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sleepymarmot · 1 year ago

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Phantom Thread (2017)

[Finally forcing myself to post the reviews of films I watched earlier this year. Saw this one on January 29th — almost exactly seven months ago! As usual, I also post the notes I took while watching, so scroll down a bit if you only want the review.]

Liveblog

The dress is pretty but it doesn’t sit well on her at all.

Damn that was quite a rude way to hit on a perfect stranger

Girl has no sense of self-preservation! What do you mean you get into the car of a customer you talked to for two minutes, after dark?!

Wow he put his fingers in the sauce, is that normal for rich British men or is that another creepy flirting method? That’s unhygienic, please use your own food for innuendo

Oh my god Cyril is immediately acting creepy also

“My job to give you some. (beat) If I choose to.” Dude lmao…

“You have the ideal shape. He likes a little belly.” Ok first of all, insane thing to say once again. Secondly, w h e r e

I like this dress even less. Weird skirt, looks uncomfortable.

Why did he bring his sister to their date

“How early?” “I’ll wake you.” …

The fabric conversation… Is this negging again or is he for real

I really thought Cyril would say “Maybe you’re being too fussy.” I guess Alma has not yet leveled up enough to get quoted verbatim

“But, please, don’t let her sit around waiting for you.” Ha, now Cyril is repeating Alma’s words without even knowing Does Cyril not drink from the kettle? That was kind of risky…

The wedding dress is ugly Oh, he said it himself, okay

Damn, all of these women have to work overtime because of this couple’s power plays

He went from “I want a divorce” to “We’re doing food poisoning based BDSM” awfully quickly

Wait where’s that text post about being poisoned by your wife... Was it inspired by this movie lol

Ok so we all agree Reynolds is autistic, with his routines and picky eating and misophonia

---

Review

How come Tumblr has never mentioned this one to me? Feels silly to say “where have you all been hiding this” about a Best Picture nominee from five years ago, but still. This is literally a romance between “ok first of all i didnt "miss" the red flags i looked them and thought yeah thats sexy” and “love my terrible wife […] when we eat dinner ill smile and say “poison again ?” and she will shrug mischievously but we both know it is very much poison”!

General notes

Set design, cinematography and lighting were beautiful. In our age of murky shots, it’s remarkable to see a film that’s never underlit — sometimes even the opposite. Wasn’t a fan of the grain, though; the flickering is hard on the eyes, and in the copy I watched it looked like a low quality rip instead of a warm nostalgic analogue look that I assume was intended. The sound side was as good as the visuals: this might be the first time I actually noticed the sound design, and the score was nothing less than what I expected of Jonny Greenwood.

I have mixed feelings about the costuming. Some of the dresses are beautiful… but the two most important ones, the very first dress we see and the very first dress made for Alma, didn’t fit the wearers’ silhouettes, and looked stiff and uncomfortable.

Some of the dialogue, mostly at the beginning, felt unnatural; not sure if that’s just me not being a native speaker, since nobody else had the same complaint.

I didn’t get “never cursed”. Was that a statement Reynolds secretly made about himself, or a lucky charm referring to the princess’ marriage? Why did Alma rip the label out? Why did she join the seamstresses in the first place — did she feel guilty that they got caught in the crossfire and had to work overtime because of her, or did she just want to inspect the dress? I also don’t understand why people seem to adore the New Year’s Eve scene.

Do you think Alma told the doctor the whole story, or just talked about their relationship but left out the poisonings? I think it would be unwise to tell that to anyone lest they call the police…

In the sections below, I am going to talk negatively about Reynolds a lot. So I want to clarify first: I do sympathize with Reynolds in many ways; I wouldn’t want a new person to get in the way of my habits, and I would be unhappy with the surprise dinner too. And that’s also exactly why I don’t invite strangers to live with me and interrupt my routines then get mad at them for that, you know…

Filing this one as “Movies I wouldn’t want to watch or discuss with my mother even though there’s zero sex and nudity on screen”. I don’t know which part would be more awkward, the Freudian subtext or everything else…

The omelette

I’ve recently acquired a bad habit of reading too much about movies before watching. In this case it was probably a good thing, though: without the spoilers, I doubt I would have seen this any time soon, or managed to sit through the first hour. Luckily, I didn’t know the key element of the omelette scene, and still managed to have a proper first time viewing experience as it slowly dawned on me that Reynolds was aware of everything and the poisoning was going to be consensual this time.

That scene, and the follow-up interactions between Alma and Reynolds in the cottage (excluding the daydreaming flash-forwards, which I have mixed feelings about), were, unsurprisingly, my favorite part of the film. Many reviews quote Alma’s monologue (which, as I realize now, I might have originally encountered in a joke screenshot with zero context) or the line Reynolds says in response, so I’ll highlight some other things. The contrast between how simple and ordinary their actions are on the surface (cooking, serving food, eating, talking at the table) and how wild the meaning of these actions is; the mix between a duel, a dance and a negotiation that mostly consists of extremely mundane movements. The intense eye contact, the “I know that you know that I know”. How Alma put too much butter in his food and poured water too loudly for too long, and he accepted it without complaint but with the same calm and clarity as the poison. How they look genuinely happy, in love, and on the same page for the first time in the entire film. How easily he says “I love you”.

The omelette discourse

…And now that I’ve documented my immediate positive emotional response, it’s time for some overthinking and complaining. Perhaps everything I say below can be dismissed by saying “they’re both awful and deserve each other, that’s the point haha”, but that’s not a mode my brain can stay in for long. So please bear with me, or just skip this section.

Because no matter how exciting and cathartic that ending is, I can’t help but ask: what next? Is this experience going to let Reynolds finally grow out of his cycle of childlike helplessness and patriarchal despotism, instead of solidifying it? What are we supposed to infer — that the poisonings are going to be a regular occurrence from now on, or that they will become unneeded as Reynolds gradually mellows out? (The former would, realistically, have diminishing returns and practical complications like “people are going to start asking questions”, and the latter kind of goes against the celebratory kink-positive tone of the film’s grand finale.) Are we to believe that Alma’s poison is an antidote to Reynolds’s toxic masculinity, and that the more he submits to Alma the more he can tolerate her when things go back to normal, until the two of them grow to exist harmoniously?

I guess there is some evidence of that process already beginning. When Reynolds bounces back after the first poisoning, he’s slightly less mean to Alma than before the marriage. Alma’s poisoning is also less destructive the second time: consent, no collateral damage, not on the eve of an important deadline, she agrees to call the doctor.

I think the film wants the viewer to think that by the end, Reynolds and Alma’s mutual toxicity cancels itself out, and they manage to reach a harmonious equilibrium. That might be true of the first poisoning, where Alma retaliates against Reynolds’s abuse with some of her own. At the mid-point of the film, their vileness is pretty evenly matched. After that first poisoning, there’s a brief honeymoon period. Then Reynolds goes back to berating Alma, disregarding her feelings, and being dissatisfied with her presence in his life… And in response to Reynolds making her feel unloved, Alma does something that makes Reynolds feel loved. In the end, the score is still in Reynolds’s favor instead of being even. Even in Alma’s daydreams of their happily ever after, the closing monologue of the film, there is no mention of Reynolds changing to accommodate her, only of Alma changing to accommodate him: “I am older and I see things differently, and I finally understand you.”

Perhaps here the story structure and the balance of power between the characters are in conflict; it makes sense to end the film on the strong scene that changes the relationship in a major way — but that means the viewer doesn’t get to know if that change leads to improvement. We never learn if Reynolds eventually becomes a better partner; we only know that Alma is committed to him either way.

No matter how satisfying the couple’s new arrangement is to watch, I don’t see how it would help with the actual problems in their relationship. They are at different stages of life, and that exacerbates the natural differences between their temperaments. Reynolds doesn’t respect Alma as an equal; he insults her and allows others to insult her to his face. He has immense power and privilege over her socially and materially. He has a career that he loves and a devoted sister, but she has no life outside of him — no friends, family, interests, hobbies, income, etc. — and it’s hard to tell if it’s sexist writing, intended characterization, or both.

How is any of that going to be helped by them growing closer emotionally? You two found a love language you have in common and unlocked a new level of intimacy and mutual understanding, congratulations! Is it going to broaden Alma’s horizons and opportunities? Is it going to give Reynolds more progressive views and social awareness, enough to at least defend the honor of his lower class wife? Is he going to stop being emotionally abusive because he is emotionally fulfilled?

This would imply that Reynolds behaves the way he does simply because he is too high-strung and he just needs to take a chill pill. That the problems in their relationship can be reduced to him being a control freak, and once he gets accustomed to giving up control and learns to enjoy it, and then he’ll be a good partner. Sorry, but it’s hard for me to believe that one can tame, let alone fix someone by domming them.

The film seems to attempt a subversion of the patriarchal, hierarchical “artist/muse” “upper class/working class” “man/woman” power dynamics. But the characters do not dismantle that existing power imbalance: instead, they build something new and mutually satisfying on top of it. The film intentionally avoids the feminist wish fulfillment route: Alma doesn’t liberate herself, and she doesn’t even want to. It’s a fairy tale where the Beast doesn’t really become a better person, so the Beauty becomes a worse one to “match” him… but she’s still locked inside his castle. Alma doesn’t abandon the role of a muse, only adds another traditionally feminine role to it: mother. As Feminist Frequency’s review puts it, “Traditional, restrictive gender roles are not escaped; one set is just briefly swapped out for another.” Related: it might be just a consequence of Reynolds’s chosen trade, but the people Alma walks over in her bids for his attention are always women (Barbara Rose, the seamstresses).

Speaking of motherhood… What happens when the woman who likes to treat her husband like a baby gets a real baby? How does she split her time between them? Does she end up neglecting one of them, does that make Reynolds jealous or more abusive? Or will he by that time have gone through enough personal growth to be actually fit for fatherhood? An interview with an expert on Alma’s specific brand of abuse asks an even more worrying question: “I also wondered about the baby at the end, because those who engage in the behavior are likely to do it [again] when similar situations arise. So as the baby gains skills of emancipation, would Alma be equally threatened by that? I saw the baby and thought: Oh no, it may be at risk.”

Perhaps I am being overly cynical and uncharitable here because of who made the film. When an artist with a history of being cruel to his girlfriend writes a story about an artist being cruel to his girlfriend, and makes the fictional girlfriend abusive too, how can I not question it? This film was already very awkward to approach and enjoy as a fan of Fiona Apple, even regardless of its content.

The relationship development

Another thing that didn’t work very well for me in the final sequence is something that also applies to the other parts of the film: the internal logic of the couple’s relationship development. Reynolds goes from “This was a mistake, I can’t live like this, I want a divorce” to “Intoxicate me now 😏 With your lovin’ now 😍 I think I’m ready now 😳” in the space of one cut. These scenes are directly adjacent with no development between them. It makes sense from Alma’s perspective (“what an asshole he’s being, he needs to be poisoned ASAP”), but not from Reynolds’s.

On Alma’s side, though, there’s also a bit of weirdness: Alma to Reynolds: Don’t worry babe you’re not gonna die, I’ll take care of you <3 Alma to the doctor: If he died that’d be fine by me, we’d just meet in the afterlife ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I really can’t tell how I am supposed to take this, and which of the men she was lying to!

But let’s go back to the beginning of the film. Throughout the initial phase of the relationship, I was sure that Reynolds chose playful bullying as his flirting tactic consciously, but later in the film he showed so little self-awareness that I started to suspect he thought that was a normal way to show interest in a girl you just met. Either way, I was surprised that the way he condescended to her changed considerably when the seduction was over, though in retrospect it makes sense. On Alma’s side, there was a similar shift: she was far more welcoming of his insulting methods of flirting than I would expect from a self-respecting adult with a strong personality, and started rebelling when they settled into domesticity. Perhaps the domineering attitude of a handsome stranger showering her with attention was exciting at first, but when their relationship became routine, she quickly grew sick of being treated like a second class citizen in what has become her own home. (I wasn’t joking with the quote at the top of the review: it was my genuine and immediate impression that Alma goes along with the 342561 red flags exhibited during the very first day not because she’s a doormat but because she’s a freak.)

The love at first sight didn’t work for me, as well as the couple’s determination to stay together despite their incompatibility. I’m just not convinced that they actually love each other as entire human beings. They do love certain sides of each other. Reynolds loves the muse with the perfect measurements; the assistant totally devoted to him; the new woman (future) finally displacing his older sister (present) and mother (past) while, unlike them, also being his sexual partner. Alma loves the genius who makes her feel beautiful and important. They both love the persona the other assumes in a caretaking scenario. But is there a deeper connection? Do they actually love each other unconditionally, not just the aspects of each other that fulfill their needs? I’ve seen quotes in confirmation of that from PTA and Vicky Krieps — but the text itself provides no satisfactory evidence of that.

Obligatory comparisons with other films

I like to chain movies together because of themes or character dynamics they share. A couple of reviews for Crimes of the Future mentioned this film, and I decided to watch it next assuming that the similarities start and end with the relationship between an aging artist and a strong-willed younger woman. Turns out, these two films also make an interesting double feature because in some ways they’re an inverse of each other. Crimes of the Future and its main couple wear abnormality on their sleeve, but the central relationship is healthy and stable; Phantom Tread appears classy and family-friendly, hiding the more shocking aspects of the relationship beneath the luxurious surface. Both films are very sensual without the conventional sex scenes, but the approach is diametrically opposite: Crimes of the Future circumvents the content rating system, managing to put explicit scenes on screen just because they don’t contain specific banned body parts; Phantom Thread purposefully and conspicuously avoids showing any sex or nudity to preserve the aesthetic and make other scenes feel more charged. The protagonist’s old age is important in both: for Saul, it’s deteriorating health and conservatism towards newer ideologies and ways of interacting with and modifying one’s body; for Reynolds, it is the decades of habit and privilege making him internalize the belief that his own authority, taste, routines are something absolute and unquestionable.

A bigger surprise was the two films also shared the theme of food and eating. Crimes of the Future: eating as a fundamental bodily function, food as means of sustenance, and the politics of food; Phantom Thread: eating as pleasure, food as means of human connection, and the power dynamics of feeding and being fed. Both films go deeper than the surface: food is not just something that is served and tasted, but chewed, swallowed, and digested, which is not necessarily a smooth and uncomplicated process. Phantom Thread’s exploration of the food theme is probably the best one I’ve seen so far not just in film but in any media, and the only one I can think of where “food as love and sex” made sense for me.

Choosing The Favourite as the next film to watch after this one was a good choice too: they also had some things in common. There’s a young woman winning an older and more powerful person’s affection by taking care of them while they’re sick, there are toxic relationship, there’s even literal poison... The older parties are similarly spoiled and eccentric but very different in certain important ways, and the protagonists are even more alike.

People have mentioned this film’s similarities to Rebecca, which I haven’t read or watched; my own first thought was about Misery, which I also haven’t read or watched. Out of the films I’ve seen before, there’s Crimson Peak — someone made an entire Venn diagram for their similarities. I’ve also seen comparisons with a number of other films, mostly ones I haven’t seen. Is Phantom Thread more intertextual than the usual or is that just me?

#phantom thread #liveblogs and reviews #blah blah blah #maybe i should stop trying to write coherent reviews...#i wrote most of this right away but the task of making it readable has been weighing me down for months and drained so much energy from me

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thessalian · 3 years ago

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Thess vs TLoVM Ep. 6

So now that I have a decent desk chair, actual liveblogging!

Hello, Dominic Monaghan!

Matt really is in every episode, isn’t he? Then again, men with brown longish hair aren’t exactly uncommon. Still, there was an eyepatch! And then he was crushed like a soda can.

So the giants look like Ryuk from Death Note. That’s ... special.

“What, ‘cos we all know each other?” THANK YOU, GROG.

So @true0neutral needs to watch this because Yennen is such an awesome priest of the Dawnfather.

Oh SHE SEES ORTHAX DAYUM. I’m sorry, but seriously - beyond the white hair and everything, he hasn’t said enough to determine how much he’s changed yet.

See, I liked the conversation about who’s actually leading, and Keyleth did actually put it best. They each lead when it’s appropriate for them to lead. They shift and change leadership roles depending on what strength is required to get through anything that gets in their way. That’s always been Vox Machina’s strength. It’s when they start thinking any one of them is The Leader that they get all fucked up.

Okay, this is Grog as I know and love him. “Yeah, all this sucks and it’ll probably make a good fight and that asshole fucked me up with his sword so I kind of want to kill him but this just sucks and-- wait. These assholes mean no ale? I. Would like. To--” “GROG NO.” “Oh, let him destroy a thing or two. It’ll be a good warm-up for him.”

I’m sorry, Yennen. But it sounds like Percy’s friend Archie hasn’t changed one tiny bit.

“You’re playing on my emotions. And I can’t say I blame you.” Yeah, nobles and priests sometimes have to be manipulative little shits, but I do love the, “You’re playing me. And it’s working. And I’m so proud of you” tone of voice.

...They’re actually going to do the beret. Oh. My gods.

This is a “Pike needs to internalise the fact that she’s worthy” thing, isn’t it. The fight with the Briarwoods even before she got hit with Delilah’s spell, her not being able to help as much as she wanted to, it’s all a doubt thing.

Well, Stonefell, there might be no room for heroes in Whitestone, but there’s clearly room for dishonourable weasely cowardly bastards using a chained-up dwarf as a punching bag. (Also you’re gonna find that heroes don’t take up that much room until they’re busting your door down. Just by the way.)

Also, HI DARIN DE PAUL! He must have had so much fun with this...

Rory. McCann. HELLO. ...So wait, we get to see Scanlan force that guy off a roof? I’m liking this idea.

This is why At Dawn, We Plan was a whole thing. You’re right, Vax. Mostly. Keyleth’s plan wasn’t bad. I mean, assuming there are any animals worth a shit in Whitestone.

"Nothing but Bad News.” PERCY YOU SHITHEAD. Still, great use of the scope.

I mean, I knew they kept the door bit, but AAAAAAHAHAHA.

“Congrats. Everyone’s getting out early for bad behaviour.” AHAHAHA I LOVE YOU VEX.

Well. That’s ... one way to get through the door.

Nice use of illusions, Scanlan!

And that, right there, is a call to vengean-- DAYUM KEYLETH. I mean, narratively speaking, crushing the head of the resistance fighter who saved the life of one of their own basically marked Stonefell and the entire Briarwood rulership for extinction, but it’s nice to see that as a catalyst for Keyleth coming into her own righteous fury. Also, hello Minxie.

Okay, now THAT was a shot. A shot that could break the haft of a maul that heavy? Also the accuracy of it. Just a really nice touch.

“I wanted you to know it was me.” GAAAAAAAH THAT’S FUCKING TERRIFYING. Kudos to the animators. Also to Taliesin Jaffe because this is all way creepier than his original yelling.

...Then again, the yelling is equally creepy. And again, kudos to the animators; rage like that tends to look laughable in this animation style, or at least ... well, two-dimensional, pardon the pun. But the combination of rage, horror and just plain disgust on his face, both during the shooting of Stonefell and later, when yelling at Vax about his vengeance...

And then the animators let him go to horror-tinged vulnerable shock. No one gets to say the animation in this is bad. Ever.

Yeah, even knowing what does ultimately happen (though I understand that liberties will be taken here), I still get that feeling that whether “I have a sister” ends well is up in the air. I mean, that “This changes nothing” scene is all it took to flag up a few very key points: that Cassandra’s in a bad situation and might well just be going along to keep herself alive, that Cassandra might hold a grudge about being left for dead (because we can see that de Rolos hold grudges), that she has been in the custody of a vampire who likely has no qualms about messing with her head... Just a couple of lines and it sets up Cassandra’s whole moral and psychological battleground, and the defenses Percy’s going to have to get through in order to make “I have a sister” a reality.

So, six episodes in ... while the campaign will always have a special place in my heart (and now I kind of want to watch it again), I like this version ... not better, but in a different way. They’ve managed to find ways to set up the important themes in a lot less time, in subtle yet powerful ways. Haven’t seen much of Mae Catt’s stuff - then again, Mae Catt hasn’t written that much - but this was a winner.

Wait.

Waitaminit.

I happened to see who wrote Ep. 7.

Travis. And Sam.

I have got to see their writing chops. I have to. It’s not an option. I require food first, though.

#the legend of vox machina #tlovm spoilers #Thess watches Critical Role

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loreweaver-universe · 3 years ago

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And that’s...the show.

Man. Wow. A Place Further Than the Universe, huh. This is now my favorite anime I’ve ever watched. Great pacing, great writing, strong and lovable characters, gorgeous animation...all pulled together into one big warm blanket of feel-good fiction. This show is so sweet and so sad and so happy at the same time. It’s rare for a work of fiction to pull tears out of me, and this one did so multiple times. Especially Megumi’s farewell scene, man, that DESTROYED me.

God, this was good.

It’s a show about four teenagers going to the end of the world and finding themselves. It’s such a simple premise, but they got so much out of it. I loved this show. I think the only bits of it that I didn’t like were when Hinata was trying to flaunt her body for the adults early on and that brief blip where they emphasized that it was the MALE staff who were extra sorry to see the girls go. Those bits were weird. The rest of it, though? Amazing stuff. Chef’s Kiss dot meme.

The relationship between the four girls is my absolute favorite part of the show. They come together so quickly as such natural friends that it’s amazing to think that there was a part of the show where they didn’t know one another. I’d have watched another six episodes of these girls easily. It’s good that the series ended where it did, of course, it was an excellent narrative choice, but man, this was a fun time.

If I have a complaint about the characters it’s I think that Mari becomes something of a side character once they actually get to Antarctica--she’s important to the group’s cohesion as the point they all rallied around, but she doesn’t really get any focus. That’s a shame. The parts that did focus on her were awesome, though.

Well! That’s that. Thank you so much for picking this show, Oro. It’s so good.

Speaking of Oro, now that I’m finished with A Place Further Than the Universe, Oro is continuing to be my patron, but instead of picking one show to jump right into he’s having me watch the first episode of a handful of shows to see how I like them. Immediately replacing A Place Further in my lineup will be the first episode of Princess Principal, so that will be interesting.

Up next more immediately, though, I’ll be starting the first episode of Kino’s Journey! That’s the show replacing Amphibia in the patron picks list. I’ll be starting that in a little bit, so stay tuned for that!

I also now have a store! You can buy shirts, hoodies, stickers, mugs, and more there in two designs–Bullshit Space Magic and the King of Frogs! I hope you guys like what you see there!

As always, thank you so much to my 59 patrons for making it so I can do this for a living, and thank you again to all the people who have donated to help me survive the last six months of my shattered mental health. You guys make my life so much richer. I’ll see you guys in a little bit for Kino’s Journey!

IN OTHER NEWS:

I recently completed my blind playthrough of Resident Evil Village! You can see the full playlist of those streams by clicking here!

If you’d like to help me pay my rent, buy me some food, or help with my bills and medicine, please use my direct donation link! If you’d like to support me per liveblog completed every month, please pledge to my Patreon! Becoming a patron not only allows you to vote on what shows I do whenever I choose a new one, but also grants access to the community Minecraft server to $5 patrons or higher!

You should also go pledge to Gio’s Patreon, or his Sponsus–our Discord server maintenance tech, creator of Rubybot, and community Minecraft server overlord deserves far more than I can afford to pledge to him by myself.

If you’d like more of me and my content:

My Episode Lists master page, where you can find every show and liveblog I’ve done!

My Discord server, where you can come hang out with me and other fans, check out member liveblogs, and join community gaming guilds!

My Twitch channel, where I stream variety games every so often!

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My Twitter, where I make announcements about liveblogs and streams!

My merch store, where you can get shirts, mugs, stickers, and more!

It’s your kindness and support that lets me do this stuff, and I wouldn’t be where I am without all of you to do it for. Thank you all so much for your support, and for tuning in every episode!

OTHER PEOPLE YOU MAY ENJOY:

I may have been one of the earlier Steven Universe liveblogs, but a whole community of livebloggers has sprung up over the last five years! I linked to a bunch individually for a few wrap-ups, but honestly, this end-slate is already eight billion miles long, so I’m just gonna link to my links page. Click here if you want recommendations of other livebloggers, or other neat people, or webcomics and podcasts that I recommend.

#a place further than the universe #furtherbloggin #bloggin #further episode 13 #further26 #episode wrap up

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howtotrainyouragents · 5 years ago

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Agent H’s AOS Rewatch

S2E10 “What They Become”

I wrote this out during the actual rewatch week, but I didn’t realize I never posted it! Boy, did this get long.

-I had to do a liveblog of this episode because it’s one of my favorites of the season, and we get SKYE’S TRANSFORMATION!

-Okay, so @the fandom who were around back then: at what point did people guess they were doing a terrigenesis/Inhumans storyline? Because I only learned that’s what they were doing via the internet frenzy after the episode was over

Ward, May, Coulson, and HYDRA

-MAY’S. EPIC. FLYING. FUDGE YYYYEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHH. This is so fucking brilliant of her, dead-dropping the plane and then cloaking.

-”I would put two of these (bullets) in his heads”. Plus, Coulson always looking at the good side: “you saved six agents”. I didn’t do a liveblog of 2x09, but that conversation with Bobbi about acceptable casualties is SO IMPORTANT and vital to who Coulson is and the show overall and you know that’s the moment Bobbi truly supported Coulson.

-Good callback: Before Coulson freaked out that Skye was taken. Now he’s confident that she’ll be able to handle herself until they can get in there.

-”Hand me your side arm, let’s find out”-Skye

-Is Ward’s personality shift (though still a psychopath) this first half of the season because he’s lost without Garrett or because he believes he can be redeemed through helping Skye? Both?

-Yass queen, pick up the diviner

- I loved seeing the bad guys maneuvering around each other in Season 2a, and all of that coming to a head this episode. But I don’t know why Ward and Skye and all attacked and then they just stopped. I think they could have taken the HYDRA goons easily

-“Never turn your back on the enemy.” You know I’m glad Skye shot Ward too. It’s closure on his belief that she can redeem him that’s been carrying him through these last ten episodes.

-I never realized that Agent 33′s voice was distorted

-HYDRA, SHIELD, and the aos writers treated Kara so badly, and I am yelling shame and ringing the bell at all of them.

Hunter and Bobbi

-“If he really is dead, the number of people I trust on this planet, just plummeted.” The Huntingbird hug is so beautiful! How strong Bobbi pretends to be (“Whenever this is all over, I’m gonna cry for like a week”= so real) and how she lets herself go with Hunter. She’s so surprised by the hug at first, and I love how much taller she is than him. He knows about the flashdrive, but he tries to comfort her anyway and that makes me sad and touched.

-”Diego’s early and he’s wearing a suit.”-Bobbi

-The kiss! Ugh, Huntingbird really does fill all the classic OTP tropes

-”Don’t die out there.” “He likes to hear it.” “Who doesn’t like to hear it??”

-”Join SHIELD, travel to excotic distant people, meet exciting unusal people, and kill them” -Hunter

Fitz, Simmons, Tripp, and the Koenigs

-Bahahaha, the Koenigs, His little thumbs up and Hunter rolling his eyes for his life (Hunter would die in the middle of saying something sarcastic, and I will stake my life on that). Also good reuse of the pod units but this time for good (rather than, you know, bottom of the ocean and dying). Sidenote, did we see the pods anytime before Skye gets shot?

-I love Fitzsimmons working together (finally) in the holding cell. I love how the minute they say they’re not gonna work together anymore, they have to work together. Here, they’re so polite but also they’ve got such a natural rhythm. Simmons seems like she wants to talk about them but he’s like oh no, wasn’t talking about myself! Fitz is both back to himself and also gotta new groove (his recovery is going well!). Simmons being genuinely worried for Mack. FITZ’s LOOK OF LOVE

-I only appreciated it on this rewatch, but the show has good continuity of Fitzsimmons/team vs alien tech/bio. They spend majority of season 1 finding 084s and researching their properties and learning how they interact with human biology. Then second season plays off the events of the first season: they’ve seen how many times alien tech/biology is dangerous and they’ve seen it infect and kill so many people. It makes perfect sense why Simmons and the others would be cautious about this alien stuff (Fitz is the loyal one, remembering that this is their friend they’re talking about it and he’s got (blind) faith when it comes to his friends). Season 2 is like introduction to actual aliens (as opposed to relics/artifacts/Asgardians) and how human Inhumans are. Season 3 builds on that further by exploring the good and bad sides of Inhumans.

-I didn’t do a liveblog of the previous episode, but Fitz’s “If you’re looking for vacation time, bribery will get you nowhere. I’ve tried.” is golden. I like the little character traits they give Fitz like, in addition to being a literal genius and all the trauma he’s faced, he’s just a quietly disgruntled SHIELD employee who just wants vacation time and warmer AC (re: season 4)

-Howling Commando gear!!!!!

-Aww, Tripp flirting with Simmons and Fitz is just like…

-The Koenig cloning jokes, hahaha (Poor Tripp)

-First mention of Theta protocol! Dun dun dunnn

-We don’t know what the alien tech is. But Hazmat suits should do the job. :)

-I remember the Fitz splitting off scene being hilarious. Is it because he’s miffed at the flirting, miffed at Simmons, or just genuinely proving that he can do things now?

-Simmons touching Fitz’s arm. And then him holding her later!!!

Cal and Skye

-Cal and Skye’s meeting! This is an emotional, painful reunion.

-I LOVE the actor who plays Cal, he does fantastic job. Seriously how did they get him and Dichen Lachmann to play her parents?? Well done, casting director

-I love that they make Skye biracial just like how Chloe Bennet is and it’s relevant to her storyline

-So to recap Skye’s backstory. Her mother is taken by Whitehall but is released when he gets captures in the 40s. She’s born to her parents, but Whitehall captures Jiaying again. Cal rescues Jiaying, and they return, but HYDRA had already taken Skye as an 084 (?). SHIELD teams led by Audrey then take care of SKye until she is given to an orphanage. Correct?

-”People liked me. I liked myself.” This line deserves much meta

-Teach you about the stars= Inhumans. I love how that’s a total throwaway innocent line, but it all makes sense once you know.

-Just when Skye has figured out life as a SHIELD spy, her world gets rocked again. But I think this path is a good development because she’s not just a regular SHIELD agent: She was born on the outside; learned to think in unusual ways; she’s bubbly and warm and compassionate when SHIELD agents before were typically taught to be rationale and merciless. She’s born to be a new kind of SHIELD agent as well as the bridge between Inhumans and SHIELD

-The lullaby :(

-”Best Day Ever” -Cal

-I mean the emotional manipulation of “After you change I’m the only one who’ll understand” is bad, but he was right in the sense that they all were afraid of her

-Skye wanting to stop the drill and get the obelisk as a way of making it up to Coulson and because she’s a good SHIELD agent. But, like, she knows that’s what her father wanted, so does she just believe she won’t get caught up in whatever is going on? Does she go because fate is pulling her? Does this show believe in fate?? *thinks about all the future time-travelling shenanigans and gets a headache*

THAT ENDING THO

-The thing with Mack presumed dead freaking broke my heart, but it’s a good fake out to blindside us with Tripp’s death.

-IMO, the obelisk is a good fake out for terrigenesis crystals. Even if I knew about Inhumans stuff before hand, I wouldn’t have put it together through what info they give us on the obelisk in previous episodes

-THE TRANSFORMATION. “”WHAT WE BECOME” AKA THE QUESTION THAT WAS ASKED WAY BACK IN SEASON ONE IS FINALLY GETTING ANSWERED. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH. The chanting, man. Is it the same one we’ve heard before?

- “I gotta admit I’m just the tiniest bit nervous.” I could write an essay on why I love this line.

-SKYE’S TRANSFORMATION. IT’S SO POWERFUL AND SO HEARTBREAKING. THEY’RE BOTH JUST TRYING TO SAVE EACH OTHER. I’M CRYING.

-I probably just need to rewatch this again, but why didn’t anything happen to Tripp when the terrigenesis first activated but then he gets hurt when he gets hit? Like is it the terrigenesis won’t hurt him, but touching the crystals/obelisk will?

-Ya’ll are gonna hate me for this, but... I get why Tripp had to die. Like, it devastated me and still does and its racist and HE DID NOT DESERVE IT. But from the storyline POV, I see why he was chosen to die. Tripp was incorporated into the story in season 1 to replace Ward. We needed an action guy on the team because half the team is non-combat and we needed someone who was genuinely good to balance out the real Ward. But season 2, everyone’s shifted roles. We have Daisy, Hunter, Bobbi who all fill the action roles, so Tripp’s primary role is no longer necessary. He’s (intentionally?) underdeveloped: he does a variety of things, but he’s not filling any one role nor is he vital in any specific relationship, the way Coulson, May, Fitzsimmons, and Skye are, and he doesn’t contribute to the season’s plot the way Hunter, Bobbi, and Mack do. Plus, it’s a really shitty symbolism of how the show is progressing to darker tones by killing of their sunshine boy.

-Anyway, I cant believe they just end like that for a mid-season finale. Top ten moments of superhero genre, without question. Also, is this the first time we here’s Daisy’s theme song? Because I’ve mentioned before how powerful and sad-sounding it is

-GORDON!!!!!!!

#My grouping has either made this less or more confusing #and I can't tell which #I'm sorry #aos #aos s2 #aos rewatch #aos season 2 rewatch #aos s2 rewatch #may #tripp #coulson #ward #skye #daisy #huntingbird #fitzsimmons #agent h #agent aos rewatch #agent report

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ghosty-schnibibit · 7 years ago

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new taz liveblog under the cut ^o^

just from the description i am so worried for my boy duck, here we go

oh dang this is a long ass recording, you weren’t kidding griffin

minerva :D

"only duck can see minerva" oooh this is gonna be awkward as hell, and also maybe cause some interesting narrative tension in the group

aww ned :')

"i feel a deep and profound desire not to die" mood

god i love minerva

ned you fuckin coward ilu

"let's get wet n' wild" b a r c l a y

with every new episode we get more details of aubrey's outfit lol

oooooh no there's, the scary music

HOLY FUCK THAT'S A BIG BOY

barclay you precious baby

aww travis

what is aqualung???

yay armor :D

duck baby what are you doing

kicking its ass apparently holy shit

god damn that is cool as hell

well i've had to google aqua lung now, it's evidently a scuba term :o

he's a tuff boi B)

and there's another new middle name for ned lol

oh no D:

oh snap, this is gonna be dramatic as hell, i can feel it

n u g e t

aubrey my precious baby

"there's a difference between knowing it and feeling it sometimes" well that fucking hit me where it hurts travis ; _ ;

griffin's monologues make me live

i... i don't really have words to express how much it means to me that travis is making sure aubrey's out to her parents and accepted by them, that even if they don't accept her career choice they accept her. it just makes me feel warm inside and i love it, god bless the mcelroys

oh fuck is this the flamebright pendent? IS THIS THE THING NED STOLE FROM HER??? I'M FUCKING SCREAMING THIS IS SO SAD

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

DO NOT JUST LEAVE IT THERE GRIFFIN!!!!!

oh damn that is cool as hell

pigeon my girl :D

oh nooooo D:

THIS IS FUCKING TERRIFYING

OH NO DUCK

god i fucking love beacon

griffin do not turn this into a vore thing

DUCK NO HOLY SHIT

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON

i have a sneaking suspicion that this is more minerva shenanigans

DUCK HAS A LITTLE SISTER AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

HER NAME IS JANE :D

oh no oh no oh no

awww she is so cute :)

duck is a badass holy shit

okay yeah this is a nightmare vision thing

oooooh no i am not liking what this is foreshadowing vis-a-vis sylvain

this music is so good and yet so terrifying

DUCK ILU MY BABY

"i know you're not a friend of my mom cause you're calling me duck and i know she hates that" i am... concerned by this :(

god help me this is so cute

my headcanon duck just looks like safteytown justin so all i can picture is a tiny justin

hmmm... so the threat isn't from sylvain?

not a great thing to say to a little kid minerva

"i've got class tomorrow though" duck omg

this is so good omg

oh this is creepy as fuck what the hell

OH THAT AIN'T GOOD

yeeeah my girl!!!

aubrey ==> do the windy thing

beacon ilu so much

someone please draw the fence falling over on duck

NED YOU DUMBASS

damn they are making some really great rolls this session, wow

oh dang, are we gonna see the british dude?

is this the cryptonomica? is this gonna be a jean val-jean priest saved his life dealio?

YET ANOTHER MIDDLE NAME

“edward boniventure” god i love ned

i love victoria so far omg

jesus christ this man and his middle names

OH DANG

WAIT WHAT

oh damn what the fuck is going on

this music is so sad holy hell

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?????

aaand there's the ad break

i am so pumped for the lunar interlude :D

aaand now build me up buttercup will be stuck in my head for hours, thanks griffin >:(

duck's new catchphrase

"who you whipped into existence with your beautiful brain" ilu griffin

i love this dude's voice

DUCK THE BABY BEAR RESCUER

"the splendor is all still in place" bless you duck newton

oh shit he's seen beacon!!!

god bless the kepler community theatre lmao

i love this guy omg

OH FUCK, KIRBY YOU DIPSHIT

okay, at least he didn't see the bit with barclay

NED THIS IS NOT A GREAT MOVE, NOT GOOD, VERY NOT GOOD

missing persons reports... did... did barclay murder people???

NED YOU CANNOT BACKPEDAL FROM THIS

that good ol' npc nose pinch

oooh no that's bad

well that's fucking ominous as shit omg

yay, the spring is back! :D

aubrey my baby, my precious bi baby you impress that cute girl with your magical wind exploits

aww dani :(

wait the what??? what's this about corruption?????

oh aubrey :'(

MAMA :D

OH NO MAMA D:

final thoughts: that was so good!!! a super great finale to a really cool arc! i'm so excited about all the foreshadowing and cool backstory stuff that went down and i can’t wait for next right thursday! i know its still super early but i can’t wait to see what theories spring out of what we learned this episode :D

#taz #taz amnesty #the adventure zone #taz spoilers

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stupidpianist · 6 years ago

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27 october 2018

10:00: Shut off alarm, hit snooze. I set my phone’s snooze to ten minutes, I should probably lower it to five because of the frequency with which I “snooze”...

10:10: Shut off alarm again, put it to snooze.

10:20: Turned off all alarms until alarms at 11h. Got up and chugged giant glass of water from Brita.

10:21: Back in bed. Trying to sleep more, not ready to “start the day” yet.

10:40: Woke up from strange nightmare in which the world was experiencing an apocalypse, hard to remember exact details, remember being on an ark-like massive boat, trying to escape from some kind of antagonistic war force? Remember there being a corrupt leader. Almost 99% of my dreams are about banal things, like, literally Googling things and reading Wikipedia, the other 1% are always really dangerous apocalyptic or life-threatening situations in which I’m trying to save as many people as possible.

11:00: Shut off alarm, turned over to right side, went into “fetal position,” thought, “wow, this is comfortable, wow, this is so comfortable.”

11:30: Woke from another weird dream, dreamt that I was seeing the band Ghost perform in Montreal, only, the crowd was really diminutive, and most of the people in the audience were inexplicably not paying attention to the show at all. I was able to go right up to the stage. They played a few songs. I woke up. Weird. Going to get up now and clean my bathroom, it needs a “thorough scrubbing.”

11:31: Chugged another massive glass of water from Brita. So satisfying, one of the most satisfying things, waking, feeling dehydrated, taking glasses of water “to the face.” Mm. Yum.

11:32: Cleaning bathroom. Have probably super-harmful-to-environment chemical thing that is used to scrub porcelain surfaces. Have my “trusty,” “handy dandy” cleaning sponge. Have paper towels. First scrubbing tub, it’s gotten so grimy, wow… I remember when I used to work in a local ice cream parlor in my town, and one of my favourite things to do would be to mop the floors. The other employees and managers found this really weird, always said, like, “nobody wants to mop the floors,” but I always explained that it was one of the few activities that you could see the 1:1 results of your efforts immediately after doing it, and so I found it really really satisfying. Feeling the same way right now, scrubbing the tub, seeing all the muck and filth wash away with every little sponge motion.

Moving onto the sink now, first have to clear everything off of it. Electric toothbrush, check. Plastic comb, check. Gatsby hair product thing, check (when Phoebe came to use my wifi she was like, “of course you use Gatsby,” and I thought “oh crap, I’ve been ‘caught,’ I’ve been ‘pigeonholed’”). Toothpaste, check. Razor, check. Scrubbing sink now, scrubbing hard, scrubbing efficiently. This chemical stuff really “works wonders,” there must be some seriously bad stuff in here… Should I be using gloves? I don’t have sensitive skin, I’ve never really had problems with… With chemicals and my hands? I don’t know, seems like I should be using gloves right now.

11:43: Okay, deep-clean scrub finished, going to shower now, been looking forward to showering since last night. Don’t know why, I shower every day? I don’t know, maybe it’s from excitement that I’m, like, “preparing for the night,” going to meet up with person I met for drinks with a few nights ago this evening, extremely excited to do this, so, like, the shower is, like, propelling me into the day? Which gets me closer to the evening? I don’t know I DON’T KNOW I’m just trying to say I’m really hyped for this shower, okay? Going to put on some sweetass shower music. I got the best shower tunes, hit me up if you want the “sickest, dopest” shower playlists. I can curate them to your specific genre or BPM preferences. Just let me know, “drop me a line.”

11:48: Putting on clothes now. Going to “throw on” my “edgy pants,” and a thermal top, and “FUNERAL” hoodie, and Walnut Hill jacket. “Standard attire,” heheh. Wondering if I should also wear my raincoat? It’s supposed to rain steadily this evening, but I don’t want to be, like, sweating… I also don’t really mind the rain, it’s just water, it’s really not that big of a deal, it’s just like, you’re wet, so what? I’ll just bring my super crappy umbrella with me, that should be enough to mitigate any “water damage” my body could take. Read in Disaster Artist yesterday that Tommy had a daily routine of drinking five Red Bulls. Reminds me of me in middle school. “Fiending for” a Red Bull today, really “jonesing” for one, going to put some change in my pocket and grab one from a dep on my way to school.

12:00: Backpack: PACKED. Wallet: IN POCKET. Keys? I GOT THOSE TOO, BABY. Going to head to school and update this liveblog, and then practice piano for however many hours my brain lets me. Not sure what kind of “piano vibes” I’m getting today, but I hope it’ll be good?? Have also been putting off listening to Daniil Trifonov’s newest album, it’s Rachmaninov’s second and fourth concerti, and some Bach transcriptions. I really don’t like the fourth concerto, and I only sometimes like the second, even though I was super obsessed with it when I was younger, in my early-and-mid teens. Remember texting one of my friends, someone I feel more fondly towards than almost any of my friends, Alex, how long it took him to learn the first movement of the second concerto, just as a baseline so I could compare my own timeline and see if I was “on par” with how good at learning new pieces I wanted to be, and he told me he learned it in something ridiculous like one afternoon. He’s one of the most self-determined people I’ve ever met, maybe the most self-determined, miss him a lot. Should send him a message, why haven’t I done that...

Sorry sorry yeah so I’m going to take some time too and listen to the album in the practice rooms. Will probably/inevitably give me more practicing motivation. I am a huge fan of Trifonov. Will let you people know how the album is.

16:25: Packing up my piano books. Hey hey hey! Hi hi hi! What’s up YouTube!! If you’re wondering how the practicing went, it was… Satisfactory. I started warming up with some Schubert, his last sonata, and promptly started like sobbing uncontrollably. Can never seem to make it more than a few pages in before this always happens. Played through the first movement and second movement, no repeat in the first just to “save time” as I intended it to be a warm up, and created a pretty substantial pool of tears on the practice room floor by the time I was done. How the heck does anyone practice pieces like this without becoming a giant mess of tears?? Dissociate? I don’t know.

Felt really really good to play through it, though; one of my favourite pieces that I love the more and more I work on it. I thought I sounded really good in the Schubert, so I moved to Alkan, which was substantially worse. Felt like I had really heavy brain fog, like, a dense miasma of brain fog. Was able to play, but felt distinct disconnection between what my hands were doing, and what my head was thinking. I really hate that sensation, when you don’t feel in control of what you’re playing, so I switched to Thalberg, which was a bit better, but really just felt off. Played it through and did a little passage work before turning to Beethoven, opus 110, another one of my favourite sonatas, and my favourite Beethoven sonata by a long shot. After working on this pretty intensely I was like, okay, so you practiced for an okay amount of time, four hours or so, and even though you didn’t sound good, or feel good, you still did work, and you still put in effort.

Haven’t gotten groceries in a long time, going to head to Provigo to get supplies for massive Greek salad and pasta, here’s what I’m gonna get:

-bell peppers

-cherry tomatoes

-english cucumber

-lemon

-kalamata olives

-dill (maybe, if i want to “splurge”)

-red onion

-feta cheesee

-pasta sauce (i’m lazy i don’t wanna make it myself don’t judge me okay)

-mushrooms

Have the rest of the ingredients like dry pasta and stuff for Greek salad dressing at home. Gonna try and “beat the rain,” too.

16:45: Success in the grocery store. Also ended up buying a large scented candle as a bit of an impulse purchase; I really like things that create pleasant/comfy/cozy scents, and my Airwick thing I plug into my wall ran out of oil, and I don’t have any more incense, so I was like, “yeah, my mom loves scented candles, I love scented candles, let’s get a scented candle, yes.” Chose “Cashmere Woods” scent. It’s brownish in colour. Hope it smells as good as the name implies, one can never tell just by pure sniffing of the unmelted wax�� Very… distrustful… Oh, oh! Also got bananas. Need some breakfast food that I can take and run out of the door.

16:56: Home. Going to unpack groceries and then read more of the Disaster Artist in bed, I think. Will also catch up on some YouTube tech videos. Feeling like a real nerd right now.

16:59: Got a Facebook message from the person I’m seeing again tonight!!! Okay so we’re going to meet at 22h, that gives me enough time to be productive before then, getting really cozy in bed, “settling in” for a nice read. Heheh. Ho ho ho. Something about “hehe” is just so funny to me, I still can’t place why, can any of you help explain it to me?

18:13: Got through a whole slew of tech videos, a whole mess of tech videos. Was just starting to read Disaster Artist when I heard the notification sound from my speakers hooked up to my laptop on my esk that notifies me when my younger brother signs into Overwatch. “Chatted him up” and he said he could play A FEW ROUNDS. MULTIPLE. Do you people realize how huge this is?! Usually he just has time for one! Maybe it’s because he has a long weekend? Monday for him is a teacher’s day or something, so he gets it off. Either way, here we go!!!!

19:37: Wow those were some INTENSE games. Played tank for some of it, then DPS for most of it. Haven’t actually played Tracer in so long, I used to main her so hard. Still my favourite champion to play alongside Junkrat. We played pretty well, won most of our rounds, wow, my adrenaline is so pumped up from that, can’t believe it’s been over an hour?! Holy heck that flew by. Brother going to eat dinner now, recommended that I make greek salad. Will probably do that, or maybe go for a run?? I don’t know, I’ve been so physically inactive the past week, I feel like a slug, I should at least do SOMETHING.

20:08: Yeah my adrenaline is pumping way too hard. This always happens, as a kid even if I was just having a “playdate” with a friend, I would get so so so, uh, not anxious, but like overly excited? Manic? That I literally couldn’t focus on anything or sit still, so I’d just run around doing menial activities while sweating through my palms profusely and just feeling a huge tightness in my chest. This still happens to me, but not as strongly, I think?? Unless I’m super excited to see someone, which I am tonight?? I need to “burn off some steam,” think I’m going to go on an intense bike ride, okay, see you guys soon, yes yes YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

20:13: CHRIST ON A CRACKER I forgot it’s raining now!!! OH NO HOW AM I GONNA crap crap I don’t have a flipping fender for my bike so if I go biking I’m gonna get soaked crap crap crap maybe I’ll just take a walk and blast music?? Yeah that’s feasible, won’t get too “wet” from that it’s gonna be great, I’ll do that, okay!!!! Just “thinking out loud,” here, folks, move along, nothing to see here, nothing at all.

20:41: Back from walk. Was really nice, rocked out to some Ghost (Rats, Con Clavi Con Dio, Cirice, Faith, in that order, I think?) and just chose some side streets off of Saint Laurent. Picked up a “quille” of 10.1% Labatt that the person mentioned wanting to get after she taught me the Quebec slang for those 1.17L, or 40oz dirt cheap big bottles of beer. Can’t call them 40s here, different system of measurement, can now call them quille. Seems astounding it took me this long to learn the term for it. Also got some Unibroue beers to “balance out” the pond scum that is 10.1 Labatt, even though it seems like my best friends here and I all concur that 10.1 Labatt is strangely delicious? Like we’d voluntarily, and do voluntarily drink it. Ooh, and some Powerade, lemon-lime flavour, my favourite. I’ve always preferred Powerade to Gatorade in terms of taste for as long as I can remember. You may be asking, “George, that’s a lot of liquids, why did you even get the Powerade, that’s just sugar water.” You’re right, but I just got my pay stubs from the last two weeks so I know how much I made so I was like, “you can go crazy, it’s the weekend before Halloween, do it, loser.” And you know what??? I DID IT. Going to eat a turkey sandwich now. Internal monologue repeating, “a nicely stocked fridge means a nicely stocked mind.” Hehe. Eheheheh.

#liveblog #blog #writing

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 17 [Chapter 5 - Trial]

Aaaaahhhhhhhh.

Thoughts under the cut.

I don’t even know where to start with this one. There were like . . . a thousand things that happened that I could talk about first. Wow. This goddamn trial sure took me for a spin and left me completely dazed and overwhelmed and depressed by the end.

I probably should have seen Kaito being the culprit coming. I just assumed that it would be ‘too easy’, since it was the second most obvious answer after Kokichi. But I can definitely say that even if the ‘who’ wasn’t too inherently difficult, the ‘how’ sure as fuck was.

It’s slightly lame that a good amount of the mystery of this trial revolved around stuff that only happens during the trial itself, but it’s fine. The shit that went down in this trial was oh so worth it.

Funnily enough, the thing I thought was a spoiler about Kaito being a culprit probably wasn’t actually intended as a spoiler for it, but it still lead me to the right conclusion. I saw a spoiler-free review that talked about how some of the motives in this game are lame, and I vaguely remember them mentioning the idea of someone killing because they had a terminal illness, which immediately made me think of Kaito once that whole plot point started up, but since his motive for murder had nothing to do with his illness, I think that person was just throwing out a generic example of a cliche motive, but it just so happened to still point at someone who ended up being a culprit anyway. They probably should have chosen a different example, lol.

Anyway, this trial was just sorta . . . insane. Wow. I wasn’t even able to definitively guess that the person in the Exisal was Kaito because his entire demeanor, especially when he switched over to ‘being Kaito’, felt too uncharacteristic of him to be true. But it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t actually Kokichi. Though even then, I still wasn’t sure if that meant Kaito was actually the killer.

Especially with the mid-trial swerve of Maki seeming to be the culprit, and genuinely believing herself to be the culprit. I was skeptical about the idea of the killer being spelled out before the intermission phase happened, but her whole story seemed too good not to be true.

I really, really liked this whole trial’s set-up of having both a mystery victim and a mystery killer. That was a really interesting idea. Especially with the additional layer of it being intended as ‘a mystery that even Monokuma can’t solve’. It made things feel incredibly baffling. In a good way.

The most negative thing I can say about the mystery itself was probably that, in the end, it ended up being almost exactly the same sort of scenario as case five in DR2, with a character setting up an insane murder mystery with themselves as the victim, set up in a way to expose and destroy the mastermind. They definitely played out in different ways, but the similarity was a bit too hard to ignore.

As a whole, though, it was great. It at least felt more satisfying than chapter four, even though I get in hindsight that chapter four’s trial was ‘unsatisfying’ for very intentional reasons.

It even made me warm up to Kokichi a lot as a character, which I wasn’t expecting. Now that his motives and feelings are more or less clear, it’s easier for me to understand him and appreciate his choices. I still can’t help but see him as a version of Komaeda that has a more off-putting personality, though. He’s definitely a fun character, but his personality just irritates me a lot of the time.

The first half or so of the trial wasn’t super hard in terms of the logic and the minigames, but it definitely picked up in the latter half once things got more and more weird and complicated. That was good. Sometimes the exact logic behind certain things still bugs me, though. I think I mentioned it before, but the ‘pick one of your truth bullets from the full list’ parts can sometimes feel a bit non-intuitive. Like when you have to point out that the crossbow was used, but you have to specifically pick the crossbow itself, because picking the arrows makes the other person be like ‘what, are you saying that they just stabbed someone with the arrows?’. That felt a bit dumb. It should have been immediately obvious what I meant by that. But it’s a minor point.

On a similar topic, a lot of the mini-games still feel kinda unnecessary, but that’s always been an issue with this franchise. There’s not really much to say about it at this point. Though I should say that it threw me off so fucking hard when I got a hidden Monokuma inside one of the Psyche Taxi segments. I had no idea that was possible. And on THAT note, I’ve had no real luck at getting those. This one was literally the second one I’ve found in the entire game. I know I missed one because I only noticed it in the background right before I started a free time event with someone, though. Maybe it would have been there if I went back for it later, but I didn’t bother.

I’m also getting better at the Argument Armament sections, somehow. They’re still stressful as heck, but I’m slowly improving. [And on the note of this chapter’s one, I guess I was right in assuming that if Kaito was this chapter’s killer, someone else would try and defend him]

I feel almost silly for suspecting Keebo so heavily, but both Kokichi and Kaito felt a bit too easy at the time. Oh well. I have . . . things to say about Keebo, but I’ll leave that for later, I guess.

Back on the topic of the murder itself, the whole set-up of it really was kinda ingenious, and really could have been an unsolvable mystery if things had gone differently. Especially with the whole element of there being no real proof as to whether the victim died via Maki’s poison arrow, or the hydraulic press. In the end, it basically came down to personal feelings and belief, rather than cold hard evidence.

Which reminds me, I also really liked the whole theme of Shuichi’s intuition as a device vs his feelings of belief as an individual. That was neat. Especially when it got to the point where, even after using evidence and deduction to figure out that Kaito was the culprit, he decided to lie in an attempt to stand for what Kaito believed in, and was risking his life for. Which, sadly, ended up being the final push that got Kaito to give up.

I actually tried like three times to vote for Kokichi even after that scene, since I still wanted to support Kaito, but the game didn’t let me. Oh well.

Before I forget, I may as well get back to my whole [apparently ongoing] rant for a little while.

As I’ve said before, I still personally interpret Shuichi as having a crush on Kaito that he’s trying to deny. I also said it before, but I’ve been aware from the start that this probably isn’t ‘canon’, especially after this whole trial happened and it didn’t get mentioned, but it’s still something I believe in. Especially with how heavily Shuichi and Maki were getting paralleled in this trial. Either way, at this point it feels safe to say that whatever Shuichi feels for Kaito is equal to or stronger than whatever he felt for Kaede [and had much longer to develop], and the game’s obviously already framing her as his love interest, so yeah.

I guess it goes without saying, but with how this whole game is about the nature of truth and lies, and about criticizing the idea that exposing and living with the truth is always necessary and good, it feels rather fitting that I’m choosing to treat this as my personal truth, even if it might just be a lie.

And for the record I still find Maki’s crush on Kaito to be really adorable and also heart-wrenching in this trial. If anything that’s just part of the reason why I’m seeing Shuichi’s feelings as basically being the same sort of thing.

Rant time over [for now], lol.

I guess there’s not much more to say about the mystery itself, so I should start talking more about the aftermath of the trial.

To start with, I figured in advance that Kokichi probably wasn’t the mastermind, since it felt too ‘obvious’ and happened way too early. I think I also commented on how it was a bit odd how the Exisals and stuff were treating Monokuma, but I didn’t quite guess what the full situation with that one was.

I’ll talk about the concept of the ‘true mastermind’ in a minute. Before that, I wanna say that it was really fitting and amusing that Kaito’s execution was a spin on Jin’s from DR1. I really should have seen that coming. It was a nice little throwback. I also really, really liked the detail of Kaito dying from his injuries rather than the execution itself. It may not have been a complete victory, but it was a moral victory.

Though on the flip-side we have the whole reveal that Kaito probably had the plague that killed off most of humanity, which in itself wouldn’t change anything, but it carries the really uncomfortable implication that maybe everyone in the cast had the same plague, and he just had his symptoms show up first. Which would just make this entire scenario even MORE depressing than it was before.

This whole chapter’s just making me more and more unsure what the deal is meant to be with Rantarou and the Monokubs. I still feel like they have to be related to the overall story somehow, but I’m getting less and less sure about what their purpose could be. I’m still assuming that the Monokubs have AIs that are based on the personalities of other people in the last killing game Rantarou was a part of. Maybe the other survivors of said killing game. Which makes me wonder if we’d ever get any idea who they were as actual people.

With the reveal that Kokichi ISN’T the mastermind, and might not have had anything to do with setting up the killing game, now I can’t help but wonder if it was Rantarou who set things up. Obviously SOMEONE had to, and I assume it’s one of the main cast members. It’d also explain why he knew about the killing game in advance, and why he seemed intent on winning it. It certainly hints at him being kinda . . . malicious, but that was already clear enough. This would also explain what he meant about how this is a killing game that he wanted to have happen.

Presumably he’s genuinely dead, though, so that pokes some holes in the idea of him being the mastermind, assuming that ‘the mastermind’ is a currently living person. If we limit it just to the main cast, then Keebo seems like the most suspicious person, since he’s a robot who could be running some sort of sub-program to control Monokuma, in a way that might not even be conscious on his part. But, again, I’ll talk more about him in a moment.

First, I should talk about the plot point that I’ve been holding off on mentioning for this entire post, and that’s Junko. I’m laughing so hard at the implication that she’s the goddamn mastermind for the third game in a row. It’s such a brilliantly polarizing writing choice. Part of me had been genuinely hoping it would happen. I have a soft spot for Junko as a villain, if only because I love seeing people get so angry over her. The ways that she causes despair and frustration in the fandom just by existing kinda validates her status as the main villain of the series.

I’ve mentioned before that it feels like they’re setting up some sort of a twist about the events of this game being fictional, even in the context of the DR universe, and this is making me even more certain of that. Especially with the focus on the topic of ‘the people who this killing game are being shown to’. The main thing that always bugged me about the apocalypse idea was that broadcasting the killing game had always been the top priority, and so it felt weird to imagine a killing game happening in this sort of scenario. I kinda assumed it was to do with there being a new mastermind with new priorities, but the idea of Monokuma still abiding by his own rules is definitely too strange, even if we make that kind of assumption. So it makes sense that he’s broadcasting this to SOMEONE. The question is who.

And honestly my best guess is that this is setting up some abstract meta-twist about us, as the players, being the people who the game is broadcast to. I’d been idly considering that for a while, but seeing Junko show up, and seeing the references to how the characters are all ‘easily replaceable’ and that ‘the killing game can happen again and again’ makes me think that, in-universe, V3 is literally some kind of story that Junko’s writing. Maybe not in a literal sense of her writing a book or something, but maybe the game takes place in a DR2-esque simulation, and she can just restart it again and again to create an unending killing game of unending despair. It seems like the sort of thing she’d do. And obviously it’d work pretty well on a meta level as commentary about the franchise itself. Which to me got pretty definitively confirmed when Junko mentioned ‘supply and demand’. V3, and it’s killing game, only exists because we, the fans, financially supported this series enough, and wanted to see more killing games happen enough, that this game got made. It seems like the natural end point of how this series likes to comment on the almost voyeuristic nature of murder. This game only exists because there was an active demand for it. Because we like seeing people kill each other in video games. Because experiencing intense emotions through media is a cathartic experience that people want to go through again and again. I’m not trying to be like ‘violent video games are bad!’ or whatever, I just mean that if this game is going to end with the big bad villain literally being the people playing the game, then it’s certainly justified.

Though on the same level it also makes it feel like this is the furthest the series could ever go, and that any more games being made would just feel uncomfortable and weird. But even if this game ends in that sort of way, there’s still going to be demand for more games. We’ll still want to get another killing game, and another, and another, even if we complain about how discomfiting it is to have a game turn around and criticize us for our enjoyment of it.

If we assume that this is where it’s going, I wonder how chapter six will go, and how the game will end. Will it be like DR2, where we get to argue against a digital version of Junko? That’d be a bit . . . odd, and probably kinda depressing, since if this is all just a story being written/programmed/etc by Junko, then no matter what the characters can to do her, it probably won’t kill her. She’ll still be alive in the real world.

On that note, if we’re meant to assume that Junko is alive ‘in the real world’, it makes me wonder what point in the timeline we’re working with, since her physical body got pretty definitively destroyed at one point, unless the person we saw in that one CG near the end was her in a robot body made to look like her. Who even knows.

Also, this whole Junko thing makes me even MORE unsure how the hell Rantarou and the Monokubs fit into the story. Is their backstory all part of a fictional setting she made up for this game? I have no idea.

I really can’t help but wonder if Kodaka will try and continue the series after this. I guess it wouldn’t be impossible for him to do so, but I just . . . don’t know how it’d work, really.

I still find it incredibly fascinating how utterly depressing and miserable and filled with despair this entire game is, especially as we understand how it connects to the entire franchise, compared to the far more hopeful ending that DR3 gave us. Though it’d be a lot less depressing if the entire apocalypse scenario was also made up by Junko and didn’t actually happen. But to be honest I kinda love the sheer audacity of Kodaka writing such a hopeful direction for the story and it’s universe, only to completely tear it apart by literally putting it through a fiery apocalypse, so either option works for me.

Anyway, I wonder if we’ll get any more deaths, or if it’ll be like the last games where nobody in the main cast dies in chapter six, ignoring the mastermind. The game is REALLY hammering in the concept of ‘the killing game will end when two people are left’. So it just makes me wonder if that might really happen. Though since only two people died in this chapter, we’d need to get a scenario of two victims and one culprit in the next chapter, to create a scenario where we’re then left with two people. Or maybe three people will just die normally. It just depends on whether or not we get another trial, really. I’m not really sure what I expect to happen, but the most important thing is probably that, if this really is all fictional, to some degree or another, then the concept of someone surviving becomes a bit meaningless, so on some level it kinda doesn’t matter. But it’s still interesting to speculate about.

I really would not be surprised at this point if the next chapter involves Himiko and Tsumugi dying, and us getting one last trial between Shuichi, Maki, and Keebo, who all definitely feel like the most major and plot-important characters right now. That might be interesting.

But it also makes me wonder if we’d then get ANOTHER chapter after that, or if we just might not get a trial where we face off against Junko specifically. Who knows.

Either way, Himiko and Tsumugi definitely feel a little expendable right about now, and I’m incredibly suspicious of Keebo and his plans right now.

I wasn’t really expecting his inner voice to just . . . malfunction and stop working after he gets hit with a rock. That kinda came out of nowhere. And now we have this bizarre scenario of him powering up and flying around while apparently bombarding the school with missiles. I wonder if his plan is just to burn everything to the ground so that the killing game will forcibly come to an end. It’s kinda hard to imagine Keebo doing something so violent, though.

I did really like seeing the remaining survivors, aside from Keebo, start training together. That was really sweet. I really love the sense of friendship and companionship between them. Well, mostly between Shuichi and Maki, but you get what I mean.

I have no goddamn clue where the next chapter is going to go, at this point. The end of this chapter raised so many questions and cliffhangers that I feel like things can just go in any direction they want now.

But as a bottom line, I can only imagine this game having a depressing, or at least bittersweet, ending. Especially if everything is some sort of fictional story. But even if it’s not, the characters have no real future left. No matter how much hope they have, they’re stuck in the academy. So I just can’t see this ending happily.

Also, as a final note, I tend to be pretty bad at expressing the exact extent of my emotional reactions to stuff in this game since I’m having to talk about so much in these posts and I try and keep them at least relatively concise and orderly and whatnot, even if this isn’t meant to be any kind of a professional review or anything, but this whole trial and it’s conclusion was depressing as fuck. It tore me apart. I knew something like this was gonna happen, since I was already bracing for this ending with Kaito dying in some way or another, but actually seeing it happen really hurt. I’m not kidding when I talk about how much I love the entire Kaito-Shuichi-Maki trio. I honestly think that they’ve become some of my all-time favourite DR characters. I get why a lot of people might think they’re a bit boring and plain [other than maybe Maki], but I absolutely adore them. Out of all of the ‘main trios’, they’re far and away my favourites at the moment, although there’s a lot of recency bias going on there, since I still have a huge soft spot for the main characters of DR2. Mostly Hinata and Komaeda, though. The fact that I like Maki a LOT more than Nanami is probably what weigh things out in V3′s favour. I don’t really wanna pit any of the characters against each other.

Anyway yeah, this chapter put me through an entire rollercoaster of emotions.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers

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circular-time · 8 years ago

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Spare Parts Liveblog 5 (end of disc 1)

Above left: Lee Sullivan illustration for Spare Parts in Doctor Who Magazine. A lot of the early BFs got teasers like this, back when they were the only new Doctor Who dramas, and there was a lot of overlap between people working on DWM and Big Finish (e.g. editor/executive producer Gary Russell).

Let me consolidate so I’m not spamming you with too many posts.

Track 1.4 - “Civil/Domestic Disturbances”

Uh oh. Sisterman Constant (constant? I guess it’s supposed to be Constant) reports on the highly suspicious Nyssa, obviously a disreputable character.

Totalitarian state, secret police... Doctor, you really need to stop wandering about on your own and go collect your companion before she gets into horrible trouble. It’s a credit to how much he respects Nyssa to be smart and handle herself, but still, ack.

(Somewhat an Achilles’ heel of audios: can’t have too many characters in a scene at once, so the TARDIS team splits up to cover more story).

And then comes that great gruesome moment when the Doctor gets his first look at a very early prototypical cyber policeman, who is more like a cyber-zombie, and of course these creepy horrible things are what Mondas has instead of friendly bobbies.

[Link: Really great DeviantArt illustration of Mondas by JanjyGiggens.]

The cyber-implant horse is a nice touch of horror. Since both it and its rider are sort of walking corpses animated by cyber implants, the effect is to look like Death on a Pale Horse.

This was the first time I’d ever heard that eerie singsong voice of the early Cybermen, courtesy of Nick Briggs. At first it sounds goofy. But as time goes on— it’s so detached from emotion in a way that even a monotone isn’t, it’s really really creepy.

And the Doctor, bless him, is so busy making observations and exploring that he doesn’t realize how much danger he’s in until the cyber-police tries to arrest him and hurts him (police brutality, this is sadly NOT retro but modern) when he doesn’t comply.

Because Pete’s specialty is agony acting. Just warming up here; he’ll have more opportunities later.

“I was standing up before you knocked me down. Thank you officer.” Five usually uses “thank you” when he’s being a snarky.

And of course he uses smarts and random things in his pockets but NOT a sonic to wriggle out of danger.

_______

Back to the Hartleys, and they sound like any real squabbling family. Except Frank’s homework is “logic and cybernetics.” Nyssa offers to help, because she’s a smart cookie and knows all about that kind of thing.

Which she proves by giving Mr. Hartley’s artificial heart a tuneup. This is why the Doctor likes her; she’s at home with alien tech and just about as handy as he is.

Another hint of Nazi Germany (or Soviet Russia, or 1984, or any other totalitarian dystopia): someone crying for help outside, being hauled off by the police, and the Hartleys just turn up the television so they can’t have their conscience troubled.

______

Track 1.5 - “Change and Decay”

The Hartleys are getting out their holiday tree — parallel Earth taken to the extreme again — but again, it’s a little threadbare and macabre.

Good acting Sarah Sutton moment:

“You’ll be glad to get back to your family for the holidays!” Nyssa (wistfully): “Yes. I’d really like that.” Ouch.

And then we get a tiny bit of Traken backstory/worldbuilding which is so beautiful and sweet and sad. Again, Big Finish gives classic Who companions the depth/character study the show often didn’t take time for.

More worldbuilding-- Marc Platt suggests the cybermats were originally children’s toys! And yep, there goes Nyssa fixing it, not realizing how dangerous they are (or how horrible, if you’ve heard the Benny story suggesting they’re cyber-converted babies).

Dodd’s still trailing the Doctor hoping for spare parts, but then they find out what’s happening after curfew. The cybermen are bodysnatchers, robbing the graveyard. Even Dodd is shaken out of his cynicism and horrified.

Track 1.6 - “Ask Not”

While Nyssa and Yvonne are playing with the mat, Frank reveals he wants to join the work crews, get better pay, and be there when they break through to the surface. So apparently Frank doesn’t know about that broadcast that opened the audio.

Yvonne Hartley and her dad have been kind and hospitable to Nyssa, but Frank, the son, tears away the curtain and reveals the truth: they’ve been feeding her precious rations purchased by selling Mrs. Hartley’s body (to Dodd, we learn later).

Talk about guilt. Nyssa promises to bring them food to make up for it. They try to stop her, but “I’m putting you all in danger... I can look after myself.” Again, more proactive than she was allowed to be on TV, mostly, where she was almost always the Doctor’s sidekick.

Just in time; the cyber-police come knocking as she flees. And whoops, innocent that Nyssa is, she takes the cybermat as a gift!

The Hartleys are terrorized— this is just a scary, horrible world, the more so because it’s like real-world places where the government can haul off anybody.

Now it’s the Doctor getting someone else in trouble for a change: Dodd helps him disable a policeman that’s trying to arrest them.

But then the Doctor tries to persuade Dodd to DO SOMETHING to stop the Cybermen and it’s too much for Dodd; he doesn’t want any trouble. The Doctor’s giving the people of Mondas a wake-up call. He sets the church bells ringing and runs.

The Doctor and Nyssa manage to meet at the TARDIS, and this is the point where they should LEAVE, and the Doctor knows it.

For listeners who haven’t got the backstory by now, they spell it out in an impassioned scene — Nyssa sounds angry, horrified; she’s guessed this is the place where the cybermen were birthed. She only knows them as the race that killed Adric.

Now they have a very VERY rare argument. Nyssa wants to help. The Doctor insists they can’t; too much of the history of the universe hinges on the creation of the Cybermen for them to interfere with it. He didn’t want to get involved.

And, cliffhanger reveals his first instincts were right: stirring up the people of Mondas causes the Committee (first heard here) to order a crackdown. As if things weren’t brutal enough already.

DOO WEE OOO. I love me classic Who cliffhangers.

And four-act structure. Act One: setting the stage before all hell breaks loose. Part I cliffhanger is the point of no return; the Doctor and Nyssa have inadvertently pushed Mondas into a tipping point, but they don’t yet know it. (Not that the fate of Mondas would’ve been averted if they hadn’t meddled— the Cybermen were about ready to take over — but their appearance is the catalyst.)

#spare parts liveblog #big finish #spoilers

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canariesrise · 8 years ago

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Supergirl Thoughts

Up to 2x02

(I know -- that was fast. I’m very much a background tv watcher and have actually done a lot of other stuff this weekend. Hence whey I haven’t been liveblogging even when I’ve wanted to.)

So if somebody had told me this was a Greg Berlanti show I would have started watching it a while ago. He made one of my favorite shows ever -- the first show the ever made me live the shipper life -- Everwood. And made another show I really like, Brothers and Sisters. Ultimately at the end of the day what determines whether I enjoy any show is the character stuff and I see a lot in this show that is what I loved about Everwood with its rich characters. (Oh god, now I just want to go watch Everwood. The FEELS. ALL OF THEM.)

Anyway, I was surprised by how serialized it turned out to be, because genre tv especially often is not. At times it actually felt like a bit too much -- like there were too many serialized plots going on between the foundational plot of Kara figures out how to be Supergirl, hides it from Cat, etc., the Astra/Non story, the other prisoners, Max Lord, Hank and all his back story. But maybe I felt that way because I was watching it all in two days and it was a lot to follow as background tv. I felt like all of it was very interesting except the Max Lord stuff -- I just could not follow his character’s motivations when he was being antagonistic. He was very much a villain the failed to launch for me.

As for the characters, well basically I love almost everyone. Despite my earlier post I have come to like Cat a fair bit, although in many moments it’s more “I like her as a character” than “I like her as a person”. It varies, and I am still struggling to like her unreservedly -- I find her extremes of kindness and meanness still a bit sharp to navigate as a viewer. I’ve never really like Chyler Leigh but I find her totally fine and watchable in this. Hank is my favorite, obviously. Winn is great although I lately feel like he’s being a bit pigeonholed by the writing.

Really the one character who I don’t particularly care about is Jimmy. Both he and his relationship (if you could even call it that) with Cara are like one of those flavorless rice cakes. Wasn’t hurting me but I got nothing out of it. I didn’t feel any chemistry between the two of them and just felt confused because we were being told that they really like one another but other than her early crush, it just felt odd. And as a character, I still don’t feel connected with him, maybe because he’s been so smothered in this weird narrative. I don’t have any connection to any Superman stories, so I don’t feel an inherent whatever about his presence like many viewers generally do.

On the other hand, I’ve been enjoying a lot of what the show has been musing on. The mind control and global warming stuff -- very interesting. The various acknowledgments of abusive parenting. Kara’s struggles and the millenial life.

And I’m obsessed with Kara’s apartment. It is truly the most fantastical part of this show but whatever. I am the trash of the trendy millenial fantasy life.

P.S. My name’s Siobhan and I’m a literal Irish banshee so let’s put on Day of the Dead makeup! Whiskey tango foxtrot. (I realize this is almost certainly something from the comics but am giving Berlanti and co. some major side-eye for replicating it uncritically.)

#Devin watches Supergirl

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funforahermit · 8 years ago

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Buffyverse tagging meme

@whedoncon said “everyone do this and tag me back so I can read“, so I’m doing this and tagging you back so you can read ;)

top fifteen characters

1. owner of my heart Rupert Giles 2. Spike 3. Buffy 4-9 in ever changing order: Dawn, Cordelia, Tara, Oz, Anya, Wesley 10-15 also in no particular order: Drusilla, Willow, Jenny, Ethan, Lorne, Lilah

I feel like Ethan should be a muuuch higher up, but that’s only because of his fanfic persona and I’m not sure that counts

Also I just remembered Harmony. And Andrew. Can I make it 17?

favourite minor characters

so, hang on, should I put Ethan here instead? He’s only in 4 episodes... Anyway, let’s see... Cassie Newton from Help, Jonathan (as a minor character before he becomes a regular "bad guy” in season 7), Olivia, Sineya, Nikki Wood, Dennis the ghost... and kinda the Groosalugg I guess?? He’s sweet??

ranking of favorite seasons of both shows

Ah. Well. That’s really really hard. Maybe 3,2,5,4,6,1,7 for BTVS? Or maybe 2,3,5,6,7,1,4? Or........ yeah idk. Let’s just say 2/3/5 in joined first place and then the rest.

And for Angel, um... probably 5,4,3,2,1 because I started off not really liking it and then it gradually became more fun to watch. Maybe I just needed a long time to get into it. Maybe I’d feel differently if I watched it all again.

top ten episodes of both shows?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME

okay, there is a 99% chance that this list is not accurate and I’m forgetting some really cracking episodes, but I’m just gonna see what comes to mind first...

Buffy: The Dark Age, Passion, Once More With Feeling, Hush, Surprise/Innocence, The Prom, Fool For Love, Two To Go/Grave, Helpless, Band Candy, The Wish, oh haha that’s eleven already oops

Angel: I can’t even remember most of it, oh dear... okay so Billy was definitely impressive. The one where Wesley and Lilah run around in the Wolfram&Hart building and something is happening and they need to get out and she gets hurt, what’s that called? Then the party early in season 5 where everything Lorne says happens. Then, also in season 5, when Angel and Spike both want to drink from that goblet to prove they’re the chosen one. God, this is so hard... all I can think of are character arcs and certain moments, but I’ll be damned if I know which episodes they happen in and if I liked the rest of those episodes too...

EDIT: OMG AND SPIN THE BOTTLE

ats or btvs?

Buffyyy

While I do like the characters of ATS, most of the plots bored me.

least favorite main character?

Oops that’s a mean question... I guess I’ll have to say Xander? I mean, I’m warming to him. I’m trying, okay?

top ten ships?

Gethan, Gethan, Gethan, Gethan, Gethan, Gethan, Gethan, Gethan, Gethan and Gethan.

No? Okay.

(Gethan though), Weslah, Calendiles, Spuffy?? a bit??, Giles/Spike, Giles/Wesley, Giles/Spike/Wesley, Willow/Oz, Willow/Tara, Giles/Anya

do you write fanfic?

I can’t write, but sometimes I wish I could.

what fanfic do you read?

Giles centric stuff. All genres, smut preferred. (Oh dear I’m terrible...)

when did you start watching?

Late February or early March 2015

show recommendations for Buffyverse fans?

Interesting question. I have no idea. I want to recommend Blake’s 7, because it’s cool and ridiculous and I like it. But it has little (if anything) in common with Buffy and Angel. Maybe Dominion? Because Tony Head and fantasy elements? A whole lot of Buffyverse fans seem to be really into Parks and Rec (whatever that is) and Gilmore Girls (never seen it), but that’s more like a second hand recommendation, because I don’t know those shows myself. Oh hang on, what about Warehouse 13? I’m sure that’s brilliant, even if I’ve only seen four episodes so far (guess which four, lol).

do you own/collect anything related to the shows?

I’ve got a few magazines, this book, and a tiny model of Giles’ car =)

how often will you watch an episode?

The plan this year is to watch and liveblog a few episodes every Thursday, except when I’m working. Hey look, today’s Thursday :D

how many times have you watched either show all the way through?

Buffy twice (third round underway), Angel once.

five unpopular opinions?

- I don’t really think that Faith going evil was Buffy’s (or the Scoobies’) fault?? There’s a lot of meta about Faith being neglected and not given enough support or enough chances, and it’s excellent meta and while I’m reading it I kind of agree, but then when I actually watch the show I can’t really bring myself to blame anyone but Faith herself. Sorry...

- I don’t understand the degree of fierce hatred that Kennedy gets.

- I love love love the spell they did to defeat Adam in Primeval. The core four becoming one. I dig that.

- I don’t think Giles’ character was ruined in series 7, and neither was his relationship with Buffy. There were some rough times, but they fixed it. Nothing could ever come between them permanently.

- Dawn is great.

least favorite thing about the fandom?

Least favourite thing about any fandom is when people don’t respect other people’s points of view. But I’ve found myself a corner of tumblr where only nice people dwell, so I can’t really complain about anything :)

And now I’m too exhausted to tag anyone, but please feel free to do it and say I tagged you!

#whedoncon #buffy the vampire slayer #tagging meme

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 5 [Chapter 2 - Daily Life]

Thoughts under the cut.

I knew I said before that I expected Ryoma to die, but I’m kinda sad that it happened so soon. Though in hindsight it makes sense, since he got a lot of focus up to this point. Honestly I was bracing myself for it to be Kaito, since basically everything about him in this chapter thus far feels like death flags galore. It’s kinda the main reason why I’m immediately suspecting him to be the killer, even though it doesn’t really make sense in terms of his personality and his whole attitude about the killing game.

Before I say anything else, I just wanna say that this whole part nearly took me five hours and to be honest I think about an hour of that was probably me just doing stuff at the new casino the game opened up. It’s kinda addictive. I at least got some new skills out of it. Mainly the ones that max out my influence and focus, which will be appreciated in the next trial. I got closer to losing the first trial than I was expecting, so any extra bit helps. I think I got one or two other ones, but I can’t remember. I at least didn’t have any room to equip anything other than the first two. In addition to the skills I had previously, that is.

If I keep using the casino, I think I’ll probably just work toward getting skills and stuff, before getting any cosmetics. We’ll see. The casino is surprisingly fun, so I might do a session of it once per chapter.

Anyway, moving onto this chapter’s story itself, I like it a lot thus far. Though before I forget, I just want to say that that beginning scene is super incredibly suspicious, and makes me feel like we might even be setting up for some kind of ‘they’re all in purgatory’ twist or something. Who knows. My guess as to what this game’s overarching story is going to be in the end kinda got thrown off in general in this part, mostly with how the game decided to spell out at least part of the whole Ultimate Hunt thing. Thus far it’s as I suspected, more or less. There was some sort of social push against the Ultimates that lead to all this. I wasn’t expecting them to already explain the whole thing of everyone being hooked up to machines, though. So they all decided to voluntarily wipe their memories in order to avoid prosecution. I vaguely remember that in the ‘first loop’ before the game properly began, nobody knew they even had talents, so that makes sense. I can’t help but be suspicious of all this since we’re being told it so early in the game. Especially since they’re being really vague on the details, and so many little parts of the game keep alluding to the idea that none of this is real somehow. The whole ‘I want to die with everyone’ line also makes me lean toward this being some sorta purgatory, but that feels almost too obvious.

The transition into Shuichi being the new protagonist is going pretty well. I still really like him as a character, especially with the character development he’s undergoing. I like that he’s still understandably depressed about things, but is still moving forward in his own small ways. I feel like his design is sort of incomplete without his hat, but I appreciate the idea behind him abandoning it.

His new-found friendship with Kaito is also a big reason why I like how this is going. It just feels kinda refreshing and unique to have another character be the more pushy, outgoing one who sees the protagonist as their sidekick. I really hope that Kaito can at least survive past this chapter, so that we can see this dynamic play out for a good while. It’d also feel a little . . . predictable and depressing if Shuichi goes from trusting one person who immediately dies to trusting ANOTHER person who immediately dies. We’ll see.

I liked Kaito before, but this chapter’s making me really like him, especially since I got to do his first free time event [it was the only one I did, since my other two were spent unsuccessfully talking to Kaito, and unsuccessfully talking to Keebo]. He’s just a really good dude, even if he doesn’t go about everything well. But he’s still trying to keep everyone happy and confident, especially Shuichi. At least someone’s trying to reach out to him. I already kinda ship them. It was also a good thing I did his first free time event, since it helps establish how hard-working and educated he is. Which we kinda knew before, but this helped contextualize it a bit.

I should probably just keep talking about the characters before I get into stuff with the motive and murder and my vague preliminary speculation.

To be honest, I still don’t know if I like Kokichi that much. He’s definitely a good character, and he’s really central to the group dynamic and whatnot, but I just can’t help but be kinda annoyed at his chronic lying and overall attitude. I’m aware that it’s probably covering up some kind of tragic backstory, but still. I’m pretty sure that he’s a fan favourite, considering how many twitter/tumblr icons I’ve seen of him, but he hasn’t fully warmed on me yet. I don’t exactly hate him, I just think he’s a bit annoying. He’s also really creepy at times in ways that I was not expecting. On top of that one goddamn disturbing expression from the last trial, I think he did a variation of it with a creepy black/white filter, so that was kinda terrifying. Not to mention that part where we get a really zoomed-in close-up CG of his face when Shuichi wakes up in Gonta’s lab. Though while I’m talking about him, I just wanna say that even though it’s unlikely, I’m pretty heavily speculating that he’s actually lying about what his talent is. Considering how much of a compulsive liar he is, it’s incredibly hard to trust his absurd claims about being an evil supreme leader. It also feels like he makes smaller lies every time he says that, to make the basic concept seem more realistic in comparison. I feel like this might be easily verifiable though, especially when we see his lab, so I’m not entirely sure about this. [On that note, if we eventually find Rantarou’s lab, I wonder if it’ll reveal anything about his talent]

I really like how much this chapter’s giving screen-time and development to Tenko, Himiko, and Angie. They’re a trio I wasn’t quite expecting to see form, especially in the exact way it’s playing out here. I think I said before that Tenko was my least favourite character, but she’s really growing on me. I can’t quite pinpoint why, since she hasn’t exactly changed, but still. I at least like seeing her be so incredibly awkward and blatant about her crush on Himiko, and her contrast between believing in Himiko’s magic while being skeptical of Angie’s belief in Atua.

And on that note, I wasn’t expecting to see Himiko become converted to Angie’s religion like that. But it makes sense. She’s obviously struggling a lot with stress and anxiety and fear, but Tenko isn’t really doing a whole lot to help, in spite of her crush on her, which is also clearly making Himiko uncomfortable. So it makes sense that she’d turn to someone else for comfort. Considering that Himiko is probably going to be a huge suspect in this chapter, I wonder how Tenko will be during the trial.

Angie still disturbs me a little, honestly. It’s just getting creepy how little she seems to care about the idea of people dying, and how if anything she seems to enjoy the prospect of it. In general her eternally upbeat and smiley attitude is the sort of thing that just feels unpleasant in this sort of situation.

Gonta is still precious and I adore him. It’s kinda sad how he’s just constantly being lied to and kept at arm’s length by everyone. Especially since chances are he’s gonna die sooner or later. Maybe not. We’ll see.

I’m pretty intrigued by Maki during this chapter. She’s certainly being suspicious. But since she’s so suspicious I at least doubt that she’s the killer. I want to try and have a free time event with her next chapter, if I can. I wonder what the deal is with her being so defensive about her lab. It’s hard to tell what’s up with her in general.

Keebo still feels a little odd to me as a character, so I dunno what to say about him. I did feel pretty bad seeing him get tossed into the water tank though, and it was cool seeing him get his moment to shine and derail Kokichi’s plans.

I hope that Tsumugi, Kiyo, Kirumi, and to a lesser degree Miu get some focus soon. I mean, at least Miu got a bit of focus in chapter one, but the other three definitely feel like the least important people thus far.

I kinda want to do everyone’s free time events, just to learn more about them, but you really don’t get much time to talk to people. Oh well. I’m pretty sure that there’s a bonus mode you get after beating the main game that lets you do everyone’s routes really easily. I never really looked into the ones for the past two games though, so I forget how they work exactly. But I’ve heard that some sort of mode like that exists in this game. I think it’s literally called Dating Sim Mode, which is kinda hilariously on the nose. Though I wonder, would Kaede be the protagonist in it, or Shuichi? I guess if it plays out like an alternate timeline where no murders happen, it’d logically be Kaede. But it’d be amusing if you could at least choose to play as Shuichi for it.

And on the note of free time events and stuff, it’s hard to tell, but I THINK that the number of friendship fragments you had technically stays the same? I’m not sure. It said I had one fragment in my skill screen. But I don’t think I had an option to look at Rantarou’s detailed info screen. Oh well. It’s not a big deal, so nobody needs to tell me. But the way chapter one played out makes me think that I should have just tried to fit in two sessions with Rantarou, since talking to Shuichi was kinda pointless.

Speaking of Rantarou, this chapter’s making me wonder if instead of gaining the memories of his talent, he gained the memories of the Ultimate Hunt that we saw everyone else get here. He at least knew enough to know the name. I’m getting more and more curious about him. Especially since we still don’t know exactly what his plan was when he went to the basement.

To bridge over to discussing the murder, I should say that I still really like Ryoma as a character, and I wish I could have talked to him more before he died. But there were other characters I was prioritizing over him. I just really like his whole grizzled, realistic, but self-deprecating attitude. I wasn’t really expecting him to feel like such a big voice of reason, but he really was.

Though before I talk about his death specifically, I want to talk about the motive this time around. I really like how it’s technically the same motive as the first one in DR1, but it plays out really differently because everyone’s motives got mixed up. Which is why it’s going to be REALLY interesting to see how the hell someone got motivated to kill Ryoma if they got somebody else’s motive. It’s a really simple twist on the idea, but it does a whole lot to change the situation and make the motive less clear.

I feel like there was probably some tablet-swapping going on in the background that we didn’t get to see, even counting for how Kokichi’s plan for doing one big binge-watching party failed. The fact that he spent some amount of time alone with Gonta, and that he got caught up in some unexplained event while he was getting the tablets, is making me really suspicious about what’s going on. Maybe someone just managed to find and view their own motive and decided to kill, but that seems a little . . . simple. I wonder if the exact situation of who got which person’s motive will play into the logic of solving this case. Other than Shuichi having Kaito’s motive, all we know is that everyone had a different person’s motive, and that Gonta had Tsumugi’s. And I guess we also know that Maki never looked at whichever one she got. The fact that we got Kaito’s motive is really interesting to me, since it seems like it was done to make him less suspicious, since we as the player would know that Kaito never saw his motive, and so we’d assume that he had no motive to kill. But it still felt like this chapter was signalling his death in an almost Stephen King sort of way. I hope not.

As for the murder itself, it definitely seems that the issue will be more to do with figuring out how Ryoma’s body got into the water tank, than how he actually died. It’s fairly obvious that he died sometime during the night, or right before the magic show, and was drowned in the pool. The game just about spells that out though, with how Shuichi immediately guesses that the time of death being hidden meant that he probably died elsewhere. I mean I guess it could be, like, a double subversion, but I doubt it.

I feel like anyone who was present at the magic show is probably largely free of suspicion since I’m not sure exactly how anyone could have moved his body into the tank if they were standing elsewhere in the room. Since we saw the contents of the tank before the curtains got drawn over them, he had to have been actively moved into the tank during that one-minute time frame.

From what I remember, the characters not present at the magic show, excluding the currently dead people, were Kokichi, Maki, and Kaito, from what I remember, so those three are pretty suspicious, but Kaito seems like the only one of those three who probably did it, in a metagaming sense. I just can’t see Kokichi dying so soon, and Maki’s being set up as a suspicious character, so by process of elimination Kaito seems like the most suspicious of the group. I feel like it’d lead to a more interesting mystery if the killer was someone physically present in the room during the magic show, though. It almost feels too easy to suspect the people who weren’t there. And honestly I almost feel like them not being in the room at the time would have made it harder rather than easier to set the body where it ended up.

At least in terms of the people in the magic show, Himiko is obviously really suspicious. Funnily enough, Kokichi even spelled out the whole ‘she seems suspicious, which almost makes her seem NOT suspicious, but maybe that’s what she WANTS us to think’ thought process that I had in mind. It’s really easy to fall into that sort of loop, especially when you try and metagame it. Realistically speaking, she obviously had the best ability to physically set up the body, since she was in the tank at the time, but I doubt that she’d try and murder someone in a way where it’d be so easy to pin it on her.

Obviously a major part of the mystery here is going to involve her being stubbornly silent about explaining how the escape trick worked because she wants to tell us that magic did it, and so it’ll be hard to figure out the mechanics of how a body could have been moved there.

Though, wait, I guess it’s actually pretty easy to guess that Ryoma might have been hidden inside the small piranha tank, and got dropped into the water tank along with them. I’m not sure how they would have kept him from being eaten before the drop happened, but still, it’d be a convenient way for him to have gotten into the tank, especially since, as a timer-based mechanism, the killer didn’t need to be the one to, like, drag him into the tank. In which case literally anyone could be a suspect, whether they were in the room at the time or not, but I guess a big question then is figuring out how someone got the body there in the first place, especially if they weren’t involved in the preparation of the magic show.

I wish I could remember where Ryoma would have been during the night and morning before he died, and who would have had alibis and whatnot. Although, come to think of it, since even touching the pool water during night-time is forbidden, then if he was drowned in the pool I guess it must have been during the morning, since he would have died via the Exisals if he’d broken a rule. Which narrows down the time-frame to between 8am and whenever the magic show happened, which I think was very soon after that.

I wonder how much of a puzzle there’ll be to figuring out the exact mechanics of how he got drowned, though. The pool’s overall layout, and the detail put into describing the exact dimensions of the pool itself, and the detail about it being only half-full, make it seem like there must have been something more to it than just ‘someone dragged him there and shoved his face under the water until he died’.

If it’s Kaito, then it almost feels too easy, in a way. Especially with how I think he didn’t do a training session with Shuichi the night before the murder, and how he wasn’t there at the magic show. And as I said, the thing with Shuichi getting his motive feels like it might be a way to mislead the player from guessing that he did it. It really would confuse me if he did it though, since he didn’t see his motive. Unless Monodam actually gave everyone their correct tablets when he returned them all. We’ll see.

I think my main issue is just that I have no real idea who ELSE could have done it. Nobody else seems genuinely suspicious. I haven’t done the investigation yet, but as of now, we mostly just have a few characters who are being immediately framed as suspicious people, which feels like shorthand for ‘they didn’t do it’ at this point, and a whole bunch of people who have the same amount of evidence pointing at them. Kaito’s the only one who has any amount of signs pointing at him, though a lot of that’s me using a metagaming perspective, since I have no clue why he’d do such a thing.

I guess the only other particularly suspicious people would be, I dunno . . . Angie and Kirumi? Since Angie was working with Himiko on the magic show, and Kirumi helped with the curtains. That’s about it. I’m curious to see if my guesses might change once we have actual evidence. I hope it’s not quite as simple as that. I know that there’s no real chance of it being as much of a mindfuck as the first case, but it’d be lame to go right from that to a case where I immediately guess it correctly.

Oh, and before I forget, I have no goddamn clue what’s going on with that writing Gonta found. I just can’t even begin to formulate a guess about that. I don’t even know if it’ll be relevant to this case, or if it’s a hint toward a future plot point.

I think that’s about everything worth going over. Judging by how chapter one went, I might do the same thing and play both the investigation and the trial tomorrow [with a break in-between to write about the investigation before I do the trial], but I might take a break tomorrow and do it the day after since I have something else I need to do sometime over the next few days. It might work better to take a break after the end of this chapter, though. We’ll see.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #I probably shouldn't be surprised that these posts are consistently turning out to be pretty long

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 9 [Chapter 3 - Daily Life]

This time on DRV3, things get ~spooky~. Right in time for Halloween, funnily enough! Well, nearly.

Thoughts under the cut.

Well this chapter sure is weird. I wasn’t expecting such a big focus on occult stuff and religious stuff, but I guess it’s a natural turn of events. At least, the whole deal with Angie basically absorbing half of the remaining cast into her religion and then using her influence to impose strict order over everyone. I probably should have seen that coming. I’ve been creeped out for a while now, and this is the natural end result of her attitude. I really like it as a plot point. It’s kinda sad that since she died here it only really lasted for a single chapter, but still.

The heavy focus on her being more or less a cult leader who everyone outside of her group, and even at least one person in her group, wanted to take down one way or another made it fairly obvious after a while that she’d be the victim this time around. I was expecting at least one other member of her group to be dead as well, though. Mostly because the chapter three cases from the last two games both had two victims each. I guess it’s nice that they broke that pattern. I was really afraid that Tenko would get killed off, especially with how she’s gotten a good amount of focus and development recently. But she’s still alive, which I’m happy for.

And let’s be real here, it was obvious that Angie’s lab would be the crime scene as soon as the game pointed out that it has two doors with different locks on them, and that Angie likes to keep the door locked from inside while she works. That was just screaming ‘this is set-up for a locked room mystery’.

This chapter’s motive was the really bizarre thing, though. I did not see that one coming at all. The chapter title was worrying enough, but then we got to the stuff about resurrecting a dead person to bring them back into the game. That’s . . . something. I was confused for a while about how the process worked, since it was a motive for murder. Like, I guessed that maybe the ritual involved a sacrifice, but the game never really explained the actual mechanics of the ritual until near the end of this part, and it sounds like there’s no murder involved. So I guess it’s a ‘motive’ more in the sense that it’d sow disorder in the group and lead to murder that way. I think. I’m assuming that the ritual won’t work, obviously.

Seeing low-def 3D models of the dead characters was so goddamn weird and creepy. And now they’re ritualistically being hung upside down around a corpse. Yay.

Though before that, I should mention before I forget, there were also more weird hints at the overall story early in the chapter. As I kinda said last time, this chapter starts off with some sort of news story about a deadly metero shower. I’m not sure what to make of it. Was that the unprecedented crisis that Kirumi mentioned? I’m skeptical. But then again I’m kinda skeptical about every single hint at the overall story in this game because everything seems so fishy.

On that note, we also got the return of the funeral hinted at with the start of chapter two. So it seems like everyone was able to remember what seemed to be their own collective funeral. Not sure what to make of that. I can’t help but stick to my ‘this is literally purgatory’ theory, but I think that’s just what the game wants you to think. So then what’s the deal? Are the main characters in this game, like, clones or impostors or something? I have no idea. In general I can’t even begin to guess what this is leading to. I feel like the game’s just throwing out these absurdly weighty but vague ideas and making me think about these absurd ideas for where this might be going.

Like, we even had what seems to be the return of the New World Program machine from DR2, which was . . . weird as fuck. No idea what the deal with that is. And on the note of references to past games, we even had the return of the gold foil sword from DR1. That was probably closer to just being a reference though.

Oh, and on the topic of some of the more random things that happened, I still can’t work out what’s going on with the message on the tile in the garden. That’s still a mystery to me. And I don’t even know where to begin with that scene of Miu and Keebo in Miu’s lab. That sure was . . . something. I guess the game felt that it had been holding back too much on the fanservice-y CGs, lol. I wonder what the chances are that it might somehow be a pivotal scene to solving the case.

I’m also completely baffled by what’s going on with Monokuma just . . . shutting down, and Monodam taking over. The Monokubs confused me in general ever since they first showed up, but now I’m even more unsure what the heck the game is planning with them.

I did another small session of gambling and decided to get the skill that automatically reveals the first letter in the Hangman’s Gambit, and the skill that stops the reticle from moving, though I’m gonna have to wait to equip the latter one since it apparently takes up a lot of slots. I also must have forgotten to equip one of the Argument Armament skills last time since it was there for me to add to my list. I also managed to have enough friendship fragments by the end of this part to get the skill that automatically silences loud voices in Mass Panic Debates. I dunno if I’ll get the one about focusing on specific conversations.

Somehow I managed to get events in with Keebo, Maki, and Kokichi. I wanted to talk to Kaito, but in the later events he didn’t want to talk to me since he was sick. I don’t really have much to say about Keebo, other than that I’m still a bit baffled by how he’s basically just a comic relief character at this point. I mean, he looked so . . . badass and protagonist-y on the first promo poster we got. He’s even the single character shown on NIS America’s limited edition box set of the game. It’s weird. Anyway, moving on, I’m really liking Maki, but I think I’ll talk more about her in a minute. Kokichi is . . . slowly growing on me, honestly. The fact that he’s apparently a huge goddamn nerd who wanted to play Yu-Gi-Oh with Shuichi was pretty great. It’s still hard to get a read on him, though. He’s the sort of character who’s so two-faced that it’s hard to bother even trying to figure him out. But I still think there’s something worth discovering about him, so I’m prioritizing him a bit in free time events.

I almost forgot, but I wanna talk about the Shuichi-Kaito-Maki trio, and how much I love them right now. They’re so wonderful. I still have a huge soft spot for the Shuichi-Kaito dynamic. Especially after the part where Shuichi talked about how Kaito more or less completes him by balancing him out and making him feel happy and carefree in a way that he normally can’t. It’s just really heart-warming. But I also like that Kaito immediately stuck up for Maki and, like with Shuichi, forced her to get out of her shell. Shuichi and Maki really do both need someone reckless and impulsive like Kaito around to push them forward when they’d otherwise falter. Seeing Maki get bought into the training sessions was really nice. I like that she’s slowly warming up to them in her own way, and is actually taking Kaito’s words to heart.

I really like what this chapter’s been doing for Maki’s overall character development and depth. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her at first, but I really like her as a character now. The idea of her being an assassin who’s been forced to basically abandon her humanity and her personal relationships time and time again, but who also wants to live a better life and overcome the way she was raised, is really compelling to me. I also just really like her attitude, especially now that she’s not being secretive about stuff, and we know why she is the way she is. Her habit of saying ‘You wanna die?’ whenever Shuichi questions her about something is amazing and I love it. I’m also pretty glad I did her first free time event. Though, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure it was the part where she talked about the cult that had trained her, so . . . were you just unable to have free time events with her before this point? I guess that’d make sense, given her attitude before this chapter.

As for Kaito . . . I love this purple space boy with all my heart and soul, but god dammit I’m gonna get stuck in another loop of being suspicious of him. Argh. I’m just so suspicious of how he suddenly got all weird and sick a day or two before the murder, and how he spent a lot of time holed up in his room at night and thus feels like a prime suspect for the current case. It’s at least giving me horrible flashbacks to chapter three of DR2, with the despair disease or whatever they called it. Even though I know it’d be handled differently, it’d be lame if we got a repeat of the overall idea of an illness being related to the culprit deciding to murder someone. Especially with how aggressively telegraphed it was that something’s weird with him and he’s spending a lot of time alone. It almost feels like the chapter’s setting him up as being one of the immediate suspects, which I’d be glad for if it means he didn’t do it.

I think I’m at a bit of a loss as to who the other prime suspects would be, though. But that’ll presumably change once I get done with the rest of the chapter tomorrow. I just feel like there’s a lot of info I don’t have. I couldn’t even easily guess what the murder method was, based on the clip we got of her body. Probably because she kinda just showed up for a split second at the end of it. It looked like some kind of wound near her neck area. I think.

The main mystery here is obviously that it was a locked room scenario where the room was locked from the inside, but somehow the culprit got in and out while keeping the room locked from the inside after they left. Even though the last chapter literally had a character trying to tell everyone that they can use magic, this is shaping up to be way more Umineko-esque, especially with the creepy occult ritual going on. It honestly almost feels like a reference to Umineko, but locked room mysteries are a basic enough idea that it’s probably a coincidence.

I’m not entirely sure what my preliminary guess about the locked room trick is. This is a very different situation to something like Umineko, so I can’t really apply the same logic here. I guess my immediate thought would be that I’d like to check if the other door into the room is definitively locked from the inside. Just to be safe.

I also thought that Monodam stole the key away, so I’m not entirely sure how anyone locked the doors from the inside to begin with. If we at least assume that there’s only one valid key in play, and no, like, master keys floating about.

I easily lose track of the flow of time in this game, so it’s hard to remember, but I think the whole scene where Shuichi, Maki, and Tenko tried to convince Angie to stop the ritual happened after midnight, the night before they then walked in during the morning and found Angie’s dead body. So I think that’s the night that this case is revolving around. Which is part of why I’m suspecting Kaito, since I’m pretty sure that was one of the nights where he was holed up in his room, and Shuichi and Maki were doing training alone. I at least know that Kaito wasn’t with them during that whole scene, so . . . yeah.

I know that the clues mostly come during the investigation, but it really doesn’t feel like I have many clues at all to go by for this one at the moment. It at least feels like it’d be really hard to pin down anyone’s alibis since I don’t think we know about anyone having been running around during the night after the confrontation happened. I think Miu might have been working in the computer lab at that time, though, so since that’s kinda linked up to the same part of the building I guess she might play a part in verifying alibis and stuff. That’s about all I can think of, really. The only other person I can think of who might have been breaking curfew after the confrontation would have been, well, Kokichi, who I think they actually ran into shortly before the confrontation. I think everyone else was probably just in their dorms. Himiko got involved in the confrontation too, I guess, but I kinda doubt she killed Angie.

And, of course, a main issue is that aside from Kokichi knowing how to pick locks, I don’t know if anyone would have any unique ability to mess with the locks on Angie’s room. So in terms of each character’s individual ability to pull this crime off in the first place, everyone seems on almost even standing.

It’s probably pointless to predict things too much, but I guess my main three suspects would be Kaito, Tenko, and Kokichi, with Himiko and Miu at a more distant fourth and fifth place. I feel like I can trust Maki on this one, so the only other character who I have even the slightest evidence to suspect is probably Kiyo, purely because he’s gotten a fair bit of screen-time in this chapter.

I have a feeling Tenko didn’t do it, at least because I doubt she would have literally talked about wishing that Angie could die and attempting to basically arrange an assassination on her if she was going to end up killing her directly. But still, she obviously has the strongest motive to kill Angie, other than Maki I guess. And I’d really like to see where she as a character, and her dynamic with Himiko, will go in the long run now that Angie’s dead.

And on the note of motive, I would imagine that everyone on Angie’s side other than Tenko has no motive to kill her and are thus probably all innocent, while everyone on Shuichi’s side has a pretty clear motive to kill her. Which is why I’m only really suspecting people on his side, for the most part.

Also on a metagame-y note, I definitely feel more inclined to suspect a male culprit this time, after two female culprits. Which limits my options even more, though I’m not 100% sure on it.

I certainly hope this chapter plans to throw a curveball at me, and isn’t just blatantly signalling Kaito as the killer. But, I mean, that’s exactly what I said during chapter two, and look where that mind-set got me, lol.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers

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