#it’s also so far the closest in plot to the OG episodes and I’m like

[dongpound]

Would yall believe me if I said the Zaa’Vadal shit might be the most unpleasant chapter I’ve ever written just bc it’s taken me SO long and I’m just like 🧍 I’m tired of this

[liesoverthec]

OG 911 Character Details from Canon Pt 2

Hi y’all I’m back! I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reblogged the last details post - I sort of just thought people would like it and it would die, so to see it travel and hopefully reach more writers was so great so thank you again!

Details under the cut since I went a little crazy 😅 and if this is your first time seeing this, the first part, and any future parts, can be found under this tag here!

Quick note before I get to the details - always, ALWAYS take details from dialogue or plot over details from the set or props if they contradict each other. The writers have the ultimate say over what happens on the show/for the characters, so whatever they say goes, even if it goes against something props has already laid down (eg, Chim’s birthday, sorry Libra crew. He’s an Aries or a Pisces). So keep that in mind for the future in case some of these details I have which are from props/set are changed in the future, or if you’ve noticed something yourself!

Also if you have questions, I am MORE than happy to answer them, although if you leave them in the tags on this post I’m probably gonna lose them, so if it’s something you’d genuinely like an answer to, drop it in my inbox! Besides my standard “ask” tags, I’m also tagging asks about canon details with this tag here. Every time I make a big post like this, I’m going to link all the asks I’ve gotten since the last post, but if you’re looking for more info in the mean time, that’s the other spot to look!

Buck has a grill on his patio.

Eddie doesn’t hang Christopher’s art on the fridge - instead it is either hung on the corkboard in Chris’ room to the left of the door, or Eddie puts it in an actual frame and hangs it using a hammer/nails in Christopher’s room. All the Diaz family has on their fridge is a bunch of bendy people magnets. (I absolutely ADORE him putting all this effort into treating Christopher’s art like it’s something you’d buy from a professional artist).

Info on everyone’s ages can be found here. (Little more discussion of Chim’s situation here).

Albert has a bachelor’s degree! I don’t know in what though, except that it’s some field for which is a Master’s is useful.

Athena was in a sorority in college, Delta Sigma Theta. Their website describes them as “ ...a sisterhood comprised primarily of Black, college-educated women ... [that] considers the issues impacting the Black community and boldly confronts the challenges of African Americans and, hence, all Americans ”, which I love for Athena, and feel is very in-character for her at that time in her life!

Chim is an aviators dude. When he wears sunglasses, they’re always aviators.

Athena also wears nothing but aviators.

Bobby wears square aviators.

Eddie, on the other hand, always wears Wayfarers.

Buck either doesn’t really like sunglasses or he constantly forgets he owns them, since we’ve only seen him wear them once in 60 eps, in a move I’m pretty sure was ONLY for dramatic effect.

Hen’s sunglasses change style over the seasons like her regular glasses do, but she tends to like browline sunglasses.

Info on Christopher’s school can be found here!

There are two colors of dispatch polo, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhythm or reason for who wears what. Maroon - Maddie and Linda. Blue - Josh and May. Jamal has actually worn both maroon and blue, so it doesn’t seem to be TOTALLY set in stone although I’ve never seen anyone else switch. Sue is too badass to wear a dispatch shirt.

Both Bobby and Eddie drive 4 door pickups. Bobby’s is navy. Eddie specifically has a black, 2020 GMC Denali 1500 pickup truck (in case you want to specifically look up what the inside of it looks like or what features it has 😂)

Info on the 118’s medical certifications can be found here.

Correction to Eddie’s living situation from last post: no next door neighbors, but instead UPSTAIRS neighbors. (Pointed out by Abigail in this ask). Also since someone else was wondering the notes of the last post - no, there is absolutely no discussion on the show of whether or not Eddie rents the apartment or owns it. But based on the fact that it’s 1) LA and 2) an apartment, my guess would be he rents it.

When Maddie isn’t feeling like herself, she tends to straighten her hair rather than curl it. It seems to be more when she’s uncertain about her place in her own and other people’s lives, rather than just when she’s simply worried - eg it’s straight in 2B, when she’s uncertain if she wants to continue working as a dispatcher/is unsure about her relationship with Chim.

For work, Chim, Eddie and Buck all use black duffel bags with a LAFD patch on the top. Hen uses several different cute bags, and Bobby seems to have a plain black duffel bag.

Watches - Bobby, Athena, Chim, Hen and Buck all wear their watch on their left wrist (but Athena ONLY wears hers for work, she takes it off at home.) Eddie wears his on his right wrist, and Maddie doesn’t wear one.

Chim (and Maddie by default) literally still have the exact same couch as in the pilot. (Which means that Chim has cuddled Tatiana on that couch, AND Albert has had sex on it. TIME TO GET A NEW ONE, BUCKLEY-HANS 😂)

The 118 has five different rigs - the engine (E118), the ladder truck (T118), two ambulances and the captain’s truck. 95% of the time, when the team is chilling in the cab of a rig and chatting (eg the ‘stuck under a live telephone pole’ scene in Jinx), they’re in the engine, not the truck. (Which I personally learned recently are NOT interchangeable terms!)

Athena and Michael got married when Athena was 37.

If you’d like to give Maddie a full name beyond “Maddie”, you should use Madeline. (I know, I know, in 4x04 she says Maddie is the name on her birth certificate, and that you should never use props details if they contradict script details, but I always thought that was a super weird exchange in 4x04 which could be explained by Maddie getting a nickname since she was born when Margaret and Phillip, you know, actually loved their kids and showed it, so of course Buck doesn’t get one, and in 4x04, Maddie was trying to avoid the entire issue of why she got one and Buck didn’t. But! Do what you want, and use Madeline as the full version of Maddie if you’d like, since that’s what’s on the BOLO in 2x13 😂)

Athena’s call sign is 727 L30, but she doesn’t have a specific squad car - the number changes throughout the series.

Chim really likes chewing gum, but he’s the only one out of the entire family!

The station has an Xbox One S, and it’s white.

In the real LAFD, there are stations 1 through 114. To avoid confusion while filming on the streets (I’m assuming), our fictional LAFD never uses the number of a real station. So if you want another station for a fic, and you want something that would be real in OUR universe, use the numbers 115 and above. They’ve gone as high as 221 in our universe.

Battalions - station 118 is in Battalion 7, which is also not a battalion in real Los Angeles. The 118 has interacted w/ Battalion 1, which is a real battalion, but other ‘non-real which makes them more likely for our universe’ battalions include numbers: 3, 8, 13, 16, 19 and above.

S1 Buck knew the term Jedi, but based on context, didn’t understand AT ALL the context provided by Star Wars, so there’s another edge of his pop culture limits for you.

Chim is the most tech-savvy out of everyone, hands down.

Athena has a VERY active Twitter account.

Abuela’s house number is 8902. I don’t have a street name for you unfortunately though. :/

Athena’s favorite flowers are white roses. None of the other women are really flower people.

Michael likes to wear purple.

When they’re at a call, Buck does pretty much all of the stuff with the hammer and the saw. Eddie does all the work needed with the drill.

Harry goes to Meadowbrook Elementary.

Buck lives on the fourth floor of his apartment building, across the hall from Apt. 416. The lovely @lovelessmotel found this listing for what is more or less the apartment. What happened was: the set crew rented this apartment for the one episode at the end of s2 when Buck moved in, and then over the summer before s3 built their own set of it, and changed some things - eg giving him an island, and moving the sink to a second counter against the far wall, you can see the changes here in this amazing gif set by the awesome Austen, but the listing should let you click around a little more upstairs and figure out dimensions better than what the show provides!

When Athena and Hen go out to eat together, it’s always fast food burgers and fries.

Waffles are Athena’s favorite food, and tiramisu is her favorite dessert.

Every takeout we’ve seen Buck eat has always been in a Chinese food takeout container, and we know he likes Thai food the best. EXCEPT! The one time we see him eat takeout with Eddie and Christopher, they have pizza. So take from that what you will......

Eddie has a cell phone and a landline.

Chim is a shameless multiple texter.

Chim and Bobby sleep closest to the door in their respective bedrooms (both right side of the bed if you are standing at the foot, facing the headboard), and Athena and Maddie sleep furthest away from the door (left side).

Some canon last names for other firefighters at the station in case you wanna add more people to a fic - Mitchell, Sanchez, Serrano (woman), Porter, Meyers (woman), Maxwell, Voyta

Hen and Karen really love decorating their house with dark/red wood.

Karen is Mommy and Hen is Mama.

Bobby has a brother, and a grandmother, and that’s literally ALL we know about his family outside of Marcy and the kids.

Evidence points to Eddie being the oldest child in his family.

Karen has multiple brothers (no sisters), but no idea how many - just that one of them is named Trey, and one of them lives in LA and has kids. They might be the same brother and they might not be.

Both Hen and Athena are only children.

Athena has been on the police force for 30 years.

Christopher and Denny are the same age (born in 2011), and Harry is two years older than them.

Michael lives in apartment 308.

The bank in this universe is CalAm.

Hen and Karen have a picture of Denny, May and Harry on their fireplace mantel.

Eddie having a black thumb + a lot of plants in his living room = him buying fake plants bc he likes the aesthetic ™ or someone (cough Carla cough) is taking care of them for him.

The COVID timeline in OG’s universe is fucked up compared to the real world’s, so it shouldn’t be used as a way to measure time! They just throw it in wherever it makes sense for the story they want to tell (eg the vaccines in s4 ep 8), since s3 was both done before COVID hit but also airing while it was happening. It makes absolutely no sense for May to graduate in March nor for Chris to be going to what is specifically labeled summer camp, and the vaccine plotline was INCREDIBLY early, even for real life, so don’t use anything from that as a measure of time. I’ve found except in specific examples, eg the two tsunami episodes, it’s very safe to say every episode covers a week - fall holidays on the show line up with their real life counterparts, indicating about the same amount of time is passing for us and them.

On that note - Jee-Yun was born in late January, early February 2021. (Conceived in Pinned, which was end of March/beginning of April, meaning Maddie was around a month along at May’s graduation in May ➡ 42 weeks + 3 days from then = late Jan/early Feb. Which unfortunately means we most likely won’t see her birthday celebrated on screen. If we assume she was conceived on the date Pinned aired, aka the very sexy hotel scene, then January 21st or 22nd would be Jee’s birthday, depending on if she was born after midnight or not.

Buck has had at least one other Jeep between the one Maddie gave him, and the one he has now, which means that when he needs a new car, he is purposefully choosing Jeeps.

I hope this was all as interesting/enjoyable to you as it was to me! And just to repeat - I love answering questions so pls let me know if you have any at all ❤

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Tagging: @buckbuckley

[balillee]

my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

[tarhalindur]

Higurashi Gou final thoughts pt. 1

(Spoilers go under a cut:)

Taking this by arc:

Onidamashi-hen: The best executed first cour arc by a significant margin.  Probably not coincidentally, it stays the closest to the structure of the OG arc and thus keeps more of OG’s tension ratchet than the other Gou arcs.  I have two main issues, and I’m pretty sure both of them can be firmly pinned on the anime staff rather than Ryukishi07 himself.  First, it pulls its punch on the stealth sequel aspect.  I’m not entirely sure that going for a stealth sequel was the correct decision (it’s a cost/benefit tradeoff), but if you do you’re going for the wham of the sequel reveal, and the anime undercut this by putting the Rika/Hanyuu scene at the start of episode 2 rather than the end of the arc.  Second, it overdoes the final Rena fight, making it so over-the-top that it’s difficult to take seriously.  Neither of these issues exist in the manga (which has a believable amount of stabbing and has the Hanyuu scene at the end of the arc where it should be), and in the former case we also have a Ryukishi07 interview indicating that this was a change requested by the anime staff, so this goes on them.  (Interestingly, by way of contrast I think this approach might actually work well for the Mieruko-chan adaptation that Passione has coming out later this year.)

Watadamashi-hen: The core issue here (above and beyond fridge logic after Satokowaski-hen) is the finale, which landed like a wet fart.  It both escalates from zero to 100 *way* too fast and has the worst case of “tell don’t show” in the neo-question arcs - we learn about every single dead body in the arc from Ooishi’s end-of-arc narration.  That’s relatively defensible for three of those bodies, which we only learn about secondhand even in OG Watanagashi-hen (though IIRC in OG two of those bodies have foreshadowing from rumors earlier in the arc, and unless I’m forgetting something that’s absent here), but all five?  Yes, keeping Keiichi locked away from the final showdown removes fridge logic issues, but you have prominent security cameras - you can at least have him see the aftermath of the showdown on the screens (and freak out because of it).  Adding insult to injury, the Keiichi vs. door scenes are also so over-the-top as to damage willing suspension of disbelief.  The 0-to-100 issue is harder to fix, because the one thing Watadamashi did right was put the Rika-loses-it scene as an end-of-episode cliffhanger, and “Keiichi et. al. are about to enter the Saiguden” probably wanted an end-of-episode cliffhanger as well for discussion purposes (it might have been able to get away with using the commercial break).  The simplest fix is the same one @tsuisou-no-despair​ floated: cannibalize an episode off of another first cour arc.

Tataridamashi-hen: Amusingly, I think Gou has retained OG’s tradition of having the Tatari- question arc being the weakest question arc.  As I see it there are two interlocking core issues here which boil down to the same issue.  Tataridamashi-hen goes for a very unconventional method of building tension: it doesn’t, instead relying on the viewer’s realization that something bad has to be coming to do so for it (the old “that can’t be right, we’ve still got twenty minutes left in the episode” reaction I more commonly associate with things like police procedurals).  The problem is that this runs into the Endless Eight lesson: even flawless metatext should not be used at the expense of enjoyability of the actual text.  And while the arc got some leverage out of “when exactly is this going to diverge?”, there’s a point much like Endless Eight itself when you realize where it’s going to diverge (i.e, not until the end) and that until then you’re sitting through the same events you remember from OG.  It works about as well as it did for Haruhi.  (Unless you’re a new viewer, but in that case staying too close to Minagoroshi-hen has other issues.)  Worse, unlike Minagoroshi-hen itself (which did something similar to build tension but a) non-source readers hadn’t seen it before so it wasn’t foregone the same way and b) you had several more episodes after the subarc for the main event) the arc ends almost immediately after this.  (The simplest fix here might have been cutting down on the arc time by speedrunning Minagoroshi events, reducing the amount of time you’d have to wait.  You could even have a couple of obstacles collapse faster than expected; this late in the first cour it would serve as foreshadowing for Satokowashi-hen, and would also deal with unfortunate implications concerning the village’s prejudice considering that the staff knew Satoko was going to be the culprit.  Trimming an episode would also neatly solve the issue of where to get an additional episode for Watadamashi-hen from!)  The good news is that the final confrontation is the best of the first cour arcs (it’s somewhat more realistic than the other two, actually not that far behind some of the more memetastic OG moments except for Teppei’s eyes, and not showing Ooishi’s rampage is forgivable given that they knew they would be actually showing it in Nekodamashi-hen), but that’s damning with faint praise.

Nekodamashi-hen: The best Gou arc.  The episode 15 jump cut is the stuff of legends and the best scene in the show by a sizable margin (the one thing the director does well is black humor, it seems), while the rest of the arc isn’t as good, it’s far shorter on demerits than the rest of the show.  The one really, really obvious demerit is that they really didn’t need to spend half an episode on the intestines-ripping scene (if Ryukishi07′s comments are to be believed, once again we’re pinning this on Passione), but effects on my stomach aside there are worse issues to have.

Satokowashi-hen: And here we have the other side of the coin; this is the worst Gou arc, and it’s the one spot where I’m pretty sure Ryukishi07 himself gets some of the blame.  There’s a few issues here.  First, the single most obvious dangling plot thread from Matsuribayashi-hen (Satoshi’s fate) is effectively dropped despite being directly relevant to the other dangling thread that was picked up (how Rika treats Satoko and vice versa); this includes missing an opportunity to show Satoko’s character arc through different responses to learning about Satoshi’s condition.  Secondly and compounding, Shion is also dropped along with the Satoshi thread; AIUI this is kind of understandable given final Satoko/Shion interaction in the Matsuribayashi-hen VN (which IIRC never made it into the anime), but dropping her without explanation still leaves something that looks awfully like a plot hole since a single conversation with Shion is potentially enough to stop the events of this arc from ever happening.  (”Character X had information that would have stopped the tragedy but never had an opportunity to tell anyone” is a classic tragedy trope, but you should really have a *reason* for that character never having the opportunity as opposed to just having them vanish without explanation.)  Finally, there’s just the general issue that while the ending points for both Rika and Satoko are reasonable the path they take to get there just doesn’t quite add up.  I can kind of get there via a combination of “blame the director” (the loops montage could and should have easily shown Satoko’s deteriorating mental condition as she watched - using interlaced cuts to her face with changes in facial expression is a classic method) and mind caulk (Rika was exaggerating for effect when she described her desire to go to St. Lucia’s as a long-time thing and it only really kicked in after Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko originally only planned to suicide in Matsuribayashi-2 and only took Rika out with her as a crime of passion after feeling betrayed, hence the next few loops lacking her murdering Rika) but being mind-caulkable is not the same as actual good execution.

I mean, I’ve banged on this drum before, but... the basic concept works.  Really well.  Satoko’s abandonment issues and Rika’s treatment of Satoko are two of the major dangling plot threads from OG Higurashi (*eyes both Minagoroshi-hen and anime-only Yakusamashi-hen*).  It makes perfectly good sense that the latter comes back to bite Rika, especially in a sequel literally titled “karma”.  I already suspected Satoko was on the autism spectrum based on OG, her being ADHD in addition to or instead of that makes perfectly good sense given those conditions often overlap.  Rika’s desire to escape the well morphing into a desire to escape Hinamizawa entirely?  Sure, just present it as that.  Satoko steadily losing her support network as her friends are torn away from her by changing life circumstances, then going to a boarding school that she hates, that strips the rest of her support structure for her and starts to take even her one remaining friend (her childhood friend, no less - and one that Satoko is at this point attracted to romantically in true osananajimi fashion) away from her, and then starting to snap with some prodding from a certain witch?  That’s a compelling story idea!  But as present it just doesn’t quite work, and that’s on the execution.

(Side note: I wonder if some of what went wrong with Gou was just the kind of production issues endemic to modern anime, amplified by the pandemic.  I remember at least one comment/blog post somewhere in the wake of WEP’s issues noting some of the effects that production issues can have on an anime, and one of the things they noted was excessive slavishness to the source material as a time-saving measure; that sounds awfully similar to some of Ryukishi07′s comments about how he didn’t expect Passione to take his script quite so literally, and to my admittedly untrained eye it sure looked like there were a bunch more other animation studios than usual mentioned in Gou’s credits...)

Final score: depends on your exact rating system, but given the range I’m looking at I can’t see how I can give it any score other than 3.4/5 for obvious reasons.  (Pending Sotsu, anyways.  It’s possible that Sotsu will resolve some of these issues - in particular, Ryukishi07 always has struck me as the kind of author who would get a kick into baiting us into falling for the same twist twice; it’s not impossible that the apparent lack of unreliable narrators so far is a double bluff, and that could affect the “question arc” scores in particular.  More on this in a forthcoming solution space post.)

[salmonthestoryteller]

In Which Salmon Has Too Much Time on Her Hands.

My thoughts on Malex, Candy, and Future Plot Speculation. (I promise I am writing my fic, too)

I've had a few days, and episodes, to contemplate my feelings on the Alex/Michael/Maria love triangle and this is going to get long so I'll end up needing to post this on a comp instead of my phone so I can add a cut.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please buckle your seatbelts and return your tray tables to their full upright positions cuz we're about to land in the spoiler zone.

Who do I want Michael's End Game to be?

Definitely Alex.  I feel like their connection is more depthful.  I also feel that he is more of what Michael needs in a relationship.  Alex knows that Michael isn't as tough as he likes to act.  He already proved, back when they were teenagers, and again with their first conversation in 1x10, that he's willing to be a safe place for Michael.  Someone he can let down his walls with and honestly talk to. However, Alex hasn't really let his walls down to Michael since his return.  The closest was the end of 1x09 when he talked about their past relationship.  But that was still about their past.  Alex still isn't talking about himself, his past, or his troubles.  Yet he did talk about some of it to Kyle.  So is Michael able to give Alex in a relationship what Alex is giving him?  Right now, at least, apparently not.  Whether that's more about Alex's issues or Michael's issues, or just a combo, it's still true.

Maria and Michael's snark is cute, and they have good chemistry.  However, Maria buys Michael's act.  She thinks he really is this macho, swaggering cowboy.  She's slowly starting to lean on him.  Crying on his shoulder, feeling safe that he's watching over her after she's been drugged.  Michael is proving he can be what she needs - someone who doesn't expect her to be her own savior. (A position Michael occupies in his own group of friends and is far too familiar with.)  However, Maria has offered zero proof she can be what Michael needs.  The first time he went to her when he was upset, he ended up having to comfort her.  The second time he specifically sought her out, she lashed out at him over Alex.  That is not a safe space for him to let down his walls.  If anything, he feels the need to be strong for her and protect her.  Which is sweet, but not what he needs in a long term relationship.  And while I'm sure Maria would be more than willing to be a safe place for him if their relationship developed, I'm not convinced Michael would ever be willing to open up to her like that.

As things stand right now, who do I want Michael to be with?  Um… neither?

I do think Alex and him need to get to know each other as who they are here and now. Considering the parallels between Malex and Echo on the show, I am looking forward to the scene when they admit they love who each other is in the present, not just some dream from the past.  However, it took Max and Liz almost three months to get there.  I think Alex and Michael deserve the same time.

Maria, on the other hand, is the only one who doesn't know about the aliens. Plus, Isobel may not have killed Rosa, but they still are the ones that covered it up.  Liz has had time to deal with that.  Alex apparently knows everything, so he's had time to deal with it. Maria hasn't. To place her in a relationship and then have her find out?  I 👏 do 👏 not 👏 approve.

So my final thoughts on it all has to do with the fact that this series is based on the novels, not on the OG show. So, as a fellow fan reminded me, many plots from the other television series won't appear in this one. (Am I the only one who is sad we won't get a Nasedo or Tess?)  So, while obviously not everything will line up with the novels, here's some speculations from what I've read up on them in relation to the current series.

Michael was in a love triangle in the novels, though that was with Maria and Isobel.  He was captured by the novel version of Project Sheppard, and ended up briefly with a third girl instead. (That was the novel version of Cam, though, down to being a spy for awhile. So I see it as unlikely that will become a plot.) Cam leaves and Isobel and him realize their feelings are more sibling than romantic. Michael and Maria end up together.

I think it's important to remember Alex is the one occupying Maria's spot in this series version of the triangle, with Maria occupying Isobel's.  Read into that what you will. I know what I'm reading into it. I'm still not sure if this series is or isn't making Michael actually related to Isobel and Max.  If so, I'm totally down for Maria being the one who gets romantically involved with Michael's older brother in Isobel's place.

Following the book plots, though, Michael would end up captured by Project Sheppard for awhile (So by Jesse in the series?), followed by Alex getting kidnapped to alien homeworld by an evil alien. (Who I think is Noah in this series) In the book they end up working with Manes to try and get Alex back, but he wasn't the villain in the book series. The thought of them having to work with Jesse to save Alex?  Eek.

At this point I'm just wildly speculating what may or may not happen, which is a total tangent. I seriously need to get back to my fic before Tuesday destroys me again.

[i-see-london-i-see-klance]

Voltron Season 8 - Overall Thoughts and Reactions

Okay so let’s break this down a bit. Into the good, the bad, and the eh???

The Good:

I love that this season took the time to give us some character moments. Moments when it was just people talking about their feelings or just spending time being people. At points it was clunky, but even then I appreciated that they took the time to actually let us see the characters, not just the plot.

The Allurance romance was also really organic to me. It wasn’t in your face, but it wasn’t brushed off once they’d hooked up either. The show gave them moments together, but didn’t make it a major focus. I also loved that, yeah, they loved each other, but it wasn’t one of those true love, destined to be together romances. They loved each other like normal people did. And so when Allura...became one with the big bang(?), Lance was sad, yes. But he wasn’t emotionally destroyed. He was able to move on, which is totally realistic for a relationship that new. Just, slow clap for the writers on that one

Honerva. God, Honerva. She was just amazing. I don’t think the series did a very good job as setting her up as the ultimate Big Bad; she was kind of on the sidelines and in the shadows too much for it to feel completely organic that she kind of took over at the end, but GOD the season worked her up beautifully...well, up until they castrated her character right at the end, but I’m choosing to focus on the good. She was ruthless, she was powerful, she was badass. And her motivation was so refreshing. She was evil, but her drive was love of her family, and my god I loved that. She was amazing this entire season. I ADORED what they did with her.

The character cameos were incredible. I don’t remember that many new characters, if any, getting added, which makes sense because there’s no point in introducing us to new people and expecting us to care about them at this point. The cameos were mostly well used, and I loved how many old characters they managed to cram back in. Most shows make their characters a one off and the fact that Voltron doesn’t was something I loved about this show in general, not just this season. It was sweet to see so many familiar faces.

While I was NOT a fan of the last 2-3 episodes, the last 5-10 min of the final ep actually managed to be really touching and sweet, and I thought it was well done. Allura’s sacrifice kind of came out of nowhere, but at the same time it made sense. She’d been showing off all these fancy quintescence powers since the first season, when it became clear that it was going to require fancy quintescence powers to save the day it’s perfectly logical that she’s the one to do it. And having her have to sacrifice herself to save everything feels more realistic after the extent of the damage that was done rather than have her and Honerva just fix everything and then carry on like nothing happened. It makes her seem less overpowered, even though SHE AND HONERVA ARE TOTALLY GODDESSES YO. And then I’ve always been a sucker for those “where are they now” type endings where we can get a brief bit of final closure when the show doesn’t really have time to spend on the aftermath. And the end results seemed very fitting and in-character for the team, unlike some “where are they now” segments I could mention (*coughDIGIMONcough*)

The Bad:

Ugh so many things

The writing felt all over the place this season, and a lot of details were handwaved or really badly explained. I don’t need an in-depth explanation for everything that’s happening, but too many times the answer the show gave for things happening was “Whoa that’s weird but hey moving on!” and it felt really lazy to me. Worse is there were a few times where they actually acknowledged the gaping plot holes and then never explained them (i.e. Earth’s defenses, Voltron and the Atlas fusing) which just draws more attention to the poor writing. I wouldn’t mind it so much if there had been a precedent for this kind of thing throughout the show, but the only example I can think of where some random superpower shows up out of the blue without explanation was when the Atlas turned into a giant mecha the first time, and it pissed me off just as much then. I get that this is the final season. I get that the stakes have to be raised because this is the climax of the entire show. But if you’ve upped the danger so high that the only way you can make the heroes believably triumph is by giving them random new powers, you have done a really shitty job of writing your climax.

Bringing back the original paladins. Don’t get me wrong, I love the characters, and any extra screen time for Alfor and OG!Zarkon brings me so much joy. But the entire segment felt really unnecessary and out of nowhere. These characters had already gotten their arcs, we already had closure when it came to them. Sure, it was sad. They all kind of died. But there was no need to bring them back. They were really dead and gone. Not to mention having them interact with the new paladins just made it more obvious that they were supposed to mirror the original team, where Lance piloted Blue, Keith Red, and Shiro Black. Blaytz and Allura had pretty much nothing to do with each other, they weren’t foils to each other’s characters, and their interaction was just kind of weird. And while Alfor chatting up Lance was kind of cute in the “meet the parents” kind of way, once again the personalities don’t match. It was awkward and out of place and overall those episodes felt really meaningless and forgettable

A lot of Allura’s actions this season kind of bugged me as well. She did something risky and stupid, starting doing questionable things, and then in the end she essentially faced no actual consequences for these actions. I mean, sure, in the end she kind of DIED, but that wasn’t related to her mistakes so I don’t think that counts.

The meh:

The fanservice. I’m kind of torn on this one because while it’s nice that the show took the time to add in little extras to please the fans who have been with this show all along, a lot of it was really blatantly fanservice. Lance’s altean markings come to mind as an example. They just appear, they never get explained or acknowledged or have any reason to exist or impact on the story. He’s just got altean markings now. And the only reason I can conceive why they added that in was for the fanservice.

The season’s treatment of Coran really irked me too. It was really inconsistent with how it treated his relationship with Allura, sometimes making it very clear that he’s her closest remaining thing to family, and other times ignoring that connection completely. I THINK what they may have unintentionally implied based on when and who was showing the emotions was that Coran cares a lot more about Allura (acting as her guardian when Lance asks her out, weeping in the flashback when Alfor asks Coran to stay by her side) than Allura cares about him (telling Lance on their date that she has no family left at all), which, yeesh. As if I didn’t already have problems with Allura’s writing this season

The lions were a mixed bag this season. I can’t say they had personalities anymore, and I suppose they haven’t for a long, long time but at least they had a few moments here and there where they were acknowledged to be their own characters, rather than just machines. It just wasn’t enough. Remember when Red was actually finicky and temperamental? Remember when the Black Lion actually seemed to care about her paladin? Remember when Blue had sass? The show clearly doesn’t

Overall, did I think this was a good season? Yeah, I’d say it was decent. Not the best by far, but also definitely not the worst. And considering the path the show has taken over the last few seasons, I think we got an ending that was as satisfying as we could expect. It didn’t blow me out of the water, it didn’t change the world, but it met my (admittedly low) expectations. It’s over and I walked away being okay with how it ended, rather than disappointed or frustrated. I’m sure I’m one of many people who will say that the show definitely started out way stronger than it finished, and that it never quite lived up to the potential of the first few seasons, but at least I can say I saw it through, and I did enjoy at least seeing how it ended. But I’m also really glad it’s over, because I think it was starting to wear itself out, and that’s why the quality slipped. It got too big and epic, and it needed to end before it turned into Supernatural, where there’s always got to be a bigger threat. I don’t know if I think the good of the final season outweighed the bad or vice versa; while I think there were more little things and moments that made me happy this season, the problems I had with it were pretty huge. And they REALLY ticked me off. But it’s probably close enough that I can say they balance each other out.

I guess I’ll just say that while I’m kind of sad it’s over, and I wasn’t entirely thrilled with how the series progressed, I’m still happy I watched it and I got to be a part of this fandom and phenomena. Someday I might watch the whole series again, for nostalgia’s sake.

But I also might just stick to the beginning, when all we had was a small team of misfits, and a universe of possibilities :)

[survivormagictreehouse]

Episode #5 “I have nothing else to lose at this point” -Jay

-Did I even make a confessional last round??? AHH. Okay so I’m excited with our swap and I think we have a strong tribe but I’m REALLY sad (and not surprised) about Austin leaving. I think that I am on a very strong tribe and I can’t wait to see what happens with it going forward!  Like I can’t bad talk anyone, I like them all. 

-Can we talk about how proud I am of myself for remembering enough information to tell Cindi while she was answering questions? LOL, I had never been so nervous in my entire life so I'm really good that we pulled out a win!  Ali and Collin did such a good job retaining and relaying information.  It is nice to have another day off and I'm really curious to see what Ali decides to do and what the next challenge will be... I don't want this tribe to be broken up yet.   If I do end up swapping I really want to end up on a tribe with Chips.  We played in a game recently AGAINST one another and I'm dying to work with him, like actually work with him so oddly enough, I'm really hoping that he isn't going anywhere! I feel like they will probably go after Timmy or Jay. Right now the person on my tribe I feel like I can talk with the easiest about the game is Ali, he is probably my number one and I feel like I can tell him stuff without it getting passed around the entire tribe.  Do I completely trust him?? NO.  But I do trust him the most haha.  

-I SURVIVED AHHHHHH I GET TO STAY!!!!!!!!! Fuck that was so close and I feel so bad for throwing Austin under the bus but hey, I needed to stay in this game and keep my relationships strong. Plus, voting for Timmy would have looked really shitty to him, after the whole alliance thing. Anyways....Birch is here now! I love them sm and I really look forward to getting to work with them again. As far as I can tell, my best bet of staying is a group of me, Timmy, Zach, Birch and probably Chips. Chips and Zach were so helpful to me this whole day, reassuring me and giving me the information I needed to stay safe. I also called with Timmy just now and we're gonna be sticking together since it's our best option. Its really been a big turn from feeling comfortable in the tribe to fighting to stay, but I'm gonna stay fighting and hopefully make it out of this swap alive.

-I'm trying so fucking hard to stay in this game but right now it feels like a lost cause. Zach sold me out so badly last night and it feels like it's been impossible to recover. I'm trying to get me, Timmy, chips, and birch to all vote Zach but it's feeling less and less like it's actually happening and more like they're just saying it to keep me comfortable. No one is really responding to me anymore and it just feels like this is the end. The only little bit of hope I have is apparently Timmy has heard it's gonna be Birch instead? Seems like a long shot, I don't really want to see them leave, and I'm not gonna push for it. Birch is an indespencible ally and I will go to rocks for them if i have to. I have nothing else to lose at this point.

https://youtu.be/cYEa3LQE6N4

-Going into tonight's tribal, I think I'll be safe and have the votes of Timmy, Jess, Gavin, and Keegan. However, I feel like either Gavin and Keegan could flip (though unlikely) OR an idol could be used on Jay. I guess we shall see though. See y'all on the other side :)

-okay so the og annie tribe lost their marbles and got a 4-3-1? which well. in other news, i died in my other game and mr BODHI on this tribe got me out... very interesting. i was originally gonna punish him and get him out. and i still might. im unsure. he would deserve it tho he is so wishywashy that its infuriating. rn dream alliance is cindi/vi/ruthie/rachael (aka feminism + ali). bodhi was the best to vote for me on a game level and him needless treating me like crap makes that much easier.

-okay hello... so in a crazy plot twist... we won the storytime? i was really proud of my own contribution to the challenge, i passed on a LOTTA info to collin and he did so so good passing it, ruthie SNAPPED when she was so nervous and cindi brought it home. my game has been pretty smooth sailing, two easy votes and now im chilling on the most wholesome tribe ever. should i probably be throwing these challenges to save jay/timmy/austin... maybe... but am i going to... no. im not risking my game life when i see my entire current tribe as long term allies. ideal scenario is that group implodes and sets us up to pick up the pieces at merge... maybe? but also i think we are swapping again before merge, so just adding another challenge with the shakespeare challenge delays me getting jumped by the conglomerate of generic men, birch and jess. my closest ally right now is definitely ruthie, i LOVE ME SOME RUTHIE. vi, cindi, collin, timmy and rachael i also trust to some extent. bodhi i literally would get an indescribable seretonin rush from voting out... i would LOVE the opportunity to jump him in this game. am over that man. but im vibing having fun! still have an idol! and living my BEST life ha. im sorry my confessionals have been underwhelming but my game experience has been pretty smooth sailing so far ha.

-Spill the tea! *It's 1:11AM and I still miss Gavin.

-It's 8:59 PM and I still miss Gavin. prayer circle for Gavin <3

https://youtu.be/JSmJThHF-tU

So I did something. I am not allied with 5/7 people on my tribe. I have the "3 Canadians, oh and the 2 American Hosts" Alliance of me, Jess and Keegan. I am not quite as Loyal to that alliance as I am my new one. But I still don't want to vote them out. If I HAD to I would but i want to keep them. I really like both of them. I just made the "The Jolly Crew" Alliance which is Me, Jay, Timmy Z and Zach. I love this alliance. I vibe really well with Timmy and Jay. I am a little more iffy on Zach but he is really cool! I stan everyone! I guess out of the 2 people left I would prefer to vote out chips? He tends to be kinda inactive and I talk to him the least. IDK I'll go with the numbers, and my alliance.  

Another round, another immunity win. I’m just living life and am happy with how this game is going. Don’t really have to do much but making sure it won’t be me if we eventually do go to tribal.

We lost the challenge despite my best efforts. I think we’re voting Jay

I wish i had something of substance to say but this tribe refuses to go to tribal :/ i've found spots where TWO idols were in the past i think??? lions -> straight ahead -> ask for a tour, and vikings -> small boat -> get on the small boat

Soooooo... we lost the challenge again an' I got kidnapped by the gentlemen o' fortune. love that there fer me! then, to me surprise, right off o' the bat, jay threw me name out. so 'e be essentially dead to me now an' I expect 'im to be leavin' tonight. his blood ‘ill be on me hook after tonight. luckily fer me, I went around an' started spreadin' that there I 'ad 'eard 'e been sayin' me name—and 'e 'ad apparently only said it to zach. so now, the votes be between zach an' jay... an' I could not be 'appier as me name be off o' the table as farrr as I know. so bless to the sky to that there. I be expectin' jay to set sail tonight, but who knows. there been a lot o' talk o' 'im or birch 'avin' an idol or some kind o' advantage (which I believe birch may 'ave something), but I don’t think I be playin' me idol unless I catch wind o' somethin' strange 'appenin'... but me fingers be crossed an' I be goin' to 'ope fer the best.

2nd win and Ali is chucked to the tree house. Gotta do a music video

So the Annie curse strikes again............ wooo. This vote is a bit of a mess but honestly this all works out for me. Jay going ensures that I have Chips/Birch's loyalties moving forward and honestly the more OG Annie people that go the better. I hate the whole tribe lines situation but honestly I'm kind of stuck in it and I think I'm stuck in it for the long haul or at least for now. Zach going ensures I can climb the social rankings of the OG JACK tribe but it also might make me land on the bottom and it would be such a gamble. Do I trust Zach? no. Do I think everything Birch/Jay are saying about Zach is completely true..mhm BUT I need him just for a bit longer at this point. Also if Jay didn't say Gavin's name I probably would risk it and vote out Zach but at this point I can't not vote out someone who is saying my number 1's name... I want another swap because I'm bored of talking to the same people and I need to form some new bonds before merge. 

With me getting one vote last time, I really wanted to secure my spot within my team and was able to talk with Zach and Jess into making an alliance chat with us and Keegan/Gavin. Hopefully jay goes tonight but I’m not to sure. In the challenge bitch was terrible. We are a bit nervous they got an advantage or idol on exile which is why we are telling everyone the vote is birch tonight. Guess we will see how tonight goes

I'm doing lots of house stuff today but I hear there's a mess to be had with Jay versus Zach. I want to vote Zach because he has been acting head honcho but also... dont care too much. Im going to try to force a tie then get blindsided out of the game. Hype energy!

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The Round 5 Cast Assessment will be combined with Round 6 (on the next episode)

[ts-nightingaleislands]

Episode #2- “My dumb ass tribe apparently doesn’t know how to play chess”- Tawni

I want to go and do some chatting today if I can, get people feel more comfy. I have to be consistent because when you're consistent peoppe are going to want to have you around longer. So I am gonna work on the whole tribe if I can!!

I am so conflicted right now. Rizo has potential to be one of my closest allies and that makes me kind of concerned for this. The twist has me needing him gone to get the idol and Im not concerned with it, but like realistically I feel like I have one of the easier lists...I cant decide if I should trll him to assure I never want the idol or keep it a secret. I could claim Ill never target him but really it would make me paranoid that my ally has me as an option on the table. Gosh Im in a pickle

I think an alliance may be brewing! I was approached by Chris and Gwen talking about a group of five of us, but nothing is concrete yet. I hope it's true though, the five consists of myself, Gwen, Chris, Sara and AnnMarie, which are the people I personally find the most interesting so they're definitely the people I wanna see stick around. Kyle's fun too, but we've only spoken a couple times and as soon as I thought our conversation was going somewhere he left me on read, so... ya..

so, i'm a mess and forgot to do this for round one,, sorry!! but, it was actually kind of an interesting round. upon meeting my tribe, i was mainly just trying to get to know everyone and at least introduce myself, which was honestly kind of overwhelming especially never having met these people LOL. but all in all, i think it went well. i at least made a bit of conversation with everyone on my tribe which was super good i think. i think the first talk of strategy came from zach, who wanted to make an alliance with like everyone but cheatham, dylan, and will which was kind of messy. i made the mistake of mentioning cheatham's name as the vote in that chat before i realized that no one else in there was loyal to that alliance LOL and actually wanted to vote zach out for being messy. as far as i know, cheatham doesn't know that i said that so hopefully he never gets around to hearing it??? but anyways, after that mess, i was added to another alliance called the sane ones, with noah, tawni, cheatham, and dylan. i actually really love this alliance and im super thankful to be a part of it. we all discussed voting zach and sure enough that's what happened. so last round was pretty straightforward with a unanimous vote against zach. however, in my new alliance, i have been informed of austin making an alliance with the same people in my alliance minus me LOL. so now i have to watch out for austin who is probably coming after me since he isn't including me in my alliance. but i feel pretty decent right now, i really do feel like that alliance has my back and im working on building individual relationships as well. i feel closest with tawni i think since we are currently bonding over our distrust of noah since he's kind of fawning over the fact that we are women?? like what?? LOOL please i don't want to deal with straight men this game honestly. but anyways yeah i'm kind of hoping we don't have to do tribal again so soon because it was pretty stressful, especially now that i know some people aren't including me in things.

Going into the first immunity challenge, I was confident that my tribe could pull thru because for the most part we were all very active. In the time of the challenge I have made great connections with everyone in the tribe and I feel like I have info coming from everyone. I was able to make Gwen Sara Chris Kyle and Annmarie all feel like I was there number 1 and truly idk who is my number 1. I do enjoy Gwen Chris and Sara. As of now they are my final 4 and we have our alliance the Corgis. I am ready to lose and go to tribal and see if these guys are loyal. In terms of target I don’t really have anyone because everyone seems great. Steven has been the least active so as of now I would say him. But the twist is interesting because I want the idol but I do not want to target any of the people on my list so I will play it by ear. But expect some fun and aggressive gameplay.

A lot, I'll make another one later but it's always good to form an alliance you know.

I need to stop showing more of my personality to these people because if I show my self fully it’ll give people a sense of what I am like so for now on I will tone down how I talk to people. Also if we lose I’ll make sure Vincent will be going home.

Austin told me there are 2 trios, and I'm not in either of them :(. Apparently Noah, Will, and Cheatham have a sort of pregame, and then Amy, Dylan, and Tawni have all aligned as well. If I'm going to be honest, I may have made a bit of a hasty decision when I said I wanted to side with ADT over NWC. I wanted to vote Will out for a while, and hopefully I'll get my chance to soon. But winning the challenge would also be a favourable outcome!

Ok so chess. That entire situation was stupid. First off. My dumb ass tribe apparently doesn’t know how to play chess. So the resident stoner had to volunteer aka ME! So at the challenge we, Tim and I, get propositioned with potentially getting an individual advantage by forfeiting while in the lead. Well not even caring about an advantage going into the challenge to begin with I was fine with losing. I would have been fine waking out completely empty handed. But tim being the angel, hoping he doesn’t make me regret calling him that, he is let me at least get the individual reward. But I’m not sure how knowing will has me on his list will help me. Considering he is on mine as well he was already a target for me. It kinda helps knowing I dont have to go after someone who isn’t on my list but I’m not sure how I can actually use this advantage ATM

Noah is still on my side apparently because he leaked Will's plan to vote me. Of course, a part of me is still worried that this is a 4D Chess play which still ends with me dying, but until that my vote will be for Will (most likely).

I HATE LOSING! we need a win but....im doing loyalties for this vote so i can build trust and have numbers on my side

Before the challenge my mind was set on Vincent going home and now it is Amy. So I was able to tell Vincent and Austin to vote her ass out and I told Noah to ask Dylan to vote her out as well and to also I got Noah to tell Dylan if Dylan can be a decoy vote for Amy so we don’t have to worry about who’s she voted for when she’s being given a decoy and the girl doesn’t even know, I’m kinda setting up Noah to look like a stronger player in Dylan’s eyes, I just hope I perceive to be a weak player as in strategic wise to the others. The Queen Stays Queen Adios Amy xx

Man petrel is on a roll. 3 straight challenges and I must say I am impressed. I am happy my team is successful but I’m kind of disappointed I wanted to go to tribal. I wanted to get this game going and see if I could make some moves. I’m confident in my Corgis alliance the the side relationship I have build with Kyle and Annemarie that I think I have a good grasp for the game. I wish we lost and I would have probably waited to see what everyone wanted to do. I’m expecting Steven to be the number 1 target in my estimation. I would like to target maybe Tim because he is a strong player and was on of my targets so I would love the chance to go into the immunity pool for that idol. But I have to be patient and passive I just really want to see where everyone loyalty lie. Should be very interesting

I don't want to lose because I actually like everyone on this tribe. But...we're all literally just sitting here singing Kumbaya around the campfire. The REAL test is going to come once the game turns dog eat dog. After this tribal, Thrush likely will be at least somewhat divided and know that those in the minority might be more likely to cross tribal lines in the instance of a swap. Petrel is loose and unpredictable! So....I'm not asking for tribal....but I'm sorta asking for tribal! It would tell a lot!

Well! I was surprised how organized we were as a group in the challenge! I definitely feel we make a great team and honestly I think for me once I feel like I am under pressure I act out and I am happy I was able to contribute

Hello! So I am waiting in the standby line at Radiator Springs right now so...45 minute wait yay! It’s a good thing we won the challenge yesterday so I can enjoy Disneyland without having to worry about tribal. What’s really interesting to me is that I see myself trying to implement David Bloomberg’s rules without even realizing it. I’m scheming and plotting, albeit trying to keep a lot of it under the radar - to at least make it appear like I’m not scheming and plotting too much. So for example, for rule clarifications for the immunity twist, I am getting those answers in my host chat rather than the tribe chat. I don’t want them to know that I am actually thinking about these things strategically. Last thing I want to do is be michaela-ed out of this game and be undateable!!! I would like for me or one of my alliance mates (preferably Chris or Rizo) to get the idol if we end up having to go to tribal council and vote people out. It isn’t so much that I want to have the immunity, but I want to know where it is. In this game, knowledge is power. Knowing who has the immunity idol is important. Ideally it’s on our side, but if we keep winning, it might not be. If the other tribe does get it, we will have to keep the majority OG Petrel and split votes. That would probably be our smartest option, assuming everyone is willing to stay Petrel-strong. That’s my plan for now. But don’t doubt that I will flip if I think it will benefit me in the game. Another thing that I did this round was discussing a little strategy with Chris, as he is my #1. I wanted to get a feel for where his head was at in case we went to tribal council. (We had this discussion on voice chat during the immunity challenge). My thinking is that I want to try to get some cards out on the table pre-losing a challenge just to not make it look like I’m just strategizing because we lost. It’s a tough balance. So what I did was I just asked Chris where his head was at in case we did lose. We both agreed that the 6 needs to stay strong (Chris, me, Rizo, Sara, AnnMarie, Liam). That leaves Kyle, Steven, and Tim. I waited until Chris threw out a name first. He said that he didn’t like how Tim reacted in the first immunity challenge when our second move didn’t count because we formatted it wrong. He said that he didn’t like that Tim was sooooo upset at the hosts. That gave me an opening to share that when I accidentally made an incorrect Harry Potter reference, Tim all of a sudden didn’t talk to me as much. I didn’t share my thoughts that I think Tim is very smart and strategic. I would be afraid of him in the merge - he comes off as someone who would be okay throwing alliance members under the bus to further his game. I mean, I am too (IN THE GAME - I LOVE MY PEOPLE AS PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF THE GAME). So if we do lose an immunity, Tim will probably be a target; however, it may be beneficial to get Kyle or Steven out since they are on my list. We will see how things go if it comes down to it. Another thing that I need to balance is my threat level in challenges. It’s tough because I want us to win, and it’s hard for me not to take control of the challenges. I’m trying to control just as much as I think I need to to win, but not adding too much extra strategically if it’s not needed. Okay, so alliances: things are about the same, but there is one new alliance - Tim’s Devils. So basically, Tim made a group chat with AnnMarie, Sara, and me with some important information. Apparently when he played Hero’s chess with Tawnie, she told him that Noah has been a little creepy (AKA Dan-like) with the girls in their tribe. Now, unfortunately this could be three different things: 1. Noah could actually be creeping and that would be gross. I’m assuming that since he wasn’t ousted from the game, that if he is being creepy, he got a warning and stopped. 2. Tawnie could be making it up. Now, I would hope that wouldn’t be the case, especially given the events of the current season with Missy and Elizabeth. I really really REALLY hope this isn’t the case. Why would she do this? Maybe she has Noah on her list for the immunity twist. If she is doing it, and it’s for that reason, that would be super messed up. 3. Tim could be making up the story that Tawnie told him. Again, I would hope this isn’t true. What would his motivation be? Maybe to keep the target off of himself in a merge or swap? All three of these scenarios are messed up. Sexual harassment is not okay, and neither is using it for gameplay! So Chris said that Corgis is the new FOUTTE (four of us to the end - a bb21 reference). I said we have to keep the name Corgis, and Fessie is not invited. I’m in for that final 4, except for Sara. I adore Sara, but in terms of the immunity twist, she is on my list along with Kyle and Steven. So I need to figure out a way to get her out ASAP, without making it obvious that I’m doing it. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone in the tribe. AnnMarie knows she’s on my list, but I’m on AnnMarie’s list. So it might be beneficial to get AnnMarie out at some point too. I don’t know who else has me on their list. Chris is my #1 for now. As much as I adore him as well, I am not afraid to throw him under the bus in the finals. Chris, if you are reading this after the game, I love you and it’s just game play! I do want to go to the end with you though!!!!! F2! Or F3 with Rizo if that’s the case. The other tribe has been going to tribal. So unless we have a tribe swap soon, they are more likely to get the idol first. So that is definitely something to keep in mind. If Noah goes home tonight, it will be in the back of my mind that Tawnie may have him on her list. And if someone from their tribe gets the immunity, then she may be a contender. Should keep things interesting! Okay, so it’s almost time for me to get on Radiator Springs - so that’s it for now!

So I find that my top 2 are Rizo and Gwen, both of whom have now told me in various ways that I'm their number 1. This should be interesting! I actually dig Rizo a lot but also I had good vibe on Gwen since seeing her intro so we are gonna have to see how this plays out!

I talked to Gwen and we both said we didnt have each other for the twist but I voiced my concern on having the name of someone I like but beung unsure if I should tell them and she felt best to not say a word so I guess Im not telling Rizo 8l

Okay FIRST OFF i don’t wanna day that i’m controlling the game. But i’m controlling the game. I’m obviously a F2 with Tawni bc we know eachother and we tell eachother everything. Noah thinks he’s my F2 but tbh i hope me and tawni can get him out soon bc he’s so PARANOID. Will thinks that we are bffs and i’m blindsiding him tonight. Dylan and Amy think i’m super close with them. And i’m also cool with vincent and Austin. Everyone keeps coming to ME with different plans and it honestly feels nice. I’m just gonna keep being nice while telling them what is going to happen. mwah X

Everything’s going good(knock on wood). We’ve won two straight immunities and the reward challenge(way to go Tim), and we’re about to have the numbers by two people. Hoping we can keep our immunity streak going. I want to get a good group going, possibly with an alliance chat. I feel pretty good with everybody. Really hoping we don’t swap anytime soon. And finally. Go Petrel.

Ok, so I'm gonna be a little mean, but I think I already know who doesn't like me. It feels like a lot of people in my tribe. Everyone is lovely, but I feel a bit disconnected from everyone, especially because of my inactivity. I'm happy though, because everyone works so well in challenges. My inactivity due to school is gonna mess up my game for sure. I'll try to be a bit more bold and there, so I'm not as forgettable as I think I am.

7 votes Will, 1 vote Amy.

[survivorkomnata]

Episode #9: "Anyone wanna speak up?" - Zach

they tRIED IT SDLGKDMSKLGM

ok so miguel was voted off 5-4-1 miguel/ME??/luke. the four people who voted me were stephen / ally / jess / luke. thankfully, i could count on the Kato 2.0 people on having my back. we also just made an alliance!!! because FUCK my og alliance with stephen/ally/(and karthik). and I STILL HAVE AN IDOL.

ok i'm just shook. i lowkey thought maybe alyssa was playing me but.. she wasnt. she saved me and i owe her for that. i hope it doesnt really hurt her position in the game but she's by far playing the best i think.

i'm just shook. i'm not mad at anyone. i apologize for how i acted post-tribal but oMGGGfgGgG these BITCHES|!!! it's the game tho, and i hope i can keep on kicking and swinging cuz im gonna fight tooth and nail in this game.

also it's so funny idk why but me saying the last line was ALGKDLSGK i still laugh:

anyone wanna speak up?

(ill give more later im just.. frazzled)

Ummm so about that fucking vote. WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?! WE HAD THE CHANCE OF TAKING OUT A FORMER WINNER AND A PROVEN CHALLENGE BEAST! I'm convinced the IQ of this person who flipped is a -20 because.. that was the stupidest move in the existence of Tumblr Survivor..... and I'm the QUEEN of the House of Stupid Moves. I can declare it.

I'm not 1000% sure right now who it is but I have two guesses.

My first guess is: It was Ally.

Reasons: 1. Ally has admittedly worked with Zach in another Survivor game. 2. She also arguably had the MOST contact out of everyone with Zach all day. 3. She possibly wants to pin this vote on Alyssa to break up any possible alliance between myself/Stephen/ Alyssa. 4. She wants to break up me and Alyssa 5. The group of Karth/Zach/Ally is a thing?

My second guess is: Alyssa Reasons: 1. If Zach left she is the next biggest threat here. 2. She wanted a shield. 3. She's trying to build as many relationships with people as possible to cover her social fucking ass. 4. She hates me and wants to off me and will use Zach to kill me in this game.

I honestly don't even know if my predictions are correct here but... I sort of hope they are and I don't look dumb in the future.

My plan going forward is: to not create a bigger mess that was already created.

XOXOXO Jessip Girl.

I'd also like to add another reason why I think it's Alyssa is because Miguel was one of the people who tried to vote her off.

THANK U

Wow!! An attempted blindside gone wrong. This was really exciting and fun. These are the reasons I play this game for, finally happy to see these happening. A lot of lies and betrayal all of which is understandable but these things has got me pumped up. I am going to play with my emotions and they have triggered me. Time to start playing the game and play it hard. An attack on Zach is an attack on me, so they better be prepared to handle my rage.I feel this was a very good tribal in terms of the game as it makes its future bright and exciting. Luke....what are you doing??? Everything that has come to out of his mouth so far has been a lie. I just cant believe the way he is playing, no where close to what I was expecting from him.

After last night's chaos... my word. I have a feeling Touchy Subjects is going to destroy some people here.

Plot twist: I've heard some recent developments about the flipped vote.

According to Tim it was Luke? Oh? Buddy.... has officially been put on my "Shit List" in this game. You can't sit around and play both "sides" of this game. THAT'S MY JOB.

I'm not too sure how I'm going to break this to Ally. She might not believe me but I KNOW I NEED TO TELL HER.

Also: I still don't get why sooo many people trust Tim. I know Tim doesn't trust me anymore or maybe... not as much as he used to. BUT why did he tell Zach right away about the Miguel vote yesterday? IT ALL SEEMS SO SKETCHY.

Being thrown in the basement has given me an opportunity to reflect on some things in the game. I was kinda flattered to be the winner of both "running the game" categories in Touchy Subjects. Unfortunately, that perception might cause the other players to plan more behind my back. I know from last vote that being in the basement before Tribal Council shouldn't impact things tooooo much for me. Still, I'd rather have the opportunity to talk with people whenever I want.

Speaking of last vote, I tried to blindside Zach! And it didn't happen. The original plan was Miguel, but things got switched up when no one seemed to bite into wanting him out. Ally wanted to get Tim instead, which signaled to me that she obviously didn't have a strong relationship with him. So I had to swoop in and say Zach should go instead because Tim is in one of my many alliances. Honestly I'm beginning to prefer the 4 Elements alliance over AJ's Angels because it's possible Alyssa was the one who flipped, and she's not telling me it was her. But after Touchy Subjects, I think I have a better chance against Karth in the end than I previously thought. He's viewed as inactive, which I personally disagree with, but that perception is very good for me.

Another alliance I'm in is the "Samurais" which I would have liked to call "The Resistance" but Luke had other plans. I honestly just view this alliance as a means to an end. That end being.... getting Zach out, SOON! Hopefully Ally has a case of tunnel-vision with getting Zach out as soon as possible and her/Luke don't suspect a thing when I flip right afterwards.

All of this is contingent on Jess feeling the same way, since flipping on my own wouldn't get me the numbers, which I think she will now that she sees the other players view Karth as being dragged to the end.

I'm still in the basement, so I don't know who the 2 sides are voting for. I doubt Zach sent me down here because he wants me to find an advantage... so I could be a target. I hope Karth and Tim would keep that from happening, and push the vote onto Luke instead. I might prefer to get Jake out just because I don't have a strategic relationship with him, but beggars can't be choosers. It's not like I'm particularly close with Luke anyway.

Ok so sorry for not making confessionals as often as I did before!!  The game has literally been warped based off of the fist merge vote. Zach was targeted by Stephen, Ally, Luke, and JESS. Freaking Jess flipped on me when I thought we were really tight and cool. I played off my frustration with the others in the alliance of the 4 elements as understanding but I made moves. I first formed that allaince but now I formed an allaince of Kato 2.0 minus Miguel ofc. Tonights vote I want to do Luke but lets see. I will talk about challenge results soon as well!!

i won IMMUNITY!!! i'm so blessed because i've been told by two sources (namely tim & alyssa) that i was going to be targeted had i not. so? bless!

regarding what ''subjects'' i won: - would dump rice in the fire [true] - biggest physical player [true] - most likely to have an idol [true] - trust the most [false??] - want to see win at the end [false lol]

so that's interesting. i did a tentative game ranking and originally i put: alyssa > zach > ally > karthik > stephen > jake > jess > tim > luke

but now i'd put: alyssa > ally > karthik > zach=stephen > jake > jess > tim > luke but it's still super tricky to accurately rate because of the multiple factors you could include (threat size, potential to win, potential to go to FTC, allies, etc.). i honestly think my jury management is 0/2 so far, and that i will lose at FTC due to ''not working with people'' even tho i entirely blame others for that :D

now let's talk about the reasonings for voting me (hopefully i haven't spoken about this already): stephen - were worried about a potential idol play/new vote so they voted the "safer option", named zach. --> this kinda throws me off. i think it's realistically the most truthful of the 4 excuses, but it's kinda sad that my name was a ''safe'' vote opposed to someone having my back (because i have tried to work with them and especially like. jess.) ally - felt betrayed by the stephen w. vote and like i ignored her. --> i think this is dumb. firstly, girl, we kno u are STRATEGIC. secondly, i didn't ignore her whatsoever?? i was the closest to flipping imo but i didn't because stephen w. targeted ME? like if she genuinely voted me bc i didnt flip after my name was stephens main target (bar jake) then... sister idk what u want. luke - last minute scramble, didn't think i was getting many votes. --> well this is just false. point, blank and period. jess - that when she offered miguel's name, i was hesitant and freaking out (and that she wanted to be my number one opposed to number two). --> dumb. i told her miguel's name. i said it'd be sad but i'd be down and not willing to stick my neck out for miguel. maybe i came off poorly, sure, but if you truly wanted 2 be my ''number one'' u shouldnt make the vote me but rather someone else.

i'm just peeved.

on top of that, karthik is sooo rude??? like he didn't tell me shit about the basement until i confronted him. LIKE. I SENT AN ENEMY (OF MINE) TO THE BASEMENT AND YOU FAILED TO LET ME KNOW THAT YOU GUESS EVERY 6 HRS OPPOSED TO 24?? LIKE ?? I COULDVE SENT IN A DUCKING FRIEND!! so rude. i honestly am questioning my trust with him more and more through each round.

i also want to talk about someone that's great. JAKE! i love you so much. last confessional i may have doubted you (and, maybe the round before) but i'm extremely appreciative for you in this game and i can't stress enough that i'm just paranoid as duck and worry way more than i should. thank u LOL i trust u a lot now.

but, that's all in the past. let's talk about tonights vote. allegedly, stephen told tim that the target was going to be me, but due to immunity, jake is now the target. this makes a little sense given allys been wanting jake out the absolute MOST, but i feel like it'd be a decoy. don't matter tho xx i'm safe. alyssa is also apparently flipping (or, staying i guess) with our side and voting out luke - who is our sides target. i see logic in voting luke. he'll be the easiest of that side to get out, but on the other hand, he's the least threatening and if i'm going to flip someone, it'll be easier to flip people against ally (best liar, etc.) or stephen (running the game, etc.) opposed to luke (voted out next, don't want 2 see win, etc.). but have it be known that i'd CRAVE idolling out stephen or ally, and i may just do that.

it's still early in the day, and a lot can happen. i'll try* to keep yawls posted. i genuinely trust no one and i'm like at the stage of being sad ): because i don't think i can win and i don't think anyone wants to work with me even though i feel like i've been super social. i am always opened when i play games, and that may be 'snakey' or something but i'm willing to work with ANYONE. but they are not seeing that, and i don't know what to do abt it. maybe they're targeting me for being a threat (as a main reason), and that'd make me content but it feels like i'm one of those "one sided" people and... yeah. i guess only time will tell, but my fatass is in final 8 with an idol and all these birches know that, and i'll just have 2 play around that. good luck to me LOL ALSGKDLSKG

After a shocking touchy feelings, I’m feeling nervous about this tribal. No one is saying anything and I’m honestly feeling like I’m going home tonight. People are telling me I shouldn’t be and I want to believe them but I just don’t know.

ugh I want to save Luke but I cant afford to lose Tim/Jake/Zach's trust so I may have to just follow the groups preferences and vote Luke. I would rather have preferred the target to be Jess/Alyssa as they seem to be playing good games and aren't close to me. I had talked it out with Luke and now I feel like he would be help to my game down the line but dont feel like going over the board to save him.

Luke is voted out 5-4. He becomes the third member of our jury.

[snkpolls]

SnK S3E03 Results (Manga Reader Version)

The poll closed with 563 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated! 

Please note that this is the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!

Rate the episode

84% of users rated the episode a 4 or 5 this week, compared to 64% last week. This episode had less action, but was full of key character moments that manga readers were excited to see animated.

So far it's my favourite since it follows the most the manga but with some bearable adjustemements. If the episodes will be like this from now on, I'll be completely satisfied and could get over all the changes in the first two episodes.

The adaptation is doing well, but of course manga readers(me included) about some bits being changed and rearranged. But on the other hand they might come me up with something unexpectedly good. I won't forgive them if they don't give shit machine tho.

It’s starting to feel more like the arc I love

It was great, I'm having trouble deciding which episode is the best of this season yet. I thought the second one was the best, but then I remember the premiere and now, once again, I am thinking about the 3rd one being the greatest. The quality this season is off the charts.

Compared to episode 2, episode 3 was quite uninteresting

I think it must have been boring and confusing for Anime-only's

This episode was appropriately paced for an episode full of flashbacks, and honestly I think it paid off to get the backstories of Erwin and Historia in one showing to avoid conflicting with the future action episodes.  I don't have much else to say- I can't really be critical because it was a pretty good episode, adaptation-wise.

Which of the following moments were your favorite?

Hange taking their anger out on the table and Levi walking in on it is the winner here! The closest runner ups were seeing Levi’s wanted poster and getting Erwin and Historia’s backstories. We all agree it was nice to see many of these things in color animation finally!

Hange's scene where she blames her table destruction on a cockroach? Totally relatable. And I loved that Levi kinda teased her for it.

I have been waiting for Erwin's back story for AGES and was not disappointed! Kidwin was as heartbreakingly adorable as expected (that nose!! The sad bby at the funeral!!)

I liked all the topics they addressed that had been previously skipped (Historia and Erwin’s pasts). Also, while the sequence of events have been changed, I’m looking forward to how they are going to pan this out.

Erwin has great ass.

Hange's tableflip scene was amazeballs, man I love her!!

Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit. Pixis in a suit.

The conversation between Erwin and Pixis gave me thrills. I thought it was going to be boring, but it was very well shown.

My girl Hange's time to shine in this episode! I want her "BAAAKAAAA" as a ringtone asap

Who drew it better: WIT or Isayama?

51% of respondents thought the OG drew it best. Isayama can finally sleep at night. Funnily enough, the anime only respondents preferred WIT’s version!

Who has the best reaction to Historia’s backstory?

Sasha took the lead as she paused licking at her soup bowl to listen to Historia’s story. Connie was easily the next runner up with his dumbfounded expression. We weren’t surprised to see Springles win this one!

How cute was baby Historia?

The vast majority of respondents just wanna pinch those cute little cheeks (and probably take her home, treat her to some hot cocoa and love her properly).

And baby Historia was the cutest omg! That lil nose and her lil blush! I'm crying bittersweet tears here.

How could anyone possibly look down on and abuse such a precious little bean like baby Historia?? Alma's so pathetic…

Baby Historia is the cutest thing I have seen in anime. She is so adorable and sweet! I would love to hug her so much! She is just too cute! <3

Child Hisu is ADORKABLE

How cute was little Erwin?

While this is a tiny bit more spread out than Historia, the majority of respondents were also enamored with adorable kidwin and are ready to adopt him at any time (and probably give lots of hugs too!).

BABYWIN!!!!!!!!!

Young Erwin was def my fav bighead-bigbrows!

I love Erwin so muchhhh my precious baby is so cute and handsome at the same timeeeee I just want to hug him and never let anything bad happen to him againnnnn

The episode was dialogue heavy with a lot of character backstories and plot exposition. What type of episodes do you tend to prefer watching?

In general, respondents don’t mind if an episode has a lot of action or if it’s a bit slower with some good plot developments. What matters is that we keep moving forward and that it’s entertaining, right?

About episode type: Tense conversation ready to break into action at any second, like when Kenny and Levi were talking in the bar.

It was a nice change of pace after all the fights in the first 2 episodes but I'm looking forward to the action  coming back next episode

Did Flegel really stay in that alleyway the entire night?

We asked this mostly for fun and respondents didn’t disappoint. The majority believe that he did stay in the alleyway the entire night, but plenty of you had some fun commentary (and sass) to provide us all with some laughs:

Based on how the events at Erwin's went, I'd guess that Reeves was killed nearing dawn and it hasn't been that long.

During the night, he went to slay all of marley and came back in the morning, Flegel for president!

Oh crap, I didn't even notice that. Part of me wants to say maybe he left and came back, but that really doesn't make much sense if he's trying to not get caught. No doubt the Interior Squad would have surveyed the area a little before getting the body ready for a public reveal to frame Erwin.

He took one long leak

He went to get sour cream and came back

Slept in a trash-can then went for a morning stroll

insert Schroedinger's cat analogy

No clearly Annie came and rescued him

Somehow he knew Commander Handsome will be there, so yeah, he stayed. I would stay too <3

no, he crawled up the wall like a spider and slept on the rooftops dont worry

On a scale of 1-5, how distressed are you about Eren being tied, gagged and drugged?

Most respondents seemed unconcerned or indifferent to Eren’s current situation, but those who are distressed were pretty vocal about it:

PLEASE MAKE SURE THE POOR BOY GETS SOME WATER???  The little scene with his in-and-out of consciousness is very distressing to see!

I pray that Eren gets a happy ending; I feel SO stressed for him

Who has the best hat?

Connie’s sunhat took the lead! But we agree that all hats are good and that everyone was looking fab.

HAT HAT HAT I'm really hoping that from this point on, they will follow the manga more closely again, as I am not super impressed by the current shake-up in event order but most importantly HAT HAT HAT JEAN GOT HIS HAT.

The hats!!! The hats are so good!

Love his top hat but lost half his lines for it

JEAANNN'S HAAAT

How many flashbacks within flashbacks is too many?

Half of respondents appreciated the Inception reference and just want to be flashbacked into oblivion. Okay but seriously, there were some who got a bit confused by WIT’s use of flashbacks for some of these scenes. We hope you’re holding up okay during current manga chapters!

bit weird to slow it down this much when the first 2 episodes were so action packed, 2 flashbacks in one episode is a bit much if you ask me. the episode didnt give you any break or a few seconds to let the information sink in.

I was confused by flashbacks in flashbacks. I don't lke that type of stuff and I got feeling that they were traveling in time :/

How do you feel about the rearrangement of events after this episode?

45% are still tentative and not ready to judge the situation just yet. However, a good 37% combined are either content or are already finding they like the changes better. It seems the optimism is starting to improve overall!

Dont remember much of the order of events in this arc, as long as it all makes sense its fine. I trust Isayamas judgment

I prefer the manga’s order, but I am content, BUT I’m still waiting for more episodes to make a final judgement, BUT  I’m still very confused with where they are going with this.

I want to slap the whole WIT Studios and Yams but u know im okay for now.

Same story, different medium. Pretty neutral, happy I don’t know word for word what’s going to happen.

So I was very very nervous about the changes and pacing, but them taking the time to slow down and let the emotional weight of Historia and Erwin's backstories sink in is just what I needed to calm down a bit. I still have some preferences with the manga, but I'm sated to the point of watching and waiting without making too much of a fuss.

Some changes do make the action flow smoother, but im not happy that the studio decided to cut out Reeves-Levi wall bonding and L's squad 2.0's doubts on killing people

Rearrangement? Who cares? Erwin on graveyard was pure sex how was I supposed to thino about rearrangments???

I think the anime is doing a good job restructuring the arc, and is preserving its internal consistency quite well. But I am upset about some of the things that got removed, so I don't quite like the anime's retelling.

The rearrangement was understandable, however until I can look over the whole arc, I wouldn't be able to give a fair opinion on the execution of this season.

How do you feel about Historia’s absence when the Survey Corps proposed she needs to be queen?

As with the previous question, nearly half of voters are not yet ready to judge how the changes will affect the arc overall. 35% of you guys think it was a bad choice on WIT’s part. It’s probably safe to say we’re all on our toes wondering how WIT is going to handle this plot development as they move forward!

I hope we can still see the Levi smiling moment at the end of this arc despite the absence of these scenes.

I prefer Rod being the one to push the idea of her royalty into her, and I still think we'll get a moment regarding Levi's will to accept a different kind of hell and pushing Historia to make a choice in some other way later.

It didn't have a huge significance to the plot but it gave both Historia and Levi some good characterisation.

I feel a mixture of "I need more episodes" and "It was a poor choice".

Had to be done for an action packed start the season but I'm disappointed as it is an important scene for Levi's development

It was a poor choice that broke an important chain of events, it was Levi who had to force Historia.

Ralph called Hange a devil after they were locked up. Was this good foreshadowing to current manga events?

71% of respondents believed that this was good foreshadowing! We suppose one nice part of the anime being as behind from the manga as it is, is that we can recall these older moments that manage to have thematic relevance to current events.

I think Hange being called a devil was amazing foreshadowing, but also in a sense that, by overthrowing the current system, they are unwittingly putting themselves in the exact same position as the old government and its cronies were in with almost exactly the same problems and solutions available to them, the poor things just don't see it yet.

After this week, do you believe future episodes are now going to be more faithful to the original chapters?

50% of voters are confident that WIT is mostly headed back toward the linear timeline of the manga, with maybe small bits and pieces shuffled or omitted. 28% aren’t feeling as optimistic about it, however. But 18% are confident we’re back onto the strict manga timeline.

I'll have to wait and see all the episodes. No point trying to guess, only to be disappointed. Isayama authorised the changes, let's see what his new vision of these chapters!

I believe they will be faithful more than just "a little bit."  It seems the PV is a good indicator of that.  The Historia rising up to be queen is definitely going to be handled differently and there is no way around that.  But I'm ready, Wit!

im still trying to grasp what they trying to do of the pacing and the moments and i still hope the upcoming eps will make sense of all that cuts and flashbacks.

They'll have to do something different with Levi and Historia's 'discussion' about her becoming queen. I wonder if it will happen later, and someone else will do Reeve's line about him being a scary but good man? It would be interesting if someone like Mikasa does it.

Leaked episode titles PROVE they are gonna butcher up the cave scene

Maybe yes, maybe not. It all depends on Isayama and WIT, so let us wait for episode 41, shall we?

Which scene from the PV are you most looking forward to this week?

The largest group are most looking forward to Jean testing whether or not they can trust Marlowe and Hitch (please give us the stick WIT!). The close runner up is Levi interrogating the MP with the nice mustache and a case of foot-in-mouth. Literally.

I'm totally excited to see Marlowe and Hitch!

Central MP HQ next week?!?! Hoping for some new action scenes.

GIVE ME HITCH AND MARLO RIGHT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW

everyone in the PV is hot (yes pulverized erwin is still included)

Which group of characters are you favorite?

“All of them” wins as the good neutral vote.

I never know how to answer the which group is your favorite question because my fav is 104th + Annie (sans RB). So I'm always answering sans RBA which is unfair to Annie.

Where you do primarily discuss the series?

Additional thoughts on the episode?

A little bit better, but not enough. But overall I'm satisfied and I enjoyed it.

All in all, a very nicely done episode. I like how the story is coming together, all the different elements in the manga are there, just in a different order. I had high hopes for this season and so far I am not disappointed!

At this point I have absolutely NO clue where they are, or what's going on. The manga was less confusing for me.

Damn cockroaches, always ruining Hange's day.

Earlier I was really salty about Levi having to hold Mikasa back everytime it was mentioned that Eren was kidnapped, but later I noticed that instead of Mikasa being cool with it immediately like she was in her manga, in the anime they are slowing her development down to make it more realistic and believable(Levi had to physically restrain her the first time around, while the second time he just had to talk her down) so I still have faith it wit. I am still a little angry that the "That wasn't how I raised him." scene was cut though. It was an important Mikasa-Armin moment. But oh well! At least we got to see Jean in his glorious fedora!

Felt well-paced, I do like that they are tweeking things to make the anime feel more smooth.

Hanji looked like a snack throughout this episode shes so hot oh my god I’m so gay

Baby Erwin and Historia are wonderful, and I really like that they put two very different parent/child relationships on display here. Erwin's devotion to his father's theories, and the closeness to their relationship paralleled the neglegence Alma showed towards Historia - and in the end, the parents meet the same fate, offed by the Interior Squad."

Both Historia and Erwin's backstories needed stronger direction. Also, just a nitpick, but the soundtrack they used when Sannes told Hange "good luck" was an extremely weird choice. It was a very grim and ominous scene yet the music in the background didn't reflect that.

Pixis' lack of opposition was annoying. It seemed like he was just there so that Erwin had someone to talk about his backstory to. In the manga his red-line of no blood being spilled and his willingness to stay with the nobility if they had unknown but good reasons for their behaviour increased the stakes a lot.

I love the consistent tension buildup and the music choices that just compliment it. Sawano has been on a roll with the new tunes, and the way old ones have been used has been fantastic. Attack on D for Erwin's flashback is a choice I didn't consider, but I'll be damned if that wasn't a great call.

I just want to protect smol Historia and precious little Kidwin

Loving the development for Erwin. People need to realize that he isn't some cold hearted badass. He has feelings too ya know!

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll see you back on Monday!