#wow how thematically fitting

[jibunbosh]

Mesmerizer is a satire of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and the rest of the modern short-form vertical video format

A brief thematic analysis.

I'm sure there are countless people already interpreting the imagery and details in this wonderful song & MV, like here and here, so I won't spend too much time retreading that ground. Miku and Teto are dancing. Miku gets hypnotized. Teto signals for help, but gets hypnotized at the end as well.

That part is obvious enough, but that's still pretty surface-level. What is this seemingly hyperspatial horror scenario supposed to mean to us?

While checking to see if anyone before me's already come to the same conclusions as I did and if I should bother not writing this text post at all (lol), I came across udin's great analysis video. She comes to the conclusion that the song tackles themes of disillusionment with reality and the ways we indulge in escapism to relieve ourselves of the pains of the world.

I agree with that reading! From practically the very beginning, we have Miku call to us - the viewer - to push away our true feelings. Teto comes in to peddle a solution, inviting us to surrender and empty our minds - in her words, "pretending to know nothing."

You, the viewer, are a critical character in this masquerade. For nearly the entire video, Miku and Teto's eyes are unfailingly trained on you. Or, well... perhaps they can't actually see you, but they can see a camera, or whatever other aperture the point of view is supposed to be from. And they know they're being watched. (Who else would Teto be sending distress signals to?)

Let's put a pin on that for later.

udin notes very early on that Miku and Teto are, conspicuously, kept in vertical frames - very similar to the video formats of TikTok (and Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and whatever other clones of the format exist.) You know, just like the animator Caststation's Rabbit Hole fan MV that went viral some months ago.

Hey wouldn't it be crazy if the song's producer, 32ki, released Mesmerizer shorts too haha. Wouldn't that be crazy.

Wow, wild.

These short-term vertical videos are captivating & alluring. If you're reading this, it's more likely than not that you've also found yourself caught up in them at least once, scrolling through the infinite algorithmic slurry and forgetting about the real-life issues you have at hand. Would you say, then, that you felt hypnotized? Mesmerized, even?

And so these two invite us to join their world and focus on the... uh... rectangle.

Their dances are repetitive, following the same loop. Their outfits are distinct, but their choreography isn't. They're copying the same formula, repeating it ad nauseam to the best of their ability.

They're doing a fucking TikTok dance.

Back to the pin I told you about earlier, with Miku and Teto looking at a camera.

Miku sways with the camera, eyes looking directly at it like a swinging pocket watch. She's been looking at it the entire time, after all. We've been seeing her via our screen this entire time, but, again, she doesn't necessarily see us. She's beholden to the camera, which she dances for day after day, caught up in its spell. She's hypnotized by it. Eventually, she breaks.

Teto, on the other hand, resists. For a while, anyway.

Despite her being the one jumping to us with the "solution" at the beginning of the MV, there's very quickly good reason to question how much agency she has in this. She dances for the camera as well, but she doesn't want to. She's signalling for help. She wants out.

Many content creators (as much as I personally loathe the non-specificity and soullessness of the term) have struggled with the adaptation to the short-form video format, and the preference the algorithm has had for these captivating, bite-sized videos. They're catchy, and easily drive up metrics. Practically anyone who's publishing their work via video format online needs to learn to adapt or fall behind, even if that means whittling their content down to fit the frame, the time, and people's shortening attention spans. Sometimes, that means compromising on specificity and completeness... or, in other words, the true representation of a full work.

The song's writer, 32ki, has been releasing songs on YouTube for several years. Their first YouTube Short, however, was posted only a year ago: a short, whittled-down segment of their previous song, CIRCUS PANIC!!!, hoping for it to win the ProsekaNEXT song contest. It was their first song to achieve widespread popularity and hit a million views.

The shorts, however, aren't the "true" versions of the song. The full song just won't fit.

We're being mesmerized as consumers of this endless stream of content, rather than appreciators of music and art. However, that relationship isn't completely symmetrical across the plane that is the 4th wall. Miku and Teto are trapped not by their attention spans, but by a compulsion to project their "truthful acting" and peddle that window into a colorful, problem-free world.

We, as the collective audience, need not dwell on any one thing for too long - we need only swipe, and move on to the next video. However, Miku and Teto are trapped behind the screen for eternity, day after day.

They're the only characters we get to see, of course. There's no evil 3rd voice synth character that's plotting to keep them trapped in there. We can't put a face to whatever force is hypnotizing them and trapping them behind the screen. It's faceless - like the inscrutable algorithms of YouTube recommendations or the TikTok For You page, or the impersonal corporations that develop & maintain those aforementioned apps. Miku and Teto's likenesses, on the other hand, are being exploited and extracted from for their entertainment value, being strung along by that metaphorical hypnotizing force like puppets on a string.

Many people, represented by Miku, enjoy their success on such platforms. It's freeing and liberating to throw oneself wholeheartedly into such an endeavor, of course! Others, represented by Teto, harbor their doubts of the emotional veracity of such a medium, but know they have little choice lest they face destruction... perhaps not literally as a person, but as an idea.

Wouldn't it be easier just to let oneself be swept away by it and give in?

[aroace-genderfluid-snake]

I ALSO MADE AN AA5 REMAKE IDEA LIST LIKE A WHILE AGO HERE:

case 1:

- basic case, get into the grove of things

- against a payne cause LOL

- jury system trial run 2.0

- phoenix there to oversee it and heckles apollo for the lols (assistant)

- scarecrow murder

case 2

- start off with phoenix saying something ominous before disappearing for the rest of the case. trucy with apollo

- blackquill’s arrest with athena showing up at wright anything agency. she also sticks with apollo for the case

- new prosecutor. don’t know who, but they’re convinced that phoenix did forge evidence and that edgeworth is covering up for him (important later but doesn’t come up during this case beside some general goading)

- edit blackquill’s arrest to make it more political. maybe he’s a prosecutor from overseas that edgeworth brought in?

- jury system isn’t used. explained as phoenix working on something

case 3

- jury systems there. phoenix is not.

- phoenix is back and gives apollo a case then disappears again

- apollo thinks it’s simple. or he would if phoenix didn’t give it to him

- suspiciously little evidence

- phoenix shows up, gives apollo some papers, then leaves

- same prosecutor. realizes halfway through someone tampered with the evidence. accuses apollo.

- papers are a list of who came and went into the evidence locker during the investigation. apollo presents it as proof he never showed up

- prosecutor seems shocked by something and forcibly ends the trial for the day

- apollo ends up talking to the prosecutor and asks what’s so shocking. the prosecutor doesn’t answer, so apollo goes to the defendant to ask if they recognize any names. they do but won’t say who due to danger or whatever

- apollo investigated the crime scene again. miraculously, there’s more evidence around.

- apollo goes back to the agency to hear edgeworth and phoenix talking. all he manages to get before being found is “we will catch her”. when asking who “she” is, he’s told he doesn’t need to know

- second day, prosecutor shows up with a new witness, who claims to know something about the missing evidence.

- there’s a lot of stuff that happens, but eventually, apollo realizes that the new witness knows something about the evidence that they could only know if they had seen it, and they claim to have just seen it taken

- witness ends up arrested. real killer not found.

case 4

- phoenix is there from the beginning. says something about final testing for the jury system and mentions some sort of secret coming out. when pressed further, he just laughs

- jury includes apollo and trucy’s mom

- same prosecutor. shows up at crime scene, demanding to speak with phoenix. phoenix obliges, leaving apollo on his own.

- when asking the detective on site what they could be talking about, apollo is told a story about the prosecutor’s parent being disbarred for forging evidence. prosecutor helped with disbarment

- unsure of what to do with that information, apollo investigates the scene. this time, there seems to be too much evidence, and phoenix shows up to tell him he should get it all checked. mentions something about an attempt on his life before closing off and leaving

- when checking evidence, a large number of it is proved to be falsified. when asked about it, apollo denies any knowledge, and he’s let go due to the fact that he brought it in

- prosecutor shows up again. apollo asks about evidence on scene and if they knew it was faked. they did not, and apollo asks if they want to look together to find out who faked it. prosecutor agrees, but on the condition that they share evidence for the upcoming trial. apollo agrees and the prosecutor goes to ask around about the falsified evidence while he stays behind to search the crime scene.

- trial begins. apollo shares his evidence and prosecutor tells him about witnesses coming up. phoenix and edgeworth pass by, not stopping, but apollo hears edgeworth mention something asked of the prosecutor. when asked, the prosecutor admits that when they took phoenix aside for a conversation that they don’t tell apollo the contents of, he had asked them if they’d be willing to share information with the defense in an attempt to make the trial more fair. they declined up until they heard apollo say something about forged evidence. they decided to ask just in case apollo did have something to do with the forging so they could get it checked themself. when asked why phoenix wanted them to do that, they admitted that they didn’t know. apollo decides to ask phoenix at a later time.

- stuff happens, and apollo realizes a piece of evidence is forged right before the prosecution presents it. he demands a recess and tells the prosecution of his suspicions. the prosecutor brushes him off saying that he has to do more than that to throw them off their game. apollo tells phoenix of his suspicions and phoenix tells him that it’s part of a plan. when asked if the prosecutor knows that, phoenix tells apollo that it wouldn’t work if they did. apollo gets pissed off but goes back into the courtroom.

- the forged piece of evidence is presented, and gumshoe ends up coming in. he tells the judge that all the evidence that was considered forged all went through one detective and that the piece just presented was one of the few pieces that remained intact. court closes for the day to investigate

- when apollo confronts phoenix after the trial, phoenix tells him that he did tell the prosecutor but wasn’t believed. he then said that he didn’t want to tell apollo because he still believes the prosecutor is on their side but that the prosecutor doesn’t believe they’re on their side, and that if apollo knew what phoenix had told them without the full story, he probably would’ve assumed there was something wrong with the prosecutor. when pressed further, phoenix admits that he was the one who told the prosecutor of their father’s crimes, though he was anonymous at the time. however, when the first jury trial happened, the prosecutor figured out it was him and assumed he knew due to the fact that he had done the same thing, and phoenix hadn’t argued. when asked why not, he said that if the prosecutor believed that there were larger amounts of intentional forgery than there is, then they’d be more suspicious and therefore more able to catch things that edgeworth, phoenix, and apollo all missed due to edgeworth being too high up to see those things, phoenix only being involved in the jury system, and apollo being a defense attorney. apollo tells him that that’s manipulative and phoenix agrees before leaving. apollo gets frustrated and leaves to go to the crime scene

- at the crime scene, the prosecutor shows up looking pale. when they see apollo, they apologize immediately and ask if he has any more suspicions. apollo realizes that the prosecutor now being more friendly with him was probably also phoenix’s intention, but he agrees to go over the evidence after they finish investigating anyway. when they get to the scene, though, they aren’t allowed entry due to the fact that it’s being investigated due to the forgery. when protesting, edgeworth appears and allows them in. before he goes in, though, apollo asks edgeworth what his and phoenix’s plan is. edgeworth just tells them that they’re looking to end the dark age of law and leaves.

- when on the crime scene, the prosecutor asks apollo why phoenix doesn’t have his badge yet. apollo says he hasn’t thought about it. the prosecutor wonders if it’s because the dark age of law isn’t over and he believes that someone is needed that isn’t affiliated with the defense or prosecution. when apollo points out that phoenix is affiliated with him, the prosecutor mentions phoenix going to the prosecutor’s office for multiple prosecutors. when asked which ones, the prosecutor says something about klavier along with edgeworth and a few that they aren’t entirely sure about but they think have a good chance of being involved. apollo resolves to talk to klavier as soon as possible.

- they find a few more pieces on the crime scene, but the most startling is a bloody ace. when asked about it, the detective says they don’t know how it got there, and picks it up. apollo notices she’s lying and eventually pressures her to admitting that someone forced her to put it on the scene of the crime and remove it once apollo had seen. the prosecutor asks apollo if he knows what it’s from and he lies and says no before heading back to the wright anything agency.

- when back, he tells phoenix about the ace. phoenix says he’s surprised that that’s the route she went with and reassures apollo that nothing will happen, and if it does, phoenix will just tell them that it was him who did it and never told apollo. apollo tells him that that isn’t better and phoenix disagrees, saying that a few more years in ruin won’t be much. apollo says something about trucy and phoenix tells him that since he has yet to get his badge, it won’t change much. apollo argues that it’d be more charges against her father and phoenix tells him that at least they’d be correct. finally, apollo asks phoenix why he doesn’t have a badge and phoenix just tells him that there’s more he needs to do before that can happen then leaves. trucy then reveals to apollo that she was there the whole time and admits that she’d rather phoenix not go through that again. apollo agrees and tells trucy that he’ll look into ways of making sure it doesn’t come out.

- conclusion of the trial. no new news comes out, and the mother doesn’t make herself known

case 5

- news of the forged ace comes out

- phoenix tries to take the fall but apollo does before him

- he says that he knew kristoph was behind phoenix’s disbarment and that he killed the victim in that trial but he had no way to prove it so he had the ace placed there

- phoenix tries to argue that since the ace was found on the scene the day of the murder, that was impossible, but apollo points out that he could’ve just followed kristoph. when asked why he didn’t report as a witness, apollo says that he was afraid of what kristoph could do.

- it gets taken to trial, and apollo tries to take his own defense. before he can do that, phoenix reveals that he already has his badge and has since his acquittal. when asked how, he says something about edgeworth

- it’s decided to be a jury system trial. the prosecutor is the same as throughout the game, though they visibly have doubts about the whole thing.

- the prosecution has a witness to bring to the stand, but before they can, klavier shows up.

- he says he can’t prove or disprove apollo did anything but he can give character testimony and why he believes that guilty or not, apollo shouldn’t be punished.

- the jury grants his request and he admits that about four years into phoenix’s disbarment, edgeworth had approached him. originally, he had thought that edgeworth just wanted to yell at him, but instead, he had told him about the current evidence they had against kristoph. it has convinced klavier of his brother’s guilt, and from there on, he had worked with edgeworth to decrease his reach.

- phoenix hadn’t known about this and is visibly shocked. he gets upset, but before he can say anything, klavier reminds him that he kept much worse from edgeworth and that if anyone has the right to be mad due to those seven years, it’s him. phoenix reluctantly agrees but still says that he doesn’t agree with how that happened. klavier tells him that it doesn’t matter and that it already happened.

- klavier continues on to say that they did find evidence against his brother but that it was always disposed of before anything could happen, even when it wasn’t possible for kristoph himself to get his hands on it. he says that catching the people who took care of that evidence was what he and edgeworth were doing and names a few people they arrested, including the prosecutor’s father. when the prosecutor asks phoenix about it, phoenix just says that he figured he was the best target for the prosecutor’s anger and he didn’t really feel the need to correct them.

- klavier then says that by the time phoenix got arrested for murder, they still hadn’t got everyone, saying that’s why he decided to come back to the states. he tells the court that the only way they could’ve gotten kristoph arrested was by either taking away his entire network or forging something, and since they hadn’t taken away his entire network by the time phoenix got arrested, they were considering forging evidence themselves. klavier says that prior to apollo’s arrest, he had believed phoenix forged the ace, and that no matter who did it, no one deserved to be punished before leaving. phoenix reiterates that it was him and apollo once again disagrees.

- the witness finally comes in. she seems shocked to see phoenix at the defense stand and apollo as the defendant. phoenix tries to goad her into saying that he was the one who forged the ace but it doesn’t work. the witness says she saw apollo put the ace on the scene somehow someway, look, the point is, she’s covering for someone due to being threatened, and once this is discovered, someone (edgeworth or gumshoe) comes in with a list of people who have been put under similar threats.

- witness from case 3 is on the list

- when asked the meaning of this, whoever came in simply says that this witness testimony must be thrown out and that without it, they don’t have the proof needed to punish apollo.

- there’s a short recess and apollo approaches gumshoe to ask about someone with the description of the detective who pulled the ace from the crime scene of the fourth trial

- gumshoe admits that he knows no one with that description and says he’s going to check for her

- she’s the blackmailer. woo.

- shit happens, and blackmailer gets into the courtroom and eventually gets caught. she leaves with a warning abt the dark age of law and phoenix laughs at her

- apollo ends up being found not guilty by the jury on the grounds of them not thinking any real proof was found and that even if there was, he still wasn’t guilty of anything

- there’s a cut scene of apollo and trucy’s mom on the jury, selecting not guilty

- at the end, apollo and phoenix are outside the courtroom, talking and apollo ends up asking for more clarification on the dark age of law

- phoenix ends up explaining that the only reason this is considered the dark age of law is bc the corrupt ppl keep getting caught, causing faith to be lost in the court system. he tells him that this’ll be what they need to enact systematic change and it’s a necessary step for his and edgeworth’s plans to move forward

- when apollo asks about said plans, phoenix just says to make things better. apollo gets frustrated, saying he should be allowed to help, which causes phoenix to laugh and tell him that he’s already helping

- ends with athena coming in and asking to join wright anything agency

end notes: not 100% on all of this (phoenix having his badge and klavier helping jail his brother r the most questionable) but the idea of following the theme of corruption and struggling to help when you don’t have all the info (sorry apollo lol) along with moving forward the dark age of law plot feels like it’d! be! so! good! anyway, aa6 in this universe would probably revolve more around restoring ppl’s faith and the enactment of phoenix and edgeworth’s efforts to overhaul the court system (think letting defense attorneys have access to the same info as prosecutors and not being allowed to present evidence in court unless it’s examined by the police). ends with a final trial where apollo’s mother is on trial and ends up revealing herself to him and trucy which includes an instance of apollo having to choose between presenting unexamined evidence (since the new system isn’t fully implemented) or not presenting it, leaving it 100% up to the player. either way, it goes to be examined (prosecutor demands it if presented, apollo gets assistant (trucy) to get it examined if not), and comes up as fake. ends court for that day and shows an actual investigation into the forged evidence instead of just blaming apollo (with phoenix there mentioning he wished they did that for him) and it ends up leading them to the forger, who ends up being the killer and admits to being the killer in case of 5-3. phoenix and apollo talk at the end and phoenix says that that person was the last of their list of what they assumed to be kristoph’s group and that, for the first time since he got disbarred, he is no longer hunting for corruption. says he’ll still keep an eye out but that he trust that the changes to the system he and edgeworth added along with the new blood in the field such as apollo and athena (athena will mostly be a judicial assistant in this due to her still learning to be a lawyer). phoenix reveals that he and edgeworth are still doing research into new systems they could possibly implement, but since edgeworth can’t research in other countries, he’s going instead. he repeats mia’s line in aa3 telling him he’s all good as a lawyer to apollo before entrusting him with wright anything agency. ends with something with trucy, apollo, phoenix, athena, and lamirior (maybe them seeing phoenix off to his research?? idk) and some sort of conversation with trucy, apollo, and lamirior, tying up that loose end somehow. most of the other cases will revolve around learning whatever system edgeworth and phoenix decided was chill and will feature different prosecutors in each case to show how it affects each of them differently

apollo justice trilogy ideas

because capcom fucking WASTED the potential they had with aa4 and the storytelling of the trilogy deserved to be replicated with more characters

notes under the cut

Keep reading

[markrosewater]

I’m not sure if its a chicken and the egg situation for me story-wise about the Desparking and the omenpaths (i.e. if planeswalkers needed to be desparked to justify the omenpaths being important or if the omenpaths were created to add extra weight to the desparking), but in either case it lessened my interest in Magic’s story and world as a whole. Nonwalkers being on other planes haven’t filled the same thematic niche and importance that planeswalkers did and the use of omenpaths in the story doesn’t have the same mystique as a planeswalker being a fish-out-of-water stepping onto a new plane did.

For me it’s also how prolific it feels the omenpaths have been used has made the planes and some surprises on them feel less special? For example, Dragonhawk being on Bloomburrow felt less like an “oh wow, a dragon from another plane? That’s bad/scary! I wonder what that means lore-wise?” and more “oh neat. That’s this set’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge callback to another plane. Moving on.” Thunder Junction was a fun set to play, but it was less the of wild west world we’ve craved and more of a “haha look at all our wacky villains cosplay cowboys! Isn’t that crRRraaAAazzZZy?” There’s also that with how often offworld characters have appeared on planes and how more easily interplanar communication has felt like it’s become has somewhat ruined the danger and excitement of being on a new mysterious plane and has really shrunk the feel of Magic’s multiverse. It’s starting to become less of bright new worlds to learn about and more set dressing for this season’s grab bag of characters.

I don’t want to hate the Desparking and omenpaths especially since I’ve enjoyed playing some of the sets and some legendary cards for previous walkers have been neat. I also know there’s also the logistical aspect of wanting/needing to print less planeswalkers per set to save up the design-space that players broadly wouldn’t be able to completely understand. Something had to be done after how big of a villain the Phyrexians have been and how important their story need to come to an end at, but after so many sets it doesn’t feel like it’s stuck the landing and I don’t know when it’s going to recover its footing for me to regain that feeling I lost again.

The best way I’ve come to describe the feeling is tt’s kind of like having a puzzle that’s missing a large chunk of pieces and you’ve tried to cover it up by taking pieces from other sets. It’s covering the hole, but it’s not quite fitting and even where it does match up it stands out how different it is.

Thanks for sharing.

[adorkastock]

Sorry if you've answered this before but why did you change your name from Senshistock to Adorkastock

Oh yes! Let's talk about it! ⭐ When I started making pose references I was doing them for myself so I could draw Sailor Moon OCs. Fandom friends were like, "Wow nice poses!" and I was like "Thanks, it me." so they asked to use them, too.

I started making more poses focused on Sailor Moon themed characters and ideas which is why I chose the name "SenshiStock." Senshi is the Japanese word for soldier and the characters in Sailor Moon were called "bishoujo senshi" AKA "pretty soldiers." (In the modern incarnations the branding as been "pretty guardians" to focus more on the protection aspect vs the fighting aspect.) Eventually people started asking me for poses that were outside this theme and I began to expand my gallery. For many years I kept the name but for a long, long time it was feeling like it didn't fit anymore. Only - I didn't have a new name? SarahStock was one but she's a Canadian wrestler so I didn't want that to be confusing. 😅 Fast forward to 2018/2019 when I started getting really serious about my hairbow making business. I needed a name and a friend (gosh I wish I could remember WHO) suggested "AdorkaBows" since my bows are pretty nerdy themed. I loved it immediately. After that it just seemed natural (and maybe good marketing?) to change my pose reference stuff to "AdorkaStock." It was actually my kid who made that suggestion. Brilliant little bean.

So yeah to summarize for the TL;DR:

SenshiStock name felt outdated thematically

I didn't have a good name so I didn't change it for many years after that feeling started

my bow business got a name AdorkaBows

stock followed along = AdorkaStock

And that's how that happened. ♥

[faelapis]

alright! we got one whole person interested, so here's my hot take:

the first "how to train your dragon" movie is WAY better than httyd 2.

i know everyone loves like, the cool warrior mom design, the romance and the "epic animation moments" in 2... but can we for a moment be honest and say the whole "hiccup becoming a leader / which dragon is the Good Alpha" plot was dumb as hell? also, the villain sucked?

the original httyd is pretty good about keeping the structural problem grounded in real societal fears. namely, fear of the unknown and of beasts. it makes sense for any ol' village dealing with such a problem. it was intelligently designed around a solid premise.

httyd 2 is like. actually, dragon taming is a big thing, even outside berk. and theres a Scary Foreign Man dragon tamer who is bad and just wants power. it's okay to other him. being a good guy is about being a protector instead of an evil, power-hungry guy... which hiccup never was anyway... so no real growth there. just be good instead of bad. wow. what a theme. very thought-provoking.

people act like httyd 3 being bad came out of nowhere, but httyd 2 was the original sin to me. it totally dropped the societal themes in favor of generic good vs evil fights and "worldbuilding" - despite having no more interesting stories to tell.

it also kind of ruined hiccup for the sake of developing him. like. his whole thing is that he can't fight, so he has to find other ways to contribute to society. he's the anti-macho hero. which ends up being important in convincing the village that dragons can be peaceful. he's empathetic to the other, because he's been othered.

meanwhile in httyd 2, hiccup's like. Cool Warrior Man, who needs to step up and be the hero king when his dad dies. he can fight just fine, because he has a cool dragon to fight with. so he's just like any warrior, but one who fights with weapons instead of brute strength. aka most fictional warriors who arent just "the heavy."

the first movie isn't beyond criticism, obviously. the animation was a little meh compared to httyd 2 - i get why visually its seen as an upgrade. plus, httyd 1 also did the thing of having like a last minute evil dragon to defeat... but that wasn't the point. the POINT was the village and its fears. the POINT was overcoming that.

whenever people list why they love httyd 2 and consider it superior, its like... lists of details. like, look at the upgraded character designs, the cool flying scenes, the affection between hiccup and astrid, or the clever way hiccup's prosthetic leg is designed.

but these are film *details*, not fundamentals.

if you told me the sequel to httyd was going to have a much more generic story, ignore the themes of the original and makes its deliberately lanky and weak protagonist into Handsome Hero Warrior Boy, i'd be like. that sounds kinda bad. but the Animation Details (tm) i guessssss

i know hiccup is still "himself" in 2 to some extent, btw. he's an inventor, he's intelligent, and he initially tries to talk to the villain. but none of that ends up mattering. its arguably looked down on by the movie, which really, really wants him to step up to be the warrior king like his dad. aka a generic Hero Strongman.

i'm not totally against evolving the themes of a work to fit new conflicts, btw. sequels should generally be different from the first movie. that's fine. that's expected.

but while the new conflict in httyd 2 IS born out of the results of the previous movie, that evolution feels very literal, not thematic.

namely, the evolution is "more people have dragons now." it builds the conflict from there. its based on worldbuilding, not on theme.

i don't think a very interesting evolution.

it kinda went from, in httyd 1: "the theme is fear of the unknown. how prejudice/ignorance manifests, educating oneself through compassion, the dangers of worshipping violent masculinity, and the importance of questioning what you're taught by society."

to, in httyd 2: "the theme is dragons. who has them? what they want with them? how can the Good Guy humans protect dragons from the Bad Guys? also, being a Good Leader means being a strong Hero Man who protects his friends," without asking any deeper questions related to the themes of the first movie.

and i'm like. guys. guys.

the theme shouldn't just be "dragons."

the theme of the first movie was NOT just "dragons." the first movie could've been about people being afraid of unicorns. or large birds. or unusually intelligent bears. it was not just about literal dragons, it was about societal fears and trying to overcome our base gut instincts.

i think this is what really plagues httyd 3: it builds on the themes of the second movie, not the first.

httyd 3 asks further questions that only really revolve around the literal relationship between humans and dragons. it does not understand any broader themes of what that relationship represents.

it clearly thinks its very intelligent for asking "what do the dragons themselves want?", but that question is not respected enough to be explored in any thematically coherent way.

the only real weight its given is the argument that there will always be "bad humans" out there, and so, dragons are safer in the wild. which sure is... an argument. but its a very "othering the problem" kind of argument.

it acts like its caring about the agency of dragons, but its not really. dragons were not actually portrayed as "oppressed" in berk society after the first movie, nor lacking agency. they were only at risk of "bad individuals", to which that solution is stupid. the racialized bad guy in httyd 2 didn't steal all his dragons from berk. he caught and subjugated them, mostly from the wild.

all while looking like... this, by the way. i feel like we don't talk about that enough. all the good guys are white nordics, while the only man of color is scary, domineering and cruel. in a series of movies that was once about having empathy for the other.

MAYBE if berk had been really oppressive towards dragons in httyd 2, we could've had a theme. maybe if they treated them like a dangerous commodity that must be tightly controlled despite their nominal acceptance and inclusion, we could've had a thematically tight 3-movie arc about like fear and oppression or whatever.

but that would require, yknow... making the movies be about broad societal problems, instead of just evil individuals. and only the first movie cares about making any real societal critique.

also, the solution in httyd 3 would've still sucked. these movies, in terms of writing, really decrease in maturity from 1, down to 2, to the plummeting depths of 3.

there is no relationship of oppression that is solved by completely segregating society and going our separate ways (httyd 3). just like there is no oppression that is solved just by defeating bad individuals (httyd 2). we have to learn to coexist as equals, to educate ourselves and be compassionate to the other. even if we're afraid.

that's the dream only the first movie kept in its heart.

[kindlespark]

this is gonna be SO long and rambly sorry anyway i saw a post abt how babel does queer characters and it got me thinking abt why the tropes it uses would usually turn me off other stories but didn’t here

MAJOR BABEL SPOILERS //

i feel like i’d be more mad abt how robinramy ended up in babel if it marketed itself as queer lit at all or if its fans were going “WOW AMAZING QUEER REP” abt it. but no one told me any of that, so finding out they were gay was just a fun little bonus surprise to me. i get why ppl are eh abt robinramy not getting together/technically still being subtext (which i dont think is really true btw like the book literally says “robin was falling in love” but idk i guess if you were stupid you might’ve assumed that it was falling in love with oxford given how romantic some of the other language is (WHICH IS ALSO THE POINT bc i think robin’s friendship with ramy blurring into romance is why he romanticised like all his friendships/experiences in oxford BUT IM GETTING OFF-TOPIC)). i just think robin’s repression abt being gay was intrinsically tied to his attitudes on imperialism (wrt refusing to acknowledge anything that complicated his life until it was too late) and i don’t consider it a cop out or queerbait. like i genuinely don’t think robinramy could ever have gotten together without drastic alterations being made in terms of plot and character. plus i think it’s clear that kuang didn’t want to write a story with any kind of focus on romance at all, because it’s not that kind of book. there’s no successful het romance either, so it grates a lot less. the only reason romance is included at all is to show the ways in which white entitlement manifests. so the tragic way robinramy played out just made sense to me.

and i speak as someone who accidentally spoiled myself on You Know What in the middle of reading and i was like ugghh boooo dreading it the whole time expecting to roll my eyes when it happened but then when it did i was like. wow im actually not that mad LMFAO 😭😭😭 actually thematically the book sets it up so well that i believed that this was unfortunately the only way it could’ve gone. babel is about the loss and tragedy and grief that colonised people experience. it’s about the lengths people will go to to uphold empire and the lengths ppl will go to to tear it down like idk 😭 i guess it is bury your gays but it didnt bother me this time because i thought it fit thematically ❤️ i enjoy tragedy as a genre a lot and i would’ve made it gay anyway you know. thanks rf kuang for doing it for me so i didnt have to.

WHICH IS ALL TO SAY that i guess if you’re going into babel for the queer rep without appreciating that the story is fundamentally a tragedy it would feel like it’s just reusing tired tropes….. but i think the choices kuang made were rly deliberate and not in a way that feels like trauma porn or shock value. the book is fundamentally about the struggles of poc so the layer of queerness that was introduced felt like a subtle extension of the experiences of characters of colour in the book, and i enjoyed and related to it as a queer chinese person who kind of realised they had to prioritise their fight for the liberation of poc over queerness mainly because the idea of western queer liberation cannot be dissociated from imperialism and many aspects of homophobia as we know it was an export of christian european empire into our colonised countries in the first place and FUCK THIS IS A WHOLE OTHER TANGENT ABOUT HOW I THINK RAMY AS A CHARACTER IS EMBLEMATIC OF THE TENSION AND STRUGGLE THAT QUEER POC DIASPORA HAVE BETWEEN OUR IDENTITIES GODDAMNIT OK FORGET IT POST CANCELLED i just rly think babel’s handling of queer characters is fine and makes sense and i like it personally and maybe i will make a coherent analysis about it one day but that day is not today byeeeeeee

[animentality]

Maybe a hot take, but I think Durge is the real protagonist of BG3. Like... I'm sorry, everyone love their Tavs, but from a narrative point of view, it doesn't have fucking sense. It's just another guy (gender neutral) in a The Choosen One situation. I've read this story before, hundreds of times. But Durge's recepción (or disgrace)... now that has juice! That makes sense on a narrative level. You started it, you end it, one way or another.

Anyway, I'm never (with my +500 hours) going to play a Tav run. Ever. Origins only, mostly Durge. Durge and Durgetash are waaaaay better, sorry not sorry.

You are spitting nothing but facts, anon.

You wanna know what the HONEST to GOD fundamental problem is with the writing of Baldur's Gate 3?

It's that it spreads itself so thin, desperately attempting to write an open sandbox sort of world in which ANY kind of character can fit in...that it ends up being this hollow nothing.

IMAGINE if the Dark Urge WAS the default protagonist. It WOULD'VE BEEN an amazing story, if it had been given the focus it deserved, instead of just blankly repeating the SAME dialogue you'd get as a Tav and as an origin.

The idea of a former villain turned amnesiac, and going on an adventure, learning about themselves from the perspective of an outsider and seeing firsthand the horror they've wrought? It's like a fucking Zuko arc, except finding out you were the Big Bad all along could've been written even better than that...

We could've had that blank, nothing slate that Tavs start out as...and then find out, that it has thematic significance, because WE CHOOSE who we become, after a childhood/adulthood of being unable to make our own choices, and being forced into the role of the villain before the game even starts.

It's a MUCH BETTER WAY to give people a blank slate to work with, for the fun of roleplaying, but ALSO asserting a particular theme. Which is, the gravity of your choices, big and small. To do good or to embrace evil.

YOU KNOW. How Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did being a Bhaalspawn.

IT'S ALSO A REALLY GREAT WAY to DO an RPG because yes, you slightly infringe upon the freedom of the customizable characters a person can make, but in exchange, you actually tell a fucking story where choices are the main theme.

INSTEAD. Because they were so dedicated to Tavs and the variety of ways you could play as a Tav...they completely undersell and underutilize what could've been a really amazing character.

You can literally choose to DIE for your friends in the end...and then what?

Withers brings you back in five seconds, no one has any real reaction to you doing that, except saying good job buddy :)

And then you're basically a Tav.

And ALSO. I want to say this, because it's been bothering me.

The Dark Urge has Tav syndrome too.

They have TWO notes in the entire game that we have to read into to try and glean a greater depth to their character other than murder hobo.

And that's it. They're a blank slate too.

If the Dark Urge was the protagonist, we might've been able to look into who they were before, outside of just laughably evil flesh eating monster.

They might've had real fucking depth, instead of just tidbits.

I and my fellow Dark Urge/ Durgetash enjoyers have to do the fucking work for them and write in stuff that isn't actually there. The Dark Urge as a protagonist could've been really meaningful. We could've seen inklings that they had misgivings about being Bhaal's Chosen. We could've seen scars of resistance, where they tried to defy Bhaal, but were punished with death, disintegration by the loving hands of your own father and flesh. We could've had betrayal, redemption, loyalty to one's blood family vs one's found family.

But we don't get that, because it's taking too much time away from Tavs.

Sometimes I really wish the Dark Urge wasn't even an option. They gave me this thing, and I thought wow this is the only way to play the game...and then I look and see, ah. But the potential for greatness could drive me absolutely insane.

And it has.

Durgetash is the product of my frustration with the game's characterization of the Dark Urge.

And I know I'm pissing off the salty BG3 fans who love their Tavs and all, and think the Dark Urge is lame, and god FORBID a protagonist have a character, can't have that in an RPG, but I can't find it in myself to care.

I'm built different than the rest of y'all. I don't just feed on content, I analyze its nutrients. I calculate how good for me it actually is.

And BG3 has wonderful mechanics.

But the story has so many problems, from beginning to rotten end.

And it is what it is. I still enjoyed myself playing it.

But the story isn't good for anything except allowing you to create a far more compelling story on your own, in fanfic or in original work inspired by it.

And I guess if that's all they wanted, then fine.

But goddamnit, I'm gonna complain anyway! Divinity 2 did it fucking better.

[beatricebidelaire]

netflix opera night is so.

[top tier aesthetics. beautiful dresses. beatrice's outfit. esme's outfit. kitme teatime. the aesthetics.] [i cannot forgive the way they changed this. this was supposed to be a b&b thing] [beatrice baudelaire is so beautiful i can forgive anything] [i cannot forgive the way they changed this. where the hell is bertrand] [beatrice baudelaire you are so beautiful] [beatrice and olaf not getting any interactions is a disappointment frankly if they're going to change how the night went they should at least give me that] [olaf sleeping during beatrice's performance and waking up immediately after is so funny. extremely b&o behavior i can get behind that] [did i mention the aesthetics?] [la forza del destino's plot does involve gun going off accidentally and killing someone so in a way i can appreciate the perfect irony of this accidentally going off version happening right at a la forza del destino performance. it's thematically fitting. and i know joe tracz mentioned this too] [actually watching the scene made me realize i cannot get over this i hate this how could they do my wife (the opera night) like that] [where is bertrand] [one strong argument about lemony not being involved in the opera night is bc what happened at sbts] [kit is so clueless it's painful to watch] [i do understand why they felt like it's easier to combine sugar bowl theft with opera night bc they needed to squeeze this into s3 and they have much less space than the books and different media required different handling sometimes] [WHERE IS BERTRAND YOU GOT HIM FOR S3 YOU CAN AT LEAST HAVE HIM HERE] [beatrice baudelaire you are so beautiful i can forgive everything] [the consequences of changing olaf's death into an accident is that this implied beatrice's original target for the poison dart is esme and that she was willing to shoot esme over the sugar bowl. she was willing to do this after her talk with esme saying "i know you want children too" they're talking to each other like they were close friends but she was willing to shoot her and she did fire the shot it was just olaf's dad got in the way. wow] [J was in that taxi wasn't he i am constantly thinking about this post] [beatrice baudelaire you are absolutely radiant] [WHERE IS BERTRAND]

[atopvisenyashill]

god that person is soooo full of brain worms or something because like even as a dany lover, i see everything you’re saying about her as great observations based on the text. She’s young, she’s traumatized, of course when she gets over to westeros it’s not going to end as well as she hopes. The only thing I can pray for is that George writes her end better than D&D did because it was atrocious how her most trusted advisors went from being her biggest supporters to acting like “no actually her grief from losing her best friend and two of her dragons who were as much like children to her as anything could be means she’s just as mad as her father”, especially when Tyrion never knew Aerys!! I would love to see her descent into madness, see how all of her losses stack and utterly break her, but the way those two switched up real quick was honestly disgusting to me

YEAH like I think the biggest issue with the show is that she’s surrounded by characters who are pale imitations of their book selves or characters she’s just NOT supposed to be interacting with like that. There’s no doubt in my mind that Tyrion is going to flip sides & it’s probably going to spell her doom, but the Tyrion in the books is in a vastly different, much darker place currently than the Tyrion she met in the show and that’s going impact their dynamic MASSIVELY. Varys is NOT some monarchial marxist aksjdj he’s a mad scientist trying to hand make the perfect king bc he’s seen the destruction caused by bad ones and he thinks he’s Above It All when in reality his traumas as a slave inform his bad behavior just as surely as they inform Melisandre’s. The show doesn’t want to engage with all of that though so Tyrion & Varys just kind of nonsensically flip on her for *checks notes* acting the exact same way she’s been acting for years when they never had a problem with her stupid behavior BEFORE s8.

And i go back and forth on what I think is going to happen but ultimately YEAH i do think george is going to write an ending that is much more fitting and also, despite what the targ nation people insist upon, TRAGIC than what we got. It’s going to hit harder, it’s going to be thematically interesting, it’s not going to be george going for the ~cool~ or wow shocking plot line the way those two idiots did!

But definitely the thing that hit my rage button on that one is this idea that like first of all, dany isn’t somehow mentally ill or that the presence of mental illness is a weakness or moral failing. I don’t know how you even exist on terros without developing something deeply unhinged in your brain, and dany meanwhile has a conga line of trauma and some ancient blood magic and incest cooking in HERS, i don’t think i’m saying anything out of pocket by saying “yeah i think she displays some patterns of behavior that are worrying when you essentially have a pet nuke.” but two it’s also like - ALL of these people are insane!!!! lannister, stark, tully, martell, baratheon, targaryen, greyjoy, on and on, they’ve all lived through at minimum one but some of them several wars that completely upended their lives and killed a lot of their family, and then got thrown into stressful situations that require a much more delicate hand than any of them are capable of. that’s the whole series!!! it’s just a bunch of insane people going “yeah exactly girl let’s do it” and “it” is usually war!!!

[evilwickedme]

So if Superman is Moses and Captain America is David, do you think that Spider-Man is Job?

He's always miserable, with suffering piled upon suffering and loss piled upon loss. But he always has faith in the goodness of humanity and the righteousness of his duty. He maintains his faith throughout all of his trials, and that's what makes him a hero.

(I was thinking about how Judaism and Xianity see G-d differently, and more specifically how they see faith and obedience to G-d differently. In Judaism faith isn't about obedience, and G-d is often an allegory for the world just as the world is often an allegory for G-d — at least that's how I interpreted the fact that 90% of our prayers are thanking G-d for creating a specific aspect of material reality. So if the story of Job is, from a Jewish perspective, isn't about unwavering obedience to a single entity but instead about having unwavering faith in the goodness of the world, then it fits Peter Parker almost to a T, right?)

Wow ok I am SO pissed off that I wrote the answer to this for a full hour and now it's just fucking gone because Tumblr decided not to publish it when I hit post. What the very fuck. So I'm going to try to shorten what I wrote a little and hopefully it'll still make sense. But this is a great ask, for real.

Anyway. I feel like something that's been lost in my most popular posts is that my central thesis when it comes to the Jewish nature of superheroes is not that there's a 1:1 between every hero and a historical, mythological, or Tanakhi figure. The central thesis is, instead, that the very concept of heroism as presented in comics is tied to the Jews who created the genre; it's just very easy to demonstrate these kinds of concepts with direct allegories that have such clear parallels. I actually have a third secret parallel that'll probably never see the light of day, between Magneto and Aher (and like, does anybody even know who Aher is? he's not exactly a well known figure).

One of the reasons I haven't posted this comparison is that it is largely thematic, and therefore requires considerably more explanation, especially for goyim or those who aren't familiar with Aher's story (אלישע בן אבויה fyi if that means anything to y'all). But that's sort of my point - it's much easier to point that Superman is literally Moses and Cap and David serve very similar purposes as characters than to talk about the fact that superheroism is based in Jewish values and traditions: the very idea that heroes are meant to make the world better through action as opposed to sacrifice, the value assigned to every single life (he who saves one life etc), characters becoming better people over time rather than going through dedicated redemption arcs, etc (I can't remember what I wrote here and it's driving me nuts thank you very much for asking).

I gave a lot of context here to the difference between Golden Age and Silver Age writing here but honestly again that took forever and I don't feel like typing it all up, so I'll just point out the basic facts which are that the people creating the comic book industry in the late 30s and early 40s were desperate Jews trying to save their people across the ocean, and also were only about ten or twenty years removed from having lived in the Old Country themselves. Their life and culture was intensely Jewish, they'd grown up in specific Jewish tales. By the time we get to Spider-Man, the situation is entirely different. It's been 25 years of comics (Superman debuted in '38, Spider-Man in '63), and the Jewish foundations of comic books and heroism are already baked in to the genre. Yes, the industry is still overwhelmingly Jewish, but now the separation from a purely Jewish upbringing and Jewish separatism in the Old Country is forty years old. The attempt now is to specifically make stories that haven't already been told - for Spider-Man, the main concept was that there had never been a teen hero before who stood on his own - one that wasn't part of team like the fantastic four, or, more typically, a sidekick.

All these differences actually mean that the coding of these characters is very different. Superman being Moses was intentional; Cap was created as anti-Nazi propaganda. Spider-Man was and is Jewish because he is such a pure example of what Jewish heroism is. He's flawed, he's angry, but he can't help himself from trying to save... Well, everyone. It is, however, important to note that he debuted a long while before Magneto was confirmed Jewish (I don't actually know if he was the first, bc I'm having trouble finding that kind of info easily on the internet, but he's certainly one of the most notable Marvel Jews ever, and he was confirmed as a Holocaust survivor relatively early); it was a whole before Marvel realized you could make somewhat prominent characters Jewish, let alone heroes, and by then Spider-Man was one of their best selling characters, and they're still afraid to this day to alienate readers by confirming him as such.

But moving onto Job - I think I have a very different read of the Book of Job from you, but that's not surprising to me; the Book of Job is incredibly opaque, and I doubt that any two people will interpret it exactly the same. Also, I was raised Orthodox, and I often have very different perspectives on various Jewish things than the typical American Jew. Here's how I view it, though.

Firstly, Job absolutely does not maintain his faith throughout the entire story. Yes, initially he's presented as the most pure person ever, one who has never even been tempted to do a chet (חטא, closest translation is sin; another word would be aveira, which would best be translated as a transgression). And, indeed, it is not his deeds that lead to him losing everything; it is instead Satan who argues to test his faith by taking everything he holds dear away from his - his money, his cattle, his children, his health, his wife.

It's noteworthy, for any goyiche reader, that Satan in Judaism is not the Christian Devil who rules hell. He's an adversary, for sure, but he's more like an opposing counsel; his role is to argue for every human's guilt, especially when someone has committed a terrible aveirah. Forgive me for saying this, but he's essentially a devil's advocate. He can be viewed as the manifestation of yetzer hara on a wider scale (yetzer hara and yetzer hatov are the two natural impulses we all have in ourselves, the first to be selfish or to commit bad deeds and the other to commit good deeds and help others; this is a neutral fact rather than a condemnation of any person, and also I'm massively oversimplifying things here). Also, he's a tattle-tale.

Anyway, back to Job. Yes, at first he does maintain his faith, through the loss of his property, his children, even his health; his wife, before she dies, begs him to curse God, and yet he doesn't. But when she does die, he spends a chapter lamenting the day he was born, regretting that he wasn't stillborn. At first this doesn't look like a direct accusation at God, but it absolutely is, as God is in charge of life and death, but also evidence by the following:

So Job does lose his faith, because as far as he can tell, he has never done anything wrong in his life ever, and yet he has been cursed to grieve everything he has ever had, and he won't even die.

Most of the book is dedicated to dialogue between himself and three of his friends, who come to the common conclusion that he must have done something wrong to deserve this treatment. But Job remains adamant: I did not deserve this.

The general lesson that many people take from this book is that God works in mysterious ways, blah blah. But like... We know, in fact, exactly why this story happened. We saw it! We saw Satan advocate to try Job! So what's the point of the book?

The point is the Job keeps asking "why". The point is that Job hears that God won't forgive his friends, despite the fact they blame him for his misfortune, and he still chooses to pray for them. The point is that he refuses to take what has happened to him quietly. Not accepting that what happened to him was just, but not accepting others' injustice either.

Ugh. I phrased all of this way better in the first draft. I really truly hate this.

Anyway my point is that Job, despite being far richer than the average Jew by the standards of his time, actually is meant to represent a very common situation: what do you when bad things happen. Do you blame yourself, or do you blame God? Do you let other people beat you when you're down, or do you stand up for yourself?

And the thing is those themes are universal, but they're not really related to Peter Parker in particular. In the shallowest sense, the kind I used to compare Cap and David or Superman and Moses, they do not have similar stories or backgrounds. Job has everything, and he loses it all, and he mourns all of it, including the property and money; Peter Parker is working class, has never had enough money, but we see again and again that he views it as a tool rather than a goal in and of itself. Spider-Man's origin is about learning to battle your yetzer hara, your darkest impulses, and we see Peter again and again trying to do his best even though he's often being pulled by his instincts to use his power for selfish purposes. Job does not ever have to learn any such lesson; he never did anything wrong.

The one thing in common between the two stories is that they both believe that every life has value - well, if Peter is being written by a competent authors at least - with Job praying to save the men who are literally called the "resha'im", the evil ones, and with Peter being the little man's hero. But that can be said about most heroes, especially the notable ones. Hell, there's an entire double page spread dedicated to the concept in Batwoman: Elegy. This is more of another indication of Jewish values making their way into the foundations of superhero comics than it is a similarity between Job and Peter.

Also, I feel like I need to be clear. Our prayers thanking God for creating something? Traditionally are simply thanking God for creating something. I'm not saying you can't interpret it as a metaphor for the world if that's what works for you, if that's how you see God, but God was very literal to most Jews for thousands of years, and I could talk for ages and ages about the schools of thought regarding God and the world and Maimonides and shit.

Speaking of which, we need to discuss the fact that Job is literally just some guy. Like he's not a prophet, he's not a leader or a judge, he's just some rich dude who lost everything, mourned it, and then got it all back. I've talked about this before, but one of the foundational ideas of my thesis is that the similarity between prophets having powers (such as Samson but also really any judge being considered a higher authority despite not even communing directly with God) and superheroes invokes Maimonides' claim that the first degree of prophecy is the need to act for the better good, being unable to ignore the ills of the world and doing your best to fix them - that people who incapable of ignoring that urge (and Peter, despite his occasional selfishness, often prioritizes Spider-Man in his life specifically because of that urge) are possessed by the spirit of God. Literal prophecy, communing with God, cannot exist without this base level. So, in effect, Peter is significantly holier than Job.

Anyway. Again, I've definitely missed some points because of Tumblr's fuck up and I intentionally skipped most of the history lesson that gave a lot of context which I didn't feel like typing up again, but this is most of it. Sorry if this wasn't what you hoped for, but this was a really interesting thing to talk about anyway, and I'm very grateful you gave me the opportunity to think it over.

[windamp]

let's rate red hood costumes

if i forgot smth lo siento. just let me know, there are so many of these and i am one creature

this is just for fun btw. nothing serious here! <3

now these are all comic canon red hoods (except maybe two? we'll get to them). no alt universes. maybe one day.

now on to the costumes

Hush Jason. Maybe not technically Red Hood but like. c'mon. close enough

i'm giving the rating 6/10

I know the trench coat was probably more for mr. hush himself, but i enjoy it. i'm also a filthy pouch lover so they do get points. also in red! cute. the boots are also neat. the negatives are that ugly robin dress/tunic thing. kinda silly. still it was good for giving bruce a spook.

2. the classic. the og. red hood utrh version!

9/10, easy. the casual outfit paired with the sleek red helmet. *mwuah* wonderful! nothing bad to say. it's recognizable. comfortable. stylish. great job all around

3. titans tower. ah.

-10/10. i would give props for running around in the scalies BUT THE UGLY ASS YELLOW TIGHTS. disgusting. bare his legs to the world you cowards. i'm mad. this could get at least 7/10 for sheer moxy if it weren't for those hideous target brand pantyhose

4. brothers in blood.

he's literally just copying dick, but being unhinged as hell about it.

5.5/10. he looks good. who doesn't in nightwing's fit? though he is copying, he does get points for obsessive weirdness of it all.

bonus?

???/10 i don't know how i feel. i've never known how i feel about this.

5. final crisis

i think he had a helmet in this arc and it broke but dont quote me!!!! pay me to read final crisis again if you have an issue.

he spends most of his time in jeans + leather jacket + just the domino

this is probably the most boring but i give it a 10/10 my boring ass loves it. no dressups just a guy in a shitty little mask. clapping. bravo. there's something ~thematic~ bout it

6. final crisis pt 2

1/10 i hate the red robin suit i hate it i hate it. we finally got tim out of the damn thing even though it came at too high a cost (he's trapped in robin purgatory). it does look okay in wfa, but usually in dc reg comics it looks like ass.

regardless jason looks bad in it too. very sweet of murdery bruce to give it to him but ugh. at least could've given him some ears on that mask. then it couldve been bumped a point

7. batman

the first time jason decided to wear a muzzle. hm.

6/10. there's nothing wrong with it. it's just a bit generically 'what would gun batman look like'. the face part is my favorite, with the weird grater muzzle, pointy ears, and red glowing eyes. it's fun

8. batman&robin

i need to get my first thought out. the little symbol on his chest reminds me of homestuck. i can't really unsee it. i know like theres no connection. but it looks like it could belong on a homestuck human

anyway. 3.5/10. he was willing to try something totally new, so i'm giving points. i enjoy the white. is the red hood goofy af? yes. yes it is. iconic, though? sometimes the upper black part is drawn lower, i've noticed. it doesn't change much for me.

i like the thigh highs going on here. the red guns are sexy!. he looks bad but there are good things here!!!

there is this version, which ditches the thigh highs, gives back the classic helmet, removes the cape for a jacket, and adds belts.

6/10 i think it fixes a lot about the prev costume, though it's really just like they threw utrh's costume and his previous batman&robin costume in the blender lmfao

wow flashpoint. father todd is not a red hood, so we progress.

9. nu52

an update on the og look. i do like the contrasting brown jacket, the prominant thigh straps. sometimes his helmet is drawn suctioned to his face so -2 for any of that cause it's so weird

8/10 not a bad update to the classic.

10. red hood/arsenal

i dont remember when he changed into this actually. in my head it's rh/a but i could be wrong.

i see no one talking about this abomination. his new fit? yah. this one? no?

4/10 the bottom of this is fine. i HATE the jacket. sorry it's just. ugly. his arm bands are also clunky. the matching between arsenal and red hood is nice though. so it didnt get too low. roy pulls it off better :(

11. wingman

hm. i didnt read this. this makes me not want too akdsfhsl

0/10. ugly. looks like a villain in some scifi thing in the 90s. like power rangers. sentai villain looking ass. boring grey, ugly lines and shapes, the goofiest helmet on earth......

ig willis is burdened with this curse now

12. 3 jokers (dubiously canon. i dont consider it so but since dc left it in the air we add it)

he has a helmet for a bit. this one is interesting bc i could actually see it as a futhering of his costume had he lived. sans helmet ofc. it's hard bc i don't not like this, i just feel it doesnt fit his aesthetic in the present day. 5/10. if jason had lived and not become red hood id rank it higher but then we wouldnt be here, would we?

13. batman's gift

i debated putting this, but it's different enough from the nu52 vers

very fun. body armor all over. i like the red arm guards here unlike w/ the prev one that had these (less bulky ?). i like the leg stripes.

it doesn't really do much to change his look, but there are differences

7/10

14. task force z

it's like the above but more just body-armored. really all he's done is remove the jacket and get shoulder pads. 6/10. the negative point is for the lost jacket :(

bonus

7/10 i did say if he ditched the tights i'd rank it higher (twas all a dream through lmao)

15. current

controversial of me, but i think. i think it's fine.

now i do agree his little hoodie is.........well it's not that great. my least favorite part tbh.

the new brown pants nicely contrast, though i have seen this costume with grey pants too?

here we are. The red bandages are fun, i think if they were white i'd hate 'em but the red is interesting. i also like when bits of them are sticking out. idk. cute detail.

i like the muzzle mask as well. that with the hood has given us delightful in shadow!jason where only his eyes glow out. i also like when artists put his white hair tuft out. adorable. probably not what he's going for but that's what the creature no face look is for

really the hoodie is the one thing i'm ??? on. it looks silly in a bad way. there are ways to keep a red hood while giving a better jacket/vest. future state's was much nicer.

7.5/10

this wasn't in the ratings but i do prefer any weapon beyond the crowbar sigh. it starts showing up through a lot of them so i decided to just not do anything about the score.

[jacksmusesdrv3]

Forever looking for ways to explain things via graphics so, here's one for how I tend to manage analysis around possible DRV3 conspiracy in relation to the common Fiction take and also its fandom (because why not make it a sciency looking scale huh)

Neutral zone would be something like this thing talking about Shuichi, although depending on your perspective things I intend for this zone is prolly pushing the ph4 boundary, it's something I want to be able to reach the middle. It's easiest to communicate in this zone because it means only making lighter speculations and laying out evidence, which means I can be a bit flexible as long as I word it adequately. Sometimes music inspiration can fit in this zone nicely!

Vibe zone is where I want to be more comfortably as that's where much of my personal investment and emotion is, but is often very hard/impossible to communicate in Neutral zone as it requires reshaping one's view of the game's truth first. I tend to put more specific kind of music inspiration, and theory of Kokichi’s character, twin and the basic DRV3 world in here. It's also where I spend time creating for catharsis (too many damn WIPs though, le sigh)

HELP zone - so named because it's the thing that had me screaming out for help - encompasses very-unfortunately connected behind-the-text social-cultural issues - a solid ph0 due to the sheer fuckery - thematic speculations on said fuckery, and also very complicated threads I don't know what to do with unless I make a way more detailed plan with research. This is an area that demands more care lest it poisons me

Don't know what to say about ph10-12 except it is just that- something I find uninspiring personally (unless it's fanfic that vibes in distinct ways I find interesting). Ph13-14 viscerally annoys me to the point I don't want to see it much less talk about it 90% of the time (that's 'Real Fiction' in a nutshell- don't care for it and am firm in my feelings that it's bullshit)

This is super simplified and I may come back to it to revise but wow I might just start using a ph scale or something-

[quihi]

Okay, overall thoughts on Fablehaven and Dragonwatch. I hope to write in more detail later - I have a first draft of a post about my take on some of the religious themes and allegory in Dragonwatch - but I gotta start somewhere (that requires less citations).

I saw Carnival Quest on the library shelf last November, read that, and had so much fun I decided to go for more Brandon Mull and reread Fablehaven. (I don't read a lot of kids books, as an adult, but I hadn't felt like reading in awhile and this made reading fun.) The first book was rough, honestly—it was his first published book and it shows. The prose felt clunky and awkward, but I got used to it and it improved. Seth drove me insane—so much of the plot was driven by "Seth screws up." But it was a quick and easy and fun read, and the world and concept were a delight!

Books 2–4 were great. I only read the books once or twice over ten years ago, so all I remembered was the general concept, a little about Kendra and Seth, and a vague idea of the final battle. I got to experience all the twists again! It was very fun to see the people who populate this increasingly large world, and the people around the edges like that rich couple in Georgia who have fairies but have never seen a preserve. Like, how did they get involved, how much do they know? It's clear that Kendra and Seth are way more deeply involved than someone who just discovered the preserves normally would be. I have a lot of thoughts about their parents and how Fablehaven fits in with their lives, and I think I think about that a lot more as an adult—it doesn't bother me but I find it more sad now.

Keys to the Demon Prison was big, and wow did we see the world. It added a lot of stuff that hadn't felt foreshadowed at all—the Eternals, Vasilis, Bracken—so it felt a little disconnected and like there were some deus ex machina. I liked the ending, though, and how everything wrapped up with swapping the demon prison and the fairy realm.

So, fun series! They definitely felt like kids books, but I would still recommend them to kids and adults who want to read a fun, magical adventure.

After this, life got busy, and I needed a break, and time to let the books sink in and read a few other books, so I didn't start Dragonwatch until January. I raced through the first three books, then took about a week off before I could get myself past the beginning of Champion of the Titan Games, then finished the series in under a week. They got so frustrating and dark that I needed that break, but I'm glad I didn't force myself to keep reading when I was worn out.

Okay, look, I know this seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed them. I don't know if it helped because I read them all in under a month and didn't think too hard or reread them in between, and I hadn't been eagerly awaiting them—I don't think much about Mull or keep up with his new books. I didn't notice a lot of the continuity errors that I guess were there, though I did notice the big thematic change from darkness being neutral to being more evil (though I have some thoughts on that, too). There were definitely some weird choices. The structure of book five felt very similar to Fablehaven's book five.

I liked Knox and Tess. I see reasons they would be introduced, and while they could have done more (Tess: spends entire series as the innocent girl, gets teleported around a couple times but never to anywhere from which she can get home), I couldn't help liking them. They're decent foils for Kendra and Seth, at least. I think I'd have liked more of them, over cutting them. I badly wanted Knox and Seth to sit down for a good conversation about mistakes and forgiveness.

One of the story choices that baffled or irritated me most was not putting Marat or Agad back in charge of Wyrmroost, after Celebrant lost his status. I guess the best argument is there wasn't time between them returning from Stormguard Castle and Seth's disappearance, and the explicit consent of both Kendra and Seth was needed, but like, that should have been the first thing they did. I guess no one thought of it. And I suppose there was still the issue of no easy way to leave.

There was a lot of religion, which I began to notice in Master of the Phantom Isle, and was surprisingly blatant in Return of the Dragon Slayers. Religious themes in books don't bother me, though I know that's a YMMV topic and I understand why some people don't like it. (Thank you to the Fablehaven fandom for, as far as I can tell, not getting into absolute hatred of Christianity.) But, well, they were still overall the fun adventures that I was reading for, even as they got more sad and the character arcs got deeper. I'm glad I finished and read through the whole series.

I was left with a lot to think about. I have ideas for fanfiction. Mostly canon compliant, set after Dragonwatch, with some earlier, and also one romance AU that I'm worried about people's reactions to the ship. I'm buying a lot of the books to reference more easily, since I like referencing books when I write and I'm no longer twelve years old with the time and urge to flip through and reread books a dozen times until I know every plot point by heart by the time I return them to the library, but I do have more disposable income.

So, uh, I'm not really one to rate books, but I'd still call these solid and fun overall, though they have their flaws. I far prefer enjoying books to criticizing them, so I'd rather like them and try to find ideas and headcanons that improve them, rather than linger on the elements I dislike. I want to be positive!

[lillified]

I remember you saying earlier (on twitter,not here) that the autobots were kind of boring,since they only fit into a few archetypes. I’ve kind of been thinking about that, and I thought they may also have been boring because of another thing: these few personality types means no one really bounces off eachother, and it doesn’t lead up to any interesting conflict.

This may only apply to G1,or I may just be talking nonsense, but compare them to the decepticons. The decepticons have a lot of different personalities , so they contrast against eachother and a lot of the times,disagree with eachother,creating conflict. However, with the autobots, the similar personality problem can come when no sort of conflict,even ones between certain characters,exists, and everyone has no sort of unique opinions towards eachother. And conflict,you know,makes up a lot for a story and characters.

A lot of people don’t care much about the autobot moments a lot, however you don’t really need to scour the internet to see videos and people posting about Megatron arguing with Starscream or skywarp getting clowned by rumble and frenzy, if you know what I mean.

hey!! wow, it is always surprising when people remember stuff I said lol

I’m admittedly just not really a big autobot fan (if I get the opportunity to write the autobots they’d be very messy) but I totally agree with you here—people seem to like the autobots, conceptually, for very different reasons than people like the Decepticons, and it factors into an interesting dichotomy between how different people view characters as a literary device.

while it isn’t a rule by any means, I’ve noticed there are a lot of people who love certain autobots, but specifically like them in isolation. the idea of the character is more important than anything they’ve actually done. pretty much every autobot that exists has a fan, but they could have little, if any, screen presence. this isn’t bad, of course! in many cases, it’s extremely novel and sweet. that being said, I’ve noticed that even the most prominent autobots have this happen—Optimus Prime is more of a symbol than a character, and that separation is a source of comfort.

This also happens with Decepticons, but I’d argue it’s to a lesser extent? They tend to have much more defined and consistent character relationships, arcs, and themes. The decepticons who are viewed in isolation most frequently would probably be Soundwave and Autobot Megatron, which is interesting (I am honestly not a fan of the modern characterizations of either of these, but I totally understand why people are!), in that their interactions, story purposes, and even personalities are flattened to separate them from the underlying narrative. People love the idea of Soundwave, but fail to give it a personality.

Once again, I don’t think any of this is bad! Moreover, isolating characters from the existing narrative and putting them in different places according to where they might better suit a story is a very good thing, actually. I’ve never agreed with the pushback for iterative/adaptive media altering existing characters’ traits or personalities to suit their thematic purpose, because I think it takes away the agency and undermines the vision of the artist. obviously you can dislike certain characterizations (I do that often) but blaming a deviation from the norm is extremely reductive. Trying to stick to an idealized checklist of how a character ought to act instead of recognizing them as a reactive, dynamic story device is how you end up with flat, unchanging characters and a boring story.

To tie that back to what I like about the decepticons, I think the fact that they are so messy is their strength—they aren’t all just different skins on the same archetype, they’re unique thematic elements which adapt and serve a function in the story. You can make them physically and even archetypally unrecognizable, but as long as you utilize them as elements in the story and afford them the conflict and complexity they deserve, it’s much more difficult to go wrong.

thanks for reading, and thank you for the question!! I hope this all makes sense—I wiped myself out last night and I’m still recovering, so I apologize if this was incoherent lol

[artblock-tm]

Here for that Fandom ask post. Black clover series pleaaaase

Blorbo: Julius Novachrono

I’m sure you’re well aware from how much I’ve rambled about him in DMs, Noot, but he is literally my #1 blorbo forever and ever. He’s my specialest guy ever.

^ bug

Scrunkly: Dorothy Unsworth

Not only is she literally peak design and personality-wise, but she’s just,,, so so cute. I love you Dorothy. The eeperrrrrrrrrr

Scrimblo Bimblo: Marx François

MARX THEY WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND YOU LIKE I DO. You’re the only thing keeping this goddamn kingdom running my friend. You deserve a million dollars and a vacation. He’s the struggler

Glup Shitto: Owen

Oh, you know he’s obscure when he doesn’t even have a last name in the actual series. Wow. Anyway, he brings me disproportionate amounts of joy. I love you Old Man Owen.

Poor little meow meow: Patolli

THE CHARACTER EVER. If I had the time I would ramble about how Light Magic is so terribly thematically fitting for him, and his messiah complex, and how he’s so awful for such an understandable reason, and how he loves his friends to the point of wanting to commit literal genocide, and—

Ahem. Um. Point is, he’s a well-written character with a well-executed plot twist and fantastic parallels between him and other characters.

Horse Plinko: Rhya

I have him as my profile picture on my spam account since I just love him that much. I want to appear in his dreams like an ominous vision and hover at the edge of his sight and disappear the moment he turns to look at me.

Okay. Um. Spoilers for this last one!

If you haven’t have the plot of Black Clover explained to you by me, OR haven’t caught up to at least manga chapter 331, then please do not proceed <3

Eeby Deeby: Lucius Zogratis

I HATE THIS BITCH. I HATE HIM SO GODDAMN MUCH. SEEING HIS CLONES DIE DOZENS OF TIMES ISN’T ENOUGH I NEED TO PERSONALLY EVISCERATE HIM.

I hate his smug ass smile and his god complex and his levelheaded tyranny and his everything. He’s literally the worst and I hate how he has so much potential because that forces me to keep thinking about him. UGH. I miss Julius.

[little-meowyao]

Hello, MDZS fan! Can I ask your top 5 (or top 3) favorite characters from MDZS? And why you loved them? Also, your top 5 favorite moments from the series? Thanks 🤩

Jin Guangyao

He's just. My blorbo. He's so amazing and so interesting and you can fit him in SO MANY ROLES. He's so versatile and he's so so complicated as a person. Going a bit into headcanon realm here but I like the idea that despite being incredibly ruthless when situations ask for it, JGY is also deeply empathetic (and shameless link to a fic sorta about this)

Everything he does has such deep implications for the MDZS society and his upbringing and is just. Wow

2. Lan Xichen

This guy is just so afjshkhagjj. Insane. I love his daddy issues and how they influence him (I love how he basically becomes QHJ at the end. Very sad but thematically aproppriate I think). He hurts so pretty. He's my darling. My little punching bag. I love his characteristic of not taking conclusions without having the whole story (and how that colors post-canon him because he CAN'T have the whole story anymore ☹️) and how that contrasts with killing JGY because of a rumor (metaphorically). MXTX says "I know a guy that is so well-adjusted" and takes you to LXC

3. Su Minshan

Give it up for the most normal guy in the entirety of MDZS! I just [INCOHERENT SCREAMING] You have no idea how much I adore this man. He's a cool guy. He's a cringe loserboy. He dies because he uses too much power.

I like the paralel with JGY and how neither, at end, will ever be more than their origin (son of a whore/lan traitor). I love how deeply resentful he can be and how his loyalty is so ridiculously easy to win but at the same time, in the canon situation, only JGY would be capable of that

He's doggishly loyal and that appeals to me in a atomic level because I'm like that too. A man like Minshan would fix me actually

4. Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen

I know you asked for top 5 but I CANNOT separate these two on my mind

I love how the eye situation paralels chengxian. I love how utterly tragic they are

I love how XXC takes SL's hurt-fueled "I never want to see you again" at face value. I love how utterly self-sacrificial he is. I love how SL spends the rest of his life looking for him. They are so utterly tragic and you cannot convince me they aren't soulmates

(I love how the entire eye situation comes about because SL was mildly repulsed about being touched by XY, as he is with every because of his mysophobia, and XY took that as an insult)

I adore them

5. Nie Mingjue

I don't know what to say about him but he appeals to me deeply. I love how he's dying and he knows he's dying. I love how the conflict with JGY stems from "It would kill me" not being a valid excuse not to do something on his mind. I like how rigid he is in his moral code. The issue with NMJ is precisely that he's NOT a hypocrite.

The man that he is. I love how he flips on JGY and never flips back. I love that he perceives killing JGY as saving him from himself. I love how he is bound by duty in his relationship with LXC, and unlike JGY, unwilling to pretend they can have something they can't.

Da-ge the man you are

As for favourite moments:

JGY's death

I love him taking the last shred of agency he can and also (attemping) to take the culpability of his death from LXC's hand

2. SMS's death

He dies because he uses too much power :( and he dies for JGY

3. The Nightless City scene

I adore how much that says about JGY's relationship with WRH. Ruoyaos my beloveds.

4. JGY giving LXC back the jade token

EMOTIONAL DAMAGE.

5. The teacup scene

I love how LXC can be so subtle in the way he conducts a situation but he KNOWS how to do it! It's like a slap to the face to the people that were wiping their fingers