#let it be known that this is the second episode of the second season. directly following 'amok time'

[jakei95]

[Post in English] Something Nyx and I want to publicly address, regarding the recent allegations in the Glitchtale Crew's Discord Server and it's moderators. I really apologize for the upcoming wall of text. These are our Twitter threads I have pasted them here, in case you don't have access to said platform. I have also added some additional notes to provide more context. All details under the line:

NyxTheShield: (Transcription from his official twitter thread) I read some mean comments lately and I just wanna be super clear: I havent been related to Glitchtale since at least 2022. I never considered myself part of the community and went through some much shit while doing stuff for it that my mental health was completely destroyed.

For people who thought I was an admin of the server, that was just in paper. I was constantly de-admin'd, demodded and kicked from the server through the years for simple stuff like asking the rest of the mod team to not say slurs or standing up against the Midnight Crew. I personally left the server for a long while because I really did not want to be around some of the people there. All of this happened years ago (from 2016~ to around 2020). On the early years, my full income came from Youtube/Glitchtale. I was a broke college student and my economic stability depended on it. Despite this, and making literally hundred of tracks and hours of music for the series, most of the income came from my own ad revenue. I was paid less than 2000 USD for all of the work. Essentially, I was paid in exposure.

This wouldn't have been an issue for me if at least I got to keep my artistic vision with the series. That didn't hold true for long.

From the second season and onwards, and in multiple instances, I would score the entire OST for the episode, watch the episode when it released, and then find out a completely new section of the episode (usually a battle scene) with music from somebody else This was completely demotivating to me because I wasn't being paid, the tracks would not fit the rest of the OST at all, and most of the income I made from the battle scenes. I had to work for weeks trying to compose music for glorified powerpoint presentations (Basically everything that's not a battle scene on the series was just still frames of characters barely moving) and do all the heavy lifting and I wasn't even let known about the guest tracks.

This added to the feeling of having absolutely no power within the community. I don't know if this was intentional or not (I don't wanna presume malice), but all of these things together contributed to me distancing myself from the community.

Honestly, there is A LOT more shit that went down these early years that are extremely traumatic to me that I would prefer to not talk about unless completely necessary, but I feel this is a good amount of context for what I wanna talk about next.

As you might be aware, extremely serious (and true) allegations were made against Camila and his partner, Veir, which was accused of grooming minors from 2015 to 2021 There are really good videos out there explaining the entire timeline of what transpired, but I specifically wanna talk about 2020.

(Jakei's note: Links to said videos are here: [1] [2] [3])

In that year, a public document was made by my head mod CrystalFlame alongside 2 other mods in the GT server, that exposed Veir and their actions. This document went mostly unnoticed. Even more, Crystal went through a lot of abuse for coming forward about their abuse and was almost ostracized from the UT AU community because of this.

Because of this, I was asked directly by one of the victims (and also representing the other victims) to please not speak up (Citing that they just wanted to move on and didn't want to involve themselves with more problems and expose themselves)

All the info was kept very vague from me, including the people who were involved, the extent of the stuff that went down, etc But I knew enough to know it was serious. I followed their request and didn't speak up publicly about this, but I banned Veir from my server, warned all of my mods and people close to me in those circles about Veir, and constantly tried to get Camila to please adress the situation. Despite this, she did not listen and we all know how stuff went down later in 2022, where the allegations came back again with full force. This time around I wasnt asked to stay silent so I spread the word around and confronted the entire mod team. I was shortly banned after that.

I needed to address this because this thing has been eating me alive for years. I was intentionally kept in the dark about a lot of context and nuance that would have completely changed my mind about speaking up or not about what happened in 2020.

Everything is easier in retrospective, and with the knowledge I now have about the situation I know for a fact that I would have spoken up about all that happened. But being asked directly to not speak up by the victims was something that goes against what I am Sorry for the long rant, but I really needed to get this off my chest. I am tired of having to deal with this kind of stuff. As a content creator/public figure I am trying my hardest to keep the communities I am active in as safe as possible.

I feel I could have done more for the Glitchtale community regarding the grooming situation, but all of the years of abuse that I endured really fucked up my judgement. I am not very good at dealing with people and I always trust the people close to help me for this kind of stuff

Sadly, in this case, those same people who were close to me were also the victims, so they couldnt have known or had a way to help me out, I should have helped them instead. Most if not all of what was described in this thread is backed up by screenshots, chat logs, and direct testimony from the people who were involved during this time.

I don't want to direct hate to anyone or start a witchhunt, I am doing this purely to decompress a bit and try to vent some of the trauma I experienced all these years.

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Jakei: (Transcription from my official twitter thread) I would also like to share my experiences about my relationship with the Glitchtale Creator, Camila Cuevas. Publicly, we appeared as close friends, but in reality, that friendship was based on bullying and mistreatment, and this affected my mental health deeply.

Years have passed, and the memories still cause me pain. I decided to remain silent, but after the revelations of grooming cases in her community, I realized I wasn’t being too sensitive. The time has come to speak up about my experiences.

During the early years of Underverse, I was dealing with a serious depressive episode. Simultaneous internal and external pressures as an independent artist amplified my mental strain. Meeting Camila felt like finding a genuine friend who shared my passion for the fandom and understood the struggles of being a content creator amidst toxicity. At my lowest, I became compliant to doing things that I didn’t want to, just to keep people around me happy. For Camila, this meant allowing her to belittle my work and make me the butt of her jokes.

Only our veteran followers may remember the 'roasting games' between us on Tumblr (consisting of mutual insults), a spectacle where she'd always win. However, it was a game she privately forced me to "play" and I ended up accepting, despite the discomfort it caused me. These 'games' would give her a cool and strong image in the fandom while painting me as the dumb, 'cringe-worthy' friend. In essence, I became her personal punching bag, unknowingly reinforcing his reputation.

Camila's favorite term to demean my series 'Underverse' was “Cancerverse”. It felt like a constant contest where she'd always position herself as the superior writer and animator simply because my story and animation techniques didn't fit her standards. Years of being subjected to her ridicule left my self-esteem in ruins. I was okay with the negative feedback by some fans, but when my 'friend' publicly disrespected my art, it made me question my abilities as an artist.

I can't deny there were times when she gave me advice to deal with hate or hurtful comments. However, her damaging comments and treatment outweighed those moments of support.

My depressive state worsened around July 2017, where I had accepted people pushing me to do things I wasn’t comfortable with, while being part of Camila's demeaning games, just to appease her ego. I was introduced to Nyx during this time, he offered his music for my series, and eventually we started dating. We met in person in Chile, where I also met Camila. I hoped our friendship would strengthen but everything felt the same. Before I moved to Chile with Nyx, Camila reached out to me in dms, attempting to turn me against him because he opposed the use of slurs in the GT server. She claimed Nyx was being 'brainwashed' by his American friends belonging to the black and LGBTQ+ communities. She made fun of my dating choices, suggesting I was entering a toxic relationship, while showing off her relationship with her then-boyfriend (later exposed as a pedophile). She even quoted her own mother assuring me that Nyx would 'get back to normal', and if it didn’t happen, she would let me live in her house, almost like if she was telling me that Nyx would hurt me or make me feel miserable.

It only took Nyx 3 months to realize that the GT server was going in the wrong way. I initially felt compelled to defend Camila due to my inferiority complex, but soon realized Nyx was right. (Jakei's note: Not only Nyx was right, a lot of people that called her out over the years were right, yet they were not listened to at the time)

Even then, I found it difficult to distance myself from Camila due to the false sense of obligation I felt towards her. My fear of her making fun of my work kept me from interacting with others in the short period of time I stayed in her Discord server. I was afraid that she and her echo chamber would talk behind my back, something that I found out was happening in private chats until recent years.

Rebuilding my self-esteem wasn't an easy task. I began noticing the red flags – Camila's lack of respect not only for me but Nyx also, the emotional manipulation Nyx was suffering from Veir (something he used to do all the time with his other victims), her attempts to 'roast' me in front of her family and fans in the Underverse/Glitchtale meetings, and her constant criticism of my artstyle not being compatible to hers in the few collabs we made.

All these 'small' instances, dismissed as insignificant by many, caused me immense pain while treating my depression. I felt it was too late to express how I felt, as I feared being labeled as attention-seeking or oversensitive by her and her fanbase. Ironically, the moment she talked about her traumas after being bullied in the past, her feelings were the only ones that mattered any time she was involved in a problematic situation in the fandom and deserved to be the only to get pats in the back.

I never expected a sincere apology, as I was convinced she didn't remember or didn't care about the hurt she caused. I tried to maintain a facade of good terms with her, both publicly and privately. Eventually, I distanced myself from her, unfriending her and banning her from my own server even if she didn't interact there. I started focusing on my own work and the people who appreciated it. Despite this, the aftermath of the bullying continued to affect me.

Everything fell into place when the grooming accusations against her former boyfriend and server mods came to light. It was a shocking revelation, but it validated all my doubts and fears about her. The purpose of sharing my experiences is not to stir up drama, but to address the concerns of those worried about my association with Camila. I want to make it clear that I will never tolerate such behavior. Although the things I did for her in the past cannot be erased, I hope Camila at least deletes the animation remake I did for her and all the collabs that boosted her views for free, though I'm not optimistic about it happening.

As I've matured, my hope is that she and her crew learn from their mistakes, start behaving like adults, and take responsibility for their actions in their future projects and with their new followers. But I'm skeptical about any real change, especially if their server continues to exist. The best course of action for me was to cut all ties with Camila and Glitchtale.

NyxTheShield (now my husband) and I have endured too much from our treatment by Camila. We no longer want to be associated with her or Glitchtale. It's a chapter of our lives that we wish to close. It's time for us to focus on recovering our mental health, as remaining silent is only prolonging our pain. We have been working to improve our mental and physical health over the past few years and this is a crucial part of our healing process.

[wheelerpilled]

'forced conformity is killing the kids'

Mike Wheeler ST5 Theory/analysis

So we've all seen the new BTS of Finn Wolfhard on the set of Stranger Things dropped and OH MY GOD. THE DUALITY FROM LAST SEASON.

I have to TRY write about it ATLEAST...because wow I have a lot of potential thoughts, sorry it's once again unstructured, messy, and repetitive but stay with me please!!!!!!!!!!

I've seen ALOT of people happy we're getting s1-2 Mike hair back but guys .....it's not a good thing!!!!!!!!!! Mike is going THROUGH IT.

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In Season 4 it's acknowledged that Mike is finally coming into his own a bit, Eddie says he was wearing 'whatever his mom bought him' when he first came to highschool, but in episode 1 when we see him for the first time in S4, he's clearly been influenced by Eddie and has figured out what style he likes and what he's interested in, he's in a DND club, he's comfortable being known as an uncool nerd, he's growing his hair out (yes I DO believe it's because he idolised Eddie, I have more to say about that in a second)

basically: his hair and his outfits, aswell as pretty much the way he acts in Hawkins (NOT California- he goes back to pretending to be something else) in S4 represents the ideology non-conformity and his sense freedom in this new persona

he doesn't feel lost in highschool anymore, he's doing what he likes with his friends (DnD) and he's proudly wearing his hellfire shirt around school/Hawkins, basically, he's accepting that it's okay to enjoy 'different' things that aren't considered the norm, and it makes him happy, he feels comfortable!

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But now in Season 5, from the pictures we've seen, it looks like he's fully reverted back into his shell, I guess I understand why tbh I don't blame him:

he comes back to Hawkins after everything and everyone believes he's in a satanic cult- townspeople probably treat him badly and Jason's team mates probably blame Eddie and the rest of hellfire for Jason's 'disappearance' (death). They directly connect him with all the horrible things that have happened to Hawkins as of late

...which is probably what the BTS of them walking towards Mike are about, they probably keep harassing him no matter how he acts and Mike just wants them to leave him alone, let's face it:

High school has probably gone full circle back to middle school for Mike and he's getting bullied/mistreated again. So he feels his only option is to remove himself from Hellfire and become 'normal'.

Hellfire might maybe even be blamed for the gates being opened. Last we heard, the townspeople were hunting down Eddie and the rest of hellfire, and the graffiti on Eddie's grave in the S5 pics shows that he's still very much hated.

Mike probably got harassed by multiple people who don't believe Eddie's dead, or believe Mike was in on it and are out looking for him, or think Hellfire contributed to some satanic ritual causing the 'earthquake' and thus Mike is also a target and it's dangerous for him.

So I think part of the style change and haircut is due to THAT, he doesn't wear his hellfire shirt anymore because he doesn't want any affiliation with the club.

As Finn Wolfhard has said in previous interviews 'mikes just trying to act as normal as possible' so by seperating himself from Eddie/Hellfire and becoming more conventionally 'normal' he won't be treated like an outcast.

He won't be assaulted, bullied, blamed, or worse if he conforms. He has a greater chance of everything becoming better/easier while living in Hawkins if he does this, he might have even given up DnD aswell- so yeah he's gonna be pretty MISERABLE in season 5

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Alot of people wanted to see his reaction to Eddie's death, I think we'll definitely be seeing the lingering after effects of it, and alot of Mike's arc will kick off because of the aftermath of the vilification of Hellfire.

Only few people know that Eddie died to try protect Hawkins, Eddie was a role model for Dustin and Mike, but they're grieving him in COMPLETELY different ways

Dustin decides to honour him by taking up a similar style and proudly wearing his hellfire shirt, and is also probably trying to sway the town's opinion on Eddie and prove him innocent.

....But Mike seemingly decides that he DOESNT want to end up like Eddie anymore: dead and hated, known as a satanic freak.

Someone he idolised is now deceased, he doesn't know how to properly handle that fact, it's intimidating that someone he looked up to do much could be so hated, and in turn has caused the reaction from Mike that is basically 'if my idol is treated as such a horrible outcast, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps, where would that leave me?' he's feeling lost and hopeless, especially with the state Hawkins is in, so he probably decides the best thing to do is just blend in. Be normal.

It probably scares him that even merely his interest in DnD and all these other factors immediately make him a target, as far as townspeople believe- Mike is one of the kids who was close with a brutal serial killer, they probably think he's just as 'messed up as Eddie the freak was' for staying friends with someone who'd do such horrible things

I think Mike just wants to hide as much as he can right now, he has ALOT on his plate and doesn't need the rest of the town out to get him.

so if anyone asks: he'll probably say things like 'I didn't really know Eddie! I would never join a cult like that, I didn't know!' or something to try seperate his name from the hellfire club.

Mike will end up picking protecting himself and hiding his true identity and values/traits rather then living exposed and vulnerable; yet true to what he actually believes is right....And that is the opposite of what Dustin is doing,

Dustin is a proud hellfire member and friend of Eddie, he's picking what he thinks is right over self-preservation from the town, he's still wearing his battered shirt, now HE'S the one growing his hair out, he still adores Eddie and misses him (so does Mike probably, but he feels he CANT outwardly publicly show support or stand up for him)

I do wonder if this will cause some sort of tension between Dustin and Mike, because Dustin is doing the opposite and becoming more like Eddie instead of distancing himself from the hellfire name, he might feel betrayed that Mike 'gave up' on Hellfire, and maybe accuse him of not even caring about Eddie or his death?? Idk!!!!!!!!!! I feel like Dustin will also be going through it this season 😭😭😭

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I do also think Mike will try to be clinging alot to El this season (I mean, before they inevitably break up which I believe will probably happen kinda early on if it actually happens at all)

this is also because just the idea of having a girlfriend corresponds to his idea of conformity and being 'normal'. He just wants to be a normal guy, his life is nothing out for the ordinary, he's not interested in satanic things like dnd and hellfire, he's just a normal person. A normal person who is PROBABLY a target of Vecna in season 5 😓

I believe his arc for this season will be trying to breakout of these notions of conformity in exchange for things he actually likes and is interested in, we saw him sort of branching out in season 4, but I think THIS time it's happening for real, and he'll end up fully embracing his own views and interests after some sort of emotional arc-which will also probably be part of the M*lev*n break up (not censored because I'm against them/hate them I just don't wanna clog the tag for others 😭😭) OR set off by the breakup

Throughout season 1 he was told he liked El, or others assumed it, so I think he assumed it aswell, they just never broke up because El ALSO thinks having a boyfriend is normal and expected, and because Mike was the boy she was closest to she assumed it was romantic feelings (and he kissed her in S1 which probably contributed to her assuming they were romantic feelings)

Alot of the people around her are also in relationships, and she watched alot of TV with happy romantic couples so she thinks it's more normal to HAVE a boyfriend then to NOT have one, I think Mike and El kinda stayed together because they think they're SUPPOSED to by these social standards,

They obviously care about each other alot, and mistook it as reasons to just stay together, she wants to be a normal girl because only being a superhero isnt good for her, she needs to be 'Jane Hopper' and not '011'. I do think she definitely needs to be single for awhile and find herself, even if her and Mike are to be endgame, she NEEDS at least some time to gain some experiences outside of living her life as a superhero, (Mike also needs character development outside of being 'Els Boyfriend's)

Which is why it was vital that her time with max in S3 existed, so El could realise her value and that there is a life outside having a boyfriend- I think Mike needs a similar moment aswell, a wake-up call of sorts where he can take a step back and consider maybe rather than letting society dictate his actions, he makes decisions for what he wants for himself ('we make our own rules')

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If m*lev*n is endgame then sure that's great for them, but I genuinely don't know what big character arc could be in store for Mike that doesn't involve a breakup and themes of non-conforming, it doesn't even have to involve Byler endgame at all (although I AM a byler truther)

I think Mike learning that it's okay to let go of that romantic relationship if he doesn't feel that way anymore is a big step for his character, or atleast taking a break so he can work on himself, anything along those lines of actual development on himself rather then on his relationship- El and Mike have been romantically paired from the start, he needs to learn that it's OKAY to breakup with someone if thats what he feels is right, (side note: I DO believe El would/will be the one to breakup with him 😭)

I don't think he realises that he'll be able to stay friends with El, it's not 'shes my girlfriend or else she'll hate me for breaking up with her. No other options'

he doesn't want to lose her because he cares about her but he can't find a way to balance that romantic relationship alongside his other friendships. So I think for his character to develop they have to breakup, even temporarily, but obviously that's only my opinion if M*lev*n is endgame then oh well, it's endgame, but I think they would be a really awesome platonic duo and I'd like their relationship alot more if it was that way

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I think later in the season he'll realise that living this way not actually what he wants, and he doesn't want to give up who he is, or pretend to be something he's not- because he IS a nerd who likes DnD, and he does support Eddie, he cared alot about him because he idolised him, and i think season 5 is about him learning that that's okay and he doesn't have to feel so much pressure to conform by societal standards, bro needs a better grief process, forced conformity GOT HIS ASS 😭😭😭

What I'm trying to say is: all of this, and his new look is a safety net of sorts, he's still pretending to be something he's not because he feels he HAS to, otherwise it's dangerous for him in Hawkins because of hellfires reputation, but he's also acting this way because of other factors that I haven't really thought through yet LMAO

I believe season 5 will probably be him accepting those things about himself and embracing it, maybe also undoing his emotional repression along the way, I guess I would describe it as coming of age and I think if it's handled well it could be really beautiful in a way

OH MY GOD I RAMBLED SO MUCH AND IT ISNT EVEN A SOLID THEORY JUST A COLLECTION OF THOUGHTS😭

Sorry that was long and repetitive but uhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah..........anyways Mike Wheeler ily keep ur head up king please don't die in S5‼️‼️ stay safe‼️‼️

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

you once said that the ZK do not allow the canonical Zuko to show real, sometimes ugly signs of trauma. can you write more about this? because that's what I always felt when I came across their terrible takes, but I couldn't express it.

Gladly! But first, I need to mention the sign of trauma that Zuko usually lacks - and that, for some reason, the fandom insists defines his character:

Fear

Don't get wrong, I'm not saying Zuko never experienced fear. We all saw that poor boy on his knees, crying, begging his father not to hurt him.

But in "Zuko Alone" we also see 10-year-old Zuko get bitter that only his younger sister was expected to show off her firebending skills, and deciding that he would go against his father and demonstrate his own skills to the Fire Lord - that despite the fact that he knew Azula was better at it than he was. Even when it goes wrong, he is upset, but doesn't look afraid of the consequences.

That same episode shows Azula mocking him for playing with knives despite not even being good at it, and even though the fandom insists she was his worst fear ever since he was a child, Zuko responds with a "Put an apple on your head and we'll see how good I am." That little guy has exactly zero chill.

Let's not forget why he was banished either: Despite being considered too young to be in that war meeting, Zuko demanded to be there, eventually got his way, and despite having been told not to say anything, the second he hears a general suggest using their own men as "fresh meat" to lure the enemy, Zuko speaks out against it. And at the start of the Agni Kai, he looked 100% ready to fight a grown ass man with battle experience - until he saw it was his father/Fire Lord.

Let's not forget his Agni Kai with Zhao, which was his idea and that he actually won - and before that, he openly calls Ozai a fool, to which Zhao points out that banishment clearly not teach Zuko to watch his mouth. Or the time he openly challenged Azula in Ba Sing Se and they only didn't fight then and there because Azula knew she'd have the advantage by using the Dai Li. Hell, at the start of that very season, after she tried to lure him to a trap, Zuko's first reaction is to charge at her, fire-daggers in hand. That boy is the definition of "Fuck around and find out."

He has also done things like choosing to save his uncle from earthbenders instead of chasing Aang, crossing a blockade and going into actual Fire Nation territory even though he legally is no longer allowed to do that, and helped rescue Aang from Zhao as the Blue Spirit. It shows us that Zuko doesn't have an issue with temporarely deviating from his mission because of something HE deems important even though his father doesn't, openly disregarding Ozai's orders, and even basically saying "My father will have the Avatar as a prisoner only if I'm the one to capture him"

And, of course, on the day of the eclipse, Zuko grabs his swords and directly threatens Ozai, telling that bastard to sit the fuck down, shut up, and listen to his list of reasons why he sucks as a parent, ruler and person.

Zuko is brave. Unbelievably so. He is fierce, proud, and impulsive to the point of getting himself in situations that he should have known would not go his way (like fighting a waterbender in the snow, in the full moon) because he is very much a "act first, think later" kind of guy. So the fandom's insistence that he is constantly paralyzed by fear is a gross over-simplification of how his trauma affects him.

We only see him genuinely afraid of Ozai twice. During the Agni Kai itself, and then again when he WANTS to speak out against his father's plan to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground, but can't bring himself to because he remembers what happened last time he spoke out against that kind of horrible thing during a war meeting, at that very room. It took something THAT triggering to make him cower before a challenge.

However, fear wasn't the only reason why didn't speak out during that moment, and that takes us to the first "ugly" sign of trauma that the fandom as a whole likes to pretend Zuko wasn't repeatedly shown to experience:

"My father is right about me, actually"

Zuko doesn't think Ozai was wrong to disfigure and banish him. How could he? Nobody in that entire room stood up to at least try to support him, not even his uncle - who also once said "Why would your father have banished you if he didn't care about you?" because, surprise surprise, nobody in that family knows how to help someone through trauma because they're all dealing with their own shit. Even his crew, who WAS sympathetic to him after finding out how he got that scar, were still 100% willing to not only support Ozai, but risk their lives for him.

Zuko isn't just trying to heal from abuse, he is trying to heal from victim-blaming, and to go against YEARS of indoctrination that say the Fire Lord can do no wrong. That's part of why it was so difficult for Iroh and others to help him: Zuko didn't believe that he needed or deserved help.

And that is also one of his three major unhealthy coping mechanisms. Claiming that HE needs to prove himself to Ozai, that HE needs to make up for HIS mistakes, not the other way around.

It might seem strange that this could be a way to cope, but look at it this way: If it WAS his fault instead of Ozai's, then that means his dad is not an unfair, abusive piece of shit that is unbelievably cruel and impossible to please. Zuko just needs to accomplish this mission of capturing the Avatar and everything will be fine, they'll be a normal family again, and he won't have to be afraid of someone he thought he could trust.

It was like Iroh said: Things are never going to be the same ever agin, but the Avatar gives Zuko HOPE. And that hope that his abuser will one day have a change of heart and be a loving father to him again is both what allows Zuko not to give into despair - and what keeps him trapped in that awful situation.

Misplaced Anger

Another "unpleasant" sign of trauma that Zuko has is how he clearly has an anger problem. Sure, he's a moody teenager with a short fuse, but we see over and over again that he tends to blow things way out of proportion, and that when faced a fact or opinion he doesn't like, he is quick to lash out at someone with VERY cruel words (see him calling Iroh a lazy, shallow, jealous old man in "Avatar State", or calling him crazy and saying if he wasn't in prison, he'd be sleeping in a gutter in "The Headband").

Through the entire show, many people faced Zuko's wrath - Iroh, Aang and friends, his crew, Azula, innocent people of the Earth Kingdom, Mai, Ty Lee, that one rando that talked to Mai, and even Zuko himself.

The one person that usually escapes said wrath is, ironically, Ozai. In "Zuko Alone" he refuses to believe his father would ever be capable of harming him, in "Avatar State" he snaps at Iroh for doubting that Ozai really changed his mind about the whole banishment thing.

He is mad at Aang for being too difficult to capture, and at Zhao for stealing his one chance to come home. He never stops to question if it's fair that his father had him chase someone that was presumed dead, aka an impossible task, as the condition to bring him home. He also never addresses how he feels about the reason WHY said banishment happened until the Day Of Black Sun.

He is mad at Azula for lying to him and trying to take him home as a prisoner. He never gets mad at his father for not only wanting to lock him away forever because ZHAO screwed up at the North Pole, nor how messed up it was that he put Azula in charge of said mission.

For fuck's sake, in the day of the eclipse, we find out that Zuko legit believed his mother was DEAD - and the entire circumstance was shady as hell and put Ozai in a very bad light. Yet Zuko still wanted his love, still wanted to be a "worthy" son.

He HAS to direct his anger at other people, otherwise he'll realize that no, his father, the adult that was meant to care for him, is a complete monster.

Everytime Zuko lashes out at other people before confronting Ozai, he's basically acting like someone who is drowning and, in a panic, is trying to pull the nearest person under so he can try to breathe. It is one of the most accurate and honest representations of trauma and abuse, and it makes me SO mad when people erase it in their fics because "poor, innocent, helpless turtleduck that can do no wrong" makes Zuko look like less of a dick - and also completely strips him of his agency.

And that isn't even the thing that fans ignore the most. That "honor" goes to the simple fact that Zuko, as expected of a child raised to believe the Fire Lord can do no wrong, decided that Azula had the right idea and that the best way to avoid being a victim again was...

Copying His Abuser

Zuko has REPEATEDLY let his "inner Ozai" out through the show.

He is all manipulative by not letting the pirates know he was chasing the Avatar who was worth A LOT more than the scrowl they'd get as a reward for helping him, and by using Katara's necklace as a way to try and get her to say where Aang was.

He repeatedly steals stuff from innocent people (including some who helped him, like Song) because, in his own words "These people should just be giving stuff to us" - aka he's very much an entitled prince.

He betrays his uncle by joining Azula in Ba Sing Se, leading to Iroh being thrown in prison. He also doesn't give a shit when Katara says "I thought you had changed!" and he sends a freaking assassin after the Gaang. Even him refusing to tell Azula that there was a chance Aang could still be alive works both as a "Zuko doesn't trust Azula to not use that against him, and for good reason" and "Zuko did not even stop to think that, since Azula was the one who killed Aang, him coming back also puts HER in danger, because he's too focused on his own problems to notice anybody else's."

More importantly, he rejected a chance of a ceasefire with the Gaang three times (The Blue Spirit, The Chase, Crossroads of Destiny), much like Ozai refused his shot at ending the war in the finale before his battle with Aang, and not only did he challenge Zhao to an Agni Kai and seriously consider burning him, he also threatened one of his crewmen by saying he'd "teach him respect" - which we found out later that episode was what Ozai right before disfiguring poor Zuko.

For fuck's sake, Ozai was literally designed to look like an older Zuko. One without a scar, one that was never banished, one that never had to see first-hand all the death and suffering war brings and reflect on the role he plays in it.

Finally, we have the war meetings in "Nightmares And Daydreams", in which Zuko doesn't speak out against his father's completely inhumane plans to deal with the Earth Kingdom. When talking about it with Mai, he says "I was the perfect prince, the son my father wanted. But I wasn't me."

That is the turning point for Zuko for a reason. It's him finally being forced to acknowledge that, to become Ozai's ideal son, to earn his (conditional) love, to not be his victim he has to be just as bad as he is, just as cruel, just as unfair - and we see in Azula's breakdown how Zuko likely would have ended up if he accepted that path.

But he didn't, and that was not easy because even though it was the morally correct choice, it'd require him to sacrifice everything - his title as a prince, his right to be in the Fire Nation, his relationship with Mai, his (extremelly complicated, sometimes good, often awful) bond with Azula, the "easy" way to get literally anything he wanted at everyone else's expense, and, of course, accept that his father was never going to love him, was never going to change, and was never going to feel sorry for abusing him.

Erasing such a central conflict of his character for the sake of denying he ever did anything wrong is, ironically, removing one of Zuko's most noble character traits: his inability to just live with himself after doing something horrible. There's a reason he is in deep conflict even after getting everything he wanted after the fall of Ba Sing Se - he knows he doesn't deserve it after what he's done.

If you ignore his mistakes and the horrible consequences it had for other people, you also ignore Zuko's growth. This puts him more in the position of a good guy being held hostage by the evil villain, not of a troubled child that redeems himself as he matures.

No flaws, no mistakes, no growth, no arc.

Trauma Doesn't Just Go Away

This one is, by far, the bad trope regarding Zuko's trauma that Zutarians are the most guilt of: assuming that if he just gets enough comforting hugs (mainly from Katara), all of his inner turmoil will suddenly be healed. No more sadness, no more fear, no more of the ugly traits they never acknowledge in the first place. Just a happy, fully recovered Zuko.

But that's just not how these things work. Having the support of a loved one helps victims feel better, but it won't magically make everything okay. Trauma is a really difficult thing to handle. There's good days, bad days, relapses, bad habits that are difficult to move past from. And not only are there cases in which people take YEARS to recover, there are also cases in which they never fully heal, and instead just learn to live with that burden that is still very much present.

I understand the desire to show in fics and headcanons that Zuko will eventually be fully healed and happy, but the way Zutarians make Katara act as not just his girlfriend, but as basically his therapist that needs to find miracle solutions for every single one of his problems, comfort him whenever any minor inconvenience happens until he's gotten enough hugs to be magically okay doesn't just reveal how hypocritical they are, since they insist Kataang is about Katara being Aang's girlfriend/mom/baby-sitter, but also that they legit do not understand a damn thing about trauma and how it works.

Which takes me to:

How Mai Actually Did Right By Zuko

Poor, poor Mai. She gets blamed for "bring out the worst in Zuko", for not being "supportive", for being too cold and unemotional, for not "seeing the real him" - yet she's one of the characters that CONSISTENLY help put Zuko back on his track.

She offers him emotional support and lots of signs of affection over and over again - telling him not worry when they're arriving at the Fire Nation, pointing out she doesn't hate him when she says she's beautiful when she hates the world, explicitly saying she cares about him in The Beach, being incredibly sweet and loving to him during all of Nightmares and Daydreams, and then again in the finale by helping him get dressed up and acting all cute as they get back together.

But she also holds him accountable when he screws up. She doesn't let him use his difficult life as an excuse to be a jerk and calls him out when he's being unreasonable, or when she feels mistreated/like he's making a mistake (see The Beach and Boiling Rock Part 2).

But since the fandom loves to completely erase Zuko's mistakes AND to not let go of a stupid ship war, this completely changes the context, making Mai out to be this awful, bitchy girlfriend, when in reality, she did a great job handling Zuko - sometimes even better than the fan favorite and mentor figure Zuko had through most of his arc.

Uncle Iroh Fucked Up

Before all of you try to kill me, let me make one thing clear here: I love Uncle Iroh. He is one of the most awesome characters in the show, and I fully believe he was trying his best to help Zuko.

But he is still a human being that makes mistakes, and he was raised in the same dysfunctional family Zuko was, meaning he often had NO IDEA how to handle his deeply traumatized teenage nephew/son.

Him spending all of book 1 trying to help Zuko capture Aang so he could go back to living with the guy that disfigured him is already bad enough, but we also have the episode "Avatar State" in which Iroh asks "Why would your father banish you if he didn't care about you?"

Obviously he only did these things because he didn't want Zuko give into despair and depression - but he is still, at best, ignoring the issue, and at worst actively making excuses for Ozai's abuse of his own son. This backfires on him spectacularly, as Zuko sides with Azula over him both in the first and last episode of the season specifically because he believes that appeasing Ozai is the right thing to do, as he was only banished "for his own good."

But THE biggest mistake Iroh made when it came to helping Zuko was his refusal to accept that no, Zuko was never going to be happy by living a quiet, simple life in Ba Sing Se - even after Zuko explicitly said as much to his face.

Obviously, to some extent, Iroh HAS to make Zuko accept that he won't ever be able to come back home after Ozai literally ordered Azula to capture him, but he could have tried to find some kind of middle ground with Zuko, since being a waiter clearly wasn't making him happy.

"Oh, but what about how Zuko started acting after his metamorphosis? He was so happy about working on the tea-shop with his uncle, and that was supposed to reveal his true self!"

Yes, it was supposed to do that. But we saw how Zuko acted after actually dealing with his trauma and redeeming himself. He was obviously in a much healthier place, both mentally and spiritually, but he was still moody, still sarcastic, still as proud as ever, and even Iroh recognized that he was meant to be Fire Lord.

Zuko's arc has a lot to do with identity, with how he sees himself. At that point, the only thing he still had in life was his uncle - so he was acting like him, because there seemed to be no other role model, no other path. Seeing that weird, cheery, relaxed, always-seeing-the-good-side-of-things version of Zuko was honestly unnerving.

And Iroh thought that Zuko basically giving himself the Lake Laogai treatment was okay because he following in his footsteps, doing what helped IROH heal and change - he didn't realize it was never gonna be able to do the same for Zuko.

The very second Azula shows up, even when she's being hostile, Zuko drops the facade, because she's a reminder of both his old life and what he thought his future would be. And when she offers him "redemption" Iroh tried to advice Zuko against joining her by saying "The redemption she offers is not for you" (as in not for someone who is doing better and doesn't need to return to the Fire Nation) and "It's time for you to choose. It's time for you to choose good." How is it a choice if Iroh is explicitly saying which option Zuko cannot pick, essentially making the decision for him?

Iroh didn't just get the way to help Zuko wrong - he didn't realize his nephew didn't believe he needed help. They were not on the same page at all, and that contribuited to Zuko betraying him.

Though, thankfully, it ended up being for the best, as Zuko found his own way to redemption by himself.

Conclusion

This fandom as a whole tends to not understand Zuko at all and just eat up a bunch of fanon while pretending to be so intellectual, which I very much resent it for.

[samwinchesterswifu]

Exile on Main Street (Dean Winchester x Reader) Angst

Requested: No

Season 6 x Episode 1

Warnings: slow burn, deeply setted angst if youre ready to cry.

Song Inspiration: "Every Rose Has Its Thorns" by Poison, "Faithfully" by Journey

MINORS DNI

A/N: Oofta. This one got me a little emotional.

Word Count: 1386

Summary: Dean returns to ask her back in the game. Broken and destroyed by the memory of him leaving her for Lisa, she's unsure whether or not that would be a good idea, but these Winchester boys are known for their apologizes.

She sighs, entering her apartment late one evening. Kicking off her shoes, she strides over to the kitchen. Turning on the water she begins to handwash the few dishes left over from last nights dinner. Flashbacks replaying in her head of the brothers, of her past lover, of what her life used to be like before Sam jumped in the pit.

She turns over to her radio that sat on the counter, tuning into the classic rock station that Dean had consistently on. ‘Every Rose Has It’s Thorn’ by Poison turns on and she goes back to cleaning the dishes while humming along. A small tear seeps through her eyes thinking about Dean. Before Sammy jumped in the pit, they had gotten into a deep argument that lead to their break up. Dean had disappeared and she assumed it was to be with Lisa.

She always felt second best to Lisa after finding out about her. She just felt like a toy for Dean, something to hold and to have sex if there were no other options. She knew deep down it wasn’t the case, but after leaving her the way he did, that’s all that ran through her brain.

Wrapping up from dishes, she is completely unaware of the fact of someone breaking into her apartment. The last verse of the song begins to play from the radio and she turns up the sound. Grabbing a whisky glass from her cabinet, and the bottle from the counter, pouring herself one extra large shot. As the song ends, she slams the whisky glass onto her counter, accidentally shattering it in the process.

Another sigh left her lips as her hand began to bleed from the smashed glass. Sneering at picking out pieces from her hand she takes a moment to look up at the window. Seeing a shadow of a man behind her. She stops, quickly turning around to find none other than Dean. Her eyes darts between Dean and her gun that was on the table.

Dean holds up his hands and moves towards her, giving her just a split second to dive towards the table. She’s getting to pulling the trigger when suddenly the gun is knocked out of her hand and her arm is twisted behind her back. Looking up she’s met with Sam’s eyes. She tries to wiggle free of Sam’s grip, getting desperate with tears rolling down her face.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Dean speaks up from behind her now.

“It’s us, see?” Dean takes out the demon knife, and slices on his bicep.

Still trying to wiggle free, Dean also looks for salt in her cabinet, doing the whole routine.

Taking a deep breath, she finally calms down enough to warrant Sam letting go of his grip. Rubbing her wrist to ease the pain she looks between both brothers. Utterly confused.

“You wanna explain whats going here before I beat your ass until you see stars Winchester?” She says through gritter teeth looking directly at Dean.

Dean clears his throat and shifted on his shoes.

“Can you give us a minute Sammy?” Dean voice sounding shaky, almost nervous to be in the same room as her.

“Sure, I’ll be in the car.” Sammy says giving her a look that almost said to hear them out.

Sammy leaves her apartment shutting close the door that they lock picked.

“So?” She says, standing in her kitchen with arms crossed over her chest. Sending daggers towards the man she thought she lost forever in the woes of a woman he loved more.

Dean mentions to sit at her table. She shrugs, moving for him to do so. But she felt comfortable standing. Giving her an advantage to move if she still felt like beating his ass. Dean coughs at the awkwardness.

“You got 5 minutes Winchester,” She states sternly.

Dean takes a deep breath and begins to explain everything. How he got poisoned and how Sam saved him, everything happening with Sam and their family. It was a lot to take in, and time seemed to fly by getting later in the night.

“…So we came to see if you wanted to be back in the game.” He asks, eyes looking towards her in the same old puppy dog look he used to give after a bad hunt.

She was about to say something when she realized the radio was still on. ‘Faithfully’ by Journey started to play through the crappy speakers. Tearing at her heart strings as another flashback occurs of when they were younger, dancing to this outside of the impala.

“Why now Dean? What about Lisa? Ben? All that apple pie life? What do you what me to come back?” She says, choking as she tried to hold back tears.

Another deep sigh left Deans lips.

“I miss you, Y/N, what I did was totally wrong and I’m so sorry I never fixed anything after Sam jumped. I abandoned you and I  acknowledge that I made that action,” Dean takes a pause. She turns back towards her cabinets, grabbing a glass to pour another drink of whisky.

Dean studies her from the table and she can feel his eyes burning into the side of her cheek. She pauses for a second, trying to console herself before speaking to him. However, she breaks, tears start streaming down her face. She grips onto the counter, white knuckling, allowing emotions she pushed down to resurface after a year.

She hears the chair Dean was sitting in scraping against the hardwood floor as he stood up. Crying harder, she was engulfed in a large bear hug. She let it all go. All the memories of their times together whether that was romantically, after a good hunt, or a bad one flood her brain. The memories of her doing everything she did to make sure Dean didn’t jump the gun to say Yes to Michael. The love they made after he returned from the trip of the future and finding out she got bit from Croatian virus and he had to kill her. It was too much to keep down anymore.

Dean consoled her with quietly voiced shh’s. Petting her hair while laying his head onto of hers. One arm was still wrapped around her waisted tightly. To afraid to let go.

She finally calms down after a good while. Checking the clock it was way past midnight at this point. Certain that Sam had probably left the two to chat.

They stand in silence for a little while longer. Letting her bask in the feeling of Dean’s body weight against her after all this time. Taking a deep breath, she signals to Dean to let her take a step back. Which he does reluctantly, still holding on to her arms at arm’s length.

“If I come back, what’s gunna happen Dean? Between us?” She asks, voice hoarse from the crying.

“Whatever you want. We can start over, take our time. If you want nothing to do with me, then I would understand.” He takes a moment to pause before continuing.

“I can’t continue on like this. I need you here with me, with Sam. Hunting or figuring out whatever the hell is going on does feel right without you sweetheart.” Dean says, tucking a strand of hair that fell out her ponytail behind her ear.

“Okay.” She whispers.

“Okay?” Dean asks, heart pound against his chest.

She nods, and Dean lets go of the breath he didn’t even realizing he was holding. He leans down to give her a small kiss on her forehead, hovering for just a moment.

“I have so much to take care of before we leave, this apartment, my job, so I can pack up tomorrow.” She says looking around the place she had gotten used to calling home.

“Yep, nope, totally understand, whatever you need Sam’s and I’s help in we will.” Dean says, letting go of her arms.

“Thank you,” She whispers. Receiving a nod in return.

“I’ll uh, text Sam to come get me, I think he may have left.” Dean says looking out the window assuming he’s  trying to find the Impala.

“Stay for tonight,” She asks. Dean looks towards her longingly.

“Okay.” He speaks out. “Whatever you want.”

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 2)

Hope you didn't think I'd forgotten about this post yet. Lads, ladies, and other lovely people, here we go. I have more yelling about bird boy to do.

But first, a few disclaimers. For people who may have missed part one, yes, as the title implies, this post is part two of an attempt to analyse Crow's character throughout 5Ds' whole run. You can find part one here. Now, both for people who may not have the time/energy to read my first, huge post about this right now, let me explain what I'm about here before we start again: My analysis is not meant to deter people who like Crow from liking him. It's also not meant to convince Crow haters otherwise, even if I admittedly personally like Crow. All of this stuff is just my personal attempt at dissecting how his character was handled in the show and why that might have been. And because this is part two, and I covered the Fortune Cup and Dark Signers arc in the first post, I'll start with the pre-WRGP arc, then dig into the backstory Crow was given directly before the WRGP begins properly. Also, mind the length of this post. I'm physically incapable of writing short things.

I also feel the need to reiterate another thing before I really get into the meat of things again: If you were hoping to see any old rumours about 5Ds confirmed, this is the wrong post. In fact, thanks to the very thorough work of someone over on Reddit (another shoutout to @mbg159 here, who's the author of those posts), I know for a fact that literally all the big rumours surrounding Crow are one big pile of logistically impossible horseshit, and I think after so, so many years of people citing this nonsense, the fandom as a whole finally deserves to let these go:

No, Crow was not meant to be a dark signer, least of all the final boss of season one, and Blackwings were not the reason he got more screentime later.

No, Aki being sidelined was not the result of her irl voice actress' pregnancy.

Yes, I know these two posts are both a long read each, but I cannot begin to tell you how tired I am of these rumours. So even if you don't have time to read the stuff above, please take away this: The big 5Ds production conspiracy theories are. all. bullshit. Because, to put it in as simple terms as possible, none of them work out logistically. The events people have pretended affected the show's production in a major way all don't line up with the actual production timeline. So just can the rumours already. Please let them die. And no pitting Aki and Crow against each other on his post or because of this post, yes? I beg you, I am so tired. Ok? Ok.

All right, now we can get to the good part. In my previous post, I left off at the end of the DS arc. So, in what position is Crow at the end of the DS arc? He helped save the world by defeating Goodwin and got his very own signer mark after Rudger/Roman Goodwin's death.

And now, where is Crow at the start of the pre-WRGP arc?

(Bam. Delivery bird boy be upon ye.)

This time, Crow wastes absolutely no time coming back on screen. We see him again within the first episode of the second half of the show, and wouldn't you know it! He moved in with Yusei and Jack and the three of them have a funny, brotherly, bickering dynamic between them. Also, as a fun little add-on that is very much in line with his deeply Satellite, down to earth characterisation from the first half, Crow now works as a delivery driver to earn money for the household. That's all very nice and good.

But what is his role in the plot from here on out? Well.

First, a small note about the pre-WRGP arc. Though this arc is fun to watch because it gives us a lot of silly character interactions the show no longer found the time for once the WRGP started, the pre-WRGP arc really can't be said to bother with actual plot much. It's the known filler arc of 5Ds, and as such, Crow is not the only character who gets pretty much nothing plot-related to do during this arc. Thus, I'll only give a quick run-down of what he does get up to, just in case any of these tidbits end up showcasing a relevant aspect of Crow's character I might come back to later.

Furthermore, another thing that's pretty much obvious to everyone who's ever watched the show in its entirety but still bears mentioning: Crow gets a lot more screentime from this point on out. Technically. Why do I say "technically"? I'll get back to that further below. For now, just keep it in mind.

So, how does Bird Boy spend his time during the arc where the plot's on the back burner? To be honest, on the sidelines, mostly. Don't get me wrong, Crow's there. Most of the time. But he gets pretty much only two episodes where he's the focus, and both of those aren't exactly known for being 5Ds' most memorable episodes (even though I still like them both tbh, but I digress): For one, in episode 68, he gets to convince Bashford to move in with Martha so the depressed old man isn't spending his entire retirement living in a scrapyard.

(This episode's comedic moments are actually fairly solid. But those are just my two cents.)

And for two, in episode 85, Crow gets to bond with the boys' somewhat cranky landlady, Zora, by duelling some sense into her son, Lyndon. (Which also introduces us to a duelling tactic only Crow uses that we will later see again: Losing on purpose.)

(And here we can see Crow showing off his skills at dealing with petulant children.)

Now, do these two episodes where he gets to be relevant actually do anything for Crow? As a character? Debatable. If nothing else, they strongly reaffirm the values Crow represents which we were introduced to in the first half of the show, though. They reintroduce us to his stubbornness, to his (in comparison to Jack and Yusei) more playful nature, to his very Yusei-ish dedication to doing the right thing, to his penchant for spite, and to his strong sense of family and community and his belief that these two things shouldn't be abandoned unless you have a damned good reason for it.

You may notice that there's a sizeable gap between these two episodes. That's because those episodes are where we get the only smidgens of plot in this arc. Among them, highlights like Sherry's introduction, the first reveal of accel synchro, Aki's turbo duelling license exam, three separate story beats hinting at the machinations of the emperors of Iliaster (Luciano's little stunt with Rua and Ruka, Placido getting started on building a killer robot army, and the Jack double being unleashed onto NDC), and Bruno's introduction. So, here's the thing: Crow is technically present during most of those episodes, too, but he doesn't actually get to meaningfully interact with the plot-relevant elements. (Which is not to say he doesn't have nice moments here and there. He does get to bounce off the other characters, and, just as one example, helps Yusei and Jack upgrade Aki's duel runner, as well as help Yusei build Rua's duel board. Crucially, he doesn't get to do anything that later becomes plot-relevant, though.) Moreover, not one, but two characters who end up becoming major players in the series' finale are introduced here, which is relevant insofar as that Bruno and Sherry both end up needing a good amount of development before they can impactfully take their later roles. Now, I say this with nothing but genuine appreciation for both these characters, because I do like them, but I feel the need to point out what this means not just for Crow, but for pretty much everyone who isn't Jack or Yusei: Every minute of screentime that was dedicated to Bruno and/or Sherry was one minute less the writers could spend on the rest of the cast. This is not to say that time shouldn't have been spent on them, they needed it, especially because they were introduced so late, but it's something I do want people to keep in mind when talking about who got how much screentime and whether or not that time was well spent. (I also have a larger gripe with the definition of "screentime" in general, but more on that later.)

So when does Crow get to be relevant to the plot again, now that he's even a signer and all? Well, not until episode 94, when the WRGP arc has already started. (Note that I'm using the 5Ds episode list on wikipedia as a general guide for which arc and which season starts where. You can find it here.)

*Deep breath*

So. Episode 94.

(Pictured: One very scruffy dragon. Bird? Dragon-bird. Bird-dragon. You figure this shit out.)

That episode. The episode where Crow, who was awarded with the status of a signer during the finale of the DS arc, finally gets a dragon to match his mark. And the episode where we finally, finally, get some actual backstory for Crow that goes beyond his involvement with the Enforcers and childhood with Jack and Yusei. A backstory that's only Crow's own. Except. How do I put this politely...

This shit doesn't make a lick of sense. Neither the events in the duel between Crow and Bolger in the present resulting in Black-Winged Dragon's appearance, nor the Pearson backstory.

Now, I'm not saying this to step on anyone's toes. From a writing standpoint, I can even make a fairly reasonable guess as to why this episode/mini-arc is here, I think: As I mentioned in part one of this analysis, Crow was not only introduced very late, but also got very little backstory of his own, which set him apart from the other signers. Don't get me wrong, he did get some backstory—we know of his strong connection to Duel Monsters because he learned to read from cards, and we know of his involvement with the Enforcers/Team Satisfaction. Crucially, though, Crow doesn't really get a backstory segment that feels as unique to him as the others. Aki gets her tragic past with her parents and her powers, Jack gets his betrayal of Yusei, which also doubles as part of Yusei's backstory, who as the protagonist understandably gets the most backstory, and even the twins, though they are as always treated as one unit, get their very own segment about the time when Ruka was essentially in a coma. Meanwhile, Crow only has that one-off tear-jerker moment about learning to read from his cards and his being a part of the boys' duel gang, which, and I cannot stress this enough, is treated as more of a Yusei and Kalin/Kiryu backstory by canon than a Crow backstory. Thus, it makes perfect sense from a writing standpoint that the Pearson/Black-Winged Dragon mini-arc would be here. Crow, up until this point, has neither a backstory segment dedicated solely to him, nor a signer dragon to call his own. So, how do we solve this? Give him both in a strategic double-whammy! The math checks out. Unfortunately, the writing of said mini-arc... doesn't.

Now, look. The juicy question of whether Crow would have worked better as a non-signer or not, which I already discussed in part one aside, I personally don't hate what this backstory is trying to do. It's just that the whole Pearson-drama has some very notable, logical holes which I'll get into below. Furthermore, this is not the first time something related to Crow has some unfortunate, logical and/or chronological issues. I already brought up the infamous fridge and Rex Goodwin's rather confusing backstory in part one, both of which raise some serious questions. However, Pearson and everything surrounding him arguably blow that clean out of the water. Let's examine this more closely, shall we.

The long-overdue backstory we get for Crow begins with a mystery: Mikage and Trudge, for a reason that is never given to us, are investigating the death of Robert Pearson (whose death would have been several years ago at this point), whom Crow knew very well, and they're doing it because they found a hint that the person who killed Pearson used an illegal card, Crimson Mefist, to do it.

(Post redemption-arc Trudge actually doing his job instead of bullying random Satellite citizens. Who would have thunk.)

Thing is, here, we already encounter our first, minor problem: Pearson has never been mentioned up until this point, not even as an aside. And this issue is compounded by the fact that not only Crow seems to know him, but Trudge claims to as well, because "Satellite used to be his jurisdiction". So, a named character who's familiar to both one of our protagonists and a notable side character, and we've never seen hide nor hair of him. If we pull our heads out of the story for a second, the irl reason for how this came to be is probably pretty obvious: Pearson was never mentioned before because the writers had nowhere near as solid of a plan for Crow as they did for the other characters, which leads to him being introduced out of nowhere here because we need a backstory and a dragon for Crow and we need those now. Moving on.

The mention of Pearson having been not simply killed in a fire, like Crow previously assumed, but having been murdered through a special, illegal card immediately makes him suspicious. So, he goes to consult Bolger/Bolton, another never-before-seen character who gets introduced in service of this backstory, and who knew Pearson well. And while this guy certainly acts amiable towards Crow at first, implying that the two have a good rapport, at least, he quickly starts acting suspicious when Pearson's murder comes up. Moreover, we as the audience at this point already know Bolger's looking for Black-Winged Dragon so he can use the card essentially as collateral to save his company. And the name "Black-Winged Dragon" already leaves very little to the imagination as to whose deck this monster is supposed to fit into. But, in a small twist, we learn from Crow that this was apparently Pearson's card, and supposedly lost in the fire where said man died, to boot. Then Bolger challenges Crow to a duel, too, offering to tell the truth about Pearson's death if he loses, but demanding Black-Winged Dragon, which he believes Crow to be in possession of, if he wins. So far, so good. We've got a mystery here, and canon is not contradicting itself just yet. Until we get to the actual backstory, which shows us the time Crow spent with Pearson, that is. Before we get into that, I'd like to highlight one theme this mini-arc introduces that actually feels like it fits Crow: Legacy. Over the course of meeting Bolger again and being reminded of his time with Pearson, Crow starts thinking about whether he's taking over his former mentor's/father figure's legacy well enough.

(Crow having some Deep Thoughts TM, featuring one of Yusei's most relaxed, easygoing smiles in the entire show, probably.)

This theme, I would argue, is one of the major things this backstory introduces that really meshes well with the Crow we already had until this point. He's a community-focussed guy and absolutely a family person, if him taking care of Satellite orphans is anything to go by, so leaving behind a good legacy for the people after him (read: the kids he took care of) would absolutely be something he cares about. We see this element of legacy again in his cards during this episode, too, which canon implies he inherited from Pearson. (I'll get to THAT can of worms below.) And on paper, with the themes he's already got going, Crow being the only one to inherit his deck rather than build it all by himself would actually make sense!

However. This is where we have to get into the meat of the backstory. I'll start by listing the barebones information Crow's backstory with Pearson gives us, then going into why several aspects of it are either logistical or chronological nonsense.

So, as canon tells us, Crow met Pearson after Kiryu/Kalin was arrested, when the Enforcers/Team Satisfaction all went their separate ways. During this period, Crow had already set up shop near the original Daedalus Bridge and started out taking care of orphans, but it wasn't all smooth sailing. He was, by his own admission, "living aimlessly". Then, during a pinch, Pearson and Bolger show up, take care of some bad guys for Crow and the kids, and Crow sees a new role model in Pearson. Pearson, who rides the Blackbird, plays a Blackwing deck and owns Black-Winged Dragon. So, he joins up with Pearson, presumably learns how to work on duel runners from him, and also befriends Bolger. Then, one day, a fire breaks out at Pearson's workshop and the man in question dies, but leaves Crow his runner and his duel disk before he does so. End flashback. Because I want to tie this together nicely, we also learn later that Pearson technically left him Black-Winged Dragon, too, by sealing it in his runner. And, of course, that dragon later becomes Crow's very own signer dragon.

Several points to be dissected here. And funnily enough, Bolger's duel with Crow isn't relevant for any of them. Let's start with the big one: The timeline. I want you to remember that as far as canon is concerned, Crow is 17 during the DS arc. Moreover, it's canonically stated that Jack stole Yusei's first duel runner two years before the show's start, at which time Crow would have been 15. And their time together as the Enforcers must have been even before that, because Kiryu/Kalin was already in prison for a while at that point and Crow and Yusei don't reunite until the DS arc is basically in full swing. So, I'll make a vague estimate here and say that during the time of the Enforcers, Crow would have probably been 13-14. (Which is hilarious when you think about the fact that this gang of angry teenagers essentially took over the entire duelling underground of Satellite, but I digress.) Now we add the idea that Crow met Pearson after the Enforcers, but that he died before canon starts into the mix. That means Crow first ran into Pearson sometime around age 15, and that he then died presumably before Crow turned 17. So far, so good, that still slots into canon, even if it makes Crow pretty damn young for some things. He's even missing the personalised Blackbird duel disk he later wears during the Enforcer days, I went back to check. What he is not missing, however, are his Blackwings. And this is where canon may or may not have made an implication that, if intentional, breaks this timeline. See, during the scene where Pearson's workshop is burning down and he's already trapped under debris and has embraced death, he tosses Crow his duel disk and leaves him his runner.

(Two important screenshots, in sequence. One, Pearson with his duel disk still strapped to his arm. His deck is very obviously still in there. Two, Crow with that same duel disk, as made obvious by its distinct shape.)

What this implies is that Pearson also left Crow his deck. Which, yeah, fair enough, if I were dying in a fire I'd probably also think "fuck it, not like I'll need my cards in the afterlife". What this (and Crow's look the first time he sees Pearson's monsters) implies, though, is that Crow didn't start playing Blackwings until Pearson left him his deck. Which is factually untrue, because there is literal evidence in the show that Crow already had Blackwings during his time as part of the duel gang, before ever meeting Pearson. (The exact episode, if you want to check for yourself, is 33, where Crow summons both Bora the Spear and Blackwing Armor Master during a flashback.) However, I will concede that the show never actually states this is the case, it's just implied by what we see on screen, so perhaps the idea here was that Crow already played Blackwings before Pearson, but grew to love them even more through his mentor/father figure, and so later happily integrated the deck he inherited into his own. Crucially, canon never states this outright, either, though, so the option remains on the table. But, to give the benefit of the doubt here, the possibility that this could still slot in with canon and that it was just handled poorly is there. The same cannot be said for the Blackbird, however.

(Uh oh. So much for canon continuity.)

The above two screenshots directly contradict each other. First we have Yusei, upon reuniting with Crow in Satellite during the DS arc, casually remarking that Crow finished his duel runner. Which means that canon at this point suggests to the audience that one, Crow built this duel runner by himself, for himself, and two, that Yusei knew about it for a while already. Then there's the second screenshot, from the Pearson backstory episode, where Crow outright claims the Blackbird was left to him when Pearson died. I don't think I need to tell anyone that these two things can't be true at the same time. And again, I think this is where Crow fell victim to the writers not having a clear outline for him. At first, he was supposed to be this scrappy guy who also built a duel runner for himself, just like Yusei. But now, he's a signer, needs a backstory and a dragon, and because a theme of legacy is introduced alongside Pearson, the runner suddenly needs to be inherited, as well as (possibly) Crow's cards. Now, a crafty fanfic writer could probably reconcile the above contradiction somehow, and I know some stories that accomplished that. But the point isn't that we, as the audience/fandom could make this work, the point is that canon didn't make it work. What canon, sadly, also didn't get to work was Black-Winged Dragon.

(We meet again, bird-dragon.)

Here comes the next elephant in the room: Everyone and their mother who has watched 5Ds knows that Black-Winged Dragon was never implied to be a signer dragon up until the duel where Crow acquires it. In fact, an entirely different dragon is teased so heavily long before BWD ever shows up that it to this day is one of many people's major gripes with the show's writing.

(Why, hello, Life Stream Dragon! Fancy seeing you here.)

And yet, Black-Winged Dragon is turned into a signer dragon before Life Stream Dragon, who was teased more than sixty (!!!) episodes before BWD was ever even mentioned. Why? Simple: Because Crow became a signer and Rua/Leo didn't, because the signers all need dragons (or else the "5Ds" part kind of doesn't work), and because Life Stream Dragon thematically doesn't fit Crow.

Now, I've seen people post theories to reconcile this weird hitch in canon, hell, I've even posted an idea for how it could be reconciled myself. But, again, that isn't the point here. The point is that as far as good old, barebones canon is concerned, it isn't reconciled. Canon at first states there are five signers, suggesting that there are also five dragons. But then, the fifth dragon never shows up, and one of the signers dies, to boot. Only for canon to then teach us, oh, no, look, the signer marks can wander from one person to the next. And to add insult to injury (at least where the show's writing and internal consistency is concerned), the signer mark that was "freed up" by Roman/Rudger's death doesn't wander to Rua/Leo, who any attentive watcher would have expected to become a signer because it was heavily teased during the DS arc, but to Crow. Frankly, I'm not surprised many people were angry about this, but in case my disclaimer didn't make it clear, I don't think it's productive to pin this on Crow by claiming his cards became super popular irl. There was definitely an out-of-left-field writing choice made here, but the only answers as to "why" were left in the 5Ds' writer's room, I believe. At a guess, if you want me to throw out a non-sugarcoated theory as to why, though? They probably thought Crow would be a more interesting character for their target audience. He's a scrappy guy who sticks it to authority, he's brave, he's funny, he plays a cool deck, and most of all, unlike Rua, he never embarrasses himself in a duel on screen. Why am I highlighting that last part? Because I feel like people sometimes forget that the target audience for this show, at the time of its creation, were about twelve year-old boys. And you can feel free to contradict me on this, but most twelve year-old boys I've known and know don't want to project themselves onto a chracter who loses and gets his butt kicked a lot, and who's a bit awkward and steps in it sometimes, which is much closer to how actual twelve year-olds are—but that's exactly why they prefer the cooler characters. And Crow is the cooler character, by average twelve year-old boy logic, regardless of what the grownups of this fandom think.

So Crow gets a dragon and the writing doesn't bother explaining the how or why of it, let alone tackles any of the implications made by Black-Winged Dragon's existence as a signer dragon. (Like what does this mean for the larger worldbuilding? Does the Crimson Dragon actually have more than five servants, but chooses to only ever bestow five marks at a time? Can any "dragon" the Crimson Dragon chooses be a signer dragon, and it just so happens that the constellation of signer dragons is nearly the same as the original one in present-time 5Ds canon? Did the Crimson Dragon specifically elevate BWD to a signer dragon because it felt like it? Was BWD always supposed to be a signer dragon? Was Pearson supposed to be a signer, but died too early before the dark signer prophecy was set into motion? Am I overthinking this? (Yes.)) He also obtains his dragon in what feels like the weirdest way possible to me, because it suddenly??? Just decides to appear in his runner????? Out of nowhere??????

(Why is that here. How did it get there. Why did Pearson even put it in there. And HOW. Is it just wedged between the machinery or what???? And how on earth did Yusei, Bruno, and/or Crow never find it before this point considering how often someone tinkered on the Blackbird on screen???)

(This scenario, of course, also raises the question how the other signers even got their dragons. But like many other, interesting questions, this episode chooses not to interact with that one whatsoever.)

In short, this backstory is a bit of a mess, to say the least. For as much good as it tries to do by contextualising Crow's character and giving him something that sets him apart from the rest of the protag group, it feels like a rough draft of an episode was given the green light to be produced without any editing, judging by the contradictions and weird implications. As such, it harms Crow's character as much as it builds it, as evidenced by how much fandom backlash he still receives years later for the things that were bungled in this backstory and also in different aspects of his character writing.

Now, you may notice this post has gotten stupidly long due to just how convoluted the specific hangups of Crow's backstory are. I originally meant to cover the WRGP and even the Ark Cradle arc for Crow in this post, too, but due to how much there was to say about canon's attempt to finally make Crow a "proper" signer, I've decided that trying to force another two whole arcs in here would be a disservice to the analysis and the character, and also make this agonisingly long, so I'll close this part out here and write a part three, perhaps even a part four depending on how much material the WRGP gives me to work with.

There's one more thing I need to get back to before I finish up this part, though: The "screentime" discussion. I mentioned far above that I take issue with how some people seem to be using the word screentime, and now I can explain why. First, I want you to take a look back at the episodes I covered here, those being 65-95, essentially. Now, as anyone who usually dislikes Crow will tell you, Crow is present in most, if not all of these episodes. He's on screen. He's getting screentime, and, according to many people, hogging it, even. Okay. Now, I want you to look back up at the analysis. How many episodes did I cover where Crow actually gets something to do? As in, where he's either the focus of the plot or gets to contribute to it in a significant way? There's the old man Bashford episode. There's the Poppo Time clock episode. There's his two backstory episodes. That's four. Four episodes. If you're generous, you might add in the episode where he gets to narrate Yusei's backstory alongside Jack and the two fake Jack episodes where he gets to have an emotional moment or two with his foster-brother. If you're less generous, you'll note that none of these episodes have Crow actually interacting with the main antagonists in a meaningful way or set up anything important that pays off later. (Hell, he doesn't even get any, and I really mean, any meaningful setup interactions with Sherry, who ends up being his final-boss-level opponent during the final episodes! Aki gets more meaningful interactions with Sherry than him, not that this ever gets a payoff.) And this is why I take an issue with people claiming Crow gets so much "screentime" post DS arc. Because to me, "screentime" should be time spent letting a character act meaningfully within the story, which most of the pre-WRGP episodes aren't for Crow. He's on screen, yes, but in many episodes, it wouldn't matter one whit whether you replaced him with a nameless side character, which isn't exactly a great look for a supposed third of a protagonist trifecta. Perhaps I'm being too strict with my definition of "screentime" here, fair enough! But the claim that Crow hogs screentime already rubs the wrong way during this comparably unimportant arc, so I can't leave it alone. It feels very decidedly malicious to claim a character who during some episodes seems to only be there to provide exposition or make whatever jokes Yusei and Jack's personalities aren't suited to is stealing screentime from other characters. As for the WRGP duels and whether he's "hogging" anyone's screentime there, I'll dig into that nonsense in the next part, please be patient with me.

...Phew. Okay.

Now, before I leave you to wonder whether I'm every finishing my Crow analysis in full again, I want to attempt to do the same thing I did in part one—propose some changes that could have been made to the writing for Crow's character in order to make things slot in better with the rest of canon. With a small disclaimer, of course: These are just my suggestions as to how Crow's character could have fit into canon more smoothly and been done less of a disservice by his own backstory.

So. First, a quick-fire thing about the pre-WRGP, to get that out of the way: Crow, alongside Aki, is the only signer who didn't get his own confrontation with either Iliaster or their minions. (Yusei had Ghost, Jack had fake Jack, Rua and Ruka had Luciano.) Instead of having him confront a cranky old man in a scrapyard or Zora's son, they could have easily given him a very short side-story where he gets to experience the threat of Iliaster up close and personal, too. Hell, they could have very nicely cut the recap episode where Crow and Jack lie in the mess of Jack's terribly built coffee table and philosophise about Yusei's backstory for this, too. (As funny as their interaction about the coffee table and Jack lying on the floor with a perfectly intact coffee cup are.)

(Pictured: Two idiots (affectionate) contemplating life among the scraps of a shitty, broken coffee table.)

Then, there's the Pearson backstory, of course. So, here's the thing, I think two very different kinds of "fixes" could have worked here. Crucially, they both depend on Crow's status as a signer. I argued in part one that Crow might have worked better as a character if he hadn't actually become a signer, so I'll give both versions here. Let's go.

Option A: We try not to touch canon too much and Crow stays a signer.

How to do this? Frankly, I think what Crow's mark and Black-Winged Dragon were majorly missing was setup. The mark is the smaller offence here, since, fair enough, the idea that signer marks can wander from person to person isn't too out there for 5Ds canon. However, the lack of a dragon despite the alleged 5Ds stands out, and Life Stream Dragon's wasted setup only makes it worse. Thus, making Black-Winged Dragon make sense would have required giving him the same amount of foreshadowing as Life Stream Dragon, at the very least. And you know who could have been great for that? Sweet, ever-forgotten-by-canon Ruka. She was already shown having flashback dreams to the signer dragons' first battle against the dark signers, so who's to say she couldn't have gotten dreams about a shadowy, new dragon she's never seen before? Perhaps even dreams where she's not sure if the dragon is good or bad at first! It could have provided intrigue, it could have made the audience curious. To strengthen that, canon could have also bothered taking the question "hey why are there only four dragons now" seriously. No character in canon ever questions why there are five marks, but only four dragons. Even Rua, who was previously hopeful that he might secretly be a signer, never brings it up. If canon had bothered to actually point this mystery out, they could have used it not only to foreshadow Black-Winged Dragon, but to aid Life Stream Dragon's setup, too. What the fuck am I talking about, I hear you ask. Hear me out: Life Stream Dragon is shown way, way later down the line, long after the audience probably already accepted that it was simply never going to show up, literally bursting out of Power Tool Dragon's armour. We are not provided with an explanation as to why. Imagine if they had sprinkled in another dream Ruka could have had about the ancient past here. Imagine if they had used the opportunity to show something like, oh, during the battle, Life Stream Dragon got injured so badly they had to protect its wounded body with a suit of armour, in the hopes that it would heal. And with one original signer dragon out of commission, the Crimson Dragon sadly had to choose a replacement in between, because the Earthbound Immortals were sure to return. Bam. Black-Winged Dragon. Two signer dragons, set up simultaneously, without forcing the canon lore to do somersaults. Furthermore, to actually explain why Pearson had the dragon but wasn't a signer, they could have easily sprinkled in a flashback between him and Crow. Maybe Pearson could have mentioned how the dragon always feels like it's never really his, as a joking aside. It would have been enough for me to suspend my disbelief, you know? And then the rest of canon could have played out exactly as we know it. Crow could have confronted Bolger, could have obtained Black-Winged Dragon because maybe the dragon finally decided he was worth throwing its weight behind. The mystery behind the missing fifth dragon could have been solved, and it would have made for satisfying payoff without kneecapping Life Stream Dragon's setup or conjuring an extra dragon out of thin air. And really, stuff like the runner thing could have so easily been solved by simply picking one version (did he build it himself or inherit it?) and sticking with it. All it took was a little more care.

Option B: We assume Crow didn't actually become a signer, but try to keep his backstory intact.

Okay, this version works under the assumption that Crow, despite partaking in the final battle against Goodwin during the DS arc, didn't receive a signer mark. To make this work, I would, bluntly put, simply make it so that Black-Winged Dragon doesn't exist. Pearson can still play a powerful Blackwing monster during his flashback that Bolger wants to find and sell later, but it simply isn't that dragon. Really, Blackwings have enough to choose from there. If the backstory episodes had been placed a little later, say, during the pause in the middle of the WRGP, he could have even received something like Blackwing Full Armor Master here. (Yes, I know that card didn't exist at the time, but my point is that he could have simply received a powerup like Yusei and Jack did, instead of a completely new monster.) With this setup, they could have still added the intrigue of taking the question why there are only four signers now seriously. They could have still set up a mystery about why no one ever saw the fifth dragon outside of dreams. And it could have made Rua becoming a signer later, and in this version getting the tail mark instead of a completely new one, that much more satisfying. And Crow could have kept his "fuck destiny, I'm trying to save the world here"-attitude from the DS arc, providing a nice, amusing counterweight to our heroes chosen by an ancient Incan dragon deity. All it would have taken would have been not giving him a mark and switching out Black-Winged Dragon for something else.

So, take your pick, I guess. In the meantime, I'll try my best to work on part three faster than I did part two, lmao.

See you next time!

[rukbat3]

Babylon 5 Rewatch - Mind War

This is a post I originally wrote several years ago for Mark Oshiro’s Mark Watches blog. I don’t really plan to edit them before posting, so there may be some references that don’t make sense. If you see words that look like gibberish, they are actually rot13, which was our way of discussing spoilers. There are plugins you can install to decode the text (Cryptext is the one I use), or you can copy/paste to rot13.com, or just ignore it.

Hooray! Catherine Sakai is back! This means she’s going to be a recurring character, not just a single-episode romance character! I love how in this episode you can see the conflict between their two jobs, but it’s not a huge deal; it’s just something they’re learning to navigate. [season 1] Nyfb, unun, V sbetbg nobhg guvf yvar jurer Fvapynve gnyxf nobhg univat gb znxr ohqtrg phgf va pbafgehpgvba. Guvf vf rknpgyl jul V ybir O5. Gur pbagvahvgl srryf fb betnavp.

As you can see farther down, I think the way that G’Kar interacts with Catherine is so interesting. From everything we’ve seen about his character so far, we absolutely buy into Catherine’s interpretation of his actions. And the episode itself basically leads us to think he’s up to something nefarious. But no! He really was just trying to help. It gives us another level of insight into his character that makes us think maybe there’s something more to him than just the loud, brash, antagonistic person we’ve seen before.

As far as the main plot of the episode, it’s Star Trek comes to Babylon 5! (Or if you’re me, the other way around. The first time I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I gasped when Chekov first appeared and said, “It’s Bester!”) There’s not much more I can say at this point. We get some hints of shady doings happening back on Earth, but whether anything more will come of it is yet to be seen.

I would like to highlight two scenes, though. The first is Talia’s description of what it’s like when telepaths make love. It’s very evocative, and I have always found this scene to be particularly memorable. Naq vg’f fhecevfvatyl vzcbegnag zhpu yngre ba va gur fubj. Abg gb zragvba znxvat pregnva guvatf jr svaq bhg nobhg gur Cfv Pbecf rira zber ubeevslvat. And the second is Jason Ironheart’s explanation of what the Psi Corps experiments were aiming to do. “Think about it. You want to assassinate someone, so you get a telekinetic. He reaches into a person's throat and gently, quietly, with a thought, he pinches the carotid artery shut. The blood stops; the brain starves; the target dies; and then you just let go. Murder without a trace.” Absolutely chilling.

There’s a third scene not directly relating to this subplot, but relating to telepaths in general that I think it’s important to discuss. And that’s the scene where Talia is explaining to some random guy what it’s like to be a telepath and they share an elevator with Garibaldi, who is obviously thinking something sexual about Talia, which she picks up on. I feel like we get a scene like this one in a lot of books/shows/movies where mind-reading is a thing, and it’s often played for laughs, as it is here. But for me, there are a lot of questions raised by this brief moment. In a world where the existence of telepaths is widely known, how responsible is Garibaldi, who is not a telepath and presumably hasn’t received any form of mental training, for controlling his thoughts? What if he hadn’t known Talia was a telepath? Would that make it okay? On the other hand, he’s just overheard her talking about how hard it is to block out strong emotion. Does that give him more responsibility to control himself then before?

Because if he can be held responsible, then it seems to me that what he did to Talia is a form of sexual assault, or at least harassment. But are we okay with what amounts to a form of thought policing? Once you open the door to punishing someone for what may well have been a stray thought, there are any number of ways that could be abused. On the other hand, why should all the responsibility lie with Talia, or any other telepath to protect themselves? I don’t see any easy answers here.

[season 4, TV movie] Nyfb, jung vf vg va guvf frevrf nobhg gryrcnguf naq gur zra jub ner vagrerfgrq va gurz va ryringbef? Vg arire tbrf jryy!

Favorite scene: The two scenes that G’Kar and Catherine Sakai have together often get mixed up in my head when I’m thinking about this episode, so I can’t really pick one over the other. In each of them, G’Kar says something I really love. In the first, it’s “No one here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair. And not me.” This is borne out in the events of this episode, at least in G’Kar’s case, which makes you wonder: How right is he about everyone else? V nyfb ybir guvf dhbgr orpnhfr vg frrzf gb zr gung vg’f bar bs gur birenepuvat gurzrf bs gur fubj va trareny. Ab bar vf rknpgyl jub gurl nccrne ng svefg tynapr. Abg rira Orfgre! In the second scene, I love G’Kar’s explanation of what Catherine saw at Sigma 957, but I love what he says next even more: “They are a mystery. And I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the universe—that we have not yet explained everything.” And when you put both scenes together, I find them collectively eye-opening about what this show is trying to do, not just with the character of G’Kar, but with the world of the show in general. Vg’f rfcrpvnyyl vagrerfgvat gb pbzr onpx gb gurfr fprarf nsgre lbh’ir svavfurq gur fubj naq guvax nobhg whfg ubj evtug T’Xne vf.

[pippin-katz]

Rewatched Merlin Season 4, Episode 11 “The Hunter’s Heart”

I have to say, everything works out in the end of the episode, but Arthur says some nasty shit to Merlin that is just swept under the rug. He threatens to exile him TWICE.

The second time, he threatens him with exile and the scene cuts to him in his chambers an unspecified amount of time later. When Merlin comes in to serve him, he’s clearly walking on eggshells and doesn’t say anything other than “do you need anything” and refuses to respond to the things he’s saying until Arthur asks him directly for advice. Clearly, he hasn’t apologized.

I hate that it goes from Arthur literally threatening to exile him, to him acting like nothing happened between them because he needs Merlin’s support. It feels icky, even though we know Arthur was only lashing out because he’s heartbroken.

I think they should’ve had Arthur apologize more. There are tons of points throughout the show where he says or does something to Merlin that upsets him, but either ignores it or “apologizes” without actually apologizing.

Early on it makes sense, but letting him get away with that behavior after they’ve known each other for 5+ years feels pretty unhealthy. Though, it’s pretty obvious that the writers wanted to hold onto the “Arthur’s an ass” character trait, and that was probably one of the easiest ways to do it.

[llumimoon]

THE PROPAGANDA WORKS. WHAT IS DNDADS I NEED TO KNOW

YESSSSS THE PROPAGANDA IS SPREADING !!!!

I’m so glad you asked tehehe dndads is short for Dungeons and Daddies! It’s a comedy DnD podcast about the relationship between parent and child. It currently has two seasons, the second one is ongoing right now.

SEASON ONE!! Also refereed to as dndads odyssey, is about four modern day suburban dads who get transported to the fantasy world of DnD and have to go on a quest so save their sons.

It’s a RIOT- the first episode is a perfect hook. Like genuinely, if you enjoy the humor of the first ep the rest of season is exactly like that. It can get pretty emotional at times in the later episodes, there’s strong themes of generational trauma in this podcast, but the cast are incredibly good at balancing the comedy and the emotional scenes. There’s 69 episodes (LMAO) and it’s complete! The ending ties directly into the next season.

SEASON TWO!! Also known as dndads quest or dndads pussywagon depending on who you ask. This season follows the four teen grandkids of the odyssey dads as they deal with the aftermath of season one.

Season 2 is definitely a little darker, there’s a bit of a eldritch horror undertone to it, but the humor from season one still carries over! The teens are very endearing and complex characters, and the cast doesn’t shy away from giving their characters tangible flaws and letting them make mistakes. The teens are some of the most accurate fictional teens I’ve seen in a WHILE.

Don’t worry about not knowing anything about DnD- the cast plays VERY fast and loose with the rules so all you really need to know is that hey roll dice to make things happen. These guys are out here adding friendship bonuses to rolls and fighting vampires with magic fanny packs.

You should be able to find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and literally anywhere else you usually find podcast stuff. It’s genuinely sooooo fun and the tumblr community is AMAZING. I really hope you give it a try !! ^-^

[nottoofondofgaypeople]

Can we have the scene from the baby showers with Laurance, Garroth and Aphmau in the street Laurance has fake proposed to Aphmau to get Zane off their backs as gay as humanly possible.

Also if I can be greedy can we have Zoey coming to fetch them from the Irene dimension as gay as humanly possible

A 2 for 1 deal huh? I'll be real with you, I was gonna make these be in the same post, but upon going back to the first episode of season 2 I have so much to do with that scene that it's going to need to be its own post. You'll still get both scenes, but the second one needs more time to cook the delicious angst I know you feral beasts all crave.

scene takes place in episode 56 before the polycule has gotten together and is much more a moment of realization for all three of them (largely Garroth). All of them know Laurance loves Irena, and she gave him a very hesitant answer in response. So they aren't together, but aren't not together? I don't get it either.

Silence lingered as Zane walked past. All three of them waited for the sound of his door closing. Laurance waited a second later before he spoke.

"I'm sorry," He finally whispered, but the final sound came out like a laugh. "I'm so sorry--"

"Don't," Garroth started, letting out an uneasy breath. He glanced up at Laurance and... Smiled. It felt really nice to smile like this. "You saved Lord Irena's life, again."

"Yeah, you did," She muttered. She was never more grateful that Laurance was blind and unable to see how much she was blushing. And how shaky her hands were. The silver bracelets on her wrists clanking together might have given it away. "I-I'm amazed you thought of that."

"I just heard him threatening you, and I couldn't stop myself. I'm sorry if it made you uncomfortable."

"No, no, Laurance you were perfect!" Irena reached forward, placing her hand on his shoulder. It was like second nature. She was never physical with him before, but knowing he was blind made it easy to just fall into the habit of having a hand on him. "It worked, right? You bought us some time."

"Yeah..." Garroth let out a sigh as he glanced between them. There was a thumping of his heart, but it didn't feel like jealousy, as he expected. It was the same kind of feeling he got when looking at Laurance in the academy. The same kind of feeling he got when Irena put on a flower crown. At the same time. "I would have never thought of that."

"I've heard Zane's voice before, but I had no idea the High Priest of O'Khasis was so..." Laurance looked to where he thought Garroth was. He was wrong but it's the thought that counts. "Cruel."

"It's okay. You acted when my anger got in the way of my judgement and saved my lords life." Garroth looked up to Laurance, the sound of his helmet the only indication to the blind man that he'd moved. "I can't even begin to express my thanks to you, Laurance." Warmth spread across Laurance's cheeks, a rush of life he desperately needed. Even if he was blushing and grinning like an idiot, even if it was the most obvious thing in the world, he made it known how much Garroth's words meant to him.

"Me too," Irena cut in, her left hand nervously twirling loose strands of her hair. "I'm really sorry you had to be in this situation at all, but you saved my ass. Again."

"That's just what I do for you, my love." Irena rolled her eyes and gave Laurance a slight smack on the shoulder, but it only made him start laughing again. Garroth expected something still, some sense of envy. The only envy he felt was that he didn't know enough about flirting to join then. But he wanted to.

"I honestly wish he had done something to directly harm a member of Phoenix Drop," Garroth admitted almost sheepishly. He took a deep breath, and instead leaned against his shield and tried to take on a cooler demeanor. "Then I would have really done something to shut him up." Laurance gasped in a sort of fake horror, in a way that Irena had heard Cadenza do before. It made her giggle, and that made Laurance giggle in turn. It did not make either one of them want to kiss the other, definitely not.

"Careful Garroth, you know what happens to villages that step out of line. We're lucky we stayed small enough that O'Khasis just took notice."

"Right. I'm not seriously thinking of doing anything that rash. Just wishing for it."

"Can't fault you for that," Irena agreed with a breathy laugh. An uneasy feeling started to settle in, one Laurance was determined to fight off.

"I feel I should make it clear, I have no intentions of marrying Lady Irena, either. That was just a ruse to get Zane off our backs."

"Aw, that's too bad!" Irena pouted out her lip and spoke in an exaggerated tone. "And here I was about to plan and decorate the entire thing."

"Oh really? And who would officiate it?"

"Not Zane, that's for certain."

"Y'know, Castor is a shaman. He might have the power to officiate." That earned Laurance a smack on the shoulder that made all three of them burst out into giggles. And now it was Laurance's turn to be absolutely elated to hear the sound of their laughter. To hear it come from a genuine and wholesome moment, compared to the cruel mocking laughter he became used to in the Nether. To remember that he was loved.

"Keep up with those suggestions and we'll get divorced before we can get married!"

"Oh, my love, you wound my heart with your cruel words. Whatever can a poor, blind poet do to recapture your love?"

"Quit being such a romantic might be a good start," Garroth shot in playfully. The words could have come off harsh, jealous, even biting, but his tone was loving. His tone was practically dripping with love. Garroth didn't realize it, but Laurance sure did.

"I can't help it."

"He really can't. But it's fine, because I can always get back at him."

"And how do you plan on doing that, my love?" Irena reached up and ruffled his shaggy hair.

"I could always have Cadenza dye your hair again. She'd just say she's redoing your roots, but maybe it's a completely different color and you wouldn't even know."

"She would do it too," Garroth agreed.

"Don't egg her on!" Laurance defended. "My darling fiance already threatened to dye my hair blue."

"And what if Cadenza actually took my suggestion?" Irena's sing songy tone made Laurance raise an eyebrow as he tried to look down at the likely smug expression of the woman leaning onto him.

"She didn't."

"She did." He tried to look to Garroth.

"She did." Laurance's eyes widened in fear, and his hand suddenly went to his hair, bringing it in front of him before he pouted slightly. Right. He still can't see.

"Please tell me you're joking." Unbeknownst to Laurance both Irena and Garroth glanced at each other, and even if his face was hidden, she could practically see the goofy grin plastered across his face. She really wished she could see him. Irena gave him a raised eyebrow, and Garroth just shrugged his shoulders, leaving it up to her how far they would take this bit.

Laurance's hand reached for Irena in a more desperate manner than she expected, which was enough for her to break. The moment Laurance held her hand, she burst out laughing, not blind to the way his fingers danced over the pulse point on her wrist. Seconds later Laurance and Garroth were laughing with her, all three of them simple elevated into the feeling my one another. It was a genuine moment of sincerity and peace, desperately needed after the events of the past few days, and the anxiety Zane had brought.

It was an honor in Garroth's eyes to help in making Irena and Laurance laugh. He was overwhelmed by their love, clear and obvious for anyone to see, even more so that they allowed him to be a part of it in some way. Some perhaps foolish part of him wondered if he could truly love them both, and if he could love them in turn. For now, Irena swept around Laurance and hooked her arm in his.

"How about we get back to the party, my oh so charming fiance and his dashing blue hair?" Irena suggested, though the final comment earned her a groan from Laurance.

"You two better be joking about that or this marriage might actually end before it begins," He shot back.

"Don't worry Laurance, she didn't actually dye your hair blue," Garroth assured him. Irena fully pouted, sticking out her tongue.

"Thank you Garroth."

"Yeah, thanks Garroth for ruining my joke!" For a second he couldn't tell if her anger was sincere or not. Until she reached for him, grabbing at his elbow and dragging him so he was also arm in arm with her. "As a punishment, you're now required to come into Kiki's barn with us and enjoy the festivities yourself." Garroth looked down at those amber eyes and... he couldn't ever say no to them.

"Whatever you say, my lady."

[mrbensonmum]

TV Show - CSI: Las Vegas IV

We did it! The middle of the second season brought the much talked about changes in the aspect ratio, and at the same time, although it was subtly hinted at the beginning of the season, the lab and the interrogation rooms also changed.

But before we can enjoy this new, wonderful, screen-filling view, we have to go through another tough battle. Because yes, I'm harping on it, but Catherine is really exhausting at the beginning of the second season.

So far, she hasn't been confirmed as supervisor, and she graciously declined the temporary takeover by Grissom. Yet she behaves constantly like a boss, always bringing up that she's not properly appreciated, and her interactions with colleagues are just impossible; that's just not teamwork, sorry. Yes, she's supposed to be portrayed as the strong woman, and I can understand a certain gruffness there, but I find her incredibly disrespectful when working with Nick, Greg, or Sara. They're her colleagues and teammates, what's up with that??

This brings us directly to another point that struck me in the first part of the second season, namely the treatment of Greg. The impetus for this came from a comment by Grissom when Greg dared to call Paul Millander clever in his eyes. You can do that, and yes, Grissom is particularly involved in this case, but that was kind of intense. It made me realize that Greg is being treated quite disrespectfully. After all, he's a crucial point in almost every investigation; let's remember how often Grissom is with him, gets some info, and leaves with the idea to solve the case. It's no different with the others, and yes, Greg can be difficult, but he simply doesn't deserve this treatment.

Now I've watched one episode in the new format, and it feels like they've changed quite a bit here. We've already mentioned the aspect ratio, and as a result, the camera shots of the city feel much more natural and fuller. But even with the individual characters, more is revealed or they are set in scene differently. There's more play with the composition of the individual shots, and it feels like the series has undergone a facelift. The aforementioned lab has also changed; it hasn't received the full glass setup yet, but the somewhat outdated look from the first season is gone. Now, they play even more with the light; through the glass fronts, some shots can be better executed, and characters are often accompanied by the camera when walking through the facility or from one lab to another.

Other actors also have one of their first appearances here, just like back then in Dr. House. So we see an even younger Jeremy Renner and a very young Amanda Righetti, who will later become a regular on The Mentalist. What becomes of Jeremy Renner should be known!

With Paul Millander, who pulled a pretty big rabbit out of his hat in his last episode, we've also dealt with one of the first episode-spanning villains. Tammy is still around, but I found that Paul was much more present, especially because he managed to establish himself as a judge.

Meanwhile, Grissom's hearing impairment has also become noticeable, which will manifest more frequently as the series progresses. I especially like the episode where he reveals that he knows sign language because I really like Deanne Bray. She's always a ray of sunshine when I see her in a series, and it's fun to watch her speak or gesture in sign language. I just saw that she's also in Heroes for a longer period (9 episodes). Luckily, this series is also still on my rewatch list.

Now that we're practically in full throttle, because Doc Robbins and Super Dave are fully on board, along with Archie, who used to sit behind the cameras at a university and now works in his role as Archie in the CSI, we can really get started. My brain is already being flooded with wild memories, and I'm more excited than ever that I started this rewatch.

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten that we've already had the pleasure of meeting the charming Lady Heather. But I'll save that for the next post because we know there's still a lot more to come.

[phantom-mizero]

Let me first explain my reasoning for each of them and why I personally think they could end up dead either in the first season finale or later. Valentino in episode 2 is ready to march to the hotel with nothing but some regular guns (as far as we know) and try to kill everyone who would get in his way to get Angel Dust back. He only stopped because Vox held him back from doing that. Charlie actually meets Valentino in episode 4 where he, at first, acts like the biggest creep to her and mistreats Angel which actually gets her to transform into her more demonic form. Valentino is the second person that made Charlie this mad and he just acts smug about it Episode 6 only makes it more widely known to others how shitty he is as a boss and that you should stay far, far away from him.

Vox fought Alastor once before and in an older picture of him and Valentino we can see that the TV he has as a head was an older model once, which means that demons can “update” their designs slightly if their body was wounded enough/torn apart, but not killed by an angelic weapon. He admonished Valentino to not get involved with Lucifer’s daughter; to not bring down her and especially her father’s rage on them for hurting someone she cares about or hurting the literal princess of hell in the crossfire, but, and this is, especially after episode 6, a big but he is willing to broadcast one of his Alastor diss tracks he worked on to all of Hell who has a TV. You could say Alastor swung back, but after seeing how much effort he puts into a song if he truly hates someone he wants to hurt emotionally and the very low effort he put in to put Vox in his place it’s truly night and day. Vox directly stating to a news reporter that his company would work on security technology against angels is also a ballsy move, especially if he just got the idea. He has no idea if it would work or how to even kill them. He doesn’t even have a way to test it like he can test other inventions till the next extermination date arrives.

Velvette compared to her male compatriots may seems rather tame, but her one point is only reinforcing the others behavior and making it even more obvious. I can only point out how she didn’t gather any favor with the other Overlords at their meeting, dissed pretty much everyone there, but specifically Zestial, the oldest Overlord that still exists after Alastor brutally murdered pretty much every other one once he manifested in hell. I saw some speculation that Zestial’s business has something to do with information and intelligence gathering, which is highly supported by the episode he’s in. So when he sings “We can’t act without more intelligence”, he is giving Velvette a fairly specific warning that she and the Vee’s are going to die if they are not careful and think they are powerful enough that they would never get toppled. Carmilla is also enforcing that when she sings “You and the Vees are inane and uninformed. Smug wannabees who don’t heed when you’ve been warned.” Carmilla is literally giving her the more explicit version to what Zestial only alluded to, to try and make her see how it could ruin them if they continue on their path.

The Vees are Overlords sure, but they are far from being the strongest or the most well informed to make the best decisions. Vox get’s their company to produce anti-angel tech with no guarantee that it could work, the Vees found the head of an angel so they know they can be hurt and killed and Velvette has the strong suspicion that Carmilla killed the angel. In other words I strongly suspect they are going to try and fight the angels on the next extermination day to make a power grab like Hell has never seen before.

[zyqmp]

ROTTMNT theory time :)))

Spoilers for the entire series + movie

This is pure speculation and fun, and will only be supported by the lore of ROTTMNT not any other show.

So basically I’ve been trying to figure out how these badass overpowered mystic powers work because it’s more confusing than any fandom lore I’ve read so here’s a theory about that + a little more thoughts on mystic powers as a whole

One big point before I go all out on this theory, anyone can have mystic powers. They can be human, mutant, yokai, even the Kraang, all living beings can harness mystic powers with the correct training. This is slightly proven by Warren Stone being able to use an mystic stone without problems, April and Cassandra being able to use Aprils mystic Bat, and when April gets hamato ghost possessed by Karai.

So let’s get on with the main theory.

In the final episode, “Rise” Big Mama reveals something crucial to the show as a whole that the fandom didn’t really know about(due to the second season being hard to watch). When the turtles need her help to find out where Shredder has taken Splinter and Draxum, she says

“To harness a life force you would need the source of all yokai power, enperian”

Then when Shredder finds this ‘enperian’ it’s revealed that it came from a single Kraang who died either in battle or from crashing into the Crying Titan

From what we can concur, the Yokai (from Big mama be know “We yokai have existed for thousands of eons”) must have evolved from the blood/engine fuel from the dead Kraang. This being the very source of all mystic magic, but than what is Ninpo? I believe it’s just an technique that the Hamato clan learned to fight the Shredder. (Similar to demon slayer, how humans have found ways to defeat demons with ancient arts if you need a comparison)

Another point about mystic magic, is that it cant directly be accessed without unlocking it. I think weapons at the beginning of the series are more like a catalyst for the turtles to harness their inner power.

The weapons only unlock a small part of the turtles real power, such as Leo’s portals becoming twin katanas that teleport wherever the other is, Mikey’s “wip”becoming nunchucks that can extend and light on fire, and Raphs force fields becoming a lot bigger and durable. We’ll talk Donnie in a minute because he’s a special case. But thanks to the mystic weapons the turtles learn and adapt to their powers and train themselves around them.

“What about you, Donnie? Don’t you want a glow-y weapon?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll never let you go.”

It’s made clear from the first episode Donnie is the most reluctant about “mystic magic.”

Even if he’s against the emphasis on mystic magic, he doesn’t try and stop it entirely, he more try’s to find a way to make sense of it. In the episode “Donnie vs Witchtown” (or Hidden City Adventures II) he’s very adamant on being against the whole idea of something he can’t explain.

“Because, I’m the Science Guy! If mystic powers can do everything I can do but better, than why would you guys even need me?”

The whole “being insecure about your role on the team thanks to something that you can’t avoid” might have been dragged out a bit more in the series(if a certain company didn’t cut the second season in half and postponed the show). But Donnie being insecure, is the driving reason his mystic powers were so delayed. It’s hard for Donnie to accept mystic magic but when he finally does his powers start to awaken.

So these powers are awaken through acceptance, possible training, and a catalyst for those powers? Not exactly, but you’re on the right track.

We have to look in the future to understand how to trigger these powers. It’s seen in the first few minutes of the ROTTMNT movie how powerful F!Mikey mystic powers have grown. Even Casey Jr. awes at his powers and through his description of F!Mikey we know he was incredibly powerful.

“You are the most powerful mystic warrior the world has ever known. With those two hands, you send me back in time”

F!Mikey is even foreshadowed in the first episode of the show. When the turtles lose April after she tried to save Mayhem, it’s Mikey who recognizes the hidden city symbol from splinters “do not touch shelf”

“Oh, hey! I’ve seen this before! In fact, we all have.”

It’s Mikey who assessed the portal to the hidden city

"How about we let the artist of the crew take a poke at it?"

And Mikey is the first of the turtles to awaken his weapon the ‘Kusari-fundo Nunchaku.’

"Whoa. Magic weapon”

That begs the question, why exactly is it Mikey who’s the Badass mystic warrior? Why couldn’t it be Donnie or Raph, maybe even Leo? What separates Mikey from his brothers that makes him so powerful in the future?

Out of all his brothers Mikey does have one big attribute that his brothers all lack in, his ability to be vulnerable, and being in touch with his emotions. His biggest strength and weakness is his empathy and emotional intelligence, unlike his brothers whom are very dishonest with their emotions and problems. It’s seen thought the show his emotions and feelings land him into difficult circumstances and often get him in trouble without one of his brothers to to stop him from getting hurt.

“Look, Mikey, repo men have to be mean, and I don’t know if you know this, but you’re kind of a softie."

"That really hurts my feelings! Oh, you have a point. But I can do this. Hard as nails.”

“I heard something.”

“A model train. Simple answer.”

So with his more open mind and emotional vulnerability his mystic powers grew. This could also support the real reason Donnie could really use his powers. He’s the most emotionally distant of the brothers, being so uneducated on them he doesn’t know some of the basic emotions that people feel.

So in conclusion, mystic powers come from a lot of different things. They can be awaken though the acceptance that magic truly exists. They can be harnessed through a catalyst that enables the user control over them. And the thing that triggers and fuels them are emotions. Plus spending years training them will result in you basically becoming Dr. Strange.

Yes very confusing but if you want more evidence then you can just watch season 1 and the movie and pay attention to their mystic powers.

But that’s just a theory, a Rise theory!

[theflagscene]

I find it interesting that they recut the preview of episode nine of The Sign to make it look like Phaya dies, when at the end of episode eight they originally let it rather ambiguous. With Phaya being brought into the ER and Tharn begging him to stay with him, then the boys all sitting around in the waiting room, followed by the case debriefing and more of the cop stuff. Khem later telling Tharn while standing in the hospital hallway that either he takes them with him to look into his family’s murder or he’s telling the captain what he’s doing, the preview finally ending with Tharn being given Phaya’s bagged clothes, badge and amulet the day of the drowning.

The recut starts the same way, with Phaya’s supposed corpse being brought into the ER, then it cuts to Tharn right away being given his belongings (like he had just died) and then goes directly into the case/cop stuff. Ending with Khem’s threat to go to the captain, but remember that they’re standing in the hospital hallway when that happens, obviously having just come from visiting Phaya since Singh is with them as well and typically he works at at the IDF headquarters. And right at the 22 second mark, if you watch carefully, there’s a half second frame of all of them - including inspector Akk - waiting around in the hospital back in the outfits they were all wearing the day Phaya drowned, Tharn soggy and filthy again in the oversized black shirt. It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but it’s there.

So they’ve recut it for Channel 3, to make it look more dramatic than it was at the end of episode eight. Meaning they don’t want it so obvious that Phaya survived, which I mean, clearly he was going too. I’m not against the idea of the twist of killing off your lead star - the one with the well known name, I know technically Babe plays the main character - but Saint doesn’t tend to fall into the type to sign off of the ‘kill the gays’ trope. Also Babe has spoken about a love scene he and Billy filmed in a cave in the final/close to final episode, as well as Billy and the director wanting/hinting at trying for a second season. So while I appreciate the editing team trying to do the ole fake out with the preview, maybe don’t show a less dramatic version of the preview four days before you recut it lol.

[darknebula85]

30/6/2023, Log of Darknebula85, 1:33 AM…

I came here because I'm curious, and after having seen all the episodes I have to say that I found it spectacular, it's too good and it perfectly dealt with a subject that affects me a lot, the negative impact of hate comments on the internet (The author of this manga knows how to capture human situations in a very real way, for example, for me the most real romance I have seen is that of Kaguya Sama, so I am not surprised that he has known how to capture the subject so well of bullying). Chapters 6 and 7 were my favorites because of the following: Many years ago I had a friend who was bullied by people online because of a misunderstanding that happened at his high school, and the insults reached such a high point that he ended up taking his own life. His name was Yoshua, and I could have helped him at the time and I didn't, as mentioned in chapter 6, when a person cries for help and no one helps him in time, bad things happen. Toxicity on the internet is enormous, many people who have opinions that are different from other opinions go directly to attack just to be right, they believe that hurting gives their point of view more strength and in the end they can end up causing serious damage, because let's remember that behind every post, image, etc., there is a human with feelings, and many of them don't know how to handle random internet attacks. Attacking others does not make you superior and it will not solve the insecurities you have about yourself. And that would be my opinion on the subject, I can't stand those who harm others, and I found Oshi no Ko wonderful, I'm tempted to read the manga but the anime is so good that I'm resisting that impulse. By the way, I swore that the Oshi no ko manga was finished, I was very surprised to see that they keep publishing chapters.

PS: There is only one thing that worries me, I see that many people hate several main characters, in fact instead of discussing which character is better than the other they argue about which one is worse than the other, and I'm afraid XD. At the moment Akane is my favorite character, I like her and she made me empathize with her a lot from the experience I told you about before.

It's a very good work, and if it's already so good with only 11 episodes, I can't imagine how it will be later, I'll be looking forward to that second season with great anticipation.

[unknownchaos]

[flies towards your current location at high speed. Tries to open your door instead of breaking it, falis miserably, trembles, and falls directly on your bed] ... So you have seen the show!! That's amazing!! Please let's rant about it and reblog posts so chat can get convinced to watch it. Also, let me hug you <3

Accepting your hug with open arms <3 also, I love the show!!! So much!!! I'm taking your "please let's rant about it" as an invitation to do so, so here's the spoiler warning for Invincible under the cut for anyone else reading this :) (Also, warning for incoherent rambling. I got a little excited)

Where do I even start? The show is incredible, and the characters are incredible, and the animation is incredible; can you tell I like the show? When my friend first recommended Invincible to me (well, it was less recommending and more telling me to watch it) I did not have high expectations. Then Omni-man turned the Guardians of the Globe into red mist?? I was sold on the show right then and there.

Right before I even got to episode 5 with Battle Beast, a friend of mine who read the comics long before he watched the show likened Battle Beast's appearance in the first season to putting Thanos up against Pre-Serum Steve Rogers in a fight. I only realized how right he was when Battle Beast absolutely massacred everybody easily.

Dude, all of episode five was just phenomenal. I mean, if it weren't for episodes 7-8, it would definitely be my favorite. Everyone was just so cool, the action sequences where just so sick. I actually paused the show when Mark went super saiyan-- everything about that scene was so insane to me.

And then the fight scenes between Omni-Man and Invincible???? Jesus, dude. For a bit of context, I had only ever known of Omni-man from Mortal Kombat and a couple of out-of-context clips that made me think he was just some Deadpool-esque superhero. I don't know if you know about his Mortal Kombat fatalities, but in one of them Omni-man grabs his opponent and does the whole "holds them up to an oncoming train" scene he does to Mark in the show. At the time, I thought it was just a cool fatality, but then he did it to Mark in the show and I lost it.

Is this where I talk about my favorite characters? I'm gonna talk about my favorite characters now. Robot/Rudy is my #1, hands down. I saw him and it was adoration at first sight. What can I say, I love robot characters. While I do understand his whole "becoming-human" arc, I have to say that I am partial to his Robot version over his Rudy version. (If that makes any sense)

I don't know how controversial this is, but Omni-man's right up there at #2. Hang on, before you block me, I just think he's a really interesting character. The tears when he flew away from Mark? The fact that he let Mark live? All the fucked up shit he's done on top of that? There's just- something about him that's so interesting to me. I want to study him under a microscope.

Allen is #3. Like with Robot, it was love at first sight. He's just so cool and a good person all around, and I KNEW they would kill him off the SECOND his "Allen the Alien" title card showed up. I was watching the show with Red and I called it out loud and she said "they wouldn't kill him off, right? They wouldn't do that." and then he died in front of us. I was devastated.

Then it comes to Amber and Eve who I love very much and they are both very dear to me. If anything bad happens to either of them ever I will need 3-4 business days to recover. [Obligatory comment about how hot they are here. Anthony obligatory comment about how Eve with the buzz cut is an underrated look.]

I could go on forever about this show, but for both of our sakes, I'll conclude this post here :) feel free to give me your thoughts as well :)))

[abalonetea]

hi there! If it isn’t weird or too much of a bother, I saw your reply on a post mentioning how marble hornets fundamentally changed the horror genre, and now I’m super interested. could you share more about that?

nnnnn this isn't weird or a bother, it's one of my absolute favorite topics to discuss! people don't discuss it much, or at least not in the circles that i tend to roam, but it truly changed the horror genre on a multi-platform level.

so! some basic information. YouTube was launched in 2005. four years later, the first video in what would become known as the Marble Hornets series was posted. right now, ARGs (alternate reality style YouTube series filmed as though they are 'real life') are super common, and the Slenderman phase had come and gone; and the indie horror game market is booming!

but when Marble Hornets first came out, only lonelygirl15 was on-going and making an impact. even then, it was only known in very select circles. Slenderman was only discussed on select Reddit threads, and had no solid popularity attached to it yet. and indie horror games were few and far between.

So, it was one of the first of its kind - and the first to truly make any known waves. by the time that the second 'season' came out, even people outside of the main horror circles had heard about it! there was so much discussion at the start as to whether or not it was real, and it hit a level of popularity that no other YouTube series had managed to reach.

the first 26 episodes were made with only $500, Adobe Premier, and Sony Vegas Pro. it was featured as one of the top ten horror fan films in Dread Central, and even got positive reviews from Robert Egbert! but this isn't about the acclaim around the series itself, which is its own separate post.

this is about THE RIPPLE EFFECT.

the ripple effect can be boiled down to several points

*ARGs

*indie horror games

*the slenderman mythos

*horror films

first, the obvious. Marble Hornet's showed people what you could do with a small budget and the still very recent addition of YouTube online. Keep in mind, it had only been about four years since YouTube launched and people were still finding new ways to make use of it. Marble Hornets showed other indie artists what the medium could be used for - and inspired a massive swath of horror ARGs such as tribeONE and everymanHYBRID which took the universe that Marble Hornets created and built off of it.

There were dozens of these. A lot of them fell apart fast, but others ended up being almost as good as their original inspiration!

and then people started to get creative! Daisy Brown, Petscop, Jack Torrence, POSTcontent, and countless others - and they were shown this medium through Marble Hornets series and subsequent success.

next up is the mythos itself.

Up until now, Slenderman had just been a vague concept on the Something Awful forums. Marble Hornet is the series that popularized an actual concept around it, providing the monster in question with the alternate reality base that has since become mostly accepted cannon. it very literally created the larger idea behind the Slenderman mythos - which leads directly into -

the truly massive amount of Slenderman indie horror games that came out en masse right after Marble Hornets became popular! and this was huge! many of the big name indie game developers we see on market today got their start making Slenderman games. it also, same as Five Nights At Freddy's, introduced a new method of gameplay that took the indie gaming community by storm.

suddenly, everyone was not only making a Slenderman game, but they were trying to one up each other, leading to a rapid increase in the capabilities of indie horror game developers, as well as a boom in the market itself. those who did Let's Plays at the time (i'll give a shout out to my favorites, John Wolfe and MrKravin) suddenly had a surplus of short horror games available to them!

and then there's the media sensation! not only did it manage to get its own movie, but it created a very specific genre of movie that took off rapid fire. Butterfly Kisses and Char Man fit into this genre, as examples.

it also took what was a seldom used concept at the time, the disruption of the camera and the audio/video distortions, and introduced techniques that had not been brought into the mainstream viewing.

it was also one of the first YouTube horror phenomena to break containment; a creation that started as a $500 project and rippled out into a genre defining, Slenderman mythos creating, technique inspiring series that to this day can still be seen as the influence in popular games and movies.

it heralded in the creation of so many new projects, inspired a new genre of horror, and reinvigorated an otherwise stagnant game market.

how cool is that?