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knives-and-narcissi · 5 years ago

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10 Reasons it would make narrative sense for Levi and Historia’s character arcs to conclude together.

I’ve been wanting to do this for ages, but I’ve been nervous of the backlash. Feels like it’s now or never though, and theorising for/analysing stories is one of my favourite things to do - I’m clearly missing those literary analysis essays from university days. So please excuse me if you think I’m deluded - I probably am - but the analyst in me won’t let me be until I’ve got this all out of my system.

Beware, it’s a long one. There's some thoughts on chapter 130 nearest the bottom!

1. Childhood Parallels - The Abandoned Children

Levi and Historia’s childhoods mirror one another - there are striking similarities, but then also sections that fit together to complete each other, as though they are matching jigsaw pieces. The characters start out in worlds that are opposite - Historia has the comforts of a safe home, food on the table, and fresh air and sunshine. She has all the physical nourishment she needs, but she does not have her mother’s love. On the contrary, his mother’s love is the one thing Levi does have, otherwise living in poverty underground. Both their mothers, however, appear to be using sex and the idea of love as a means to survive or way to try and improve their circumstances, and it is out of this necessity that both end up being born.

Levi is clearly affected when he first hears Historia’s tale of her childhood - Isayama shows this through the fact that Levi’s plate is the only one left untouched at the end of her story. He has been so sucked in by what she’s relayed, and probably saddened, that he hasn’t been able to bring himself to eat as the others have. Historia’s story rings true with some of his own experiences, but also highlights the world he may have found himself in without his mother’s love.

Remember, Isayama consciously thinks about each panel he’s drawing - he wouldn’t include a small detail like that without reason. We see more of these instances of small but significant stylistic choices and minor details as we progress. Isayama stated in an interview that he wants to give fans an ending that fans would never guess, but that when they look back, the clues were there all along.

Continuing on with the theme of their childhoods and Isayama’s stylistic choices, let’s take a look at two significant moments:

Both characters, although experiencing different forms of deprivation initially (Physical vs. Emotional Nourishment) were abandoned at crucial moments in their lives - when they were looking for validation from their primary caregivers and the people who should have been responsible for demonstrating affection. Historia was abandoned when, after reading and taking onboard information she read in books just like her mother, she reached out to hug her, and Levi was abandoned at the moment he demonstrated that he’d absorbed everything Kenny had taught him. The parallel between these images is very powerful.

Kenny is a character that highlights more parallels between Historia and Levi.

Kenny’s words highlight the literal lack of growth in height for both Historia and Levi - both are particularly short, and also look youthful - but we can also take the words to suggest that the characters are still very much defined by what happened to them in their pasts, and have yet to step away from their demons and achieve closure on what has happened to them as children.

At this point, we can definitely say that Isayama has chosen to tie both Historia and Levi’s stories together through their childhoods - their backstories are revealed alongside each other, in the same arc of our story, and in terms of experiences, they are both identical and mirror opposite at different points.

2. Shared Values

Despite being deprived of affection for large portions of their childhoods, both Levi and Historia appear to have experienced glimmers of kindness in their darkness as well, and this has shaped some of their values and behaviours.

Levi experienced his mother's love for a short while until he lost her - we know how deeply she cared for him from her refusal to give him up despite Kenny’s advice to her when she fell pregnant. Historia had Frieda’s kindness instilled in her, even though she's not able to consciously remember her actions until later.

Both display an affinity for animals, with several manga and even anime-only scenes where we see them being affectionate and kind to their horses. We don’t see this as prominently with any other characters.

But one of the biggest shared values is their desire to protect children. I've posted on this before, but here are a few examples of Levi being driven by this value:

It’s clear Levi has a soft spot for children. And Historia? We know her feelings on children from her first action as Queen - realised with the support of Levi.

3. Kenny’s failure … Levi’s success?

These next scenes we’ll focus on represent the moment that Levi and Historia are set up to undergo that ‘growth’ Kenny was referring to earlier in the uprising arc. Note Isayama’s choice of words here, and the symbolism of the whole scene. Kenny doesn’t tell Levi, ‘I couldn’t be someone you looked up to,’ or ‘I wasn’t fit to act as your father figure,’ he literally says ‘I can’t be some kid’s dad.” What does he do then? He shoves the titan serum at Levi.

Isayama pays great attention to this - dedicating several panels to the weighty moment, and Levi’s expression. It’s very dramatic. Notice how the word ‘Dad’ even has it’s own speech bubble. It’s almost as though Kenny is passing the mantle on to Levi - passing that responsibility on to him. It feels as though the passing of the serum replaces the missing words, ‘but you can.’ Isayama didn’t have to have Levi ask that question in the moment before Kenny passed the serum on to him. He could have positioned it so that the discussion about dreams was the precursor to the serum being passed over - which in my head, for the context of the scene, would make more sense. But he didn’t; he chose to have Kenny say that exact line to Levi - to admit his inadequacy as a father figure, with that focus on the word dad - and then hand the item over to Levi.

By itself, the scene could be seen as highlighting the ways that Levi is already a better father figure than Kenny. He has been somewhat paternal in his role as a Captain. But it’s the very next scene that brings Historia immediately into focus.

Historia looks suddenly so much maturer here, and the way the scenes sit immediately after one another feels too much like foreshadowing.

If you want the full effect of what I mean here, just rewatch this section of the anime!

We are presented with parallels between them once again. The focus of the crown and power of the monarchy being bestowed on Historia parallels the gift of the serum from Kenny to Levi - drawing on the ‘titan science’ element of the Ackerman heritage, perhaps?

Let me take a moment here, while we have these two visual representations of the Ackerman and Royal bloodlines side by side so perfectly, to point out that Isayama chose to answer a question in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine regarding the nature of a child born of both these bloodlines in 2018:

Q: If a child were to be born between two people from the royal family and the Ackerman family, which blood would take precedence?

A: I think that both [of their bloodlines] would be reflected.

4. Blood Lines, Identity and Destinies - the Acker/Royal connection

We are still missing some information about the Ackermans, and Mikasa’s own Ackerman powers and behaviours have been a focus in recent chapters, prompting more questions. This suggests that the role of the Ackermans will be important in the story’s finale. With that said, lets have a look at what information we have about them so far in relation to the Royal Family:

- They worked closely with the Royal Family at one time, even being described as their sword and shield until they fell out of favour.

- They cannot be controlled by the king’s vow or have their memories tampered with. For this reason, they became enemies of the crown and the two bloodlines became at odds with one another.

Do either of these scenarios sound familiar in a romantic setting? The knight and princess trope has been hugely popular in fiction for as long as stories have been told - Lancelot and Guinevere is a well known classic. And two feuding families finally brought back together through love by the younger generation? Romeo and Juliet, anyone?

Okay, so maybe I’m reaching here. But Isayama has opened the discourse around this connection between the two bloodlines without concluding it, so I am certain it will have a part to play in upcoming chapters. Why create two characters from said bloodlines with such satisfyingly parallel but awful childhoods, if not to use them in some way to conclude this part of the narrative in the future?

5. The Beast Titan.

Another common plot point that Levi and Historia have is Zeke. The Beast Titan is a defining element in both their arcs. Levi is driven forward by his vow to kill Zeke, and this is repeated to the point where we expect this to be realised, or at least to see some satisfying resolution between the two. Historia’s situation is defined by her vulnerability to being turned into a Titan in order to consume Zeke. This threat to Historia’s life as a normal girl is also repeated across the later story arcs, just as Levi’s vow and apparent destiny to face off again with the Beast Titan is. If we link back to the knight princess trope, we could suggest that Historia is the metaphorical princess, Levi is the metaphorical knight, and The Beast Titan is the metaphorical dragon. The dragon must be slain in order to protect the princess, and the one to do this is always the gallant knight, or the hero. We know that Levi has been labelled Humanity’s Strongest, and even a hero, before.

It has been Levi’s destiny from the start. What's more, what is the crux of Zeke’s plan for Eldians?

Euthanasia by preventing reproduction. Zeke’s ideology basically directly opposes the values of Levi and Historia - who wish to save as many children as possible.

6. The Smile

If there is one scene Levi fans lost their heads over, it’s this one. The Smile. Who was responsible for getting the sullen Captain to smile? None other than Queen Historia. The one time we get to see a genuine smile from him, in all 131 chapters of SNK, is when Historia playfully punches his arm. I think by this point, it is absolutely fair to say that Levi has a soft spot for her, although I’m not suggesting this is anything romantic at this stage due to her still being a child. What else is interesting about this scene? Let’s look at it from Historia’s point of view. She’s still a 15 year old girl. I’m hardly suggesting she’s got deep, meaningful feelings for a Captain so many years her senior. What I am suggesting, is that clearly there is the beginnings of her seeing him in a different light, and feeling some sort of fondness towards him too. This is also the stereotype of innocent, youthful infatuation - how many times have we seen teenagers play-fighting or bantering with the object of their affections? Something might just be stirring in Historia towards the Captain as she begins her transition into adulthood.

7. THAT (deleted) Scene

Okay, so we can’t very well talk about the smile in the context of this topic without addressing this scene:

There were a few scenes cut to make the uprising arc in the anime more streamlined. This is one of them, and again, has been one of the most talked about. People either love or hate this scene. In the manga, it absolutely sets up some major character growth for Historia, when she goes from being scared and allowing Levi to threaten her into taking an action, to standing up to him atop the wall at Orvud district, throwing his own words back at him. In contrast to Historia’s willingness, Levi becomes more receptive to her perspective and backs down, which also shows his growth. (More on that shortly!)

So, if it adds to the narrative around Levi and Historia, and is a key part of their development as characters, why did Isayama let the studio remove it? It must be because their influence on one another’s growth is no longer important to the story, correct?

If you ask me, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Isayama has stated there were some elements of Uprising that he was unhappy with. Just, for a moment, think how this scene would fit into the bigger picture of a relationship (whether that be deeply platonic or even romantic) between Historia and Levi. Could people get behind that knowing that once, he handled her so roughly? Does keeping this scene as canon for the anime open a can of worms in terms of what is and isn’t acceptable (even more so than the age gap already does) when it comes to a relationship? Could Isayama be seen as glorifying abuse and suggesting that female characters are likely to develop feelings for men who have treated them so poorly in the past? I completely understand Levi’s reasoning for acting this way in this scene, and I loved the set up and pay off later in the arc. However, I do believe that animating this, and then having them become much closer later in the story, could make a backlash likely.

My conclusion to this particular section is - if their influence on one another as characters was unimportant, and the payoff of them reaching a stage where they bring out the best in one another wasn’t relevant to the rest of the story, then The Smile shouldn’t have made it in, right? So much of the set up was removed that it would have been far easier to scrap the scene than to try and figure out another reason for Historia to punch Levi, and make him smile.

That punch was important. It remains for a reason.

8. Levi’s Echo

So, since we discussed the impact of Levi’s words on Historia in the previous point, and how Isayama uses them to illustrate her character growth, let’s jump ahead all the way to chapter 130. We’re now post time skip, where Historia is nineteen. She’s matured now into a young woman - a woman old enough to acceptably conceive a child. This is the chapter which caught everyone’s attention due to Historia’s words to Eren regarding the idea of said child. But first of all, I want to focus on a scene which appears a couple of panels before her question:

‘It’s not as if I’ve just been tending to cattle all this time.’

What does this line mean? The only thing we know in terms of what Historia has been doing in the time skip is that she set up an Orphanage that Levi was also very much invested in and supported her with. So she’s not only been tending to cattle, but ... tending to orphans? With the Captain’s help?

Remember how we said that Isayama doesn’t include subtle details unless there’s a reason. Having Levi support her with the orphanage as a way to show how much he cares about the poorer children wasn’t needed - we already know from several instances discussed earlier that he cares about that topic deeply. So surely this must have been a small detail to set up for a later reveal?

This line alone is interesting, but not necessarily enough to suggest a big influence from Levi. But it’s the next line that grabs attention:

‘There’s no need to fight or run.’

What does this echo?

In my mind, the reason served by this dialogue in 130 is twofold. It works with both the literal events of the deleted scene, and also with the reader’s knowledge that the scene was disregarded later:

1. There is no reason to run or to fight, because Levi is on her side now. When he originally spoke those words to her - run from me or fight me - they were used in reference to what he and the corps were going to make her do - ie, become Queen. Now, they are not forcing her to do anything - they aren’t making her comply with the 50 year plan of producing as many royal children as possible and turning herself into a titan. Instead, she’s empowered by them, and very importantly, him, to make her own decisions while they try to figure out an alternative. (Why do I say him? I’ll cover this in the next point). And yet ... she still chooses to bear a child. A child born of love, not necessity. This is the difference between the birth of her child, and her own birth. And funnily enough, Levi’s birth, too.

The cycle of history is being broken.

2. Her words serve as a reminder that in the revised version of events, Levi never even forced that choice upon her in the first place. He’s always been her ally and treated her with care and respect. Even more reason for her to value and care for him in return. There really is no need to run or fight - from the military police, because she will bear a child, stopping them from turning her - or from Levi, either.

9. The Hooded Figure

As promised, let me explain why I say that Levi empowers Historia (yet again) to make her own decisions. My good friend Key made a wonderful discovery regarding the hooded figure panel, and honestly, based on the evidence I’ve seen, I’d be prepared to bet a whole lot on this next claim:

Levi is the hooded figure who warned Historia of the plan to turn her.

I’ve shared Key’s original post previously, but here’s the gist, with some added observations.

Levi from the hallway; Levi from that iconic scene, fits the dimensions of the hooded figure perfectly, without having to adjust the panel sizes.

The jacket worn is lighter in colour than Eren’s standard black one, but is reminiscent of the jackets worn by the Levi Squad in the uprising arc. The only other clue we’re given to work from is that the figure has their hands in their pockets.

Hmm ... you know who else has a habit of stuffing his hands in his pockets?

So if Levi is the one who warned Historia, is that why she subtly uses his words when talking to Eren?

Let me return to chapter 130 once more, and just invite you to read the following panels from a different angle.

10. Mikasa-Eren/Levi-Historia Parallels

Alright, so this is a bit of a head-mash, but just consider what I’m about to say. In our panels with the Historia-Eren-Zeke conversation, Mikasa is never mentioned by name once. Zeke mentions ‘this Ackerman girl,’ however there is no confirmation that Eren was in fact talking about Mikasa when he asked Zeke about the Ackerman traits ...

Isayama only shows us the conversation with Zeke after Eren has just spoken to Historia about her fate and what the Paradis government want her to do in terms of bearing children. If these are just all memory fragments of Eren’s, why would discussing this with Historia suddenly make Eren think of a conversation about Ackerman traits with Zeke?

In this conversation, Zeke puts two and two together and gathers that Eren is asking these questions because of Mikasa. He then tells him how much Mikasa obviously cares about Eren, regardless of any ‘ingrained behaviour.’ What does Eren then link this with?

The conversation where Historia asks him what he’d think if she was to bear a child. What does ingrained Ackerman behaviour and Mikasa’s true feelings have to do with Historia’s child?

I want to suggest this possibility: this conversation has nothing to do with Mikasa’s feelings for Eren, and everything to do with Levi’s feelings for Historia.

Eren even confirms that Zeke has the wrong end of the stick with asking him how he will respond to Mikasa’s feelings.

What are you even talking about?

Here, he is not considering how he will respond to Mikasa, because he can’t even contemplate that with what he is about to do, and how long he has left to live (although this may have then prompted his later conversation with Mikasa after the market - where he sees Levi save the boy that he will later kill - do you see how this is all linking together?)

Here he means the lives of Historia, her child, and potentially even Levi, as well of course as Armin, Mikasa and the rest of his friends. Want to know why I think that? Isayama hinted it. Again.

We have the image of Historia, suggesting the idea of bearing a child, followed by the image of the child Levi saved, followed by the image of Levi himself.

Isayama draws every detail in every panel for a reason. If part of his conclusion to this manga involves Levi and Historia intertwined and the birth of an Ackerman-Royal child, it won’t be a massively random idea.

It will contribute to an ending where the clues were there all along, but we never really considered them.

(There’s more, so much more, but I have to stop somewhere or I won’t leave my computer. If anyone wants a part two because you’re thirsty for more of this crap, drop me a comment!)

#Shingeki no kyojin theory #attack on titan theory #snk manga spoilers #historia reiss #Levi ackerman #Historia dad theory #Historia pregnancy #royal Ackerman connection #snk chapter 130 #snk theory #aot theory

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ghostofbambifanfiction · 6 years ago

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Hey Sarah! Another GOT question. Since episode 2 was so wonderful, which of our favorites do you think will be killed? Any time there was a heartfelt moment I immediately thought one of those characters wouldn't make it out of episode 3 alive. I feel like Jaime, Theon, Jorah, and Gendry won't survive. Mostly because the showrunners don't like to give us happy endings. What do you think?

Hi lovely!

Okay, so, the first thing to note is that I really don’t think that the showrunners like denying us happy endings. I think they’re working—more or less—towards the same ending that GRRM has planned, and I also believe that they love the characters. I think they really love the characters and want to do them justice, whatever that means for the individual. Sure, some of the deaths have been shocking and sad, but I’ve never seen a major character die with their arc still in progress. Every major death has served a purpose and made complete sense to me. So with that in mind, here are my theories on all four of the characters you’ve named. Let’s bullet point this mother!

Jaime: I honestly think he’s safe next episode because he still has an overarching plot with his family to resolve and I honestly can’t see the show letting him go without him at least telling Brienne that he loves her. The fact that Cersei has sent Bronn to kill Jaime and Tyrion seems like a guarantee to me that both Lannister boys are making it through the battle, because you know the show is going to touch back on that again.

Theon: Of the four characters you’ve named, I can see Theon dying in the battle because his arc could very well point him to an act of self-sacrifice in the service of the house that has been his truest family. I think the audience are going to feel cheated if at least one major character isn’t killed, and Theon dying—after all of the horrors he has endured and all of his growth and self-improvement—would fulfill the dual purpose of ending his arc in a fitting way and breaking the audience’s heart. I am hoping that he won’t die, but worried that he will.

Jorah: I could go either way on Jorah, honestly, but his growing bond with Sam and Sam’s clear discontent with Daenerys leads me to think that he has more still to come. He’s been largely away from Dany since season 4 for some reason or other, and he hasn’t truly seen what kind of person she’s turned into. I’m still 100% convinced that she is on a villainous path and that he could be the last person to defect from her. So I dunno. Jury’s out.

Gendry: A lot of the theories flying around about Gendry seem to be based on the common horror/thriller trope wherein two people have sex and one of them dies afterwards. Since Melisandre informed Arya in season 3 that they would meet again, yet she hasn’t shown up at Winterfell yet, I feel like that means Arya is safe. If we’re following the common trope, that would put Gendry in the firing line, but Game of Thrones has never been a show that conformed to common tropes. It subverts tropes. I think it’s trying to make us fear for Gendry, but I don’t actually think he’s going to die.

Some other things to consider re: Gendry (because anyone who knows me knows that Arya, Gendry and the Gendrya pairing are my top priority along with Sansa and Bran)

He’s the only Baratheon left in the world, and we were reminded of that in his most recent scene, which seems pointed, especially when you consider that…

Ned and Robert wanted to join their houses all the way back in season 1, but unfortunately, the son that Sansa was betrothed to obviously wasn’t a real Baratheon. Yet Robert’s proclamation was an assured one, it always seemed oddly prophetic to me.

The below shot of the two of them leaving King’s Landing on the wagon headed north, while a procession follows on foot, has always seemed to me like foreshadowing. Can’t you see them ruling the people of Storm’s End together? The show has used imagery to foreshadow before. In season 2, Tyrion and Shae lay on his bed in nearly the exact positions they were in when he killed her two seasons later. That’s just an example, but you get me.

The show spent two seasons building up a foundation to Gendry’s relationship with Arya before Melisandre took him away. Arya trusts him. She cares for him. She was in love with him way back when, and he clearly cares about her. When she took off her clothes in front of him, he was very concerned by her scars and, I dunno, that seems like…not nothing. It seems like a segue into a deeper examination of their relationship. He is clearly trying to get a handle of who she is now. Of all the relationships that Arya formed as a runaway over the years, her friendship with him was the healthiest and purest. The connection and affection she feels for him will, I believe, play a vital part in furthering Arya along on her journey to reclaim her humanity and her sense of peace, rather than continuing on this insanely damaging revenge mission. Their relationship has depths to explore, and I don’t think the show is going to throw that all away just to give us a sad death. If he did die, I feel like she’d go careening in the other direction, and as I’ve already stated, I feel like the showrunners and writers (and especially the Bryan Cogman) love her character too much to do her such a disservice, especially since this season and season 7 have gone such a way towards pulling her out of that darkness.

On Gendry’s part—because he has as much agency as Arya and he matters as a character outside of what he represents for her, I also think that Cersei could be his real mother. I’ve detailed as much in the article I wrote here which you can take a look at if you like. It saves me from explaining it now, haha.

Even if she isn’t his mother, I still think the fact that he’s Robert Baratheon’s only surviving child is important and that he has a role to play in the restoration of that house. He’s certainly a much better man than his father, and he’s been one of the smallfolk for long enough to care about them and ensure that they are well treated—and isn’t that the kind of liege lord the people need?

This answer was mostly about Gendry and Arya. If Tumblr mobile messes up the formatting (which it will) I will be pissed.

#Game of Thrones #Gendrya

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butshesnotalone · 6 years ago

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How D&D Could Have Improved Season Eight

I have DEFINITELY had my issues with season eight, but I still held onto the hope that the last two episodes would resolve the issues,conclude the story, and give characters the justice and endings they deserved... but here we are. I just recently found out that D&D were offered by HBO to make the final season ten episodes long. This makes me mad because I assumed the season was rushed and short due to a lack of budget. But apparently D&D thought they could finish everything in just six episodes. This is ridiculous and clearly didn’t work out. You can not successfully wrap up seven seasons and practically a whole decade of storytelling in six episodes. Also not all of season eight’s episodes are extended. To me it seems like they just wanted to get it finished and over with. It is like they lost interest in the show and were not as passionate about it as they once were. If this is true then this is greatly disrespectful to the fans, actors, GRRM, and everyone who is involved in making the show.

I believe that if D&D wanted the events of episode five to happen they could have successfully supported them if the season was longer. What I am saying is that episode five could be pulled off with the same conclusions and minor changes if only there were more episodes to build up plots and characters to support them.

For example:

Jamie Lannister could still die with Cersei but it could make sense. Hear me out. What I’m proposing is that when Jamie leaves there is a scene where he is on the Kings Road and somehow expresses his true intentions to kill Cersei. This would make us know that his arc was not for nothing and that he truly loved Brienne and had become honorable but didn’t tell her because he knew he would probably not come back to her. When he gets captured and talks to Tyrion they together plot to kill Cersei (and possibly inform Dany). Jamie is let go and goes to Cersei like he does, but with the intention to kill and not save. He could still have his fight with Euron but instead of being over Cersei it could just be Jamie beating that clown’s ass. When he gets there he realizes that they are going to die and it’s no use killing her so he dies with her. All they would have to do is change some narrative to show he reluctantly holds her and does not attempt to bring her down to the dungeons and save her. He could even insult her in their last moment and show the audience that he no longe loves her but is not willing to actively kill her. With more episodes Jamie’s arc and character development could be completed and yet he could still die a tragic and horribly unsatisfying death which would appease Jamie stans, Jamie haters, and fit in with Game of Throne’s signature style.

I personally am not a huge Jamie fan but I appreciate and admire his arc and think he has had some of the best character development in the show. If not for him raping Cersei next to their sons corpse, pushing Bran out of a window, attacking Ned, and sleeping with his sister then I could see myself liking this guy. Nonetheless throughout the show he was shown to have honor and grow to be a good person. I really felt that him and Brienne being together was the completion of his arc. But this is Game of Thrones and people do not get happy endings. With my proposed ending Jamie would still be shown to have changed and briefly gotten his happy ending. Also he would get an unsatisfying and horrible death which would be a plot twist and shocking but not destroy his character. We could know that Jamie died a good man who loved Brienne and had finally realized Cersei was toxic but ended up dying with her like he came into this world. This would make sense with the foreshadowing of how Jamie told Bronn he wanted to die but also go with Maggie the Frog’s prophecy because if Jamie did not attempt to rescue her he would in a way kill her (we all know prophecies are not straightforward or clear).

Also my second proposition and the biggest controversy in episode five: the Mad Queen. So I personally have seen signs of “madness” in Dany. There has been build up to her demise in the show, but not enough and not obvious enough. The show portrays Dany as a hero even after she is cruel and says things like “I will take what is mine with fire and blood I will take it.” There is lots of evidence to support her descent into darkness but there is not enough to show her mental breakdown. For many casual viewers or Dany stans it seems as if this all came out of nowhere which means the show was not written well enough. The scene at the feast was great in showing her isolation, the scene where Missandei is killed shows her anger, and the scene where she screams on her dragon is great foreshadowing. The problem is that this is just one episode of build up. If they had more episodes they really could have dived into this and expanded on how she feels. They could have shown more scenes of her feeling isolated, alone, and unloved. Her relationship with Jon cold have been better explored to show how controlling over him she had become and how he was afraid that she would hurt him, his family, or his people. They also could have shown how her anger was building and she would snap at people and speak of doing horrible things and making rash decisions. Then it would make sense that she murdered innocents. There just was not enough supporting evidence. Dany could still do the exact same things she does in episode five but with more build up and evidence it would be better supported and not leave many viewers confused why bells set her off to kill everyone.

I really wish D&D had agreed to make ten episodes instead on six. They could have really ended this story well and leave fans happy. They could have also escaped everyone saying they are bad writers. I could write more about his but honestly I do not have the time and I think I made my point.

#jamie lannister #brienne of tarth #jon snow #dany targaryen #mad queen #d&d #david benioff #d b weiss #game of thrones #cersei lannister #hbo got #hbo #grrm

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kob131 · 6 years ago

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https://caddeter.tumblr.com/post/182525513250/imagine-being-so-fucking-stupid-that-you-decide-to

Well now, let’s give this a REAL stress test huh?

Yeah, no shit they blocked you, all you’ve done is proven that you have an I.Q. score that needs to be represented by a letter to explain how stupid you act. Remember when you said this:

“ cept 90% of it isn’t criticism, criticism would actually be helpful, no its at the very best nitpicking to the extreme and then crucifying the show and creators who put a ton of work into making a great show over some inane bs.”

1. Considering that Volume 6 seems to have been made in response to most of the criticisms the RWDE tag has given, I’m guessing those criticisms were actually pretty darn easy to find and were actually quite helpful.

2. So it’s wrong for us to ‘crucifying the show and creators,’ but it’s okay for you to crucify us?

3. “put a ton of work into making a great show.” Dumbass, you don’t fight opinions with opinions, and great shows don’t tend to have:

Uninteresting characters

Underutilized plot threads and potential

Blatant plot holes and contradictions.

Every cliche in the book with no self awareness.

Years and years of queer-baiting.

Unsympathetic characters.

No clear reason for… Anything.

A plot that relies on its characters all being too incompetent to do their jobs, or even exist for that matter, in order to flow correctly.

Constant ass pulls.

Deus Ex Machinas

Over reliance on cliffhangers in order to keep its audience invested.

Villain Sues.

Mary Sues.

Marty Stues.

Blatant rip offs of everything more popular than itself. Not even references, just blatant rip offs.

Poor communication between the writers, animators, and soundtrack artists to the point where you wonder if they entered the same room at any point during production.

Writers who flat out admit they have terrible memory.

A good case for sexism.

Failure to deliver on almost everything they promised their audience

And no comprehension of how writing works at all.

Ad Hominin as an argument thus disregard.

Sorry but don’t you know? Everyone in the RWDE tag says they don’t listen to them so an improvement CAN’T be made in response to RWDE. Or, are you just just lying?

Considering you LOVE to bring up the dead and try to harass anyone into silence while saying people who haven’t done anything nearly as bad hould eb crucified:

Yes. By YOUR standards.

And finally:

Opinion

Only once so STILL an opinion

Opinion

Same thing as before

Opinion

Proof

Opinion

And Opinion

So out of 19 arguments you used opinions for 17 of them. Funny then huh? Almost like your standards are arbitrary and contradictory.

If RWBY had a ton of work put into it, we wouldn’t have a series of exposition dumps that contradict the episodes, we’d have a much clearer idea of when team RRNJ started their journey to Mistral and when it ended in relation to everything else, we’d have actual distinctions between Semblances, Dust, and magic, we wouldn’t have been making the complaint that Ruby felt like a non-entity in a show indirectly named after her for over five fucking years. Volume 5 spent over half it’s run time focusing on the main characters sitting around a house and talking, for fuck sake!

Cadder-

They have made distinctions between all three

You’ve been provided with proof to the contrary for years but ignored it.

And you like Red vs. Blue which did precisely for FIVE SEASONS.

You only made one fucking one point out of 23 so far. Pretty damn telling eh?

Oh and if making a complaint makes it valid, doesn’t that mean that OP’s compliant is automatically valid as well? Doesn’t that mean the THOUSANDS of complaints I have made are all automatically valid? And if not thus we must have a set standard: RWDE fails by any standard that is set. So, are you wrong...or are you wrong?

But even if you want to ignore all that, that’s why the RWDE tag exists! It exists so that you can blacklist the RWDE tag and more easily ignore it. What you’re doing is the equivalent of diving into a pool of piranhas and then complaining that you got bit.

And yet here you stand, eating food you hate for no reason and complaining about it. Maybe you should listen to yourself.

Here’s a thought: Maybe the people in the RWDE tag who stick with RWBY actually want to see a good version of it, and you don’t get that by flat out ignoring the bad. I mean, it’s not like they constantly say that or anything.

And it’s not like the creators are constantly say they work hard or that others constantly say they make great show. So, Cadder, what sets you above them? You know, aside from your narcissism?

Says the guy who can’t handle the idea that maybe people don’t like a show he does, and needs to go out of his way to insult them for no other reason. The RWDE tag was made so that people like you could avoid the crowd that didn’t like RWBY, but since you can’t handle that idea, fine: This is going in the main tag.

Says the guy who couldn’t take his own bullshit for a single second before screaming ad yelling like a petulant child.

And gee Cadder, didn’t you JUST say that RWDE sticks around because they DO like RWBY? Huh, was that a Freudian Slip I read?

And finally: Rooster Teeth makes plenty of other content and there are SO many others. RWBY was made for it’s audience and you could avoid it yourself.

But since you can’t handle that idea, fine. I’ll continue to attack you then.

No, you’re an idiot for ignoring what they’ve said, why RWDE was created, and for not following your own advice.

Gee, and yet you ignore what the creators have said, ignore why RWBY was created and ignore your own advice. But hey, takes one to know one right.

The RWDE tag complained about how nobody seemed to care that Oscar was being taken over by Ozpin, not even Oscar himself, and it cast Ozpin into a very negative light by making him akin to a parasite from a sci fi horror movie. Volume 6 showed that, yeah, the characters in-universe see that as fucked up, and they rightfully call Oz out on it.

Nope. Ozpin being in Oscar was barely brought up and in fact ignored.

So 0-1.

The RWDE tag complained that Jaune took away Ruby’s chance to talk about her struggles in Volume 4 and her big fight with Cinder in Volume 5, once again stealing the focus from her. One of the first things they did in Volume 6 was remove Jaune from the plot for a few episodes, and even when he came back, they focused more on Ruby.

Nope. Ruby talked about her struggles with Oscar in Volume 5 and you screamed at the creators for it while Ruby never re fought Cinder.

Her focus was said everywhere ELSE but RWDE so 0-2.

The RWDE tag complained that Ruby never took the chance in Volume 5 to ask Ozpin about her silver-eyes, instead seeking to learn hand-to-hand combat that was only important because they changed Mercury’s fighting style. Volume 6 introduced a new character who had silver eyes in the past and had her teach Ruby how to use her silver eyes.

Except that’s based on the idea of Ruby not taking control, not her Silver Eyes. Still doesn’t apply to what RWDE has said so 0-3.

The RWDE tag complained that, despite setting up and foreshadowing a big confrontation between Ruby and Cinder, Volume 5 did not have Cinder take the chance to attack or even indirectly hurt Ruby. Volume 6 almost immediately brought Cinder back, and rekindled her hatred on Ruby.

Except that that Cinder never lost it AND since Jaune did nothing else in the Volume, ignoring you was GOOD writing. So 0-4.

The RWDE tag complained that Ozpin was completely incompetent for volumes upon volumes by keeping his allies in the dark, making him a very untrustworthy individual. Volume 6 has him face some consequences for those actions.

Nope. Ozpin was never treated as incompetent nor showed he was gonna change. Other people said he should face consequence but by your own admission: you never did. So 0-5.

Let’s make that 1-28 to gather all the arguments into one spot.

I could go on.

Please do. I wanna see how far you’ll dig that hole before you realize it’s your grave.

There plan has been to wing it. They’ve already gone on record and said that Ruby’s development and focus was one of the things they wanted to fix with Volume 6.

Let’s add: ‘I don’t know how writing works’ to the list of reasons why you’ll never be listened for.

Because planning something it doesn’t mean every single detail is planned out. Every single writer knows this.

I said they made Volume 6 in response to the criticisms, I didn’t say they did it well. It can easily be argued they didn’t understand where the criticism was coming from, which given some things Miles has said about RWBY’s critics in the past, isn’t that wild of an assumption to make. Also, general consensus seems to be ‘it’s better than last Volume.’ And while that isn’t saying much, it still means its an improvement.

Not according to RWDE *cough* Damage Control *cough* The fight between Sokumotanaka and SSSN *cough*

Do you see the quotation marks, or are you just trying to put words in my mouth? Of course it’s wrong to attack the creators of a bad show, but the RWDE tag doesn’t do that! Attacking the creators of the show would be launching death threats their way. Attacking the creators of the show would be harassing them online through their social media accounts. Attacking the creators of the show is not making jokes at their expense. Nobody complains when we make jokes about Micheal Bay, nobody complains when we make jokes about M. Night Shamalan, nobody complains when we make jokes about Reki Kawahara; so why do you complain when we make jokes about Miles Luna?

You know-

Because when this exact same shit happens elsewhere, you call it attacking. When it happens with SU, you scream your heads off at SU crits despite them using ALL your arguments. So we’re just following your standards.’

Oh and no on digs up Micheal Bay’s dead friend to attack him with the corpse. That’s pretty fucked up. You wanna know who agrees with me? Your little inspiration, Doug Walker. When his character The Nostalgia Critic did that, he was treated as someone who made a serious fuck up ad felt remorse. You don’t act like or feel like that. So nice try.

The toxic part of the FNDM are the ones who barge into the RWDE tag and assert their views. The toxic part of the FNDM are the ones insult and belittle the critics of the show just because they found a flaw in their precious little cartoon. The toxic part of the FNDM are the people like you. The RWDE tag was created so that you could ignore us and we could ignore you, it’s the equivalence of a sign that reads ‘Do not enter! Radiation!’ When you ignore that sign, it’s your own damn fault.

And RWBY is the equivalent of ‘Don’t eat! Fish!’ When you eat fish and bitch about it, it’s your own damn fault.

Also: mind showing me where those people use your dead friends against you? ... No? Then you hold that title.

Oh, I do, you don’t. Criticism is when you voice your misgivings about a show, backing it up with examples, explanations, and facts, in the hopes that the people who make the show will see those criticisms and try to improve.

Except that if anyone treats a show you like in the same manner, suddenly it’s not criticism anymore and you default to MY definition. Sorry Cadder, can’t have both.

1. If you think the RWDE tag is terrible, than stop reading it.

2. Would you rather we complain about a show we don’t watch?

3. I did stop watching it, after Volume 3.

4. That doesn’t change the fact that the characters would still be uninteresting.

1. ‘Because we just want the RWDE tag to be good!’

2. You don’t watch it

3. So you have no idea what you’re saying. What a that about examples ad facts again?

4. Says the man who doesn’t watch the show.

Hey, remember back in Volume 3 when Penny mentioned to Ruby how she had a plan to stay with her at Beacon? No? Well, neither do the writers.

What about Yang’s PTSD arc, which they seemed to blaze through, and only ever give a passing mentioned to ‘Yeah, she still has PTSD?’

What about Weiss’s romance with Neptune, which came out of nowhere and promptly went back to it?

What about actually having Ozpin be a shady, morally grey individual casting which side of his conflict with Salem could be considered a ‘good’ guy, instead of just having him get sick and then pinning all the blame for everything that happened on Salem?

Or hell, what about any of the racism against Faunus, which only seems to exist at the most minor of levels most of the time?

1. Hmm, almost like it was a Red Herring. What was that about ‘not understanding writing’?

2. Showed, didn’t tell it. Just like RWDE always says.

3. You mean the character who only barely appeared in this previous Volume? Hm...

4. Hey didn’t you say you stopped watching the show? Well I guess that makes sense as Ozpin was never treated like that.

5. How would you know? You stopped watching the show. As it shows since Meagrie, Illa, Adam’s brand, the Fanaus being locked in cages in Ozpin’s flashback ect.

The Grimm are supposedly attracted to negative emotions, and this is even how they were able to determine where the White Fang were hiding outside the kingdom of Vale in Volume 2. Yet despite that, the White Fang weren’t being overrun with Grimm down in the tunnels.

What’s more, during the same volume, in the same location, the negative emotions brought on in Yang, Blake, and Weiss when Oobleck questioned their motives to becoming Huntresses didn’t attract any Grimm to the campsite. The Grimm were only every drawn to negative emotions when the plot called for it.

Even still, this raises the question of why the Grimm are attracted to negative emotions and why they only target humanity and its creations when they were created by the God of Darkness to be the general embodiment of death, meaning that they would go after everything that’s living.

The rules of Aura also tend to fluctuate in how it works and how powerful it is. In Volume 1, Pyrrha asked Jaune why he didn’t activate his Aura to protect himself during initiation, then in World of Remnant, it was stated that Aura passively protects its wielder, meaning Jaune shouldn’t have needed to activate it.

What about all the leaps in logic required for Cinder’s plan from Volume 1 to Volume 3 to work? Her plan required matches in the Vytal Tournament to end specific ways despite how even they looked, and the fact that JNPR vs. BRNZ only ended with team JNPR winning because BRNZ didn’t recognize an opportunity to attack. It required the Fall Maiden to not run away despite having every opportunity to and instead continue to fight Cinder. It also only failed because Salem never bothered to tell Cinder about her one weakness as a Fall Maiden so that Cinder could be defeated by Ruby’s Silver Eyes.

There’s also everything brought up here.

1. Proof they had negative emotions CONSTANTLY?

2. Except they’re all shown clearing out the Grimm around them so...

3. But Cadder! They do! After all, RWDE loves to cite how they ‘go after’ animals.

4. Hm, would have known that it works like a trained reflex if you watched the show.

5. Well, it’s not like Cinder jut needed a bad match up or is shown hacking the syste-Oh wait,,,,

Gee, three mystery people or one demigod? I would the demigod would think to win.

Hm, almost like CInder’s arrogance was a character flaw eh?

6. ‘Yes let me cite this source to a Tumblr blog, they totally wouldn’t lie right?’

To be fair, one could argue that Miles already knows how to fill these plot holes and just plans on doing it later. I’d counter that he has already stated that he has terrible memory and out of all of these questions, the only one that’s been answered is the Maiden’s connection with the Relics.

And I’d counter that you still blame Miles for Jaune even as Kerry has stated otherwise so you have a proven bias against him.

Hence the second half of that sentence: With no self awareness. It’s often stated that RWBY just uses those cliches as a jumping ground to later subvert them. It doesn’t. If anything, the longer RWBY’s gone on, it only becomes more cliche. And yeah, cliches aren’t a bad thing, when utilized correctly. But right now, we have a light vs. dark McGuffing hunt where our main character has this super awesome superpower that can defeat the bad guys fueled by love and friendship when our characters hardly interact with each other or build up their friendships. And this is done without an ounce of self-awareness or anything to make the premise more compelling.

Oh so? ... Oh wait, it;s just an opinion. And what was it you said? ‘Can’t fight an opinion with an opinion’? Funny how you forget..

If you view making a show like baking a cake, then most of these cliches are the sugar; and it doesn’t matter how much sugar you pour in, if you forget the baking soda, your cake isn’t going to rise.

And if you view RWDE as a bunch of flat earthers: Continuously saying something doesn’t make it true.

Xiaolin Showdown, another series that could be considered a McGuffing hunt, has more intrecate characters and multiple factions warring it out for the Shen-Gong-Wu, and more intricately crafted stories. It’s not just ‘Go to place, find thing.’ There are also often hurdles the characters need to face, be them external conflicts with the bad guys and the unique games they have to play for the Shen-Gong-Wu, or internal conflicts, such as spats with other characters or emotional conflicts.

Gotcha.

Oh that show where the usually useless sidekick character meant for comic relief ends up being the only person able to save the day in an episode only for this instance to never come up again? or what about the generically evil witch? Or the bumbling bad guy whose actually a huge threat in a future timeline? Or the Big Bad beings sealed away instead of being destroyed because plot? Or what about the leader being someone who has been at this for years and yet is treated just the same as the newcomers because ‘different viewpoints’? Or what about the elements being Fire,Water, Wind and Earth with Fire being high energy, Water being sagely, Wind being a hotshit and Earth being serious and bulky?

Funny how you forget all THOSE cliches.

Sorry Cadder, should probably choose something else. Xiaolin Showdown was one of my favorite shows growing up and I remember a lot of it clearly. And you’re not smart enough to be able to defend it like I can.

Well, I’m not seeing a counter argument, and the cases for queer-baiting are pretty self evident, just look at all the times they’ve made jokes about White Rose or Bumblebee in the show. It took them five years of empty promises and excuses to actually give us some LGBT representation, and it was the Psycho-Lesbian trope.

And Xiaolin Showdown made jokes about cliches-Welp, better go shit on that then Cadder. Now now, no one’s gonna get better if you don’t ignore how jokes poke fun at things.

Gee, not really an empty promise if it comes true eh? And oh my, the lesbian is a psycho but the straight guy whose an actual psycho you defend is A-Ok? Hm, sounds like someone’s biased...

Well, let’s see:

Jaune Arc: Cheats his way into Beacon and doesn’t do any of the work in order to actually become the hero he claims he wanted to be. When offered help, he gets mad and explodes at the person who offered it. Continuously tried to convince Weiss to go out with him and refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. When confronting Neptune, he treated her more as a prize to be won than an actual person. Was the only one to mourn Pyrrha’s death in Volume 4 and, because he couldn’t keep his emotions in check, got into a fight with Cinder in Volume 5, stealing Ruby’s big conflict with her and inadvertently getting Weiss impaled. Now, that all wouldn’t be too bad on its own, but he never faces any repercussions for it. Far from it, most of the time, he got rewarded in some way.

Ozpin manipulated our main characters into doing his bidding, brushed off Ironwood’s ideas and suggestions and continued to rely on his students who were still in training to get the job done. This never worked, yet he is continually presented as a wise mentor who knows what’s best. He also shows no concern for the 14-year-old boy he is slowly overtaking and assimilating. He lies to his allies, kept secrets from them, and from volumes 1 to 3, it felt like he was making a bad situation worse. He also needed to use an ultimatum in order to convince Pyrrha to become the Fall Maiden, giving her no other alternative than ‘Everyone dies.’

Qrow is a perverted alcoholic with no self control who destroys military property and humiliates Winter for no other reason than ‘why not’ and gets away with it. He shows no sympathy for Yang in Volume 3 after the Vytal Tournament incident, even calling her crazy when she explains what happened, and uses team RRNG as bait for Tyrian.

Weiss was a racist prick who never apologized for any of the things she said in Volume 1.

Sun stalked Blake all the way to Beacon and Managery, and seemingly can’t get away from his teammates fast enough.

Yang destroyed Junior’s bar in the yellow trailer because he didn’t give her the information he didn’t have and assaulted several men who were just trying to do their jobs, and even encouraged Jaune’s pursuit of Weiss.

Gee-

Not only is most of this lies (Jaune is treated as in the wrong most of the time, Ruby mourned Pyrrha in Volume 4, Jaune treating Weiss as a prize is your opinion as many others (especially women) disagree, Jaune was treated as in the wrong for exploding at Pyrrha and had to apologize, Ruby did a bunch of things in Vlolume 5 while Jaune did nothing.

Ozpin brushed him off because Ironwood DIRECTLY CAUSED the Fall Of Beacon due to his fuck ups, he’s succeeded far more times than fails, he has no choice where he reincarnates, He’s never shown DIRECTLY lying, he keeps giving Pyrrha outs, he was treated as in the wrong for keeping secrets, that’s an opinion and he had no otehr choice,

Qrow’ shown to be pervy in a joke (remember something similar happening in Xiaolin Showdown. Hmmm), he’s treated as in the wrong for that, he directly contradicts that and tries helping Yang and he didn’t know about Tyrian.

And yet you ignore her character development (despite someone in Xiaolin Showdown being responsible for resurrecting THE BAD GUY)

Not stalking

Yeah, criminals doing criminal shit! Oh and proof? No, RWBY chibi doesn’t count.)

But wouldn’t one say that these intentional flaws are there to make the characters INTERESTING? SO which is it? Interesting character or Sympathetic? Can’t choose both you showed they’re mutually exclusive in your eyes.

That’s… That’s not how stories work. For instance:

Instead of going to combat schools like Signal, like our main character Ruby did, Jaune instead cheated his way into Beacon to become the heroes his family was while putting in none of the work for it. He was also never told anything about the world around him, like Aura, Semblance, ect, when those things are incredibly common and there’s no reason to assume the rest of the world wouldn’t know about them. It’s not like Huntsmen and Huntresses are a secret.

Ozpin is implied to have accepted Ruby into Beacon because of her silver eyes, yet never thinks to train her with the damn things!

Despite wanting nothing to do with the feud between Ozpin and Salem, Raven steals the Spring Maiden’s powers and was fully intending to take the Relic of Knowledge until Yang pointed out how stupid that was.

Ironwood made a robot that is capable of generating Aura, yet instead of telling the populous or even Ozpin about this, he instead keeps it under wraps as he entered her into the Vytal Tournament, which one could argue was to test Penny’s abilities, but with the way it was presented, it felt more like he was trying to cheat.

And then there are all the humans working with Salem, despite seemingly getting nothing out of it. It’s even worse for Hazel, who’s sister was probably killed by a Grimm, yet he’s now working with the Grimm’s ruler.

So Cadder- How do you rewire the electrical system for a house? How do you repair a TV? How do you replace plumbing? Hm, you don’t know? Gee, it’s almost li8ke you have to *gasp* go to school for this!

And yet he says it’s because of her skill with the scythe. Hm, you reject both show AND tell....

Gee, not like that’s a character flaw stated to be in Raven-OH WAIT.

Gee, not like Ironwood is paranoid or somethi-OH WAIT,

Hmmm, not like *gasp* that could be elaborated on in the future! Or that hazel is DIRECTLY STATED to be a grieving mess who is shown to not be logical.

And even then, we don’t judge things based on what they could be. We don’t judge things based on what they claim to be. We don’t judge things based on what they’re going to be. We judge things based on what they are right now. Yeah, the reasons for this stuff could be explained later, it could also not be explained later.

So I’m just gonna go ahead and judge you based on your first word in each sentence.

Cinder Fall’s plan required absolutely no student from Haven to realize that they were never at that school. Nobody realizes that the girl who supposedly left with the injured student was still in the audience. Amber never thought to run away from her fight with Cinder, despite having clear chances to do so. Emerald used her illusion powers to steal mere trinkets and food, when it had the potential to turn her into one of the greatest thieves Remnant has ever known. It also required for Ozpin, who know she would be attacking, to not do anything about it like Ironwood suggested. I have an entire fanfiction pointing out how, if Beacon was a little smarter, Cinder would have failed a dozen times over, and very few of my scenarios have been dis-proven by recent information.

Proof that anyone WOULD ask about them?

Proof that Emerald didn’t hide herself?

Stated character flaw for Amber.

Emerald’s not amoral, she did what she had to for survival.

Not like Ironwood’s paranoid.

And you’re a proven liar, so why should we care?

The Maiden’s who didn’t exist until after Volume 2, Ruby’s silver eyes which were only brought up once, the relics that were never foreshadowed, most of Cinders plans, Raven being the Spring Maiden, shall I continue? I might as well not, the entire tag is filled with this stuff.

Not an asspull, that’s a deus ex machina, Ozpin’s vault, numerous Tumblr posts disagree since you think they’re valid. And please do, I love making you look like a corrupt fuckwad.

Ruby’s silver eyes at the end of Volume 3, the ships to Mistral at the end of Volume 4, the train that Oscar was able to take at the end of Volume 4, one could argue Penny at the end of Volume 1.

Everyone else said it first, basic logic says there should be patrols, INTERkingdom travel is locked down and Penny was foreshadowed.

No, most shows have each episode end with a sense of finality and complete the story each episode is telling. Avatar: The Last Airbender is known for its tight continuity, and I can only think of one cliffhanger from that series. RWBY, meanwhile, never feels like it’s finishing a single story for each season, and it feels more like the only way the writers will expect the FNDM to continue watching is if they never finish the story as opposed to actual investment.

Yeah...except Avatar tried pulling ‘the hero is totes dead ya guys!’ so it should be consider worse in your regard.

Cinder Fall from Volumes 1 to 3, see four paragraphs above.

You mean the woman whose been repeatedly insulted and shamed?

Pyrrha Nikos, arguable Ruby Rose, Cinder Fall again.

Dead, bullshit, shamed.

Jaune Arc, Qrow Branwen, Ozpin, Sun, through affiliation with Cinder - Mercury.

Characetr with the least respect

Open drunk

Purposefully flawed leader

Called out on his shit

Being Sub-servant.

Here’s a rather big one. What about the comparisons that can be drawn between the Grimm and the Titans from Attack on Titan? What about the school of adventure trope that has been done to death by the likes of Harry Potter and Soul Eater? How’s about the fact that you can draw more parallels between RWBY Volume 4 and Final Fantasy Advent Child than you could on a graph in an average math class? What about how the Maidens are pretty much the Avatar but quadrupled? Or how’s about the fact that Ozpin is a poor-man’s Dumbledore?

What about the Titans and teh demons from Berserk?

What about the hundreds of other works BEFORE Soul Eater and Harry Potter?

Proof and no, YHH’s doesn’t count.

Cept they don’t need training, their powers aren’t used by otehr characters and a fuckton of powers are like this

Except Dumbledore was never directly called out on his shit nor revived from the dead.

Gee, didn’t cliches meant rip off.

https://youtu.be/RccCIHwM5ow?t=1196

There’s also the fact that in Volume 4, puddles of mud were supposed to be regular puddles.

How’s about the entire BMBLB incident, where Miles had no knowledge of the existence of the song, and Jeff Williams claimed his songs had no meaning?

This stuff isn’t a secret, people have talked about this stuff extensively. How the fuck do I know more about the production of RWBY than a supposed fan?

Slicksickman who has an open grudge against Miles: disregarded

Proof.

They’ve always done that.

Except none of this fits your argument so....

There’s called plot holes, this is how you get them.

AKA ‘google my proof’

How’s about the fact that Yang runs into a situation to save Blake for Adam, and her reward is a chopped off arm, post-traumatic stress, and mockery from her father, where as Jaune rushes into a situation because he can’t keep his hate boner for Cinder in check, and Weiss gets impaled for it, only for him to unlock his semblance, heal her, and no one gives him any crap for what he just did? There’s a double whammy here, Weiss gets injured for something Jaune did, and Jaune doesn’t face consequences despite doing pretty much the same thing as Yang.

Except that Weiss being impaled IS Jaune’s punishment.

Taiyang made on joke (but yang openly insulting him? A-okay!)

Or hows about the above moment for Jaune, but when Salem goes through a series of responses so akin to the five stages of grieve I’d be more surprised if it was unintentional than if it was, and the narrator and by extension the writers try to paint her as a complete monster with absolutely no one blaming the gods?

Because Jaune didn’t try tricking immortal beings and he admitted to his flaws ad was treated as in the wrong?

Dumbass, the RWDE tag has more citations for this stuff than a Wikipedia article!

And your citations so far have been INVALID.

More like Conservation.

An action packed series that rarely had any action and for a whole volume had most of the main cast talking in circles as well as sitting in circles.

LGBT representation as promised by Monty Oum, only for it to take five years before we had so much as one confirmed homosexual.

A show that focuses on four girls that kick ass until Jaune walked on screen.

A monster hunter series where the monster hunting aspect hasn’t been relevant since Volume 1.

The show began with talking and was mostly talking.

Never said when.

Jaune’s relevance is TIED to one of the females

And I thought it was about four girls kicking ass.

I could say the entirety of the RWDE tag or just point to most of the points I’ve ready made, so I will!

*points to my blog*

Try again...

Well, as you loved to say: Citation Needed. Yeah, we make jokes at Miles’s expense, but then again, so did Nostalgia Critic about Micheal Bay and M. Night Shamalan, and Linkara about Frank Miller, Scott Ciencin, and Rob Liefeld. People rarely, if ever, get on their cases for it. Once again, there’s a difference between attacking a writer and making jokes about them.

Remember what i referenced before?

Nostalgia Critic using the dead:https://youtu.be/0EVOxDVSAfE?t=1949

You on using the dead: FUCK YOU, I KNEW MONTY BETTER THAN YOU YOU FUCKWADS! DO AS I SAY BECAUSE I KNEW MONTY FOR FIVE SECONDS!

The Nostalgia Critic earned my respect that day.

You and RWDE have earned my eternal ire.

Hey, I think I found a picture of you online:

Sorry everyone, Cadder accidentally posted a selfie.

1. All evidence to the contrary.

2. ‘Couldn’t’ You couldn’t give a shit if we liked the show or not. If you could give a shit about if we liked the show, that means you do care. I’m starting to notice a pattern, the people who love RWBY seemed to have failed their English classes.

1. You reject evidence so...

2. Says Mr. “ Managery “

1. Criticism is almost always a good thing, and seeing as to how Miles has at least attempted to improve his writing and address our criticisms, and that general condenses is that this Volume was better than the last, I think we very much are helping.

2. Why don’t you eat some film and put your talents as a projector to good use?

1. Except by your own statements, he didn’t.

And 2. Why don’t you use your talents as a sentient barrel of toxic waste to go pollute some wildlife. Only thing you’d ever be good at.

#cadder

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yupuffin · 7 years ago

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Deus Ex Machina in KADO: The Right Answer

One aspect audiences and critics commonly look for in good, respectable anime is logical consistency and realistic plot progression. As a result, deus ex machina (literally “god from the machine”), or an unrealistically sudden, yet convenient resolution to an obstacle or difficulty, is a device almost universally scorned as a sign of bad writing. Given that such coincidences should never occur in real life, this is understandable, even intuitive.

However, this doesn’t mean one should brush off each occurrence and drop the entire series the second a deus ex machina occurs -- especially not in KADO: The Right Answer, an anime that champions challenging the obvious and examining problems from different perspectives. With how short series are these days, it is often difficult to tell whether perceived flaws are due to bad writing, or are included intentionally to make a point. If you’ll bear with me for a few paragraphs, here I describe how deus ex machina is utilized in KADO not simply to nicely wrap up a severely truncated plot, but rather to warn against the real-life consequences of making assumptions and expecting convenient coincidences to solve your problems for you.

Of course, KADO spoilers abound under the cut, so be warned.

Even from the first foray into KADO, the audience can already expect deus ex machina to play a role in the plot, at least somewhat. Indeed, zaShunina’s arrival in the universe is the literal definition of deus ex machina, if you put forward that Yaha-kui zaShunina is a god-like being (even asked by Shindo at one point, “You’re a god, aren’t you?”) emerging from a giant, otherworldly structure that can loosely be described as an anisotropic machine. This “sets the scene,” so to speak, for the rest of the anime, outlining that, if such stunningly convenient occurrences as a being from another dimension bringing technology to solve humanity’s most pressing problems can happen, the unexpected should (to an extent) be expected.

Given that zaShunina’s appearance on Earth is the starting point for the series, though, fans are understandably able to gloss over this particular event. There are several other purported deus ex machina in KADO that are more glaringly decried as metaphorical patches to gaping plot holes, or unnecessarily coincidences evoked solely to confine KADO’s complex, thought-provoking plot within the limit of twelve episodes. The first of these is the “big reveal” at the end of the ninth episode that Saraka, previously thought to have simply been a talented negotiator, is actually another being from the anisotropic, just like zaShunina. I can safely say without exaggeration that the complaint that this development is not at all foreshadowed is universal. Hence, from a logical plot perspective, it makes no sense whatsoever. It is purely a convenience for our protagonist Shindo, who, without Saraka’s intervention, would have been killed on the spot, and an inconvenience for zaShunina, whose opinions on how humanity and the universe should be handled so aggressively contrast Saraka’s.

There are several extremely subtle hints to this development throughout the prior episodes of KADO; like any other thread of information being examined in the series, discovering them requires a meticulous rewatch of the entire anime up to this point. Perhaps the more noticeable of these are Saraka’s inherent skepticism of everything zaShunina says and does -- after you’ve already finished the series once, rewatching the “obligatory festival episode” and observing her unsuccessfully attempting to “one-up” zaShunina at every given opportunity gains a new element of humor -- which can be attributed to logical suspicion of his ostensibly generous actions, as well as to the idea that, given his conduct as an anisotropic being, she has more reason to suspect his true motives than any naive human. Additionally, for me and other viewers with whom I have discussed the series, Saraka’s red eyes were an instant signal from the moment of her introduction that something about her was different from the other human characters. Perhaps watchers will nonchalantly notice the last frame of the opening animation, as I did: a dark but colorfully silhouetted image of Saraka which looked, to me, for lack of a better description, unusually important, not to mention the fact that her voice actor performs the song accompanying the animation.

Most of these hints seem to point out that Saraka bears a separate, higher degree of importance from the other human characters, much as how Natsume quips in a later episode that an appropriate partner for Shindo would be “someone on a higher level.” A viewer with a careful eye for detail may notice, in addition, Saraka’s description to Shindo of natural history, particularly the evolution of life as we know it today. She speaks about the subject as though she experienced it herself -- which, as is supported by a lengthy scene showing anisotropic beings, depicted as a series of sparkling lights, experiencing the lifetimes of many different organisms over the course of prehistory, she absolutely did.

Few or none of these moments may be obvious to a first-time viewer of the series, and it can be said that the mere existence of foreshadowing does not fully justify a deus ex machina. However, if this occurrence is to be viewed as a flaw, one must then include zaShunina’s arrival in that definition as well. As a result, it can be said that deus ex machina, while possibly a flawed device, is simultaneously inherent and necessary for the series’ setting and events to begin with. Does this make KADO an inherently flawed or even “bad” series? Perhaps not. If you’ll allow me to address one more example of deus ex machina in KADO -- perhaps the one you’ve anticipated this whole time -- I will then go into the function of deus ex machina and why it is so integral to the message of the series.

It’s the last episode, and viewers are more or less on the edge of their seat, waiting for Shindo’s “surprise” to confound and finally defeat zaShunina, stopping short his efforts to remove all of humanity from the universe and forcibly take them to the anisotropic. And that surprise is... Yukika, Shindo’s and Saraka’s daughter, who has a deeper connection to the anisotropic, and hence a stronger ability to bend space and hyperspace, than even a pure anisotropic being. Spectacular Yukika whacks zaShunina around for a while to show off her anisotropic expertise before dealing the final blow, permanently sending him back to whence he came (or killing him, depending on your interpretation). Needless to say, Yukika is seen as the most glaringly obvious and unnecessary deus ex machina of the entire series, and the exact conditions of her appearance are a subject of much complaint and debate. I would argue, however, that Yukika is not as much of a drastic measure as she is made out to be. She certainly fulfills the “surprise” aspect of Shindo’s master plan, which was painstakingly pointed out as the key to its success -- as well as further outlined by Saraka, who describes the plan to zaShunina after he kills Shindo: first, zaShunina was made to believe that all of his opponents’ efforts had failed, necessitating Shindo’s death so that zaShunina fully drops his guard, maximizing his vulnerability to further attacks or stimuli; second, Yukika’s actual appearance, was intended to give zaShunina more information than he could ever process. (Watching zaShunina experience through perhaps five or more separate emotions in the same moment upon learning of Yukika’s origins should be sufficient evidence that this aspect of the plan was successful as well.) The meticulous details of Shindo’s plot aside, Yukika was arguably a reasonable conclusion Shindo and Saraka could have reached given the information and tools (hello, Nanomis-hein) they had access to, especially given their remarkable thinking and problem-solving abilities -- even if it’s not one the audience could have managed to figure out in such a truncated timespan as one episode of anime. (Perhaps viewers who have played Fire Emblem and experienced the mechanics of introducing characters who are descendants of others would be more familiar with Shindo and Saraka’s line of reasoning.)

That isn’t to say Yukika herself isn’t a deus ex machina -- it is that very shock aspect of her sudden appearance that allows her to fulfill her function in the plot, as well as for the concept of deus ex machina to fulfill its own function in KADO as a whole, which I will now finally describe.

In KADO, mere human characters are presented with problems on a scale grander than one they have ever imagined, and expected to solve them while minimizing permanent damage to their existence. As I alluded to earlier in this analysis, “drastic times call for drastic measures” may be seen as an appropriate phrase to describe the grandiose scale of events in this anime. Hence, deus ex machina is utilized intentionally in KADO to point out that the occurrences in the series are, in many aspects, not realistic: in real life, convenient solutions aren’t going to miraculously appear to solve every problem, particularly those solved so easily by zaShunina’s devices such as the wam and sansa, bestowed so conveniently upon humanity. The issues presented in KADO, some on a less cosmic scale and others not (again, those targeted by anisotropic technology), often make appearances in reality as well, and effort must be spent to improve them. This is a truth functional on multiple levels: for humanity as a whole, as well as for the individual. Road blocks will not magically be moved out of the way without some earnest and conscious effort to dissolve them. Mustering the courage to expend this effort is often the difficult first step, but many who have done so can attest to the fact that the effort is worth the outcome.

Thus, KADO is presented primarily as an opposition case: both as a precautionary “opposite of reality” situation, as well as a contrast to other moments within the series. For example, after finally realizing that getting his way by force, even if it meant making enemies out of his former friends, was ultimately the wrong decision in fulfilling his plan, he shows signs of making a self-directed effort to change (”[on the road to] somewhere else... You and I are the same, aren’t we, Shindo?” he muses under his breath). However, though many problems in KADO are miraculously solved, zaShunina’s mistakes don’t magically get fixed, and his change of heart is too late and in vain. From the beginning, zaShunina has been KADO’s mascot, designed with meticulous genius to evoke an overwhelmingly positive response from the audience. Hence, zaShunina’s downfall is the viewer’s final reminder to carefully examine situations from multiple angles, to constantly question even well-established truths, and finally, to expend the effort to change for the better in the face of wrongness.

On one last note, even if you all are allowed to complain about the events I have outlined thus far being deus ex machina, I don’t see anyone complaining about the fact that Kanata Shinawa can make a fully functional Wam out of mere paper. (No, but really, Shinawa is a lot more important and deserves a lot more appreciation than she initially seems.)

This analysis was slightly longer than my last piece on the meaning of meaninglessness, but I hope you enjoyed reading it regardless! While I still have many thoughts about KADO as a series, I’m not sure if or when I’ll be able to write another (hopefully) coherent, fully-fledged analysis post on any given concept. That being said, if you have any questions, ideas, or points that you’ve been considering that you just haven’t managed to wrap your head around, feel free to send them my way!

#seikaisuru kado #seikai suru kado #kado the right answer #kado: the right answer #anime analysis

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a-mist-in-the-trees · 8 years ago

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My Favorite Beauty and the Beast Things

Review: Beauty and the Beast (2017)

· Note: will update this once it comes out on DVD and I can add gifs.

· To start off, I genuinely think this is the best Disney remake yet, it keeps the heart and best moments of the original while improving the story, developing the characters even more and making it its own with a few new moments.

· It's always difficult adapting an originally animated feature into live-action, technicalities and such that are sometimes impossible since you can do literally anything in animation and it's rarely questioned. In addition, this is a fairy-tale, logic and reality isn't 100% there. So some random character tendencies are glossed over a bit. They really improved the overall story with filling in a few plot-holes, little details that wouldn't have made sense in a live-action version. They brought a good measurement of realism while still keeping the beloved enchantment of the original. Adam was given a little more a back story, as well as Belle, and brought alittle bit more weight of the impending curse by taking away everyone's humanity if all had failed.

· The opening was very orchestrated and well-narrated in explaining some of the plot holes away, but I still prefer the stain glass, it was so beautiful with David's gentle voice narrating. Although, it was nice actually seeing it play out. <3

· Audra McDonald is queen. Right next to Julie Andrews.

· The enchantress just barging in cause it's odd that a prince would answer his own door. A+ to Stephen Chbosky & Evan Spiliotopoulos.

· I loved how even in the beginning of the film, we don't see Adam's real face until the end with Belle, with all that rococo make up and such. Just beautiful details.

· The script was very well written, with its foreshadowing and subtleties especially.

· I didn't know about anyone besides a few cast members (Emma, Josh and Luke) so it was ever a surprise when I saw Stanley and Audra at the beginning and Ewan and Ian at the end. :)

· "....athletically inclined."

· I understand the criticism with Emma's voice being "auto tuned." I personally wouldn't say auto tuned, maybe a little too unnaturally polished but I would give her some slack. She's not a professional singer, it's just softer in comparison to Paige O'Hara's Broadway experience. I do think it was better than having another singer on top of her acting, although debatable as that is, I think that would've been less well-received than what she gave us.

"Busy?" "...No."

· "It is love we must hold onto / Never easy, but we try."

· I like the addition that Belle is an inventor, it really adds a good sweetness and endearment to her and Maurice's relationship and it doesn't overshadow her character as a whole. She still mostly loves books.

· The placement of belle and her father's house was a little odd though, just in the middle of the square like that, I'm sure Gaston wasn't the only one to step on her cabbages, accidentally of course.

· "...his little wife. UGH!"

· I loved the small addition of Maurice getting Belle a rose, that's a nice nod to the original version of the tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and it does come back around more logically when Belle takes Maurice's place in the dungeon.

· Even the wolves felt more like their own characters, I really love the theory that they are the castle guards.

· Oh my gosh, the castle was so ridiculously rococo, I couldn't stand it! <3

· "Forget you? Everything I am is because of you."

· Emma's Belle was very well-done. In her acting, she brought a bold confidence to Belle. She's a lot more assertive in her actions and of course, headstrong, in addition to Belle's kindness and bravery that we all know and love.

· I was very surprised how Belle replacing her father in the dungeon scene was written, it was very different but I won't say better and I'll explain why. I liked how different they were, again partially separating itself from the original but still paying tribute to it. LA: Belle is more physical in her sacrifice, pushing Maurice out of the cell whereas A: Belle was more decisive and made a deal and gave her word that she wouldn't leave. That took a lot of courage and I'm not preferring one over the other because that's impossible, just acknowledging how different the two are even while they're the same character. I guess, I relate more to A: Belle's decision making where LA: Belle's quick-witted actions I look up to. Because of how that scene was orchestrated, it also bleeds into the differences of LA: Belle beating Lumiere with a stool and devising a plan to escape as soon as she got to her room and A: Belle making a deal and being given a tour by the beast on the way to her room as sad as she is. I feel like the original made more sense in that regard, but that's just me.

· Love how Belle asks him to come into the light and he doesn't so she brings the light to him.

· "Forever can spare a minute."

· I loved that the feather duster was also an enchanted flying bird, that was a beautiful and elegantly magical surprise.

· The effects of the magic mirror were a little too small which made it look weird to me.

· I felt that Be Our Guest was a little too focused on Lumiere and explosive with him flipping and dabbing everywhere (yeah, I caught that), just not as colorful as the original, but I do understand with how much detail they put into the set and costume design that an exact replica might've been too expensive to animate, which fits since it's not meant to be a carbon copy of the original anyway. · As much as I would've loved to see Human Again in the live action version, Days in the Sun was incredible. Plus that would be a lot of enchanted objects to render.

· "Days in the sun / Where my life had barely begun / Will I have leave you?"

"How in the midst of all this sorrow / Can so much hope and love endure."

· "I can feel a change in me. I'm stronger now, but still not free."

· All the little subtleties really made this remake shine.

· I was a little disappointed that the "Gaston trio" all looked the same and didn't have their different colored dresses but never mind... ;) and the girls do have their own individual patterns in you look close enough.

· I was surprised that Gaston actually went with Maurice to see about the beast, he did start off as an okay guy...but then he ties him up...

· "You need to help me. You need to stand."

· "...Okay, I'm older."

· The addition of the enchanted book was interesting, but aside from helping with belle's back-story more, felt a little unnecessary or just one too many magical items given by the enchantress. (She really wanted to torture the beast, didn't she?) But I do like that it was a nod to the Enchanted Christmas sequel where Belle gives Beast a book. :3 I still love the song Stories so much and the animation!!!

· "These were the borders of my life / In this crumbling, dusty attic / Where an artist loved his wife / Easy to remember, harder to move on / Knowing the Paris of my childhood is gone."

· "Let's go home." ...and then he just melts. :3

· I never thought the addition of the back-story for Belle's mother and how Beast acts (his mother as well) would affect the tale so beautifully. It never crossed my mind how much of a deeper connection that would establish for the two of them until that scene with the book came on screen. Just beautiful writing, I can't say anymore without crying. (Trust me, I've cried enough over the perfection of this movie already.)

· One of my favorite scenes: The Beast and Belle eating dinner and reading their books together at the table like they're already married. Just...happy sigh. :3

· Chip is adorable, I liked that they gave him an older voice.

· Josh Gad was brilliant as always.

· Luke Evan's Gaston was well executed and just not in looks. (Points to Lucy Bevan for casting!) I liked that they gave him alittle more depth as well, with being in the war and a little more cruel than in the original, again bringing more realism and makes him more grounded as a true villain..or just a monster as Belle said.

· They even made Lefou a more prominent character than just the villain's sidekick I love it so much! He had such a redemption arc and realized HE can do better than Gaston. ;-)

· "There's a beast running wild, there's no question / But I fear the wrong monster's released." I like this too much. Chills.

· "We don't like what we don't understand / In fact, it scares us / And this monster is mysterious at least." Wow.

· Belle and Adam's relationship was well fleshed out more. They have such adorable banter! It was brilliance. I loved how they related to each other through books. It creates a better basis for their relationship. Even though I also love how belle taught beast how to read, they're just two different types of relationships. Good relationships, but different.

· He just gives Belle an entire library because he doesn't like her taste in books! Like oh my gosh, Adam... you beast.....wait.

· As much as I loved the library scene in the LA version, I can't get over how sweet the original is, just look at how happy the beast is because she's happy! :3

· The emphasis on the Beast's very expense education and him being widely read does well in this version making him relate easier to belle and makes more sense in general I guess but I would argue for the sake of the original, which does have the 10 years stamp on it, that the Beast even said himself in Human Again that it's been so long since he's last read anything. If the last time he did read was when he was still human at 10-11 with how much of a despair and depression he fell into after being cursed, I would say it's understandable and it helps him and Belle form a connection with her patiently teaching him. How to read and fall in love.

· "I never thanked you for saving my life." I love this line cause of how much it can have a double meaning.

· "I saw her in the ballroom and said we should have a dance tonight, I'd never imagined she'd say yes!" HAHA! AWWW!!! :333333

· I see nothing wrong with the dress, it was beautiful. It flowed very nicely and I loved in the scene, the animation of the golden flecks being added to the hem. That ear cuff was dope too.

· As much as I love you Emma Thompson, I'm sorry but you don't hold a candle to Angela Lansbury. But you still did very nicely. :)

· "Can anyone be happy if they aren't free?"

· One thing that bothered me a bit was how it seemed they made Belle feel so bad whenever she tried to leave the castle, even towards the end with her father. Like, really? That never felt like an issue in the original.

· All of Evermore. Thank you Alan Menken, and Dan Stevens.

· "Waiting here, fore evermore..." and the long zoom out with the last shot being Belle riding away still in her dress and then sudden black and the ORCESTRA! :D So perfect.

· “I set her free. I’m sorry I couldn’t do the same for all of you.”

· WHY DID MISS POTTS TAKE AWAY THE BEAST LINE AT THE END!!! IT WAS SO POWERFUL, EVEN IF WE ALREADY KNOW HE WAS SUPPOSED TO SAY "BECAUSE I LOVE HER", UGHHHH!!

· I prefer Gaston using a knife instead of a gun when fighting Beast, the stab was more imitate. Also, three gun shots, geez!

· The ending was a little off to me. I kept waiting for Belle is say I love you and then the last petal fell and everyone froze but the enchantress just waltz in and is like "I'll just fix everything now." Like, what?! I thought they were going to pull an evil frozon-hans card and just leave it there but whatever. I don't know...maybe I'm ruminate over it a little more but that's just how I feel about it at the moment.

· [From: destielydia.tumblr.com: You know what I LOVE about the transformation scene? Adam waits for Belle to come to him. He just stays where he stands, he stays still because he doesn’t want to scare her. She is the one who takes the first step because he still gives her a chance to go away. That’s how much he respects and loves her. But you can see everything in his eyes - how much he wants to finally touch her gently with his real human hands, finally, and not to be worried about hurting Belle. His eyes have some true excitement in them and love and I’m crying I love Adam and Belle."]

I love this as well, it’s a wonderful parallel to the dance scene when Belle offers her hands to him and lets him come to her.

· I think Emma did wonderfully originating her role as Belle. Paige O'Hara and Susan Egan gave their blessings so if you didn't like her, go enjoy the original animated feature.

· Ewan, you stole my heart at Moulin Rouge! So you were golden..or is he brass?

· "How would you feel about growing a beard?"

· Oh my, that growl...I can just imagine how many dirty fanfiction is written based on that moment.

· The addition of the new songs were wonderful. :)

· The costume and set design was just magnificent and so beautifully detailed, I have no other words.

· Also I'd like to point out how wonderful it is there are two interracial couples in this movie with at least three more movies featuring them coming out this year. Yay.

· Why is no one talking about Belle's wedding dress at the end though?! It's so beautifully and simply white with all the freakin' roses on it!!?!!?!!?!

· As for a note on the gay moment at the end, I am so happy that all I saw previewed for this before seeing it in theaters was the teaser trailer cause they blew it way out of proportion. I mean, it's pretty obvious that LeFou is gay right from the beginning, the Stanley moment was cute and funny and then the literal 3-second moment that brought them together was cute. That's all I have to say.

· Personally, some of the minor continuity errors that people analyzed from the original, I didn't give a whole lot of attention to because it's simply a fairy tale. (how belle lifted the beast onto her house after being attacked, why the villagers didn't know they have a cursed prince, the Eiffel Tower, etc.) That's almost like saying, "oh, why is Tarzan riding a high wheeler in the jungle? That's so impractical!" It's just a form of imagery for the scene but I digress and in spite of that, the corrections really improved the characters and helped form a complete story.

· I love how they brought Celine Dion back to sing an end credits song, it's so nice. :)

· Even the end credits are stunning!

I just really hope they reconsider not keeping the songs in the Mulan remake. Even if, as Chris Weitz said [http://www.hypable.com/disney-cutting-songs/], it is easier to do animated musical Disney movies, the new Beauty and the Beast proved that you can do it and do it well. Which is more than I can say for the Cinderella remake they did in 2015. The casting was spot on but if you take away what made the original the classic that it is, it won't be received kindly.

#beauty and the beast #2017

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baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa · 8 years ago

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ALRIGHTY it’s review time! I’ve finally finished RTTE Season 4 and MAN was I pleased. A vast improvement from the last two, much closer to the first season in quality and good enough that I think it could edge towards canon. From what I’ve seen from the fandom, there’s still a lot of controversy-- some people loved it and some still hated it. I have SO MUCH I could say about it, especially since a lot of the plot lines are continued from season 3 (which I did not finish, due to extreme annoyance and disappointment), but this will already be a long post with me condensing my thoughts. I tried narrowing it down to some of my favorite parts and some of my least favorite parts, but all in all, it was a fantastic season. If this is what the writing team can do, consider my expectations raised. So without further ado:

Cat’s Top 5 Best and Worst of RTTE S4

Best of the best

5. While the overall quality of the season was amped up, there were a few small shining stars that definitely excited me. The first is Ruffnut... who finally seems to be rounding out as a character! We get a lot of comedy relief from the twins and chicken, and this season was no different. Macey’s viking funeral cracked me up. But what I loved most was the way the twins seemed to grow. Especially Ruffnut. We get to see her trusting her intuition in Gruff Around the Edges, recognizing that her brother had been misplaced before anyone else. We get to learn from her interaction with Gruffnut that she values humility and honesty. And then later, in Twintuition, it’s Ruffnut that urges her twin to prioritize the dragon riders over Macey. It’s Ruffnut that humorously and bravely stands up to Viggo in his interrogation. They’re small steps for the twins, especially Ruff, but I think this season has been more characterization than any season so far.

4. My next favorite part was a little bit of a selfish, fangirlish kind of pleasure. We got to see Hiccup in tight black leather. I almost didn’t include this in my faves because it’s such a ridiculous little thing, but it made my heart do a pitter patter. Why? Because we’ve never seen Hiccup in black leather, but how much have we as a fandom loved to read and write about Hiccup in black leather? I can think of a few fics off the top of my head, including my own Sacrifice AU. There’s just something so dark and mature about putting Hiccup in black-- it takes him from our scrawny noodle cinnamon roll to a mysterious, vigilante sinnamon roll. It allows the imagination to play with ideas that we as a fandom (and, selfishly, me as a writer) never expected to get to see on screen. It’s not something I thought we’d get from our Y-7 show. And it’s not just the leather, it’s his demeanor sometimes. The tension and angst, the occasional ruthlessness, the table flipping, my goodness! Our baby Hiccup is growing from a noodley family-friendly dork to an actual young man with emotions that aren’t watered down by the PG rating. I didn’t think all of his outbursts were 100% in character, but at least for the most part, we’re getting some characterization that fits the tone of the first and second movies.

3. The last three of my five faves were-- I’m sure expectedly-- related to the Hiccstrid. Gods alive, it’s about time, right? For a couple of years now we’ve been impatiently waiting for the romantic development. Not just as squealing shippers who love a good romance, but as fans who respect the timeline of the canon movies. After season three, I’d started to give up hope, but S4 brought it back for me. I could do a whole post alone about the Hiccstrid, but for now I’ll mention my #3. I loved the riders’ reactions to the couple. Was it realistic that Fishlegs caught them kissing and thought-- strategy meeting? No. Was it goofy that the twins thought either Astrid and Hiccup were dying? Of course. And was Snotlout’s gambling theory totally out there? By Thor, yes. But I loved every minute of it. I loved the silliness, the obliviousness. My boyfriend and I died laughing at the twelve-step program line, and at every comment Tuffnut made about Hiccup’s frailness. It was light, it was fun, and I think it was super appropriate for the series. In my headcanon, I’ll probably keep a more mature take on it, but I think using a comedic approach was the best way for the writers to handle it.

4. I loved Blindsided. Which is where, I think, most of the fandom divides. You either adored it or you hated it. I have just one thing I didn’t like about it-- I thought it wrapped up too quickly. Other than that, I thought it was one of the strongest episodes for Astrid’s characterization in the whole series. Like Ruffnut, she kind of gets shafted so far as real plot focus goes. She’s too often shoved in the boiling cauldron in a volcano with Throk, too often the damsel in distress. Always falling off of something, always nearly getting hit by something. This episode was the first time that I didn’t roll my eyes and say, “Here we go again.” Because it didn’t just toss in a knight in shining armor moment for Hiccup. We saw Astrid lose her edge, her confidence, and then spit her self-consciousness in the face. My absolute favorite part of the season, even more than the kisses, was when Astrid jumps into combat with the Triple Strike and Hiccup sighs, “Of course she’s not going to hide. What was I thinking? She’s Astrid.”

The whole episode was just unapologetically her. It had her stubbornness, her wittiness, her relationship with Stormfly. We saw her be vulnerable without being a damsel, saw her take on danger despite a disadvantage. And we got a situation where Hiccup and Astrid were forced into close but casual physical proximity. Not just the “oops I fell on top of you” trope, but Hiccup guiding Astrid, her reaching for him. Why is that important? Because for the RTTE hiccstrid that they wrote, the two are very teenagery. Can’t be close or touching, because omg we’re just friends. But this kind of put them into a situation where I think they could subconsciously recognize how natural and comforting each other’s touch is. We see hand-holding, close contact, Hiccup sitting by her bedside (”until she falls asleep”, wink wink), and Astrid holding tight to him during flight. The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that the hiccstrid was rushed, but I think this episode is the biggest evidence that it isn’t (comparatively speaking). We get a few nods of hiccstrid in the first few episodes, but once Blindsided happens, it’s all bets are off. They realize how easy it is, how heart-pounding and real their relationship has become. That there will always be a Hiccup and Astrid. It’s not just a childhood flirtation anymore, it’s a bond that’s been long forming. And I think her blindness in this episode did a great job of showing her off as a warrior, but it also did a lot to connect the bridge from friends to more-than.

5. The one thing I did have an issue with, hiccstrid wise, was all the random setup the writers did in the last couple of episodes. What they were trying to do was position everything for Viggo to make Hiccup choose between Astrid and his passion for the dragons. But we had Hiccup and Astrid say, “Sorry I got so worked up” and “I just can’t focus when you’re in trouble”, but we never actually saw them getting worked up or losing focus because of the other being in danger. I thought that was weird and a little poorly executed. BUT while I didn’t like how it was set up, and while I thought that it was cheesy that once again Astrid was captured by the villain, I loved the way Viggo mentioned the future. I think his exact words were, “Are you really going to sacrifice your future-- all the wonderful years you have ahead of you-- for that?”

I mean, holy crap! Do you get any better foreshadowing from a group of writers? The villain calls Astrid his future, and Hiccup doesn’t blink twice. He doesn’t amend the statement, or go off on a tangent about protecting the dragons. That said, how did Viggo know what was going on with Hiccup and Astrid when the gang hardly did? But whatever, I thought it was a very poignant way of confirming that this is the same couple from the sequel that are clearly headed for marriage and a forever kind of love. They didn’t pansy dance around it or treat it like the new relationship that it-- at a glance-- is. They knew that hiccstrid saw each other as end game and they treated it as such.

And the worst...

1. Season four wasn’t without its flaws. There were a couple of spots where the writing was a little rushed, a couple where it was a little lazy. But as opposed to the past couple of seasons, which had one or two good episodes in a sea of awful, this season just had a few episodes that fell flat for me. One of those was Notlout. Question: How many times have we seen Spitelout be a jerk to his son? A thousand. How many times have we seen Snotlout react by being bullheaded and reckless? A thousand. I felt like Notlout was just this season’s reiteration of the same typical Snotlout-centric episode that they do almost every go around. Spitelout says something nigh treasonous, Snoutlout gets insecure, the gang and their missions are thrown into shambles because of his need to lead, and in the end he realizes that the team does value him after all. We get it. It wasn’t a bad episode or anything, but it’s so repetitive and unnecessary at this point. Would have much rather seen more of the twins or Berk.

2. Episode two that I really disliked-- The Longest Day. I thought it was silly. Apparently this week or whatever of sunlight is not unusual for Berk, so why was everyone so rattled and unsure of how to behave? Why did everyone just decide to stay up for 24, 48, 96 hours instead of boarding up windows and sleeping? That’s what people who actually live so close to the north pole do. And why on Thor’s flat earth would Hiccup send the riders home to “do something easy” and wash their dragons instead of getting some sleep in the first place? If you’re going to take a cultural event like the sunny and dark seasons of the north as inspiration, actually let your fictional nation utilize realistic means of coping. It was ridiculous and completely blown out of proportion. Frankly just bad. Sleeplessness causes silliness and moodiness and clumsiness, yes, but the extremes they took it to was really a mockery of the characters, in my opinion. It wasn’t funny, it was badly written. Did not enjoy it at all.

3. That was actually not my least favorite episode, though. The one that had me scowling at the screen and rolling my eyes and sighing with exasperation was Out of the Frying Pan. Could there be anything worse than dumbed down plot and terrible resolution? I’ll just make a list of things that were absurd. Hiccup and Fishlegs being stunned that they don’t think exactly the same. An uneccessarily difficult goal-line of a mysterious hatching ground in the middle of a volcano. The Eruptodon not being able to fly the egg to the mysterious hatching ground even though it’s been able to do so for a millennia of generations. HIccup, dragon master, thinking a NIght Fury was better suited for a lava-filled volcano. The fact that once he tried and failed, their first thought wasn’t immediately oh let’s try Fishlegs’ way. The necessity of Hiccup going with Legs and Mala into the volcano. The impatience of Throk and Astrid, which led to the idiotic idea of swinging a GIANT METAL CAULDRON over an active volcano with-- what-- a rope? Mala being so freaking one track minded, instead of humanizing her with some doubt or fear. The giant metal bowl tarzanning across the volcano. The damsel in distress moment where Astrid is fainting from the heat. Have I mentioned the giant cauldron in the lava??? LITERALLY nothing special about the lava in the hatching chamber. They could have chucked the damn egg into the lava pit and it would have been just fine. So many plot holes, so much lazy writing, such poor characterization. I was incredibly worried that the season had just taken a page out of season 3′s book. The only redeeming moment of the episode was where the mama Eruptodon was magically revived by some dank herbs from Throk.

4. The only real failure I found in the over-arcing plot lines (not the individual plot lines of each episode) was just how quickly the whole Viggo and Ryker thing was wrapped up. For such an adversary, they were disposed of a little casually. Ryker I guess was eaten by the whirlpool of lunch. Even though he and his crew have been shipwrecked a dozen times over the series and always seem to magically make it out alive. And then Viggo is expected to be this big mental combatant, but suddenly he’s chucked into a weird basement hole (instead of killed by his supposedly brutal brother?) and we have this back and forth of will he betray us? maybe not? oh yeah, he’s definitely backstabbing us? Nevermind haha he’s chucking a knife into the ocean. If we hadn’t had such a tease with whether or not Viggo was on the dragon riders’ side, it would have had much more of an impact when he actually did take Astrid hostage and demand the dragon eye. They set up the betrayal between the brothers well, with various scathing comments from Viggo in the approaching episodes, but the whole thing was a little confusing and rushed. In the end, Viggo falls into the volcano (at least he didn’t jump into a cast iron fishbowl), and we’re led to assume that he’s doneso. Maybe he lived? Maybe not? I think they were trying to be poetic with him jumping after the dragon eye, but it just came off a little poorly executed.

5. And that brings me to my last point. I needed more episodes! This season took me back to the first. It was exciting and fun, but there was also real emotion from the characters and real peeks into how they operate. We got the group using teamwork, Hiccup becoming a leader, the politics and dangers of dragon poaching, and a few hilarious moments in between. Like I said, there are a few weak points to the season, but it was a much stronger and much more satisfying set of episodes. We got to see a lot more realness from the teens, and finally finally some Hiccstrid that could be considered canon (if you squint at their ages). Even the Dagur and Heather side story didn’t annoy me (Why? Because they weren’t flat mary sues with traumatic backstories blah blah blah), which says a lot. Over all, this season did what it was supposed to-- it amused me, got me invested, and made me hungry for more. It made me impatient for season five, which is such a different emotion than what I was feeling at the end of season three. Now I’m sucked back in and all I can do is wait with bated breath.

#httyd #rtte #rtte spoilers #race to the edge #race to the edge spoilers #cat rants #gosh i miss talking about these doofuses

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phoenixyfriend · 8 years ago

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andfullofterrors “Why are the longest reviews I get the ones that are bigoted asshats? ...”

(honest request for help understanding) I....don't get the point of wanting long reviews? I prefer 'this was great i loved it!' over a discourse on my fic. Can you maybe explain it to me because I'm still so confused and the want for long reviews has never made sense.

I think this might be a misunderstanding? Or maybe you’ve just had a bad experience with long reviews?

I’m not asking for discourse, though analysis is pretty nice sometimes. I would hate to get the kind of reviews that @tozettewrites used to get on HtGR, for instance. But long reviews doesn’t necessarily mean discourse.

In my case, I’ve been writing fanfiction for... eight, maybe nine years now? There was a gap in there somewhere early on, but I’ve been writing pretty regularly for the past six years or so.

I’ve gotten jaded, so I’ll start off with why short comments bother me.

“This was great, I loved it!” is nice in that it reminds me that people still enjoy the fic, but it... doesn’t really tell me anything beyond that? It’s better than kudos, which are better than just a follow/favorite, but it’s... it feels rote.

I have literally had people copy-paste the exact same comment on twenty or thirty consecutive chapters of a fic (I ended up blocking this person). It gets tiresome, and after a while, even the non-copy-pasted ones start to feel disingenuous.

Because nobody tells me why they liked it.

“I liked this chapter” is fine, but I’d much prefer “I liked this chapter because X.”

Here’s some examples of things that I personally try to add when I review, in their shortest and most generic form:

“I really liked how you handled the characterization for this person. They seem like a really difficult archetype to work with.”

“I enjoyed the plot progression in this chapter; it really fit with the foreshadowing you’ve been tossing around recently.”

“I love the way you developed the relationship between these characters. It’s not like canon, but the slow, complicated development really works for both the characters and your writing style.”

“I haven’t seen this trope used with this fandom before, but I really like what you’ve done with it.”

It takes a bit more effort, but for me (and many other writers) it means exponentially more to be told why a person enjoys something than just being told that they enjoyed it. Long reviews, especially ones that basically liveblog their experience of the chapter, make my day.

I’ve been told that fics I’ve written have helped people understand and love characters and ships that they hated before. If that doesn’t warm the cockles of a writer’s heart, I don’t know what will.

The other reason I like long reviews is that they help me improve as a writer. If I’m really proud of a scene that I wrote, and nobody mentions it despite talking about other scenes, then I know I did something wrong. If I see that people focus on a throwaway line at the expense of plot-relevant events, then I know I need to handle it differently in the future. And if people tell me that they enjoyed something in particular, then it helps me understand what my strengths as a writer are.

I should probably also mention that long reviews are more likely to open up a dialogue with the reader/writer, since there’s something there to actually respond to.

Though a short review is still better than no review.

If there are other authors that would like to add their own experience on this front, then please feel free to add on.

#reviewing #reviews

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Persona 5 Royal review – both better and worse than the original • Eurogamer.net

It’s a great intro: protagonist Joker darting along the casino roof, quick like a shadow. Making fast work of a handful of enemies while leaving others in the dust, his black coat swishing behind him. The excited voices of his team mates over the intercom as he’s almost reached his goal, but then! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! He’s surrounded!

Persona 5 Royal review

Developer: Atlus/P Studio

Publisher: Atlus/Sega

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out now on PS4

The first sequence of Persona 5 Royal acts as foreshadowing and tutorial all wrapped up in one, showing you everything you will regularly be doing in each dungeon you crawl through – jumping between platforms and squeezing through ducts to find a way forward, hiding away from enemies or ambushing them when they’re not looking. Most importantly, in round-based combat you unleash Persona, manifestations of parts of Joker’s psyche who can use different elemental attacks, healing spells and stat buffs. Persona 5 Royal also adds a grappling hook to your arsenal, which you’ll mostly use to find shortcuts and additional treasure.

Joker and his friends, regular students at Shujin Academy in Tokyo, one day stumble into the Metaverse, a parallel reality that manifests Palaces where people live out their worst desires. There’s also Mementos, a sprawling maze of randomly generated dungeons. The group of high schoolers enter these palaces to steal people’s treasures, causing them to let go of harmful desires and confess their crimes.

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Persona 5 Royal brands itself as the definitive version of the game, and introduces an extensive list of improvements – if you’ve played Persona 5 before, you’ll definitely notice how P-Studio worked to fix a few common gripes. New items help in combat, such as talismans that buff several stats at once, more food and drink that replenishes SP and many new accessories, among them rings you can put on your team members so they can use spells they normally don’t have access to.

You can form bonds with two new characters, first-year gymnast Kasumi Yoshizawa and school counsellor Takuto Maruki. Scenes with both are sprinkled in throughout the main story, while an all-new storyline after the main game focuses completely on them. New bonds mean there’s new Persona to catch and new abilities to gain from becoming friends, too.

Speaking of abilities – Persona 5 Royal introduces a really cool new special attack that unlocks as the story progresses. Called Showtime, it’s a powerful attack that unlocks when an enemy is almost finished or you’re really struggling. Two friends in your group will pair off and start a short, eye-popping sequence that briefly takes you elsewhere. They’re really difficult to describe if you haven’t seen them – Haru and Makoto for example start a WWE Smackdown double attack, and Ryuji and Yusuke start a saloon shootout when the enemy rudely interrupts Yusuke feeding Ryuji some ginger-laden donburi. It’ll all make some kind of distant sense when you see it, I promise.

The improvements aren’t all combat-focused, either. Thanks to a wealth of additional options, you’ll find it easier to raise your social stats, and if you time things right it will now only take you a single playthrough to max out every confidant. To justify adding even more content to an already meaty game, the palaces are now shorter, mostly because the layout of each has been streamlined to include fewer rooms, and some puzzles have also been shortened. Notably, you can now collect Will Seeds in each dungeon, manifestations of a palace ruler’s driving feeling. If you collect three seeds and take them to Jose, a small boy who hangs out in Mementos, you gain a powerful, otherwise inaccessible ability.

Gymnast Kasumi appears sporadically throughout the main game, to experience her full story you have to finish that first.

There’s more stuff, but the important question is, does it make Persona 5, an already universally lauded game, any better? Honestly, and I’m making my best Robert DeNiro face while I say this: meh.

When I played the original Persona 5, a handful of things detracted from my overall immense enjoyment – the treatment of some of its characters, the difficulty, which to me felt pretty easy, and the length of the game. It wasn’t just the number of hours, which was colossal, but how long they could feel.

If you’re plugged into the discussion that surrounded Persona 5, you know that certain parts of its plot didn’t land that well: a storyline in which your friend Ann is supposed to pose as a nude model, and a bit where your characters meet a couple of gay men. Atlus West requested the latter be changed, but to me it’s an absolute non-change that while no longer suggesting the abduction of minors, still finds ample opportunity to stereotype gay men. Small mercies, I suppose.

The way Ann is treated is equally off-putting to me, but it’s just part of your standard grab bag of misogyny in Japanese games, so of course that would remain unchanged. Don’t get me wrong, I love Persona 5 a lot, and I recognise that the opportunity for change is limited if you don’t want to downright cut content, but Royal does nothing to fix its larger problem: you get to meet a group of characters that’s perfectly adorable in their own right, but it’s constantly suggested they would be nothing without you.

The Velvet Room now offers battles where you earn battles for particular efficiency.

Persona 5 Royal puts its own characters down – it’s frequently suggested that Ann is a bit of dumb blonde, Yusuke is just weird, Makoto is too uptight, but you’re here to change their lives. P5R adds instances of queer-baiting to the mix, not letting you date your male team members, but putting you in intimate situations with them all the same. Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal take the power fantasy to whole new levels, making sure to call the protagonist, and by extension the player, awe-inspiring, a hero, a leader, whenever the opportunity presents itself. I find the idea of being near-infallible pretty tiring.

This leads me to the combat. I’m confident in telling you to start Royal on Hard if you’ve played Persona 5 before. Royal also comes with two modes that lock you into your chosen difficulty, Safe and Merciless. You now have so many additional abilities and items that I think the standard game is way too easy, and can feel like going through the motions. Boss fights have been retooled with new segments to fit the narrative better, but the balance feels off – overall I enjoyed the fights, but I had trouble with some that had never bothered me before, while others seemed too easy given how far into the game I was.

The last point on my list however, is perhaps one of the most common complaints about Persona 5. I’m pretty happy how on normal difficulty there’s never been a reason to mindlessly grind, even though in essence that’s what Mementos is for. Grinding isn’t what turns Persona 5 Royal into a game of over 100 hours – it’s how characters review and re-review even the most basic information ad nauseum. It’s how you might not want to spend the next four hours driving around in Mementos, but you have to, since it’s a plot requirement. It’s how the game heavily cheats you by suggesting not once, not twice but three times that this is definitely the last battle and the world will be saved any minute now.

The additions here make all of that worse. Absolutely no one I’ve ever talked to said “you know what Persona 5 needs? Another palace. And I also really want to spend more time in Mementos”, yet that’s exactly what you get. To make the plot additions work at all, it needs a massive leap of faith that undermines pretty much everything you’ve done until this point, and it’s so frustrating. After a truly epic finale, another villain simply takes the place of the last. It’s the same principle that often makes movie sequels so grating – the victory you’ve just had was for nothing. For a game that frequently tells you the exact opposite, to stay true to your ideals and keep fighting even when others think it’s pointless, this is especially disheartening.

You use the grappling hook seldomly but to great effect. Wheee!

Without wanting to spoil anything, the new villain does have interesting motives, but they’re the sole upside of a storyline that asks you twice to have the same conversation six times in a row, and that gives you a palace where you fight three new enemies over and over, one of them several consecutive times. The way it is, the new story content feels a bit tacked on, despite giving you the option to keep working on your Social Stats and links – it feels like a DLC. This is an additional month of in-game time, relating to something that’s only alluded to in bits and pieces throughout the main game. It might be fun if you come back to Persona 5 after several months, but put at the end of the main storyline like that, it just makes you wait for it to be over.

If you’ve never played Persona 5, thanks to much of the optimisation this is certainly a safe bet. But Persona 5 Royal doesn’t so much feel like a definitive edition and rather a game made for fans who get excited about collectibles like the Will Seeds or additional Persona, or who are thirsting for new interactions with characters like the twins, who were previously largely neglected. Sadly it doesn’t add enough to justify another playthrough.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/persona-5-royal-review-both-better-and-worse-than-the-original-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persona-5-royal-review-both-better-and-worse-than-the-original-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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horrible-monstrosity · 7 years ago

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17 We open with friendly neighborhood dumbass Akko studying studiously, sitting on a bench in a sunny grassy field which she ignores in favor of a massive stack of books like the bookworm Lottie only sort of is, while redhead side witch bitches about dropping out of school because she's just too cool. An... interesting entrance into the episode, to be sure.

Redhead turns herself into a dashing boys' school student. ..... Did the spell make her grow bollocks

"even though no one's asking you?" is a pretty weird way to ask someone about their dream. I don't think anyone asked redhead to become a broomdancer, or robots girl to become robots, or... anyone to do anything they just wanted to do. and again, she has already accomplished what she says she wants to do- the yeti, in the next episode robert girl, the fairy strike... this show does not know what it has done or what it's doing.

... Wait, are they really here to just fucking steal the grail from the school? why? I've already forgotten why they wanted it, and why petty theft by a couple of randos is so easily accepted as a method of getting it back. Are there no witch authorities who might have wanted in on this? Later redhead says it "belongs" to the guys' school as a way to deflect explaining how it works... shrugg

Have I mentioned yet that I like the supporting trio more than the main three? I could probably write a whole fucking essay on that. All three of them are straight-up archetypes... but that alone is enough to make them at least basically functional as characters. Because that's *why* archetypes end up as archetypes- it's a grouping of character tropes and traits that hits a chord with people. And that's why "cunning normal" was such a fucking retarded concept, Kiznaiverrrrrrr-

It's kinda weird she stays disguised even after getting caught... I guess this is actually consistent; it's been shown before you need to use another spell to transform back, meaning unlike most settings ontological inertia actually applies. but then later on the transformation seems to start slowly undoing itself for no reason anyway. How does this work? magic router?? why'd akko even take that?... whatever

we finally get some violence against witches (threatened but never put though because of course not), which doesn't explain anything but at least characterizes the guys as your entirely typical medieval-styled witch not-likers. The fact that this is what passes for an improvement in this fuckshow of a shitshow is just fucking sad. there are some actually tense and brutal scenes in there, some nice visual shots, like akko getting thrown on the table tied up and the distant side-shot of the guy getting hit by the armor... that aren't killed by wackyness! Amazding! ... Though it still doesn't quite work, probably because the show is still clearly too light-hearted to, say, actually use the torture devices. But them being pulled out isn't a wacky gag either aside from a bit of the reaction. what tone is this?

"y u no use ur magic on me??" "because there's no reception here dumbass the fuck do you think this works like"

Yet another interesting unaddressed plot point- magic was what got them into this mess and turned blong guy into an armored monster, and while a witch was the one who stopped it little to no magic was used in doing so, she basically just needed to smack him hard enough. It seems like the takeaway from this is that witches are perfectly fine people, but magic still needs to fucking die. hmm

by the way what happened to the wordfinding plot this episode

So clearly this was Croi boi testing her angery magicks, but I have to wonder... *why* is anger magic the strongest sort? I mean, it can basically only be arbitrary, but how convenient that her evil energy-having plan can't just go off by spreading feelings of sunshine and happiness.

18 "trained to catch every gost in 12 days, but the goal is one gost in one year"... This is literally, exactly, what Lottie says. What? Literally one minute in and like 20 seconds of dialogue and already this shit makes not a single lick of fucking sense.

akko trips and fucks things up again okay we fucking get i- why was that enpugh to breakm the fucking robort? akko's own body must be the most destructive object know to mankind.

We return to the generic wackey-qwackey humorisms the show had mostly shed in the last couple episodes, and it feels more forced than ever before. After all these thng I can't actually believe Akko's still this shit... and apparently the show itself doesn't either, since as soon as Akko finds something she can actually do it entirely stops. Once she starts working as a convincer/go-between/gopher, not a single thing gets broken. In other words, Trigger just abandoned her character development to churn out and force out more mediocre obligate humor. But at least it was only for, like, half of the episode.

on the other hand once she gets her shit back together the cards get brought back. That was always a kind of interesting little thing, that Akko knew some things even other witches didn't because of the fandom-ing that brought her to the school where she was otherwise so far behind everyone else. I mean, that just raises the question of why the other witches apparently never saw these cards and I feel like I asked exactly this many an episode ago so let's just move the fuck on again

isn't the ship from the OVA? it looks like the shiny rod... and like the same old vaguely eva-lagann looking shit. I forget what it was from Gainax that looked like that, but definitely it was something.

"I already know I won't be as good as Constance"... Man, when Akko's good, she's fucking good. She really isn't trampling over someone else with the conviction that she's always right about everything, she's just so excited she wants to draw a fucking robort. And then Candace loves it and is inspired to make it actually work. it's fucking cute man

gosts viral on social media Normies can't see gosts, but presumably Akko can. How is this actually determined? Rather, the deeper problem is that the line between witches and normies was never defined. There's some implication that it's hereditary, since everyone aside from Akko comes from a "witching family", but the very existence of Akko belies that. So if anyone can train to become a witch, how much training do you do before you become witchy enough to see gost? Actually, should people with latent potential be able to see gost? If Akko is bad at becoming a witch, logically there should be some people who would be better at it relative to her. Shouldn't there be some people in the crowd who can see gost as is? Also, do any males exist with any amount of witch potential, who could see ghosts on their own? If they had never called attention to it by doing the "gost can't see normie" thing, there'd be nothing to really question- you could assume witching is a skill like any other that people could aquire, that's often handed down through families like any other job or career, and that some people are just kind of terrible at. Buuuuut they had to get in this lame "muh on muh cell phone at tuh evuuuunnnt" joke and didn't think it through. Good work, Trigger, keep it up

how is many crow? how many gost We're shown each cube succing up at least one gost each, then multiple cubes forming one crow, but then there's a whole fucking lotta fucking crows. How many gosts were there? How many were left after the large amount that were already taken out? There's just an unmeasured infinite supply of gost somewhere offscreen to conveniently move in as needed. Trigger didn't think this through. And then a super-giant mega-crow shows up which must have used up even more gost. Great

and then the robort- OKAY TRIGGER WE GET IT YOU WUZ GAINAX ONCE CALM THE FUCK DOWN this is just so boring. YEAH, A FUCKING ROBOT, WE GET IT TRIGGER, YOU FUCKS HAVE FUCKING ISSUES. GAINAX-SENPAI WILL NEVER FUCKING NOTICE YOU, GET OVER IT. ... reactions from the peanut gallery are on point tho. akko even credits constantinople for her part in making this possible. she's a good kid. so good. too pure for this fucking show - the robort runs out of energy- WHY DID YOU NOT BRING A ROUTER YOU FUCKNAUTS THERE WAS ONE IN THE IMMEDIATELY PRECEEDING EPISODE WHY - it's a drill. it's a fucking drill. ........ i want to cry acid.

team cubes it blastign off againnnnnnfuck this gay earth

aww man akko doesn't even want to be thanked but compton gives her a training broom anyway. it's beautiful.

19 an old tradition and a new power... croix-was-write is written into the very fabric of reality in this show. good and then mom-diana fucking dies. LOL BYE BITCH.

why would you have the head-appointing ceremony randomly every few years rather than, like, when you need to appoint a new family head? it would even affect the exact same urgency, just have events come to a head so she needs to be pulled out of school and become family head now. why are they electing a baby teen as family head anyway? what age are these kids, anyway? akko looks like ten sometimes.

the second diana says "muh respekt for convention!!" you know she's gonna be treated as full of shit. it's over something we've never heard of and had no reason to assume, anyway. i don't even know "you know about the words?" you've blabbed them to everyone including the rival school that wants to execute you all, so why are you surprised?

...... LOL WHUT THE AUNT LITERALLY HAS GLOWING RED DEMON EYES WHAT THE FUCC?

.... Andrew is one of the best fucking characters in this shitshow of a show. The amount of fucks he's come to not give... Just invite the witch girl your father knows and hates to ride in your car squished up between him and yourself. And dad-man just can't fucking do anything about it. Holy shit lol and lol these british people sure fucking love soccer. boy i sure bet this isn't hammed-in foreshadowing for some fucking bullshit that's going to happen in the last episodes!!!! i'd fucking bet my lyfe on it !!!!!!

what fuck is diantha wearing We get another one of those nice moments that makes me hate the rest of the show. Akko, being energetic and people-oriented as always but somewhat more constrained due to the awkward and unfamiliar situation, tries to go for the teddy bear as an attempt to start some conversation with Diana... Diana yells at her not to touch it, and she actually does not touch it. Now go back and watch the robot episode again. HMMMMMMmmmmm Except it wasn't about the bear, it was about the box of Chariot cards, because of course Diantha actually likes Chariot, bet no one ever saw that twist comingHEY WAIT A MINUTE, didn't one of the earlier episodes hinge on Akko knowing something Diantha didn't because of the cards?? It can't be because Akko was the only one to autistically memorize them all, because Diantha is smurt character and should have remembered it at least somewhat just from reading it normally. kindness from diana, when the rest of the family and household is by akko's own statement even worse.

old lady yells at akko while unfitting music plays

#triggered by trigger

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