#IIRC THEY HAD THE COMPLETE SERIES @ 1 POINT

[projectdivaar]

newly acquired

[seraphinitegames]

Hey, Mishka!!!

I've been replaying TWC over the last couple of months, and must say, it's been an entirely rejuvenating experience for me. Like, I was reading it the first time, although I've replayed the series quite too many (worrying number) of times already. And it still manages to amaze me, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I've repeated this in the past, and I'll repeat it again. The Wayhaven Chronicles is a blessing for me and I'm sincerely thankful to have come across it when I did. And I'm grateful to you for making this lovely world a reality (and of course, the four beautiful vamps)! Really eager for Book 4 and have already player the demo; can say it's gonna be worth the wait. It every time is.

Replaying the series in the last few months, I had a certain uncontrollable urge to drop and ask a few questions to you. Apologize in advance for the long ask and message, but it had been bottling up inside of me for SOOOOOO LONG.

1. In Book 1, when we're to lead the investigation in one of the three directions, is there any way to get success in any direction without Bobby making a big joke out of our investigation in the newspaper?

2. In Book 2, when Nicole and Max Salinas come to report their incident, can Tina actually find out anything unusual? If so, what is actually needed to explain that?

3. In Book 3, I noticed if we choose to go the final mission alone, depending on the route chosen, Boddy/Doug will end up tagging along as well, jeopardizing everything. Is there still a way to complete the mission successfully and rescuing everyone like it happens when we go along with Rebecca?

4. Less of a question, but more of a plea. Please tell me we can get a pet anytime in the series. I was just curious if we can get one.

5. How powerful is the big baddie in Book 4 compared to Unit Bravo? You don't need to answer if this verges on spoiler-y territory.

Really sorry to overwhelm you with this, but it's just months and months of joy, happiness, and sheer ecstasy making me blabber on about this world like this. Thanks once again, for making this truly beautiful story, world, and the vampires a reality.

Have a good day!!!! Lots of love from India!!

You can never play a game you love too many times (I keep telling myself that as I gradually burn a hole into my poor old console playing Dragon Age over and over, lol!)! If it brings you happiness, then that's what is important! :D

Ok, let's see about the questions...it's been a whole since I've gone through the older games without being in editing mode, hehe!

I don't think so...Bobby is, well, Bobby. And that scene was there very much to establish their character and show the player what type of person they are.

I don't think so, again. If there's anything unusual or odd, then I usually like to let the MC find that instead of it happening 'off-screen' so it's more impactful for the player—unless it's Verda discovering stuff, because that needs to happen for…reasons.

Iirc, in the Bobby/Doug routes, you get the auction scene, so a lot of that branch involves focusing on saving yourself! But the other team that joins Unit Bravo will help in saving a lot of the captives in that version.

I would love that being a massive animal companion fan myself, hehe! But likely not, just because the MC is away a lot from home, and that's unfair on the pet, even a fictional one, lol. I was tempted to give the MC a supernatural pet that hung around at the facility—that was definitely a strong idea at one point just so I could write a pet in the series for those that wanted it (me, I was the one who wanted it, hehe!) :D

**BOOK FOUR DEMO SPOILERS AHEAD** It's not just that Book Four's villain is terrifyingly powerful (or will be. They are, thankfully for the MC and UB, in a weakened state for a while due to what's happened to them and what happened in Chapter Two) but it's a lot to do with the fact that their power specifically counteracts and weakens Unit Bravo's. So that's a double whammy!

Thank you SO incredibly much for the amazing message! It means more than you can know <3

[markantonys]

I can't remember what Rafe has hinted/what has been leaked/what you've speculated re Matt getting the Ashandarei. On a personal level I really don't give that much of a fuck if he gets a "real" Ashandarei or keeps his DIY dagger-and-spear version from s2, but at this point I want him to get the book version ASAP just so the bookcloaks will stop bellyaching about it.

yeah i don't know if we've had any hints one way or the other! all i can think of is there was an interview with the production designer and he mentioned that it was important to get the design of the DIY spear right because it's the weapon mat will be using "for the rest of the series" but then later in the same interview he said it was the weapon mat will be using "for the rest of the season" so i didn't get a definitive sense on whether he actually meant it would be mat's weapon for the show's entire run or whether he only meant that it was an important spotlit prop for this particular episode (plus english isn't his first language so idk how much stock to put in his precise word choice of series vs. season. heck i think even native english speakers use them differently depending on region, thinking about how taskmaster calls it "series 1" "series 2" etc where an american show would use "season 1" "season 2" instead).

so yeah, i'm not sure what to predict myself! i could see it falling into the same category as what you (i think it was you) were saying about mat's ancient memories, where the show clearly made it so that he got them already from the horn and it's silly for reddit to be expecting him to get them from the finn next season. maybe this is a situation where he got his ashandarei already and it's silly to predict he'll get another, different one next season. on the other hand, the DIY spear wasn't as obvious a substitute as the hero memories, so it's a grayer area. back to the first hand, iirc the bedpost he used IS carved with ravens, which feels like kind of a giveaway that this is indeed THE Ashandarei™ since that's the design it has, unless they only designed the DIY one the same way as easter-egg-y foreshadowing.

back to the second hand, mat still needs to get his medallion. but back to the first, he doesn't have to receive them together, so maybe medallion + answers are his only finn gifts, or maybe he picks up the medallion from the tanchico museum (no reason it can't just be a ter'angreal artifact already lying around in this realm of existence) and only gets answers from the finn. i'm also not even completely sure mat needs the medallion at all if Hating Channelers isn't an entire personality trait of show!mat lmao but it IS such an iconic part of his whole Look that i don't see why they wouldn't include it.

overall, i too don't care either way! i remember i made a post a while back that was like "i can't believe people are actually worried that mat won't get his real ashandarei, come on guys do you think he'll be using a DIY spear for the entire show? be serious" so if he actually does use a DIY spear for the entire show i will be embarrassingly humbled yet again jdkfjg but in my defense, the thing i thought was absurd about that was "mat using a knife taped to a stick as his permanent weapon", it was the unstable temporary craftsmanship that was absurd to me, not the general idea of him making his ashandarei himself rather than being gifted it. all we need is a 3x01 scene of perrin properly blacksmithing knife & stick together (doubling as a good mat-perrin solo bonding scene) and my sole objection would be resolved!

there's also the question of the dagger. would it narratively work for the dagger to be stuck with mat for the rest of the show? i thiiiiiink it would, because rand's already been stabbed, i think fain's already been corrupted, and i kinda doubt they'd bother with elaida's corruption because she's already got enough internal & external factors to make her do crimes without also needing to be corrupted by mashadar. so maybe mat can retain custody of the dagger forever now if no one else needs to come into contact with it. but if not, they could have perrin fashion a new, normal spearhead and weld it onto the stick.

in conclusion, now that i've pictured perrin helping turn DIY Knifestick into a proper permanent weapon, i want it so badly! i want mat's signature weapon to be imbued with the power of friendship and homoerotic stabbings!

[transmutationisms]

Thank you for letting me do this, really~~~

Like you mentioned in another post, this isn't specifically about oppenheimer or any narratives it portrays but the wider discussion that's been resurging around usamerican imperialism, nuclear weapons and the military/militarization in general. And this is so very long so I apologise.

The fact of the matter is, even after all the "lessons" learnt from bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the us wanted to do further testing to see the full extent of the impact of nuclear weapons. These tests were carried out in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, which was already heavily militarized by this point.

As usual when it comes to military interventions and imperialism by core nations, these tests were framed as a necessity "for the greater good", and to "end all wars", even framing its supposed necessity through religious narratives (which, well, christian missionary efforts).

There were 67 tests conducted from 1946 to 1958, and some of the weapons tested like the Bravo bomb dropped on March 1, 1954 over Bikini Atoll were many times more powerful than the ones used in WWII. As expected, these tests completely destroyed  the Marshall Islands, from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land. So much radioactive fallout, so much devastation and literally uninhabitable to any living being.

I want to talk specifically about one of the most atrocious aspects of this whole ordeal which is that while the usamerican authorities evacuated the Marshallese people in Bikini and Enewetak during the 1948-52 testing period (operations sandstone, greenhouse and ivy) to nearby islands, they failed to do so for operation castle series begun in 1954. The relocated populations suffered as well, since there weren't enough resources on the islands they were resettled in to sustain this extra population, and of course, the nuclear fallout would affect them even though no weapons were directly tested in these islands.

The impact of the bravo bomb detonated over Bikini was mainly on the people from Rongerik, Rongelap and Ailinginae atolls, who were not evacuated until after the bomb was detonated at which point they were already exposed to high levels of radiation. In fact, the Rongelapese people were basically used as human test subjects as they were relocated back to Rongelap in 1957 where they remained until 1985 when they had to evacuate themselves.

The us actually declared Rongelap safe and that there were no long term effects from nuclear fallout in order to relocate them. Edward teller himself has gone on interviews to declare how little of an impact the bravo test has had on human lives. Iirc the documents regarding the tests were only declassified in the 70s, so Marshallese people were deliberately kept in the dark about the cause of the illnesses they were experiencing due to nuclear fallout. Here is Lijon Eknilang, a Rongelapese survivor talking about her experiences:

In June 1957, when we did return, we saw changes on our island. Some of our food crops, such as arrowroot, completely disappeared. Makmok, or tapioca plants, stopped bearing fruit. What we did eat gave us blisters on our lips and in our mouths and we suffered terrible stomach problems and nausea. Some of the fish we caught caused the same problems. These were things that had not happened before 1954. Our staple foods had never made us ill. We brought these problems to the attention of the doctors and officials who visited us. They said we were preparing the foods incorrectly, or that we had fish poisoning. We knew that was impossible because we had been preparing and surviving from these foods for centuries without suffering from the problems that appeared after 1954.

It has always been interesting to me that even the people who were not on Rongelap in 1954, but who went there with us in 1957, began to experience the same illnesses we did in later years. Foreign doctors and other officials called those people the “control group,” and we were told the sickness of that group proved our illnesses were common to all Marshallese. We did not believe that, and we learned only recently that the “control group” had come from areas that had also been contaminated by radioactivity from the weapons tests.

The usamerican authorities to this day do not acknowledge how serious and how much of an impact the nuclear weapons have left on the Marshall Islands and its people. There is no acknowledgement of the fact that people outside of the Enewetak, Utrik, Bikini and Rongelap atolls during testing were affected even when they show effects of radiation. There is no acknowledgement of just how much destruction they've brought upon these islands (also keeping in mind that animals were not evacuated). And of course, there is no acknowledgement of the fact that none of this was necessary in the first place (even if it can ever be called necessary). It was basically a large scale human experiment done for the sake of science and the "greater good", with little to no concern about the impact it would leave on the people of Oceania.

Oh, and there's also a huge crater left on Enewetak from the testing that's basically leaking nuclear waste into the soil, still contaminating the flora and fauna in area and beyond. There's so much spending by the us military in the Pacific region, especially now with the whole AUKUS agreement, but nothing has been done to properly contain this waste. Or actually address the violation of Marshallese people's human rights due to nuclear weapons testing. There has never really been any talks of reparations either, and whatever money and resources the us has spent has been woefully inadequate.

While the testing stopped decades ago, this is only a part of the ongoing militarization of Oceania by the US (and associated core and semi-periphery nations). Of course, this is all framed as selfless efforts by the us to prevent wars (which it always seems to be doing), for the greater good of humanity, to take us into further advancement and so on. Lastly, to mention a sliver of the role science has played in all of this: they were celebrating the discovery of new elements after the ivy mike detonation (1952), while people were suffering the impact of ongoing nuclear testing, and iirc, they were actually hoping to discover new elements from these nuclear reactions, so who's to say that these weapons were not made as a part of the race to discover elements, aka scientists' version of a dick measuring contest.

Sources and for more info for anyone interested:

Barbara Rose-Johnston. Nuclear Disaster: The Marshall Islands Experience and Lessons for a Post-Fukushima World [where I got the quote and most of the info from]

April L. Brown. No Promised Land: The Shared Legacy of the Castle Bravo Nuclear Test

Carl Zimmer. Nuclear Tests Marked Life in Earth with a Radioactive Spike [the sheer scope of the radioactive fallout from bravo]

Kit Chapman. Element Hunting in a Nuclear Storm

Edward Teller interview

.

[agenericplaceholdername]

Dragons Rising E1-5 Thoughts

In the run up to the official release of Ninjago: Dragons Rising Season 2 Part 2, I’ll be posting my thoughts on the episodes already released in chunks of 5. This also marks the end of the Ninjago full series rewatch I started at the start of this year. These will just be bullet points, not full episode or character analysis – if this is popular, maybe I’ll do that later. No real spoilers for S2P2, but I’ll make slight allusions to events that happen.

First: The Merge, Part 1:

Solid beginning. I love how Arin introduces the Ninja as they pan across the screen in one-take – reminds me of the Skybound intro

It is very unclear how long Arin and Sora have known each other. This episode implies they just met with lines like “best new friend” but next episode Arin says they met “right after the Merge”

A LOT of exposition that consists of Arin and Sora telling the other person something they probably already know

It’s interesting that Arin says he wants to create a monastery for people who lost their parents in the Merge – the Monastery is now home to a ton of people who have found family in the Ninja

Frohicky is great. So is Lobbo

In the time that Arin and Sora argue about whether or not to chase Riyu, they could have passed the finish line. On the other hand, this would have prevented Lobbo from winning

Rapton sees two children fall to their death and doesn’t care lol

Ras is ridiculously cool in his intro scene. He just spawns in midair, wins, and leaves

Arin and Sora are so much fun in this episode. Some of the dialogue is strange but I am sold on their friendship and they have good chemistry together

Love Lloyd’s entrance

The Merge, Part 2:

Man Lloyd is just so cool here. He might have 0 self confidence later but at least physically he rightfully outmatches almost any opponent

How do you accidentally make a bomb? It’s funny tho so who cares

“Do elemental powers come and go?” “No. Well, sometimes.”

Kai and Lloyd’s reunion is so insanely sweet

Arin and Sora playing catch with Riyu is great

Is it “Claws of Imperium” or “Claws of the Imperium”?

Is Firstbourne an unofficial Dragon Matriarch?

Okay what is with Rapton being okay with children dying by falling from a great height? If not for the Matriarch he would have just dropped Sora into the abyss

Lloyd is so cool again, and probably didn’t even need a spark from the Matriarch given how easily he handles the five Claws of Imperium at once

The Ninja standing for hope is a recurring motif in S1P1 – it’s part of E1, E2, E3, and E10 iirc

“If he ever needs us, he will be able to find us” … oh

Why did Ras want Lloyd to bond with the Dragon Matriarch? What did that have to do with hunting Source Dragons?

Crossroads Carnival:

Lloyd copying Wu from the Pilots is funny, but it does imply that after the Monastery was rebuilt, Wu made Lloyd complete the course before he could finish his tea. At that point Lloyd had defeated the embodiment of evil, fought in a war, and defeated and depowered Emperor Garmadon (among other things) yet that wasn’t good enough? Okay knowing Wu yeah probably not

The beard gag. Nuff said

Arin must be in crazy shape to be handling the training course this well

Couldn’t Arin and Sora have just asked Lloyd to go? Like at dinner or something? Training was over for the day

You can see the parts of the carpet ripping off Riyu’s disguise

Just realized that SA Mark 1 = Sora & Arin Mark 1 that’s so cool

Look Lloyd at least Arin and Sora didn’t tie you up and banish themselves to another realm

This is a rare sighting of Sora’s bike helmet with cat ears

“Ninja help everyone” but what if it was Rapton, Arin? Would you help him?

The tent scene is really well done. The music, Lloyd being so overwhelmed, it’s really sweet, especially as an older fan

“DO NOT TYPECAST ME”

Protective parent Lloyd is great

Sora and Lloyd – is dreaming about giant marionettes that normal?

Object spinjitzu!

Lloyd uses the pieces of the mediation carpet to defeat the marionette, so that’s a cool detail

This conversation between Lobbo and Kreel is pure gold. I hope Lobbo finds love <3

Can someone pour salt onto Grab-Barg please?

This is a great one-off episode, and Dorama is easily at his best here. As much as I love the other DR characters, the Arin, Sora, Lloyd trio (+ Riyu) all bounce off each other really well, and this is a light, low stakes episode that includes some important growth for Lloyd 

Beyond Madness:

“Worst student in the history of students” – is there something about being in Ninjago that saps all your self confidence?

There are a lot of Bounty crash scenes, but this might be the funniest: Sora having to use the ladder to see what’s going on, Lloyd and Arin leaving her, the toolbox falling, Lloyd trying to land, “Let us never speak of this”

I love the pool of water on the Bounty. No the water didn’t seep into the wood or spread out on the ground – it’s just perfectly still

Autobiographical one man musical? As a diehard fan of Clutch Powers: A Musical Life, I’m excited to watch The Dorama Drama this winter!

Nya’s water blast knocks Arin to the ground, but Lloyd (far more trained) is fine. It’s a minor detail but cool nonetheless

The Lloyd-Nya reunion is really sweet

“The important thing is to accept others for their flaws and– Why is that foul thing here?” Thanks Crag-Nor very cool

Wait so where did Nya end up after the Merge? What stories are there?

Why do the “Earth Dragons” shoot fire from their mouths?

“Kai’s… gone?” [Cut to Kai] “I’m starving!” okay they got me there that’s actually pretty funny

Arin says Kai was his favorite Ninja, then corrects to saying second favorite – but he’s talking to both Lloyd and Nya! So which one is the favorite?

This battle is fun and the music is great

So Lloyd catches Sora and Kai catches Nya… but no one catches Riyu? He literally just falls to the ground. Riyu villain arc?

Wow Riyu just ended racism. Beautiful

Sora’s last line is a good setup for the next episode

Writers of Destiny:

This episode implies that the only reason Arin learns Spinjitzu without being formally taught is because of the Merge. If so… how?

The Spiderverse-esque glitching effect is super cool

Spinjitzu basically allows for flight here

There’s a running trend of Arin and Sora falling to what should be their deaths. No wonder Wyldfyre is afraid of heights

It’s good to see Kai’s confidence hasn’t gone anywhere. Yes, Kai, I’m sure the monks would love to tell you how awesome you were

The Cloud Kingdom retcon is definitely a net positive for the series, but it doesn’t really square with Kingdom Come. The destinies written in that episode have an immediate effect on the characters. I think the synthesis of the two would be that the Writers are very good at predicting events and even have a slight ability to change outcomes, but mostly they just guess accurately and when they’re wrong, events “defy destiny.” Their ability to change outcomes is gone after the Merge

My heart is breaking right now at this hug

But how can storm clouds wash ink stains out of white togas? Marcus please I wasn’t listening

The way Euphrasia delivers her words when explaining how she can’t have a power (“Writing destiny is our power. Anything else, especially actions, violates who we are”) sounds like she’s repeating what one of the other monks told her. I wonder if she started to tell someone but was shut down

“Euphrasia’s Destiny” is such a good soundtrack

“I released the ninja from the evil worm cocoons in the cloud basement”

“I knew the last one. I already like you more” low bar Lloyd but fair

The worms were cursed to not reveal forbidden information? Wow they really were planning ahead – that’s a very specific word

This episode can very easily be read as a coming out allegory

Kai ribbing Lloyd is great

So was Imperium responsible for the Mergequake? My assumption is no but Rapton implies that it was (or at least was aware it was coming)

This episode is like a mid-mid-season finale – the Ninja fight a miniboss, Sora finishes a small character arc, and the rest of the “season” (up through the S1P1 finale) takes place in Imperium

See you next time for the conclusion of S1P1!

[stackslip]

augh yeah as much as i do love the parts of COS that are very obviously trying to do something competent and genuine, the amestris parts are just so ????

ill be honest, im pretty sure i blocked those scenes out, so remembering that what happened on the amestris side is. yikes

definitely wish the movie was more focused and didnt try to add as much as it did. especially roy -- i dont mind the beginning, hell i think him exiling himself to the north is a good concept, but the fact that he takes back his position (iirc) is just. so are we throwing away the character development and him realizing that he CANT change the military from the inside or what.

in general i honestly wanted to see less of the military cast. they frankly dont have much reason to be there other than the fact people wanted to see them (esp armstrong... just. WHY). im sure there are still ways to work in roy if the creators really wanted him to be there but like. idk! they sure didnt have to do it like that! we couldve spent more time on exploring noah as a character. or let izumi die on screen. sigh

been a while since i rewatched COS but thanks for pointing out all the weird stuff, i'd almost forgotten it and i honestly shouldn't.

(and of course i have to say i love your posts on the series proper. i will never be normal about scar. ever)

the second i saw roy in there i was like why is roy still in the military at all. wasn't his whole arc about realizing that he can't do shit within the military because it is an institution built on atrocities and exploitation? why is he still in it then. why is he talking about serving his country. why's he talking about waiting for ED that makes no fucking SENSE. (why is he alive. someone said they thought roy was supposed to die by the end of 03 but they kept him alive bc he's a fan fave and i wholly believe this frankly). why is the country's military still seemingly intact with a whole surveillance network, when 03 ended on the military being severely crippled and amestris's neighbours getting ready to invade it and bring it to its knees? why are we literally seeing *the fucking weimar republic* in cos only for amestris to not parallel it in any way and instead be the brotherhood-type funland where once you've taken out the mean führer, everything is fine and there's nothing to fix?

and like. this is a short movie right! i know that they were denied a season, maybe even a season and a half to finish off the show and that some elements of cos were meant to be in the og show's ending. and it shows! bc again munich is fucking reasonably competent considering how much is crammed in on hour thirty. and i know that cos's production was also rushed as hell and that as an Anime Movie they were contractually obligated to 1) put as many recurring fan faves in as possible 2) have at least a third of the movie be a big action scene. so like. i can understand the limits. you have no time, you're told you have to put all this shit in, you want to finish off the brothers' story at the very least. but my gd! you're telling me you had an izumi death scene and it doesn't happen??? you could cut roy out ENTIRELY from this. you could not put ARMSTRONG IN LIORE. you could..... i know they had no time at all, i know once again it was 03 being shafted by production committees and time and budget but it's legit insane how the very stupid and seemingly innocuous choice of having armstrong "rebuild" liore comedically completely slapped me out of whatever headspace cos had managed to slip me in before. i was enjoying it a lot until we got to amestris. and this armstrong thing, followed by rose's line here:

it's just. it's almost comedic. i'm almost wondering if the writer is fucking with me here and acknowledging just how stupid it is to put armstrong doing alchemy in liore is. probably not but gd this is bad. this is brotherhood levels of obliviousness to the themes.

anyhow i'm not finishing cos tonight bc i'm too pissed about it lol. it's funny bc for years i was told it was bad but for the opposite reasons that it's actually bad. like folks kept saying the munich parts were bad/stupid/wrong and made no sense when to me they're by far the most thematically coherent and interesting/emotional bits of it. i LOVE the relationship between noah and ed. and like, i know the bar is is in hell when it comes to depicting roma on screen, but i can't help but appreciate the little and big ways both noah and her people get humanized, how they feel like the most real and concrete part of this world ed insists is a dream or hell. but really, genuinely noah is so good, alfons's weird crush on ed is hysterical, the general atmosphere and research around 1923 munich seems genuinely thoughtful (and it also tells me that the writers had been thinking about this long, long before even 03 ended). i genuinely believe that making munich! hugues a nazi sympathizer and a racist is a really inspired and brave choice that makes the audience reflects THEIR hugues and how the amestrian military behaved. so anyhow these parts are good, genuinely. it's sad that that's the first third and then you get thrown into this mess, and there's still a whole stupid nazi battle to come. it's stupid. it's stupid especially bc there's a genuine part of the movie that IS smart and thoughtful. it'd be so much easier if all of it were bad, or if the difference between the writing in each part weren't so obvious. anyhow. i wanna finish cos bc i wanna see wrath's arc end and envy eating hoheinheim and ed/al reunion and more of noah. but also i think i'm gonna be writing off large chunks of it lol.

(also thank you very much, i'm trying to preach 03 to whoever i can whenever i can. appreciate the love)

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PRELIMINARY ROUND - BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES

PROPAGANDA

Kendra Young

1.) Kendra was shafted due to a combination of misogyny and racism. She is a Jamaican young woman who enters the narrative to serve as a foil for Buffy, the main character. Her backstory is one-dimensional and her personality is one-note. (Rather than exploring what it might be like to be a teenager growing up in Jamaica, facing the same Chosen One fate as Buffy in a different setting, they just made her robotically devoted to the idea of being a slayer with no other traits.) She exists purely as a comparison for one issue that Buffy is encountering during this time in the story. As soon as Buffy worked through this issue to the writer's satisfaction, Kendra was removed from the story (i.e., was killed by being outsmarted, hypnotized, and then executed by a villain). During her brief life, she was subjected to the trope that when two women are in the same story they have to hate each other and see each other as rivals, despite the fact that this makes so sense with either of their characterization. She is MUCH less fleshed out than the vast majority of other characters in the story and her narrative role is eventually replaced with a far more complexly written white woman (proving that they could have done all this interesting stuff with Kendra in the first place??? but chose to kill her off instead.)

2.) She was introduced as a foil to the protagonist and set up as being an important new addition to the cast whose very existence in the show completely altered the status quo and she had a really interesting dynamic with the protagonist and a compelling backstory and a lot of potential for some great character development and to provide a new point of view and there was just generally so much potential there AND THEN THEY KILLED HER OFF AFTER LIKE THREE EPISODES AND NEVER MENTIONED HER AGAIN. FUMING. (also she was like. the only major woman of colour on the show at least for the majority of the show's run. so y'know that fucking sucks)

anyway I think this post really sums up how badly she got screwed over:

3.) Okay, so I had more been considering her a victim of racism, but let's call it misogynoir. Aside from the sexist origin she shares with all the slayers - some men got together to imbue Woman with power against her will which they would then oversee and manage for their own purposes and according to their own interests- she has been trained for slaying from childhood and yet she is killed pretty quickly after entering the story for the purposes of a white girl's angst and character development (and in fact her character only exists for this purpose)… by a fingernail. A powerful, well-trained, competent and bad-ass girl is killed because she didn't lean back one inch further fast enough. IIRC there's also sexism and racism in the way she is portrayed as kind of naive about the normal world and Buffy has to show her how to be a normal teenager.

Illyria

1.) illyria was an all powerful demon whose literal introduction to the show was her taking over the body of one of the main characters and killing her in the process. given such an introduction, i think it would be reasonable to assume that she'd be a really major character and would play an important role in the show's plot. WRONG SHE BASICALLY CONTRIBUTES NOTHING TO THE PLOT AFTER LIKE HER FIRST TWO EPISODES. she also gets depowered and then in the last couple episodes of the show she gets incapacitated so she's not even there when all the other main characters (who, by the way, are all men at this point) make their Big Important Decision to fight back against the evil company they've been working for. apparently in the angel writers' world women can't have agency even when they're literal god like demon lords

[sapphire-weapon]

i still wonder if it's possible that RE7's sales being slow at first is because it was the first big RE game in a very long time and not really bc of RE6's reception.

also iirc RE6's sales kinda picked up last year and right now its total sales is over 14 mil which is honestly a very good number. is there any particular reason for that?

i don't think so. RE7 had a monster of a viral marketing campaign with the beginning hour demo -- like, people were comparing it to PT, which is crazy to think about -- and people still hesitated to buy the final game because the name "resident evil" had become so tainted. like, literally no one believed that the demo was going to be representative of the final product. i think capcom may have even made a statement that the demo was its own thing and was not going to lead into the game, which i'm sure hurt them. you can still find shit on reddit from back when the game first released of people opining that the game sucks compared to the demo.

RE6 picked up sales when the game released on the switch, and because it's not anywhere close to being a "new" title, the only time we get updates on its sales figures are in capcom's annual reports. so, it'll look like sales are suddenly spiking out of nowhere, but the reality is that that's just going to happen when a new port gets released and we don't get updated sales figures for a year.

lifetime sales also don't matter 13 years after the fact. RE6's lifetime sales are only useful insofar as they contribute to RE as a series's lifetime sales -- they help bolster the marketability of RE as a series to investors and shareholders. but the individual title is no longer relevant; it doesn't mean anything anymore. this is true of not only RE6 but every single RE game released prior to RE7.

the reason why RE7 is the cutoff for regular announcements of sales figures is because capcom is showcasing the success of the RE engine. when the REX engine is completed and has its first game released, we'll never hear about sales for an RE engine game again outside of capcom fiscal reports.

in terms of measuring a game's success, everything is measured by something called "return on investment" -- or ROI. basically, ROI is just a comparison between the budget of the game vs the amount of money that it brought in.

this might get a little math-heavy, so bear with me.

but every single investor is looking for a 10% ROI. so, say that a game's budget was 100 million dollars and had 100 investors who all put in 1 million dollars. all 100 of those investors are looking for a 10% return on their investment -- which means every single investor is looking to get $100,000 on top of the $1mil they originally put in. or, to put it simply, every single investor is looking to get paid back $1.1 million. this would mean that the game would have to bring in, at minimum, $110 million in order to pay off all 100 investors at the rate that they expect to be paid.

but capcom is also looking to get a 10% profit on the game. so, the game would have to bring in $121 million in order to be deemed a success -- or, in other words, bring in 21 million more dollars than it took to produce.

anything short of that renders the game a failure. it doesn't matter how many units were sold; not enough money was brought in. and you can't just look at the sales numbers and multiply that number by 60 or 70 or whatever the game released at and be like "WELL IT LOOKS LIKE THIS GAME ACTUALLY MADE 150 MILLION DOLLARS SO???" -- because not all of that $60 or $70 price tag went right back to capcom. percentages of that cost get sliced out to pay digital storefronts and brick and mortar shops that carry the game and console manufacturers and shipping companies and things like that. that shit isn't factored into the budget, because that money is paid at the point of sale for each unit, depending on where and how it's sold.

so tl;dr you can't look at just raw sales numbers when determining a game's success from a corporate perspective; they're meaningless. they are only useful in terms of judging them against other game releases to see relative success within the wider trends of the industry (which is meaningless to capcom as a corporation; if they didn't recoup their budget and they couldn't pay off their investors, then it doesn't really matter where the game ranks among the rest of the industry. they have to pay their bills, first and foremost).

RE6 had an incredibly bloated budget because capcom back in the early 2010s had gotten too high on their own supply and so unbelievably carried away by their own hubris that they were chasing the sales figures of call of duty (which, for context -- modern warfare 2 generated over one BILLION dollars in the first 90 days, a number which was unheard of until grand theft auto 5 went "lmao hold my beer").

which is how we ended up with shit like this:

5 million sales was a failure to capcom.

DLC was canceled, and RE went into hibernation for five years while a lot of soul searching was done internally.

because 5 million sales was a failure.

[parkeryangs]

OK BUT THIS IS REALLY INTRIGUING ACTUALLY. tell me more about this 'mattkey' ............

YES ABSOLUTELY OH MY GOD

SO in episode 1 participant observation, the main character, mike walters, claims to be "investigating" a secret online game called woe.begone out of curiosity/boredom, via actually playing the game. w.bg is a series of challenges, the first being that mike had to call his ex-boyfriend and tell him the worst thing he ever did to you.

mike does this, explaining that his "lifelong best friend" (matt) had unexpectedly died in a car crash, and his ex wasn't home at the time/didn't realize how serious the situation was, so he left mike to worry alone before matt's death had actually been confirmed. he tells his ex that he doesn't forgive him and has a breakdown, then waking up the next day to realize that matt wasn't dead and there was no trace of the voicemail he left for his ex. (so, at this point, mike continues to play w.bg, with matt as his "prize")

there's several other challenges he completes, along with another old friend of theirs also playing woe.begone, but the next marker of their relationship is in episode 11 this is only temporary, when mike's woe.begone challenge is to kill the prize from his first challenge— which is obviously matt. he explains the situation, a future version of him shows up to "prove" everything to matt, and ultimately matt slides his gun across the table, mike apologizes, and tells matt he loves him. (i talk more about this in another post)

at the end of season 1, woe.begone contacts mike to tell him that he has to relocate to a government job, a place called o.v.e.r./oldbrush valley energy & resources. he does, with season 2/3 following the start of his time in the valley & continued problem-causing due to w.bg lol. then in episode 35 safehouse, he kills another character and flees o.v.e.r., driving 26 hours to matt's house. he doesn't tell him all the details of what happened, but episode 36 respite is mostly dedicated to mike talking about the few days he spent with matt ("we didn’t need to do anything other than be in each other’s company") (i ramble about matt in 35/36 here)

there's a lot of non-mattkey events that occur, lol, but it gets to a point where matt essentially wants to be involved with a time travel org mike creates called base, but mike kind of keeps him at a distance for reasons unknown (coughs. mike does have a boyfriend he meets at o.v.e.r. and not saying it has anything to do with that but i'm also not Not saying that) and in episode 84 panther, matt helps with stalking two "rogue" iterations of mike and his boyfriend edgar (and i believe this is the first episode where matt has a voice actor?) and continues to do so throughout the current point in the podcast/"about a year" in canon time.

at the end of episode 120 true story, a (drunk) mike transports to matt's house as there was a timeline they'd been in (~e104 to 120ish iirc) where matt was dead once again because of mike. mike gives matt a box of his old stuff, and matt, worrying over mike using time travel when he's drunk lol, brings mike to stay in his spare room (that he mentions he's kept open since mike was last there). mike tells matt he loves him, and matt returns the sentiment.

so YEAH. mattkey my absolute beloved. imo their dynamic is very much "knowing one another better than they know themselves" if that gives you a more direct idea jksdhfjksdf. also college-era mattkey has been brainrotting the fandom recently which might be my fault LOL but pre-wbg mattkey is SO compelling even if only mentioned in passing - i talk about college mattkey here, here, here (kind of), and here, and i wrote a short fic about them here. overall, essentially the catalyst for everything in woe.begone is literally just. matt. like... mike literally rewrites time to keep matt safe and while it's true that mike has a deep relationship with most of his friends, matt is so intrinsically tied to him in a way that nobody else is.

[spockandawe]

Hello,I absolutely adore your work! I have been binding books for a few years now (mostly scanlated manga that hasn't been licensed,and some pdf books that are too expensive for me to afford or too rare to buy). I came across your work a few months ago,and absolutely relish your posts. I was wondering if I could ask for some advice?

Do you print your books at home,or use a printing service? Because they're such massive amounts of pages if I want to do a full series...once I printed a 24 volume series and my printer reached its page limit,and I had to get it serviced to reset it😭(I know a code can be bought and used,if it happens again I intend to do that but I'd like to avoid if possible). If you use a service can you recommend any,or any general advice for finding one?

And if you print them at home, could you give some advice on how to print Quattro or snaller books? I just use Acrobat (older versions) to print in booklet setting to get a half page sized book,I would really appreciate some knowledge on how to go smaller (and save some paper)

It's okay if you would rather not answer though,or if you want to take a while,I completely understand if that's the case!

Oh my gosh, you can absolutely ask anything you want, this is my favorite hobby to enable people for! (I LOVE that you're doing this for scanlations, also! My manga hyperfixation is mostly dormant right now, but once my brain locked on to archival work for fan translations of cnovels, I immediately started anxiously circling this idea like a dog whining because it can't fit all the toys in its mouth at once, so I'm delighted to hear someone has this interest!)

I print my books at home. I've considered using a printing service for some special cases, like large paper my machine can't handle, but it was ultimately expensive enough, and my personal needs were off enough (I do high-volume, fast-turnaround work) that I've never actually followed through. I'm fortunate that a few years before I picked up this hobby, I got a color laser duplex printer (canon mf cdw644, iirc) as a gift, and it's filled all my needs beautifully, so I never had to look for another way to tackle the issue.

It is still very expensive to make as many books as I do, I've spent unconscionable amounts of money just on toner, but the math shakes out pretty clearly in my favor. Now, an issue that has occurred to me for more graphic prints would be that if a comic page has a lot of hard blacks, I'm not sure how much it would take before it was cost-effective to go elsewhere. I'm not sure if a point like that does exist, but it's a question I'd be interested in knowing an answer to!

(Laser printers tend to be more expensive up front, but cheaper to use in the long term. I do know one person who owns an ink TANK printer and sings its praises, but those can be harder to find for home usage)

One thing that I'm not sure would apply to your printer is that for big jobs, I *think* my computer and printer run out of memory and it messes up not just the current print job, but future ones I queue up after it, and switching the printer off only makes it worse. My pages start looping back to the beginning of the print job and starting over and the only fix is to reset my print spooler in my system services directory and ruthlessly cancel jobs until my print queue stays empty. I can get around that by printing smaller sets of pages at a time (1-50, then 51-100, etc), so something like that might also help coax your printer into cooperating!

And ahhhh, yes, small books! I'm a HUGE fan, I rarely print anything larger than quarto these days. I use a free tool developed by other fan binders, which I'll link right here

https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/

It has a lot of settings that I haven't explored in too much depth, but I use it to impose almost everything I make. There are layouts for the straightforward divide-in-half imposition (half-letter, quarto, octavo, etc), but towards the bottom there are wacky layouts, like six sheets per side of paper. There might be resources somewhere in renegadepublishing that go into more depth, but like I said, my experimentation has been relatively bland XD In general, I recommend double checking the files you get from it for whether you want to flip on the long or the short edge, but other than that, I've found the tool very intuitive and easy to use!

I hope that helps!!! I'm always delighted to help people out with any of this stuff :D

[thekaijudude]

Do you feel Taro should have been the last real Showa Ultra from his time?

cause Leo and 80 doesn't really looked like Final Showa shows compared to what Taro offered

I remember I see in somewhere that one of the writers that thoght Taro should had been the last Showa Ultra but it seems that it was the broadcaster that at the time wanted another Ultra series and so Tsburaya was kind of forced to create Leo

Tbh im alright with there being more Showa shows after Taro. The Showa Era itself is just simply ultraman shows that were produced during this period of time

Not to mention, the other showa series after Taro have also gone on to inspire subsequent series as well. Its also for TsuPro at the time continue to explore other themes like Leo with its martial art-focused theme and 80, being the more "humanized sensei", and to make their early expansions into other media like Joneus with its animated series, along with Powered and Great for their international productions. So TsuPro themsleves were still just simply exploring what they could really do with the franchise at this time

Not to mention these subsequent series continued to serve as part of the fundamental concepts for Ultra shows that were then adapted and improved on in subsequent series after the Showa Era

(But ngl i still hate 80, not only because of how he looks but how weak he was protrayed in his own series, frequently being totally knocked down by simple projectile attacks for example)

But speaking of at least major changes from Taro to Leo, i do rmb reading in either the Taro or UB Super Complete Works was that they did purposely dialed down the powerscales from Taro to Leo and onwards as it was pointed out that Ultras are getting way too powerful

This was very noticeable with feats in every subsequent series like Choju were established to be leagues beyond normal kaiju from Ultraman-Jack in Ace, which then in ep 1 in Taro, the kaiju are now suddenly one shotting choju (Astromons ate Oil Drinker in a single gulp iirc) to establish the new powerscaling

Now this was quite significant as i pointed out before as if they were to continue scaling upwards from Taro, theyd eventually write themsleves into a narrative hole due to powerscaling, which back then i pointed out which is what dragonball is suffering from now.

This is also especially prevalent in the NG era, as except for obvious exceptions like Fusions or Movie+/++ forms, all NG are relative to each other, with the UB at least being "shown" to scale with their max forms (tho iirc my calculations actually have them scale at pure trinity fusions, being around 10 000x stronger than NG)

At least TsuPro till this day still actively only acknowledges the "Ultra Brothers" as the firsr 6 Ultras for modern (post-Mebius/Zero) on-screen appearances

Thanks for the question!

[fortune-maiden]

Warrior Cats Reread #1: Into The Wild

Some friends decided to organize a group read of the Warriors series and since I grew up with these books and loved them a lot as a kid I decided to join in

Idk how far I'll get into this reread (my hope is to at least finish the first arc) but I thought it'd be fun to write up some thoughts as I finish the books :D

iirc I first read Into the Wild when I was in middle school after a friend convinced me to try the series and my mom bought me the first book of the og series & new prophecy during a family trip (possibly to make me less whiny since I remember being very bored on that trip and I think I was actually almost done with Into the Wild by the time we were heading back xD)

Anyway, I remember reading several of the first series books multiple times but for some reason never the first one. Which is a shame because its a great book and I remembered some parts of it pretty vividly! The conflict with Brokenstar and him training young kits before they were ready, Yellowfang's exile and friendship with Firepaw, Tigerclaw murdering Redtail and Ravenpaw being a witness and being forced to escape at the end or risk losing his life... There's a lot of good stuff!

Also Spottedleaf I guess.

Actually the #1 thing I remembered from this book is that Spottedleaf dies and it is very sudden and weird and for some reason she becomes Firestar's Lost Lenore in later books. I thought maybe they had some meaningful scenes in this book I'd forgotten that showed them building a bond or her being kind to him at a time when most of the clan regarded him with suspicion...

But nope! It's exactly as I remembered xD

Maybe most of this bonding occurs after she's a force ghost?

Although she died a lot further into the book than I expected so there is that I guess!

Other things of note:

Bluestar my beloved! I vaguely remember her being my favorite character as a kid and I still love her!

Yellowfang my other beloved! I still love you so much!

Ravenpaw is a good bean who deserves the world. And also wow was Tigerclaw determined to kill him in this volume!

And speaking of Tigerclaw killing cat-people, I could have sworn he was responsible for Lionheart's death but I guess not? Maybe?

I had completely forgotten that Wind Clan was a non-entity in this book, having been driven out. I vaguely remember them being pretty helpful in this arc and then turn into the worst clan later

There is so much murder and attempted murder and talk of murder in this children's book series and I wouldn't have it any other way <3

Overall Into the Wild is a great first entry into the Warriors series that eases the reader into the setting and the way of the clans (even if you can kinda tell things were still being figured out at this point). Brokenstar makes for a great first antagonist to be defeated at the end, while a more sinister threat looms in the background raising more questions and mysteries for Firepaw to explore in later books

[beevean]

Sonic games being rushed is like peanut butter and jelly: you just can't have one without the other

As soon as it was confirmed that Frontiers was gonna be open world I would've betted my soul that it was gonna get rushed because that's a genre that requires lots of money, staff and dev time...and SEGA and Sonic Team aren't known for none of these. If Forces, a much smaller and simpler game, had very clear cut corners than Frontiers was a no brainer

And honestly? I'm tired of fans going off about how this is a practice that Sega's been doing since 06 or whatever. No Sega's been doing this sice day 1: Sonic 2 was rushed. Sonic 3 had to be split into 2 in order to meet Sega's deadline. SA1 is 80% undercooked stuff and the list goes on

It's why I scoffed years ago at Izuka's ( I believe it was him) comment leading up to Forces' release about how they were going to put more development time into projects in response to fans' criticisms. I don't believe this is something that either him or any other single person over at Sonic Team can truly promise, I think this is just Sega's way of doing things in general: case in point Forces and Frontiers, alongside games like Rise of Lyric, Colors Ultimate, Origins and even Mania at launch all showed obvious signs of rushed development and cut corners, albeit at greatly varying degrees, despite all being developed by completely different teams.

Add to all of this the fact that Sonic Team are clearly desperate, if not downright clueless, as to what to do with the series in order to make the fandom AND the general public and critics happy, and we've got a pretty depressing situation

Frontiers was also delayed a few months too polish it even further. Considering that they couldn't even fix the most glaring pop-up I've ever seen, the situation must have been dire.

(then again, IIRC, a ton of development time was spent on Giganto alone...)

I don't know what to say. Yes, most Sonic games are rushed. Not all of them are glitchy messes like '06: some of them have just a lot of cut content, or recycle assets, or have some sloppy mechanics... I think Unleashed and Colors may be the only games that show no signs of being rushed at all :\

I still believe Frontiers, as a genre, will influence the next games, perhaps for the whole decade - they seemed pretty happy with it. It is shameful, though, that it always seems like Sonic Team is pressed for time, even though by this point they're releasing a major game every 5 years while in the 2000s it was one every 1-2 years.

[beesandwasps]

In this particular case I approve, because I always hated the song Fly Me to the Moon.

Another example of licensing weirdness that either hasn’t been pointed out in the notes or which was pointed out too far back for me to be bothered to scroll through: the really frenetic first season of Kodomo no Omocha (“Child’s Toy”, a.k.a. Kodocha) had an opening song (19 O’clock News) with lyrics written by the author of the manga (she mentions it in the sidebars of the later parts of the manga, which was still going on when season 1 was produced) but performed by a fairly popular boy band called Tokio. The animation in the opening is completely synced to the music (here’s a copy on YouTube which isn’t super high quality and is just slightly out of sync but is “correct” as far as it goes):

When the series was picked up for international licensing, Johnny’s, the agency which represented Tokio (and a lot of other boy bands, they were known for it to the point where you could use the name of the agency as an adjective for male idol singers), insisted that they owned the rights to the song and that it could only be used internationally for an enormously high fee. So to avoid paying, the English DVD release of season 1 put the song from the second season opening — Ultra Relax — over the season 1 opening and called it a day, which of course destroyed all the synced-up animation. (IIRC it’s even the wrong length.) But at least it was performed by the voice actress of the main character instead of a rapacious boy band so there weren’t any nasty surprises about the rights.

(Incidentally, the founder of Johnny’s has been credibly accused of, and is basically known to have committed at this point, decades of sexual abuse against the firm’s clients. The initial accusations were made in 2001, and IIRC the English DVDs were license after that. So the desire not to make a deal with somebody under high-profile public disapproval may have had something to do with it, too. The guy died in 2019, but the accusations were so numerous and public disapproval was so strong that the company both split into two parts and rebranded to avoid using his name any more.)

you know how you can go and watch a movie you watched a bunch as a kid and the version of a song in it is different? like they actually changed it since you were a kid? that isn't normal. we didn't do that until like, the last ten years. it's fucked up.

[neospokenworld]

WINTER ANIME 2025 FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm gonna say I was going to do this like a week ago but I completely forgot and only remembered now that the Spring season started lol, still a good thing that I forgot because I would've missed entirely the epilogue OVA (I think it's an OVA? I have no idea) Momentary Lily had. Also before I start I wanted to link the first impression post, why you ask? Just because lol. Anyways you can read it here

Now you might imagine that with only 4 anime I wouldn't drop any of them right? well you'll be wrong! I actually dropped one and that one was:

Zenshu: my disappointment never went away with this being an isekai tbh, never really caught my interest and it was really a drag to go through even if it was for only 3 episodes (yes I dropped it in EP3.) Honestly even with the ''transforming'' animation it was pretty meh for me the entire time so I just didn't continue it. One good thing though is that I liked how the things Natsuko drew were always animated in sketch form so there's that.

Now we begin!

SAKAMOTO DAYS

Now, I've heard a lot of people complain about the animation to the point of saying that ''they ruined the adaptation'' and being honest, while not being an adaptation that's so good for me to consider reading the manga like Kaiju No. 8; Oshi no Ko, or Chainsaw Man, I would say that it was pretty good in the end! (at least as an anime)

It was pretty fun to see in general and good to just turn the brain off for a bit and watch. The characters were pretty likable and the story, while only being just the very start, it was easy to follow. It was kinda weird for the series to just end with 11 episodes but seeing how the Wu Ten arc just ended I think it was a nice place to stop instead of dragging another episode for it so that was good.

From what I've heard after this is where the plot really kicks off but it might be just people waiting for their favorite arcs to be animated so I'll be taking that like a grain of sand. Needless to say cour 2 is on it's way next season so I'll be watching that as well but for now it was really fun.

MOMENTARY LILY

I'll repeat myself from what I said back on my First Impressions post: This was weird, but in a good way lol

That's the vibe I had watching it and not because the anime itself was weird, but the mixed signals it had all the way through. Like as I said after watching Episode 1 I felt chill Slice of Life vibes with some action in between and then I saw Episode 2 and it suddenly became so dark out of nowhere, like the first episode was a set up for a more darker story (which already had the setting and the opening for it) only for then throughout the next couple of episodes go back to being a silly SoL with action thrown here and there. I had my guard up 100% of the time just in case someone else died on the way to where Citron was. IIRC this is around E7 already and by then we had the main plotpoint solved so then they throw in about finding out who Renge is and the origin of the Wild Hunts... It felt like the anime started one way, did a fake out to set the stakes, continued the same way it started, and then went a different direction in the end.

Now, I say all of this as if I'm hating the show but it was quite the opposite really, I liked the SoL episodes since they helped flesh out the characters a bit and also raised a few more questions that ended up getting answered, plus maintaining the 3 minute Kappou throughout the entirety of it was pretty cute all in all.

Animation was really solid and the characters were nice, the way it progressed maintained me entertained throughout the entirety of it and the action was really good (that first fight vs Balor was amazing), my only complain of the anime was that the final fight felt underwhelming but besides that everything else was cool.

Oh, almost forgot, the opening is easily my favorite this season, pretty good stuff and in a way represents well the contrast between the tone of the show the majority of the time and the setting lol.

Won't post the Apothecary Diaries one yet since it'll finish this season so I'll just post it then lol

[grunge-mermaid]

grunge rewatches Murdoch Mysteries pt 4

1x10 Child's Play

"more than 1400 children are rescued from england's most impoverished neighbourhoods and given a second chance in Canada" you mean stolen from their families and homeland to become slave labour and indentured servants to the ultra-wealthy and morally bankrupt

I can feel the sarcasm radiating off the episode summary "who would want to kill a humanitarian involved with placing troubled english youth in foster homes?"

a sneak-o-scope!

Herb ertlinger!!

adopting a teenager and then changing her name to that of your daughter who died 2 years ago "in an accident" is really fucking morbid, Flora

iirc the "accident" is incest & paedophilia related, as is the adoption of this particular teenage girl

yep

"it was Howard's idea to procure a girl" 🤢

couldn't defend your first daughter but at least you did something to protect your second daughter

1x11 Bad Medicine

"stem to sternum"

Miss Pencil!

I knew she came back at some point and had some connection to a psychiatric hospital but I thought it was much later in the series

"women's brains are not designed for complex thought, their reproductive organs sapping energy from any further development" good job on calling that shit out, Murdoch

even for 1895 that's fucking bonkers misogynist bullshit

Mr Tinker motorizing his fellow inpatient's wheelchair so he can escape the hooded killer is surprisingly touching

gotta look out for each other however you can when contemporary science (and therefore the medical professionals) view you as subhuman

p sure Wykeham is pronounced "wickem" like Wickham and Wycombe and not "wick-a-hem"

sorry, getting distracted by an article on American companies being completely blindsided by Canadian companies cancelling distribution contracts as if they expected nothing to change when their government continues threatening to destroy us

"growing anti-American sentiment" my ass

it's anti-Trump sentiment, we have no beef with most Americans

blame the right fucking people. a beat dog's gonna bite. blame the one beating the dog, don't blame the dog for biting

anyway, back to Murdoch...

Murdoch, you do not want to read Julia's journal from her time in Prague. you would be clutching your pearls from page one. She's wealthy, well-educated, progressive, and very open-minded. of course she got up to some scandalous shenanigans.

1x12 The Prince and The Rebel

Historical Figure Shoehorned Into Plot #...3??: Prince Alfred

no idea if this is meant to be a sympathetic portrayal of period-typical anti-Irish bigotry or a mockery of Irish folklore/superstition

ew ew ew ew ew

also: why does Murdoch need to cover his mouth & not inhale the fumes but Julia's perfectly fine to get all up close and personal with the acid-burnt flesh?

"hooliganism" is a curious way to describe fighting back against oppression

"I uphold the law" and that right there is why all cops are bastards, even the charismatic detectives. they don't protect anyone, they uphold the law. regardless of how unjust or immoral those laws are.

the prince's valet is part of the Brotherhood, right? he's the one who's supposed to assassinate the prince?

or is it eddie?

18 years later, Higgins is still a constable but doesn't have George's valid excuse of serving time for a murder he didn't commit meaning he'll never get promoted.

oh it's BOTH the valet and eddie

eddie :(

jesus fuck

poor murdoch

1x13 The Annoying Red Planet

Peter Kelleghan! first appearance of Terrence Meyers

this is the first time we hear George's conspiracy theories about aliens, right?

there are so many repeat guest stars that I have no idea if Peter Kelleghan is playing Terrence Meyers under a pseudonym or if he's legit just a different character

martians and crop circles!

example #1 of George's bonkers ideas being the key to solving the case

oh he is actually Terrence Meyers operating under the name Terrence Meyers but the job is a cover

I really hope TM is investigating the potential existence of aliens for the government for realsies

he's staying at a shack? is that the regular definition of a shack or Pierre Poilievre's definition of a shack?

the casual intimacy of seeing a Victorian woman with her hair down

still not seeing any chemistry between Murdoch and Julia

i think the characters just haven't been developed enough yet for the Opposites Attract dynamic to really shine

Martian Jesus would be a great band name

it's a blimp!

Russian! can I understand anything they say?

oh look it's a JTF that's not supposed to exist but everyone is aware of them

sounds familiar

JTFs are terrible at keeping their existence under wraps. Alaskan licence plates in the walmart parking lot & grocery stores full of men who look like the least discrete private security detail ever give the game away every fucking spring

I'm assuming Wales is also known for extraterrestrial shenanigans? if they're speculating about it potentially being where the super top secret project got moved to, along with New Mexico?

Alright, season 1 done. Will I continue to annoy you with all 18 seasons? who knows. will I do season 2? idk probably.