I think it’s interesting how as time goes on Zoro kind of becomes more and more like mihawk in some ways whether that’s just because if you spend time with someone for 2 years you’re bound to pick up their habits or a deliberate attempt to emulate him is a conversation for another time. And Mihawk and Zoro where already pretty similar at the start so it’s a little hard to notice now.
But yeah whether unconsciously or consciously Zoro is becoming a bit more like Mihawk and it’s interesting to think that while this means maturing in some ways (he’s swordsmanship for one but he’s also just quieter much more assured of himself) it also means deaging in some others.
Despite their significant age gap and general dispositions, when it comes down to it Zoro is just a lot more emotionally mature and developed than Mihawk is. And a big part of why is because he found something larger than himself to devote his life too, hell Mihawk himself even kind of acknowledges this when he agrees to take Zoro on as a student when Zoro begs for the sake of his captain and crew. He acknowledges that putting aside his own ego and dreams for the sake of someone else isn’t something he can do and sees it as a fault in himself and a strength in Zoro.
Mihawk may be outwardly mature and his skills defiently did not stagnant but I’d wager that Mentally Mihawk is still stuck at the same age he was when he took over the title of world’s strongest swordsman. Honestly maybe even younger. And it isn’t until training Zoro, letting Perona stay with him, for probably the first time in his life taking charge of lives outside his own did he finally unarrest his development.
If Zoro is purposely trying to emulate Hawkeyes, which it wouldn’t be a surprise if he was that’s who he’s trying to be Afterall, then it would honestly set him back emotionally because fundamentally as he is now Mihawk’s attitude doesn’t work in a crew. It’s too singular, too abrasive. And while that abrasiveness can be useful in Zoro’s role as Luffy’s first mate sometimes it makes him a little too callous a little too apathetic, like with his disregard for Luffy’s sadness over vegapunk.
But Zoro has his crew to temper that, they are honestly just too ridiculous to ever stay serious around. And try as he might to hide it Zoro is also just a silly dude who likes to be horrifically petty with his opponents. And zoro still has so much fire in him, so much he has too prove and so much he wants to protect to ever really fall into Mihawk’s apathy. Zoro has Luffy who even after they reach their dreams will probably still continue to turn the world upside down forever keeping Zoro in some kind of trouble and his life interesting.
Zoro can’t be Mihawk because even Mihawk can’t be Mihawk anymore. Being with crossguild and crossing with the Red hair pirates and the strawhats is going to change him, it has too. if Mihawk is going to live after losing his title he’s probably gonna have to become a little bit more like Zoro.
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Feeling very violent rn so here's a very controversial opinion:
Everything after season one of Young Justice sucked.
Look, I know I'm obsessed with the show but that doesn't mean it's good, it means that I'm too deep into it at this point to get out. There are good moments within the other seasons but in general? They were not good.
I'm sorry. I understand that they wanted to be creative and have a neat narrative and deep lore and all that. And they do! The narrative and lore is extremely deep.
But the plot? The characters??
Season one was an actual functional show that balanced character development, plot and dialogue with world building, lore and messaging.
The other seasons do not do that.
Season two bounced back and forth between like 16 characters. We got some development for some characters but even that was minimal compared to the character development in S1. And this isn't me complaining that the og group wasn't in S2 enough. That's not my issue. I would've loved to focus on a new group and I think that Jaime, Bart, Ed and Gar would've been super cool to focus on. I loved what character development they did have and I craved more.
But the problem? The problem is when you have 16 fucking characters that you are trying to develop and shove into a coherent plot and have actual meaningful scenes. There just wasn't enough focus on S2. Imo, S2 was meh because the characters got left by the wayside. The plot, dialogue, world building, lore and messaging was fine, there just seemed to be a lack of heart/warmth in the show because of the characters. It's hard to get invested.
Then holy shit. S3 introduced more characters. And the plot got more contrived and 'big picture' to the point that it started to abstract. It felt like nothing mattered. There were no stakes, you were just watching things happen. There was 50 fucking things happening an episode and 80% of it was lore/world building. It felt like I was studying for a fictional history exam.
I'm pretty sure the main character in S3 was earth 16. Just the entire universe. Because goddamn. We checked in on almost every living being and EVERYTHING was a plot point. Most of it wasn't even relevant to anything happening in the season. Man it was.... it was bad.
And at that point it just wasn't enjoyable at all to watch. I probably should've stopped watching but at that point the sunk cost fallacy had already kicked in. I knew it could be good. Maybe it could be good again. And people were constantly praising it as cinematic genius so I was like 'okay well maybe I'm missing the point? Maybe you aren't supposed to enjoy shows? Maybe this is fine?'
But season four broke me.
The creators heard that people were frustrated by the lack of character focus and the episodes following 72 characters and the episodes switching between 50 different subplots every episode and their solution? Their solution was to take allllllll the different unconnected plots and, instead of evenly spreading them throughout the season, jam them all into 'arcs'. So you had a bunch of mini seasons consisting of 3-5 episodes dedicated to a cast of ~5-8 characters (some of them new). And each of these episodes had unconnected a plots, b plots and c plots.
THAT IS NOT A SOLUTION
Holy shit that is not a solution.
Not to mention the overarching plot of the season, in which we had no fucking clue what was happening until the final episodes where everything became a speedrun to wrap everything up. We literally had no idea what the main plot was until it was ending.
Good god it was bad. It's bad writing!
I know people liked it and good for them. You should like what you like and you don't have to justify it. But for me it was insanity. I'm sorry I actually don't want a season long subplot where Beast Boy is depressed and sleeps all day. I would be cool with it if it had anything to do with the larger story but, surprisingly, spending five minutes watching Beast Boy sleep every episode didn't make for compelling storytelling.
I'm still not over how we didn't even know who the main villain was until the end of the season. And then all of a sudden he does a villain monologue to tell everyone his evil plan and his motives. Super cool actually. I love it when I have no idea what the stakes are for the majority of a show. It's incredibly good storytelling when you leave the audience in the dark about a major player in the plot for all of the plot. And then doing an info dump evil monologue in the final episodes to rush through the explanation??? Fucking fantastic and not a sign of terrible pacing at all.
I'm just so frustrated. The show isn't about being a show anymore. The show is an entire cinematic universe shoved into 20 something episodes. It's desperate to tell every single story at once, audience, pacing and good writing be damned.
I'm so tired of the constant praising of Greg. His whole 'i don't write endings because life doesn't have endings' and 'i don't write cliffhangers, I just leave things open ended' thing is pretentious bullshit. I'm tired of pretending it's not. A good story has an ending. Stories are not life! Some of the best shows I've ever watched had planned endings. And oh my god. The cliffhanger thing... that's just semantics my guy. Greg you write cliffhangers. You can insist they aren't but I'm going to call a spade a spade.
It's also.... I'm fine with explaining things, in fact I love it because it's an excuse to talk about the stuff I love, and I have a fairly decent knowledge of comic book lore. So, I could not only understand what was happening in the show but I was also super enthusiastic about explaining it to people. But hey Greg? Hey buddy? If 90% of your audience doesn't know what the fuck is going on and needs to be familiar with super specific obscure comic characters from the 70's then you might have a problem.
I think I realized halfway through s4 that the most enjoyment I got from an episode was when an obscure comic character would cameo in it. But then I realized that a) they generally weren't explained at all and b) 50% of the time they weren't just hanging out in the background and they were vital to the plot. So to understand who the fuck they were and what the fuck was happening you had to be familiar with... well all of DC comics actually.
Anyway this rant is getting long and unhinged and I don't think there's a point so I'm going to cut myself off even though I have so much more to say on the topic. I think my general point is just that I didn't enjoy watching the later seasons and it's chill if you did and we should all respect each other's opinions ✌️
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sometimes I think about how when I went to college for a year before I dropped out (basically failed out,) the counselors/dean told me they can't help me at all or give any accommodations unless I have an official autism/adhd diagnosis. that might sound logical at first, but when you think about it more, it's actually quite fucked up. if someone is struggling really bad, what's the harm in helping them? why do they require a paper to get even the smallest amount of help? people who don't need help aren't going to be failing miserably without help! even NTs could benefit from some adjustments to the horrible school system! (but changing the entire system is a whole other conversation that the school system isnt ready for)
but even if you do agree to jump through their hoops, you realize it's even more fucked up that the diagnosis process requires YEARS in most cases (in my case it took 4 or 5 years, can't recall exactly now, for autism/adhd diagnosis, which would have meant i finished school before getting it if i managed to mot fail out, or i wait that long before going back, which is a whole struggle itself) and they also tried billing me for THOUSANDS of dollars because of insurance issues!!
so you put a ton of time and money into this, and then get told the only accommodation they are willing to give you for autism and adhd is "a little extra time on tests"
....
my test scores were the best part of my whole class experience. that was NOT what I struggled with!!!!! those tests were all online and could be done in the comfort of your home where you can accommodate yourself and have plenty of time left over when you finish them because you are comfy in your own space, (and also, no one was stopping you from having your notes/books/google open to find the answers,) and you don't even need a time consuming, expensive diagnosis for that!
SO WHAT'S THE POINT!!!!!!!
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man, its such a drag trying to find objective reviews of books with disturbing content. 9 times out of 10 it will center around the shocking subject and criticize it mainly on how justified was its usage.
Read Tender Is The Flesh yesterday and I wanted to see what more people thought, but ugh its so tiring having to filter through all the shocked normies.
I wanna hear peoples thoughts on the issues of sustainability that have been entirely left out of what is an obvious satire of late stage capitalism and the meat&dairy industry!
I wanna be validated on my nitpicky pro science sceptics pet peeves about how little enthusiasm the author has for the scientific method, how shallow the worldbuilding feels when youre faced with the premise of " all animals carry a virus deadly to humans, so they can no longer eat meat". I have a million questions having some basic interest in biology that I do. I have a million questions from being a vegetarian by simple preference. I wanna hear from other people who have trouble suspending disbelief cus INSECT PROTEIN IS RIGHT THERE AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN PEOPLE KILLED THEMSELVES BECAUSE THEY COULD NO LONGER EAT MEAT THATS INSANE
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