#WHATS THE POINT!!! they have been established in their story and characters for fuckin

[tiptapricot]

I’m not an MK1 hater by any stretch of the imagination but god… any time I consume any further MKombat media it’s like… literally why would they ever do what they did with Kuai Liang and Hanzo. Like what was ever the thought process for them to do that with their stories.

[dr3amofagame]

dr3's attempted serious of c!dream duo rankings based on lore importance (note: probably wrong, definitely argue)

c!Dream and c!Tommy: This is kinda undeniable. Like, in terms of their story, in terms of the Dream SMP, they are absolutely the heart and soul of the server. The c!Dream and c!Tommy show was such a thing that it has been like intentionally referenced and parodied within the story itself a million times. The story literally hinged on the idea of their opposing each other, c!Tommy-as-hero and c!Dream-as-villain, to the point where their whole you know finale and the closure for both characters involved realizing that they actually wanted the same thing and intentionally stepping out of the roles given them. Nothing really compares, sorry c!Discduo for the poll (but the heart wants what it wants XD)

c!Dream and c!Wilbur: I cannot believe they ended up ranking so low like I'm actually appalled. SLASH JAY but like . guys. Guys Please. c!Dream and c!Tommy's whole schtick forms the beating heart of this server because the story c!Wilbur wrote about them was its backbone. Like it's incredibly difficult to actually overstate how much c!Wilbur actually influences how c!Dream ends up--the paranoid spiral he ends up on is a direct influence of the increasing isolation he lived up until November 16th--this is why c!Quackity is so confident when he states c!Dream has no one left during dethronement and this is why c!Wilbur knows that c!Dream has no one in inconsolable differences. c!Dream doesn't exist in a vacuum and the whole, L'manburg narrative tyrant-villain-monster idea that originates from Wilbur ends up culminating in the identity that c!Dream ends up assuming to accomplish what he wants like hoooly shit he quotes "unfinished symphony" in Doomsday and he expects c!Wilbur to save him from the prison to the point of calling on him as his savior before basically Anyone and he lists c!Wilbur's name with c!Sam and c!Quackity post-prison like. Shit's fucked. Anyway.

c!Dream and c!Sam: Look I warned you guys I was going to be a little selfish. A Tad. Though, you know, it's kinda hard to compare in terms of like, you know, the fact that they literally spent a fuckin year together with almost no one else--sure there were visitors, sure Quackity happened, but like so much about them is very much isolated to. Them. (Also the ccs very clearly got a little carried away w/ these two and this reflects onto their like, Everything XD). With c!Sam and c!Dream it's less about well, straightforward comparisons and more about the Multitudes--c!Sam as the Plan, and c!Sam as part of the time and part of the server that c!Dream idealizes, and c!Sam as the cage for the monster the punishment for the evil the one that holds the villain away. And obviously while c!Dream doesn't um redefine his whole identity to base it on c!Sam the way that c!Sam does with c!Dream, the power of the trauma bond established over a year of Nothing Else does makes c!Dream noticeably more comfortable, almost, with c!Sam compared to like quite literally everyone else post-prison. Which is. Y'know.

c!Dteam (emphasis on c!Dnf): Admittedly, I'm not the biggest c!dnfer around by a long shot, so I don't really have as much to say here--but you know, considering c!Dteam very literally symbolize what c!Dream desires like. They're an extremely important part of who he is, what he wants, and why he does what he does. There's a reason why dethronement (and the cutting ties with c!Sapnap and c!George) is such a defining moment in terms of showing when he's fully burned bridges with the rest of the server, when he totally stands alone, etc. Obviously c!George is the originator of the "big happy family" line and well his mutual interests line up with c!Dream's quite a bit more than c!Sapnap's do, but as far as c!Dream is concerned both relationships are very much important to him and symbolic of happier times (and he's quite convinced that well. Both of them kinda want him dead, for reasonable reasons. So.)

c!Techno and c!Dream: This is where numbers get finicky, admittedly. As much as I love c!Rivals, and I love them a lot, I struggle a bit to put them on a definitive ranking. Because...well, on one hand, c!Techno is absolutely very high on c!Dream's priority list like as a character. I have said before and I'll say again that some of the most like outstanding displays of loyalty on the server come from c!Dream coming in c!Techno's defense at GREAT risk of personal harm--this guy literally stares down and denies both of his fucking torturers for c!Techno, like holy shit. c!Dream really fucking likes the guy like. So damn much. At the same time though, we're talking more...narrative importance versus importance to the character from a character's perspective--which is part of why c!Dteam is as high as they are, imo--while they're extremely important in terms of c!Dream's motivations and how he defines the whole "happy family" ideal around the idea of them living peacefully as a family, as far as actually looking at character interactions...especially post-dethronement they mostly just. Exist as figures that c!Dream yearns for but is also really fucking scared of. There's not as much consistent character interaction and frankly when we're talking about a character that's actively suppressing what he actually wants, they're not exactly high on his mental priority list either. All this being said, c!Techno definitely gets points by being one of the main vehicles by which we see c!Dream's like, humanity--being one of the few characters not to treat him as just a monster to be defeated and having similar ideals and therefore being an obvious comparison to make. Which is obviously important when we're talking about c!Dream, who was keeping himself rather in the dark.

c!Dream and c!Punz: Another real struggle to rank--I'd understand putting them up higher, but what really holds me back is well. c!Dream and c!Punz is the same as c!Dream and the Plan. And don't get me wrong, the Plan is extremely important to c!Dream as a character and like defines a lot of his actions especially post-revive book onwards, but what complicates this is like...well c!Punz as a character in terms of c!Dream? Like, he's just. He's just the Plan. That is his purpose, that's who he is supposed to be, and of course the Plan is important and of course c!Punz's like motivations here end up playing a big part in the tangled mess of what c!Dream ends up doing when we're talking what he starts ranting about in the third finale stream, but like. Well it's really not about c!Punz, innit, it's about what they're working together towards. c!Punz is secondary to the plan in a way that you really can't say the same for when you're talking about, say, c!Wilbur + the L'manburg narrative, or c!Sam and the prison. I can see an argument for them being higher just because like, if we're talking major c!Dream arcs, it's reasonable to have c!Dream and c!Tommy as being like a presence as the "main characters" in Wilbur's story starting the revolutionary war and ending at the genuine finale with c!Dream's main character development being split between the previously-named season finales--c!Wilbur being the main influence leading up to November 16th as c!Dream takes on the villain mantle, The Plan (and therefore c!Punz) driving him until Staged Finale, and the c!Sam and the Prison being the main force until the prison break...but well. There's just not enough of c!Punz and c!Dream actually acting together as a duo in terms of give and take in this dynamic to really make me put them higher--what's really important about c!Punz and c!Dream is just. The Plan and the Plan alone. Anyway, I'm decently flexible about this, but eeeeeeeh.

[altschmerzes]

THE 13 BOOKS I READ IN 2023 IN ORDER FROM BEST TO WORST + THE PROTAGONIST'S SUPERLATIVE. PART 1.

NOTE: this ranking is entirely based on how much i enjoyed the thing and not necessarily on anything quantifiable or concrete. except for 1 and 12 those are just i think empirically true. also, this got very very hard between 2-8 and i enjoyed everything above 10 like, immensely. that said:

1. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. fucking gorgeous book. the writing was incredible, it made me feel like i needed to write right now right now right now or i was going to die and also why would i ever write again when i didn't write this. made me REEL several times and need to put it down and process it. i need to read it again and again. so much in there about the structure of story and fairytales and roles within a story and just. augh. man. i have at least a thousand words worth of highlights of quotes that make me completely insane. i want to write a dissertation on the interactions of amalthea and lír.

Protagonist: Amalthea/The Unicorn. Best Gender Moments And Unmatched Aro Vibes.

2. Blackcurrant Fool by Victoria Goddard. someone designed these books in a lab just to kill specifically me. i'm so thrilled i'm like, mad about it. this is book four in the series and included some MASSIVELY fun payoffs for some background references and foreshadowing that had been building for a while. some of my favourite tropes on this here earth are contained in this book and they make me insane in their execution. beloved. i kept having to put my face in my hands and shriek. like. literally. i liveblogged the last like ~30% of the book to several people. in detail.

Protagonist: Jemis Greenwing. Most Likely To Respond To A Given Situation With Both The Most Sincerely Heartfelt And Most Dramatic Option Possible And Then Insist That This Was The Obvious And Logical Thing To Do.

3. Bee Sting Cake by Victoria Goddard. some really excellent introductions to characters and concepts in here. did a good job as the second book in the series to continue keeping things interesting while maintaining and expanding on what was good about the first one, introducing new elements and making them play well with the established dynamics and situation. some really fun exploration of 'what if your two favourite people met each other and how would that go'. some delightful stuff about bees also which gets me in my feelings and the pov character has a good cry a couple times which he damn well deserves at this point.

Protagonist: (since there are two, i'm alternating for this series' superlatives) Peregrine Dart. Best At Being Totally And Completely Fine (Lying).

4. Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard. YES. I LIKED THESE BOOKS A LOT OKAY. THREE OF THEM IN A ROW. WHAT OF IT. very fun introduction to a series, it was a great first book. it delivered its worldbuilding in my favourite way for a fantasy series to do so, which is to just sort of drop me right in and explain as we go in a naturalistic kind of way. it meant i had to accept i just didn't know what was going on several times but that was fine. excellent combo of silly and serious and the characters are just. so charming and i'm so so fond of them. also i love a really stuffy strict distant society. bc then i'm like OHO TIME TO BREAK THESE RULES!!!

Protagonist: Jemis Greenwing. Most Likely To Have Everything Happen To Him So Much And All At Once.

5. By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar. this book would probably have been ranked higher if it weren't for all the Someone's Got Their Dick Out. which is fine, go for it, but it felt like all the like. someone is getting their guts stabbed out and someone else is fuckin every other page is mostly a thematic thing that is supposed to drive home how gritty and grimy the narrative is. which y'know. not my bag. i like a gritty and grimy narrative but dude we know. that said it was extremely fun except for that, and i liked the way the characters were described a lot. they were not good people and it was deliberate and compelling. it was a lot to process all at once and i wish i'd slowed down with it - the last fourth of the book particularly hit me like a train. special shoutout to everything this book did with pelinore and the questing beast.

Protagonist: Arthur Pendragon. Most Doomed By The Narrative.

[spider-man-2o99]

ok i’m still On Break do not take this post as a sign that i’m like. Actively Tumblring again yet because i’m still not, 4 the most part, but i have had my ear to the ground for special interest things, of fuckign course, of course, bcuz i’m me, and i. just. i am .i’m so fucking sorry to all the new SM2099 comic fans who are only just now realizing just now how dire the straits are, here, LMAO. it has been this way for Years. earnestly and from the bottom of my heart i love spider-man 2099 so much and also nobody on the goddamn planet Cares About Him At All or can even fucking write him half-decently unless every single celestial bodie in the fucking milky way galaxy comes into perfect fucking syzygy, i think, i think, i think. why did u think we (me) had a psychotic episode after that fuckin movie dropped. fucksake. lord above. because it’s all always “ohhh being yourSELF and telling your OWN story your OWN way” until you Look A Certain Way and ARE A Certain Way and Have Symptoms That Look Frightening and Don’t Move Around Like ‘Normal’ People Should Move, fuckin’ freaky-ass creature beast-thing, and so on and so on and so on, Christ all-fuckin’-mighty. gets tiring. but. anywaygs.

it is far easier to be destructive, than constructive. so. ahem. sorry. refocusing. it seems quite simply that just yet another goddamn story missed the point that 90s future spider-man is a story about very plainly and simply loving each other as people. it’s a story about a severely depressed, miserable, cynical little man who finds new reasons to live in every kind person he meets, and there is an open earnesty to that, if nothing else, that no movie can take away 30 years later. anybody can decide to try and be a better person than the one they were yesterday, and that is goddamn important. to portray anything otherwise was an unfathomably cruel decision, on sony’s part, and as soon as we got trailer evidence that they were leaning into his more “intimidating” features back in ~dec. 2021, i.. pretty much Knew it was what they were gonna be doing with him. why wouldn’t they? i mean. who actually even cares about this obscure nobody, right? c-listers are the tried-and-true adaptational chameleons, anyways; they sure suckered in dumbasses like me, who still took blind hope in hook line and sinker, thinking he’d be important to the film, or at the very least portrayed sympathetically to his 30 years of established comic history as a character who is consciously aware that he is an adult survivor of fucking child abuse. but. c’est la fucking vie, i guess.

[toxi-works-at-culvers]

What’s your opinion on the recent lore drop in regards to the leak to the upcoming Tales of the Pizzaplex book? The Fnaf 4 stuff?

oh man i absolutely hate it. i've done a whole massive rant on it on my discord but i'll try to summarize it in a more logical way LOL

so for one, it is entirely unnecessary and kind of retroactively ruins the 4th game's impact. the nightmares don't NEED some kind of scientific logical explanation? nightmare is in their name, they're nightmares that aren't real. it should be self-explanatory and i'm not sure why it was thought that they needed to be explained (especially when there's illusion discs right there if they really wanted an explanation that badly) but it's kind of been an issue with fnaf for a long time - all the paranormal stuff is just gone for some reason, and i don't understand what the need is for everything to be sci-fi??? i heard someone else say this, but fear of the unknown is very much a real thing. and it stops being scary when it's overexplained and reduced to some random science experiment.

and then there's what they did to william. i don't know who wrote dittophobia but there is no way in hell they understand or even care about his character, or maybe they straight up hate him. like yes, we've established he's a villain and kills children. but kidnapping? experimenting? FEAR GAS? what does this actually add to his character? it's like they're just trying to make him as evil as possible without any regard for 1. what actually makes an interesting villain and 2. how he's actually portrayed! he loved kids, why the hell else would he agree to open fredbear's? even in the books he supposedly put the kids to sleep before killing them so they didn't feel it, so EVEN WITH how he's portrayed in the books i don't think he would do that kind of thing!

(this got kind of long the rest is under the cut)

i feel like this kind of goes with all the villains in the fnaf series at this point (william, vanny, mimic): all of their potential is constantly getting squandered. you saw how hard they had to backpedal on william being burntrap, and how vanny was hardly even a threat, and mimic came outta nowhere if you didn't read the books (which most people don't). i feel like at its core fnaf is a tragedy, not some goofy ahh sci-fi shit. william COULD be a tragic villain, a guy who lost his marbles after his kids died, and i feel like that's really the best angle to take for his character! but most of all - they've kind of turned william's character into a joke at this point. he's not a threat, he's just fucking ridiculous because how can you take him seriously if he's just a one-note pure-evil villain in a cartoonishly goofy and over the top mad scientist way who's just evil for the hell of it!

and then there's the fact that there isn't even a mention of other already existing characters. who the fuck is rory?? where's CC and michael? why the hell is it implied william purposefully made the bite of 83 happen but then there was no mention of CC or michael. like at some point you have to wonder if whoever is writing these just straight up hates the main games (because if this isn't supposed to be tied back to the lore… then why is it advertised like that). why are they utilizing william but no one else? could they not come up with a better antagonist, or better yet, leave this unnecessary story out??

one thing that's going to be awful i think is how the fandom perceives this story. i've already seen sooo many awful takes about this story and, in turn, the rest of the lore too. like midnight motorist is just about afton kidnapping kids?? most of the fandom has already hated william but now he's kind of just. even more of a punching bag than before, so good fuckin luck to those of us who actually like him and think he's an interesting character! as well as fnaf 4… it just defeats the purpose of the nightmares as a whole, and they're not nearly as impactful or interesting as they would be if they were either a personification of michael's guilt OR cc's fears.

in my honest opinion there was no reason for this story to be written in the first place. and it's a dumb, convoluted idea. lmao

[blacktobackmesa]

how does chronicles of benry tie into gordon streamman, if at all? is it like a joke stream benry does randomly for april fools day or is it actual lore?

It's got lore, but it all hinges on which Chronicles you're talking about: Holly Edition or Scorpy Edition. If you've seen them, you know that they have VERY different tones.

Spoilers for both streams and for existing Streamman works below. Prepare for rambling.

Events from Holly's version have been referenced obliquely in Don't Spell Memory Without Me, and will be discussed further in future stories. Memory establishes that Benrey does not have any pre-game history aside from what others "remember" about him, and being the only one with no past upsets him. At the end of the story, Benrey sets off with Tommy to talk about inventing a backstory, "mentioning something about a dairy farm." Since the Hollowtones Chronicles of Benry stream is established to be a story/movie being told by Holly from Benrey's point of view, I've interpreted the ideas present in it as Benrey's fantasies, or the backstory that he's created for himself. Heck, maybe he's even gone into gmod at some point and fully acted the whole thing. You can play dolls sometimes buddy it's all good

That leads into Scorpy's take on Chronicles, which is rather more... abstract. For the record, I adored watching this stream in real time. Surreal horror that makes you unsure if you should laugh and defies you to find meaning is my jam. That being said, I don't think this stream works as something literal that could just occur in a Streamman story. If I wanted to interpret it as a literal experience Benrey has, it makes a fascinating character study. Perhaps some sort of dream journey or Silent Hill style physical/psychological journey of self-reflection, perhaps due to data fuckery. Maybe even between the game being shut off and being brought into the new program.

However, I'm not currently interested in interpreting it like that. I think the stream is far more interesting when read as a meta-commentary on trying to catch lightning in a bottle for the second time. HLVRAI was such a smash hit, and people are still hounding RTVS for a sequel or a return for the characters. As a creator, that's difficult to handle. The pressure of living up to your own success, of being able to give the people what they want. What if it's not what you want? You might still love your breakout hit deeply, and love the attention it gives you, but will you always be able to feel that way? What are you sacrificing to chase the feeling it gives you? Are you making this sequel because it has worth on its own, or because you want to feel that way again? You can never feel exactly that way again, whether you're the creator or the fan. "How do you know when it's time to let go?"

That's my reading, at least. Yes I took lecture notes during the original screening. I have the heart of an academic, but the constitution of... not an academic.

Anyway, I do think some elements of the stream can worm their way into Streamman, both literal and nonliteral. The theme of recapturing something impossible cuts me very deep, so I like to reuse it, but I also think I can use some of the locations and surreal imagery within the Streamman setting. I haven't brought it up before, but Benrey's house in the home program is a lawless land. He likes to experiment with programming and create his own little domain, the place is much bigger on the inside. One day Gordon could go over to return something that Benrey left at Tommy's and walk inside to find a gmod map full of crucified amonguses.

...man I really dedicated one paragraph to the stream that I'm actually using and then a fuckin' essay to the one I'm not lol

[steveharrington]

Could you talk more about the issues you have with s4? I’m only asking bc I think you’re very sensible when writing about ST!

yessss i love to whine and complain <3 plus ive had a lot of time to Reflect and Marinate on the season so i think these thoughts will be more coherent than some of the stuff i was posting directly after it came out. here we go <3

biggest overall complaint is steve's storyline taking a sharp left turn back into stancy territory. before anyone sends me a why dont you like stancy ask: stancy itself isn't even the reason i disliked this storyline! (also they arent compatible and want different things and its canonically stated like 5 different times in the show) but the Main reason i disliked steve's writing this season was that it largely undermined the value of his relationships with other people. season two established that steve would willingly put himself in harm's way for the kids both against billy and in the tunnels, and season three went on to establish that steve feels the most comfortable when he's hanging out with robin and dustin and just being himself, free from social expectations. all of these discoveries that we worked up to since season one were basically just forgotten in this season. steve is annoyed with dustin, annoyed about staying with the kids, gets injured and only has a meaningful interaction with nancy while robin just walks off screen, doesn't get a single emotional interaction with dustin about the danger they're in or the trauma they're undergoing even after eddie fuckin DIES and overall i just felt like he wasn't acting like himself in terms of his relationships with other people, and this to me seems like an issue with the duffers wanting to prioritize a love triangle once again

i also just have issues with the plot writing as a whole. soooooo many glaring mistakes that just do not seem typical of a stranger things season! ive seen people say "well what did we expect" NOT THIS?? idk from small details like will's birthday and hopper apparently just lying on the floor completely unscathed to larger overall bad writing like eddie's death being absolutely pointless and no one talking about it afterwards, the season somehow feels rushed? even though it was 2x as long as any other season and they had three years to write it? how do you have a 2 hr 30 min episode and not a single scene where the people who spent all season protecting eddie don't get together and talk about his death. that's just...unfathomable to me

out of the four storylines in volume one, two of them were like unbearably boring to me. im so sorry. it got to the point where every time it cut away from hawkins i would text em "FUCKKK" because they were far and away the most compelling story. i always predicted the russia plotline would be boring like the second s3 ended i said oh boy thats gonna be boring. but the HNL storyline......was somehow even more boring. and i love el! i liked venry as a villain! i LOVE JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER but jesus christ is brenner a redundant boring ass character who's always entering the frame sneakily and saying some shit like "eleven......the virus inside you is spreading.....you are an evil evil little girl" like JESUS dude we get it. idk ive never found his character nearly as interesting as the show seems to think he is, and i think spending this much time with him this season was honestly a mistake! so glad he's dead rip. i also wasn't a fan of the stretched out bullying plotline because it was very cartoonish to me and also just like. not necessary. we already know el feels alienated. watching her get shoved to the ground and have a milkshake spilled on her precious little dress just felt like kicking her while she was down

anyways theres a lot this season did well! quite honestly, it all falls apart in the last episode. without the mistakes made there, it would have been so much stronger. but alas i fear it's my least favorite season of stranger things so far because of these issues </3 to me there were times where i was like "am i really watching stranger things right now??" because the writing choices were just so bizarre and uncharacteristic of the show as a whole. praying season 5 is better but i have a strong feeling season 2 will always reign supreme

[gayspock]

OK SOMEEEE gripes

im ACTUALLY extremely conflicted on some of the present day stuff and i think its mostly down to the characters

like im very happy with jeff, and i think he's fine as is - brilliant, even, bc hes a genuinely refreshing take imo as opposed to what they could have easily done (i.e unlikable, distant from it all husband). not that he would be CRAZY or unreasonable to resent shauna, but like... its just fucking so much funnier + more interesting to me to see a character kind of just go with it, rather than to have them stew in angst. like i think its more interesting and allows for them to explore different beats than what you'd assume they would if you'd just known the basics of what shauna was up to. imo

similarly i was happy with adam as a character, too, and i think they developed him well enough for who he was and how he functions in this story. im glad he didnt turn out to be javi (if he was, i guess, bc he still could be technically that kinda suck wway more now tbh booo) and whilst there was nooo way he was gonna survive if he was just some guy which he was

theres also guys like kevyn. my jokes aside abt how scary he is im kinda fine with him, and i do actually makes some kinda sense that hes a cop + that he's now so straight-laced. some loser divorced dad. and it'd be a good comparison to natalie, and the lifestyle she lives now and how their paths diverged. however i kind of wish they'd... just let him go? like i wish he'd been at the reunion, and they'dhad that exchanged and then he'd just walked away to his wife and kids and her back to the yellowjackets no return no return no return huh what was that YEHA. my point is. i feel like there's no true resolution between them two thats organic and it just kinda feels weird to keep him around past that. i know they need a cop character for whats happening with shauna now but it just feels kinda ... bizarre to have him playing that role with that creep dude. bc whilst i do prefer limited characters in a show like this and to keep it tight and clean it just feels weird for it to be him and for it to be THAT insular AND, again, for him to keep sticking around when i dont feel like theres anywhere for him to go.... like its kinda DIFFERENT with the other cop dude, bc he isnt pre-established and he does kinda just function moreso as just. a fucking yuckhead fuckhead but instead its just this weird uhhhh. and kevyn is back! um. he will continue serving this purpose and we will never touch on him and natalie again. bc we shouldnt ofc but it also feels weird to have him there without ever mentioning it LOL

who else. fuck. like i am also very conflicted abt tai's wife and son like.... they do just feel a bit like- theyre just there? and i think that DEFINITELY makes some sort of narrative sense with tai, and with her whole deal- she has it all, she has everything but she has nothinnggg but... IDK KINDA SAD MAN. bc its weird i'll go back to this with jeff and callie, but it does make SENSE that the non-yellowjackets characters are always gonna be secondary with the story theyre telling in more ways than them just being secondary characters but with how fucking impossible it is to reconnect with fucking ANYONE after everything they did/went through BUT ITS LIKE... like i said i kinda like jeff and ironically his absolute lack of personality became a personality, whereas with simone&sammy i feel like theyre just kinda... SUPER functioning and that does kinda make me worry because whilst i know a lot of ppl are yelling for tai/van endgame... i dont know it feels weird to write them off fuckin completely which is what i feel like the show might kinda lean into at some point...😭like i want more for them, and from them. and i also sorry i also hate fucking "scary child who sees the supernatural" trope SORRYYYY its so tired to me and so lazy . give this kid some proper fucking development

and i think its also another issue im having with the present day stuff. theres too many characters rn and its being misspent. like do not get me wrong im not against quirky elijah wood BUT i feel like misty's ENTIRE. FUCKING. ARC. RIGHT. NOW. would be so much more fucking effective if she was alone and tracking down natalie by herself and kinda struggling with that. OR if they kept up her rapport with jessica- like have her tag along, whether it'd be under the guise of a fixer or not, and maybe have her cause some tension bc again if eel like.. ITS SO MUCH WEIRDER just having jessica's entire stint just come to an end in the way it did and it would have been a much more solid throughline into s2 than to bring in elijah wood whos just genderbent misty and its like . ok its just nott.... INTERESTING TO ME... SO WHAT. SHES FOUND A GUY LIKE HER? WHO CARES MAN. IM SAYING THIS AS A LITTLE FREAK WHO CANT CONNECT WITH OTHERS & YEARNS FOR KINSHIP, LIKE... I JUST FEEL LIKE ITS KINDA BACKWARDS AND REGRESSIVE AND NOTHINGGGG. jessica was a much weirder fucking dynamic and i think could have been interesting and i do think theres ways they could have had them both pursue natalie but now its just... ehhhhhh like

and i also feel like elijah wood is kinda bringing up the comedic parts of misty's story and dont get me wrong i LOVED a lot of the dark humour bits from her in s1 but i feel likw now its kinda getting too close to just. that. kinda like just oh funny joke funny dark humour. and losing a lot of the substance it should have, which is kinda necessary to the humour itself....AND he's sort of stealing her limelight like WHO CARES. GO AWAY DUUDE. have confidence in misty to be able to CARRY this shit, cmon, bc no offence elijah but SHE WAS WAY BETTER AT IT! bc thats whats so GOOD ABOUT THE SHOW OTHERWISE- you have the confidence to let all these girlies to carry their plotlines by themselves, so dont slip!!! GET BACK UP. and again im saying with the too many characters thing- its just... ehrhh. who cares to spend so much time on him??? whos just out of nowhere when its like.. again i'd prefer it if you spent that time with taissa or with .....

CALLIE. SHHES PROBABLY THE PERSON IM THE MOST CONFLICTED ON IN THE WORLD. bc in so many ways again i feel like we cant focus on her too much in shauna's little life that shes made for herself but I JUST... I CANT HELP BUT FEEL LIKE WE'RE IN THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE SPOT IMAGINABLE WITH CALLIE, wherein we dont get enough of her and her side to really empathise with her but we get too much of her to find her on the wrong side of irritating-AND THAT. SUCKS. THATS THE WORST. EVER. BECAUSE SHES LITERALLY A TEENAGE GIRL. I FEEL LIKE THERES SO MUCH MORE THEY COULD DO WITH THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHAUNA/CALLIE IF THEY PUSHED FOR IT MORE, BUT ITS JUST... again its in this such an awkwwaarddd position where they only bring her in to be difficult it feels like. and the thing is? shes being reasonable. MORE than. shes totally justified in all the shit shes doing. but bc of the unfortunate way its framed she comes off as...... sadly.... unlikable which . again AGAIN IT SUCKS. BECAUSE SHES A TEENAGE GIRL AND THIS FEELS LIKE THE FIRST SHOW IN A LONG TIME TO HAVE A CAST FULL OF UNLIKABLE FUCKING TEENAGE GIRLS BE THE BEST EVERRRRRR AND SHE COULD BE SO GOOD MAN SHE COULD BE SUCH A GOOD WAY FOR SHAUNA TO LOOK INTO THE PAST BUTEE..... they kinda just write her off too and bring her up to cause complications obly. thats all it is. and i dont know i do get it i dooo get it bc again it makes SENSE with shauna and who she is and where her life is that the presentation would thereforebe kinda more her perspective but also... i do just feel... ITCHES. LIKE IM CLAWING AT THE WALL

ok last thing maybe idk. idk how i feel about lottie at all. its strange. i felt like she..... was kinda not present enough in s1. does that make sense ever at all. i wish we had more from her and her whole visions thing, and she had as much focus in the past as the others did from the very beginning. bc i feel like in s1... we didnt see enough of her in that regard? like we got her- we got bits of her. but not enough of her-her. bc im fine with her kinda story on paper (ish) and how its playing out but i t does feel weirdly unba;anced across s1 / s2. and its throwing me a bit there

[brendleellipsis]

Brendle Rambles About CPU Kerfuffle For No Good Reason

I'm not entirely sure why I'm doing this.

I've been having a lot of Thoughts and Feelings these past couple days. Even more so than usual, I mean. And the way I've been working through all that is by just... talking. Kind of a lot. Massive text walls in discord servers, meandering monologues in voice call. To be frank, I'm not sure if anything I've been saying makes any sense at all, if anyone can follow my frantic, stream-of-consciousness ruminations as they jump from one topic to another, desperately clawing at the walls in the hopes that, at some point, I'll say something that matters.

But it's whatever. The written word has always been my most trusted tool of communication, of bridging the seemingly unassailable gap between me and the rest of the world. It's through sharing these thoughts of mine that I feel just a bit less alone.

Enough about that, though. I'm here to talk about CPU Kerfuffle.

(WARNING: This Shit Is Loooooong)

What a fuckin segue, am I right fellas hahahaHA

I want to make clear before I start this Already Too Long Diatribe, I have quite literally no plans going into this. I hardly have an inkling of what I'm going to say and when I'm going to say it. But, in a way, I think that can be a good thing. I too often tend to overthink things, needing my ideas to be perfectly crystallized in my mind before they're worth putting on the page. As a writer, I need to get over that shit. That sort of thought process is the enemy of progress. I've wanted to talk about this sort of thing for quite a while, but I had been putting it off because I "don't have any ideas".

Ideas are overrated. Let's fly by the seat of our pants, just this once.

So. For a bit of background, CPU Kerfuffle is a stream series, streamed on Twitch by resident silly fella @chongoblog that involves taking a bunch of Level 9 CPUs in the game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, assigning them some characters (for example, pink Captain Falcon is Captain Valentine, silver Samus is The Guy From Spy Kids 3D, etc.), and throwing them into a tournament to watch them duke it out. The series changes and evolves and becomes something so much more as it continues, but that is pretty much the core premise of it. There's improv comedy and silly character interactions, it's a ton of fun and I love it.

But yeah, the series does start off relatively simple. And in a way, that's good. The first season, comprising of the first ten episodes, is... a little bit rough, but they're still very fun. Many recommendations on how to get into the series suggested skipping Season 1 and starting with Season 2, which premiered after a lengthy hiatus and served as a soft reboot, as it's a bit more indicative of what the rest of the episodes would be like. And I'm not going to disagree with that... but I also think the Season 1 episodes are worth watching too. Not just because they have the same charm, though they certainly do, and not just because you'll get to see the first appearances of some major characters, but because it's honestly quite fascinating to watch the show evolve from its more simple roots.

The first couple episodes don't really have much in terms of an overarching story, but I feel that they establish a status quo, which I feel is necessary for a story before you shake it up. You'd also get to see the commentators experiment with giving the characters small arcs within the confines of the tournament, the first of which being a character named Squid Jenny, who had her arc in Episode 2. You'd then be able to see the hosts try out their first arc that extended beyond the barriers of a single episode, with the Crimson Arc. I started watching this series around Episode 5, so being there, on the ground floor, watching the silly funny Smash Bros. show become a bit more than that. Of course, it was still very much a comedy, and the major players in the story didn't have nearly as much depth as they would in future episodes and arcs, but... there's something very cathartic and fascinating about watching this creative process happen in real time, to see the creators test their limits with each consecutive episode.

CPU Kerfuffle is the very first, and so far only, fandom that I have actively participated in. Ryan Chongoshow, aforementioned host of CPUK, has a discord server for his streams, and as such, there's a channel for the silly funny Smash Bros. show as well. This was my first real experience interacting with people who care about a story as much as I do, being able to actually express my thoughts on a piece of media to others. Eventually, I started writing fanfiction. For a show about Smash Bros. CPUs. On its face, the idea seems a bit absurd and dumb, and part of me felt insecure about it, but I knew the people I had found company with cared just as much as I did. Yes, the show was a comedy, it was irreverent and filled with shitposts, but there was still a passion there for the stories being told. And that passion only grew when Season 2 came around.

As I said before, the beginning of Season 2 acted as a sort of reboot for the series. Season 1 had gone on hiatus with a bit of a cliffhanger, with the Crimson Arc having some major loose ends untied (for context, the previous episode ended with Crimson seemingly killing one of the contestants). The first order of business was wrapping that shit up, and then continuing from there. There was a mini-arc that involved, to use a wrestling term, an absolute heel of a character that everyone, including the hosts, loathed with all their being, and again, it had the hosts experimenting with character arcs once again, which led rather cleanly into the next arc, which is widely considered one of, if not the best in the series. (My opinions on whether or not that's true are complicated, we'll get into it later)

If Crimson was an experiment in seeing what an overarching villain could do for a series like this, Dr. Order was the refined final product. Of all the villains in this series, she by far had the most incredible stage presence; she was arrogant and egotistical, she knew she was better than you and she was going to make sure you knew it too.

She is also a Wii Fit Trainer. So, there's that.

Order was introduced in Episode 14, and honestly, even then, I don't think anyone really realized what she was going to become, not even the hosts. Because, like. How could you think she'd be that good a villain? She's a Wii Fit Trainer. She sucks at fighting. She got unceremoniously dunked on by a Chrom named Bing. And then she came back the next episode with a clone of Bing, named Google.

(This is going to be a weird aside, but I want to talk about the community again and how cool they are. One of the greatest joys of being a CPUK fan is that the only real designs we have of these characters are Smash Bros. renders. And while this was certainly unintentional, I think Ryan Chongoshow accidentally created the most fan-artable show of all time. The Smash Bros. characters and the color schemes created a base with which to build off of, with everyone in the community having their own interpretations of the characters. That said, one of the fun things about it being a community is that, sometimes, collective headcanons just Become the way everyone thinks about the character. Google, who I mentioned earlier? I don't remember who decided he was a robot clone, I don't think it was mentioned in the show itself, but the community just Decided he was a robot! I love that! It's great!)

Anyways. I won't get too deep into the specifics of how the plot progresses, because if I did, we'd be here forever, and we all know this post is too fucking long as it is, but Dr. Order showing up again with Google starts the arc proper. Dr. Order is your classic mad scientist, she's just making shit happen because she can. There are several very important characters that have direct connections to her, being her experiments. There's the aforementioned Google, a clone of Bing meant to be the perfect fighter. There's Machiavelli, the ultimate lifeform, and Mach 2, who was built to be superior to Machiavelli in every way and just Isn't. There's Hackerman J0hn, who's an actual cyborg. There's Larry the Florida Man, a shapeshifter who's a whole fuckin can of worms that I won't get into but he's one of the best characters and honestly a perfect microcosm of what makes Kerfuffle's method of storytelling kick so much ass.

One of the great things about this arc is how personal it all feels. Crimson was, at most, an agent of chaos. He was characterized as this malevolent force of nature that tormented the tournament for no reason other than that he could. Crimson would get recharacterized later, with new lore being added to flesh him out a bit, but it took a bit for that to happen. Dr. Order, from the very beginning, is human. One would think that she'd be a downgrade in terms of scope, but not only does she begin dealing with forces she doesn't understand, she also makes every interaction she has with the tournament fighters feel intentional, calculated, and malicious.

This arc is where the show fully comes into its own. The final stretch, from Episodes 17-20, are some of the most tense and fun and satisfying experiences I had ever seen, seeing the culmination of what the show was. Dr. Order might not have been intended to be a villain from the beginning, but she became the perfect villain for CPU Kerfuffle. Season 2 begins with the disparate chaos of the tournament be brought to a standstill by a new head of the tournament, Iggy Koopa (yes, that one). Teams are put in place, and each fighter from that point on is enrolled in the tournament as a part of those teams. There's a real sense of camaraderie there, where these eight teams lift each other up, while also competing fair and square to see who's the best. Yes, the Kerfuffle tournament can get a bit... dramatic at times, but at the heart of it, it's a community. And Dr. Order is the antithesis of all of that. She does not have a team, she has subordinates, tools, with which she can claw her way to the top. She does not fight fair, she uses trickery and subterfuge to win her battles. Part of this is because she's a Wii Fit Trainer who sucks at fighting, but it unintentionally allows her to become even more of a malign figure in the cast of characters. And this makes it so, when she's eventually beaten in Episode 20 (which was an absolute Event in my life that I'll never forget, I cried actual tears), it doesn't only feel like the jerk was beaten up, but that community and friendship and love had triumphed over callous selfishness, that the ideal of defining who you are had beaten this monolith of petty control. And, yeah, that sounds like some Saturday morning cartoon Power Of Friendship nonsense, but. Fuck, man, that breaks me open.

And in many ways... I might very well be reading too far into things, but sometimes it feels like the themes of the silly funny Smash Bros. show reflect the feelings I have with its community. The world can be horrifying and monstrous. And it sometimes feels as though there is no way to endure it, that there's no point in enduring it. But... every once in a while, while I'm walking through this cold, dense, endless forest, enduring the slow but excruciating crawl of time moving forward... I find a campfire. I find people, telling jokes, telling stories. And... I think those little campfires are so deeply important. I think they're necessary. In a cold and indifferent world, it's vital that we find little pockets of joy and whimsy and absurdity and optimism, and that we share it with one another. We take our hope and our joy wherever we can get it. We try telling stories. We try telling jokes, drawing little pictures in the dirt. And that is the point.

To be honest, I've been considering ending this overly long diatribe here, if only because this has gotten insultingly long, and expecting people to read it is probably hoping for too much. If I did end it here, it would feel right. I've reached an emotional climax, and end point, I've said something that matters.

But... there's still more of the show to talk about.

CPU Kerfuffle does not end at Season 2. There was a hiatus after the Season 2 finale, which was by all means earned. But it did eventually come back for a Season 3. And I'm not going to talk too terribly much about Season 3? But I want it to be clear that it's not because it is somehow not as good as Season 2. In many ways, I prefer it. It explored the ramifications of Dr. Order's reign of terror in some really cool ways, and it's truly astonishing how, even after the villain's definitive defeat, her impact still echoes through all of the characters that she hurt. It's really great stuff.

The lore of the show is expanded even further. I didn't mention it earlier, but the first arc villain, Crimson, had a sister introduced in the tail end of Season 2, named Chartreuse. Where Crimson had domain over dimensions and space, Chartreuse had domain over time. And in Season 3, a third sibling is introduced, named Cobalt, the god of life and death. These deities are some of my favorite characters in the show. They're vastly different from one another, but in their own ways, they do very much come off as gods, as immortal, unfathomable beings. All three of them are fascinating, but I did not bring them up so I could gush about how much I love them.

I brought them up to talk about Prism.

This is another example of CPU Kerfuffle expanding on and, occasionally, slightly retconning parts of its established lore to tell a kickass story. Prism first appeared in Episode 15, and beyond doing some Wacky Stuff, she didn't seem particularly noteworthy. So imagine my surprise when she returns in Season 3 and introduces herself as the caretaker of the color gods, their babysitter, for lack of a better term. I honestly can not describe how kickass that revelation was.

Prism is a really fun villain. She is similar to Dr. Order in a lot of ways, but different in others. She does represent a monolith of control, with even the deities that look after time and space being simple disobedient children to her. But she is quite different when it comes to her mannerisms and methods. She is much more prone to talking things out, with an honestly chilling cheer, a smile that you can't quite tell whether it's genuine or false. Dr. Order is a villain that is fun to watch. Prism is oppressive, she dominates every conversation she is a part of, all while maintaining her bright attitude. It's absolutely chilling.

Prism begins an arc called The Grand Kerfuffle, an absolutely gargantuan bracket that was more akin to eight tournaments stacked in a trenchcoat than a single tournament. And to me, it honestly felt like the closest we could ever get in this show to a Final Arc. Each leg of the tournament felt like an event, with major plot turns, more build up to Prism as a villain, and the reveal that Spectrum, the elusive parent of the color gods, is dying. Spectrum had been foreshadowed for quite a while, so getting confirmation on its existence was huge. Crazy bullshit was happening, it was all ramping up to something incredible, I could just feel it-

And... then CPU Kerfuffle went on hiatus. And it never came back.

First off, I want to make this damn clear, I do not blame the creators for this happening. Mental health and maintaining ones own stability is so much more important than streaming a silly funny Smash Bros. show. Also, it's also not like things have abruptly ended, never to be seen again. During this lengthy break, Ryan Chongoshow has been doing Non-Canon Curiosity Tournaments (or NCCTs) in the aforementioned discord server. They're a lot of fun, and while it isn't the same, it is giving me the things about CPUK that I cared about most, the character interactions and the interesting plot lines. I honestly want to go into some of the ideas posed there, but this interminable post is long enough and explicitly non-canon material is where I draw the line.

With all that being said, though... I can't help but feel at least a little sad about that. Because, the more time passes, the more it becomes likely that CPU Kerfuffle just isn't coming back. Not in the way it was, at least. I've been trying to come to terms with that for a long time. Other people in the community seem to have done that. But... I'm not really sure if I can? To be clear, this is not meant to be a guilt trip. That being said, I've had far too many things in my life just... end. And not in a satisfying way, the way most stories do. They just stop. Friendships, and lives, and my own damn childhood. Done, just like that. Very abrupt. No closure. And as much as I can understand that sometimes, things are just Like That... it doesn't stop it from hurting. It doesn't stop me from wishing things were different. Wishing that my best friend in elementary school would have at least talked to me before wordlessly ending our friendship. Wishing that I could have spoken to my grandmother one more time before I lost the chance to. Wishing that a global pandemic hadn't ended my high school experience early, cutting me off into a cold, frightening world that I didn't know how to navigate.

Wishing that... that silly funny Smash Bros. show that helped me get through those hard times didn't have to end like that.

I'm well aware that I'm being wildly selfish, and irrational. Turns out, people are just like that sometimes. I get angry that my thoughts and feelings never coalesce, never make sense... but then I have to remember that none of us make sense. The world doesn't make sense. Life doesn't make sense.

But we have to live it anyway.

This could very well just be me reaching for a poignant ending to this meandering thesis I just wrote. Maybe I'm looking too deep into things where that depth just doesn't exist. Maybe I'm feeling just a bit too much about a silly funny Smash Bros. show. But, to be honest? I don't care.

The world is cruel, and cold, and uncaring, and confusing, and every day that I keep living has the potential to be a trial that I can't overcome.

But sometimes the rat wins. Sometimes a Florida man hits a shitty lady in the face with a volleyball. Sometimes a time traveling dog flirts with a time goddess and it becomes something beautiful, and you laugh and you cry and you feel as much as you can.

And then, with the memories of those times behind you, propping you up, keeping you from falling, you keep living.

[kosmic-arts]

An Unhinged KH Rant That I Needed To Get Out of My Brain

here i am, once again, tortured by hypotheticals like- "what if kingdom hearts didn't suck?" and, "if i could rewrite kh, how and what would i cut or add?"

honestly,, my ideal kingdom hearts timeline is kh1, com, kh2, and days. that's literally it. games extending backwards or forwards from the end of kh2 (bbs & ddd kh3 unioncrossfuckinghell) really sapped the life from the series imo. in a better world, square and disney would've put kingdom hearts to rest by 2, and we would've all grown up and moved on with happy memories :))))

lol. but is it possible to extend the story of kh without draining it of all the magic, mystery, and charm established since kh1? by now i think we can all agree that here at the tailend of the timeline (kh3), this game has reduced itself to a fake deep shitpost soulless disney ad. :) -so, how could it be done anyway? ultimately, bbs would have to exist. you would need something to expand on the story's lore, and the lore of the keyblade and it's wielders is a prime target. i love and hate bbs; but i do think it really takes away from the charm of the keyblade itself and the mystery surrounding it. explains too much, if you will. lets not get into how the wayfinder trio spends their entire time talking about how much they gotta train and how their entire lives revolve around training and how wooden and stiff a vast majority of their interactions are eraqus dont even get me started he is so boring do not talk to me about the shitty gacha paytowin mobile game god help me also their shitty mark of mastery exam is with the fucking flying balls its so lame are you telling me this is what keyblade masters are capable of; what fucking happened to lingering will in kh2fm??? why cant we do any of that shit in bbs? wheres the fuckin keyblade transformations and capes in that game-

ok. bbs would have to exist… but it should've revived kh1's way of integrating disney plots into the main story. ALL the games shouldve revived that trick post kh2. whats the point of disney being a major half of these games if you dont use them. like- ven goes to fucking cinderella world and meets cinderella (NOT AS A RAT), and ven is sad and lost an looking for his friends and cinderella convinces her stepmother to hire ven as a stableboy or a peasent servant or some shit. something to get a roof over his head. ventus learns from cinderella about her dreams and it gets him thinking about what he wants out of life… maybe he wants to see his friends succeed and become masters but thats mainly just a pretty excuse hes been using to mask his true feelings. truthfully hes scared of getting left behind. maybe he discovers that he feels inadequate in comparison to his friends, and fears for the inevitable future where they leave home to lead their own lives/search for their own apprentices. fuck idk. 1 talk with cinderella could unlock all of that. easy. imagine writing. what a concept.

WHAT im saying is. disney shouldn't exist in kh just to be an ad. the reason why sora in kh1 came to the conclusion that MY FRIENDS ARE MY POWER, is because of the lessons he learned in each of the disney worlds up until his confrontation with riku. he literally explains his entire reasoning before he says the line- the disney plots mattered to sora's character development! by the end of the game, he became so much more wisened and was capable of butting heads with ansem who had studied all the esoteric makings of the universe and thought he knew where life began and eneded: darkness lol. but sora had come to a different conclusion: kingdom hearts is light!!! lmao!! it was an asspull, but shit. i could follow the line of logic well enough and it was cool and dramatic without insulting my intelligence.

what am i talking about? disney? i think the timeline extending backwards as far as bbs is serviceable, but nothing in this world will convince me otherwise from the belief that unioncross is hot garbage and needlessly complicates the plot to an insane degree. its literally star wars prequel movies but even shittier, but this time, theres a casino for the little kids!!! yay!! :))

aanyway. what about ddd..? the resurrection of org 13 needs to not fucking happen. and if it does, only like, 4 of the 13 and half of them arent even enemies. i dont want to kill guys i already slaughtered 2 games ago. theyre not threatening anymore GOD. what if kingdom hearts established new villians starting from ddd that would lead into kh3 being a whole new story? pretty epic right? it would be just like how com introduced the org13 the first time after ansem was beaten to lead into kh2! woww! but, like, who would this hypothetical new ddd-introduced villian be? we all know the kh team cant design characters for shit who aren't walking talking black coats. MoM? lol? i like the guy, but hes an overpowered omnipotent all knowing god that is too strong to feasibly be beaten by anyone without a humongeous ass pull deus ex machina to solve the problem. like c'mon, dont act surprised when sora inevitably walks up to him, goes- "light light friendship heart. the future can be changed!" and then MoM is like, "ah fuck i guess you're right. i suppose i, the master of masters, the most powerful keyblade wielder ever, maybe even the progenitor and also seer of all time and existance who knows everything you're going to do before you're going to do it-- knows less than you. i was wrong all along. guess ill die!". don't act like it wont happen like that :))). you really think the kh writers are competent enough to handle a character as difficult to manage as MoM? he's a cool guy, but they fucked up trapping him in this garbage game.

lmao. but anyway, who knows who this hypothetical new ddd villian would be. but it would have to be some other dumbfuck obsessed with the (((power of kingdom hearts))). thats the name of the game after all. so really, what im actually saying is- kh3 shouldve been a whole new storyline with new villians and plot, rather than dredging up closed plotlines from the previous games. we shouldnt have to be waiting till mf kh4 just for a new story. im not playing that game btw. not unless square figures out how to make a game fun to play like its literal 20 yr old predecessors of kh1&2, while also not selling me the fixes to the game in a 40$ dlc. fuck you. REMIND me not to ever play this shitty game ever again.

ok. i think im ok… i got everything out my system. bbs shouldn't have been garbage where you cant even be like lingering will by the end of the game. also disney worlds need to serve a purpose in kh beyond serving merely as ads… ddd shouldve introduced a new villian for a new plotline continued in kh3, rather than retconning and resurrecting everything from the previous games… and MoM is a cool guy trapped in a shit game that will inevitably get botched. yup.

ok i feel better now.

[cookinguptales]

I will preface this by saying that of course I’m a nandermo shipper so I’m biased but like

as a writer

I’m looking at this whole Freddie thing with like... increasing confusion. Like... the way to get your audience invested in a romance is to, y’know, show it? They’re hinting at it, but we’re not really getting to see any of the things that usually get fans into a romance. Not how they met, not how they got together, not how they actually interact, not their ship dynamic... It’s mostly been some generic phone endearments and Guillermo hanging up on him mid-sentence. Hard to get a handle on, y’know?

At this point, I’m guessing that there’s a very high likelihood that we really won’t even see the guy until the end of the season. And while hinting at a mysterious lover is great for a fuckin murder mystery or something, it’s not an effective way to get an audience invested in what a romance is rather than what it could be.

So at this point, I can’t help but wonder if we’re not supposed to be getting invested in it...?

Maybe I just spent too long in Big 2 comics fandom, but I know that a good way to get your fans annoyed at a new love interest is to have an established main character go from 0 to 60 about them with no build-up that the fans are actually privy to. Like, we know that the character has feelings for them, and that’s fine. But in order for the fans to have feelings about them, we also need to kind of fall in love with them, y’know? It’s easy to feel cheated and irritated with a character if the writers neglect that very important step.

When it comes to writing a romance, it’s just... not good writing... And I think these are not bad writers! So the only other thing I can think of is that they’re not writing a romance. Either what they’re actually building to is a storyline about Guillermo’s fucked up interpersonal skills and inability to ever actually be “normal” (highly likely, I think) or one where Freddie causes trouble (less likely, I think, though this show doesn’t really have normal people in it) or it’s going to be a story about Guillermo and Nandor in the end (which feels... pointed in the show itself, but seems unlikely from interviews?) or... I don’t know.

I’ve been trying to give both of these new relationships absolute benefit of the doubt (despite obviously not really wanting them to go well, lmao) because I mean! I’ve changed my mind on pairings that split up my ships if they’re well-written enough! I’ve actually spun dozens of scenarios for how these two relationships could work in my head. But yeah, it’s getting harder and harder with each passing episode. Both Marwa and Freddie feel more like plot devices in someone else’s story than actual characters at this point, and we are swiftly running out of episodes. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to see ways that each of these could become well-written romances. (Nandor/Marwa especially is dead in the water, I think.)

And I mean... These writers are so fucking good at writing romance when it comes to Laszlo and Nadja! That’s a pairing that we were also introduced to well after they got together, but they managed to show their ship dynamic so charmingly so quickly that you kind of feel like you’ve known them forever. So the fact that they’re just... not doing that... has me like ??? what are you planning??? because it sure as shit doesn’t feel like a well-developed romantic storyline! lmao

At this point, even if Freddie does stick around for s5 (not a thing I’m hoping for, mostly bc of narrative cohesion reasons which I went into with one of my last answered asks) his introduction has just been so damn strange that I don’t know if this can ever feel like an organic relationship...? I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I realized at a certain point that it was because, based on how this is being used in the narrative, it’s starting to feel more like foreshadowing for a bad thing than a good one. Or if not a bad thing, then at least an explosive one?

I mentioned it in one of my last posts, but this is starting to give “Colin’s 100th Birthday” vibes. The way they keep bringing it up, but too quickly for any real information? The way that “Freddie” has been announced as the penultimate episode of the season, the same spot where Colin “died”...? This is starting to make me uneasy!

I guess I’ll just end with saying personally, I kind of hope that the thing with Freddie ends catastrophically just because I like seeing my blorbos Suffer but I acknowledge that’s probably less likely lmao. At this point, I’m just going to be happy if they have a greater plan here that isn’t just “dump an unintroduced love interest on viewers near the end of the season” because again, I just don’t find that narratively satisfying.

but damn, if we aren’t building up a romance, what are we building?? I keep trying to figure it out! ;A;

[adultswim2021]

Moral Orel #13: “Satan” | November 27, 2006 – 12:15AM | S02E03

This is one of the more formula-breaking episodes of the show; focusing entirely on Coach Stopframe’s relationship with Clay, as well as Satan. In the episode we see him turning from God to Satan and boy do we ever. (I couldn’t figure out how to fix this next sentence to make it sound good so please read it in a George Wood voice) His decorative wall crucifix and his crucifix necklace get a bit of a work out as he turns them upside down and rightside up again depending on which deity whose attention he’s vying for. The opening scene he gets so fed up with neither God nor Satan answering his prayers for Clay to gay-guy call him while he waits by the phone, so he spins the crucifix. When the phone does ring, and it is Clay, Stopframe realizes the crucifix has landed perfectly sideways. Spiritually, the man is lost. But he does know what he wants and it’s boning Clay. 

This one is unique because it’s fairly alienating to first-time viewers, though I guess the story is fairly easy to get: a man wants another man to love him back as much as he loves him, and is bouncing between god and satan to get that love. When he enters god’s house, Reverend Putty delivers a very pointed sermon against gay people. Stopframe spitefully turns to Satan because of this, flipping his crucifix yet again. (exhausted, sad) He simply can’t stop flipping.  

Throughout the episode we see Stopframe attempting to get things to the next level with Clay, and nothing seems to work. Clay is too repressed to actually act on his attraction to Stopframe; they get together and flirt and both men seem to really want physical contact with one another, but Clay always cuts things off before they get serious and runs home. At home he finds Orel going through a vacuum cleaner bag to fish out some of Clay’s hair. Stopframe has asked Orel to bring him some of his father’s hair so he can cast some sort of Satanic spell on him. 

Stopframe also invites Orel to a Satanic orgy. He’s a virgin like me, after all (yet somehow also being a serial impregnater), and they seem to need one for some sort of ritual. When they get there the Satanists balk at Stopframe bringing a non-legal virgin, and make it clear they can’t use him. They also turn out to be fat losers, rebelling in some sexual perversions but mostly gluttonous ones. It’s all about the pizza and candy there. Stopframe leaves, dejected, and Orel leaves with a belly full of pizza.

Orel’s role in this is rather passive, which is what makes this a formula breaker. He is just a pawn in Stopframe’s plans. When we see him digging out hair from the vacuum cleaner bag, he notices a single dog hair and sighs, “poor Bartholomew” establishing that the show does value continuity, and that this episode is indeed a very real examination of Clay and Stopframe’s ongoing relationship, making it clear that they don’t fuck, but boy they both want to, and one of them is READY. 

I wouldn’t describe this as a strong episode, but it does show what’s to come. Character-focused episodes that exist just to examine a relationship and drive said characters and the show at large into a new place. Though really, this episode isn’t terribly essential, it serves to remind those of us who have been hanging in there who these people are, and it’ll probably matter later on. Stopframe and Clay’s relationship is quite central to the ending of the series, and it’s at least a little important that we check in on them and see how they’re doing. Which isn’t that good. I mean, they could be butt-fuckin’. What’s better than buff-fucking?

Oh yeah, there was pizza in this one. Remember when I was keeping track of that? Fuck.

MAIL BAG

whose your favorite character on the following shows: squidbillies, metalopocalyse, robot chicken, morel orel, and aqua teen. I think that covers all the currently runnig shows. bye.

Ah yes! Something from one of my many fans, I dare to dream. early, nathan, no one, rev. putty, shake, homer

[idkbishsss]

my review of the mandalorian so far (I’ve seen 5 episodes, and got spoilers for ep6 why drafting and this up)

It okay.

I definitely think so lines here and there need work. I’ve definitely liked all the cameos/references, but that’s because I’m just a fuckin’ nerd-

it’s my least favorite season so far, but I don’t think it awful

Don’t take my word for it, because I could watch anything SW related and like it. The power of hyperfixations baby!

I also don’t have the same opinions with most people. My marvel opinions would probably offend a lot of people. I also don’t set high expectations for anything in case they don’t met it.

Going to be honest, they did just throw away a few plot points though. Like the fuck happened to the people in ep3? They lost the plot point.

First two episodes are the best so far. I think episode 3 is the worst. It’s not because I don’t like the episode, but because they did nothing with that plot so far.

Episode 5 also isn’t my favorite, I definitely think they could have done a better job at establishing the pirates a little better. Yet I do still like the action and I think the ending with Bo is good. I think she deserves it, I don’t think Din would want that. As much as people are mad at the fact that she can take hers off and Din can’t.

I just think he would rather not have to bring all the mandos together. I actually wouldn’t mind if next season it’s just him chilling with Grogu as his friends come for aid.

I wish that it was more about Mandos and not the new republic. Yet I think it’s setting up some conflict for the end of the season. I also think that that this could have been the last season and then the just do a Bo-Katan show to show the rest.

But the show is called “The mandalorian”. I think that it’s trying to be about mandalorians as a whole, not just din. (I still think they should add more din)

I LOVE ZEB

I definitely have some theory’s on what’s going to happen.

I definitely love The Armorer and Bo stuff:}} (even if it’s not canon)

And there’s a lot i love, but hate get more traction on the internet.

Now I’m going into what I hate

WHY ARE THEY DOING ALL THIS SHIT FOR US TO LIKE BO KATAN?!?!?

the only people who don’t like her are people who haven’t watched Rebels and the finale season of tcw series. I feel like they setting her character back. Just trying to undoing character development.

I talk about this perversely, BUT WHAT WAS EPISODE 3!?!? I liked that episode when it came out, but all that O U T T H E W I N D O W. They aren’t doing anything with the plot point. Also it’s just a set up for the fall of the new republic! Which would be good, if I didn’t want the sequels UNTOUCHED. Leave them alone, you made mistakes. Run and bury those why you still can!

If it was another show? Yes it work! It’s was working when the had Moff. It was still with the plot, yet didn’t feel forced.

Din feels like he just exists. Add some conflict, make him pissed that he can’t walk both ways or something. Even if I hate that, it’s still something. It can also be explained well. He feels like his entire life he’s respected the way, but he doesn’t like that the rules are different. He had so everything for the way, he was kick out for “disrespecting” it. Make him want to walk both ways at the end of the story because of this!

also i just know they are going to do Paz is the one all pissed. Please add Din to the story again, I beg you.

And, make one episode, centered around Mandos. Without anything else. I don’t care if it’s past. I don’t care if it’s wholesome or not. I don’t care if din doesn’t even show up. Just do an episode for Mandos (I know ep4 exists okay, but I need more then that-)

Also don’t give Bo-Katan the dark saber PLEASE

Like that she went against an empire, and that’s not really easy to beat. I don’t blame her, i think any Mando could fall to that.

But I just think that it should be someone else. Maybe not Din, but definitely not Bo-

-gets spoilers for Ep6-

…IM GOING TO RUN OFF A CLIFF-

What? Why? HOW?

First! JACK FUCKING BLACK ACCORDING TO MOST

SECOND, what did I say? Make it about mandos not the fucking CLONE WARS?!?!

Look I love Bo, BUT GOD NO. NO

well at least according to a few we got dumb ass lovable Din back:) (I’m also sure there’s good things about the episode)

I lied. I hate this show (I’m sure with in a few days I love it again-)

Edit: I saw someone say ep6 just should have been an entire season it’s self. I have a feeling it not bad, just overwhelming.

[ronpatrash]

okay here is my danganronpa 3 anime experience post. tl;dr it wasn't great and i really didnt need to watch it, but i have to...complete the plot in its entirety? I gUESS??? and this was...painful

first off let me say that my watch of this was with my danganronpa friends. it's already a biased opinion you're about to read, cause we're watching it dubbed, and for the most part we weren't paying full attention to it, because the plot fell off very quickly

the english dub is alright though! for the most part it's not bad and not too jarring, though some lines can sound ridiculously funny, like yukizome talking to chiaki and asking "you think no one will like you cause you're a gamer?" or junko actually saying "kamukura yaas queen" and "he's gonna burst a blood vessel cause i dissed his waifus" I CANT BELIEVE THIS BAD SHOW MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD AT SOME POINTS. junko's english VA is a delight and i'm so glad i sat through it for her to show up and be a horrible girlboss <3

and also the future arc is so skippable that my friends and i still got the gist of the plot while we watched almost all of it at 2x speed LMAO the only part that was a great time for me was when toko and komaru showed up (what a nice continuation from ultra despair girls!!!) and when makoto was about to be brainwashed into committing suicide, cause we get to see a glimpse of what his mind was experiencing. that shit was really cool cause of all the dr1 characters and makoto going through survivor's guilt? i was fascinated UNTIL WE ALL SAW MONDO, IN BUTTER FORM, WITH HIS JACKET ON THE FLOOR THAT SHIT WAS HILARIOUS)

actually the whole story,,, the whole thing with the despair that led to the end of the world shit is just so,,, shallow in the end? it would have held more weight to me if being in 'despair' wasn't actually just brainwashing through watching an animated film. i think the concept of mitarai being so good at animating that he uses hypnotism methods in his films to manipulate the emotions of the audience is... far-fetched but makes sense? animation and film directing is in a sense about making your audience feel things, and everything plays a part in that (from character movement to composition of the shot and colours, sounds, etc etc if you've been to animation school you know this stuff).

as cool as the idea is, I JUST DIDNT EXPECT IT TO BE THE BACKBONE OF THE ENTIRE TRAGEDY, and as much as i want to hate it, i cant bring myself to. im just disappointed, but it's very danganronpa to do this

OH AND I DIDNT THINK MITARAI'S GRAND PLAN IS TO JUST HYPNOTISE EVERYONE AGAIN WITH A HOPE FILM INSTEAD OF A DESPAIR ONE, DUDE, YOU WERE THE REASON WHY EVERYTHING WENT TO SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE

AND I DIDNT THINK HE WOULD JUST BE STOPPED WITH UHM I DONT KNOW, THE FUCKIN,,, POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, FROM HIS CLASSMATES THAT HE BARELY KNEW OR INTERACTED WITH. THIS PLOT IS SO UEHJDJGJF

also the new characters are mostly very boring. i kinda called it early on that there's sorta a throuple thing going on with yukizome, munakata and sakakura dOES ANYONE EVEN REMEMBER THESE PEOPLE'S NAMES FOR REAL?? I SURE DONT, I KEEP HAVING TO LOOK EM UP CAUSE THEIR PLOT WAS SO UNINTERESTING, AND MUNAKATA AND SAKAKURA ARE BOTH ASSHOLES

the throuple ended really badly too????? oh my god the adult characters are all terrible, only great gozu, the guy with the bull mask in the future foundation, was amazing, bUT HE LASTED LIKE ONE EPISODE. future arc bad,,, you can tell characters were created just to be killed

if you cant tell already by how incomprehensibly angry this entire blog post was written, i'm relieved to be done with the anime. there is no more mystery, the writing is just really bad. it's comparable to my experience with following the kingdom hearts timeline in that it's good in the beginning (because many questions are open and unanswered and your brain fills it in with theories you enjoy), and gets worse towards the end (because every question is answered badly, established plot points are rewritten for bad reasons, and the work is clearly rushed so they can try to beat more money out of this dying horse)

[toaarcan]

Thoughts on Sonic 2.

So, I just finished my Liveblog of Sonic 2.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my more detailed thoughts now that I’m not jumping back and forth between the tabs every few minutes.

I’ll give a disclaimer that I watched this one without seeing the previous film. I wasn’t remotely interested in the story that one was trying to tell, and I jumped straight into this one because the presence of more actual Sonic characters gave me the vague hope that it would be about Sonic and co. and not a bunch of humans. For the most part... it delivered on that front.

Overall, I think the movie was... decent. It wasn’t amazing, but it’s a solid superhero movie. Genre-wise, that’s what this is, and I’d put it on par with the middle-to-good range of Marvel flicks, and miles better than most of what DC shits out. Not that the latter is a high bar to clear, but still decent.

I will reiterate that I think these movies would work significantly better in pure animation than live action. Sonic is a character whose design is rooted in classic cartoons, and the further away he gets from that, the less he works.

Character-wise, it was pretty good. Tails and Knuckles have had a really rough time in official material over the past... decade. When SEGA left the console game, they felt the need to backtrack on a lot of their characters’ growth, and dumb them down for a new audience, and as a result, Tails became a wimp and a useless hollywood nerd trope and Knuckles became a loud idiot who constantly gets shown up by his friends.

This movie didn’t do that. Knuckles in particular is on top form, in a way he hasn’t been since the Archie comic died. Yeah, I know he’s in IDW as well, but literally the first thing Flynn did with him under IDW’s banner was have him be made aware that Eggman was going to ruin the world and then decide to let it happen so he could be the hero and lead the resistance. Then they established than he was never actually the leader of the resistance and Amy did all the hard work.

What I’m saying is that Knuckles has been short on wins, and the movie is a much-needed boost for him.

Less so with Tails. He’s still mostly occupying the same box that SEGA put him in after Sonic Heroes, where it seems like they forgot that he used to be playable in every game and he was just about equals with his comrades. Still, he’s at least using his genius to fight now, instead of just standing around and playing with his iPad like he does in the games.

There were times where he felt like kind of an afterthought. It takes him a long while to turn up, he’s the last of the main characters to actually arrive, and he spends a significant portion of the film unconscious and separated from the others.

I also think that his friendship was Sonic was a little rushed. I got it, but I’ve been a fan of the Sonic series for eighteen years and Sonic and Tails being friends is what I expect and what I’m used to. I do not know if it would’ve landed for me had this been my introduction to them.

He’s better than he is in the games, but that’s not really hard to achieve.

Robotnik made for a good villain, but I’m not sure if he felt right. See, Eggman is a pretty hammy character, and Carrey is a pretty hammy actor, but but it’s different flavours of ham. Eggman is a theatrical showoff, he grandstands and gloats and he slaps his logo on everything. Carrey’s acting is more manic. He unhinged, but still not quite like Robotnik. And frankly, I often thought he was just mugging.

Y’know how sometimes, something that’s *almost* right but not quite there feels weirder and more “off” than something that isn’t even close and wasn’t trying? Yeah, that.

There were several points where Robotnik felt less like Robotnik and more like just Jim Carrey.

Still, he did the job pretty well, and the big picture aspects of how Robotnik works were all there. It’s just the mannerisms and the dialogue that don’t quite land for me.

Also the part where he licked the car’s windscreen was just fucking weird.

Then the sticking point: Sonic himself.

This Sonic is... different. And that’s not new for Sonic adaptations. He’s been a showy, invincible Bugs Bunny type, a nerdy schoolkid’s alter-ego, a grouchy, snarky prick, a laid-back adventurer, a confident and powerful freedom fighter, a lazy, apathetic bum, and even an exiled prince. A young kid looking for a new family isn’t beyond the pale for him.

Still though, something about it doesn’t really feel all that right. The Sonic series doesn’t really tend to put a whole lot of effort into realistically depicting its characters as teenagers or kids, so it’s weird to see them actually doing that here.

Sonic as I know him as always been an extremely confident and self-assured guy. That’s not to say he never has insecurities, but they tend to be more subtle and buried.

I don’t really think the whole “Parents and kid” routine he has with the humans really works all that well.

Still, his personality felt mostly alright. A bit on the over-snarky side but acceptable on that front.

As for the humans, I gotta be honest I didn’t give two shits about them. That might be why the “Dad” thing fell flat for me, but I am just not invested in a bunch of human characters.

The wedding scene was a painful experience. As I said in the liveblog, I do not like cringe comedy, so watching Tom putz around and make a fool of himself for what felt like half an hour in the middle of the film was inarguably the worst part of the film. I spent the entire scene badly wanting to cut back to the characters I didn’t pay to watch. I’m not gonna linger on it, though, because you’ll read or hear the same thing in literally every review of this movie ever made. Trust me, I checked.

The exception to this would be Agent Stone, who I actually rather liked. As I said in the liveblog, I wouldn’t mind seeing him adapted into other Sonic media. It’d be good to give Eggman someone to bounce off who isn’t constantly mocking him like those fucking mini-robots.

The other negative I want to bring up is the music. The instrumental tracks were fine, if a little generic. But the actual songs put into it? Yeah, those didn’t really work. Sonic vocal music pretty solidly lands in the butt-rock genre, and there was a distinct lack of guitar shredding in the songs chosen. When I think “Sonic music scene”, I can assure you that I never think Uptown Funk.

To end off on a higher note, though, I must again stress that I really liked what they did with Super Sonic.

Super Sonic has thus far only shown up in a handful of Sonic’s many, many adaptations, and most of the ones that did use him were comics. Not exactly in the public eye. Sonic hasn’t gone Super in screen-based media since Sonic X finally died in 2007, so it was great to not only see him make a triumphant return, but also be excellently represented in terms of his raw power.

I better see Super Sonic vs. Super Shadow in Movie 3.

[nightcoremoon]

Tom Holland is a good actor, a great spiderman. I won’t say anything negative about his performance.

No Way Home essentially ruined the character.

Anyone can be a superhero. Xmen has hundreds of characters with awesome superpowers but very few of them are good characters. DC has several characters in the comics with squandered potential. Superman and Shazam and Aquaman are all capable of being great characters as we’ve seen from recent films, but in a lot of the comics they’re just vehicles to deliver plot with. oh superman needs to freeze something, he has magical frost breath; magic eye lasers; magic telekinesis; MAGIC FUCKIN FABRIC S HE THROWS AT YOU THAT MAKES YOU FALL OVER FOR TEN SECONDS AND THEN BE FINE. Shazam goes Shazam and magic beans go and do a thing. Aquaman is like FIIIIIIISH and fish go do some random bullshit. The good stories involving them are in the minority, especially in comparison to Batman. Now, it’s ludicrously difficult to fuck up Batman. He is easily the best thing DC has ever made. He has the best and strongest character writing of any DC superhero, and in fact, nearly every marvel superhero too. Dark Horse wishes they were on the level- much as I love hellboy spawn & umbrella but they are so many levels below batman levels of iconic. Try listing iconic metal bands and convincing anyone that above megadeth pantera slayer and cannibal corpse should be fucking MGK. and I say that liking some of his work (but goddamn is he such a fucking scumbag douchelord sometimes). Anyway Marvel has its fair share of great characters but a lot of them are… bad. at least nowadays. no love for gambit or psylocke or firestar or magma or polaris. fucking polaris, you know, quicksilver and scarlet witch’s sister? I think. maybe. I don’t know, there’s too many comics out there to worry about all of it. but that’s the thing. the market is oversaturated. there’s too many cool powers but not enough character development.

and then there’s spiderman.

I daresay spiderman is marvel’s greatest creation. he is marvel’s batman; the best of the best, the cream of the crop, characterisation perfected. if not the best he is definitely up there. and he’s definitely the most loved.

and for good reason! spiderman is special not because his powers are super unique and interesting in the realm of comics. ok yeah he’s fast and strong and he can do spider webs and he can fight. but there are a lot of spidermans out there. way too many. even scorpion and doc ock and uncle ben and j jonah jameson have all been spiderman once. same powers for the most part. but we don’t really care about most of them. and why? because peter parker is easily the best //character//. and don’t worry, miles is a close second. in fact, spiderverse is probably the best spiderman movie of the 10 based on everything that isn’t spiderman related. miles and peter both have very strong developed characters that have nothing to do with the spiderman persona. this is what makes spiderman special. he’s not just spiderman. he’s peter parker. he’s miles morales. he’s all of us. we are all spiderman. we can relate to him. we can see ourselves in him. no matter what walk of life you come from, we can all understand where he comes from; he’s just some dude. but he’s a good person. we got to see him as peter or miles for a long time before he got bit by that spider. well… except for holland. but that’s fine because where the other peter films faltered was in things besides peter. but not the mcu spidermans. if anything, this is the best spiderman that has ever graced film… spiderverse is an animation which is valid and great but we can all agree that they’re different mediums, and that spiderverse is easily a 10/10 whereas all the others range from 7-9. yes, spiderman 3 and the amazing spiderman are both 7s. no lower. don’t question me. ok anyway the point is we all love spiderman and peter parker.

mcu spiderman operates a little differently. in civil war he’s already established as a friendly neighborhood spiderman; he’s where we were at in the sequels in his cameo in steve rogers’ trilogy finale and tony stark’s initiation into Definitive Main Protagonist territory and T’challa’s introduction and Scott Lang’s return to form and etc etc. he’s just there to help tony stop steve from committing war crimes. we get time with both peter and spiderman. we get a sense of his character. he’s just a young kid with bright eyes and starry dreams and a real sense of duty. he understands that with great power… you know the rest. it’s an establishment of his place in the universe. we’ve already killed uncle ben, we don’t need to rehash that. we know who he is. we get it. and that’s what made civil war such a great film; it is easily by far the best ensemble writing in the entire franchise.

then in peter’s solo romp we get more of peter himself. he’s only spiderman for a short time in the film, and even then most of it he’s not using his powers to fight, he’s fully injecting his personality into every scene. we can see how much he looks up to stark and how much he wants to help the avengers and how much he’s willing to give up popularity and homecoming and the mathletics and good graces of school staff for the sake of being the hero that the plot demanded. he is not a superpower to deliver plot; the plot happens and he has to react to it. homecoming was a phenomenal spiderman movie and deserved all of the high marks it got. and then infinity war happened and, he was also good in that too. and then he died. and then endgame happened and he came back to life! but then tony died. and he was sad. very sad. the sadness bled into far from home and he found a new mentor in fury who was actually talos, he pursued the other side of the coin that was wishing to be the peter he wanted to be now that the world demanded spiderman in the wake of stark’s loss, he realized that he’s not a kid anymore and he can’t afford to be so selfish because of that whole great power thing. he found a happy medium.

and then jameson had to go and fuck it up /positive

(I loved that cameo)

and

…

this is where the positivity ends.

I fucking hated no way home.

I genuinely think it ruined spiderman for the future of the mcu.

it affirmed my belief that endgame and far from home are the absolute final pieces of the marvel puzzle that will constitute my enjoyment. no more. never again. it’s over. I am perfectly satisfied with it ending there.

now, don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy most of it. I liked doctor strange taking on the mantle of mentorship. I liked the way they brought together a bunch of the untied plot threads of the amazing duology, and the fanservice from raimi’s trilogy was comforting. I felt like 3 ended as well as it could have and sufficiently tied it all together, so maguire (and norman) functioned to give us the uncle ben moment that was such an effective gut punch that came from out of nowhere especially after teasing her and happy together. it felt like iron man 4; we saw that they could move on from the grief of his loss. but then right smack dab in the middle BOOM we get a devastating tragedy right when the plot needed a kick in the pants. and the final fight scene was very well done; right up to the moment maguire stopped holland from stabbing norman AND THEN EVEN AFTER THAT. the movie ended with everything going back to normal.

…god I wish I could say that.

STUPID FUCKING GODDAMN MULTIVERSE PHASE FIVE DISNEY GREEDY CORPORATE MEDDLING BULLSHIT

sorry, I had to get that out of my system

ok so yeah the multiverse almost fucking exploded and then the universe had to purge its knowledge of peter parker. you know, the one thing that makes spiderman special. now he’s just a sad boy with dead parents and a magic nanobot suit. completely indistinguishable from a whole host of boring garbage saturating the market. so whatever the fuck disney is forcing its people to do with a gun to their heads is gonna be just… so fucking bad. I don’t care anymore. I legit don’t give a shit. They took a promising start to a long franchise and just squished it into the dirt because they want wanda to be the next thanos. they should have ended it a long fucking time ago. and now they’re going to force keaton back in it and force us to acknowledge morbius and ruin venom and come up with some random dumbass bullshit to fill a sinister six roster. I am so fucking disappointed with disney for screwing get more actors of color out of long contracts. I’m not shocked at all that downey evans & holland and all the other white men get like 400 billion dollars. it’s an atrocious travesty. my baby is aflame.

Spiderman is dead.

Marvel is dead.

The mcu is over and I don’t give a shit about it anymore.

I’m gonna write my own fix it fic and slap a flex tape on that shit and make it all better because I’m a better writer than whoever’s pulling the strings right now.