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[breath-of-void]

Harmonic Convergence was a bad idea

I think the idea of the Air Nation being restored so suddenly cheapens the effect of the genocide.

I fully understand that the world of Avatar is not our world and so things don't have to be as tragic as they are here, but I think the notion that almost 200 years after the genocide, there are only 5 Airbenders left (one of which is the Avatar so it kind of doesn't count) is a testament to the idea that such a tragedy is going to take time to recover. It'll happen, for sure, Jinora, Ikki, Meelo, Rohan, Tenzin, Kya, and Bumi all have the capacity to produce airbending children. Kya seems to have no interest in having children and neither does Bumi and we don't know how Ikki, Meelo and Rohan feel about it, but the Air Nation will come back, but very VERY slowly because of what happened that fateful night.

Fate is also a concept in the Avatar-verse and so, for the Avatar cycle to continue, there will be another Airbender born hundreds of years down the line.

As well, bending is as much a racial distinction as a superpower. It reads a little weird for a bunch of people to randomly wake up bending air when, they might have had their own deep spiritual connections with their own elements. Opal is not a bender per se, but she may have had a lot of pride in her earthbending ancestors and carried neutral jing close to her heart. But suddenly she is now a different race and must learn to be that race, her own culture be damned.

What would I have had them do?

I still subscribe to the idea that bending can be taught; it just takes extreme dedication and adherence to the tenets of that bending. If they desperately needed to have more airbenders (which I don't think they did, other than Zaheer), literally have the air acolytes start bending. Those with a deep love and connection to air nomad culture, due to the increased magic or whatever, start bending. Then there's your global police force (which I also think is a silly concept).

[breath-of-void]

Korra considerations

Now, hear me out: the White Lotus are not government officials. They are traitors and spies and are some of the most cunning and powerful benders the Avatar-verse has ever seen. In light of that, I would propose that there is no way that, after Korra's attempted kidnapping, that they wouldn't have taught her any subbendings they could have.

Korra should have been an absolute tank.

Lightningbending first of all is nearly a one-hit kill against any opponent. That should have been first on their list to teach her. That and redirection given how somewhat common lightningbending is.

Next, metalbending should have been high on the priority list. Like way up there since, like lightning, not many people have a counter to it. Less than lightning, in fact.

Controversial, but I think Katara should have also given her a crash course in bloodbending. Enough so that she can break out of it just in case it crops up and with a warning that if she ever uses it for anything other than defense, Katara herself will come kick her ass.

I'll say lavabending was too high concept even for the WL and combustionbending is near suicide to learn so not those. But sandbending, glassbending and vinebending should have been in her arsenal. They would have turned her into a weapon.

With this, we keep to the story where Korra is the most stacked avatar in history in a world that does not need her. She can body Amon no problem, but the people don't want her to. She has to win them over before she can face him with any kind of public support.

Season 2, I'd change the lore to have both Raava and Vaatu inside the Avatar and that what Unalaq did was rip Vaatu out and left Korra comatose. Her team then have to go into the spirit world to basically reboot her, but now she's only got Raava, the spirit of pure order inside her and Raava hates the idea of Republic City. To each their own and so forth and so the team has to double back and try to get Vaatu back inside Korra else she nuke the city.

Then season 3 would have the red Lotus coming to take their shot again, but get absolutely manhandled because Korra is a beast (and one of like 5 people alive who know how to fight an airbender. Zaheer isn't special). It'd be another political intrigue as they just go underground to try and take out as many world leaders as they can before Korra catches up with them.

At this point I don't even see how season 4 can happen, but I'd like to see Korra basically trying to establish a theocracy in her own little part of the world; essentially trying to hold on to relevance and still suffering from having Raava alone run rampant in her body for like half an hour that one time. Then she sees what Kuvira is doing and has an "oh shit" moment as she realizes she's the bad guy and there's no real reason for her to be trying so hard to dominate people. Something to that effect.

Korra shouldn't be losing fights!

[breath-of-void]

Free Thoughts on the Newest Book of my Favourite Series

I'm concerned for Percy.

Percebeth used to be super cute and the ultimate goal of any fictional relationship... but now, in Chalice of the Gods, I'm worried that Percy has put far too much stock in Annabeth and hasn't really thought out his own life. In fact, there is a long running trend in the series- that I'm not entirely sure Riordan meant to include- that Percy cannot think more than a few days ahead and it's genuinely concerning. I'm going to separate this into Things I Find Concerning and Things I Would Have Liked (not Rick's crimes, just things I would have been interested in seeing) and then, finally, Things I Liked.

Things I Found Concerning

Percy does not like school and yet is excited to go to New Rome University with Annabeth. Annabeth enjoys academics and she has a clear path for her life, she wants to be an architect and redesign the planet or whatever. Percy, on the other hand, does not really have any interests. Nothing school can help him with anyway. He likes swimming, skateboarding, his mom and Annabeth. That's about it. It was sweet a few books ago when his only goal was to be with her, but he is 17 now (older if you consider all the shit he's gone through) and he has not quite considered that he's going to have to do something other than dote on her. Because he doesn't even cook! He lives rent-free with his mom and just talks about how much better Annabeth is at things than he is.

In the vision he has of his future and when he is old, there is him, Grover and Annabeth in a garden by the beach. This bothers me for two reasons: there's no mention of anything else that he has going on, just that he's with Annabeth; and where's Juniper!? For the first point, Percy doesn't mention a job that he would have liked having or other things that he would have had going on like a skateboard repair business in the garage or something. It's just him. In a garden. With Annabeth. That's his future and that irksome. And for the second point, Grover has been dating Juniper for 2-3 years by this point, longer than Percy has been dating Annabeth actually, but she does not appear in his daydream of their future. She's mentioned in the book, she and Grover are still dating and still on good terms (and she's functionally immortal) but Grover doesn't get to have her in the future? Third wheel for life.

I don't like that the gods call him "Percy Jackson" now instead of Perseus.

Was a time when the gods called him by his full name which was just unfamiliar and formal that it spoke to how alien and removed they were from him and his world. It's not a crime that they don't do that anymore, but it feels too local now.

And I get that Riordan wants to keep him street-level for these adventures, but Percy feels very nerfed in this book. Like, I'd scale him to very minor god in base (on the level of maybe the Triumvirate), but he gets tired so easily and laments about all the things he can't kill when he very easily could. The biggest example I have is in the field of snakes, he goes on about how he wouldn't be able to butcher ALL of them when, I personally feel that at this stage in his career, he very easily could have. And he already had a reason not to, Iris had specifically forbidden it so there was no need to have his say that he was unable when he was already not allowed. I think Percy should keep being a force of nature, no exception to the rule that Poseidon only sires monsters, but find clever ways to keep him from doing that.

The world has also started to feel much safer than it initially was. I remember Percy's first words to us were that being a demigods gets you killed in brutal ways and that most did not live to adulthood. But Percy just casually goes to and from school with no sense of urgency. No monsters attempt to try their luck at killing the great Percy Jackson or even try to get at his mom or Paul while he's not home. And I've considered that maybe his reputation precedes him, they recognize his scent and aren't willing to risk it, but, as I've noted above, no one really fears Percy in this book. He feels weaker. And it's one thing for the gods to disregard him, but you have minor river gods ready to throw hands and the aforementioned snakes who were fully ready to swallow the son of Poseidon. I'm not saying I need everything gritty and grimdark, but our initial premise was that children would regularly get torn apart by stray harpies and hellhounds, but in this book, no one is even a little concerned about this. Even someone like Paul who should know how very fragile his very existence is: the sky is barely being held up by a being who really doesn't want to be doing it; the Earth itself is a genocidal primordial goddess who is merely lulled to sleep by the whispers of a teenage girl. But the status quo must be maintained.

Riptide has a child lock!

There are parts of this book that made me remember why I fell in love with the series. The humor is pretty decent in places, like Percy reminiscing how a bolt of lightning on a clear day took out his kite or the aforementioned handicap that Iris put on his quest, she had forgotten about it overnight.

I could also appreciate his trying to philosophize a bit with the nature of immortality and addressing Percy's decision to not become a god, but I did not like that he made the life of a minor god tragic. Now, instead of Percy rejecting the glitz and the glamour for hard work and aging, it's framed that he made the objective right choice as Zeus would likely have him doing grunt work for eternity. Ganymede is always miserable and fearing for his life; I would have liked if he was simply dethatched from reality, only wanting his cup because it was all he knew not that he would be killed if he lost it.

My likes were fewer than my concerns.

In conclusion, the things that made Percy cool at 12 are making him sad at 17.

His singleminded drive to only be with Annabeth feels like it will breed resentment down the road. Annabeth states in no uncertain terms that she loves him and is serious about him, but I can't imagine that lasts long when she's working and homemaking because Percy has one skill and he doesn't even like doing it.

I genuinely think that Rick should let his world be tragic because with the knowledge of all Percy has been through, parts of the book feel like the narrative is fighting the characters. Percy has anger issues (being stated to throw a skateboard through his wall when he was frustrated or break plumbing when anxious), he's traumatized (though he uses the slightly outdated term "shell shock") by having his body rearranged on a whim and coming close to death a fairly regular basis, but the writing wants to keep him grounded and relatable. Percy isn't relatable anymore, he shouldn't be!

He's been through 2 world wars, held up the sky, went to actual hell, indirectly prevented Ragnarok and directly saved the Egyptian pantheon. He has come in contact with, fought and been possessed by more deities than anyone else in his verse will ever know exists. He's watched friends die time and time again and he knows how fickle the will of the gods are. There is actually nothing stopping them from killing him and everyone he loves at a moment's notice. Even swearing on the River Styx cannot keep them accountable. The Sun has shown up on his doorstep begging for help, he nearly killed the concept of Pain, he handed Time the knife to kill itself and his best friend is the incarnation of the Wild. Percy is built different, but he doesn't do anything with that.

I genuinely think that a proper "end" to his story would be Dionysus being freed from his curse, Chiron being promoted to head of camp and Percy being made activities director. That way he's helping newer generations of demigods survive the nonsense that is the world they live in. If he absolutely MUST be with Annabeth at all times, he could do that at Camp Jupiter while she's at NRU.

[breath-of-void]

The Sea Beast vs Nimona

I'll preface by saying that these two movies do not need to be in competition with each other nor is the purpose of movies really to BE in competition with each other, but I noticed certain similarities in their messages that I think are worth pointing out. Particularly, I noticed that The Sea Beast does some incredible work where Nimona fails. Mainly, this will be praise for The Sea Beast with some comparisons tossed in for flavour.

The Sea Beast is a movie decrying the evils of blind nationalism while acknowledging the sacrifices of those that came before both in service of and against the system. As with many good movies, a myriad of comparisons can be drawn to modern day problems. While The Sea Beast seems pretty comfortably anti-war, it could also be a more general critique of the treatment of Others. This is where the comparison with Nimona comes in as it is also about the Other (though more specifically, it appears to be about transgender identities. Again, it could be any Other identity that the majority rejects).

I've expressed before that Nimona's lack of monsters hinders it because we don't really get to see the majority have to contend with them. Nimona is the first real monster anyone ever encounters and she promptly dies and is lauded as a hero. In The Sea Beast, there are monsters abound and they look very different from humans and from each other. On one hand, this is just good world and creature building, but on the more meta level, Other does in fact look different. Nimona is not wrong for this, but it seems to say that the Other looks just like you despite acting and BEING different. Again, not a bad thing, that is true. The Sea Beast's approach says that the Other does in fact look different and that can be scary, but 1) they are not a monolith; they look and act different from each other as well, and 2) they are just as capable of great intelligence and compassion.

The Sea Beast also establishes the career and legacies made from violence against the Other. Nimona does this as well, but it feels lackluster. In one of the most amazing movie "tricks" I have ever seen, The Sea Beast starts by indoctrinating the viewer into their world. It shows a child stranded after a Beast attack, a little girl reading stories of heroism against the monsters to her foster siblings, a mentorship bordering on fatherhood as one man still capable of so much compassion (sacrificing his thirty year goal to uphold a code) passes on his livelihood to the boy he rescued. Aboard the Inevitable, there are women in power, fraternity abundant, all manner of diversity and none of it is ever ridiculed or played for laughs; it's a good place where everyone is happy and proud to be there. And these are the "villains." Jacob "who killed five of them beasts in the span of two days" is our loveable oafish deuteragonist. It even shows the hardships that Captain Crow faces when the king and queen try to replace him. Compare this to Nimona where the Academy is very obviously evil from the start. It is shiny and monolithic and only Bal, an outsider, seems remotely likeable. Nimona starts you with the view from outside, while The Sea Beast starts you from inside.

Obviously The Sea Beasts... everything works better as an anti-war film, but other institutions are mirrored here. The Church can feel like a warm and loving place that is sometimes at war with itself and the powers that be, but it only seems that way because you belong. Every member has their own lives and families and hardships both in and outside of their religion, but that all coalesces into unjustified hatred of the Other. Of that which does not fit in. The Sea Beasts starts us off by showing how amazing and wonderful it is to be a part of the In Group and even shows them triumphantly slaying a beast... then it shows us Red's kind eyes. It shows how quickly leadership will cannibalize itself to harm something that it has always been told is harmful (that's something else I love, Captain Crow didn't start it, he's a victim too). It even shows those that profit directly from it (royalty) and those that profit from the sidelines (Batterbie). Again, more effective as anti-war, but still poignant. Where Nimona falters on this point is that the Director was the monolithic bad guy. She feared the unknown, yes, but the moment she attempted to hurt innocents, everyone turned against her. In the Sea Beasts, the crew continued to follow orders albeit less sure of themselves. It took heavy proof and an impassioned speech to get people to stop and think.

On that note, Red didn't sacrifice herself for anyone. She was willing to listen to reason and to not kill the captain, but she didn't need to prove her moral superiority. That was it, reason. If she killed him, then people continue thinking monsters are only capable of violence. Especially since it was obvious he was just as brainwashed as everyone else. In Nimona, with no prompting, she decides that it is her duty to fly headfirst into a monster killing laser to protect people who, just a moment ago were stoning her as she tried to kill herself. It was a preachy mess. How much more impactful would it have been if she took the one person that was kind to her and flew out of the way and let the people look on in horror as they realize what their leaders were willing to do to harm someone who was no threat to them?

In the end, The Sea Beast does a ton of leg work in just about ten minutes more to show the humanity of the oppressor and why they do what they do before stating definitely that it is no excuse. My absolute favourite thing it does is that it never goes back on Maisie's backstory. Her parents aren't actually on some island somewhere living alongside the Beasts all kumbaya, they actually are dead and they were killed by Beasts. Compassion is not a genetic trait. Maisie has as much right to hate and fear the Beasts as anyone else given what she has lost to them, same as Jacob, same as Crow and Sarah Sharpe... but she chose compassion. She learned and accepted and forgave with the knowledge that the Beasts aren't evil, just upset.

[breath-of-void]

Just watch They Cloned Tyrone and it was great!

An interesting thing SPOILERS is that Fontaine's "mom" was a recording programmed to respond somewhat intelligently to certain lines of questioning BUT there were no responses for genuine affection. That was... that was sad.

[breath-of-void]

Being a Grumpy Old Man about Nimona

Forewarning, I’m gonna levy some criticisms against a very gorgeous movie with some decent representation and ambitious themes. I’m open to discussion about why I’m wrong, but I’m going to be very opinionated here.

Starting with the things I really liked about this movie:

The art direction was stellar. I loved the way everything looked and particularly Nimona’s eyes. Whichever team drew and animated this thing deserves the payout they get and more. 

I also really like that Bal and Goldenloin are just gay. It’s not a big deal, they simply are because they’re people and people are allowed to be people.

This movie is also pretty funny. I felt like Todd was a bit much in places, particularly in the part where Nimona first turns. It kind of undercut a moment. But the humour was pretty good overall. One of my favourite jokes will always been “I’m not a girl, I’m a shark!”

Now on to the complaints. And it’s really just one complaint: there are no other monsters.

This creates a failing of the movie in two realms, plot and theme. The plot is the lesser of the two evils so I will start with that.

For 1000 years, the Institution heralded itself as the bastion between humankind and monsters. They maintained the wall and had pseudocelebrities in the knights who were also trained and deadly. Where this gets weird for me is that the Director really seems to believe that there are monsters out there in the valley. All the knights, while cocky and pompous, are fundamentally good people and they all truly believe there are monsters out there. But there’s just Nimona.

I understand that the whole “she was scheming and lying to keep power for herself” plot is kind of played out, but it’s played out for a reason. People do that. They leverage the fear of the unknown to maintain dominion over those without the courage or resources to disprove them. But the movie did not have to use that plot if they had simply included a scene of other monsters. Without that, this entire kingdom just seems ridiculous.

Or perhaps if they had lessened the timeline. One thousand years seems like a very long time to be afraid of nothing especially when you have the technology to prove it. But like I said, this was the weaker of the two issues. 

Nimona (the movie) seems to have been going for a theme of “the monster is the other” and judging from a couple other people’s takes, that’s what they got from it. It depicts a culture that hates something they do not understand and reviling someone they think is undeserving of personhood. There is even an implication of the readiness to accept homosexuality vs transgenderism as one may be easier to stomach than the other. And depicting that transgender individuals are more a danger to themselves (via self harm from societal pressure) than to other people. 

Good stuff.

Then we get to Nimona’s sacrifice. 

I don’t think she should have done it. Perhaps she did it with the knowledge she would survive and so she was doing a nice thing for the sake of being nice, but I personally think Nimona should have let them die especially since, in her human form, there’s no way that gun was going to hit her if she just grabbed Bal and flew away.

There’s a couple movies that do this thing where the hated group must first prove that they are worthy of not being mistreated before the group in charge decides to change. How to Train Your Dragon does this, as does Astro Boy and Monsters vs Aliens. That doesn’t make these movies bad, far from it, these movies are great. In the case of Nimona, however, I would have liked to see something different especially how the comic ended.

Brief tangent for the comic.

The comic fixed my lack of monsters issue on page 1. The general vibe is that monsters exist, Nimona is just weird for a monster. We never see these other monsters, but the comic states definitively that they are real and even shapeshifters are fairly common, just that none can do what Nimona can do. 

And the issue of needing to earn personhood is not present as Nimona “dies” trying to kill everyone after the pain and betrayal get to be too much for her. Even after that though, Bal is in her corner, demanding that she not be referred to as a monster. Nimona has killed a lot of people and even at the end, with her mental faculties intact, she chooses destruction; she is still treated as someone who is deserving of love. This was even before Bal finds out that she is still alive. To quote the 12th Doctor “Do you think that I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”

Back to the show!

Why Nimona sacrificing herself presents such a problem for me is that now the kingdom does not have to confront their predjudice. They get to put up a mural and say how much they loved Nimona and how great she was... but they didn’t know her. I believe Bal misses her, but the rest of the people are just putting on airs. 

Especially since Nimona is a whole person. Before the sacrifice, she was not easy to digest. She’s extremely violent, rude and destructive and her powers exacerbate that. And it’s kind of objectively concerning that she can simply become anyone at anytime. But she died and the people can just say “yeah, we fixed racism. It was pretty cool” and they don’t have to grapple with the fact that Nimona is not quiet or personable like they would want her to be. 

Having other monsters fixes this because then the people do have to live with these issues. They have to confront the beings they had been abusing for generations and thefact that they have personality quirks as wild and random as any human. At the end of the movie, there is the illusion of change, but there’s no real way to prove it without it being tested.

In conclusion, there were a lot of things I liked about this movie, but I think they tried too hard to talk about something that they were not commited enough to explore. The question I would ask the movies is: would Nimona still be worthy of personhood if she had not been willing to sacrifice herself for the people who hated her?

Ultimately, the film oversimplifies a complex issue. The Director being the sole bad apple in the Institution and Nimona being willing to let go of her anger first shows a kind of wishful thinking in the eyes of the oppressor, that the hated and the reviled must first prove themselves worthy of love and then that the root of the danger of -isms and -phobias is a single person who can be ousted.

[breath-of-void]

What Legend of Korra left on the table

In my previous post, I talked about how Korra should not be losing fights because of how being the avatar works, now I’m going to talk about all the interesting things that were going on that they just dropped, ignored or changed.

The entire equalist subplot was dropped after Amon’s reveal!

Why!?

I get that it was a huge betrayal to find out that the man leading your revolution against benders is also a bender... but the guy had a point! I find it hard to believe that everyone collectively went back to their regularly scheduled lives after finding the courage to voice their unhappiness with the status quo. A nonbender was elected president, how many benders were happy with that decision? Were there people claiming it was a “diversity” hire and he was not qualified? There were interesting ways this could have been delved into, perhaps with more Tales of Ba Sing Se type episodes.

Unalaq claimed that the spirits were unhappy with the commercialization of sacred holidays and the division of the Poles. He started a civil war over it and even got the avatar on his side, a move that sent a rift through the world as those who already felt that they did not need the avatar moved further away from viewing her as any kind of authority.

Then we find out that Unalaq is using waterbending to control some very generic spirits into senseless violence. This signals to me that the spirits don’t actually care about what’s going on and THAT’S a problem because the spirits DO care. As late as Aang’s teenage years, spirits still express rage against humans for not respecting their space. General Old Iron ( who Aang had to murder to get him to calm down), The Mother of Faces, Hei Bai, the Phoenix Eels, the Heartwalker, etc are all sprits that live or lived in the human world and expressed rage at humans’ sacrilege. That’s without mentioning Father Glowworm and Koh who were just dicks.

The point is that Unalaq could have had a very legitimate point about the spirits being upset but the question could be, how far is too far. Spirits also aren’t big on communication with anyone who isn’t the avatar, so Unalaq interpreting the will of the spirits could be wrong, either intentionally or accidentally, a fanatic seeing signs from the gods that drive him to murder. Him being the cause of their rage robs us of an interesting story about a religious divide when the religion is indisputably real.

Varrick was a war profiteer. 

Look, I like goofy characters too, but I hate this trend of making characters idiot savants. Varrick was a super goofy guy until we find out exactly what is going on with him. It is revealed that Varrick is much more cold and calculating than everyone thought, playing fast and loose with lives as it suited him. I feel like that aspect of his character was lost in favour of making him entirely a meme.

A similar thing was done to Bumi, Aang’s son. We learn that he’s a venerated war hero with an unconventional way of doing things. Instead of keeping that narrative the truth, they made it so that he was just lucky. That his victories were accidents. I think it was a lost chance to make more interesting characters like Iroh. It isn’t that Iroh is putting on a mask, he genuinely is a bumbling old man who just wants to play Pai Sho and drink tea, but when the going gets tough, The Dragon of the West emerges; both are true. Bumi could be as loony as his namesake, but also a competent strategist when the need called fo rit.  

The Red Lotus plot was all silly. No notes.

Book 4 was almost a return to form. Kuvira had a legitimate goal and harsh methods for achieving it. The unification of the Earth Kingdom was believable as a goal someone would want and that others would be opposed to and her methods while barbaric, were effective. Then they dropped that for favour of making her just evil.

I said in my previous post that the avatar is too powerful for their stories to ever revolve around a fight. 

Kyoshi’s story was never IF she could beat Yun, but if she could do so 1) emotionally, and 2) without flattening the continent. Yangchen’s story is a political one. Obviously she could kill the zongdus and force the shangs to obey her through fear, but that’s not sustainable or moral. Even Kuruk’s story is about his battle with depression and the weight of what he had to do, killing a spirit is easy work for an avatar. 

The Legend of Korra opened with Korra entering a world where she was not needed. There have always been people who claimed not to want the avatar, even in Aang’s lifetime, but now the world is relatively at peace and everything she does seems to make things worse. They kept this theme up somewhat by showing her miserable every so often, but they shied away from the political and social implications of what amounts to a herald of the gods walking amongst humans. 

[breath-of-void]

Korra should not be losing fights

My friends have a theory: any long enough conversation with me will eventually devolve into my complaining about the Legend of Korra.

I have come to the conclusion that the story of the Avatar should never be about a physical fight. By nature of what they are and the power system of the verse, the Avatar should not be able to lose a one-on-one fight. 

What I mean by this is that bending is more about technique than anything else; it’s like fighting in the real world, there is a benefit to being stronger but there’s only so strong you can physically get. The inclusion of elemental abilities even negates that to a point because, at a certain point, it doesn’t matter how big the rock you get hit by is. The Avatar is the amalgamation of thousands of benders, their techniques and strength all rolled into one. Every avatar is, by nature, stronger than the avatar before them because they have that previous avatar’s knowledge and strength. And if there is somehow a reason they can’t figure something out, they can just bring forth that avatar to fight on their behalf. My point is, there is not a single bender alive that can fight an avatar and win.

The journey of the avatar is a philosophical one. They are, at the end of the day, human, and are prone to mistakes and they are given a job so massive that it takes more than one lifetime to accomplish: balance the world. 

Aang’s story was simple. He existed in a time of war and so his job was unequivocally to stop the genocidal maniac leading the Fire Nation. Throughout his series we see hints at a subtler, more difficult thread of conflict that requires his attention (warring Earth Kingdom clans, indoctrination of the Fire Nation youth, sexism in the Water Tribe, etc) but because Ozai has always been the big threat, that’s what he focused on and no one could blame him. About half way through though, it kind of stopped being about whether or not he could beat Ozai, but whether or not he could do it without killing him. The Avatar State is a tactical nuke in the shape of a person, it’s what people were trying to draw out of him at the start of book 2 and, in truth, the moment it came out, it stopped being a fight and started being an asswhooping of truly cosmic proportions. 

So what’s my point? My point is that Korra’s series started out the right way but devolved into fights she should have easily won. 

Book 1 and half of book 2 of the Legend of Korra are amazing because they aren’t quite focused on whether or not Korra can beat the villain, but whether or not she can win the people. The nonbender revolution is honestly one of the best bits of either series because it’s a really good point that people without powers are at a HUGE disadvantage against people with powers (in fights and in just normal everyday living) and how they feel about their spiritual leader being a bender. Korra’s first statement to a group of nonbenders complaining about the disparity in society is that bending is cool so they should be quiet. It’s an interesting thing to explore. They we have book 2 where the Northern and Southern Water Tribes are at war and Korra has to pick a side. Whatever side she picks 1) is going to win, she’s, as I said before, way too powerful, and 2) going to send a message that the spirits favour them. It was really good stuff!

Then they turned it into a question of whether or not Korra could beat Unalaq. Yes, yes she could, there was no reason for her to have lost that fight. Unalaq might have been a better waterbender than her, but she was a much better firebender than him. And earthbender and airbender. As well, he might eclipse Korra herself in waterbending, but he’s not better than Aang or Roku or Kyoshi and spirits forbid Kuruk. In a 1v1 with her having full access to the avatar state, Unalaq should have lost even after he acquired Vaatu. 

It’s not that I think Korra is weak, it’s that she shouldn’t be weak. Losing to any of the mediocre benders in her story was unacceptable the from the moment she unlocked the avatar state. I will make a special consideration of Kuvira as fighting against metalbending is hard on a good day and against Kuvira’s particular creative use of metalbanding, it’s a chore. She should have demolished Zaheer and his cronies though.

I’m not unreasonable. I can accept P’Li and Kuvira (the first time) being a challenging fight, but, as the title says, Korra should not be losing fights.

[breath-of-void]

001 Was Underwhelming

A ton of people are of the opinion that Stranger Things season 4 was an unexpected return to form and that the villain of Henry was *chef’s kiss.* Surprising no one, I do not share that opinion. 

Now, I do not fundamentally disagree with the premise that the children in Hawkins’ Lab weren’t just the product of Mystery Science Juice. In fact, I was a little excited when Henry (as an orderly) brought up the existence of a 001 that was a lot like Eleven.

Where it falls apart for me is that Henry (as an orderly) was that 001, because why would he be? Why would Brenner, knowing Henry’s prevalence for murder and mayhem, let him walk around unchecked in the facility. Granted, not fully unchecked, but he had way more personal power than he should have given Brenner’s fear of him. The Soteria in his neck suppressed his powers, but wouldn’t a dedicated enough Henry simply have been able to scratch it out at some point given that it’s shallow enough to be seen from the surface of the skin? And there’s no build up to his powers either, the moment it’s gone, he’s right back to a hundred percent. It feels like he should have been restrained along with that Soteria.

There’s also the question of where Henry’s powers came from. I don’t typically need a detailed explanation for why there’s cool stuff in my media. In Firestarter, for example, Andy and Vicky’s powers are the result of Science Juice and Charlie’s are because she’s their child. I really don’t need more than that. When you start having people like Henry randomly develop powers though, I start asking why. More accurately, I start asking why other people don’t have these powers.

Eleven could have simply been born with her powers. One of a couple children touched by the Upside Down and I would have accepted it as there is a repeatable, random element to it (i.e. shit happens sometimes). Her and One and the others being given Science Juice that inexplicably connects them to the Upside Down also works for me. But Henry just being the sole human person to be born with powers just because and for no other reason feels really weird. 

I want to state for the record that I don’t think it’s bad just because it isn’t what I would have done. But it genuinely feels strange to me that Brenner would allow a Henry who has shown nothing but contempt for the living to have unfettered access to all these other psychic kids. 

So now we have the question: what would I have done?

Still have Henry be the genetic code for Eleven and the others, but instead of allowing him free reign of the facility, depower him and keep him restrained in the basement. Think Wretched Egg from Deadman Wonderland. I would have either Eleven stumble upon him while running from the other kids or have the orderly be the victim of a trickle of Henry’s powers leaking out and he brings Eleven to him under the guise of helping her escape. 

As for where he got his powers: Science is good enough. Perhaps they created a portal to the Upside Down and on of the scientists was pregnant at the time and her baby was born with powers and a lack of empathy. Simple.

In my narrative, the baby would of course be held by Brenner to see what else it can do. The first few years are easy enough but as the kid’s powers grow, it becomes harder to control. Maybe it starts speaking with the Upside Down itself, wanting to merge the two worlds permanently and Brenner destroys the portal to prevent that. In a rage, Henry rips the facility apart and runs away, eventually getting himself adopted for a good few years before he starts hearing the Upside Down again and kills his new family. This incident draws Brenner’s attention who gets the Soteria in him while he’s unconscious, takes him back to the lab and puts him under heavy lock and key while using his blood to make more psychics. Which then leads into Eleven finding him and helping him which leads to the massacre which leads to her using one of his rarer powers, opening portals using death as a catalyst and flinging him through it which leads to season 4. 

In conclusion, I don’t hate the IDEA of 001, but he was handled badly. I’ve never really been able to stand villains getting their way, not because they’re particularly clever or powerful, but because the Powers That Be where incredibly lazy when it came to containing them.

[breath-of-void]

The Hypocrisy of Miyagi-Do

Finished all of Cobra Kai season 4 in one sitting and so spoilers ahead.

Also, this is a longer one.

Obviously this show is great and everything about it is great, but I want to bring attention to the disproportionate way it favours the LaRussos and Miyagi-Do.

In the original Karate Kid, Cobra Kai was clearly evil. More than that though, it was kind of trash. It was good against anyone who didn’t know any proper karate, sure, but the moment Daniel learned how to defend himself, he became top dog. Even more than that though, its philosophy of “strike first, strike hard, no mercy” was clearly meant to incite violence and hatred. When Johnny restarts Cobra Kai in season 1, all this sort of came back, but with a twist.

Cobra Kai is confidence and outer projections of strength. While Johnny took an aggressive approach to everything in his life and, indeed, when starting Cobra Kai again, it developed into something else. It would be wrong to say Cobra Kai didn’t start breeding bullies again, but it instilled a sense of confidence that characters like Aisha, Miguel and Eli didn’t have before. Even as Johnny softened up, he began dissuading his students from being little monsters. It was Daniel and his refusal to let go of the past that kept Cobra Kai festering in villainy. By the time Kreese came on board, it was just right for corruption.

To bring it back to Daniel: as stuck as Johnny is on the past, Daniel is as well. Johnny is bitter because his past was a mess while Daniel only seems to have gotten over it because everything went right for him. You can tell that the two are different sides of the same coin when things don’t go Daniel’s way. He throws his power and influence around to harass Johnny despite the former being no threat to him. 

The LaRussos are just the worst people and that is a hill I will die on. Starting with Daniel, he is as stubborn as Johnny if not more considering that he is used to getting his way. Several of Johnny’s relapses into his old self are either because of Daniel’s direct harassment or his refusal to consider how something would affect Johnny. I keep remembering how, in season 2, Johnny takes care of Sam after she drinks herself stupid and Daniel’s first reaction is to trash Johnny’s apartment (I mean, it was Johnny that kicked him into the tv, but still). Daniel has a tendency to get aggressive first, but he gets off scot free because he never actually throws the first punch, he just antagonizes until someone does.

Sam is the worst of the family. She has an entitlement that makes most royal heirs tell her to chill out. In season 4, she was at her absolute worst and I give her no breaks whatsoever. If I’m not mistaken, she still hasn’t even apologized to Johnny for Yasmin wrecking his car. Sam gets angry and, like Daniel, wields whatever power she has over people like a warhammer then screams bloody murder when they actually strike back. The way she treated Tori this season was way out of line even without her knowing what was going on in Tori’s life. Several times Tori was just minding her own business when Sam went out of her way to antagonize her. While I also blame Miguel for doing Tori dirty, Sam had a hand in it and yet she tries to spin it as if Tori was the villain. 

Amanda, I used to think, was the reasonable one. She was the one telling Daniel to stop messing around and focus on his actual job. Even when she relented, it was less about actually getting on board with karate and just knowing that she couldn’t stop him so it was a waste of both their times to try. All that went out the window in season 4 when she went out of her way to threaten a child. I get it, Tori hurt Sam, cool, but there was no reason to go to this girl’s workplace to make a scene. I can’t say Tori would have listened otherwise, but maybe meeting her outside of work. Or actually trying to figure out why. Or even just waiting for Tori to get violent first. But no, she went into this child’s workplace guns blazing and then went about her day when Tori got fired. 

Not much to say about Anthony, but he’s a little shit. That is all.

Now, the show villainizes Cobra Kai (I group Eagle Fang in there too as it’s the same style) and everyone associated with it. I have mixed feelings on how this is portrayed because, on the one hand, yes, John Kreese might actually be Lucifer himself and Terry Silver is the war god Ares, but there is some good in Cobra Kai that I’d touched on earlier.

Cobra Kai is about strength and, in the wrong hands, it’s a tool for bullying and destruction, but, in season 4, the Cobra Kais were all pretty happy just being themselves. We don’t spend much time in the high school this season, but Kyler seems to almost always be having a party with his Cobra Kai friends and not harassing the other students. Granted, he could do both, we never actually see this while we do see Miyagi-Do students showing unnecessary aggression to those they don’t like such as Kenny. Tori and Robby, while they set out initially to be a nuisance to Sam and Miguel, decide on their own that they’d rather just be in each others company than bother with their exes. It was those exes that started a fight and even post-fight left seething while Robby and Tori were just happy to be together enjoying normalcy for once. 

Say what you will about John Kreese (I mean, I just called him the devil) but he actually seems to care about his less fortunate students. In as much as it helps him somehow. Whatever his rationale, he gave Robby a place to stay and took care of Tori’s abusive landlord. It was Daniel and Amanda who blamed and judged these kids for circumstances beyond their control before doubling back once the circumstances were revealed to them. Kreese went looking for the problem and helped in the ways he knew how. Granted, these are short term solutions. Threatening to cut off a landlord’s willy and letting a homeless kid stay in a warehouse isn’t going to do much for these kids’ futures (whom Kreese seems to think is going to be spent practicing karate with him until the moon splinters), but it is leagues better than what Daniel and his family are doing.

In conclusion, Miyagi-Do is toxic. No hate to Mr. Miyagi himself though. In fact, Miyagi-Do worked for him and the lessons he wanted to impart onto Daniel. The very fact that he insisted that Daniel find his own way meant that he didn’t intend of Daniel to form a cult-like reverence of him. 

Daniel might preach peace, but his students and his family and even himself show that he has no interest in a non-violent scenario, just one where he always wins. As a consequence to this dissonance, Johnny has to be made to be even more unreasonable. When Sam and Miguel picked a fight and then ran away, he almost seemed upset at the fact that they picked a fight to begin with, but then doubled down on the idea that it was the running away that was the problem.

[breath-of-void]

Religion in Encanto

First, this is not a serious take. This is a speculation that came to me after watching it and I just want to share it because I don’t think anyone else has had the same thought process. 

Spoilers ahead.

Would the villagers worship the Madrigals?

There was a scene with Luisa carrying a church so I assume the dominant religion is still Christianity and Alma does refer to their gifts as miracles constantly, but, I mean, the whole family is a pantheon of gods living amongst them.

I would also argue that there is evidence that the Madrigals are worshipped in the movie itself. First, and this is pure speculation, Luisa is indestructible and can effortlessly carry large buildings. Maribel hinted that she might even be capable of moving mountains (though that might have been an exaggeration). Isabel can conjure plants from thin air. Doesn’t even need soil to be present. Pepa can straight up command the weather. On a whim, she can cause hurricanes and thunderstorms. Her mood dictates whether crops are good that season or not. I feel like people would worship them on the basis of that alone.

On the more concrete side, everyone kind of bends over backwards for the Madrigals though. Granted, they are kept safe through the Madrigals’ powers, but that just fuels my theory. The village bends over backwards for the Madrigals. They demand things of them, yes, but in the way you petition your gods. 

I don’t think it’s a tyrannical situation, but I fail to see how you can live in a village with a family with which there is divine proof that they are better than you and not develop some sort of reverence.

In the end, I’m not really saying anything. I do think it’s an interesting idea to explore, maybe in fanfiction.

Less importantly, imagine if they were tyrants.

[breath-of-void]

Black Widow and Pamela Halpert

So I recently came upon a series of tiktoks denouncing Pam Beesly from The Office. As a concept, I absolutely love the idea of deep diving and challenging our previously held beliefs about beloved fictional characters (there are countless cries to reevaluate Jim, also from The Office, as an unmotivated time waster rather than the cool guy we used to think he was). But this creator and plenty in the comments touched on things that, while they may make her a flawed person at worst, do not make her a bad character. 

I am by no means saying that she is wrong for her assessment and at the end of each video she does encourage discourse which is good. This just sparked a primal need in me to give my amateurish take on how we treat female characters in the media. 

Pam, like every other character on The Office, is flawed. She does bad things, she has a shitty attitude, and, one could argue, she cheats on her fiancée. That being said, that is no reason to denounce her as a character and I actually think it’s important to have characters like that. 

One of the biggest complaints most people have with her is that she constantly flirted with Jim while being engaged to Roy. As younglings, we all thought it was cute and that justice was served when they finally got together, but growing up, we realize that it was kind of a shitty thing to do. But I would like to counterpoint and ask... is it?

I mean, yes, actively making googly eyes at another potential suitor especially when it’s clear that he has the hots for you when you are committed to someone else is bad, but it ignores greater context: Roy’s treatment of Pam and Jim’s own autonomy. 

Roy was undoubtedly neglectful of Pam and was initially supportive of her friendship with Jim SO THAT SHE WOULDN’T BOTHER HIM FOR ATTENTION. Is it truly a crime that she sought solace from the one person in the office that she could get along with? If we changed the scenario to make Jim female (we’ll call her Jill) would their friendship then be considered flirty? If Pam and Jill were doing everything she and Jim were (nix the one or two kisses they had) then they would just be the two mean girls in the office playing pranks on the uptight assistant to the regional manager. Of course, it is fact that they were indeed flirting with each other (or more accurately and it is my personal belief that Jim was flirting while Pam was simply being friendly UNTIL it grew into something more.

A lot of people also tend to think of Pam as manipulating Jim’s feelings for her to gain, basically, a second boyfriend while her shitty fiancée was an ass to her. This might very well be true, but heck if Jim didn’t have a part to play in it. This idea of “manipulating his emotions” is ludicrous because Jim is a grown man who should know better and, at some points (such as when he started dating Katie and Karen) we see that he does. At best he is culpable in feeding the fantasy that he and Pam could be together despite her engagement and, at worst, he is too naïve to live. Pam didn’t manipulate him. She didn’t hide her relationship status or anything and, in fact, told him more than he needed to know about it. Several times, she would leave with Roy or act relationship-y with him in front of Jim. He was her friend, and if there was ever a chance of them being more then Jim was just as responsible for that.

So where does Black Widow fit into this? 

Well, she didn’t kill Dreykov’s daughter and I’m still salty about it. 

The idea that a flawed female character cannot be rooted for seems ingrained in our enjoyment of TV. See, the worst thing we know that Natasha has done (in the MCU not the comics) is, you know, murder a little girl. At this point she was not brainwashed, she did it because a job needed to get done and what’s a little collateral damage. What makes it worse is that her target survived so she basically just murdered a literal child for no reason. Bummer. She’s grown since then, and the knowledge that she did something like that will forever haunt her. No matter how many good deeds you do, or how many worlds you save, how do you cope with the fact that you set off a bomb point blank on a child?

But they backed out of it. In the end, turns out, she’s okay. Slightly charred, but otherwise vibing. The idea that Dreykov turning her into a weapon was Natasha’s fault is laughable because I would like to know what shred of evidence led us to believe he wasn’t going to do that anyway. Girl was destined to become a Widow whether she was his daughter or some orphan. That fact that she had to be mentally subjugated cemented that for me. I’ve complained about this before, but the identity of Taskmaster didn’t matter when they had no goals of their own. If it were that the girl survived but dedicated her life to killing Natasha for what she did and keeping the Widow program going, then that would be a suitable trade-off, but she didn’t care. As it stands, the worst thing Natasha has done... doesn’t exist anymore. The kid didn’t die and now that the brainwashing has been erased, she’s going to be taken care of. 

Did I just want to complain some more about Black Widow in this rant about Pam? Possibly.

That being said, a realistic depiction of a flawed woman should not be decried. Especially when, and let’s be honest, Pam really isn’t that bad. When all is said and done, Pam is no more mean nor petty than the rest of us. In the aforementioned tiktok, her cattiness to Kathy was cited and... so what? I’m sure there are plenty of us who thought of being or even were catty to whoever our best friends were dating because we wanted them to ourselves (whether it be platonic or romantic). 

Audiences tend not to like when women who are TOO flawed but still called good. Not that it’s always done right and discourse around this type of thing is important, but when there calls to cancel Pam, an ordinary woman whose list of crimes include being snarky to her best friend’s girl, kissing her best friend while super drunk and bullying the office joke, it’s time to evaluate why. It’s not so much that I think Pam is good, but I don’t think there’s enough wrong with her to call her bad.  

[breath-of-void]

Black Widow shouldn’t have been a “Marvel Movie”

I think we can all agree that the opening sequence to Black Widow was just *chef’s kiss* amazing. The movie as a whole was fine, I liked it, but it was having too much fun.

What I mean by it shouldn’t have been a “Marvel Movie” is that “Marvel Movies” are contractually obligated to have fun. They’ve got to be a laugh and a half and, for some stories, that’s okay. Movies like Thor and Captain America and Iron Man and Spiderman are about in-your-face heroes. Ones that rush in head first, cause some damage and then stay to clean up afterwards. These heroes are paragons, they can save everyone and they don’t do bad things (nothing so heinous as killing a child as “intentional collateral). 

Black Widow, the movie, hinted at some very dark things: child trafficking, gaslighting, complete mental subjugation, necessary sacrifices, etc. Black Widow, the hero, has a very shady past. She’s not as loud and pushy as the other heroes and, this solo movie should have been her chance to showcase that.

I’m just going to quick fire through some of the things that could have used more screen time or development.

This idea of complete mental domination. This is spoken about and we see how powerful it is on the pig, but we don’t spend much time on the effect it had on Yelena. The scene with the pig was impactful and I loved it and would have liked more like it. She was being controlled for most of her life; she hinted that she wasn’t sure who the real her was but it was little more than words.

Taskmaster. Comic to movie adaptation aside, Taskmaster could have been swapped out for any of the other mind controlled girls. The movie acted as if there was something there with her being the girl Natasha intended to kill along with Dreykov, but she had no motivation of her own. I thought Natasha was going to gas her, but get her ass beat anyway, because she didn’t need to be controlled to hate the woman that set off a bomb in her face. I’m not a professional writer, but I would have thought it a neat parallel if Taskmaster was indoctrinated the same way Natasha was, that she could change of her own volition, but didn’t want to. 

The fact that Widows are everywhere. The point of Dreykov’s plan was that Widows were near undetectable and highly lethal. Any woman could be a Widow and before you figured it out, your government would be toppled and your senators all killed. It’s an espionage plot that was ripe for an uneasy atmosphere and questions of whether or not any of our protagonists can be trusted, much less background characters. But it’s a Marvel Movie so it must be loud and proud and forgo the manipulative and lethal Widows for mindless killing machines with the emotional range of a lamp.

In conclusion, I liked Black Widow. There was a lot it did right, but it was very much held back from being a darker movie by the brand which it is attached to. I was expecting something of a Red Sparrow, but within a world where alien gods and secret civilizations are part of everyday politics.

[breath-of-void]

What... what happened to Hama?

I mean, did Team Avatar literally leave this 80-something POW to rot in a Fire Nation prison camp?

I'm not asking for a redemption (though that'd be nice), but... like, Aang put more effort into keeping Ozai safe than in letting Hama know that she didn't have to play vengeful mountain god anymore.

Even just, putting her in another prison. The Fire Nation hated her from the word "go" and it was through their abuse that she got this angry AND SHE HADN'T EVEN DONE ANYTHING TO THEM YET. Ming Hua probably got off easy compared to what they did to Hama.

Hama did heinous things, that's for sure, but we can't just pretend it was just to put her in a Fire Nation prison when that's the source of her trauma and rage.

[breath-of-void]

Just finished Cobra Kai season 2 and can I just say that the last episode was handled so poorly!

Spoilers abound

Starting with Daniel and Johnny's fight, that was so contrived that it hurts. Daniel is worried about Sam, I get that, and he learns that she's been drinking and he finds her in this dump of an apartment building; I understand he's worried something might have happened to her. He knocks on the door and he asks Johnny if his daughter is there (keep in mind, he clearly doesn't give a fuck where Johnny's hoodrat son is) and Johnny tells him that she's there and safe, but Daniel, a hysterical father, needs to calm down before he yells at his daughter, or worse, Johnny's son... and Daniel fuckin' flips.

What's annoying is that it wouldn't have taken much to get them to fight. If Daniel had calmed down and gone in to wait while Sam and Robby got their collective shits together ready for some cathartic tag team parenting, but Daniel and Johnny accidentally on purpose insult each other's parenting style, that would have gotten, not only a fight, but a more emotionally satisfying fight. It would have taken a minute to set up and pay off and would have been leagues better. As it stands, I genuinely didn't understand Daniel's reasoning for flipping out and striking first because Johnny didn't lie to him or try to turn him away. Heck! He took care of his drunk, delinquent daughter! My friends and I had bets that Daniel would have blamed Robby's influence, at which point Johnny would jump to his defense and that's where the fight would come from... but we all agreed that Daniel's reaction was unwarranted and mind-boggling.

To make matters worse, in the next scene, Daniel confirms that he does in fact blame Sam for her poor choices, but was upset that they went to Johnny for help which is a really stupid reason for starting a fight!

Next, Dimitri was practicing his first amendment right without his second amendment right. I know this is from the episode previous, but he came in talking some mad shit for someone who can very easily get his ass kicked. And his insistence that Hawk was just a softie is unfounded given that Hawk has shown the willingness and ability to kick his ass before and the only reason he's still drawing breath is because his friends, Romeo Lee and Juliet Chan, were around. Also, I don't know if it's because I'm older and my peers have all mellowed out but I feel like when he said that Hawk watched all the Harry Potter movies and cried when Dobby died, half those kids would have just said "So did I!" (The other half would have asked what a Dobby is). And also when he said Hawk's real name like it was an embarrassing secret, I feel like the kids would have went "Yeah, we know who he is, we're shallow, not dumb." Like, did people go up to Pablo Escobar and give him shot because he wore dorky clothes in high school. Sure Hawk was a wimp six months ago, now he's hyperaggressive and has a posse, who gives a fuck what his name was-- is? The bedwetting thing was scathing though, points for that.

But that was just the lead up to say that BULLSHIT DIMITRI COULD BEAT HAWK. Dimitri learned yesterday to block one punch from a guy who wasn't trying to hurt him and, in that same scene, got his shit kicked in by another guy who wasn't trying to hurt him. Hawk has been training harder and longer and you're telling me that Dimitri, by the power vested in the montage, could stop him and flip him? That sounds like some r/thathappened.

And finally: who gives a fuck about Ali?

Like, let me take you on a walk through my garden of fucks.

You see, my fucks grow seasonally, at certain points in the narrative, some fucks will grow while others wither. As you can see, there at the end, there are fucks for Miguel's wellbeing and Robby's safety and the future of Cobra Kai. In that plot over there, the empty one, are the fucks for the Ali subplot.

If you'll notice those dead fucks at the bottom, that's during the Johnny's trying to get laid arc when I gave a fuck about him sending a message to his high-school girlfriend whom he, Daniel and his dead friend were all still creepily obsessed with. Now, however, is not the time for that and this there are no fucks to give!

I feel like it would have a much more tragic cliffhanger if it were Robby calling and he threw away the phone without looking because Robby has no home right now! The LaRussou's are mad at him, he prolly just killed his dad's replacement son, his mom is in rehab and he sic'd a kung fu old man on his hoodrat friends; how's he doing? I don't give a fuck that Ali sent Johnny a friend request, what the fuck does that mean for Cobra Kai and Miguel's spine anyway?!?!

[breath-of-void]

Gabriel is like the one RPer in a party of murder hobos.

[breath-of-void]

Just finished On My Block

I’ve got no analysis, just praise.

Season 1 was by far my favourite of the 3 with 2 pulling a close second and third sitting comfortably in the back. At times it felt as if the comedy was fighting with the drama especially with Jamal, but it worked out in the end. I have been sufficiently brought to tears.