#i might do this for s2 too but i remember it less & it's hard to take notes when ur watching w/ someone & cant pause it a bunch

[sunlightsilence]

MY THOUGHTS ON SIDE ORDER

If you see this, you don't have #side order or #side order spoilers blocked. .

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So. Side order's gameplay is fantastic to me, I've completed it with all 12 palettes now. I love splatoon and I love roguelikes so this was sort of a match made in heaven for me.

Creating the OP builds, the final boss, the general colours and music and vibe of the game is amazing! Everything to do with Pearl and Marina are *amazing* and they're so hella gay it's adorable :D And I love that they're not even hiding the queer representation now. Marina having a sprawled out Pearl as her desktop background is so cute, even seeing an elevator scene where they gush about eachother, and another one where Marina worries that Acht is hitting on Pearl.

And... cannon They/Them Acht! I remember all the people on Reddit being like "it's just the marketing team mistranslating their pronouns in a tweet!" NOPE, it's in game too!

Hell yeah :D Smollusk is adorable and I love him, and maybe we finally have a splatoon villain tumblr won't turn into a tumblr sexyman since he's a literal infant xD

And Pearl Drone is so hecking cute, I love her so much!! If you spin around in the lobby she spins too, and if you stay still she falls asleep :D

I did my first run with Brella cause it's my fav and it has my beloved inkstorm kit from S2! It took me three tries before I beat the tower for the first time, but then every run afterwards with different weapons I've always cleared it (I was got bounced off the tower for that first death and the second I was caught offguard by how fast the reefslider spam is)! Brella was definitely my favourite run, but I also really enjoyed the roller and brush runs. My roughest run was with the Splatling. I had dreaded doing charger after that, but charger turned into my fastest run!

I could see myself unwinding in this mode hundreds more times. I am saying this all to demonstrate that I really love this DLC, it might be my favourite of all the single player modes so far, either that or S2 hero mode. So my following criticisms are out of love for it because it's close to perfect. So the big one is... "the dlc is too short!" I hear that a lot on both tumblr and reddit and someone inevitably chimes in with "You don't play a lot of roguelikes, do you?" I mean... do YOU? I've done over 100 runs in Wizard of Legend, and thousands of hours on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Etrian Mystery Dungeon. Yes it's made to be run multiple times, but when a run is only 20-30 minutes it's still only about 6 hours of content if you do all the palettes. And these could be fixed with the assets they already have! Like imagine an Endless mode where the difficulty (enemy speed and hp values and number of spawns) kept ramping up higher and higher each floor, with the leader board being kept track of on the app. Or a daily tower run to save a random cephalopod from being grayscaled - the daily inkling/octoling's palette giving you a random weapon/sub/special for that day that followed the rules of 8's Octoshot (more hacks = less chip slots). Or like a super hard difficulty mode - imagine a mode where every floor had a danger modifier, and maybe a Parallel Cannon spawns into the stage to try to hunt you down (maybe it's even invincible so you have to run away from it while doing the stage objective?) I know the Octoshot is kind of the "hard mode" (it's still not too bad though since it's basically just like starting from the beginning without hacks), but it's not fun being limited to just the one weapon type. Especially for it for people who find the regular shooters boring. I don't feel like this is an unreasonable request either, Wizard of Legend - a roguelike made by *two* people - for instance has a few options for post game challenge runs (a randomized mode, a mode where the enemies start from the highest difficulty from floor 1, an extra long run that touches on all the bosses, a BOSS RUSH mode, Curses - basically one thing gets massively buffed while a second thing gets massively debuffed). The Mystery Dungeon games tend to have unlockable MASSIVE dungeons that start you off from having nothing. (like imagine a 99 floor floor tower where you started with no hacks, and a basic shooter with no sub/special and you had to earn new weapons/subs/specials/hacks as you go). Could do the Curse style idea with extra special Marina hacks. "Hey 8, I just figured out a hack that turns everyone's Max HP to 1 - both yours and your opponents!" "This hack will make you much faster but the floors will always be dark!" Or those Bonus challenges, imagine if there was an option to do conditional runs with them. Like "Beat the Tower without using your special, unlock a specific splat tag banner" Again, I am only criticizing because I love it. It's just also the easiest and shortest of all the single player campaigns we've gotten I feel, and if they were going to lean into the roguelike genre, I wish they looked into how other roguelikes reuse assets to lengthen the gameplay and provide extra challenges to keep players interested for a long time.

AND I AM STILL MAD YOU CAN'T PLAY AS A SQUID AND THEY REMOVED THE PLAYABLE SQUIDBEATZ (half joking. Not really upset, but I do find it odd now that there's more campaigns you can play as an octoling than an inking on the switch now despite inklings being the mascots...... rotm/oe/so vs just s2hero/rotm. And I don't see why we can't just have minigames back, they remove more minigames each entry and paying to listen to music now is frustrating...) Haha... But yes, overall, I loved it. It's a 9/10 from me. Adding squidbeatz and some post game longevity / challenge modes would have made it a 10/10. I can't wait to play more, I can't wait to visit Inkopolis Square again next splatfest :')

Now, onto random observations!

The lobby has jump ramps on the back corner pillars. I don't know why!

You can turn Color Lock on in the main game and it *does* affect Side Order. It gives you permanently Blue+yellow or Blue+green ink, even in the hub area.

So with this boss, it uses the hairstyle from your S2 hero mode data to get their appearance... But I swear mine is using the feminine voice here and when being splat, despite that hairstyle being locked to masculine inkling voices in Splatoon 2? I do use it with the feminine voice in Splatoon 3. Or maybe the voices are just mixed into one here, I can't quite tell? Well it made enby me happy to see. I do kinda wish we got a challenging superboss fight with 4, these felt a bit weak.. but it seems to imply they aren't specifically 4 but Order made them based on their data... So...where is the real 4?!!! Did she never show up to work? Speaking of that boss....

Around the room are these white pipe like structures...

That will be instantly recognizable to anyone who dabbles in japanese model kits - they're sprue trees, like the kind used in Gunpla.

The robotic boss has robot model kit building pieces in the background :D

I still don't quite get the intro scene where everything goes digital on the train.... So it's implying either A) your character got Grayscaled.... But your character is fine when you go back to town... you don't even see any characters standing around suffering it's effects, they could have had some npcs spacing out or acting weird ala Persona 3... or B) you're getting pulled into the memverse too, but there's no sign of your S3 character *at all*... (though this would have been a good way to let us play as an inkling too nintendo >:l *angry woomy noises*)

Honestly I felt kinda like Acht's inclusion was sort of superfluous at first... mostly their role felt like "Pearl & Marina: *does something gay* Acht: wow these two sure are hella gay right 8? i feel like we're third wheels". I kept waiting for some kind of...reveal? Their memories are pretty much fully restored instantly rather than rolled out gradually like I was expecting...I was thinking maybe they'd, like, link them to Paul, or follow up on the recognizing Pearl somehow or being linked to the engineers that created Order or...SOMETHING, but it never came. Other than maybe dropping a hint about the person who instructed them and Marina when they were in school? Their role was really just "I'll hold the elevator and jump in for a song"... But maybe that's okay, eight and Acht are trauma victims and this was meant to be a place to heal them. Maybe it's okay that we take it slow getting to know them.

Okay that's all that's brainworming away at me for now, I'm sure I'll think of more later. Again, I really love it, definitely a 9/10 for me. I hope yall enjoyed it too :)

[guiltycorp]

Not that i mind but i wonder if some changes to the shown dynamic were purposeful? The ending especially showed a lot of Gojo's regard for Geto, it was very cute (although I did think that Geto's depressive state in it would influence anime-onlys to see him as this typical brooding teenager who is annoyed by Gojo... and also im still certain that Geto showing middle finger in the group photo wasn't really in character for him). The lyrics of the opening and ending also add a lot of context for sure!

Then in the last episode they did a great job of adapting Gojo's emotional reaction, going even further with the excellent voice acting, erratic movements and bleeding from clenching his fist too hard... And of course the ambiguous redness under his visible eye after the dream, i'm sure we aren't going to get any confirmation whether it's from tiredness or tears (or allergies, or artstyle) but the implication alone is enough.

But!! At the same time in that final episode they chose to downplay the scenes where Geto mentioned Gojo before defection. And they didn't erase those moments but instead chose not to show his face fully.

It's like... His last hidden warmth towards Gojo, only shown to the manga readers. I'm not sure what the animation team's intent might have been with this, but I have to say - to me the manga had felt more ambiguous in regards to their relationship, their emotional states and feelings remained mostly subtextual (and i don't only mean the romantic overtones but just specifically Gojo's attitude towards Geto in the backstory). Meanwhile the anime chooses to focus a little more on Gojo's appreciation for Geto, clarifying a lot of things on his end but leaving Geto's side of things a biiiit less apparent? Which might in the end be for the best in order to make the sealing moment unambiguous. As it is, it was easy to interpret Gojo's fatal hesitation as an understandable shock at seeing a person from his past that he had killed. One could imagine him reacting the same way to Toji, for example. This way, however, Gojo's feelings will be clear. Also, I do remember how before s2 a lot of people claimed that Gojo didn't care whatsoever, citing that as the reason he had missed all the signs and why he 'had no problem' killing Geto in jjk0 (as if he hadn't avoided it to the last possible moment). So I believe it's very important for the audience to see that Gojo absolutely did care, and their sincere friendship just wasn't enough to overpower the messed up world they were living in, at least not without Gojo understanding that the system required change (which he didn't fully get until after Geto snapped, and even then... haha...). This in my view makes for a more complex narrative than just Gojo being a narcissistic person without personal attachments? It wasn't a one-sided narrative, both of them really were friends and liked each other outside of just going on missions together, it just wasn't enough. Anyway yeah, it feels like the anime showed a bit less of Geto's POV when it came specifically to Gojo, but we got more of Gojo's emotions in return, so yay!

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

A Quick Look at Logos

I wanted to write this down to get my thoughts on paper because, yes, Wish'adel is insane but she's the Chalter of Flingers she's got crazy numbers but Logos is a lot more interesting because what he does is more unique and honestly I think he fulfilled my prophecy a while back: they're inevitably going to power creep Eyja, and I think they did it.

First, module and talent. Logos has the same Delta module as Ebenholz, meaning he does Necrosis damage, and it improves his first talent. His first talent gives him a decent chance to attack another random target when attacking for less damage (importantly, this can be on the same target) with some slight crowd control and if they're under necrosis burst, it deals additional Elemental damage.

This talent is pretty good but not exactly stellar in most situations, and amazing in others. If you're fighting a group of enemies, chances are this will just results in some decent spread damage, but against one enemy this is big fat free DPS increase that makes Logos a lot scarier.

His second talent is a small flat RES reduction and a small flat Arts damage increase, which helps Logos a lot. Logos will always deal okay damage against most enemies.

Logos' Skill 1 is crazy. If you've ever used the Besieger Relic in IS4 and watched Typhon show off why she's IS4's incredibly special girl, this is Logos being Hypergryph's incredibly special boy. The instakill threshold for a maxed out Logos is 2,565 HP. That's pretty respectable on its own and puts a wide swath of enemies both in "instantly dies when entering attack range" and "will die upon taking any reasonable amount of damage", but remember, that's without buffs. If you use Skadi the Corrupting Heart's and Warfarin's S2 on Logos, that HP threshold jumps to 4,155.

Since the remaining HP is deal as damage to another enemy, it is VERY easy for large groups to suddenly have massive chain reactions where enemies instantly die, deal damage to another enemy, and that enemy also instantly dies. This skill is great, it's one of the most efficient skills at clearing out large groups of trash.

Logos' Skill 2 is deceptively powerful and his strongest boss killer kill on his kit. Due to the scaling damage increase and the insane attack speed triggering his first talent repeatedly, this skill ends up having a really high DPS that's all extremely compatible with attack buffs and Inspiration. It also gives Logos 90 RES, which essentially gives him 16,000 HP against Arts damage, and has good skill cycling time. I wanna see Logos and Mandragora trade beams.

Oh yeah this is also great for piling on Necrosis damage btw.

I want to say this is the kind of flashy S3 that won't really see use over his other skills, but it's really hard to argue with a skill that, at base, gives him 3,420 ATK and lets him hit 3 enemies at once. The primary gimmick of this skill is stopping and absorbing enemy projectiles, and I think this does probably have more uses than the funny showcases against Talulah, but this is just a good skill for having an on-demand mini Volcano.

There's a pretty reasonable chance this might be Logos's best skill in IS too, just because a skill that reads "quadruple your ATK" goes insane with literally any additional stage ATK buffs. Survivor Contract in IS3 already let's you do insane shit, and I genuinely wonder if getting to 6 digits worth of ATK is possible with Logos.

There's something to be said that Eyja's S2 is still really good, and I don't necessarily want to disagree. But I think what Logos brings to the table is both very powerful and very unique, and I think players are going to find that they edge much more into bringing Logos into squads than they do Eyja.

I mean you can also use them both, the cops can't fucking stop you.

[starplusfourletters]

(way too many) thoughts on the ahsoka show

It was fine? I was really afraid there would be something I hated. And there was nothing I hated. Sad but true that that’s the bar for new SW material atm.

I really liked ep5; ep5 will probably get a rewatch. I liked the casting. The visuals were pretty cool. Huyang was a treasure.

So we’re really going with “the Force is in everyone so everyone can use the Force if you just try hard enough”? I… kind of hate that. That somehow feels ableist of me to say. But this is a heckin fantasy universe I feel like some people Really Are That Special, y’know?

Exception that proves the rule: A Force-less Sabine is still VERY SPECIAL. In Rebels, she can hold her own in a fight just as much as Kanan or Ezra. She’s extremely competent without the Force. She’s somehow less competent in this show

She really is just the worst here in ways that I do not remember her being in Rebels. I guess arguably Ezra was the one with Terminal Protagonist Syndrome in that show? And she caught it from him before he left?

I feel like what this season WANTED to be about – and honestly it’s the lowest hanging fruit possible for a show titled “Ahsoka” – is the tension between Ahsoka’s past / her relationship with her master and her future / her relationship with her apprentice. But I don’t think they actually hit a balance there, because they just did not make her relationship with her apprentice very compelling. Three reasons for this:

1. My bias. There are very few things that start with “Ahsoka &” that would get my attention more than “Ahsoka & Anakin.” Feel like I’m not alone on that one tho

2. Established canon. It’s already an uphill battle because Ahsoka and Sabine don’t have much of a relationship in Rebels. I’m honestly not sure they ever have a conversation. I remember Sabine being like “wow she’s cool much cooler than my idiot adopted brother”, and maybe that would be a place for a mentor figure relationship to start, if Sabine weren’t already DROWNING in mentor figures. It’s not that they have nothing in common, they are just straight up not a focal point of Rebels S2.

Hey you know who canonically has latent Force abilities? And maybe needs some training? And whom Ahsoka would have a Complicated feeling about without even needing a prior established relationship? Someone with mutually incompatible daddy issues? Someone deep enough in the cultural zeitgeist she literally would need no introduction?

Yes I KNOW it’s never gonna be canon and I should just go back to AO3 but it’s RIGHT THERE HRRRRRGGGGHHHHH

3. But a lot of the issues with Ahsoka & Sabine as a focal point are of the showmakers’ own creation. You’re telling me they have a relationship now? Fine, CONVINCE me of that:

First they shoot themselves in the foot by not giving us any information about how Sabine became Ahsoka’s apprentice originally. Why did Sabine want to become a Jedi when she didn’t want that in Rebels? DID she want to become a Jedi? What did she want to learn from Ahsoka? Why did Ahsoka decide to take an apprentice at that time and not any time before or after? How did she feel about it? And why pick Sabine, who is, and this is true, Not Very Good at the Force? Who approached whom, or did they run into each other accidentally? I suppose answering some of these questions might require answering “where was Ahsoka between 3 BBY and 4 ABY?” and they aren’t ready to do that yet, but guys. GUYS. If you’re trying to tell me how Ahsoka and Sabine fix their relationship, you gotta tell me why I care first.

I know I'm harping but I really cannot emphasize enough that "fuck it I'm gonna go round two on Found Family" is an arc-defining character beat for both Ahsoka AND Sabine and the fact that the audience doesn't get to see it really makes me question whether the powers that be themselves know what it looks like

Then we get vanishingly little information about why they broke up, and all of it is provided by Huyang. And what I’m picking up from what we have is “Sabine got too Revenge Quest-y, and Ahsoka got nervous.” I don’t even know where to begin here – maybe with the fact that if Sabine decided to go on a murder rampage, she wouldn’t need the Force, lol. We know Sabine’s family died, she wanted to go to Mandalore, and Ahsoka didn’t want her to. So… did Sabine go? How did she end up back on Lothal? Who left who? Was Ahsoka worried for Sabine’s safety, or that she was getting too Dark Side-y, or both? What juicy terrible intergenerational-trauma-driven things did they say to each other when they broke up? I want to compare and contrast this with Ahsoka leaving Anakin, but I do not have the information to do so because there are zero details and the info we DO have is from ANOTHER CHARACTER. Again, if this season is about this relationship, TELL ME WHY I CARE.

To me this is the same cardinal sin as Picard S1 – implying that some really interesting stuff happened when the audience wasn’t watching, and that it explains why the characters are behaving the way they are, and then… not disclosing that information. EXCEPT PICARD GAVE US MORE THAN THIS fjdghjfghjkhkd

I was not on Tumblr when I was watching Picard S1. Probably for the best.

But okay, they have a history, the show is gonna be about them, sure let’s move on. AND THEN THEY SPEND LIKE HALF THE EPISODES NOT EVEN IN THE SAME GALAXY. The time they do spend in the same room is 75% generic sniping. As someone who came into this way more invested in the Ahsoka & Anakin relationship, ep5 was very much NOW BACK TO THE GOOD PART

And the couple of beats they do have together have me going HUH? After ep2 I spent most of a day debating myself on whether there’s a missing scene, between Sabine getting stabbed and waking up in the hospital, where we see Ahsoka actually REACT. On one hand, Ahsoka would be upset, maybe we as the audience can fill in the gaps and we don’t need to spend time on it. On the other hand, maybe we do, tho? At the time I was thinking about how we haven’t seen Ahsoka truly emotionally vulnerable since TCW with the exception of “Shroud of Darkness” and maybe “Twilight of the Apprentice.” She has a very normal range of emotions, and she expresses them in very controlled ways, and I just wanna see what she looks like when that breaks down, ya know? What’s weird to me is that in ep4 when Ahsoka thinks Sabine is dead we do get this beat; she gets Real Mad there for a second. So maybe what we’re learning is it was a double beat and they should have cut the stabbing thing entirely I mean come on they had to have known they were gonna catch flack for that. Then again, having that moment shows the audience that Ahsoka does give a shit, more than she wants to admit and more than she typically shows Sabine, which is a fun compare/contrast with Anakin, and it might have given me a better understanding of the relationship if it had come earlier.

The other big beat is Sabine deciding to help the baddies. That is just such a devastatingly terrible decision. So bad, in fact, that I feel like we’re supposed to be drawing parallels to Anakin. Their whole “screw over the galaxy to save one person” thing. Except 1) Sabine is not Anakin and 2) in order for that to be interesting, Ahsoka needs more information than I think she has. She knows Padme died around the same time Anakin totally lost his shit, and that’s about it. Which is actually a fun little thought experiment: what assumptions does Ahsoka make about the causality there? The only people who could have given her more intel are Palpatine, Obi-Wan, and Vader – unlikely. So IF the show is about the lines between Anakin and Ahsoka and Sabine, Sabine’s choice here could be central to that, and crucially to Ahsoka’s understanding of that, except it’s just for the audience I guess?

I do really like that Ahsoka’s extremely chill about what Sabine did, though. Ahsoka “Eh Shit Happens” Tano. Somehow her lesson from all this is “masters support their apprentices literally no matter what. Citation: Mine did.” That’s an unhinged take and I expect nothing less from my blorbo.

WHICH IS WHY WE SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST GOTTEN A FLASHBACK TO THE SITUATION IN WHICH AHSOKA DIDN’T SUPPORT SABINE HRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

I realize that I’m really tearing into this thing pretty much just for not being something it isn’t. Like, it’s not BAD. But maybe its weaknesses stem from not committing to being about any one thing. It’s kind of about intergenerational trauma, it’s kind of a Rebels Part Two, it’s kind of a Filoniverse installment, it’s kind of a worldbuilding exercise. And that’s not necessarily too much material for an 8-hour show. It’s more like the powers that be DECIDED that was too much material.

TLDR, footage of me after pretty much everything star wars that’s come out since the Disney acquisition:

[blocksruinedme]

Top 5 favorite fics (either ones you've written or ones you've read)

Going with mine, cause the other is way too hard. I'm not going to rank them, just top 5

"Stay?" - Joel/Jimmy, empires s2. 2.6k. Very straightforward, Jimmy and Joel have been hooking up, Joel always leaves after, Jimmy asks him to stay. Joel thinks about it! Joel POV

whatcha gonna do? - Bad Boys ship, Limited Life. It's not done, but you could end it where it is, which is "fade to black". Joel and Grian are trying to seduce Jimmy and he's very clueless. He gets into a bit of a negative headspace as he goes farther into his denial that they could want him. Ch 2 will be just... very very spicy. I have several sequels planned out but SO MANY WIPS so we'll see. It's currently 7k and ch 2 might bring it to like... 18k. IDK. I think ch2 is really good. Jimmy POV.

with the time they had - Flower Husbands, Bad Boys ship, Limited Life, no on screen sex but it's a little spicy. Note: Many meta things are left unresolved, but the core emotional arc comes to a conclusion, for that night. The premise: Every time one of the the traffic life games get set up, no one remembers. This time something is different, and Jimmy keep getting to the edge of remembering things, and sliding off. Grian is also going through a time! "Joel is just some guy". Along comes Scott, who stumbled into remembering, and really wants Jimmy to remember. I cried writing the ending. 12k, Jimmy POV.

Damn I I can't pick between my two smalletho week fics, i'll do both quickly. Call Off Your Ghost - Joel is obsessed with Etho, who does not realize this, and he's going crazy - and he's insanely jealous of Bdubs. Set after DL but written before limited life. It's the first fic I've written that I might not read based on what I saw, but I would like it. Joel POV. Blame it on the Moonlight  - Joel and Etho are Red, the end is in sight, and Joel really wants to kiss Etho. 1.4k, shortest thing I'm written that's longer than 100 words. Joel POV.

I Hope You Have The Time of My Life - Bad Boys ship, limited life, set after episode 6. RED LIVES RED LIVES RED LIVES. I'm really into all the possibilities of Red Lives. Grian will let Jimmy kill him for time, but only if they make it gay. It's Joel POV, a ton of thinking about the dynamics of all of them, especially Grian/Jimmy. He knows he is unexpectedly the glue of the team, which is confusing but it's worth the effort to keep the boys together. Chapter 2 keeps getting more complicated but also better. I hope to have it out soon! chapter one is 4.3k and chapter 2 is, idk. less than 10k, i hope.

....it's all joel pov and jimmy pov, huh. Very well. "with the time they had" was originally going to be scott pov and much much simpler, but doing jimmy pov and his struggles to remember and confusion was much more interesting than a lot of "scott saw jimmy slipping away again".

[coraniaid]

Hey, I was just wondering do you know if Dawn is ever brought up on Angel? Just asking cause I'm towards the end of s5 of Buffy/s2 of Angel and I've been headcanoning the whole time that Cordelia didn't get hit by the memory rewrite spell as a side effect of that vision hook up she's got with the Powers That Be and it just never comes up because why would it. Anyway just wondering if that's something that'll end up being disproven or just never addressed.

Also I guess like sideways ask what sorta memories/dynamics do you think got incepted of the Angel cast who would've known her? I like to think she'd think Cordelia is the coolest just because it'd annoy Buffy especially earlier on, I dunno if Wesley would've ever met her I can't remember if he even met Joyce. I also like to think she saw past Angel's brooding exterior and pegged him as the massive dork that he is and then obviously got her own share of Angelus trauma.

I don't know the later seasons of Angel as well as I know Buffy, but I do know that Dawn is mentioned on Angel at least once beause it happens in one of the rare episodes Faith is in! (In Season 4, when Angelus first hears that there's a Slayer in town he phones Buffy's house to check if it's her and we hear him say hi to Dawn on the other end of the line.)

I think that might be the first (or only) time Dawn gets brought up though (mainly because I don't think there's much mention of anyone on Buffy directly in S3 because the shows were now on different networks and they weren't sure how to deal with that). But as far as I know, Cordelia never mentions Dawn so I think your headcanon is probably safe.

For the other part of your ask:

Yeah, agreed on Cordelia: thematically, Dawn is Buffy's innocent childhood self and Cordelia is the cool and popular high school cheerleader we know that Buffy misses being in S1 and Dawn wishes she was in S7. I think the show suggests that Buffy and Dawn's relationship was less strained before she became a Slayer and Cordelia (especially S1 Cordelia) is who Buffy was before being the Slayer. So I think Dawn would naturally like her, and then (as we see with Glory a bit in Season 5, who Buffy explicitly compares to Cordelia), Dawn would delight in realizing she could annoy Buffy by suggesting that somebody she knew was cooler and prettier than her. (And Cordelia, in turn, would certainly appreciate being flattered and -- as we see her talk about Joyce in School Hard -- would equally delight in praising Dawn at Buffy's expense.)

I don't think Wesley does ever meet Joyce but I assume by Season 3 Dawn was sneaking off to Scooby Gang meetings with Buffy in the library at least some of the time (who was looking after Dawn when Joyce was away buying things for the art gallery?), so she probably did run into Wesley once or twice. Since I think Dawn would have been a huge fan of Faith on first meeting her and that she'd copy Buffy in blaming Wesley for how things went down in Consequences I don't think she'd be particularly happy to meet him. And I don't think S3 Wesley would have had the slightest clue how to talk to a pre-teen girl who visibly hates him and keeps telling him to leave Cordelia alone.

I think pre-Angelus Dawn would have bullied Angel mercilessly once she realized she could (if she was the one who walked in on him holding Mr Gordo, for example). And yes -- if Angelus was going after Joyce and Willow he'd definitely have tried to hurt Dawn too, and she would not be quick to forgive him (if she knew about it, she'd definitely be on Xander and Faith's side in Revelations). I think part of the reason she gets on so well with Spike in Season 5 is that she has lots of stories about embarrasing things Angel did or said that only she and Buffy were around to witness.

[lilyblackdrawside]

Evaluation of current SSS EC Units

This unit returns from the previous cycle. It's still good and useful in both dungeons. Leizi gets the debuff going all by herself on whole groups of enemies and having someone who permanently halves def/res and gives a 30% more damage debuff is pretty good. The deployable is also still quite good. I think Branch A is stronger, because more damage is enemies dead faster, but in the Lighthouse there is something to be said about less damage being the key, at least in the boss stage. But if you want to do less damage, you can just not bring this one. The "problem" with Branch B is that Gnosis already has perma freeze anyway, so it only buffs up his S2, which isn't too useful this time around. You either want enemies frozen for a really long time (Crawler) or for just a moment (Nethersea Predators). The branches are seemingly seemed around soft and hard CC, with A working with Slow, Bind and Levitate and B with Stun and Freeze, though Levitate is hard CC (full disable) so I might just be making things up. Leizi and Gnosis still carry the game even against John Hypergryph's best efforts, so this EC Unit is still good.

This is the new faction-based EC Unit that has replaced the Abyssal Hunter one. I didn't consider the AH one to be good, but this one's pretty alright. You can think of this EC Unit as a draw engine. By returning operators to your hand, you go even 0 as long as you're shuffling Kazimierz operators and in this way it's very easy to build full Sniper stacks with Platinum, Fartooth, Meteor and Proviso (also Justice Knight, but she's got a really long redeploy time so not very practical) as well as Defender and Vanguard ones with the Pinus girls, Gravel and Blemishine. Nearl does not count for this EC Unit, she is Followers, not Kazimierz. Yes, I know. The Pinus girls count anyway because they're special and precious. In theory, you can also build Guard stacks but ground-based approaches still suck. Stick with high-aspd ranged arts assaults. I'll go into this a bit more on a later EC Unit.

The "problem" with this one is that the faction itself doesn't have any good operators to cap a ranged stack off, so Branch B is a bit limp. With the four ranged operators that you do get, you can relatively quickly and consistently build up three full sniper stacks, more if you're willing to spend time waiting for one of the three to cycle back in the draw. You're not willing to do that, nor do you have the time because there's not much draw in these dungeons. You get at most about 1.5 times through your deck, unless you're filling it with just Supporters, which isn't unviable with this module. It's still advisable to have some off-faction Snipers to get a stack going, otherwise you have to cycle the three for a good while and they don't make for good offense like that.

Branch A is quite powerful and if you're good at counting off 10 seconds in your head, you can probably cycle the melee operators to keep it going indefinitely. I never bothered though.

Branch B is, as I've said, a bit rough because of the lack of ranged stack cappers. If you really do want to focus on ground units, it's quite good and you have some options for operators there between Nearlter, Ashlock, Flametail and Huncle. Blemishine.

One odd issue I run into with this one is that my hand gets very full. Sometimes it feels like I should keep an open deploy slot just to dump my hand. This EC Unit feels clunky to use because of this.

Now we're getting into the regional EC Units, this one being for the sweets factory. The theme of that dungeon with this EC Unit is to make you use ground operators. This one technically has draw power built in, but it's not good enough for me to have remembered it. So there's a fundamental problem with making me actually want to use ground units in this mode. Aside from a single dungeon, enemies always scale Hp, Atk and Def. With this in mind, I choose my core units depending on how affected they are by these stats. Ranged arts attackers are only affected by a single one: Hp. They don't care about Atk (especially in this set of dungeons, because there is hardly any meaningful ranged damage) and Def is generally also ignored. Melee physical attackers on the other hand have to worry about all three of these. If I want to use, let's say La Pluma to dps down these groups of enemies with her true aoe damage then either she has to tank them herself, for which she needs some defensive equipment so I have to lower her offense or she needs someone to tank for her, which means she needs a whole other operator who needs equipment and the stage layout needs to accomodate such a thing, which in La Pluma's case is easy because she can just attack around a corner. Melee arts attackers then come to mind. Arts Fighters have one block, so once again you need to shore that up. Actually I don't feel like explaining this anymore. The EC Unit wants you to stack block and rewards you for that with stats, which are only active while blocking. The dungeon is also full of almost exclusively the highest defense enemies you can think of, so if you stack block on your operators, they're not getting through that. Even with the EC Unit buffs. Are they really trying to get me to use ground units by putting enemies in that they suck against? Like, really? Branch A gives you more draw, which is fine, but at best you're getting like 12 to 15 out of it. I can just deploy a Supporter on Equip A for that. Branch B once again wants you to be blocking enemies to get anything out of it. I don't want to be blocking enemies. I want to kill enemies. Blocking is not a desirable state.

Emergency Mode of this dungeon gives enemies increasing damage reduction when they're not blocked and LEIZI STILL IS THE BEST OPTION. SHE STILL CLEARS. It's only meaningful on the final stage where the boss' drones become nearly unkillable BECAUSE YOU CAN'T BLOCK THEM.

Feel free to try to make ground units happen, be my guest. But don't do it like this. Don't try to make me use ground units while also stuffing the dungeon full of enemies that most of them can't efficiently handle.

This is the EC Unit for the Lighthouse. It doesn't do much for 5 stages and is pretty good for the boss.

The drone can be viewed as a Medic amplifier. It has enough hp, that unless you get some good stacks going on your Medics, a single one won't be able to keep it sustained too well. (Don't bother stacking your Medics with a ton of equipment, even here. Give them one or two Snipers, maybe a Vanguard (tactician) and let them gain atk by Caster-equipping a Bard and letting them get their Atk Inspire going) Regeneration works on the Drone, so Bards or Blemishine are also quite good with it, since to them it's just another target in their range without diluting their healing to other operators. Branch A is fine, but I don't use any Medics that make good use of this. SP support always sounds nice, but in the end it's not that impactful in this mode. Branch B is good, because Therapists give out a wide-range atk buff and it's easy to get a lot of overlap going between that and certain Supporters with omni-directional range (Bards, Hexers) More damage is more damage.

For my first few runs, I thought this thing was borderline mandatory for the Lighthouse, but it really isn't. Two or three Medics can keep up with the healing demand, which isn't even unusually high outside of the boss stage and there you tend to get slapped with such high elemental bursts that the Nerve Damage gets triggered from 0 to full in an instant, so I prefer Therapists over Wandering Medics. I bring one of each - Whisperain and Mulberry - and Whisperain is probably doing more work.

I prefer to use the Energy Perturbation Amplifier, but it really doesn't matter which EC Unit you bring here. Field Support Drone is a safe pick.

[marrfixated]

Pinned post/My info:

Last updated June 15, 2024

TL;DR: Marr, he/she/ze/they, neurodivergent, Total Drama/Dunmeshi, fanfiction, sideblog @priyemma

I hate my job 😡😡😡 rahhhhh

Hello! My name is Marr! I use He/She/Ze/They, whatever. I’m Omni, Bigender, and AroAcespec. I’m cool with any gendered terms, and I pretty much use them interchangeably myself. Gal, guy, neither, whatever!

I have ADHD and anxiety (both diagnosed) along with other things, but those are the ones I’ll probably talk about on here the most. I’m mixed White and Latina (plus Native) but mostly white (in that it’s a little more of my genetics than the others and I’m painfully whitewashed). I speak English and want to learn Spanish, but I’m definitely not fluent. American, and a lot more “country” than I realize lol (I’m a midwestern gal)… I do study a few other languages, but mostly in an etymological sense.

Right now im really into Total Drama. It’s one of my longest lasting hyperfixations so far! I also post about a few other things, like Dungeon Meshi and House M.D. (More likely reblogging those things though)

Specifically in Total Drama I mostly post about Priyemma or Alenoah. Recently been talking about the newest Reboot season (and my complaints with it). I talk the most about World Tour and TDI 2023 because those are the ones I remember the best. I plan to rewatch them all… someday. I haven’t even finished watching reboot s2 because it’s painful!

I love shipping! I can’t even list them all because there’s so many tbh. I am very much a multi shipper and I constantly am finding new things to ship! I try to not engage in ship hate ever, but sometimes I slip up lol. I post some less-than-positive content about Nemma on occasion or Juliayne… everything that could be considered ship hate is tagged as such and never tagged with the ship that is being slandered.

I can’t really draw, so if I ever post my beginner drawings please be nice lol 😭 I’m still developing a style and learning. I have many, many WIPs that I might share here and there. I do really want to be able to draw confidently and make art for the things I love!

I’ve started writing fanfiction again lately! It’s a struggle for a lot of reasons. Props to everyone who writes fics because it’s hard. It takes me hella long too… I have a lot I’m writing but few published lol. My user is Marrfixated on AO3, feel free to leave comments or kudos!

I’ve written four Alenoah oneshots so far. Most recently posted Contra Entendre, so go read that! I have 3 other oneshots that are somewhat written and I’ll post someday, but I’ve shifted my focus to planning some longer fics. I currently have an Alenoah AU and a Priyemma post-canon fic in the works! The latter is my main focus as I plan out the entire thing… kind of obsessed with it. My job and taking care of my little siblings takes up a lot of time over the summer, but now that I have a break from classes, my free time can be spent on writing instead.

I also have tiktok @Marrfixated. I post on tumblr more than TikTok because it’s easier, but I started off there. I mainly repost (reblog) things on TikTok. I don’t really use anything else yet (except ao3). I also have a Priyemma centric sideblog on here (@priyemma), where I’ll usually reblog content from and vice versa.

You’re on thin ice if you engage in ship discourse, constantly hate on ship I like (it makes me sad 💔), or are a dsmp fan/an enjoyer of any of Vivziepop’s works (I don’t like you).

Proshippers DNI. Zionists DNI. TERFs DNI. Vivziepop defenders DNI. Dream supporters DNI. Dsmp supporters also DNI. Do some damn research. Also general DNI… I can’t list everything that makes someone a terrible person.

I might post suggestive things here sometimes, but rarely and usually jokingly. Anything like that would be tagged accordingly, and let me know if there’s something for me to add. I don’t plan to EVER post nsfw or suggestive content related to td, it makes me uncomfortable as most of the characters are minors. I do curse a lot, and reclaim the f slur on occasion. Please don’t engage in ship discourse on my account for no reason! That’s no fun.

I usually take like 3 years to answer asks or dms or whatnot for various reasons… but I swear I don’t mean any offense! I get nervous, or I don’t know how to answer, or it goes missing, or I forget… whatnot. But basically… I’m not a passive aggressive person, and I mean no ill will if I don’t answer anything!

I reblog a lot, so I tag all my non-reblogs as #original post.

That’s it!

[nosolaceofastraightanswer]

hello everyone!! i'm the person who ran the TUA color polls for each of the seven siblings over the last few weeks. sorry it took so long but i'm here with results! i'm going to have charts first because they are flashy, easy to look at an understand, and also won't make the post too long above the keep reading :DD without further ado, the results of the poll: "Which color do you associate with [Hargreeves]?" !!

[keep in mind that the labels are above the charts, and viktor's may be hard to read because the chart maker i used only had a white background- same if you're on dark mode i apologize]

analysis and words under here if you're interested lol :D it’s basically me just rambling for WAY TOO LONG about analysis lmao

okay so going into this, my hypothesis was that everyone’s colors were more or less determined by their s2 outfits. the fashion was iconic and stood out a lot, so it was very likely to stick in people’s brains.

my personal choices in order of siblings are: blue, orange, yellow, pink, green, red, and blue again. i chose green for five because of like.. chalkboards? i feel like he gives the green vibes y’a know? for the rest it was mostly determined by outfits and vibes etc.

but i’m sure nobody wants to hear me talk about my own opinions for too long [afterall, i didn’t even vote in the polls to keep them unbiased as possible] so here’s my analysis of YOUR choices

blue green and yellow were all the top choices for luther, which makes sense to me. blue ended up winning. they’re all generally cooler colors. when i think of luther i think of less stand-out colors, something solid and steady. blue is the most popular favorite color. it has a lot of range, just like luther. he wears it a lot throughout the seasons. blue is associated (not to bring color theory onto the color theory website or anything) with a feeling of sadness, and also responsibility. i really see him as a very tragic character tbh, à la s1 characterization.

diego was surprising to me, because even though my prediction of orange was correct there was a large amount of black in play. red was third after that. i don’t see it as that surprising considering his outfit from s1 lmao. let’s be honest they’re all emo anyways. red and orange are both associated with fire. diego probably would do arson if he thought he was doing the right thing. red is very agressive of a color, but orange is seen as a little less in your face. it can represent change too. but all in all, i think that it was chosen most often because of his orange and black polka dot shirt from s2. slay ig

allison was surprising to me at first, because i didn’t expect so much purple. i think that the pink might be because she’s a girl though. the red is what confused me the most. i would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts because i’m honestly not sure. @creepy-not-crawly (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) was talking with me about the polls, and said this about allison having yellow win:

purple is associated with royalty and we all know she’s a queen. ofc, yellow won. we ALL remember that dress from s2. she’s also fairly optimistic for the first two seasons, and s3 largely revolves around her trying to force herself to be happy. yellow is associated with happy, and she was happy when she was with ray and trying to get it back s3. i have a post about the whole tone fuck up from s2/s3 here X so read that if you want!!

alright klaus. green came out (haha get it) in first and i think this one was essentially due to the association of ghosts and supernatural things in general with green. it’s SPOOOOOKY you know? it’s represents change and growth. the guy is trying. also the military is associated with green uniforms (at least in the US), so it can be easily linked back to the vietnam war incident from s1 and his connection to dave.

five had the most votes and it ended up with the closest results to one color taking half the pie. blue won, and red and black followed. i think for the red, it might be because of the metaphorical and literal blood on his hands. as far as i can tell, his powers- some of the most distinctly colored in the show- were a major factor: (credit to @dead-peppermint and @the-time-travelers-admirer in that order)

and his iconic uniform is mentioned as well. (thank god the old man got a change of clothes in s3, manifesting for s4) blue represents responsibility and we all know he has so much on his shoulders (insert joke about how hunched over he was s3 because aiden gallagher has been aging over these past 5 crazy years but he’s supposed to be playing a 13 y o boy). blue is also associated with calm- the man needs some calm in his life, à la that one part of s3. and last of all, sadness. i think most of us remember “HE’S LOVED THEM FOR LONGER THAN THEY’VE BEEN ALIVE” (link post cus i can’t find it) and he spent so long mourning his family, and is probably still mourning them.

og ben is probably the most underrated character imo, so i was excited for this one. i predicted red because of that one scene (UGHHH SO TRAGIC) when he was a kid and covered in blood like “can i go home now” (🥺). my dear mutual @/deadpeppermint from before left these thoughts:

blue and purple tied for first, with red and black in second. honestly the leather jacket? hoodie? thing? and generally emo vibe really lent itself to that lmao. i think purple and blue are also really good colors for him, because he is a king and also responsible as heck (or at least, he tries in comparison). i’m still crying over how he left in s2 ISTG BRING HIM BACKKKK (srsly tho line i want to make a post about his absence affected s3 ughfhfhfhfhfhh) but that brings us back to blue meaning sadness, and oh my lord does this boy represent grief!!! he’s soooooo <3

and finally omg we are at viktor! this graph is fucking hilarious to look at because it just looks empty. the white violin had an association with color, and you could NEVER GUESS which one (sarcasm). i actually forgot about this next was blue, and i think it’s cute that blue was on top three, even top two for 5 6 7. and the. @/deadpeppermint once again with thoughts:

SO TRUE!!

sorry for all of the errors i'm losing my mind.

anyways if anyone (unlikely lmao) has actually read this, or even scrolled down- hi! also goddamn! i hope someone enjoys this post because i have literally postponed so many projects for this weird little side thing. MMMMM DATA. i would make some kind of conclusion, but i'm damn tired and i think that my whole hypothesis kind of worked out! TYSM TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED!! and the people who left thing in the tags or talked to me about it? A MILLION LOVE FOREVER

i plan on doing more analysis in the future, but this is kind of dipping my toe in with a more fandom centered analysis. also! shameless self promotion! this whole thing started because i made a little animatic? thing? and started wondering about the colors because i ended up assigning them. CHECK IT OUT HERE X SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON MR BEAST TIKTOK FORTNITE. anyway. i literally have two other things that have been done for a while which i'll be posting in due time. if anyone is wondering why i haven't been posting art (idk, maybe?) it's because i was holding off on this crazy monster of a post! i'm really excited to make animatics because the music bro it's got me ITS GOT ME THIS DAMN SHOW. i am a self taught beginner artist tho, so i mean be ready for that. (that makes me sound so pretentious STOPP) anyways here! 🎩👑👒🧢 swaggy hats and a 🦉🦋🐞🐠🪿🦜🐁🦔 lil guy to go with it! 🥰🫵 see ya besties ily. i am so ill.

[three--rings]

God, so okay, so, I want to say. . .

Pretty Follies is still out there as my hanging OFMD WIP. I never intended to abandon it, I just got two consecutive cases of major Ship Brain with new ships and then couldn't really get back into the mood.

Part of me told myself I would finish it before S2 aired. I remember when I updated it in January I thought: well S2 might air in March/April so I have time to finish this....and then nothing, and I thought well, good I have more time to finish this.

And now okay I have a Deadline.

But...for a while I felt like I couldn't write at all. And then I got obsessed by Shuake and couldn't stop writing for them, and wrote some stuff that got some VERY VERY nice comments that helped my writer self esteem. So I also have THAT wip hanging over my head

Because then I was in the fucking CAR ACCIDENT. And since then I've felt like I have not only negative writing ability, but I haven't even READ anything.

(A lot of stream of conscious babbling under here about IDK where I'm at RN...)

Like honestly, not even a joke, it's been three weeks and I haven't read a single fic. And like at first, sure, it was terrible pain and heavy medication and then it was less pain but still medicated and now it's not that much pain at all and mostly my normal level of medicated (cause not to forget I'm a chronic pain patient none of this is new to me.)

But I've felt so utterly braindead. All I've been able to do is watch Youtube and play very brainless video games. (And also partly watch and partly co-play Red Dead Redemption 2 with my husband which has been a DELIGHT. I've played it before but he hasn't so I'm getting to enjoy his first time reactions. It's a let's play from next to me, and then when it's too hard he hands me the controller to kill everyone.)

And I've basically been living waiting for TOMORROW which is when Starfield will go live (for me) because I've been anticipating this game for so freaking long. And my plan was basically to spend the next couple months doing nothing but play it.

But now...I'm like, also in a month there's OFMD. And I should try to write. And I don't know if I KNOW HOW.

IDK my writing mojo has always been a thing that is mysterious and does not respond well to forcing. Like, when it's gone I have to just do other things and it will come back, but damn it's bad for finishing things. And I don't even really remember what I was doing with Pretty Follies except that EVERY PART OF MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE with that bride wedding topper. That's, like, part of that fic's verse. I don't care. It's in there. It's what I'm talking about with Ed in that fic. IT's YES.

BLAH IDK IDK I should reread my own fic I guess. But also my brain doesn't want to.

It's weird how suffering is like...BAD for energy and artistic motivation. And I'm mostly just now coming out of the suffering and I've stopped sleeping 12+ hours every day, but like, also I have weeks and weeks of recovery still. So...IDK

I'm allowed to be lazy RN. IDK. It's ... annoying.

[spicyicymeloncat]

The Overlord lmao (for doodles/character discussion thingy)

The Overlord

Ooh what to talk about.

The overlord, in my opinion is… kinda boring. I mean he’s is and is intended to be really simple - the literal personification of everything bad in the world. Whilst this is kinda not great for world building reasons, the overlord is supposed to be more of a allegorical, symbolic abstract plot device and in the writer’s defence, they didn’t think they’d get renewed after s2 and thought that “the good must have evil” backstory was enough context for the world’s backstory. Disclaimer: I have yet to see crystalised part 2 so if idk if this ramble will become less or more relevant after that (also no spoilers about that pls)

The overlord is a pretty good symbolic plot device - he’s a ghostly manifestation of any issue that a viewer could see themselves facing and the story is about overcoming that problem and pushing through - hence “Ninja never quit”. Tbh in that sense, he’s a really good foil for the moral of s2. I think (although I’m no professional) good villains are those that specifically challenge the message of the story. So for example, if the story’s message is love wins, then the villain is written in a way that tries to disprove that idea and tries to say something else like “actually no, manipulating others while not caring about them at all is more effective”. So in Ninjago, the message is “No matter how hard life gets, always push forward and don’t give up! Ninja never quit” and s1 is all about the ninja pushing forward past what was holding them back, and gaining their true potential. S2 is all about how no matter what Garmadon throws at the ninja, no matter what challenges Lloyd faces in training for the hardest day of his life, they push through it and succeed. It’s literally the lyrics of the weekend whip. Meanwhile, the Overlord and Garmadon’s arc follow an antithesis of this: Garmadon has had to struggle all his life and eventually succumbs to his hardships and to the Overlord. His goal is, instead improving himself, but to bring the rest of Ninjago down and recreate it in his own image; make everyone evil and miserable like he is. That’s also the overlord’s power - to corrupt everyone in Ninjago and make them evil. These two characters try to bring the worst out of people in a show that says be your best self. So thematically the overlord is pretty cool. He’s the scary big bad that can be a metaphor for any looming, seemingly insurmountable problem we face in our day to day lives that threatens to turn us and the world for the worse.

However, whilst that’s a great concept, the in universe lore feels really unfinished. The overlord is literally a cloud of purple smoke that came out of nowhere and has decided that it wants to become a dragon and make people angry. The overlord doesn’t really have a past other than “he had to exist because balance bla bla” and he just pops in the second half of s2 as a device to ramp up the stakes of the villain (and save Garmadon from being held accountable). Tbh it’s been like a few months since I watched s2 so I might not be remembering the pacing exactly right but s2 was paced kinda weirdly and I wish the overlord had a lot more set up. Like simply knowing his existence earlier on would be nice. It would also be nice if he was a bit more… developed. Like what if the overlord is less of a sentient being and more like a disease that made people think worse, kinda like the scrolls of forbidden spinjitzu. Or maybe he is sentient and we touch upon his greed to take over more and more of the fsm’s territory. I mean I do like the theory and the overlord is part of the fsm master, since the fsm master was part Oni and dragon and the overlord is an evil spirit dragon. But that would mean that at some point the fsm master was a fully good person if he somehow severed his connection to whatever darkness the overlord is and Yknow I’m not too convinced just because I don’t think it should be that easy idk. Maybe at some point the fsm somehow severed all his connection to the Oni and dragons and became as mundane as an ordinary human, which is why he was able to die. Idk there’s definitely a lot of opportunity to explore the overlord and the fsm and I’m sure if they are the same person it only amplifies that metaphor about being a better you/worse you. Also the generational trauma of guys becoming evil…

It really would’ve been nice if they set the overlord up earlier in the season, since he’s supposed to be this mountain of a threat, I feel like that fear factor isn’t as effective when we don’t even know who is are why he’s showing up now of all times. Like maybe he���s someone even wu and Garmadon are terrified of because of his rivalry with their dad. Maybe Garmadon, every episode, hears whispers of the overlord, tempting him to become worse and worse whilst Lloyd is forced to watch from the other side of the battle field as his dad falls further away from being saved. These would not only add a really ominous and scary note at the end of all those fun quirky filler episodes at the start of s2 but increase the tension and add a sense of progression in the story. Idk the overlord is a little plain and I think he could’ve been spicier.

He’s not the most entertaining villain to watch, which is fine, as evil personified ig he doesn’t need that much of a personality. He’s got some oddly hilarious moments tho:

Not the overlord being self conscious about his appearance. He saw cryptor bullying mindroid and knew he wouldn’t survive. Overlord ashamed to be shorter than mindroid.

At this point I actually forgot he was in s3?? S3 was kinda a humbly mess anyways (and this post is ridiculously long), but I think something to mention is that, at the end of s3, the overlord actually won. If the overlord, from a writing perspective, exists to turn the protagonists into their worse selves, then he succeeded. He split the ninja up, and they quit. Even if he didn’t win, they still lost. And they should’ve totally gone with that angle yknow. I think the overlord could’ve been terrifying, I mean he controlled the whole city. Aesthetic wise the spider imagery is very fitting and I can tell it’s only gonna get better with the new season.

That is FINALLY all I have to say on the overlord. Sorry to have overloaded (ithinkimfunny) you with ramble but that’s just what happens. Not my favourite villain and I think he’s a little underdeveloped but he’s got his quirks and fulfils what he needs to.

[froggymarsh]

For Empires Pixlriffs (s1 or s2, both work): 4, 8, 50, 71, and 100 please? If thats too many just choose your favourite :)

4. Is Your Regression Voluntary, Involuntary, Or A Mixture

S1: a mix! mostly involuntary, it takes a LOT of outside help for him to get small on purpose and it's a fight all the way down

S2: a mix of both, mostly voluntary though! he knows it's something he needs to do so unlike the copper king he actually makes time for it and doesn't try to fight it when it happens. there's some embarrassment from less-than-ideal circumstances, but he just kinda laughs and apologizes and lets them know what he needs and he deals with it. the copper king would shut down in those kinds of situations and not be able to talk or anything, poor kid

8. Are You A Baby, Toddler, Or Big Kid Regressor

i am SOOO bad at age ranges waugh uhh

S1 baby and toddler? when he falls he falls hard and fast and deep, either straight to babymoding or barely hanging onto toddler because he wants some autonomy still - the only time he fully gives up autonomy is if he's suuuper distressed or someone he really trusts is there (usually jimmy or fwhip. part of them becoming friends again was looking after a regressed pix. that'd be a fun fic to write actually remembering that for later)

S2 is all over! he plays it by ear and can never really seem to pin down his ages exactly? he doesn't really care to keep track and most folks he goes to for care know him well enough that it's never much of an issue to not know how old he is

50. Are You Easily Scared?

for both- no not really. S1 is scared of thunderstorms (if he didn't summon them himself), and both are afraid of the dark

71. Night Light Or Glow-In-The-Dark Stars

oh definitely glow in the dark stars. you know the song "Constellations" by the oh hellos? that's pix. to me <3

100. What Is Your Favorite Thing To Learn About In Headspace

S1 i think he'd be thrilled to learn other languages actually and. this might be a little morbid but also how the other empires honor their dead. fwhip is always surprised when he manages to remember things about their lessons because the kid is deeeep in regression, all no thoughts head empty, but when he's big again he'll use some Grimmish which is cool

S2 is the same with languages i think- and just history in general ? tell him the story of your empire and he gets so excited.

[xiexiecaptain]

Shadow & Bone rewatch deep dive commentary that was started on twitter and is being moved/continued here!

This is the post for EP 04: Otkazats’ya

[Episode 01 post] [Rewatch Commentary Links Masterpost]

((There WILL be spoilers mentioned for the books in the Grishaverse including the Crows duology & King of Scars duology! This is basically from the perspective of watching the show as someone who knows the books well.))

(Just a disclaimer that I’m picking up doing these commentary posts from here after season 2 is out! Just fyi, I might mention s2 stuff in these where it wasn’t mentioned in the posts for eps 1-3)

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Omg not the captain singing the drinking song Nina sang to Inej in the hold of the ship on the way to Fjerda

I love how they just toss in background book details in new places to color in the world! You can tell everyone working on constructing this show was such a massive fan of the books and it warms my heart

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As always, I’m just enamored by the linguistics and writing systems the show has designed and fleshed out for all the languages!! They make the world feel so lived-in!

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Poor Mal. He really feels so powerless and helpless; even to people who are super devoted, sheer faith and longing can’t keep people going forever.

Boy is living on crumbs atm

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Mean Girls (2004) voice: AND NONE FOR MAL ORETSEV BYE

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These two are so pure i can’t get over it. 

Thank you for giving Mal close relationships (even if they eat it soon) other than Alina!

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NOT GENYA CALLING HER SUNSHINE-!!!

😭 😭 😭 

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YEAH ITS CUS HE WANTS TO FEEL OWNERSHIP OVER YOU ALINA

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Yep yep giving her crumbs of vulnerability to draw her in. 

Top tier manipulator shit.

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Jesper’s hair and expression here I’m fucking laughing so hard

He looks like he just woke up from a week-long bender omfg.

 Jesper, honey, I’m begging you, drink some water along with whatever alcoholic beverage is in that glass

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LOVE LOVE LOVE how they find ways to weave the Crows’ plotlines into the S&B book plot.

Using the Winter Fete party as distraction was probably drawn from them using Hringkälla for the Ice Court job. But I suppose in the show it’s gonna be the other way around now which is funny. They’re probably gonna be like “Well, remember how we snuck into the Little Palace in Ravka because of their big celebration? Let’s do that with this job too!”

Very Beethoven/Bootstrap Paradox meta shit here and it makes me laugh

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Kaz Brekker has never taken a day off in his entire life and it shows

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LOOK HOW EXCITED THEY ARE

Even Inej is trying not to burst out grinning

Same you guys

I always get hyped as fuck for a heist!

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You’ve heard of Chekov’s gun, but we’ve finally found Chekov’s bullet

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The fucking barmaid’s face 

I can’t

“Who is this strange Zemeni dude and why did he dump a goat in my arms and start speaking softly and mournfully to it in Kerch???”

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Not him blowing Milo a kiss

I LOVE JESPER FAHEY AND HIS DRAMATIC BISEXUAL ASS

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LYING THROUGH HIS GD TEETH AGAIN

Spinning his fake little sob stories

Manipulator 👏 Shit 👏

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I do appreciate this way of trying to make exposition about the Black Heretic story more active

And making the scene serve several purposes at once (Kirigan trying to draw Alina in with his ~relatable outcast~ stuff, as well as giving the viewers the backstory)

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Again, I’m just glad these three got to be on-screen. It gives Mal other people around him that matter. (Which does then help fuel/motivate his devotion to Alina as we go forward.)

That was really also one of the things that bugged me about book!Mal (Although, to be fair, it might be less of a writing issue than a personal one) but it sticks in my craw when characters are single-person focused. (Unless that’s, like, part of their character shit to figure out, them feeling lonely or co-dependent, etc.) 

Like I do understand it’s kind of been “Mal and Alina against the world” since they were young. But they haven’t always been together since they joined the military. Having relationships that span back for a long, long time can be powerful, don’t get me wrong. But length of a relationship isn’t the only measure of its importance.

I think part of it was that we only got Alina’s POV and so Mal in some parts of the series felt very one-note, unmotivated, unbelievable, etc. Because all we got was what he managed to say to Alina when he was actually present and interacting with Alina (which didn’t happen for a large part of books 1 and 3.)

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The lesbian skepticism on Nadia’s face-!!!

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I will never, in my life, get over Freddy’s acting as Kaz acting as a stuffy fancy ~artíst~

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CLEVER CLEVER CLEVER CLEVER

I LOVE THEM I LOVE THEM

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Ok so remember when this was the first sneak-peek scene they released of the Crows and we got to see them in action together for the first time??

It reminded me of my thoughts about Freddy’s voice as Kaz. 

At first I was like “oh, hmm, he’s got kind of a higher, smooth voice as opposed to the way Kaz’s voice is described in the books” which is that rough gravely “rock-salt rasp.”

But as an iteration of Kaz (pluralism is my friend, you guys) Freddy’s voice for him is something I actually super love? 

Like it’s a different sort of menacing. It can feel icy, if that makes sense. Like the higher register lends itself to his voice sounding cold, and the smoothness comes across as that kind of menacing sort of calmness. I dunno I just dig it.

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I know we talk a lot about Inej’s knives (for good reason) 

But dear saints I love Inej being invisible soundless sneaky. 

I know she’d dislike me saying it, but honestly, she’s goddess material. This woman deserves to be lauded and honored at every opportunity.

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What’s that meme again? “My idea of help from above is a sniper on the roof?”

Also, him waiting for the clock to chime to disguise the gunshot-!!!

Clawing my face off because I love my clever clever little thieves so much

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[“Oh, and Inej,” he said as he led her out of the salon, “don’t ever sneak up on me again.”

The truth was she’d tried to sneak up on Kaz plenty of time since then. She’d never managed it. It was as if once Kaz had seen her, he’d understood how to keep seeing her.”]

Ok so we all agree that Kaz 100% did the same thing as with the magician he saw as a kid, right? Where he was obsessed with figuring out how the trick worked and unraveling it so he could learn to see what was actually happening?

Like [“Some people see a magic trick and say, “Impossible!” [...] And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for that skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they’re the kind who won’t rest until they’ve mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I’m that kind.”]

INEJ WAS A PUZZLE HE THOUGHT ABOUT OVER AND OVER UNTIL HE FIGURED IT OUT

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Oh, yknow, just reviewing stolen high-security floorplans in a public bar. As one does.

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Lmao so basically my entire family hunts (northern woodlands, man) and I’m relatively sure my grandma has something that looks pretty much exactly like this

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every friend group has someone like this in it

(in my experience said friend is usually a transmasc gremlin type)

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fucking Mal just Very Seriously doing his Very Serious tracking while these two chucklefucks discuss selling literal shit in the background

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knowing our beloved nina, the amount of sheer willpower she’s dredging up to refuse food is seriously impressive

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she aint wrong, matty boy

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ok so this is actually super interesting?? Because it speaks to Matthias having subtle curiosities/doubts about grisha and not fully understanding why someone would become grisha since he believes  (read: was told) they weren’t just born that way.

In the books we never got to see Matthias speak to Nina alone until the shipwreck, there was always either other drüskelle and/or the other grisha captives on the ship (I mean there are other captives tied up here but they aren’t all shoved into a cage together so Nina and Matthias can have their own conversation)

I really like this little peek into Matthias trying to make sense of the indoctrination he was fed

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yeah exactly, he’s trying to assuage his doubts about how “human” feeling Nina is because it’s gnawing at the indoctrination of dehumanization he’s been taught

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Also, i love the camera work in this scene -- the lights are all hazy with lots of lens-flares and the shots are so so tight and close!

We’re putting two characters whose circumstances of birth and country and beliefs are so diametrically opposed together. But here they’re having a brief moment of connection where they each have a glimpse of each other’s humanity (in between all the vitriol.)

By cutting in close and having the rest of the “world” feel “out of focus” or “out of shot” it’s allowing this moment to feel like they can be two people for a brief moment rather than grisha and drüskelle. I adore it.

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Yeah, see and then when they start talking politics about the Darkling, more of the shots have the camera pulling back a bit, because the “world” outside the two of them is shoving distance back between them

(Obv this is not an exact one-to-one this mapping of shots, but the scene in general does that and its really cool)

And then it pushes back in and gets more hazy again when Matthias has a moment of decency and offers Nina the bread without strings attached

mwuah! chef kiss!

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ofc then it falls apart because these two are the most stubborn (affectionate, exasperated) people on the entire planet who can’t EXIST without taking petty jibes at each other

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Just taking a moment to appreciate Calahan Skogman because he plays Matthias so incredibly well

I’m hoping so damn hard we get to see the Ice Court job adapted so we can see Matthias get let out of detention so he can go run and play with the other kids at recess

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These are the faces of two exhausted parents at the end of a frustrating day with their excitable son and I’m living for it

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LISTEN YOU TWO

AT LEAST JESPER IS COMING UP WITH IDEAS, STOP GLARING

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Ok but this troupe leader, Marko, actually comes off as such a wholesome guy? I lowkey love his face?? 

Look how tear-stained and puff from crying it is?! This poor guy finally got to perform for royalty and thought his lifelong dreams had just been crushed and was sobbing into a mug of beer!

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Inej entrusting Kaz with her knives DOES something to me, you guys

There is a fucking novel of unspoken words in these expressions I’m gonna gnaw my couch cushions in to piecessss-!

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He’s so cute you guys I hope he still has a long and fruitful career even after all the fuckery that goes down at the Winter Fete

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This whole scene has me gazing in adoration like a doting parent

Me to the person next to me, pointing, with a camcorder in my hand: Those are my kids!!! God, they’re so talented, I’m so proud of them!!

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The fact that they made up entirely new playing card suits for this world-!!!

Honestly so much of what makes this world come to life in the show is thanks to how much AMAZING work the props and set people did??? 

They obviously loved and cared about the grishaverse so much, you can see in the sets and the costumes and the props how much work was put into making this world come to life and feel like a world that really exists with all its little bits and bobs and details!

That kind of worldbuilding minutia stuff just makes my brain go brrrrrr

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Also I haven’t mentioned anything about the soundtrack yet but hot damn they’ve done so much to make it atmospheric but also do the A+ soundtrack thing of weaving musical themes for characters/groups

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Ok tho Kaz 10000% could have gotten in as a performer too. Man’s got mad slight-of-hand skills he could definitely go in as a stage magician

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It’s time for 🎶✨~Alina’s Emotional Mushroom Trip~ 🎶✨

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Of course she was! 

I feel like its super obvious that two orphan kids who’ve been through trauma and made a close connection would crave the stability of the life they have with a beloved friend, especially over an unknown where they would be alone and in a new place again having to start over???

I mean, she says she was thinking of Mal and not herself, but it’s both. Because him being alone would mean she would also be alone. 

Alina was a scared little kid who had lost everything and was doing what she thought would keep everything she knew from being ripped away again.

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I feel like in the books the dynamic of Darklina in the first book, it was obvious/deliberate that Alina felt very isolated at the Little Palace and so was kind of always steered back to the Darkling for scraps of affirmations or reassurances, plus the draw of their powers compounding this manipulation net the Darkling pulled her in by.

The dynamic feels different in the show, for a few reasons. I think Alina being aged up contributes to that. Also, we don’t get Alina’s interiority and descriptions of how her/the Darkling’s powers feel and pull her. 

(Also Jessie and Ben have Very Good on-screen chemistry. And Ben Barnes is, well, Ben Barnes so the attraction-angle of the pull toward him is very believable.) 

I mean, while Alina is aged up, she’s still a young woman. Her whole life she has overwhelmingly felt less than, invisible, and nothing special. And someone powerful is now telling her she’s unique and powerful and he’s the only one who understands her. 

While Alina is still obviously manipulated heavily in the show, it feels less extreme? I don’t know how to word it?

Other contributing factors I think are her actually making closer friends at the Little Palace and that in the show we don’t see that extended period of time of her struggling and struggling and feeling like shit and powerless and “Other”-ed again. Also because we are shown that Mal DOES super care about her, rather than only getting her speculating and worrying. 

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And not only on Alina’s end is it different but I feel like the show we get shown more of Kirigan feeling helpless (something which is both authentic and strategic.)

Like I think its definitely real that he is struggling with these feelings of helplessness and futility in moving towards his goals. 

But he is very deliberate in the ways he goes about showing it to Alina to make her feel like he’s letting his guard down with her and to garner sympathy with. As Baghra says towards the end of the season, giving Alina “a glimpse of the wounded boy.”

And it’s a huge credit to Ben Barnes that I feel that simultaneous nature. 

Like in the moment, you do believe him in his pain and his loneliness. Because that is real. 

But then you step back and realize he’s only showing it and showing it in such a way to weaponize it to cultivate those feelings of sympathy in Alina and keep her from seeing him as dangerous to her. 

Ben Barnes’s performance really sells the Darkling so well. Because these things are all true: he has seen people die and is lonely and feels like he has to claw his way toward any change he can achieve.

But he is also playing bits of that up in very strategic ways in Alina’s presence to manipulate her.

(I always feel like I’m not gonna have more to say about the Darkling and then I end up writing a novel about it??)

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”B-b-but- 

Wait, was I the only one who believed we were actually giving them a fair trial?!?”

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My parents’ walks to school, according to them.

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Listen, I just love them

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I LOVE THEM PUTTING TIME AND THOUGHT INTO SPRINKLING IN WORLDBUILDING

END ME

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Listen all I can think about when I watch this scene is how this actor probably spent 9 hours in hair and makeup and wardrobe just to stand there, grab a stack of letters, shake his head, and walk away because he was a non-speaking extra and if he said “No” out loud they would have had to pay him the under-5-lines rate

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Get that shit outta here, Baghra, we celebrate interdependence in this household!!

Also, the entirety of season 2’s themes would also like a word with you 👀👀

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Ok not to sound like my northern midwestern mother but

CHILD DO NOT GO OUT IN THE COLD! AND SNOW! AT NIGHT! WITHOUT A FUCKING HAT ON?

You’re gonna get frostbite, Mal!! 

It is AT LEAST below 10°F with how crunchy that snow sounds!!

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Honestly, good for Alina. proud of her

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This is funny to me because I know Jessie had a habit of just napping constantly in random places on set

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Just BFF things: having matching palm scars

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ARCHIEEEEE

Sometimes I feel for Archie because it can’t be easy playing Mal who, as characters in the grishaverse go, isn’t exactly the biggest fan favorite

And yet he’s out here giving us performances of this caliber

I see you and I love you Mr. Renaux

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And that’s the end of episode 4!

[Episode 01 post] [Rewatch Commentary Links Masterpost]

[tuiyla]

Gah! Same anon as before. I just want to clarify that in no way was I blaming Puck for the relationship with Shelby (summarizing thoughts in asks gets so messy!). I was just trying to express how weird it is that we can recognize the trauma behind Quinn's terrible decisions in S2-3, but a lot of people seem to view Puck as somehow having it together? I mean, he gets arrested, almost fails his senior year, and ends up in a sexual relationship with his baby's adoptive mother, but somehow the show and a lot of the fandom only see Quinn as the traumatized one in this plot, and I've never understood it. The show seems to want me to view Shelby/Puck as some hot, sexy milf storyline where "oh, if only circumstances were different, they could be great", when all I see is a fucked up teenager who sees this as a way to get his child back and a 40-something woman who keeps egging him on by dropping lines about how hard it is being a single parent and "oh gosh, will you please come to the hospital and hold my hand and play act that we're parents together".

So, in summary, Puck is ALSO traumatized by everything related to Beth, but while Quinn is generally villainized over her trauma, Puck's is often presented as him just being a cool badass who likes to fuck. And a not insignificant portion of the audience seems to buy into that fully, which might make his plot in 3A even more frustrating for me than Quinn's.

No worries Anon, thank you for explaining. I wasn't 100% on where you stood with Puck based on the previous ask but that clears it up, all good.

The show's framing is entirely to blame for this. As much as they villanize Quinn, they acknowledge that she's a mess and crying out for help. Puck is portrayed as Shelby's peer and Glee shows no effort to show how messed up that dynamic is and how fucked it is that Shelby actively encourages Puck's belief that he has to be some kind of provider. He's 18!

Sad truth is, viewers are often willing to take what the show says, explicitly or implicitly, at face value. They're being told that Puck is being "mature" here and don't question how messed up that is. It reminds me of people comparing characters' trauma, too, very often with Quinn and Kurt, as if this is the fucking suffering Olympics. Puck is a complicated character and many have complicated feelings about him but there's undoubtedly a story there about a boy with issues. And though I do think Glee treats Puck with a surprising amount of care and put more effort into his story than most of the girls, there's an utter lack of respect when it comes to his relationships with older women. It's always, always a joke. Even when they had this opportunity to explore how messed up it was with Shelby, they still leaned into him being this more mature guy who needs an older woman anyway. Puck is anything but mature and it's whack that the show would explore his feelings of inadequacy but legitimize this fucked up relationship.

Then again, I think the show fumbled the potential of the Puck and Beth storyline when they showed that flashback in 1x22. Quick makes me so uncomfortable and it is the one thing I can't look past when it comes to Puck, and knowing how incredibly dubious Beth's conception was I frankly feel less inclined to care about Puck's complex feelings on his own fatherhood. And I wanna care! He could be such an interesting ch. But as always, the issue is Glee's inability to recognize what story it's telling. And so every time I want the show to explore what Beth and that experience means to Puck I remember that, at best, he pressured Quinn, and at worst Beth is the result of deception and full-on assault. That does make it more complicated. But bottom line is I agree that in terms of the season 3A storyline audiences should recognize that Puck is also a victim at Shelby's hands here. Because she just never stops being the absolute worst.

[takaraphoenix]

Shadow and Bone: Season 2 Review

Now that I’ve sat with my s2 feelings for a day, I want to put something a bit more coherent together.

Second seasons are always tricky. They tend to fall victim to a major quality drop; very often, a first season manages to be mindblowing and the second season falls completely flat. With how much I loved season 1, I spent the past year very afraid of what kind of quality season 2 might have.

The short of it: I was pleasantly surprised, I don’t think there was a quality drop, I think that quality-wise it was pretty much en-par with season 1.

Sadly, that does include the major flaw - cramming too much plot into too few episodes. Eight episodes are just not enough for just how much they make happen, watching it all is so overwhelming in how quickly everything happens and how nothing is allowed to breath because we have to rush to the next thing because we just don’t have the time to sit with anything. And that’s a shame.

At the very least they could have given this 10 episodes to allow it all to be loosened a little bit more, though I still think that this would have been the perfect jumping off point for a Six of Crows spin off and splitting the two major plotlines this season - the Shadow and Bone season 2 focusing on Alina’s story and giving the Crows their own spin-off. Simultaneous release and make them crossover, when Zoya and Tolya go visit the Crows and when the Crows come join SaB for the season finale, those interactions could have still happened, but I think there would have been less whiplash and more focus if the rest had been allowed to happen in two separate shows.

My favorite thing about this show has been and still is that it has great characters. The plot’s... questionable - I’m not gonna lie, I’m very happy they mixed the book series (despite what I literally just sad; I think it served s1 very well to mix them) - but the characters are so amazing? I’m the type of person who usually really latches onto one characters, that’s mine, and the others become secondary characters to my fave. I don’t think I’ve ever latched onto as many characters before.

I love and adore Aleksander so much, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this feral about and attached to a villain before in my life. Alina is the most compelling female lead I’ve met since Buffy Summers, honestly - she is strong, capable, soft, beautiful, amazing. I fell for Inej so very hard so quickly, she is so amazing. Jesper is absolutely brilliant, that balance of snark and soft coupled with canon bisexual. And I even latched onto Kaz in my own way, because his trauma-response in regards to touch made me project my asexuality onto him and there aren’t many characters that I headcanon as ace so I have a very, very soft spot for those characters in particular too.

That’s already more characters than usual and I genuinely that that would be it. I knew that season 2 would bring new characters and I had hoped they’d be nice additions but I actually grew unreasonably fond of them too.

Tolya and Tamar are absolutely amazing. I wish we could have had more focus on Tamar and particularly her romance - I didn’t like that the Tamar/Nadia basically only happened in the background, like I get that we are pressed for time, I do, but you are wasting so much time on so much straight relationship drama because this show is playing Noah’s Arc to degrees that are very rare to see outside of CW shows honestly, so it would have been nice if I had gotten at least a little focus on the one wlw ship on this show, especially since they did have great chemistry on their scenes together. And Tolya is adorable, the big, strong guy and then he loves poetry and I’m gone.

Nikolai actually makes me feel like someone tailor made that guy for me. The snark! The jokes! The insistence on not remembering Mal’s name! The high levels of chemistry with Alina and the fake marriage trope with Alina! He’s a pirate! He’s a prince! He’s handsome! He’s amazing! What can’t he do! Gotta love him.

Genuinely my favorite part really was on Nikolai’s pirate ship. I would have absolutely watched an entire season of Alina and Mal as parts of Nikolai’s crew. Just. Pirate stuff with Nikolai, Tolya, Tamar and Miradi.

I really thought I would be... disappointed this season. Maybe that’s why I’m not. Because I set my expectations incredibly low so they were hard to beat, but honestly? I genuinely enjoyed the season.

The costumes were absolutely stunning this season, the costume department went all out!

The new characters were great. The plot is still whatever to me, I have thoughts on that that may be worth a separate post at some point but the thoughts aren’t changes from season 1 so it’s not really impacted by season 2. Nothing in season 2 really did anything drastic that disappointed me plot-wise. Well, that’s maybe untrue, but... nothing disappointing in an unexpected manner, perhaps, would be a better way to put that?

Aside from maybe the book spoilers I knew, like that firebird thing. I read about that. I was expecting some epic shot, with an actual firebird, some cool reveal. Not an info-dump from Baghra, of all people. That was... anticlimactic. And it also honestly made no sense? In the books, Alina and Mal went and found the actual firebird, because they were looking for the firebird. Because Alina wanted to use the firebird as her amplifier. And then realized that Mal was the amplifier that would work for her. The show kind of... muddled that together and decided that Mal couldn’t find the firebird because he was the firebird. But he... he wasn’t? He wasn’t a bird, he may have been the amplifier, but he wasn’t the actual firebird. That was... weird, boring and also kind of illogical.

I do think the show’s biggest issue is its pacing. It’s like we’re running a sprint, but it’s actually the length of a marathon. I feel out of breath. Please slow down.

I liked the ending. The ending surprised me in a positive way. I did not see a corruption arc for Alina coming at all. I really didn’t. Been advocating for this since like episode 3, nobody told me there would be actual Alina corruption in canon so that’s a nice surprise. I like how this could be a final ending that would leave things open for interpretation while still wrapping up all major plotpoints, but it definitely invites season 3. A very sensible way to end a season when you write for a Netflix show and never know if you will be allowed to live or die.

[mlobsters]

supernatural s12e18 the memory remains (w. john bring)

now mr ketchup has orders to kill sam and dean, will he do it or does he too decide to acquire some free will. the power of banging mary compels you!

is this like, a black philip costume? i still haven't seen the witch. but some day

DEAN I've been trying, Sam. The GPS on his phone is turned off, and there's nothing in the system about some weird guy in a trench coat getting arrested or turning up dead. SAM Right. Dean, it's Cas. I mean, this isn't the first time he's dropped off the map, you know? And whatever's happening, he'll be fine. He always is.

with his history, might also be a concern that he's not off making very bad decisions but hey ho

s12e18 / altered carbon s1 - antonio marziale as isaac bancroft

hey, cute sad boy with the curly hair was in altered carbon

DARYN Black Bill.

hey, i was close!

DEAN I already figured out a way to kill it. SAM How did you – you don't even know what it is. DEAN The Colt. Dusts anything. Work smarter, Sammy, not harder. SAM Oh, don't do the hot coffee thing.

dean's sure on a mission to get this waitress. and annoy sammy as a bonus

everybody's happy, taking the win

s12e18 / the magicians s3e1 ryan mcdonald as bacchus

upper midwest stereotype man was bacchus in the magicians!

and his character led to this delight (post) (they were drunk and trying to be "fun" enough to be admitted entrance by bacchus. srs nerds not allowed 😔

KETCH It's clear. Onward. Now remember your orders. By the time we leave, Dr. Hess wants to know everything about our "friends" the Winchesters – their allies, their habits. How does Sam get his hair so shiny? How many ratty flannels does Dean own?

hokay. tone, who needs tone. hodgepodge of cliches slammed together. but understandable that everyone is jealous of sam's luscious locks

DEAN So goat dude is just a dude? SAM Then who's the monster? Sheriff Bishop Moloch. God of sacrifice.

LOL so i played an absurd amount of nethack, a text based turn based roguelike thing which has a funny mashup of d&d/folklore/myth etc so i know moloch from that - where it was a background bad guy god and his realm was the underworld (checking results from last years nethack tourney and people that i knew back in 2006 are still playing)

is that supposed to be blood? is he dead again?

peppy jazz moment, again, who needs tone consistency? uh oh, mary and baby dean, is mr ketchup feeling something?

ok so uhhh i guess the writer had a completely not peppy fun spy moment in mind for this scene

ok, no dead dean, just bleeding with a tbi, no big whoop

PETE Hunting people. Killing them. The family business

so dumb and i laughed so hard

SAM Colt. Dusts anything.

cute

DEAN Next time you hear me say that our family is messed up, remind me that we could be psycho goat people.

also cute

this talk of legacy (and the music) sure has me thinking this is episode they carve their initials into the table. you WILL feel some feelings. let's talk about them dying and their memory fading away

we're gonna show you them as BABIES (with knives), FEEL THE FEELINGS. i was resisting until they intercut sam blowing off the bits as a baby and a grownup. brute forced a few tears out of me. (jensen mentioned he was able to snag the chunk of wood from the table after the show ended)

the music was less schmaltzy than swan song, where the baby clips came from, however that did make me cry because i stupidly watched dean beaten to a pulp via lucifer!sam tell sam he's not gonna leave him and then the big montage of clips of sam and dean that brought sam to the surface with just wind as the soundtrack (sidenote but they used the demon growl sound thing with lucifer!sam in that scene that was azazel/whatever demon prince they whacked/also in title credits s2 at least)

anyway, they finally leaned into the ketch being creepy, listening to their conversation with the bug he planted and creepily staring at the family photo i guess HE STOLE? the one dean's managed to keep track of through going to hell and being a demon etc etc. all right

this episode was all over the place.