the dynamic of demigods thinking which other demigod is the most powerful is always amusing to me because. like, we know the big 3 kids are all the most powerful. That's just a fact of their universe. And then we know nearly every character views Percy as the strongest demigod, and most people are very rightfully intimidated by him.
and you look at the powers of the Big 3 kids and there's Percy, but then you realize Nico is just kind of objectively more powerful than him but simply chooses to hang out in Percy's shadow like he's Percy's scary dog privileges. Like, the two of them are pretty equally capable of causing multiple different apocalypses. Nico just also has like four different instakill powers and it's not like he doesn't use them. He very much uses them! Not infrequently, even! And they don't seem to take a significant amount of energy from him! And other demigods are pretty intimidated by both of them! But Nico makes a conscious point to keep his cards close to his chest and not let on exactly how dangerous and scary he can be if he wants to. People are already scared enough of him without knowing anything about him and he doesn't like that. Percy doesn't think about that nearly as much, and so usually just goes in guns blazing and that's part of why he's considered a wildcard. And then Nico himself puts Percy on a pedestal, so those who do know more about Nico's abilities then presume Nico knows something they don't about Percy that implies Percy is even stronger than him.
And even on a meta level Nico's narrative role requires him to be functionally more powerful than Percy, because he very often serves the purpose of getting Percy out of situations he can't handle on his own. That's just part of his function as a character! But also narratively he can't overshadow Percy so he just takes a backseat of his own accord and that's very amusing to me.
everyone wants stories about powerful women and women finding and knowing their worth and coming into their own without having a man be the center of it all until it doesn’t look the way THEY want it to. then it’s just chalked up to lazy writing.
I know why people don't like Turnabout Bigtop. I am among the people who dislike Turnabout Bigtop.
But I GET why people like the case. I'm not going to be one of those annoying people who just blindly dump on it because I hate those mfs too.
Thing about Bigtop isn't that it sucks. Thing isn't the weird grooming stuff (though that is a huge part of it). It's not that it could've been good.
It's that - in my personal OPINION - it could have been *great*.
I think it had the potential to be one of the best third cases in the trilogy. It had everything; a fun and goofy setting fit for a pretty dang goofy lawyer game - where the environment itself had jokes and quips and one-liners and mishaps and tomfoolery written all over it, it had the previous case introducing a very interesting and important plotline that gave background for one of the more well-loved characters while also introducing an equally fucked up and lovable new one who was a child forced into a shit childhood of naivete in a CIRCUS with another character who was very naive and childish - whose interactions could have been funny and cute and reflective of said shit from the previous case (seriously she becomes such an important character in the 4th case, WHY would they not include her in this one for some character development? How did they fuck up letting a CHILD explore a CIRCUS?? That would have made the interactions flow MUCH better).
They had a pretty good, sympathetic killer imo, a morally dubious victim, an asshole of a client (who was pretty flat admittedly in-game, but I like his weird, topsy-turvy reasoning for it in the anime. Also, I think Max being kinda a dick would have bode well for the themes of Farewell since most of his clients up to this point have been like...nice? Not nice, but sympathetic, but him having to defend someone who's innocent but a prick would have shown him that just because someone is an asshole, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer for it and that they have the potential to grow as people, which is almost a complete opposite of what Matt was. Ultimately, I would have loved the contrast of them as clients and I think it would have also served as character development for Phoenix, especially with his low-empathy tendencies).
They just didn't think that far ahead. They just didn't execute it well enough. They just decided to make three of the adult characters fight for the hand in marriage of a teenage girl. (Bat's part of the story was actually kinda good if he was just YOUNGER, I think him doing that for Regina would have been a stupid thing someone in the circus would do to impress their crush. Damn you Ace Attorney and your weird treatment of underage girls!!)
It just flopped and that's ok.
Even though it kinda sucked, it can still mean something to me.
Also I'm a Moe Curls apologist. I liked him, shut up.
stultifera navis rerun AKA thinking about Iberia hours again because a lot of the Iberians have such fascinating relationships with the concept of home but specifically Thorns and Lumen are eating at my brain. like where do you call home when the place that is your home Just Fucking Hates You? Elysium's rewinding breeze specifically makes a point to hammers home how differently Iberia treats its Liberi and its Aegir
(which is especially interesting since this comes right after a conversation where Purestream commented on how despite Leizi being a high ranking government official, there are still some experiences that are universal for all Yanese people - because the experience of what Iberia itself is like isnt universal for all Iberians)
But all that being said, Thorns also straight up states that Aegir is not his home, and yeah, how could it be? How could a place you've never been to, never truly known, ever be your home? How could it ever feel like a home?
so where do you go when the place that you are from hates your people and the place your people are from is completely unfamiliar and alien to you? Thorns' answer at the end of the conversation with Aya is: my home is where i chose it to be. my home is where there are people I care about and people who care about me
in the complete opposite direction, Lumen's oprec asks: why do you still stay in a place that wants you gone? because the people of Gran Faro like Jordi well enough but when push comes to shove, they will want the only Aegir in town gone
and yet, when Rald the messenger offers him a chance to leave Jordi turns him down and when he's forced to escape Gran Faro after the people there literally try to send him to his death (or worse) at the hands of the Inquisitors he keeps trying to go back because like everyone in stultifera navis, Jordi is clinging to his own dreams of a golden age
but the shape of that dream is unique to every character and for Jordi, his dreams are deeply, inseparably bound to the Eye of Iberia, the legacy his parents left behind
and it's this dream of becoming someone great, of bringing about that golden age that his parents devoted their lives to help create that ties Jordi to this nothing town because despite everything, despite the mistrust of the townsfolk and the hostility of the Inquisition and the danger from the ocean, he simply cannot leave it behind
(or, because i personally dislike the official translation,)
"I just see this place as my home"
so yeah. not sure what overall point i was trying to make here i'm just. deeply in love with these stories about chosing what is and isn't your home, of saying you will not call a place your home because it has given you no reason to or saying you consider a place your home even though it has given you every reason not to. deeply unwell about them <3
Being a fan of Stranger Things means knowing that there are way too many characters now but also not wanting to get rid of any of them because you love them all dearly.
no but it really IS wild to see the difference between dsmp and qsmp. like obviously communication is much better and it doesnt feel like anyones stories are being sidelined but also just like. theres so much respect between creators and what they choose to create here. foolish is making incredible buils and cellbit is keeping him company and his builds are being actively used. bad is respected by literally everyone on the server, and not just treated as the guy who yells "language" whenever you say a no no word and nothing else. its keeping creatora and fans alike engaged, yes, but its also just... so respectful in a way im not used to lmao
I should not be bitchy when my fandom is getting a new release.
Unfortunately I am an immense pessimist and get disproportionately resentful if I feel someone else's (wrong) preference is gets more or better attention than mine.
That said. I am probably going to be sorely tempted to set myself up for disappointment and put G's anniversary project into a dick measuring contest with Wing's.
If wing gets more dialogue, more art, OR I see more of it on my feed, I'm going to be unbearable to be around.
jesus christttt im not surprised at all to hear that the knuckles series focuses on wade and other human characters a lot i saw this coming a mile away with how almost all the news we were getting before the trailer came out was about the human characters/actors and not about knuckles (or sonic or tails or any other animated characters) but the fact that somebody calculated how many minutes of screentime knuckles has and it came out as LESS THAN HALF OF THE ENTIRE SERIES' RUNTIME when the series is NAMED after him is ridiculous. after this show comes out wade will likely have more screentime and overall plot relevance in the entire scu than tails does. did they actually think wade is a popular enough character for people to be down with this. what the fuck
In general Barber writing the whole "Cybertronians are stuck in an endless cycle of violence" thing was a really good idea but it sometimes felt as if he put more priority on the colonists lecturing Cybertronians about how evil and bloodthirsty they are instead of like, having a shred of sympathy for the fact that they were all collectively traumatized by a 4 million year war and even before the war their society was violent/oppressive/dysfunctional so literally no Cybertronian has lived a life untouched by pointless death.
Like, there's "these characters have an outside perspective so of course they don't understand" in universe logic that I understand and even enjoy, but then there's what Barber did which was basically make the story an endless trudge of people fighting each other and never getting better and there was the fucking Onyx Shockwave story that was "yeah that colonization? Yeah I was actually the one that organized the Primes and said that colonizing was a good idea because I wanted to cause chaos lol my master is death and suffering" so it's like. Okay so the entire history of the entire Cybertronian race was organized by one guy, rendering the decisions of all the other characters (including Shockwave himself) basically pointless.
And on top of that I have to sit here listening to these Camien et al OC's constantly complaining and bitching and moaning about how Cybertronians are the stupidest most stubborn assholes ever, why can't they just stop being petty and stop fighting, why is everything their fault. They say this as their own planets sit on the ruins of colonized civilizations. And one of the primary targets of their criticism and bitching is Optimus Prime, who spent the 4 million year war trying to help organics Not Get Colonized and then spent most of phase 2 continuing to try and Help Earth Not Get Colonized Again.
I'm even rather fond of jl and jc's relationship in cql and I think it can be pretty fun bc jl disrespects him so much (unusual for that setting) and clearly does care about him and trust him to an extent and wants a reconciliation in a very sweet and straightforward way, and jc is obviously fairly protective over him (calling out wwx for saying that shit abt jl's mother at his first meeting was genuinely fair and wwx knew he screwed up), but that still doesn't make jc jl's best uncle or even like...a very good one imo he's really mean and aggressive and pushes him into dangerous situations and teaches him terrible life lessons 😭 literally it is wwx. and how wwx to swan in after 16 years dead and killing jl's parents (as jc sees it) and very quickly oust jc from this seat as well. lmao
one thing i was not prepared for when i started this rewatch of sdmi has been for it to finally sink in how absolutely heartbreaking daphne's whole deal is. this poor kid, man