#as a person who never loses or misplaces stuff ever basically. that kinda felt like a sign

[girlitfeelsgood]

honestly at this point I might just say fuck it and give crystals and all that a chance

[alleyskywalker]

GoT 8.5 personal thoughts

SPOILERS

Yea this episode was pretty messy in a lot of ways – I thought that people were exaggerating because their ship got screwed or their fave turned out to not be a hero. I’ve actually been fine with the way most of the other stuff payed out. The Dorne plot was probably the closest that got to this level of “ok this was not very well thought through” in my personal opinion. I really think that most of the problems were caused by the feeling that everything was rushed and without proper payoff or setup. A lot of the same end results would have been fine and felt organic if they were developed over a larger number of episodes. Either this season would have needed to be extra long or we’d need a slightly shorter season 8 and then another short season 9. I don’t think it even needed to be multiple seasons but just some more breathing room for all the characters.

 Things that could have been fine but suffered a lot from the pacing:

Tyrion’s faith in Daenerys seems woefully misplaced because she snaps the way she does. But this is probably the “victim of rushed season” that faired the best because it makes some sense in the context – Tyrion knows Dany is dangerous but he didn’t think she’d snap this way. The audience wasn’t expecting her to, after all.

I feel kinda vindicated re: never really liking Daenerys and I don’t think it was unforeseeable for her to burn King’s Landing. She’s been building up to that for a long time now. But I did find it a little jarring that she did it after the city basically surrendered. I thought she’d do it in the process of taking the city, i.e. yea we’re using fantasy nukes but it’s meant to achieve a goal not just taking out pent up frustration on surrendered soldiers and civilians. Again, this could have been perfectly fine if it was given a little extra time to develop. If she had done this with almost no allies, if everyone – Jon, Tyrion, etc – had turned against her completely. Here, she’s still got Jon’s loyalty if not his sexytimes, and Tyrion is, despite everything, still on her side, and she’s got the unsullied and the Northern armies at her back. I don’t think she’s isolated enough to justify quite this level of crazy. But, as a concept, I don’t think it’s bad writing or somehow unforeseen that Daenerys would lose it in some way. *shrug*

The problem with the iron fleet isn’t that it burned – it’s not illogical that that’s what would happen to a bunch of wooden ships with a fire-breathing dragon around. But it’s kind of a bummer that it was set up as this big thing and then went down so quickly. There wasn’t much payoff.

Jaime and Cersei’s death scene – whatever else is to be said about it – also did not feel dramatic enough and given enough oomph, I felt like, given the stature of the characters and their storyline. Theon’s and Sandor’s had more payoff, given the weight of the characters, etc. Nick and Lena were great in it, but, again, I think it suffered from the overly-crunched pacing. Jaime deserved something more drawn out and dramatic for his death scene – but he’s my fave so I am somewhat biased. But it’s just jarring how anticlimactic if felt for me – me, the person who swore that whichever ASOIAF book had Jaime’s death scene in it would go flying across the room once I read that he died. Maybe it’s because I had been so emotionally prepared for Jaime to die – more than Theon – that I feel deeply sad but not as IN TEARS emotionally about it.

A more minor and personal complaint – I wish the show hadn’t forgotten about Yara :(

  Positive things:

Tyrion and Jaime’s goodbye scene was AMAZING. Dear God do I hope that something like that happens in the books (if we ever get them lol) even despite everything happened with them there (and didn’t on the show).

Arya choosing to turn away from revenge and trying to live and, implicitly, later finding something other than revenge to live for, was actually very heartwarming as a character beat for her. In a way, she gains some of her humanity back like this.

I didn’t really care about Clegainbowl but I think it was a proper ending to Sandor’s arch in a lot of ways. And the shot of him going down with Gregor into that fiery put was very poetic and fitting.

 Jaime and Jaime/Cersei specifically:

You would think that as a Jaime/Cersei shipper I’d be happy at least in principle. But I actually never thought they’d have a happily ever after – that’s not really what I wanted for them because to me their story was always one of tragedy. My ideal ending would have been (better lit, for one lol) Jaime killing Cersei and then either killing himself or succumbing to wounds he received previously as he holds her in his arms. If Jaime had to die it made sense for him to die with Cersei and I did say before that she is his The One. But like more that their fates were inextricable in a lot of ways, not that he would strive for a HEA with her past a certain point.

I don’t think the way it was played erased Jaime’s arch necessarily, though? Shipping aside, I don’t think Jaime’s arch was about “getting away from Cersei.” Getting away from Cersei was more of a byproduct. The arch was more about priorities. He got stripped of a lot of his arrogance, he tried to pull Cersei back from the edge and make better choices himself, and the culmination was at the end of last season where he left her to go and fight for all of humanity. Jaime says as much at the start of this season – he chose to come North because the fight for Winterfell went beyond family and romantic love and such. It was about saving the world. In season 1 Cersei was the entire world for Jaime more or less. But she’s not anymore.

So, to some extent the logic is at least kinda justified – especially if the Jaime-Tyrion convo was tweaked just a little. Like, Jaime going back to convince Cersei to either run away and leave everything, to not cause mass destruction and maybe save herself too in the end does make some sense. He gets to both save hundreds of people (potentially) and also his sister, because, at the end of the day, whatever else she is, she’s also family. Give her a chance at life but far away and without power to really hurt anyone. Or, if he fails, to die with her – maybe because of guilt, maybe because he feels like he’s linked to her by fate. It wouldn’t be a reach to think that Jaime could get overwhelmed by feeling displaced, feeling like he can’t really go back after everything. And, again, that fated pull between the two.

But I don’t think the writing really got that logic across (maybe it didn’t mean to?). Especially when Jaime starts telling Tyrion how Cersei might win. Because this seems like he wants to be with her even if she is ruling over total destruction, which at this pint IS jarring for his character arch. Disregarding that one moment, I think the rest of it could have been played reasonably, but suffered, like a lot of other things, from bad pacing.

On second thought, I think Jaime could be bluffing Tyrion in that scene to an extent. Tyrion is all like “why are you walking into suicide” and Jaime is like “don’t worry, bro, maybe she’ll win and I won’t have to due.” And then when he’s telling Tyrion why Cersei won’t give up and he says “it’s not impossible that she’ll win” he doesn’t look hopeful. He actually looks kind of pained. It’s more like this is part of this argument to Tyrion as to why Cersei won’t change course – she has reasons to believe she could still win. (I don’t take his comment about not caring about the civilians of King’s Landing at face value because this wasn’t even true as of S1. Otherwise, Jaime wouldn’t have become the Kingslayer.) But the writing is definitely confusing.

(This ending for Jaime makes me wonder whether Jaime/Brienne is a thing that happens in the books or if last ep was just fanservice. (Which is a shitty thing to do to the shippers at the end of the day.) This is why I was always so against that ship happening (plus the lack of chemistry, tbh). I always thought that Jaime and Cersei would die together in one way or another – as much as I loathed the thought of Jaime’s death – and in that context it seemed weird to make J/B a romantic thing. Mind, I don’t think Jaime slept with her to play with her feelings or anything. But having them get romantic is jarring with how Jaime tends to do romantic relationships. He had never been with anyone but Cersei until then. Sex isn’t just an activity to him, it’s extremely meaningful. So, I wonder if GRRM would go there.)

 I do still like the show? I just wish they hadn’t rushed everything so much at the end because it certainly does take away a lot from the emotional impact.

[thoughts-of-loyalty]

Captain Marvel (2019) Review

So, I saw the Captain Marvel movie recently (on 3/9, as this’ll likely end up posted a bit late) and as the big movie that’s set to bridge the gap between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, as well as the big-screen debut of Captain Marvel (not to mention the first Marvel female hero to get the limelight), there was a lot of excitement and hype built around this film.  Starring the titular Captain Marvel, real name Carol Danvers, and set in the 90s - before any film sans Captain America 1 - we’re given a look into the origins of the “Strongest Avenger,” the one Nick Fury sought to call upon at the end of Infinity War to fight against Thanos.

Full movie spoilers and my opinions below.

Synopsis: This film focuses on the origin story, so to say, of the future Carol Danvers/”Vers” (as she’s known among the Kree), in the adventure that sets her on the path to become the superheroine known as Captain Marvel.  Believing herself to be a part of the Kree due to memory loss, she is part of a group tasked with investigating the reported abduction of a Kree agent who was captured by the Skrulls (an alien species capable of mimicking the appearance of any human they view, one which is supplemented by their poorly-elaborated-upon talents at learning a lot about their targets).  Due to events beyond her control, she is separated from her Kree allies and ends up stranded on Earth.  Discovering details about her past life while there, she teams up with a young Nick Fury to discover the truth about her past and how intimately tied she is to the current Skrull-Kree conflict...

The Good:

The Visuals: To be sure, Captain Marvel - like all other big budget Marvel films - is a visual spectacle.  The CGI is very on-point for this film, the fight scenes are generally well handled, and it generally managed to capture the 90s look and vibes that the film is set in fairly well.  The Skrull are also made to look great for their big screen debut, with amazing work put into the transformation scenes, and Captain Marvel’s abilities are a visual delight.

Not Bogged Down by Continuity: One good thing about Captain Marvel in the relative sense is that it doesn’t bog itself down much with a desire to connect itself to the other films.  While some things will certainly make more sense in context of other movies (such as the importance of the power source everyone is fighting over and who exactly Phil Coulson is in relation to Nick Fury), the movie is self-contained enough that one can enjoy it without feeling they need to see everything Marvel-related prior to keep themselves informed.  This is in contrast to, say, Ant-Man 2 or Spider-Man, which require one to have seen Captain America: Civil War to understand all the ongoing character dynamics.

A Straightforward Story: Tying in to the above, but Captain Marvel never loses itself in trying to tell an overly-complex narrative with a million different plot-lines at once.  While there is certainly a twist or two to be had, the movie kept itself focused on the important characters and most of it’s attention was on Captain Marvel and her personal journey.  It told the story it wanted to tell and never did it veer into pointless sub-plots or give focus to truly meaningless characters.

A Lack of a Love Story: In what is something of personal gripe, I appreciate the complete lack of a romance story in this film.  A common criticism that has been directed at many other Marvel films was the inclusion of romance between the male lead and a major female character (usually inspired by one of the comic romances), usually to the detriment of the film as the romances were rather out of nowhere and had little purpose beyond just having one.  This film didn’t have any of that, and while one could make arguments or ship as shippers are wont to do, there was never a “These two are suddenly in love and kissing because there needs to be a romance” moment and I am glad.

The Cast is Well-Acted: A bit of a weird one, I suppose, but most of Captain Marvel’s cast is just as enjoyable to watch as any other Marvel movie’s cast.  I never felt a single cast member wasn’t giving the role their best, and while the dialogue could be cringe-worthy at times, it was only ever due to the script, not the actor/tress in the role.

A Good Message: It was made no secret that Captain Marvel would be a primarily feminist film and have messages about gender equality and women not needing the approval of men to be who they are.  And the film delivered it with only a minor heavy-handed approach.  The female characters were all competent and never eye-candy, but at the same time the movie never used the “machismo men who talk big but are actually pretty lame” trope other less-subtle movies used, all the characters were as competent as they were implied to be.  It was occasionally blunt during some portions of dialogue, but it never felt forced and it carried its message well.

The Bad

A Tonal Disaster: The movie was unfortunately bogged down by an overindulgence, so to say, on comedy.  Now, this in and of itself is not an issue, as Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok can prove - a movie can be primarily comedic in nature but still have great stories and be serious when they need to (though one could argue both had tonal issues, I wouldn’t deny that).  That said, where this movie most falters is in how it tries to be primarily comedic at times where characters necessarily shouldn’t - for example, there’s a earlier on moment where Carol blasts open a door some time after Nick Fury had done secret spy stuff to open a prior one, making him incredulously ask why she hadn’t done so before and her responding she didn’t want to steal his thunder.  This is at a time when Carol knows there’s a time limit of sorts (the Kree are due to arrive in less than 20 hours to rescue her) and Carol is learning about events that may intimately involve her and her lost memory, but they let the cast wait around so they can have this joke.  This is around the point I started to worry for the movie, as well, because I could tell the movie would be willing to let it’s mood go to waste for a quick joke.

A return to basic villains: One common issue held with many of the earlier Marvel films was the very weak villains in their movies.  They could look cool or be menacing, but Loki was pretty was really the only one who was complex for the longest time.  It took until arguably either The Winter Soldier or Age of Ultron to buck this trend and give us memorable or complex villains.  This continued for most of Phase 3, with their villains being complex, sympathetic at times, or otherwise memorable presences.  Spoilers: the Skrulls were build up as that, but plot twist, the Skrulls aren’t the villains, the Kree are.  And the Kree do nothing to establish themselves as memorable villains - you could arguably have even forgotten two of them were main antagonists in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  The only relatively memorable one is Yon-Rogg, Carol’s mentor, and the two spend so little time properly interacting after he’s revealed as a villain that any complexity he could have is never properly utilized.  For that matter...

The Supreme Intelligence is kinda pointless: Tying into how the Kree are an unfortunate return to basic villains, the Supreme Intelligence - the Artificial Intelligence ruler of the Kree - is an exemplar of this aspect of the Kree in this movie.  The Supreme Intelligence is something of a recurring presence in this movie (though I use that term lightly, given that it only appears before Carol for a grand total of five minutes if I’m being generous), and as the guiding force behind the Kree, it is technically the main antagonist of the film (Yon-Rogg is the most present of the Kree antagonists, but his actions are ultimately guided by the Supreme Intelligence).  As noted above, though, Carol and the Supreme Intelligence only spend about five minutes together, and only half of THAT time is spent as them on opposing sides, where it is little more than a generic overlord-emperor type, giving us a nothing driving force for the antagonists as a whole. Which is unfortunate, because...

The Kree are very underdeveloped in general: This is an issue because for a chunk of her life, after receiving amnesia, Carol considers the Kree her people and becomes part of a Kree task force.  While somewhat understandable that she’d be willing to stand against them as they’re responsible for her predicament in various capacities, the movie spends so little time developing the relationship between them and the other Kree.  Neither she nor the named Kree she battles seem to hold any strong emotion about coming to blows, to the point that they could have been replaced with a random Kree task force she never knew and nothing would have changed.  This goes double for both Korath and Ronan, who were incredibly flat villains in Guardians of the Galaxy - any hopes one might have had that they’d receive stronger characterization was misplaced, as they’re just as one-dimensional as before.

“Subverting Audience Expectations” ruins the Skrull: Many have (supposedly?) praised the Skrull for their role in the movie as a red herring antagonist who are actually sympathetic, with many bringing back the old praise of “This movie is great because it subverts audience expectations” that popped up during Star Wars: The Last Jedi.  I have a much longer rant about that, but that isn’t the issue I mean to address here.  And before anyone gets on my case, I have no desire to argue “the Skrull are ruined because they don’t follow their comic book selves;” the MCU is perfectly allowed to reimagine the Skrull as they desire, and if they wish to make the Skrull sympathetic, then that is their prerogative. In this case, the issue is that they’re so intent on making the Skrull red herrings that the Skrulls pre-reveal and post-reveal are essentially entirely different beings.  Before the reveal, Skrulls are making an proactive effort to discover what they need, capturing a Kree agent and luring Carol in with deception to read her mind and learn where to go, and when they get to Earth, they immediately install themselves so that they can best discover what they need to know - which isn’t necessarily bad, because that can still be played as sympathetic but willing to do whatever is necessary to get what they need to survive.  But post-reveal, the Skrull we knew as antagonists are almost entirely different beings - Talos and his “Science Guy” are almost comic relief after the truth is revealed, albeit with a few moments of competence (for a prime example of their newfound incompetence, it’s revealed the Skrull couldn’t find Wendy Lawson’s lab because their “science guy” didn’t realize the coordinates they were trying to figure out were directing them to space).  Talos in particular goes from “Leader of the Skrull remnant doing whatever is necessary to save his species and his family” to “Leader of the Skrulls who wants to save his people but never wanted to hurt anyone while doing it.”  Sure, Marvel subverted our expectations, but when your red herring is essentially two different characters before and after the reveal, it’s no wonder audiences ended up surprised.

Nick Fury backstory is now a joke: Now, this in and of itself isn’t an issue - there’s no rule stating Samuel L. Jackson NEEDS to be badass in every movie, or we can’t have a “Younger Nick Fury who is comedic due to being new to it all.”  Like I noted above, Nick Fury is generally competent - as are most characters in this film, even the Skrull post-reveal - and does well enough in his role in the film.  But there’s an elephant in the room: how Nick Fury lost his eye.  Namely, he lost his eye to Goose the Cat/Flerken after the cat decided is was being messed with and scratched his eye.  Yes, you read that right.  Nick Fury’s lost eye was due to him essentially getting scratched by an alien in cat form he pissed off.  And no, it wasn’t “rampaging alien form that hit him with a massive claw,” no, it’s “small house cat claw to the eye.” Now, if it isn’t clear why exactly it’s bad, let me explain it in a bit better detail.  This isn’t just an issue of “We wanted to subvert audience expectations, so Nick Fury lost his eye in a funny way because no one saw it coming” - though it still is that, too.  Rather, the issue here is that what happened here is now canon, and is retroactively canon for the whole of the MCU up to that point.  Nick Fury justifying why he hid secrets to Captain Freakin’ America as because “Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.” - that’s the story he tells everyone because he’s too embarrassed to admit the truth.  That big reveal at the end of the Winter Soldier, where he reveals he had a backup retinal scan of his scarred eye because he was just that prepared in case someone tried to lock him out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. systems by removing the retinal scan of his good eye?  Thank goodness he had that eye scarred by a cat, otherwise, there’s no way that plan would’ve had a chance of working later on.  Him calling Coulson, his most loyal supporter, “His good eye?”  Thank goodness a cat clawed out his eye so he could make it clear how much Coulson meant to him with that distinction. That’s the big gamble you take when you retroactively introduce a character’s backstory in a prequel - everything that happened there is now canon to everything since.  And now Nick Fury’s backstory in the MCU will forever be “He lost it to an annoyed cat,” because Captain Marvel decided that it was better to make a joke of it.

And now, for a minor gripe: This is a bit of a lesser example, but y’all recall what S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for?  Don’t recall off the top of your head?  You could rewatch Iron Man, because it tells you in recurring joke form - Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.  Someone really should shorten that, right?  Something the characters note anytime the full name is brought up.  And at the end of the movie, Coulson tells Pepper - who is going to recite it by name - that it’s S.H.I.E.L.D. for short now. If only Coulson was around back in the 1990s, where Nick Fury makes reference to how he’s “Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D.” and namedrops S.H.I.E.L.D. a few times. *ahem* Yeah, it’s a minor continuity error in the grand scheme of things, but it was something I figured should be mentioned because that was something that I noticed and wanted to bring up.

Final Verdict

Captain Marvel is a... competently-made movie.  And I’m really sorry to say it, but that’s the most I can say about it.  It’s well-made, well-acted, tells a simple enough story to understand that isn’t bogged down by continuity, and it has good messages in it’s narrative.  But it loses so much of itself due to having an inconsistent tone throughout, and it’s plot goes from decent to bog-standard around the time it decides to “Subvert audience expectations” and give us some of the most boring villains this side of the Phase 3 MCU films.

Would I recommend others to watch it?  Somewhat.  It’s not exactly incredibly essential viewing for the MCU and I don’t think it’s really all that good, but it’s not a terrible movie, I can understand why one would like it despite all it’s flaws (people can learn to overlook nearly everything), and it does add to the MCU enough that it is worth seeing if you want to see all the Marvel films.  But if you want a good female superhero film with a feminist message, you’re better off watching Wonder Woman.

And now, to address the elephant in the room pretty much every male who didn’t enjoy the film needs to deal with:”You didn’t like Captain Marvel because the main character was a woman and it had a pro-women message and you must hate feminism.”  It’s a comment that tends to get directed at males who don’t enjoy films with female protagonists, regardless of quality of the film (see: Ghostbusters) or reasons for disliking the film (albeit not without reason, to some degree - after all, those biased against something would be much harder on it than something they aren’t even if their flaws are much the same).  Not helping matters were that trolls DID review-bomb its Rotten Tomatoes score before it even had a full day under it’s belt - which the movie didn’t deserve, it should be judged on it’s own merits, not targeted by insecure men angry about there being a Marvel movie starring a female hero.

And I don’t expect to convince anyone who isn’t willing to believe me otherwise.  I can point to all the video games (Metroid, Portal, Resident Evil, etc) I love that star female protagonists, or that I considered the Wonder Woman film to be excellent, and it won’t convince anyone.  If you think I’m sexist garbage because I’m a male who didn’t like the film, my reasonings above or thoughts below won’t probably won’t convince you.

Here’s my views on this, however: Marvel had taken much too long to give us a movie primarily starring a female hero.  Marvel has many great female heroes, Captain Marvel included, and any one of them would have been as worthy of a film as a male counterpart.  The MCU dropped the ball repeatedly when it came to giving their female heroes films - Black Widow would’ve been great for a film but never got made and the omnipresence of Scarlet Johansson has made many people not care; Scarlet Witch got primarily confined to Avengers-focused films; The Wasp is very enjoyable but still has to share screentime and billing with Ant-Man; Gamora was probably the best and still those films still spent more time with Star-Lord, not to mention she was killed of in Infinity War without certainty of her return, leaving that “Third Guardians movie focused on her” up in the air.

We finally have a Marvel film that’s starring a female, and it’s primary message is about how feminism is important - and it’s good we’ve finally got one, but it took us until Phase 3 to finally get it and the film was marred by so many other issues I would struggle to call it good even with its positive qualities.  And that’s not the quality it deserved - not as a Marvel film, as a Captain Marvel film, or as a feminist film.  And anyone who would say “Who cares if it was not all that good, we’ve finally gotten a feminist superhero film from Marvel”?  You’re settling, and you shouldn’t.  What we deserved isn’t what we got, and by defending it, you’re essentially saying that Marvel can get away with low-quality movies so long as they can say “Sure, but fans were asking for this and we gave them what they wanted.”

You want a film with a female superhero protagonist that has a feminist message that is, above all else, good?  You should watch Wonder Woman.  And I know how there’s all the issues with the DCEU as a whole, or the rivalry between Marvel and DC fans and the former who wanted this movie to be good so they could be proud Marvel made a feminist hero film that was better than DC’s.  And kudos to you who support brand loyalty.  But DC did what Marvel didn’t for the longest time, and for all of the DCEU’s issues, Wonder Woman had very few issues on its own, and the issues that were present were very minor compared to everything it had going for it.  Wonder Woman was what Captain Marvel wanted to be, and what it ultimately failed to be.

[ghoultyrant]

FoZ Notes 18

Alright, we finally are having the plot start moving. Kinda. In any event a decent amount of stuff I felt like making notes of is happening.

--------------------------

Saito literally glowing after him and Louise affirm their love. Neither of them notices. [You know, I’d forgotten about this because it doesn’t come back]

Fouquet giving money to Romalian orphans out of kindness. This is apparently just a thing with her. Oh, excuse me, to Albionese orphans in Romalia. So she's got loyalty to her country, I guess?

Also, Wardes is back. Apparently him and Fouquet have been hanging out in Romalia for... some reason... since Albion lost the war. He's been reading some secret Romalian book detailing historical events involving people revolting against Church power etc, among other books he's been reading in this period. Apparently Fouquet stole it for him.

Wardes mother was a researcher at the same facility Eleanore works at. She researched history (I guess she was an archeologist?) and 'earth history' (??), eventually went crazy, sexist commentary ensued because the author STILL cannot make up his goddamn mind. It's heavily hinted that the Wind Stone Catastrophe I've been spoiled on is her Go Mad From The Revelation moment, which she for some reason decided to not tell anyone about. Wardes is now trying to follow in her footsteps. Why? Because he semi-accidentally killed her when he was twelve by giving her a shove at the top of some stairs, so he's felt guilty ever since.

So. The fuck does that have to do with his original plot of wanting to become God-King of Halkeginia? [No, the story makes no attempt to explain what his original storyline was about]

Romalia knew Wardes and Fouquet were here the whole time, did nothing until just now because Reasons.

Josette has never felt happiness in her entire life. It takes her a bit to recognize it when she first experiences it. She's fully aware Julio is just using her, but loves him such that she's fine with that, which would be creepysweet except she's like the fifth such character at this point, so really it's just plain creepy. Especially since they're all women.

I am getting REAL damn tired of Romalia knowing everything everywhere all the time EXCEPT when they fail to know a thing that it would actually be plausible for them to guess at. (eg Joseph being the Gallion Void mage) The story almost never makes the slightest effort to justify it. It's ridiculous.

More generally, Julio is a goddamn Sue of the highest order. More so than Saito! That's nuts!

Isabella has a knife that talks. Unclear if it's a knife-person or just a knife-radio. Later narrative implies it's a radioknife.

Tabitha saying she isn't foolish enough to help a religious fanatic -to the Pope. Gutsy.

The Pope replacing Tabitha with Josette is intended as a plot to bait out Saito and company because of fucking course.

Guiche views stealthy action as un-noble. No wonder he's so shit at his attempts to court a zillion women without them knowing about each other.

Oh hey now WE are using 'Skillnir' to fool enemies. Skillnir apparently require blood from the person you're wanting them to imitate... which raises the question of how Romalia got a sample of Saito's blood without him knowing. This is a dumb plotpoint.

Kirche will fucking murder you if you kill Tabitha. No hesitation. That's pretty darn close, emotionally! It’s more emotion than she’s shown for, say, Colbert, who I’ve utterly failed to mention her having the hots for after his ridiculous non-death because it’s an idiot plotline.

Saito is fucking baffled by someone having seemingly changed their face with magic. Don't think too hard about how Louise told him about the bastard-hiding place with its face-changing magic, you know, last volume. That was a whole volume ago, how dare you expect the author to remember things from so far back!

Abruptly, we're told Earth Stones are a thing and are necessary for golem production. Okay, cool. Fuck you, you horrific piece of shit, this is either some of the worst planning I have ever seen or some of the most blatant, disrespectful retconning I have ever seen. We should've been hearing about this in Volume Fucking One. Volume Two at the latest, where we were introduced to Wind Stones. We should not be hearing this nonsense in VOLUME EIGHTEEN.

Abruptly we hear that the Pope, when traveling, has to stop and bless people, thank people, etc etc. Why has this never cropped up before, then?

Chikasui -the girl of face-changing and Isabella's right-hand woman as far as I can tell- showing up as a man. Is she a shaspeshifter?

You know, I only just realized the "Mountain of the Fire Dragon" is actually something we heard about back in Volume One. Holy Continuity, Batman!

Really annoyed that Tabitha being pulled from the Pope's carriage doesn't cause Vittorio's men to second-guess their loyalties. Their outrage seems to be over, essentially, casting aspersions upon a man who should be beyond reproach, and then the aspersion turns out to be true. They ought to be horrified and/or outraged to discover that Vittorio has abused the trust that everyone puts into him, NOT blithely, angrily fighting for him like nothing has changed. [Reader note: Saito and company accuse the Pope of kidnapping Tabitha, basically, the Paladins are all “His Holiness would NEVER and how dare you claim otherwise!” and then out comes Tabitha and they don’t acknowledge how this contradicts their belief in the man]

Also getting tired of Vittorio and Julio insisting people should trust them, as they totally have a good reason for it honest! Nope, don't care. Behave in a manner not worthy of mistrust before you demand trust, assholes.

I'd be thrilled to see Saito calling Julio on his manipulative womanizing bullshit if he wasn't a massive goddamn hypocrite. Also because it devolving into a fist fight while Tabitha, Kirche, and Louise stand by and watch is idiotic nonsense. Earthquake interrupt! Vittorio makes a comment that implies this is the Wind Stone Catastrophe. Specifically, Fire Dragon Mountain takes off. Julio claims this Wind Stone issue is why they need to retake the holy land... which explains fucking nothing.

Ugh.

Ridiculous claims that half the landmass of Halkeginia will rise up and this will cause a land war. Guys? You remember Albion? That place people live on right now? I know you do, because you're mentioning it in this conversation. In fact, this will INCREASE the amount of land available to Halkeginia! There will definitely be chaos and death, but you're all wrong ANYWAY.

Oh and we learn Brimir made a device that's in the holy land that requires four Void Mages to activate and which will somehow fix this. Dude. It's been 6000+ years. Even shaving it down to 5000 since Halkeginian years are shorter than Earth years, that's way the fuck too long. It's probably rust and dust, or at least buried. This should be obvious to everyone. Yes, I know, there’s those stupid preservation spells, but the plot itself seems to have entirely forgotten about them.

Why did all this stupid shit happen? Because! In true Shonen style, Julio wanted to fight Saito! Okay, so? What, Vittorio obligingly did a bunch of pointless bullshit to accommodate his familiar secretly being hijacked by an Entity? This is not an explanation that makes any kind of sense.

Of fucking course there's a spell for turning a wand's tip into a whip. And of course Eleanore knows it. As an aside, Malicorne is a masochist. It looked that way for several volumes, but A: I thought he was nobody important, a temporary character and B: it was ambiguous. Nope, he likes being whipped. sigh

Aaaand Louise saying she's "not a child anymore" seems to be taken by everyone as a shocking admission that she's had sex. Oh god she's had sex with Saito. I need brain bleach.

Naturally, Tristain digging into the Wind Stone issue causes them to agree to participate in the Crusade. This is stupid. The stupidity is unending. I'm having trouble making myself keep reading in the face of the biggest, most world-building-est plot twist of the series being such a crock of shit on every level.

Luctiana gets Ali to accept this mission he hates by virtue of refusing to marry him if he denies her the "greatest adventure" she can imagine. Because she wants to come along too, you see. Bidashal Just As Planned this, pretends innocence when Ali calls him on it. [Wait, did I mention Luctiana and Ali before? I don’t remember that being in my previous notes, did I lose the original notes or is this misplaced? In any event they’re both Elves. Luctiana has a fascination with ‘barbarians’, which is her entire character aside from being pedobait, while Ali has basically no character at all]

Oh fuck no. No, don't have Louise throw away her noble title to be with Saito. This is heinous bullshit. (Okay, it doesn't actually happen, but that Louise would consider it worth it horrifies me regardless)

Something I ought to have mentioned back on Volume One: magic lamps. Thing is? They've never been explained. Who makes them? Why are they in noble houses/institutions, but nowhere else? What powers them, given that magic is chant-based? They're just... present, and questionable worldbuilding.

Elves murdering bandits. Ali purports to dislike killing, but none of the Elves seem upset at the gruesome deaths they're inflicting. Wow, what pacifists. I am very convinced.

End volume 18.

------------------------- In which we finally learn about the Wind Stone Catastrophe and learn that Romalia's Crusade is not just fanatical religiousness. Oh and we finally see a bit of Elf culture/lands.

Alternative summary: Stupid Nonsense Pileup. Like a thirty-car pileup, but of stupid nonsense.