#Thoughts on the 3rd Arc

[worstloki]

Fortesa Latifi, We Were Young

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

3l!grian is frequently depicted as a tragic figure and sometimes i wonder if we even watched the same series

[camp-counselor-david]

I was wondering what bugged me about the season 4 Cameron Campbell redemption arc, and I think it finally clicked for me. (And yeah it's 95% David related)

Tw for talks of abuse under the read more.

(Spoiler warning for s3 & 4!)

My relationship (from a character standpoint) with Mr. Campbell is very iffy. He's meant for comedic relief, as is his treatment of David within the series.

Side note- I know that the wolf in "The Forest" being a metaphor for Campbell's abuse of David isn't technically canon even if it's pretty widely accepted by now, so I'll be excluding that part in my analysis.

Mr. Campbell goes through a lot of changes within the series. He starts out as sort of a criminal mastermind type. Self-serving, a blatant scammer, and someone who is seen abusing David in particular many times in the show, physically and verbally. That's not even mentioning the scene in "Jasper Dies in the End," where he attempts to murder a young David for witnessing Jasper's near-death experience. Despite this, David looks up to him and idolizes who he is as a person.

Up until when things peak in season 3, where it's revealed to David that he's not only a terrible person, but he has attempted to frame him for the camp being a scam. Season 3 handles Campbell the best in my opinion, up until the ending of "Camp Corp" where it's decided that Cameron Campbell is more of an idiot than a mastermind, so his new punishment is staying at the camp under David's watch.

Season 4 is where it takes a turn for the worse. As per usual, David is on board with the idea of redeeming Mr. Campbell and places faith in him changing for the better. This didn't bug me until the episode with the escape room where the series begins to explore a different side of Campbell. There, it's revealed that despite how awful as a person he was, he secretly has some type of heart! He still had feelings for the woman he ghosted for 17 years to the point of never once seeing another person in all of that time. Not only does that feel impossible to believe, but given how he acts when he's coming back from the club in "Keep the Change," it feels a lot more like a retcon to me. You're telling me that someone as greedy as him would make such a responsible choice when it comes to any of his personal relationships? In 17 years? While regularly being under the influence of alcohol and other drugs throughout that time period?

It felt like a quick "See? Mr. Campbell isn't actually that bad of a person!" To which I feel is not the right angle to take with his character, at least not so quickly. I understand that characters can have nuance. They can have good traits and still be bad people, but these traits have to line up with what makes sense for the character, and from my perspective, it didn't.

They then change the approach with Campbell and start making him a lot more reasonable of a person in the way he talks. "Time Crapsules" ending with an admittedly nice message from him about change using the camp itself as a metaphor for his own character growth, which becomes apparent in the last prominent Campbell episode, "St. Campbell's Day."

This is the episode that urks me the most. Since the very beginning, David has had full faith in Mr. Campbell. He spent time making excuses for him and going out of his way to prove that change is really possible. But (spoilers, sorry!!) then this episode features the very first time that David stands up against Mr. Campbell. He sees the fake holiday that he's making for presumably self-serving reasons and decides that Campbell is showing his old patterns again-- because why else would he make up a holiday revolving around making money?

David ruins the holiday by stealing the holiday supplies and reporting him to the presses as a con artist. Then, the show reveals that David was overreacting, and this was really pushed by the campers rather than Campbell himself. They wanted to raise funds for the camp to get new things like the outhouse, and David feels bad. Afterward, there's a happy moment where David apologetically fixes everything with the help of Gwen and QM, which is admittedly very sweet, and Mr. Campbell forgives David for jumping the gun and assuming the worst.

While I don't hate this, it just rubs me the wrong way that the one time David stands up against Campbell, he's punished by the narrative. He apologizes to Mr. Campbell, a thing that Campbell never properly does for David, the one who actually deserves it.

This episode could have been a good opportunity for there to be some reflection on how David, who vouched ceaselessly for his redemption, might have some mixed feelings on his abuser. Exploring this side of things more would have made this a better episode and overall a better arc for me rather than "Silly David!! You've ruined the one good thing he tried to do!".

The concept of David wanting to be happy about the changes but finding that part of him guiltily thinks that Campbell doesn't deserve it is something I really wish they explored a lot more.

The tl;dr of this is that the Mr. Campbell redemption arc isn't a bad angle to shoot for! Some of it was handled decently, but the loose ends that we'll likely never see wrapped up leave a sour taste in my mouth. A few kind moments don't make up for around 14 years of abuse, and that's not even mentioning the death of Jasper as a consequence of Campbell's actions.

I love this show a lot, and this is by no means hateful towards it, I just feel a little put off by how they handle the Campbell-David stuff.

[lunaris-the-hummingbird]

Put More "Bug" in the Bug Dragons!

HiveWings and SilkWings are less than half the size of the Pyrrhian dragons.

Thanks to their NightWing ancestry, HiveWings are slightly bigger than SilkWings, but SilkWings by far have the highest wing-to-body ratio of any tribe.

All HiveWings have wrist stingers, but no other unique traits (all SilkWings have silk glands on their wrists, so it felt appropriate that HiveWings have their one unique ability on their wrists too).

Both HiveWings and SilkWings have antennae; HiveWing antennae have a bend in them (like the bee above), while SilkWings have antennae that curl like a butterfly.

All HiveWings are fuzzy to some extent, whether it be just a few stray hairs or an entire fuzzy coat.

Some SilkWings are incredibly fuzzy. They even have hair on their wings!

HiveWings have BIG eyes!

[bluecapsicum]

Cold winter skies illustrations for my daily meteorological fiction project, Reports From Unknown Places About Undescribable Events (Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon).

Keep reading for captions.

December 24th - We report: once again, we find ourselves under a murmuration as we walk past a field. We can hear trills and whistles coming from this massive bird cloud waltzing in the winter sky. We think there might be a few hundred of them, all moving together. We stay there for a long time.

January 10th - We report: the sky so dark and low this way, and the horizon so far, the trees bare and tiny in the distance; we wonder whether there might be space enough between the sky and the earth for us to walk. As it is, our face is up in the sky and our feet are down in the frozen earth.

January 13th - We report about this time, late in the afternoon when the humidity starts to saturate the atmosphere. Even through the dense clouds, there are faint hints of sunset colours amidst the grey. Blackbirds and sparrows are getting busy while we wait for the rain.

January 18th - We report Jupiter and Saturn at nightfall today; we expect Venus to follow shortly after, although the sky might be overcast by then. It is still too bright for us to be able to see stars, but we know that the Aquarius constellation is right there, rising over the horizon.

January 21st - We report: a morning removed from the world, fog and frost making even time move sluggishly. Every blade of grass looks brittle, and we wonder if they would snap off immediately, should we touch them. We cannot locate the sun, though we know where it should be.

January 25th - We report: the frothing winter sea during high tides; any colder and it would freeze solid, it would seem. There is an icy blue in the waves that unrelentingly crash against the rocky shore. The day stretches under an opaque sky that remains the same throughout.

January 30th - We report that we lost a glove on this snowy path, and we tried to walk back in our earlier steps. It was easy at first, but the snow and the night kept falling steadily; the footsteps disappeared. When we finally came home, though, our expert told us that they had picked it up.

February 13th - We report a very rare and complex halo display: a 20° halo, a parhelic circle with parhelia, a sun pillar leading up to an upper tangent arc and a parry arc, a 46° halo, and a circumzenithal arc. Very complex indeed, many arcs for a single sun. It is absolutely freezing outside.

February 22nd - We report: in the car, on a parking lot, facing the ocean. The rain is hitting the windscreen hard, in waves. It is an old car; the wind shakes it and whistles through the small cracks where the doors do not close very well. We watch raindrops run down the windows at an angle.

March 14th - We report: it has not stopped being cold here. We walk in the footsteps of someone who was here earlier this morning. It has snowed a little bit again since, and some of the tracks have been filled in. We are following a line of pollarded trees that creak in the cool wind.

[pinacoladamatata]

"if you fancy Astarion, you might want to consider therapy. He's so damaged I must have him! Enjoy the fantasy and then call a therapist. It's a two step thing and it's very important you do both." - Amelia Tyler what do your narrator eyes see? 😂😂😂

[epickiya722]

2nd OFA User 🤝 Bakugou

Other than them looking alike and being partners with kind hearted green eyed people... doors are their enemy

[guideaus]

hii <3 i've really enjoyed following your recent vinland saga lb and now that you're completely caught up i'd love to hear your thoughts on the current arc! (good or bad. personally i kind of hate it lol)

hi! honestly, and i know this is kind of a cop out answer, but i don't know how to judge it at the moment. I am interested, and it doesn't feel as bad as the 3rd arc, but i think after the 2nd arc, vinland saga got a bit weird with the story's pacing and direction of events?

For the 2nd and 3rd arc, things like ketil's wealth or canute's thought of using military force to keep an occupied territory were eventually fully discussed and dealt with by the end of the arc, but the 3rd arc seemed to skip out on doing the same thing in a major way multiple ways. so, for the final arc, i keep being unable to tell if these little moments of something being brought up is yukimura actually building on a conflict, or if that's the extent of it. For example, in the 3rd arc Einar begins developing issues of being upset with Thorfinn doing everything by himself, which comes off of the 2nd arc's end having Thorfinn successfully just take 100 hits and impress his way to deescalating canute, but moments where einar or gudri express frustrating with this were derailed with the heterosexual "~oh so you caareee about him ;)" thing which felt inappropriate, and thorfinn manages to beat the main antagonist in the 3rd arc easily imo in a dumb way that didn't make sense. einar in the final arc finally disagrees with thorfinn enough to choose the settlement over him, and i kinda dont like how that was done? also everything having to do w the greek expedition not being shown at all when i imagine most ppl thought that'd be the point of the arc, lol.

So because of the 3rd arc, i cant tell if things will pay off or not, but also based off of some things from the 3rd arc, some things feel weaker in the final arc. I feel like the 3rd arc should've been where thorfinn is actually free, maybe not from violence/war, but he chooses to consider others and plan for his dream, but the 4th arc doesn't quite feel like much paid off, relationship-wise. Firstly, the beginning of the current arc has a bit of timeskips and doesn't introduce many new characters, which should be a thing when there's this group that's supposed to have been formed to follow thorfinn in a way that's only been done one other time. a lot of things like ivar's inclusion and how the people there are easily swayed as if they know neither ivar nor thorfinn make them feel like npcs in a video game, and the new characters associated with thorfinn from the 3rd arc don't seem to hold much influence regarding him, despite them all being essential to the expedition. I think after the third arc, vs started doing this thing where it seemed to be building something up plot-wise, but then it's kinda pushed aside for something else, like now where i assumed eventually thorfinn would actually confront ivar somehow, but never did. i know VS isn't a slow, character developing series, but i feel like it had to after leaving ketil's farm, but instead the 3rd arc felt awkward w the main gang, despite anilist trying to call them a found family lol.

ummm, im not sure what else to say besides the fact i can't quite tell where the plot is going anymore (not that it's off the rails nuts like jjk or something lol), but personally the quick pacing and regular timeskips frustrate me and i can't tell if some things will pay off and yukimura has a point or not. i think yukimura also kept the thought of all women being the peaceful voice of reason against men, which i dont agree with, and i can't tell if there's a suspicious thing going on with bug eyes and Niskawaji'j...

[quirinah]

can you draw Komaru as Bronya if you haven’t already? I really liked your art of Toko as Seele

maybe you can draw Byakuya as Welt too lol

thank you for indulging in my niche two year old crossover brainworms. take some dangaronpas as a treat

[seafleece]

fjorester divorce prayer circle one last time boys

[sassmill]

Ah fuck it’s 2 am and I saw myself in the bathroom mirror and now I’m having gender thoughts

[shroommoss]

scar delivered the killing blow on the red king, and now ren the king has hired him as his personal attack dog. but scar has no loyalty. he's only on the side that feeds his bloodlust. for now its the side of the king that fills his corridors with the rotting heads of his enemies. but as the blood tides turn in the future...

i think we all know where this is going to lead

the blood dripping into the king's eyes may no longer be the blood of his enemies. but that of his own.

[unohanadaydreams]

There’s a bleach dating sim ?

No one wishes there was one more than me, but no lmao.

There was a post about a project dubbed BleachAPRIL yesterday that linked back to a little preview video on the Bleach site, using the delinquent high school art Kubo made for JET and making a game with it. I think people calling it a dating sim weren't thinking it was like a true otome or anything but more a simping game (ala Hypnosis Mic and other games that revolve around attractive anime guys but don't involve actual dating).

The game itself was an April Fool's jokes, which is very fun and I hope they do AU jokes every year. I will gladly be an April Fool for a fake Bleach game any year, every year.

But also kind sad it won't exist!!! Bleach games that dare to be more than rehashes of the main plot are rare! Really the only one I remember is The 3rd Phantom (which brought all the drama a teenager could ask for, really).

[frogmascquerade]

Potd spoilers in the tags :D

[sar3nka]

Remind me not to look at fandom tags... People are so not normal about Darkstalker. But one person made a great point, the characters aren't That Deep unless you make them (probably cause. There's so many). Fanon outweights canon in the end. I think that's nice, tbh. Also saw someone else disliking Whiteout which felt sooo good to see. Hm anyway I have more thoughts

[seaoreos]

Me n my partner’s 1 year anniversary is this Saturday,,,,, what the fuck,,,