#like the show would be so much stronger if they really did deconstruct the idea of the superiority of romance like it kinda toes the line

[weepingfireflies]

I really enjoy stories where the author talks about how ostracizing romance and romantic intentions can be, but I feel like the storyline only really shows up in romance anime where the (usually male) character has to be in love with the female protagonist, which honestly degrades the whole point a little bit. "I love that you're not just seeing me as a romantic partner" is a great motivation, and there's no real reason to make that the reason they fall in love, yanno?

[j2zara]

thinking so hard about j2 looking and acting like jace when jace isnt pretending for anyone or putting on a show of being cool girl. dirty blonde hair, comfortable baggy clothes in pastels, soooo sweet and willing for anyone who’ll show him a soft touch. maybe a pair of glasses. he literally Is jace before porter and jace haaaaaates his ass so much.

J2 IN BIG OL' GLASSES AGENDA FINALLY WE'RE STRONGER TOGETHER!! Also pastels Bluejay trutherism. He would look so cute in pastels. Jace doesn't understand bc i think he's a jewel tones person. But. J2 is so cute i love him so much.

The funny thing is that Jace HAS all the clothes from his slutty college phase and his grunge phase and his emo phase whenever even *I* write cloneverse stuff but actually? This might be the truest thing ive ever seen. Something about IYWD paints pre-shatterstar early aguefort jace as. Almost a Goodboy. Like. Very much deconstructing from either of his religious upbringings but i do think there is even a shy, slightly buttoned up conservative vibe. Like. Literally buttoned up. Porter is the one who convinced him to stop wearing his scarves so tightly wound lol. Held in place by a family heirloom with a symbol his mother's galicaean faith. Replacing one god for another. That's J2 to me. He's so 25 year old green new hire jace coded it's not even funny. Desperate for direction. For someone to tell him he's getting things right, maybe even give him a little guiding hand.

(And how much does Porter dictate? Porter told Jace he liked his scarf undone. Sure J2 gravitates toward blue, but did Blue become J2's thing because it was the one thing that Porter was able to pick up as well? Was he bluejay before, his own person from jace, or did he become Bluejay for porter?)

For the record. I still think jace can have those rebellious phases that we love to use to give the clones fodder for dress up so i will chalk this up to like. He's at a new job he's kinda falling back onto what he knows and what he knows is putting on that perfectly cultivated Jace Stardiamond Personal (Lights Camera Bitch Smile)

Anyway. I honestly think out of the clones J2 is probably the most like myself (not really in personality but maybe when it comes to things like personal taste and presentation). That wasn't really on purpose I think I just needed thing thats differentiate him from Jace. But. Like. He's very oldest daughter he's very like takes on all the responsibility for himself and i wouldn't exactly say perfectionist but I do think he just. He takes on a lot and is terrified of failure, desperate to prove his worth, his utility. Like off the clock you know he's changing into sweats immediately but when he's on the clock you know he doesn't crack.

Again the differentiation from jace i guess. I liked this idea of someone who was actually kind of frumpy and laid back in his downtime, as opposed to Jace who is always on always performing always perfectly cultivated (which is why J2 feels so manic pixie coded so You Belong With Me Frumpy Next Door Neighbor Taylor to jace's Bitchy Head Cheerleader Taylor). And i don't think these traits are too distanced from jace, Jace is very preoccupied with his own comfort (and like i love the autistic headcanons, particularly abt him dressing for comfort especially because i relate to that so hard i wear the same halter top in different color every day fjkldjakfjla) but that's why jace is willing to put in the work sometimes right? Work to maintain the comfort. Or at least the illusion of effortless, the cache of being a hot and fuckable elmville 9. And Again that idea of everything being effortless and the illusion of being laid back while Jace has this white knuckle grip on everything.

And like. Jace takes all that one willingly, that's self imposed, but if you had to perform being perfect all the time, if you were told that was your job, wouldn't you want to escape a little? Relax on your downtime? Be a creature of comfort? That's J2 to me. And tbh i do think there are a lot of instincts in J2 that might be his own thing but also might be Of Jace. Would jace be a more relaxed and carefree if he didn't feel the need to be On all the time?

Tbh i am compelled by Jace's dislike of J2 b/c like. I get it but also you created this and he thinks he created his perfect replacement for porter and you WANT him to be able to take care of porter while also resenting him for taking care of porter while also seething because J2 is a low rent knockoff but also look at him he doesn't even CARE about playing the part of the cunt porter married and Porter still likes him (Jace does not know the extent to how much J2 is obsessed with wanting to be the cunt porter married. J2 is willing to put in the work for that and that alone. Otherwise he is a dirty blonde in old badidas shorts cardigans and slides w/ socks. with a gender he thinks is probably not cis but does NOT want to unpack rn).

I do also wonder if Jace resents how soft J2 is and does want to push to see if there is that underlying cunt porter married in there somewhere. Like. This guy CAN'T be as sweet and perfect as everyone thinks he is. (it comes out sometimes. Cunty j2 is something i hold very close to my heart bc it doesn't come out nearly as often as cunty j3 or j4 but it does exist)

[linkspooky]

Now heard me out.

The Nobody Dies AU is a pretty good name and such. But there’s one missing fact. Our Lord and savior Geto still dies in the AU. Thus the name of the AU doesn’t match!

Therefore, I petition for a new name. How about “The Struggles of the Weak” AU?

Yeah?

Since the main characters in your JJK fanfics are characters that are considered weak, or tend to overcome weaknesses itself (e.g. Michi, Junpei, Mai).

So it would be a perfect fit for all your fics!

…

Oh wait... Shoko isn’t really weak tho.

…

Hold on!

You can argue that since Three’s Company focus on Sigma and Delta, there’s a case that both of them struggle against the Jujutsu World and are too weak to fight against it!

Ha! See! I make great arguments!

Plz don’t take this ask too seriously, I just thought the name “The Struggles of the Weak” is pretty cool for the AU

Our Lord and Savior Geto may have died for our sins, but that doesn't mean there's no way he can come back or be alive at the end of the AU.

I can't say anything more though, that's spoilers.

That is a cool name!

A big inspiration for writing the AU was to focus on the more minor characters in Jujutsu Kaisen, the ones who do not get stronger, who get worse, and show them in a more sympathetic light. The idea actually started with Junpei. More or less my concept of Junpei's foiling with Yuji is that they both are idealists but Yuji is the type of person that can beat up any bully that ever tried to mess with him, but Junpei is not strong enough and gets beaten up instead.

Isn't it understandable then that Yuji who was strong enough to protect himself is able to keep his ideals and his positive attitude, whereas Junpei who was weak and beaten down becomes more of a disappointed idealist and spirals into negativity.

The characters I chose to focus on were characters who either died or were punished mercilessly by the narrative of Jujutsu Kaisen, for being weak. Junpei is shown sympathy despite turning into a curse user and attacking his class, but in the end he isn't saved and dies before he has the chance to redeem himself. That's part of the tragedy of the Jujutsu World, but you know that's what fanfic is for.

Basically the whole point of the AU is to deconstruct the ideas that "Strong = Good" and "Weak = Immoral", and show people much more complicated to be defined by that binary. After all, if Yuji did not have super strength and had to endure being beaten and then burned like Junpei did, then would he endure it better than Junpei had? A lot of what makes people weak or strong is often situational rather than some kind of internal quality. There's also a strength in weakness too, there's worth in enduring even if that's not all you can do and you don't have it within yourself to conquer your situation or fix your problems all on your own. One thing I wanted to demonstrate with Junpei is that despite how disappointed he is with people, the idealist inside of him still remains which shows in the way he treats Mimiko and Nanako. He is someone who much like Yuji wants to reach out and help others, but circumstances have not allowed him too and he can't really change those circumstances without outside help. And Yuji may have super strength, but he has also been helped by the people around him time and time again.

The fic continued and I decided to focus on Mai especially after she gave that dumb speech to Maki on her death that was more or like "You're never going to get stronger because I don't want to be strong" and then the fic 'Werewolf' was born out of my desire to show that Mai may not be able to punch people as well as Maki, she may whine and make excuses and blame others but she has her own strengths too. A person as weak as Mai struggling and needing help isn't any different from Maki, there's no weak or strong twin they're just both people with their own weaknesses and strengths. After all Maki is strong physically but you could make the argument she's weak emotionally, she's not even capable of having a basic conversation with Mai or showing her feelings because that means exposing herself to that vulnerability.

I think Shoko is weak in the fact she has no vulnerability at all, so therefore she forms no attachment to people. She's basically invulnerable with her RCT and yet she never gets close to people at all, and never tries to form deep and meaningful relationships and stays on the outside of things instead.

That's a good point about Sigma and Delta though, the real tragedy of Three's Company is that Sigma and Delta never really stood a chance to win because they sent the three strongest students after them to hunt them down. It's not really the individual choices of any single person involved in that story, but rather not a single one of them was really strong enough to change the world. Shoko, Gojo, and Geto all in part sympathize with the kids but they don't go against their orders and still bring them in. Sigma and Delta only want to live in peace, but they just don't have the strength to make that happen. Sigma loses not because he's wrong or immoral, he's just weaker than Gojo. Gojo at that point also is in his first year and isn't particularly concerned about doing the right thing he is just finishing the mission. Which is why more or less the story epilogue ends on Shoko and Gojo visiting Geto's grave, because after not saving Sigma and Delta, the next person that both of them were too weak to save was their own friend.

There's strength in weakness, and weakness in strength, that's basically the message I wanted to get across for the whole AU.

I might still keep the name nobody dies AU, because the AU was inspired by the fact I did not like Nanako, Mimiko and Junpei's death and found them unnecessary, and the bigger goal of the AU is to give screen time to characters like Mai who died before they ever had a chance to shine.

[ramblingguy54]

True Colors: An Emotionally Fantastic Serious Game Changer.

If we’re to look back at Reunion as Season 1′s dramatic pay off for Amphibia’s message of toxic friendships, as Anne & Sasha’s conflicting dynamic showed us, then True Colors is a colossal expansive note on this big theme of the series. True Colors makes Season 1′s finale look like a walk in the park for what angst goes down between our three main heroins in Season 2′s climatic resolution. Everything that can go wrong does go oh so painfully wrong for these three kids. Anne, to no one’s surprise, gets double crossed by Sasha leaving things between them a Hell of a lot more bitter than they were previously, as if that couldn’t already be topped when Sasha tried to kill the Plantars before. Anne has had enough of her lies and manipulation not being afraid to tell Sasha straight up how awful of a friend she’s been in general, even hitting her where it hurts most of all saying, “No, I’m done listening to you! I’m done trusting you! You’re a horrible person and I am done being FRIENDS with you!”, going so far as to get a shaken reaction out of Sasha dropping her brave face act, making this girl try to wipe away the frog family.

Right off the bat, True Colors makes it highly evident this isn’t just another story of stopping a bigger threat, but one hitting much closer to home, overall. Yes, King Andrias is certainly a dangerous villain, who makes his presence and intimidating nature known to the others by True Color’s final act, which despite this Amphibia isn’t entirely putting him at the forefront, rather focusing on a more intimate study of Anne, Sasha, and Marcy’s big emotional conflict. This finale knows exactly where to put its focus of importance on, so I love that instead of it being action packed we’re getting the spotlight shined on just how screwed up these three of a friendship have, in spite of Marcy claiming in The Dinner episode, “We’re supposed to be friends for life. We don’t split up!’ . Very ironic stuff right there, indeed.

True Colors’ most powerful strength it adds to Amphibia’s ongoing profound story about healthy friendships is the thorough deconstruction of these girls defined “ideal relationship” as people. Before Anne came to the world of Amphibia this kid was afraid to stand up for what she believed in, even knowing especially well that stealing the calamity box was morally questionable, but did it anyway. Sasha was super manipulative, abusive, and used her power to control people, like she did a lot of toward Anne in their lives. Marcy, while very smart, wasn’t the most competent physically, who soon grew into being more independent without needing to rely on Anne always having to be there for her. These three were changed immensely by the events of being thrust into this world of sentient amphibian creatures. Anne benefited morally most out out of all three in taking up the mantle of responsibility and ironing out her own issues. She’s become a much stronger person all around. 

This episode asks us an important question though in nutshell with, “Have Sasha & Marcy truly changed for the better?”, since Anne has reached a point in her arc feeling genuinely content with who she’s become and the bonds that have been made with the Plantar family shown most notably with Sprig Plantar. Hence the whole purpose behind the song, It’s No Big Deal, with Anne feeling proud for who she is, yet not noticing a bigger issue right underneath her nose. That previous episode was meant to bring Anne’s happiness up only to bring it all crashing down in a devastating display of new revelations in True Colors. Every dramatic emotional beat isn’t just earned. Each significant moment is completely knocked out of the park by terrific voice acting, beautiful animation, and music composition that gave me serious emotional goosebumps. True Colors did exactly as Not What He Seems accomplished for Gravity Falls in shaking up its own respective dramatic stakes just when you thought it couldn’t get any higher for these protagonists. Shit seriously hits the fan here.

Did it ever occur to you, Anne? Sasha? That one of you knew more, than she was letting on? That ONE of you might’ve gotten you stranded in Amphibia on purpose...?

The big bombshell twist of Marcy playing a part too in getting them into this whole debacle completely flips everything upside down. Sasha pushed Anne into taking the Calamity Box, yes, but if Marcy never sent that photo because of her desire to stay with them together forever, then they wouldn’t have been stranded in basically a world full of dangerous creatures and who knows what else. Easily my favorite part of the episode, considering it adds more nuance to a situation that defined Amphibia’s story. It wasn’t just one person’s fault at the end of the day. Sasha bullied Anne into taking the box, Anne didn’t put her foot down to make a stand for something morally questionable, and Marcy took advantage of them both to benefit her own selfish desires for supposedly a “happy ending” not involving them staying apart, due to her parents moving away for a new job. All three girls played an important part on why they got landed into Amphiba. It’s why Anne’s statement to King Andrias, “The three of us may have made some mistake, but you...You’re evil and I’m gonna stop you!”, holds such a real weight to it, as this story continues to solidify how genuinely fleshed out their dynamic is.

Marcy’s super desperate plea to be understood by Anne & Sasha when Andrias revealed her getting them thrown into Amphibia purposefully was hard to watch. On one hand, I felt for Marcy because she didn’t want real life circumstances to tear apart that close connection she had to Sasha & Anne. Sure, she could’ve just kept in touch with them over the phone or chatting online, too. However, Marcy had known them since very early childhood. When you’ve been so attached to someone it can be a devastating thing, depending on just how vulnerable you are emotionally, to start drifting apart. Marcy represents that embodiment of toxic need for togetherness and couldn’t bear to let a possibility, like moving away, throw a wrench into her happiness and friendship, as well.

Never mind Marcy wanting to stay permanently in a different reality, rather than face her’s, but it made this person feel like something more. It gave her a chance to feel truly special in being able to live out a fantasy dream of having such power and freedom that a kid, like herself, couldn’t have had. The freedom to know she is plenty capable of making it out there on her own without Anne having to watch this kid like a hawk. So, to have someone, or something, try taking it away from her terrified Marcy of facing a terrible truth. That she isn’t strong enough after all to live a life without Anne & Sasha by her side completely, where Marcy will never feel truly worthy enough to blossom into her own person. It’s why that line, “I just...didn’t want to be alone...”, carries such a deep pain to it all. Marcy just crumbles into pieces accepting her greatest weakness. As much as Marcy fumbled the ball big time, it’s so easy to empathize with her on the idea of feeling competent enough. Marcy never meant to hurt Anne or Sasha, but the sad crushing punchline is she very much did.

Speaking of which, Anne had every right to be upset and mad, obviously. Anne has been missing so many things from her life before everything went off the wall. Hopping Mall especially highlighted Anne’s emotional desire to give anything just to hear her mother’s singing again. This teenager has been really dealing with a lot of grief in general quite honestly. Anne got into a high stakes battle against Sasha to save new friends, who’d practically became like an adopted family, which left the poor girl traumatized and heartbroken over the end result. She thought finding Marcy would help compensate for it and eventually be able to mend those complications with Sasha to boot. It’s simply painful to see it all blow up in Anne’s face to know not only Sasha betrayed her trust yet again, but realizing Marcy also played a part of responsibility in getting them thrown here. Matt Braly really just decided to slap future trust issues onto Anne finding out Hop Pop, Sasha, and Marcy were all super dishonest in their intentions at one point or another. Damn, I feel so bad for her.

It makes their embracing hug back in Marcy At The Gates so much harder to watch. Anne was super glad to see her again. Anne had wondered what became of Marcy or even possibly started to think she could even be alive at all. Then come to find out later on Marcy having intentionally ripped her away from a normal life must’ve felt worse then what happened with Sasha. Anne, already done with all of Sasha’s bullshit, thought she could at least expect better from Marcy not letting her down, but that too wasn’t the case. Marcy is very much as flawed as Sasha in what she has done. To think, Anne wanted so badly to get back home, yet she’s staring the very person dead in the eye, who ripped her away from it to begin with. Marcy knew Sasha would talk Anne into taking the box from that thrift shop, even if she wasn’t completely certain it would successfully teleport them away. Regardless of whatever good intentions someone can have in why they did what they did, it still doesn’t absolve them of said mistake. Fact of the matter is, Marcy tragically made her own bed, by choosing to mess with forces she couldn’t begin to comprehend and now has to face consequences, in spite of her not deserving them.

What really got to me was when Marcy tried to spin around Anne’s personal growth and close friendship with the Plantars as all entirely thanks to her. When she said, “I gave you this! I gave you everything!”, I was like, “Nope, that couldn’t be any further from the truth.”, seeing everything that has culminated in Anne’s journey of bettering herself. Marcy didn’t give Anne anything, but a one way ticket to cutting the kid off from her family, presuming she’d be fine with this idea. It’s all kinds of messed up, however what it boils down to is Marcy undermining Anne’s independence and agency. Anne’s moral judgement in decision making was what allowed her to create this new life she made for herself in Amphibia. Anne’s honesty as a whole led her down a path of togetherness, while Marcy’s lying landed her in a result of not wanting to be alone, costing her so much.

“I don’t believe this. We were so focused on each other we couldn’t see what was right in front of us!”

True Colors excels at earning each of its emotional beats because they line up with character motivations down to the last letter. Anne doesn’t want to trust Sasha anymore because of their already rocky past, which leads to her helping King Andrias regain control of his kingdom. Sasha not keeping a lid on her temper, wanting to rule over Amphibia, and trying to reinforce that power dynamic with Anne & Marcy only made things worse for her image of a changed good friend. There wasn’t a chance in Hell Anne would hear Sasha’s reasoning after she flat out tried to take away her frog family, by attempting to use the Calamity Box a bit ago in the episode. Marcy wanted to believe there was a happily ever after in seeing this world traveling idea as their only chance for salvation as friends for life, but it turned out to be something much more sinister, when learning of Andrias’ backstory and his true scumbag nature. All three of their motivations come clashing together, blinding them from a much bigger danger. Something that effectively puts everyone at stake.

Amphibia’s Season 2 finale works so excellently, given it covers important dramatic elements it’s been stirring around since Season 1′s early rumblings. Amphibia is a story centered around people’s need for emotional connections. True Colors builds miraculously off what Reunion already did quite well in showing friendships can become rough and they are never easy to deal with. When you have to make a stand it can be a tough pill to swallow on the reality check of maybe this “good friend” of your’s isn’t as nice as you previously thought them to be. Anne having been hurt one too many times now by her former friend sends that message close to home, so much so even Sasha begins to question her morality as a human being. It poignantly encapsulates how this trio’s complex friendship is a serious growing issue needing to be reexamined, overall.

What if Anne’s right..? What if I am a horrible person...?

Something I absolutely love to pieces about True Colors, also a testament to Season 2′s darn good writing, is how much introspective we get from each character on what they’re feeling. We’ve seen plenty of Sasha’s vulnerability before in other episodes centered on her issues, but now we’re getting to the root of it. Sasha is really taking everything more to heart, little by little. Sasha’s understanding what kind of an effect she has on people, seeing the damage it has caused made evident by Percy and Braddock in Barrel’s Warhammer. Grime once told her, “Some dreams have a price and not everyone is willing to pay it.”, where she’s questioning that idealism every passing minute the invasion plan proceeds further into reaching success. Sasha isn’t sure what to do with herself anymore feeling aimless. Those previous episodes had a real impact on her priorities more than she cared to let on with Sasha’s typical tough girl act. This kid has let her guard down more, which scares and confuses Sasha. She’s always used to playing the role of protector it contradicts everything Sasha stands for when the roles are totally reversed because now Anne has made her feel the tremendous change in their growth as individuals.

Sasha’s lifestyle has been all about control that after somewhat learning to be more considerate to Anne & Marcy’s feelings she feels beyond conflicted about what truly matters to her. The most screwed up part of it all is Sasha didn’t want to fight anymore, taking up a pacifist approach after seeing what King Andrias had been hiding from everyone. It’s a fitting punishment for Sasha to try bringing Anne over to work together once more, but getting her pleas for companionship outright ignored. Anne was correct that Sasha had wasted all the chances to be reasonable. Boonchuy tried to hear out Sasha before at The Third Temple. One wanted to start things over again to iron out their serious issues, but the other was driven by bitterness, while only remorseful to a degree at best, of seeing their once weak friend become so independent, mature, and stronger that it drove her up wall. Sasha wanted to take away that “problem” being the Plantars, since in her eyes they’re the source of Anne’s strength, driving a wedge further between the two girls in their heated Reunion 2.0 battle.

True Colors demonstrates the horrific price of no trust, communication, nor teamwork from the three main girls that Andrias smoothly took advantage of, as if they were fiddles. 

“That’s the thing about friends isn’t it? The more you love them, the more it hurts when they go.”

King Andrias is quite literally what I wanted Lunaris to be, where DuckTales’ Season 2 finale didn’t impress me on doing. He’s a serious big baddie to the main cast, who follows through on his threats of violence to demonstrate his wide array of arsenal and power. Andrias doesn’t just emotionally manipulate characters, like poor Marcy, but utterly crush them without an ounce of remorse for his actions. When he dropped Sprig out that window after Anne willingly let him have the Calamity Box back I thought they were legit gonna kill this boy off. The way Anne’s flashback montage of her good times with Sprig were eerily shot really didn’t help either on that note. Anne’s Calamity power finally activating is easily up there among stuff, like Dewey risking his life for Della’s disappearance in Last Crash, where the cinematography is shot and animated brilliantly. You feel Anne’s blind raging sadness in every hit she landed on those robots and Andrias. If anyone didn’t believe Sprig was like a little brother to Anne, then I dunno how anyone couldn’t view their bond anymore as such after this hugely defining scene. Anne went bloodthirsty when she believed Sprig to be dead further evidenced when she hugged him in relief afterwards exclaiming, “Sprig!? You’re alive!? Oh, thank goodness...”, which cuts deep so damn much.

Anne was ready to fight every one of Andrias’ troops in that castle to the death, if need be. Before Sprig came back from falling, thanks to Marcy’s quick acting, to comfort Anne, her only goal was to slaughter every opponent in that throne room, along with making Andrias pay dearly for even daring to lay a single finger on anyone of the Plantars. I’m not gonna lie, this pivotal power up reminded me so much Gohan turning Super Saiyan 2 after Cell curb stomped Android 16 into pieces with a smirk on his face. Anne Boonchuy’s maddening outburst is a classic testament to the idea of, “Piss off the nicest person and they’ll make it their mission to instill the biggest kind of fear/terror into you.”. showing this kid at her most vulnerable mental state, yet. Sprig & Anne’s cathartic embrace really messed me up in reinforcing just how these two respect, love, and would go above any of their limitations to help the other out. Sprig’s “death” scene was a masterful bait by the writers into making us think someone was gonna die and it was gonna be a poor kid, no less.  

However, it was actually all just a bait and switch for the real, “Oh, shit. They really just did that”, moment with Marcy unexpectedly getting run through with Andrias’ gigantic sword. In a last ditch effort, Marcy wanted to atone for what she had a hand in getting them all into. Marcy was ironclad determined in making her own stand for what was right trying to save the people she endangered. Akin to what Sasha did in Reunion for saving Anne’s life, Marcy does the exact same here. Although, unfortunately this time, no one is here to protect Marcy from escaping death, like Grime catching Sasha from plummeting at Toad Tower. Marcy couldn’t react in time because she was so focused on helping her dear friends out. She wanted to prove to herself at least one time, “I’ve screwed up so much stuff with my friends. Maybe, just maybe. If I get my friends back home, it’ll prove I’m not an entirely crappy person for setting these events into motion.”. Marcy’s own deep seeded remorse is what saved Anne & the Plantars, while being the cause of her own untimely demise at Andrias’ hands.

This scene is what no doubt encouraged the warning sign for younger viewers Disney decided to make for them. It’s impressive how far Matt and his crew are willing to go for intense dramatic content. Andrias trying to crush Polly with his fist after destroying Frobo with casual ease, dropping Sprig out of the window from up sky high, and stabbing Marcy with his powerful sword displays his cold blooded brutality. Doesn’t matter who you are. If you get in the way of Andrias’ plans for multiverse domination, then he’ll throw anyone into their own grave, be it man, woman, or child. That’s the mark of a truly terrifying antagonist.

Andrias didn’t care who had to be hurt or manipulated to get back the box, so he could invade other worlds with Earth being his next prime target for invasion. Marcy’s fate is a horrifyingly poetic statement, since Sasha stated to Anne in a flashback from Marcy At The Gates, “One of these days, she’s gonna get herself killed.”, with True Colors tying back to this line in a disturbing manner. Something that sends chills down my spine is we get to see the full extent of how far Andrias shoved the sword through her body. We don’t just see the entry point of where it hit her, but it even zooms out to show the whole thing. Real talk, I got serious Avatar The Last Airbender vibes from this scene. Reminded me so much of Aang getting suddenly zapped with lightning by Azula when he tried to enter the Avatar state. Marcy didn’t want to be alone so badly she ended up inevitably dying alone trying to send Anne back home to their reality. One Hell of a way to close off Marcy’s last moments in Season 2, until her inevitable resurrection happens in Season 3 now that King Andrias has her in a tube tank that looks tied to his master.

True Colors ends on a deeply bittersweet cliffhanger leaving the fates of Sasha & Grime totally unknown if they’ll get away by the skin of their teeth, or get captured by Andrias’ soldiers and robots. Anne finally returned home with the Plantars, but at a deadly cost of leaving her other close friends behind in Amphibia. After all the isolation, heartbreak, and endurance she went through with her frog family Anne finds herself at a total loss for words. Once again, Anne is in a state of solitude of not knowing if her friends are really okay or not, mirroring the start of Season 1 when she landed into Amphibia’s world. It’s safe to say to say that, “Finally me and it’s no big deal.”, lyrics have aged terribly for Anne’s realization of finding her own identity came at the expense of getting separated from friends she’s known since kindergarten. Definitely see Anne becoming a lot more protective of the Plantars now more than ever after watching Marcy drop to the ground from being stabbed in front of her eyes.

Amphibia’s Season 2 finale is exactly how you capitalize on a winning story telling formula of dramatic writing, lovable characters with layered depth, and increasing the stakes of your story in an organic manner. True Colors is a finale that should be talked about for a long time to come, as it not only showed how worth the wait it was, but reinforces why Amphibia is a truly great series. It’s unafraid to take its characters to dark places in a way that feels totally earned.

Amphibia Season 2 is everything a sequel to a first film should be.

[aspoonofsugar]

Hello, I would like to know what you think about the discussion that Cinder and Watts had.

It is interesting to note that what Watts tells Cinder is that her suffering doesn't make her strong or special or worthy of anything and by extension Watts tells Cinder that as much as she pretends that her suffering made her strong in reality she is still quite fragile and vulnerable because she hasn't been able to overcome her trauma and still wants to give meaning to her life and suffering.

Hello anons!

These two asks can be answered together.

First of all, I really liked that scene! It is probably my favourite moment of the episode together with the sequence in the underground.

I think there are two ways to see Watts and Cinder’s interaction in the episode.

1) Cinder

Cinder: You’re right. Without you I am nothing. But because of you, I am everything.

As I have written here:

Cinder’s way of thinking is very similar to Mercury’s. Not only have they both endured their parents’ violence, but they have tried to give this violence meaning. It is because of Madame that Cinder has become “everything” and it is because of Marcus that Mercury has become “strong”. They must believe that it was not all for nothing and that the pain they felt made them stronger instead of weaker.

This is why Cinder thinks that deep down her “hunger” is good. It is because it drives her, but she ignores that it blinds her too.

The idea that suffering made her stronger and more deserving than others is Cinder’s main coping mechanism.

She was treated as nothing, so she needs to believe she is secretly worthy of things others are negated. As I have stated here, she deep down wants to be chosen:

I would say that Cinder wants to be chosen. She wants to be special and to be given value. This is probably why she is serving Salem. It is because Salem has chosen her for an important role.

Well, Watts’s speech is about exactly this:

Watts: You think you’re entitled to everything because you’ve suffered, but suffering isn’t enough. You can’t just be strong, you have to be smart. You can’t just be deserving, you need to be worthy.

In a couple of phrases he deconstructs Cinder’s coping mechanism and this is why she is made to feel so vulnerable.

The whole point of Cinder is that she should stop reducing herself to her trauma and pain. By doing so, she both dehumanizes herself and dismisses others.

She dehumanizes herself because she tries to overcome her inferiority complex by looking for power and she does not realize that this is turning her into a monster:

Raven: Aura can’t protect your arm, it’s Grimm. You turned yourself into a monster just for power.

She dismisses others because she is so focused on her own pain that she can’t notice others’.

In short, she must stop pretending everything revolves around her and should start working on herself and her own issues. This is thematically what Watts’s speech is about. It also ties to the teaching of the Fall Maiden about choice. Destiny is not something that is given to you, but something you work towards:

Pyrrha: When I think of destiny, I don’t think of a predetermined fate you can’t escape. But rather… some sort of final goal, something you work towards your entire life.

Cinder is looking for worth outside herself. She wants Salem to recognize her and magical powers to be strong. She misses that self-worth is something only Cinder can grant herself.

However, things are not as simple in-universe because Watts is not referring to this in his speech. What he wants is not for Cinder to overcome her issues and to realize serving Salem is wrong. What Watts wants is for her to become better at her job.

Not only that, but in Watts’s speech there is hidden also this message that @luimnigh and @harostar have discussed here. Their posts are already clear, so I won’t spend much time on it.

The main idea is that Watts is worthy, while Cinder is not and how it goes back to their different upbringings and social status. In short, Watts is an Atlesian elite, while Cinder is a no-one, who was bought as a slave. Cinder keeps feeling this difference and can’t really break free from this kind of mentality.

That said, I think this last point gains more nuance when one looks at what this speech means for Watts himself.

2) Watts

Watts’s allusion is Watson and WoG says that he is Watson if he had connected with Moriarty instead of Sherlock. Personally, I think that as for now another good way to describe his allusion is that he is Watson if he were jealous of Sherlock instead of loyal to him.

As for now, Watts’s defining trait is his jealousy of Pietro Polendina and of his creation:

Watts: She’ll open the vault and she’ll destroy herself...And our little Penny problem would be...

It is not by chance that he wants to blow her up, even if that would not really be necessary. The Little Penny Problem he is talking about is really his problem and not Salem’s, who could not care less about Penny once she has the relic.

Watts wants to destroy Penny because he wants to be better than Pietro. Still, he misses why Pietro is better than him:

Watts: She’s on a set-path now...At least she should be...As much as I hate to admit it there seems to be some part of her capable of resisting...

As we know, the part of Penny who is capable of resisting is her humanity. Penny is a masterpiece not because she is a war machine, but because she is a real girl. This is the core of Pietro’s genius and this is what Watts can’t grasp:

Watts: Our tin soldier's heart has cost him his mind. We need to keep their attention on Mantle for as long as possible.

Watts, just like Ironwood, believes that feelings make you weak and stupid. Of course, this is the anti-thematic statement which has already been proven wrong over and over. Even when it comes to the situation above, Watts is actually being baited by Ironwood and him falling for it results in his arrest. The moment Ironwood is more open about his feelings is also the moment he is acting more logically.

In short, Watts is a brilliant scientist, who bought in Atlas’s ideology that you must pursue success at all costs. You must be strong/clever because only in this way you can be successful. If you let feelings cloud your determination/mind, you are a failure.

However, it is precisely this ideology taken to its extreme that is Watts’s own downfall.

He can’t understand Pietro’s ideal and is overshadowed by him. What is more, the idea of not being the first in his field drives him to disgrace.

His backstory makes so that Inside team WTCH Watts represents Salem’s entitlement.

This makes him similar to Cinder, as well. He is different from her for upbringing and status. Still, they both have the same flaw. They believe they are entitled to things.

Cinder does so because she has suffered. She was no-one, so now she must be the most important person in the world.

Watts does so because he was born an elite and he should stay an elite forever.

Watts is there not only to tell, but to show (both Cinder and the viewers) that the path Cinder is on leads nowhere. Watts had probably everything Cinder ever wanted. He was successful and rich. He did not have to worry about food or poverty. Still, that was not enough for him. He wanted more and this led him to betray his own country and to join a nihilistic witch.

In other words, Cinder will never find what she is looking for in power or success. Watts had both, but he is empty just like her. He is hungry just like her.

This is well conveyed symbolically by Watts being one of the very few characters that never unlocked his semblance. It means he never truly unlocked his full potential. He never truly understood who he wanted to be. He tried to be who his society wanted him to be, but he was not satisfied and decided to destroy it instead.

So, when Watts talks about the need to be smart and the difference between being deserving and worthy, he is actually talking about himself, probably without even realizing it. He is projecting his feelings of failure on Cinder. He was deserving, but not worthy. Pietro was the worthy one.

Other than these two, there is also another level to this confrontation that has been underlined by @misstrashchan​ here.

It is about the parallel between Cinder and Ironwood when it comes to their reactions to Watts spelling them the truth about themselves:

Ironwood: I will sacrifice... whatever it takes... to stop her.

Watts: Oh, I hope you do, James. I hope you do.

The difference, as the post above explains very well, is that Cinder is able to listen to Watts, while Ironwood ignores his words altogether.

This ties to how Ironwood’s inability to recognize his mistakes and to change his mind (literally what his semblance Mettle is about) is why he is the main villain in an arc where we are having the first redemption arc of one of our original trio of villains:

A redemption, which will probably be followed by other defections among the AceOps themselves.

In order to redeem one-self, a person must accept they were wrong and change their mind. Ironwood is unable to do so and this is why he is dangerous.

In conclusion, I love this confrontation because it is very complex, has many levels and is gray. In terms of complexity it reminds me of Tyrian’s interactions with Emerald and especially Mercury:

 Tyrian is seen tormenting the two kids whenever he gets the chance. That said, he ironically ends up spelling out for them truths the two must face:

Tyrian: Do what makes you happy children… please? I’m begging you…

Tyrian: Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate! Our mistress wishes to see the end of it all! There is no ideal more beautiful.

Tyrian is a great evil mentor because he manages to spell out what Emerald and Mercury should do and to make sure through his body language that they are not able to. He tells them the truth and threathens them, so that they can’t pursue what they need.

Here, Watts tells Cinder the truth by lashing out about how she is so worthless, that a machine must do her job.

It is also interesting because both Emerald and Mercury are clearly set-up to have an evil mentor figure:

Emerald and Hazel’s foiling has already paid off, while Mercury and Tyrian’s will probably pay off in the future.

I am not sure if Cinder will have a similar foiling/relationship with Watts. Still, it is an interesting possibility. Especially because one thing I would really like to happen with the original villain trio is for the abuse and the manipulation they are subjected to backfire. I would like for them to break free (with others’ help obviously because they can’t free themselves alone) by taking all these thematic truths they are told, so they can be manipulated, and to change them in teachings they can use against their abusers.

In short, I want Cinder to say...”Yeah, I do not need to be deserving of power because I am already worthy on my own”. And I want Mercury to free himself and to tell Tyrian...”This is what makes me happy”.

I think that this has partly happened with Emerald in the sense that Salem’s tactic to weaken her loyalty to Cinder through fear backfired:

Salem: Emerald... I want you to tell me whose fault this was. Now

Emerald: Cinder! We failed because of Cinder...

Salem: That's right. I want you to understand that failure. I want you to understand why Cinder must be left to toil in her isolation until she redeems herself.

The whole point of this interaction was to make Emerald submissive. It is clear Emerald is there for Cinder and not for Salem, so Salem frightened her and forced her to symbolically “betray” Cinder.

Still, this did not work for two reasons.

a) Emerald needs to see Cinder for who she is, so that she can break free from her.

b) Fear is among the factors that motivated Emerald to leave:

Yang: You're gonna have to try and summarize it. Why should we trust you?

Ren: Because she's scared. Just like us.

Not only that, but in an inversion of what usually happens with fear in the series, it is specifically because Emerald and JOYR are all scared that they can overcome their conflict and work together (as @echo-from-the-void​. noticed). Fear has separated our protagonists from the AceOps, but has brought them Emerald.

These are my main thoughts on the scene, thank you for the asks!

[flying-elliska]

Just binge read the Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon and !!!!!! amazing. Now I want to yell about it for a bit, bear with me (essay incoming sorry)

- the concept already, urban fantasy dystopia, just feels both so fresh and so obvious it's surprising it's not more of a Thing, and the world building is next level. the modern technology + Victorian aesthetics is not just cool (although it is) it evokes the fact that Victorian England was a brutal, very unequal and fucked up society, so it really fits a dystopia. Plus Scion is also an evil empire that invades other countries, which is also thematically relevant, as is the fact that the MC is Irish.

- I'm obsessed with the concept of a magical mob and Underworld (unsurprisingly) and people who are pushed to the margins of society because their very existence has been outlawed and bond together to find freedom but are also forced to exist in a state of constant brutality and the damage it all does

- the first book throws a lot of plot and world building at you in ways that can be a bit overwhelming and confusing, and doesn't give you a lot of time to connect emotionally to the characters, so that took me a while, but it's really worth pushing through for, i love them all now.

- I love the main character, Paige, so much. she's a survivor ; clever, witty, action oriented and very down to earth ; she's also very competent in ways that feel earned, and interestingly flawed, not some gratuitous emotionless Strong Female Character with plot armor or a 'not like other girls' complex. She's proud and she has a mean, ruthless streak. She's brave, too loyal for her own good, and impulsive to the point of recklessness, and sometimes her gambles pay off and sometimes she has to pay a very heavy price for them (it made me yell at the page several times). It's really cool to see a female MC that is so invested in the politics of her world. I hate that so many female mains in fantasy or dystopia are these isolated loners who hate politics, only really care about a handful of people and want to retire to their husband/2.5 kids happy ending as fast as possible, with a plot-line that focuses over personal development rather than political goals, because it sends this weird message that women are not meant to be in the public space. (Not making this into a rant about the Shadow and Bone books but lol I could)

Paige has to shoulder massive burdens that nobody in their right mind should want and that's understandable, but you do get the sense that she enjoys being a criminal, running free and scheming and climbing over roofs and outwitting her enemies and sticking it to the government. She doubts herself sometimes, worries about people only valuing her for her powers, but she doesn't have a lot of time to waste on self-consciousness, angsting or moping about her feelings. It's very empowering to read. And she's fiercely compassionate in moments where it's actually very dangerous for her to be. She has this constant struggle between the part of her that finds injustice intolerable and the part of her that is grimly pragmatic. This is exactly what women in fiction have been excluded from for too long, complex dilemmas about action and morality taken seriously, not just love triangle shit. It's great. Although wow does she deserve a break. Ouch. Baby </3

- the world is incredibly fucked up but there seems to be no sexism/homophobia/racism, which is refreshing to read. the main romance is m/f but there's a lot of ambient queerness, just because and not to 'make a point' ; the author has confirmed that the MC is demisexual, her bff is gay, the love interest is pan, there's a badass trans commander/mob boss, you get randomly informed that this henchwoman has a wife or that this mobster is trying to save his boyfriend, it's great (and it's not a word-of-god after the fact thing like jkr it's actually shown on the page, they just don't use any labels)

- the main romance is a slow build that is very low-key at first, enemies to reluctant allies to friends to lovers, but becomes really powerful over time. the fact that the MC is demi means it can't rely on 'omg so hot i can't stop thinking about him!' clichés - nothing wrong with attraction at first sight but it often leads to lazy storytelling and irritating instalove, tell over show romances. the characters are drawn to each other but it's more of a meeting of minds and souls at first, admiration and common goals, and their actions are still first and foremost guided by strategy, not sentiment. (sidenote I've often wondered if i wasn't at least a little demi myself. that would explain why i have such high standards for credible romance lmao.) also there's a significant power imbalance at the start but it gets very much deconstructed before anything can happen and it's an interesting negotiation. Warden could easily have fit in the 'brooding immortal douchebags' category but there's an alienness and gentleness to him that lifts him above that, along with the respect and space he gives to Paige and their shared experience of trauma and hopes for a better world. Her hot-headedness and his calm, deadpan sort-of-humor play off each other really well. Also I love the idea that develops over the series that their connection isn't a distraction from their fight but that it makes them stronger and allows them to resist and find solace from the deluge of constant horror that is their world. their whole dynamic in s4...no words. also the second time i read a scene where one character is bandaging the other's wounds and there's touch aversion involved and like, I LOVE that.

- lots of complex different bad guys. some are just brutes, some are sadistic masterminds with superiority complexes, some are deceptive and manipulative and morally ambiguous. love that the Big Bad Guy is a woman - female characters being fully realized means that sometimes, they're just incredibly evil (as long as it's not tied to their gender, i love that). Paige and Jaxon's relationship is fascinating - he's a terrible, manipulative person but i do feel in his own way, he cares about her and wants to see her thrive ; but that's not necessarily a good thing as he sees it as a justification to make her go through awful things. She knows he's awful but she can't get over the fact that he took her in, taught her, believed in her and gave her a sense of belonging and freedom when nobody else did ; she was super proud of being his mollisher and it makes sense it would take time for her to rebuild her sense of self without that, on her own. I like that the ambiguity isn't resolved (it's also a very good illustration of how emotionally abusive parental dynamics can get their hooks in you). The fact that he's aroace really works there too, could have been a lot creepier otherwise and i feel that's really not the point.

- also it's really cool how each book really feels like its own thing, it never feels repetitive, there are huge twists and a shift of focus each time - the penal colony in Oxford in the first, the London Underworld in the second, traveling through England in the third, Paris in the fourth, etc. The pace is pretty breakneck and i wasn't bored for one moment - actually at times i would have liked more quiet moments w the characters. There are two novellas that focus more on that and the second one is an exploration of trauma and recovery that's particularly hard hitting and beautiful. The first book does feel like a beginner novel, it's a bit clunky in terms of exposition, pacing and character development etc ; and there are moments where all the violence and brutality feel a bit repetitive ; but overall the story builds up so beautifully and in so many complex ways it's just really worth it and it's not for nothing i read the four books and two novellas in five days. just have to wait for the next one now though argh

- anyway more people should read it

[mc-critical]

(Okay head’s up, I’m going to be on your blog a lot since I absolutely LOVE your takes and analysis’.) Do you think (strictly theatrically speaking, not in the non-fictional and historical sense) Suleyman really loved Hürrem? As I watched the show I found it very silly how other characters of the show would remark how Suleyman “loved Hurrem so much he refused to ever take another concubine again” because..he did? And multiple times from what the viewers have seen too. Majority of the times the concubines/other women in Suleyman’s life (Isabella, Firüze etc) were only removed from his life via Hurrem’s intrigues, not by Suleyman’s decision. What do you think?

Aww, thank you so much for the nice words! 💕 Be here as much as you wish, absolutely no problem! (there are some takes I've had in the past that are quite passive-agressive in retrospect 😅, so I might as well also give you a heads up.)

As for your question, I think yes, SS loves Hürrem, but in his own, sometimes honestly incomprehensible (even outright toxic), way.

The writers perhaps wanted to hint at love at first sight in the beggining, due to the way she fainted in his arms in the first episode and how he kept thinking about her (that Ibrahim had to tell him that where he was supposed to go was the other direction) and the wave of excitement and anticipation he felt while waiting for her. But when they spent two nights together and he truly got to know her, was where it was at. Her uncanny ability to make him laugh, entertain him in a way no one else had before, was what impressed him first. He felt calm, safe in her presence, and wanted to keep this probably forever, along with him doing whatever else he wanted in the meantime regardless.

I feel the point of contention of whether he truly loved her or not comes from the fact that, the show wanted to make their love story integral to their both historically thematic and narratively soapy story - what I mean is, they wanted to make it the central plotline. And as a central plotline, it creates and/or extends on the other plotlines, having to show the other characters' reactions in excessive detail and even center parts of their motivations around it. You see how S01 and S02 of the series played this aspect of Hürrem and Süleiman's story completely straight - it presented it as The Love, this big, (thematically and narratively) unprecedented thing, this vital aspect of the series' DNA, the very tool that moves the story forward, that is only bound to have consistent narrative opposition: and I'm not referring only to Isabella and Firuze and all the other concubine arcs that force love triangles suited for the genre, it all is also about the continuous, frequent attacks on their love, that only stopped when the show made a complete genre shift by the second half of S04 and didn't have much time left. They worked with the idea that the more this love is attacked and antagonized, the stronger it becomes and the more shall people root for it. That's where the problem comes, because in retrospect, you can honestly see that these attacks played a major part in provoking a bunch of stuff SS did for Hürrem. Mahidevran beating her to death and poisoning her? SS gives Hürrem a chamber only for herself. (the other one she shared with Ayşe.) Them accusing her incessantly? Valide complaining about her? The various attacks? He continues to care even more for her. Valide and Ibrahim arranging that attack with the bandits? He married her. And one would wonder: is this even genuine or does the writing simply use her enemies' failings to lead Hürrem to SS? Is that the only reason he actually cares? What does MC want to achieve?

There are people who say that the entire point of SS loving her was that she was so different from everyone else (and that the concubine arcs ruined it), and yes, it was like that, in the very beginning. First impression is important and he truly began to enjoy her a lot since their first two nights, for her bringing him something new. However, both of Hürrem and Süleiman's characters and their relationship overall, drastically evolved throughout the show. When the first impression had passed and Hürrem gained SS's utmost attention and she became pregnant, she very quickly started taking stuff for granted, considering him only hers (the demonstration of the ring in front of Mahi; the twinge of jealousy towards Ibrahim.) and as a parallel, him still being a Sultan, having to follow the customs anyway, and calling Gülnihal in his chambers twice. Both of their ways of living clash, because Hürrem wants a monogamous relationship and takes every sign of care for him at face value, while SS lives in an environment that wants him to do what is expected of him.

SS both loves and hates when Hürrem stands up to his will. There have been times where she acted rashly, making borderline silly accusations (like blaming little Mustafa for the fire in E10), where she made moves out of jealousy (like stealing Isabella's pendant) and where she was complaining to him for something she didn't succeed to get (like Valide's chambers in S03). Süleiman sees her rebellious nature and goes out of his way to do moves to spite her. (this guy invited Isabella on a halvet out. of. sheer. spite and nothing else! smh honestly..) But there are as many times where he simply covers what she did (like killing Isabella) and caves to her demands anyway! Why would he cave to her demands and close his eyes on so much stuff she did, if he doesn't feel at least something for her?

The different treatment she gets also comes into play, because no matter how many times she's attacked and he seemingly stood by and watched aside from more serious cases, all it honestly does, is trigger his protective instincts. Despite of all the bumps on the road, Hürrem always was his darling, his special snowflake, whom he clearly felt something for. If anything, he wouldn't have freed her and this isn't something he would do to just anyone. (as we see how he refused to free Mahidevran when she desperately begged him to in E45.; and what's important, him freeing Hürrem wasn't provoked by someone else attacking her.) And when she makes all these jealousy fits, he listens, because Hürrem's character development represents full adaption to the circumstances of the harem, and by that, getting just like the others and learning their tricks. This has turned him off numerous times and when she shows that rebellious side of hers yet again, he couldn't help, but listen. What he said to Ibrahim after he sent off the Russian concubines, is especially telling: "No. (I don't love Hürrem as much as she loves me.) But now I fell in love with her even more." This summarizes extremely well what he thinks of her at this point, because while he's ready to cut her some slack, he's still helpless to her.

Though, later down the line, it gets very abundantly clear that if he loves her, he doesn't love her because she's different and she's rebellious, but because she's loyal to him. Infinitely loyal. She loves him this much, that she's not only ready to willingly drink poison and kill herself for him anytime, but she doesn't even want to give up his throne. It is all very well highlighted by his infamous line to Fatma: "Hürrem is not an angel, but she has something that none of you have. Loyalty! Absolute loyalty... / "She never saw anyone else on the throne but me." Over the years, SS began to live with the dramatically increased paranoia of betrayal, turning his natural ego from a strength, to an everlooming weakness. It destroyed every single relation of his, except for Hürrem. She's the only person that wasn't targeted by this crippling paranoid fear, he perhaps found piece and tranquil in her presence, because he knew that she wouldn't ever turn her back on him. And all these times he got mad at her, he had halvets to spite her, he caused her to prove to him how much he loved her, it turned out to be not only because his ego was tempered with, he wanted to test her loyalty the entire time. And all the times he prevented her from digging deeper into him and told her to stay out of political matters, now in S04 he no longer does that, since she actively joins every single conversation. Hürrem and Süleiman's relationship was put in a thorough deconstruction in S03 and S04, because after the slow Cerebus Syndrome transition began occurring and Yılmaz Şahin fully took over the script, the narrative stopped playing the love story completely straight and it put in the impression that it isn't focused on as much as it was before. So its more problematic aspects began showing even more down the line and it all lead into this very realization. The last episodes of Hürrem's life, while seeming like a cop-out, are genuine love letters for the fans and for Hürrem, with having Süleiman realize who he will lose and what will happen next, giving her the attention he never did. (I think the best Hürrem and Süleiman scenes we got, were in these episodes, along with the ones in the beginning episodes and right after the wedding, in E43-44.)

[And the episodes after Hürrem's death also make us question whatever he cares for her, because all he did there was straightforwardly betray her dying wish. Still, we should keep in mind that SS was at the peak of his downward spiral and it was Hürrem's death that sealed everything for him - losing the person who loved you dearly and was the most loyal one to you in your book, only caused catastrophic and devastating results, with SS going in her chambers in E136 and begging her to forgive him, right before the big fight between Selim and Beyezid began. There is everything else he did, yes, but losing HER is what caused him the truly neverending misery and what pushed him to such extremes, the loss of her loyalty broke him and finished him.]

Isabella and Firuze and Nazenin also add to these tests of loyalty, as well as being love triangles, added in for the drama. I feel SS did this not only to spite Hürrem, but also because he liked her unpredictability and he truly never expected for her to be this loyal in his eyes. It is possible he thought at some point due to his paranoia that she would give up on him, betray him, knowing that she also has her own ambitions. But seeing that none of that happened... perhaps all these continuous rifts in their relationship strived to show how strongly she loved him after all and maybe he came to appreciate that, even if it were too late. {note: the others said that SS loved Hü not exactly because of him refusing to take in concubines, but rather not taking concubines in for a long time. It illustrates more their hopes and beliefs (Mahidevran in E61: "Did you really think that his majesty couldn't be with other women?") and arguments presented when they need to win someone over for their cause to get rid of her. (like Hatice with Afife in S03) I always considered the Firuze arc more of a thematic tool than a dramatic one: aside from showing an actual continuous rift between Hürrem and SS, it breaks Hürrem's season two finale victory in half, enforcing even further that there isn't just any true long lasting victory that the themes won't condemn in this franchise. Nazenin was more for the parallels (Nurbanu - Nazenin; Hürrem - Gülnihal), while I never fully figured out what Isabella Fortuna was for, tbh.}

{He regarded Isabella as more of a toy, unfortunately, even with him saying that it was all somehow "a political game" with her and we had only him succumbing to his "manliness", protecting her from the snake and inviting her to a halvet only to spite Hürrem. With Firuze it was, admittedly, a bit more complicated, because he sure was infatuated with her to some extent, recited the exact same poetry to her, as well, but then again, we have the poisoning as a factor, and we have no idea to what extent it began to affect his psyche, besides him having to lay in bed in E78. I don't think Hürrem's intrigues had anything to do with the feelings he had for both of them, and I believe he would at some point have let them all go, exactly due to his ego and loyalty complex.}

I don't say that Süleiman's love for Hürrem is a healthy one, because oh noo, IT IS NOT, very far from it, in fact. Especially with the writers still keeping the status-quo with them the exact same even after he freed and married her, and for a while, it never made an actual difference. However, it is something that he didn't feel for anyone else in this harem and I would say that he indeed cherished it a lot.

[bearpillowmonster]

Top 15 Music Artists!

I won’t be doing a separate song one, instead I’ll just recommend a few for each artist (at most 3). Other than that, there aren’t any rules to this, no order, it’s all just opinion. I will however say that I don’t like “one genre or another” I either like a song or I don’t and I’m not as big of a stan for individual artists, just what song they created so I always hate when people ask me. Not to mention most music I listen to is from either a game, anime, or movie. I’ll try to make most of these the clean versions.

Daft Punk: This is an easy one. They created the Tron Legacy soundtrack (Tron seems to always make its way onto most of my top 15 lists), they are my number 1 that I would go see in concert (that’s still around) if only they’d have another tour. So many other artists have sampled their work and people have mixed their tracks with other artists on YouTube and they just add to the excellent sound. 

Some notable jams: Robot Rock, Instant Crush, Something About Us

David Bowie: This a bit of a comfortable one, in a way it reminds me of my stepdad but his music ranges from stuff about space to just every day stuff that massages your needs, another one that can have remixes done and just add to the magic. I’ve heard some of his songs before he died like Moonage Daydream in Guardians of the Galaxy but it was only after his death that I really started liking his music. I used to think he was an actor first and a musician second but I stand corrected. 

Some notable jams: Oh! You Pretty Things, Moonage Daydream, Space Oddity

The Weeknd: This boy can drop a track and the words don’t even have to matter because the lyrics can be twisted but the vocals and the beat say otherwise and I know somewhere, somehow, you’ve heard his music even if you haven’t realized it. Oh and Starboy? Yeah that features Daft Punk. Oh and that song? Got its own Marvel comic! (before it was cancelled after the first issue due to name and story issues) 

Some notable jams: Starboy, Secrets, Reminder

Kendrick Lamar: I don’t consider myself into rap much but I genuinely think that Kendrick is probably one of the best rappers. Who else do you know that talks about Grey Poupon mustard and makes it sound good? His voice is recognizable and calm but almost raspy but then he can turn it and make it fast and angry, either would make just about any song sound good. I wish they had him cover ‘Can you feel the love tonight’ for the Lion King, because I could just imagine how good it’d sound especially with Beyonce. 

Some notable jams: Humble, Poetic Justice, Swimming Pools

Electric Light Orchestra: My introduction was Don’t Bring Me Down but what really brought me into their music was trying to come up with something classic for a soundtrack for one of my stories and well this stood out the most. 

Some notable jams: Don’t Bring Me Down, Turn to Stone, Strange Magic

The Black Eyed Peas: I grew up in this age. This was the kick-off to getting myself into music. It was my first CD, it was my first song on my new iPod nano, it was the first time I even showed an interest (which was late in the game).  

Some notable jams: Imma Be, Just Can’t Get Enough, Back to Hip-Hop

Aerosmith: Another early one for me because this is what I was exposed to as a kid and everything since then has made an impression on me. Steven Tyler had the most plays on that iPod nano. I would normally suggest Dream On but I picked You See Me Crying first because it came to mind first to display the range of music they have, it’s a very sad song but also a bit of a calmer one that I don’t think gets nearly as much attention as it should. 

Some notable jams: You See Me Crying, Cryin, Walk This Way (Ultimate version)

Kanye: He made a music video based on Akira. Did I mention that it popularized the shutter shades again? Oh, and the song? Yeah it samples Daft Punk. That’s not even the only time he did that either, he sampled a track from Tron with Kid Cudi (but it was just a demo). He does a lot of sampling but somehow he builds on the original songs and tracks and makes them better. 

Some notable jams: Stronger, Roses, Through the Wire

MJ: I can’t find a better deconstruction of a song than Billie Jean. It’s practically a masterpiece. Take the track out and the vocals still sound good. Take the vocals out and the track still sounds good. You can do whatever the heck you want to this song and it will still sound good, I even listen to the Animal Crossing remix sometimes. The closest I could find to that was Billie Joel’s ‘For the Longest Time’ because it’s acapella. 

Some notable jams: Billie Jean, Bad, Thriller (vocals only, it’s creepier)

Twenty One Pilots: Trench. Need I say more? I like nearly every song in that album and that’s rare. I see plenty of stans for this band but that’s not what made me care, because a lot of their old songs are ear worms and have been overused and I think even they realize that such as ‘Ride’ and ‘Stressed Out’ (more like Worn Out). But then somehow something good came out of the Suicide Squad movie, a special song, Heathens! By the title, it sounds odd but upon closer inspection, it’s juicy. On top of that, Trench comes out and basically clarifies that a lot of their music videos connect and involve theories with their own universe and whole ARGs devoted to it. 

Some notable jams: Heathens, Legend, Chlorine 

Genesis: If I could give this band a number, it would be 17 because that’s the age that Genesis seemed to define. I liked a lot of their songs but I began using the songs as references to my love life at the time because I was going through a lot. I like Phil Collins on his own too but Genesis simply has more tracks that I love, I even bought and read Phil’s autobiography because as you probably already know, he did the music for both Tarzan and Brother Bear. 

Some notable jams: Invisible Touch, In Too Deep, Tonight Tonight Tonight

John Mayer: I almost put Drake Bell here instead but John Mayer is the kind of music you listen to when your heart aches and I for one like it. 

Some notable jams: Heartbreak Warfare, Moving On and Getting Over, Gravity

Smash Mouth: These later ones are getting a bit weird, huh? But yeah, the famous ‘All Star’ creators make some decent music, I won’t even reference any more from Shrek.

Walking on the Sun, Can’t Get Enough of You Baby, When the Morning Comes

Sweet: You remember that part in Regular Show where they had the dance off with the ghost DJ’s? Or how about the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 trailer? I even have a shirt with their logo on it because I liked the idea of making it tie-dye but it didn’t work very well so now it’s just an orange stained Sweet tee. 

Some notable jams: Love is like Oxygen, Fox on the Run, Ballroom Blitz

Sheryl Crow: “This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no country club either. This is L.A.” I can’t help but vibe when I hear her, I’m not into country (as you can see from this list) but she makes it fun, she is an exception of sorts, she doesn’t do just one thing. If you read her Wiki, she does basically all genres and I like that she isn’t bound to one thing, it’s representative of her fun music and personality. Yeah, she’s guilty of the mainstream wear out as well but they can’t have them all. Picture is technically Kid Rock but she’s featured and I’d feel bad if I didn’t include it. 

Some notable jams: All I Wanna Do, Picture, Real Gone

[theboywiththedemonblood]

11, 12, 15, 23

Thank you for asking! 11. Thoughts on BMOL

I Liked the concept and I feel like I’m one of the few people who really liked s12, because it had more of that ‘monster of the week’ kind of vibe reminiscent of the earlier seasons. I think it absolutely made sense to have such an institution, actually more than what was happening in the US with the government being mostly oblivious about the supernatural and the only entity aware were a bunch of loose canon hunters. 

As for the members: I thoroughly enjoyed when Lady Bevell got her throat sliced open. She really was the embodiment of heartless British upper class assholes. Can’t stand Ketch and his all over the place characterization. Him actively trying to bed the entire Winchester family was amusing to watch though. Loved Mick. Finally Sam had a fellow geek to bond with. Hated how he was killed off too soon. Mick felt human and layerd, I wanted the boys to benefit from his knowlege and connections.

12. Thoughts on Mary

I... don’t care much about her as a character. I didn’t find her arc interesting and I don’t think Samantha is a particularly good actress.

However. I liked how they did the whole deconstruction of the saint-like mother figure. For the largest part of the show Mary was almost an object. She had become this perfect, made-up mother for all the Winchester men, including John, a reason for their revenge and vendetta and when she came back, especially Dean had to deal with the realization that she was human and flawed and had no idea how to be a mother to two men her own age and didn’t really want to. I think with better writing and a stronger actress that arc could have been really fascinating, but to me it kinda fell flat.

15. Thoughts on Wayward Sisters as a whole (not just the one ep)

I think it was kinda doomed from the start. Supernatural leans heavily on the insane chemistry between Jared and Jensen and their impressive acting ability, especially in later seasons. It’s not an easy thing to recreate. SPN does not have a strong writing team to put it mildly, so to get enough people engaged with a spin-off you’d need leads who have fantastic chemistry and talent and the girls... lacked both. I love Donna and Jody to bits as supporting characters, but they don’t have the gravitas to carry a show and the younger girst definitely don’t. A spin-off that would have worked I think is Bobby and Rufus if they could find two good leads. Enough stories to tell and we are already emotionlly invested. Charlie’s adventures in OZ would’ve made a cool mini series or a special. It they hadn’t died, I wou’ve loved to see more of Jo and Ellen, perhaps Jo becoming more of a proper hunter and Ellen reluctantly assisting?

23. What do you want or get out of watching supernatural?

It took me a while to get on board, but then I got pulled in and emotionally attached. It’s all about the characters for me, they make the show. Story, mood and setting wise I much, much prefer the first 5 seasons, maybe even the first 2. That was strong storytelling and gorgeous cinematography. For me, the Kripke era is the core of SPN, everything after felt a bit like fanfiction. I kept watching for the characters I fell in love with: Sam, Bobby, Crowley, Dean, Jack, Rowena, so many great characters. While I have how toxic the fandom is, it being so huge means that there always gonna be some awesome new content to discover, it being fics, art, videos or rp partners and that’s pretty great (I know the suffering of being in a small fandom or shipping a rare ship. Drowning in content is a luxury)

[duhragonball]

The 10 Best Episodes of Dragon Ball and DBZ

Back in October I wrote up a list of the ten worst episodes of Dragon Ball, and I always meant to go back and do a ten best list to go with it.    Well it’s the last Sunday of the year and I got nothing better to do, so I’m gonna knock that out today.

Honestly, I’m not sure which one of these was tougher to do.    The main reason I made a worst list was because I noticed a small handful of episodes I just didn’t like, and I realized that even with a show I like this much, there had to be at least ten stinkers, so I liked the challenge of picking them out.   On the other hand, picking the ten best episodes is like finding really good pieces of hay in an awesome haystack.    And I’m a horse, so I’m already super-into hay.   This analogy is getting tortured, so I’ll just move on.

Honorable Mention: Dragon Ball Z Episode 125.

I think the fandom has unanimously agreed that this is the all-time best episode of Dragon Ball, but it didn’t feel right putting it in my list.    I don’t know if that’s because I sincerely believe it’s the 11th best episode, or because I just don’t want a predictable choice taking up space on my list.    That’s how Dragon Ball rolls sometimes.   Past a point, you can’t tell if you’re liking something ironically, or just plain liking it.  

Without question, this is the all-time best filler episode.   We all know the tale: Goku and Piccolo are busy training for the upcoming Androids battle, but Chi-Chi is sick of them not helping around the house, so she wants them to take driver’s ed so they can drive her to the grocery once in a while.    Well, mostly Goku, but Piccolo somehow gets roped into it too.    Honestly, I don’t think he really needed to go through with this.  He pouts like Chi-Chi made him do this somehow, but she was clearly only interested in getting Goku licensed up.    I think he just sort of invited himself into this situation because he wanted to feel like part of the family.   

Anyway, the boys dress up in stupid/awesome civilian clothes, and somehow manage to be great at driving and terrible at driving at the same time.   It’s a very zen kind of show.   Also there’s a smidgen of Vegebul goodness, and Icarus shows up for no apparent reason, so there’s something for everyone.   

10. Dragon Ball Z Episode 120

This the one where Future Trunks kills Mecha Frieza.   There’s no shortage of fans who think reviving Frieza in the 2010′s was worth it, but for my money, nothing they do with the character can possibly top his (first) death scene.  

Leading up to this episode, everyone just assumed that Goku killed Frieza on Namek, but he survived, got rebuilt as a cyborg, and invaded Earth for revenge.  The implication is that Goku will have to fight an even stronger version of his greatest foe, except he’s nowhere to be found, and no one else stands a chance of holding the line until Goku can arrive.  

But then the story ups the ante again by having a totally new character show up, turn Super Saiyan, and shrug off Frieza’s attacks like they’re nothing.   When he finally attacks Frieza, he whips out a cool-looking ki blast, and that turns out to just be a feint.    No, his real attack is a simple swing of an ordinary sword, which cuts Frieza in half like he’s made out of butter.

Meanwhile, all the major characters are standing on the sidelines wondering what the hell is going on here.    There’s a Super Saiyan besides Goku?   Aren’t all the Saiyans extinct?   Where did this new guy come from, and how did he even know to be here?

It’s a brilliant episode, because it serves as a coda to the menace of Frieza that loomed large over the previous 119 episodes of Z, and it also serves as a prelude to the next 75 episodes, which promises a crisis far beyond anything that’s come before.   But it also works as a stand-alone story.    Frieza’s body tells the story of why he wants revenge on the Super Saiyan, and when Trunks reveals that there’s more than one Super Saiyan, he completely self-destructs.   He goes from the tyrant of the universe to just another corpse in a matter of minutes.   It’s amazing to watch. 

9. Dragon Ball Episode 67

Strictly speaking, Goku’s assault on the Red Ribbon Army base is three episodes, so maybe it’s gauche to include one and not the others, but this one is the climax of the Red Ribbon’s downfall, so I think it stands out.   

By this point, Goku’s already entered the RRA headquarters, and is just having his way with the place.    Episode 66 was full of guys trying to shoot him, but he just kicks all their asses and moves on.    Staff Officer Black has finally realized what they should have accepted from the beginning: that Goku is too strong for them to defeat by force.    But Commander Red can’t quite bring himself to give up the fight.   Maybe it’s because so much of his identity is tied into the Red Ribbon’s supposed invincibility, or he just can’t fathom how a small boy can do all these things.   

I think what really hurts his pride is when his soldiers start deserting en masse.   Before, he could keep them in line because of the Red Ribbon’s fearsome reputation, but that’s over now, whether he believes it or not.    When Colonel Violet loots his treasure vault, not even bothering to disable the security cameras, he has to know that it’s all over. 

Then we find out that he only wanted the Dragon Balls so that he could make a wish to become taller, and Black is horrified.    He wasted all those lives and resources for something as petty and selfish as that?    What makes this episode so great is how the world around them is crashing down, and they’re arguing over a plan that’ll never happen anyway.  And Red absolutely doesn’t get why Black would think his wish was stupid.   He’s like “Um, you need to check your tall privilege?”   And Black shoots him in the face because he’s just done. 

But this episode’s not done, because once Red is out of the picture, Black sort of loses it and tries to fight Goku for possession of the Dragon Balls.   It’s really amazing character development, because Black was the calm, collected center of the Red Ribbon Army, but then he just flips out, forgetting all the lessons his comrades learned the hard way.    The lure of the Dragon Balls is just too seductive for him to give up.  

Also, Colonel Violet is super cute.

8. Dragon Ball Z Episode 135

A few episodes before this one, Vegeta debuted his own Super Saiyan transformation, and kicked the shit out of Android 19.  It was a big deal, because up to that point, Goku and Trunks were the only Super Saiyans, implying that jerks like Vegeta couldn’t do it.    It was also a big deal because it was assumed up to that point that the androids might just be unbeatable, and Vegeta clobbered one of them in a single episode.   

But that episode didn’t make the list, because this one is far more important.    Here, Vegeta tries to press his luck by challenging the even stronger Android 18, even though everyone else tries to tell him this is a terrible idea.   What follows is one of the coolest fights in the series, and the best classic Dragon Ball battle to feature a woman.   For a while it looks pretty even, but then 18 reveals she was hustling Vegeta the whole time, and defeats him with no trouble at all.

Why is this such a big moment?   For one thing, it’s the next step in deconstructing the Super Saiyan Legend.   Vegeta had already proven that you don’t have to be a good person to turn into a Super Saiyan, and that it’s not just a once-in-a-millennium thing.   Here, he proves that Super Saiyans aren’t as invincible as he liked to believe.   We’d already seen Goku lose to Android 19, but he was sick at the time.   Trunks was no match for he androids in his own timeline, but those battles had happened off-screen.   This is a much more visceral demonstration.   You’ve got the Saiyan Prince, in perfect health, fresh as a daisy, comfortably transformed, and it doesn’t do him a damn bit of good.  18 breaks his arm like it’s not even hard.

For Vegeta, this was a big deal, because it finally cemented the fact that there is no finish line.    From his first appearance, he seemed convinced that he could become the supreme being in his universe, simply by killing Frieza, becoming immortal, or transforming into a Super Saiyan.   Here, he thinks he’s finally pulled it off, only to lose even more decisively than ever before.

7. Dragon Ball Episode 99

I debated whether to go with this one or Episode 101, where Tien finally beats Goku to win the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, but I think this episode deserves the nod.    The Goku/Tien championship bout spanned several episodes, but this is the one where Tien finally decides that he’d rather win the title than avenge Tao Pai Pai.   

Let me back up a bit here.    Goku (seemingly) killed Tao in a prior episode, and Tao was the brother of the Crane Hermit, Tien’s master.    So going into this fight, Tien was planning to defeat Goku, win the championship, and then kill Goku in front of the live audience, just to get that extra bit of revenge.    But once the fight actually got rolling, Tien began to develop a begrudging respect for Goku’s talent, and then this episode happens, where Tien starts winning, and Goku accuses him of cheating.    Tien doesn’t know what he’s talking about at first, until he realizes that the Crane Hermit is using Chiaotzu’s psychic powers to paralyze Goku at key moments.  

Once he figures it out, he tells them to stop, since he wants to prove his own superiority, but Crane just wants Goku to die, title or no title.   He orders Tien to stop clowning and kill Goku at once, but Tien refuses, and turns his back on the life of an assassin.   Chiaotzu does the same, since he was enjoying the match before all the interference started.    Crane flips out, but Roshi Kamehameha’s him out of the stadium, allowing Tien and Goku to finally fight without any outside interference.  

Tien’s first order of business is to let Goku have a bunch of free shots, in order to make up for all the hits Tien got in while Chiaotzu was cheating.   Then he grows four arms, because he still wants to kick Goku’s ass, even if he doesn’t hate him anymore. 

Tien’s reform isn’t unique in the series, but I think his particular transformation is very neatly accomplished, inside this one episode, during a single epic battle.    Like so many other characters, he figures out that revenge, power, and bloodlust are hollow pursuits compared to the thrill of pushing your own limits through the sacred art of gonzo anime violence.   Being a bad guy isn’t just morally shameful, it’s downright boring.   Piccolo and Vegeta would eventually learn the same lesson, but it never gets spelled out quite as eloquently as it does in this episode.   Also, Launch tries to kill Chiaotzu with a giant cartoon mallet.  

6. Dragon Ball Episode 147

On the other hand, you’ve got this episode from the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, where Piccolo doesn’t learn a damned thing, except how to take an epic beating.

This episode is just wall-to-wall nuts.    Piccolo blows up the entire city where the tournament is being held, and that’s just for openers.    Tien uses his Ki-ko-ho to make a foxhole for the others to hide in, and Launch kicks Kami into it when he doesn’t jump in right away.   

Piccolo’s city-busting blast was intended to finish off Goku, but it doesn’t even scratch the lovable bastard, and it just gives Goku and opening to pound the ever-loving crap out of Big Green.    Goku just goes sickhouse on him, in one of the most satisfying and well-animated sequences in the whole series.   And to add insult to injury, he continues to play by the tournament rules.   Once he has Piccolo laid out where the ring used to be, he asks for a ten count.  

And that turns out to be a huge mistake, as Piccolo has enough juice left to zap him with a mouth blast at the last second.   The attack leaves a baseball-sized hole in Goku’s pec, and Piccolo just starts stomping on the wound.   Worse, he’s still strong enough that no one else can come to Goku’s rescue.   

And then, just when Goku looks to be finished, he gets back up anyway, still looking to win this battle.    Is he overconfident or just stupid?   Neither actually, as he has the whole fight under control, as the next episode reveals.  

5. Dragon Ball Z Episode 281

Oh mannnn, this episode ruuuules.   One of my pet peeves with this fandom is people crapping on the Buu Saga, simply for coming at the tail end of this franchise.   It’s bullshit, just like how Star Wars purists act like Empire Strikes Back is the best movie ever made and Return of the Jedi is a cinematic bowel movement.   They’re both good, you just lost interest before the series ended. 

The Buu arc isn’t my favorite, but it’s balls-to-the-wall awesome, and when I was making this list I had a hard time picking a favorite episode from the Kid Buu fight.    It’s just such a beautiful battle, packed with story and character development.    I can’t blame viewers for getting burnt out on Dragon Ball if they watched the preceding 433 episodes first, but to say these episodes are bad is just flat-out wrong.

Anyway, I went with 281, which features the tail end of Goku’s solo effort against Kid Buu.   Vegeta steps into give Goku a pep talk, and Goku admits that he can’t gather enough power to blow Buu away.   To do that, he’ll need a full minute to charge his ki, and Vegeta offers to buy him that minute, even though he’s weaker than Goku and doesn’t stand a chance against Buu by himself.   

What follows is a solid ten minutes of Vegeta getting clobbered, but he keeps getting back up and forcing himself to find new ways to play for time.    He doesn’t try to beat Buu, because he knows he can’t.  Instead, he keeps him busy, and psyches him out so he won’t bother Goku while he charges up.   

What makes this work is that it’s the counterpoint to Episode 133, seen earlier on this list.  Then, Vegeta thought his Super Saiyan form made him a guaranteed winner.   Now, he’s using Super Saiyan 2 in a desperate bid to just hold the line until an even stronger fighter can make his own last-ditch effort to win.    Vegeta’s fighting for a chance at victory, and it’s a slim chance at that.   One of my favorite things about this episode is how tragic it is.   By Episode 282, it becomes clear that Goku’s plan was never going to work, so Vegeta’s efforts were in vain.    But he doesn’t seem to mind much, because at least he got to throw down against Kid Buu and see exactly how long he could hold out.  

4. Dragon Ball Z Episode 184

This is the one where Gohan finally snaps and turns into a Super Saiyan 2, but when you put it like that, it seems so pedestrian.  

From his first appearance in Episode 1 of DBZ, Gohan was shown to have hidden potential, which was gradually brought out over the course of the series.   By the time the Cell Games rolled around, it was sort of implied that he had finally realized that full potential.   Goku trained him to be a Super Saiyan like himself, and how much higher could he possibly get than that?  

But Goku’s secret plan was for Gohan to fight Cell, and if he got in a pinch, Gohan would then tap into the same hidden potential he used to turn the tables on the Saiyans and Frieza.   Goku’s theory was that if he trained Gohan to be a Super Saiyan, then any power boost Gohan experienced during the fight would rachet him up to an even higher level never seen before.  

This suited Cell just fine, so he pooped out an army of mini-Cells to torture the Z-Fighters until Gohan’s rage pushed him into this higher level.   And that’s what this episode is all about, except it doesn’t really work.    The Cell Juniors clobber the heroes from pillar to post, but Gohan doesn’t change, and he doesn’t know how to make himself change.   Then Android 16 has an idea to talk him through it, and he convinces Mr. Satan to toss his severed head over to Gohan to he can make his speech.   Cell stomps on 16′s head in an impulsive act of cruelty, and then then “Unmei no Hi - Tmasahii Vs. Tamashii” starts playing.   

This is a huge moment in the series, not only because of the advent of Super Saiyan 2 and the turning of the tide in the Cell Games, but also because it marks the fufillment of the promise of Gohan’s character.   We all knew he would become something great, and now it finally comes into focus.  

But this episode also gets high marks for how all the other characters are handled.   Goku’s “foolproof” plan collapses, and he’s forced to apologize while they all get beaten down; Android 16 sacrifices himself after already losing his body; Mr. Satan does what little he can, proving that he’s more than just a gloryhound; and Cell seems to have second thoughts once he finally gets a glimpse at Gohan’s hidden power.  

3. Dragon Ball Z Episode 94

Maybe it would make more sense to pick the episode where Goku turns Super Saiyan for the first time, but I think the false-finish that precedes it deserves the spot.   I’ll try to explain.  

There’s really three things going on in this one.   First, Goku’s trying to assemble a Spirit Bomb powerful enough to kill Frieza.   In the previous episode, Frieza finally noticed what he was up to, and he decided to kill Goku before he could use the bomb.    But the bomb still isn’t big enough, so Goku needs more time.  

Second, Piccolo has jumped in to keep Frieza busy long enough for Goku to get the time he needs.   Much of this episode is Frieza beating up on a defenseless Piccolo, and then Krillin and Gohan jump in too.   It’s just awesome seeing all these guys throw everything they can into this effort.  

Third, there’s a filler subplot featuring the dead Z-Fighters on King Kai’s planet fighting the dead Ginyu Force members.   It’s goofy, and kind of inconsequential, but it’s fun.   I just like seeing the whole gang getting to worth together in the same episode.  

So when Goku finally deploys the Spirit Bomb and Frieza finds himself overwhelmed, it really feels like a team effort.  King Kai reports that Frieza’s been beaten, and this inspires Yamcha and the others to put the Ginyus away for keeps.   On Namek, only Krillin and Gohan are left standing after the Spirit Bomb explodes, and they wonder if Goku and Piccolo could have survived.  

I won’t sugar-coat it, a lot of DBZ episodes go pretty light on plot points.   So when you get one like this, with so many things going on all at once, and so many characters joining in, and so much suspense and drama, it really clicks.  This would have been a brilliant finale to the Frieza Saga, and the icing on the cake is that it’s all for naught.   Frieza’s fine in the next episode, which is all-the-more frustrating because of how satisfying this episode was.   

2. Dragon Ball Z Episode 179

Huh, I got a lot of Androids/Cell episodes on this list.   It’s almost like the Androids/Cell arc is the best one and it rules over all.   Nah, that can’t be it.  

This is the high-water mark of the Goku/Cell fight, which the whole series had been building to since Cell was first introduced some thirty-odd episodes earlier.   Here’s the new big-bad final boss, the next Frieza, essentially, so naturally it’s going to be up to Goku to put him down in a 19-episode brawl.  Only that’s not what happens.     Goku goes into the Cell Games admitting that he’s no match for Cell, but he wants to fight the guy anyway.   No one understands what he’s planning, but he seems pretty upbeat for a guy who expects to lose.  

The fight itself only goes four episodes.   The first is a feeling-out process, the second is mostly Cell showboating, but in this third episode, they really go at it.  The animation is beautifully handled by Keisuke Masunaga.   He’d supervised a handful of episodes before this, but this one is the first action-heavy episode, truly serving as a demonstration of what he could do.  

Plotwise, there isn’t a whole lot to say.   The battle goes pretty evenly here, and the main appeal is that all the other characters are still trying to figure out what Goku’s strategy is.   He said he couldn’t win, and yet he’s hanging in there with Cell, so what’s the deal?   You might think Goku’s aiming to win on a technicality, using Cell’s own rules against him, except Cell enjoys the fight so much that he blows up his own ring to prevent any chance of an out-of-bounds finish.    From here, the Cell Games can only end by surrender or death.  

So then Goku goes up into the air and tries a Kamehameha, similar to the one Cell used earlier in the battle.   Cell thinks it’s a bluff, since he knows he can dodge it, and from that steep an angle, Goku would just end up hitting the Earth and destroying it.    But Goku doesn’t blink, and just when Cell isn’t sure what’s going to happen, Goku teleports right in front of him and unloads the Kamehameha into his face at pointblank range.    

It’s another false finish.   Cell survives, but he has to grow back his head and arms first.    But for a moment, it looks like this was Goku’s big plan.  He knew he couldn’t outpower Cell, so he out-finessed him by using the Instant Transmission to get past his guard.   And you know, if the ring hadn’t been destroyed, maybe this would have worked.   Goku could have tossed Cell’s decaptitated body out of bounds and Cell would have regenerated to find himself outside the ring.   I always wonder what he would have done in that scenario.    I mean, Cell’s kind of a sore loser, but he seems to respect clever ploys, and the tournament was his idea.  

Anyway, Cell rules, this episode is wall-to-wall action, and the Warp Kamehameha is the best move in Budokai 2.  

1. Dragon Ball Z Episode 31

Personally, I find the Saiyans Saga to be slightly overrated, but dammit, this episode has just about everything.    I’d go so far as to say that when people praise the Saiyans Saga, they’re really only thinking back to this one episode, or maybe five of the best episodes that include this one. 

Here’s the deal: Vegeta has invaded Earth and all of the Z-Fighters are dead or badly hurt.  Only Goku is left to stop this guy, and he’s armed with the Kai-o-ken technique, a power multiplier as effective as it is risky.    King Kai warned Goku never to go beyond a double Kai-o-ken, because anything more than that could cripple his own body.   But he tried that in the previous episode, and Vegeta laughed it off.  So in this episode, Goku reluctantly goes for a Kai-o-ken times three.   

And for a few glorious minutes, Vegeta gets completely wrecked.  Goku just picks him apart with hit after hit after hit.    It’s enough to humble Vegeta and it’s enough to draw blood, but it doesn’t actually put the guy down.   Instead, Vegeta becomes so outraged that he flips out and tries to destroy the entire planet with his finisher, the Galick Gun.    This leaves no choice for Goku to keep using the Kai-o-ken times three, and he’s gotta fire a Kamehameha to block Vegeta’s shot.  

And when that turns out to be too weak to push back Vegeta’s attack, Goku is forced to turn it up even higher and use a four times Kai-o-ken.    So now we’re beyond anything King Kai had imagined when he taught him the technique.   It works, and Goku manages to shoot Vegeta into space, but his body is terribly banged up from the effort.  

Which is a real shame, because Vegeta manages to save himself from being blasted into space, and he’s still got enough juice to pull his own trump card: turning into a giant ape!   Saiyans need a full moon to do this, and Piccolo helpfully destroyed the moon before Vegteta’s arrival, but that doesn’t matter, because Vegeta can make his own artificial moonlight with a special ki technique!   So the episode ends with an exhausted Goku staring at a hundred-foot tall Vegeta-ape.  

And hopefully I’ve made my point.   You’ve got three big BIG moments in the series here.    Goku’s Kai-o-ken X3 offensive against Vegeta was what made their rivalry.  Before that, Vegeta never came close to sweating Goku, and afterward, every time Vegeta thought back on their battle, this was the part he remembered.   The Galick Gun/Kamehameha beam struggle was an iconic moment all by itself, and it’s the standard by which all other beam struggles are judged.   And then you’ve got Vegeta using the fake moon trick and turning into a giant ape, setting the stage for the final leg of the battle.    Any one of these things would earn a spot on this list, but DBZ #31 has all three.   It’s gotta take the top spot.   It’s just gotta. 

There’s a lot of really great episodes I didn’t cover.   I’m a big fan of the Pikkon episodes, and the one where 16 fights Cell is a personal fave, and the Vegito episodes are awesome too.   But there’s only so much room at the top.     I bet I could have a completely different list in a couple years’ time.   In conclusion, Dragon Ball fucking rules.

[askbloatedbellyblog]

I'm not sure if you've watched/read this far, but any headcanons for Josuke in JJBA: Diamond Unbreakable

I read the manga YEARS ago and apparently blocked most of it out of my memory but Diamond is Unbreakable did just finish on Toonami where I was watching it so you’re in luck, I can actually answer this one. Josuke is an interesting target partly because of his stand and others, though I’ll probably ignore some limitations about it as well or I’ve forgotten some of it.

I know that Josuke can’t exactly use his stand on himself but he is able to use it on others and even mix and combine people (like with the rock) so there still might be ways around things, so I’ll still take them where I can get them.

First off with stuffing there are a few different options out there. To start at the VERY beginning and what I think was a significant plot hole that was never resolved and would have made PERFECT SENSE if they used more of Another One Bites the Dust for more extended time travel, is Josuke and his encounter as a child with the person that saved him and his mother in the car with the pompadour (which someone go back and make their hair go down to give Josuke a better hairstyle. Yes I said it. He looks SO much better with his hair down.). If that person happened to have a stuffed belly or burp or something while rescuing them that definitely would have an effect on Josuke and his eating habits as much as it has his hair. There could be a lot of fun dialogue if that was the case, like if he burped and said something like “I think I might have eaten too much before lifting a car” or “Burps are just my manliness escaping to show off” or “Eating more than even you thought you could is a true show of strength!” and that all has an effect on Josuke as he’s growing up where he’s trying to be like that guy, in shape but a big eater.

This doesn’t bring up the alluded to paradox where Josuke IS the person that saved himself in the past! Which could be interesting if he already had a big appetite and had spent the day eating in town and had gotten a rep before then saving himself and then Josuke connects the dots on the stranger and finds out that he has a big appetite and tries to emulate it as well. So then it happens all over again as part of the paradox where he’s destined to always have a huge appetite. (With the side benefit of, say he didn’t have one but he had to make sure that he did have one when he went back and had to keep the timeline consistent and making himself eat even more and thereby compounding the need for capacity for eternity unless the paradox is broken. So goes the flow of time, so goes Josuke’s belt and buttons.

Now there are some other options. If we keep in mind that Josuke can’t heal himself and he’s injured there may be a problem. And while I don’t agree with how it was depicted in the anime (because it was kind of gross), there is someone who is a solution to the problem. Even though he’s shown basically once and never returns as a stand user or threat, but there is Tonio Trussardi. Thanks to his stand and dishes that violently heal people (though not sure if it’s without their knowledge or its just Okuyasu being dumb. Also keep Okuyasu there until he’s finally both smart and actually handsome), in time of need Josuke could be sent to Tonio’s and have to stuff himself (or have to be force fed if he’s incapacitated) to make sure he’s actually healed of any injuries. So if Josuke did have a buffet/menu’s worth of food he’d for sure be all healed up and ready to go back to whatever fight he’d want to. Plus it would be a good way to force himself to up his capacity because any time he actually hurt himself or stuffed too much for his stomach, then the food would actually end up healing him all over again and make himself even stretchier. (Add that he does it after a hard workout and it might even help make him buffer over time because has to have the golden time for eating protein but also the food would help with muscle repair.

Additional stuffing ideas would be that Okuyasu would be exactly the type that would always pester Josuke with eating bets. He’d already have an affinity for money and with access he’d always be betting Josuke to eat massive amounts of food or giving him his own food. Or as the bully he is, he’d steal lots of other kids food and then give it to Josuke without telling him where he got it. If he was for whatever reason helping to feed Josuke or during a contest, he could use his The Hand power to magically bring the next plate of food closer to him and Josuke without any effort.

Rohan would be interesting because he could easily make things happen with his stand. So either he could find out that Josuke is a secret eater, or if he was a feeder or belly lover for any reason or just wanted to torture Josuke, he could totally write in new eating habits or abilities to Josuke making him eat way more than he usually did and forcing him to binge and up his capacity with either Josuke thinking it was totally normal or having no control over it at all. Heck Josuke in pursuit of an eating contest prize might even ask Rohan to do it to him on purpose.

Koichi would be harder to do anything with his stand other than making it so he could help decrease the weight of Josuke’s belly when he eats too much or slow others down during an eating contest. But truth be told, I think that Koichi in a stuffing scenario would be a feeder. He’d be eager to please and probably be the type that would give Josuke more food everyday. Depending on how big Josuke got, he may even help to carry and support his belly thanks to him being so small. I also think that he’d be a good gopher for Josuke’s requests for food if he’s in the middle of stuff and end up coming back with more.

I won’t go through all the enemy stand users, though I’m sure there are ways to probably incorporate several of them of if I tried hard enough, though I would be remiss to not talk about Yoshikage Kira. The strangest scenario is with his time repeating that he might kidnap Josuke and stuff him for torture and then go back and do it all over again. If his blasts by his stand were less, I would actually think he might make Josuke eat smaller versions of it and make him burp if they went off in his stomach. Mostly it would be interesting if his time travel was used over and over again with some left over consequences like if Josuke had been in the middle of eating each time they went back in time and the food kept compounding in Josuke’s stomach as he became fuller and fuller.

Now the interesting bit might be with Josuke’s own stand. If there was a way for him to heal himself then it brings up a bunch of possibilities of him eating way past his limits but then helping him repair any damage. But it could be used to put back anything he might try to puke up if he got to full and just because it didn’t repair his stomach, I absolutely believe that his stand would give belly rubs like all the time. He could easily use it both with the stand seen or unseen and give him an advantage when he was trying to eat so even if his stomach was upset then he could have Shining Diamond help soothe his own stomach. But this also means any medications he took like tums or pepto could be reconstituted and used again to help settle his stomach. I do think it’s very possible that he might view being a stronger eater than Jotaro as a point of pride and might use the same motivation to up his eating and hit the gym to try to surpass his half nephew. The other options are still having Shining Diamond help feed him when he’s alone and leaning back already very full, his school uniform broken open and basically having his own feeder and belly rubber while he continued to eat. This would totally help him be able to continue eating while he leans back with his own hands on his belly and a smile on his face happily glutted and dreaming of Morio while his buttons break.

(this is why he may end up eating Okuyasu)

When you get into vore related stuff, that’s when things get a little bit interesting. First, nearly all of what I mentioned before could apply in a vore scenario with a few modifications.

First off, I think that Josuke would have two different modes. First off with his usually happier personality, I think he’d be more a safe vore person and not digest unless he had to or wanted to. On the other hand, I think if they made fun of his hair or hurt him or his friends then he’d digest without mercy at all.

So first off on the safe vore side, there is the idea of Josuke using Shining Diamond to make sure that whoever he ate is perfectly fine from any acids. Either could make it so there is no effect at all or only some as a form of mild torture. Now the terrible idea is that Josuke eats someone and then starts to digest them and then uses Shining Diamond to repair any damage to be able to keep them even longer in his stomach. That means he could keep someone in his stomach for a VERY long time, either gently or roughly. This could also solve any swallowing problems since Shining Diamond could basically deconstruct the person and then reconstruct them in his stomach so he’s just suddenly bloated.

Depending on how much digestion took place either with safe (and reconstructed without any pain) or more torture style, the fun idea is that of consequences to that. First off, if long term, it means that Josuke would either have to eat whole meals on his own for them and and then have Shining Diamond reconstruct them back to normal in his stomach or just reconstruct them in his stomach to begin with. Second, is if there is some digestion this would still have some effect on Josuke. Either means he really doesn’t need any food during this time, but it does mean he’s still consuming calories and either he has to work out to keep off extra weight or he starts to gain weight over time which he may not notice until they are out of his stomach. I think in the case of safe vore really any of his friends would be fair game like Okuyasu and definitely Koichi. Rohan gets the more torture treatment.

Koichi would be fun safe or not because of his stand because as a way to fight back it first means that in his regular forms that the stand could amplify the sound of his burps or moans even weaponizing them if he didn’t want to be eaten. Next would be that Koichi could also increase the weight of the belly so it feels much heavier than it really is, making transport and waddling that much worse for Josuke. Now if he was eaten safely and didn’t want to move or was also trying to keep Josuke safe, just means that he could increase the weight of the belly until Josuke couldn’t move and was basically pinned by his own belly despite whatever size it may be.

Rohan using his stand to make Josuke eat would be a fun one here as well. It could be an extension of him stuffing and upping his capacity and easily get to the point of unintended consequences. For example if it was just an instruction of “Josuke kept eating more and more and beating his own records” or something then it’s very possible that Josuke keeps eating bigger and bigger meals until he finally attempted to eat someone and because of the influence of the stand, totally could. Same could be just a direct addition of “eats someone” and then Josuke eats someone and still has to fight Rohan before he can set them free. It’s also easy with Rohan for when Josuke is using Mikitaka as dice when things go wrong that to cover Josuke has to hurry and eat the dice or some other object and swallows them down with then Mikitaka becoming his regular size in his belly, much to Josuke’s surprise. Though then he might have to do his best to actually tell Mikitaka to come out who make end up in his stomach, digesting and regenerating on his own and deciding he likes it in there and Josuke is stuck like that until Mikitaka gets bored.

With Kira, there is again the thought of time travel being used against him. Where he might be forced to eat someone and have them come back repeatedly in his belly or having to swallow them repeatedly. Could even be that is the way that they repeatedly get killed in that timeline before being rolled back. I do think it’s possible that he does eat Kira as a way to be rid of him and that even after he tried to use his bombs it didn’t do anything and only make Josuke burpy.

There are a few other options with him eating as well. First off I think if someone asked/paid him to be eaten, he’d initially look at them incredulously and then be all for it and even excited to be getting money for such a strange but fulfilling thing (I think that Koichi would do this a lot. Even if it’s just to hide from Yukako). I also Josuke could use the power in battle to protect someone and even using Shining Diamond to heal someone in his stomach the entire time he was still fighting. Or if there was a stand after someone, in the gut they go. Even some strange combo attack might work well with that and being able to use them as a sneak attack all from his stomach.

I also think that if someone pisses him off about his hair or maybe gives him crap about his belly size after a stuffing, he’d snap and eat them right up. In those cases, I think he’d have no remorse on digesting and getting revenge. I also think this might be the case with any of the stand users that hurt his friends that don’t end up joining on his side, the best revenge is to just end up in his stomach.

The one person that I think could also be digested (aside from maybe also Koichi but that’s a different idea) would be Rohan just because of how much he hates him and rightfully so even if he’s sorta friendly with them by the end.

Josuke is also one that I think could digest completely and have a plausible way to bring them back to life and reform them. He could in theory digest them and not bring them back until much later if he so desired as a way to teach them a lesson though it might have more effect on his waistline then he would have wanted.

I’m sure there a bunch of other ways that Josuke could eat or use his stand but at least here’s a bunch for him. With all this, I think it’s very possible that Josuke may not be as slim as he usually is and be seen around Morio with a very bloated belly for a variety of reasons.

[luimnigh]

Common Misconceptions In The RWBY Fandom

Because this kinda needs to be made. There’s a lot of lines in this show that have been interpreted in strange and weird ways that I feel we need to clear up the misconceptions about. So instead of scattering them through various meta-posts, let’s clear them all up at the same time. So, if you’re willing to come along, let’s begin:

“Bad Father Taiyang” Part 1: Yang raised Ruby

The Misconception:

Now, this is probably the top one I see around the place. And I’m not trying to take anything away from Yang here, she definitely took on a Mothering role in Ruby’s life, a lot of people take this to an extreme. I’ve seen people thinking that Yang would “obviously be good at cooking, having to cook for herself and Ruby” and various statements to that effect.

To put it simply, when Yang says that Taiyang “shut down” in Burning The Candle, they think it meant a full-on, Apathy-like cessation of willpower. That Yang had to take on primary caregiver role.

The Proof Against It:

But that’s disproven only a few lines later. When Yang left the house with Ruby to find her mother, she explicitly says that she “waited for Dad [Taiyang] to leave the house”. Taiyang was still clearly taking care of them, physically at very least.

And even beyond that, Yang and Ruby hold no ill-will against Taiyang. Their relationship is clearly a loving one, with Taiyang falling asleep at Ruby’s beside in Volume 3. And before anyone says that this is a Retcon, in the latter half of Volume 2, we’re shown this good relationship when the girls speak of him after he sends them Zwei in the mail. A package from him is considered something to “cheer her [Ruby] up”.

Do you really think they’d have such a relationship if he was emotionally or caregiving-ly absent? No, because that would be an abusive relationship, which is kind’ve RWBY’s speciality in recognizing.

Even on a meta-level, they cast Burnie Burns, a man who epitomizes a “good father” to the RT community and to the company itself as Taiyang. That doesn’t seem like the casting they’d do for a bad father.

What The Line Really Meant:

For a period of time, Taiyang shut down emotionally. He became depressed. While he cared for his children’s physical needs, he neglected their emotional needs. This is something that clearly has affected Yang, putting the burden of Ruby’s emotional needs on her (a burden she has still helped shoulder since then, though is clearly learning to let go of recently), but not really affected the two girls’ relationship with their father. Taiyang recovered from his depression, and has been an admirable father since then. Like every parent in RWBY, he’s a person, and he’s made mistakes in his parenting, but that doesn’t make him a bad parent.

Yang was Retconned!

The Misconception:

This, technically, can also fall under “Bad Father Taiyang”, but is usually mostly addressed at Miles and Kerry.

I’ve seen people saying that Yang’s fighting ability was retconned into “uses her semblance too much” and “dumb fighter who relies on her power”. People dissecting the pre-Volume 4 fight scenes for evidence of Yang being a smart fighter. Calling this a “retcon” (Retroactive Continuity: when a previous established fact is altered by the writer later in the story).

This all stems from a conversation Yang had with Taiyang, in which he says “Do you realize that you used your semblance to win every fight after the qualifiers?”

The Proof Against It:

Holy crap is this taking Taiyang out context.

Straight up, the lines directly before this were:

Yang: “Let me guess: ‘I was sloppy.’”

Taiyang: “-laughs- No. You were predictable. And stubborn. And maybe a little boneheaded.”

It’s pretty clear from the preceding lines that Taiyang isn’t talking about her fighting style. After some talk about her semblance, and how it won’t always save her, the conversation shifts into one about Raven, her stubbornness, and her similarities with Yang.

During which, Taiyang says that “You both act like the easiest way to tackle an obstacle is through it. That strength is all that matters in a fight.”

Which leads us to:

What The Line Really Meant:

I plan on making a post about this, but Strength is at the core of Yang’s character arc. Not just physical strength at that, but the word that  most people would use here is Power.

Yang is person who was born strong. Not just physically, even. Her core character trait, beyond anything else, is that Yang Xiao Long might get knocked down, but she’ll rise stronger than before. It’s her semblance; her connection to fire is evocative of phoenix motifs; hell the song “I Burn” calls her a Super Saiyan, who have “get stronger from being beaten down” as actual trait of their species.

But Strength, Power isn’t everything. We hear this in one of the first lines of the show, from Salem herself: There Will Be No Victory In Strength.

And that’s the point of the conversation with Taiyang. He explicitly compares her to Raven, who thinks Strength, not just physical and magical but also strength in skill and intelligence, is everything. And Yang has kinda been following that philosophy. She’s been using her strength to try and brute-force situations. We see this in the Yellow Trailer, as she grabs Junior by the balls in order to try extract information from him. We see this in the fight with Neo, when she switches up her fighting style multiple times, but can’t actually beat her. We see this in the fight with Mercury, where Cinder predicted she’d counter Mercury’s fake attack rather than dodge or block.

But this is where Taiyang hammers home the point that Yang’s strength isn’t everything. There are times to use strength, and times to find alternate solutions. And Yang has taken that to heart. The point of the Bandit fight is that while she predicts it, she doesn’t start it, giving her opponents the option to walk away. When Mercury grabs her arm, rather than attack him and get caught up fighting, she lets it go. When she arrives down in the Vauilt, she deconstructs Raven’s motivations so completely that by the time she shoulder-checks her mom on the way past, Raven’s already been defeated.

And when she goes up against Adam, someone who believes in strength just as much as Raven, she ultimately beats him by not using her strength until she’s taken away his.

“Bad Father Taiyang” Part 2: Moping

The Misconception:

Taiyang tells Yang to “stop moping”. This means he isn’t taking her PTSD seriously/he doesn’t understand her true problem/he’s a bad father/Miles and Kerry think PTSD is just moping.

The Proof Against It: See my first point on why Taiyang isn’t a bad father and why he wouldn’t be given such a harsh line unless there was some truth to it.

But on the Miles and Kerry interpretation, they have honestly been doing a fantastic job at portraying what PTSD is actually like. Some credit goes to Barbara as well, but PTSD in RWBY is portrayed as something you have to learn to live with, not overcome or “get better” from. Sure, you can mitigate it, but it’ll unfortunately always be with you.

Yang didn’t “get over” her PTSD by being told to stop moping. Because Taiyang was not referring to her PTSD.

What The Line Actually Meant:

Yang was moping.

See, Yang’s not just suffering from PTSD in Volume 4. She’s also suffering from heartbreak.

Her best friend, the person she was closest to outside of her family, the person she may even have realized that she was in love with, had just left her like Yang feared she would.

Like we’ve established, Yang is all about getting up when she gets knocked down. That’s at the core of her character. I honestly don’t think the missing arm and the PTSD would have kept her back home as long as it did on it’s own. Because we all know how a Xiao Long reacts to heartbreak (See: Taiyang “shutting down”).

But also because Adam straight-up told us that Blake leaving hurt more than losing an arm did.

What do I mean by that?

See, the whole point of the Adam fight is to explain to Blake what Yang wants to say but knows she can’t. The person Adam pretended to be is Yang, even if he doesn’t know it. Every line he says after he takes off the mask is something that actually applies to Yang’s feelings towards Blake.

“People hurt me long before we met” = Raven’s abandonment, Summer’s death

“But no-one hurt me quite like you. You didn’t leave scars, you just left me alone” = Blake left Yang after someone else had left her a scar (the arm)

“She made a promise to me once” = Literally paralleling the promises Blake has made to both people

Blake knows Yang and Pretend!Adam are alike. In semblance, in personality, it’s why she fears Yang going bad at the Vytal Tournament. And it’s why Adam saying that “no-one hurt me quite like you” triggers Blake’s realisation of why Yang doesn’t want Blake to protect her. Because it would leave her alone.

Yang can handle anything life throws at her besides Blake leaving. So when Yang was left moping after being left behind by the woman she loves, who better to point out she was moping than the person who’s been through the same thing twice?

The Birds

The Misconception:

And finally, the subject that began this rant of mine. The revelation to our heroes that Raven and Qrow can turn into birds.

People, quite confusing, take this to mean that our heroes are rendered suspicious of Ozpin because… he gave Qrow and Raven magical powers? They decry it as not really making sense, a false way to create tension between our heroes and Ozpin.

But maybe there’s a reason why it doesn’t make sense?

What The Line Really Meant:

Just look at the wording people. "What you did to Qrow and my mother", "What Oz did to my brother and me".

Raven implied that Ozpin gave them magic, placed this burden on them, without their consent. And Yang was rightfully pissed at the idea of such a thing. The rest of the group are taken aback at such an idea, because if it can happen to Ozpin’s previous generation of followers, it could happen to them.

You see Yang only reacts when Qrow firmly states that "We made a choice, we wanted this". It’s a look of shock. Raven lied to her.

And that’s why she tells Ozpin “No more lies, no more half-truths”. Raven has placed doubt in her mind, but both sides have lied to her at this stage. The only way to make sure she’s on the right side is if one of them isn’t lying to her, feeding her half-truths and lies of omission.

Which is why she takes it so hard when he omits the truth again. Down in the Vault, Yang made her choice. She chose Ozpin over her mother, permanently. There’s no going back from what Yang said to her. And then Ozpin omits the truth again, about the Relic, and this not only makes Yang question if she made the right choice, but reminds her that if she’s made the wrong one, she can’t go back on it. That’s she’s sacrificed any hope of a relationship with her mother for Ozpin, a man who can’t stop lying to her.

Conclusion:

I hope I’ve helped clear up some misconceptions for you guys, and made your RWBY-watching experience less confusing and misinformed. If you liked this, please reblog and share these corrections, so that the fandom no longer gets caught up on these moments.

These are just the misconceptions that I’ve been to dredge up from my memory on a Sunday night, so if I spot any more I’ll add them in later reblogs.

[redandfranticfeelings]

i am a whole month late but i saw frozen 2 and i actually have Opinions TM? which may not be very good, im not a good movie analyst, but this was a weird one. spoiler alert!

i like the backstory of anna and elsa’s parents and i like the idea that elsa’s powers are a gift, even though they really could have played into the powers being a gift more given how often she’s seen them as a curse. but they also kind of put the parents on a pedestal too much considering how they emotionally abused anna and elsa in the first movie. i would have loved to see the girls grapple with that trauma as well as remembering the good about them and feeling bad about their deaths.

on that note, they reference the first movie so much but it feels very gratuitous because a lot of elements feel detached from similar elements in the first movie. olaf recapping the entire first movie was funny but didn’t need as much time as it got.

that sums up olaf well too, actually. his anti-nihilistic personality was so batshit to me that it amused me, i like the idea of him dealing with maturity and change because it almost seems to be a deconstruction of his character archetype, and something that a lot of people who have aged since the first film could relate to. but it kind of came out of nowhere and then went nowhere, and he ironically ended up acting even more immature at times than he had in the first movie so it felt like they had no idea what to do with him, which sucks when he’s given entire scenes that don’t connect much to the plot. his song was probably my least favorite part of the movie, it felt even longer than his song in the original which at least served as a funny establishing character moment back then.

kristoff’s plot was sitcommy and meh and he was inconsequential to the story so much they p much forget about him in the second act but i gotta admit his song was so batshit bizarre it cracked me up. plus he is really endearing, even though they did not elaborate enough on his relationship with anna at all (and the first movie was already a bit rushed in that department). i would have liked more on how he sees her as a guiding figure in his otherwise very directionless life. in fact that could have even been subtle foreshadow for her role as a leader at the end of the movie!

as for anna herself...i like the idea of her plot! i like that she’s so paranoid and traumatized about elsa going anywhere alone and has to overcome that when elsa basically ascends to a higher power. i think people are too hard on her, i get her being overprotective and worried about not being around for her sister given how long she was shut out. it’s one of the few elements that actually seems like a proper follow-up to events from the first movie. i like that elsa is so gung-ho about taking all this responsibility alone but anna has to take up the mantle when she thinks elsa is gone, rather than sit alone and cry about it. however, i do wish her being queen had been built up more. maybe highlight her connection to the people arendelle, or even the northundra people, to show that she has leadership skills when not obsessed with elsa (since she is very personable). granted idk if she actually is qualified to lead a kingdom given how the first frozen is one of the few movies to reference how queens have to deal with things like the economy, but i’m willing to shrug that off since most movies of this kind don’t see queenhood as a responsibility thing but a title of honor.

i like elsa seeking out her history and heritage since that was kind of robbed from her as a child, but it would have been interesting if anna, who actually had her memories wiped, showed more interest in these memories being visualized. however i feel a lot of things came too easily for her. i like the idea that she had to conquer all the elements before she could find the truth about arendelle but idk it seemed like she didn’t struggle much, it just sort of Happened? it didn’t feel like her character developed or changed much. she started off hearing a call, decided to pursue it early on, and outside of a tragically-brief grapple with her parents’ death, just went through these individual challenges with nature basically the same way, by using magic. like as soon as the forest realizes elsa is magic each time it calms down. i get that she’s basically the chosen one but i would have liked a bit more emotional struggle, maybe more leftover insecurity about honing her powers or gaining new ones, maybe a stronger reaction to the fact her grandfather was basically willing to perform genocide due to the same beliefs about magic that had her hating herself throughout most of her life. i guess maybe her freezing to death might represent that, like how the truth hurts, and how her sister trying to make it up to everyone with a massive sacrifice is how she unfroze might be some sort of meaningful metaphor, but idk it felt a little too similar to the resolution of the last movie, and again things felt too easy for her.

super disappointed at how little the sami characters did. given how i’d heard they consulted sami folks to properly represent the culture, i expected the new characters to have a more direct role, but all they did was provide some mild exposition, and even then, anna and elsa found out most things. why couldn’t the people of the forest, especially the elders, just explain what anna and elsa’s grandfather did to them? honeymaren and ryder were cute but did basically nothing, which is sad since i heard so much hype about honeymaren being shipped with elsa.

also the people of northundra being shut out from the outside world by magic is a great parallel for elsa’s situation in the first movie but that connection was barely made because the new characters got sidelined so badly.

it would have been pretty cool to destroy arendelle and rebuild it, or maybe to give the northundra a new gift to replace the false one. but the whole thing with the dam generally felt a bit anticlimactic. and i appreciate a message about reparations and twisted nationalistic history but i dont really know what message they were going for there, and whatever it was, it would have been stronger if we got to know the actual people of the forest better.

the salamander was cute but it didn’t have much of a point any more than the other elements of nature and is almost as much of an Obvious Plush Toy Design as pua from moana. (btw, this movie reminded me a bit of moana, thematically, just way more complicated.)

the songs were nice but i dont remember most of them. ‘show yourself’ was my favorite. i like it better than ‘into the unknown’ lol, maybe because it came later in the story even though i wished there was more power struggle in the scene itself.

[linkspooky]

Maki and Megumi pt. 2

Maki and Megumi are distant cousins and two characters connected by their shared blood in the Zenin family, but usually they’re almost polar opposites. I discuss this in my previous post about the two. However, despite their differences or maybe because of them they work rather well together as complementary personalities. Here’s an analysis on Jujutsu Kaisen chapter 108 and why it was Megumi who showed up to fight with Maki. 

All of the fights in Jujutsu Kaisen aren’t just there fore the sake of showing off cool patterns, every fight and fight matchup has thematic meaning. That means there’s something the author has to say in comparing and contrasting whoever participates in a fight in Jujutsu Kaisen. 

We see Maki and Megumi fighting together again like they did in the Sister School Event, because they both have something to learn from this fight. The Shibuya Incident Arc is such an excellently planned out arc that there are several parallels already going into this fight.

1. NobaMaki Parallels

Ever since Gojou got boxed the theme of this arc so far has been that while individual strength is important, it’s not everything, and simply being stronger is never going to win you every fight. This is why we see characters who are strong individualists getting hit hard this arc. 

Maki’s entire current goal revolves around the idea of her own individual strength. The way she sees it, in order to fight for her place in the world, and prove her family wrong about her she has to get stronger than even the toughest Jujutsu Sorcery user in her family all on her own. 

This is something we see Maki has sacrificed several personal relationships for, including any kind of healthy relationship with her own twin sister who she was much closer to when she was younger. Now Maki’s bad relationship with Mai isn’t her individual fault, it’s the family situation that created the tension between them, and both Maki and Mai are bad at reaching out to each other or understanding one another. However, Maki even says as much to Mai that she has to prioritize herself. 

In Maki’s mind, rising up to the top alone is more important than anything else, even being together with her twin sister. Maki’s not wrong for thinking that way she’s just an individualist, she’s very strong and singleminded. However, an individualist mindset does not win the fight in every situation. Which is why her parallels with Nobara come into play this arc. Nobara, Maki and Gojou are all characters that strongly parallel one another they all seem to believe they can accomplish anything with their own individual strength. They are, highly motivated and confident individuals, and most of the time this attitude works for them but not always. 

Nobara is also someone who uniquely sympathizes with Maki’s situation. You can see her sympathy arises for two reasons, one Nobara’s always attuned to people who get judged by unfair standards (she hated the people in her small town for judging her only friend instead of getting to know her), and two because Maki fought back against that unfairness. 

Nobara tends to like people who fight back against their circumstances with everything they have. She tends to dislike people who succumb to their circumstances and lash out. She has almost no pity for them. (Just a reminder you don’t... have to sympathize with someone going out of their way to hurt your friend because they don’t know how to communicate their abandonment issues in a healthy way). This is the entire point of setting up the Maki / Mai parallel where Nobara sympathizes with one of them, and doesn’t sympathize with the other even though they’re both reacting to the exact same situation. 

It’s because the way Maki copes really really alligns with Nobara’s world view, which is that with self confidence and strength she should be able to overcome everything. Whereas, Mai who is part of the Kyoto school who tends instead cling to connections of other people around her. (To Mai, her connection with Maki was what was more important than being a Jujutsu sorcerer, hence why she feels abandoned. Mai’s so close to her Kyoto friends one of them literally tries to explain the situation to Nobara.) The Kyoto kids are in general known to be much closer and more trusting than the Tokyo Kids who all fight side by side, but tend to be distant. 

Two different ways to react to a situation. However neither one of them is wrong, and neither one will work for every situation. Which is why Nobara loses her first major fight in the Shibuya Arc so far, because her go to strategy was to use herself as a decoy and charge in alone. As a result she was taken by surprise. She was stronger than her opponent but strength was not enough. 

Now paralleling that situation we have had several comments in the last three chapters on how Maki is completely out of her depth. Yes, Maki is strong, however she’s still not quite there yet. 

Maki’s worldview is that strength is everything, so what can she do when she’s just not strong enough to contribute to the situation? Maki isn’t going to be as strong as two much older sorcerers when she is still pretty much just a kid. It’s impossible to become that strong that fast no matter how hard you push yourself. 

So, what Maki experiences is the frustration of reaching her limit. She’s strong, but not strong enough, and therefore she’s just getting in the way in this situation, and even had to be protected by a man she hates. 

Maki is getting picked on so relentlessly by characters here in order to put a crack in her world view. There are situations where her strength will not be enough. Even if she was the strongest person on earth (Gojou) she would still be caught in those situations. The solution isn’t to get stronger, the solution is to open yourself up to different possibilities and be flexible rather than try to solve every problem in one way. 

Maki even admits it. This was her mistake 1) refusing to listen to Nanami when he told her she probably should not be here, and 2) not going to meet up with Megumi because she wanted to prove herself. (Though in that dialogue she’s kind of also in denial about it, she says her real mistake is that she didn’t take it out fast enough but... the fact that Megumi saves her this chapter indicates that her mistake was indeed leaving Megumi). 

Maki’s mistake would have cost her her life, if Megumi had not shown up. Her narrative punishment is that one she’s put in a situation where despite being crazy strong, she’s just a burden to the others around her, and two isn’t able to overcome the situation with guts and her brash attitude alone and has to sit back and be saved. 

2. MegumiYuji Parallels

Megumi and Yuji are also strong narrative foils to the extent Nobara and Maki are. It’s no coincidence that literally right after we see Yuji lose a battle, Megumi comes in the clutch. What’s really interesting about this arc is that it’s a deconstruction of the piece of advice Gojou once gave Megumi. 

Gojou tells Megumi that he needs to stop downplaying himself for the sake of others, and instead learn to swing for the fences the way he and Yuji do. While this is good advice, once again it’s not entirely right. It’s also advice steeped in Gojou’s world view. 

Remember Gojou is someone traumatized by the fact that his only friend Getou went rogue and betrayed him. He once believed that as long as him and Getou were together as the strongest duo they could accomplish anything, only to be struck with his own powerlessness when Getou left and he could do nothing to save him, or make him stay. Gojou is someone who ever since then had a habit of taking everything on his own shoulders. Gojou’s advice is good to break Megumi out of his self sacrificial habits, but it also comes from a place of Gojou assuming that you’ll always die alone because nobody could ever fight alongside him after Getou left. 

Gojou’s decision to go alone into the subway system is the mistake that starts this whole arc up. When characters decide to cooperate together in this arc they’re rewarded, when they try to run ahead alone they’re punished. There’s a reason both Yuji and Megumi fought together before splitting off to fight on their own. 

This fight established that cooperating with another person is often harder than fighting alone, but also something ultimately worth it because strength would not have won Yuji this fight. The reason Yuji won is because Megumi’s strategy, and Megumi needed Yuji’s cooperation with him to overwhelm the enemy. 

Megumi, after unlocking Chimera Shadow Garden has developed into more of an individualist. He’s followed Gojou’s advice. The most important part of Gojou’s advice however isn’t that Megumi had to stop cooperating with other people and become more like Gojou, but rather the problem is Megumi’s way of cooperating with people is a tendency to sacrifice himself, and belittle himself for the sake of others. Megumi as a person is someone who is very repressed. 

There’s a reason Megumi was a delinquint in middle school, but is a very distant and quiet boy now. Megumi is someone who is always deeply angry, but instead of trying to deal with those feelings he represses them. He feels a deep hurt for being abandoned by his father, but insists to Gojou he doesn’t care. He feels deep protective feelings for his sister, but distances himself from her as much as possible. Megumi’s tendency to sacrifice arises from this, because he’s repressing himself. He thinks the only way he can help others is to sacrifice himself. However, true cooperation is what he did with Yuuji, it’s butting your heads together and both sticking up for what you believe in and finding a compromise between that. Getting along with people can often mean fighting with them too, and Megumi tends to be a very conflict avoidant person. 

In the current arc it’s Megumi whose grown in this particular aspect, and Yuji who hasn’t. The manga makes it clear that Yuji and Choso are pretty much neck and neck, the fight could have gone to either person. So, what is it exactly that loses Yuji the fight? 

This moment right here where Yuji decides that helping other people means sacrificing himself. He becomes more like Megumi, but is taking on a negative aspect of him rather than a positive one. This is also a flaw that’s been present within Yuji’s character from the start, he’s borderline suicidal sometimes in how willing he is to throw himself into danger and rather than focusing on survival he’s always trying to make peace with his death and find a good death. Yuji is someone who accepts his death far too easily, because he views himself as someone expendable. 

Yuji makes a decision midfight to keep fighting even if it means dying, instead of trying to live to the next day even though he promised Megumi this before the fight. 

That’s the flaw in Yuji’s logic. Him deciding to pull a heroic death in the middle of a subway tunnel isn’t helping anyone, whereas he could have made the decision to fall back and wait for help. Maki only got saved because Megumi was there to help him. In this situation mirroring Maki, Yuji was only saved because Getou’s surrogate family was there to help him. 

Yuji despite sacrificing himself for others is still really only thinking with an individualist mindset here. He’s making decisions without really thinking about how it will affect the people around him. Whereas, Megumi who has been the most cooperative character this arc, and also directly faced his tendency to take a dive so other people can succeed gets to show up in Maki’s fight. 

3. Future Predictions

There are several parallels between Maki and Megumi. Just to summarize, they’re both connnected to the Zenin clan. But while Maki’s entire life is dominated by the Zenin clan, Megumi doesn’t really care about his connection to the family. They both have sisters who are incredibly important to them. They also both chose to distance themselves from their sisters at one time, Megumi lost his sister to a curse and wants nothing more than to go back and apologize. Maki’s sister is still alive but she’s too prideful to apologize. They are both people who were taken in and helped by Gojou, Maki reflects Gojou’s ideology whereas Megumi is ideologically the exact opposite of Gojou and a much more cooperative person. 

They are set up as characters who have several similiarties, but almost always make opposite choices. Even from their family situations, Megumi was born outside of the clan but has a powerful Jujutsu Sorcery, Maki was born inside of the clan but was born with no Jujutsu Sorcery technique. 

The point of having such similiar but opposite characters together is so they can work together. They both have a lot to learn from each other, Maki has to learn how to more effectively fight in a team because there are going to be situations where her strength can’t solve everything. Megumi has to learn not to repress himself. Which is Maki’s greatest strength she never represses anything, because to her the absolute worst thing is the death of the self and having to let go of her pride. 

However, more than that Megumi and Maki being brought together now is likely because they are going to face an even bigger opponent than Dagan. Dagan is cute and all, but he’s not exactly someone who would bring about character development from them other than being a hard opponent to fight again.

However, one last similarity with Megumi and Maki is that they both heavily parallel Toji. Who just... happens to be running around right now. 

Maki and Megumi both share several flaws with Toji. He serves as a shadow archetype for both of them. 

The shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.

A shadow archetype is a character meant to highlight the repressed flaws of other characters. Toji is made up of Megumi and Maki’s flaws, but rather than being a work in progress as a person, Toji let those flaws utterly ruin him. 

For Maki - Toji parallels her in two aspects, one her desire to prove herself stronger than everyone else despite not having a Jujutsu Sorcery technique through her own strength alone, and two her choice to abandon her family members. 

Toji represents the extreme consequences of Maki’s choice. Maki is much more sympathetic than Toji, but she still displays unhealthy behavior that’s not going to be good for her in the wrong run. The thing about Maki is that she can have both, she can have both her connection with her sister, and also want to become strong enough to prove her family wrong about her. She just refused to compromise. Toji is someone who followed his own selfish desire to the end and regretted it. 

He thought the only important thing was being stronger than his opponents, and because he only lived for that strength, he abandoned everything else in his life, including his moral and his own son. Toji is a bad future if Maki continues to make that choice. 

For Megumi - Toji is Megumi’s father (obviously), and while he never raised Megumi they are similiar personality wise. They both repress themselves to an extreme amount. 

It’s not that Toji didn’t feel guilty for abandoning Megumi and killing people, it’s just no matter what he did he always repressed it and refused to face his actions. He was so good at denying his own feelings that he didn’t realize how much he regretted abandoning his son until he was literally at the brink of his own death and it was too late to change it. 

Megumi is also someone who tends to seriously regret things. He regrets the way he interacted with his sister, because now she’s gone he can’t apologize to her. Megumi and Toji are both bad at handling their own emotions, and especially their traumas. Megumi’s reaction to Toji’s decision to abandon him is to put a lid on all feelings related to his father and pretend he doesn’t care. 

That’s never healthy and it’s likely the lid is going to come off when he faces Toji again. Here’s my prediction for the arc, Toji is going to show up and it will be Maki and Megumi who fight together against them, because he’s a shadow archetype for the flaws that both of them need to overcome. 

[nellie-elizabeth]

Suits: One Last Con (9x10)

Okay, so then what happens next is that Harvey and Donna move to Seattle, and they become closer than ever to Rachel and Mike. At least once a week, Harvey and Mike have a "guy's night" while Donna and Rachel have a "girl's night." And then, gradually, they realize they've ended up with the wrong people. So they all get divorced and then Donna and Rachel become a couple, and Mike and Harvey become a couple. Someone please tell me they're writing that fic.

Oh, sorry. Was I supposed to talk about the episode? Let's get to it.

Cons:

I predicted last week that this episode would be overcrowded, and I wasn't wrong, exactly. I'm grateful that the conflict with Faye was over before the midpoint, so we could have a nice long goodbye with all of the characters. But while I do enjoy that, I also must admit it doesn't make a lot of sense. Faye was a season-long threat, and she's dispatched a third of the way through the finale. It just goes to show that as interesting of a villain as she might have been in the beginning, she didn't really matter. She was a figurehead. She didn't really change anything about these people and their perspectives on their lives. It all felt pretty pointless in the end.

No matter how much fan service a finale has, there are always going to be things that get missed. For example, it seems strange to me that Jessica couldn't have made a cameo at Louis' wedding. She's working on another show for the same creators; how hard would it have been to get her in for a few minutes? And I hate that Alex was the one to go to Katrina. On the one hand, I get it. They needed to find something for Alex to do in this episode, because he's been a pointless character for several weeks. But Harvey and Katrina never get a moment of apology, and that really sucks.

I've talked a lot in these reviews about my issues with Donna and Harvey. It's not that they're painful to watch, or actively unpleasant. The actors do a good job. It's perfectly serviceable. But I think I've finally figured out one of the reasons why they never quite clicked for me as a couple. Harvey is always talking about how Donna knows him better than anyone. But this is what editors mean when they say "show, don't tell." Donna knows Harvey. We've seen it throughout the years. But how does she show that she knows him? Well, she has the supernatural ability to read his mind and predict his requirements whenever the plot requires it. And she acts like is mommy just as often as she acts like his girlfriend, guiding him through his emotions like an enabler.

But Harvey can say again and again that Donna is the one for him, and how well she gets him... and then we can see Mike in the same episode, showing that same thing, instead of telling it. I'm not even pushing for a romantic interpretation, necessarily. It's just that Mike comes in, and they have their quippy banter. They work together to take down Faye. They re-enact Mike's interview with Harvey but in reverse. They find excuses to touch each other. And in an episode that involved two weddings and a health scare, the single most emotional moment in the episode is when Harvey tries to leave Mike's apartment dramatically after telling Mike he's never stopped trusting him, and Mike says "no," like the very idea of Harvey losing his license is torture to him. They have the chemistry. They have the beating heart of this show, and that's been true from day one. It makes the romance between Harvey and Donna pale in comparison.

Also, in an episode that had to accomplish so many things, so quickly, it was odd to add in that little health scare for Sheila. Why did her pregnancy have to have complications? It felt like something to add just to make for some more drama, but we really didn't need that. I'm glad that mother and daughter were both okay.

Pros:

I was always going to rant and ramble a lot in this review, since it's the last one for the show. But just because I had a lot to say in the "cons" section doesn't mean there was nothing to enjoy here. Let's start with my girl Katrina.

As I said, I was irritated that she and Harvey didn't have an on-screen reconciliation. But I am so, so happy for her that she gets to be name partner! It's so refreshing to have a character arc on this show be about a woman choosing her career over her love life, and having that be an empowering and rewarding choice to make. I'm all about it. She gets to come back to the firm, newly powerful, and stand with Alex, Samantha, and Louis.

Samantha and Alex were both underutilized in this finale, but I get it. I'd rather focus on the longer-standing characters, too. And the show did a good job of making this episode the end of an era for Harvey and Donna, and yet also a new beginning for the others. The image of the new firm name on the wall was really lovely. I especially liked that Samantha acknowledged how crazy it was that they'd kept changing the name, and decided that they can't change it anymore for at least five years. But Litt Wheeler Williams Bennett will be stronger for Katrina's presence among them.

Louis has one of the best glow-ups in TV history. There were times over the years where I didn't think I'd be able to forgive him. I still selfishly hold a grudge for that time when he physically attacked Mike. But at the end of the day, he has actually grown as a person. This is a great example of show vs. tell, actually. We've seen it all season - Louis has been calmer. He gets angry or worked up about something, but he doesn't fly off the handle. When he tells his therapist that he's ready to have him as a friend and have him officiate the wedding, it doesn't feel like empty words. Louis might still need therapy in his life, but he has the tools now to know how to get himself the help he needs. It was so fun to see his "final form" as it were. And then we see it put to the test, as Sheila goes into labor during their wedding ceremony. You might expect him to freak out, but he's calm. He's planned for this, and he's there to be supportive for Sheila during this difficult time. Even while he's frantic for her and the baby in the hospital, he keeps a cool head and doesn't do anything he would later regret. Yay Louis! (ps - Louis learning that Donna and Harvey were leaving was more emotional for me than Harvey and Donna's wedding). (pps - that scene of Donna and Louis holding hands in the elevator gave me LIFE).

It was predictable that Harvey and Donna would step up and take advantage of the pre-arranged wedding - a lot of fans predicted this exact outcome. And while I've spoken extensively on my mixed feelings about their relationship, I can't deny the cuteness of the scene. We get that lovely proposal, with Harvey's mother's ring. We get Mike putting his arms around both of them, with his little quip about being unlicensed to officiate. We get Harvey and Mike gripping hands as Harvey leads Donna out for their first dance. It's all very cute, and I feel happy for the big Darvey fans out there. They totally deserve to see all of that happiness, even if I don't agree with the couple at its core. This is the inevitable conclusion, and it was done quite beautifully.

Will I ever be over how much Harvey and Mike love each other? I really don't think so. Let's talk about the best parts of the episode.

First of all, I already mentioned it above, but that scene at Mike's place was just golden. Mike walking in to find Harvey already there was great - they have always just barged in to each other's personal spaces and that's such a testament to the trust between them. And then you have Harvey telling Mike the truth, and telling him that he's going to have to go on the stand and risk getting disbarred. Mike's reaction is genuine panic, and then the two of them concoct a plan that will save the day. I just love the idea of Harvey going over there not to ask for Mike's help, but because he couldn't stand the thought of Mike thinking he didn't trust him. That's love, baby.

Then you've got the interview-in-reverse thing at the end. I could spend hours just squealing about the fact that Donna and Harvey are leaving the firm and moving to Seattle (my home town! woo!) to be with Mike and Rachel. Hey, maybe the four of them could all be in a poly relationship... but that's for fanfic to decide, I guess. Good finales need to come full circle, and also need to set the characters up for changing futures. This idea of Harvey moving to Seattle, of Mike being Harvey's boss, manages to do both. They are quippy and cute with each other, but also genuine. Harvey decides to leave the firm in order to take out Faye, but he also genuinely wants a fresh start. His life changed forever when Mike walked into his life, and I really do feel like that was the final message the show left me with, when the dust had settled.

So... yeah. I can't find it in myself to be a hardcore Darvey shipper. This finale was never going to cater to all of my needs. But at the end of the day, I was mighty pleased with several of the scenes, and I love where it left all of the characters, in terms of their careers and happiness. For this finale, I'll give a rating of...

7.5/10

For the show as a whole? Well, I hate to break it to anyone who's unaware of this, but Suits isn't that great of a show. It has a couple of really strong elements, but over the years its stories became repetitive, and there's quite a lot that doesn't actually make sense about these characters and their motivations. But I don't grade these shows based on objective quality. I grade them based on the elements that I enjoy most in a show. For years, whenever Suits came back on the air, it was one of the things I looked forward to most each week. I longed for every scrap of content between Harvey and Mike that I could possibly get. There are moments over the years that I have gone back and watched in a loop because of those two. I also liked the way the show deconstructed toxic masculinity, and had a feminist message that didn't feel like something out of an after school special. I had fun watching this show, and I will think of it fondly for years to come. The show over-all gets:

8/10

[zani-is-a-stan]

suzani watches the Sherlock unaired pilot

Opening

-       This version of John looks way more old and way more dad

-       That close shot on the gun tell the viewer that John is suicidal

-       The dark silhouette of the cupid statue kind of stands out. Given how the cinematography and shot framing is a lot sloppier in this version, I don’t think this is intentional. But if it was intentional, this would be a signal to the viewer that this is a love story.

-       Mmm, pass on both Anderson’s beard and this way of introducing the concept of a Sherlock

-       This title & credits sequence is so dated

-       Anderson with no inflection is boring

-       Dinner with wine is not a great place for John to be saying he’s broke

We meet Sherlock & Molly

-       We start to see the beginnings of the geometric and precise framing that are the signature of the show in that one shot of Molly behind the glass

-       Its nice to see that Molly’s character required almost no adjustment between the two versions. Given that she was the first character original to the show instead of the books, it’s nice to see that she stuck the landing so perfectly

-       It’s starting to be really obvious how loose the editing is. There’s a lot of dead air at the beginning and end of every shot before each cut. Much better in the final version.

The lab

-       This version of Sherlock seems a lot more accurate to the book Sherlock from Study in Scarlet than the series ultimately ended up being. He’s softer, more interested in interacting with other people than the antisocial, high functioning ASD (where’s the fic that explores that?) twanging brain haver he is in the first episode of season 1

-       I want to read a take on Sherlock that discusses him as having ASD and interprets the violin playing and the mystery solving as his stimming techniques

-       The camera shots in this scene are really starting to stand out as very different from the show. It’s not just the editing which is kind of thoughtless – these shots are poorly composed and poorly planned. I don’t think it would stand out so much if the final version of the show didn’t make so many deliberate and stylized decisions regarding with the shots and editing.

The apartment

-       The extrapolation of john’s family based on the phone became much cleaner in the aired version

-       Comic sans! I mean, mrs Hudson is better than that.

-       Mrs Hudson definitely checked out john’s butt …

-       “can I just ask … what is your street?” this was very good, if repetitive

-       Sherlock needs an assistant? This sherlock has a need for human connection that the other one doesn’t – and he has a lava lamp.

-       Ugh the apartment at 221B baker st looks so much more vintage in this setup. Not a fan.

-       This sherlock definitely cares more about what other people think than the final version.

-       Mrs Hudson is a much softer, premade character in this version. I like the final version better. She seems stronger that way.

The cab ride

-       So boring. Such greenscreen. Wow.

-       not just the greenscreen. the difference in the shooting and finishing of this sequence in the pilot and the aired episode is so incredibly improved that you can hardly believe there were part of the same thing.

-       TOO MUCH SYNTH

-       Sherlock has a far too human response to john’s compliments and more doubt in how accurate his deductions are

The crime scene

-       Im glad they changed sally’s outfit, and smoothed out sherlock’s taunting of her and Anderson’s affair. Ugh I wish they’d kept sally around. This show needed more normie/casual sherlock opponents. Lack of closeups in this scene do it no favors

-       They cut the Rache/Rachel clue. And btw, I do love how this was inverted from the book presentation in the show.

-       “no, there are two women and three men lying dead, keep talking and there will be more” – this sherlock prioritizes people over mystery solving, and that’s a little more humanizing as well.

-       When he’s deconstructing the scene around the woman in pink, there’s a switch in sherlock’s voice when he’s off camera. I’m wondering if maybe that’s a stat actor reading the script for some reason, or if they recorded the dialogue and the camera angles at the same time and forgot to switch when they were editing that shot? Makes sense given how messy the editing is throughout the pilot.

-       “do you know you do that out loud?” “sorry, I’ll shut up” “No, don’t worry, it’s fine” (pleased smile) --- this exchange is so accurate to book Sherlock and Holmes

-       This is not the same sally as the first episode. I had to check because I have a little bit of face blindness and there weren’t any closeups, but it’s definitely not her. Interesting how the actress who ultimately played her changed the inflection but brought very little new to the blocking.

a bit inbetween and the pink case

-       No Mycroft, hmm. Don’t care for it. It added a lot with a really nice red herring feel.

-       John returns to his place for absolutely no reason narratively.

-       I don’t care for the red herring moment where john looks at the pink case and wonders if sally was right and talks out loud about it.

-       The end exchange of this scene is awesome and should have stayed. “Donovan said you get off on this.” “And I said danger and here you are.” “DAMNIT!” It’s very funny, and it’s a fun spar between the two rather than the ultimate resigned tolerance that series John seems to settle into by season 2.

do you have a girlfriend? a boyfriend?

-       Sherlock not eating is a brilliant touch, I think that should have been there.

-       This version of the girlfriend boyfriend conversation is far more successful than the aired version, although I prefer the setting in the aired version. It’s flirtier, and the “Everything else is transport” line carries implications I prefer to the one we saw on on the official version.

-       Sherlock knowing the cab thing ahead of time really lowers the stakes.

-       Angelo and the headless nun thing is fucking beautiful. (although angelo is a bit of an upstager) But, the change in the plot to the John running and leaving the cane behind in the final version is much more relevant to the story.

-       Ok, so the cabbie drugging Sherlock did show us that John is smart in his own right (we never got enough of that), but it showed us Sherlock fucking up in a way that is inconsistent with the show version of that character. For us to buy that Sherlock is other level super genius instead of just very smart, he can’t make this kind of mistake. If he can’t make a mistake, then John can’t prove his own intelligence. I do think it was a good idea to put the police back in his apartment now, as it gives us more interesting and fun things about those characters, and the ultimate build to the cab ride and the incorporation of modern technology really contributed to the modernizing of the adaption.

which pill

-       WHOA that cabbie did just very much threaten to molest or rape Sherlock. Although if there were no women or gay men on the script team, I can totally see the writers not realizing that this line had that connotation.

-       And this version requires a lot more explaining of plotholes with dialogue in a way that is avoided in the final verion. This is unquestionably good, because there’s nothing more graceless in filmed stories than having plot explained with words, especially by a villain.

-       Taking the pills out of the bottle looks silly.

-       Final version cabbie is better. More self-satified and mean.

-       “Either way, you’re wasted as a cabbie” is a way better line in the final.

-       Taking him out of the apartment and away from the police phone call was A+ the right choice.

-       Everyone know the best cops scream “Who is firing, who is firing?” when someone fires a shot.

i’ve got a blanket

-       Sherlock saying “Yeah, maybe he beat me, but he’s dead” is a far shot from the man who shook a dying man and demanded to know if he was right or not. Again, this Sherlock is far more human and far less computer.

-       That bit with mrs Hudson at the end was unnecessarily mean, I’m glad they cut it

-       “I’m his Doctor.” – this lines should have stayed forever.

Overall thoughts

Ok, so overall changes between the pilot and the aired first episode. Plot was a lot more polished. They scrubbed every trace of human need from Sherlock, which I think was a good choice, at least for the beginning of the show. His literal only love is his own abilities as the show airs, which leaves him with a very interesting and exploitable weakness – his arrogance, where as pilot Sherlock doesn’t seem to care all that much when he makes a mistake. We did lose a couple of scenes that had a lot of good chemistry in them, but I think the plot was much improved overall for the changes. The change of Sherlock from being casually mean to people like Anderson to swatting away an irritating fly is very successful. The focus of Sherlock’s relationship with Lestrade seems of a higher priority than Watsons a little bit, so I’m glad that changed. The lead up to John shooting the cabbie was much better in the final

Honestly the pilot doesn’t look like a pilot as much as it looks like a proof of concept piece. The budget was obviously smaller: that’s why they reused the same restaurant set, it’s why the final confrontation took place in the apartment rather than a second location, that’s why the effects are missing or budgety, that’s why the editing was low-end. This as a pilot was sold on the impact of the actors and the bones of the script, not on any of the look that would ultimately make the show what it was. The color work between the first and second version of this alone was amazing.   I also think that the hair change in Sherlock was an excellent choice. It offsets BC’s face/head structure in a way that plays into the strangeness of the character in a much better way. Similarly, the coat and scarf that he wears in the series do exist in the pilot, but aren’t really a signature of Sherlock’s on-screen shape design in the same way.

I think the only thing I would’ve kept is the inflection, delivery & read on the girlfriend boyfriend scene, and the return of the “I said danger and here you are” exchange.

There’s a lot of talk about Sherlock’s sexuality and what was cannon in the books. TV Sherlock they seem to be confused about (Belgravia as an episode left me really confused about what statement the writers were trying to make there, which implies that they’re either not completely sure either, or they’re too straight to understand what they’re doing). In the books, Holmes chooses not to have romantic relationship because it stops his brain from working clearly – it’s a deliberate choice based on the Victorian concept of sex (and women, because they are clearly only sex objects) diminishing the capacity for clear thought and mental performance. This is not the same as him being asexual or aromantic as we not aro/ace people understand the concept in 2019.

Based on the scene as it airs, the girlfriend/boyfriend scene would leave me with the opinion that Sherlock is not just asexual but also aromantic. Possibly one of these by choice rather than nature. Based as how the scene plays out in the unaired pilot, I would think that Sherlock is celibate and also attracted to John, more likely gay than bisexual. (There was quite a bit of smoldering going on in the Sherlock to John direction.)