#and oh the payoff at the end

[im-the-queen-of-stardust]

So Part 26, hm? Always love to see a character at their breaking point. Love it so much, that I'll cry over it, because damn my heart was just breaking for Arthur. John reciting a poem to calm him down was just the last nail in my coffin.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

literally the easiest way to make someone care about a character and make them feel well-rounded beyond basic traits like personality, sexuality, ethnicity, etc, is to give them an actual character arc, and it’s shocking how many people do not seem to fully realize this

you cannot just cram a bunch of tropes. tropes are not the main event, they are tools to tell the story you wish to tell. emotional impact comes from the lead up, so you can’t just jump ahead and expect the payoff to work. “I want this character to just ___ already!” but they’re not there yet. that’s where the arc comes in - how do they get there?

and! most importantly, and this is something I really want people to think about when writing - the most important relationship your character should have, always, is with the world and society around them. defining your character purely through their interactions with other characters are, I find, how a lot of female characters end up feeling flat or not engaging with the themes as much as the male characters, and also how queer and non-white characters wind up as devices for other characters’ development instead of being more fleshed out

[rcrisdraws]

This might be the first time I actually came up with an entire start to finish plot-

[rexscanonwife]

Well. I'm finally caught up with the bad batch and with absolutely NO Rex appearance I just gotta say

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also marble hornets fun fact #92 like it's fun that for once the neurotypical agenda accidentally got a win: when in that s1 "interview" episode apparently there was no particular plan to have tim be a recurring character before a strong audience response of speculation that there must be something more going on with this guy because his fidgeting with a notebook all throughout the video was indication of Liar's Anxiety or whatever; in reality tim sutton was not making any acting choice (to serve then-nonexistent writing) but was spontaneously being someone often fidgeting with paper. then call that unfolding developments

[tollsoftheclockwerkbelle]

can we get a movie about tigeress alone and unpack all of that please

[marsbotz]

he can pog now. on command

[whysamwhy123]

Aaaaaaa stoping by to say hi! I am going to do some tie die with a toddler tomorrow which should be fun and a mess. What is your reaction to part one of the fantasy high finale??? Personally it really made me love mary ann

Also some spring flowers for you 💕

Awww, pretty flowers, thank you! I hope you and the tot have a lot of fun! I'm with you on Mary Ann, I was all about her Uninvested Player schtick and how well it played off the Bad Kids, but her actually emoting for the first time got a hell of a laugh out of me. I'm thinking she's the only Rat Grinder who's making it out of the finale alive, since the Bad Kids either can't or won't be willing to take her out. I have a lot of Thoughts about the rest of the episode (my weird observation/mild criticism that I've had since Crown of Candy, that the Intrepid Heroes are now too good at DnD that it makes the finales lack tension still holds unfortunately) but I really enjoyed it overall - Ally and Murph's tactical plays are always so impressive for me (Murph hiding in the lava was such a Big Brain move) and I'm still not over the fact that Brennan decided the main obstacles of the final battle should be lava and the Stunned condition...in a campaign where he homebrewed a spell that makes the party unaffected by both of those. Like, congratulations, you played yourself! 🤣

[controlaltdelete-my-existence]

king piccolo arc is weird because it’s obviously the blueprint for many of the arcs to follow as well as one of my favorites, but narratively this is also the arc where some of db’s writing decisions start getting a little questionable. It starts off pretty strong: Goku’s impulsivity gets the better of him and he pays for it with Tambourine. This is soon followed by a truly memorable (and lowkey satisfying?) beat down by king piccolo (that rock to the back and elbow to the stomach look genuinely painful). Goku’s reduced to quite literally biting piccolo to try and stay in the fight. All of his arrogance that’s been building up since red ribbon is immediately knocked out of him and he’s left unable to move, forced to rely on someone else for the first time in a long time (the beginnings of an idea his character struggles with throughout Z).

Meanwhile king piccolo’s minions force a team split in Kame house, giving us three teams to follow as the dragon balls are collected. King Piccolo has a (what should be) iconic moment of literally kill Shenron. So now he’s young, he’s back, and he’s more overwhelming than any other opponent in the series to date. I don’t think Tao’s attempted murder of Goku hits quite the same highs as King Piccolo’s first assault; imo it hits differently because it’s not just that goku failed to beat him, it’s that all the characters we know and care about are genuinely at risk and even dropping like flies.

I guess in terms of story structure that would now put us at like, the second act low point? And ofc the question is ‘how is goku gonna come back from this?’ Which is how we get to what is imo a somewhat poor plot device: the ultra divine water. I definitely feel like this was something that could have been handled much better, though I don’t necessarily blame the author due to the pressure of having to write a serialized story. Still, at least a little foreshadowing with Korin in red ribbon might have helped the ultra divine water feel like less of a shortcut and more like unlocking a secret goal. The entire philosophy of DB is ‘work hard to improve yourself’. imo the way it should’ve been handled was goku realizing he already has the skills he needs, he just needs to continue honing them, maybe unlock a new technique or two through training, until he stands a chance. Goku’s whole fighting style is letting himself take a beating for awhile to figure out his opponents move set and then coming up with a creative counter-strategy. He’d already fought piccolo once, so it would’ve been a good way to keep the story thematically consistent.

Another way it could have felt less jarring is for him to at least have to overcome himself. Korin remarks in the actual story that Goku is too emotional (after losing Krillen and Roshi), which hurts him as a fighter. Needing to quell his rage when facing piccolo again could have been The Thing for him to overcome. Visiting Korin should have reminded him of his training there and instead of Korin saying he has nothing left to teach Goku he could have said, ‘hey, you know the skills, but you’re not using them properly. your anger and your arrogance is getting in your own way’. Essentially, learning meditation and tranquility, etc. (I know that idea is addressed in his later training with Kami, but it might have been valuable to have Goku meet Kami here instead and start the groundwork of those skills, perhaps set it up as him getting back in tune with himself after his losses until he’s ready to help Tien. Just spitballing here).

If the ultra divine water had maybe been some way of measuring goku’s overall progress since he initially started his journey rather than a mini adventure arc, it might have felt less jarring in a story all about self-improvement. I like the ultra divine water in terms of what it does for the oozaru, with the oozaru as being representative of goku’s inner strength, but personally that’s not enough to completely justify it to me. Imo the same symbolism could have been achieved a better way. As it is I don’t hate the UDW but I do think its general existence and relatively simple method of attainment weakens what is overall a very strong arc.

[chrismcshell]

why must i work today when i could be getting another ending in 999

[nyxengale]

Okay was anyone going to tell me that Tango's final last life episode ends with eight minutes of a silent black screen or was I supposed to find out by sitting through the entire thing waiting for something to happen?

[bejeweledmp3]

totp is officially 40 thousand words long. And we're not even on the main scene of the first section yet.

[psychoticwillgraham]

mom during the first scene that will and hannibal interact in after hannibal smiles at him: 'oh... he's gonna DESTROY that man, i just know it'

me: *evil little chuckle*

[bunnyinatree]

How I feel trying to figure out what on earth is going on with Ushikawa:

[image ID: the conspiracy theorist meme from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the actor is wide-eyed and frazzled in front of a board covered in papers and red string. End image ID.]

I recognized him immediately from another Murakami novel; I believe it was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but now I'm starting to doubt myself. And I did some mental math, to reassure myself that even though TWUBC was written before 1Q84, it still takes place afterwards (presumably in the 1990s, when it was written). So I thought, "Okay, Ushikawa will be fine, because he has to live past 1984 to make his appearance in Murakami's other book."

But he is definitely dead by the novel's end, so is the answer that he died in the year 1Q84 but not 1984? And because TWUBC takes places on an Earth with only moon, Ushikawa is still alive and kicking, sort of like how Aomame theorizes that Ayumi might still be alive in a different universe?

[mlobsters]

been sitting on the next episode of spn for several days now because i really, viscerally, do not want to watch dean have to torture someone. hey here's a thing he's really fucked up over, let's force him to do it again.

i don't care how it serves the plot or characters, i do not want it

[death-rebirth-senshi]

Every once in a while I'm like. Well I should play Inquisition again. Prepare myself for dragon age dreadwolf (which doesn't exist and is never coming out). I barely remember what Solas' deal was shouldn't I refresh. Etc. Well that's the devil talking.