#i mean it's a lot in itself especially since he doesnt really deal with any of what happened

[radiantmists]

reading animorphs sequentially instead of in whatever random order you can get your hands on them is such a trip because you can see these kids getting progressively better at war and worse at being happy, you can see how traumatic events from one book echo into the next ones but never quite get dealt with because these kids have no real way to take care of their mental health, you can see their relationships deepening but simultaneously gaining friction and faultlines as they learn just how far they'd go for each other but also how far they'd go in general...

obviously this series was meant to be episodic in nature, and i actually think that might be the better way to first encounter it, but the arc of the series in publication order is extremely well-crafted

[jaekaicx]

so ive had this idea for an amphibia fangame for a lil while now-

(LONG post)

its based around the idea that sometime after anne got sent back to earth, she decides to sneak out one night to visit sasha and marcys bedrooms and poke through their stuff. this causes a bunch of memories to come back to anne through flashbacks while she tries to process everything thats happened and her feelings abt their friendship.

i was thinking itd be mostly a visual novel type thing. maybe with a few small choices, but the story would be mostly linear. thered be around 3 main story beats: a prologue bit w/ anne sneaking out of her house, marcys bedroom, and sashas bedroom. also one of the main mechanics would be looking at one of their bedrooms and clicking on random objects of importance and triggering a flashback sequence.

it came from the idea that anne will probably try to just shove all her emotions down and try to ignore her feelings abt true colors and everything that went down then. especially with what we saw in the sneak peek, anne will probably try to hide her emotions and bottle them up, which is obviously not healthy. so eventually shes gonna have to work through her emptional baggage and try to process everything.

i havent thought through EVERYTHING just yet, just some more major plot points and maybe one or two ideas for flashbacks. nothing too solid yet. but heres a bit more detailed runthrough of the plot

summary - prologue

so it would start off with anne at home. she and her mom are talking outside annes room. her moms concerned abt how annes been handling everything that happened in amphibia but anne keeps brushing everything off. her mom tries to get her to open up, but she keeps dismissing her and eventually shuts herself in her room. after taking a bit to cool off and think anne decides that shes gonna take the night to just ride off her emotions and stop repressing them for once. she also makes an impulsive decision to sneak out and check out marcy and sashas rooms.

anne goes to gather her stuff in her room, and just as shes about to climb out the window, sprig walks in to check on her. hes still rly concerned abt his big sis but he knows he cant stop her. he tries to go with anne, but she tells him she needs to do this on her own. so, sprig lets her go and tries to cover for her while shes gone.

so at this point i’ll probably give the player the choice of whose house to visit first. it doesnt rly impact the story or whatever, but i guess it might have a small emotional impact depending on whose house u choose to go to first??

(quick note: after this bit, there arent too many specific details for the plot and stuff like that. its largely just an overall idea of how the plot is gonna go. and even then, there isnt much to it. i didnt think that far ahead yet, which is why there isnt as much refinement yet. so far i just have general ideas for how annes gonna get to the bedrooms, with a couple of vague flashback ideas. just keep that in mind; this whole thing is still being thought over and planned as im typing this out)

summary - sasha

with sasha, annes still rly conflicted abt how she feels abt her. of course shes still rly hurt by being backstabbed by her twice and swordfighting her as many times. but as much as she hates sasha she cant bring herself to fully give up on sash. she hates her guts but deep down shes still willing to give sash another chance.

there may or may not be a small sequence where anne has to sneak into sashas house, but eventually she works her way into sashas room. im not entirely sure abt the details of sashas house n her family yet. im probably gonna wait for info from s3 until i solidify anything, but for now i do know that sashas family has a big house n theyre probably rich.

so anne goes into sashas room and its been left pretty much untouched ever since annes birthday, save for the few times someone came in to dust things off. again, dont rly have all the details for sashas room, but it kind of has a vibe of controlled chaos, with organized clutter and a bit of a touch of a rebellious teen girl. one detail i do want to have is a calendar opened up to the month the trio disappeared, with annes birthday circled and highlighted so much that its impossible to miss.

the calendar itself might include a flashback. im thinking of also having a varsity jacket and some old stuffed animal be different “artifacts” that trigger their own memories. there’ll be a bunch more, but those are the only ideas i have so far fjsbndnd

summary - marcy

ok so i want to be rly mean about marcys segment: this is going off the theory that marcys parents moved away while the trio was in amphibia.

anne doesnt know this yet tho, so shes in for quite a surprise when she turns onto marcys street to find a realtor sign on the front lawn. the clues are all there: an empty driveway, sign on the lawn, an overall empty vibe coming from the house. but it doesnt completely register at first. its not til anne actually comes up close does she notice the sign.

anne tries to deny it, and decides to prove to herself that “no marcys parents wouldnt do this. theyre not that cruel. im just gonna check marcys room myself.” the front doors locked, so she just goes over to marcys window and climbs in.

but its completely empty.

ok not totally empty, but a lot of marcys furniture and stuff is gone, except for a few stray toys and other “junk.” the home guys (idk what theyre called????) are still kind of in the process of cleaning everything out, so theres still some stuff left here and there around the house. but its still way too empty. and its yet another gut punch for anne.

anne searches the rest of the house a bit more, hoping that shes just hallucinating. but no, marcys parents are really gone. she tried to deny it before, but now she has more of an idea of how shitty the wu parents are. so anne decides to just mope around in marcys old room, checking out the stuff their parents left behind.

maybe she finds an old blanket marcy liked when he was rly young. or an old rubiks cube from marcys vast collection. a cnc figurine, some cards, a pride flag, and old diary? a couple of other old toys, an old report card or two, or maybe even some stray clothes. whatever anne finds, its all thats left of marcy, at least in LA.

it really doesnt leave anne in that much of a better emotional position. she already felt conflicted enough about what happened in true colors and what she found out abt marcy. but seeing even a small glimpse of what marcy was dealing with, it just makes her more confused. marcy was such a sweet kid! theres no way they couldve done anything wrong. yet here anne was, betrayed by both of her childhood friends.

only now is anne really taking the time to process the fact that marcy essentially kidnapped her and sasha with the calamity box. he didnt mean to do it, and theres no way they couldve known the box would actually work, but it doesnt completely excuse marcy. his actions still hurt anne and sash, and while they meant the best of intentions, it didnt rly come through that way.

and now marcy was dead. stabbed in the back by the newt king.

and now annes curled up in an empty bedroom, wrapped up in one of marcys old blankets, trying to wrap her head around her feelings about marcy while reminiscing in the past.

summary - extras/epilogue??

i kind of like the idea that anne ends up drifting off in which ever bedroom ended up being the second one she visited. she slowly comes back to consciousness, with her surroundings feeling somewhat familiar, only to wake up in horror bc “OH SHIT I FORGOT TO GO BACK HOME” im not completely sold on the idea tho bc it feels a bit abrupt and like too much of a tone shift?? idk it doesnt feel exactly right

but anyways, im also playing around with the idea of a small epilogue scene with the calamity trio hanging out in annes room, a good amount of time after amphibia ended. dont know what theyre doing in there, but theyre just chilling and feeling a bit nostalgic i guess.

but uh yeah thats pretty much what ive got for the overall idea. it doesnt feel too out of reach, but somethjng like this would definitely be ambitious. i could mayyyybe handle writing out the vn and drawing the character sprites, but i have no idea how to code a vn or draw detailed backgrounds, both of which would be pretty important to this fangame fjsndj. so i might consider having help with this.

THIS ISNT ANY SORT OF PROMISE OR WHATEVER. id rly love to follow through and make this fangame a thing, but im not making any guarantees. i have no idea if i’ll actually follow through, but i would definitely love to.

who knows. maybe in like a couple years this might actually become a thing. but for now i have no idea

[littlx-songbxrd]

Zia I have an important question. (Also hi!!! How are you? 🌻)

If the bullies from the academy beat Alastair for a whole year, why do they never physically harm the Merry Thieves? (Save for the demon incident with dumbass Clive)

Especially say Thomas? Who was unusually frail for a shadowhunter?

Why do I feel like it was racism? I mean it could be something to do with their families maybe? That there would be consequences for them, but also there was no consequences for the demon thing soooo

Did Alastair's method of verbal humiliation just make them laugh more so they didn't feel the need? Like WHAT is happening? Did they only beat up Alastair and no one else??

(Also why is no one angry with Eugenia for dating Augustus? He actively bullied them too, even insulting Tessa while staying in her home....James literally threw him into the Thames? Why is it never mentioned that the Thieves at least didn't approve? It sort of makes the "they hate Alastair more because he is actively in their life" theory lose some credibility?)

I don't mean this to sound rude or critical of the Merry Thieves, I mean it more as an inconsistency in CC writing

I feel like you've come to the right place for this because I partake in the hobby of overanalisis wayy too much (and am critical of the mt to a certain extent but fjfnnfnrmfnnf)

Now, this could all very well be CC not being consistent or maybe not thinking of certain plot points before she publiahed nbs and cls

But if we see it in canon context, it does keep the question, why do they hit Alastsir and not the merty thieves

In my opinion theres a simple answer

Merry thieves had power

Alastair did not

Yes the merry thieves were potrayed as "outcast" in the academy and were tormented verbally

But the merry thieves are also very much the sons of 3 of the most influencial families in london. If they contiously hit and phydically harmed them, do you think their parents would sit and do nothing?

You really want to deal with the Consul, head of the london institute perhaps

I do not claim verbal bullying has any lesser effect than physical (both can be extremly damaging). But verbal sure is a lot easier to hide, specially in theyre society

Where they dont really have any sense of mental health, which is the side verbal bullying affects. If shadowhunters dont believe in mental health ot wouldnt be such a hard thing to hide within the school itself. Meanwhile if they hurt any of them, thatd be a lot harder to cover up

They could get away with an incident, once. But if it happened again are you gonna be the one to deal with the consul?

They might have been outcast, but their families did have power

Now Alastair

Lets go by simple logic

If you see you do smth and you can get away with it

Why would you stop?

If they bullied Alastaor and got away with hitting him with no consequence

Why would they stop?

Alastair has no safetly net, maybe all they know about his father are through rumors of his fall of grace but if they harm Alastair and really nothing happens. No repricusions from his family, why would they see reason to stop picking on him?

Alastair was small, just out of a toxic family and very vulnurable. No one came for him when they first did it, neither the second. Because I dont think Alastair would write back, because what would he leave the academy for? To go back to Elias? Again? After this was his final chance

I do certainly believe racism did play a part of it to a certain degree. I feel this part (given the shadowhunter world building) would play more part into the verbal side of it

Cause heres a noy who doesnt look like them, doesnt speak like them (yes Alastair did not have a brittish accent, he developoed it in the acadeny fight me djjkfk) and will never be like them

Do you think the mundane kids working for assension wouldnt give him weird looks? Those raised in mundane society who are only used to seeing people like him as beggars or "my mama and papa told me we shouldnt trust them?"

Which adds in itself more reason to not write home, cause how does he tell his mother they dont trust him because of the culture she gave him?

This got way to long and idk if it makes sense but i've been thinking wayyyyy too much about it

ALSO YOIRE RIGHT ABOUT THE AUGUSTUS THING BUT I GUESS THATS ON CCS PART. ITS IDIOTOC BUT-

Also im doing fine!

Quick question since I just realized this

Is there anything I can call you by? Cause I dont think I call you anything and its messing with my brain

If not I'll give you a nickname!

[eztria]

trollhunters: rott and overall toa thoughts

decided to write down what i think of the movie and the series as a whole after watching rott

toby domzalski

first of all, i am so unspeakably sad that toby remained a comedy relief character until it was time for him to die. i really hoped he would get his time to shine but not like this. the death scene was definitely amazingly done and im glad that at the very least rott had a scene that showed the audience just how important tody’s friendship was to jim.

on that note tho, im sad that no one seemed to realize that toby was gone??? it was only after jim realized what happened that he was the first to desperately search for him. i get that toby has the strongest ties to jim but??? claire??? AAARRRGGHH??? they were also close with toby but even after seeing him take the car they didnt immediately shift their focus to him after finding jim???

i really wished we got more serious moments with him through all the toa series. i feel like after trollhunters (although he was also a comic relief there, but id say there was more to him back then), he became the designated comic relief and it makes him such a 2-dimensional character.

jim lake jr

jim is one of my favorite protagonists ever in any show, so seeing him struggle through all the series was always an emotional rollercoaster. i appreciate what rott was going for, the “he doesnt need the armor/amulet, hes always been a hero” sentiment but... the movie gives him the amulet back in the same scene in which he says it. i was severely disappointed when it happened, im not gonna lie. the scene would have been way more impactful if jim defeated bellroc by himself when they were stripped out of magic, instead of suddenly getting a power-up and besting her in combat. if jim didnt get the amulet right then the message of “i always was a hero, with the amulet or without” would have actually hit way harder. we see jim struggle about being just human and lacking the power to hold his own ground in a fight through the whole movie and him suddenly besting bellroc with the amulet is just. underwhelming. i think he should have gotten the amulet after the fight, so we still could have the whole time travel shenanigans thing happen, but def not when he got it. 

and on the topic of the time travel, what the fuck did they do to jim. like????? hello????? this. in Not. the same jim lake jr who went into the darklands all by himself so his friends wouldnt get killed/hurt. this is Not the same jim who refused to burden his mother with what he had to deal with as a trollhunter. the fact that he makes a concious choice to have toby pick up the trollhunter amulet????? is so out of character for him???? especially since he experienced all the struggles, the hurt, the trauma himself. i Refuse to believe he would ever have his best friend relive the hell he has been through all those years. especially since only He has the knowledge of the past??? how does he think this is going to play out??

not to mention that, by having the amulet choose toby, it means that the whole fate/destiny aspect of jim being chosen is out of the window. i didnt like how much the series leaned into it already, because im not a fan of stories which support the concept of “destiny/fate” but that ending really just confirm that jim was never the chosen one, he was just lucky to get the amulet first, because it could have been literally anyone. and im not trying to say that toby would not be a great trollhunter himself, i just mean that if toby can also be chosen instead of jim, the whole speech about destiny is kind of a lie.

claire nuñez

this isn’t really a criticism about her character, but more of how she has been treated by the narrative. im glad that claire gets to do more in this movie and that she keeps an active role (despite being spent in critical points to prevent her from solving problems). i really wish claire was more than Just jims love interest once they got together tho. i wish she was first and foremost his friend instead of his girlfriend, although that might be just my personal pet peeve of narratives putting romantic relationships above platonic ones. i felt it was really a shame that her wish for jim was to “find her and try until she falls in love with him again”. like i get that it was a sweet scene and sentiment overall but all i could think of was shouldnt she be freaking out that her friends and family are possibly dead because of the destruction of the whole town??? she could have been helping people evacuate and then join the fight.

the steve palchuk problem

ive seen a lot of people talk about this, but yeah the mpreg plot was really unnecessary. its really weird and it made me very uncomfortable considering both aja and steve are like. supposedly 18? in rott. this whole plot point not only feels like it takes up time that could have been better spent, but it also kinda portrays aja as a really bad partner to steve. like. you’re telling me she never really told him how this works??? like, ignoring how stupid and arbitrary the 7th kiss thing is, considering that she knows how kissing works for humans, she Should have told him about the possible consequences of it. i get that she was on akiridion-5 but is there really no way for her to communicate with him, considering that krel stayed on earth??? i dont remember if there was any communication mentioned, but if it was, that makes aja even worse in this context, honestly. they did my girl so dirty.

(on a quick note tho, i do like how aja was reluctant to follow jim. she’s a queen now and her priority will always be the safety of people surrounding her so her sentiment of “you can do the risky thing But my ships are still showing up either way” was really nice and i actually liked that she kinda went against jim and questioned him.)

with the mpreg steve plotline also comes the fact that eli is barely in this movie. we literally only get to see him to see that he has a growth spurt and then to have him deliver the babies. i really wish we could have gotten more about eli himself, maybe see how his relationship with aja developed into a friendship??? or the good old eli-steve friendship after a long time of being apart.

anticlimactic deaths/losses

nomura’s death scene was so fast and we didn’t even really linger on its impact, which honestly was. really disappointing. strickler was also done really dirty by being killed off nearly immediately after the reveal of his engagement with barbara. at the very least we got a scene of the lakes mourning him.

nari’s death served a purpose. they sacrificed herself to kill skrael. i did like how much it impacted douxie, but after the deaths, the characters are not really mentioned again until the very end when jim decides to time travel.

archie being left behind felt kind of forced and i wish he stayed in the story if only so douxie didnt have to lose two people close to him on the same day. we also never mention him again which... okay.

this is the finale... where is everyone, what is happening

is barbara just stranded in the castle now??? where is nana?? the changeling babies??? notenrique and claire’s family??? the trolls from the troll market??? this whole movie just felt rushed, honestly. we never were told how barbara and strickler got to the castle and we never even got to witness them see jim in the human form for the first time too. i honestly think this movie should have just been a series. it has enough action to stretch it out and we could have had more scenes that were about finishing arcs for characters and lingering on the consequences of certain deaths. its not a bad movie in itself, but it does not feel like a proper finale to the toa series, especially with the last 5 minutes of rott. im kind of disappointed, but at the same time we p much got an open ending so everyone can go wild with their interpretations/speculations.

[aprito]

hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog 

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me) 

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please) 

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since. 

so finally we can move to the first question 

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic. 

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara. 

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol 

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.  

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

[forevercloudnine]

new 52 scarebat ship meme

(I had @heroes-etc​ give me more questions, but for scarebat this time, since we talk about it 24/7 but I never post about it. These are from this ship meme.)

4. Their favorite physical feature on each other?

There’s only one feature of Bruce’s appearance that’s scarier when he’s not wearing the batsuit, and that’s his creepy blue eyes. Especially the way Greg Capullo draws them where they’re sickly pale and have ridiculously constricted pupils.

So his eyes would definitely be in the running for Jonathan’s favorite feature, even if seeing them would require Bruce’s mask to be off, which is something New 52 Scarecrow explicitly avoids. Yes, that character trait only exists to justify why Batman’s identity is still secret after Scarecrow mind controls and subsequently institutionalizes him in “Gothtopia,” but I think it’s interesting so I’m going to pretend it’s not shoe-horned in there for meta reasons.

Actually having to see Bruce without the cowl on would definitely permanently break the illusion of Batman as a nightmarish inhuman bat demon, which I’m sure is a large part of the appeal for anyone as obsessed with fear as Jonathan Crane. But Bruce’s creepy eyes would be a serious consolation prize. 

Bruce’s favorite of Jonathan’s physical features is rough, because Jonathan is famously not great re: physical features. I’m going to say his mouth, because a) that’s where the snark comes from, and b) the New 52 establishes that in one of their earlier encounters, Jonathan had sewn his own mouth shut, so it’s one of those things where a bad first impression turned positive later on leads to more fondness than if you’d made a good impression in the first place.

I just looked up the panel where he does it and I DID forget how incredibly gross his lips look here, which makes the fact that I have chosen it as Bruce’s feature seem really funny in retrospect. But I do think that seeing Jonathan’s mouth healed and unmutilated would be a reassuring reminder of how he’s stabilized since their first encounter, at least to the point that he isn’t hurting himself anymore. Also, Bruce buys him a lot of chapstick.

Bonus alternate answer that did not make it into the Google Doc:

9. How open are they with their feelings?

Bruce and Jonathan are both pretty competent deceivers in the New 52; Bruce always, Jonathan depending on how the writer is feeling (though you could argue that Bruce just has a stronger grip on reality, while Jonathan’s skill at obfuscation varies with how lucid he is).

...I was going to use Detective Comics #23.3 as an example of Jonathan being a good liar, but actually upon re-reading I’m realizing that only 1/4 rogues buy his attempt at manipulation. So maybe he’s considerably worse at hiding his intentions than he thinks he is. Regardless, he doesn’t ever attempt to disguise his obsession with Batman.

Whether or not he’d express romantic feelings or try to hide them is debatable. There’s no Masters of Fear equivalent in the New 52 establishing that he was ever mocked or punished for expressing romantic feelings for someone, though there is a flashback panel in his origin emphasizing that he was always lonely in this regard (and coincidentally doesn’t specify that his interest is in women, which is fun).

In Green Lanterns #17 he has some internal monologue about how fear is his romance and he needs Batman to feel it, but it is an INTERNAL monologue, so it’s not clear if this is something he would express to Bruce or keep to himself. Or if he’s even fully processed it himself, given how incredibly out of it he is in this comic. Most of his spoken lines are just kind of screaming incoherently. Bruce gets pretty snippy with a Green Lantern at the end of the issue for suggesting that Jonathan should be punished for his crimes as if he were in control of his actions. 

Bruce is a similarly complicated answer, since for all his deceptions and shadowy mystery he pretty much wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to romance. It’s just that his heart doesn’t express or process emotions the same way as anyone around him, which can create conflict. His (seriously underrated) love interest during Scarecrow’s origin arc, Natalya, spent most of her time dating him thinking that he didn’t care about her for this reason. He was trying to express that he loved her, but he mostly did so through complimenting her skills, which she never took as serious declarations of affection because he wasn’t being straightforward and she was insecure.

Jonathan does not himself seem like someone who would be especially secure in the idea of another person having romantic feelings towards him, so I assume that while Bruce might THINK he’s being open with any romantic feelings he develops, he would in reality just be really confusing.

13. How do they react to being away from each other?

I actually think that in general, Jonathan is one of the few people who would have no issue dealing with Bruce’s tendency to unexpectedly go AWOL for long periods of time, given that he himself has a tendency to fixate on his work to the exclusion of everything else.

But New 52 Jonathan specifically probably has pretty serious abandonment issues due to his father putting him in “the pit” and dying before he could take him out, meaning that Jonathan was waiting for his dad to come back for him for God knows how long, until Jonathan Sr.’s employers finally sent the police to investigate. 

So while in general I think he wouldn’t be very clingy, any impression that Bruce had died or otherwise wasn’t coming back for him would probably be incredibly triggering. If Bruce could assuage this reaction by occasionally sending updates that at least indicated he was still alive, then I doubt Jonathan would have any problems with his absence.

(@heroes-etc​: bruce sending like a checkmark emoji once a day. jonathan hears his phone ping, looks at the screen, and goes hm. good. and doesnt respond.)

Bruce meanwhile has no problem ditching literally any love interest at any time if something crime-related comes up, unless he’s considering quitting the cowl for them (as Joker probably accurately fears will happen with Catwoman in Prelude to the Wedding). But I don’t think he’d stop being Batman for Scarecrow, nor would Jonathan ever want him to — he’s interested in Batman, not necessarily Bruce Wayne.

But even though Bruce wouldn’t have an emotional problem with distance, I think he would get similarly paranoid if they went too long without contact, though for different reasons than Jonathan. Unlike some other villains (*cough* Joker and Riddler), Scarecrow has machinations that don’t require getting Batman’s attention, so if he decided to continue with his less legal experiments, he would not feel compelled to get Bruce involved. While the “World’s Greatest Detective” would probably not have an issue keeping an eye on Jonathan while he’s in Gotham, he’s considerably less capable of that in space. And Jonathan is definitely a rogue he would be obsessed with keeping an eye on, even if he reformed. 

Batman & Robin Eternal established that Dick’s first supervillain conflict AND first mission leaving the country was chasing Scarecrow across the world for an entire summer, which is kind of insane considering how early it was in Batman’s career. Like, he did not have an army of children to watch Gotham for him while he was gone. He had one child, and he took that child WITH him. He left Gotham undefended for months, JUST to catch Scarecrow. Sooo that in of itself implies he wouldn’t be great at keeping his distance.

15. Does their view of themselves differ from their partner’s view?

Well, Jonathan occasionally sees Bruce as a giant bat demon, so yes.

Outside of that very obvious differing view, Jonathan in general sees himself and the rest of the rogue gallery as more vital to Batman’s identity than Bruce considers them; the extent to which he’s right varies depending on your interpretation of Bruce’s character, but it’s definitely not something Bruce would ever consciously think or say. 

This is related to something that’s definitely a misconception of his, though, which is that the majority of Batman’s job revolves around supervillains like him. In Kings of Fear, when Jonathan blackmails Bruce into letting him come on patrol with him (which is a whole thing in of itself), he’s shocked at how boring most of Batman’s work is. Which probably goes along hand in hand with sometimes seeing Bruce as an almost mythologically inhuman figure. 

In his defense, it’s not like he has a lot of context for what the minutiae of Batman’s job is like. He’s either fighting Batman, hiding from Batman, or imprisoned by Batman in Arkham, a place where everyone else also spends all their time fighting or hiding from Batman. Which would really skew your perspective.

Interestingly, Bruce and Jonathan are both people who pride themselves on being extremely self-aware. Both of them probably inaccurately. You can rant about how you have a perfect understanding of your troubled mental state all day long, but if you’re still dressing up like a monster at night to indulge the power fantasies you created as a traumatized child by scaring the hell out of people, there’s probably a level of self-realization you haven’t gotten to yet.

Bruce however is at least self-aware enough to regularly be able to analyze his way out of fear toxin induced hallucinations, which Jonathan is unable to do — when he’s not depicted as having become immune to his fear toxin due to overexposure (as he is in Green Lanterns #17), he can be defeated with the same formulas that Batman regularly manages to resist (like his honestly embarrassing breakdown in Nightwing #50). 

Which ties into the difference between how he sees himself and how Bruce sees him: Jonathan obviously visualizes himself as a “master” of fear. He actually has the same internal monologue about fear and trauma that Bruce does in Batman: The Dark Knight #13: “Make it your own... run to what you fear... stare it in the eye... until it whimpers and backs down.” But Bruce doesn’t see Scarecrow as conquering his fear; he sees him as addicted to it, to the point of his own detriment.

Which is interesting, because Jonathan clearly sees his Scarecrow persona as a way to regain control after being victimized by his father’s fear experiments throughout his childhood. I guess Bruce’s perspective would be that Jonathan’s father instead got him addicted to fear as a child, so his attempts at agency as Scarecrow are just a) reliving his trauma over and over and b) compulsively inflicting his own trauma on others. There’s probably some truth to that, even if overall it’s probably an oversimplification (and coincidentally pretty much EXACTLY what Riddler argues Bruce is doing by “funding” Batman in Batman Annual #4, so there’s that).

20. Did either person change at all, to be with their partner?

The obvious answer here is yes, because Jonathan is a supervillain with no regard for human life while Bruce is a superhero who has dedicated his life to protecting people. So presumably one or both of them would have to make serious compromises to be together. HOWEVER. Scarecrow’s primary motivation is to research, understand and inflict fear, while Batman’s modus operandi is making his enemies afraid of him. So despite their contradiction in morals, they’re uniquely positioned to advance each other’s goals, were they to ever join forces.

Bruce never has a problem using fear toxin on Scarecrow, presumably partially out of an “eye for an eye” sense of poetic justice, but also because Batman is practical and it’s a nonlethal weapon that’s always available to him while fighting Scarecrow. If he could have fear toxin customized for his own use, it’s hard to imagine him being unwilling to use it. In Gothtopia he actually advocates for using what’s leftover from Crane’s new formula on all the inmates at Arkham, which seems about as insanely morally ambiguous as it gets. Arguably, putting fear toxin in his smoke bombs would be considerably less wrong than drugging mental patients out of their mind when they’re supposed to be receiving therapy (this is also the issue where he illegally releases Poison Ivy because she did him a favor, which is both morally questionable and relevant to the current topic).

Jonathan obviously already thinks Batman is the most interesting possible case study in fear; it’s why he keeps coming back to Bruce and Gotham despite being one of the more independent villains in Batman’s rogue gallery in the New 52. So though he would have to give up actively kidnapping people (which would be a huge sacrifice, I’m sure), teaming up with Bruce would give him unrestricted access to his favorite test subject. Unfortunately, it seems very possible that he would fall back to old tricks if he ever felt that he’d gotten everything he could out of a partnership with Bruce. Fortunately, that would probably take a VERY long time.

[prose-for-hire]

Silver bullets have nothing on you

Pairing: Cordelia Chase x fem!werewolf!reader

Request: thank you! could i please have one where reader is Cordy’s ex and she transfers to sunnydale. buffy doesnt like her because she thinks shes a Vamp but actually secretly shes a werewolf! Thank you! i love ur work

Warning: Violence. Buffy doesn’t really get on with reader. Reader is ashamed of being a werewolf. Blood mention.

A/N: Reader is Cordy’s ex but there are feelings still there. A little angst but hopeful at the end. Another fic in honour of Cordelia Chase Appreciation week !! 💖

You had transferred to Sunnydale, unaware that the ex you were still hung up on basically ran the school. You had met her one summer, her father had a business meeting in your town and they had stayed for a long weekend. You had tried to stay in touch, keep things long-distance but she had broken things off with you when she thought you started to become distant with her. She thought you had gone off her and she was really hurt by it, having to coldly break up with you to make herself feel better than the rejection she felt.

But, you weren’t pulling away from her because you wanted to. You had a secret. You loved this girl too much to inflict it on her. It was a lot to take in. Most people didn’t believe in demons and you didn’t want her to have to find out if she didn’t need to.

 The first evening you arrived, you bumped into a blonde girl. You managed to bump into her several times, always in the dark, since then. The girl, who happened to be a slayer, took an instant dislike to you. She was suspicious. You weren’t quite human, something inside her told her this. You shied away from her when you heard whispers of slayer in your mind. Something within, call it self-preservation or animal instinct told you to avoid her as much as you could.

This was hard, however because she appeared when you least expected her - always after dark as if she was waiting for you to grow fur and start gnawing on the nearest teenager. It made you paranoid, the condition already hard enough to prepare for when a full moon was coming let alone feeling like the Slayer was ready to pounce on you.

One night, you were at the bronze. You were sitting alone, as you had been most evenings with very little to do in town. Your thoughts cast back to her. Cordelia. The most beautiful and kindest person you had ever met. You had hoped you might catch a glimpse of her (you knew she lived in Sunnydale, after all) buy knew it was probably the best thing for her that you hadn’t. You were relieved she had broken up with you in some way, because it meant she had saved herself from the possibility of you hurting her in some way.

You didn’t realise that on the other side of the Bronze, there was someone in the same predicament. Her. She was thinking about you, staring into space and sighing. She missed your touch. The way your lips felt against her skin. The conversations you would have that often ended in uncontrollable laughter. She wanted you back. She had even started to come out to the Scoobies and people she was closest to because she wanted to be long term with you.

But now she was mad at you. For avoiding her. Ignoring her calls. But mostly she just wanted you back. Her heart was in pieces and no amount of popular guys her superficial friends set her up with could compare to you. You were the girl of her dreams. Literally - she kept having these dreams. Dreams that you were back together again and she was holding you against her. Inhaling your scent. Whispering such intimate things. 

You had transferred to Sunnydale High school and had started your classes (when you managed to find the correct rooms) but Buffy Summers had only ever seen you at night - leading her to confirm her own suspicions based on this. She thought you were a vampire. She made you uncomfortable and she always appeared to be glaring at you, no matter where either of you were in the room.

Tonight, there was a man sat beside you. His complexion porcelain white and he dressed like he was stuck in the 1970s. He suddenly slung his arm around you and you scowled, pulling away. But he whispered something persuading you to walk away with him. You had no choice, he was very strong. He had a strong hand on your arm and he was telling you to act normal as he walked you through the crowd and swiftly out of the door.

Buffy caught your eye, missing your pleading look. Instead seeing the kind of person you spent time with and decided this was one battle that wasn’t worth fighting tonight. She wanted some time off she would deal with you and your friend later. This meant that you were alone, with a vampire, that wanted to sire you. Your brain was rattling against your skull, wanting to jump ship before the inevitable. Death.

When he was satisfied he had found somewhere you wouldn’t be interrupted, he slammed you against the wall and held you in place. You shivered and it wasn’t the cold. You were scared. You had so many things you wanted to do with your life. You wanted to graduate. You wanted to be the first person to discover the cure for being a werewolf. You wanted to cling to the idea that you and Cordy would get back together one day.

But all of these hopes were draining out of your brain, quicker than the blood would be drained from your neck. Instead, only fear remained. You cursed yourself, not wanting this to be the last thing you felt before death. Wasn’t your life supposed to flash before you? All you could think was that you wanted to see Cordy’s face one last time before you died. You would take any moment, so long as it was her.

The vampire grinned at you, toying with you and giving you the impression you had room to struggle. But he had you exactly where he wanted you. You were struggling until he stilled you, pinning your arms by your side. He moved to get a better view of your neck, his face shifted and you braced yourself as he moved in to bite.

You finally saw it. Her face. You could die happy, having seen her face again. Your vision started to go fuzzy, but the picture of her was now imprinted in your brain. You desperately tried to cling onto the image as you felt the fangs retract from your neck and ignore the pain that was coursing through you.

“Urgh!” He spluttered, starting to spit out the blood that had been oozing from your neck, “What is that - you taste like... dog” he started to wipe his mouth off in disgust. It snapped you out of your submission especially as the face you had seen wasn’t something your brain had conjured up. It really was her.

She had been looking for some kind of weapon to use ever so quietly as he took the first bite. She had since grabbed a metal pipe and as forcefully as she could, hit him over the head with it. She instantly dropped it, her fierceness appearing because it was you. Because she couldn’t bear to see anything happen to you. She appeared to be running on adrenaline.

“Pack up, princess” the vampire warned, baring his teeth and trying to get her to leave. You clutched at the wound on your neck as you watched the exchange.

“Leave. Now. I’m the biggest bitch that Sunnydale high has ever seen and that means a whole lot of pain for you” She said, but her voice faltered at the end. She had only ever staked one vampire and it had been a total fluke. But she wanted to make sure you were safe. She was so confused when she saw you leaving the Bronze, she had to follow you to convince herself you weren’t a trick of the eye. 

“Two for the price of one” The vampire shrugged, clearly unmoved by Cordy’s threat. He went straight for Cordelia and you grabbed him, twisting his arm and managing to push him to the floor. You had the upper hand only because he (and you) hadn’t realised the strength you possessed. 

You were confused, standing still with your brows knitted together. Blood running down your side. This allowed him to gain the upper hand again. He sprung up as you were in awe of your own strength as he started to round on you, his fangs bared. You felt a rumble in your chest, as if you wanted to growl. It was a dull ache, like when your tummy rumbles except in your chest.

Out of nowhere, Cordy broke off some wood and while he had his back turned, she managed to stake him. She ran through the dust, to your side and checked over the wound that was already slowly closing itself up. Your mouth had widened in shock at how easily she appeared to roll with everything. She moved a hand to softly rest under your chin as if to close your mouth that was still open in confusion. How did she know about vampires?

The next evening, you had met at the Bronze. You had a lot of catching up to do. You wore something to hide your neck as you had no way to explain how your wound had already healed. She had started to tell you about hanging around the slayer, how she had never mentioned it because she didn’t want to have you worrying about that. She really cared for you and she was very protective. This hadn’t stopped despite you no longer being her girlfriend. 

Talking to her was so easy, you both smiled over at each other and shared anecdotes you had been saving in hope that one day you would be able to speak the way you used to. Your legs brushing against each other under the table, making you both smile every time that they did.

Every so often you opened your mouth, trying to find a way to tell her what had happened to you. What you were now. How you had become a werewolf. But every time you open your mouth you just can’t do it. You were so scared of rejection. You didn’t want her to think you were some monster. You were still you.

You were scared she would hate you. Find you unlovable for something you couldn’t change. The conversation stopped flowing so easily as you found yourself more caught up inside your head. She noticed you had started to become distant - staring off into space again. She clicked her fingers in front of your face more than once and decided that it was probably time to call it a night. She asked if you would take her home and you nod, agreeing to walk with her. It was the least you could do after she saved your life.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Buffy saw you escorting Cordy out and felt a sense of duty she was sadly lacking when a stranger was taking you for a bite the other week. She followed you both a safe distance from the Bronze and then started to attack you. She spun you around, landing a hard blow against your face which made you cry out and clutch your face.

“Ow! What is your problem!?” You snarl at her as she raises an eyebrow waiting for your forehead to shift and confirm her suspicions. When it had almost been a solid minute of staring in silence, Buffy still didn’t back down.

“I know what you are” 

“I- I don’t-”

“You’re a vampire. I’m the Slayer. Together, we’re a match made in Hell” Buffy started to punch you again, but you were more ready this time. Your arm came up instinctively to block her curled fist but nothing connected with your body. Cordelia had stepped in front of you. Her arms crossed. There was no way that someone with that hairstyle was going to be beating up the girl she cared for.

“I’m not a vampire!” you said from behind Cordy.

“Buffy, God, not everything is about you! This is y/n she’s just transferred from-” she started to introduce you but Buffy had to be tough. It was her job. She couldn’t just take your word for it and let you go.

“Move, Cor, or I will move you” Buffy warned. Cordelia was getting on her nerves. First she didn’t believe Angel was a vampire and now you. 

“Just... do what she says” You mutter as she swung around, eyes wide. As if you had just grown a second head. She decided this must mean you are a vampire. 

“When?” she whispered but there was no time to reply. Buffy was attacking you so quickly all you had to do was blink and she had already left several bruises starting to form on your skin. You could handle yourself on instinct for the most part, but trying to win a fight against a slayer? You had no chance. 

You managed to block a few moves but you were lacking on offensive blows. She was just too fast for you. She eventually knocked your feet from under you, your brain taking time to catch up to where you were now in a heap on the floor. She stepped over you with Cordelia screaming and trying to hold Buffy back. Buffy had a wooden stake now as she crouched next to you, the pointed end of the wood starting to become increasingly uncomfortable as it dug into your chest.

“I’m a werewolf! I’m a werewolf!” You shouted, putting your hands up in surrender, “I’m no threat, unless you find me on a full moon! Please don’t put that through my chest!” you plead, pride no longer a worry. Fear of rejection now further down on the immediate list of threats. You let your mouth say whatever it wanted so long as it would get that massive splinter away from your precious heart. You weren’t a vampire, but you were pretty sure a massive object stabbed through your heart wasn’t going to be very healthy.

Buffy paused and you knew she would expect you to prove it in some way, “Look” You mutter, grabbing at the cross that was hanging around her neck as you proved to her that your hand wasn’t starting to steam. 

Cordelia’s face was a picture of shock. She had known you weren’t a vampire and hadn’t been sure why Buffy had gone totally psycho (her words). But this? It all made perfect sense now. The secrecy. The way you went missing for those three days every month - she knew it couldn’t have been camping. What a bad excuse. But it didn’t make it any less of a shock to hear.

Buffy mutters an apology getting up and leaving, knowing this wasn’t her conversation to have. She stared at you for a second where you were still sat on the floor after you had been knocked down pleading for your life. Then she left just as abruptly as she had stormed in.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” she exploded, clearly mad that all of this - losing you, feeling so distant from you was down to this. To your shame. You hadn’t even wanted to admit it until you were two seconds away from death.

“I didn’t want you to... hate me” You said softly, “I mean it. Silver bullets have nothing on you - on the pain that I would feel from losing you because of what I am...” you sniffed, looking into the distance rather than at her disappointed face.

“You could have died! That’s way worse” The pitch of her voice climbing several octaves in disbelief. She didn’t think hiding this was worth almost dying over and she told you about it. You squinted at her, she didn’t seem to be cowering from you in fear or not being able to look at you in disgust.

She just appeared to be exasperated that you hadn’t told her something apparently so mundane to her now she knew about demons. She offered a hand to help you up and you took it gladly. 

The smile you shared, knowing that you both cared for the other filled you up with hope. Your body glowing from head-to-toe with the possibilities that came with her acceptance. You walked slowly, the moon lit your path as you walked home together.

Maybe you could face the full moon, with her by your side.

[b0ttl3d-up-st4rs]

Well I'm gonna do what I do best and self reflect to an insane amount. This is probably gonna be a long post so buckle up.

To be honest my behavior for nearly the past year now is concerning to say the least. There's this little voice in my head that just desperately wants to get more and more hurt, more and more traumatized. Why is that? At first glance the negative approach could be to say its some sort of masochistic behavior and any negative repercussions as a result of this behavior is deserved, but I don't really think thats the case.

Self sabotage is a characteristic that can be exhibited in many mentally ill people and I am no exception. I think this behavior, of seeking to be hurt by grown men on the internet is partially self sabotage.

And I remember when I first started this shit show, I just wanted attention. Sounds mean to say, but craving attention is something the human soul desperately wants. And I was starting to feel some sense of self beauty but I didn't feel as though anyone around me was appreciating it so I tried to get attention from grown men because being showered in compliments and attention felt so good when my whole life I've never gotten any of that.

I think there's more too it, though. Looking back my whole life it's almost as if I've wanted to get hurt. In books I liked to sit around with the pain the characters felt. And its almost like I wanted to get traumatized. I've heard that people with trauma that they don't acknowledge is trauma or think its bad enough to be traumatizing seek put worse forms of trauma, in order to feel that pain is valid. And I think that's part of my issue too.

I do have unaddressed and repressed childhood trauma. I was given unrestricted internet at a young age and was exposed to the horrors of the internet. Nothing like straight up porn, but a lot of suggestive content. And in general being exposed to that caused me a lot of catholic guilt as I was raised catholic. I remember feeling like knowing these things were my fault. Many days I felt so guilty that I would pray to god to let me not wake up in the morning.

As a child I also questioned my religion a lot, which i think was traumatic in itself. Religion is a big thing. And as a kid I had a big issue knowing reality from fiction. Heck I still do. I remember as a kid my friend telling me that we were all demigods and one day we were going to run away to camp half blood. That the percy jackson books were real. It sounds stupid now, but I processed that as real and it was so stressful for me.

And I remember being 12 coming out as trans and as a part of the lgbtq community to my parents. They didnt react well. They said I was confused. My mom said I was both too young and too old to know. I fought a lot with my mom. And in general have a lot of unhappy memories from then. I was outed multiple times in my life.

My relationship with my parents still isnt good. My mom has a tendency to be toxic. I hate that I have to stay in the closet around my family its so painful. Like a month ago I mentioned the lgbtq community for the first time in years, asking my mom her opinions on it and if it changed since 2017, and it turned into her yelling at me and making herself a victim. It really hurt. I forgot how much it hurt.

I don't really have much of a relationship with my dad. We barely talk. Hes very emotionally distant. When I'm at my dad's house I sort of fend for myself. Its the exact opposite at my moms house. She's overbearing and never leaves you alone. It's like going between to extremes.

And honestly I can't wait to move out. My mom and I have arguments a lot. But hey at least I have some relationship with her, I don't really have a relationship with my dad.

I remember one time this year, I was during the end of a school semester. I needed to catch up on work because after talking to my abuser for like 5 months and then unlocking him I was left in shambles and fell into a really bad depression to where my motivation for school just disapeared. Im still dealing with that tbh. Anyways I had to go to a online meeting to choose my classes and I didn't get to choose the classes I thought I would be able to, and that made me really upset. But after the meeting I had to go to do am act of kindness (I chose picking up litter at a graveyard cause i like graveyards) for my school project but I was still distraught. If I was given some time to myself I probably wouldve been able to go without issue, but my mom wanted to go immediately. We argued. And when I got there I refused to leave the car because I felt so much like shit. We argued more. It was the worst argument I ever had. She even swore at me. Which she's never done before. And she ended up playing victim again. She does that a lot I guess. And doesn't really listen to my feelings. Whenever I try to communicate about my feelings with her it turns into an argument and she makes it about herself. So yeah our relationship isn't the greatest. And I think having mommy and daddy issues is a trauma in itself. Ppl deserve to have happy healthy supportive families.

Oh right and another trauma I completely forgot (funny how that happens) is when I was 14 and admitted to a mental hospital because I tried to off myself. It was so surreal and they forced me to learn how to make eye contact with people cause apparently thats "how they know im doing ok". Which is kinda fucked considering the fact I recently realized I might be autistic. And eye contact is literally so painful for me. It especially was back then. Anyways the place itself wasnt too bad but the feeling of being trapped overall sucks and being disconnected from the rest of the world isnt fun either. Also I dissociate all the time but I especially dissociated hard thru the whole experience. And sort of made myself into the perfect patient, repeating all their bs and literally lying to myself to convince myself that I was ok so they would let me go. So that was kind of weird.

Anyways I know I have it better than others. And honestly sometimes it's hard to tell what exactly was traumatic in my childhood. I probably forgot and repressed other parts of it too and am forgetting things. But needless to say these unaddressed traumas didn't help my mental state. And i do think that's a big part of the voice in my head begging me to just get hurt more.

Overall my mental state is fucked, It's been really hard for me not to be taken advantage of by another internet pedo. Heck the only reason that isn't happening rn is because no ones dmed me yet. Also I unblocked my old abuser and we are talking again now so thats fun. It definitely doesnt help the cognitive dissonance in my brain of him being actually a nice and supportive dude. I think thats also a part of me wanting to get more traumatized. Since my abuser is a nice person that should counteract all the fucked up sexual things he said to me in the past right? I mean others have it worse, had worse abusers that were actively cruel. That's part of the bitch in my subconscious brain talking. It sucks tbh.

Anyways yeah I probably need therapy but I don't feel comfortable talking about this to my current counselor and honestly its really hard to say out loud. I can talk forever about it by writing it down but the moment I speak words from my dumbass mouth I break down in tears and can't do it. Plus idk, I'm scared if I say anything she'll have to tell my parents and that my phone might be taken away or I'll have less privacy and for a closeted queer where my only current life line is the internet and my online friends: that is a terrifying idea. Idk. I'm fucked basically.

[delfinodreams]

OKAY i said i would make a post about my thoughts on paper mario a while ago and im finally writing it out

ill put it under a break because its probably gonna be long-ish

update: yea this bitch is LONG

okay so overall i really really enjoyed it!! it was really solid for the first entry in the series and i could definitely see the inspiration that ttyd later took from it. one thing that i didnt know about was partners not having HP, which threw me for a little bit of a loop. partners as a whole in this game don't play as active of a role as i wouldve expected because they have so little lines but using them in battle is still very fun! another small thing but i also hadn't expected mario to be completely silent, but it later grew on me!

i'm also gonna list my experiences and opinions on each chapter so here we go!!

chapter 1 - pretty alright for an introductory chapter! i didnt find anything especially notable, apart from getting 2 partners in one chapter. navigating the koopa bros. fortress was fun, and i loved the battle at the end!! their theme is SUCH a banger i had to sit back and listen to it for a bit when the fight actually started ehe

chapter 2 - not quite a fan of this one imo? i liked the first part through the mountain, but the trek though dry dry desert kinda took it out of me. BUT the addition of my favourite partner made up for it! parakarry my beloved <3 also the cutscene where dry dry ruins rise up??? that shit was SPECTACULAR. i absolutely loved how it turned dark when it first came up, i wish it stayed like that for more than just until you entered the ruins. the boss itself wasn't too exciting for me, probably because there wasnt much of a story?? i dont know how to describe it. actually its like that for quite a few of these bosses, but its the first entry for this series, so i wont fault it too much.

chapter 3 - this might be my FAVOURITE chapter- the suspense buildup throughout the entire chapter was AMAZING holy moly!!! first through the forever forest when you have bootler ask for you, and then wandering the mansion itself. i TOTALLY thought that boos were gonna be actual enemies when i saw them floating around. sneaking around tubba blubba's castle was so so fun to do, and i legitimately panicked when you ran into him in the hall and also when he wakes up and chases you back to the windmill. i didnt actually think the heart itself was the boss, just a miniboss, so i freaked out when i left the windmill and was immediately thrown into a battle with tubba blubba. i cannot express just how much i enjoyed this chapter, seriously!!

chapter 4 - coming back to toad town with the music change threw me for a bit; i wasnt expecting action to pop up so soon! figuring out that you could actually go into the toybox was such a "wait, what??" moment for me, but like, in a positive way. it was really cool to navigate this chapter and the lantern ghost encounter genuinely creeped me out at first because it was COMPLETELY dark. the fight against general guy is also a BANGER i could listen to it all day

chapter 5 - man i LOVE the whale. just a big guy willing to take u across the ocean :^) i really appreciated how you weren't stranded on the island too, like how you were on keelhaul key in ttyd. the ravens are also funky little guys, love them too. again, the lava piranha didnt really have any substance to it BUT it was a nice fight nonetheless! when it popped up again i was shocked but i made it through!! also fuck kolorado he doesnt deserve his wife

chapter 6 - this one's formatting is really neat- one central area with lots of branching paths, which i hadnt seen in my past pm experiences! i loved the quest leading up to the big beanstalk, plus the environment was so pretty!! the little part with the sun tower popped out to me, i'm not sure why though. maybe it was the music, it was so different from the flower fields theme. at first i had actually expected to go up to the clouds earlier, maybe like midway through the chapter. i thought that would be the "dungeon" of this part, so i was a little bit let down when i realized that the fields were the majority. however, the bit of the clouds we do see is SO good i LOVE the atmosphere!! huff n puff was actually relatively easy, using parakarry and lakilester for their all-around attacks. the guitars were a nice touch for his theme as well!

chapter 7 - oh dude i LOVED this chapter. i didnt know what i was expecting when i first went into the pipe in the sewers, whether it would put me into a village immediately or if i would have to make it through some screens before. needless to say, i was relieved when it popped me out into shiver city. the whole place felt "warm" which was really nice!! i was comparing it to ttyd's chapter 7 and fahr outpost which i didn't really vibe with, so it was a nice change! the whole murder plot was also unexpected but i enjoyed the whole "whodunnit" mystery! omg as im typing this i realize just how many aspects of this chapter i love this is gonna be long,, the entire snowy atmosphere is just so PRETTY and starborn valley felt so solitary to the rest of the land, like its own little bubble. i also had no idea that ninjis were in this game so when i saw one at merlon's i was like HUH?? anyways the way up the mountain to the crystal palace kept me on my toes; i thought that was the dungeon at first! the small bit where you see madam merlar and she tells you the story of the palace really got to me i have no idea why. the music and mysticality of it all was just SO good. dont even get me started on the crystal palace itself HOLY MOLY. the whole reflection bit was SO SO clever and the moment you realize its NOt actually a mirror?? fucking magnificent. this has to be my favourite dungeon in the whole game because it has such a NEAT gimmick!! it also has my favourite mario enemies, duplighosts! FUCK the crystal king though. he stunlocked me with his freezing move because i could not get the hang of blocking it. my partners really carried me for that battle; thank god for quick change

chapter 8 - THIS CHAPTER DELIVERED. the buildup for the entire game leading to this point. OUTSTANDING. i had to sit back and admire star haven because its so pretty- did i mention i love the water graphics in this game?? it has a pixelly look but it works SO WELL. going to the ship to take you to bowser's castle really felt like a "this is it" moment. the entirety of bowser's castle was So Good, it kept me on my toes the entire time!! slowly advancing as the music got more intense REALLY pumped me up. tracks that start off with only a couple instruments and eventually add more as you progress is one way to make me go BONKERS. the one bit where you make your way outside on the bridge and the music dials down and then you re-enter on the other side to it SLAMMING you in the face- that was Great. and then the complete silence as you get outside peach's castle HOLY SHIT. and then you actually enter the palace and the music is SO EERIE and youre like OH SHIT THIS IS REALLY IT. seriously, the buildup for this entire castle is done SO magnificently. i hadn't expected to fight bowser twice, i guess it was the game's way of letting u level up One Last Time before u got to the big bad. that being said, i wasn't too worried on getting a game over since i was fucking stacked on items. but that's besides the point- the fight itself got my heart POUNDING. the effects for the star rod and the star's powers were really nice to see in action, and the little section with peach and twink was so cool! i was expecting a little interlude where you would get your stats maxed out because thats how its like in every pm game, but it was still moving :)) bowser's final battle theme fucking SLAPS. the guitar especially sounds AMAZING. you really see him as a threat here and its so badass. his healing move fucked me over multiple times- i probably ended up having to deal with double his base HP over the course of the fight.

after the fight was over and you got to see peach's castle float down with the soft music in the background, it really hit me that its done, its over. again, the effects in this game are so pretty and theyre utilized SO well for the n64. visiting toad town one last time with all the npcs was a really nice touch- for some reason i really loved being able to interact with vanna t. (chuck quizmo's toad assistant) she's ADORABLE and i will probably end up drawing her sometime :)) the credits were also something that i really enjoyed- i LOVE the ongoing theme of parades at the end. seeing everything and everyone in the game condensed into a short 8 minutes really got me, i cant remember but im pretty sure i was smiling the whole time! and a small sidenote- TOADS WITH GLOWING SPOTS ON THEIR HEAD HELLO?????? I WANNA DRAW THAT SO BAD.

the ending screen with peach and mario looking at the fireworks made me really soft and i teared up a little because i was finally finished. the addition of pop diva's solo in the track was also so touching, it was my favourite sidequest in the game so hearing it again brought up Emotions :')

one thing i wasnt sure of was if there was a post-game mode and my completionist heart was disappointed a little when i found out i couldn't advance from the end screen and was forced to reset. although not many games from this era had post-game content so i cant dock too many points for that.

the paper mario series has a fond place in my heart, and finally being able to play the game that started it all really was a special experience. it really cemented my love for the original formula and i could see many places where ttyd took inspiration from. this game really is fun, and i would highly recommend playing it yourself if you have the means!

[akechicrimes]

not to speculate too hard about the inside of a silent protagonist’s head, but the more i think about joker persona 5, the more convinced i am that he’s firmly entrenched his approach to relationships in hiding aspects of himself from others so that he can fulfill some sort of transactional relationship. and the more i think about that, the more i really do think that akira’s whole thing about emphasizing transactional relationships and almost intentionally surrounding himself with only selfishly-motivated people is a fear of intimacy.

i was talking with @aryashi about this post with akira’s really heartbreakingly cynical opinions on friendship, and the weird phenomenon where in persona 3 and 4, the protagonists are intentionally pushed to reconsider their views on friendship and making bonds with other people, and come out of their journeys with friends who’d ride and die for them. but with akira in persona 5, it’s odd because akira has a very well-documented transactional/cynical view on how relationships work, but he isn’t quite ever pushed to reconsider that point of view.

which is to say, persona 5 as a game is much less about relationships and friendships than persona 3 or 4. in persona 3, minato has only two personality traits, and those are that he’s a 2006 emo MCR fan and that he’s self-isolated. his entire character arc is about him un-isolating himself, learning to have relationships again, and learning that other people make life worth living. in persona 4, souji (or yu) is a city boy sent to a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, winds up learning first-hand just how judgmental small towns can be even in their proximity, and is forced to confront the perils and rewards of other people knowing you for who you truly are. 

in comparison, persona 5 likes to say that it’s about justice and societal reform, and seems to actively encourage akira to mask himself (or at least parts of himself) in order to achieve societal reform. he is quite literally hiding half of his activities (thievery, mostly) from the other half of his life (his day life as a student). arguably, he’s also hiding his confidants/social linking side business from his own thievery team, too. logistically, this makes sense, since akira is avoiding getting put in jail for thievery by hiding his identity. the flip side is that akira works for a better society while never once being known for who he really is, which is a fairly common trope among masked heroes who do work for the whole of society while never once being thanked or recognized for their work, but it’s a stark contrast to the other games.

so in a lot of ways, not only is akira not pushed to reconsider his views on relationships, he’s actively encouraged to keep masking parts of himself from others, and to use his anonymity and ability to hide to his own advantage. in particular, akira is encouraged to find people who he can gain something from, people who stand to gain something from him, and to strike a deal; and this deal usually involves akira hiding parts of himself so that his new confidants will continue to work with him.

which is cool and also highkey relatable, sure, but it sure does seem to be one of the reasons why akira walks out of the game with a whole bunch of friends who seem to................. not really know him very well, for some reason? and all his social links are, like, a collection of business partners or sponsors?

that’s not to say that his relationships are always built on akira hiding parts of himself to fulfill a transactional deal. a lot of his relationships wind up being non-transactional even if they started off that way, and a lot of his relationships end with his confidants guessing that he’s a phantom thief. but i wonder if akira himself views them as non-transactional. or, that is to say, akira seems to move away from viewing relationships as purely transactional, but he’s never pushed to embrace a relationship that is purely, 100% altruistic.

he starts every relationship with a transactional deal from the beginning of the game to the end. he uses relationships as a “we mutually help each other out” sort of arrangement as far into the game as his last conversation with sae as his lawyer. and the fact that these relationships become deeper and more meaningful than a simple business arrangement doesn’t mean that they’re not still fundamentally business arrangements. it’s a bit like getting to know your local barista: you might have conversations and learn more about them and even become friends, but at the end of the day, fundamentally the arrangement is built on interactions where you pay them money for them to make you coffee. (and to keep going with the barista metaphor, such a business relationship depends entirely on presenting only certain aspects of oneself to another person so as to keep the relationship going.)

or, also consider what akira said in this tweet as linked in the first part of this post. it may be that he knows that, for example, kawakami comes out of her social link adoring her student, and would go above and beyond to help him if he asked. but that in itself is a transactional relationship of another kind, isnt it? akira has to continue being the sort of student that she likes in order to continue to have her support; in return, she lets him get away with all sorts of wild shit in her class. rather than a one-off transaction, the relationship moves almost towards a type of sponsorship, which akira trades behavior that she approves of for her continued, continuous help. so the relationship remains transactional, and in a lot of ways, akira is not only trading with supporting kawakami emotionally, but he’s hiding parts of himself in order to maintain the relationship he’s built.

aryashi said that he should have come out of the game with some ride-or-die friends like the other persona protags--friends who know him completely and entirely, and would go above and beyond for no transactional reason whatsoever. she said that he should have had at least “ryuji, or akechi,” which was so fascinating to me because those two characters are so entirely and completely polar opposites, but reflect akira’s issues of isolation from two really important angles.

ryuji’s probably the character who has the most altruistic relationship with akira. he latches onto akira and from the first time they meet, ryuji selflessly tries to sacrifice himself to save akira, who ryuji barely knows, met about five minutes previous, and actually doesn’t even know the name of. ryuji couldn’t have an ulterior motive to help akira if he tried. and ryuji’s remarkably consistent about his selflessness, too; there’s no benefit to ryuji when ryuji gets mad on akira’s behalf to defend him, and it continues all the way through P5R. 

but in a weird way, it’s like akira doesn’t--understand this? although ryuji is the character who seems to care about akira himself the most and consistently defends akira, especially in regards to akira’s record, the instant ryuji’s social link starts, the social link progresses in the same manner as a lot of other social links, in which akira exchanges emotional labor and support for better teammates, better teamwork, better personas, better social links. suddenly it’s not about ryuji caring about akira, but akira helping ryuji through his track team problems. it’s like akira and ryuji are speaking entirely different languages, or are simply thinking so differently that akira just had no idea what to do with ryuji when ryuji goes out of his way to reach out to akira just for the sake of kindness. he seems taken aback by ryuji’s enthusiasm and sincerity in several cutscenes.

which is not to say that i dont think that akira doesnt value ryuji immensely, because i think he does, and i think that ryuji reaching out to him when akira had first moved to shujin and was entirely alone meant the world to akira. but i think that going through a friendship constantly feeling like ryuji’s altruism has an expiration date, impending dealbreaker, or is simply just incomprehensible because it doesnt have any transactional value to it is a type of isolation in itself. and if not a type of isolation, then definitely a type of emotional barrier that prevents akira from really embracing a relationship or person like ryuji--if not out of confusion, then maybe just out of fear.

confusion or fear, or maybe just a history of being rejected for who he is--either way, i do think that one of the things that’s so notable about a transactional relationship is that it makes intimacy much more controllable. persona 4 intimacy was a fucking gauntlet to be survived, because it was just a sheer, undiluted blast of your entire self being put on display. in persona 5, intimacy can be controlled if you know what a person wants out of you. if you know what they want, you can be that thing they want. if you know what they want from you, then you can leverage what they want. if the terms of the deal are clear-cut and determined from the start, someone like akira doesnt need to be afraid of being rejected, and never has to guess at what a person wants from him, and need never take an emotional risk himself. the more selfishly motivated a person is, the easier they are to please, and the easier they are to extract a working relationship out of, and the easier they are to even have a relationship with.

which brings us to akechi, because it does seem to be the case that akira gets along so well with akechi because it’s understood between the two of them that akechi is NOT here to be friends and he DOES have ulterior motives. even without the whole shido thing, akechi is pretty obviously there to nail akira for being a phantom thief; the kindest possible interpretation of akechi stalking akira is that akechi is there to pick up blackmail material on him. 

not to speculate too hard about the insides of a silent protagonist’s head, but i do wonder if maybe that’s why he got along with akechi so well: he assumes that akechi wants something from him that benefits only akechi himself, and akira is totally right. that sort of selfish motivation is something that akira can understand, predict, and accommodate.

nobody is allowed to tell that one anon who keeps showing up in people’s inboxes trying to convince everyone that shuake is an unhealthy ship, but it’s not a great dynamic. it’s also not any different from any of the other social links akira has. it’s pretty par for akira’s course, actually.

it’s also what akira understands, and it’s what akira is comfortable with, and oddly it serves as a point of connection between the two of them, especially in their P5R s link. and the more that akechi pushes at various emotional issues throughout his social link under the cover of “i’m only here to investigate you,” the more emotional intimacy they can get away with while pretending they aren’t doing exactly what they’re doing.

which is like. bro. when goro akechi is better at emotional intimacy than you are. you done REALLY fucked up.

but at the same time it’s like........................ it’s very clear that akira walks away from the game with more or less the same point of view on friendships and relationships that he went into the game with, because akechi wasnt going to be the kind of person who pushes him on that point. again, akechi and akira having a relationship that started off transactional and grew to become something else doesn’t necessarily mean that either one of them have changed their general modus operandi on this point. the person that would have really pushed akira to change would have been ryuji--but for whatever reason, ryuji didn’t wind up being the catalyst for that sort of change that he should have.

i dont really have a conclusion because this is my blog and i can do whatever i want and nobody has yet paid me enough money to buy my silence, but if you really want a conclusion, have this: pegoryugoro IS a valid ship and they DO have an interesting and compelling dynamic and i SWEAR to god i will make it work one day.

[dopposhusband]

Hey, hey, hey! I'm here for some good content again! So, how about Apple Cider, Egg Nog, Gingerbread Latte and Hot Toddy! ( ´ ▽ ` )

@yokairu Good content? Me? ;w; Thank you, Ill do my best to supply then!

Apple cider - Which of you is more likely to make snow angels?

Hifumi and I of course! I love to play in the snow, since I only ever had the chance to may one or twice before, but even then the snow wasn’t high enough for snow angels! So, whenever it at our home Hifumi and I always run out to play in it and of course make snow angels! Very rarely, Jakurai will join us too, but since his hair is so long it always end up tangled or dirty though! We’ve tried our hardest to get Gen or Doppo but they’re strong on the position of not flopping on the ground to flail around!

Egg nog - Would either of you dress up as Santa?

Jakurai, Hifumi, and Gentaro all would and have dressed up as Santa! One year Jakurai got all dressed up to pass out toys for the kids in his hospital and the next year Hifumi helped too! Gentaros dressing up is usually restricted to just at home as one of his goofs, he gets all into character and everything! He just takes any chance he can to play a character, not that we mind, infact Hifumi get really into it too! Sits on his lap and plays along too! Personally, I dont mind dressing up either but I can’t get into character to save my life and as much as Hifumi wants Doppo to join them at the hospital one year... he’s a little too awkward for it!

Gingerbread latte - Is your f/o more likely to give you many small gifts or one big gift?

Jakurai is more interested in small gifts that have big meaning to them! Framed photos of our time together, or souvenir items we can look at and get lost in memories! This year I suspect he has a lil locket for all of us, or maybe another fancy framed picture! He also fills the stocking for us so we have those tiny gifts as well that he picked up!

Hifumi is all about HUGE gifts that he gives us like they’re no big deal even when it isn’t Christmas... He makes so much money at the club that he sorta just drops it on whatever he thinks we would like with his lil twist! An expensive tie for Doppo, comfy designer shoes for Jakurai since he works a lot on his feet, giant plushies, that we’ve long since run out of room for on the bed, for me, and some of the best writing pens on the market for Gentaro! AND THAT WAS JUST HIS FIRST WAVE OF PRESENTS! We dont try to compare anything with what Hifumi gives us,,, his wallet is as big as his heart!

Gentaro isn’t the best when it comes to gift, so he tries to make it up with all of the lil stories he includes us in! We have so many books, published and unpublished, about the four of us that it really is a gift in itself! Though, he does try sometimes to get us more physical items as well too! More of a small gift kinda person, lil plushies and trinkets that he thinks we would like!

Doppo isn’t too great at gifts either, he doesn’t make too much money and even then tends to overthink the whole gift giving too! He wants to get something meaningful, but he worries about disappointing, especially after everything Hifumi gets us, but we always try to ensure him that it isn’t about the gift, its the thought! He usually get us tiny gifts, usually necessities like cooking tools and such for Hifumi or something he knows we already like!

I try to give gifts based on my sweethearts interests! Which usually isnt too much, so I suppose it’d count as smaller gifts! Something more novelty like pot warmers for Doppos plants, or a small figurine from whatever show/game Hifumi and I are into at the moment! I also like to get something just straight up random for Gentaro and Jakurai, so they can try out new interests! 

Hot toddy - Would your f/o be someone to get their tongue stuck on a frozen pole?

This is something you could only find Hifumi end up doing! Hes such a goof he had to try it out at least once to see if it really was as bad as the movies make it out to be,,, and it kinda was! Luckily however, we were able to get some warm water on to it to avoid any damage to his taste buds! Silly goof, you’re a chef, you need those! Gentaro always tries to trick people into doing it, but so far he’s only managed to fool Dice and Jiro, the victory was short lived before Jakurai and I gave him a stern talking to! Finally, Doppo always has his tongue poked out whenever he’s in a sweet mood, we always have to remind him to be careful so he doesnt freeze it just like that!

[discountdyke]

I know nothing about TMA but I’m a gossip pls release the rant if you’d like 👀

firstly id like to say this ask is a christmas gift in itself, i LOVE an excuse to rant about tma. this is gonna be long tho so lets head under the cut

tma is a podcast produced by rusty quill which really means that it started with a few white guys, and as such, the voice cast is almost completely white and its one of those media with “aracial” characters. however, they’re clearly written as white bc, well, there wasnt any effort to do otherwise. so this is the beginning of many problems.

the biggest instance of racism is with a family of avatars of the flesh - a horror power involving flesh/meat. the family is chinese, and sells ppl human meat in their chinese restaurant. this is extremely and overtly racist, and back then they didnt have any sensitivity readers or common sense i guess, so they just. did that. one of the episodes involving them had a “horror” element in which one of the characters speaks in english. this is supposed to be scary bc “how could a chinese person know english??” in order to avoid addressing this, in a later episode the characters only refer to them vaguely without names. this issue was unaddressed for YEARS before an apology was given, only for them to do what? more racist shit.

two of the main characters in tma are cops and as such are a heavy-handed metaphor for police brutality. one of them, daisy, commits violent atrocities bc she is an avatar of another power called “the hunt”. she basically just kills whoever the police tell her to. her cop partner, basira, excuses her actions bc “they were criminals”. its clear that these characters are supposed to be bad but then things get weird - theres an entire arc about whether its morally correct to kill daisy. bc she has a little redemption arc. unfortunately, if ur a cop, u dont deserve a redemption arc. so theres this big thing about “well shes a better person now” etc coming from all of the characters, not just her partner. it really waters down the message imo.

so, what do you do when you write a horror podcast with themes about capitalism and police brutality? you write an episode about a white person going to prison and experiencing police brutality. i cant even begin to express how inappropriate that is - especially since its a lazy attempt at horror. their excuse was “well, 2020 is unprecedented”. uh, cops have been committing police brutality since their invention. the blm movement started in 2013 - no excuse for saying ‘we wrote the eps in advance and theyre just hitting close to home”. 

and, tbh, it could have been written well but it just wasnt? and then there was a high profile police brutality case in the us so they delayed release until the next week - bc police brutality only happens once in a while, right? imo it wasnt the episode itself that was the most offensive, it was the idea that black ppl are only murdered by cops every once in a while and its just a topical issue, not something that happens every day.

i started off with the racism bc i think thats tma’s biggest problem, but the thing about it is this: tma is well written. or it was, up until season 5. but when season 5 started airing it was bad. it was really bad. it throws away the entire formula that it used for the first 4 seasons, has a couple that constantly argue and try to undermine each other, the main character has suddenly flipped into full murder mode so that each week they just kill off another character. it became extremely bland, the horror which was generally surreal - random doors appearing, uncanny valley creatures, skies that never ended - into everyday horror. it was a huge tonal shift and now instead of hearing about an endless neighborhood with no people, it became “capitalism sucks. the government sucks. the police suck.” over and over again which, while true, does not a good horror podcast make.

the point of this is: when you look at how bad season 5 is, you realize how bad the rest of it is as well. it doesnt hold up under its own writing. little details that could be ignored, or even huge problems like the continual racism suddenly became glaring issues. not to mention character arcs which had developed slowly suddenly took huge turns in s5 out of nowhere. 

the worst example (which i stopped listening so ive only heard this second hand) is a character who was a spooky woman who had a weird door that made u crazy, turns out to be politcally conservative the whole time. and she was about how, like, you think you know ppl, and then theyre conservative. or something. just, really bad political analysis. 

id also like to point out that in the prison episode in s5 which is a culmination of the “police are evil and bad” theme ends with the characters talking about how this one guy deserves to be in prison. liberalism at its finest here. 

there are a lot of narrative issues in tma but it really boils down to this: we excused a shitload of racism bc there was good writing. and now theres no good writing. also jonny sims singlehandedly created the most annoying gay characters to ever exist.

i dont think that jonny is a bad guy but he is woefully inequipped to deal with the big real world problems and themes he built on. its sad, tbh, bc its something that COULD have been really amazing. 

he tweeted once that the s5 finale would be a “chocolate torte of tragedy” where i assume hes going to kill off either one or both of the gay characters, but the real chocolate torte was the way he ruined his own podcast.

tldr; tma’s writing built up to something it couldnt actually do. and that made the whole thing collapse. also its really, really racist. 

[blackasmidnightcats]

QfG Rants and Remakes part 5

Big thanks to both @agathasarmy and @yarasquad for sharing their ideas with me and believing that I could actually make a coherent rant without being too swallowed up by my emotions and hopefully I'll be able to do the same here.

P.S. Imma change the title of the next Rants and Remakes cause it's definitely not focusing on QfG anymore and it's gonna focus of AWWP so yeah...there's that to look forward too.

Chaddick & Yara + Tagatha interlude

Note: This post was originally gonna be titled "Chaddick & Yara + Mourning the Departed" and would have turned out as how it is explained below but as I was writing about Chaddick I realized that I needed to talk about something concerning Tagatha and realized that this post would have been too long for all three so I gonna move the "Mourning of Departed" in its own post. Hope you guys understand. Tagatha has a strong pull with me.

Imma actually gonna outline this cause I need to organize my thoughts and at least with this I could remember the direction that I would be heading.

First part's definitely going to talk about how Chaddick and Yara's death is bs

Then imma explain why them staying alive would have impacted the TCY storyline a lot more meaningfully (p.s. this is where the Tagatha interlude will be found)

And last (and this has been moved to its own post so stay tuned for it), I would also like to nitpick Soman's obvious lack of thought when it comes to the characters that have departed (mainly Callis and Lady Lesso and August Sader) and how it should have affected the characters (mainly Sophie and Agatha)

How Chaddick and Yara could have helped the storyline better

WARNING: I realized while writing this that I kinda made Chaddick and Yara more flawed than they are writen because I have to think about their character growth and they can't have that without having any flaws. So expect some more drama with these two than needed as I share my thoughts on how their characters could have went. They get better in the end believe me.

So I think that everyone in the fandom is one with the idea that Chaddick's death was one of the MOST worst decisions that Soman made.

As @agathasarmy said it once, Chaddick's death is more frustrating than sad because of how out of nowhere it is.

Via @agathasarmy:

but… Chaddick??? dying??? IN THE BEGINNING OF THE SERIES????

IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE, AND THE ONLY WAY IT MAKE SENSE IS COS SOMAN OBVIOUSLY DID IT TO INTRODUCE RHIAN AND THATS THE SHITTIEST THING ABOUT IT

HE REDUCED CHADDICK’S DEATH AS A PLOT DOOR WITHOUT PROPERLY SUBSTANTIATING CHADDICK’S CHARACTER FIRST SO INSTEAD OF US TRULY MOURNING HIS LIFE WE’RE JUST LEFT WITH THIS HOLLOW FEELING OF WHAT HE COULD’VE BEEN AS AN INTEGRAL CHARACTER TO THE PLOT

THIS

Chaddick's death felt hollow because it was a PLOT DEVICE. It didn't (or at least Soman didn't) conscider Chaddick much of a character but a means and once this happens some deaths can be very very hollow.

Like his POV chapter was very hard to read all because especially once you find out that he's dead by the end of it (SHAME SOMAN, SHAME) because his story and plot had so much potential. We weren't able to properly feel sad about his lost because we didn't get to know him better.

It just feels tragic. So much potential lost, all because Soman wanted Tedros to feel vulnerable because he lost his close friend.

WHICH SOMAN DIDN'T REALLY NEED TO DO

I explained already why this is bull and I'm gonna explain later what could have happened for Chaddick's character.

But in summary on why Soman didn't need to do it: EXPECTATIONS

Chaddick and Tedros would have been stressed out with all the expectations and comparison with Arthur and Lancelot. One wrong move could have broke them apart easily.

But Soman could have also not wanted to deal with Chaddick against his Sophie obssession so there could be that too.

SHAME SOMAN

Now, Yara.

Our little Soft Girl

She should not have died.

She really shouldn't have

W h y ?

Because her being alive would have impacted the story more than her death ever did. Just like Chaddick.

And if the problem was what she could have affected in the storyline in TLEA, then she could have been on the sides like. . . as Tristan from time to time or something.

Her being alive would have not affected or change TLEA at all. Like if more important characters like the Coven and the League can fade into the background then so could she.

But I really don't imagine her being in the school for New Evil with Aric as Dean. No, maybe Yuba could have hidden her with the League and she could have accompanied Princess Uma when they were getting Tedros and Agatha and then accompanied the Leuge or something.

Really it would have been that simple. C'mon.

Plus Kiko has been reduced to wreck after that. At least, with Yara being alive she could have fixed herself a bit more.

Okay

So in summary again: CHADDICK AND YARA SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED AND SHAME ON SOMAN FOR KILLING THEM OFF

Now, let's get to the juicier part, what could these two have contributed to the TCY storyline.

On Chaddick

It's pretty obvious what Chaddick's role should have been. He should have been important to the plot because his role would have been about breaking the comparison between the Past and the Present (see Soman, it could have been integrated into your canon plot) between him, Tedros, and Agatha to Lancelot, Arthur, and Gwen.

I'm pretty sure that Camelot has its eyes on these three.

It's pretty freaking convenient that they all have a predecessor to be compared to. And I'm pretty sure that it's not just Camelot who notices the pattern. I mean the whole freaking Woods read about this affair.

So Chaddick, along with Tedros and Agatha, should have been the ones that break this chain. It could have symbolized that Camelot was entering into a new, better era after a similar relationship broke it.

Like, a King, his beloved Queen and his most trusted Knight brought hope but ended in a Tragedy.

Now, another King, his beloved Queen and his most trusted Knight are skeptically judged for having the same pattern and they instead bring the Glory that first trio didn't

With Tedros, Agatha, and Chaddick united with each other bringing Camelot out of its traumatic experience with Tedros's parents, Camelot finally accepting that these three are not the same as Arthur, Gwen, and Lance and fully supporting them DESPITE the fear, would have been a much stronger message of that 'the past doesn't always repeat itself.'

Because with Rhian being known and most propably remembered as Tedros's most trusted Knight and betraying him in the end, it's like a copy of what Lance technically did to Arthur.

It just further proved that Camelot's King would always be betrayed by the ones they trust most.

Sadly for Arthur, he was betrayed by both Gwen and Lance and they left him alone.

While Tedros still has Agatha but without Chaddick the lesson simply is not learned.

Chaddick was integral to this formula because Camelot would have had to face yet another propable tragedy for their beloved King in the hands of the people he loves. With Tedros, Agatha, and Chaddick, complete, proving that they could do better despite having just a strong a bond as what Arthur and co had and Camelot accepting and trsuting this, the previous wounds would be replaced with new Hope.

Because even if that whole affair happened and ruined the Kingdom, at least they have proof that it's not always gonna happen that way.

And that's why Rhian being remembered as Tedros's Knight hurts this idea. Cause he betrayed him too.

Anyway, hopefully I made my point with this legacy thing.

Plus Chaddick and Arthur's Round Table training him. WHY SOMAN WHY?!?!?!

And now, imma explain what I think should have happened with Chaddick and how his character development and his role should have played out.

Because Chaddick is a pretty well rounded character, his POV chapter proves that he's brave, and is willing to die for his friends and what's right, and there isn't really much flaws to him aside from that he can sometimes make the most worst decisions despite being pretty wise.

I honestly cannot tell if he is stupid sometimes or Soman just does this to him cause PLOT.

Fandom I need help with this. Give me some opinions.

Like. . . he's wise enough to know what was right, examples being warning Tedros about Sophie and the first to listen to Agatha in AWWP, but also dumb or ignorant enough to bully Agatha in Book 1 and that VERY IMPORTANT THING ABOUT completely ABUSING Tedros is AWWP.

Like I'm kinda confused with him.

Well maybe we can say that he's a bit ignorant and maybe was raised with privilege so that's why he bullied Agatha in Book 1 and kinda wisened up in Book 2 about her.

But I am not excusing his attitude towards Tedros in AWWP because that was messed up. Well, AWWP was messed up so there is that but if we have to acknowledge that mess and have some closure then I vote for it to come from Chaddick and Yara.

Like maybe the reason why Chaddick is more wise now is because of that very experience. Maybe he could still be a bit guilty about it and that kinda messes with his mind cause he still thinks that Tedros is still the same boy those years ago in their second year and Rhian uses this to his advantage.

Actually, thinking about it this makes so much sense.

Like instead of AGATHA having the trust issues (thought I wouldn't completely vanish it, just not at the same level as she does in canon) it's CHADDICK that has them. Cause he's always kinda gets haunted by what happened in AWWP.

I mean Tedros replaced him with ARIC of all people when he failed to retrieve Agatha. There has to be some animosity between them since. I can imagine that Chaddick kinda felt like him and Tedros could never be as close as when they were during their first year. And he would totally understand it if Tedros never really forgave him for what happened and was at peace with it even if he didn't have enough guts to find a closure for it. He'd respect his friend first and foremost.

But then comes Tedros, all fine and inviting him to be his Knight like that would mess Chaddick up.

He propably couldn't believe it at first and maybe even kindly refused the offer at first but then he sees the heart break in Tedros's face and Chaddick realizes that Tedros really wanted this.

Tedros still sees Chaddick as his closest friend despite what happened in AWWP. And maybe after some thinking, Chaddick realizes that he still wants to have the bond with Tedros like what they had in Book 1. So he accepts.

But of course, they've changed and Chaddick still gets eaten by guilt because I think that he's the kind of person that knows that he did something wrong and wants to repent for it.

So instead of that wise friend that Tedros had in Book 1, Chaddick can't trust his judgement about Tedros because he's scared he'd go too far. So he kinda just agrees to Tedros's ideas and doesn't really give advice. Tedros kinda notices this and tries to talk to Chaddick about it but Chaddick would be all formal to him. Tedros, I don't really know, would think that it would be for his sake with the comparison with Arthur and Lance and all. So he kinda just goes along with it.

It's messy right now guys, I know, I'm kinda butchering Chaddick's character here but I promise it gets better and in my mind he'd be like this for only Book 4. He'd be Wise Chaddick again right after. Just give me a chance to explain.

So they have this kind of miscommunication thing that Canon Tagatha had in QfG instead and that would have made so much more sense and here's why;

Warning: this is officially where the Tagatha interlude starts so if you wanna skip it (why though???) find the sign that states it's the end. It's gonna be in pink too.

The fact that Tagatha was having a miscommunication failure was kinda off with me because 1) they've been over this in AWWP and TLEA. In TLEA Tedros has absolutely no problem with pushing Agatha to share more when she wouldn't and 2) he could easily read her like a book, especially when it counts. Like he could get her favorite food wrong but he always seemed to know what Agatha was having trouble with and was there to help her out and is not afraid to call her out on it (i.e. the Cinderella thing, he was on point there)

Imma provide some examples of Tedros totally getting Agatha when it counts;

AND THIS

AND THIS TOO

WAIT THERE IS MORE (The Tagatha Moment)

AND LET US NOT FORGET

THIS IS WHY TLEA TAGATHA WILL ALWAYS BE BEST TAGATHA.

I get that Agatha's insecure about herself and maybe she was kinda influenced with the Excalibur thing (but I highly doubt it though) but it's no reason for her to get to the conclusion she did at the end of QfG.

I mean girl, you were always thinking that Tedros would be a Great King in TLEA and that's why you've been so insecure about yourself. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT???

Someone call me out on this PLEASE. I'm hurting myself by judging her too hard.

I can imagine that she would be sceptical with Tedros's ideas and kinda doubting him about it (you guys have no idea how much it hurts typing this) but I can also imagine that she would never doubt that Tedros's heart is in the right place even if she thinks that the way he gets there isn't always the best.

Like we have literal proof that Tedros gets Agatha almost like Sophie does and the best thing is that I'm sure that Tedros would think of the best in mind.

The mess in QfG makes no sense because they should be over this miscommunication bs and it should not have been a thing.

And if it was because of the stress with Excalibur and his responsibilities as King that made Tedros suddenly not get Agatha then WTF Soman!?!?!? I did not ask for this. They were literally about to die in TLEA and yet they could still joke and tease each other and have these cute little scenes with the other.

Instead I got Rhian's b*tch ass being Tedros's therapists when he knows sh*t about this boy and Agatha doubting Tedros like he did something horrible. (Well he did for trusting Rhian but i digress)

I could have had more of these cute Tagatha scenes instead. Like, is it too much to ask for these two to just show their love for each other in other ways than "I will save you" and "You're the best thing ever and I don't want to lose you for this horrible thing that I did or say" like give me small softer moments anytime.

Tedros gently teasing Agatha when she's being difficult and Agatha being totally trying not to show that she's smitten over it.

Agatha trying to be romantic at the most outrageous moments and Tedros being like "?????" but totally finding it cute.

Other character just not getting these two when they do and they are just as confused.

These are the kind of scenes I wanted from them. And if I have to use Chaddick to get it then so be it. (I'm sorry about this, I'm mostly projecting at this point and these really affecting my personal opinions on this matter but I'll try to tone it down a bit so that it's still coherent)

Note: this is the official end of the Tagatha interlude but i'm not keeping any promises that it'll be the last

Anyways, Chaddick and Tedros, they have more reasons with having communication problems because;

They have not been together for a very long time and they've both propably changed since

AWWP. So far, the two of them have had horrible experiences as the last thing that they remember about each other.

As I explained, I headcanon that Chaddick has a somewhat formed a sort of PSTD with it and is very scared that he's gonna mess it up.

I'm not even going to try to explain the PSTD thing cause I feel like I'm not gonna do it justice but I hope you get what I mean.

Chaddick must have become more unsure of himself after AWWP and he must still be trying to fit this new Tedros with the old one that he used to hang out with in Book 1. It would have been a good comparison to show that Tedros has indeed change and grown since then.

Like Chaddick kinda feels like he needs to intervene when Tedros shares a very outrageous suggestion but doesn't know how and kinda ends up in a mess.

Basically imagine Tagatha's problems in QfG and apply to Tedros and Chaddick instead.

And Chaddick would have been suspiscious about Rhian from the beginning. He's a smart savy guy afterall.

So Rhian kinda exploits this and gets the two boys against each other. Because say that Tedros and Chaddick have this big fight propably like the one when Agatha comments that Tedros was being a horrible king but Chaddick's the one that said it instead. Say that this happens around the middle of the Book and it's the final straw between them because they haven't been properly communicating and all the pressure on them. Rhian could easily worm his way to Tedros's side and replace Chaddick nicely. Cause unlile Chaddick, Rhian would make Tedros believe that HE'S the one that believes in him the most.

So they kinda fall apart and Chaddick and Tedros are trying to understand where it all went wrong.

Agatha would try to understand each side and get them to better terms again but she can't do it alone plus a-hole Rhian is butting in.

I imagine that, for me, the logical person that Chaddick might approach on his dilema with Tedros might be Ravan.

Cause the two of them basically think the same way and are usually calm and wise. The only difference would be that Chaddick's more active while Ravan's more passive and choses to observe before making a move. So he calms Chaddick down when he's being too impatient.

Chaddick and Agatha would be talking of course. And I don't know why but I imagine that they're more numb to all the gossip about the three of them especially around each other because they're both sort of level headed and wise then when they're with Tedros individually.

And I imagine this is where the Tagatha drama happens. Only after Rhian cause I wanna be clear that without him, Tagatha would have been fine. He also tries to break them up by saying that Agatha sides with Chaddick and that she doesn't have much faith in Tedros too.

Agatha's going to deny this of course (because it's all bs from Rhian) but Tedros has been too stressed and vulnerable that he sorta starts to believe it and Agatha gets frustrated that Tedros is choosing to believe Rhian when she's known him longer and after everything that they've been through.

But Tedros isn't fully under Rhian's spell. I would have put several times when they would doubt each other especially when Rhian talks crap about Agatha and Chaddick and it would be beserk button for Tedros so Rhian doesn't really go there.

Now Chaddick would be having his little personal battle with himself and Ravan and Agatha would be there to support him and give some advice.

The real kicker would have been when Rhian is adored by Camelot as Tedros's Treasured Knight, someone better than Lancelot and Chaddick kinda has a heartbreaking moment because HE'S supposed to be the one that was known as Tedros's Treasured Knight not this stranger. Not this stranger that stole everything from him especially his best friend.

Agatha hears about this and reflects the time when she gave up her own position as Tedros's queen in TLEA and remembers that Tedros knows her and all her monsters and has been the light to help her fight them.

So she and Chaddick have this talk and she tries to concinve him that Tedros wouldn't want for Chaddick to just give up on him like that. Chaddick thinks about it but is still not completely convinced but Agatha reminds him that Tedros CHOOSE HIM to be his Knight and Liege and they both have to fight for it.

It's Ravan who finally manages to get Chaddick to gear when he asks Chaddick if he's going to regret anything he should choose to either regret letting Tedros go and not fighting for their friendship or make a complete idiot of himself but fight for their friendship instead.

So Chaddick does the latter but everything is too late and the Rhian thing happens as I explained in the first Rants and Remakes post and Chaddick gets tossed into jail with Tedros.

It's in book 5 that I imagine their relationship actually starts to heal itself and they both try to get through everything. I haven't thought of all the kinks out yet but I imagine a lot of fights and Chaddick just kinda shouting what he thinks before he startsvthe regret it and Tedros being this physic and just getting Chaddick too like how he does Agatha.

Again, I haven't thought of everything yet but I'll share it when I do

Now let's move on to Yara

On Yara

Yara would have been more influencial alive then dead and I already explained why how she could have been handled in TLEA cause where I really see exploiting her is in the storyline of TCY.

With the Balance vs Chaos in mind as well as the Lady of the Lake villainess plotline, Yara could have been the answer to this.

She'd be a living reminder of everything that all the characters went through in AWWP and how horribly toxic it is to everyone. Especially those like Yara who lives in the between.

Like with the Lady plotline she would have promoted ultimate purity for both Good and Evil and doesn't believe that each side could be able to understand each other so she thinks that she's promoting Balance that way and that letting each side corrupt the other is Chaos.

She would have believed that Yara is an abomination to the Balance because she is the embodiment of the idea that you can choose some charcteristic from two sides and still be yourself.

Plus with Yara alive the other characters would be forced to rethink their ideals and how to approach this new possibility and reflect on the old ways that have been hurting the ones that are similar to her.

I imagine that Yara's gonna have an internal struggle with this like she's still trying to understand it herself and as she tries to understand it the more that the other characters do as well.

I haven't actually thought out her actual detailed storyline just yet and even though I wanna say more I know that I might butcher her character as I go on but I definitely know her importance to the possible story.

As I explained before, if in TSY was Good VS Evil and that the TCY was about Good AND Evil and how both sides need each other to grow and develop and that the importance of the School still teaching Good and Evil in its most purest form is so that they'd all have a guideline to go by but the curriculum has become more flexible with their beliefs OF Good and Evil and that every student just have shades of grey but choses to go by these either of the two and can still be a Hero or a Villain then Yara could have been the right person to show that it doesn't matter if your not completely on one side and was given the characteristics of the other, it matters what values you choose to follow despite it and how tou choose to use it to help everyone else for the better.

Cause it's canon already that it doesn't matter what they are, it's what they do that counts.

NGL I'm not completely satisfied with how I explained Chaddick and Yara I feel like I didn't do them justice here and I will definitely get back to this when I have organized and fleshed out my thoughts on them

Anyways, if you guys would like to add your own thoughts to this post pls do.

[armsdealing]

@neotropical​ sent: 10, 12, 15, 18, 26, 26 for Shiro | 28, 31, 36, 40 for Fenrir character development questions / inbox cleaning.

SHIRO.

10. what energizes and drains them most? shiro is introverted. heavy social interaction can drain him really fast, especially inane social interaction like small talk. paradoxically, being idle can also drain him. if he's not sleeping or eating, or reading or using his mind in some fashion, he'd rather be out there in the field, investigating cases and trying to solve them. he's a bit workaholic, and feeling like he's doing nothing worthwhile can affect his mood.

12. how are they bodily expressive? how do they use nonverbal cues such as their posture, stance, eyes, eyebrows, mouths, and hands? he's more expressive than he gives himself credit for, though most emotions tend to be negative, like annoyance or irritation or suspicion, if not outright anger cuz he's grumpy as fuck. he has expressive eyes even in wolf form, and since they are devoid of color the dilatation of the pupils is very clearly visible when he's agitated. body wise, he also goes tense, hackles proverbially raised, fists balled up, mouth pinched into a frown (or flashing fangs), standing tall or slightly crouched as if to lunge. his body language is pretty authoritative, typical of his species. and though like i said most of the emotions can be negative, he's not above showing emotional vulnerability. if he feels moved, he can truly start to cry right then and there (albeit stoically) without carinh, and if he's content/pleased/happy he's not above smiles -- though they are rare.

he's also easy to make blush if flirted with too heavily.  :/

15. what kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? calculating and practical? full of doubts and fears? does it find any sort of outlet in their lives? mostly on the practical side, that's for sure. he tends to be motivated toward concrete goals, and is very good at staying focused. of course, he is not above occasionally daydreaming and losing track of things. this happens especially when not engrossed by something; his mind is full with grief regarding his past, as well as wariness toward the future, and that can lead him into brooding. his main outlet for his thoughts is his job as a social worker and private investigator. he finds it very rewarding that he can put his skillset to good use for the benefit of the community.

18. what kind of person could they become in the future? what are some developmental paths that they could take, (best, worst, most likely?) what would cause them to come to pass, and what consequences might they have? what paths would you especially like to see, and why? best case scenario shiro becomes a more tolerant person of humans, learning to understand and accept the gradations to their morality and that some humans are okay, while also learning to cope with his trauma in a healthy fashion, growing all around more emotionally open. along those lines he also accepts that he can have romantic feelings for someone without negating his sense of purpose and identity as a vigilante slash undercover god dlfkjdkf.

worst case scenario he distances himself more from the warmer side of him and opts to become a cruel and punitive deity that sees things mostly in black and white terms (something he already does to an extent) and doesn't form actual relationships with anybody, opting instead to dedicate himself to slaughtering humans he deems evil. basically it's a regression: going back to the same place where he was before making it to anima city and turning his life around.

both are likely, but of course the most likely is the former one if things go ideally -- like if he has more positive contacts with humans, and if others manage to get through to him emotionally. basically friendship and love will save him.

i'm good with either path tho of course i want to see him become healthier. i'm not opposed to him getting worse before he gets better, because i do love myself some drama.

26. how do they view and feel about relationships, and how might this manifest in how they handle them, if it does? he doesnt have many of them. most are purely incidental and tho they are positive they're not very deep. it's mostly work related or people that leave in his apartment building that he chats with from time to time or like, the owner of the coffee shop he frequents ddfjh. he thinks they are okay but at the same time he feels awkward and doesn't know how to go about them. he feels distant (his past and status as a god play a role no doubt) and even tho occasionally he wants to be closer to people he doesn't know how to even start. he's also a bit of a jerk and that doesn't help.

27. what do they strongly like and dislike, in any category? why? shiro greatly dislikes humans as a result of his past, being a victim of a massacre where all but himself died (purely on incident, since he was beheaded). he thinks they are all an irredeemable and violent bunch who sees his people as lesser. he also doesn't like beastmen that work with humans, seeing them as just as bad as humans too. in a more casual note he does not like the cult that has formed around his person, he thinks it's all a bunch of scammers trying to make money off his image. he wants to do something about it but isn't yet sure what.

he likes seeing anima city prosper and thrive and see beastmen happy; it genuinely warms his heart. and he likes children a lot. he has worked with the city to find many orphaned children better homes. he also has an affinity for boots and sweaters. 😌

FENRIR.

28. what are they likely to do if they have the opportunity, resources, and time to accomplish it? why? i mean if he had the opportunity resources and time odin would be DEAD already dfjgdhjfg prophecy be damned. he would've already put down a lot of asgardians, if not asgard itself. other than that... he's off and on about the idea of forming a legitimate pack. he could do it but it's a risky move considering gods are always cutting him short whenever they think he's getting 'too powerful'. but those things aside he doesn't want for much and he DOES already have the resources and time to do whatever he wants... to an extent.

31. is there anything that counts as a “dealbreaker” for them, positively or negatively? what makes things go smoothly, and what spoils an activity or ruins their day? why? fenrir has a short fuse and on bad days if you get on his nerves he will kill you. i mean he will really just shoot you dead for annoying him if he doesn't feel like acting civil. disrespecting him is a big no-no, he has a low tolerance for idiocy and people who think they can act all insolent around him. if you think you're close enough to get away with that you need to give yourself and ur relationship with him a long hard look because chances are you're wrong. acting like you're better than him/superior to him? dealbreaker. pitying him in any way? also a big dealbreaker. it truly annoys him. he will sooner stop talking to you than entertain your sympathy, even if what he's going through is worthy of it. he doesn't want anything to do with it. other things that can ruin his day is pain flares due to his bound status -- he deals with chronic pain 24/7, and it's the source of most of his bad moods.

as for things that makes situations go smoothly -- if the pain is unusually mild that given day. nice food or drink, or completed jobs, and presence of people he likes (family, or lovers)

36. how much do they rely on their minds and intellect, versus other approaches like relying on instinct, intuition, faith and spirituality, or emotions? what is their opinion on this? fenrir is more instinct and intuition than intellect, but he is by no means dumb. he is hypersensitive and hyperaware of things and is constantly processing amounts of information that would knock out the average human, and acting accordingly to it all. his hunches are usually correct and he's quite capable of analysis and deductive reasoning when necessary -- take for example when he quite correctly guessed that asgardians where trying to trick him with gleipnir. emotions play less of a role when it comes to serious decision making, tho yeah like anybody sometimes he will act purely on passion if its something that affects him to such a degree. he doesn't feel any particular way about it, and is confident in his decision making (perhaps sometimes overconfident but yh y'know, that happens), since it tends to work for him.

40. what do they wonder about? what sparks their curiosity and imagination, and why? how is this expressed, if it is? for a long long time(pre-binding) midgardian culture truly sparked his curiosity. he wanted to learn about humans and how they operated and the things they liked to do. after this curiosity was satiated he doesn't express wonder over many things. he has unanswered questions about the fate of the world and how fate will play out but virtually everyone does. he would rather spend his time in the present than invest a lot of time simply thinking about the future. simply put, he is not an imaginative person. 

[i-am-the-entertainer]

RevieWBY: Volume 6

This has been stated so many times, but Volume 5 was bad. Okay, it wasn’t terrible, like I don’t feel offended by it being bad (unlike certain folks), but looking back on it I don’t have anything to say to really defend it as something Rooster Teeth should have talked up as much as they did at the time. It had some good things going for it, but the amount of problems it had in terms of animation and writing really put a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. So for Volume 6 to deal with all that fallout, it was going to have to do a lot. And to their credit, CRWBY accepted the criticism in stride, and actively worked to make Volume 6 something that people who despised Volume 5 might enjoy.

Still, one had to go into this season with the understanding that some people were never going to be completely satisfied with whatever CRWBY did. Because at the end of the day, the RWBY that Rooster Teeth currently makes is not Monty Oum’s show anymore. No, this isn’t saying CRWBY is in any way disrespecting his legacy, it’s just Monty Oum had a certain method to running the show that only he could really get away with: epic fight scenes, suddenly throwing giant curveballs into the series’ mythology, taking vital time away from storytelling so the fights looked cool. I mean, there are people who criticize the show for doing that now when they didn’t give two shits when Monty did it, because Monty did it in a manner that somehow worked. I don’t know how he did it, but he did, and, well, he’s not here to do it, and there’s no way even a huge animation team can collectively do things like him. And they shouldn’t: if they can use a better industry standard animation engine than Poser, than the fact that Monty Oum didn’t like animating with Maya shouldn’t stop them.

Blah blah blah...this is all about FNDM reception. What did I think of Volume 6?

Well...

Focus

In my mid-volume review I cited this as Volume 6′s strongest aspect, and as far as I can tell this remains the case. By focusing our hero storyline on one group and for the most part the villain storylines on only a few characters who were paired off, Volume 6 effectively told a story that didn’t force the viewers to juggle multiple things and find some semblance of a continuing story. Everything happened linearly and the whole thing made for a more enjoyable watch overall.

Tone

Building off of that renewed focus, this volume felt like it had more of a consistent tone that lasted from beginning to end. RWBY markets itself as an anime show and uses a lot of that anime-style of humor (slapstick and comedically exaggerated emotions), but honestly it’s always played fast and loose with using that humor in a way that doesn’t feel out of place. In this volume it was more consistently used, and that’s largely thanks to the nailed down focus that allowed character interactions to utilize the humor in a natural way. Ruby and Maria Calavera were especially good sources for humor.

Now, things did get a little more screwball when Cordovin came into the mix, but it was interesting seeing CRWBY take that humor to a logical extreme for the first time in a while (not since the Beacon years). It interrupted the tone for a bit, but not in a manner that overall changed the genre this show is going for.

Animation

Beautiful. The improved production pipeline that we’ve heard about really came through. These episodes were the best they’ve ever looked, minus a few errors here and there, showing just how amazing RWBY can look when you give the animators time to add their own touches. There was some really great fight animation to boot: none of the fights this volume felt awkward, and you could tell the animators had a lot of fun.

Worldbuilding/Storytelling

It feels weird saying that Volume 6 did a better job with worldbuilding than Volume 4, which took place on four different continents and traveled across one, and Volume 5, which took place on two different continents and featured the second major skirmish between the villains and the heroes. I think this has to do with just how well it was integrated into the story: insight into the world came at points where the story needed it and when the viewers wanted it. Nothing ever felt like a massive info dump better suited World of Remnant; where there was just too much information delivered that wasn’t relevant to what was happening in the show. Volumes 4 and 5 had this same problem with establishing the world, often telling us too much in a way that just didn’t feel natural to the story. With Volume 6, almost every chapter up until the final Argus arc included some form of that insight:

Chapter 1 showed us how ordinary civilians deal with traveling through Grimm territory––the steps they take to protect themselves

Chapter 2 showed us some aspects of the Mistral criminal underground, not telling us too much about it but suggesting it was much larger than what Cinder encountered.

Chapter 3 showed us...so many things.

Chapter 4 offered a sense of the stakes RWBY faced in relation to all of Remnant.

Chapter 5 and 6 gave us a glimpse at another form of non-city life in Remnant.

Chapter 7 introduced us to Argus, my favorite of all the Remnant cities we’ve seen; plus a glimpse into the life of the silver-eyed warriors; and a more representative depiction of what domestic life is like in Remnant

Chapter 8 told us what Atlas personnel who aren’t Ironwood or Winter are like, plus the long-awaited insight into how the silver eyes work.

Chapter 9 shows something of the effect the Battle of Beacon, and by extension Pyrrha’s death, had outside of our core group.

Things kind of teeter off with the finale arc, but that’s because worldbuilding became a little less important to what was going on. This is kind of a stretch, but the mech fight and the arrival of the Grimm in Argus give us an idea of how large non-capital cities defend themselves without just spelling everything out.

All in all, this volume delivered on some impressive worldbuilding, probably the best the series has had in a while. It wasn’t massive info dumps unless it needed to be (e.g. Chapter 3), and it offered just enough for other important things like the storytelling and the action to still be in the forefront.

Characters

Volume 5, despite the fact it involved the major reunion of Team RWBY after two volumes, felt like it was simply putting the main characters through situations without those situations really doing anything to develop them or define them as anything beyond what we already knew. Some characters fared better on the development front, namely Yang, but others, especially Ruby, just seemed to be along for the ride without us getting any insight into them. This is where the writing issue that came from separating everyone starting with Volume 4 really came to a head: too many different characters with their own story to cover, and sometimes those stories just didn’t do much for the character beyond existing as a situation they were in.

Volume 6 feels like the refutal of that, and that mostly has to do with the fact that we’re not juggling so many storylines anymore. When a major event happens to the heroes, everyone gets affected at the same time. The train crashes? DEVELOPMENT! Jinn’s story? DEVELOPMENT AND INSIGHT! Snowstorm? INSIGHT! The Apathy? DEVELOPMENT! Telling team JNR about Jinn’s story? DEVELOPMENT! Adam ambushes Blake and Yang for the first time since Volume 3? DEVELOPMENT! WITH A HEALTHY DOSAGE OF ANGST!

Surprisingly, the same thing is happening to two of our favorite villains, Mercury and Emerald: even though they only really appeared in three chapters this Volume, we actually got a surprising chance to see how their defeat at the Battle of Haven affected them, and their increasingly strong misgivings about working for Salem. We get more of an idea of them as people rather than Cinder’s blind followers, understanding why they stuck with such an evil person for so long. It’s the most we’ve learned about them since Volume 3, and we didn’t even need lengthy flashbacks.

Even Adam got some more insight. RWBY has been following the path that Adam was an abusive ex-boyfriend for quite a while now, but there was always this underlying thought that he got into the White Fang business for a seemingly noble cause. The problem was the show hadn’t depicted how he got from Point A to Point B. The Adam Character Short offered us some of that much needed insight, putting some of his actions up to this point in a new context, even if it was set-up for clearing up some things so they could get rid of him.

Of course, there are still exceptions to characters getting character development, and honestly they’re kind of glaring ones. Oscar’s development arc, where he came to accept he was his own person, completely happened offscreen (for reasons that I’ve brought up before and will reiterate in the final section), robbing us of really witnessing his growth as a person. I enjoyed some of the stuff Cinder did this volume, especially her escape from the vault and her fight with Neo. But honestly she continues to be a pretty bland villain with little hints at her motivations for being such a terrible person: the Battle of Haven was such an utter defeat for her there needed to be some form of consequence that would’ve affected her character while also telling us more about her. Maybe it would’ve been her strategizing her revenge, which would’ve gotten more insight into how she thinks as a master planner. Instead, we get her leaving the vault, more or less going back to what she used to do but in a more low-key setting, fighting with Neo, plotting with Neo, and leaving with Neo. It felt more like “Hey, she’s alive, and here’s what she’s doing,” which while I appreciate it feels kind of a waste of time if you’re not doing anything with her beyond that. Honestly, a post-credits reveal that she was alive and then a pre-Volume 7 character short detailing how she made it to Atlas that covered her and Neo’s entire storyline this volume would’ve been more helpful.

Before I go on to my most major critique of this volume, I need to address the two Goliaths in the room.

Adam

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they needed to get rid of Adam. The way things have been going, there was only so much more you could do with his character before he became a nuisance that was overstaying his welcome. I understand people wanted some deeper insight into him, but the fact was he was never introduced to be a major villain to anyone beyond Blake and later Yang. They could’ve had him have a thing against Weiss, but they didn’t, they focused the time that would’ve made him a major villain for everyone else on making people like Roman and Cinder and Salem the big villains. They decided on the path of abusive ex-boyfriend a very long time ago, and if you hadn’t figured that out after the Adam Character Short I honestly think you were being willfully ignorant to what���s been building up.

The best I can say is that Adam and his history is a missed opportunity for some pretty interesting storytelling and worldbuilding, but the fact remains: it is not his story that they want to tell, it is not his show. It may make something interesting to think about, but Adam’s story is supplementary, and works better in supplementary material, a la character shorts and maybe mangas.

Jaune

Y’all need to quit it with the “Hrrr drr Jaune took up time again moan moan Miles Luna is self indulgent” talk, he barely did anything this volume beyond Chapter 9 and having a sister that the whole fandom loved.

Pacing

This...this is where Volume 6 ran into trouble.

Overall, from the season premiere to the finale arc, this was probably the best-paced season of RWBY we’ve ever had. Major story events happened right when we needed them, and for the most part they didn’t drag out story arcs for any longer than they needed to be.

Well...until they reached Argus, that is.

At face value, a lot happened in the final couple of chapters. Chapter 8 gave us Maria explaining the silver eyes, Chapter 9 had the scene with Pyrrha’s statue and the mysterious Red-Haired Woman (I’ll headcanon whatever I want about who she is, Jen Brown) Chapter 10 started the Cordovin fight, Chapter 11 reinforced Blake and Yang’s partnership, Chapter 12 killed Adam, and Chapter 13 had Ruby finally use her silver eye powers to defeat a Grimm and they made it to Atlas. Yeah, it was a pretty eventful set of episodes.

So then why did it feel like it dragged? Here are a couple reasons that I’ve identified.

1. The Cordovin Battle sidelined story arcs for too long

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the finale arc should not have been split up like that over so many episodes. It afforded us some pretty well-animated fights, some of the best the series has ever had, but the volume hadn’t been relying on that action to keep up the forward momentum, but on actually telling the stories of these characters. I get the need for CRWBY to prove that they can do well-animated fights, but as I’ve come to accept action should never take precedence over storytelling (I know, that’s hard to swallow when parts of the fndm spends hours complaining about how Monty’s not animating the fights anymore). And it’s clear to me in this final arc put emphasis on the action over the momentum of the story, bringing the actually pretty good storytelling the volume had had up to that point to a grinding halt.

Now, historically RWBY fights have delayed telling stories, but it’s never been for too long, at most maybe two chapters? But if you spend three chapters on a single fight, thereby devoting three weeks of your viewers’ time to high-octane action, people are gonna notice that the story is basically going nowhere.

What could’ve made this less of a problem? Well, perhaps establishing Cordovin earlier and making her less of a buffoon would’ve eased my hatred of this arc. Volume 6 lacks a clear antagonist for the story, but the way Cordovin was treated as a big deal in this final battle made it seem like she was taking up that role, except we didn’t even see her until the final half of the volume, and in her debut we couldn’t take her seriously as a villain, much less an antagonist, because of the pure comedy they used in her intro. There needed to be something about her at least a few episodes early––take this with a grain of salt because I think following JNR in Argus would’ve killed the balanced pacing of the first half of the volume (and just made the Jaune haters apoplectic), but maybe a few quick scenes of JNR arriving in Argus and getting rejected by her would’ve been helpful. Or honestly easing off on the comedy of her intro. Such a one-note character who we are primed to not take seriously isn’t interesting as a major force, so identifying her as a more threatening roadblock for the heroes would’ve made the stakes of the final fight a little more...present.

2. Important storylines got trimmed for time’s sake and weren’t addressed properly.

@hypeathon (whose excellent production analyses for this Volume are well worth a read) identified a tweet Miles made back in October, prior to the premiere and most likely when they were finishing storyboards, about “killing your darlings.” For those unaware and who may have severely misinterpreted that comment, “killing your darlings” is when writers have to sacrifice something they love or want to do so that the story works better. The timeliness of this tweet (after they would’ve finished the script but before they’d wrapped on storyboards and voice acting for the final episodes) suggests the writers’ room had to cut a lot of material from Volume 6 (what Miles called a massacre of darlings), most likely due to production limits or not having enough time to cover them.

Think about it: the story from Chapters 1-7 was really good: everything was properly spaced out, the scripts felt polished, there was a balance of action and comedy and legit storytelling, the good pacing lasted longer than it ever has within a single volume.

Then we hit Chapter 8 and suddenly it all changes: storylines don’t get the proper time devoted to them, arcs come to a screeching halt due to the big fight. Unlike previous volumes, where the imbalance was pretty much the entire volume, there’s actually a clear point right in the middle of this volume where things suddenly took a turn for the worse. And the fact is, some of the problems with the story in the final arc suddenly make more sense if you accept that time that would’ve been devoted to it got sidelined in this “purge”: Qrow’s alcoholism suddenly getting brushed aside after Chapter 9 hopefully to be addressed next volume, Oscar disappearing and all his development happening offscreen, Adam’s completely unsubtle return after only a vague hint in Chapter 1 that would’ve been stronger if he’d kept popping up in Argus. I’d even go so far to say the odd pacing of the final few chapters could easily have been the result of the writing team not being able to devote a single chapter to such a grand fight, so they needed to stretch it out so CRWBY could actually animate it within reasonable deadlines, which meant sacrificing time for those arcs that so desperately needed development.

So what overall is gonna fix RWBY’s pacing in the future? Well, I think at the moment the show is too ambitious. If it wants to keep to a reasonable production schedule, they need to control the scale of their finales so that it can be completed without needing to sacrifice other storylines. If it wants to hold onto that ambition and make the finales as grand as they want it to be to do their boy Monty proud, then they absolutely need to delay the actual release of the volume so they can put in the proper amount of time to both the story and animation. And I don’t think anyone would mind waiting a little longer for Volume 7 if it meant this show got the care and attention it needs to tell the story it clearly wants to tell.

Conclusions

Evaluating Volume 6 is impossible without evaluating what came before it. RWBY was never a perfect show, but when you lose someone who was responsible for the show’s popularity in the first place and have to change how it’s made to make up for his absence, there’s going to be backlash. Backlash from the fans, and, uh, backlash from inside the company. The fact is, people are never going to be satisfied with the RWBY that Rooster Teeth makes today, and Rooster Teeth is never going to push out a RWBY that will make everyone happy. All they can really do is keep moving forward.

And move forward they did. Despite my problems with the finale, Volume 6 was good. I’ve always been sort of ambivalent about the show (I was drawn to it by my brother shortly before Monty’s death and have been watching it out of respect for him and the company as creative artists), and even if I thought some of RWBY’s critics were being too harsh (or seriously needed to find something better to do), I didn’t find Volumes 4 and 5 enjoyable enough that I felt like defending them. But guys, Volume 6 did something amazing: it made RWBY fun to watch again. Focused, consistent, and compelling storytelling plus gradually eased-in worldbuilding made for a story that I could follow along without having to juggle so many different plots. Improvements in the overall animation made things nice to look at and when fights happened they were always entertaining, never making me cringe or grimace, always making me think “Hell yeah, beat the shit out of them!” Just like I felt back in the old days of the show.

I feel as though what’s holding RWBY back at this point, however, is adhering to the production schedule that its old vision called for in making its current vision. And it honestly cannot keep doing that. RWBY is a show trying to reach grand heights, and its rushed production timelines and lost story arcs are keeping it tethered to the ground. Yet I can’t help but say: Volume 6 is RWBY at its finest so far. It can’t fix the problems that previous volumes have had, but it builds on the void those problems left to build a story that makes this show feel like something worth following once more.

So, I can safely say I’ll be following along when RWBY returns for Volume 7...hopefully later rather than sooner (again, it needs a better production schedule).

[alittleyellowdinosaur]

The Dragon Prince Season 2 Review

*SEASON ONE SPOILERS IN THHIS SECTION* i love this show and, unless another Voltron situation happens, that’s not going to change. But I find myself... disappointed with this season. Mainly bc it felt like a season of filler episodes. Yes we had some developments, largely with Caleb’s magic and his relationship w Claudia, as well as Claudia and Sorens relationship and Virens Evil Plan™️. But 3 of the 9 episodes were on just Caleb and Claudia in one place, with the same issue that could have been resolved in one episode leaving room for more, and 2 of the remaining 6 episodes were mostly backstory on Caleb and Ezran’s mother. And while yes, I was very excited to learn about her it was just... lackluster, as it was told as a story by Viren and not a more meaningful way, such as Caleb’s memories, or in a letter from his mother, for example. The remaining episodes were mostly focused on Caleb’s magic. It just felt like filler as these things could have been dealt with in more exciting ways. I hate to bring up Voltron, but in the episode where Shiro connects to the black lion, that was still engaging and didn’t feel like filler bc there were exciting things happening during this, and their was a deadline. In this season, very little action happens, and most of it is in backstory, and the things that (in this case of the one episode of voltron) took one episode, took a whole season, even though about the same progression took place. It’s just boring, and made the season feel like filler.

Especially because the whole time there is never any real danger or time pressure. Rayla begins the season saying “danger is coming” but Claudia and Soren show up later that episode I think and don’t wind up being that dangerous. The rest of the season there is no real time constraint except us being told, not shown, that they need to get Zym to Xadia soon. Although you might say Viren causing trouble is the danger, it’s not really present in the narrative as he isn’t sending people out to get the trio and the trio has no idea what he is doing.

Now for some LARGE SPOILERY points I’d like to make about the season (I apologize if formatting gets weird here, I’m writing this one my phone and it, well, is tumblr. Also I can’t find the mobile version of the read more button.)

In this season there is a lot of development of Caleb’s romantic relationships, specifically with Claudia, and briefly at the end with Rayla. Although I admit I have not looked up their exact ages, appearance wise, to me, Caleb looks 15 or so, and the girls look late teens early twenties. This, to put it simply, makes me very uncomfortable. In Season one, I was perfectly fine with Caleb’s puppy dog, schoolboy crush on Claudia. It was realistic to how a young teen might feel towards an older friend as he is first hitting puberty, and I found it cute. But now Claudia is reciprocating, and not just in a motherly, older sister way. She’s doing her hair up, she’s goin on a date with him, and they nearly kissed. I find this unacceptable as the age differences between them are too large, and regardless if the young one is a boy, that’s still very much not ok. Maybe technically she’s only a few years older than him, but as it isn’t stated and appearance wise she is much older seeming (since you can’t expect viewers to look up the wiki, this is what I have to go on), I strongly disagree with this, and the same concerning Rayla. He is, from my interpretation, 15. That’s not ok and I’m extremely mad about this. I hope it gets resolved in a way that is appropriate but I worry it won’t, and I worry more about the message that sends to young boys that they should let older girls hit on them when that’s no more ok than an older man hitting on a younger girl.

My second big complaint is how lgbt rep is handled in this season. Bc yes, we got some!!! And they died two episodes later!!! Not even, if you do some critical thinking as to why their daughter is ruling as a child queen with no parents. But yes, they kill the two lesbians who show up, although they are very much canon, kissing and a kid and all. They kill them, and although it is necessary for the narrative and not just thrown in there to get rid of them, it still sucks bc it’s still the trope that hurts so many of us. Now do I think this is the only lgbt rep we will get in this show? Absolutely not, I firmly believe we have yet to see the true lgbt characters revealed (still hoping for Amaya...) and I don’t believe this was all we will get, however those episodes haven’t been released yet and as of our knowledge this is all we have, and it’s a kill your gays trope. I just can’t agree with this, even though again, it was necessary to the narrative and wasn’t just a dismissive death and move on.

Oh and one last quick thing disliked. In this season, Soren briefly becomes a quadrepeligic. It’s handled rather well, in my opinion, with Soren trying to find the good in it and crack a joke as is his way, and Claudia nearly having a mental breakdown bc she doesn’t have a spell to help. But then she pulls one out of her ass and heals him. And although I am not disabled nor do I have any disabled friends, I find this a bit rude to the community (please do tell me if I am wrong about this however and you believe the disabled community is fine with this as I am not certain). The community doesnt have a magic solution to solve their disabilities. That’s not an option. And in my, admittedly unknowleable opinion, I think they should have let Soren remain disabled and truly showed how that affects the life of someone who previously relied on fighting. I think it would have added a whole other layer to the show of both diversity and intrigue. Do I think this was a slight at the disabled community? No I don’t, simply concerning how we know they don’t have a problem putting characters into the show with disabilities, and doing it well too (Aka Amaya making tasteful jokes about being deaf and using actual ESL, and Vallads, a pirate character from this season who DOES use magic assistive technology to deal with his blindness and it works amazing). But I do feel this was a wasted opportunity for character growth for Soren by helping him realize fighting skills aren’t all that make him who he is, and also an interesting way to creatively work in magical assistive technology (a la the flying wheelchair from A:TLA)

Lastly I’d like to talk about some good things about this season bc I’ve bashed it enough for one day don’t you think? Viren’s whole thing with the mirror was boring as hell yes, and only contributed to the filler season feeling, however it was intriguing and I’m curious to learn more about the man in the mirror, so I appreciate that mystery. I liked the development of Claudia and Soren and how it showed what might be the start of Claudia’s descent into Dark Magic. I enjoyed the whole part where Callum was sick and struggling with using dark magic, and how it was taken as a bit of a joke on the deep important hallucinations, while still being a deep important hallucination. Also the inclusion of memes (“one does not simply walk into Xadia”) and the pirate Vallads. I just find this shows ability to make light of itself to be really enjoyable and part of why I love it so much. Ezran is as always an absolute bean and he grows so much in this season. Caleb acknowledging why Rayla struggled to tell him about his father and not letting it drive a wedge between them like it would in so many shows (and would be frustrating like it always is) was so mature and I loved it. Claudia’s development about her mother, Queen Sarai’s whole section, and Harrows letter were all amazing bits of development, especially in the case of Claudia, about how hard it is on kids when parents divorce, while also acknowledging why there was a divorce and that it wasn’t bad that the mom did it. Also the explainations Of magic and the Sunfire (I think that’s what they are called) elves were awesome (who else is now shipping Amaya and that one leader elf??) I think a lot of the development was super amazing and I loved it all, and by no means do I think this season will be a blight on the show as a whole, I just think it very much had some faults and I look forward to seeing some more plot focused episodes!!