#also I think not having not access to a gym here is contributing to that

[tamis-fabulous-adventure]

Tami Liu's Day Off

So I didn't steal a Ferrari and I didn't jump on a parade float (on my bucket list though), but I did do laps around Vice City in a commandeered Cheetah in GTA. Good enough, right?

I also started working on a new painting. I'm not too sure where its going yet, but I think I'll just go with the flow with this one. I've really been into Fauvism and Primitivism art lately, especially the later works of  Paula Modersohn Becker where she starts to explore those art movements.

I've been meaning to hit the gym, but I've also been... procrastinating. And I won't lie to you, I struggled a bit with the exercise machine. But the dance studio is roomy and well lit - perfect for some zumba and yoga.

Not pictured, but I treated myself to a nice massage afterwards. The masseuses at Wilki's work wonders on the knots in my shoulders. Next weekend I'll have to do their facial and mani-pedi bundle, and I've heard their sauna package is the best bang for your buck!

Remember to treat yourselves with some self care and spend some time on your hobbies this weekend!

~ Love, Tami

click the readmore for a mini art history lesson because i love to yap

Okay so when I was taking art history classes for my degree my prof made it a point to use Paula Modersohn-Becker as an example of Fauvism because Henri Matisse was an abusive piece of shit. Imagine my surprise when I did a little googling and she didn't even show up in the list of artists for this movement.

I dug up my notes and these are the characteristics of Fauvism:

Visually - "Violent emancipation of colour"; unusual uses of colour, freedom from colour as a to-life descriptor. Bold contours, simplicity of shape and form, "primitive".

Thematically - stubbornly unsubmissive, beastly; embodying vitality, individualism, and reclamation.

Here are some of Modersohn-Becker's works. Gonna break out my MLA citations for this.

 (Left) Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 1876-1907. Self Portrait. 1906. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.13593095. Accessed 22 May 2024.

(Right) Paula Modersohn-Becker. Kneeling Mother Nursing Her Child [Knieende Mutter Mit Kind an Der Brust]. oil tempera on canvas; Gemälde / Öltempera auf Leinwand, 1907. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; http://www.smb.museum/smb/home/index.php?lang=de, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.15716943. Accessed 22 May 2024.

Modersohn-Becker's works subvert the traditional uses of the female nude - in fact she is considered the first known female artist to paint nude self portraits. Her portraits are not idealised, they don't proposition the viewer, and they are monumental, an outright rejection of how the female body has been painted by men.

My prof was incredible, she always made her lectures about how women are often forgotten in the big Western art movements, and how their contributions to art history are overlooked for your Picassos and Degas and Matisses. All shitty men, yet the face of the art movements they were a part of.

btw don't come in here asking what male artists did to deserve my ire, this is a sims blog and google is at your fingertips, thanks :)

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

What's your ideal solution to our obesity issue?

as with most issues, i want it attacked from all kinds of directions.

first and foremost, one angle of attack is an angle i think would help with a lot of our social ills: build denser, more walkable cities. upzone, subsidize public transport, build bike lanes, build more "green space", build more grocery stores, etc. build an environment that encourages people to get out and walk around (or ride bikes). this will also help build a greater sense of community which should, ideally, help people's mental wellbeing and we know that poor mental health can affect obesity.

which leads me to my next point: better, more accessible mental health treatment.

honestly, just more healthcare in general. the more accessible healthcare is the more preventative measures can be taken. make health/nutrition classes a more standard part of healthcare.

and that requires more (and higher quality) research into health and nutrition.

unironically, subsidize gyms. gyms memberships can be expensive. have the government subsidize the cost for low-income individuals. or give tax breaks for gym memberships. or just government subsidies weight management classes or fat camps.

reduce work week. overworked people are stressed and sleep less and have less time to be physically active or cook healthy homemade meals, all of which contribute to obesity.

not sure how this would be done but there should be an effort to create adult sports leagues. sports are huge in high school and college but after that, unless you're one of the lucky ones that play professionally, most americans will probably never play a sport again for the rest of their life. i think we should create adult sports leagues. not only would this make people healthier but i think it would foster a greater sense of community as well. maybe have government sponsored athletic tournaments with a bunch of cash prizes? let's get greco-roman in this bitch.

also there's my dream about mandatory militia service. one weekend every month or something everyone will have to muster at their local militia armory and do some intensive physical training.

education. make health and fitness and home economics more serious parts of the education system. i know some places still do home ec but my school didn't. it should be mandatory. you'd be surprised how many adults i know who don't know how to cook and who primarily subsist on fast food. teach people how to cook, yo. and teach them how to eat healthy. i'm not sure how to get people to take physical education more seriously. maybe make it a bigger part of their overall grade? make sports mandatory? bring back corporal punishment? lmao. also, part of education includes educating parents. i've discussed elsewhere how i want to create a new "reimagined" family planning organization and one thing that it would emphasize is educating parents about nutrition and keeping their children healthy and active.

fat taxes and healthy food subsidies. part of the reason why people opt for fast food and junk food so much is because it's simply really fucking cheap. tax foods with sugar and high fructose corn syrup in them and subsidies whole foods. also wouldn't be opposed to literally taxing obesity itself, sorta like they do in japan. also, here in california we have this program where people's food stamps are worth like twice as much if spent at local farmers markets. i don't know if the data is out but i can say from personal experience that it seems to be pretty effective. farmer friends of mine have told me about how much more business they've had lately and how a lot of it is due to food stamps. would love to see a program like this applied at an even larger scale.

stricter regulations on junk food advertisement combined with an intensive "anti-junk food, pro-healthy food" propaganda campaign.

i think this would be a start.

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-pokemon-fan]

My Thoughts on Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

Uh oh, someone else's take on these controversial ass games. I'm sure everything that can be said about them, has. But as is my custom, I need to vent. For a bit of background, I have never played Diamond or Pearl. I got Platinum for Christmas in 2008 and have only ever played that for my Sinnoh experience, up until this month when I borrowed Brilliant Diamond from the library and hardcore Nuzlocked it.

First, let's talk about the ways BDSP is better than DPPt, because it would be flat out dishonest to pretend that they offer nothing to Sinnoh and are completely horrible.

HMs are gone. Thank god. HMs have always been bad, but with 8 of them in Sinnoh, it's especially bad in DPPt. It actually fundamentally changes how you can build a team when you don't always need to have a Surfer and Flier with you.

EXP All. I love to see it. Majorly cuts down on grinding. I really wish I could turn it off just for purposes of not accidentally overleveling, but that's kinda okay because of...

Access to your boxes anywhere. Honestly probably the best contribution that SwSh made to the series. I love this feature. Aside from when you're in gyms, overleveling isn't always a problem. It's easier to switch up your team to try out new mons and experiment, too. If you liked the difficulty of having to make it through a dungeon or route with the team you went in with, that's the best part: it's optional. Options are never a bad thing.

The music and sound effects are in higher fidelity. There's a charm to the Nintendo DS sound font, but the remastered soundtrack sounds great (I generally prefer Zame's remasters though). Don't get me started on the unpatched Day 1 soundtrack, though.

The Grand Underground is neat. It doesn't do much good for me in a Nuzlocke, but I can appreciate its value for vanilla runs. There's more to do on the singleplayer side, and Scarlet and Violet have me totally roaming-encounter-pilled. For all purposes besides making encounters straightforward in Nuzlockes, fuck random encounters.

You can register four key items instead of just one. Switching between fishing and cycling was never easier. They took the Gen VI approach of directional registration, which works off of muscle memory instead of Gen V's list. I like it.

Boss fights are now harder. They have better held items (including super effectiveness nullification berries), better abilities, and trickier coverage moves. They're harder to plan around and I like that minor bump in difficulty.

The town map moving from being a key item to a button on the pause menu, and being able to fly from the town map screen. Both things just make navigating Sinnoh a bit easier (which you know it needed). Also a welcome addition from SwSh.

That's it. From here on out, it's just complaining. Those complaints fit into two camps. 1) Quality of life updates aside, BDSP is a poor remake of DP, and 2) BDSP is a remake of DP, not Platinum. The direction of the game seemed to be "make it as faithful as possible to Diamond and Pearl, but also make it worse in random and baffling ways." I can go off about the Platinum problem later, so let's go over the ways BDSP is just a bad remake.

The friendship rework. Gen VI introduced Pokémon Amie, and anyone who bothered to put enough time into it would find their Pokémon randomly doing better in battle. Having high affection created a chance that your mon will either dodge an attack, tank a fatal hit with 1 HP, or land a critical hit. This has been folded into the friendship mechanic, so now any Pokémon who hits the newly-raised friendship cap will now have these buffs. I'm of two minds with this one. I think it's neat that the Pokémon you spend the most time with can do better in battle. It rewards sticking to a team of your favorites, which is what NPCs usually encourage you to do. Thing is, I think this should be optional. Anything that makes the game easier or harder via RNG should be in the player's control, and this isn't. Where this becomes a real nuisance is that once a Pokémon reaches the point of using these buffs, using them is battle is a slight but cumulative time loss. Every time you send them out, the game takes the time to shake them back and forth and put up a dialogue box with pointless flavor text. Every turn you do an attack, there's another useless and repetitive dialogue box. Every time the buff PROCs, a little heart animation plays. Bro. Just shut up and let me play the game. It's actually very annoying, especially during grinding sessions when I. Just. Want. To. Kill. My. Opponent. Jesus Christ.

As a side effect of the friendship rework, the friendship checker Pokétch app is now tuned to the higher cap. That means it's just about useless when checking on your friendship evolution mons. Your Golbat, Budew, and Buneary will all evolve before they show two big hearts. Now they'll have two big hearts when they have access to the RNG buffs, but you'll know that anyway because every battle just got several seconds longer.

The art direction. I won't spend too much time on this because it's been torn to shreds already, but I do need to mention it. Come on. The chibi style worked in DPPt because the DS required it. At every opportunity, they showed characters at true scale. They were intended to be life-size and just appeared small when they had to. I'm sorry, I just can't take Cyrus seriously when he's talking about his plan for recreating the world because he just looks like an angry little Funko Pop. And that little waddle that everyone has... ugh. Gross.

This is truly a tiny nitpick, but it looks like chibi Lucas's textures were applied to the T-posed model without consideration as to how they looked when he is standing normally. Look closely, his vest looks like it has tiny sleeves that come over his shoulder. It probably wouldn't bother me if I felt better about the game as a whole, but now every little problem sticks out like a sore thumb.

The bicycle has some weird problems. In high gear, it can't move just one tile at a time. It has a long windup time on low gear. It can't maintain speed when making a 180 turn on one tile. It's just weird and functions worse than it used to. The cycling outfit is also not as stylish as the defaults, but that's not major.

Registered key items are activated with Start, not Y. Uh-uh, no. Not having it. DP took advantage of the new buttons on the DS and functionally replaced Start with X and Select with Y. This was the format all the way up through SwSh, and they just randomly decided to fuck it up. They didn't even map something different to Y! It's just a useless button now! Sure, it just means I have to move my thumb a bit further, but it's frustrating that they threw away over a decade of precedent for a less convenient system. (P:LA and SV get a pass for changing things because they alter the whole control scheme)

Pokémon have their Gen VIII movesets. Some of the changes are non consequential, like how Zubat now has Absorb because Leech Life got buffed. Some are sucker punches, like Jupiter's Skuntank having Belch at Spear Pillar. Others fuck up how Pokémon function. Mime Jr needs to know Mimic to evolve, meaning it is now a useless baby until Lv 32 instead of 18. Infernape used to learn Flare Blitz at Lv 57, giving it a powerful STAB move in the very late game. Now it's at 68, making Flame Wheel its most powerful Fire move by level up until the post game.

That's all that comes to mind right now. I'm sure I'll pile more nonsense onto this. I just want to be done with this game but there's so much grinding before the Elite Four. Psh.

[detectivejacob]

*

[softandwildx]

Here's something I'd like to point out that I don't think ya'll understand about your fat shaming.

First of all, other people's bodies are none of your business. Period. Fat people don't care about your shitty opinion or your fake attempts at concern for our health. It's unwarranted, unsolicited, and literally doesn't fucking matter.

Now a lot of you combat this very simple and easy to grasp concept by saying things like "your health affects mine!" Or "your fatness costs me money!" First off, no. No it does not. However, if you're truly worried about the cost effectiveness of my fatness, let me remind you of a few things.

Losing weight costs money. Gym memberships cost money. Home workout equipment costs money. Driving to the park to take a walk costs money. Healthy food costs money. Dieticians and nutritionists cost money. Doctors and specialists who say "the problem is you're fat" without actually giving you any resources or advice for tackling this issue cost money.

It also costs time. Most people work full time to overtime jobs, many even work 2nd and 3rd jobs just to make ends meet. Pepper in the fact that most people have families to take care of and enjoy time with, and that accessing the above costly resources is made nearly impossible by companies who value warm bodies in seats over work quality and employee lives, and you have an incredibly difficult, if not impossible environment to lose weight in.

Remember too, that there are many, many reasons why someone could be overweight. Many people with weight issues have genetic and hereditary disorders that they can't control. Many have chronic pain and other health issues that contribute to their weight gain and make it even harder to exercise and get enough movement in to make a solid difference. Some people have mood and mental health disorders that make it hard to even get out of bed. Some people just fucking like being fat! Fuck you if you don't like it!

So what are we learning? Fat shaming is not only fat shaming, it's ableism, classicism, and most importantly, not fucking necessary.

And just in case you missed it above, I'll repeat it for you. If you don't like fat people, I'm here to tell you:

Nobody cares. 💜

And if you really, truly cared about the health and wellbeing of us fatties, you'd be spending less time calling us disgusting and worthless because you don't like how we look and more time advocating for cost effective weightloss resources and programs, easier access to healthier foods, and fair and equal medical practices.

But I know you won't because that's not actually what it's about, and you're not ready to have those conversations because they take away your false sense of superiority. Tough shit. Fat people are always going to be here. We've always been here, and we aren't going anywhere, so get used to it.

[miekasa]

and i found them! the actual ac unit snippet was hiding with the last one, so i thought i’d just drop them both here 😅 your appreciation means the world to me 🌼

💉the broken ac unit snippet [not the previous choppy summary, but the actual snippet that was hiding with erwintholomew’s]

it’s summer—dry heat, humidity, and warm winds all around. oc has been working in the outdoor makeshift hospital for her month’s rotation shift. tents of covid cases have been overflowing. it’s patient after patient, and she’s in PPE—full-on hazmat suit for 8 hours (sometimes more). food and water breaks between shifts aren’t feasible because they’re saving suits, bathroom breaks are timed before or after she suits up. it was literally hell.

levi’s been noticing his roomie coming home even more exhausted than usual. sometimes, she just goes to the kitchen and drinks down two glasses of water before heading for a nap. he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried. she looked like she’s lost a bit of weight. she was always a little paler and seemed to be wilted these days. he’s been trying to quietly shoulder a bit more of her chores, but he’s also pretty amazed at how she manages to keep up.

it was on a saturday afternoon when he found out. he had work and errands to run and some packages to send to his mom. he knocks on his roomie’s door to ask if she wanted him to do anything for her. he’s willing to do her groceries or make her dinner if it meant seeing her eat something other than instant ramen or a peanut butter sandwich. her muffled voice bids him to come in.

oc: oh heya

she gives him a tired wave. she’s sitting on her bed, reading something on her tablet. the first thing levi notices is that it’s way too fucking hot. her room is neat with a bit of a mess, a few notebooks strewn around her bed and a shirt hanging on the study chair, but obviously clean. the fan she has turned on was doing nothing to alleviate the heat though.

levi: you know you can turn your ac up in this heat right?

oc gives a tired chuckle at that.

oc: it’s been broken for a few weeks, but don’t worry! i already got a new one

levi is pretty speechless, considering that the heat wave has only been getting worse for the past month. she points to the unopened giant box crowding the space by her work desk.

oc: work’s just been exhausti—busy lately, but i’ll get around to it. i just need to switch them out and take the old one to recycling downstairs.

levi honestly doesn’t have anything to say to that because what the hell—

oc: did you need something?

he snaps out of it.

levi: i’m—i’m going out for errands. want me to get you anything?

oc: oh, are you passing by the pharmacy?

he wasn’t planning on it, but levi nods.

oc: yeah hang on, lemme just write the prescription for my pills. thank you!

levi shuts her door and speedwalks to his room. he knows he’s being irrational, and he knows that it isn’t his fault but fuck, she’s been living like that for weeks on top of all her work. he turns up his ac unit, rolls down his blinds, and fluffs the pillows on his bed before pulling the covers down. he knows that he could offer the suggestion of sleeping on the couch in their living room (they had an ac unit there after all), but no. she deserves better than that.

when levi walks back to her room, oc’s head peeps out of the door.

oc: here, i just need three boxes and i can cashapp you the payment.

levi grunts, taking the prescription and folding it into his pocket.

levi: come with me.

oc is pretty taken aback at his gruff tone, and she wonders what’s gotten him in a twist. she’s on the verge of passing out because work has been brutal and she has a golden weekend, so she was planning to catch up on a lot of rest. she follows quietly, wanting to quickly resolve whatever this was. her roomie’s always been a little...weird. it gets weirder when she realizes that he’s leading her to his room. cold air hits her when he opens the door and ushers her in, and she feels reborn.

levi: you can rest here for now

oc’s eyes widen at that. they’ve been roomies for over a year now, and respecting personal spaces has always been a huge factor contributing to their civil harmony as roommates.

oc: levi, it’s fine! i can’t, really! i don’t want to intrude, and besides, it’s fine, i—i’ve been alright anywa—

she’s cut off when he starts nudging (pushing) her towards the bed.

levi: seriously, i’ll be out the whole afternoon.

her but’s and what-if’s and i’m-fine’s fall on deaf ears. her roomie maneuvers her expertly and practically trips her to make her fall onto the bed. when her back hits the soft mattress, she feels a wave of fatigue hit. then he’s guiding her head towards the pillows while she mumbles about feeling like she’s overstepping, but levi’s room was cold and comfortable. the bed was a cloud, cool and soft and dragging her further into sleep. she feels the covers pulled up around her shoulders, and darkness claims her.

levi leaves quietly after shutting down the fan in her room. his afternoon is spent running some on-the-ground tasks for projects for work and personal errands. he does take an impromptu trip to the old deli near their place to buy some cuts of beef and a cheap bottle of red wine for a stew. he wonders if he’s breaching boundaries, but he makes an impulsive decision for once. he’ll drag her to dinner if he has to, she looks like she hasn’t had a decent meal in days. when he gets home, it’s late afternoon, but the sun was still up in all its scorching heat. he disinfects the goods thoroughly before heading for a shower himself. oc is still sleeping soundly when he checks in on her [levi thoughts: good, she really fucking needs it]. he goes into her room and replaces her broken ac unit, easily installing the new one and padding up the sides tightly. he brings the old one down before sweeping up the dust in her room that has settled from his handiwork. he turns it on to test it, and her room cools in minutes. satisfied, he leaves the ac unit on and starts dinner.

oc comes to slowly, mind still clouded and heavy from sleep. everything around her is blurry and she’s engulfed in softness smelling of black tea and spearmint. the realization of where she is hits like a freight train and this wakes her right up. the time on the clock by the bed says it’s almost half-past seven, and oc panics. she’s overstepped, her roomie’s gonna be pissed, and oh god, she didn’t mean to take that long of a nap. she practically runs out of his room. levi is setting two places at their table when she dashes in. a pot of stew was simmering on the stove. he looks up and just points to her meds.

levi: it’s already been disinfected.

oc opens her mouth for what was going to be a long apology when levi interrupts her before she even begins.

levi: i also installed your new ac unit. the broken one’s already at recycling.

oc’s eyes widen and she can feel tears welling up because it’s been weeks of exhaustion and uncomfortable hot nights and she’s been trying to find enough strength to do that and—

levi goes tomato-red when his roomie launches herself at him and wraps her arms around his shoulders tightly. he can hear her voice quivering, tone hovering on about-to-blubber-and-cry, repeatedly thanking him and apologizing for overstepping and he kind of just stands there for a moment. he pats her back awkwardly, wondering how to respond to her and decides to keep quiet and let her break the hug first. she might actually cry if he pushes her away.

oc lets him go gently, a little embarrassed at her outburst but she gives him a small smile and mutters a soft “sorry.”

levi: cut the apologies, brat. i offered. it’d be inhumane to let you sleep in that heat.

oc is about to argue when he fixes her with a glare that makes her sigh. she presses her palms into her cheeks in resignation.

levi: come on, i made dinner. you really need to eat something other than synthetic garbage and peanut butter.

oc sniffles and giggles. levi sets the food down and takes a seat beside her. he freezes when she grasps his hand.

oc: really, levi, thank you

levi shrugs (absolutely melting at her smile). he doles out servings of stew and rice, and they have a quiet dinner.

💉erwin’s own private gym in his penthouse snippet [in which erwin’s not even in this snippet, but he and his gym are catalysts of sorts]

it’s a rare occurrence that oc wakes before noon on her days off. so when she bumbles into the kitchen at 7am, craving for some tea and the little tiramisu her patient from work gave her, she bumps into levi. levi—also fresh out bed and only clad in boxer shorts. plaid dark pink ones that did wonders for his ass.

oc, completely forgetting that she’s in an oversized shirt that goes past her shorts and that her hair is a mess, stops mid-stride. her jaw drops. levi is built. not to any extreme body-builder kind to any extent. but he was fit and holy fuck his back alone was oh wow. yeah, she’s awake. levi turns at the sound of footsteps and has to suppress his smirk because oc’s appraisal was very very distracting, affirming, and ego-boosting. he thinks his roomie doesn’t even realize she is gawking [levi thoughts: she looks way too fucking cute and soft for someone half dead from a toxic shift yesterday and he wants to run his hands through her hair and knead the knots out of her shoulders and feel those legs—].

he truly has to hold in his laughter when oc literally goes “what the fuck” while waving around her hands gesturing to his abs and pecs. oc squints in the midst of her appraisal.

oc: how do you maintain all that in a pandemic??

levi sets down another mug and pours out more tea while explaining that erwin, who lives in the penthouse suite of the complex, has his own home gym. levi, hange, and moblit have exclusive access to it because they’re friends, they live in the same complex, they all work from home plus they clean up and help him maintain it.

levi: it’s a lot safer than public gyms.

oc is still chewing on this information while now blatantly staring at his thighs.

levi: i’m pretty sure erwin will let you use it too if you’re looking for someplace to work out. i can ask him if you want.

he adds some milk to her tea before walking over to oc and handing her a steaming mug of chai. he does this on purpose just to get a reaction out of her because he is absolutely basking in this. she is usually very composed and almost nothing fazes her, and he thinks he’s never seen her flush this deep. oc snaps out of it as she thanks him for the tea. she just nods, her eyes a little glazed over and unfocused.

oc: oh, th—that’s nice. i’ll think about it.

she primly grabs her tiramisu and walks back to her room, leaving levi smirking in their kitchen. she has thoughts that need processing.

oc thoughts: erwin happens to be filthy rich and roomie-free and can afford a penthouse. he dedicated a room in his penthouse to a fully-equipped gym. this is some really good chai. she pretty much stared at her roomie, with his knowledge, very disrespectfully at seven in the morning. her roommate is hot. pretty. cute. sexy. his voice—how has she never noticed? arms? abs? those thighs?? all of the above??? anyway, that v down his hips, his chest—yeah, her vibrator’s batteries die that night, and she’ll have to remember to get new ones after work. this is very for her, very bad indeed.

this was the h-word snippet 🥵 LMAO i had to give oc a little something because this isn’t one-sided after all 😌

SDKJSGHLF;DS ANON YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR MIND YOU’RE A LITTLE GENIUS YOU KNOW THAT!!! INCREDIBLE!!

when levi walks back to her room, oc’s head peeps out of the door.

oc: here, i just need three boxes and i can cashapp you the payment.

levi grunts, taking the prescription and folding it into his pocket.

levi: come with me.

THIS PART!! IS SO LEVI!! I’M OBSESSED!! I’m obsessed with the whole concept of him just... affectionately forcing her to nap in his room because it’s the least he can do to help ease her pain, and show that he cares; but this right here!! The way he had no intentions of going to the pharmacy, but is going to help her out anyway!! Begrudgingly taking the perscription, and immediately changing the subject away from the topic of her paying him back!! So good!! (And why do I get the feeling that he never accepted her cashapp lmaooo). 

oc is about to argue when he fixes her with a glare that makes her sigh. she presses her palms into her cheeks in resignation.

levi: come on, i made dinner. you really need to eat something other than synthetic garbage and peanut butter.

oc sniffles and giggles. levi sets the food down and takes a seat beside her. he freezes when she grasps his hand.

oc: really, levi, thank you

levi shrugs (absolutely melting at her smile).

ALSO HERE!! I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know but the casual insulting her dinners lmaoo only to help her out; it’s the showing affection without outright saying it’s affection that’s so GOOD!! I’M OBSESSED!!

AND THE WHOLE GYM SEQUENCE!! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! LOVE LEVI BEING JUST A LITTLE COCKY!! GOOD FOR HIM!! HE’S ATTRACTIVE!! HE SHOULD KNOW IT!! PLS but oc being just a little shameless and telling him how good he looks and just staring without feeling guilty LMFAOO GOOD FOR HER TOO!! GOOD FOR THEM!!

[viroro-kun]

My Review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime (2019)

[The following post is a repost of a thread originally published on Reddit in November 17th, 2019, titled “My final review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime”, which I’m sharing here again for archival purposes. I may eventually do a new one and this post is meant to only reflect my thoughts at the time. It will also not be updated with later information to keep it consistent with the original] About two weeks ago, the Sun & Moon series of the Pokémon Anime concluded after a run of three years, ending up as what's probably one of the most controversial entries of the show, with fans either loving it as a fresh take on the series or disliking it for several issues that cropped up over time. Now, after reviewing the series for the length of the aforementioned three years and at the eve of the beginning of the newer series, I'd like to pass my personal, final judgement of the Alolan series. Now, first of all, I think a preamble is necessary: all of what I will explain is my opinion and nothing else, and this isn't meant to be senseless bashing of the Sun & Moon series, either. I treasure striving to be objective and analytical above all else, and while I of course can't claim mine will be an absolutely perfect and objectively correct review, I will do my best to share my thoughts on the matter, while explaining why I feel this specific way.Secondly, I'd like to address an argument I've occasionally seen brought up, that due to Sun & Moon's seeming focus on comedy and slice of life it's not possible to compare it to previous seasons. And while that may apply for some specific choices it made, I don't believe that's the case: it was still set in a new region of the Pokémon world, still had Ash undertake the local region-wide challenge, still had a structure involving unimportant self-contained episodes (which we could call 'filler' in an useful but technically inaccurate definition) surrounding the plot-based ones, and still ended up with a League at a climax for it all. Therefore, at least on a structural and plot standpoint, there are enough commonalities to make a comparison possible, and that's where I plan to dig in particular to explain my stance.

Before I move to the meat of it, however, I want to spend some words of praise for some things I feel this series did right or at least deserves some compliments for, overall. First of all, I think that Sun & Moon does great in mantaining a chill, comfy atmosphere which to a degree makes it stand out from previous seasons, and I understand why this was appealing for some previous fans of the series. Most of the cast is pretty likable on the whole with particular props to Ash's Alolan Pokémon team managing to mantain lots of expressivity in all situations, and the series has a decent willingness to explore some concepts previous seasons only lightly touched on. The show also foregoes a lot typical Team Rocket shenanigans for different kinds of plots, making it great for people who find their usage stale and played out by now, and the simplified art style allowed for some pretty good sequences both in battle and out. At its best, the series can produce some of the best moments of this Anime as a whole, and it was at least the first series to let go of some limitations that were just weighting the show down at this point. While I think several of these pros also have indirect cons attached to them (especially in terms of tone and character usage), these are all things I feel need to be pointed out in positive for the series.With that said, I'd like to begin my proper dissection of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime.

Pokémon Sun & Moon - A Pokémon Anime in an Identity Crisis

1. Plot Pacing and Development: The Problem of the Stationary Setting and the "Happy Bubble"

Everyone who has heard of the Sun & Moon Anime is probably aware of its biggest break from tradition: rather than being an adventure series, this entry in the long-running Pokémon series decided to take place in a single location with occasional detours by having Ash enroll in the Pokémon School, shifting the general tone of the series towards a more slice of life approach. This had a significant effect on how the story developed, but in my opinion, if there's a fundamental issue of the Sun & Moon series, it's probably this one. Because rather than committing to the change, the writers appeared to want to have their cake and eat it too.

Specifically, adventure series and slice of life have radically opposed mission statements: for the first, progression and rising action are an important, consistent story engine moving the plot forward; the second is instead far more laidback, focused more on enjoying the moment and offering low stakes and drama more often than not, especially Sun & Moon's chosen brand of it that's closer to a sit-com than a proper slice of life. Pretty much, adventure series have a degree of development in them, while slice of life is defined by the lack of said development.

Now, I'm not saying Pokémon characters were always amazing examples of character development, or that every series prior was well-written. But the structure itself was sound, as you had Ash embarked in a defined goal of winning the League as part of his vague dream to become a Pokémon Master, having filler adventures on the way, but always undertaking rising action from the first to last Gym and occasional rivals, until the climax of the journey at the League (and in Kalos' case, the Team Flare arc). We see Ash, and occasionally his friends, actively train, fight or improve on the path to their goals, while the narration itself always reminds us of what the current major objective is. Even when the episode doesn't actually contribute to the larger story, the viewer always has a reassurance that the next objective will be reached eventually.

The structure of Sun & Moon, by comparison, is inherently more passive more often than not, as you have Ash and the others waiting for the plot to happen to them. Instead of having Ash actively seek a new challenge, you see him sitting down and wait for something specific to make him go and progress, and so does everyone else, with only rare exceptions. The characters are effectively static until the plot decides to move them, and while this could superficially resemble the previous structure (as both have a progression that could be defined as arbitrary), the Sun & Moon series barely, if ever, reassured the viewer to still remember the goals it set up, or even what the next one to come is.

Now, inherently, the characters being passive recipients of plot isn't a bad thing, it's just how slice of life stories tend to work. The problem of Sun & Moon, however, was that beyond the vague and SoL-friendly concept of Ash at the Pokémon School they still had Ash pursue the Island Trials (and in fact, he's impressed by the concept of mastering Z-Moves before he even enrolls in the school), which gave the show a problem: it wanted to be a chill story focusing more on small time hijinks than big adventures, while still taking on a structure that demanded to follow the rules of an adventure series, creating an inherent contradiction.

What I mean is that, since the Island Trials were still part of Ash's stay in Alola, the show was still supposed to abide to the rising action leading to a climax, giving the show a direction that it had to fulfill by its end rather than have an open premise with occasional plotlines (example: GeGeGe no Kitaro, where the open premise is 'Kitaro deals with evil Yokai' with every other longer plotline spinning from there). It's something that pretty much prevents the viewer from fully enjoying the more quiet romps, because in the mind of a viewer expecting progression, these are just a diversion over the more important goal Ash has in the region. Now, in fairness to Sun & Moon, the show seemed aware of the tension and made sure to tie each Trial Ash did into either school trips or wanting to get specific Crystals, but beyond making it seem like Ash didn't care much for something he claimed he wasn't interested in (especially with wanderlust being a previously estabilished character trait of his), this ran into another big issue of Sun & Moon: rather than a sense of rising action, pretty much every Island Trial Ash did was narratively unrelated to each other, especially once it was revealed that Ash didn't need to complete any of them to access the Alola League, in contrast with how every badge was important and necessary in previous regions.

This specific issue wasn't however unique to Ash, but rather a persistent problem in pretty much every element and story arc of the series: be it Ash's quest, Guzma's struggles, Rowlet's rivalry with Hau's Dartrix/Decidueye, Lycanroc's rage issues, Lillie's goal to be able to touch every Pokémon again, the Necrozma and Aether arcs to even the Alola League and anything in between, almost all of them had only the bare minimum of buildup and either ended as soon as they got teased or happened to be sidelined for a large amount of episodes before they got their due focus, if not both at once. While some of these arcs ranged from alright to pretty great (Litten's pre-capture arc dealing with Stoutland's passing, or the Guzma-related segments of the Alola League), there are quire a few (chiefly Necrozma) that were ruined by a combination of lacking setup work and the feeling that, simply put, nothing mattered that much. Sure, the arcs could be mentioned here and there, and some can set up things for the future (like how Aether leads to the Ultra Guardians), but on the whole, the arcs are effectively done-in-one in terms of lasting impact. Unlike how in previous shows you could've had stuff like Ash's and Dawn's intertwined journeys, here you have Stoutland lose relevance in terms of influence to Litten as soon as he dies, where save for Stoutland brief cameo as a spirit on Poni Island his storyline got shifted in the unrelated rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar.

This last example, in particular, brings up another of the big issues of Sun & Moon, one that can be divided in three parts: plot pacing, plot segregation, and the "happy bubble".

In regards to plot pacing, one of the most notorious problems brought up for this series is the fact that, to put it simply, each plotpoint will only progress when the show decided they have to, which led to things like Lillie going almost an entire real time year between getting her Z-Crystal and then her Z-Ring, or Ash doing absolutely nothing about his Lycanroc's raging issues for getting dirty for close to thirty episodes before they happened again in the Ula'Ula arc, during which neither character gave any hints of even thinking about these lingering elements in any way even if it was clear setup to be followed on. This, coupled with the aforementioned lack of a constant reminder of the next destination, just made for a frustrating waiting game in terms of the next major point of progression.

A related issue is the plot segregation, or specifically, how each major arc is effectively removed from the others, from Kiawe and Sophocles' occasional focus episodes to more important stuff like Lillie's Pokémon phobia, her and Gladion's later interest in finding their father, Lana's desire to create a balloon to explore the ocean with, Ash's Island Trials, and so on. It made these characters feel like they exist in their own separate paths, never to intersect, something the evolution episode in the Poni Island arc somewhat exemplifies since Sophocles' and Lana's efforts happen on completely distinct plotlines and locations. As I explained above this also happens with major arcs, like how the Necrozma arc's only contribution to the wider narrative was sending Poipole home (and given its later offscreen evolution and power up, one could make a case the arc had a negative impact on the series). The segregation also had the effect of having the plot act like something flat out doesn’t exist unless it has been directly showcased, leading to such goofiness as Kukui's best friend Molayne not being invited at his wedding in spite of being Sophocles' cousin, or how absolutely no one was in Poni Island during the Manalo Festival buildup. A good example of the difference, I feel, is this: in previous series, we could've had Serena relate to Ash with her Master Class loss at a significant point of his character arc during the Winding Woods episode; in this one, Mallow only revealed her mother issues after Lillie's entire arc revolving around her mother was resolved, with the two never comparing notes. The closest we get is Ash relating to Lana for his problems with Lycanroc using Continental Crush in Ida's first episode and Lillie trying to help out Ash during his fallout with Rotom, both of which refer to things that happened to them either mostly offscreen or entirely there.

The plot segregation was, in particular, noticeable with the decision to associate three of Ash's Alolan Pokémon (Torracat, Dusk Lycanroc and Rowlet) to specific characters as rivals, with the Pokémon driving the rivalry rather than Ash himself (who had otherwise rather civil, mostly friendly interactions with Kukui, Gladion and Hau). On paper, this should've guaranteed that every Pokémon had their moment to shine, but effectively, it meant that each of them were restricted to mostly their specific rival in terms of focus post-Aether. Lycanroc got Olivia's Grand Trial, the Ula'Ula arc to itself and then the rivalry with Gladion's Midnight Lycanroc, but no other significant usages; Rowlet got roles in the first two Grand Trials, but then spent almost one hundred episodes before its second focus episode, and beyond his friendship with Meltan it only got Hau's battle and a part against Kukui to itself; Torracat was the one absolutely done dirty here, as beyond the Stoutland appearence in Poni Island and the Totem Lurantis battle pre-Aether, all his following focus moments rely on the rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar, with only occasional minor scuffles to its name and a bit of the Guzma battle to its name. That would already be bad enough, but the fact that until the League there's no battle that requires Ash to involve more than two Pokémon (with most of them requiring him only one), Ash's team never actually gets to act as a team until the very final battle of the series, furthering the lacking sense of cohesiveness. Year two of the series was particularly bad in this sense, as most major battles were fought with either Pikachu or Lycanroc while Torracat and Rowlet barely did much.

And lastly, one persistent result of both the plot pacing and the plot segregation was a phenomenon I like to refer to as the "happy bubble," or the tendency of the Sun & Moon series to confine major conflicts and bad moments for the characters only to their specific focus episodes. In previous shows, you could have moments of self-doubt or worry linger even outside dedicated episodes (Dawn's depression for her losing streak, Ash's rivalry with Paul affecting him, and his increasing worries in the latter part of XY being clear examples), but due to Sun & Moon's commitment to fun times before everything else, it means the characters aren't allowed to have any conflict or moments of darkness to later conquer unless they're the focus, and even then resolving them quickly. See how bubbly Lillie is even when she's scared of Pokémon unless the episode is specifically about her, how she never even thought about her father until Gladion reminded her, how Ash's confidence and his relationship with Lycanroc are only focused on in Ula'Ula and then never again, and most noticeably the fact Mallow's dead mother was treated as something that tore her for years but it was only ever directly dealt with in one episode, to the point she's the only family member on Bulbapedia listed under characters of the day. The problem of this bubble is that it pretty much makes it hard to invest in the emotional struggles of these characters because they end up feeling like throwaway moments which are then functionally forgotten, with no sense of constant growth. Characters get their moments, the audience gets invested, and then it's forgotten, with only few and far-in-between moments of exception, and that's another thing making each conflict feel segregated from each other.

If I could sum up everything in one sentence, I'd say this: Sun & Moon is composed by a myriad of pieces, some excellent, some average, some awful and everything in between, that all exist mostly in a vacuum. I'll return to this topic in a bit, as there's another important aspect to touch first.

2. Characters and Their Development: Too Many, Too Little, Too Late

Another aspect of Sun & Moon that's often brought up is the decision to have a main cast of six counting Ash, with the game Trial Captains Mallow, Lana, Kiawe and Sophocles alongside plot-important character Lillie turned into Ash's classmates. These characters have been as much a point of praise as they were of criticism, with some fans absolutely loving this group while others couldn't absolutely stand them. I feel the best way to tackle this is to first list how I feel each character was handled in terms of planning and development, before going into their relationships and the rest of the cast, starting with the humans and then going through Ash's Pokémon before closing on Ash himself. I will say to start with, however, that none of these characters is inherently unlikable the way they started as, and most of their later issues came solely from their handling down the line or flaws in how they were approached.

2.1) The companions

Among the companions, Sophocles was probably the one that made the poorer first impressions, as beyond sharing the same type specialty, his game background as an inventor and his Anime presentation as a programmer that sometimes built things gave him a number of unfair comparisons with Clemont, not helped at all by an introduction episode that ranks among the worst ones of this group. That said, I feel by the end he actually ended up being one of the best characters of the group in spite of heavily scattered focus, for one major reason: he's one of the few characters of this group to have a consistent character growth that plays in his dream and that's easily noticeable as the story unfolds. Early on, he starts as the timid, insecure kid that gets easily scared of the dark and needs people and Pokémon's support over everything, but between his first few episodes and the later clarification of his interest in space, it's clear that his development was actually aimed towards him growing into a more independent and confident person and trainer. He goes from being unable to tell his friends that he's not actually leaving Alola after a misunderstanding and only getting his second Pokémon as a gift from Ash to slowly take an interest in rising Charjabug, first with a race and then by evolving it, then deciding to gain a Z-Crystal and a Z-Ring, learning to use it, and ultimately take part in the League in spite of knowing to not be on the same level of his friends, yet still putting his all, with a nice interlude where he takes things into his own hands during the Celesteela mission, and with the race he does to gain his Z-Crystal leading him to confront and surpass his fear of the dark. While still pretty scattered and sidelined, I feel he's a character that's been developed well-enough and that in his post-series aim is actively working towards his dream in a new but productive way by visiting Mossdeep City's Space Center, and definitely my favorite of the Alolan kids as he clearly developed into a better person by the end through a straightforward, traceable progression.

Lana is probably up there with Sophocles in terms of being one of the best characters of this group, and I'd go as far as saying she's probably the best non-Coordinator/Performer Pokégirl out there. While Sophocles ranks high due to getting good personal development, Lana ranks high because, while on paper her dream of creating a big balloon to explore the ocean with is simple and a tad silly, it is something she puts clear effort into and that she never loses track of through the whole series, even with a fairly noticeable void of attention in the mid-series stretch. Between being the first of the non-Kiawe classmates to get a Z-Ring and a Z-Crystal, learning how to use Hydro Vortex, then evolving Popplio to Brionne and then Primarina (while dealing with a Kyogre along the way) while also getting Oceanic Operetta, she's consistently focused on her improvement, and always the best female battler of the bunch. The only thing that really penalizes her is that while her dream is technically achieved, she ultimately gets Oceanic Operetta with offscreen training and they never make a point to highlight that as a big moment, and while her skill development is solid, she remains exactly the same character throughout the series from the first and last episode. An entertaining character for sure, but one that just gets stronger and not much else. Still, she's easily one of the best female leads this series ever had, and a good example of how to make a non-Coordinator-esque female character work well after the pitfalls Misty and Iris fell into.

Kiawe is not far from them, with a pretty solid run slightly marred by a few issues. Specifically, he's probably the best battler of this group that isn't Ash, but he's distinctly characterized as having two "modes" as a character: either the serious, spiritual follower of Alolan traditions, or the one that started popping out more often later in the series where he's an overreacting ham to rival Cilan. I personally feel Kiawe's better moments tends to come from the first mode, not only because he stands out better in a funny sense by being the straight-laced guy in a cast of wacky people, but also because he's the best character to explore the more spiritual angle of Alola, the element that truly makes the region stand out compared to previous ones featured in the series. Unfortunately, beyond the fact the slice of life romps tended to favor his wacky angle more than the serious one, Kiawe is penalized by not quite having a true arc to develop through: he wants to become a stronger trainer and claims so, but all his episodes ultimately end up involving unrelated matters: he catches his Marowak, learns to use a Z-Move with him later on, and ends up getting his Charizard back into working shape after he undertakes Fini's trial to save Ash, but while each of these are overall good showings and he's probably got the best League run of the cast in terms of prowess and skill, they tend to remain isolated instances. It also doesn't help that while his hot-blooded rivalry with Ash can be fairly entertaining and it's teased from episode 2, it ultimately culminates into an underwhelming showdown in the penultimate episode that barely feels like an afterthought. I'd hardly call him a bad character and he still does pretty well even with his issues, but one that could've been handled better on the whole.

A far different story is Lillie, a character that, I feel, suffered from several different issues all at once. To address the elephant in the living room first, let it be said that while they share traits, Anime Lillie and Game Lillie end up being fairly different characters by the end, and while I think Game Lillie is probably one of the best creations of GameFreak, my opinion on her Anime self couldn't be more different, and it's not due to straight comparisons between each other. Now, Lillie doesn't actually start badly: the fact that she has a phobia of touching Pokémon from an unknown source at first actually gave her a nice direction as a character in a way similar yet different from Lana, but it didn't take long for Lillie's major issue to show itself: things happen to her rather than her working towards stuff proactively, and the majority of the time her struggles are resolved by feeling sad or believing really hard with extremely few exceptions. This started already before the Aether arc, where while her episodes were good, they all relied on the exact same formula of Lillie unable to touch Pokémon, being unable to do so and feeling sad about it until she can in a spur-of-the-moment situation, which started to make her episodes feel stale.

The Aether arc seemed to finally change things as it heavily revolved around Lillie, but to anticipate some things I'll delve into more detail later, the changed circumstances ended up weakening both the conflict and her character, making her come across as too unlikable. But beyond that issue, the problem of the Aether arc is that it ensured that Lillie was completely healed of her phobia due to the actions of others rather than herself, which killed off all her character potential and left her with nothing to do for the rest of the series (while the conflict with her mother was completely brushed under the rug after this arc introduced and hastily attempted to resolve it). Sure, she 'grew stronger', and got a Z-Ring and Z-Crystal, but the majority of important things of the Mohn arc were actually dealt with by Gladion, while her own help ended up amounting to still, once more, feeling really hard rather than active work. But the biggest problem of her character is that all of her major achievements derived from either someone else (Silvally healing her phobia by saving her, Gladion actually defeating Totem Kommo-o, her Z-Ring being borrowed from her father, Gladion finding Mohn's Zoroark) or facilitated by outside assistance (her one victory in the League's Battle Royale coming from effectively killstealing a Salamence Kiawe weakened, her battle with Tyranitar having the assistance of a Totem Sandshrew) which made it hard to think she earned her development or truly grow stronger when she ultimately always ended up relying on someone else, especially given her tendency to never act unless prodded (see how she seemed perfectly fine not touching Pokémon for years until Mallow and Ash actively tried to get her to do it, nor try to learn why she has the phobia in the first place, nor thinking about where her father may be). This, alongside the tendency of the series to play up game moments like the Lillie and Solgaleo moment or her change in dress and hairstyle to show her resolve while sapping all the meaning they had in the source material and the habit of the characters to praise Lillie for anything she does no matter how minor or trivial, ultimately made her a character that was borderline insufferable to follow, especially for the classmate pushed as the most important beyond Ash.

The worst of all main characters, however, is without a doubt Mallow. While I have several issues with Lillie's handling as a character, at least her faults come with how the show decided to approach her, while I feel by contrast Mallow was only allowed breadcrumbs of just about anything, something already shown by how she had to wait until episode 18 for her first true focus episode. Back in the earliest episodes I thought her interest in making Aina the most popular restaurant in Alola could've given her a drive as a character similar to the one Lana and at the time Lillie had, only for the story to be content with leaving her where she is. Between the fact her Bounsweet evolved twice in ways that were respectively too sudden and rather unrelated to her and the habit of her focus episodes past her first to focus away from her more than on her (having to share screentime with her brother 'Ulu and Oranguru, specifically), it felt like she was added to the cast because they had to, and while the last year of Sun & Moon tried to put a patch on the problem by giving her emotional moments with her mother and her League match with Lana, said patches had the effect of not feeling very genuine since her mother, as I mentioned above, only really figured in one episode, while Mallow suddenly being afraid of Tsareena getting hurt when she fought in Ultra Space and in other instances just fine just feels like an awkward attempt at giving her an emotional moment that doesn't gel with her characterization too well. If we add onto it that she only mastered her Z-Move during the League itself, her Z-Crystal was gained just by making a burger, and the Shaymin she cared for after meeting her mother effectively did nothing afterwards until its deal was resolved at the last possible second during the final credits of the series because 'Ulu found some Gracidea with no input from Mallow proper, Mallow ended up feeling like the most mishandled characters of this crew, whose character and development felt more like isolated moments than anything cohesive.

The Pokémon of the cast outside of the major ones don't really warrant much talk, the best of the bunch being Kiawe's Marowak for his vibrant personality and good feats, while everyone else ranges from pretty much not too focused on (Turtonator, Charizard, Tsareena, Togedemaru), useful for development but otherwise kinda dull more often than not (Primarina, Vikavolt, Snowy), cute but pointless in spite of heavy buildup (Sandy), and pretty much useless (Shaymin, Magearna outside of being a McGuffin), mostly getting occasional cute moments than anything substantial or productive for their trainers.

2.2) Ash's Pokémon

Beyond the classmates, there's the matter of Ash's Pokémon as well, and I'd like to spend a few words on the Rotomdex. On the whole, he was never the most important character, but I'd say the best way to describe him is that he's a likable character that happened to star in some rather poor episodes: while his overreactions could get annoying sometimes, for the most part he was likable enough, and his existence ensured that Ash would lose his oft-criticized trait to scan Pokémon he already saw that made him come across as dumb, and some of his moments and hobbies made him pretty endearing. His only real problem is that his focus episodes usually tended to focus on rather stupid plots aimed only to comedy, and while three of them are at least arguable, his last true focus episode happened to be one of the worst episodes of the series due to how out-of-character Ash acted under the possibility of Rotom leaving. None of the issues of these episodes were Rotom's fault, but as a minor character, it was somewhat unfortunate for him to receive such a short end of the stick focus-wise.

Going back to Ash's actual Pokémon, beyond the eternal Pikachu, I'd say the one most worth of consideration overall is Torracat (or Incineroar, but he never fought under the form), both in terms of praise and criticism. I say so because, before his capture, Litten seemed to be given unusually large focus, including being the first of Ash's Alolan Pokémon to debut and appearing for several episodes even between his major pre-capture arc, which being among the most tragic and involved capture circumstances seemed to point towards Torracat being the 'ace Pokémon' of the region, only for things to change once Lycanroc entered the picture. To put it simply, Torracat has some rather solid episodes and a personality that very much matches Ash's own, but he often feels like he's only given breadcrumbs of focus. Between only taking part in one minor trial and no Grand Trials, not getting his own associated Z-Crystal until right before the League and having it used only twice counting the test run of it, and his rivalry battle being the only one in the Alola League to happen in the middle of a match rather than at the end of it (which lead to a rather goofy division of him getting declared winner and then fainting after evolving just so it couldn't technically be considered a tie even if it functionally was to preserve his triumph), it feels like the poor Pokémon is never given enough of his due, and while I enjoy his drive to surpass Kukui's Incineroar and especially the way the plotline was figuratively used throughout the Ash VS Kukui battle, it just seems like Torracat is always last in priority in terms of Ash's Pokémon, which makes even his good moments feel like afterthought even with nice bits like his relationship with Lycanroc, especially with how, as touching and well-executed as it was, Stoutland's effect on Torracat is forgotten as soon as it happens, between Fire Fang being mastered exactly one episode later and Stoutland himself only being brought back twice, once as a thought by Ash and only in the second with Stoutland meeting Torracat again in Poni Island, mostly for the purpose of teaching him another move. So, in my opinion, Torracat is a case of a conceptually solid-enough character, that's however penalized both by how little the narrative gave him focus, and the fact that his arc with Stoutland and his later rivalry with Incineroar are pretty much unrelated (for why I consider this a flaw, consider that fellow Fire starter Infernape was able to have a memorably tragic backstory that did dovetail into his major rivalry perfectly, so just asking for a degree of connection isn't outside the realm of what this show can do).

And then there's Lycanroc, the Pokémon that the series wants us to consider the regional ace, which had several issues associated with him. To put this simply, I feel like he was a much better character as a Rockruff than he was after his evolution, mostly for being the perfect mix of adorable, focused, and having actually pronounced rage issues that occasionally popped up but were treated completely seriously, alongside having a pretty good showing in the Olivia battle as a rare final bout to completely not involve Z-Moves in a period where their usage was starting to become excessive. However, after the evolution (which is treated as a rare, one-of-a-kind event due to Rockruff evolving during a rare green flash yet is never actually remarked on beyond very occasional comments that he looks odd that are never treated as much), his handling changes for the worst, specifically for two of his rather ace-worthy moments: its rage form arc, and the way his rivalry with Gladion's Dusk Lycanroc was handled. The first is overall the biggest issue, because it's also symbolic of Sun & Moon's tonal issues since his major challenge to overcome as a Pokémon is the fact that, whenever his fur gets dirty, he goes on murderous rampages, always after acting goofily shocked in a way intended to be humorous, creating a whiplash effect that doesn't make clear how the viewer should find the scene given it first asks us to laugh at Lycanroc and then to be scared of him. This is also only introduced once in the middle of the Aether arc and then never revisited until the Ula'Ula arc, where it's ultimately solved by Ash bringing back memories of how Rockruff used to act about getting dirty that happened completely offscreen, only for the writers to then milk the drama some more two episodes later by now handling the rage mode completely seriously in terms of reactions and using actual rage as the trigger instead of just specifically the fur, in an episode that ultimately relied on Ash not trusting his Pokémon (when he was already somewhat out-of-character by being scared by Lycanroc's rampage after he was willing to hug his blazing Chimchar to calm him down back in Sinnoh). It's all handled in an extremely brief arc and then never again, feeling like an arc that takes elements from both the Infernape and Ash-Greninja arcs while missing the slow buildup and non-regressive development that made those two arcs work (and I'll elaborate more on it in a bit). Beyond this, his rivalry with Gladion's Lycanroc suffers of being extremely sidelined in spite of being the 'major' rivalry of the series: while the two Pokémon did fight three times, the first time was interrupted by Team Rocket (something they stopped doing for major rival battles for quite a while beforehand), the second relying on some very weird resilience by Midnight Lycanroc by not only tanking completely Dusk Lycanroc's Splintered Stormshards to seemingly no damage but also snapping out of confusion to deliver a finishing Z-Move of his own, and the third relying on a battle that was overall not too bad, but felt more like a mid-series squabble than Ash's victory at the Alola League (which is then completely outclassed in spectacle by Ash VS Kukui). Dusk Lycanroc's rivalry isn't actually too bad, but considering how Gladion's Lycanroc is the only major opponent Ash's ace got to fight post-evolution outside the Ula'Ula arc, Kukui's Pokémon (none of which he defeated) and occasional training bout, it did restrict a lot of his feats and ended up with him feeling more like an okay Pokémon than the powerhouse the writing wanted him to seem like. Coupled with a lackluster personal arc, this makes him closer to the Krookodile tier of 'possible aces' than one of the major ones like Charizard or Infernape.

And then we get to Rowlet, the last of the major Alolan four counting Pikachu, and probably the most problematic of the bunch. Much like Torracat and Lycanroc, Rowlet isn't inherently a bad Pokémon, with the first episodes neatly estabilishing two things: yes, he is dopey and loves to sleep a bit too much, but he's also a serious and competent fighter in battle that never fails to impress, making sure that neither side ultimately hurt or diminished the other. His problem is ultimately revolving around two things: he's spent a long time out of focus, and his later focus didn't exactly paint him in a good light. The first is probably the major issue at hand: while both Rowlet and Torracat were heavily sidelined midway into the series, Torracat did at least get a few token episodes to himself, while Rowlet's first real focus episode after his capture one only really comes almost one hundred episodes later. While in the early series this was mitigated by having Rowlet take part in two minor trials and two Grand Trials, this focus is all but forgotten by the second year of the series, with Rowlet reduced to solely a gag Pokémon whose greatest achievement ended up being learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree. This had the adverse effect of making his gag tries, which previously only showed either in minor matches or not during serious parts of battle, to slowly become more and more prominent. The other issue is that Rowlet had without a doubt the weakest rivalry set up and buildup of the three major Pokémon Ash obtained in Alola, as Hau and his Dartrix only appear in one episode before the League and two of the three battles Ash had with Hau involved major, non-strategy related writing contrivancies to reach the desired outcome (Ash slipping his Grassium-Z and getting distracted to fetch it for Rowlet to lose for the first one; Rowlet's Decidueye hoodie tanking a Z-Move, the overturned loss, and the sudden learning of a Feather Dance that doesn't act like the one Rowlet was trying to master for Rowlet to win in the final one). The way Rowlet acted in the Ash VS Hau battle is kinda emblematic of this, as the oft-debated overturned loss moment involved him falling asleep in the middle a match he was supposedly fired up for just for the sake of a joke and nothing else; regardless of how one wants to justify it, it doesn't change that such a thing never happened before in the series, and it ultimately involved Rowlet betraying the trust Ash put in him just for a scene the writers deemed funny, in what was supposed to be his finest hour (while Rowlet fell asleep in the Hala Grand Trial, it was only after his part of the match ended). Considering also that two of the moves Rowlet learned required the help of his adoptive flock without as much input from Ash and he ultimately ate an Everstone just for a variation of Seed Bomb that turned out to be more a liability than asset throughout the series, not even a cute relationship with Meltan and the fact that he won his last important matches of the series makes up for some of the worst excesses of tonal imbalance and inability to let jokes go in a context that absolutely have no space for his brand of incompetence-based humor.

With the major Alola captures gone, there's just the other two latecomer to discuss, and I'd like to start with Poipole/Naganadel, specifically because he's probably one of the worst handled Pokémon Ash ever owned. While the second year of Sun & Moon had several issues, none are as glaring as Poipole being the major Pokémon of the period, only to not actually do much of actually important. Starting with the fact that Ash only bonds with Poipole by proxy to begin with since Poipole interacts with and loves Pikachu before Ash even actually enters the picture, Poipole's biggest contributions to the series afterwards are acting silly for the majority of episodes and never actually getting involved in serious fights beyond one small bout with the Team Skull trio (which is estabilished as even more pathetic than the Team Rocket trio), making the fact that Ash captured him feel like a waste, especially when his focus episodes dealing more with his emotional side end up being just two, and ultimately not doing much of helpful during the Necrozma arc except leaving at the end in what at the time felt like a rather permanent farewell (as he was stuck in another dimension rather than somewhere Ash can readily access). Now, if Poipole's story ended there, he would've been odd but not too bad all things considered, but the problem comes from the fact that Poipole eventually returned right at the end of the series for no adequately explained in-universe reason during an unrelated Guzzlord attack, not only evolved but also presented as a competent and useful battler in spite of the fact none of it happened either onscreen or by Ash's efforts (unlike how Gliscor and Goodra, Pokémon in similar situations, did prove their worth onscreen before being put aside for a time), making this turn come across as an undeserved boost for Ash just so he could have six Pokémon, alongside removing the beauty of the permanent farewell Ash had with Poipole because the sheer coincidence of Naganadel's arrival and then his departure means that they may as well see each other again in the future. Among Ash's Pokémon in Alola, Naganadel is probably the crowning example of the series wanting its cake and eat it too in terms of wanting to be cute and fun and then rushing to make battles matter without the required buildup.

Meltan shares a lot of issues with Poipole, but overall to a lesser degree, mostly because his biggest problem is just coming way too late in the series and, much like Poipole, he only really bonds with Ash by proxy due to starting to like Rowlet first. Much like Lycanroc, his existence is supposedly important as a new discovery but this trait of his is barely called to attention, and coming too late in the series he only gets a few battles to his name with his contributions mostly amounting to gags rather than skill and serious fighting, alongside having the dubious honor of being the only Pokémon of Ash's Alola team to never use Z-Moves in spite of Ash fetching a Steelium-Z as a result of his final Grand Trial for no other reason than the out-of-universe one that Melmetal has never been in a game where you could use Z-Moves. Adding to the fact that Meltan only evolved right before the League finals for reasons outside Ash's guidance or influence conveniently before the last match for the victory, only to give indirect help at best and then winning a battle against a Pokémon with no feats, it's hard to consider Meltan's power boost earned and even harder to tell if he even had a significant power boost to begin with considering how little feats we have for both him in particular and Alola battles in general. All in all, a Pokémon that's been more shortserved by how late he came than actually any inherent issues.

2.3) Ash, Pikachu, and the Team Rocket trio

And with all those characters breached, we have to move on to the Sun & Moon take on Ash himself, which is, to put it simply, rather complicated to discuss. Another one of Sun & Moon's biggest talking points was the decision to amp up Ash's typical childishness to higher degrees than usual, with even his voice actress Rica Matsumoto confirming in an interview for the next series that she was explicitly instructed to play Ash as younger than usual for the Alolan series. Now, yet again, Ash having a goofier and more relaxed personality is neither unprecedented (as he was always silly to a degree, even in XY) nor inherently bad, and the problems mostly came from how the series decided to handle him later. One good thing at the start was that the take this series seemed to go for was Ash being a battle shonen-esque hero stuck in the wrong genre, with his typical behavior clashing with the more relaxed nature of the setting, which actually worked well in ensuring he didn't feel reset while fitting the new mission statement of the series. The problems really came up with how, ultimately, Ash became the series' biggest target of butt monkey-related humor (with the rest of the cast either being treated far more seriously or only occasionally being given the same treatment) and his initial competence in battling lead the way to an overabundance of 'silly regular kid'-related humor with even battles treated as mostly laughing matters, something later battles and important matches overturned to a degree that started to make Ash's handling feel arbitrary.

And arbitrary is the best way to describe Ash in this series: he can either be as good a trainer and master planner as he always was (Ash VS Olivia, Ash VS Misty, Ash VS Kukui), a heroic young man willing to go to good lengths for people he cares for (Tapu Koko rematch, most of the Guzzlord arc) while being scared and intimidated by his own Pokémon (Ula'Ula arc), a regular kid screwing up on daily tasks and willing to cheat his homework (Sophocles' early focus eps, the open school episode), a whiny little kid (the Stoutland treasure hunt episode, the Rotom farewell episode), a surprisingly thoughtful and serious boy (Stoutland's death episode, Minior episode) and everything in between, with the changes being so jarring that it feels less like this show is attempting a nuanced take on Ash and more like the show is simply not caring to stick to any portrayal depending on what the episode requires, especially when as I said above the entire premise of the show hinges on Ash not falling for his typical wanderlust (which is the inability to sit still for long and explore the world, so 'school and daily life adventures' doesn't cut it) without ever adequately explaining how, and seeming strangely uninterested in looking for new chances to grow stronger unless they happen to come his way. Arbitrary is also a great way to describe his impact on both his friends and the region, where in spite of appearing in every single episode, it often feels like Ash is irrelevant to his own show: he has nothing to do with either of Lillie's family deals, nor Sophocles' growing independency beyond occasional sidelines support and kickstarting it indirectly with the Charjabug gift, he barely did anything to support Lana's achievements beyond being there when they happened, his rivalry with Kiawe was nice but ultimately wasn't given his due, and Mallow and him barely got to have significant interactions throughout the story. Most of his rivalries in the region were carried more by his Pokémon than himself as he only shared amicable relationships with all of his supposed rivals with no real competitivity at their core (aside from Kiawe, which as mentioned was done dirty), and even when he got to be a hero it was either as part of an effort by everyone (Necrozma arc, both Guzzlord instances, technically most Ultra Guardians episodes), relying on questionably justified plot devices (Aether arc, and once again the Necrozma arc), or ultimately moving the focus away from him and his influence when you'd think the story would do the opposite (Guzma's parts in the Alola League). Adding onto that that the amount of times his Pokémon gained moves in the heat of the moment without training (a series staple that previous series tried to downplay with more onscreen training) and how his Pokémon ended up learning moves more for the actions of someone other than him than because he helped them, and Ash's handling in this region really adds up to strangely inconsequential, which is particularly bad considering how the League tried to go the other way, making his eventual achievement at the end feel hollow in the face of lacking buildup in the region and the several boosts and narrative aids he got to get there.

There's also the elephant in the living room that is Ash's development. Early in Sun & Moon I've seen people claim this series was more about Ash developing as a human being than as a trainer, which would be true... if not for the fact stuff like Ash doing chores was also alluded to and shown in previous series like AG and DP, and that during the Alola League (which should be the culmination of the series) none of it is actually remotely involved except for Ash talking of his love for the region during the final attack, while it never actually showed in previous matches (even against Guzma, which should be where this should come up given Ash's declaration at the start of it, the narrative wants us to stay in Guzma's head instead). The 'love for the region' thing also seems weird to bring up to me considering he actually spent less time exploring the region and more being holed up in one city with very occasional detours, with most of the plots ensuing around him being the sort of thing you'd see in "filler" episodes (like taking part in some competitions, taking part in a play, etc). It feels more like the series wants us to pretend the typical filler hijinks now are part of character growth rather than being just small adventures for fun. If we consider that learning to love the region, then Ash didn't really do much of different from previous series beyond sitting still this time around. And ultimately, the fact that Ash is back to adventuring now in a similar way to previous series means that if Ash ends up winning a League again in the future (which is not unlikely now that the ceiling was broken through), none of the reasons given to make his stay in Alola significant would really age well. The only arc that I feel actively tried to develop Ash as a trainer was Ula'Ula, and that still relied on some very significant moments of out-of-character behavior from Ash.

2.4) Relationships, and Everyone Else

I think at this point one recurring issue has cropped up: specifically, there are so many supposedly important characters that none of them truly got their due in terms of focus, either having to be satisfied with a number of focus episodes that barely amount to an arc or with their involvement into things reduced to just their specific deals and barely little else, especially with how this was the first series to not have all of Ash's friends necessarily involved in every episode. I feel this had a pretty adverse effect on the series' dynamics, as the already diluted interactions between the cast due to the large group ended up being even less focused on given that not all the characters were always there. As a result, we barely know stuff like Mallow's or Sophocles' relationship, or Lillie's and Kiawe's, and so on, with their own relationships to each other mostly falling into basic friendship (the ones with Ash in particular mostly falling into respect, friendliness and occasional snark at his expense), with only a few like Kiawe's competitiveness with Ash or Lana and Mallow being revealed halfway in as childhood friends having particular focus, otherwise being content with splitting the cast into 'the boys' group' and 'the girls' group' whenever they needed focused attention, and the rare occasions where the characters had some interactions. For the most part, perhaps emblematically of this series, characters mostly shared moments rather than actual relationships.

All that's left to discuss in this area is the rest of the cast, and let it be said... for a series supposedly about exploring the people of Alola, the majority of the non-main cast ranges from forgettable to rather dull, especially once we move to the lesser recurring characters. Lusamine's reduction to an overworked mother who only gets involved in matters explicitly tied to her children and occasionally the Ultra Guardians missions was a rather noticeable waste of an interesting game character, and while Kukui does have a nice presence and good usage throughout the series, the same can't quite be said of his wife Burnet, who beyond some good presence in the Aether arc and minor bits of exposition when dealing with Ultra Beasts (and in particular Necrozma) is effectively sidelined in housewife position for most of the series as Ash's 'second mother' (a position that, unlike Kukui who actively acts the part, mostly seems to come from cooking for him and being married post-Aether) with most of her funny moments coming from being a Royal Mask fangirl. Wicke has very little going for her, while Faba is probably one of Sun & Moon's worst misfires in that, after making his villainy far worse than his game self, the story acts like he should be forgiven while never actually learning his lesson, in spite of the show telling us he caused trauma to Lillie for years and how most of his contributions to anything end up boiling to minor help at best, and attempting to cheat his way to what he wants (the League) at worst. It's a horrible lessons for kids to have, and I'm not sure what the writers had in mind with this aside from keeping him around because the games' more snively and heinous Faba (even accounting for his more evil USUM iteration) also did.

Then we have the Kahuna, which are for the most part okay bit characters (even if Olivia's take was pretty weird, coming from her game self), with Nanu as the obvious standout even between the issues of the Ula'Ula arc as a jerk trainer with a point that doesn't really get 'taught his place', close enough to his game characterization, and Hapu having a decent track to development in the Poni arc (even if much like Olivia, it sacrificed her game characterization along the way). The other Trial Captains not part of the main cast run the gamut between nice to see but not particularly deep (Acerola, to a degree Ilima) and pretty much borderline pointless (Mina). Ash's rivals are a similar deal, with Hau being nice but having not too much to himself with how late he enters the series, while Gladion is an alright character whose rivalry with Ash mostly suffers of being a tad vanilla: they're on friendly terms, are strong, and like to battle each other, but beyond that Ash doesn't have much of a reason to be a rival (something even Alain had by being interested in facing Ash even if he was as separate otherwise), like the student-teacher relationship Sawyer had, or the foil status Paul shared with him, or simply being an old friend he wanted to surpass the way Gary was. Their lack of connection alongside the fact that Gladion would barely think about him unless the plot required him to only contributed to them feeling a tad distant from each other, and why their final bout at the League felt for many viewers just 'okay' rather than the earned culmination of their relationship.

And then there are the lower tier recurring characters, ostensibly Sun & Moon's selling point as, unlike previous series, only rarely did the series happen to introduce 'characters of the day' that never came back afterwards. The biggest problem is that, ultimately, all of these lower tier characters are still as flat as the characters of the day of yesteryear: in spite of appearing several times, all we know of Anela the old lady is that she used to be a dancer and likes Litten/Torracat a lot, Ulu is pretty much an even more flanderized Brock that seldom pops up, Anna the reporter mostly stuck to that role, most of the parents and relative of the classmates that weren't Lillie's remained minor characters with little of note to themselves, and so on. The only noticeable recurring guys among the bunch are probably the Skull trio (which mostly acted as a second rate Team Rocket while was even less recurring than they were in this region) and Viren as a recurring antagonist, mostly for being the kind of villain you usually saw punished at the end of the series in previous series (like Dolan the Pokémon merchant) except made recurring in spite of being arrested in his previous appearence, with no real explanation beyond 'kids' show logic'. Even supposedly important characters like Ida and Horatio mostly remain rather regular mentors and rivals with not much else to them, and are unlikely to stick to anyone but the most diehard fans. There are of course some good characters among this bunch, especially the borderline characters of the day like two-episode-wonders Dia and the Kanto weaboos in the Malie City arc, but overall, if Alola truly wanted to make this a lived in and more developed region than previous series, its inhabitants didn't give this aim any real favors, in my opinion.

3. A Dissection of the Series: What Went Wrong, How, and Why

With the biggest parts of important elements of the series analyzed, I'd like to use this final part of the review for some extra analysis of how the series went down and why, in my opinion, it ended up changing for the worse as it went along, since there's one important thing to point out: Sun & Moon, conceptually and fundamentally, wasn't a bad series. But what it does have is, beyond some big flaws, several small ones that continously added up.

Now, let's start to dissect everything, dividing everything by their year of airing.

3.1) Year One: Beginnings, Akala Island, Aether Foundation

When I say that, I have to start with saying that my opinion of Sun & Moon wasn't initially this negative, and in fact, the first twenty-to-forty episodes were actually pretty nice: while the setup is slightly different than usual and humor is definitely prevalent (in particular the oft-mentioned 'funny faces', which would go on to become one of the defining elements of this iteration, far more than any prior series), there's a steady influx of plot-important episodes, development and setup for the future to help making the series a breezy watch, with each slice of life romp feeling either productive or simply fun diversions. Among the good things estabilished here that stand out as good even at the end of the series there's definitely the spiritual angle of Alola, an angle that whenever explored truly does make the region feel different than previous ones and like Ash is effectively experiencing something he never did before, and with stuff like the first trial and Grand Trial alongside Litten's capture arc and Gladion's introduction help keeping ther pace going even in the absence of a more overarching goal in the League. Now, this stretch is hardly perfect, considering that it already shows several cracks that later expanded: Ash only decides to move to the Island Challenge when he happens to remember about it in episode 9; a lot of battles end way too quick and barely get focus except for Trial and Grand Trial (which still have a somewhat lethargic pace); Gladion's decent rival setup is ruined by an unnecessary Team Rocket attack; some Idiot Plots and empty episodes that are just dull to watch happen; certain setups and developments are rushed to the finish way too fast; and, most importantly, the removal of Trial Captains from the lore and Team Skull as a consistent presence beyond occasional moments ended up removing tentpole parts of Alola's nature in the games that the show barely fills adequately, and it opens the door to call anything the show wants a trial, no matter how unrelated to battling it is, giving a feeling that the Island Challenge is hapzardly put together. But, during these early episodes, the problems are negligible or made up for, and even nowadays, I'd heartily reccomend everything up to Stoutland's death as legitimately good.

The first crack, overall, comes from the Akala arc. At the time of its airing, it looked to be a breath of fresh air as it finally moved away from Melemele Island after a rather noticeable dip in plot important events for more filler-y hijinks, and due to prior experience with the series, it was easy to assume the cast would've remained there for a while. However, that didn't end up happening, the arc ending mere episodes after it began, after rushing through equivalents of the three in-game trials (with Ash only effectively taking part in the Grass Trial from the games while Kiawe and Lana ended up gaining his Marowak and her Z-Ring and Waterium-Z instead) until it culminated in Olivia's Grand Trial, with one extra episode dealing with evolution-related issues for Lycanroc culminating into Dusk Lycanroc. This arc already started on a bad note by only allowing Ash one of the in-game trials for a Z-Crystal, which while to a degree understandable on the reasoning of wanting him to only have Z-Crystals he'd effectively use and the seeming decision at the time to not have overlapping Z-Crystals among the main cast, ended up solidifying the 'whatever counts' feeling of the Anime Island Challenge, and a first proper episode that seemed to relish into making Ash into an even larger butt monkey than usual, including him crying like a baby upon losing in a way that would've been immature for his OS self. Kiawe's episode was the standout of this batch, as it focused on him confronting an opponent he couldn't beat and with Ash giving him support into improving, estabilishing a good challenge to overcome in a way that had become rare for the series and was good to see again. Lana's own Trial wasn't bad either, but suffered of having more challenge put into it during the fishing part than the battling part, and Ash's Grass Trial being a battle that suffered of both misplaced comedy (an example of tone imbalance I'll address more later) and an opponent that barely even moved in Totem Lurantis. Olivia's Grand Trial was also probably one of the best battles to come out of Sun & Moon, putting a focus on strategy even in an extremely slow battle and with a more-than-decent finish, with the only blemish being that Rockruff's signs of evolving only really come one episode before they develop further into him evolving, and the already-mentioned problem of Dusk Lycanroc being supposedly a new discovery that nobody paid much attention to, after which we moved back to Melemele to resume the rhythm of seeming slice of life (with at least three episodes of good importance and one nominally important).

After another brief stretch, we moved briefly to Kanto for an arc that was ultimately just nostalgic fluff for old fans bringing back Misty and Brock, which was nice even if transparently OS-pandering (to the point Misty's Azurill and even Tracey were not even as much as mentioned during the episodes), with the only really important contributions to the series beyond two cool fights in the second episode was the first mention of the Alola Pokémon League (with Kukui being reminded he'll need badges, something he seemed to not pay much attention to later) and Misty and Brock getting a promise of a visit to Alola that didn't really do much for the series beyond further fluff. After this, however, we finally moved to one of the first truly major arcs of the series: the Aether Foundation arc, or, in my opinion, where the series really started to fall apart.

At first, the arrival of the Aether arc seemed to be rather promising, seemingly keeping the slice of life nature of the series but starting to delve into the elements of the games for what people presumed to be a slow burn to a payoff loosely covering the game events. Except... that's not really what happened. Instead, this entire arc turned into about a dozen of episodes harshly abridging the entire villain arc of the games and cutting everything they couldn't fit, while seemingly following the conflicting mission statements of making the arc as loosely close to the games as possible while trying to be as different from them as possible, and this was clear from the very beginning, with the introduction of Lusamine as an overbearing mother with none of the deviousness of her game counterpart. This, however, isn't necessarily a problem as the Anime has often rewritten game characters before, but what the problem is is the fact they changed the conflict of Lillie dealing with the emotional abuse Lusamine inflicted upon her into Lillie simply being annoyed at being treated as a child and, most importantly, being annoyed at how her mother evolved her own Clefairy, something Clefairy itself didn't have a problem with, that makes her come across as a spoiled brat and losing most sympathy (especially when no one but maybe Burnet reprimand her for her callous behavior), especially when Lusamine is treated as legitimately loving her and just being too busy rather than having any malice. The problem is also that, throughout the arc, the only one blaming Lusamine for never wondering how did Lillie develop her phobia of Pokémon is Gladion, while true to form Lillie doesn't seem to hold her mother accountable for it, and in fact, only wants to uncover the truth after Nebby teleports her near Type: Null by sheer coincidence, reverting her development from her focus episodes. Nebby is another big issue, as its ownership moved from Lillie to Ash for no reason other than giving him a reason to be involved in what would've otherwise been 'the Aether family show', yet the episode wants to still play into the game by implying Lillie and Nebby have a special relationship when they share their moment.

What I feel was the biggest issue of this specific arc, however, was shuffling the actively villainous role of the plot towards Faba, where he actually manages to be menacing for a brief while before the show decides to fully portray him as a silly villain hard to take seriously (including a magical girl routine to activate an Ultra Wormhole-creating machine) even as he's responsible for Lillie's trauma in his attempt to make Lusamine happy and finding an Ultra Beast for her and tried to wipe out Lillie's memories when she seemed to be able to reveal what happened. In the midst of a sea of confusing plot holes by adaptation (why was Type: Null fitted with the mask when as Silvally he did exactly what he was asked to do and Lusamine seems unaware it even exists? Where did the RKS System ROMs come from? Why the heck did a random Solgaleo and Lunala entrust their child to Ash to begin with?), the biggest problem of this arc comes from how, in Faba's aborted attempt to wipe out Lillie's memories, Silvally's attempt to save her reminds her of what really happened when she developed her phobia (a mere two episodes after it was revealed what caused it), giving her back the ability to touch all Pokémon again, making her previous attempts to do so feel retroactively pointless and only there to milk viewer sympathy for when she lost the ability to again, alongside ensuring to keep her development path directionless after this episode barely one third of the way into the series.

The biggest problem after this, however, comes from Faba's subsequent plan that ends up with Lusamine defending her children from a Nihilego and ending up dragged into Ultra Space due to her act of selflessness, with Lillie, Gladion, and subsequently everyone else moving on to Poni Island to rescue her. Along the way, Lillie changes into what the games called her 'Z-Powered Form', which in the games symbolized her moving away from her mother's shadow, while here it means... pretty much nothing, voiding it of its significance and making it come across as either a game-pandering move or something just done because the source material did it. Another significant issue of this stretch is Ash's upgrade of his Z-Ring into a Z-Power Ring, under the absolutely important reasoning of his Solgalium-Z not fitting in his regular Z-Ring. Meaning that Ash needed a magical, seemingly important ritual to obtain something whose usefulness boils down to borderline cosmetic reasons, especially as we later see Z-Power Rings doled out regularly like they're nothing important (including one to Team Rocket and Gladion's regular Z-Ring turning into a Z-Power Ring with no one remarking about it), which is probably one of the most blatant cases of marketing dictating plot flow in the history of this series.

We then moved on to the final battle, which was admittedly decent enough beyond some strange issues of power creep (like Sophocles one-shotting Lusamine's Milotic) and some occasional bits of tonal imbalance (Teether Dance hula in the middle of a serious mission by Sophocles, Mallow and Lana), but was marred by two issues of significance: one was the decision of having Lillie's big moment with her mother possessed by Nihilego involve her giving a speech of how she hates her and how she allowed herself to be possessed by an Ultra Beast for how self-absorbed she is, which while definitely meant to come across as "the mother I respect would never fall for it" has the problem of Lillie and Lusamine never getting a softer reconciliation before this moment (with said softer reconciliation seemingly happening offscreen after everything was over, which we never heard of until almost episode one hundred), which just further makes Lillie unlikable. The other problem is the grand debut of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt, a move that was only used three times that was either poorly explained or never actually received an explanation depending on how you interpret the part where it's employed in the very last major battle of the series, completely out of nowhere except for perhaps Ash's Electrium-Z shining briefly a lot of episodes ago, which was never fully explained, as is the fact Ash's Pikashunium-Z reverted after use.

And thus, after a wedding between the four-times-dated Kukui and Burnet and with Nebby deciding to leave for no adequately explained reason, with Lusamine estabilishing a task force for Ultra Beasts which involves the classmates and Lillie in the closest thing this series gave them to an onscreen reconciliation, after an arc where Lillie supposedly grew... things returned to be for the most part exactly like they were in previous episodes, almost like this arc never happened, including Lillie reverting to her regular clothes. Pretty much, this supposedly character-focused arc ended up coming across as ultimately not so important, especially when Lillie's personality remained roughly the same with the only real problems she developed from being the ones this arc itself introduced, except for now being able to touch every Pokémon.

Things seemed to just return to normal, even if this was just a prelude towards the structure of the series completely collapsing on itself.

3.2) Year Two: Ultra Guardians, Ula'Ula Island, Necrozma

Year two is the one to which I, personally, trace most of the problems of the Sun & Moon series, as the major focus of the series throughout this period ended up being the 'Ultra Guardians', a Sentai-esque team formed by the main cast under Aether Foundation supervision tasked with dealing with Ultra Beasts, and the biggest problem of this arc is that it really wasn't an arc so much as it was a loose connection of monster of the weeks plots that occasionally was brought up outside of them, but was otherwise completely separate from everything not just in terms of structure, but also in tone, as a parody Sentai with barely threatening monsters clashed heavily both with wanting to be a chill slice of life Anime and with wanting to be a battle-based Pokémon Anime. It's an arc that never fully gelled with everything else (the only I'd save being Celesteela, a good Sophocles episode and a rare character-driven Ultra Guardians romp) and ultimately ended on a pitiful note with a rather dull episode with no real oomph to it, but ended up taking the 'main arc' position and leaving the rest of the series pretty much directionless, with several major arcs stalled and, beyond Lillie obtaining her Icium-Z and an Ice Stone that then disappeared completely, Torracat and Steenee evolving, and the Ula'Ula arc for Lycanroc, and Poipole leading to Necrozma, pretty much little of major happened. Teams remained frozen, and development seemed to hit a dead end, beyond officially introducing the Masked Royal.

Between the Ilima episodes (which felt like a waste considering his main purpose at the League ended up being effectively jobbing to Guzma) and the beginning of the Ula'Ula arc proper, the viewers and the students were properly acquainted with the idea of Alola soon getting a Pokémon League, with both Ash and Kiawe expressing interest in it. This didn't send any weird looks yet, as Kiawe was estabilished as the other major battler and to have taken the trials, but this was in hindsight an important omen of things to come. In the meantime, however, Ash departed for Ula'Ula in what turned out to be a solo arc, and one that started up promising only to run into big issues along the way.

I already mentioned part of it when talking of Lycanroc, but the problem of the Ula'Ula arc is that it works on the assumption that Ash would be scared of Lycanroc's rage issues to the point of not acting, with Tapu Bulu's training giving them a moment to surpass those issues that, even with Rowlet suddenly learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree, could've even worked if it wasn't for the fact that to calm down Lycanroc and reaffirm his trust in him Ash ended up involving a flashback to Rockruff that we never saw before, making the whole affair come across as insincere. After an interlude where Ash undertook a 'Trial' that was technically the in-game Ghost one but was effectively a phony one involving Team Rocket (just furthering the 'whatever goes' sense of the Anime Island Challenge) that resulted in no Z-Crystal, the debut Electroweb, and a strange appearence of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt again in spite of the whole thing being a relatively down to earth affair even with Team Rocket about to win with Mimikyu's Z-Move, this arc reached its conclusion with Ash VS Nanu, a battle that's been in equal part praised and mocked, and which I had a friend describe in the most accurate way as a well-written and interesting battle... for anyone but Ash Ketchum.

Seeing a battle taking on a more psychological bent with Nanu toying with Ash and trying to force him to give in to Lycanroc's rage mode is an admitedly interesting choice and Nanu is absolutely the best part of this battle for it, but the problem is that this requires the assumption that Ash would unconsciously not trust his Pokémon after they put the rage mode under control with trust to begin with, alongside the battle being rather visually boring and with a 1 VS 3 set up that makes it more seem like Nanu is weak than Ash being strong (especially with Tapu Bulu tossing in a Sitrus Berry mid-match). This is supposed to be Ash's big development moment as a trainer in Alola, but it requires Ash to have a regressive mindset that doesn't fit how far he's come (something Sun & Moon does in quite a few things big and small, like completely forgetting Jennies and Joys are families of clones after the Kanto episodes) and, much like the Aether arc before it, begins and ends in the few episodes it takes to happen, I already covered Poipole's issue in his character dissection, so I'd like to move on to the most important part of this year: the Necrozma arc, which among the major arcs of the Sun & Moon series it's probably the most irrelevant. Coming in after only minimal foreshadowing (including a fairly interesting hint of a connection between Nanu and Giovanni that the show never really dealt with adequately), this arc was effectively as standalone as it gets, involving events that were only briefly mentioned after it (Rotom depositing the data of Necrozma in the Stufful episode, Naganadel's return, the stadium where the League was held being called Manalo Stadium), and that tried to make a big dangerous deal without actually having much happening: beyond the biggest damage of the episode being adults feeling comedically down as a result of absorbed energy, the introduction of an Elite squad of Team Rocket led by Giovanni's secretary Matori (here revamped as a Team Rocket trio hater in spite of originally being the one reccomending them to Giovanni in DP's last episode) that ultimately did nothing significant except maybe causing injuries to Nebby that wasn't clear if they happened or not with how stiff the animation was, the baffling and unexplained return of Nebby alongside an out-of-nowhere Lunala, and a general sense of big deal where nothing much of dangerous for the cast happened (and that bafflingly replaced the Ultra Recon Squad and Ultra Megalopolis with a talking Naganadel and a generic quarry that achieved effectively the same purpose), this arc ended up feeling like a snoozefest that only resulted in Poipole staying behind in his now healed world in an overall beautifully permanent-feeling farewell, except that, in the light of future events, this choice felt like one that effectively harmed the show in the long run. Also, with Matsui being the headwriter, one might think resolving the arc with everyone sharing their energy borders on self-plagiarism considering she was also the headwriter of Dragon Ball GT, which had a similar climax (itself inherited from Dragon Ball Z).

Thankfully, even if this year was really not the greatest, the following one brought as much improvements as it did other problems to deal with.

3.3) Year Three: Poni Island, Hints of Mohn, Alola Pokémon League

The third year of Sun & Moon did not start on a good note, as after the Necrozma arc the show ended up on a shortage of things to look forward to, with several arcs still stalled and only the still no show Guzma and the League left to check out. During this period, perhaps to lead into Let's Go marketing, we started getting some shorts at the end of each episode dealing with an Eevee getting to Alola, which everyone assumed would eventually go to Ash, only to unexpectedly go to Lana in a move that made some fans sour. Sandy didn't end up doing much else but being cute and possibly allowing Lana's arc to resume by giving her another cute Pokémon to hold in Popplio's stead, but that was it for a while alongside Hau's debut as a character, in an episode infamous for being at the same time an okay rival introduction where Ash lost a fight by fetching his Z-Crystal and getting distracted to take it back, and where Rowlet ate an Everstone for a move that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

Beyond Misty and Brock visiting an Alola (which involved an episode where Brock's womanizing gag was blown even further than ever before) and an actually pretty decent arc starring Ash tossed into a post-apocalyptic alternate Alola to deal with Guzzlord in a rare instance of an Ultra Beast being presented as an actual force of destruction, the show finally started to move again with the Poni arc, or as some people called it 'the ultimate development arc', as the focus of this arc seemed to be the opposite of Ula'Ula being an Ash solo act by putting the focus back on the neglected companions, giving them either a new character direction, Z-Crystals evolutions, new Pokémon or in Ash's case his final Grand Trial, all tied together by Hapu opening up to the crew after starting standoffish and distant. Overall, Poni isn't on paper a bad arc, and there are quite a few episodes that are actually pretty good (Kiawe's trial among them for sure), but cramming all this development on the same island one after the other only had the effect of feeling jarring (unlike how Akala was not only still early enough, but only gave significant new things to Ash, Kiawe and Lana), most noticeably by cramming two completely separate evolution plots in the same episode in a move that slightly hurt both of them (Sophocles' feeling a tad impersonal, while Lana's lost the actual training part of it), Shaymin was effectively even more irrelevant than Sandy in the series, the Mohn arc estabilished here had some problems I'll get into soon, and the Hapu Grand Trial ending up as one of the worst 'Gym battles'-like matches Ash ever fought by utilizing the same strategy to victory as the extremely derided Brock battle by dousing Mudsdale and using an Electric attack on it, only adding the patch that 'it was just like Soak' even if no Pikachu can access that move. Ultimately, a well-intentioned arc that felt a bit too little, too late, and came at the expense of Ash's own focus before his final Grand Trial (to the point unlike the previous islands he didn't even do any unofficial trials before this one).

Following this, the next major episode (excluding a two-parter introducing Ash's Meltan that arguably ran one episode too long) was one that was both long awaited and caused some issues and improvements for the series going forward: Guzma's debut episode, alongside the formal announcement to the world of the Alola Pokémon League... and more specifically, the fact that it would be open to everyone with no requirements whatsoever, on the justification that it's not important who wins. Now, I've seen way too many debates on the topic, so I'll put it simply: regardless of if you think an open League is a good idea or not, it does mean that the various trials and Grand Trials Ash took on lost a lot of their meaning since they became self-sustained achievements that don't mean much outside their bubble if Ash didn't need to do any of them to enter the League, and this structure did cause several problems that lowered the general quality of the Alola League for a decent part of its length. When Guzma is being painted as the bad guy for considering the League just a schoolyard fight between weaklings, the viewers shouldn't be inclined to agree with him.

Another big issue of this decision is that, otherwise, it caused the structure of the series to come under scrutiny: before, and usually, since Ash is the only character taking part in the League, it's only his growth in skill that is under scrutiny, and everyone else is free to be as strong or as weak as necessary, but opening the door to everyone to join in also meant that everyone in the series came under scrutiny, and to put it simply characters like Mallow just weren't made to be involved in it even under the guise of a League for fun, something that showed in the actual execution of the Alola League and that I'll get to in a bit.

The episode after this one started the further estabilishment of the Mohn arc, and let me just say... this arc is, on the whole, probably the most disappointing of the various arcs of Sun & Moon, and that's saying something after everything I explained so far. Specifically, the biggest purpose of this arc was for the Aether family to find out about the whereabouts of the seemingly dead patriarch of the family, and supposedly show Lillie as being 'strong' after the events of the Aether arc, but in actual concept, it was just a convenient way for her to get a Z-Ring after conveniently ignoring the possibility for almost one real life year, getting it 'on loan' for almost getting a Z-Move to work in spite of everyone else requiring to pass a real trial to get theirs, and with her contributions effectively ending up still needing Gladion's help and amounting, once more, mostly to feeling sad to catch audience sympathy, while Gladion gets a Zoroark to be only used in one round of the League. But the worst part of all is that this arc, to put it simply, doesn't end. After Magearna finally wakes up and we get the not explained reveal that it knows where Mohn is, the Aether family embarks on a journey to find him... only for the series to end at that point. After spending six months teasing this storyline, just leaving it hanging like this is poor storytelling, and even with the justification that Pokémon 2019's world-hopping premise would mean the new show can end it for Sun & Moon, the series shouldn't have to rely on another one to resolve its own plots, especially one on which supposedly significant moments of the late series hinged on.

The rest of the series, however, does gain something from the open League premise, and that something is a consistent direction by having everyone get boosts in preparation for the League, which at the very least leads to some alright moments for Sophocles that play nicely in his arc and the technical resolution of Lana's arc, among a sea of strangely persistent legendary appearences that only got more and more contrived as the series went on considering they were entirely separate from each other, even the ones that led to ultimately good episodes (like the one where a Celebi led to Ash and Torracat meeting a young Professor Kukui), since it felt like a move to ensure attention that was wholly unnecessary to the story being told. But over time, everything came to a close with the start of the Alola Pokémon League, probably the most talked about arc of Sun & Moon, for good or ill.

The Alola League is unique in several aspects, both in terms of the Sun & Moon series and the Anime as a whole: for the former, it's a battle-focused arc in a region that didn't want battling to be the focus as the climax of it; for the latter, it's the longest League arc in the series' history. clocking at roughly sixteen episodes. Being a tournament arc, you'd think such a good length would benefit it, but the way the series decided to execute things left a lot to be desired, most specifically because Sun & Moon has a very mixed track record in terms of battles and for the decision to show every battle of the tournament even if just partially. There is a lot that could be said about this arc, but I'll try to aim for the big ones first: for starters, beginning the League by reducing the contestants to just sixteen using a Battle Royale was a rather poor choice, as not only that's a format that allows characters to reach high positions by just surviving rather than being strong (as seen by how James got to the Top 16 even if he explicitly didn't face anyone), but confining it to just one episode meant that pretty much every battle of it was reduced to just a series of one-hit KOs from every major characters, with all of them ultimately surviving. After that, another problem was how a lot of the early rounds of the arc ended up averaging between okay to poor battles, with the dubious honor of having Ash's first battle being completely for laughs against Faba, the only character beyond Jessie and James to get one in this League in spite of being the eventual winner. I already mentioned the specifics of Mallow's attempt to quit her match coming out of nowhere from a character standpoint and the issues of Ash VS Hau, so I'll just say that Lillie's battle against Gladion was okay but done dirty for what was supposed to be a huge moment for her in terms of development, and that Sophocles', Lana's (sans Mallow's) and Kiawe's battles ended up being okay to great on the whole. However, the fact that the first two rounds of the League only used one Pokémon each didn't help the sense of escalation at all, nor the sense of Guzma being correct in describing this League as 'a schoolyard fight between weaklings'.

From the Semifinals onward, the League improves in quality due to only good battlers remaining, though it does run into problems of a different sort: Guzma, which was built up as the major threat of the League with Ash vowing to stop him due to what Alola did to him, is not only dealt with in the penultimate round rather than in the finals, but in a battle that makes that statement ring a tad hollow since the perspective we follow during the fight isn't Ash's, but rather Guzma's, shedding some light into his confidence issues and his Golisopod's habit to use Emergency Exit whenever scared (which beyond being only halfway foreshadowed, also ends up with the bad side-effect of giving Ash a free win through Torracat, turning Ash VS Guzma into a 2 VS 1 in Ash's favor), but effectively making Ash interchangeable as a result. It's a good fight with some nice moments, but it just makes his build up as possibly ruining the League for everyone ring hollow when his presence didn't seem to ruin the League for anyone in any way, and the threat wasn't even considered worthy of the finals. Kiawe VS Gladion, by contrast, is mostly a good fight with not much else to it. However, one thing that starts to be noticeable in this part of the League is the sheer reluctance of the show to start any matches before the halfway mark or close to it, padding the airtime as much as possible with not always necessary scenes and stretching the battles along two episodes even when not necessary.

The finals having three Pokémon each meant that Ash VS Gladion ended up having a bit more meat to it in terms of battling, but Ash once again ended up getting another boost in the form of Meltan's evolution into a supposedly powerful mythical Pokémon, which would already be bad since he shouldn't be getting these kinds of boosts at the very final stage of this story (and yes, just to be clear, Kingler's deal was poor writing back in OS as well) but also comes after a gag battle rigged in his favor, a battle that required several contrivancies on his side to be won with Rowlet, and another battle with a facilitated victory in Guzma, making it feel like Ash ended up getting into each of these matches with the writing rigged on his side. The Gladion battle has some fairly good moments both from a character and battling perspective, but between the unearned evolution right before it and just the way they built up to things, Ash's victory here ended up not really feeling as impressive as you'd think this first League Conference victory should be, all things considered. A battle that just ends up as 'okay' rather than the amazing it should've been.

However, after a somewhat dull interlude involving a Guzzlord attack that's probably comprised of more stock footage than action just so Naganadel can come in to make number, we moved on to Ash VS Kukui, probably one of the best battles of this series. That said, while it is pretty good and better written than the majority of them, especially in terms of how Torracat is handling for its first three episodes, it is knocked down by being an exhibition match, meaning that beyond 'fun' and offering a good fight, Ash doesn't need to win this battle (unlike how every other major battle at this stage usually comes with adequate stakes), and most importantly how Tapu Koko forced his way in in place of Kukui's last Pokémon (after Kukui allowed Naganadel in on the pretense of being part of the family, ignoring that three-to-four of Kukui's Pokémon in this match were never seen before and his supposed Pelipper was completely excluded just because the local deity wanted some fighting), which given how Koko wasn't part of this particular equation comes across as scrunching two battles to save time. It also doesn't help that then Tapu Koko interrupts the match again just to allow Kukui and Ash to use Z-Moves again, with Ash ending up using 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt for the final time while praising the region, which while making for a cool finisher it ultimately makes Ash's supposed aim to master Z-Moves to defeat Tapu Koko resolved in a poor way when he only won using the Z-Crystal he never actually trained to use and that only conveniently showed up whenever it needed. Accounting for yet another boost in the form of Naganadel's return, this battle is ultimately marred once again like most of the League by the writing apparently wanting him to win at all costs and look good while doing so, strategy and skill be damned along the way.

After this followed two episodes of closure, that had some good moments (especially in regards to the Team Rocket trio) but ultimately involved a lot of contrived instances (like an Ultra Wormhole for Naganadel to return home coming just above Kukui's house) or poorly executed moments, most importantly the completely offscreen adventure of Ash and Nebby in Ultra Space, the way Mimikyu decided to let go of his killer instinct towards Pikachu, and most importantly the fact that Ash decided to leave his Alolan team behind for reasons the viewer wasn't made privy to, and which ended up having negative implications for either the Alolan team or the previous Pokémon depending on how you read it.

And that's ultimately how Sun & Moon ended up feeling for me, with several small issues that kept adding up, until the show just couldn't handle them anymore.

3.4) The Problem of Themes and Other Technical Issues

Before to move on the closing statement, I'd like to quickly address something I've often seen brought up in Sun & Moon's defense, generally its themes justifying a lot of what it does alongside exploring the region of Alola by having Ash live there. Usually, the biggest themes I see brought up about this is that Sun & Moon is about family and meeting a world and learning from it... but while the first might have some merit, the second is very much what the show has always been about, arguably moreso than Sun & Moon has been since Ash actively travelled to meet said world rather than wait until the world came knocking at his door, and there were a lot of family-oriented moments in previous series, be they siblings or relatives. I'm sure there are other, different themes that one could bring up here, perhaps some that are indeed unique to the Sun & Moon series, but there's something important to say about themes: no matter how good the message you want to spread or explore is, if the narrative has issues, you can't excuse them on the pretense of themes, especially if it starts to be applied to every single imperfection one finds in a story. Themes are embellishments that make stories better, not substitutes for good writing.

And in terms of narrative issues, Sun & Moon has, in my opinion, quite a few of them, not just the ones I explained in the first paragraph but also some important ones involving both the way episodes are written, and how battles were handled, including the way the generational gimmicks were used. In regards the way the episodes are written, there's the fact that several of them end up involving a strange structure where the plot doesn't actually begin until the halfway mark, and while this may perhaps help with a slow pace and relaxed atmosphere, it does have the side effect of making quite a few of them feel dull to watch, especially older fans used to the rhythms of the series before this iteration.

Bigger, and most pressing, are the problems of battle writing this season ran into, which go deeper than just the absolute downgrade in battle presentation, but go straight into how the battles were written. One noticeable thing that feeds into how slow the battles ended up being is the fact that commentary became just as commonplace as it used to be in the earliest series, constantly breaking the action on a regular basis rather than letting the scenes flow more often than not. Beyond that, the biggest problem is that, more often than not, the battles aren't decided by skill or strategy (though there are occasional skill-based bouts), but rather who feels a bigger drive to win or happens to fire their Z-Move last, which coupled with the removal of most of the minor battles that could go either way to mostly focus on the big ones that have to absolutely be resolved a certain way, leading to such gems as the already mentioned battle with Hau where an otherwise good Ash ended up slipping his Z-Crystal just so he could be distracted and lose due to it, or one where Gladion managed to completely tank a Z-Move only to reply by his own, out of nowhere new Dragon-type Z-Move. It made battles dull to follow more often than not, especially with battles often falling more on shows of strength or exchanges of moves with no real rhyme and reason rather than giving the impression that the trainers had any real plan behind their orders (Ash constantly falling back on relying on an incompletely learned move in Ash VS Hau being a particularly blatant case of it showing).

And relatedly, another major issue of the series overall is the way it choose to handle Z-Moves. Compared to Mega Evolution being a fairly consistent 'have the stones + have the bond = Mega Evolution' in the previous show, Z-Moves depend on several factors, from getting the pose right to having a correct amount of focus and bond with the Pokémon to if the Pokémon used them before, and as a result, the entire idea of mastering Z-Moves feels wholly inconsistent: sometimes you can have characters with perfect relationships with their Pokémon completely failing at using their Z-Moves, sometimes characters like Mallow that first chided others for not getting the Grassium-Z pose right and then ended up unable to master Bloom Doom well until the League match, sometimes you can have characters that get Z-Moves right with Pokémon they never even saw before, and everything in between. It feels extremely arbitrary, and makes 'mastering Z-Moves' feel less down to the characters' agency and more down to whether the writers feel like having them master them or not.

But, if I may say, the real biggest problem of the series is that, simply put, it often raises questions it never manages to answer satisfactorily, just creating a situations were things are left so vague everyone has to either remain confused at what happened or supplant it with their own headcanons. Counting just some of the important questions: Why did Ash choose to go to school instead of a typical journey? Why was Tapu Koko so interested in Ash? Why did Ash receive Nebby from that Solgaleo and Lunala? Why did Nebby leave at the end of his arc? Why do Giovanni and Nanu know each other so personally? Where did that Lunala come from? What's the deal with Dusk Lycanroc and Meltan? Why does the Pikashunium-Z manifest? Why did Naganadel return? Why does Magearna know Mohn's location?

I have no clue. And frankly, I'm not sure if Sun & Moon knows, either.

4. Conclusions

And with this, I reached the end of this long dissection. It probably got pretty ranty, and it may sound excessive considering this is all the result of overanalyzing what's ultimately a kids' show, but I think I covered most of everything I wanted to. So, in the end, with so much said, what are my final impressions of Sun & Moon? Well, I'd say the amount of fun you'll have with it will depend exactly from what you want of it.

In spite of all my critiques, I'm fairly aware of how people just looking for a good time to cheer themselves up with occasionally emotional moments will find definitely stuff to like. Less critical-minded viewers will also definitely find something for everyone in there, and perhaps enjoy what the series has to offer. My personal opinion is that, ultimately, at its best Sun & Moon can be one of the best entries of the Pokémon Anime, while at its worst, it can be even worse than entries like the Best Wishes series. And as someone who likes consistency in terms of what a series has to offer, I found Sun & Moon a quite irritating watch to do, and probably my second least favorite entry of the series even with its good moments.

Overall regardless of which opinion you will have ended this read in, I hope you found my thoughts interesting to read about, and whatever opinion you hold of the Sun & Moon series, I respect it, and, in case you enjoyed it more than I did, I'm glad you did.

As for me, I officially consider the Gen VII Anime a closed book. With the new series starting soon enough, I'm optimistic that things will only look up from there. Not just for me, but for every other watcher as well.

So, regardless of what the future may hold for this show, I'm looking forward to continue my journey reviewing it with all of you, hoping in better stories to be told.

[ladylee13]

All right, y'all, I've had enough with shitty society. I say we start a cult called "Actual Inclusivity."

Instead of the center of the cult's teachings being some manipulative bullshit, it's literally just love, acceptance, and respect.

We buy some land and start a communal living situation but instead of the money going up to whoever is on top and making them rich, all the money goes toward upkeep and improvement for the whole community. The finances are transparent and available for anyone to see and anyone shown to be corrupt or messing with the money gets kicked out.

We keep a farm to feed everyone. We have high speed wi-fi and some apartments (maybe with communal kitchens, maybe with private ones, idk logistics aren't my strong suit but I wouldn't be the only one running this, so we'd work out the kinks)

Everyone gets to do what they enjoy. Artists make art (and they could do commissions and freelance work and stuff like that to help raise money for the community in addition to art for art's sake), scientists can do their science thing, people who enjoy gardening can tend the farm. Tech people can do tech stuff (idk, I don't do much stem stuff, but we wouldn't be amish, so there'd be upkeep for tech stuff needed, so y'know). Whatever else. Autistic people can spend loads of time focused on their special interests. Non-verbals are not expected to talk. Depressed people or people with anxiety are not expected to work on days when getting out of bed is too difficult. Anyone having a panic attack or PTSD episode while working immediately gets to put down their work, walk away, and come back when they are again capable of giving their work their attention, be that in an hour or not until the next morning. Everyone uses whatever pronouns they prefer, and everyone else uses the appropriate pronouns when addressing or referring to them. If swearing makes someone uncomfortable, people will be expected to respect that and filter their language around them. Everyone gets to love whoever they want with zero societal repercussions. If two people want to get married, they get to. If two people want to live together without getting married, no prob (living together pre-marriage is against my religious beliefs, so I wouldn't do so, but that doesn't mean no one is allowed to. Live according to your own beliefs as long as they don't hurt anyone else. The goal here isn't to make everyone believe same thing or act the same way. It's to respect each other, and hopefully foster more understanding for others and lower discrimination and hate). In that vein, polygamy makes me feel weird, (admittedly, I don't really understand it,) but if some people in a polygamous marriage wanted to join us and were willing to follow the rules, great! Hop in! Let's even have a talk about it. You can help me be more understanding. No one is allowed to force their beliefs into anyone else and if someone feels pressured by someone else, all they have to do is say so and the other person will stop. I've had enlightening and wonderful conversations about religion with people of other religions/also atheists (once even with a drunk atheists and that was great). And all those conversations were great because in no way did they expect me to change my beliefs and vice versa. There was just a sharing of perspectives. And afterward, I felt like I understood them better and they understood me better. And that's what I'm aiming for here.

We can have a few sensory deprivation tanks and weighted blankets available for people with anxiety/PTSD. We can have tons of fidget toys for anyone who needs them to help them focus. We can have anything people need to function their best (I don't know much about what people with neurological disorders that I don't also have need, but whatever they need we'd have). Everything written is also written in braile. There's elevators and ramps in every building. Guide dogs and ESAs are accepted anywhere except in the space of people with animal allergies (Like, the communal areas are regularly cleaned to prevent hair causing allergic reactions and such and there are signs designating pet-free zones). We could maybe have like an animal shelter in a nearby town that anyone can come into to help with and spend time with animals. There would be a prayer room for quiet meditation (with whatever anyone needs for their best prayer environment, like I know Muslims pray toward Mecca and I don't know if there's any ornamentations or anything that they would prefer to have, but if so, it would be there). There'd be a gym to give people access to exercise equipment. There'd be a big old clock tower with bells to indicate prayer times for anyone who needs them. There would be a church building for use by any religious denomination. There'd be regular community activities to give people the chance to have leisurely social interaction and also sometimes exercise in small or large groups, but no one is expected to take part. Everyone with any form of neurodiversity or from any minority group gets to be treated fairly and have their needs accommodated.

No proving you have a disability like you have to to get accommodations from colleges. No one telling you it's all in your head or it's not natural or you should try harder or you just haven't met the right person yet or treating you as being under them for your gender or skin color or anything else you have no control over. Just actual acceptance on every front.

Basically, you'd pretty much be able to live your best life under the principle I learned as a kid: "your agency ends where the next person begins." As long as your actions do not harm anyone, you are free to do as you like.

The rules for living here? Everyone will be expected to contribute however they can (no punching a time clock, but contribute to the best of your ability). There will be no discrimination or hatred toward others. That's pretty much it. It's not that complicated. You will be expected to respect others and they will be expected to respect you. Any crime of any kind would be punished (and I mean things like theft, which I expect would be far less likely to happen given that everyone would have their basic needs fulfilled, and not like things like drug addiction because criminalizing addicts doesn't really prevent people getting addicted and just makes the problem worse.)

I figure the system would be run by committee. Any issues would be put to a vote, and given the size of the group, everyone would get a vote and everyone's vote counts. There would be no one person in charge of the community. Not me, not anyone. Everyone is equally in charge. Issues of things like accusations of discrimination would be handled by a court type situation where a mediator is chosen and both people get to explain what happened (in case of false accusations, which hopefully wouldn't happen, but y'know), and if the problem is based on a misunderstanding or an unchecked or unevaluated privilege, maybe the discussion alone could help the two people work it out, and if not, they get a big meeting with everyone there, and they get a chance to give their side to the group and the group votes on whether or not the accusation is solid and if the accused person will be punished (idk 100% how the punishment would work, but I figure depending on the severity it could be like a first offense would get community service and some kind of lesson in bridging cultural differences or something and a second offense would get something harsher and a third offense would be getting booted from the community. And then something like rape would get an immediate boot.).

Straight/white/cis/NT/any other non-minority people would also be accepted and welcomed so long as they treat everyone there with respect.

And anyone who says or does something homophobic or misogynistic or racist or ableist or anything else along those lines gets first a gentle warning and a chance to re-evaluate their prejudice and if they refuse to check themselves they get kicked out with whatever money they came in with.

I know that no matter what system is in use, there will always be someone ready and willing to find holes and take advantage. So we'd run on a spirit-of-the-law system instead of a letter-of-the-law system, and with everyone getting a say and everyone basing their decisions on that foundation of respect, it would be easier to enforce.

And sure, maybe this is just a fantasy-land-pipe-dream, but come on. How cool would it be? No more forcing our triangle or star or pentagon or splatter-shaped peg asses into circular holes? I don't believe in humanity at large to implement large-scale actual acceptance, but a little mini-society? That seems a little less impossible, right?

This is all spitballing, but the more I think about it, the more I love it. Feel free to add on.

[ravenwolfie97]

2020 Art Summary

Yep, it’s 2021 already. 2020 is finally over. It felt like it lasted forever, and it felt like the end would never come, but here we are. Crazy how the time flew by.

I felt like I didn’t get much art done this year because of Current World Event, but I made a lot more than I thought I did. Even some of my new favorite pieces came out of this year, so I think that’s worth celebrating and looking back upon!

I was insanely productive during the first month of 2020, and looking back I was surprised at all the stuff I did, but then I remembered that that winter season was actually one of the best times of my life! I started being more socially involved, and I think my newfound drive at the time translated into all the art I pumped out this month. This is just a small fraction of what I made in January, but I only have so much space. Quite a few complex pieces in both style exploration and polishing my own style.

Apparently February was a rather intimate month. Things began to slow down in terms of my own art here, with me spending more time in social settings and school work ramping up, I didn’t have as much time to coop up in my room to draw. I did wanna do something for a friend’s Valentine’s Day OC art challenge, so I drew my lovey-dovey couple from Dance of 1000 Words havin’ a dance. Nothing actually came of that challenge, but it was fun to do regardless.

One of the things I was most proud of in the winter season was making more friends, and one of the closest friends I made was completely coincidental. I met a person named Kiri on the bus one night I decided to volunteer somewhere by myself, and we ended up chatting and getting along. They quickly told me their tumblr username, and I shot them a message immediately after they left. A couple days later, we met up for brunch, and we started becoming really close friends and creative partners!

Not much else happened in March cuz that’s when Current World Event started becoming an issue, but Kiri and I still kept in close touch and we randomly started developing a concept for a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Galar Edition. These are a handful of characters we thought up, with Skipper the Scorbunny and Dross the Dreepy as the main characters, Morgrem as the main antagonist, and some shopkeepers such as those of the Greedent Bank and the Indeedee General Store. This was also my first time drawing all of these Galar Pokemon (except Scorbunny, but I also made Skipper a bit more unique than a regular Scorbunny).

Lots of events happened this month. First of all, Steven Universe Future ended, one of my favorite and most influential shows was no longer continuing. I had to do something as tribute, both as a send-off to one of the greatest cartoons in the world and as a cathartic release for my feelings towards it.

A while later, I got the opportunity to start playing an MMO in beta called Fer.al, by the same people who made Animal Jam, which coincidentally I had also beta tested for back in the day. I ended up getting really attached to my first character, a Senri I named Sasha, and though I’ve made more characters than them since, they’re still my absolute favorite. Though I haven’t touched the game in a few months, I was really engrossed for a long time and enjoyed playing through the beta and early access phases.

At the end of the month, some friends of mine invited to a roleplay group with some mutuals, and we all played characters in a crime syndicate. Just a bunch of ragtag thieves and criminals who ended up together in order to protect an artifact called the Crown of Thieves, which was essentially a flag to be taken by other groups to prove that they are the best thieves in the land. My character was based heavily on my sona (if it wasn’t obvious) and was also influenced by Cloud Strife, since the FFVII Remake had just come out and I was super into watching the cutscenes at the time. My character’s (code)name is Valkyrie, and they are a mercenary, going between multiple different employers to carry out whatever duties they need to do. They have a more complicated backstory, but presently they were recently hired by recommendation of their friend Shark (played by @shmoots-universe​ who is also My friend now ily maya) who works with a group called the Court Cards who are currently in possession of the Crown of Thieves. Valk never really had a place to call home, but staying with this group of people had to be the closest they could get to that feeling. They still sleep with a knife under their pillow because of trust issue but that’s okay.

Okay, so technically these examples started in April, but I continued making content with them in May, and the month was just pretty void of art in general, so here I am addressing them.

There were two main things I worked on this month: a Steven Universe AU of my own and the whole #sixfanarts thing that kicked off around then. Let’s start with the fanart bits. I did two and a half of them (six in April and nine in May), and it was so much fun to be able to draw stuff I don’t normally do! My personal favorites are shown here: Blake Belladonna from RWBY, Roll from Megaman, Yuki Konno from Sword Art Online, and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The other thing I’d been planning for a while was a Steven Universe AU, probably to cope with the show being over but also because I was inspired by a lot of those SU AU artists I started following at the time. I won’t share the details here because it’s gonna have its own blog at some point, but the example I’ve shown here is of a comic I made loosely in order to introduce a divergence in the plot of the story as well as introduce a character unique to my AU. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the characters and get a feel for the style.

As the year progressed, my amount of art I made per month began to dwindle, this time mostly because school was kicking my ass especially hard with finals. However, I took what time I had to get some backburner pieces finished, like the Tigerlily picture which I sketched out a couple months back, and the Gunvolt picture which I started working on SIX YEARS AGO. I don’t quite know why I got the urge to work on it again after so long, but it was nice to finally realize. The other drawing for DOTS was done in the dead of night but I was really happy with how it came out.

Despite only having two summer classes left of school, this month was really rough because they demanded a lot of my time and attention. I did not have the gumption to do anything digital, so I stuck to my sketchbook to get out what I felt like getting out.

My friends and I did a stream of the game Helltaker, and I really enjoyed the concept, so in following my friends I made my own Helltaker demon OC named Raksha the Ravenous Demon (it’s a pun but also got mythical insp). I also got super into Hazbin Hotel at this point, mostly because the Addict music video dropped and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I doodled Angel Dust cuz I felt like it. The other drawing I did was actually a free commission I gave a friend of mine as a prize for a trivia game show I ran back in June. He along with a couple other friends got some free drawings from me for getting the top three scores, and this one in particular was fun because of how interesting it was. He wanted me to draw a video game reviewer called the Irate Gamer from a specific moment, and I decided to go ham and just make it as dramatic as possible.

University classes finally wrapped up and right after that I was in the process of moving out of my apartment and getting adjusted to living with my parents again. I did a couple of agg.io drawing sessions with my friends from the Court Cards group as well as a new Dungeons and Dragons homebrew group I had joined. I drew some more of Valkyrie and came up with a design for my DND character Qakuqtuq (or Kai for short). He is monkey grandpa and I love him.

My main focus was on finishing a polished piece for my friend Cake, whose birthday was in the upcoming month. I wanted it to be as amazing as possible, so I put a lot of time into getting more detailed and making them look good. In addition to that, I did a few TOME doodles just for fun. The creature on the bottom was for this month’s art challenge on my Discord server where we made original TOMERPG monsters, and I created Hundylow, a Crystal-element monster based on the Grindylow from English folklore.

This month was a lot more productive than the past few had been. I tried to do a 31-day art challenge called Creatober but failed to get past the third prompt because I was still swamped with other work. I’m still happy with what little I did, including the piece with my characters Kyle and Guarudan from DSWD.

I don’t remember how, but I also suddenly rediscovered an old Flipnote Hatena series called Tales of LostClan, a Warriors fan series that I would say was the most obscure thing I’ve ever been super invested in. It was what got me into the actual Warriors books, and I liked it so much I redrew the animations into a comic... twice. Didn’t get nearly as far the second time but clearly my love for this little fanfiction had not waned after nearly a decade. I felt like drawing a book cover/movie poster for the series, just to get it out there and see how much I’ve improved over all that time.

Also I felt like making a vampiresona just before Halloween because I never dress up for Halloween in art (or real life anymore, for that matter), and I wanted to do something like that for once. It was short-lived but I really liked the design!

The focus of this month was definitely on Pokemon stuff. As per usual I contributed to the current Gotta Draw ‘Em All collab, and I was tasked to draw Regieleki. It was really fun to figure out how to make it stand out and look like it was made of electricity.

I also committed a lot of my spare time to my Fakemon Gym Leaders, as I had been working on bringing them to life in the past year or so now. As of this post, I’ve finished rendering their full body poses and gym badges, but I’m still working on completing all eight VS portraits, the first half of which are shown here.

I... didn’t draw anything this month, actually. What I’m showing here was worked on in the last few days but has actually been in progress for a couple of months, and I just finished it earlier today, in 2021. But I needed to show something off, and it’s also about time I mentioned it.

Back in October, I kept seeing people rave about this game called Genshin Impact, and I was interested but not so much as to start playing it... until my friends started playing and I was like “fuck it, let’s download it”. Since that day, I have been super immersed and in love with this game, to the point I came up with my own canon based on my gameplay experiences. This also included the creation of an original player character: Astra, the non-binary Traveller. And now, I’ve finally drawn them and brought them to life.

It has been one hell of a year. I had some of the highest highs and lowest lows in 2020, lots of changes, and I have now officially moved onto the next chapter of my life now that my time at university is finally over. I’m very excited for what 2021 has to offer, and I’m going to go forward with great ambition.

[itsmattsunshinehere]

So here goes nothing....😅😅😅 I have thought of a scenario where a student is studying marketing and has offered herself to promote karasuno's volleyball team. And as she is working with them she makes friendships and developed crushes and love and all that good stuff. With a lot of fluff please.♥️😋♥️ If u can't that's just fine still will love everything you put out your so talented and I love you♥️♥️♥️♥️

Okay so first IM SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG PLEASE DONT HATE ME 😫😫

I had some difficulties writing it because I didn’t know if you wanted reader to come from Uni or simply Karasuno. You also talked about developing crushes and Im a fool for Daichi so yeah it turned out as a Daichi x reader lol But feel free to ask for another one if you don’t like it!! Thanks for your request, you’re so kind and honestly I think there are people here on Tumblr more talented than me but omg thank you I love you please let me know what you think!! 💘💘💘

-L

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

Sweet lovin’.

Sawamura Daichi x reader.

synopsis: just Daichi helping you open a letter from your University.

word count: 1.6 K

tags: fluff

~~~

"C’mon Y/N, open it!" the boy on your right encourages you.

You're a little anxious, your hands are shaking slightly while you carefully unlock your phone. You can't calm down: you know how important is that email, you've been waiting for two weeks now. You open the inbox, but immediately lock the screen, not feeling brave enough.

You knew that getting into the university you were aiming to wouldn't be that easy, so you immediately took as many courses you could to prepare for the various entrance tests you’d have to do. Even so, when you found out you had to bring a completely new and original project, (the promotion of a product completed with data and graphs concerning sales), you were quite surprised not expecting it and soon you started panicking as you saw the million challenges you’d have to face, not to mention all the pressure you felt: after all it was the task you would have to submit if you wanted to be admitted to the marketing courses in what could be your future University (if you made it).

You are resolute and organised, you’ve been making plans for your future since you were really young, thinking about what your job would be when you grow up. You've always liked to read and recommend books to your friends or parents, so you decided to work for a publisher and evaluate which manuscripts to publish and which to discard. But it is clear that to do such a job you also need to know how to sell a product: it is therefore essential for you a degree in Marketing and Communication. You had calculated everything, down to the smallest detail, and yet in front of that email just over two months ago you had trembled, finding yourself deadly worried. On the other hand you had never done anything like this, starting from scratch, without anyone’s help and that’s what was most likely to have determined your admission.

For days you were scrambled to come up with an idea that could represent you 100%, and then you found yourself one day in the school gym in front of the entire men's volleyball team, on the orange flyer in your hands it was written in capital letters "LOOKING FOR HELP FOR OUR MANAGERS."

"Help us grow! If you are interested, come look for us: Sawamura Daichi (3rd year, section 4); Shimizu Kiyoko (3rd year, section 2)."

You immediately saw the opportunity behind that simple piece of paper. You had found your "product" to advertise, it was the opportunity you were looking for and you could not let it got; that's why you let instinct take over you and you headed straight to the gym; you hadn't given it too much thought, knowing too well that if only you'd stopped for one more moment to reflect, you'd only come out with more doubts.

You were presented to your "project" and they had welcomed you with open arms, especially Nishinoya and Tanaka, happy to have more people in their big family and that could lighten the load of work for Kiyoko and Hitoka. Although at first you had no intention of becoming a manager of Karasuno, day by day you had bonded more and more with those guys, finding yourself one day crying in front of everyone because of how boded you were when Hinata gave you with a beaming smile the team uniform. You had learned to appreciate each one of them, everyone with their own special personality, trying to help them as best you could during their training: several times you happened to assist Kageyama and Hinata till late and help them improving their spikes, or healing the wounds and bruises that Noya got, not to mention all the afternoons spent trying to comfort Asahi, in an attempt to raise his self-esteem a little. Then along with Hitoka and Kiyoko you draw posters and opened a fund for the team, you created a page on Facebook by posting constant updates, just as you had created a Twitter profile where only the three of you, Daichi, Suga and Professor Takeda had the access (coach Ukai refused to take part in something that complicated). You saw how slowly your crows got up again attracting more and more attention, just as you had seen your project take shape and come true.

After about a month of joining the team, you had taken the train to Tokyo along with the three third year and Kiyoko, who had decided to come with you to bring all the necessary documents for the application and the eventual registration. Careless as you are, you would surely have got lost, that's why Suga asked you if he could join you and after hearing him, the others had also offered to keep you company along the way.

Finally, another email had arrived on your phone: for three days you did not even look at your inbox, too scared to find out that you had been refused. Not to mention that of all the possible days Suga, being aware of your crush on the captain, had decided that today was the best day to give his contribution and leave you alone with Daichi to tidy the gym putting the last things in place, hoping that you will muster up courage to take the first step and confess. It’s obvious saying that his hopes are unfortunately misplaced.

Daichi, being the kind person he is, seeing you more nervous than usual asks you if you had heard from the University and suddenly you turn pale, telling him all your concerns.

"Good heavens Daichi, I can't do it, please look instead!" you beg the boy by your side. You have the feeling that, if it’s him the one who's telling you you've failed, it's going to hurt less than reading it with your own eyes. The captain picks up your phone with one hand and yours with other, making you blush instantly.

You don't know how or when you started having feelings for him, you only know that at some point you started paying a lot more attention to what he told you and noticing all the details of his face: how he purse his lips when he scores a point, how he snaps his tongue with frustration when during training he fails to serve or receiving Asahi’s services. Of course, you immediately tried to hide it all, choosing to focus on the first years and prevent Tsukishima and Kageyama from biting each other’s face off.

"You have to tell me the passcode, Y/N." he replies with a chuckle, trying to calm you down by caressing your hand in circular movements, causing the opposite effect.

You feel your heart beating wildly, you're not used to having so much skinship between you two, neither being so close with him. Of course, it had happened other times that accidentally in removing the net he touched your hand, but you always tried to pretend as if nothing happened, obviously failing: Tsukishima and Sugawara immediately understood that you had feelings for him, as well as Kiyoko, who immediately encouraged you along with the setter.

You give him the password and watch him carefully swipe his fingers across the screen, opening the inbox and reading the email carefully. After what seems like centuries, he rolls his eyes towards you and with a smile he turns your phone towards you. You rip it out of his hands and read until you find the magic word: ACCEPTED.

"You made it Y/N, you got accepted." He congratulates you and, in a moment of pure euphoria, you throw your arms around his neck, clutching him as tightly as you can as he bursts out laughing and hugs you back.

You feel so comfortable in his muscular arms, you feel warm, feeling almost as if you were home. You would never want to move away, but after a few seconds you two separate, you redder than ever, while he looks at you, smiling, holding once again your hand with his and you look down on the ground regretting being so careless.

"Sorry, I didn't want to jump on-" You interrupt as soon as Daichi raises your chin and brings your face close to his, looking into your eyes, his lips brushing yours, softly, delicately, kindly, almost as if he's afraid of breaking you.

When you separate you look at him surprised, with your mouth agape, unable to say anything, because DAICHI JUST KISSED YOU. You are speechless, trying to understand that what just happened is not a mere dream. The boy meanwhile waits for your reaction, but seeing that you are still silent he lets out a laugh, rather embarrassed by all that courage he showed you just now.

"I'm sorry Y/N, I don't know what’s gotten into me. I'm sorry I should have told you first, but you know I like you so much that seeing you-" he tries to explain you, but you interrupt him right away.

"You what?!" you ask him, your eyes wide open, as he looks at you even more nervous than before, he just wants to sink and disappear sucked into the ground.

“Yes, I've liked you for a while, I thought I'd tell you one of these days. I thought it was pretty obvious..." He tells you, scratching the back of his neck with one hand. You suddenly take the other hand.

“I like you too!" you say with a smile. You remind him so much of a little girl who just got the gift she wanted for her birthday. He can't help bursting out laughing again seeing your happy eyes, wrapping you again with those arms you love so much.

“That’s good, you know? I was dying of shame." He whispers sweetly in your ear, while you smile, letting yourself sink in the warmth of his embrace, chuckling back.

[oliviasugarbabe]

i hope im not bothering you, but im a fandom writer and im greatly interested in the sugar baby lifestyle, so i was hoping to ask a few questions! is the stereotypical lifestyle of a sugar baby exaggerated or is it genuinely like that for some? is there something that most people don’t understand about with the relationship and what goes on, or is it as simple as it is portrayed in the media? do you have any tips when writing about being a sugar baby? thank you very much, i appreciated it! 💓

Not at all babe! I haven’t made a post like this yet so let me just write out a whole response about this stuff! I have lots to say to bear with me haha. I know you’re asking for your writing but I get constant questions about if sugaring is really this easy great glamorous thing from those thinking about doing it so I’m just gonna cover it all. 

 Yes the stereotypical lifestyle of a sugar baby is exaggerated, it’s not as simple as hopping on an app and getting a date with a reasonably attractive older man who will shower you with money and gifts for nearly nothing in return. I always tell girls this! It looks more like being active on multiple apps/sites and/or freestyling. It looks like hours upon hours on your phone perfecting your profiles, chatting with men who often will be time-wasters with no intention of spoiling you, and tons of dates with time-wasters too. Also, hours of screening men to make sure they’re legit. An insane amount of grooming yourself. Nails, hair, waxing/shaving, teeth whitening, exfoliating, moisturizing, soft feet, gym, perfume, makeup, cute lingerie, not getting the tattoo you want, even perhaps fillers and plastic surgery (I have tattoos and no surgery and I’m not skinny, but I know I’m giving up lots of rich older traditional men by looking this way) Having a spreadsheet to keep track of the lies you tell to each man (honestly that part is fun for me tho) and just way more work than you’d think from the popular stereotype. 

Lots of men won’t give you the money you want, and it can take a long time to find a guy who will and you might not even like him. Sugaring also includes fucking old, wrinkly men like a porn star and 100% making them think you love it. They’ll do weird shit like lick your whole face and you gotta pretend that’s fine too. These are rich, often white, privileged men from a generation and brotherhood that often look down on women and you have to fake the correct personality with each one. Can you drop everything to travel with him? Can you come up with a lie for your parents/roommates/friends? Can you say “no” to bareback sex in a cute way? Answer his call/text when you’re in bed and just wanna be left alone with Netflix? Ask for money without being nervous? Can you keep the conversation going on a date if he’s boring and awkward as hell? Giggle when he shits on your generation and other women? Not feel guilty about his wife he’s cheating on? Lie to everyone you know? Read on the internet about how disgusted some people are about what you do for money? Be seen with him in public? Be spotted by someone you know? Sure, these things are technically optional; you can just refuse every man who isn’t perfect, but a lot of women on here are afraid to talk about the fact that when you’re doing this because you need money, there are often tradeoffs and boundaries crossed in order to get paid, because that’s what sex work often is. I think it’s glamorized a lot and that ultimately hurts sex workers. I need breaks sometimes when I can’t take it anymore and I don’t have a current “main” daddy. Sex work has also done serious damage to my desire to EVER be in a normal relationship with a man, get married, or have kids. I already pretty much hated men but now I hate them more lmao. 

Lastly, like any sex worker, you perhaps will have to live with the constant risk of being outed to your family and friends, and the risk of having one of these men do something horrible to you. 

But yes, some girls DO live that lifestyle we dream of but it’s rare and hard to find and these women are often models or at least look like ones, live in the right cities, have the right connections, etc and just have access to that shit in ways that I don’t and many women don’t. Privilege still shows its face in the sugar bowl! Truthfully, there’s generally, for most of us, more money in escorting. Way more payoff for your time. I’d rather just have sex and leave with my hourly rate than spend all this time and energy being a whole girlfriend most of the time if I’m being honest. 

As for what the relationships are like, refer to the details above lol! Aside from that I should say I’ve had some good relationships but they’re men like any other. I deal with neediness, clinginess, condescension, etc a lot. They’ll flake on dates. Resist spending money just when you thought they might be a serious daddy. And again, it’s not just about being young and attractive. You usually also have to be interesting, smart but not too smart, sexy but not slutty, fuck like a porn star, confident, and sometimes, not show much that you’re a real person. Like, you can cry in front of a real boyfriend. If you cry in front of your sugar daddy, you might get dropped like a hot potato. You know what I mean? Be a perfect girl on his arm, or he’ll find someone else. Some daddies are good men sure and not like this, but still, lots of sugar daddies are part of a certain lifestyle and attitude and they expect something specific in return for their money. 

Lastly, writing about sugaring and sex work is something I do for fun and to be a part of my own community and to give honest word about sex work. I think that writing about sex work is best left to sex workers. Fandom writing is fun and harmless tho! If you’re gonna write about us, you made a good start finding someone who is actually in that world to ask about it! Sex workers write books and blogs about this life and I recommend finding them. There are a lot of inaccurate, shitty, harmful portrayals of us out there and I hope you do whatever you can to not contribute to that! Although....if you’re writing a sexy fanfic or something I feel like it’s fine either way cause I’ve gotten hot and bothered by all kinds of severely problematic wattpad stories and such so like. Anyways, if you want me to keep helping you, you can DM me and I’ll answer your random writing questions. I understand completely why people are drawn to writing about sugar baby lifestyles, it’s just not always what they wanna hear. I hope your piece comes out good! I’d love to read it if you wanna share eventually! 

[a-whump-muffin]

The Darkest Minds liveblog Chapter 22-24!

Chapter 22:

HE’S A CREEP RUN AAHH.

It wasn’t so much that I didn’t trust Clancy’s motivations; he just unnerved me. When someone takes such an interest in you, you have to wonder what it is exactly they’re searching for in your face.

Exactly??? My?? Point??

Oh, so him being kinda short is supposed to make things better? xD

If he had these kids following his every whim and order, it had to be because he was a good guy, right? People didn’t help other people just for their health. Clancy had the kind of confidence that made him the sun at the center of East River’s galaxy. Everything and everyone orbited around his light.

EXACTLY??

Psst, those two sentences contradict each other.

That is a really creepy possibility, honestly. And exactly the reason Ruby was so afraid of herself.

You are treading on thin ice, Mr Handsome. Stop pushing her around. She doesn’t like you staring at her, so you just stare even more.

Ok, yes, let’s actually talk business. Learning to use powers. So he can stay out of her goddamn head.

Chubs and Ruby bantering is my life now haha. I love how they’ve warmed up to each other.

LIAM haha poor boy he’s bad at sports. I relate. I use to get injured so much during gym class.

There’s something to be said about how she routinely calls him Clancy Gray, which makes sense since he’s been such a constant but distant presence in her life, kind of a concept more than a person. (We’ll ignore the fact that I ALWAYS use full names in my own stories lool look it’s just a culture/language thing ok)

How does he have access to all this information is the question.

Even though he’s gonna unveil his backstory here, I still don’t trust him…

But yeah that’s reasonable about why his father leaves him alone I guess. That was sort of how the rumors went in the first place - him being powerful enough that the government just has to accept they have to leave him be.

PROVIDED THESE DO NOT LEAVE VISIBLE SCARS. HM.

Gotta say, the real villain is definitely the adults/government. Even if I don’t trust this guy further than I can throw him, whatever side he’s actually on, it will have been a product of what was done to him and how he grew up.

Also, taking a step back, it makes sense why this guy has no sense of personal space or boundaries. Not even counting who he was before he got his powers, the mind control abilities really go a long way in contributing to that ease with invasion of privacy.

Your own father trying to murder you after experimenting on you will probably scar you for life, yeah.

Yeah training an army of superpowered kids sounds about right.

“They’ll get out from under my father’s control one day.”

That…might be dangerous given who knows how they were treated but ok.

So yeah still don’t trust this guy, but it really does seem everyone is out there trying to use these kids to further their own means and Ruby does need to learn enough to keep others out of her head. I don’t think she has much of a problem with the knee-jerk erasing and even influencing people to do what she wants anymore, she’s aware of what can trigger her erasing capabilities and she has shown to use her mind control abilities pretty well already.

Now just to keep this dude out of your head.

Chapter 23:

But also if I’m completely off the mark, it doesn’t bode well that he’s the type of leader who has taken the burden on his shoulders and won’t share it with others because someone needs to be that leader, the strong one who has all the answers.

Show the creepy guy being nice to a bunch of kids to make us let our guards down, I see how it is.

All these parallels!

Aww Zu, she’s getting more confident in herself it’s so nice seeing her at ease and showing off her powers.

There are so many emotions and pining going on.

His life has been pretty isolating though, so you can’t really blame him for wanting to form a connection with the only other Orange he has been able to meet.

And she’s desperate for human contact that doesn’t carry the threat of erasing memories and if he would stop being a creep then this could be a very nice relationship ok I get it.

Also, idk how I feel about using other people to experiment on without even asking them. I feel like if you asked nicely, some people wouldn’t mind helping you out, yet you have to go and fuck with people’s heads. Way to go.

Ooh Chubs has snapped. Understandable though, but he’s tsuntsun like a cat. When he’s upset, he lashes out with claws and his words hurt.

LIAM if this is a joke, I swear-

Chapter 24:

Snack him over the head, girl. Do it.

To be honest she hasn’t spoken to him at all for weeks so how would his memories have been erased.

He tried. Kinda failed in the process.

Oh, so that’s what Liam wants! Freeing the camps.

Rein in your jealousy Liam, lol, we need someone around here to be level-headed and reasonable.

YOU CAN PRACTICE WITH ME. Oh god how about worst nightmare ever for the poor girl?

I mean, I get it, he misses how close they were and now they hardly see each other but uh she’s practicing exactly because she’s terrified of what will happen if she doesn’t get a good hold of her powers.

Zu’s leaving? Aww. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.

When all this is over, will you come find me? There’s something I want to tell you, but I don’t know how to say it yet.

Oh?? What is this plot point?

Liam wants to make a difference, he’s probably the only one who’s thinking for the future and not just about surviving another day. Ahh, I like his type of character but you always are a bit afraid for them…

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Riverdale 5x02 Review.

So I’m really late with this review I know, to be honest I was undecided about whether I was even going to write it because well this wasn’t my favourite episode and I try to avoid being too negative and this review did feel like I was being very negative and repeating alot of the issues that I had brought up in other posts and reviews but ultimately I decided that I had said I was going to review Season 5 and despite it not being my favourite episode I thought there were still some really great moments in there which I would like to talk about but overall I do feel like there were some plotlines that were too rushed and just not fleshed out properly. Also I can’t watch episode 3 until tomorrow morning where I am it’s like 1 am at the moment so figured I’d kill the time by writing this. But anyway lets get into it and as always these are just my own opinions you are welcome to disagree but please be respectful and obviously there are spoilers. 

Archie

So first I want to talk about Archie’s storyline. So here’s the thing I kind of feel like Archie has had PTSD since the blackhood shot his dad all the way back in season 2. I think each new bad thing that happened only contributed to it, going to jail and being forced to fight in the underground ring, being attacked by the bear and nearly dying, the whole survive the night thing with penelope, then his dad being killed by a reckless kid. Just one of those things would be traumatising let alone all of them at once. I also feel like he has never really dealt with any of that trauma properly until this episode when it all just spills over. I think KJ did an amazing job with this storyline. I think alot of his pain this episode stems from his father’s death. Archie is having all these big milestones that he should be sharing with his father but can’t. I mean he’s just had prom without his dad there, graduation is coming up and so Archie who already misses his dad is probably missing him even more. Then on top of that he gets this video tape that takes him right back to when he felt the weakest and he has to confront all of the anger and pain that wells back up again. To start wth Archie tries to work through the feelings with physical excerise, punching his boxing bag or going for a run, working out in his gym but when that doesn’t help he starts to have angry outbursts. I mean Archie has alot on his plate at the moment, not only is he trying to work through his feelings about his dad not being there for these big moments , he doesn’t know yet if he’s even going to be able to graduate with his friends and then there’s the whole having feelings for betty and veronica and that mess plus his mum asking if he wants to write the letter for the guy who killed his dad. I think Archie said it best when Betty asked him if something was wrong and he replied what isn’t wrong. Also I’m sorry to say this but a really hated that scene. Not because of Archie snapping at Betty but because it made me a little irritated at Betty. I mean Betty at this point knows that Veronica found the song Archie wrote for Betty and that he doesn’t know if he’s going to graduation and she’s standing there with her arms wrapped around the guy she chose over Archie asking him if there is something wrong, I don’t know it just seemed like both an insenistive and kinda dumb thing for Betty to say. I want to make it clear that I’m not hating on Betty here we all have flaws and I think its more an issue with the writing than anything else but yeah that scene irritated me a bit. Also it did show us that whilst Veronica is still very much sticking to the lets pretend everything is fine plan Archie clearly is not comfortable with the plan and it does seem to me like he feels alot of guilt about lying. In my opinion Archie is the kind that whilst he makes mistakes he likes to own up to them and tell the truth so not telling Jughead the truth doesn’t feel right to him and I think this is frustrating him and the only reason he hasn’t come clean is because of Betty. Another issue I had with Archie’s storyline this episode is something that I’ve talked about before several times and it’s one of the shows biggest flaws in my opinion which is the storylines and characters not crossing over at all. I mean its pretty obvious in this scene that Archie is struggling at the moment and you’d think that having seen this his friends would reach out to him and try to support him and yet just like last episode there is practically no interaction between the core four in this episode. I mean even something as simple as one of them trying to ring Archie and him not picking up and then one them saying they are worried about him would do, something as little as a couple of lines of dialogue to show that his friends are concerned for him but instead it just came across as his friends either didn’t care about what he was going through or were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice that Archie needed them.

One of my favourite scenes was when Mr Augustine comes to see Archie and ask him to write the letter for his son instead and Archie makes that speech about how he understands that his son made a mistake when he hit his dad and that it was something Archie could have done himself but that the one thing Archie wouldn’t have done was keep driving. I do think this is true like I said before Archie is someone who will own up to and try to make his mistakes right. I think this scene also really showed how much pain Archie is in and how he is struggling with forgiving the son despite understanding that the son had made a mistake. I just think KJ’s acting in this scene was soo good and he hit the right balance between anger and pain. 

Another scene that I thought was really heartbreaking was when Archie comes home and finds his mum watching the tape. I just felt so bad for Mary seeing what Fred and Archie went through because of the Black Hood and her realising just how much trauma her son was keeping inside. My heart really broke for her when she said ‘I need to know what’s going on inside of you.’ This poor woman can see how much her son is struggling but he’s keeping it all inside and I know how scaring it is when you know someone is in pain but they are hiding it and you don’t know what’s going on inside their head. Also I find it so sad that Archie still feels like he was a coward and that he let his dad down. It’s after this conversation that Archie really goes over the edge though and smashes up the tv and then his uncle shows up and I think his uncle knew whated he needed, that he needed to get the anger out however I’m not so sure the method of letting Archie beat the living crap out of him was the best but I spose it seemed to work and again it really wrenched at my heart when Archie finally broke down crying hugging his uncle also I did get chills when the camera panned to the punching bag and you see that its covered in blood where Archie has been hitting it so much that his hands have bled. 

Ok so now I want to talk about my absolute favourite part of the episode, Archie’s letter to the judge. I full on teared up when I heard it like everything about it was perfect and I just know Fred would have been so proud of his son for writing it but the one line that really made me cry was the line ‘Fred Andrews believed in lifting up those around him and in second chances.’ If you could sum up Fred Andrews in one sentence it would be this one because Fred was always supporting those around him and trying to help them achieve their best. 

Charles and The Auteur Mystery

If Archie’s storyline was my favourite of the episode then this was my least favourite. My biggest issue with it was how rushed it was also the reveals were really underwhelming in my opinion. So this sotryline is kicked off with Betty and Jughead getting a call at 3am from Bret telling them he has information and asking to be moved to Solitary. But when Betty and Jughead go to visit him the next day and discover he’s been brutally murdered. At first they think it was David who killed him but then David himself shows up dead in what looks like an apparent suicide. But then the mystery thickens when Donna calls Betty afraid and on the run because someone is killing the Stonies and tells Betty that Joan is dead too and she thinks she is next and that it is connected to them trying to kill Jughead. Betty of course is having none of it and puts the phone down on her. But the next day she trys to get a hold of Joan and finds out that she really was killed by someone bashing her head in with a rock. So we reach the reveal of Charles being a serial killer. I full on rolled my eyes at this reveal. I hated it no other way to put it I just straight up hated and not just because I really like Charles’ character and seeing his relationship with Jughead and Betty grow but because it made little sense and wasn’t properly explored. To me it almost seemed like they got to this episode and then suddenly remembered that plot point where Charles visited Chic in prison and thought crap how do we explain that oh I know lets just have him murder some people in this episode and say he’s a serial killer that’s shocking right? Except it wasn’t shocking at all. Especially when by this point in the episode Hermosa had killed three people and Penelope had wiped out at least six people who happened to be her own family all because they weren’t letting her daughter get her own way. And then they expect me to be shocked that Charles killed two people and asked his boyfriend to kill a third. Also at least Charles had a fairly decent motive unlike Penelope, he killed the Stonies because they had tried to hurt his little brother and pin it on his little sister and most of them got away with it and he killed David because he was helping Bret but I also think that him letting Jelly Bean have access to those tapes could have played a part into it, I mean it is like Charles says he only kills horrible people who hurt the ones that he loves, and he does seem to be very protective of his siblings, it’s sweet in a very dark twisted kind of way. But like I said this plotline had no build up at all. I mean the whole Stonie’s murder mystery was started and ended in this episode they could have done it so much better just by moving things around a little. If they had revealed that Joan had been killed in an earlier epsiode for example. Maybe right after Jughead discovered the tape of masked Betty hitting masked Jughead over the head. How much creepier would have been for them to see that tape and then right after find out that Joan had been killed by a rock to the head? Not only would it have heighted the mystery of the tapes but it would have introduced the new mystery of who was killing the preppy’s sooner. Then they could have had Bret die 5x01 after Betty and Jughead went to see him they could have gotten that phone call they got in this episode and then found out he had been killed. Then have the final murder have David happen in this episode and the reveal that Charles was the one behind it. The mystery would only have been a few episodes longer but at least it woul dhave given us as an audience time to one get invested in the mystery and two actually wonder who could be behind it like we did with the video tapes. Also another thing that disappointed me was the lack of reaction from Charles’ family, like they hardly react at all, we don’t see Alice and FP’s reaction to the news either so again that was really underwhelming. But I think the thing that bothers me the most about this particular storyline is that if you took it out it would make no difference to the plot. Like this plot point of Charles being a serial killer changed nothing and was so unnecessary. But it’s ok I know a way they can fix this (just as a disclaimer they are not going to do this but its a fun idea so) I am chosing to believe that there is another twist to the story and that actually Charles is a victim and actually innocent in this, I’m choosing to believe that the Farmies, through Chic hypnotised Charles to kill the Stonies and David because Evelyn was working with them in the plot to kill Jughead and frame Betty and when they heard Bret was talking to Betty and Jughead they decided to tie up some loose ends and get rid of the Stonies. Also they wanted to get revenge on Betty and Alice for their roles in Edgar’s death and Evelyn’s imprisonment and so decided taking Charles away from them was the right price for them to pay. Yes I know it’s got some holes in it but I still think it’s a better storyline than the one we got so I’m sticking with it. In all seriousness though despite not likely how his character turned out I do hope we see Charles again. It is possible that maybe a little down the line they’ll give him a redemption arc I mean in Riverdale is murder really that terrible of a crime? I think the saddest part for me about this reveal is that I feel like Charles played a big part in helping Betty overcome her fears around having the serial killer genes because she knew her big brother had them too and he had his stuff together and was a respected FBI agent and if he could live a normal life and not go around killing everyone because he has these genes then she can too. Now they’ve taken that away from her which is probably going to make her doubt again and make her feel like a ticking timebomb. I just don’t think its necessary to make every person who comes into these characters lives evil. Also it is a rehash of the whole evil brother thing that they did with Chic and I said way back when Charles first started acting a little shady that I hoped they wouldn’t do a repeat of that storyline because that’s just boring and that’s exactly what they did. It would have just been so much more interesting to have him be morally grey but not a full out phsycho who kills people. Anyway I think I have ranted on long enough about this topic so lets move on to another underwhelming plot reveal. 

Jelly Bean is behind the tapes. See this is one that really should have been shocking. But again the way it was written just made it seem so underwhelming. Like the reason for her doing it was so weak, she didn’t want Jughead to go to college. Also I wasn’t hyped on the way the characters just shrugged it off like she full on terroised the whole town not just Jughead she brought Archie’s trauma back up causing him to pretty much have a break down this episode so she better march herself over to the Andrews house with a really good apology and start saving up to buy them a new TV because that’s the least she could do. Instead she just says she’s sorry to FP and gets a hug. I get the whole message they are saying here that Riverdale has created this situation were kids are doing really dark things but because of the amount of trauma they are put through they have got to the point when they themselves don’t even recognise when they are doing something really dark. I just think it could have been better written. Especially because other than Jelly Bean we didn’t know who any of the other people are in those videos. They mention that she had been hanging out with Ricky again and he was the one who started helping her with the tapes, they could have easily put a scene or two in where we saw them hanging out together even if it was just quick shots of them in the background of other scenes like we spot them sitting together in a booth at Pop’s. At least that would have given some build up to the reveal but again like Charles’ it kinda came out of nowhere. Also is it just me or are there a lot of people invested in what’s going on with Jughead I mean there’s Jelly Bean making the tapes, Charles murdering people for even daring to attempt to hurt a hair on his baby brother’s head and Veronica who pretending to still be with her ex to spare Jughead the pain of knowing his girlfriend cheated on him. Look I love Juggie too I’m just not sure he’s worth this much trouble especially as they are doing more to make his life more complicated than making things better for him as they are intending. Come on guys Juggie is a big boy you’ve got to let him deal with his own problems. Also as a side note I did find it kind of funny that when Jughead decided to tell FP about Jelly Bean he took his alcoholic Father for drinks, though it does look like whilst Jughead is drinking alcohol FP looks like he’s drinking water. 

Blossom and Lodge Family Drama     

 Ok these two plotlines I’ll be honest I didn’t care a whole lot about it was just kind of the same old stuff we’ve seen before. I did like the Lodge woman all banding together and standing up to Hiram and I love that Hermione finally grew a backbone and decided to divorce Hiram. But I must confess their plot to overthrow Hiram and the way they went about it was kind of dark I mean Hermosa literally arranged to have their own father beat up. I do think that maybe Hermosa has an ulterior motive to wanting to overthrow Hiram and if she sticks around in season 5 I could see her becoming an even worse villan than Hiram though it does seem like from some interviews with KJ that Hiram is going to be taking all that extra time to make Riverdale even more of a mess than it is already so we’ve got that to look forward to. 

As for the Blossom storyline again I didn’t care a great deal about it. I think it’s sweet that Cheryl is trying to right the wrongs her family has committed over the years by creating sanctuary land for the Uktena people. I also find it hilariuosly over the top that when they refuse and Cheryl tells her mother her mother’s respose is to just straight up kill them all. Especially as Penelope usually only does something if it benefits her and I’m not really sure how this will benefit Penelope unless it’s just an oppurtunity to revenge kill the family. Again I feel like there is probably more to this plotline and that it is somehow going to come back to bite Cheryl in the butt but only time will tell. Other than that I don’t really have much to say about these storylines. 

Theories for episode 3 

So my theories for 5x03 are 

1) FP will leave Riverdale with Jelly Bean to protect her from the town’s corruption and hopefully get her plenty of therapy. 

2) Betty will finally tell Jughead about her kiss with Archie. I really hope she is the one to tell him and that he doesn’t hear it from someone else. And I also really hope that he does find out because it’s starting to seem like he won’t and I don’t think that’s fair to Jughead and honestly will make me think less of Betty. 

3) Betty and Jughead will break up realising that with the distance they won’t make it especially as the trust between them has broken due to her kissing Archie again, if he can’t trust her when they are in the same town then how can they make it work when they are apart. 

4) Betty and Archie still won’t talk to each other and that’s gonna really annoy me. I mean they’ve only been friends since childhood so why would they need a one on one scene right. 

5) Kevin and Fangs might finally confirm their relationship. 

6) There are going to be lots of moments that are going to make me cry. 

7) There will be no mention of Charles or the effect him being a serial killer had on the family at all. 

8) Cheryl will be arrested for her uncle and maybe the rest of her family’s murders. 

9) There will be lots of references to Fred and maybe Archie saying goddbye at his grave before leaving for the army and that’s defo going to make me cry.

10) The last few minutes of the episode will be a flashforward of Betty with the gun and will set up the new mystery. 

So that’s it for now, I’m gonna be staying out of the Riverdale tag now as like I said earlier I’m not going to be able to watch the episode for hours yet where I am it doesn’t come on to Netflix til about 8-10am in the UK. 

[loadingluke]

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6 weeks post stage 3

Hey all, today I am 6 weeks post op stage 3.

Since my last update, I started to struggle with deflating the device. I started to notice that it felt like the device had twisted even more, and that the button was even further in my leg crease and borderline inaccessible. This all came to a head about a week ago, where I was stuck inflated for about an hour and was unable to completely deflate my device as normal and as I had previously. I emailed Dr Goossen and we decided to stop with the cycling as I was seeing him in a few days. I was really stressed that the deflate button was broken or something, and my anxiety proceeded to spiral to that point that just accepted that I will probably need to have another surgery to reposition the pump as the way it was was not really working, or worse, that I’d need my entire device replaced.

On Tuesday I had my 6 week post op checkup back in Brisbane, so I few up for the day. I went in with René and explained the situation, and I pumped up the device as normal. René then went to have a look and tried to deflate the device, and was also struggling. She said she had felt some scar tissue around the button (which is normal as scar tissue forms a capsule around the device as part of the natural healing) but this may be contributing to the issues I was having with deflation. After about 15 minutes of both of us trying our hardest to deflate the device we decided to just leave it until Dr Goossen could have a look.

When Goossen came in to have a look I explained our issues and braced myself as he is often not the most gentle (and I was a little raw from our 15 minutes of attempted deflation). He started to have a feel around the pump and then, like magic, deflated it with zero issues in 2 seconds. René and I both just stared at him amazed and dumbfounded as we have no idea how he managed it so easily when we had been on struggle street not even 5 minutes prior. I inflated the device again and he showed me exactly where to push and where the button was.

TURNS OUT. THIS ENTIRE TIME. I THOUGHT THE PUMP HAD TWISTED 90º TO THE LEFT, AND THAT THE BUTTON WAS IN MY LEG CREASE. WHEN ACTUALLY. THE DEVICE ROTATED TO THE RIGHT. AND THE BUTTON WAS ON THE FRONT, LITERALLY RIGHT THERE, EASY AS TO ACCESS. SO, this entire time, I had been pushing and prodding and squeezing my poor poor left nut in the complete wrong spot, and for no reason at all (see the attached video of the pump bulb to help explain this visually!).

I am assuming that during the earlier stages of healing when I was still a little swollen the button was being pressed even when I was putting pressure on the wrong side because it was able to press against the swelling, but as that has gone down the lack of resistance meant that the pressure on the wrong side wasn’t enough to deflate the device, which is why one day what was working fine suddenly wasn’t sufficient. Either way, once this was all clarified, I had no issue. I deflated and inflated about 4 times to make sure, and then sheepishly thanked Goossen for tolerating my ineptitude. Since then, the pump has been working completely perfectly, and the button is actually super easy to press. So there we go. I stressed out for no reason and all is well😂

Once that was all fixed up, Goossen and I had a little chat about what happens from here. I was given the blessing to go ahead to have sex once I hit 8 weeks, and he told me that he was very happy with how I’ve healed and that I have a beautiful penis (to which I replied with ‘thank you…literally thank you’ 😂). I’ve also been cleared to go back to the gym as of 6 weeks (gently at first of course!) and have been given instructions to continue cycling the device daily until I’m about 6 months post op. We’ve arranged to have a Skype check up in about 10 weeks, and then I’ll pop back up to Brisbane for hopefully my final sign off in the end of July, also around 6 months post op. Hearing that was honestly a tad overwhelming, it’s really hard to believe that I’m all done and that I don’t have to keep coming back, and honestly a little bit of sadness that I’ll not have much of a reason to see Goossen again once I’m all settled- he’s honestly an amazing surgeon and I think I’ll honestly miss him haha.

I did mention that I was concerned about my testicular implant and that aesthetically it’s still sitting a little too high for my liking right now. We’ve decided to not worry about it yet as 1) there is still a lot of swelling and 2) there is still a chance I’ll be able to yank it down over time. He said we can discuss it in July if it’s still something I’m unhappy about, but he was a little hesitant to surgically intervene unless I really insist- as this would require replacing the implant and could pose an infection risk/ could compromise the erectile device and probably wouldn’t be worth the risk. I decided to just keep tugging and then in July if it’s still an issue we can discuss it again then. He seemed optimistic that with some determination and patience that I should be able to shift it, so I’ll keep working on that.

I’m honestly still a little bewildered and shocked that this is all nearly over, after years of waiting to be at this point. Some days I catch myself thinking about and dreading having stage one, only to remember that I’ve already done it and I don’t ever have to do it again. I feel so blessed and happy I made it here, and I’m excited to move forward with my life without having my body holding me back. I’d just like to say thanks to everyone in here for being respectful and supporting me over the last 2 or so years during this process. All the kind words and support have meant a lot and I’ve appreciated it loads.

That’s all I’ve got to say for now, so far so good. I might be a little quiet now that I’m healed up and done with all my surgeries (at least for the time being) but as usual I’m happy to answer questions, and I will of course update if anything of note happens. Until next time 👍

[smallmediumproblems]

Summary: The Magnus Institute budget waits for no eldritch entity, and there are only two archival staff with enough patience left to answer Elias' questions.

Note: I missed the deadline to submit this to a contest ages ago, and kinda forgot about it...? but, it’s finished now, so, here y’go! Takes place sometime mid-season-3.

. . .

BASIRA: Do you think he's going to notice?

MARTIN (tense): I think there's not a whole lot we can do if he does. Not much he can do to us, either. I mean, who else is willing to put up with paperwork for him?

BASIRA: I'm a little surprised he still trusts you. With anything.

MARTIN (more tense, looking for an excuse to lash out): It's almost like I try to be helpful and cooperative all the time so people know they can rely on me.

BASIRA (not sure about the method, but approves of the results): Huh. Sneaky.

MARTIN (has snapped): Nothing about this is sneaky! We're literally asking him to finance his own-

MARTIN (CONT'D, lowers his voice, reminds himself that they’re not supposed to talk about Secret Plans): You know.

BASIRA: Fun, right?

MARTIN: You're totally sure we got everything on the list?

BASIRA: I checked with Daisy just this morning. She’s not happy about it, but she was very thorough. Melanie's, erm, needs , are pretty straightforward. Tim is being actively unhelpful.

MARTIN: He seemed pretty enthusiastic.

BASIRA: Doesn’t make him helpful. Anyway, you said it yourself. It’s too late to worry about it now. What’s the worst he’s gonna do to us for a little light subterfuge?

[Cut to several minutes later. BASIRA and MARTIN are sitting in ELIAS' office. BASIRA has her game face on, and her confidence is infectious. MARTIN has calmed down a bit. But only a bit.]

ELIAS: First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for meeting with me today. I know that our working relationship is a bit… strained, at the moment, and I appreciate the degree of professionalism this demonstrates in both of you.

MARTIN: That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me.

BASIRA: I just didn't want to leave him alone with you.

ELIAS: I believe you two were in charge of drafting the archive’s most recent budget request, is that correct?

BASIRA: That’s right.

ELIAS: I had some concerns to discuss with you before I filed everything.

BASIRA (somewhat defensive): This is the pared down version. We had to make some hard choices for what to cut.

ELIAS: I would be interested to hear what you decided to forego in favor of…

[Very brief beat as ELIAS flips through the budget, which he has printed out for the express purpose of quoting at them disapprovingly]

ELIAS (CONT’D): ...four dozen assorted hunting knives.

MARTIN: Mostly, it was just more knives.

BASIRA: Daisy goes through them pretty quickly these days. We figured it might be good to have a few stashed around the archive. For safety.

ELIAS: I hardly feel safe giving you easy access to weaponry, considering Melanie’s new hobby. Not to mention your collective history of emotional outbursts.

BASIRA (trying to pretend that she cares, not trying very hard): Oh, your safety. Yeah, that makes sense.

ELIAS: On the subject of safety, I see that you've opted to restock with what I can only call an excess of fire extinguishers. Hardly necessary now that Jane Prentiss is deceased, but I understand your concern.

MARTIN (eagerly): No, you’d think that, but they’re really good for a lot of things. I mean, we ARE dealing with a fire cult. The archive’s enough of a hazard already. Loose paper, old electrical sockets...

BASIRA (supportive): They’re great for self-defense.

ELIAS: I suppose it is a better alternative to knives.

ELIAS (CONT’D, continuing to flip through papers): Speaking of excess, you appear to have ordered twice as many supplies as you normally need for the breakroom. Would you care to explain why?

MARTIN: We’re not the ones who hired a bunch more people. We barely had enough for four of us, and now we've got five! Six if you count Daisy. She’s mostly in and out, but I’m not going to tell her she can’t have a cup of tea while she’s waiting for Basira.

ELIAS: You’re certain it has nothing to do with stocking a second meeting space that you’ve decided to assemble at without my knowledge?

MARTIN (carefully): ...no?

BASIRA (more casually; no plans here, Vader, just a diplomatic mission to Alderaan): Sounds kind of far-fetched.

MARTIN (deciding to roll with it): Should we do that? It could be a good team-builder.

ELIAS: My main concern is that you’ve listed a frozen margarita machine among the requested furnishings.

MARTIN (oh! that’s all it was): Oh-

BASIRA (to Martin, confused but not upset): I thought you took that out.

MARTIN (annoyed): Tim must have snuck it back in. That- that’s an honest mistake, we didn’t mean to submit that.

ELIAS: Then we’re in agreement that it doesn’t constitute a reasonable business expense?

[MARTIN makes a doubtful noise.]

BASIRA (also doubtful): I mean...

MARTIN: I wouldn't say that.

BASIRA: Have you talked to Tim lately?

ELIAS: Hmm. Point taken. Still, I can't spend Institute funds on it in good conscience.

[ELIAS scratches out the line item and continues to page through the budget intermittently as he talks.]

ELIAS (CONT'D): Let's move on to some of the miscellanea. Cassette tapes are entirely understandable, but are you certain you need this many?

BASIRA: The tape recorders follow Jon around, yeah? I figure, if he doesn’t come back, they’re going to stop showing up on their own. We need to plan ahead.

MARTIN (angrily; clearly they have argued about this before.): That is not why.

BASIRA (conceding, more amused than apologetic): And it makes more sense for each of us to have our own supply instead of ransacking Jon's office whenever we run out. That’s what Martin keeps telling me.

MARTIN: She won't stop stealing his pens!

BASIRA (frustrated. This is also something they've argued about before.): I need them. You never gave me any office supplies.

MARTIN: You were supposed to put that in with the budget.

BASIRA: Hard choices, Martin. This was one of them.

ELIAS: Is that why you’ve ordered nearly a gross of glow sticks?

BASIRA: Oh, no. That’s for research.

[Beat as ELIAS waits for BASIRA to elaborate. She does not.]

ELIAS (forcing a patient tone): What kind of research?

BASIRA (condescending, as if this should be obvious): Spooky research.

BASIRA (CONT’D): I’m not convinced the People’s Church is as dormant as we thought. I’m toying around with defensive strategies- redundant light sources, stuff like that.

MARTIN: It’s been very festive!

ELIAS: Would that also explain the assorted sports equipment?

BASIRA (it would not): Research.

ELIAS: The smart-home device and speaker system.

BASIRA (definitely not research): Research.

ELIAS: And is this a miniature zeppelin?

MARTIN (pleased with himself for contributing): Ooh, that one's me. Er, yeah. Research.

ELIAS: Is it meant to resemble a shark?

MARTIN (yes, it is): I… hadn't noticed.

ELIAS: What about the petrol?

BASIRA (Smugly. She knows that ELIAS knows exactly what she wants to use petrol for.): Definitely research.

ELIAS: I think not. I already cannot trust you with sharp objects. I don’t see how accelerants are a possibility.

MARTIN: We did also ask for a lot of fire extinguishers. You've got to look at the whole thing in context. There's a system here.

ELIAS (crossing out several lines): Regardless. That will also not be making the final list. One other item in particular drew my attention simply because of the price. What do you need a GPS tracker for?

BASIRA (immediately): Jon.

MARTIN (disappointed): Yeah.

ELIAS: Out of the question.

MARTIN: What if he goes missing again?

ELIAS: A tracker is an optimistic but unfeasible solution. The things that have an interest in Jon are likely to take him somewhere he cannot be tracked.

BASIRA: Plan A was to give him a bunch of knives, but you shot that one down.

ELIAS: In any case, the only way this would work is if he wore it every minute he was outside the Institute. Don’t you think that’s a bit invasive of his privacy?

[MARTIN begins trying not to laugh, and is quite unable to do anything else for a few seconds as the conversation continues.]

ELIAS (icy): Something you'd like to share with us?

MARTIN: I’m sorry, I- I can’t tell if you’re being serious.

BASIRA (trying to ignore him): We did talk to Jon about it. It’s not like we were going to stalk him.

MARTIN (would be sarcastic if he wasn’t still laughing): Who would do such a thing?

ELIAS: Do we need to postpone this?

MARTIN (managing to calm down): Nope, yep. I’m good. Hmmmmmkay. Where- where were we?

ELIAS: I believe we were at the start of a very serious human resources inquiry.

MARTIN (feigning interest): Ohh! Whose is that?

BASIRA (tired): GPS unit is a no, that’s fine. I’ll get him one of those kid-leashes out of pocket. Elias, was there anything else?

ELIAS: The rest of the budget looks to be in order. If I could discuss one other issue with you, I have some similar concerns with your reimbursement requests. I take it this list is similarly ‘pared down’?

BASIRA: Yeah, I didn’t do that.

MARTIN (alarmed): What?!

BASIRA (unmoved): Yep. Just put everything in a list and printed it out.

MARTIN (rapidly cycling through the five stages of grief): Why??

BASIRA: Because we all have massively more important things to do.

ELIAS: Perhaps if you had taken the time to edit the list, this meeting would have been much shorter.

BASIRA (smug that she’s managed to make this ELIAS’ problem, not hers): Misery loves company.

ELIAS: Indeed. You mentioned Tim’s instability earlier. He’s put down several months of a gym membership and listed the explanation as ‘vengeance’.

MARTIN (uncomfortable, unhappy about TIM’s state in general but unwilling to show it here, of all places): Yeah, that’s… been a thing.

ELIAS (dismissive): I don’t suppose he’s intending to punch the Unknowing out of existence?

BASIRA: We haven’t actually sorted out who he’s planning vengeance against. Could be Jon. I don’t think he’d punch you, but I don’t know him too well.

MARTIN: Honestly, it’s been a good way to keep him busy. I won’t say it puts him in a better mood, exactly? He’s not less angry, just, erm, distracted. I think it helps. He thinks it helps, that’s what matters.

ELIAS: It is at least easier to rationalize than the margarita machine.

ELIAS (CONT'D, flips a couple more pages): One last thing… Ah. I also wanted to discuss some of Jon's travel expenses.

BASIRA: Is this from when you framed him for murder?

ELIAS: I think you’ll find that my involvement led to him being found innocent, but yes. This would be his absence during your investigation with Officer Tonner.

BASIRA (resigned): Alright. What’d he do, now?

[ELIAS slides a piece of paper across the table.]

ELIAS: Is this a typographical error, or did he really try to request this much compensation for ‘emotional damages’?

[BASIRA makes an interested noise as she reads the figure.]

BASIRA: Sounds about right.

ELIAS (stern, disapproving): We have an entirely separate form for that. It hardly counts as a travel expense.

MARTIN (did not know this. stunned, distant, half to himself): We have a whole form for emotional damages…

BASIRA: I think he just wanted to pay back his friend. Rent, groceries- I think Orsinov did some property damage, even?

ELIAS: Ahh. I see. We should be able to provide for that, if he can acquire some itemized receipts.

MARTIN (muttering to himself): What else do we have forms for?

ELIAS (darkly): A great many things, Mr Blackwood. Let us hope that you never find yourself in a position to discover them.

MARTIN (refuses to be disturbed by whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean): So, like, a sabbatical program? Have we got educational incentives?

ELIAS (perhaps a bit annoyed that Martin isn’t playing along): Don’t you already have a degree?

MARTIN (defensively): Maybe I want another one.

ELIAS: Then I suggest we have that discussion in a separate meeting. I doubt that Basira needs to know the details of your plans for personal growth.

BASIRA: Depends on the kind. Daisy might be in the market for a new gym partner.

MARTIN (terrified, dead sure that’s a euphemism for something violent): Oh wow! That’s. Great, Basira!

ELIAS: If you two are quite finished, I have other things I need to accomplish today.

BASIRA (sarcastically): Good luck with that!

BASIRA (CONT'D): I’m heading out, see you two on Monday.

MARTIN: Basira, it’s not even lunchtime. On Wednesday.

BASIRA (referring to Elias): What, is he gonna fire me?

[beat]

ELIAS (disgruntled): Enjoy your weekend, detective.

[Door opens and closes as BASIRA leaves.]

ELIAS (ominous): ...while you still can.

MARTIN: Do you do that every time someone leaves the room?

ELIAS (oh for- what now , MARTIN): Do what?

MARTIN: Say ominous stuff while no one's listening.

ELIAS (chuckles. If there was a camera, he'd be grinning directly at it): I can assure you, Martin, someone is always listening.

[adamatomic]

Design of Doom Eternal

Wanted to jot down some thoughts while they were still fresh, and I hate writing threads on Twitter, so, here we are.

(Surprise! Male game designer has DOOM OPINIONS. BEHOLD LOL)

First, disclaimers: what follows is super subjective, pretty picky, and likely unjustified. I love a good mobility shooter - Doom 2016 and Titanfall 2 are the only western shooters I really enjoy, and each do super interesting things spatially, mechanically, etc. However, I’ve never worked on any kind of FPS type of game, and never worked on a AAA game, nor shipped a game during a global pandemic, and there’s a lot that I don’t understand about what goes into making this kind of thing, much less how it’s even possible. Making a followup to a well-loved and hugely successful game is also a terrifying prospect. Finally, I am about to "dwell” on what I perceive to be “negative” things about the game, which is pretty unfair, because there’s a LOT of positives (it’s fun, it’s gorgeous, the load times are crazy short, the vistas slay again, amazing accessibility options, perfect audio, etc etc). But I think this is a game where a lot of the positives are really in your face, and what again I personally perceive to be the negatives are a little bit harder to put your finger on. And this isn’t a review, and definitely isn’t yucking anyone’s yums. This is me trying to figure out why this one feels a bit different to play. Hopefully the unanimously positive reception of the game by literally everyone everywhere (including myself) balances out whatever acid might be in these queries.

OK!

Jungle Gyms Versus Canyons

Ok, so. Doom Eternal is structured a lot like 2016 in that it’s corridors linking big wave-based arenas, which is a good structure for a game about shooting all the things. Arenas can be flat-ish or tall-ish. Tall-ish arenas seem to roughly come in two flavors: jungle gyms, and canyons. Jungle gym arenas are the ones that I feel like took centerstage in the marketing and gameplay of Doom 2016, as a way of showing off the double-jump / ledge grab / launchpad vertical mobility stuff, and because they make narrative / thematic sense in the human-built oil rig environments that comprise much of Doom 2016′s level architecture. Jungle gyms are distinguished somewhat from canyons by generally having what feel like distinct “floors”, or solid planes creating multiple separated levels of combat. Canyons, even if they have some transverse traversal elements, are more open and chaotic, with less concrete divisions between elevations. I’m belaboring this essential difference because it has a bunch of second-order effects on gameplay - jungle gyms allow you to jump from skirmish to skirmish, you can use your mobility options to “interrupt” combat, while canyons are more continuous. Jungle gyms usually have more obstacles (like the aforementioned distinct floors) which make it slightly harder for long range enemy attacks to land, which reduces the overall ambient damage-soak.

The key thing about all these arenas - flat open spaces, distinct jungle gym environments, and canyon style playgrounds - is that you definitely want all of them in your game, because the strategy and tactics for playing these fights changes a lot based on these constraints. When do you want a roof over your head? When do you not? When do you want your back to a wall? These are valid and important differences for these games specifically, especially when basic resource management strategies in these encounters is pretty similar, and because the enemy behaviors and attacks have so much variety.

So far, though, Doom Eternal feels like it has a WHOLE LOT of canyons, and NOT a whole lot of jungle gyms. It’s possible that this changes later in the game, so take all this with a big grain of salt. But the first 3-4 hours of gameplay are really dominated by canyon-style vertical arenas, which isn’t necessarily ideal in terms of variety (and makes you angst a little harder for the wall-run affordances of other mobility shooters). They also tend to be slightly same-y, outdoor, rocky environments, versus the more oil rig-inspired, recognizably human-scale mining structures of 2016 (I’m sure this changes later in the game too). The oil rig-inspired stuff also lends itself to jungle gyms a lot more naturally, so I feel like these choices of arena shapes and environment types are kind of an interconnected and difficult problem.

None of this would really even qualify as a problem, either - this is nitpicking nitpicks, at this point - except relying on canyons so much exacerbates some of the “fussiness” of the combat changes (those are next). For me, anyways - I’m not sure anyone else is feeling like these are problems haha. And it’s a big game, so I’m not sure how much this stuff changes across the whole campaign yet!

Tactical Ballistics

A Doom thing I adored in 2016 and am continuing to enjoy in Eternal is the way ammo, health, and other arcade-style upgrades are thoughtfully placed around the arenas. It’s a nod to the strongest parts of Vanquish’s level design, and goes all the way back to using coins in Super Mario to lure players out to new places they might not explore otherwise. It’s a huge part of what gives the nu-Doom arenas their “chess-like” feel, and shifts the fights away from Serious Sam-style battles and makes them into four-dimensional puzzles. 2016 doubles down on this tactical approach by leveraging a kind of resource triangle of chainsaw kills, glory kills, and just plain firefights.

A lot of Eternal’s design seems committed to upping the ante on all of these strengths. Lower ammo capacities puts more pressure on the chainsaw kills. There’s a new technique called “flame belch” that turns the resource triangle into a resource square to accommodate armor. Monsters have “weak points” now, shortcuts that change their behavior or get you fast glory kills. It’s a pretty compelling jigsaw puzzle of abilities.

It also places a lot of strain on player attention and cognition, because all this is running on top of straight-up arena-wave firefights (with 7+ enemy types at a time, all with unique behaviors and optimal strats) AND beefy mobility controls (swinging, dashing, double-jumps, ledge grabs, launch pads, etc). It’s kind of a lot. But I don’t think this is necessarily the place for saying “this is DOOM, man, you got to keep it simple, just shoot the monsters, how come there’s even upgrades” or whatever. For so many reasons, but the primary of which is that most of this stuff rules, and throwing it away would suck. So what do you do?

I want to focus on two small, specific things that really stand out to me - I’m not totally sure that they’re actually “bad”, but I think they have a lot of weird secondary and tertiary effects that contribute to some perceptions of “fussiness” in some of the battles.

Weak Points

This is a big enough change that it is repeatedly tutorialized through video on every loading screen, after every game over, and after every new enemy is introduced... so I know it was on the designers’ radar haha. And it's an interesting addition - chess fights in Doom are already about hierarchies, and adding another tiny hierarchy within an existing hierarchy is a NICE bit of tension to add, it gives a kind of scrambly feeling that is good overall. The issue for me arises from an apparent or perceived damage scaling issue around these weak points. For example, the optional sniper rifle upgrade to the heavy cannon and the optional sticky bombs upgrade to the shotgun insta-wreck the arachnotron and revenant enemies’ weak points, while sustained plasma rifle fire doesn’t seem to ever do the job. Which makes sense on paper - this is a nice way of putting pressure on the player’s weapon choices and ammo, which is what it’s all about. Although I guess you could argue that it’s also all about movement, and that this particular combat pressure has a pretty tenuous relationship with mobility in general.

Either way, it means you spend a lot of time squinting at your weapon wheel mid-battle to see how many shots your shotgun still has, because you ran out of chainsaw fuel a while ago, and are still being actively bombarded at a pretty long distance (because its a canyon and not a jungle gym). I know, I need to git gud, trust me, i KNOW. But check out the weapon wheel ammo display size in Doom 2016 versus Doom Eternal:

I love the new color scheme and ammo icons in Eternal! But it’s 3-4x harder to read the actual, very important ammo counts.

All these small changes add up to something that feels like a pretty different gameplay experience compared to the more spatial (read: movement-based) and literally easier-to-read resource management stuff from 2016. Which, it’s a sequel - failing to sufficiently differentiate it is its own huge risk. And, to be fair, 2016 had its fair share of fussy (though more legible) weapon switching. But when you add this stuff up, the matrix of considerations in moment-to-moment combat in Eternal is pretty different from 2016, and I think it largely comes down to the damage scaling around the weak points. While you can technically choose to play through battles without leveraging weakpoints (thus sidestepping most of these cascading issues), this approach is heavily incentivized by the major behavior changes that happen after you hit weak points (in addition to the constant tutorializing) and the waves appear to have been balanced around taking advantage of these things. Whether or not these are even flaws, technically, whatever they are is exacerbated by the UI design of the weapon wheel AND the relatively popularity of the relatively unobscured canyon arenas. So it’s hard for me to judge weak point damage scaling in a vacuum.

Overall, these new combat options make the arenas feel more constrained and more prescribed. Design is a nightmare this way: sometimes by giving people more choices, you’re actually giving them less. My pitch for a small tweak that might engage with some of these issues would be to keep weak points, but get rid of the damage scaling and maybe make the hitboxes a little bigger. The goal here is NOT to make weak point enemies easier so much as to open up options about what weapons you can use against them, thereby reducing wheel squinting, thereby freeing up more attention to movement and all the other stuff that ruuuules about nu-Doom in general.

Also, I should clarify that it’s entirely possible that I completely imagined the weak point damage scaling, and am a big dummy with bad aim.

Flame Belch

This is a pretty small thing, there’s this new “flame belch” move, intended to complement the existing chainsaw and glory kill moves as a way of “farming” resources from combat, one of the things that really defined Doom 2016. It differs in one huge way though, in that it has to be committed to BEFORE killing a monster. Chainsaws and glory kills ARE kills. Flame belch adds a status instead, which is “cashed in” later when you do the kill. If chainsaw kills and glory kills and BFG shots are Super Mario jumps, Flame Belch is more like a Tony Hawk jump - it starts early and is carefully calculated. Which is pretty dope!! But in this environment where weak point damage scaling and canyon layouts are already putting huge strains on the player’s attention, it feels like a big ask. The “triangle button” mechanic from 2016, the BFG, was a kill move with cool-down, so really I’m just suggesting stuff they already tried anyways. There’s no way this is news to anybody, much less the developers haha.

But... I would love to play a build where flame belch was totally a thing, just it was a finishing move, not a status thing. Let it plug into that reload-replacing resource-farming punctuation pacing flow. That shit rules.

Of course, I have to wonder what the unintended secondary and tertiary consequences of these suggestions would be. Good action games are often tenuous and deeply interconnected things where results are really hard to predict. Maybe they already tried these ideas and they sucked, or they know their own game a lot better than I do, and have a big stack of reasons this stuff would suck for most of their player base.

But wait...

Where The Hell Am I?

Last section, I promise.

I am extremely not going to weigh in on whether or not Doom games need “Story” or not, or what that even means.

But...

If you are driving a monster truck, it is probably pretty fun to see a big line of cars in front of you, and know that you are about to drive all over those cars, and that at the end is a really big fancy car... and you are going to drive over that too.

The general conceit of Doom 2016, that you are on one end of a Mars base, and you need to get to the other end, and in between is a whole lot of cars demons, is a good one. It has good monster truck-ness.

So far this is something that I’m struggling to extract from Eternal. I’m not really sure who any of these grumpy folks are, or where it is that they are, or why I am going down this corridor (aside from the very Doom-like fact that it is the only corridor around).

The problem for me is decidedly NOT that I don’t understand the slayer’s emotional whatever, or that I haven’t been painstakingly expositioned into the specific hierarchies of the demon universe, or anything that I think would normally be described as a “narrative”. For me, it’s that I don’t get to sort of soak in the anticipation of the loooong line of cars I’m about to crunch.

Does Doom need a story? Idk. Doom might need a lot of about-to-get-crushed cars though.

Finally finally finally, and this is highly subjective, but I think the slayer is just more fun when he’s an X factor or a rogue agent. NPCs recognizing the slayer feels sort of weird to me? The feeling that he is a fly in the ointment I think is stronger and sexier when he’s like... outside the canon, almost. I’m not totally convinced that having him Kratos around is as fun as having a bunch of demons and priests both confused and terrified of what this dude is doing.

OK

I need to get back to family stuff. They let me sit here and type this out, which was very kind of them. Only five tantrums so far. Either way, I’m looking very forward to playing more Doom Eternal...

...just as soon as I finish designing 17 more shirts in ACNH.

Hope everyone’s staying home and staying safe! Rip and tear, friends. Rip and tear <3