#but this show makes characters do the most bizarre shit for plot convenience...

[theprinceandthewitch]

Still unable to cope with the fact Huntlow exists specifically to keep Hunter out of the final fight with Belos even though he literally asked Luz at the end of TTT to help him avenge Flapjack.

[imunbreakabledude]

severance s2 finale thoughts

spoilers obvi

overall quite good! i lost a tiny bit of hype after last week's episode and this one still had some stuff that made me go hmmm (as in idk if they thought it out) but it also had some very cool shit too!

even if it's a bit out of nowhere (and jame eagan is still generally giving me 'random weird-evil character just made to creep you out') i do really, really like the move to have him interested in helly as his 'heir'. if i was reading it right. seemed like they're setting up for s3 that he will possibly "flip" helly and helena, to make helly active on the outside and become 'his daughter'. which would be very cool and unexpected and also provide a way for Mark to potentially still be around, because it would be like a reverse of the beginning of s2, where helly was brought back bc mark wanted her and lumon needed mark. if jame wants helly happy and he needs to keep (innie) mark around for that (for that matter, also keeping outie-mark or at least his body alive)... that helps answer why mark wouldn't just be killed/disappeared after this finale.

also, the sequence of mark(s) talking to each other was really well done and incredibly acted by adam scott.

and the escape sequence was fun and weird and bizarre and good to watch.

I'm still a little ???? though about a lot of the questions, even the ones they tried to "answer" this episode. still wondering if mark's files correspond to gemma's personalities/rooms, then did dylan, irving, and helly each have a person they were connected to on another floor? or were they literally just there to make mark think he had colleagues and it was normal work? also, still confused of what the ultimate point of all those personalities for gemma was? like it seems to be showing applications for how severance could like, erase bad memories or compartmentalize any painful experience, but why did it seem like every room had to be an entirely new "person" then? lil confused on the mechanics of that.

but mostly I remain baffled about... how the fuck is lumon a successful company. like i understand they have other above-board businesses that give them revenue, but i mean based on how they OPERATE. their most sensitive secret important business has a massive fucking office complex that is mostly empty rooms. they have like 1 security guy and 1 manager on the entire floor. mark was able to walk thru 2 floors covered in blood literally just walking gemma out with no one to stop him because 1 guy was dead and another guy was locked in the bathroom and apparently this mega corporation that kidnaps and imprisons people has ZERO OTHER SECURITY PERSONNEL? not to mention, they don't even have like, remote locks on the doors? of the building where they imprison people? they could just yknow... walk out of the stairwell?

it's the stuff like THAT that i get hung up on more than anything. lumon is all-powerful when it's convenient but completely fucking incompetent when it's convenient.

similar thing with mark's reintegration - he started the process early in the season, it was said to be gradual, but then he had that surgery to take out the chip which sounded like it was supposed to make the process speed up/instantly finish? but then the last two episodes more or less hinged on him... being even less 'reintegrated' than before? zero 'flashes' between innie and outie memories, because suddenly the plot of these episodes was dependent on innie and outie mark being as separate as possible? it makes me wonder why they had him reintegrate in this season AT ALL, or i mean, why do that scary surgery, they could've still gotten away with him doing the early process and having a few 'flashes' but then reghabi had to go for some reason so we would understand why it suddenly stalled, and why outie-mark was pitching it like it was something they 'could' do in the future.

lot of strong & compelling stuff - to be clear I still enjoy the show a lot and am very curious on what s3 will bring. but a handful of things in this season did feel like they weren't fully thought out... OR were there just to be weird & mysterious and then slightly tried to justify themselves (the goats. like, they kinda made it work, i will admit they made it work a little more than i thought they could, but it was still... kind of an awkward way to try to justify/close the loop on what was clearly a scene in s1 that was inserted just to be ~~~~weird~~~~ without a real reason for it).

also like i kinda get why but damn real shame to truly not see irving anymore :( he better be back in s3 somehow. maybe if helly is the new eagan heir she can declare that he must be brought/allowed back too.

[htmlerror]

☕ + wfa

i do not like wfa with ham, i do not like it, sam i am.

I have a lot of problems with Wayne Family Adventures. The idea for it is solid enough, but the execution is. bad. I've put my thoughts below the cut because this got long, so I hope you don't mind me going in depth on my feelings.

Duke Thomas as a POV character - I'm plagerizing heavily from my convo with @phamtai about this. Def check them out for more info and better insights than mine into the character. Duke is extremely well established in canon despite only having been around for a decade or so. Remarkably, it's taken until WFA to butcher his character. Duke in this series is too polite. He's too clueless. He's been presented as the Relatable Kid archetype that he doesn't fit. In canon, Duke has never not been self-assured. He's a relatable character, yes, but not because he doesn't know what's going on. He has experience as a hero long before the batfam became involved. And since then, he's bonded with them. WFA doesn't show his connection with Cass, his dynamic with Bruce or Jason, and completely ignores his conflicts with the family. In a supposedly family-focused product, those are damn near cardinal sins. He may as well be a totally new character. Duke has been watered down so much for the sake of this series. WFA could be a vessel to explore so many things about him that we don't see a lot of on the regular page. We could see a dive into the parallels between him and Bruce, the full psychological impact of losing his parents, epecially in contrast to Jason, how his world view and morals differ from Batman's, the daily consequences of his powers, or the fallout of his mourning independently for the friends he's lost. But those would be interesting angles WFA doesn't seem eager to explore. If you can't imagine a version Duke punching a cop just because they're a fucking cop, you're doing it wrong. Another issue is, unfortunately, Duke's role as the only Black batman member. I shouldn't need to explain why it's problematic to be showing his as constantly less knowledgeable and presumably skilled as the other bats. (No, it doesn't matter that Dick and Damian are drawn with dark skin. Dick has been written as a white man for nearly his entire existence. The person who retconned that is notoriously racist and has spent years defending her inclusion of sexual assault in her writing. I have no issue with Dick being Romani, but just changing the color of his skin is not the way to do it.) DC has recently had a push towards inclusion, on the page an behind the scenes. This is good, of course. Though if they really are committed to representation and inclusion, it needs to be an effort seen across the board. Faux pas like this paint a pretty obvious picture.

The Webtoon format is shit - Webtoon is a great platform for indie writers and artists. It's not my style of content, but I get the appeal. IMO, it's ridiculous to accept a professional comic publisher shitting out 12 page fluff pieces. Yes, the weekly comic format has been phased out for a reason. Yes, halving the workload is a possible way around that restriction. But there just isn't a good enough reason to do it. It's a pretty obvious ploy to seem "hip" and "get in with kids these days." It's lazy and frankly kind of embarrassing. For anyone who doesn't know, a standard comic book is usually 24-28 pages. This isn't an arbitrary number, it's part of the format for the art form. That length allows for necessary plot developments in a serial story line while also giving the characters, themes, and artwork time to breathe. Furthermore, it's what most comic readers have come to expect over the decades. Halving that wouldn't necessarily be a problem, there are plenty of examples of well made shorts out there, but coupling that WFA's love affair with single panels and splash pages is a major issue. Say you make a 12 page comic with 4-6 panels per page. You have 48-72 panels to work with. You can sit a compelling story into that, with or without heavy dialogue. But bring that down to 12-24 panels, and you have one of two options: either 1) ultra-compress your narrative or 2) reduce the plot to compensate. Ignoring the formatting choices, WFA is a convenient reason for DC to keep the worst of the status quo in the bat titles. There's no need to acknowledge criticism of Bruce's treatment of his family when they can simply point and say "Jason's throat hasn't been sliced open here! And look, Damian hasn't been left with the crushing guilt of his grandfather's death! We even let Tim exist as his own character!" WFA doesn't change anything, it shows that DC is aware of its problems but would rather outsource them than put in the work to fix it. There's a special kind of rejected feeling that comes with being told "I hear you, I just don't care.

Fandom isn't bad, but - Everyone is familiar with the incorrect quotes format by now. Sometimes they're funny, most of the time they tend to over-saturate. WFA is like if a incorrect batfam quotes blog was a comic. It's a steady supply of one-liners and references, sure, but it lacks any real substance. If that's what you like, I can't fault you for it, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. The way the batfandom has piled onto the "this is the best thing ever" bandwagon is concerning to me. There has been good batfam content in canon, you just need to know where to look for it. The lack of critical analysis of the project and dismissal of critiques is always an alarming pattern, but the way WFA has come to be the odd face of the fandom is just bizarre. It's everywhere, as you know if you've ever tried avoiding it. Thinking about WFA being the default interpretation of these characters makes me nervous. They lack the depth their canon counterparts. I don't care if you enjoy WFA, I do understand the appeal of it, but for the love of the gods, take it down from it's pedestal.

WFA is... fine. It's yet to commit any sins too egregious, but, like all DC properties, it's a ticking timebomb. I won't be surprised when it goes off, and I can't say I'll be sad to see it go. Ao3 has better content, anyway

[canadian-riddler]

How do you feel about the treatment of female characters in Arkhamverse?

Sexualisation of female characters - don't care. It's comic books. I roll my eyes and move on. If you wanna talk about that I'm not the one for you.

Writing - Hate Ivy's. Ivy, whose superpowers include mind-control, gets conveniently manipulated by men to absolve her actions within the plot quite often in the stories she appears in and I hate it every time. I also hate when they go 'oh guess what she's a good guy now' which they bring out in Arkham Knight. For the record I very rarely like how Ivy is written anyway.

Harley: Harley ceased to be a character and instead became a plot device a long, long time ago so I don't have much to say about her. She just exists to do whatever the story needs her to do and that's true for Arkhamverse. Arkhamverse leans in to her being victimised by the Joker, which I don't like. I dislike when the writing dismisses her manipulative nature. The thing that actually saves it all is the Joker's nightmare including the newspaper headline stating Harley and Riddler were having a baby, which implies Harley's REAL target is whomever the most powerful villain is at the time and if they had included more of that in her character I think she would have been a lot more interesting.

Barbara: Perfect. Wonderful. Why doesn't she age. Why does Barbara as Batgirl look older than Barbara as Oracle. Where did Barbara being into Tim come from.

Penelope Young: A psychiatrist who excitedly expresses her desire to subject inmates to experimental chemicals while showing no interest in treating them has a sudden moral/ethical attack and ultimately becomes a victim? Not buying it. Her doing that implies she's been unscrupulous her whole life and I absolutely do not believe her about-face right into the cliche of 'woman good and manipulated by a man, actually'.

Catwoman: I actually barely even remember her role. She also looks too young.

Amanda Waller: The perfect character.

Gameplay: I wanna know why you beat the shit out of the male characters but not the female ones. Am I advocating for the assault of women in video games? No. Am I confused as to why you punch all the men in the face but the women are either written so that you don't touch them or are provided with gimmicks to keep you from punching them? Yes. Makes me feel like the women are being treated as less dangerous than the men. I am aware that Copperhead and Lady Shiva are an exception to this, but since Batman specifically mentions his information states Copperhead was a man, I hesitate to really give credit for it as an exception, given if they hadn't changed Copperhead's gender almost every single character in the game other than Barbara would have been a man, and Lady Shiva just gives up without finishing the fight. I do give Origins credit for being more clever about the whole 'we don't really want Batman to punch women' stance the games take. I just find it bizarre given you annihilate hundreds of men over the course of four games.

[bluinary]

gag anime that you need to watch maybe

 hi hello my name is juli and i will now gently guide ur attention to some top-notch shows, please pay attanetion

(this list is for people who don’t watch much anime or who are new to it. if ur a fucken weeb youve probably seen it all. dont @ me i want to help the kids)

ONE PUNCH MAN (the obvious 1st choice lol)

Genre: Action/ Shounen

Expectation: OP protagonist with riveting backstory fights to become the strongest hero, makes many friends along the way who recognize his talents and pure heart, big bad scary villains make him stronger

Reality: OP protagonist is already the strongest hero. His backstory? After fighting a lobster-man with nipples drawn on him with a Sharpie, Saitama decides to do a workout routine every day, and somehow ends up becoming the most powerful known being in the universe. His main issue is that now, he literally can take down any villain with a single punch, and he’s very bored of it.

Best Qualities: Animation is bomb, music is dope, humor is funnie, and Best Boy is a man whose superpower is riding a bicycle. Also Saitama egg head

If you were in a coma for all of 2015, this is the main thing u missed. Moving on.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (Monthly Girls’ Nozaki)

Genre: Romance/ Comedy/ Slice of Life

Expectation: Smol shoujo protag girl grows closer to her oblivious crush through a fated, if awkward, incident which reveals an embarrassing secret that has to be kept at all costs. Through one another they gain more quirky friends, help each other grow, and, eventually, the male lead realizes that what he needs has been beside him all along.

Reality: The crush writes romance manga, and that is literally all the man cares about. It’s not a secret, but when he told people they didn’t believe him. Nozaki and Sakura grow closer, but only because he confuses her confession with a request to be his Beta. They gain quirky friends through one another, but there is zero character development throughout the entire fucking cast. Every episode is run by Idiot Plot. All the characters share a singular brain cell. There’s a tall butch lady turning every girl in the school gay. Please watch

Best Quali-teas: Everyone is baby, lots of gay shenanigans, and toxic masculinity does not exist, the OP is pretty nice, too

I literally heard about this damn show, like, two months ago. This shit was released circa 2015. Pleeze watch

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. / Saiki Kusuo no Psi Nan

Genre: Shounen/ Supernatural/ Fucking Everything tbh

Expectation: Slice-of-life supernatural where protag has psychic powers, albeit limited ones, and has to keep them a secret at all costs for fear of his safety. He has a few friends he loves and cherishes, and at least two girls who are in love with him that he has to choose between-- all of which are people he wants to protect from his double-life.

Reality: Kusuo is very aware that he is the protagonist of an anime, and he does not want to be. Born with pink hair? He rewrites the human genome to make colored hair normal. End of the world looming? He just keeps rewinding time so he doesn’t have to deal with it. Harem situation? He actively uses his powers to avoid all love interests at all times (see the above). The plot of each episode is him trying to stop the plot as quickly as possible without killing anyone. The main issue is that everyone around him is either dumb or just generally attractive to plot-driving circumstances, and they all, for some reason, want him to be in on their adventures.

Best Qualities: Heavy “me and the boys” energy, plenty of Idiot Plot, so funny that my 47yo mom who hates anime admitted that it’s funny, meta as fuck, occasionally sweet scenes, equally good dub and sub, Saiki is babie

The fandom for this shit is like. Nonexistent. Apparently it came out the same season as Mob Psycho 100, so that might be why. I almost didn’t watch it, but I got bored and it turned out to be a serious gem. Go watch if ur having a bad day, it will make u cry laughing

Sakamoto Desu Ga/ Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto

Genre: Slice of life/ Comedy

Expectation: God I don’t even know. I’d say a typical slice of life where the quiet kid is bullied but makes friends, there’s a love triangle as they grow up together through high school, yadda yadda, but look at this dude. I can’t imagine him being anything other than what he is-- a legend.

Reality: The entire show is just a question of how extra one man can be, and how well he can pull it off. Sakamoto is an “average” high school senior (in the sense that he has no supernatural abilities), but he’s....far more than that. He’s Sebastian Michaelis if he’d never been a demon. Everything always works out for him in the most ridiculous of ways-- he’s just that good. He makes a McDonald’s uniform look like Prada. He’s so smooth his bully ends up having a crush on him (and yes, it is a gay crush. no heteros in this show). 

Best Qualities: lots of homo content. the side characters, inspired by Sakamoto’s grace, all become better people, and you root for them. The circumstances are always average, but the presentation is fucking riveting. Watch to send ur depression into remission.

Another one no one talks about????? U all were so busy with ur broku no hero macadamias and ur Nartoes that you slept on this. Now’s the time to take back what was lost. Love yourself and binge this shit. 

Nichijou/ My Ordinary Life

Genre: Slice of Life/ Comedy

Expectation: Cute girls do cute, girly things and have fun with Their Close Good Friends (TM).

Reality: Cute girls get into very bizarre situations with extremely manic energies. Sometimes, the situations are normal, but the girls react in a bizarre, manic fashion. It will make you alarm-laugh.

Best Qualities: Adorable art style, little continuity, relatable as fuck

A nice little watch if you’re bored. I think the eps are on YouTube.

Pop Team Epic/ Poputepepiku

Genre: Only God Knows

Expectation: Probably a cutesy 4koma-type thing with 2 schoolgirls having shenanigans.

Reality: A regular acid trip with lesbian icons Popuko and Pipimi who are not schoolgirls, but gods. Like if Eric Andre and Hannibal Buress were turned into omnipotent anime icons. Watch at your own risk.

Best Qualities: Lots of unexpected parodies and references amongst a shitpost of a show. The OP is a bop. Popuko terrifies me, but also empowers me as a young woman because she will not hesitate to kill a bitch. She and Pipimi love each other a whole lot, so it is LGBTQ content, which is always a plus. 

I’m sure you’ve seen this one floating around. It will make you feel fear, and then laugh. Now, finally...

Ouran Highschool Host Club

Genre: Romance/ Comedy

Expectation: The protagonist is a girl who is mistaken for a boy and must be the servant of six rich, handsome young men, all of which are in love with her, and her secret must be kept at all costs. A reverse harem anime with plenty of fanservice.

Reality: Haruhi is a genderfluid queen who doesn’t give a fuck what others think she is. Because she broke a Conveniently-Placed Vase and is relatably poor, she has to pay off her debt by being a host herself-- which means male-presenting when flirting with her female classmates to make her dough. The six rich, handsome young men all share three brain cells, and most of those cells go to the character who has one line per episode (usually, it’s “Yeah”. I hope that VA got paid well). The only love interest-- the “leader” and most popular of the six men-- is so dead-set on their club being his Found Family, he confuses his romantic feelings for Haruhi with paternal ones. This is obvious to everyone but him. He never gets the brain cells. 

Best Qualities: Trans characters!! Lesbians!! Extreme “me and the boys” energy, except they’re all rich, so shenanigans skyrocket. Many 4th wall breaks. The most powerful Host looks like he’s 5. Any “fanservice” is never played straight. Takes the Found Family trope to a whole new level. Nice Parks & Rec-quality balance between hysterical and sweet. Everyone is in drag at some point.

I know all of us senior citizens grew up on this shit, but you younguns need to watch the classics to appreciate the newfangled stuff. I recommend watching when you’re in a cheesy rom-com mood. 

Honorable Mentions:

I can’t count these as gag anime, but they’re still ridiculously funny.

Mob Psycho 100

Scissor Seven

Kill la Kill

Cells at Work!

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure 

Ones I haven’t seen but have heard a lot about

Osomatsu-san

Himouto! Umaru-chan

Azumanga Daioh

Gin Tama

Sgt. Frog

Okay that is all just limke put this in ur feel-good tag because these shows will make you happy and donut for get to like and describe to my channel, where I post literally nothing at all ever good night.

[panharmonium]

some disjointed thoughts about stranger things 2 under the cut (concealed to hide spoilers from my sister)

so, season 2!

i’ve gone into every season of this show knowing absolutely nothing about it.  i’ve had no exposure to the fandom or to reviews or anything that would indicate what it was about or how good the seasons are in relation to each other, which i like, because i know my opinions are my own.  season 1 i watched back in the winter, i think, and it was amazing.  blew me away. 

i just finished season 2 and i’m like...not as into it?

and i’m glad i had no preexposure to anything, because if i had, i’d worry that i was just being influenced by other people’s opinions, but i genuinely don’t know what people think of the various seasons.  i’ve been stringently avoiding anything about this show, have it blocked on tumblr, etc, so i could watch it cold.

i’d have to watch it again to really pin down the places where my investment was flagging, and i’ll probably do that eventually, because i know my roommate will want to see it, but my general impression was this: they had me hooked in the beginning, and then they started to lose me.

- i feel like overall it was 9 episodes where very little substance actually happened.  plotlines were stretched out over a reallllllly long period of time and became paper-thin.  like nancy and jonathan?  the only thing they really did over those entire nine episodes was make a tape recording and send it to the paper.  that was their whole story, and it could have fit in one episode.

- and what did happen felt like it suffered from a lack of focus.  can i explain this in more detail without watching the show again?  not really.  but i just mean that in S1, i could tell you what each of the main character’s arcs were, and i could lay out how those arcs had clear beginnings, middles, and endings.  in S2, i can really only do that for El (and even that i feel like got messy by the last third).  

- the horror vibe was different this season.  it was LESS scary, to me.  S1 was a CREEP factor that had my skin crawling - it wasn’t like...creature horror - it was the unsettlingness.  the whole parallel world thing was so - well, the only word for it is unsettling, like.  you felt like you could take a step and accidentally wind up somewhere no one should be - the idea that you can be trapped so close to somebody and yet so far away - you just felt like the world was inside out (or upside down, if you will).  and so much of the fear in the first one came from how incomprehensible and uncertain the entire situation was - you didn’t know how things worked and nobody believed you when you tried to tell them what was happening.  that scene where the christmas lights spell out R-U-N?  scariest fucking thing i’ve ever seen.  but S2 changed it to be like...it felt like more of a monster flick.  like a zombie movie or something - lots of creatures running around that you can just shoot with a gun - that’s just not really the same vibe as the first season, and i didn’t find it quite as interesting.

- i don’t want to be That Person, because i liked maxine as a character in general, on her own terms, but from a writing perspective - what even was the purpose of her introduction?  her and her brother both, honestly, the whole family.  i feel almost bad for saying that, because i can guarantee that there were people out there complaining about her being introduced because “they just wanted to have another girl; it’s so stupid, blah blah,” cue more sexist stuff, etc, and that’s really not where i’m coming from, but for me, from a general storytelling perspective, i don’t understand why she or her family were introduced.  they were superfluous to the story.  they didn’t need to be there.  and since i don’t even feel like the returning characters got enough development this season (see point #2), i don’t understand why we spent so much time on her/her family/her introduction to the Party.  it felt like filler.

- stranger things S2 did that thing teen wolf does where 2/3 of the way through the season it drops a tonally-different expository/flashback episode that does a lot of the legwork tying other shit together while also being completely disconnected from the rest of the plot, which is basically an info dump and is my least favorite way of relaying plot/getting characters to the spot the writer wants them to go.  i think kali was the most interesting new character we met this season; i was rapt every time she was onscreen, but i don’t love the “we’re going to shove all of the character development and background info into this one episode and at the end El has had her turnaround and goes back home.”  it didn’t feel believable to me.  are we ever going to see those people again, or were they just a plot convenience to serve the aforementioned purpose?  (idk, i haven’t watched S3 yet, so...we’ll see.)

- some weird...minor tonal changes/dropped plots?  in S1 one of the running undercurrents was how mike and nancy’s mom wanted them to talk to her and she really did care about what was going on but they couldn’t connect to her and that bothered her, whereas in S2 it’s like - that theme has been dropped; she’s not involved in their lives really at all, and her and ted’s spousal relationship is just being played for laughs, and there was that REALLY weird scene with her like...lusting after billy??????  that was so fucking bizarre.  

and until one line in the very last episode, they dropped the whole thing about hopper’s daughter, too - the way they wove that into the first season was brilliantly done, and just - you don’t see a bit of it in S2, and that felt off, to me.

- killing bob was a bad call.  it was gratuitous, AND it was contrived - who the hell is running for their life and then just stops dead in the lobby to smile at their girlfriend?  ANY SENSIBLE PERSON WOULD KEEP RUNNING FOR THE DOOR.  like - bob died, but the doctor survived????????  the doctor, who was attacked and immobilized and defenseless in a stairwell, somehow wasn’t killed??????  of course not, because he needed to survive, so he could get El her papers later....that entire thing irritated me.  it made no sense.  that was actually the point where i said to myself “uh-oh.  first Bad-with-a-capital-B decision this show’s made.”  

- lack of consistency in terms of how, exactly, Stuff Works.  in S1 it was like - the Upside Down is everywhere.  the demigorgon could come through anywhere, if you were unlucky.  that was part of what made it so creepy - there’s this whole other world and it is RIGHT THERE with you, and sometimes the fabric separating the two universes gets scary thin, and bam, you’re somewhere no human has any business being.  whereas in S2 it’s like - ok, things are coming through this one portal and spreading through tunnels underground, in our own dimension???  like at first i thought hopper had actually entered the Upside Down in the tunnels, but then it seemed like the tunnels were still on our plane, just gross-looking.  so why in S1 could the demigorgon come through the ceiling of will’s house, or through that tree in the woods, or take barbara through the pool?  why did the lab people think burning that little gate would help, when the first monster from last season was obviously popping into our dimension from all sorts of other places?  

- this is a minor quibble, but it was driving me up the WALL in the last couple of episodes - what in god’s name were they injecting will with???  and HOW.  mike just grabs that syringe off the counter like “we need to make will go to sleep” - there is NO reason that anyone in the room would know what was in the syringe or what the correct dosage was or HOW TO GIVE AN INJECTION IN THE FIRST PLACE.  joyce gives it???????  by stabbing straight down????????  into will’s arm????????????  what the hell kind of injection technique is that?!?!?!  that’s not....how that works.  ever.  and maxine does it to billy too, in his NECK - just straight in there.  there is no....look, people in human medicine can weigh in better than me here; maybe things are different, but just from the veterinary perspective, you can’t just stab a creature any old place you want, and giving something via any route that isn’t intravenous isn’t going to drop an animal immediately, AND you do not have control over how long they’re going to be out.  if you give a sedative, you can’t just wake an animal up by wafting ammonia under their nose.  AND the animal is likely not going to be actually asleep until you also give an anaesthetic induction agent, and if you do give an anaesthetic induction agent, you’d better have some monitoring equipment and a breathing apparatus hooked up to your patient!

look, it just - the “go to sleep” injection was used to solve too many critical situations for me to just ignore it.  it bothered me.

anyhow.  overall, i didn’t hate it.  but i thought it was way less cohesive than the first season, and therefore way less effective.  i’m still curious to see what happens in S3, but my expectations are lower now. 

[if you wanna talk to me about this, you have my permission, but ONLY if you’re able to do it without talking about S3 in any capacity, including your own personal evaluation of how good/bad it is in relation to the other seasons.  i like to watch without knowing other people’s opinions of things, otherwise i feel like my viewing experience is colored by what i hear.  thanks! :) ]

[pellicano-sanguino]

In my Long Varney the Vampire Post, I mentioned the one and only time this character has been adapted properly; in the Greta Helsing - series by Vivian Shaw. I have just finished the third (and possibly last) book. I liked it, but I’m sad that my time with this new and improved version of Francis is over, and I was a bit disappointed that the rumors I heard about this book turned out to be false.

The two rumors that hyped up my expectations for this book were: 1. Carmilla was going to appear as a character and 2. Sir Francis Varney’s dark past would be made a plot point. When writing this book, Vivian Shaw mentioned on her site that she was re-reading Feast of Blood to better understand Varney’s backstory. Sadly, she used the Gutenberg project of the book, which only has about a third of it and never gets past the Bannerworth’s part of the story (screw the Bannerworths, they are boring as fuck). The most interesting parts are at the very end of the book, where sir Francis tells about how he became a vampire, it’s also at the very end where his depression starts to get to him, he attempts suicide, fails and for the only time in the book passes the curse of vampirism to someone else. I know it’s a long book and a rather difficult read just to get some background research done, but I was hoping Vivian Shaw could use the better material in the later chapters instead of the boring stuff.

Well, Carmilla isn’t in the book. While I am disappointed not to get one more adaptation of my favourite vampire, I’m fine with this. Dracula and Carmilla have had their fair share of adaptations. Letting lesser known blood drinkers like Varney and Ruthven a chance for a comeback is refreshing. It was just a little frustrating to keep reading chapter after chapter and expecting Carmilla to show up and she didn’t. I wish I had known ahead of time that this rumor was false.

When Vivian Shaw mentioned she was doing research for Varney’s backstory for the third book, I imagined that something from his past would be an important plotpoint. That he’d run into someone who recognized him (say, Clara Crofton, who has been revived by moonlight in this universe?) or something would happen that would draw attention to the horrible things he did, forcing him to face the fact that he can’t escape his past, can’t undo anything, can’t wash the blood from his hands. And, well, nothing like that really happens. 

Varney’s depression, the choking guilt that lies heavy on his heart, is still there. It was one of the reasons I so fell in love with the first book, how accurate this version of the reluctant vampire was to the original. But it’s all inside his head. No one else knows anything about his past and he will not speak about it to anyone. Everyone knows he’s done some ethically questionable stuff, but no one seems to care. Everyone is all too happy to be all “what’s in the past doesn’t matter.” Which, yes, I understand is a very touching and encouraging message to someone who is doing his best effort to change and become a genuinely good person. We should try to help people who regret the evil they’ve done and want to try to correct the mistakes they have made.

But Varney doesn’t do anything to repair the damage he’s done. Everyone he’s ever hurt has been long dead and gone, how convenient. This was why I was hoping for vampire Clara Crofton to make an appearance. This would have forced sir Francis to reveal to Greta at least one of his crimes (the killing and turning of Clara). And he would have had to face someone he’d hurt personally. He would need to confess his regret, to apologize and offer to do whatever he can to make up for what he did. And he would have to accept the possibility that Clara might not forgive him.

Whenever sir Francis looks back at his past, it’s all just vaguely hinting at things. Clara Crofton’s murder is the only bad memory specified. I wished he would have recalled his failed suicide attempt by drowning. It would have driven home the difference between his past self and current self - now he has something worth living for, friends and a budding romance, and a purpose in life as helping Greta with her work. Remembering that there was that lowest point where he wanted to die would have more clearly explained why memories of his past are such a sore spot, why they have a tendency to drive him into depression, why he will not speak of them.

Spoilers incoming: I liked the ending, where Varney is given the chance to drink the water of Lethe, forgetting all of his miserable past so he could begin his romance with Greta without any skeletons hiding in his closet (though he might have those literally, his mansion already has some screaming skulls...). And yet, Varney decides against it. His memories are painful, but he must take responsibility for what he’s done and since he can’t undo any of it, the least he can do is pay the penalty by carrying this burden and remember it all so that he will remember never to allow it happen again. Good for you, sir Francis, for not taking the easy way out. You may deserve a second chance, but that does not come at the expense of handwaving away your past crimes as if they never happened.

There were a couple parts that made me laugh. First is when Varney proposes to Greta, who is all “well, I guess Varney’s an old fashioned type and refuses to get intimate with me outside wedlock.” Pffft. No. Greta, no. You just don’t know his past. Proposing to women he hardly knows is one his bizarre habits (well, everybody needs a hobby). Dude is more thirsty for a legal wife than he is for blood. 

And then there was a scene where shit is mildly close to getting real, and Varney feels helpless because there’s absolutely nothing he can do, and in his despair he decides to pray. Of all things, he prays, for the first time in centuries. It’s all very intense and moving, such an emotional scene, when a monster bound for Hell doesn’t know what else to do but pray. It hit me hard in the feels. And then I turn the page and read how God himself answers the vampire’s prayer. And despite all the intense feels, I just burst out laughing. 

Good job, Vivian Shaw. I know I nitpick your work (I’m a vampire nerd, nitpicking vampire fiction is what I do) but I loved the ride and I’m very sad it’s over. I wish you’d write more books about these characters, but if this was it, thankyou for making one Varney fangirl very happy.

edit: Oh, and Ruthven turned out to be gay. Which I approve of.

[pennysword]

An Ode to My Hero Academia

Okay, like every anime fan, I've fallen into the My Hero Academia hole and can't get up... and that's not a bad thing.

I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't on the fanwagon when My Hero Academia landed on American shores in 2016. I was two years out of college and the only thing I cared about was finding a nine-to-five that paid my bills and kept my mom from telling me to do something with my life. I was also deep in the pit of post college depression, wherein I'd moved away from all my friends and thought myself too socially awkward and weird to be able to make new ones. That's something a lot of us deal with, I think, especially when we're forced out of our comfort zones.

I am a shojo romantic at heart. Most shonen don't really hook me emotionally the way shojos do. And if it does hook me, it's set in a world so fantastical and so bizarre that my interest wanes before long and I would forget the plot all together. When I did delve back into manga or anime (decreasingly so once I got my first adult job at twenty-three), I wanted to wrap myself in the blanket of the tropes that were comfortable to me: a wallflower female lead with surprising feistiness and sense of justice, a beautiful male lead like prince from a fairy tale, a second lead who would do anything for your affection. These stories were mostly set in the real world, even if they didn't make sense sometimes, I could make excuses because I loved the idea of shojo so much more than disliking the flaws.

While a lot of my friends watch anime religiously, I'm more of a casual fan (which is really a nightmare to otakus, who expect you to know every single canon, fanon, and side canon that has ever existed). I remember my first encounter with the show was equally as casual. My friend explained to me it's general concept while waiting in line for my badge at ACEN 2017. “It's about superheroes! There's this girl who is literally a frog! An ostentatious personification of America! When people cosplay this other character they wear a green zentai suit because she's supposed to be invisible and that's funny!”

Fresh off the tails of One Punch Man, which came out in 2015, I thought it was the same concept and I rolled my eyes. I knew that anime followed trends, like most things in the world: one year psychic-mecha anime was what everyone wanted to do and the next, post apocalyptic themes were all the rage. So I thought My Hero Academia was just another One Punch Man, a self-referential, satirical comedy about heroes who knew how ridiculous their own genre was. I'd seen it once and wasn't really interested in seeing it again.

My second encounter with My Hero was a bit more personal. It was 2019 and I was taking my eight-year-old cousin to her first anime convention ever. Her family has always been a little more conservative, being Jehovah's Witnesses and living in one of the most right wing cities in Mid Michigan... and I was thrilled when she confessed to me that she enjoyed shonen-ai, that her mom had bought her a complete set of Sailor Moon manga, and that she wanted to borrow my own personal manga collection for reading. There was only a four month turn around, but I made her a janky cosplay and drove her to Kalamazoo for one day of their local convention, Dokidokon, wherein she pointed out someone cosplaying her favorite character, Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia.

At this point I had the base knowledge that my friend had given me at ACEN two years prior, but I just couldn't follow what my cousin was saying. After she shyly asked for a picture with the cosplayer, she explained to me why she shipped this character with that character and why that other character was a jerk... I couldn't understand any of it. And I realized that I had missed something much more important than hopping on the fanwagon of one of the greatest anime of its time... I'd missed an opportunity to connect further with my little cousin, someone who was just beginning to sprout seeds of her own ideas and her own interests, separate from her religiously zealous mother and her perpetually aloof father. I had missed a chance to truly enjoy her happiness, to witness her excitement when she saw her favorite characters pop out of the television screen and manifest themselves before her, alive and in the flesh... and just as heroic as their two dimensional counterparts.

That fall, I watched the first episode of My Hero Academia on my morning elliptical workout and my life was changed.

I mentioned before that one of the reasons I have a difficult time connecting with the shonen genre is the fantastical worlds that I cannot relate to. For instance, I can apply logic to the world of Naruto in my head, but it never seems real like it could be real to me. I always find myself questioning social structure, in-world history, and the story's depiction of the human condition. There's always a nagging voice in my head that refutes all of these pretend worlds in shonen... but My Hero is set in a world not unlike our own. In fact, aside from his green hair, the main character seemed like someone I might have known in middle school: a small, meek nerd type who is always scribbling something in his journal, always knew more than he was letting on... someone you wanted as a friend, whether you realized it or not. Izuku Midoriya as a character is as close to the shojo trope of a wallflower main lead as you could get. When we meet him, he's quirkless and is often bullied for by his childhood frienemy, Katsuki Bakugou. He's kinda squirrely, kinda spazzy, but feels like a grounded character because his golden heart is his most defining attribute. Midoriya has no illusions about what he is. He knows he's weak. He knows that people look down on him. But he is just… good. His goodness is infallible and his goodness rings true in everything he does, including when he risks his life to save said bully in episode two.

Conversely, while Midoriya is full of impressionistic verve, Bakugou turns the tables on the typical second lead shonen stereotype because he's not some edgelord that wants revenge for his slaughtered family. He actually has both parents at home and lives in a nice house and neighborhood. He doesn't have some kind of revenge fantasy playing in his head on his journey to become the best hero... he's just a fucking dick. A dick with a chip on his shoulder because his whole life people have told him that he's the better than his peers... and when Midoriya proves to Bakugou that natural talent isn't everything, he must grapple with the idea that world wasn't everything he thought it was.

Midoriya doesn't automatically become a cool kid after attaining his quirk from his idol, All Might, either. He doesn't stop being socially awkward. Midoriya still nerds out when it comes to All Might and he still takes copious notes on every hero he encounters, his classmates or otherwise. Midoriya has a goal but he doesn't have a grand plan. There's no shortcut to the end, only day after day of hard work and determination and figuring shit out on his own. Since he is the protagonist, we see the reasoning behind everything he does and this fact grounds the world of My Hero Academia for me. We see Midoriya fail and win and fail again, but we never stop rooting for him because we know he is smarter and more capable than his awkwardness allows him to show the world.

We follow Midoriya during some of the darkest times of his life, including when he learns that he would never develop a quirk. What hurt him more than the doctor delivering this news was his mother's fervent apologies rather than words of encouragement. Because even without a quirk, Midoriya could have done anything he wanted to, had he had the support of his family. In shonen anime the parents are usually convenient plot devices or they are dead. In My Hero, though, Midoriya has a close and communicative relationship with his mother. One of the more powerful scenes involving Inko Midoriya is when she refuses to let Midoriya go back to his dream school despite his protests. She explains that, first and foremost, she is his mother and her duty is to keep him safe. When I see this scene I always choke up because this is how humans act and I don't think I've seen it in another shonen before. I hear the common argument, “Well, he's training to become a hero. He's gonna get hurt.” as a justification of why Inko should be fine with Midoriya's broken bones. And while logistically that may be true, we know that most parents wouldn't feel that way. It makes sense as a narrative, given what we know about Midoriya and Inko's relationship.

Something I also love about this series is that every character has a fail stop, a logical reason why they aren't as OP as possible: if Todoroki uses his right side too much he gets frostbite and if he abuses his left he gets burned. If Ururaka overexerts her Zero Gravity, she gets motion sickness. Even All Might, Midoriya's mentor and the strongest hero in the world™, cannot be in his hero form for more than three hours a day. Every character must learn to recognize and live with their shortcomings, because even heroes need to find their place in the universe... and rely on those who fill the empty spaces around them. Because this show, despite it's taglines and ultimate moves, thrives on the logic of balance, of give and take accepting that no one can go at it completely alone, I realized that it was nothing like the aforementioned anime. It was so much more.

Like my friend told me three years ago, on a surface My Hero Academia is about superheroes. It's about capes and costumes and training montages and redemption arcs and all the things that we nerds love... But beneath the surface, My Hero Academia is about recognizing your own power. Izuku Midoriya isn't a hero because he inherited All Might's quirk. He's a hero because, to the very marrow in his bones, he does what is right. Izuku strives to be better than his own self doubt and the world telling him he's not good enough, even though most times he ends up crying his eyes out. He embodies the will to succeed that we all have within us when we find our passions, whether it be beginning your fitness journey with some anime on the elliptical, bagging that nine-to-five job, or something more substantial, like training, despite the odds, to become a hero who saves people with a smile on his face.

[eisforeidolon]

Episode: Raising Hell

So, uh, basically I have no idea why anything in this episode happens or what its point is supposed to be. Having looked up who wrote it somewhere in the middle, I am completely lacking in surprise.

I mean, the first bit pretty much sets the tone.  Chatty Corpsy spouts exposition a mile a minute, then gets killed, and the ghost stands over her and spells disembowel.  Is that actually supposed to be scary?  Funny?  Anything but an absolutely bizarre waste of my time?

A bunch of dudes with basically nothing but FBI jackets and a bullshit story to back themselves up with convince an entire town to camp out in the local high school for two days without anybody figuring out they're full of shit.  You know, what with smartphones existing and all.  Plausible!

Furthermore, I have become convinced that everyone in this writer's room genuinely believes there is nothing scarier than a bunch of random antagonists standing around in a room pontificating at each other.  It's all demons do anymore. It's all angels do anymore.  Oh, fucking look, here's a bunch of goddamn ghosts doing it, too!  A fucking thrill a minute, I tell you.

Also, you know how the episode with H.H. Holmes was actually scary?  Whether or not you think it's in questionable taste for them to use real life serial killers at all, the reason they included him was because the whole murder castle deal and semi-mythical legends about him made for a scary premise they actually used in the episode.  I ignored the thing with it being Gacy before in Lebanon because there was more important stuff going on, but contrast the current writers' choices with him and this Jack the Ripper guy with the use of Holmes.  Here they're just throwing out the names of real life murderers to try and make their villains scary in the cheapest, fastest way possible.  Just like bringing back “Bloody Mary” that just kills whoever, this loudmouthed windbag has nothing to do with the name they're stealing to try and make him scary.

Also, the spell demon guy did is keeping the ghosts in, right?  Sure, it's going to fail, but at the moment, it's supposed to be an impassible barrier, yes?  So why, exactly, is it necessary for Sam to call in his goon squad to join the four of them in wandering into the danger zone to shoot at 'em? Seriously, why?  Shooting them dissipates them for a few seconds, maybe minutes.  They’re not laying out additional salt or iron lines or doing anything that might genuinely help contain the ghosts, they’re just putting themselves in danger because ...?  The mooks could also be better spent guarding the major entrance points to the town and/or the townies and/or doing research back at the bunker into what they're going to try next after the barrier fails.  But those things would actually make sense and prevent the shambling zombie that is the writers’ pathetic attempt at a plot in this episode being pushed into something vaguely resembling action. 

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that Rowena is now suddenly unable to do something with her powers that she did before.  Hey, remember when she stole that page out of the damned book to make herself more powerful to unseal her full powers (even though they touted her as the most powerful witch ever to begin with) and that was in season 13, well after the ghost-crystal-bomb thing?  But LOL, now she's even weaker?  This is exactly why nothing matters anymore.  Things that worked previously (angel powers, witch powers, the Colt, whatever) suddenly and randomly don't work to do the exact same jobs for … reasons.  The thing that makes it even dumber is they could have said that the ghost containing spell and crystal ghost sucking spell interfered with each other somehow.  Still at a bullshit level of convenience, but it doesn't involve making everyone and everything's powers completely arbitrary just because fuck continuity, that’s why!

Then Ketch shows up to save the Winchesters from their sudden attack of brain damage.  The show has provided an entire. fucking. town. full of angry ghosts straight from hell.  But actually bother to write a scene of Sam and Dean legit getting over their heads in a believable way?  Why fucking bother when you can just make them astoundingly incompetent.  It is literally unbelievable that Sam and Dean would not recognize those people as possessed fucking immediately.  Yet they stand there with rock salt filled shotguns doing sweet fuckall confronted by three fucking ghosts so Ketch can make a big entrance.  Is there a rule on a board somewhere in the writer's room that Sam and Dean have to be made to look incompetent at least once an episode?  Is this some kind of revenge for having to still write the main characters they're so clearly bored with?  Are these idiots just so fucking stupid they don't realize how insulting this is?  Did they run out of money for extras and the stunt coordinator?  

Also, someone explain to me how tiny flakes of metal are going to be less harmful to a human body than rock salt.  I'll wait.  They just really really wanted Ketch as one of the BMoL guys to have some kind of specialized gadget but couldn’t give him something actually potentially useful for the situation at hand.

Again, these writers really want to be writing a bad soap opera with occasional supernatural elements.  So despite that it's the final fucking season, we have time for Rowena and Ketch flirting.  Not to mention that they also give the only major female character even more relationship drama with the Jack the Ripper guy later.  If it's not questionably skeevy, it's not Bucklemming! 

Also, Castiel is not good at inspirational speeches, just like he’s frustratingly almost never good at anything else these days (those healing powers that were working last week? ha! forget it!).  Anyway, why do they keep having him make them?  Are we as the audience supposed to find them convincing though they never work on the target?  Are we supposed to feel bad for all the ~*feelings*~ Castiel supposedly has despite being an angel who isn’t supposed to have emotions the same way humans do?  I guess this particular one is to further show that Dean’s still mad (which I am absolutely 100% behind) but eh, whatever.  Though I guess that still ranks it above most of the episode sitting at a solid WTF, no really, WTF?!

Now we get to the part where they bring Kevin back for no fucking reason beyond that he's a “fan favorite”.  None of it makes a single tiny speck of sense.  Let's skip right past the fundamental absurdity of how Chuck apparently did this for literally no reason just to be a dick when he was actively trying to pretend not to be a dick.  Kevin has a “bad boy” reputation (come the fuck on) because God Himself cast him down - so him being in hell would have to be fairly common knowledge, for it to result in him having a reputation.  Except literally no demon Sam & Dean ran into between 11.21 and now taunted them with it?  Crowley, who was still alive and fucking King of Hell through season 12 never noticed and either told the Winchesters or tried to trade on it?  BULL and SHIT.  This is pretty close to the same scale of insult to continuity and the audience’s intelligence as these two fuckwits suddenly writing Lucifer as the older brother. 

Then in typical fashion, Sam & Dean discuss their plans to totes send Kevin to heaven in front of demon guy just so they can be told OH NOES!  He totally can't go to heaven!  So sad!  The poor widdle woobie!  Fuck off with this shit, show.  Not even to mention that they take the word of a demon as gospel truth when there is no time crunch or clear lack of better options.  It's all those many many hits to the head, I guess.  That I do actually find quite sad.  I mean, I don't actually want Kevin hanging around like a bad smell while they divert from actually important shit to try and get him to heaven where it makes no sense for him not to already be.  But at the end they don't even arrange some way to keep in touch just in case the fucking demon might be (gasp) lying?

Hey, I did actually like the exchange between Dean and Sam over Chuck poking his corresponding wound.  Oh, look, it's Sam's “I'm totally lying” face, followed by Dean's “I totally know you're lying but I'll let it go for now, Sam” face.  It was a great moment that required very little dialogue to work quite well.  It's such a shame nobody's making a show about these two characters!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The absurdity keeps on coming, too.  In the whole two days they've been wasting time in Sunshine Daylightville they never discussed how long the spell would last?  Oh, right, they were too busy wandering into the ghost zone to shoot at 'em for shits and giggles to care about that, I guess.  Not to mention the whole “just cast it again!” is remarkably blasé about it requiring a 'fresher the better!' human heart.

More ghosts blathering at each other.  Yay.  This supposed Jack the Ripper guy is just always in the right place at the right time to hear all the gossip, knows every random thing he could possibly need to, and already has the power to intimidate and attack other ghosts. He's basically ghost!Asmodeus, who also steals AU!Michael's original idea of how to get through the barrier, because we really needed time spent discussing the world's most obvious plan.  Also, we've seen ghosts able to attack and absorb the power of other ghosts, but it was because they had already been doing it for a while.  This guy is just as fresh out of hell as everybody else, but he's more powerful and knowledgeable and totes threatening!!!  Well, I'm convinced and not on the verge of napping from boredom.

Naturally for reasons, Rowena goes into town entirely by herself without protection with their only real hope of containing the ghosts before the barrier breaks down instead of anybody insisting on her going with backup.  That's what anybody with a brain would do!  

Of course no one asks where Ketch has been the whole time.  Or even thinks of trying to test him after he was last seen literally knocked unconscious in the middle of ghost central where we know there are plenty of ghosts angry enough to be capable of possession.  Nope, why would anyone even think to do that?  Everything in this “plot” that happens requires all of the characters to be completely fucking stupid.

I'm going to assume by “you” Ketch meant “you Winchesters” because Mary wasn't there.  It probably didn't, because Bucklemming, but fuck it.  It's the least egregious stupidity in this episode that's a cornucopia of choices for the worst.

I … actually like the scenes with Chuck and Amara?  So, you know, that's something!  

Then the episode ends with the guys looking at all the ghosties still shooting up from hell and wring their hands about what they're going to do and maybe they should get on that!  Again, if Sam's flunkies aren't all dead, why aren't their worthless asses already researching this shit over the past two days?  It's not like it's new news that there was a big open hole to hell at the center of the problem and there was honestly nothing but wrangling some cranky civilians to interfere with trying to think ahead to that.

In summary, this episode is a constant showcase of the problems that result when you set incompetent morons who don't recognize their own inadequacy to write characters who are actually supposed to be intelligent experts at their work.  It's a joke – except not at all funny.

[rhotanored]

A Deal

Who: A’mariss Renahg (mentions of Nazyl Tharazyl, Tynos Riller) Where: Ambiguous Ul’dahn dwelling (?) When: Several moons earlier... What: On what she assumes will be just another hunting gig, A’mariss runs afoul of some demons; new and familiar...? Why: RP shenanigans resulted in some characters being separated for an extended period of time almost immediately after some Heavy Shit, and I’ve been wanting to write some bits and pieces of Meanwhile... (and also lay some plot hooks for an eventual arc). Warnings: Some creepiness, a wee bit of implied body horror, some violence, angsty introspection.

     A'mariss was beginning to wonder if a large part of the blame for the proliferation of Voidsent shouldn't fall on the shoulders of those foolhardy enough to summon them for--of all things--entertainment. This was not the first time in the first few moons following her impromptu position as the only active hunter at Heaven Can Wait that she'd found herself in the extravagant foyer of one of the well-to-do under the pretense they'd found themselves with a certain-kind-of-mess that required her very specific skill-set.

    Or Nazyl's, she thought (and not without a grimace that belied yet how fresh the wound of his absence is, though it's swiftly masked), but she can no longer deny that word of mouth concerning her own successful hunts had been making the rounds, much to her chagrin. Still, that she had been asked for by name had come as a surprise, and she wasn't certain it was a welcome one. While it was true she'd undertaken the hunt of Voidsent as a way to find purpose again (in brief; there was a tangled, complicated knot of feelings tied up in her motivations), she wasn't sure she wanted the particular kind of infamy that came along with supposed-expertise in the field.

    Exhaling quietly into the empty hall, A'mariss decided that was quite enough introspection. She'd been kept waiting for nearly half a bell, with nary a sign of life following the singular attendant that had seen her in; a steely-eyed Lalafell of little patience and fewer words, particularly after she'd announced the reason for her visit. A gently folded missive was still clutched in one hand, which she'd used as proof of intent, and her pallid green gaze lowered to the broken signet that had served to seal the letter in wax; an iron trellis overgrown by thorny vines.

    It was not unlike the one she’d passed under on her way through the front gates; she’d been rather taken aback to see such an attempt at greenery cultivated within Ul’dah--attempt, she’d thought, as it had been rather unsuccessful. The garden, while designed with all manner of intricate stonework, full plant beds, and what may have been a try at topiary art were all either dead or dying. The fountain that stood as a centerpiece in copper was green and black, weathered with age and abraded from the desert storms that inevitably blew sandy detritus into the city proper, regardless of how well its denizens attempted to sweep.

    Dark sand had gathered in every unattended corner and filled every crack in the grimy cobblestones that laid the path towards the manor, and A’mariss had felt a chill crawl down her spine as she’d waited on the doorstep, shrouded in the shadow of the house darker than what she would have expected from that time of day.

    She shook her head briefly, frowning as she likewise shook off her reflections of what had brought her to this manse with another glance at the missive in her hand.

To My Most Esteemed Huntress, the letter began in a thick, practiced script.

While under normal circumstances, were I you receiving such a letter, would I find myself most unimpressed by a request such as mine being made only by missive. Nevertheless, I must needs extend to you an invitation to join me at my estate. Directions have been provided to your Namazu attendant under the strictest of confidence. 

Pray understand I desire nothing more than to explain all the sordid details of my predicament, but it must be done face to face. Trust that it is explicitly your skills— nay, you, A’mariss, that I have need of.

I await your arrival.

    There was a signature beneath the final line, one practiced and as presentably illegible as A’mariss imagined most intricate signatures were--but she hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of the name it represented. True to the details within the missive, however, Gyosho had been given directions--and that was all. The Namazu could hardly recollect who had handed over the missive (one of the tall races, which meant little) where he had retained the instructions perfectly, which A’mariss found increasingly suspect the longer she waited in the gloomy lobby.

    Just as she reached the limits of her patience (she’d also begun to reconsider coming at all; reflecting on all that had transpired to bring her here made her acknowledge the niggling uncertainty clawing at the back of her mind) and rose to her feet to make for the heavy wood doors through which she’d entered, she heard a long, low, creaaak towards the other end. Another door--one she hadn’t noticed before and certainly not the same that the Lalafellin attendant had vanished through earlier--swung open. A frown tugged on her lips as her ears flattened against her hair when it appeared, after a long moment of waiting, that there was no one on the other side.

    That was when she felt it; the subtle tug of Calling, like something had hooked itself beneath her sternum and began to pull. The strength of it startled her, and the sensation left her breathless. It wasn’t quite the first time she’d felt it since she’d aided the others in their defeat of Gamigin, but every time it had manifested since, it seemed more, somehow. Now, it pulled her straight towards the door that now stood open, and more than that, towards whatever--whoever--lay beyond it. 

    At first A’mariss resisted, swallowing uncomfortably as her gaze fell on her exit out of the estate, but she felt the scraping within her chest becoming more insistent, causing her to suck in a breath to steel herself, and her hand tightened on the missive under her grasp.

    Beneath her grip, the letter--suddenly dry and brittle as though it had aged through the cycles--crumbled to little more than a pile of dust, fluttering in ashy shards of parchment to the carpet at her feet. The two halves of the wax signet bounced off the polished wood floor, each vanishing in wisps of reddish smoke.

    Hells, she thought, tearing her gaze from the floor back to where the door stood open, and a more insistent pull clawed across her ribs. She reached an arm back to brush along the haft of the Lanetli Arzu that rested across her shoulder, and while the bow offered no noticeable response, she was comforted by its familiar presence.

    Against her better judgment, but unable to deny the Call, A’mariss approached the open door, peering down the long, shadowed corridor beyond. Motes of dust were caught in dull, narrow streams of daylight that squeezed through the tattered remnants of heavy, moldering drapes. The wooden flooring beneath her feet creaked and groaned as she crossed the threshold into the hallway, leaving obvious footsteps through layers of undisturbed dirt and dust that layered over old, ratty carpeting and hardwood both.

    She felt distinctly like an intruder, here, despite the apparent invitation. Conveniently, as it was wont to do, the tug behind her sternum had grown still, leaving A’mariss to flounder in determining its true purpose. Each step carried her further into the hallway, passing heavy wooden door after heavy wooden door as she went, each lined with a bizarre array of locks, bolts, chains and knobs randomly placed from top to bottom. She reached for one of the wrought iron handles, but it was unyielding in her grip. She couldn’t even get the door to rattle against its frame.

    A thunderous--BANG!--from behind her made her yelp, the strangled sound the only thing that made its way out of her throat where her heart had leapt. The door she’d come through had apparently slammed behind her, manhandled by some unseen force--and something skittered into the shadows at the edges of her periphery. She whirled to track it, but other than the soft motes of dust dancing in lazy circles between shards of muted daylight, she saw no movement from one end of the hall to the murky shadows at the other.

    “Show yourself!” She demanded, her voice carrying the weight of her command without an onze of the fear that fluttered in her breast, and a flicker of pride momentarily outweighed it. This was nothing she hadn’t faced before. Gamigin had thrown at her the worst horrors of her life--so far, her thoughts whispered--and she would stand and face whatever haunted this particular manor. Nothing answered her, however, save her heartbeat pounding in her ears, and an oppressive silence. Though there were windows, no sound from the streets presumably beyond reached her, here.

    Having held her breath and strained to make out any additional noise to no avail, A’mariss exhaled slowly, her gaze trailing down into the deeper gloom at the opposite end of the hallway where she thought she’d seen that shadowy apparition vanish. With the way back now closed (and her with no desire to confirm her suspicions that she’d been trapped, if only for the sake of her nerves), she began to make her way in the only directly left to her.

    The source of the additional shadows, she discovered, were far more mundane than she’d anticipated; a heavy, velvet drapery hung across the open threshold. Pieces of the fabric crumbled under her touch as she tried to brush it aside, and a heavy chunk simply collapsed at her feet into a plume of moldy spores and dust. She reeled back, one hand clasping over her mouth and nose in an effort to spare her lungs the threat, but she’d already inhaled a cloying breath in her surprise. She coughed, wrinkling her nose as she stepped over the fallen curtain and used her other hand to brush aside some low-hanging cobwebs, only to stop abruptly as she nearly bumped straight into the Lalafellin butler that had left her in the lobby earlier.

    ...Only now, he wore a horrifyingly familiar jester’s get-up.

    Then, in an erratic flicker, he was gone. If the apparition hadn’t been enough to make her heart leap back into her throat, the sudden raucous cacophony of a discordant organ being played jubilantly from the stage at the far end of the room was. It was also enough to make her anger overtake her fear.

    Finally, her hands flew back to draw her bow and nock one of her arrows in a single fluid motion, letting fly one in a streak of brilliance towards the noise; the pipes she struck jangled in a final, agonizing note as a jagged screech of laughter echoed through the room. Her ears swiveled and flicked to-and-fro in an attempt to track it, though she had an inkling it was fruitless; mundane senses would not avail her here.

    “Show yourself!” She demanded for the second time this evening, and the laughter quieted into a thoughtful hum.

    The dim, natural light across the open, dilapidated ballroom (heavily curtained with ratty drapes and alight with dusty motes much like the hallway that had led here) darkened with shadows encroaching from every corner of the room, growing like a heavy fog. All at once the room brightened suddenly, as several massive chandeliers dangling from the ceiling ignited with purple flames--and abruptly extinguished, plunging the room into full, absolute pitch.

    But not before the afterimage of a rotting white mask had teased across her vision.

    Baring her teeth, A’mariss drew back the Lanetli Arzu and conjured another of her radiant arrows, which only served to illuminate her; it was as though she stood in a black void, without form or direction. She could feel the cracked marble tile of the ballroom’s flooring beneath her feet, however, so she knew she hadn’t been moved anywhere. Unless the illusion was far more elaborate than she thought, at any rate.

    “Enough! Gamigin is destroyed, by mine hand and others’. His false visage holds no power over me now, just as it held no power over me when we slew him,” she growls, steeling herself with the memory of Yuyuta’s incinerating blow.

    “So confident,” a voice whispers at her ear, and she whirls in that direction, pointing her bow into the unchanging blackness.

    “Ş̷͍̲̻̒̂ó̵͖͓̉̏ certain,̸̫͋̌̈͝ͅ” it says again, from over her other shoulder, and her reflexes fire her nocked arrow. It cuts through the darkness, revealing a sliver of the ballroom beyond before the shadows swallow it again.

    “S̸̛̈́̌̃͊̀̔͘õ̷̸̝̭̍̒̏̔̓̈́̇̕ un̶͚͗̑̿a̶͚̘̬̠̎̒̀͒͆͐͂̀̋sh̸̲̤͉̭̼͉̗̿́̎́̇͑̓̀̿͘͜ͅa̸̠̠͙͋͌͌̏͆̄͑̃̔͗͘m̵̠͉͍͛͑͊͛͑̎̀͑͐͠ë̴̫͎̫͓͝ď̵́̓̒̃͛͘͠,” and this time she senses it behind her, a trill of shivers running straight down her spine, every hair standing up at the back of her neck. Hastily, her free hand makes the motion of a spell, her claws igniting with the same radiance as her earlier arrow as she spins to rake the Voidsent behind her.

    Her wrist is caught in a vice-like grip, halted ilms away from the lined fabric of an expensive suit-coat--or what might have passed for one, were the material not sour-smelling and rotted like the rest of the contents of the estate.

    “A̵̧̡̳̒̀nd̸̗́̿̅ ̸͍͓̦̥̎̿̀͛s̸͈͎̞͒ö̴͔̻̟́ͅ ̷̰̿̐͝q̸̧̻̺̪̊̉̽́uĩ̷͕͎͑͠c̷̝̠͚̐͋͑͘k ̶̡̤̖̭̾̐̓t̷̜̏ǫ̶̺̤̦̊ ̶̡̯͓̭̈v̵̨̈ì̷͔̣̼̔͐ol̵͖͗̚͠en̵̩͌c̷̡̪̗̖͆͆̑e,̷̨̻̠̉,” the voice purrs, and she realises the curious double-intonation she’d been hearing comes from two mouths speaking in tandem; one where a mouth should be and the other a shark-toothed maw splitting the underside of an ashen, Elezen jawline. A’mariss struggled to wrench her arm free from the creature who had her in its grip, but a resounding--crash!!--behind her makes her jump, whirling as--crash!!--one-by-one the four--crash!!--chandeliers she’d seen earlier fall to the--crash!!--ballroom floor. They scatter shards of glass, gold candelabra and purple-lit candles (half extinguished in the fall) all across the room, dispelling the immediate darkness in favor of eerily dancing, flickering shadows.

    A’mariss tugged her arm yet again with a growing sense of urgency (not that her heart wasn’t already thundering while her every instinct screamed at her to run), and if the second mouth grinning toothily at her hadn’t been enough of an indication, a perfectly beaked nose was the last (and perhaps only) remaining feature that was remotely Elezen. The Voidsent had no eyes to speak of; instead twisting, spiraling black branches seemed to extend from where his cheekbones ought to have begun, reaching randomly and ceaselessly toward the ceiling, though where the branches ended and their shadows stretched out, A’mariss was hard-pressed to tell.

    “N̷̜̏̈́̉͘ow̵̧̤̯̃̆̓,̶̳̬͙̍́ ̵̪̾̔̓̄͜ǹ̸̢̨̲̩́͐ò̸͕̜͉̘͗́͗w,̵̲̽̄͐̅ ̵͕̜̪͍͒͂́no̵̟͂͝ͅẅ̶̝́͆̈́,̶̢̩̅̌̎̍” the Voidsent said, finally releasing her arm as it took a step forward and she, a step back towards the purple fire, which was quickly spreading, consuming the draperies as it went.

    “There are much better ways for us to parley. We only thought to celebrate your victory over ol’Gamigin,” the top mouth speaks on its own, drawing A’mariss’s gaze away from the fire.

    “T̸͖̖̳͒͜hou̴̗̮̝͖͑͑̌gȟ̴̞͎̝̺ ̴͓̗́̓͛i̴̘̊̿t ̵̙̩̅͜dep̸̞̀͛̂͜͜r̸͔̠͛̉̽iv̵̮̼͎̻̔͂ed̷̲͌̓̈́͘ ̸̛̩̊̐̒us̶͍̰̯̼̑̈́ ̵͕̾ȯ̸͇͒f ̶̠͠a̵̖̪͠ ̷͓̺̻͖̉̇̎me̷̫̍��̞a̶̢̗̺̓l,̴̯̠̆̓” the second maw continues, “iṱ̴͉̍́̕͜ ̵̩̮̙͓̈́̋̚͠g̵̗͖͊̑͝ave ̷̣̤͌̐̽͜us̸̢̓̓͘ ̶̝͇̒s̴̞̗̖̈́͗o̴mȩ̸͔̤͉͊̊͗͘t̷̛̞̮̟́̚͜hi̵͑͜͠͝ņ̸̿̅͠g̴͖̜̾͛̋̎ ̵̥͔̓͝b̵̛̰̻͒̎et̸̛̖̑̓͂te̸̢͆r.”

    A’mariss’s tail falls limp behind her, the lion’s tip tufted up and flicking in agitation behind her. She didn’t like where this was going. The Voidsent “watched” her intently, leaning inwards, as though waiting for her to prompt it to explain; eventually, its head tweaked unsettlingly left, and its mouths made a little tsking noise.

    “You, of course. A’mariss. A’mariss. Ă̶̝̤͆͝ ̵̮̺͋̆̍̔̾̒’̷͚͐́́͂͆ ̶̙͙̞͝m ̴̨̛͈̌͆̑̇̉̀̚a̸͎͐͗ ̵͔̅͗̄͑̍͝r̸̉͆̂̀ ̵̧̣̳̱̬́ì̷̡̠̻̩̉͋̌͊͋̀́ ̷͈̭͐̅͝s ̴̗͍̈́̎͝͠s̷̛͉͖̈́̔͂̋̈́̂.” Every hair on her body stood seemingly on-end as it intoned her name, almost like a chant. It leaned towards her once again and she took another step back, only for the Voidsent to flicker erratically and vanish from view. She whirled, smoke from the flames now wreathing the entire room, and at the center behind her waited the Voidsent, one black hand extended towards her. 

W̵͈͊ė̸͔͍'̶͍̃r̴̫͎͕̣̒ę̵̺̹͙̐̈́ ̸̣̚b̴͚̑͠ou̸͙͍͖̽̂̆͠n̶̡͍̳̏̈́d,

                                    W̸̢̧͖̠̞͇̗̟̲͕̤̪̦̜̙̙̘̜͈̳̦̰̲̣̉̔͗͆̔̽̏͛̓͗͒͗̍͌̽͘͝ẻ̵͔̻̩̳͖͙̈́͑̾̿̋͝͝'̶̨̡̡̧̛̛̯̻̞͓͍̘̱̲͇̻̼̳̘̮̞̜̭̦̱͕̝͙̤͓̙̓̈̾͌̈́͆͗̀͒̐́̕͝ͅre̷̢̧̬̯͚̪̝̥̮͙̹̲̤͙̠̦̭͚͔͈̮͐̔͋͑͌̍̎̄͐̚̚͝͝ ̶͍͖̽̉̋͆̇́̆̉̇̀̌̓̕̚ĭ̵̢̺͚̥̙̥̞͔̠̔̈̾̓͂͋̒̇̐̓̇̓̍̂͌̓͑̒̾̋̍͘͘͘̚̕͘͜͝ͅne̶̛͑͐͂́̍̒́̑͗̊͆rt,                         Ẅ̴̠́ê̷̻'̷̬͌r̶e ̶͎͠h̶̬͋a̶͝rm̷͇̃le̴̢̔ș̵̌s̶̝̓,

                W̵̡̠̦̹͖͘e'̴̗̻̰̈́̚̚̚͝͝ŕ̷̘͕̈́̂͂̀͠e̷̟̟͈̩̦̽̉͜ ̴̜̦̲͆t̴̡́͌́̇̈́r̸̙͛̿͑ap̵̛͙͙͑̽̾p̸̻̳̼͒͘ͅed̸̙͛,

                                                     Wḙ̸͍̦̩͕͚͍̣̪̝͚̰̘̳̖̻̞̆'̷̝͊̄̇́̈́͋͛͆̇̿́̊̈̈͊̑̿́̿̉̀͝re ̴̨̢͚̪͇͓͐̄͌̒̋̌̔̓̃̚H̸͎̠́͛̐͊̐̄͒̈́̀̽͂̒́̅̏͌͊͒̕͘͘U̴̡͎̮̬͍͓͉̝͕͊͒͛͒̔͗̊̓̈́͌̍̒̍̚NGR̴̨̨̠͙̤̠̼͔͉̬̬̦̼̲͉͉̬̀̊̿̉̀̐͋̚͜ͅY̷̢̨̡̳̻͔̻̖͕͙̙̙̪̞͑̀̈͊̆͌͗͝͝ͅͅ!

                                                                         ...we are so very, very hungry.” 

    A’mariss’s jaw fell partially agape; she could feel the yearning in every word, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom pounding in her skull like an incessant ringing, and the pull within her chest returned with a sudden vengeance. The creature’s outstretched hand was like a rod, and she the helpless fish hooked on its line as it slowly reeled her in. Her bow clattered to the ground like an afterthought as the creature arranged the hand that had been holding it against its shoulder, and held the other firmly as it took her by the waist and began to dance them through the smoldering ballroom.

    “We want to make a deal, A’mariss,” she jerked; those words meant something, but--the room spun and she spun with it, as its voice cooed soothingly into her ear.

    “No, no. Do not misunderstand us, my dear. We would serve you. Willingly,” it paused, its lips pressed against her ear; there was no maw filled with teeth in her periphery, just an ashen throat, bared almost in submission.

    “Loyally,” it purred, “and we would never forget you.” 

    “You could save us.” Could she? It seemed like they had stopped spinning, but A’mariss’s vision was still churning. She closed her eyes against the flickering shadows and growing flames, tucking her cheek against the creature’s striped suit; why had she thought he smelled sour? It was all warmth as she breathed him in, like cloves and allspice and the heady musk from a Bloodglider’s wing.

    “Change us.” Like Bloodgliders.

    “Free us.” Like home.

    A’mariss’s eyes snapped open as she wrenched herself free from the Voidsent’s grasp, stumbling to her hands and knees as the last vestiges of the enthrallment released her, awareness returning with an almost painful clarity. She found herself coughing; the room was almost wholly engulfed in flame, a small ring around the pair the only area untouched. Flames had consumed all the drapes and were making quick work of the ceiling as they rolled along it in waves. On the other side of the room, a support beam collapsed in a shower of pink sparks.

    “No.” A’mariss croaked, and as she reached out, her hand closed around the haft of the Lanetli Arzu as though it had never left her in the first place.

    The Voidsent roared; something inarticulate with rage. As she was staggering to her feet, the creature’s arm--or black, glittering branches?--lashed out to close around her throat, lifting her clean off the floor.

    “N̘͈̼͕͈̥͉͔̾͢O̬̳͉̙̬̓͐ͣ̊̒?̠͉͂ͫͤ͡ IIt boomed, its maw opening wide. 

    “Ņ̢̰̗̤ͣ̃̽͌͛ͦ̉͂̓̾̚̚O̢̨̤̥͔͆ͧ́ͩͥ̑̀͐̑ͪ́͑͟? ͨ͗ͮ̿̔NƠ̆ͦ͗ͮ҉̷̡̛̗̟͚?̯͒ͪ̂̑͐̓͂̅ͣ̊͜ ͍̜̫̊̎͆́̇̍ͬ͜Ň̬̗͌͋̌̀͝O?̹̰̙̦̗̜͙̑̾̍͌͞͡͞͠͞ͅ” It repeated over, and over, and over again, breathing hot, rank breath from its split maw directly into her face. She nearly gagged, but it held her throat tight enough that she could no more gag than she could breathe. Tears streamed from her eyes, her free hand grappling and tearing at the branch that held her to no avail; for every layer of supple, black bark that came away beneath her claws, there only seemed more.

    The Lanetli Arzu vibrated so strongly in her grasp that it was all she could do to hold onto it; she could feel herself fading as the Voidsent continued to roar, and the flames seemed to join it. Distantly, she could feel herself raking her claws across her own knuckles until the blood ran against the haft of her bow; aether surged from her and into the weapon, and the heat that shot up her arm was almost more searing than the choking heat of the room. Brilliant, blinding white light ignited behind the creature that had grabbed her; she could no longer discern its true shape beyond the shadows and endless grasping black branches, but a myriad of radiant arrows burst through its center mass and tore through the arms that were holding her.

    A’mariss landed hard, wheezing, and felt an oily lump pressed against her windpipe. Try as she might, swallowing did nothing to shake the sensation and only left her near-to choking. She slid back across the floor as the violet flames began to catch on the branches of the Voidsent. It still roared wordlessly at her, limbs flailing as it struggled to tear free of the brilliant arrows that had partially pinned it in place; they would not hold it forever. Somehow, she drew in enough of a breath to force herself to her feet. She leaped through the shallow wall of violet flame, hardly even feeling the heat as she raced wildly back the way she’d come.

    All the doors were open, now; the one that had blocked her path at the end of the hallway had collapsed outwards. She could feel the heat at her back as she stumbled into the foyer, forced her weak knees to keep going as she burst through the front door, leaped down the steps, and raced beyond the black iron trellis that had welcomed her so ominously earlier. Only once she was in the cobbled street did she turn to look back where she had fled; there was no sign of Voidsent, nor fire, nor the shadows she had been fleeing. There was only a terrifying emptiness, a sense of nothing that remained, like the hollow feeling of a thread snapping where she hadn’t realized one had been.

    Trembling, she turned her gaze down to the bow in her hand. It looked no worse for wear, though it seemed to hum with a note of desperation. Her other hand rose to her throat, feeling the lump--several lumps--pressed just beneath the skin. Panic gripped her as she felt one of them give a gentle twitch beneath her fingers. Her mind raced to find someone, anyone she could go to; she bowed over her knees in an attempt to slow her breathing, feeling (not for the first time) the loss of Nazyl most keenly. He would have known what to do.

    Bereft of other options, one other name rose to mind, and he was nearby. Tynos. If there was anyone else who could help her before it was too late--it was him. She looped the Lanetli Arzu over her shoulder, and began to walk, pausing near a street sign to get her bearing. If her panic-stricken memory was right, it was only a short walk towards the Goblet--and hopefully her salvation.

      ...Then she could attempt to process all that she’d just encountered.

[bthump]

What do you think the odds are of Casca sacrificing Moonlight Boy like you've been hoping?

oof, idk

not completely terrible? I keep calling it a longshot hail mary hope but honestly I think a lot of the especially recent foreshadowing is pointing in that direction tbf.

Like I have my theory that the behelit is Casca’s and it’s about to open due to her Eclipse memories despair and whatnot, and I still think that’s overall a v strong theory. Fate, all those questions about whether Guts is carrying the behelit for someone, Skull Knight planning shit and using Guts and co, the suggestions that he’s in cahoots with Danann, Danann acting shady (Guts get lost Casca’s scared of you vs here Casca put on this dress and go see Guts right now), our recent lesson on dragon roads and spirit trees, tbh Flowers of Distant Days also imo foreshadows SK using Guts, little details like the fact that Elfhelm has used the power of human sacrifice as magic b4 lol (that wickerman), and ofc the familiar visual representation of Casca’s despair:

So the next two questions are: who is Casca’s sacrifice and will she go through with it?

And I think if the behelit does open, the odds are actually very high that the sacrifice will be fetus/MB and not Farnese. My #1 reason for saying this is the fact that the fetus represented her thorn-covered despair-ridden (fragile human) heart in her dreamscape. Like imo that’s pretty damn indicative.

Plus as the… shard of herself closest to the Eclipse it also seems to represent her trauma, which yk, that’s pretty common for sacrifices. Person you loved the most and hated the most, and all. And parent/child sacrifices are the most common from what we’ve seen lol.

There’s also this:

The MB first appears right after a chapter full of foreshadowing and ominous warnings. This moment is Guts watching Casca acting all motherly and shit and brooding over SK’s warning about her wishes. A lot of people seem to take this as foreshadowing that Casca is going to prioritize a baby over revenge but like… Guts wants this. Idt this is Guts fretting over Casca’s motherly instincts because he doesn’t want kids or whatever lol, imo this is Guts seeing a ray of hope for the future and wondering if it’ll be snuffed out.

Further suggested by:

She couldn’t cope with her experience, so what will she do when he forces her sanity back? This is ominous in an active, dark way that a fixation on a magic baby just isn’t likely to follow through on imo.

There’s also the werebaby thing, and if that’s what’s actually happening then presumably MB is on his way to Elfhelm right around when Casca woke up. I mean timing that dumbass reveal after Casca’s screaming cliffhanger? Hm. And handily that fucking werebaby shit means it’s now less likely that MB is going to show up and soothe Casca’s despair through her maternal instincts, which was one of my original fears, and more likely that it’s just gonna add to her despair, assuming the ridiculous truth is revealed. (Speaking of “the person you loved the most and hated the most” lmao. Like yeah, that’s so on the nose it’s comedic, but everything about werebaby is an absurd comedy so.)

As for whether she’ll actually go through with the sacrifice or whether she’ll refuse or be interrupted by plot, that’s unfortunately dicier.

On the pro side you have “what will she do?” Meaning she should do something, not fail to do something. You have all the foreshadowing re: Guts losing himself to the armour for a while, which he needs a catalyst for. I can’t think of anything more well-suited for that than Casca, the symbol of his humanity, essentially sacrificing his hope for the future (and incidentally the very thing that likely keeps saving him from the armour), becoming a monster, and (I guess) Griffith suddenly appearing lmao. And there’s the fact that Casca becoming a monster would be an extremely convenient way for Miura to avoid writing a realistic v traumatized woman while not bypassing or underselling her trauma.

And structurally we’re at the point where something tragic has to happen to fuck things up and drive things forward and finally deliver on the assloads of ominous foreshadowing that Guts is willfully ignoring.

On the con side you have Farnese’s hope that her friendship with Casca will be enough and tbf there’s an arc’s worth of development behind that. And something someone else does could be what causes Guts to succumb to the armour - like learning SK has betrayed him or something maybe.

And this whole werebaby situation is a double-edged sword in regards to this theory.

On one hand it’s timely, like I mentioned above, and it’s an indication that MB is going to be present for whatever shit’s about to go down, and probably in a way that makes things worse rather than better. Sacrificing the kid would also get the story back on what at least I consider its track, rather than fully derailing it into wacky magic baby world.

But on the other hand, let’s be real here: it’s so fucking ridiculous and bizarre that it almost feels like it has to be the new centrepiece of the plot. Go big or go home. As wildly weird as it is to completely derail three relationships that have more than enough build up to carry the plot all on their own, one can argue it’s even weirder to introduce a magic werebaby that completely derails those relationships only to neutralize it a couple chapters later.

Like if Miura’s willing to go that fucking stupid, then yeah I’m completely willing to believe he’d commit to it and make Casca’s new conflict the fact that her rapist periodically transforms into her magic child. Why not? Werebaby has dissolved all the faith I had in his ability as a writer. I no longer have that intrinsic belief that Berserk will ultimately make sense, resolve in a satisfying way, and generally work as a whole to fall back on lol.

So anyway, all that said, let’s just lay out the possibilities:

1. Casca does not sacrifice MB, maybe I’m entirely wrong about everything or maybe she turns down the offer/plot happens and she doesn’t get a chance. The fact that Griffith transforms into a baby every full moon is the new big plot point and character motivation. Story’s functionally over, everyone go home.

2. Casca does not sacrifice MB, the fact that Griffith transforms into a baby every full moon is a new big plot point, and will probably be the central issue of Casca’s narrative, but it won’t significantly alter Guts and Griffith’s relationship. Griffith’s feelings for Guts are still real and gonna bite him, Guts will still focus more on Griffith than the werebaby thing, Casca’s narrative is gonna suck like a black hole, everything’s gonna be weird. This would be incredibly awkward and horrifically bad writing, but honestly I feel like this might actually be the most probable option lol. I mean I’ve always acknowledged that fetus is probably a factor in Griffith saving Casca even while arguing it’s irrelevant to most of Griff’s feelings, I just didn’t think its relevance would end up being this silly lol.

3. Casca does sacrifice MB, this essentially cures Griffith of his infanthropy, and the original hint of babality we saw at the Hill of Swords essentially existed to set up hopeful expectations of Griffith’s ~big weakness~ before climatically dashing them when everything goes wrong for Our Heroes. Moment of hilarious triumph for Griff, low point for Guts and co.

4. Casca does sacrifice MB, this negates the werebaby thing but still affects Griffith negatively in another way - maybe ironically he’s a sacrifice himself now which causes problems for him, or handily negates the apostle worship effect for Casca. And/or because of this sacrifice Elfhelm succeeds in some plan of their own and maybe fucks up both Guts and co and Griffith, or idk, something. This makes werebaby potentially relevant enough to (theoretically) justify its existence as more than just a weird ass bait and switch/plot point to get both Griffith and MB to Elfhelm lol, while also not actually focusing on Griffith being a werebaby as a major plot point. Win/win.

It’s like… I think it’s pretty likely that the behelit will open for Casca and if that happens I think it’s pretty likely that MB will be the sacrificial offering, and if that happens I think it’s pretty likely Casca will say yes, and if that happens I think it’s pretty likely that we’ll be saved from werebaby. But that’s a lot of hope resting on hope, especially when the odds recently got a lot higher that I’m just totally on a completely different wavelength than Miura lol.

Anyway ty for asking. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst I guess.

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke [Part 4]

Still on attempt number one of beating this game with standard Nuzlocke rules + no fighting outside of Trainer battles. A death has occurred, but all in all, it’s been more optimistic than expected.

Barring some unfortunate experiences in a cave.

But it’s time for a new cave now!

Tunnel. Whatever.

Though I lied for the sake of convenient narrative pacing. Before we go inside Rock Tunnel and explore all it has to offer, there’s a trainer outside who is in need of some battling.

Picknicker Heidi wants to battle. She has two pokemon, and the first is a level 20 Pikachu. tfw you miss having a Ground pokemon, but this challenge is made for grief and I shan’t shed tears. Clefairy follows the Pikachu. With, appropriately, Follow Me as its first move. Hee.

Anyway, Allenby handles both.

Back into the tunnel. Where we have a catch waiting for us.

Also Zubat.

Many, many Zubat.

There we go. A not-Zubat.

Caught! I dub you Athrun. I’m never going to do anything with you, probably, but you can stay in the party. In case something goes desperately wrong.

Now, with the power of Flash, let’s explore the part of the game I always hated most as a child. I don’t know if I understood Flash or how it worked or that I would be happier if I had it, but I have very distinct memories of grabbing a flashlight and shining it on my gameboy in an attempt to stomp my way through the cave.

I didn’t figure out until years later that light outside the game was not going to help.

Many of my childhood trials were self-inflicted.

Pokemaniac Ashton is our first contestant of the tunnel. He opens with a level 23 Cubone. I make the decision to switch Noin in, then immediately want to strangle myself because Noin is part Poison. But it works out, and she’s in to deal with the following Slowpoke.

Noin advances to level 25, and that’s the first fight.

A level down, Pokemaniac Winston wants to battle. He has one pokemon. It is a level 25 Slowpoke. Delightful. By which I mean slightly intimidating. Noin switches in, and I start reconsidering Allenby’s position as first in the party.

Shit.

That was a critical hit from Confusion.

...How do critical hits work in this gen?

2x a normal hit. So it normally does 24 damage. So to survive, Noin has to--ugh, screw it, I’ll spend a turn on a Super Potion.

(Normally it does 23 damage. So noted.)

Okay, this is fine.

Noin is also going to move to the front, since Pokemaniacs seem to trump Hikers in this area of the Tunnel.

...It was fine, then Slowpoke used Disable. Yay, okay, still fine.

We continue down the tunnel. Next opponent appears to be a Picnicker, so Allenby goes back in front. I feel like this is going to be a lot of switching things around. For real this time, since those Slowpokes are scary.

Thanks Martha.

Heero can fight the level 22 Oddish. As well as the Bulbasaur.

Another Pokemaniac moves Noin back to the front, and I’m already tired of putting this much thought into what I’m doing.

I dearly love these games so much.

His name is Steve, and he has a level 22 Charmander. Ah. Uh. Heeeeeero. ;-; Heeeeeelp. Then it’s another Cubone, and that one can go to Noin.

My party isn’t too battered from all of this, but the thing that I really dislike about caves is that they make me unwilling to go back to the Pokemon Center even when my extreme caution wants me to. I want to embrace the hover parent. My children must live.

But I really hate walking through caves, so I prefer all of my walking through caves to go forward. Alas.

And of course with the level 20 Machop. Ugh. This is why Noin doesn’t get to be up front for these things. Even if everything else Hikers have is of interest to Noin’s dietary needs.

Allenby will eat that, but the critical hit she also eats means Noin is in for the Onix. Noin hits level 26 and we’re all very proud of her.

Post-fight, Allenby gets a Super Potion and moves up front to fight the other Hiker in this room.

Local man bullies small child.

This one’s name is Allen. He has one pokemon, which is instantly scary. It is a Geodude, and fears are instantly assuaged. ...While Magnitude 7 is going to mean another Super Potion for Allenby. Who has just gone and hit level 27. Yay.

Hiker Lenny is up next. He’s got a level 19 Geodude, and a team count that promises more. Noin is going to handles the others to keep the damage risk at a minimum.

Oh, but then there’s a Machop, and Allenby can have that.

Geez, but Allenby is taking way too many critical hits for comfort. I’m basically using some kind of Potion after every fight. I can’t remember how long this tunnel is, but. I would prefer it to be ending faster than it seems to be going.

Real player characters have maps.

He has a level 20 Onix. And a name I wasn’t looking at when it showed up on the screen. Noin gets the level 20 Geodude so Allenby can please stop losing health. ...Same with the next Onix.

Oliver, that’s the dude’s name.

Hiker Lucas is next, bringing the level 21 Geodude.

...Aaaand a Graveler. For Noin.

Oliver doesn’t.

Picnicker Sofia! With a level 21 Jigglypuff! And a Pidgey?

...Zaft. Let’s... give you a try. Heero might be rescuing you, but let’s give you a shot. You won! You can’t fight anything else until we get you some medical attention, but look at that! A whole fight! All by yourself!

Now get out so Allenby can murder the Meowth.

Realistically, I think Zaft is going to have the same problem Ismail had. The training demands before Zaft can carry weight could kill our little Voltorb buddy. But I love Electrode. I’d like to use one. What I ultimately end up with is likely a question of whether or not I can get the Exp. Share, but still. Something needs to kill my rival’s eventual Gyarados, right?

Hey!

Naisu.

No, you can’t learn Rage.

Hiker Dudley says hello with a level 21 Geodude. I grant the next to Noin. As well as the Graveler.

And there’s a move tutor down here that teaches Rock Slide. That sounds like an Allenby move. Bye, Scratch. You had your time.

A Pokemaniac’s up next, so Noin goes in the front. Hi Cooper-san. Hi level 20 Slowpoke. Hiiiiiiii-oh fuck.

I clicked something.

The window closed.

Okay, let’s try to salvage this. I think Lucas was last. I’ll just... do what it says I did up above and hope I wind up in the same place. One moment that you won’t feel at all, please.

And back. Zaft escaped the Pidgey with slightly more HP left, but everything else is exactly the same, and we’re on the second Slowpoke with Noin.

And done. Nice.

Though when I was checking my team during my replay, there was. a thing.

What. Did. Did I give it that accidentally?

...Pickup can give you TMs? I guess? I don’t even want to look that up, in case it disrupts the magic, but that’s bizarre. Or not, since TMs are one and done in this gen. Still. What.

Okay, now to go up the ladder and figure out if Noin’s 2 Absorbs left will make it until Lavender, or if we’re spending a precious Ether on her.

Picnicker Leah blocks the way. Allenby looks at her level 22 Bellsprout with disdain. Her Clefairy receives similar attention.

Picnicker Ariana has more pokemon. Like a level 19 Pidgey. And a Rattata... is this worth giving Zaft some experience, or should I accept that Zaft is too far behind to catch up.

Let me think. I have three team members that aren’t leaving unless death takes them. The guaranteed encounters are Snorlax and an Eevee in Celadon. Vaporeon was going to be my choice for the Eevee, and I would be delighted to have a Snorlax, but I don’t know how realistic it is that I’ll be able to catch it.

Electrode’s only amazing stat is Speed. But Electro Ball could do some serious murder. So... I could have a glass cannon. Not a safe choice for this type of run, but I said I was expecting to have to do this several times. Fuck it, I want an Electrode. Zaft, you’re fighting a Rattata.

Hoo boy.

Switch training for the next Rattata. Heero can have it. Heero will also stay in for the Bellsprout.

Picnicker Dana has a level 20 Meowth. And a Pidgey for switch training. Heero will take care of it and stay in for the Oddish.

SUNLIGHT.

And battles I will be avoiding until I hit the Pokemon Center.

Aaaah, sweet, sweet healing.

Oh, and the Name Rater’s here! We can finally fix Ren the Pidgey’s name! Making Ren legal! If I ever feel in the mood to train up a level 3 Pidgey!

Back up to the Picnicker and Hiker.

And the walking Pokemaniac I sort of remembered was a Trainer, but got complacent about. I’m not sure I want Allenby up front for this one. Sigh. Pokemaniac Herman. Level 20 Cubone. Okay, that’s fine. Slowpoke goes to Noin.

Now we deal with the people outside the cave.

Aw.

Sorry in advance, Carol.

Level 21 Pidgey. A Pidgeotto follows, so it’s time to play Zaft chicken again. Heero, save our little buddy from the big bird. Yay, Zaft lives to see level 17.

Hiker Clark. Wassup. Hello level 21 Geodude. Noin gets the Onix.

Lastly, Hiker Trent is up. Level 19 Onix to start. Noin takes the Graveler.

Phew. Okay! We’re in the Lavender Town stages of the plot. I don’t think I want to go to the Tower until after the Rockets in Celadon. I might also be buying Zaft Carbos in Celadon. Undecided. I can’t remember how much my money means in this. Really, the current mission is just beating down every nearby Trainer until I am forced to find more by following the plot. The only question is if I go down first or left.

I will flip a coin.

Heads. I’m going down to play with the fishes. Noin, take your place in first position.

Goldeen, level 22. Noin, level 29. Poliwag gives Speed, so Zaft comes out to play briefly. Allenby takes the next Goldeen.

Fisherman Chip is next. Ooh, our first Tentacool. Level 24. Goldeen is Allenby’s again.

Then comes Fisherman Hank. With one level 27 Goldeen. And Noin drank the exp, and saw that it was good.

Fisherman Elliot might be the fisherman I’ve been waiting for. Four pokemon. Could it be...? ...A level 21 Poliwag. Followed by Shellder. A Goldeen for Allenby. The Horsea can be Zaft’s.

Sigh. So many Water trainers. So few Magikarp.

Last fight South of Lavender until I deal with plot stuff. Lesgo. Noin and Heero vs. two level 24 Nidoran. All goes well except for Heero ending up poisoned. Ugh. There’s an Antidote for that.

Back to Route 8, and back to Allenby being in front.

Lass Julia has a level 22 Clefairy in need of punching. The second one is deserving as well.

Gamer Rich has a level 24 Growlithe in a similar state. Heero can have Vulpix so she has something to do. The Vulpix Roars out Zaft. I know better than to leave Zaft in, so Heero gets switched back to save her young one. Then Zaft gets Roared back out and Sonicbooms ftw.

Oh. I thought you were a scientist and switched to Heero in hopes of Magnemite. tfw only level 22 Grimer. And Muk. And another Grimer.

Hmmm. I think I’m going to try to see if I can make it to Celadon without fighting anyone else. I want that Eevee. For reasons of want. And the superMart there has lots of nice vitamins, and knowing how much that all costs will be useful.

Success!

One male Eevee for my first encounter for Celadon. Aiming for a Water type. Hmmmmmmmmm. Ribbons!

Naive, huh? +Speed, -Sp. Def.

Workable.

Look, you’re stuck being a Vaporeon. I’ll make it work, but that’s what I want, and I don’t have much room for choice in this Nuzlocke. Arguably that makes using you against the spirit of everything, but I care not.

Now the important things. Eevee learns Bite at level 30. Vaporeon learns it at the same level. There’s no reason to hold off evolving Ribbons. Now we go to the store and make a lot of decisions that leave my virtual wallet crying.

HA. Um. Yeah, okay, this can’t happen. Cute thought, very optimistic, but I am not spending all my money on drugging my pokemon that might die in the very next fight. I’m going to have to continue doing all the EV management the old fashioned way.

Reflect TM earned on the roof by giving a drink to a little girl. Giving people drinks is very important in this game.

Great, Water Stone and Leaf Stone bought.

Max adorbs.

There’s no reason to delay Noin receiving her Leaf Stone, either, which. is sort of depressing because yikes that moveset, but hey, let’s appreciate the added bulk and not poke holes in it.

Hooray!

Now we return to finding random trainers to fight.

Aw fuck.

A level 29 Rapidash and Ninetales. I am here too early. I put Ribbons in the second slot in the hopes of exp, but that decision might really bite me here. Allenby needs to swoop in and save the day. Hopefully she can.

Yes, she can. Her improbably good aim with Rock Slide continues, delaying its inevitable betrayal.

Yikes, that was scary. I just wanted the Fly HM.

Which I now have.

I’m going to leave Route 16 alone because I think the Snorlax blocking Cycling Road technically belongs to it, and I want as many chances at Snorlax as I can squeeze out. I will also grab the TEA before I head back to beating up Trainers.

As well as whatever my Route 7 pokemon is.

It’s Growlithe!

Hi Growlithe! Imma name you Duo!

And I can now go through the... guard thingies. They aren’t blockades... gates? Those.

Anyway, back to the Trainers on Route 8. Super Nerd Aidan sends out a level 20 Voltorb. Opportunity! Zaft and Heero do the switcheroo to make magic happen. Same with the next. And the Magnemite. Allenby gets the Koffing.

-gasp- A level 22 Poliwag! Zaft, look!

Hypnosis hits and Zaft falls asleep.

That’s honestly fine. You weren’t going to do anything.

Look Zaft, another Poliwag for you to do nothing against. And a Poliwhirl, even!

Every fight I let Zaft participate in, all I can think is how it would probably be way more useful if the teammate helping Zaft just took all the exp. Yet I persist. Because I want a dang Electrode.

Biker Richard wants to battle! Dick. He has a level 22 Koffing. Allenby can eat the second one. The Grimer is clear Ribbons food. Kill it, Ribbons. Kill it with your Quick Attack. Your wonderful Quick Attack that dodges Disables just as well as Minimize dodges everything.

And then Ribbons’ only attack was Disabled. Repeatedly.

Ribbons, let’s let one of the other party members handle this.

Welp.

Nothing can hit the Grimer thanks to all the Minimizes from waiting for Ribbons to get in a final Quick Attack. Sludge also keeps poisoning everything.

Noin finally steps in and kills the wicked Grimer.

Sheesh.

Biker Jaren, please don’t have a Grimer.

Biker Jaren has a level 24 Grimer.

Biker Jaren has a second level 24 Grimer.

Heero burns it.

Heero is a good girl.

Now we’ve got these people I don’t really remember.

I mean.

Hi Lass Megan.

Level 19 Pidgey for Zaft to share with Heero. Given the number of pokemon she has, this feels like a statement I will use multiple times. ...Fine, sometimes there’s a Rattata. Or a Nidoran. Or a Meowth. Or a Pikachu.

Bye Lass Megan.

I’m going to take a brief detour to go get my bike. I never traded in the voucher.

Now I have a bike.

Back to fighting. Lass Andrea is up next opening with a level 24 Meowth. Followed by another. And another. Win get.

Lass Paige is next on accident, because I was running along the side where glasses dude wasn’t looking. Oh well. Order isn’t that important, right? Level 23 female Nidoran, Ribbons, would you like to play? With Heero’s help, sure. Ooh, and followed up by a level 23 Nidorina. Allenby can help Ribbons with that.

Now glasses dude to finish off the row.

One level 26 Koffing.

Heero murders it.

Huh, and then I run into Twins Eli and Anne by accident. Sensing a theme, here. Heero and Ribbons versus level 22 Jigglypuff and Clefairy. No contest.

I think I’m going to give Ribbons Water Pulse so he has the chance to do something when I’m training him. Using TMs in gens where you don’t get them back is scary and blah, but he really needs something besides Quick Attack.

This is probably where I want to go face Erika. Before then, though, I don’t have a Route 8 pokemon.

-quick search-

Oh. Because I already have the ones I can get here.

Alrighty then. Time for Erika. AKA the Heero show.

Time to shine.

Lass Kay up first. She has a level 23 Bellsprout. Had. Allenby can take the level 23 Weepinbell. And we continue. Beauty Bridget up next. She opens with a level 21 Oddish. Allenby goes in for the Bellsprout. Heero back in for another Oddish. Allenby back in for another Bellsprout.

There’s going to be a lot of that.

Picnicker Tina next with a level 24 Bulbasaur. Then a level 24 Ivysaur.

Delete a Grass starter for Flamethrower?

Beauty Tamia is next. Level 24 Bellsprout. Allenby handles the second one.

Cooltrainer Mary almost has a full team. Leading with a level 22 Bellsprout. Level 22 Oddish is next. Weepinbell goes to Allenby. Gloom heads back to Heero. The Ivysaur is similarly nommed.

Two more before Erika.

Lass Lisa with the level 23 Oddish. And Gloom.

Beauty Lori with just one. Level 24 Exeggcute.

Now. One Trainer left in the Gym.

...Is it a popular theory that Erika is just blazed 24/7?

If it isn’t, it should be.

Good grief, and right out the gate we jump to a level 29 Victreebell. One Flamethrower is enough, but that’s still quite the jump, and I wasn’t expecting it. Level 24 Tangela feels more in line with what I was expecting. It meets a similar fate.

Last but certainly not least, a level 29 Vileplume.

And we’re done here. GG.

(Erika also hands out the Rainbowbadge and explicitly only has women in her Gym. Erika is the stoner lesbian leader we deserve.)

Wait, one more thing!

Only hey, we’re not done! We have the Giga Drain TM for Noin!

Best Gym so far for the squad. That seems like a good spot to pause at.

[vyrim]

Finally went back to xenoblade 3 and finished it, definitely an "only ever play it once" kinda game.

Its such a weird game because it has the clear foundation for good plot and gameplay mechanics, but the end product is just sorta fighting the player the entire time. The only thing that stood out in the end was the main group of characters who felt charming and detailed.

Don't click the read more unless youre prepared cause its a doozy.

The main idea of the story is that living your life afraid of dying instead of simply living it to the fullest isn't much of a life at all, and that works even when the plot gets really crazy by having the crazy giant orb in the sky ultimately becoming the manifested mass fears of wondering what lies in the future rather than the now. It also shows how messed up the stagnation of living in a perpetual, infinite cycle where life and death no longer has meaning.

The problem is they were shit at writing it.

Early on it isnt a problem, these guys are basically ten year olds who don't even know what parents are so learning about this stuff and thinking "wow thats fucked up" now makes sense. The issue lies in the fact that throughout the game they don't stop being surprised, and when the entirety of your more serious cutscenes are the protags spouting cheesy lines over and over it stops being interesting. The dialogue became so oversaturated with cliche that I was actually worried that my eyes were going to roll out of my head.

The antags are the worse offenders, boiling down to being "I'm so evil, look at this evil thing I'm doing, doesn't that make you think I'm sooo evil?" Every single one of them does this, and when you get to the main game and start freeing colonies, these guys pop up and die like flies. There are only two major instances where antags show any dimension to them, and the way its just vomited exposition completely dilutes any interest I would have in them. Then they immediately die to really hammer the nail into the coffin. The biggest failures, X and Y who are basically the biggest baddies before the main antag Z barely show up, and are the only two antags who die without any form of cutscene after beating them in battle, simply spouting some lines and dying. Moebius sucks, they're so painfully one dimensional that there is no substance to them being the major problem for the protags aside from being the ones running the show and conveniently showing up to remind the player just how "evil" they are.

Retconning character deaths is another big issue, something that shouldn't be one given the whole "life and death don't matter" aspect of the plot. The issue is that characters who are dead are constantly flashbacked to despite their small amount of screentime presence, and then because the enemy is so "evil" we get a shock value surprise that they've been reborn and now have to fight their old allies because their now reset puppets. Except they're not, turns out they still have all their memories deep down and now that they've been freed they're good as new. This is even worse when some of these dead characters become Moebius which is its own writing crime scene stated above. Death doesn't matter, but not in a fun or interesting way, which completely muddles the whole fucked up aspect of world's state. I couldn't keep caring after people would drop and then get back up like it was the latest trend.

Gameplay was bizarre, with a system that was cool and interesting at the start but then slowly devolved into the most boring shit. The major idea is that each character can equip any class and by leveling those classes up you can use them still when swapping to other classes, allowing for flexible mixing and matching that only gets more expansive as you progress the story and unlock more classes. Classes need cp to unlock and level though, which turns out is tied to your level versus the things youre fighting, with characters obtaining less cp when fighting lower level enemies compared to higher ones. This means that exploring the world, fighting enemies for materials, and just playing the fucking game will ultimately overlevel you compared to the environment, meaning that for most of the game you won't be getting enough cp outside of quest completion to actually get or grow classes. The game is designed to actively punish the player for simply playing and I can only assume was meant to pad out playtime by forcing later grinding.

Skills are seperated into different kinds: buffs, debuffs, aoe fields, etc. The biggest category is attacks which perform various things like debuffing, evading, bonus damage positionals, and combos. Combos are the bread and butter of doing significant damage because if a character is dazed or launched into the air they cant block or dodge attacks, and you can then finish the three move combo (break>topple>daze/launch) with a finisher that either does major damage or drops a bunch of loot.

The problem is that the combo system stops mattering once you start doing serious fights or fighting unique monsters because of the resist mechanic. Any attack that debuffs or starts the combo is at risk of being resisted, and big bosses love resisting everything because otherwise they'd be stun locked for the entire fight. Thing is theres no substance outside of the combo system, its just basic combat where the goal is to simply do ass tons of damage and hope that the tanks can keep aggro so dps doesnt get popped.

You are also, once again, punished for simply playing the game by design. Tanks cannot hold aggro compared to the dps thats generated, and their aggro generating skills can be completely nullified by missing the target which will happen with unique monsters alot. Characters have to stay close together to take advantage of any kind of heals or support skills meaning that any character with positionals is either screwed or endangering the healers who have to go out of position to heal. Most enemies also have massive cone attacks meaning that tanks have to be away from the healing or risk murdering the whole team by pointing the enemies at them, leading them to not getting any support just from doing their job.

This all compounds to the biggest issue with combat being that the AI is perhaps the dumbest I have ever seen. Healers will waste healing skills, and drop everything theyre doing to revive dead teammates. Tanks will not position enemies away from the team and will actively ignore trying to aggro enemies that aren't their main target. Dps will go so far as jumping off cliffs to use their positional skills properly, and never retreat to the healers when they're getting damaged. The game demands you play every character at the same time, otherwise basically telling the player to watch as the team runs around like headless chickens.

These are only a fraction of the issues the game has without even touching on the sheer amount of braindead side quests, the gem grind, or the fact that games need to stop being on the switch so they can have an actual stable fps and graphics that dont give characters weird half face shadows all the time. Its insane, and I can only assume that people continue to play these games because they love the dynamics of the protags.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 doesn't make me want to play any of its predecessors, and Im sure as hell not buying any dlc, which is a shame because theres clearly a good game in there.

[tellywoodtrash]

Heyy! I really loved your analysis on The Great Indian Dysfunctional Family! Could you give your honest review on it? I mean how did you find it's plot, the story, acting, directing all in all the show and what would you rate it? Thank You! Have a nice day! :)

Hello anon!

I’ve got to thank you for sending in this question, coz I did mean to do an overall review for the show beyond the lbs, and was just dragging my feet and being a lazy POS about it. You’re keeping me honest. :)

Tbh, I’m not sure how exactly to rank or rate this show. Until Ep 6. (the one with the big reveal) I really liked it. I really really liked it. But then the show just took a bizarre turn after the reveal. The plot went kinda off the rails, most of the characters were acting very strangely, and I was just left wondering why they built all this up and made me care about these characters just to bring it all crashing down like this.

The story

Nothing new, it was basically a Kapoor & Sons ripoff; right down to the whole vibe; everything from the setting at this hillstation-esque area, to the house parties, to the interpersonal dynamics (the feuding brothers, one of whom is oblivious as to why the other one is so resentful of him; the chill idgaf elder with the shenanigans; husband-wife tension; one of the characters is gay…) to how it all played out (reveal at a fun party right after a troubled marriage got a second wind, sudden untoward death of a parent, brothers making peace after…) all seemed straight up taken from that movie. They adjusted it a little here and there to accommodate the characters and make it seem different, but overall, it was just Kapoor & Sons, the TV version.

The plot

Like I said above, I really liked the way the show was written till Ep. 6. They built up the world really nicely; the family dynamics were uneasy yet stable in a manufactured way, and it all goes to hell with the entry of the ‘outsiders’ Samar and Sonali. I liked their relationship; they seemed like a couple who not only loved each other romantically, but also genuinely liked each other as who they are as a person. They’re still in their honeymoon phase, unaware/blind of each other’s more icky personality traits. Their coupling is so perfect, that even his own mother feels vindicated when they have a minor tiff, claiming no husband and wife are ever THAT happy. On the other hand we have Vikram and Geeta, who are barely holding on to their marriage; their tension is out in the open, even as much as Geeta tried to play it down. I liked how they paralleled the two couples. They also built up the suspense well; it was pretty obvious that there had been infidelity on Geeta’s part and Mridul’s paternity was in question, but the way they ramped it up was good. All this playing around Addu’s coming out, and the social ramifications of such an act in small town India, was well done. It’s after Ep. 6 that everything goes downhill. Samar and Geeta’s characters get reallllllllly unlikable. Their only regret seems to be that everyone found out, rather than the actual deed. And neither of them seem to be really apologetic? Samar kinda brushes it off after making two, three guilty faces/dialogues, Geeta picks fights with Vikram who’s trying to make peace with her despite the fact that she slept with his brother? Ek toh chori, upar se seena jori. Just distasteful. The pace of the show also suffers post ep. 6; everything just unfolds so quickly, yet nothing is really happening, and I was just confused as to what the point of all this was, and how the characters would eventually resolve this emotional quandary. But also, with the insufferable way most of them were acting, I didn’t really care either. I was just like eh, whatever, you’ve made your beds, now lie in it. The writing for all the characters just made me apathetic to their fates. The convenient killing off of PL was just dumb and contrived. Also confusing, because they had this story-telling device of starting every episode a little bit in the future and then flashing back to the point that led to this. Idk why in just that one episode (#9) they start with that scene of her at home, high on pain meds, signing to Begum Akhtar in her sleep and then suddenly it was cut to her dying in a hospital? Just weird, and it really bothered me. But again, I was just so done with these dumbasses that I didn’t actually care.

But I do have some questions about stuff that was faulty/left unresolved:

Why was Geeta talking to Kashyap on the phone saying she “needs” him and asking him to take her away from all this? Just a random red herring to throw us off? That’s pretty bullshit.

The “clues” that Sonali used to put together the secret were pretty shaky at best. He apparently lied about landslides in the area (which… is a weird lie to keep telling over and over about a place? But also the policeman who stopped the vehicle in the earlier ep. clearly stated that it was because of a landslide. So he wasn’t even lying…) and about when/why he learned sign language? How does that lead you to ‘OMG Samar’s the father of Mridul’?? 

The whole Mridul is premature thing and was conceived when Vikram wasn’t in Kannuri thing. Geeta/Samar clearly slept together when Vikram was there. So……… That whole plot point is just null and void. He could be either brother’s kid.

Did Addu get to go to Delhi afterall? I hope she did. She deserved to get outta this close-minded small town and go live her life in a place where she could exist on her own terms. 

What were we supposed to make of the ending for Samar/Sonali? I mean, the show seemed to imply they stayed together; but from what we’d seen of Sonali as a character, she didn’t seem like the type who could make peace with disingenuity like that… Even if Samar and Sonali did stay together, it was highly unlikely she would be able to hang around with Geeta/Mridul ever again. Idk, they just left that hanging up in the air, and it was unsatisfying.

The cast

Kay Kay as Vikram: It’s completely his show. His character is the best written, and the most satisfying one to follow from start to finish. And he plays all the different facts of Vikram well: the angry, bitter man who’s lost himself as well all emotional connection with his family, the exasperated dad trying to come to terms with Addu being gay/Mridul’s effeminate tendencies, the more charming husband/loving big brother he was in the past before all of it went to shit… He plays all of it really well. You start off disliking the character, but the more you see of him, you gradually come over to his side. It’s not that he hasn’t made/isn’t currently making mistakes of his own, but you grow to sympathize with him. I also loved his brief bits of comedy. I’d like to see Kay Kay in lighter roles like these more often.

One qualm though; idk why they had him wear those tacky light-coloured lenses (reminding me of that 2006 -2010ish time in tellywood, when everyone wore those damn lenses. The entire cast of DMG used to wear the same colour and it just looked bizarre.)

Swaroop Sampat as PremLata: She was the actor is was most excited for in this show, and they just fucked me over so bad. She’s hardly in the damn show. I don’t understand why they would underutilize her talents like that. Also I’m not sure of how to feel about PL as a character; she did seem to love her family a lot, but was also very hands-off and just a witness in the bg to everything? She just seemed very uninvolved in whatever was going on, to the point of apathy, just caring about her daily chais and nothing else. But whatever few scenes Swaroop did get, she was radiant and lovely in, as expected.

Barun Sobti as Samar: I always enjoy watching Sobti. Especially in the role of a straight-man to all the madness around him. He’s so enjoyable with his genuine reactions of perplexed and exasperated and amused. But I feel like… Other than in IPK, he isn’t really ACTING. Both in Tu Hai Mera Sunday and here, he plays this chill dude, which is just who he is IRL. It’s just toooooo easy breezy, and I can see that he’s not really putting any major effort into it; compared to Arnav, whom he played in a very measured manner. Also Samar as a character stops being likable after the reveal. His reason for sleeping with Geeta is hardly compelling enough, and so is his demeanour towards Sonali after the reveal. He just doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of what he’s done. The character didn’t deserve to get the easy resolution that he did, especially because he didn’t do any work for it. Bas sabne aise hi maaf kar diya.

Eisha Chopra as Sonali: She’s a revelation. I think I’ve seen her here and there in some web sketches, but this is the first time I’m REALLY seeing her. She’s very charming and confident and a delight to watch. I’ll surely be watching her web series What The Folks in the coming days. Sonali as a character is kind of a mixed bag though. She seemed like a strong, intelligent woman coming into the show, but her bizarre turn into becoming an obsessive snoop who just wants to uncover the family secrets gets pretty annoying. There’s also a brief bit where she’s being a whiny brat for no real good reason? Other than that, I really liked Sonali as a character.

Shriswara as Geeta: A good measured performance. Her character wasn’t clearly defined in the promo, and I thought she’d be a long-suffering wife, but I’m glad she wasn’t. She did keep mum a lot to keep the peace with Vikram (because of her guilt?) but did counter him when required. Her bond with Mridul was the purest, but it was strange how she had no connection with Addu at all? Most of Addu’s parental interaction is with Vikram, despite their tension. She seems to have zero relationship with her mom. I also disliked the turn Geeta’s character took after the reveal. Like I said before, there was no real good reason for her to sleep with Samar. It was just such a flimsyyyyyyyyyyyy plot point. Upar se, she didn’t even seem contrite about it. Like, idk where she got off having that tone with Sonali asking her what her problem is, for wanting to leave after the reveal. It was just jarring. Overall I liked how Sriswara played all the different bits of Geeta; the patient wife just on the brink of losing it, the indulgent mother to Mridul, the woman in a million different clubs because she’s just trying to fill the void in her. As an actor she was very likable, it’s just that the writing for her character was shaky af.

Sanaya Pithawala as Aditi (Addu): I don’t really relate to teenage angst anymore and get annoyed by it, so I can’t really say I connected with her character, but I did feel for her and her heartbreak when Nandu crushes her brutally. I also liked her cool ‘deal with it’ attitude post the incident and the confidence with which she navigated her coming out. The plot with that boy Shashi though, it was confusing… There seemed a legit moment where she was into him. I guess she’s still really figuring out who she is as a person. Her best scenes have to be with Vikram, whether they’re clashing, she’s purposely taking the mick outta him, or trying to make up with him. She was fine, watchable, but I was very distracted by her bad wig.

Prithviraj Sarnaik as Mridul: The purest. The face of an angel. The only character worth rooting for in the show. (I mean Addu too, I guess, but I found her kinda obnoxious at times.) I normally do not like child actors, but this kid was very adorable. He really seemed to have a maturity to him; silently observing and taking in everything. Other than PL, he’s the only one who really gets everything that’s going on here in this shitshow of a family. I felt really bad about how all these badly behaved adults probably traumatised the kid for life. But overall, it was a charming little performance and I wish they’d made him the overarching narrator of the show, coz I loved his little voiceovers every now and then.

Overall

Overall, I’d say this is okay for a one-time watch. It will disappoint you towards the end; because you just stop caring for these characters, which is a mark of crappy writing. But it does have an able star cast that does the best they can with the material on hand, so if you have some time to kill, and like these actors from other stuff, it’s worth a dekko (esp. since each ep is only about 15 - 18 minutes long; you can be done with the whole show in about 3 hours…)

[gch1995]

Captain Swan was like the cheap rip-off of Rumbelle. So how did they make their cheap, gross, and shallow pretty boy rip-off of Rumbelle look better than the far superior, deeply beautiful, and complex original couple? Systematically destroying every element of both halves of the deeply beautiful, emotionally complex, and unique original Rumbelle and kill off Neal to vilify Rumple to make their cheap, shallow, and gross rip-off look better by comparison, which they failed to do, anyway…It’s a sure fire way to win tons of viewers, and not piss off a huge portion of your original GA! It’s not like most of them weren’t majorly emotionally invested in Rumple’s story with Belle and Neal…*I’m being sarcastic, btw, in case that wasn’t already obvious...*

Ffs…I really came to hate this show, I’m glad I quit watching after S5 because I read spoilers that it only got worse for Rumbelle with the OOC toxic clusterfuck of the utter systematic character destruction of both Rumple and Belle as individual characters and a couple, which they used the Rumbaby to create for “fun” for A&E and these writers to make CS look better after they made them a romanticized abusive relationship in 5A, and lost half their audience by making Hook the Gary Stu of the show who everyone else got screwed over for at the last minute.

I was worried they would screw over Rumbelle in a way that finally went too far for people to just realistically reconcile after what they did to CS in 5A, and it looks like I was right from the spoilers I read for 6A…Because it’s not like A&E and these writers weren’t already systematically destroying both halves of Rumbelle enough as it already was to prop up Hook/CS when they killed off Neal. It’s not like it wasn’t already bad enough when they started all the Rumbelle drama with the fake dagger proposal, the magic hat, the lies, and the banishment that never was apologized for because it was framed as “girl power” for Belle to “put the beast in his place.” It’s not like it wasn’t already bad enough with Belle’s bizarre OOC newcharacterization of being back-and-forth with Rumple, being cowardly, hypocritical, stupid, unnecessarily cruel, controlling, insensitive, and lacking in empathy with Rumple, refusing to let him get a word in edgewise, even when he tried to reach out to her gently and honestly for her understanding and compassion, and even when he did nothing wrong, while she let Hook, Regina, and Zelena get away with using her to hurt Rumple and trusted and forgave all of them for hurting her and her true love because the narrative “needed” to vilify Rumple. It’s not like it wasn’t already bad enough when Rumple took back the curse because he claimed that “It’s the man that he was,” and “I like the darkness.”

This shit in 6A, though. This shit was just too fucking stupid and OOC to believe.

The unborn Rumbaby being a full grown adult God of Dreams with a fully formed personality and opinions in Belle’s subconscious, who she actually believes immediately without question for no damn reason when he tells her that “Rumple will destroy the family?”

BULLSHIT!

Belle talking about how she’d rather stay in a sleeping curse with her unborn child to avoid Rumple forever based off of what a dream said for no fucking reason, even before Rumple starts screwing up?

BULLSHIT!!

Belle staying on Hook’s ship, and talking to him and Snow about how she spent too long trying to make things work with Rumple, even before Rumple starts doing anything wrong in the arc, even though the writers have conveniently ignored the fact that Belle has an apartment above the library that Rumple gave her, even though she’s perfectly a-ok forgiving and trusting the man who tried to kill her four times to piss off Rumple, even though Hook’s “apology” for attempting to murder her has come too late in the series and he openly admits to letting her stay on his ship is something that he openly admits to doing to piss off Rumple when the worst that Rumple has done to her at this point in the series was keep her in the dark about his shady schemes in S4?

BULLSHIT!!!

Rumple having a Dark One 2.0 2007 Britney Spears style mental breakdown mid-life crisis when he cuts his hair because he doesn’t like the man he sees in the mirror, so he starts acting like a controlling, and potentially dangerous blindly insane dick to Bellle of nowhere?

BULLSHIT!!!!

Like, I could understand it if this bizzarely problematic shift in Rumple’s attitude had an organic lead up without all the stupid magical plot contrivances and twists that come out of the blue, and the breaking of preestablished rules used to force him to that extreme. I could understand it if Belle didn’t “have” to be made uncharacteristically, unnecessarily, and overdramatically cruel, cowardly, stupid, and hypocritical to push him over the edge. I could understand if these writers understood realistic human psychology, trauma, mental illnesses, consistent characterization, and they didn’t destroy or sideline other characters/ships to prop up their faves.

But on this show where I had barely survived through the pain that was S4 and S5 of Rumple’s being framed as an OOC one note stereotypical villain badly enough as it already was to prop up Hook/CS, Regina, and Zelena onto pedestals that they didn’t deserve by ignoring all of the trauma, loss, and grief he had endured, and the near erasure of his fantastic character development and selfless sacrifice from S1-3A? I didn’t want to see them try to portray Rumple’s self-destructive addict tendencies a third time around because he was a “difficult man to love” because A&E and these writers did not want, and/or did not know how to portray mental illness and trauma in Rumple’s character consistently, organically, sympathetically, and realistically.

They usually just ignored all that complexity in his character to frame him as a one note villain to the other characters and the audience, and refused to let them be sympathetic or understanding of him until he had finally come to the brink when it was finally convenient for Belle to actually hear him out, listen, understand why after she had refused to do so for most of the arc to push him over the edge, and he responded with some variation of “Who could ever love me,” which was always tragic with Bobby’s acting. But it was getting repetitive now because Belle should have understood this fact about Rumple after 4A in 6A, Rumple should have known that trying to fix things with magic without Belle’s consent would only make things worse in 6A after 4A, and both of them should have been smart enough to sit back and think about how ridiculous this shit with the dream zygote was. So I did not want to see a third round of character assassination one more time around at all an all time low where both he and Belle were being pitted against each other at incredibly OOC, illogical, and gross low point as enemies in this stupid magical custody battle clusterfuck over an unborn baby who somehow had the power to be the God of Dreams, orchestrate his own kidnapping, and dupe both of his intelligent parents after getting duped by the Black Fairy before he was even fucking born, especially when I knew I had seen a variation of this same plot done before in 4A. While that didn’t make total sense either, it didn’t feel so incredibly cheap, contrived, painful, unbelievable, and stupid as this shit in 6A did with all of the trauma that Rumple had been through in the context in 3B, even if it wasn’t that well written, or sympathetic in the narrative from his POV, either

Golden Queen “romance?”

BULLSHIT!!!!!

I mean, the retcons in the flashbacks were incredibly OOC for both Rumple and Regina. In the present day storyline context, it was wildly OOC for the EQ to sexually assault Rumple twice, and have a crush on him that she never seemed to before. As for Rumple giving into her advances, playing along with her, and using her to kill Zelena for him after those two kisses that she forced on him in the present day storyline? I mean, he flinched back from those two kisses, and we know he was sexually abused by Zelena for a whole year, so I could buy that he would emotionally manipulate the EQ to kill Zelena for him with his sexuality because he wanted the shears, and because he didn’t want to be seen as weak through their whole deal, so he used the darkness to cover up his vulnerabilities. I could see if it really “meant nothing,” and he had absolutely no intention of honoring his end of that indirectly implied deal he made with EQ to bang her in return for killing Zelena for him that he offered, he had absolutely no genuine romantic or sexual interest or intentions with her either way, and this was all just a horribly self-destructive, gross, and unethical way to survive his PTSD for as long he “needed” to do it in their deal. And that’s definitely my headcanon.

Unfortunately, A&E and these writers tried to do everything in their power to demonize Rumple throughout that whole thing with the EQ by shrouding his POV. Rumple’s PTSD being triggered by the EQ and Zelena isn’t an excuse for playing her, of course, but the writers literally forgot about the fact that she sexually assaulted him twice first, and then deliberately cut that scene where he ran into Zelena at Granny’s right before that scene in 6x07 where she walked in on them making out, which would have implied that Rumple had been planning on doing this whole time since the end of 6x04 when she forced that kiss on him, and was very likely expecting her to walk in on him and the EQ when they were making out in 6x07. But Bobby looked highly uncomfortable and dead inside when he was making out with Lana in those scenes, he fought Eddy against the whole GQ storyline, and he knows Rumple’s character better than A&E and their team of hacks do, so I took his interpretation in his acting as Rumple in those scenes to heart way more than whatever the fuck A&E and these writers were trying to imply in their piss poor excuse for writing on a dying show that should have ended three-and-a-half seasons before it ever had the chance to make it to this tragically pitiful and nearly laughable hollowed out shell of the fantastic show with well-written complex characters that it used to be once upon a time (pun intended).

Like I said, I hate this show, or at least the show that it became after “Going Home,” and Nealfire’s death…

I also don’t respect A&E and these writers anymore for how abruptly, cruelly, and deliberately they mistreated Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, Neal, Emma, and Henry’s characters, stories, relationships, and fans in the writing after “Going Home,” so that Eddy Kitsis and these writers could have their love affair with Hook/CS and Zelena!

I still ship Rumbelle from S1-S3, and I still ship them in fanon where the writing for them, whether it be angsty, romantic, tragic, or bittersweet, is always sympathetically in-character, consistent, emotionally complex, organic, realistic, healthy, well-written, and well-earned.

But I’m glad I quit watching this show after S5 because it became clear that they were systematically destroying both halves of Rumbelle out of spite to prop up Hook/CS, and I didn’t need to see that shit anymore. It wasn’t good for my mental health, and I’m honestly regretting that I ever even read the recaps and spoilers for 6A on tumblr.

As far as I’m concerned, the real show ended with “Going Home” because that was the last time I fully recognized my favorite characters/otp, the last time I was mostly satisfied with everyone from season one’s character development, and the last time that any of the writing on this show made any sort of consistent, meaningful, and realistic sense before becoming a cheesy, stupid, and toxic romantic magical soap opera Drama™️ fanfic rewrite centered around Hook/CS as the lead character/couple with no continuity, no depth, no organic original growth, and no character or storytelling integrity.

Belle being needlessly cruel by telling Rumple that he is “worse than evil,” and “being too weak to be good” for being afraid to fail their son as a father when she knows Neal died not that long ago?

BULLSHIT!!!!!! She had every right to be angry at him for not telling her right away about plotting to use the shears on their son without her consent, and for handing off dark magical macguffins to the EQ, but twisting his words, and using his fears against him by being mean? That’s not Belle.

Belle attempting to kidnap the unborn baby with Zelena’s help, and gloating over to Rumple angrily about how she and his abuser and the murderer of his first son were “alike,” while mocking him about how she was almost “free” when he caught her, and stopped her in 6x08?

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!

And yes, it would have been attempted kidnapping in this instance in real life that she would have been arrested for in this episode because the only evidence she had that Rumple was a serious “danger” to their unborn child with the shears at this point, and that he was having an “affair” with the EQ was all hearsay from Zelena. Zelena was not a reliable source to Rumple’s motives with the shears, or Rumple’s true intentions with the EQ. She didn’t actually know whether Rumple actually was planning to bang her or not, and I really don’t think he ever was because he told Belle that it meant nothing, anyway, and swatted away the EQ like a fly as soon as she broke their deal by hurting Belle, and didn’t kill Zelena for him.

Rumple threatening to speed up Belle’s pregnancy recklessly in a dissociative panic when she already had that fucking cuff on her wrist, and wasn’t going anywhere because he was so obsessed with these stupid shears?

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know a lot of people who watched said that it was strongly implied that Rumple was, even subconsciously, trying to deescalate himself by warning Belle to come back to him before doing it ahead of time, and showing her the aging dust in that little bottle in his hand when he terrorized her in the library with the threat to do it before calling him out, and talking him down. I do believe that the writer of this episode was trying to imply to the audience that Rumple was looking for a “no” from Belle, even subconsciously, because he didn’t know how else to descalate himself, and I do believe that. However, it still was a wildly OOC nearly unforgivable extreme that they forced him to, so they could bring this story to the unnecessary brink of past the point of no return for Rumple and Belle ever reconciling again for absolutely no reason, other than to give Belle a reason to genuinely be afraid and distrustful enough of him to give up their baby to the Black Fairy (in disguise as Blue) to give him his “best chance.”

It’s just like how Belle didn’t actually “need” to attempt to kidnap their unborn child in the episode before this, or how Belle didn’t “need” to banish Rumple across the town line with nothing. It’s just like how it didn’t make any sense for Rumple to try to give Belle the dagger at all, considering how terrified he was of being controlled again. I could see if his heart had started blackening before he left for New York, and the dagger was his veiled plea for her to help him fight the darkness because he couldn’t tell her the truth with his heart being consumed by the curse, but they never made that explicitly clear in the narrative and they ruined most credibility in that when they had him take the curse back because “it was the man that he was.” It’s just like how Belle’s back-and-forthedness with Rumple in S5 made no sense. It’s just like how Belle agreeing to take Rumple’s car and go see the world in a middle of a crisis in town after proclaiming “A hero never runs away” two episodes a day earlier in the timeline before, just because she was having relationship doubts. These writers forced their characters into OOC directions and extremes that weren’t actually necessary, just so they could fulfill their (oftentimes character assassinating and disappointing) plot twists, especially with Rumple and Belle post 3A, and I was finally fed up with it by 6A, even though I didn’t watch any of that clusterfuck.

The Rumbaby being the villain of the week under the hood after being duped by the Black Fairy to dupe his parents to turn against each other, so that he could orchestrate his kidnapping from them at birth before he was even fucking born because Rumple using the shears on him would have prevented this shit from happening?

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Adam and Eddy claiming that all this systematic character destruction of every element in Rumple and Belle’s individual characters and relationship together was “fun” and “hopeful,” and that they had been planning this storyline with the Black Fairy for a long time now, even though we all knew by now that they had no sense of self-awareness or ability to learn from their bad writing choices, every Dearie/Rumbelle fanfic writer was writing stories for the characters and relationship that they created a billion times better than they ever could imagine for free on ao3 and ff.net than the vile garbage these piss poor excuses for professional writers and show-runners were still getting paid to spew after they ran out of ideas on their after 3A and shit on Rumbelle deliberately to prop up their faves, and most people planned ahead more thoughtfully for their graduation speeches, what to wear on a date, and school projects than these hacks spent on their now dead trash show?

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!! At this point, I was just laughing bitterly at them still taking themselves as such “genius” storytellers. I wasn’t even blaming the characters for being this wildly OOC and badly written anymore because it wasn’t really even worth it anymore when A&E and these writers fucked them up for their stupid sensationalist plots, CS pandering, and inability to stick to any sort of consistent realistic characterization, development, timeline, rules, or storytelling integrity, let alone even trying to tell any story with any sort of deeper purpose or meaning at all at this point, anyway. This show was just a cash grab for them at this point for Disney product placement, and Hook/CS.

[baconpal]

so heres the long super paper mario post

strap in for why super paper mario is fucking bizarre and why that’s pretty much awesome

gonna be a good amounts of spoilers, so if you’re on desktop then hit that read more, and if your on mobile, then here’s your punishment for using this god awful app

super paper mario is a game that is incredibly difficult to put into words, but it leaves such a powerful, lasting impression on me and i can’t come to say anything first other than I love it so much, and if you havent played the game, please just go do it now, even if you have to pirate or emulate or something, just let yourself play this game. It’s one of those games that I really feel I can just recommend to anybody

it’s difficult to think of where to start with dissecting this thing so i’ll just start with the art since lookin at things is pretty easy

ART/WORLD DESIGN

every world in SPM is completely unique, not just in what type of environment, but it’s art style, and this is premised with the fact that none of these worlds are capable of existing together and are completely separate, and NOT part of a cohesive universe (LOOKIN AT YOU ODYSSEY I STILL THINK YOU LOOK STUPID)

The hub and the first 2 worlds are mostly just slight variants on the same general style of simplistic shapes and colors, with world 1 delving into more linework type aesthetics, and 2 focusing more on impressions and silhouettes, 

world 3 changes this completely with what is obviously an 8 bit kind of style, but instead of jarring over sized pixels, the world is composed of detailed tiles arranged to look like pixel art that imply a more real world, and not a gamey one, 

world 4 focuses on patterns and big patches of color to give the impression of the vast emptiness of both space and the surface of a barren planet, before giving you the “Whoa Zone”, with a striking mix of wire frame and futuristic UI style to it

world 5 takes the idea of nature being crude and simplistic and humanity being sharp, angular, and extreme and flips that on its head, with humanity and the space they occupy being these absolute memes with no sense of depth, and the plant life existing in a system of clean cut caves with futuristic technology and elegant historic values

world 6 simplifies a kind of colored Japanese painting aesthetic, down to the funny cylindrical cloud clusters and brushstroke trees

world 7 depicts what is essentially hell (yes there’s hell in this game keep your pants on) as a squarish blur of bright greens and warm reds and purples, and depicts heaven as fluffy land of clouds and Greek temples

and lastly, world 8 is inverted greyscale, where light is black and darkness is white, its simplistic and striking and i couldn’t think of a better style for the final area of a game so focused on the concept of light and dark

MUSIC

I’ll just try and keep it simple, the musics fucking cash money

The game makes great use of motifs when it needs to, where specific themes and instruments are used in other songs to suggest relationships and put battles and travels into perspective

And when it ISNT doing that, it’s just fucking funky stuff, with a weird trend of BOING and PLOP and SPLISH noises in the percussion because fuck you i guess

There’s a lot of good songs that do lots of interesting things, any of the like 5 final battle songs are great things to point to, but i’ll just go ahead and say the main theme of world 8 “Castle Bleck” is one of my favorites that isn’t super highly rated. It brings in the types of instruments that have been associated with the villain the entire game, but also throws in 2 very important things; a sudden triumphant burst of almost JRPG styled chiptune that pushes away the constantly building tension, which is then followed by the sound of a clock ticking, which is a musical motif only present in the songs “Memory” and “Promise” which is played whenever the memories of the player’s little guide thing and the main villain’s past lives together are alluded to. This one song holds a lot of weight, as well as simply being a fucking cool song.

GAMEPLAY

This is, sadly, the one place I’ll not mince any words and say the gameplay is not amazing by any standard, it’s pretty much a classic mario game if it had RPG stats, items, and random abilities granted through the character and partner systems. The 3D flipping mechanic is nothing astounding, though it is very interesting to see how worlds are constructed

One of the biggest flaws people will mark the game for in its gameplay is that it’s tedious, and while I have to agree, that’s because I’ve already played the game before, and the tedium only comes from not being completely invested in the experience anymore. I’ll get some specific examples in a bit, but there’s a few cases of “tedium” that i believe are 100% intentional and drive the story in an interesting way

STORY/WRITING/GAME DESIGN

Thats a fuckin broad section, but its pretty much everything else i have to say on the game, and where the most spoilers and random praise is gonna be

I’m not actually gonna talk about the whole story, more just the strong parts of it, under the assumption you’ve already played it or understand a story as simple as “villain wants to destroy world, hero wants that to not happen”

The writing and characters are just flawless, everyone is fun to be around, especially the bad guys, who you see more antics of than your own party. There’s goofy running plotlines about O’chunks and mimi essentially getting grounded and being forced to write essays about why they fucked up at beating mario, and big stinky brother dimentio teasting and bullying them and sneaking them out to do his bidding when The big Count Bleck is away

The game is full of referential humor to not just mario itself but all kinds of games, there’s skeletons in hell who are clearly just Marios from the mainline games who died in stupid ways, there’s an actual dragon quest turn based boss battle in hell too, and chapter 3 has an otaku villain who tried to get with peach in a simulated visual novel

but the humor exists not just in references, but in simple good scenarios, with things like “Having a game show in a bathroom when everyone's life is at stake” and “locating an ancient manuscript to use as toilet paper” or “flying through black holes to find a convenience store” and things of that nature

It also interacts with the players emotions in many interesting ways, one of the more lauded being chapter 2-3, where mario is forced into working off a massive debt of fictional money, and is required to do hard, boring labor. There isn’t anyway to avoid doing both the hitting a block 100 times and the running on a treadmill for a few minutes thing, but the constant feeling of “there has to be a faster way to do this” drives the player to prod around, find the secrets, and slowly discover how to break the system wide open and get to the end, and i love it for that

This entire game is some sort of bait and switch, to put it simply, while it’s already a bit of a departure from both mario itself and the paper series, the first 5 worlds are pretty fucking tame stuff, other than the void, which is a giant black and purple spot that sits in the sky, always, every single world has the void growing in its sky, and it does grow, every chapter it gets bigger and bigger and takes up the sky, but where this truly culminates into the “switch” part is chapter 6, which starts itself by presenting you with the most TEDIUS sounding chapter possible, fight 100 enemies in a row, and nothing else, and for 25 straight fights, that is all it is, so you’ve locked yourself into it at this point, you know whats up, but the void in the background begins to grow to the point of being the entire fucking background, and every enemy you face speaks as if they know they’re all going to die, and by the 30th fight, one of the villains comes to stall for time as the void completely swallows the world, and the party is sent back to the hub. When they decide to go back in to world 6, its empty, the entire world is a white void with a single black line making up the ground, and colorless destroyed structures occasionally peaking out of the ground.

and you walk on this white void for so long and you just feel nothing but regret and fear and no matter how fast you make yourself go you feel like you’ll never find anything, but you do eventually get your plot item and escape

then, Dimentio, one of the villains you’ve seen the least of, appears in the hub world, the safest place in the universe, and kills mario

he just fucking kills him

he puts mario in a box and fills the box with explosions and mario fucking dies and goes to hell because fuck you mario

then you go through all of chapter 7 just to escape hell (called the Underwhere cus how could we possibly be allowed to take hell seriously) and join up with your full party before confronting the final world, which i’ve already stated i just love the design off

the game just takes the comfortable ride you’re on and throws it into the fucking sun and burns you alive and i love it so much, even the very end of the game doesnt let up, where the main villain is overtaken by that absolute madman Dimentio (Whose name is a play on both Dimension and dementia), who clearly was powerful enough to have done the whole “ending of the world” himself, but did it this way for the theatrics of it

there’s a lot i could still say about the game, but this post is absolute rambling and its 2 in the morning but as usual, i just wanted to shit my thoughts onto the internet to people could maybe learn somethin about either the game or me and how i think and look at and respond to stuff, and as always, anybody who read this whole thing is cool and i love you a whole heck of a lot