#and low key it IS plot relevant and in character for her to do that

[devilsskettle]

actually it does kind of bother me that people don’t want to talk about how margot verger is a poorly written/poorly adapted lesbian character because we want to like her so bad given her sympathetic circumstances and tentatively happy ending/happy marriage. also because it’s hard to parse if she’s a more or less offensive depiction of a lesbian in the book because she’s a “stereotype” (butch) and it’s implied that she’s only a lesbian because of abuse at the hands of her brother (not an implication they reverse in the show necessarily) and because the writing is both a product of its time (the 90s) by a writer who has previously written transphobic/homophobic tropes (see: the silence of the lambs, which the show does not adapt, which i think was a smart move tbh). but low key wouldn’t it have been cool to have a butch lesbian get a (tentatively!) happy ending in a mainstream horror tv series

[skyfallscotland]

Ok so Rebecca did a one hour panel today in Sydney with Lynette Noni hosting, where she asked questions and then they opened it to fans. I've kind of summarised the things I haven't seen mentioned over and over, but I don't frequent the subreddit anymore or use TikTok, so there might be overlap. In any case, it's long. Settle in. I've sectioned it into plot/character relevant first, then themes and interesting facts about her and her writing. Basically, you all came with me. 💗

• In book three (and every book thereafter) we'll be going to more and more new places. She specifically worded it as "watching the map expand" whether that's significant or not, I don't know. (I was thinking Isle Kingdoms for OS, but maybe that's just my wishful thinking).

• She implied Jack will have a reason (explained) for uh...being a power-hungry prick? lol

• She's hella defensive of Dain, which I love. #DainApologistsClub 😌 Some highlights include:

"You guys give Dain so much shit for the same thing Xaden does. You really do and you're so fast to forgive Xaden and not Dain. Why? Is it because he's hot?"

And, "when push comes to shove, all Dain did—yes he violated her boundaries, as does Xaden—but all he did was trust his dad when his best friend no longer spoke to him. That's it."

"When Dain looks at her (in the interrogation chamber) and says 'if you had just told me, none of this would have happened', he's not just talking about the interrogation, he's talking about Liam, he's talking about if she had just trusted him (in Fourth Wing) it never would have happened." 😢

• She was asked about Liam's appearance in the interrogation chamber and definitively put to rest any signet theories involving that. "She's so alone in that moment and...I don't read fan theories but sometimes they reach my ears; she's completely disconnected from her magic in that moment, she can't even reach out for Tairn or Andarna, which are the bonds that are actually most important to her. She can't reach out for Xaden. And that's the one person who would have prevented that from happening the last year, so it's natural that's who her mind would summon."

• She's thought about a spin-off series, but she's just trying to survive this series.

• Someone asked her if there'd be any redemption and romance for Jack Barlowe and honestly, thanks guys, I don't think she's ever coming back to this country 💀 ("Are you getting enough sleep? Uh...I mean, from his prison cell maybe? No.")

• Someone asked "what is Garrick's signet and why hasn't it been shown yet?" (shoutout to this girl, she's the real MVP) to which Rebecca said "it's very much in book three, I love it."

• Someone asked about the orange dragons and unpredictability re: Amber, Jack, Varrish and then Imogen and Brennan. Rebecca said some dragons might look for traits like their own and some look for balance because it's a partnership; and that Brennan as a strategist needed that little bit of unpredictability in his life (lol, I think he got it).

• She didn't always plan for Violet to have two dragons. Originally it was going to be one (Tairn) and the editor had hoped that she would sway towards a weaker, smaller dragon and she thought that was a little too close to Abraxos in ToG, and so they compromised and gave her both. She also went on to say she doesn't like overpowered heroines and since Tairn is extremely powerful, Andarna balanced that out. (I'm not...I'm not sure how that works out? But that's what was said.)

• We are definitely going to find out more about the original six (and Lynette asked if that was a spin-off possibility and was shushed, so she's thought about it at least, but I get the idea she's thought about a lot of possibilities 😂)

• There's no timeframe for the release of the final two books.

• Someone asked if Violet's dad was Malek to which she was kind of shocked. He's not a god, guys. And low-key I JUST WANT TO KNOW HIS NAME. 😤

• On Sgaeyl: "You do (get more of her) but holy crap is she pissed. So—I'll tell you that about Onyx Storm—she is really, really mad at Xaden and she's not exactly speaking to him at the moment. So it's hard for her to speak into that bond when she's not speaking to him." 💔

• She was asked about the Violet dated Halden theory (which was fucking hilarious because the poor girl misspoke and asked if Xaden dated the prince and we were all really confused about which TikToks the poor thing had seen (note to self: consider cam/xaden), anyway after we got to the bottom of that, Rebecca replied, "I think you should read the third book." Which I'm taking to mean, the man is making a damn appearance and we're gonna find out for ourselves 👀 Hey, if I'm lucky maybe we'll even find out his surname

• Finally she said she has EP on the Amazon series, they've all been exceptionally protective of it and that she's happy with how it's going (they're not near casting yet and she doesn't want to really comment on that ever, to leave each role open to as diverse a cast as possible). She said the production team has come to the signings in LA to meet readers and see what they love and are passionate about when it comes to the series to make sure that's honoured.

"Like I mean, I've seen certain...like what can I say without getting tackled to the ground? Let's just say they've already taken steps to make sure that what you guys love about the story is envisioned and that it's not run amok. And I'm very happy with it, they're super protective of it." Which could just be me reading into it, but the first place my brain went was the dragons 👀🐉 and the CGI or whatever.

• She was asked about where the inspiration for the universe came from and she said that when her Entangled decided they were going to do romantasy they asked her for five pitches and Fourth Wing was one of them (she won't say what the others were because she might still write them someday). She said she likes the fated mates trope but she wondered what that would look like if the dragons were the ones mated, not the humans and the humans who couldn't stand each other were forced to be around each other because of this. 

• Her first ever book was romantasy but it didn't sell

• She's never really written enemies to lovers before.

• She likes found family themes because she was raised in a military family and moved around a lot, so that makes it hard to keep in touch with your extended family, and after she married her husband and became a military wife, it was their found family that was there for her—it was her found family who helped her move her house, who sat with her when her husband was injured in Iraq, etc, so she thinks it's very important to show that your family is also the people you choose and that can be just as strong as any blood tie.

• She was asked (by Lynette) why she wanted to show death and the reality of war and she said, "I've been surrounded by it. My husband's been at war since 2003, he spent 22 years in the army, first as a 19 Delta cavalry scout and then ten years as an apache pilot and we buried our friends. And I saw what it did to him, and I saw what it did to our friends, I saw what it did to our children, to us, and I love being able to examine it from a fantasy perspective just because I think fantasy gives us a unique environment from which to critique our own world by viewing it through the lens of another. And I've always delved into those themes as to why we do this to each other and where is there hope to stop it?"

• As an author her favourite scenes in Fourth Wing were the dagger stealing scene (very important to their chemistry and romantic development—"she's the only person he's taught ever, how to actually kill him") and the first kiss scene.

In Iron Flame it was the interrogation scene and how that ends with Dain and Xaden and everything coming together.

When asked about a similar scene from Onyx Storm that elicited the same strong emotion from her she said "you're not gonna like it" and that's it 💀

• She would consider writing fantasy again after she's done with the Empyrean world, maybe one of her other pitches, but she won't truly think about it until she's survived this one.

• She spoke about the "kill your darlings" writing advice and how if you love a scene but it doesn't move the plot, you've gotta cut it, and how she did that with the final scene in Fourth Wing, which was originally 7k words of Violet POV pulling information out of Xaden.

• When asked about fan theories she actually said something I found a little sad. "I don't listen to fan theories. One, I'm not on TikTok—it's a little bit more important for me to be alive than to listen to what other people think they know about me, and two, I don't ever want fan theories to bleed into my writing."

〰️ And that's it! If anyone's going tomorrow, please voice record the whole thing and report back lmao 🙏 🫶🏼

ETA: part two is here, x

[lyquynhnhu]

Episode 9 thoughts

I appreciate the recap from Luke point of view and how he fell for Natsuko. I was waiting for an episode from his perspective.

I wondered, if Luke was always able to use the powerful technique he did in episode 6 and 8, why didn’t he used it in episode 1 and 2? Well, it seems that power comes from his feelings for Natsuko, so it make sense that he didn’t use it before. Maybe he wasn’t even able to do it in the movie.

Finally, Natsuko reveals the full story of “Tale of Perishing”. To QJ only, though. Why didn’t she reveal it from the beginning instead of keep it a secret and only tells bit of it? Well, she did tell something in episode 2, but Luke made her angry so she refused to reveal further. Also, regarding episode 2, she knew about the flying void, but she didn’t explain how to defeat them. My theory is that that specific battle wasn’t shown (only narrated during Unio funeral to contextualise the poor harvest) or there was no battle at all. Episode 2 was titled “Defend”, so it could have been a defence battle and voids just retreat after ruining the harvest to weaken their enemies.

In Natsuko’s defence, she does admit several times that she never understood the original movie and once the story stopped following the plot, it was probably hard for her to logically imagine future outcomes. She doesn’t even noticed that she is changing the story, but at the same time she realise that since Unio and Destiny didn’t die, the probability of Luke falling into despair are low.

Natsuko is indeed in a complicated position (but she is not aware of it). Since she loves the original, she has no desire to change it. At the same time, she tried hard to save the characters from the tragedy. She is indecisive, and her indecision is her fault. She has also difficulty to understand her own situation. She is not sure if she is dead, reincarnated, dreaming or if she can considered that world as a different reality. If the characters are just “characters” or real people.

By the way, reading this week interview, it seems in episode 11, Natsuko’s will finally take a decision about her relationship with the movie. Maybe we will understand what she like about this movie and if she has always wanted to change it to give the characters an happy ending.

QJ is MVP this episode. In the original movie he didn’t seem relevant, at all. Always in recharge when void attack and probably forgotten near the end. He was suppose to be the last survivor, but he decided to sacrifice to change the future. Didn’t expect this, since the preview suggests that Unio was the one about to die. Hope no other character die, Unio already at risk 2 times. A 3rd time is too much.

The thing that most attracts my attention in the preview of episode 10 is Baobab talking to Natsuko. I was already suspicious of her from the second trailer and in episode 3 she was trying to tell Natsuko something but stopped because that was a day to celebrate. They never resume the conversation after that.

The new key visual is very impactful. “It’s all you fault” is directed to who? Instead of Luke, it seems it’s Natsuko who says it. To the original creator? But if the original director never created the movie, that world wouldn’t exist either. Or are the movie and that world separate things, but the bird is forcing the original plot? Anyway, Natsuko looked really angry.

The original movie was sure a tragedy. It makes no sense watching a story that end with the end of the world (ok, the title implied it, but at the end it feels just a waste of time). No wonder it gave depression to the viewers.

I can’t imagine what will happen in the last 3 episodes. How will they wrap the “original ending” storyline and “Natsuko and Luke first love” storyline.

This episode seems also to imply that Natsuko is not capable to draw original things. All her drawing are from the posters we saw in the studio where she worked. And when working on “Hatsukoi” she said that “nothing can be born” (literal translation from Japanese). Maybe not having romantic experience wasn’t her only issue. She probably only worked on adaptations or stories written from someone else, never on original concept.

From one of the interviews, they said that “Zenshu is a rom-com”, emphasising it. Not it’s an isekai with romance as subplot. The romance is the main genre. And I never seen a rom-com in which the lovers get separated. I don’t want Natsuko to save the world and return to reality. Even during peaceful time she never made an effort to return to reality. She has given up it until the bird director told her to go back. And I think the director said that only to get rid of her, maybe it’s not even possible.

[dokidokitsuna]

Goldilocks in Grimmland

This is so, so premature...but my muses have been with me from start to finish on this idea and I adore it, so I'm talking about it now! :D

So in the RWBY NeverFell AU, Yang's little mishap during the Vytal Festival actually follows her around for quite a while; with pretty much everyone but her closest friends whispering behind her back about what she did to Mercury. This is very isolating and frustrating for her, especially since she knows from Ruby's eye-witness account that Merc was definitely faking his injury. She's determined to figure out how and why she saw that illusion, and also kinda wants revenge against Mercury for low-key ruining her life. ^^; And her investigation eventually leads her back to him...except, he looks a bit different now. Shocked by his Grimmification and eager to know more, she dives even deeper into the mystery.

Unfortunately, by this time, Salem has arrived at Beacon, parking her giant whale outside the premises similarly to the way she did in Volume 8. ^^ And upon landing, it creates a Grimm-based ecosystem-- a dark forest that gradually spreads outwards the longer it stays there, only adding to the population of Grimm overrunning the area. That's a whole other issue, that the rest of Team RWBY will probably be helping with. For Yang, it's mostly just a giant hindrance to her investigation. She's got suspicions about Mercury (and knowing he's a silver-eyed warrior, suspicions about her deceased mother) and she's sure that the answers are somewhere in that Grimm-whale. But with the death-forest of Grimm surrounding it, it seems impossible for her to get there.

Until, she remembers she knows someone with a semblance that's perfect for the job. ^^

+++

There are several reasons why I love this idea: it gives Yang the spotlight for once in her life; it makes Mercury relevant; it provides an opportunity to get members of the main cast close to Salem.

But the biggest one is: IT GIVES ME AN EXCUSE TO USE REN!!!!! (≧��≦)ﾉ

I've always loved Lie Ren; like Penny, he's one of those characters who's just impossible to screw up (in basic concept, anyway...). Across RWBY's many adaptations and spinoffs, he's always adorable and always looks cool in combat.

The only problem with him, and the reason I've rarely spoken about him, is that...people don't seem to care about him?? ;_; Specifically, in the source material, he's given so little to do that there just isn't much of a reason to care about him. He barely has any motivations that don't boil down to some variant of "protect Nora". Even Nora herself is given character connections and talking points outside of "her man", but Ren has no one and nothing else. He gets a couple episodes of spotlight in Volume 4, and that's it for the whole series. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean, just think about this: Ren is the only member of the main cast who doesn't have a character song. o_o Look it up, it's true. I had to look it up just to make sure, because I found it appalling...this is a character who was originally voiced by the creator of the show; why is he such an afterthought???

So I decided, if I don't like this, I gotta do right by him in NeverFell, somehow. And it was REALLY hard to think of a place to put him, until I suddenly struck gold with this idea. ^^ Yang's little 'detective story arc' had been a thing for a while, and although I wanted her to be separate from Team RWBY, I never really liked the idea of her being alone. A character like her works best with someone to bounce off, and Ren's coolness is a great contrast for her bubbly personality.

Plus, I think putting Ren in a position like this could service him, too: not only does it give me an opportunity to add his semblance, backstory, and maybe even a Nuckelavee fight to the plot in the absence of a V4 timeline; it could give him a chance to "flesh himself out" the way Nora did in V7. Y'know, allow him to really connect with someone besides Nora-- and then, maybe seeing how similar-yet-different Yang is to his childhood friend is what'll get him to realize that he's never done this before. That maybe he's stuck to the familiar dynamic of that early relationship for so long, that there are different sides of his own personality that he's forgotten about. Sides that are coming out now that he's on this new adventure, with a new friend~.

[summerroseart]

Ooogh got back from the theater <3 gonna start off: LOVED the movie. Had a lot of fun. That is to say... I don't.... really...think it was good. It was not. (I'm sorry) But I highly recommend it! Felt like a direct to DVD sequel. I encourage piracy of this one. (/j for legal reasons)

In any case, it was fun!! Very very fun!! Absolutely no shade to anyone who disagrees with my takes lol. <3

FULL SPOILERS under the cut!!!

No seriously I'm gonna go over like. all the major plot points. Look away if you wish not to be spoiled.

- Okay. SO. not a fan of the pacing. Felt very choppy and incomplete like. RIGHT off the bat. Did not improve throughout the film, sadly. Writing and line delivery were also kinda bummer for all the characters, but those were my biggest gripes overall.

- 99 Red Balloons Green Day Cover?! Wasn't expecting that.

- Tom. Tom you KNEW that cave was there. Unless Maddie was the only one who went and got his stuff, and in that case, you BETTER have been the one cleaning out that attic.

- They are really having fun with dramatic irony in this one. Also not great callbacks to the first 2 films.

- WHY THE FUCK would you let them go with GUN???? They absolutely should have been tearing those boys from your arms wtf

- SA2 line ref, fun!!

- He... Shadow just. Hatched. fully grown. from a meteorite?? Disappointed but also EXTREMELY fascinated. What does this imply for Sonic? And Amy? Is it just because of the Black Arms? Is he fully Black Arms? Is he an unwitting spy for them??

I didn't watch the Knuckles series. Didn't they namedrop the Black Arms? But as another government branch or something rediculous?

- you guys have been alone for ONE DAY?? And you managed to crochet multiple projects, bake like 30 sourdough loaves, make a felt ventriloquist dummy, learn ventriloquism, and is that hand woven basket also implied to have been a project?? I'm impressed. But also. Do you... no longer have jobs? Does the government pay you now? I thought the knuckles series was irrelevant. What did i miss?? What happened to your work??

- Ily Maddie you deserve the world <33 they should've called you mom </3

- Sonic is giving major Boom Sonic characterization vibes, so I get why people don't like him in these films. (I love Boom Sonic wholeheartedly, but like. I Get it.)

- "Why are you tied up? Do that on your own time! You sicken me." AUSJHAJANABJAJBDJW

- Gerald is just. Alive. And 110 years old. There is no ARK. Maria didn't have an illness. The guy shooting didn't even intentionally kill her. Where is my corrupt government entity?? Devastating.

- Wish they'd done more with 70s Maria. Her character still seemed cool.

- Okay so Shadow just lived that over and over again for 50 years. Okay. I'm okay. Don't look at me.

- HATE that they inadvertently pinned the Blame for Maria's death on Shadow by having it be containers of his own Chaos energy that exploded and killed her, instead of the gun soldier shooting her in the back.

- WALTERS IS NOT A HERO SCREW HIM FUCK YOU GUN

- GUN is just... completely neutral in this :/ what was the point of Rockwell? She added nothing other than an unnecessary red herring. There could've been an EASY sideplot of Rouge stealing the master emerald instead. Especially with Wade watching it. EASY I TELL YOU!! WHERE IS MY GIRL????! WE WERE ROBBED!! ROBBED OF THE BEST THIEF IN THE GALAXY!

- Seriously though that Rockwell plotline went NOWHERE, WHY DID THEY DO ALL THAT???

(it seemed like they were setting her up to have been the one to commission Gerald for the Eclipse Cannon, but they just. Dropped her? after she gave Tom the key card?? Why did she want it??? Why was it relevant???)

- (paraphrasing bc my memory is Bad) "No person of any gender found me appealing" Sir your boyfriend is RIGHT THERE (obligatory WHOA HE'S BISEXUAL I DIDN'T KNOW THAT)

- Second act low point, but at least it felt sorta believable bc it felt like a legit sibling fight, and not a real falling out. They all just really love each other and want to protect each other. Knuckles you're wonderful, you have never done anything wrong ever.

- Missed opportunity for Dark Sonic. That would've been so FUCKING COOL! WHYYY???

- we both lost everything pep talk 2 (this time on the moon)

- just nicked the moon lmao it's fiiiiiiiinneee

- TAILS YOU'RE DOING AMAZING SWEETIE!!!

- Gerald getting zapped like a bug made me lose it.

- so like. Is everyone on earth just. Okay with finding out a world-wide government agency built a massive rocket powered death laser aimed straight for the planet that got hijacked immediately orrrrrrr

- Historians will say they were just good friends :)

- KNUCKLES YOU'RE WONDERFUL YOU HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG EVER

- "Team Sonic :)" "How about just team?" FUCKING SONIC BOOM REFERENCE????

- METAL!!! FUCK YEAH!! <- knew that'd mean Amy in the next film regardless

- AAAAMMYYYYYY MY GIRL AMY I CALLED IT I WASN'T EXPECTING BOTH OF THEM BUT HOLY FUCK!!! YEAHHHGGHGSHAHHDKKDO3BSJOXKNWHWISJBDNDJKDM I LOVE HER DESIGN SHE'S SO CUTE!!AA!!

- didn't catch the 2nd end credit scene but I'd already heard about the Shadow spinoff show (and/or movie??), so looking it up after, really not the least bit surprising.

Okay but i really did laugh at pretty much all the jokes. It was a fun time.

[silviakundera]

Snowfall ep 2 comments

ML's bestie the doctor is almost startlingly likable. I warmed up to him right away (and I can be a bit of a hard sell on supporting characters, with a tendency to impatiently ff thru them).

He's got charisma and does seem like just the type of guy to be not too fazed about a supernatural friend. You gotta develop a certain aura to handle a emergency room in the time of warlords, when every local boss thinks he's a notorious kingpin

FL smells him : "I remember you. If you don't save him, I'll come back for you."

Doctor bro: Blinks. Smiles.

She is so authentically weird and the kind of mildly unhinged that I love in a woman. Low key, quietly strange.

The doctor gets to operating, also a very chill and very weird person. I am now invested in the 3 of them hanging out.

FL goes home to get abused more, but at least now she has someone else's drama to be interested in

Mr Hot Antagonist Li and his squad of leather jacket henchman are fucking up local business owners or whatever, for fun and profit. Just to make sure we know it's that general lawlessness period.

There's this dude who gets splattered in the driveway and the squad is like wtf you scared me, bro. And some of that traditional torturing people into being "business partners" organized crime shenanigans.

Superintendent Chi, who has a prized mustache, is interested in a mine. May or may not be plot relevant.

Doctor bestie tells him the name of the Li Yingliang guy who wants him dead. ML: huh. Don't know him. 😆 😆 very wei wuxian of him

I like that ML is clearly kinda old fashioned and he's also rocking the long hair.

The man shows up on her 2nd floor window, stepping over from a tree. Girl is not at all pressed. "Half your life is mine" she's so weirrrrrddddd. I like it.

Though I'm shipping him with doctor bro just as much. (why not both?)

We got some lore: Doctor has been his bestie for three years. ML has been alive for a century. He's losing the ability to eat anything but people.

Li Yingliang is being sexually harassed by this spoiled rich girl while all he wants to do is stalk the ML, who's back from the dead

[bibibbon]

MHA chapter 415 leaks

A lot of the problems I have with this chapter are already ones that I talked about in previous chapter posts which can be found here 👇

However I still wanna talk about things that I don't like in this chapter.

1) the memory sharing thing and how random it is. I stand by the point that this plot point came out of nowhere, is a speedy and cheap way to try and build up what little development izuku and shigarakis dynamic lacks. The memories that are being shared also seem very inconsistent like why did one memory trigger another? It makes no sense why Izuku's fight with todoroki would ultimately trigger the usj and why the fight itself would be triggered by a convo that stain and shigaraki have. In my opinion, this is also a very good way for hori to just show off how he has improved his own art and be like "oh look at how good my art is now" which kinda sucks because we don't get any story but just some cool looking manga chapters

2) power of rejection?!?! Seems like a fancy plot armour for izuku not to lose all of his quirks to me🤷‍♀️. The power of rejection just sounds like such a cliche way to be like oh izuku won't lose his quirk to plot armour because he physically cannot lose his quirks since shigaraki is rejecting them. Like seriously what is it with Izuku not being able to keep his powers and we are just having him HAVE TO PASS DOWN HIS QUIRK FOR NO REASON?!?!?! you already passed down the quirk that caused the most distress aka kudos so won't izuku suffer even more if he passed down blackwhip which is the quirk that is keeping him both alive and is giving him the ability to move like why would izuku the and transfer that?!?! Seems stupid to me 😭 and low-key further reinforces the idea that the power of rejection is (A) there a plot point introduced to make it so that izuku doesn't lose his quirks and (B) so horikoshi can still create intense looking manga pages that he won't be able to create if izuku can't use his quirks anymore.

3) The unnerving focus on the police officer who took Tenko home. This manga page low-key confirmed the one theory that was like the police officer is afo and that AFO gave tomura his quirk which if it is true just doesn't line up or make sense when it comes to canon. I see how this theory can help develop both the parallels further in fanon but in canon it just damages tomura's character and its like an excuse that we should pity shigaraki even more because this police guy who was supposed to help him was a villain who gave him a destructive quirk and made him go insane /cause his families deaths. This also takes away from the half baked plot point that the gene for quirks actually heavily influence behaviour but if this theory is true then shigaraki just wants destruction because he wants destruction 🤷‍♀️ nothing more and nothing less.

4) Eri becoming relevant to the plot now? I have already said this and I will say it again Eri's quirk is too narrative breaking and too powerful. You literally cannot have the plot go on since we discovered that Eri can legit just rewind people to a time they were at their prime like she did with mirio. This brings up the question as to why she didn't do this with aizawa or all might and therefore her quirk could be used to make the series and characters have no long lasting concequences. Also how are the heroes so irresponsible thaT THEY COULD LET A CHILD SIMPLY RUN INTO A DANGEROUS AND TERRIFYING BATTLE FIELD LIKE WHATS WRONG WITH YOU ECTOPLASM DO SOMETHING YOURE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT THE CHILD ARENT YOU?!?!?!!? also this is such a shame Eri could of actually been a very good character who symbolised the traumatic events that victims of hero society faced and how young children could be kidnapped and exploited for powerful quirks however instead of getting anything like that we just get Eri BECOMING A TOOL FOR THE HEROES WHICH IS SOMETHING THAT SHE WAS Traumatised TO DO DUE TO OVERHAUL MAKING HER A TOOL FOR HIM AND NOTHING ELSE?!?!? talk about double standards. This is also making the Eri will rewind shigaraki into Tenko theory much more plausible and I hate that theory for so many reasons. However, it's either this or the theory that she will have to separate Izuku and shigaraki BECAUSE FOR SOME forsaken REASON THOSE TWO ARE SOMEHOW MERGING AND BECOMING THE SAME PERSON LIKE THAT MAKES ANY SENSE

5) where did the damage that kudos quirk was supposed to do to shigaraki go? Is it me but I seriously don't see shigaraki getting any damaged or recoil from kudos quirk like I could see some of it from the last chapter where shigaraki was somewhat struggling but that's it nothing else. Shigaraki can now fight perfectly fine and isn't getting the recoil hit if a nuke something that izuku was suffering with the majority of the fight which just seems unfair at this point like?!?! Its also another example of how hori fails at show don't tell

Seriously I still don't like the leaks but at least we got my girl hatsume and la brava that's the only good thing I can think about when it comes to these leaks.

[rabbiteclair]

finally finished urapi book 9 last night, so various thoughts on it:

I guess Todate got a happier ending than people expected

when Sorawo referred to Benimori as a friend I actually got so proud of her that I had to stop reading for a moment. like aw she's all grown up now. look at her, having a friend

unfortunately otherwise that middle file was probably the weakest part of the book. I'm sure it's setting something up for later, but in this context Kozakura's whole programming project is just a substantial chunk of a file talking about something with no immediate relevance to the plot

Sorawo getting epically owned for thinking of Kozakura as a mom figure is good though.

lots of good little character moments in here, really. I feel like this is kinda a reprise of book 6, where it doesn't advance the overall plot much, but has some fun character bits and introduces stuff for later.

Runa of course got a lot. I'm glad we finally got something focused on Runa that's actually sympathetic to her. my girl deserves it.

there was that very brief window where it looked like Kozakura might adopt Runa, and I was excited that I might have predicted the future

Tsuji adopting her is really good too though. seeing Tsuji in a less controlled and private setting is fun overall. really I want to have some kind of measurement of how much of this book is Tsuji fucking with people, because it feels like about 10% of the page count

not sure how I feel about Tsuji being able to do actual unmistakably real magic though

this book is not dispelling my feeling that the series has burnt through most of the high-profile Japanese internet ghost stories that have enough meat to build an entire short story around them. pretty much all of the ones in here could have been swapped out for basically anything else scary without losing anything. I have very complicated feelings on that

overall I feel like this is one of the most uneventful books in the series, but pretty much anything would have felt disappointing after book 8. I guess he wanted a bit more of a low-key slice-of-life kinda book after 7 + 8.

[popcultureoverdosed]

Blood Blockade Battlefront is New York at its Finest

NYC often gets a bad rep. Most people either see it as a smelly hellhole filled with crime and crappy attitudes or a breeding ground for hipsters and vapid socialites. People only see what they want to see without looking at the whole picture. This makes Leonardo's all-seeing eyes of God all the more important. Instead of lumping NYC into a box, he sees it for what it truly is; a chaotic blend of volatile elements.

The storytelling of Blood Blockade Battlefront is pure chaos from beginning to end. Leonardo is thrown into a world of highly deadly scenarios with very little breathing room in between. Each episode focuses on a moment in the character's life. One episode will focus on Leonardo befriending an amnesiac monster who loves burgers and another will feature a brigade of Charlie's angels-esque spies who happen to be invisible werewolves. It's the type of show that always keeps you on your toes because you never know what to expect. Some have criticized the show for its lack of an overarching plot and treat it as if that's inherently bad. Blood Bloockade isn't the type of show that needs a complex narrative. Its biggest appeal is simply seeing its eccentric cast interact with each other. Its episodic nature made watching it a breeze since viewers are never overwhelmed with too much information.

Worldbuilding is done at a casual pace where background lore is only given when it's relevant to what's currently happening. Since most characters are already well familiar with the lore, they usually cut the small talk and get straight to the action. In this way, the narrative mirrors New Yorker's aversion to beating around the bush. Show don't tell at its finest. We need more shows that just get to the point. Rie Matsumoto, director of season 1, feels a bit different about the story than I do, though. She inserted two original characters, Black and White, a pair of siblings who share a character arc that Intersects with Leo's. Under normal circumstances, this would have been an incredibly bad move. Filler in anime tends to feel pointless and just detracts from the story. Luckily, Rie Matsumoto made sure that the filler didn't feel like filler. It was fun watching the mystery surrounding the sibling duo unravel with each episode. It eventually culminated in a finale that was nearly an hour long. Matsumoto took a huge risk with her bold decision, but she definitely stuck the landing.

The production values of the show are also top-notch. Pretty much every episode is a reminder of why studio Bones is such a beloved company. They seriously put their key animators to work in both seasons. The fluidity of the fight scenes always left me impressed. Character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto did a great job at bringing Yasuhiro Nightow's art to animation with his iconic style. I love how even when Toshihiro is adapting someone else's character design, his style still shines through.

Special mention needs to be given to composer Taisei Iwasaki because he really killed it with this soundtrack. It's an eclectic blend of jazz, RNB, hip-hop, rock and more genres that perfectly captures the vibe of a busy New York City. Each track is a different flavor of the city and made me feel at home. The soundtrack truly embodies the chaotic feel of the show and captures its occasional serene moments perfectly.The true musical highlights are the openings and endings. BBB is one of those shows where you feel compelled to watch the full episode because the opening and ending are too good to skip. They're all incredibly upbeat songs that make you wanna stop everything and dance. Sugar song and bitter step is one of my favorite anime endings because of it's colorful animation and cheerful aura.

Blood Blockade Battlefront is the type of show that can really resonate with native New Yorkers. We see all the highs and lows of the city almost every day and you have to be just a little bit crazy to appreciate NYC for what it is.

[clockworkbee]

Love how Holly Black takes the most obvious and typical plots from fairytales and then twists them in her books, only to then end them at some absolutely cliché scene 🤌🏼

I am sorry, which ones? I cant see them in Holly Black books

Hmm. Okay.

I’ll start by clarifying (for you, anon, and anyone else who comes across this post) that when I say fairy tale, I don’t just mean the Beauty and the Beast category, I also mean those children books like Goldilocks and Pinnochio etc. as well as the many stories I've never read but heard from my dad or grandmother in my childhood (in urdu—not that they’re relevant in this post) and I’ll tell you why I thought so/saw (see) it as quoted in your ask, but just because I did doesn’t mean everyone would—and this isn’t to convince you either (but it low-key is, lol)

SPOILER WARNING: the books mentioned in this post may or may not contain minor/major spoilers about the plot but do include more information than the synopsis so if you haven’t read Holly Black’s books and would prefer knowing as little as possible before going in, I think it’s best you save this post for later <3

The Folk of the Air: My first books by the author were tfota, and the world, plot, and characters were quite refreshing to read, but then on my first read, when I read about the prophecy and the curse within the series, it hit me that within this ‘faerie’ story was an aspect of the ‘fairy’ ones, kinda like ‘beauty and the beast,’ ‘a cursed prince turned into a frog,’ or another that's mentioned in the 3rd book, but then, the way to break the curse was not so typical in my opinion, and I loved that. And of course there’s the famous parallels between Jude and Alice from Alice in the Wonderland; a human girl in a fantasy land where she doesn’t belong. (If you’re interested, you might like how it’s shown here by @rosiethorns88 and the third and second last paragraphs written here by @sensenoi unless you’re interested in reading the whole post, that is) As for the cliché ending here, I think those cheesy, happy dialogues in tqon are exactly that.

The Darkest Part of the Forest: in this standalone (which I wished so hard that I’d read before tfota), there’s a prince who’s banished and (I think, can’t remember, sorry) also cursed to sleep. So again, this was like Aurora sleeping after pricking her finger or Snow White after biting the apple, however, the way to wake up that prince wasn’t his true love’s kiss and he doesn’t love the person who finally breaks him free either, so I kinda liked that twist; the boy getting the prince instead of the girl. (You know, like a change of perspective in a fairytale retelling such as Maleficent’s pov showing love instead of hate for Aurora, I guess)

The Modern Faerie Tales (Tithe + Ironside): the story of a faerie raised as a human finding herself lucky enough to earn power over a royal faerie. For this ship, there was this storyline of ‘win your love by completing a quest’ and that’s what felt fairytale-like to me. Only, it was a bit twisted because faeries can’t lie, and that made the quest tricky.

The Modern Faerie Tales (Valiant): In this one, the ship and the insta-love were kinda it (fairytale-like), but then there was this scene where the girl almost lost the one she loved and the way she tried to delay that happening and then saved him was what actually hit like a Faerie fairytale to me.

The Stolen Heir (duology): sooo, I loved how the story started with a girl wishing for more in her life, wishing for magic, and then in a way, having that wish come true, only it’s a Holly Black story so of course magic only mostly brings horrors instead of sparkles, leaving one of the most common messages/warnings from fairy tales, ‘be careful what you wish for.’ I also loved that our fmc was made of sticks and snow, which again, is something I’d heard before in a fairy tale as a kid (I think it’s also mentioned in a grishaverse short story, the witch one? I don't actually remember, but yeah.) The twist added here was that, unlike those stories I heard where a girl who was made this way could be unmade by other people just as easily ‘if someone did this or that,’ (or maybe it’s still a part of the books, I can’t recall), Holly made Suren extremely powerful and almost invincible, and I loved that a lot. (Also, I didn’t see the Snow White story stuff here until I read this post by @of-the-way-and-wildflowers , but after reading it, I definitely do see it, and absolutely love it!) The cliché ending here, I suppose, is the way Suren came back?

I hope you got from this the answer you were looking for, anon. I don’t think I ever made a post on how I see fairy tales in these books before, so thanks a lot for this ask!

—bee 💗

[narhinafan]

Mann I agree with what the previous anonymous said about sarada fans might turn on boruto saying she should be the MC cause they already claim her as the “MC HEROINE”

Like they do with sakura like THERE IS NO MC HEROINE WITH SAKURA OR SARADA! Like hello?! the main heroine is NARUTO AND BORUTO and they need to get that in their delusional head like the show is not called “Sarada” or “sakura” like bffr? And just cause they are on the same team as the MC don’t mean they are the MC heroine, they are side characters just like everyone else And Ik hate is a strong word but I HATE sarada like I just can’t stand her whenever I read or watch boruto she just pmo whenever I see her or she talks and she is better off not talking bc she is annoying but yet boruto is?! But I did see the ch. 21 spoilers and low key she did kinda look cold BUT that don’t change how I feel abt her! And like the anonymous said they better not use sumire just for sarada weak arc bc now everyone hyping her up for the MS and wondering what her other eye could do yet YEARS ago ppl complain abt how she wasn’t a “real uchiha” and etc etc if you been there? And sorry if it’s long but one more thing that I seen on tik tok with the ch.21 spoiler and some1 said how Sarada confirmed her feelings for Boruto😂 and I agree abt how they always bring sumire into a sarada post even tho it’s abt sarada like it shows how obsessed they are!

So on point like Sakura/Sarada fans seem to feel entitled for the show to be about them for some reason.

I agree hate Sarada as well and with the bad writing surrounding her so far I honestly think she is ruining the series. Like Sakura was also bad, but in the plot as a whole she mattered little so it was ignorable and didn't have a huge impact on the story. Sarada though has been getting too much focus only to be badly written its bringing Boruto down as a whole cause of it.

I still don't see Sarada as a real Uchiha, how she is and how she got the MS was BS. All Uchiha you couldn't help, but like them even Obito despite the hate he gets is still likable and well written overall that even if you do hate him you can appreciate his character and writing. Sarada though she just doesn't meet the minimal expectations for an Uchiha. With how Uchiha centric Kishimoto was in Naruto I expected better, but it honestly feels he is just forcing Sarada to be relevant at time.

[soratsuart]

Okay, so yesterday I ended up not talking about the KH x TDP AU (I should really look for a name for it) but I'm doing it now. This will be more of an analysis of my thought process for doing it as well as what interests me of each character and universe but it might still be interesting!

Beware for long analysis of both Kairi and Leola's roles under cut, though.

Starting with the Kingdom Hearts part and Kairi's role. I don't really remember why exactly I chose her as a main character of sorts here??? I think it all came down to practicality and personal interest, really. Objectively I could have placed the KH timeline at any point of the story and have Sora or Riku or anyone else be the main character, but I think the main factors that contributed to choosing Kairi was the inclusion of the Final World as a means of meeting Leola, which isn't really introduced to us until KH3 and not many characters have visited. And like, yeah, I could just throw canon down the window and use it anyway at an early point of the KH timeline, but here is where the personal interest part of the process enters.

I guess I've just been thinking a lot about Kairi lately??? Which is a bit weird considering I haven't really thought about her in years, honestly. The fandom has always complained for the way the narrative keeps pushing her away of having much plot relevancy outside numbered titles and even then she doesn't get much screen time (my biggest admiration to Kairi fans for dealing with this all the time honestly) and added to that there were just other characters I was more invested in. Lately, though, I guess I've been thinking a lot about the potential in her and the traits she has. I can relate hard to her attachment to the past and her wish for things to remain unchanged only to be forced to experience change and grow up anyway. To the way she clinges to her best friends but can't help seeing them drift apart and feeling like she's being left behind (her dejectedly acknowledge that she isn't ready to go to Quadratum even though she wants to save Sora breaks me).

Like many others I think the way things were set up after Melody of Memory open a chance for Kairi to do some growing without Sora and Riku in the picture and figure her path, and though I'm skeptical that we will actually get a game where she gets enough spot light to develop her character that much that just means I get free reign to do it myself so er, here we are!

I really like the idea of immediately throwing Kairi into an adventure of her own. Up until now, despite the way she keeps claiming she wants to protect her friends, it always ends up with her needing the most protecting and saving a lot of the time (I'm not saying she's useless or unable to do anything, but literally every other character are experimented warriors vs her receiving a few months of training before being thrown into a war without any previous real experience, she did GREAT all things considered). I think it'd be interesting to give her a role where she's forced to be the protective role and not the protected. Leola is just a little kid and she's going to cling hard to the one person she feels a strong connection to (there is a reason behind this connection btw) and that helped her low-key revive. She's going to have to act as a guide for her and deal with all the mess that is Act 2 of TDP while being lost herself a lot of the time and without Sora and Riku there to act as support (and again, yes, there are other characters there to support her, she's not completely alone, but I think it's normal to assume that she's used to rely on the people she's closest to and that this is a chance for her to develop more her other friendships and create new bonds so there's that).

In summary, I just think for Kairi it'd be fun to explore her adapting out of her comfort zone dealing with a crazy adventure of her own.

Now, for TDP! I think I speak for everyone when I say I don't think what happened to Leola is fair. At all. And that's kind of the point, isn't it? Leola's death is what triggers all the events of the show. It's what leads Aaravos to a path of hatred and revenge that has dominoed into the current conflict. For us, Leola is less a character and more a narrative tool to explain the motivations of our villain, and we don't even know much of her personality other than Aaravos' descriptions of her and the brief flashback.

So what happens when we turn Leola into an actual character? What happens when we bring her back into the picture as a whole person??? Mind you, this is not a "what if Leola didn't die" kind of AU. Leola did die. But now she's back. And she's just a little girl who just wants to go back home and see her father after centuries of waiting and waiting in the afterlife.

I think that is what makes her a very interesting character to focus on for the TDP part of the crossover. On the one hand, what does her return mean for the story?? She's back, but her father is still a villain who's done horrible things and will continue to do so at least as long as he's unaware that she's back. How does learning she's back affect Aaravos? How does that reaction affect every other character??? How does the Star Council react??? They killed her for the crime of giving magic to humans because she "broke the cosmic order", and now she's alive again even though she shouldn't be. Does that also break the cosmic order? Will there be consequences???

But also, what about Leola herself? She comes back after being dead for centuries for something she did out of compassion and love. She comes back to a whole different world with different rules and different people, and this description is applicable to both the KH worlds AND her own world. Humans and magical people have been segregated for centuries after her death and only recently started mixing again. Dark magic is now a thing. There is a war happening and her dad is at the center of it all. How does a child deal with all of that??? Leola's story is one of dealing with lots of hardships and trauma that she will need to address. Of learning that the people you love the lost can hurt others so much. Of learning about forgiving and the rights of others not to forgive. Of the cycle of violence and that not everything is light, but not everything is darkness either.

Of course, it's not like she will be dealing with all of this alone tho. She's still just a little girl, like I've repeated many times. And she's got the KH characters around to help too. But I can hardly see that her return wouldn't kickstart a lot of subplots with more psychological and philosophical heavy themes. And also I just like exploring these themes.

I admit there isn't much else I can say on character analysis for her, given that as I said at the beginning of her part, in canon she's less a character and more a tool, but like with Kairi that just means I get free reign here to do whatever I want, so I appreciate the freedom.

TL;DR: I put Kairi and Leola in a situation together and I spin them like a microwave.

[malimothreads64]

👑Crownbreaker by Sebastien De Castell👑

Genre: YA Fantasy

Series Status: 6th Book (Final)

First things first, obviously, it happened, so of course it's still semi-relevant, unfortunately, but I still hate that the SA plot point is a thing. It's a stain on this series for me. Near the end of this, it clarifies that it was all a setup. The girl he was forced to assault was a paid actor and wrote to him and apologised for her role in the whole affair, which.. I guess it makes it less bad, but it doesn't really change my opinion around it much? Though I do low-key think that this was potentially added due to backlash because having your YA protagonist forcibly assault a girl is weIRd. Also, the fact that the new love interest character for this book (since there's a new girl basically every book, even though Kellen is in love with Nephenia) is the daughter of the guy who had him forcibly assault the girl? It was just such unnecessary drama that didn't even go anywhere.

That being said, I cried when Kellen and Ferius were reunited, lmao. It's why my feelings are so complex!!! Some of the stuff that happens fucks me off, but I love these characters so much! I've loved reading about this world. Kellen & Ferius' relationship just hits me right in the heart. The fact Kellen wasn't willing to.. do the task that was set out for him in this, until he learned that if he didn't, it would harm Ferius:

"Shalla had it right all along. In the end, duty isn't about grand dynasties or ethical debates. Duty is about family"

CRYING. Literally. Just like when Ferius said that she was;

"Three parts gambler, two parts Argosi, and one part Kellen of the House of Ke" - Soulbinder.

If I ever say I love this series, it's purely because of their relationship and nothing else.. except maybe Reichis.

Now, as a finale, I was sobbing, lmao. It's why it's a 5, despite all my issues with the series. It finally pulled one out of me! I feel like it tied the series together nicely. All the previous books were made relevant in the story; cameos; reunions; plot points. I feel like this book has been the most about what it really means to be Argosi. Especially for Kellen. A lot of this book was Ferius complimenting and basically affirming that he is truly Argosi, whether he feels like it or not.

Overall, I think it was a really good conclusion to the series. I may have a lot of hang-ups about Spellslinger, but I am genuinely going to miss reading about The Path of Endless Stars.

"See, I wasn't born to be an outlaw. Probably wasn't built for any of this. But whatever life lay ahead of me was mine, paid for in full, and every point of light in the sky above was another path for me to follow. And there sure are a lot of stars up there."

[armchairaleck]

Twin Peaks/Dragon Prince thoughts

Okay so I was never going to write a post that combined two of my sorta diametric interests - namely The Dragon Prince cartoon and Twin Peaks, even tho I've low key considered it.. but then they literally put out a fricken dream scene with Viren, Kpp’Ar, Sparklepuff and Opeli explicitly mirroring Twin Peaks.. so now I guess I will ramble on for a long time about this despite not really having anything sensible to say…

First up – massive spoilers are ahead for both Twin Peaks and TDP Season 5… Twin Peaks is in my view one of the most weird and interesting television shows ever made - like it's very David Lynch, so I guess you'd have to like that vibe - BUT if you haven’t seen it and are at all interested in watching it, and don’t want very essential plot elements spoilt please don’t read below this cut.. IT WILL SPOIL STUFF!

Not sure anyone will be left at this point, but a very condensed speed run of the twin peaks plot for the sake of drawing out some parallels later:

Laura Palmer is found murdered in her small home town where a veritable list of ner do well characters who are possible suspects also reside. Call in special agent Dale Cooper to solve the crime, so far, so police procedural…

This is when the plot starts to go a little left field - as well as the drug smuggling, illegal casino, insurance swindles, arson, doubling crossing, false murders, real murders, faked deaths, real deaths that are just part of everyday life in this quaint little rural US town, a portal exists to a place called the red room or the waiting room and to the white and black lodges which by and large represent forces of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and hold within them certain denizens who might help or hinder, or just be completely bizarre and unintelligible depending on their inclinations...

One of the evil denizens is Bob - Bob is pretty much the representation of pure evil, he possesses people and encourages them to fill his own base desires.

After a certain amount of investigation the original crime is solved, the presence of Bob and the lodges is revealed and the show gets a whole lot weirder as it moves through the rest of the second series and the third (set 25 years later)

At the end of season 2 the good Dale Cooper goes into the red room and gets stuck in there while an identical version of Cooper emerges but this one not so wholesome and possessed by Bob.

There’s a lot more to it, but I’ll get into the relevant points and possible, tho probably very tentative TDP parallels as they come up.

Anyway to break it down.. in the short scene we see we have Kpp’Ar - here I believe framed mirroring the role of the one armed man, Mike, he could also be framed as the giant theoretically but given the arm/bandage motif I’m going to say he’s the one armed man..

The one armed man used to run with Bob until he saw the light and changed his ways, and he cut off his arm to do this a little drastic perhaps? because he had a tattoo on the arm that linked him to Bob. So a possible parallel here to Kpp’Ar having also realised his dark magic/blood tie with an ancient evil entity and trying to rid himself of it through cutting it out of his arm, go, go my guy. The one armed man acts as one of several pretty obtuse guides for good Cooper in the show.

Will Kpp’Ar come back and do this for Viren? Eh probably not, I can’t even speculate on that sort of thing, so let’s leave that parallel there.

Right, Sir Sparklepuff also gets a little cameo as the the arm/the man from another place.. a cryptic clue giver who speaks unintelligibly and also has some natty dance moves..

So the arm is a fairly ambiguous character, he hangs with the evil denizens, he hangs in the waiting room, he helps, or he doesn’t, it’s pretty vague.. he is the part that was cut out to remove the evil influence, but I’m not sure where that could go if anywhere… Onto Viren, who is framed taking the role of FBI agent Dale Cooper, Cooper goes into the red room for good reasons, he wants to save his girlfriend Annie… unfortunately he doesn’t and instead he gets stuck in there while his doppelganger possessed by Bob escapes and goes on to run merry havoc for the next 25 years…

Bad Cooper is a corrupted figure who can give corpse face Viren a run for his money annnd… he also has black eyes… nice…

This is just how your eyes go when you're evil.. so err.. stay good kids

On the other hand it does look like you have a lot more fun going feral

Meanwhile the good version of Cooper has to escape from the waiting room, and trust me, it takes a long time…

Then we have Opeli as the log lady.. now the log lady, also called Margaret Lanterman, we are given to believe was once abducted as a child by aliens (there’s a pretty strong interest in conspiracy type stuff in twin peaks without it ever completely leaning in and going there, well I guess it does, let’s just say there are a lot of things beneath the surface) Margaret grows up just fine though, but on the eve of her wedding night to a fireman there is a fire in the woods, and hubby to be goes and gets himself killed fighting the flames. Margaret takes a log from the scene and caries it round with her ever after with it being heavily implied that the spirit/soul of her almost husband is in there and passes her messages with regards to some of the goings on in the town.

Hey Opeli guess what? Rayla's breaking into Viren's study... ahem..

Like anyway why did Opeli get this role? I have no idea, she's the only available female character?? Anyway Opeli says backwards the line - the jelly tart you like is going to come back in style.. the log lady does not say this in the show, but there is a pivotal scene where all the murder suspects in the Laura Palmer case are gathered together and the guilty party is approached by a white lodge denizen and told that gum you like is going to come back in style.. that's how they find out whodunnit.

So the premise of Twin Peaks is that the guilty party is also shown to be possessed by evil entity Bob and it raises some interesting questions within the fandom regarding an individual’s culpability for their crimes or whether the possession was the root cause of them and I feel like I can’t really dance around it anymore so I will say again if this show sounds interesting and you want to watch it unspoiled with regards to the murder STOP READING HERE.. also I will be going onto the darker themes of the show and you are warned they are kinda dark…

...

Right okay it was her father, Laura’s father, Leyland, possessed by Bob raped and abused her for several years and then murdered her and others when it became clear she knew it was him.

Now every time Laura was abused in the show she sees the face of Bob not her father. There is debate whether this is trauma projection, whether it is in fact evil entity Bob controlling the father’s actions… I mean there’s a lot of interesting stuff to go into, but I won’t, because I only want to look at the possession angle here.

Okay, onto the topic of possession and free will, specifically with regards to Viren and also dark mages in general.. so we have seen Aaravos possess Callum explicitly, based on one use of dark magic, whether he was able to do this due to Callum’s proximity to the mirror... not sure? He also possesses Viren very obviously on a couple of occasions, but they also have the blood tie... so it's likely that dark magic allows Aaravos to exert his influence on those who practise it as has been explored by others.

Anyway there is another factor I have kinda been low key wondering about - whether the staff of Ziard has certain possession/persuasion potential.. now I’m not going to come out and say the staff holds sway over Viren and tells him what to do because this puts a certain absolution on Viren’s actions that I don’t think is justified by the narrative BUT I do also think it would be kinda cool if Aaravos with his links to the stars and future predictions had a way of seeing what might happen and engineering his own deliverance through the push/pull of the staff.

Not betting any hard cash on this theory...

We don’t know when Viren first gets the staff, I have to re-watch that dream sequence and possibly wait for puzzle house because I have at least some thoughts it might be what Claudia finds in there.. but he doesn’t have it in the Puzzle House pages I’ve seen and he does before Magma Titan because he takes it with him..

So... I don’t know if there is a slim possibility that while the staff might not possess a mage it might subtly lead them towards an end goal - slaying an archdragon say, who holds the mirror window into Aaravos’s prison, and thereby allowing the dark mage to come into possession of said mirror and thereby setting the whole train of freeing Aaravos in motion..

Now fine, this is a bit of a stretch, could easily be Viren is simply fuelled by his desire to kill a dragon out of revenge/hubris a desire to rekindle his relationship with Harrow (ahem) but I kinda like the idea that there is a very subtle pull leading him in that direction through the staff, and Aaravos does at least seem pleased to notice that staff in his possession, while Viren visibly shies from it throughout much of s4…

This could mirror a little with the possession/influence themes of Twin Peaks - there is a ‘good’ Cooper and a ‘bad’ Cooper, but they are really the same Cooper and it is the flaws in the good that allow for the evil influence of the bad to take hold - Cooper has a weakness for trying to save women in peril, it gets him in trouble… Viren seems to have a weakness for power and doing anything for his family, however dangerous, however vile - personally I don’t really like to read stuff purely in terms of a good/bad white/black dichotomy.. but I do like character flaws leading to the wrong path and imperilling your soul.

This all inclines me towards the Aaravos is pure evil and the Prometheus and even Lucifer stuff was just a bit of a tease. In Twin Peaks the unleashing or at least the amplification of evil in the world is linked very explicitly in one episode to the dropping of the atomic bomb, this is framed as a cataclysmic event during which mankind press the button on their own potential annihilation...

s3 episode 8 - I don't think will ever be surpassed for am I hallucinating or is there something very weird on my tv at 4am vibes

I know there have been some links between dark magic and nuclear power parallels made by other people but I can’t remember the details and it has always been something I’ve kinda chewed around a bit without having any specific thoughts or beliefs on, other than ouch corruption looks a lot like radiation burns… but I can see an analogy for something that is created to both serve humanity giving us a fairly unlimited power source, while also giving us the ability to pretty much obliterate ourselves and the planet which - tbh best not to think about how close that has already been...

Dark magic is clearly a force that can be used to benefit humanity, healing, feeding 100,000 people etc, etc.. but it is also being lined up as something that holds its own peril, that probably isn’t a power to be wielded by inconsistent, unreliable and sleep deprived humans, and it’s been given to them by Aaravos? Like I think that has not yet been explicitly stated in cannon but the signs are all there.. so hmmm..

Anyway all told this has led me down quite a few lines of thinking that I don’t really have any definitive conclusions for because they are by definition not issues that can be neatly tied up with a bow... at least not by me.

Then Viren is pretty much comatose for the rest of the season much like Coop/Dougie is season 3 of Twin Peaks.. rip my guy...

Viren having the standard reaction of anyone trying to work out wtf is going on in Twin Peaks

Anyway I have never seen any fellow Twin Peaks fans out in the Dragon Prince wilds, but if you’re out there please come and rip this to shreds if you want.. I have a sieve like memory and I’m usually pretty wrong about most stuff, plus I wrote this after 4 hours sleep due to the drop time, sooo please excuse any mistakes...

[beesbabbles]

Low-key having the biggest desire to make a cosplay rn (wouldn’t be able to start until after exams but I sure as hell can start planning) and the problem when I get in a mood like this is. I have too many ideas

1890s Harrowhark from The Locked Tomb. It would be a black ballgown with a rib cage overlay, maybe a veil. I would have to make a corset, petticoats and undergarments because I would want to be proper. I don’t have the skill set for this yet, and probably would want to make a couple other projects first

My dnd character. It would be fun to have the article and dress up as her but it’s not really that interesting. Might still do one day for technique practice but it’s not making me feel passionate and for a cosplay I need that passion (she’s a changeling but is always imitating her human sister so she’s kinda boring :p)

Biana Vacker from Keeper of the Lost Cities (Neverseen cover). It would be a cape, a pin, and a somewhat complex jacket. Cape could be used in other cosplays for this series and I would try to make the jacket wearable. I could make some pants to be fancy and get extra practice (would also be consistent with Biana’s tastes :3)

Sophie Foster from Keeper of the Lost Cities (Legacy cover). It would entail a easy enough skirt but I could fancy it up, aforementioned cape, pin and a somewhat complex jacket (same difficulty as biana). Theoretically I would have to knit some socks. The socks would straight up be the worst part of this because the cover artist made the dumbest fucking socks imaginable but I could do some bullshit to make it easier if I wanted (duplicate stitching, either on my own knit socks or ones I buy), or make it hell (actually doing the colour work as shown on the cover. Would also require wearing a blonde wig and getting brown contacts because her eye colour is unfortunately plot relevant and I’ve been in this book series too long to make such a mistake :p

Jasnah Kholin from Stormlight Archive. It would entail probably more planning:/research than the other two I could do with my current skills because I don’t like the official cover art for her and I’d want to do her purple jacket/dress look. But it would be fun! It would entail a slightly less practical jacket (though I guess I could make the safehand cover detachable so I can wear it elsewise). Construction wise this jacket is on the same level as Sophie/Biana but would need more fabric, though I guess no cape so maybe it evens out. Would probably make a pair of khaki pants or a long purple skirt (hence research lmao)

Honestly, if I can decide between the last three I might spent a bit of extra effort and try to enter a cosplay (craftsmanship) contest with one of them

I’m just rambling but I am filled with ideas 👁️👁️

[abcdosaka]

i have such a love hate relationship with how gege writes women like he’s tackling the oppression of women and yet the women aren’t the important part of that conversation like he keeps killing them off 💀 it’s like how the walking dead would introduce a black character and immediately kill the previous main cast member black character

☝️ thing i can’t fault him for is that every female char is incredibly likeable. except maybe hana but tbh i still like her bc i could forgive women for anything she just got done dirty by the narrative. same with remi but honestly, instead of disliking her she made me dislike fushiguro a bit. (it’s not that i thought he’s at fault for anything i just disliked the set up for that arc) personally i think those two were the only major fumble writing wise. oh and tsumiki although i guess there wasn’t much more for her to do i was hoping she’d be more than a plot device (she was likeable anyway she made me like fushiguro more lmao)

omg i just realized what they all have in common is that they’re all related to fushiguro somehow.

another thing he does well is giving them their MOMENTS which to me is kinda more important than their depth in a battle shonen. like almost all the female combatants get a super raw moment. even hana shining that light on meguna was soo beautiful like idk that sticks out in my mind (until she fucked it up ofc)

nobara i think was actually rly well done. i still think there’s hope she’ll come back tbh. even though i said otherwise that’s just me pretending idc. yuki had a really good fight and she was so charismatic that i can forgive her death being related to choso so much (also bc i like choso). i just really wish we could have seen more of her earlier and know more abt her, esp her being a star plasma vessel, ik she was a supporting character but i was so hyped to see her in action. she’s one of my favs. tengen is also low key a fav even tho she didn’t rly do anything she’s well established and idk i just like her. uro is another fav who i need to see more of i hope she isn’t done for i feel like she got spared for a reason. yorozu was pure comedy i liked her and i kinda miss her i wish she stuck around longer. i stanned mai from her first appearance. maki is obviously my queen no words needed. i also thought momo was super cute and i still wanna know wtf that miwa panel was in the cg arc i think that was a genuine he forgot moment. mei mei and momjaku are freaks but i like them both they really help set the tone

ig the only issues are that 1) they keep dying and 2) their most important moments are related to a man somehow. i guess it makes sense bc it is aimed at a male audience but like if you’re writing abt women’s issues then you have to acknowledge the women in question as…people? that’s not rly what i mean to say but idk how else to phrase it. it feels like he wants to do a good job tackling these issues but he doesn’t rly get the core of the issue.

anyway it sounds like i’m shitting on him but the fact that he��s clearly making an attempt at expanding on the female characters instead of being like “here bitch damn” (and it’s a girl who gets one chapter of depth and is written out immediately after) is what actually touches my heart. altho ig he kinda did that with everyone but maki like i remember being surprised he went so far in the perfect prep arc for maki like i didn’t think she’d get a power up like that. and then in the sakurajima colony arc i didn’t know she’d continue to be relevant and then jumping sukuna with yuji like okayyy

the nice part of never getting fed is that crumbs are so delicious and nutritious for me. anyway i believe in kenjaku (old woman) x tengen heian era old woman yuri