#is an absolute BRUTAL and unavoidable comparison

[utilitycaster]

For what it's worth, I think Campaign 3 suffers when compared to, to put it bluntly, pretty much anything else Critical Role has ever put out, as well as most actual play that I've watched/listened to. But I think it uniquely suffers when juxtaposed with a narrative that says "if you do not make rapid decisions you and others around you will die; if you spend too much time whining about how it's unfair that you are called to make these decisions, including ones that might challenge you, you and others around you will die; and if you do not above all prioritize community and deal with threats to that community - and expand your understanding of community to be a very broad one - you will be destroyed." It was jarring and hypocritical to watch Campaign 3's defenders who had been calling for the gods to be slaughtered for much of the campaign suddenly spin around and praise Bells Hells for finding [having handed to them] the nonviolent option because that's actually always the best one, don't you know; and I think EXU Divergence challenges not just that ideal but the concept that there's a universal solution. Sometimes the right thing is to hide; sometimes it's necessary to commit violence to prevent further violence. Sometimes the right thing is to secretly eat some of the cheese yourself to prevent you from dying; sometimes it's to be on the lookout for someone trying to take more of their share in a resource-limited community and to stop them. Sometimes the right thing is to carry others; sometimes it's to give them to someone stronger and more able. And above all, many of these choices will be extremely unfair and difficult and put you at risk, and you do still have to make them, and soon.

[thistledropkick]

I haven't been keeping up with the Junior Heavyweight tag league, but Okamoto of Tokyo Sports posted an article he wrote about Umino and his backstage comments to twitter recently, and the replies are absolutely brutal.

The article covers Umino's backstage comments from 11/2, with the headline "Umino Shota requests a one-on-one fight with his master and AEW World Champion Moxley. 'Perhaps the time has come'" The excerpt from the article that people seem to be reacting most strongly to is towards the end. NJPW has translated it on the official subtitles, but I'll translate it myself here too. Umino says, "I absolutely don't approve of your way of doing things. But I know how to heal you. First of all, send me a message. Since our IWGP match in America, I haven't gotten a message, a phone call, or heard anything from you at all... Perhaps the time has come."

Japanese wrestling twitter is usually more positive than English-language wrestling twitter. (That may not be saying much given the state of English-language wrestling twitter in general, but it is generally the case.) But the replies to Okamoto's tweet are overwhelmingly negative, to a degree that really shocked me. As I went through and read them, I only saw a few scattered positive replies mixed in among almost universally negative ones.

Many of these negative comments reflect the issues that many people seem to have with his character - that his influence from Moxley feels shallow and surface-level, that he seems to be a mix of influences rather than his own man, that he isn't understanding or taking in the reason the crowd is booing him in the first place, and that he keeps being given way too many chances without having the results to justify them. And there are still some comparisons between him and Stardust Genius Naito, as well. Besides these criticisms, there are also a lot of replies that are just heckling, or are outright mean.

I think Umino is in a really tough situation right now, and I'm not even sure how they can get him out of it. Out of the "Reiwa Three Musketeers", Umino is the only one who has had zero results - Tsuji Youta has held the IWGP 6 man tag belt and won the New Japan Cup, and Narita Ren has held the IWGP 6 man belt and is the current World TV champ. Umino has had many chances, but he has won no tournaments and no belts.

Because of this, it doesn't make sense to me that they'd give him yet another match against Moxley. I don't feel like Umino's at a place where it would make sense to have him win against Moxley in a fair singles match right now - as it stands, Umino's coming to this from a string of losses, although he does have his match with Sanada coming up soon. But even if Umino wins that match, I don't know that it would make him feel like he's at a high enough level to get a victory there.

And also, while I don't watch AEW or follow it at all, I know that Moxley is a wrestler who only rarely takes a pin. I decided to look up the stats, and it seems that he's only taken one pin in all of 2024 - to Naito, for the IWGP HW belt, in a situation that was completely unavoidable because NJPW needed their belt back eventually. And that pin was to Naito, who is unquestionably the most popular wrestler in NJPW.

Given those things, I can't imagine that Umino will get a win over Moxley if this match happens. But why set him up for a match against Moxley just to have him lose again? That would make him look even worse. But a win at this point wouldn't feel right to me, and I don't think it would feel right to the crowd either.

And putting all that aside, if Umino does win over Sanada and then tries to use that to challenge Zack for the belt for 1.4, I think the crowd is going to revolt. I really do think they'll have another Naito situation on their hands, where the crowd will rally for some other match to take the main event spot. But if they're trying to make this play out like Naito's story did, I don't know how successful that's likely to be - Stardust Genius Naito had a much more established career and fan base than Umino did, and he's also just a different person than Umino is. I don't know that that's something that can be intentionally repeated.

I can't stop thinking about this Umino Shota situation, so I'm gonna write about it.

Umino has been in a very weird position for quite a while now, when it comes to his character, his booking, and his crowd response. I feel like it has finally hit some kind of breaking point at the recent KOPW show.

When Umino walked out to challenge for the IWGP HW belt, he didn't just "get booed" - he got a mix of cold silence, some scattered booing, and some overt heckling from people in the crowd shouting "Go home" at him. That wasn't even the kind of booing you want in pro wrestling - it was an outright rejection of him by the crowd.

(You can hear the heckling starting at about 3 minutes in during this video - people in the crowd start shouting "Kaere!" "Go home!" This mix of scattered booing, icy quiet, and heckling is not the kind of response NJPW goes for even for actual heel wrestlers.)

It was also absolutely not the response that anybody there had planned for or anticipated. Umino looked legitimately upset, Zack immediately took action to calm down the crowd before things got ugly, and then Takagi came out to keep things moving when it was clear the crowd was not going to change their tone. If any of this response had been planned, they would've encouraged it instead, or at least given it a little more space to play out.

In his backstage comments afterwards, Umino addressed the comparison that fans have repeatedly been making between himself and Stardust Genius era Naito. Umino rejected that comparison.

(Personally, I agree that the two situations aren't identical, but for a different reason - Naito was a much more well-established wrestler when the crowd turned on him, while Umino has never even held a title.)

In any case, the fact that Umino is directly addressing the comparisons that fans keep making, rather than ignoring them, was noteworthy to me.

Today, an article about the situation was released in Tokyo Sports. Tokyo Sports is a kayfabe magazine, and anything published there is generally done to forward the intended story of the wrestlers involved.

The headline reads: Umino Shota - "Booing = Big Shot" Proof of his decision to fight for the IWGP "Even Tanahashi-san himself said, I'm leaving it to you, Sho-chan"

This is... not helping to counter the feelings of the fans that Umino is being given a spot he doesn't deserve, to say the least. And quoting Tanahashi calling him the cutesy nickname "Sho-chan" isn't helping either.

With this being addressed directly in the kayfabe ToSpo, I have to believe it means they'll be addressing it directly in the storyline as well. And it's very easy to imagine some scenarios where they could repeat the infamous fan vote that eventually turned Naito ungovernable. But with the differences between Naito's situation and Umino's, I'm not sure how well this will actually work if they do end up trying it...

As for my own feelings about all this - I don't like or dislike Umino as a wrestler right now - more than anything, I feel like he hasn't solidified as a wrestler enough for me to have much of an opinion on him yet. But this whole situation has been fascinating to watch as it plays out.

[tomakeitbeautifultolive]

Maybe I am being an illogical and over-emotional Dany stan, not saying that to be sassy or anything - it's a very real possibility - I just don't see S8 Dany as "evil" or a "tyrant". I've seen some people on your recent posts saying that Dany stans want to make her into the victim of the series and that in reality, all the characters were victims... but I thought the show did it's ultimate best to not only ruin her character but also make it seem like an unavoidable tragedy? (1/?)

Like I thought the whole narrative of the final season was turning Daenerys into a tragic figure. The narrative rewarded the Starks but punished Dany and even D&D said if things didn't happen exactly the way it did, Dany wouldn't have burned King’s Landing if things hadn’t happened as they did. Ignoring how D&D is acting like the gods themselves deemed that the story had to go that way and not that they chose to write things the way they did of their own volition, (2/?)

I don’t think it’s necessarily crazy for Danys stans to see Daenerys as a victim not just of the writing/writer’s choices, but also within the GoT universe. Especially if we’re supposed to view her as someone who was broken by grief and lost her sanity … like that seems like someone I would have more sympathy than hate or disdain for within that universe, right? I’ve seen others on some of your posts saying that Dany’s behavior previous to S8x05 were problematic (3/?)

but I truthfully thought all of her reactions were fairly realistic and understandable. Like Dany snapping back at Sansa when she snipes at her was problematic and absolutely not the best decision, but it was understandable (up until the random snapping of sanity in 8x05). Dany worrying about Jon’s position as heir to the iron throne? While definitely OOC, within the narrative that D&D were trying to portray (4/?)

D&D were trying to portray (Dany being surrounded by people who seemed to not only dislike/distrust her and her people, but also were outwardly hostile towards her) Daenerys as someone to by more sympathetic towards. Maybe I’m wrong about all this, but that’s the way I saw it. Which I think is generally why people have more sympathy for Daenerys (and team targ) than other characters. (5/?)

Because in the end, Dany’s loss of sanity was painted as an unavoidable loss due to the incomprehensible actions of other characters, whereas characters like Sansa who broke a sacred oath and betrayed Jon because … she didn’t like Daenerys? I guess … there doesn’t seem to be a narratively supported theory for this behavior other than she wanted to, so she did? Unless you want to go into the whole Sansa had magic powers and saw the future. (6/?)

Even Missandei’s character was sacrificed in a brutal, terribly tone-deaf way to buoy Dany’s “madness” and make it more believable/sympathetic. There’s a difference between being screwed over by the writing (which they all were) and being fucked over by the narrative (which only Dany and her people/team targ were). (7/7)

Anon, in order to answer your ask, I'm going to have to do some backtracking because I think somewhere along the way, you misunderstood or misinterpreted my viewpoint.

I don't see Daenerys as evil or a tyrant, but there is no question that this was how the writers portrayed her in season eight (I personally disagree with this portrayal and find it absurd and out-of-character).

I have no interest in arguing about season eight canon or the actions of its characters unless I am refuting the character portrayals, plots, or pointing out how terrible and inconsistent the writing is. My beef is with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, not the characters.

Yes, I do personally find it illogical to deny that Daenerys was portrayed as an evil tyrant in season eight, yet to accept that Jon Snow murdered her. I don't know how this is even a point of contention. It's blatant confirmation bias and it services nothing but irrational anger. (Also, the context of my argument was in relation to Jonerys fans who harbor resentment towards Jon - not Daenerys fans in general).

I don’t think it’s necessarily crazy for Danys stans to see Daenerys as a victim not just of the writing/writer’s choices

I'm not sure how the fandom managed to so successfully strip away my status as a Daenerys fan... but anon? Allow me to introduce myself.

My post pointing a half a dozen sexist tropes used against Daenerys

My post defending the emotional turmoil of Daenerys fans

My post disproving that Daenerys was foreshadowed as mad

My post proving  that 'Targaryen Madness' is heavily inflated

My post refuting the comparison to the WWII bombings

My post about how Daenerys is actually the sanest character in the series

My post about why I think the books will end differently

Even my recent Jon Snow meta doubles as a pro-Daenerys post. This is literally how it begins:

"In season eight, the character of Daenerys Targaryen was butchered both literally and figuratively. It was such a brutal and heinous maiming of her character that by the end of the series, it was impossible to suspend disbelief and accept the inane and illogical choices of the writers."

The problem with this post is that the people who are offended by it did not actually bother to read it. I get it. It’s six-thousand words long and not everyone cares about Jon. That’s fair. All I ask is for people who didn’t read it not to jump in and start arguing about what they think it says.

I’ve seen others on some of your posts saying that Dany’s behavior previous to S8x05 were problematic

Anon, I cannot control what other people say on my posts. What I can say is that I do believe that the show writers did try to portray Daenerys as more problematic/power-hungry than she is in the books (which is all the more reason to believe the books will end differently). Again, I made a very long post about how if Daenerys was foreshadowed as evil, then so was every other character.

Which I think is generally why people have more sympathy for Daenerys (and team targ) than other characters.

I also have the most sympathy for Daenerys. The way the writers destroyed her legacy and possibly George R.R. Martin's legacy is unforgivable.

There’s a difference between being screwed over by the writing (which they all were) and being fucked over by the narrative (which only Dany and her people/team targ were).

The argument I'm making in my Jon Snow defense is not "boo hoo Jon was ruined worse!" it was "Hey... if Jon actually acted in-character, would Daenerys have ever felt isolated? Disrespected? Would she have gone mad at all?"

I am very interested in Daenerys and her narrative as well as her legacy, though I admit - I do not have tunnel vision for her alone. I love the ASOIAF series as a whole. That is why I'm going to keep pointing out all the ways in which season eight canon is bullshit and made no sense - yes, even if I have to defend other characters besides Daenerys to do it.

Thanks for the ask, anon. I hope my answer helps to show that we’re on the same page regarding just about everything - except that I have no more interest in arguing about what happened in season eight because I don’t view it as canonical.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What would u say are the best and worst book narrated by each character ?

I sat down to come up with my least favorite book by each narrator and had a pretty easy time of it — there’s an unfortunate dip in quality in the series around #39 - #43 that I can point to as definitely not my faves — and then ended up totally baffled by how to choose JUST ONE favorite book by each narrator, because such a task is almost impossible.  In conclusion, I really love Animorphs, as you probably never would have guessed from reading this blog.  So, with a little cheating, here goes:

Tobias

Least favorite: #43, The Test

The plot of this book pretty much requires that all of the characters, but most notably Rachel and Jake, act in ways that really don’t fit with their behavior for the rest of the series.  My cynical hypothesis about What Was The Ghost Even Thinking rhymes with schmender schtereotyping, but even if I more kindly assume that everyone was just acting strange to jerk Taylor around, I can’t really enjoy this book.

Favorite: #49, The Diversion

Tobias’s point of view works so well for this book, because its plot draws attention to his status as a partial outsider not only for human society as a whole but also for his team.  He’s literally trapped in a liminal space that here actually gives him a lot of perspective on his friends’ families — and the importance of sticking close to his own.  (And by that I mean 93% Ax, 7% Loren.)

Other favorite: #23, The Pretender

Speaking of Tobias being sort of stuck between roles, this book is so good because it shows the strength of his position as both able to access and able to escape being human.  He moves flexibly between a ton of different roles in this book — a leader to the hork-bajir, a supporter to Jake, a parent to himself, a son to Elfangor, a quasi-hawk, a quasi-human, a quasi-andalite — and does so with astounding grace and aplomb.  Resting bitchface has never seemed like a cooler accidental superpower.

Another favorite: #33, The Illusion

This book is the brutal shadow-self to #23, instead shutting Tobias out of a whole bunch of different roles over the course of the plot.  It does however contain one of the series’s best villains (Taylor is terrifyingly sympathetic) and some of its best moments of heartwarming body horror in the final battle.

Ax

Least favorite: #8, The Alien

Honestly, there’s nothing really wrong with this book, but there’s nothing amazingly right about it either.  It has a few great moments (Jake’s naïve optimism at the kandron’s destruction giving way to fear for Tom, Ax having dinner with Cassie’s family, Tobias definitely not tattling on Ax) but overall the plot is just kind of inane and doesn’t do much to move the series forward.

Favorite: #38, The Arrival

Estrid et al. act as such a cool check-in for not only how much Ax has grown as a person through spending too much time around humans, but also how much the team as a whole has grown until they are actually more effective warriors than a group of battle-trained andalite assassins.  Every time I reread this book I end up making noises of triumph and fist-pumping the air, no matter how public my location is at the time.

Favorite favorite: #46, The Deception

This plot hinges on the stark contrast between Ax’s terrible and unavoidable awareness about the horror of open war and the Animorphs’ lack of standard of comparison beyond “hey, remember D-Day?”  MM3 and #28 both do important work to condemn humanity from the outside, but this book actually uses Ax’s perspective primarily for celebrating the whole human species from an outsider’s point of view.

Marco

Least favorite: #40, The Other

As I’ve mentioned here, at this book’s core is an interesting concept that very emphatically does not age well.  On top of the cringe-inducing attempt at an After School Special treatment of the idea that (*gasp*) queer men with AIDS are human too, it also has a largely nonsensical plot that strains both credulity and logic.

Favorite: #25, The Extreme

It’s a brilliant use of Marco’s perspective to comment on the constraints and terrifying outer reaches of Jake’s leadership, one that also contains a highly enjoyable mix of humor and horror.  Because Marco.  I could reread this one a thousand times and still find new aspects of the narration to delight in.

Also favorite: #15, The Escape

This book makes amazing use of Marco’s unreliable narration and lack of self-insight to contrast his willingness to imagine himself confronting sharks with his willingness to run from them upon a real encounter, along with his determination to kill his mom and his inability to stop himself from saving her.  Marco is at his most human in this book, and also his most lovable.

Also also favorite: #51, The Absolute

The governor of probably-California is one of my favorite minor characters in the series, and I absolutely love the dynamic between Marco-Tobias-Ax any time it occurs (this book, #46, #30, #49), meaning that this surprisingly fun aside acts as a much-needed breath of fresh air and comic relief in between the Animorphs losing the morphing cube (#50) and blowing up the Yeerk Pool (#52).  Plus, Marco + tank  = OTP.

Cassie

Least favorite: #39, The Hidden

I’ve said most of this before, but this book is just… nonsensical.  And it’s not delightfully nonsensical like parts of #26 or #14, it’s mostly cringe-inducingly nonsensical.

Favorite: #29, The Sickness

Arguably this is the best Animorphs book, both IMHO and by fan consensus.  It’s got a simple but devlishly difficult plot, a ton of great characterization moments for all six kids, a handful of brilliant devices and settings that meld beautifully to Cassie’s overall character arc, and a wide-reaching perspective on the importance of overcoming difference that is a huge part of what makes these books so good.  It’s also funny, horrifying, edge-of-your-seat engaging, and tear-inducingly beautiful at the very end.

Also my favorite: #4, The Message

Whereas #29 is probably just hands-down the best book ever written, #4 holds a special place in my heart because it’s the first Animorphs book I ever read and the one that convinced me to go find the rest of the series.  This one is sweet and mystical, bleak with the dawning realization that these poor defenseless cinnamon rolls are in this war alone but also hopeful with the realization that these precious cinnamon rolls are in this war together.

Jake

Least favorite: #47, The Resistance

Although I’m of the opinion that #41 is more poorly-plotted, this book manages to be both poorly plotted and glaringly racist.  Its plot doesn’t make sense on several different levels, not the least that Visser Three knows how to find the hork-bajir valley in this book and then apparently forgets how to get there for the entire rest of the series.  And don’t get me started on Jake’s reprehensible behavior from the moment he casually declares Tom “as good as dead,” through to him trying to boss Toby about what’s best for Toby herself, all the way on to him being a jerk to Rachel and Marco. Blah.

Favorite: #31, The Conspiracy

Unlike #47, this book actually makes really good use of Jake’s character flaws to drive the plot forward — he’s bad at being vulnerable, and that ends up being a huge problem for his team.  It also leans hard on the irony of Jake being the only one with a “textbook” family (i.e. upper-middle class, heteronormative and monogamous, European-American, traditionally gendered, outwardly happy) and also being the only one under constant threat for his life any time he’s at home, thereby accomplishing one of the series’s better comments on the fact that children’s lives aren’t as simple as we’d like to think.

Favoriter: #53, The Answer

There are definitely flaws with RL implications in this book, but the plot is so freaking brilliant that I can still regard it as a Problematic Fave.  The final battle is so well-engineered and the Moral Event Horizon is so terrifying as it swings by that I assign this book to myself for rereading any time I’m struggling to write action or battle.  It’s a scary, awful book, but also a very fitting capstone to the series.

Favoritest: #26, The Attack

This setting is so cool.  This plot is so cosmic and yet so personal.  This use of the chee is so bitingly brilliant in its commentary on pacifism as a luxury not everyone can afford.  This story has so many moments that are either heartbreaking callbacks (the opening scene with Tom’s memories from #6) or bloodcurdling foreshadowing (Jake and Rachel’s casually absolute trust that each will be willing and able to kill the other if necessary).  This narration feels like a middle-aged and yet middle-school protagonist struggling to figure out who he wants to be — and defeating a cosmic power at its own game with the power of love.  I could gush forever.

Rachel

Least favorite: #48, The Return

Again, there’s nothing truly wrong with this book; it’s just a silly and inconsequential aside into the main character’s maybe-dreams at a time when the plot outside her head is heating up to the boiling point.  It makes this whole thing come off kind of like Bilbo sleeping through the Battle of Five Armies.

Favorite: #27, The Exposed

I’m not normally a big one for romance, but this book makes me ship Rachel and Tobias so hard that my tiny bitter walnut of a heart grows two sizes every time I read it.  Rachel has such great self-awareness that she doesn’t like any situation she cannot control or at least do violent battle against, and yet she dives into the bottom of the ocean with both eyes open and her chin up because that’s what she has to do to protect the rest of her team.  Crayak has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to asking her to turn on her loved ones.

Additional favorite: #32, The Separation

As I’ve said, I didn’t really get this book until I realized that it’s not so much about Rachel herself as it is about how the rest of her team views her, and how she defies their simple categorizations, both well-meaning (Cassie) and not (Jake), through simply being herself.  Rachel is both masculine and feminine, both tough and vulnerable, and she makes no apologies for any of it.

And another favorite: #37, The Weakness

This book has an important role for the rest of the series in that it shows how the Animorphs’ guerilla tactics can easily be taken too far, and also how Jake’s discernment of his teammates’ strengths and weaknesses keeps them all alive.  Rachel makes a fair number of logical-seeming decisions in this book that prove short-sighted, and of course it all leads to her and Jake’s brutal Checkovian epiphany at the end.

Added additional also favorite: #22, The Solution

A brutal but powerful read, this book focuses on the ugliest parts of Rachel’s personality (her sadism toward David) but also the most powerful ones (her compassion for Saddler and protectiveness toward both Jake and Jordan).  It also shows that her reckless taste for violence and her boundless desire to protect her families both biological and found are actually two sides of the same part of her personality.

Okay I have a lot of favorite Rachel books: #17, The Underground

It’s oat-freaking-meal.  Only it’s not just oat-freaking-meal, and I’m not talking about the extra-tasty maple and ginger flavoring.  It’s a biological weapon.  It’s a way to harm the enemy, but only through harming prisoners of war.  It’s a social dilemma the like of which we rarely see in children’s books.  It’s a lesson in decision making under uncertainty.  It’s a moral imperative, but no one is quite sure what that imperative is saying.  It’s a deconstruction of the implied assumption that it’s possible to write adventure stories in which no one gets hurt.  It’s awesome.  It’s hilarious.  It’s disturbing as fuck.  Welcome to Animorphs.