#no spoilers yet but their storytelling has improved SO MUCH

[kujousaramybeloved]

i forgot to think of a caption.. how’s everyone enjoying fontaine ^^

[popponn]

things about isagi yoichi

i'm keeping a list about isagi for reasons (mostly personal amusement) (please do feel free to add or correct them). contains possible spoiler for manga up to chapter 230 so far and light novel. will get longer, probably, as time goes on. (update, it gets longer and up to uber match ending as of today.)

considerate. almost like a people pleaser. actual people pleaser at first.

pragmatic. thinks very calmly, even when angry it seems, but his words still sometimes get too much.

think things through, sometimes too much.

is confident, but not unaware of his own weaknesses

start pretty insecure.

seems to be sheepish - happy when someone praise / support / pay a large attention to him (pretty humble) (interview, that one kid in station, his family)

how he acts depends on who he is interacting with

switch to a more polite speech pattern whenever nervous (pretty obvious in japanese text, like in the interview scene after bm vs mc).

seems to be less competent on other things other than soccer

looking at his favorite manga / song / shows (most are medias with children as the main audience in mind), either really loves his childhood or doesn’t pay attention to many things after soccer. seems like the latter.

a really healthy family dynamics. his parents are very supportive of his dream.

loves katsu curry.

is a pretty 'normal' high school guy it seems. tissues near the bed, thigh fetish, read manga. speaks normally.

i really don't get why he has a habit of making sure his ahoges stand up in v before a match but god thats cute.

can be really rude and impatient sometimes

is good with people, but seems to enjoy alone time too. seems to be an introvert.

at least on screen, never really talk about how it was in ichinan with the blue lock guys. either it didn't bother him that much consciously or is the type of person who gets along with everyone but no one really knows the background of in details. (put it simply might be more introverted than he appears to be, especially considering how he usually is with people)

seems to be uncomfortable with new people in his personal space (early bachira + kaiser)

while doesn’t ‘like’ rude people, seems to grow ‘used’ to them and even openly admire them (barou + rin)

does not seems to easily prejudice / be judgmental to someone. is really patient (respect to barou, that one chapter with tada from ichinan, still praises kaiser despite the antagonism between them)

his fashion sense is pretty... this is very subjective as i don't have the word for it yet, but yeah, is either not good or pretty old fashioned. (in anime official arts)

when it comes to soccer often looks angrier expression wise

really egoistic. unsurprisingly.

sometimes is pretty self centered in the way that “this is my fault” sometimes, rather than focusing on someone else. but most of the time his self centeredness comes out as “i want this and i will get this”.

on some moments also seems to focus more on what he is not satisfied with rather than what he is satisfied with. might be caused by the storytelling beats, but if taken into consideration how he always wants to improve, it's not unsurprising.

seems to be more goal / result oriented, but is not dismissive towards the process.

whenever he sees someone better than him or something seems to be ‘impossible’ for him, most of the time his responds are ‘i have to work harder for it’. sometimes there are moments of insecurity, but they are fleeting and always went back to ‘i will overcome this / him’ as a respond.

very!!!! competitive. but it’s blue lock.

both in and outside soccer, seems to be very independent

seems to be more analytical by nature rather than intuitive, especially in learning style. complete opposite of nagi.

often starts noticing things from little things and details first before going and getting the bigger picture. detail oriented person? at least in soccer.

yeah soccer nerd.

if the 0 valentine choco, his reaction to seeing live two women getting played in karaoke, and how he didn't immediately went to girls in bowling alley—yeah. definitely 0 experience with girls.

is not wishy washy. knows what he wants and is not the type to change his preference because of his surroundings. did just act as if his preference is different / just doesn't say a thing or walk away when it isn't, back in ichinan these habits are obvious. in blue lock, he doesn't actively try to make other people uncomfortable and even still accommodate some out of the field, but clearly has become more outspoken in his preference or for his comfort. boy really grew more confident (and i love him for it).

he asks santa for ps4 and other than yeah normal highschool boy behavior idk how to dissect or overanalyze this yet give me a sec or a year.

like treats!!!! seems to be partial to sweets, but he also enjoys sour candies according to egoist bible.

doesn't like being ignored. and it kinda shows.

his beef with kaiser is hilarious—but it make sense because kaiser obviously bring it up even out of field (that locker room scene after yukimiya isagi argument), taunts isagi every chance he got (vs barcha, vs mc), and whatever happened in the match. isagi better than some bluelockers and me fr frfr considering he still did not try to punch kaiser's mug.

which bring the point doesn't seems to enjoy fistfight. either shitty at it or just chose not too. but looking at his trend of being shitty at things that are not soccer and his canonically low stats especially before blue lock. yeah might be shit at fistfight (with also a bit of the latter because how do one not try to sock kaiser in the face after *gestures wildly* all that. footnote, i admit the bias). (karaoke, shidou vs rin duking it out pt.1—my guy was dying and he wasn't the one duking it out)

tidy, but not overly tidy to barou level. but realistically comparing it to stereotypes of high school boys? real tidy. (could be seen in blue lock exhib's display of his u20 arc locker and team white bedroom)

wants lil sis or big sis because of my neighbor totoro. idk how to dissect this either but—yeah not a rare thing for an only kid to say, actually.

seems to be more of a street smart kinda guy.

his tenacity in befriending or at least interacting with rin is admirable. shipping lense or not it really is.

he gets along with almost everyone. shipping lenses or not, also amazing especially for an introvert.

he says the wildest shit on field like uh yeah things he said with yukimiya was said to be cencored a little because in jp someone said he was calling yukimiya something else i don't know to say in english.

but is actually not an absolute asshole in field, saw yukimiya broke down and bro actually took a second to pay attention and moved on. until he got provoked, that is.

actually rarely become the one who approach other people first (kira, bachira).

can really got extreme when in high tension (shoving chigiri off, that 100℅ kill you @ kaiser).

turns out he talks about the thigh stuff bashfully. (it's cute.) but i still wonder why he likes lobster. like i feel like something is there. why is his taste in everything that is not soccer makes me wonder what the fuck is up with him. favorite song? cm jingle. fashion sense? honestly casual, but his sense in pattern and color is genuinely so bad im hurting. this point is so full of personal bias feel free to skip it.

seems to be pretty oblivious to things about not-soccer. especially his surroundings. not to the dense point but seems like it stems more from his focus at soccer. but this trait seems to go hand in hand with his self centered tendencies.

(this is bordering to hc, but) it seems like while is indeed obsessed with soccer, more than "oh he is only good at soccer", is more of a "if he wants it he will find a way to get it". but taking in account how his personality used to be in ichinan / pre blue lock, it's unsurprising that he doesn't want that mamy things. even in soccer that he is passionate about, he didn't back then. there is also the fact that he seems to have tendency to hyperfocus into something (i.e.: while still taking into account of others in soccer, think more of them as 'factors' than 'people'), so it may seems like the reason he got or became good at something is like "oh isagi is lucky / specialized in that", but it seems hard work and dedication really does put a big role into it, unsurprisingly. could reach that level in soccer because he is dedicated into it, tldr.

this part also became quite visible if taking into account he wants to play specifically as a striker. he is focused in this very specific thing he wants, that's why he managed to get it / improve in it.

if i did not miscount, he directly has a conversation with ego twice. and in both he is extremely impolite, calling ego names in one (u20 arc). while the other happened after he lost against rin in 4v4, and seems like he is still not happy with the loss. ans it shows. he is pretty rude when ego talk about luck which he himself noted was a big factor there. (man hold grudge.)

so yeah, seems like rather than "possessed in field" it could also be "possessed in everything related to soccer", though fudther research is to be conducted.

is pretty introverted even in blue lock. while sometimes he shares his insight to other people about his play, sometimes he also did not do this (recently you can see this the most in his interactions with ness). but yeah, this is the thing he shares about the most, something related to playmaking and soccer. but other than that nothing—at least on screen.

his pretty peaceful and uneventful background could be factored into, however ichinan highschool is pretty much his tragic backstort and not a peep about that to even bachira it seems. a possibility is that he is hyperfocused towards soccer. not to say his self centered part that is more of "what can i change about myself for this situation" and "i can't change others' way of thinking".

however seeing how that one meeting tada goes (post u20 break) and he said nothing to correct tada, even though he secretly disagrees—then also his parents who seems pretty oblivious to his soccer performance and how he casually acted about his lost against kira despite crying and screaming on public just before that—yeah, seems like a pretty private person. it's not that he is oblivious or do it out of malice, but mostly seems like he just doesn't comment about it and more of the listening type. and even when someone close ask the right question it seems like he doesn't try to show much expression or how he actually feels.

personal bias but yeah this is no longer """being polite""", this is actually being private to a very concerning degree. like the time he opened up about his worry, and still pretty related with soccer, that is completely visibly vulnerable seems like it was with nagi after 3v3 with rin (and see how that ended up. tho this make the fact that he and nagi became pretty close afterwards in such a short time a bit unsurprising. this two indeed kinda have quite a lot bonding moments outside and inside the field, shipping lens or not). like no wonder this guy snaps in soccer field, it's pent emotions fr.

but if how he is after u20 any indication, it seems like he really is very reserved outside of field that it kind of resembles how he was before blue lock. (who knows after nel arc (still bm vs uber rn when i write this, tho the match seems like ending), because boy seems grumpier there. not blaming him tho, it's battle royale inside that team.)

doing a little skimming but it seems like when talking about something he really never put focus on his feelings. it's either what's going on, others' feelings, or an opinion of his but if there are any feelings most of them stays in monologue and thoughts only.

adding to that nagi note, personally found it funny that he nearly get into same team with nagi TWICE (pre u20 team selection, nel choice where he is conflicted between german or england) but he never followed thru with it. this probably has more to do with nagi's motif & such rather than his, which this post wasn't here for sry nagi, and the fact that both that they are protagonists in the main and spinoff. but yeah, personally? it's funny it happened twice. especially factoring the fact they are close enough to have each other's number and isagi admits he has a nice chemical reaction with nagi.

i genuinely wonder how he interacts with kaiser outside of field. like. dude. i know it's funny.

might also add now that it seems the four people he is closest with is bachira and chigiri. was, with kunigami too but yeah. bachira especially, with the two keep being called two side of a coin/a soul. again, shipping lens or not, they are pretty close and isagi really seems to have come to a point where he is okay with bachira's habits no matter how odd. (personal bias, really sweet considering bachira has no friends before this and isagi while is friend with tada WE KNOW HOW IT ALL TURNS OUT). with chigiri, seems like the type of friends who look out for each other (isagi once shown checking his knee and messaging him, while chigiri is the first one jumping into action when shidou nearly kicked him). then you also add that chigiri only ever, on screen at least, opened up about his past to isagi and honestly yeah. shipping lens or not, these two definitely the looking after each other dynamic. kunigami come back, or at least interact with isagi more pls.

WHICH ALSO, seems like isagi is the only one reo kind of opened up to with his insecurities after the 2nd selection—kunigami and chigiri seems to get it too, but at least it was never shown on screen that he opened up the more vulnerable side of his anger at nagi and isagi to them. these two has a pretty good relationship it seems after that screening room scene. (might revise or at to this when epi nagi reach this part)

but this seems unsurprising in some ways because isagi really seems like the listening type. some people said these type of people is good when it comes to getting people opening up. also seems like isagi really never run his mouth so good choice actually. (look at him even he doesnt open up his own emotion how could he do that with other people's emotion. what is this a sign of pent emotion or just a sign of actual limited emotional intelligence when it came to processing them? who knows. blue lock's highly stressful and intense environment is also a factor here but hey, look at how isagi was in ichinan. might be old habits)

he is scarily cold and detached to his bonds when it came to soccer, it seems? like, he is still capable of sympathy even during the heat of the moment, unless you make him angry (both cases: yukki). but for the sake of his play his priority really is on "this is the play that i want" rather than friendships and stuff. on one side, professionality. on the other, yeah egoist.

outside of field doesn't seem to go out of his way to dig up about someone's backstory in "asking and digging and wanting to talk about feelings with them", but will listen if told. (i.e. chigiri acl convo, reo opening up, casually talking about soccer again after noa ego relationship bomb drop, etc.) seems to be more as 'minding his own business and being not nosy', which is kind of in line with his politeness.

then you bring soccer and his ideal play and it gets really cold. he really think of soccer as 'cruel' and it kind of shows with how little he thinks of outside-of-field-relation during a game. (really shows if you compare how most characters personal story, rin and reo for example, has a huge impact on their play) his brain really has an on and off switch with the niceness.

at some point in blue lock, his closest circle is bachira, chigiri, kunigami (could be canon or could be due to the fact these four are kind of the quadruplet of bllk). he is pretty much the guy most of everyone knows and has at least spoken with once after u20 tho.

but other than those 4, it seems that the one he have more highlighted rivalry are niko, barou, rin, and nagi, with yukimiya coming in later in bm. it's funny how isagi seems pretty attached to them in a pretty friendly manner in some ways. barou and rin is just on another level of "i will kill you" getting answered with "sure, okay, geez" (and it's hilarious. with barou, isagi shared meals, was a roommate, and went bowling together once. with rin, he did yoga, laughed at his death threat, and was pissed because rin was impolite. i can go on but moving on). nagi and isagi canonically get along pretty well out of screen. isagi is roommate with yukimiya—i didn't except this combo back then but i really want to know their interactions in that room, especially during and after their conflict.

then there is hiyori, kurona, and nanase's case whose relationship with him is more on the 'supporting side'. with reo, it seems to also fall into the rivalry category—but this guy's relationship with isagi is kind of more about reo-nagi relationship than with isagi himself. with aiku, it's rivalry between defender and attacker (resembles niko the most but the things these two said to each other is way wilder). then there is kaiser—i will wait til nel arc is done.

there are crumbs with some other charas like sae—but these two didn't interact (yet?) in canon. with noa, it's admiration and respect, to put it simply, but it seems it's leaning more into actual mentorship that is more casual compared to how most of bm is with noa (imo, take this part with a grain of salt). with ego, it's...surprisingly complicated on a meta level from my perspective at least.

isagi clearly agrees and thrives with ego's philosophy, but other than taking ego's words/guidance isagi was rude to him. then there is stuff like some part of their design being similar to each other (v hair, eyes on some panels tho this also happens with other charas, beta isagi sketch) and how during nel ego - isagi similarities get commented by noa and snuffy (tho on snuffy case is more of barou - isagi is like ego - noa, who is who tho we don't know for sure). it feels like there is more on these two for the future.

with his family, it's just sweet. his family is proud and supportive of him. and seeing how isagi is pretty independent as in his attachment style is very secure in blue lock, even with how ichinan basically turned him into a people pleaser, yeah definitely and canonically a good family there. he greets them every morning as part of his morning routine, and he is the only character who mention this in said trivia.

enjoys his alone time, based on his trivia. the introvert part is loud and clear.

he doesn't really get jealous easily. like rather than envy, it's more of frustration directed towards himself or straight up being pissed because said someone played a factor in why he couldn't make a goal. but most of the time, when he sees someone's strength, it came out more as an admiration and "i should do more and stand out more too!!!" rather than comparing himself and feels negativity. this especially never happen to his perception towards his capabilities. the closest thing we ever get to him feeling envy is perhaps the parts where he goes "i don't have weapon like them" when talking about chigiri's speed, kaiser impact, and others' specialities. but even then it never really lingers.

and from that probably also shows that isagi is really good at looking someone's strength or specialities. but this seems to also happen in looking at weaknesses and chances. he really does tries to take into account tendencies, skills, blind spots, etc. honestly thinking about this make sense why he immediately collapsed after vs mc, the information loading must be insane. but all in all, the main point is that he is pretty good at reviewing and observing stuffs indeed.

high achiever with an amazing durability. as said word by word by kaiser himself, this guy look at something way more amazing than himself and keep taking it as a challenge. aka his mental strength is insane—or his competitiveness is just that crazy. no wonder he thrives in blue lock where so many people want to him eat alive.

after thinking for a bit and connecting it with the 'not teaming with nagi during the u20 tryouts', it seems like also the guy who avoids his comfort zone, in area of skills and plays in this case. he seems to actively challenge himself.

seriously the type of guy who do and chase what he wants. egoist indeed.

but thinking about that, it also speaks of his adaptability and flexibility. while the part that definitely carries more tension, seriousness, and definitely didn't take shit came out so much in soccer, the way he interacts with those who are friendly with him is so different with those who are antagonistic with him. though so far, with the exception of kaiser it seems, he at some point ended up in a pretty good relationship with some of those—rin and barou are most telling. the antagonism is back on when they are in seperate team tho, but hey this is blue lock.

his moment of satisfaction is really fast—as in he like cheers for a bit, most of the time, then focus on the next challenge. this could be caused by: 1) blue lock highly competitive and rapidly changing environment; 2) it's just how he is build.

[that-ari-blogger]

Build Up

This might be an odd take, but the finale of She-Ra and the Princesses Of Power's first season is a two-part episode.

I don't mean this as a technicality. To my knowledge, Light Hope wasn't originally named "The Battle Of Bright Moon Part 1". I mean that in terms of animation and storytelling, this episode feels like the first part of a finale.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the animation for this episode feels like yet another step up from previously. But now, instead of the lighting and art itself being improved, it is the little things. The scene transitions, the expressions, everything feels so much smoother.

For example, the first meeting of Bow and Glimmer with Swiftwind has some fantastic emotions on display that aren't revolutionarily, but take a serious level of skill. That's what good craft is, the little perfections that so often fly completely under the radar.

In that same scene, the little comedy moment of Glimmer noticing her mother and glitching is so fluid. I'm not an expert on animation technique, but even I can notice how this makes previous episodes look choppy in comparison.

The effect that this has is rather interesting, because it creates momentum. The fact that everything flows together so well allows the episode to build up speed and anticipation without actually altering the pacing, mostly (I will come back to this).

For another example of how this works in another, more condensed way, take Jimmy Dean's Big Bad John. Have a look at these two verses:

Every morning at the mine, you could see him arrive He stood six foot six, and weighed 245 Kinda broad at the shoulder, narrow at the hip And everybody knew, you didn't give no lip to Big John. Through the smoke and the dust of this man-made hell walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well grabbed a saggin timber, gave out with a groan And like a giant oak tree, he just stood there alone, Big John

The BPM (Beats per minute) of these verses is exactly the same, and Dean doesn't sing faster to cram more words in. Instead, the technique on display is enjambment. In the first verse, each of the thoughts is disconnected as a description of the song's eponym is given from a place of relative safety. But later on, the danger becomes evident through the fact that this is one thought that carries through, gaining that momentum as it does until that moment of breath in the verses final two words. A moment of breath that John is giving those miners.

The point I am making is that flow is a part of pace just as much as actual timing of events, and a minour shift in animation to give the characters more of that sense of motion within scenes creates dynamism that really helps the buildup of tension of the episode.

The pacing is sped up, but only slightly, and it is through the scene composition. The mirroring of Adora and Catra here through the length of the shot is clever. What I mean by this is... complicated. There are several points in the episode where Adora and Catra get incredibly short and punchy scenes back-to-back-to-back, making the whole thing feel like a singular item.

This also helps the pacing, but instead of through events happening faster, it creates an illusion of speed through scenes themselves being shorter.

Essentially, Lianne Hughes and Josie Campbell, the director and lead writer of this episode, really show off just how good they are at their jobs in this episode. Once again, the expertise comes out not just in the set pieces, but in the subtlety.

Speaking of subtlety, Light Hope.

Light Hope is a robot, kind of. She's an illusion that you can walk into and is programmed with a set objective. Pedanticism aside, Light Hope is a robot.

The problem with that is that her way of speaking is... robotic. There is an extreme lack of emotion here, making her difficult to read. But there are a few minour details.

"Your... friend?"

Moria Gorrondona's voice acting here is stellar. Because Light Hope does emote, just only in tiny ways. She is a complex character trying to appear simple. And that cracks in this line.

At first, this seems like confusion. Light Hope is a robot, so this is probably a new concept to her. But there's also some concern in her voice, and why is that there?

I think Light Hope is a phenomenal character, but I don't like her as a person. Admittedly, this is in hindsight, as watching this episode on a first viewing, it is easy to miss these elements. But Light Hope is just as manipulative as Shadow Weaver.

Everyone you will ever meet is either running towards something, away from something, or both, be it a goal in life or a feeling of worthiness or a sense of guilt. And people will usually take the path of least resistance towards or away from that thing. Often, a person seeking to manipulate you will provide a path for you to run, but it will come at a price.

Light Hope, in this scene, messes with Adora's head. She fools around, annoying Adora and keeping her talking until she gives her something of use.

"I need to figure out how to heal her."

Adora gives everything to Light Hope with this line. Most obviously, she gives her current goal. But she also, through her vernacular, gives her fear. She needs to figure it out. Adora is running away from failure and loss, and Light Hope pounces on that fear with pinpoint precision.

"She's hurt because of me. I messed up. I got Glimmer and Bow captured and Entrapta... It's my fault, I have to fix it."

Again, Adora is putting her whole heart out there, and showing vulnerability. I want to stress that this doesn't make Adora weak at all. The ability to be vulnerable takes bravery, and it marks out both Light Hope and Shadow Weaver as lesser for using Adora's against her.

"You do not yet realise the power you have. You are distracted by your attachments. There was one before you who could not let go. Her name was Mara."

Light Hope has seen Adora's memories, she knows what Adora knows, and Adora has just told her about her fear of failure. So, what does Light Hope do? She shows Adora someone she believes to have failed and says, "this could be you."

She-Ra is a tragedy desperately trying to happen, or rather, its a story about subverting tragedy. Everything is set to self-combust as the character arcs drive themselves into the ground. Love prevents this, and so Light Hope seeks to counteract that love.

Let's talk about the reveals in this episode, because they also contribute to that feeling of this being the first part of the season finale. This episode gives an information dump about the first ones, and while a lot of it turns out to be untrue, it is answers, for the moment.

Most notably, the series is now a sci-fi story, instead of an epic fantasy story. I know those terms are loose and ill defined, but you get the idea. This episode sets up the Horde landing, the First Ones being also from space, and the empty dimension.

But there is one majour moment that makes this feel like part one of a finale. The downfall of Shadow Weaver.

This scene is really cool, as it's when Shadow Weaver fully unravels. She loses her authority when Hordak gives that to Catra, and she loses her access to her magic in the same moment. Shadow Weaver is a character who covets power so taking these two away is a gut punch, and despite Catra being a villain at this point in the story, this scene is cathartic as all hell.

It isn't a hot take to say that this is when Shadow Weaver is at her most abusive. She loses, and starts spitting insults, for no reason other than self-gratification. She needs to feel powerful and so she tries to get that feeling by belittling someone she percieves as weak. She has been doing this the whole series but now she is unhinged.

Once again with Shadow Weaver, the things she says are unnervingly realistic, I know for a fact that certain people watching this episode have heard some of her words before, aimed at them.

But the reason this is so cathartic is because Catra isn't scared. Scorpia is scared in this scene, and nothing has even fazed her in the entire season so far (she's been surprised, but she's never hidden behind anything). But Catra is winning, and completely above Shadow Weaver's nonsense.

Shadow Weaver's last mode of control was her hold over Catra, and it's the mode that the audience has seen the most of. So, watching that get so thoroughly shattered is satisfying.

It's important to me that when Catra deals the final blow, she is striking downwards. The power dynamic is reversed, and now Shadow Weaver has to look up to see her, showing Catra has moved beyond her, at least for now.

Also, as a tiny detail, this is the first time we have seen Scorpia go through several emotions. Fear is the obvious one, but also grim determination, and anger. The blink and you'll miss it expression as she carries Shadow Weaver away is fantastic. Here, Scorpia is pissed and its awesome.

Finally, Swift Wind is introduced in this episode, which is... complicated. I don't find him funny or endearing, and since he is so desperately trying to be both, I'm not really left with much for the rest of the series. In this episode, however, I actually like Swift WInd's introduction. I think being a riff on Dobby the House Elf (sue me Galbreath, I dare you) is actually used to better effect here. Instead of his rebelliousness being just a comedy thing, its also used to motivate Adora with a peptalk.

"What good is all your power if you don't use it to help the people that you love?"

Swift Wind gets flattened in the rest of the series, but I think here, as a kind of eccentric heart character would have been a really interesting take on him and might have made him more popular with the fans.

Final Thoughts

I haven't spoken about the stakes in this post, and that's because that's what I will go into next week. Suffice to say that they build steadily over the course of the episode to set up the finale.

Next week, I will be looking at the actual finale of the season. The Battle For Bright Moon, so stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[roseapov]

I've finished the Natlan Archon Quest today

1st act - 29th and 30th August, 2nd act 31th August

! Spoilers to the 1st and 2nd Natlan Archon Quest act under the cut + mentions of Fontaine Archon Quest act 1!

I won't lie, with every passing nation genshin just constantly improves upon their storytelling and I'm positively surprised that the thing back from Mondstadt, namely - purification has come in handy.

On the day where they had to do the Ode to Ressurection on Kachina I sensed the ominous vibes already but it was still quite shocking to know that she couldn't be broguht back. Atea also looked gorgeous, hoyo really upps their game with npc's

The Archon? Super cool, sacrifices herself and all, also her fight with Capitano? So long and amazing! Haven't expected that to last this long. She looks absolutely fire and I can't wait to pull for her already! Her family also looked gorgeous.

Also Capitano in itself should also be talked about, it was so wow. I love the way he discarded his cloak, it felt so cool! His design is also stunning!

Now speaking about this screen, seems like Xilonen is really skilled in the craft of Children of Echoes, just as the fact that she's a part of the plan to save Natlan. I honestly haven't expected her there at all but it still seems better than dragging a whole child to that (even tho sending Kachina to the war with the Abyss where she can die is still not ideal-)

For the other 2 participants I can guess they'll be Chasca and Citlali, since they both are from the clans that had not yet been awakened, and they're the only soon-to -be playable characters from those tribes.

I have not much to say about this patch since yes, it was exciting but it only builds the anticipation for the mainer and grander parts of the story, where this whole quest seemed to introduce us to at a stedy pace. Unlike Fontaine where we've been quite literally thrown into a trial in the first act - opposite to being only infodumpled in Natlan.

Still can't decide which ones I enjoyed more...

Btw Pacal is great- We love a responsible adult figure around here! (kinda concerned over Mualani chief) and Chasca's sister with a cool design, wow! Her name is still a bit of a tongue-breaker to me, like wdym her name is spelled like that and yet you read it so differently.. Iansan has a very nice design too! I like it a lot

And the answers from the Archon to our questions

And this pics with Mualani were really cool! Haven't expected them in the main story at all, since I did saw them before, I 100% thought they were from the Story quest

[armed-ruebarb]

Hopes and Dreams for OT3

Haha, that rhymed. And yes, I know: OT2 came out less than two months ago, but let me live in delusion! Also forewarning for spoilers and a shit ton of writing

People have said it before and continue to say it: the biggest flaw in Octopath’s storytelling is the disconnect between the characters. I think the problem is that Square can’t find an equilibrium between player autonomy and consistent plot structure.

If you maximize player autonomy, you get OT1 where you can complete the vast majority of the game without a required set of characters or what have you at the cost of character interactions and proper connections. However, if you maximize plot structure, you are left with a set in stone story that, while probably better written, takes away the “traveling the continent wherever and whenever” charm of the game. It would completely ruin the vibe.

OT2 definitely improved a lot on this front. You can’t access Ku (and the Conjurer job) without Hikari’s story, you can’t reach Lostseed without Throné’s story, and you can’t reach the Arcanist island without Partitio’s boat. However, characters still lack a particular connection in their stories. Yes, the events overlap in some places, but even then nobody comments on it because there’s no guarantee that the player would understand the context. As a result, the game has to wait until the final quest to talk about all this fascinating connections hinted at throughout the story. I want to see cool shit like:

Trousseau actually saying Claude’s name at some point.

Throné and Hikari discussing their bloodline cursed by the Shadow.

Harvey bragging about the creation of the Darkling and the Roi monster.

TRESSA AND ALFYN TALKING ABOUT GRAHAM’S DIARY!!

Simeon and Mattias at least mentioning each other in their respective battles.

There are just so many missed opportunities because what if the player hasn’t even started Primrose’s story? What if they don’t even know who Roi is? How do you monitor the player’s knowledge without controlling the entire story? I thought on the matter for a while, but then it came to me. Best part is, it’s already in the game.

Think about the crossed paths. They have actual built in requirements. Not just level recommendations, which can be bypassed with a bit of grinding: legitimate requirements. This was probably only done to compensate for each story only being two chapters because none of them explicitly talk about anything beyond each character’s first chapter (Hikari and Agnea’s is a notable exception), but it has so much potential.

By placing story requirements on OT3’s chapters, it unlocks a whole new avenue of character connections. Obviously I’m not saying every chapter should have requirements, but think about it. For example, Agnea’s chapter two has no particular ties to it, so there wouldn’t be anything there, but what if she couldn’t continue her journey to Sai because of the present conflict within it, which won’t be mediated until Castti steps in, in which case Castti’s Sai chapter two would be a requirement for Agnea’s chapter four to be unlocked.

And before you go “hey, wouldn’t that spoil the locations and events for other characters’ chapters? To which I say no! Because the crossed paths did another thing where they didn’t say WHAT had to happen to unlock the second half of the story. It’s as simple as Agnea going “I was hoping to visit the place where mama used to dance, but I heard it was currently run rampant with war…”. Then come Castti chapter two you solve the issue in Sai and it’s a quick “Agnea Chapter 4 unlocked” and that’s it. Then if you’ve already done Castti’s chapter two in Sai, you don’t get Agnea’s line at all and the chapter just unlocks.

Better yet, this gives opportunities for characters to actually be IN each other’s stories. Not just travel banters. Like Castti could be present during Agnea’s chapter four. Not enough to take away from the other side characters (she also wouldn’t be a battle requirement), obviously, but enough to the point where the player is reminded that Agnea’s story is only one of many, and that others were present too. Like something as simple as Agnea thanking Castti for helping out the town, then Castti in the background of the chapter doing rounds and checking in on people (maybe you can talk to her like an NPC if she’s not in your party just like inactive members in the tavern). Then like a quick “Castti I have to go stop international superstar Dolcinea Luciel from starting a dictatorship” “okay be safe let me know if you need help” interaction.

It’s still the protagonist’s story, but the other travelers are more than just the people you fight with. They are genuinely the reason you got this far. I think Therion’s story in particular would have benefitted from this asset because not only is his story about learning to trust his companions, but he literally starts off with almost no idea where the stones are. I have a lot more examples, so only continuing reading at your own peril, but it’s stuff like:

Stormhail chapters are locked behind Ochette’s Glacis route because of the weather. Ochette gets to tag along to prison with Hikari and then play deputy with Temenos.

Partitio can’t get his department store up and running (maybe his chapter stops midway through) until Throné defeats Mother because the Blacksnake apprentices keep robbing everyone.

Osvald can’t reach Harvey’s lab until Hikari ends the underground arena because Harvey (working with Oboro) uses the dead fighters’ bodies to make creatures to protect the entry.

If they pulled this off in OT3 they could just do so much more with character connections without sacrificing the free and adventurous feeling the game is known for. I’m not sure about final chapters—maybe just tie two together like the crossed paths. I already mentioned Castti and Throné for this where maybe you have to beat Claude first. I can see connections with Agnea and Partitio (bosses consumed by desires), Temenos and Hikari (bosses LITERALLY CONSUMED by darkness) and Osvald and Ochette (Harvey made the Darkling). LET THEM TALK ABOUT IT DAMMIT!!

TLDR: If OT3 gave story prerequisites for chapters like the crossed paths, they could reach a whole new level of plot integration and development that would mostly solve the game’s issue with character interaction.

[rhetoricandlogic]

Yumi and The Nightmare Painter - Brandon Sanderson

So, the third Sanderson book. Book 1 was a dud, Book 2 was so-so. How would I find Book 3?

I found Book 3 VERY much an improvement and my favorite of the three books released so far. You thought the romance angle in Tress was good? Compare that book to this and you'll laugh. Brandon apparently was told by his wife that his books need more romance. And, as an author who doesn't really dabble in it - it DOES show. However, he is leaps and bounds better at it here than in Tress.

For people who liked Tress you might not like this. Since it is a different type of romance. Sanderson references a story he read in college about two passangers on a train who share he same room but at different times and they fall in love with one another without really spending time with on another. It's funny, it reminded me of the screenplay Betty Schaefer and Joe Gillis are writing about in Sunset Boulevard - two people who share the same room, sleep in the same bed during different times - he works nights, she works mornings, and they fall in love.

Brandon was also inspired by anime, manga, and Final Fantasy. Which clearly shows in this book. The setting of the world and the characters in it are poc inspired (Korean/Japanese/Chinese), there is reference to noodles / chopsticks, tabook, painting that has a non-western aspect, and other things here and there. But I felt that it was handled nicely - but non white readers can go into that more.

The plot is basically two people seemingly from different worlds are linked and must solve their issues by working together under duress. [ Body swap stories are a thing I've been picking up in Chinese and Korean dramas. They're usually done for humor aspect, but it always ends up with the characters learning to respect one another which leads to them falling in love. That was like this book, the character would get tired and the male became the female while her spirit / essence could be seen by the female and everyone who looked at the male saw the female character, except the female character who saw the male. The female became the male literally and it was explained that she was legit changing his body type every time it happened. (hide spoiler)]

While Hoid is the narrator of this book, I found him not as annoying. He popped up here and there and his storytelling was a lot more muted than it was in Tress. In Tress I felt that Brandon was trying to hard to emulate the Grandfather in The Princess Bride by giving him side commentary / witty remarks. The remarks weren't as plentiful and they didn't detract from the story, so I felt I was really reading the Hoid from the Cosmere novels. There is also the presence of another character who we met at one point in the Stormlight books but I won't spoil it. I had to smile when they showed up! There are also tiny references to the Stormlight books but it is not important to read them to get them, just little easter eggs.

The reason I rate it down a star is the friends / associates of Painter's. I felt them to be weak or didn't really add to the story. And the end when they were needed they were just THERE are a plot device and not much else. It could have used more depth. I could also say the romance could be a tad bit more blatant, but what I got - again - was better than Tress. The theme of the book were two people learning to love themselves before the learned to love others and appreciate who they were and what they could give. There was a lot of healing and good discussions / inner monologues regarding grief, hurt, rejection, purpose, and love.

I'm really excited on getting the physical kickstarter copy of the book due to the gorgeous art / pictures done. I loved them and felt they brought the book to life. And even better the artist was Aliya Chen - go check her work out if you haven't seen it yet. Aliya Chen. I sadly don't think that non kickstarter fans who didn't subscribe / put down cash will get them in the mass market paperback, but maybe they'll get her work on the cover?

To be honest, Brandon did say that this book and the last were two Cosmere heavy books and I believe that will be why I'll enjoy them more. But we shall see. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and I can't wait for my box to arrive!

[westshellos]

cyborgs, magical girls, girlboss capitalism and temp-scapes: a review of bee and puppycat

[ preface: this is in reference to the original youtube series, not the netflix lazy in space re-release. i liked the original’s subtle storytelling and worldbuilding techniques (ye old adage, “show not tell”), which, in my opinion, was carelessly done away with in the re-release. the netflix version feels more “tell” than “show”, and its in-your-face expositions completely remove the ambiguity and complexity that made the original so enjoyable. so yeah, i’m a little disappointed with the direction of the netflix version, but because i love the concept of the series so much, i’ll be following it to see if it gets any better. 

also, spoilers ahead, of course. ]

the first time i watched bee and puppycat 4 years ago, i couldn’t help but see parallels between bee’s damaged arm in the final episode and major kusanagi’s mangled cyborg body in the iconic tank scene of ghost in the shell (1995). i couldn’t find any sources linking the two, and i don’t know if natasha allegri drew from mamoru oshii specifically, but let me outline their similarity: in their respective scenes, both of them exert themselves to the point of bodily destruction, exposing their bodies as mechanically-constituted—beneath the appearance of skin, both bee and kusanagi are shown to be amalgamations of wires, nuts and bolts.

immediately i was reminded of donna haraway’s cyborg manifesto, which suggested that examining the figure of the cyborg was productive for feminism because it represented a rejection of established boundaries—such as that of human/animal, human/machine, nature/nurture, man/woman and so on and so forth—that have structured our ways of knowing thus far (gross oversimplification but you get the point). 

ghost in the shell captures this sense of productive transgression more directly: kusanagi is portrayed to be simultaneously masculine in her strength and behavior yet feminine in her physical appearance; she’s also a mechanical body with an (albeit questionable) “organic” implanted soul or “ghost”. the movie in turn asks questions about life—how we classify something as living and why others don’t fall under the same category. it complicates our assumptions about biology, humanity and gender. in line with haraway’s project, ghost in the shell highlights new possibilities of thinking about the human. maybe if we abandon our narrow-minded assumptions, they both posit, we can also leave behind the pointless bickering over who can or cannot go to which bathrooms or why men shouldn’t be allowed to wear dresses and focus on other things that might actually contribute to improving lives. 

bee and puppycat doesn’t quite interrogate the same things, or if it does it isn’t presented as overtly. starring an unemployed woman named bee and her part-puppy part-cat pet-partner, the series revolves around the eponymous pair traversing strange landscapes in an alternate dimension named “fishbowl space”, completing absurd “temp jobs” and hanging out with bee’s friend and aspiring-chef deckard. on the surface, it’s easy to look at its pastel color palette and cutesy aesthetic and dismiss its seriousness. but a closer look at allegri’s history and the series itself proves that it’s far from shallow. having worked on adventure time (like her contemporary rebecca sugar) prior to bee and puppycat, allegri’s show has been compared to both adventure time and steven universe, which have each gained attention for the depth and solemnity of their narratives when contrasted against their cartoon visuals. combine that with the parallels between bee and kusanagi, and you get me wondering what the significance of the cyborg is in the show. i don’t have an answer quite yet, but i do have thoughts. 

one thing that caught my attention was the character bee herself. unlike your usual girlboss (think amy dunne, furiosa, lara croft, or even major kusanagi), bee is unemployed, unmotivated, lazy (hence the tagline: lazy in space), lives alone with her pet and does nothing but eat and watch tv all day. under the lens of contemporary girlbossery, bee is a catastrophic failure. 

but girlbossery, as we already know, is a capitalist scam. not only does it perpetuate the idea that gender equality is contingent on economic productivity, it repackages consumerism as feminism—“if you want to be the perfect girlboss like me, you need to have this thing!” or “if you want to support a girlboss, please buy this!” worst of all, girlbossery sells you the lie of an ideal woman who is, more often than not, just a reinforcement of the status quo: she’s usually thin (coded as “healthy”) and conventionally attractive (read: european-looking), smart and always financially successful (by her own merit, of course). at its core, the girlboss is an exclusionary construct that ignores the intersections of race and class in favor of a flimsy promise of meritocratic justice. 

bee, then, signals a “willingness to move beyond the ‘girl power’ rhetoric...and offer a range of nuanced female characters”, as mihaela mihailova writes. sometimes, this just means someone who’s relatable. bee might not be a girlboss, but she is one of us. allegri herself was surprised at “[h]ow many girls [watched the show and] were like, ‘oh, that’s me.’” having relatable female characters means having realistic depictions of women that might not conform to societal norms or expectations; it means representing women as we are rather than putting forth abstract ideas of women that are fundamentally unattainable. 

what has the cyborg have to do with all of this? to be honest, and like i said, i’m not sure. but allegri has cited sailor moon as a major inspiration for the series, and that gives me some sort of insight: maybe it’s an update of the mahou shoujo (literally magical girl) genre. instead of a young girl who transforms into a cute costume via the power of magic and defeats evil (often older, powerful women), you have a cyborg who’s essentially your average millenial/older gen-z woman fighting a mysterious, abstract dark force from an alternate dimension that coincidentally is a realm where precarious (and not to mention absurd) work is found. while classic mahou shoujo tropes arose in the 1990s and are aligned with notions of feminine power and innocence, bee and puppycat’s incorporation of the cyborg seems to be a 2010/2020s rejection of these ideas. for the cyborg, as haraway says, “is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence.” 

bee’s cyborg ontology firstly highlights that femininity is a construct that is fluid, malleable and therefore imitable—when we find out that she’s actually a cyborg at the end of the series, it doesn’t stop us from perceiving her as a girl. she looks like a girl, dresses and behaves like one, so why would we think any different? what that unveiling does is say that anyone can be a girl, as long as they adhere to enough social norms. in doing so, bee and puppycat suggests that there is no magical feminine power because there is no inherent feminine essence to draw from. bee doesn’t channel the magical power of femininity like her magical girl counterparts; she relies on her mechanically-constituted body. her attempt at saving moully in the final scene wasn’t done with magic but by harnessing her mechanical strength as a cyborg. 

that is not to say that older mahou shoujo depictions are “bad”—what does that mean, anyway?—rather, bee and puppycat conveys a shift in female representation that is more inclusive and relevant in the present. which brings me to my next point: temp jobs and precarious work. 

while deciding on the primary text for my ht i stumbled upon temporary, a book by hilary leichter with a premise that’s supiciously similar to bee and puppycat’s concept of fishbowl space (albeit published after the web series aired): a young woman floats through different worlds, fulfilling various duties under a myriad of temporary positions with no prospect of stable, permanent employment. similarly, bee is fired from her job at deckard’s family restaurant and earns a living with puppycat by going to strange places in “fishbowl space” to complete whimsical, absurd tasks. in one of the first episodes, bee and puppycat go to jellycube planet (pictured below) to complete the task of feeding a sugared cherry on one side of the planet so food will grow for the animals on the other side of the planet, all of which are owned by an unnamed alien farmer (also pictured below). 

if leichter’s temporary is about the precarity of work in the age of late capitalism, then bee and puppy cat is undoubtedly on the same page. not only do the disparate planets and unnamed clients in the show parallel the fractured, contract-based and short-term nature of jobs in our real world, bee almost always encounters danger within fishbowl space. whether it’s the aforementioned cherry being a soul-eating monster that tries to eat bee or the shadowy black hands that end up capturing moully, these landscapes of temporary work (or temp-scapes, as i deem them) are often treacherous and difficult to navigate. with precarious jobs taking up an increasingly larger proportion of the job market, and with the pandemic exacerbating this trend, bee and puppycat sees the magical girl grow into a woman whose freedoms and safety are threatened by the demands of the economy. bee’s cyborg body, then, is also symbolic of the effects of capitalism as it continues to figure humans as productive machines. 

nevertheless, i think bee and puppycat is trying to construct something positive. about femininity, capitalism and about the future of humanity. and with a cyborg at the heart of the show, i don’t doubt that they will. or maybe i’m just overthinking all of this. either way, the web series was really fascinating and engaging and, if fate allows, i might write all of these ideas out in full detail in the future. until then, i rate the bee and puppycat series a 9/10. 

[tomsonwalston]

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All of the bad things she needed to make — the decapitated corpses, the soft hammers, the frozen dogs — had a price. And that fact that you’re right meant within those minutes is everything the far more heartbreaking. The sequel is focused in Ellie, now 19 then remained in the somewhat The Last people Part II Download PC safe society with Wyoming. She struggles with Joel’s overprotective nature. Aside from the regular guards to clean out infected monsters, it is about idyllic. But a few hours to the game — for purposes I don't spoil — she decides away for Seattle with vengeance on her mind.

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And since the cycle has many Emmy nominations beneath the belt, expect an even splashier season 2. The Last people Part II is a sequel to the acclaimed PS3 activity, that transformed developer Naughty Dog — then realized mostly for lighter fare like the Uncharted series — in a business able to handle worse and important stories. The original starred Joel, a troubled staff whom handles on to 14-year-old Ellie as a girl appear, in the journey to accompanies them cross a post-apocalyptic America in search of safety. That results with him making a devastating choice to protect someone he thinks about about. Before the strike, Creator Neil Druckman shared images in X (formerly Twitter) of a jacked forearm power a sort over fire.

Fans on Reddit have lived talking about, despite releasing over four years before, the Final people Part II is one of the best-looking video games today. Reddit user Alive-Ad-4164 launched the debate about the place in assign a peep from DomTheBomb. The piece on the Past people became therefore very revealed, which this not solely evolved into a live-action TELEVISION collection by HBO that was published earlier this season, but before to arrived 2020 we walk a follow up on PS4 with The Last of US Part II. Love it or dislike this, One more people Part II is commonly thought to be one of the best video games of stage for various reasons. I have repeatedly mulled over the way Abby’s person might improve well in Position II in a way that wouldn’t cause resentment from me.

A wide variety of weapons, crafting items, talents, with enhance enables one to personalize Ellie’s capacities toward the performance style. A broad variety of weapons, crafting items, talents, with enhance enables one to personalise Ellie’s capacities toward ones performance style. Ellie is also, thankfully, The Last people Part II Download PC not abandoned now the girl journey. Her passion interest, Dina, is a compelling and honorable counterpart to Ellie’s more determined personality. Looking at the association deepen is one of the few moving shares from the article. It is and really kind to grasp her down to the ride.

The Hairs and also the Seraphites (nicknamed the Wound) contest for discipline from the metropolitan. The Last people Part 2 Download PC already is this distinct in the beginning we should have very little reverence for Joel along with the earlier choices. Then, instead of designing a sympathetic enemy in Abby, they get her on like bad as possible and put us toward comprehend points since the woman perspective. The real victim of most of it is Ellie, however.

[aeolian-mode]

my grievances with BNHA

(Spoilers below) I’m long-winded today cos I had some Thoughts to get off my chest in regards of how I feel about the storytelling of BNHA.

TL;DR: I don’t think Horikoshi understands the value of ma. Maybe he believes that his target audience would grow impatient, and I have to remind myself that BNHA is a shonen and is made for young people and my storytelling tastes probably aren’t what he’s marketing towards- but I still think there is a lot that could be improved about BNHA if Horikoshi spent a little bit more time in the slow moments, and valuing the emotions and relationships of the characters instead of rushing to the next plot point. He also made way too many characters, which is typical of shonen, but the more characters he has to cover, the harder it is for him to provide content for all the people who have picked a favorite character out of the sprawling cast. Everyone is forced to find satisfaction in table scraps, but if he stuck to a strong core cast, there would be plenty to go around. Long version:

"Ma” is an extremely important storytelling concept. Ma is the Japanese word for 'negative space.' In visual art, negative space is the empty places on the canvas where there's nothing important to look at. After all, if every single square inch of your canvas was filled with something exciting to look at, like character faces or action scenes, your illustration would be very hard to take in at a glance, there'd be no distinction of character silhouettes and nothing would be readable. The same concept applies to storytelling. You need ma to achieve a greater emotional impact when the heavy, loud moments occur.  Let's take a look at how Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli writes ma. In My Neighbor Totoro, 80% of the film is slow-paced slice of life moments where two sisters explore their new house, and discover supernatural creatures living peacefully beside them. Then, at the end of the movie, something distressing and horrible happens to the two sisters' mother, who has been hospitalized since the beginning of the film. The film's final 20 minutes or so are about them discovering this distressing event, and the emotional climax of the film feels extremely powerful because we were given time to live with these sisters, observe their peaceful daily life, and grow attached to them. Suddenly, something important to them became jeopardized, and we care. 

Miyazaki often uses ma with food. Characters cook for each other, or eat together. The detail of the food in the animation is often exquisite. Miyazaki and the Ghibli animators want us to notice the way light refracts through the glossy surface of an egg on toast, or the lines of fat on bacon sizzling in a pan. He wants us to exist in these quiet moments of daily life.

I can't tell you the last time My Hero Academia actually had an extended scene of ma. Maybe it was the bench scene, where Eraserhead and All Might share a moment. It was a powerful scene in the manga, and it was powerful because it wasn’t about the plot at all. It was about the intimacy between two characters who have grown close over shared adversity, and All Might struggling to find purpose in his hard life. After this scene, however, the story has been one distressing event after another without any breaks to breathe. And, since it has so many characters, it has failed to prioritize the emotions of significant characters. How did Eri feel when Aizawa was maimed? Who is watching her? How did Inko feel when she saw her son mangled, even after All Might promised to protect and raise him? How much raising has All Might actually done in Midoriya’s life? It seems every time the two of them have a conversation, it’s about One for All, not about Midoriya’s growth into manhood or his emotional development as a suffering teen who’s picked the world’s worst profession. Will we get assurance on the safety and wellbeing of favorite heroes like Fatgum and the Big 3?  Will Mic and Aizawa properly grieve Midnight? What about the rest of the UA staff? How does Nezu feel when UA was turned into a safe haven for civilians? How have the parents of all these students processed all this grief? How has Class 1-A handled their painful struggle? The story has been, instead: >heavy, distressing, lengthy action sequences where everyone is hurt >immediately following that, a prison breakout >immediately following that, scattered moments of characters in a hospital with dramatic flashbacks of their lives and burdens, yet none of them fleshed out to their fullest potential because there’s too many injured characters >immediately following that, heavy and intense emotions all focused on the plot of One for All, yet All Might is a mute ghost and has no actual bonding with Midoriya since they don’t even speak to each other >immediately following that, more heavy and intense emotions as Horikoshi rushes to show that Izuku is gone and has slapped together letters about his departure >immediately following that, more villains attacking heroes and civilians because of the prison break. There has been no ma. We haven't had a single quiet moment that isn’t focused on bulldozing into the next plot point or action sequence. What about a scene like Eraserhead sharing a meal with Eri, or talking to her calmly about life? How about the neglected characters like Fatgum and the Big 3 recovering in their own way? How about the moms of all these hurt children actually coming in and getting involved in their lives? How about the students of class 1-A trying to do something fun to diffuse the tension and show how they have grown close as friends or a found family? Sometimes Horikoshi tries to show ma in tiny snapshots rather than entire scenes; for example, there's a snapshot in one of the earlier chapters of Aizawa putting Eri's hair in a hair tie. This is a single panel. It's not enough to have a single panel. What we needed was an entire scene or chapter dedicated to Aizawa and Eri and Friends. Show her with her found family, show her going out in town or playing with a cat or talking to Mirio or Aizawa for an extended period of time. Show us scenes about nothing particularly important. 

When your story is plot, plot, plot, you're deciding that human moments and human interactions aren't important. And at the end of the day, no one watches a show for the plot. They come to be validated as a person, and relate to the characters. I came to MHA because I relate to All Might, his disability, and his desire to be strong and fight through his suffering so he can selflessly help other people. That character resonated with me. I saw myself on the screen. Unfortunately MHA stopped being what I came to see a long time ago. I’m here because I like drawing my favorite characters, and the fandom has introduced me to a lot of wonderful friends, I’m not ready to give it up. But I wish it had more of what I was hoping to get out of it.  I understand that making a manga is extremely difficult. And I understand tons of people enjoy it and have no issues with it whatsoever- all power to you! I just haven’t gotten what I was personally hoping to get, and this is why. :( ANNNND SEASON 5 JUST STARTED AND IT’S AN ENTIRE SEASON OF CHARACTERS I DOOOOON’T CARE ABOUT AT ALLLLL! HEY WE REALLY NEEDED AN ENTIRE SEASON DEDICATED TO CLASS 1-B CHARACTERS THAT ARE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY IRRELEVANT AFTERWARDS, THEREFORE WASTING SCREEN TIME ON FORGETTABLE UNIMPORTANT SIDE CHARACTERS INSTEAD OF THE CORE CAST THAT WE DESPERATELY NEED CONTENT ABOUT ALSO THANKS FOR FORGETTING ABOUT DADMIGHT HORIKOSHI  

[hopeymchope]

I finished World’s End Club

The hardest thing about completing a Kodaka or Uchikoshi game is always that bereft feeling; the knowledge in my heart that there’s nothing out there that will fulfill me as much as these guys’ stories do, and now I’m fresh out of their stuff once more. Y’know? It’s like “Well shit, now I have to settle for something lesser.”

Anyway. I finished World’s End Club. The whole thing took about 16 hours (according to the in-game clock on my save file), and I’m currently redoing a couple of stages for stickers that I missed. I doubt that’ll last me more than another hour, though, so I should be 100% finished at 17 hours. Granted, that’s with me bypassing the first hour because I’d already completed it in the demo... so that makes it around 18 hours long in total. Much shorter than the average Uchikoshi or Kodaka work, clearly!

And man, they sure do pack a lot of twists and turns into those 18-or-so hours. Admittedly, there is time to slow down and talk to the characters to learn more about their backstories or what they’re thinking (typically during “Camp” scenes). But the other two types of scenes — “Story” and “Act” scenes — are chock-full of new reveals or weird plot developments up until like, hour 15. It’s all of the usual twistiness of an Uchikoshi story compacted into a shorter timeframe. 

In addition to this being shorter than Uchikoshi’s or Kodaka’s most notable prior games, it’s also much lighter. Despite somewhat dark themes cropping up at a few points, this is a far kinder and more uplifting game than Zero Escape or Danganronpa ever were. I mean, hey, it’s about a group of 12-year-olds, so it almost necessitates that lighter tone. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but I love the core cast of kids. Sure, there are a few of them who remained thin enough that I never got very attached to them, but I mean, it’s a pretty big cast. Most of the storytelling time is spent on the central plot, so I understand the shorthand of using some stereotypes in there. Some of them do get mined for depth. If there’s one problem with them, it’s that they’re too young for me to feel comfortable shipping any of them. :P They’re BABIES! 

The bottom line here is that I loved the latest Uchikoshi-penned ride. I will remain in the tank for his works for a long time to come. But now, In order to actually list and go off on some of my (relatively few) gripes with the game, I have to get into Spoiler Mode. 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT!

SPOILER MODE  ACTIVATED

Look; I didn’t love all of the twists thrown at us. I can come up with workarounds for some of the ones that bugged me, but let me go off on which twists most irritated me and why, okay?

 First off, the reveal that all of the strange monsters and creatures were just “illusions” doesn’t make any sense. If they were just illusions, there’d be no physicality to them. So there’d be no way that a giant pillbug could abduct Pai, or that some Yetis could run off with Pochi or Yuki. So they’re very obviously NOT just illusions. Hell, while we’re at it, maybe we should inquire as to how we got “Game Over”’d by a bunch of things that weren’t there. Some of the available deaths are even specific to the exact form of the monsters we see, like if Reycho gets snapped up and chewed up by one of the large flytraps in Kagoshima. You’re telling me an illusion did that?! Maybe they’re some of MAIK’s robots that are projecting illusions around themselves or something? That seems like the best way to accept this. It keeps the basic spirit of what MAIK said to be true while also justifying how it could operate. And yet..... the game even goes so far as to claim that Pielope’s transformations are just illusions. For some, that makes sense, but we clearly physically interact with at least one of those transformations — the kids actually grab onto the Train Pielope and hold onto numerous individual parts of his transformation while riding the train. So again: That CAN’T be an illusion if you can grab onto all the parts of it. So... what gives? If Pielope never physically transforms, then how’d they grab all the pieces of her transformation like that?

The twist with Reycho doesn’t quite work logically, either. For starters, if you go back and read his “inner monologue” dialogue from the game, there are numerous instances where the dialogue doesn’t seem to fit with it being the thoughts of the “Otherworlder” OR Pochi, the two parties supposedly controlling him. The thoughts in question only work if Recyho was somehow thinking for himself already, so I guess we have to fanwank it and just assume that his “self-awareness” was starting to come through early? (I didn’t care for the reveal that Pochi was controlling Reycho either, because it has this whole tone of “You were controlling someone who never mattered because they were just being controlled by somebody else who wasn’t even the player character, ha-ha!” But the later twist that the “Otherworlder” was actually controlling Reycho made it better for me, so I’ll let it slide.)

The other thing that didn’t work for me is the reveal that Pochi is a robot. Even events that come AFTER this reveal are made more problematic as a result of it. First off, it makes it confusing as to how/why certain “X-Type” robots exist. I guess MAIK created the X-Type robots? Because he somehow reached the ability to communicate with another world? If so, where are the other X-Types? We know there have to be some others if Niyan and his gang are already familiar with the whole concept. What was their purpose? Did MAIK also program his own robots to have emotions?  Because Pochi is clearly very emotional. Even though MAIK hates emotions... ? Perhaps this game isn’t meant to answer everything, and they’re setting up for some kind of sequel. I find that pretty unlikely, but I can’t say it’s impossible. However, the big reason I don’t like the Pochi Robot reveal isn’t really the logic problems with it. It’s that they knew we’d like Pochi because he’s an introverted gamer, but then the reveal of his true nature takes all that away. He was never a gamer at all. He wasn’t even all that shy. He was just keeping to himself to hide his true nature... and his “gaming” was just him controlling Reycho. So the things that your players were most likely to dig about him are utterly erased. So in the end, who is Pochi? He’s a compassionate, heroic, self-sacrificing protagonist. Which makes him a lot more generic. 

A closing thought: If, by some miracle, this game ever gets a follow-up sequel or spinoff, I see a lot of potential in how they could mix and match the various characters’ abilities. I understand that the platforming isn’t really the point of the game, and that’s why it feels undercooked... but that also makes it the area that could most easily be improved upon. I was initially excited for the chance to be able to swap between characters so that I could have Mowchan turn into iron, then Reycho would throw him onto a ledge. Or maybe Pai could block an attacking enemy while Tattsun shoots it! Alas, this is a simpler game than that. And while I am ok with that, if they ever take another shot at it, it doesn’t have to be this straightforward and simple. They can have more fun with the platforming side. Let’s go ahead and mix and match our powers!

[dandylion240]

All of the story asks please :) (Character specific ones I'd say up to you, but would love to have them be Jonah/Cecil or my usual favorites ;) )

what’s the last screenshot you’ve taken for your story?

2. describe your story in three words or less

Family, Angst, Drama

3. describe (insert character here) in three words or less

Jonah - unassuming, brave sensitive

Cecil - insightful, supportive, caring

Evan - self-sacrificing, helpful, innocent

Jayden - protective, stubborn, active

4. how did you choose the name of your story?

I try to use titles that is kind of thematic of the story I'm writing. It takes me forever to come up with a name and sometimes the name changes multiple times before it gets posted.

5. how do you choose your characters’ names?

It depends upon the story. For my Reagan family stories (TS4) I use the parents names. It's kind of a family tradition. For instance Jonah/Ethan. All boys will start with E and the girls will start with J. In my TS3 stories I sometimes choose a theme for names and use that. Like next gen of NSQL the theme is nature.

6. how long have you been working on your story for?

Well it depends on the story. With my Reagans I started writing for them in the summer of 2019. For my TS3 legacies I started in 2014 I think.

7. whats the biggest risk you’ve taken with your story? did it pay off?

I think my biggest risk is my current story Into the Depths of Darkness. I wasn't sure I could pull it off and the story has changed from what I thought it would be and the hero of the story has changed from first conception. I'm happy that Jonah is the hero of his own story and it's given him so much character growth and he's becoming more of what I always invisioned him being. I owe a lot to @mahvaladara to how the story has progressed and the ideas she has contributed. It wouldn't be what it is without her.

8. what about your story are you proud of?

There are many things I'm proud. Mostly that I continue writing even though sometimes it feels like I'm ripping my heart out to write some of things I write about and also that I don't quit even when it's hard.

9. what about your story are you looking to improve on?

There's always things that can be improved. Writing is a process that the more you do it the more you learn and get better. I could say pictures but I'll admit the storytelling will always come first over pretty pics and sometimes I just can't find the right pose to fit. Maybe one day I'll be able to make my own poses but I'm not there yet.

10. is your story fully planned or are you still working things out? is there a definitive end?

It's a work in progress. I start writing from an outline of how I think the story should go but it's loose enough for me to rearrange things or remove/add things to it as the story evolves.

11. why have you decided to tell this story? are there any messages or meanings within it?

I just like to write. If there's any message in my stories it's that family is important and no matter awful things you might face in life if you have people who love and care for you that you can endure it. But mostly that you can rise above your circumstances and still be a healthy, functioning person despite everything even if you have a mental or health problems, you can still be happy, loved.

12. do you actually play the game or do you just use it as a storytelling medium?

It's mostly a storytelling medium for me. I do play it sometimes but tbh though TS4 lacks so much depth and gameplay I find it boring after a while. I've gotten into playing TS3 again now that I have a better computer that it doesn't lag as much.

13. from basic planning to a finished post, how long does that take you?

I don't honestly know. I've never stopped to consider how long it takes.

14. do you have any regrets about your story so far? if you could go back in time, how would you fix these?

No I don't think I have any real regrets. Sure I go back and think I could have written that better or edited that picture more but for the most part I'm happy with my stories.

15. what have been the highlights of creating your story?

The highlights have always been the people who become involved in my characters lives.

16. what about the process do you enjoy?

Seeing my stories come to life. How my characters change as the story progresses.

17. what about the process do you hate?

When I struggle to write a scene and it doesn't flow the way it should. It's generally because I'm coming at it wrong. Once I figure that out than it flows. Sometimes the seeming lack of interest in what I write from the readers is hard to overcome and I feel like quitting. But the few who comment I thank because that always revs up my motivation to continue.

18. choose a song that reminds you of your story

Just one song....that's really difficult say. There are so many songs out that fit my current story. This song fits Into the Depths of Darkness because where there's a lot of darkness there's still hope to be found.

19. choose a song that reminds you of (insert character here)

Ok I'll do this for Jonah - Fight Song

20. choose your favourite shot from your story so far

21. choose your least favourite shot so far

22. choose a favourite character from your story so far

Jonah is my baby. It may not show it by I love him.

23. choose your least favourite character so far

Hmm this is difficult because there were characters I created purely to be hated. Currently my least favorite is Ethan but it's not because I don't love him but it's because of his roll in the story.

24. are there any characters who remind you of yourself?

Not really. There are certain aspects of me in all my characters or people I know in them but none are an incert of myself.

25. what inspirations have you drawn on for your story?

There are so many. I draw inspiration from people around me. From movies and TV shows I watch. The books I read. Sometimes from the people I interact with on here mainly @izayoichan @mahvaladara @jenpants and @legendofsim They've let me bounce ideas off of them and their input helps me in my stories.

26. have other sim stories inspired you?

Yes they have. See above. All their stories have inspired me.

27. what genres would you describe your story as?

Modern fantasy drama??? I have no idea if that's a thing but it best describes what I write.

28. if you could reproduce your story in another medium (movie, novel, comic, etc.) what would you choose and why?

Hmm I'd say novel or maybe series. A movie would be cool too.

29. what would your story’s rating be? (G, PG, M etc.)

Hmm interesting I'd like to say its somewhere between PG-13 and mature just because of some of the topics.

30. if you were leaving simblr and had to choose another creator to continue the story for you, who would you ask?

I think either @izayoichan or @mahvaladara for my TS4 stories since they've helped me write some of them and they would keep true to the characters as they love them as much as I do.

For my TS3 stories I would say @legendofsim since for a long time our stories had been intertwined.

31. drop some random trivia about your story

Ethan was supposed to die trying to save Jonah

Caiden was supposed to have played the part of the hero instead of Jonah

Cory was going to heal Jonah's broken heart over the of Ethan.

But as they say the story changed...

32. give a light spoiler

Someone will be heartbroken at the end of the story.

33. recommend another creator’s story!

There are so many: @izayoichan @mahvaladara @nikatyler @justkeeponsimming @amuhav @legendofsim @simlit @lilyshadowwriter @wannabecatwriter

Please don't be upset if you weren't listed on here. I love everyone I follow but these are my favorites. I have others but some aren't active anymore and stuck with the ones I'm always waiting for the next installment, even if I'm behind on a few of them.

Thank you for asking!

[alesreadings]

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo.

5 stars.

“Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”

Now, we can insert again Gimme Gimme by ABBA. I have to warn that the review is full of spoilers, and you never know when or at what point you will find one. So, if you haven't read the book yet and want to avoid spoilers (like me), read no further. Once again, Leigh Bardugo did it. I must admit that at this point, I've just finished the book and am trying to organize my thoughts through the pain and snot, I'm still crying and my head hurts from it. The conclusion of Six of Crows came and in splendid fashion. It's everything I expected and a hell of a lot more. There are things I didn't even see coming and I loved them. Once again, I emphasize that Leigh has improved tremendously as a writer and her plots, her writing and her storytelling, grab you from the very first moment. In any case, I have to say that I am 90% satisfied with the outcome of this duology that stole my heart, my soul, my spirit and my being completely. Kaz plans a final blow, creates a master plan, but not like we saw in Fjerda. Oh, no. Now he has a motive to sink Jan Van Eck even deeper: for kidnapping Inej. And, although Inej is turned over to the others in the first 150 pages, the rest gets more and more interesting. They're not going to stop there just because Van Eck played a bad trick on them that left them in vulnerable positions. Kaz wants Van Eck to sink into a hole he'll never climb out of again. Okay, that's enough of that. Let's get down to business. I won't summarize the book because that's not what I plan to do. I plan to express my thoughts on this masterpiece. I loved it. From the beginning to the end. I laughed, I screamed, I cried, I got angry, and most of all, I enjoyed it. This is the kind of book that I devour in days, that makes me excited enough to stay up late at night reading it. It's the kind of book that makes my heart flip and then flip back to where it belongs, or where my anxiety is on the edge of the cliff and is about to throw me somewhere. The plot grabbed me, I thought the character development was just right, excellent and well unraveled. I liked how Leigh explained a lot about the background of the characters through memories and intertwined them with their present actions. Leigh's writing is divine, it grabbed me and I loved it, I even love her short stories. Everything about this book delighted, fascinated and thrilled me. When Sturmhond appeared, I cried like a little girl, because I missed him too much, as well as my goddess Zoya and my queen Genya. I would have liked to see David, but I have enough with them. I forgot to add some things, lmao. Kaz: You fucking little genius. You got me screaming and so fucking anxious during the entire book, made my heart racing. Inej:Thank you for beating the shit out of Dunyasha, we needed it. A truly queen who deserves the entire world and being back with her family. Nina: My sweetie pie, I want to protect you from this cruel cruel cruel world and give you all my love. Also, waking up the dead? A MF QUEEN. YOU CAN HAVE MY BODY AND MY SOUL TOO. Jesper: A baby. I wanted to kick him SO bad, but also hug him and tell him that everything was gonna be alright. His father is so sweet and naive that I must protect him at all cost. Wylan: Hun, you deserve to be happy, be again with your mom (tbh I cried when he found out that his mom was alive), and have all the fucking money that your fucking and ugly father denied you. My sweet angel. Matthias: I will always love you, my big bear :( I already miss you and know that I cried for you like for two hours, and I'm still crying. You deserved so mucH MORE AND YOUR DEATH WAS SO INSIGNIFICANT AND RIDICULOUS, I WAS EXPECTING MORE FROM YOUR DEATH, DEAR LEIGH, WHY???? I'M PISSED OFF, BUT I'M STILL LOVE MY BIG TULIP BOY. Leigh: thank you for giving me so much in so little and spare my life for taking so long. Also, Leigh: I will never forgive you for what you did to my sweet Matthias. He was my favorite in this bilogy and you ripped him from me like he was my own heart. Chapter 40 took away any hope of life I had. I have

nothing else to say, and if I do, I will probably edit this review to add more positive things of this masterpiece, but for now, my 5 stars and my broken and bleeding heart for Matthias Benedik Helvar say it all.

[blackjack-15]

No, the Creature’s name is Fraulein’s Monster — Thoughts on: The Captive Curse (CAP)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraphs above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: CAP, mentions of SAW, mentions of ASH.

The Intro:

The obvious Frankenstein reference in the title of this meta is the only one I make in the whole meta, I swear. It was a mistake to make the monster look like Frankenstein’s Monster, but I’m not gonna drag you guys or the meta down with that.

We’re professionals here.

This is a game with rather big shoes to fill, to be honest — it’s our first game in Germany, comes right after a very well-received “haunting” game and has shades of being a “haunting” game itself, its (small bit of) marketing played off Grimm’s Tales, and Savannah’s comment about staying in a castle where she discovered that the real monster was human cruelty is directly pointing towards it. CAP and its story could have crumpled under the weight of high expectations like MED, MID, and (in a slightly more controversial opinion) SEA did, but instead it did the opposite: in nearly every way, it improved on the Faerietale Formula that SAW inspired, and added to it.

Rather than a spooky haunted faerietale with a Hidden Villain, we have instead a monster — out in the open, even — as our main villain. The difference between ghosts and monsters isn’t really important in, say, a “Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark” or “Goosebumps” book, but it’s fairly important in a mystery, and even more in a Nancy Drew mystery.

As I’ve said a few dozen times in this series — and if you’re not tired of it yet, you will be soon — ghosts are a Reality in the Nancy Drew universe; they exist, they cause trouble, and they sometimes even help the living (or at least coexist with the living).

Monsters, on the other hand, never really exist — not banshees, not werewolves, not malicious wolves with opposable thumbs and the ability to cook poisoned foods, and certainly not monsters that in no way resemble the main villain from a Universal classic horror flick. Monster in the Nancy Drew universe is a Title, not a type of creature. Whenever there’s a monster on the loose, it’s a sure sign that there’s a bitter individual somewhere looking to hurt someone — usually for a personal grudge.

Which, as it happens, is exactly what happened here.

We’re still firmly in a Faerietale game — the ‘Nancy’ games start with ASH — but I do think it’s important to note here that the girls in this game (the victims of the monster, Renate, Anja) are all shadows of Nancy. The previous victims, sharing the designation of the Girl in the Dress with Nancy, are shadows of what could happen to Nancy if she doesn’t change the fate that’s been designated for her — down to the red hair of the original Girl.

Renate is a type of detective, trying to solve the mystery of the tragedies that strike the castle through the actions of the past. And Anja — well, let’s just say that Anja and Nancy have a lot more between then than the first glance might show.

The two women are foiled, especially with their love lives. Nancy’s dating a good man — despite the obvious, glaring problems in the relationship — and so their argument (and her own selfish behavior) isn’t the end of the world, nor the end of the relationship. They stop, they assess, and — with a little help from Anja — Nancy’s determined to try a little harder, leading us straight into ASH. The big thesis statement of the game is delivered, like last game, by our villain — “There’s nothing like love to bring order to a scattered world”. Anja gives Nancy good advice: communicate, and work for what you want.

Anja, however, was not dating a good man; she encouraged him, much like Ned does with Nancy, to be better, to try harder, to really reach for what he could be — only to be cast aside as soon as all the hard work that she had put in to supporting him led to good results. Her world was not scattered before — but after Markus, there was nothing that could put it back together again.

There’s nothing like love, indeed, but when it’s the wrong kind of person…well, the message that Anja took out of it was that somebody, somewhere, should care about her. And if they weren’t going to…well, a tragedy necessitates the force of Fate, and we know what Renate says about fate:

“Fate has a habit of digging in its claws when tempted.”

The last thing I want to touch on in this introduction — which I realize is a bit heavy on themes, but so is the game — is the importance of Titles within this game. The Bürgermeister, The Castellan, The Monster, The Girl in the Dress — this game operates a lot on character tropes, like any self-respecting faerietale, and the titles go a long way to showing who each character is. Karl feels dwarfed and inadequate next to his title; Anja wanted hers so badly that she was willing to lie; the title of Monster strikes fear into the heart of the vast majority of our cast.

And the Girl? The Girl in the Dress is a symbol of helpless fate, a sacrifice to propel the narrative forward. Remember what Renate tells Nancy? “The monster, he is here for you.”

Tellingly, it’s Nancy’s changing of what exactly it means to be The Girl in the Dress that allows our faerietale to meet with a happy ending, rather than a tragedy (the ending normally brought about by Fate, in Renate’s words). In keeping the title but changing the scope of the title, Nancy figuratively beats the Monster, and saves the memory all the Girls that came before.

The Title:

The Captive Curse is, as far as titles go, a masterclass. Nearly all the titles of the 20+ numbers are fabulous, but CAP’s title is a shining star even among them. Let’s talk about the important word in the title — “Captive”.

There are a lot of things that are “captive” in this game. We have the captives of the monster, to start off with, but there’s a lot more where that came from. The residents of the Castle and the castle’s town are also captive — they’re held captive by fear, as evidenced by the doors that refuse to open even when Nancy begs them to.

Shrugging off the idea of keeping this meta even a little bit spoiler-free, I’d also add that Markus is a sort of captive of Anja — there under false pretenses, drawing a web around him to finish him off — and equally that Anja is a captive of Markus’ — the shadow of her dick ex-boyfriend hanging over her dream job, watching him profit off of being a truly terrible person.

Renate and Nancy get in on the action, too. Renate is a captive of guilt, returning to the castle to try to prevent further deaths, haunted by her sister’s early death. She’s also a storyteller — a profession famed for having a “captive audience”. Lastly, Nancy is forced into the costume rather than her own clothes — a captive of the tale that’s being spun by our major players.

The Faerietale

In SAW’s faerietale, Nancy was the visiting prince, the Knight in Shining Armor to look after and save the kingdom. In CAP’s faerietale, however, her role gets changed around — not the least of which because we discover what an actual Knight in Shining Armor really is, courtesy of Renate:

“A knight in shining armor never did nothing for nobody. He never fought. A knight in dented, scraped armor - now that’s what you want.”

This isn’t the cynical take that some might spin it into — the Nancy Drew universe is not and has never been a Nolan-style grimdark-fest, skeptical of any good deed or honest inclination — but instead a declaration that it’s what people do that makes them heroes, that makes them good, that makes them who they are, not what they are (or what they seem to be).

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, in a game exploring what good a Knight in Shining Armor might be, that the series’ resident Knight appears within the context of his fight with Nancy.

Ned in the video games series is the closest to a Knight that we really get; he doesn’t make mistakes, he’s always patient and kind and understanding, and helps out the best he can without being actually on the scene. In other words, his armor has no dents, nor scrapes, not so much by his choice (excepting possibly CRY), but by Nancy’s. By constantly leaving him behind, she’s cast in him his role as Knight in Shining Armor — but, as Renate points out, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Ned has the potential to be and do more — as ASH will show us.

And yes, there’s someone in the series that fits the knight in dented, scraped armor, but this is not the time for a Francy meta. If ever there is a time for Francy meta.

The biggest thing that changes from SAW to CAP is that Nancy’s learned from last time, and starts trying to figure out the faerietale she’s in the minute it starts in earnest. When she hears Renate’s tale, she’s sure she’s figured it out — guessing it was about Renate’s sister — but we’re shown that her perception is a little off (as the girl was Renate, not her sister). This shifting up of the roles is crucial thematically to our ending, where Nancy gleefully assumes the role of the Girl in the Dress as the hero of the piece, rather than the victim that the Girl had always been.

What Nancy happens upon here I’ll cheerfully call the Power of the Storyteller. All faerietales shift and change depending on who’s telling the story — look at the thousands of versions of Cinderella had all over the world, all too old to just be a knockoff of their geographical neighbor’s story or (yes, I’ve heard this) based off the Disney property.

With Anja telling the story for the majority of the game, it’s a tale about how sometimes the “monster” (and her version of a monster, specifically) wins — and how sometimes they deserve to win, to perpetuate the faerietale as it always has been; as Renate reminds us, “when death goes to take a ride, he follows the road that serves him best.” In Anja’s mind, there must always be a Monster, and there must always be a Girl in the Dress. With Nancy taking over the story, however, it’s about how the victim doesn’t have to be the victim, and that they have the power to assume their own destiny.

In other words, they’re playing out the central conflict that Renate outlines in her first discussion with Nancy: “If our time together is a comedy, then I was brought here by coincidence. If our time is a tragedy, then it must be fate.”

Coincidence and fate are also, coincidentally (heh) the driving forces in a faerietale — except that fate is also a driving force for romance. And because romance is our Chief Concern in CAP’s story, a lot of the story is about fighting against fate. In the end, it’s a coincidence that Nancy arrives, but Anja tries to spin it into fate by making her the Girl in the Dress. It’s only when Nancy takes charge, not letting fate have its say, that she arrives at the ending and is able to best Anja.

One of the great questions that this faerietale presents is about the Monster is whether or not it ever existed. In a Faerietale, the Monster nearly always exists in some form or another, needing to be drawn out and killed by our hero(es) before the day can be saved.

Indeed, in Anja’s modern-day retelling of the faerietale, the monster doesn’t exist — at least, not in its Monstrous form. In her story, Markus is the monster, and she must put on the guise of a monster in order to defeat him — in other words, if a monster is going to win, it’s going to be her.

To quote Ned’s astute observation, “[Castle Finster] has too many monsters.”

But it’s Savannah’s words that we should look to, as she’s a Storyteller just as much as Renate is. Savannah, heavily implied to be speaking of Castle Finster, says that the monster she found wasn’t a ghost — it was human cruelty that made the castle and its history so terrifying.

So we’re faced with the question: did the monster ever exist, or was it solely bad people, stealing cattle and sheep and young girls away for their own wicked purposes? Was there truly an amorphous being roaming the countryside, or was it just a clever way to shift blame from those who would do evil unto others? Remember what Renate tells us about monsters:

“The worst monsters are self-made. They are people like you and me, but they have taken a terrible turn. They let everything awful, everything sad, take up all the breathing room in their hearts, until all they know is revenge.”

The answer I would give is that, for this faerietale, it doesn’t matter if the Monster is real or not. The concern is not the nature of the monster, it’s the people’s reaction to the idea of a monster, real or imagined, that sets off our faerietale and provides the stakes. The fear is real and palpable, and the ends of our villain, while understandable and perhaps even praiseworthy, require some downright dastardly means.

The Mystery:

We open first on a look back at a young girl in an Era Past being captured by an unseen monster in the woods near a castle…only to have Nancy drive up on the Castle Finster itself in the modern day. Nancy’s been called in by the owner of the castle, Markus, who wants any troubles with the legendary monster cleaned up before he and his Rich Investor Friends arrive.

Rather than a welcoming piece of history, Nancy is greeted with a scared, unwelcoming town, the fear of the monster looming large and cutting deep — and that’s before the Curse itself turns its eyes on Nancy, forcing her to play along as the Girl in the Red Dress, the favored victim of the monster. Those in the castle are kinder than those outside of it, but there’s still the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good, using the guise of the monster to wreak a little havoc of their own invention — and time is running out before the monster claims yet another victim…

As far as the mystery goes…I don’t like to use words like “spectacular” because let’s face it, every game has its holes, but honestly CAP’s mystery is pretty spectacular. Attention-catching, a bit sad, a bit horrific, and loaded with faerietale tropes, subversions, and themes — there’s honestly just not much wrong here, especially given the limitations of, well, making a Nancy Drew game in the first place. The writing does a masterful job at hinting at horrors that, given the rating, they can’t say out loud, while still telling a fully cohesive story that even the young players will be able to grab at and understand (if not to quite the same extent)

The Suspects:

The game begins with Lukas Mittelmeier, so perhaps we should too. Lukas is the rather precocious son of the head of security of Castle Finster, as well as being Anja’s nephew. Bright, mischievous, and a huge fan of games and pranks, Lukas makes the castle a little more interesting — as well as making Karl’s life a bit more hellish.

Unlike another youth living in a castle (coughJanecough), Lukas is bright enough to be a competent culprit…he just isn’t malicious enough. Sure, he’ll play dress-up, spook Karl a bit, and stall Nancy outside the gates of the castle, but that’s really as far as he goes. He would have been an especially poor culprit, thematically speaking, and so it’s a good thing that the game never really attempts to lead you there. Even his dressing up as the monster is more meant to lull the player (and Nancy) into letting down their guard so that the real monster is a bit scarier.

Next up is the Bürgermeister and bad-luck-magnet himself, Karl Weschler. Having encountered his doppelganger as a small child, Karl has expected — and received — bad luck for the rest of his life, and lives in fear of being the cause of unhappiness to those around him. He’s also a board game enthusiast, having developed the (incredibly fun, it should be noted) board game Raid! and enlists Nancy to help him polish it while she solves the “huge monster problem” that Markus hired her for.

As a culprit, Karl would have been interesting, but thematically a little off. It would have had to be a situation where enough bad things happened around him at the castle to make him want to shift the blame, dressing up as the monster in order to throw the punishment off of himself and onto a nebulous force. An interesting plot to be sure, but not one that fits the more sinister nature of the game.

Our charming castellan and cunning culprit, Anja Mittelmeier is next on the docket. Incredibly good at her job, polished, polite, and fiendishly dedicated, Anja keeps the castle in good running order, gives Nancy advice, and is a doting aunt — all while secretly sabotaging Markus by acting as the monster.

I have a lot to say about how good a character Anja is — which I’ll cover more in the next section — but she’s also the perfect villain. All the information you need to figure out who she is happens to be presented to Nancy pretty quickly, but none of it is in the proper context to make it obvious.  Even her line — “there’s nothing like love to bring order to a scattered world” — is sweet and romantic at the time, and rather chilling and menacing when you have the whole context of exactly what Anja is doing to ‘bring order to a scattered world’.

It seems only fitting that after Anja should come Markus Boehm, the owner of the castle and the ex-boyfriend that Anja is working for revenge against. Markus is snappish, short-tempered, obnoxious about his money, and rather boorish — though he has some of the funniest lines in any Nancy Drew game — and is guilty of a lot, though not of haunting his own castle.

Casting Markus as the villain would have made this game an entirely different faerietale, one that would have necessitated Anja becoming The Girl in the Dress rather than Nancy. It might have been a more stereotypical Nancy Drew story, but it also would have been weaker – after all, a lot of the horror in this faerietale comes from the curse having its eyes firmly on Nancy, rather than on her watching it unfold.

Finally, our most divisive character is probably Renate Stoller, a cake-loving storyteller bound to Castle Finster by a mixture of fate and history. Personally speaking, I’m a total fan of Renate; she has a lot of freedom to liken the situation to stories and to spell out the fact that all stories are ambiguous without being morally relativist or faux-deep.

As a villain, Renate would have been interesting — set to haunt the castle that has haunted her for so long and caused her pain — but it would have removed the Storyteller archetype from the game, causing the player (and Nancy) to doubt everything she’s said, which would have been a shame.

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love in CAP, both big and small, so I’ll try to tackle this section with some sort of organization, rather than just gushing from point to random point.

My favorite moment in the game is (in a stunning change from 90% of Nancy Drew Games) tied between the beginning and the final confrontation. The old-time film style beginning (a great example of a “cold open” of a type of horror totally distinct from SAW’s brand of horror) through Nancy’s first discussion with Karl is tightly paced and incredibly well done, introducing our main problems, a few characters, and how Nancy is stepping into this faerietale that’s been all but prepared for her. Special shout out to Karl’s “huge monster problem” dialogue, and Lukas’ getting caught at the castle’s gates — just some really great, distinct character writing that we normally don’t get this soon into a game.

The confrontation, which is normally somewhat cheesy, sometimes awful, and nearly always ill-supported (HAU being the best/worst example of this) in a Nancy Drew game, here instead shows off Nancy’s quick thinking and almost triumphant, smug nature when she figures it all out and traps the villain. The games coming up, as I’ve mentioned above, I refer to as “the Nancy games”, as they give us a lot of insight into who Nancy Drew actually is, aside from an amateur/burgeoning professional detective, but SAW and (to a larger extent) CAP really start giving us peeks at Nancy’s character — not as an infallible main character, but as a girl with an actual personality.

My favorite puzzle in the game — and I realize that it barely counts — is quite honestly Raid. Normally, the games that HER comes up with as minigames within their games are lackluster at best and criminally annoying at worst, but Raid (along with the games in ASH which are particularly enjoyable) is fabulous; it gives us more of that faerietale vibe that the game runs on, brings in Germany’s well-deserved reputation of being the King of Board Games, and actually contains a few moments of good characterization for Karl as well.

And I’m a sucker for getting to create your own card for the game. That’s just stupid cool.

One of the things that CAP does particularly well is its characters, so let’s talk a bit about them here.

Renate, a common favorite, mostly lives up to her hype, due to her storyteller’s dialogue, status as a Sage (slightly different from the usual Sage in a Nancy Drew game, due to her backstory), and intense relatability with falling asleep after eating cake.

Lukas is one of the few child characters in the ND games that actually feels like a child, so he gets points there automatically, even without noting how charming he is. Having Nancy talk to him under the table is also gold, even with the sense that she’s just humoring him, and having him dress up as a monster in a fake out that fools nobody (and even better, is not meant from a writing standpoint to fool anyone) feels perfectly in character for a relatively unsupervised rapscallion like Lukas.

Last on the favorite character list is Anja, a character done To Perfection. It breaks my heart sometimes that she’s the villain, but her character also wouldn’t be complete without being the villain — nor would I love her so much. Anja is patient, loving, a great aunt, friendly, gregarious — and a villain. Her line when she’s talking to Nancy about how she was honest and worked hard every day, and no one cared hits me every time. Anja’s a perfect example of a character who is intensely sympathetic and quite relatable without ever having the thought that her scheme involving Nancy was even a little bit okay. She’s a villain that I’d love to have come back, whether as a villain again or as a begrudging helper.

Finally, let’s get down to the miscellany.

The dialogue in CAP is pitch-perfect, from the distinct way of talking that each suspect has, to Markus’ insults, to the one-off phone call with the pamphlet company. The game in part is so fun because the dialogue is so fun, walking the line between faerietale-style narration (Anja, Renate) and almost Buffy-speak modernity (Karl, Lukas, Markus).

The last thing I want to touch on it — yes, you knew it was coming — the fight between Ned and Nancy. Yes, I’m a Francy shipper, and I do love that Frank is the one Nancy turns to for help with the fight, but that’s not what this part is about.

First off, I love that problems that would /necessarily/ come up in a relationship like Ned and Nancy’s are brought up here; Nancy’s constant jet-setting, while a common side effect of the job she does, is also something that would cause tension — especially considering that Nancy doesn’t really tell him when she sets off for another state/country at a moment’s notice.

A thing that has become Increasingly obvious over the entire series is that Nancy is, let’s face it, not gonna win any awards for Girlfriend of the Year, and in fact might win the opposite award. Ned is constantly giving her attention, validation, helping out when she calls him, and is understanding when she cancels; for her to not give the same amount of care to him (in different ways, as everyone needs different things, of course) becomes more and more glaring as time goes on.

My firm stance on being a bit anti-Nedcy comes from the belief that Ned deserves to get as much out of a relationship as he puts in, and Nancy, as the person she is and even as the best person that she can be, just can’t provide that. Their needs as people are just too different for a relationship to be fair for either person – and, as this game demonstrates, though Ned has the shorter end of the stick, it’s not fair for either one of them.

The Un-Favorite:

There’s not a lot that goes into this section, to be perfectly honest.

The forest is probably my least favorite section of the game — the part that I consider before starting a new game over — but besides tweaking it slightly to help navigation not be quite so frustrating (see below), even the forest is a pretty good puzzle.

The bag puzzle — especially if you, like me, forget every time that you can rotate the objects in Renate’s purse — is the only other annoyance in the game, and ranks as my least favorite puzzle over the forest simply for the fact that you can use a walkthrough to navigate the forest, while you can’t use a walkthrough to do the bag puzzle for you.

Other than that, CAP is just a wholly solid game — no least favorite dialogue, no awkward moment, no point where I turn down my brightness to make it seem like This Isn’t Happening.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Captive Curse?

Honestly, the first and only change I would make is to fix the forest just slightly. I get that it’s a puzzle, but it’s not quite visually distinct enough to make it feasible for a lot of players to learn how to navigate. To fix this, I wouldn’t take out the forest, I would just make each piece of it a little more visually distinct, with more markers so that players couldn’t lose their place as easily.

There’s nothing other than that worth fixing. Even my dislike of the bag puzzle isn’t strong enough to suggest scrapping it, and it’s a type of puzzle that many people like and are quite good at — not to mention the fact that it’s not at all gamebreaking in its difficulty.

The Captive Curse is often sort of a “top middle” or just “middle” ranking for a lot of players due to the fact that it’s not quite as showy as a lot of “favorite” games, and thus can get lost in the fandom shuffle. But looking at it as both pieces and as a whole proves that this game is one of the most solid in the series sporting a great mystery, fantastic characters, and more than a little faerietale wisdom to carry to the next story.

[silverducks]

Jaime Lannister – A theory on his ending in the books

So, as you can probably tell from my blog, I’m not quite yet over the ending of Game of Thrones, which I binged watched and finished about a month and a half ago now.

The main issue is the ending, or the last 3 episodes to be more precise, where so many things didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The main one being, for me, how the story ended for Jaime Lannister.

So, whilst writing all my super long character analysis for Jaime is definitely helping, (I’m about half way through the next one), I’ve also been reading about possible ways his story could go, and how it might end in the books.

And today I came across a theory I really, really like. It’s become my new headcanon for what will happen in the books and I’ve added a mix of other theories I’ve read to it as well.

Now, show and book spoilers beneath the cut.

First off, I’d like to say I haven’t yet read the books, so this post is based on the show and what I’ve read happens in the books. None of these theories are my own, but I’ve combined them all together in a way that actually makes a lot of sense to me. So until the books prove me wrong – or I come across an even better theory, this is my new headcanon.

(I don’t have any links as they’re random posts/comments etc I’ve found on the net on my phone, but I’m not claiming these ideas as my own, just putting it all together, so I hope the lack of links to source is ok.)

So without any further preamble, the theory is that Jaime and Tyrion’s story arcs and endgame in the book were reversed in the show. This would mean that the main plot points the writer, George R.R. Martin (GRRM) told the screenwriters (D&D), were swapped around between the two characters.

That would mean that it would be Jaime who became the hand of the King, not Tyrion, and Jaime who put forward the idea of the Bran becoming King.

And I love this theory, because it would be such a fitting end for Jaime. And below I will explain why.

Firstly, the idea of Jaime becoming the Hand of the King for Bran is a wonderful final step in his character arc – he’s gone from throwing this kid out of a tower to try and kill him, to serving as his main advisor, trusted with the power and command of the King. Jaime and Bran’s character arcs are already connected, much more than Tyrion’s ever was, and for the similar reason why Bran gave it to Tyrion, he could give it to Jaime – in fact it makes more sense!

And rather than a redemptodeath for Jaime, he doesn’t have to die, and can instead have a fulfilling life, continually making up for past wrongs as the Hand, and with the real love of his life, Brienne. She could still be Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, as per the show, but married to Jaime (they’d change that outdated celibacy/non marriage rule easily enough), giving her a much more satisfying ending. And why does Jaime have to die? He’s atoned for his past wrongs, lost that darn hand that (symbolically in the show), did push Bran out the window, and it doesn’t serve any other higher story telling purpose… And by becoming the Hand of the King, after he lost the hand that hurt said King, is even more symbolic.

I know Jaime has refused to be Hand before, but that was old Jaime. And if we assume Jaime continues on his road to self-betterment, then he can continue to learn and improve the skills that would make a good Hand. He’s becoming more honourable, but has seen enough of the world to know sometimes there’s a conflicting choice (unlike Ned in series one). He’s been learning to rely on his own wits and brains much more since he can’t now just fight his way out of everything – and is proving pretty smart. He is proving to be a good commander of the army and has been a Lord Commander for the Kingsguard. And has enough Lannister cunning, but with actual mercy and honour, to make it work. A stark King with a Lannister Hand!

Imagine, ending the very first episode of the show with Jaime pushing Bran out that window, to ending with Jaime by his side, advising (and also of course) protecting him. How good is a full circle/reflection piece for Jaime as that!

And in a similar vein, Jaime can be the one to put forward to the council of Lords (I assume something similar happens in the books, but much better written), that Bran should be King. That being the all-knowing Three Eyed Raven means he’s a good match. And surely the other Lords would more likely listen to Jaime – who is a good commander – than Tyrion, who hasn’t really won over many of the Lords in Westeros. After all, he was sentenced to death for killing a King (they don’t know it was a set up), and also killed his father and escaped. He’s been in a foreign land serving a foreign (to them anyway) ruler who has just sacked their Capitol city. Doesn’t it just make so much more sense that they’d listen to an alive Jaime? Yes he killed the King too, but he also did a lot of other good stuff as per his redemption arc etc.

Anyway, I just think it makes more sense – and then the Kingslayer Jaime, becomes the Kingmaker Jaime – again another wonderful full circle arc for him.

So, from a storytelling theme, symbolism and arc perspective, I think it just makes so much sense!

But when you also look at the show itself, in comparison to the books and where the show sort of went wrong, it makes more sense too.

So, just to give a bit of background on it, the theory I read today about Jaime and Tyrion’s role reversal was in a post mainly looking at how Tyrion’s character seems to be going in a very different direction in the books versus the show.

The idea is that book Tyrion is in a much darker place in the books than show Tyrion, and this, in the upcoming books, could continue. This could send book Tyrion down a difficult, morally dark path, which could result in him becoming more of a villain type character, perhaps taking on more and more of his father’s bad traits. This makes sense to me, as Tyrion was most like his father and was certainly cunning. And where the books start to properly deviate from the show, after series four, Tyrion could go either way. He has just killed his father and his lover. And in the books he also falls out with Jaime when Jaime tells him the truth about his first wife (that she wasn’t a whore like Tywin said). Being in this foreign land with all these dark thoughts and deeds haunting him, I can definitely see him turning into more of a bad guy.

So, basically, a completely different story arc for Tyrion.

In terms of his endgame? Well, if he’s swapped with Jaime’s then I guess it means he might die. Maybe after killing Cersei, hence them dying “together.” Or at least be punished such as sent to the Wall or something. I don’t think GRRM said either Lannister brother actually dies in Cersei’s loving arms, so I’m guessing they took some differences in both Jaime’s and Tyrion’s endgame, if the theory is correct.

And I’m tempted to believe it is, because it helps explain Tyrion’s kind of dodgy characterisation in the later series of the show. He just wasn’t really the same after series four, which at the time, I just put down to D&D not being clever enough writers to write a clever character such as Tyrion. But with this theory, it actually makes more sense. Tyrion was such a fan favourite character in the show, the underdog, clever, snarky good guy, I can understand why D&D didn’t want to take him down this other, darker path. In the books, there’s much more time and details and PoVs to make it work, whereas the show would struggle, especially against such a popular fandom character.

It also explains why Jaime never told him the truth about his wife, or they had their big fall out in the show.

And by changing Tyrion’s story arc so much, they didn’t really know what to replace it with (I think we all agree D&D are not the best writers), so his characterisation was not only off in later series, but it meant they took Jaime’s end game and gave it to Tyrion instead. And this further makes sense as they might have thought having just Cersei (a female) the only bad Lannister at the end was too much, especially when one of the other main female characters, Dany, was also going bad. So, they made Jaime “hateful” in the end to better match and even out Cersei, because it was supposed to be Tyrion…

(I do think D&D were also unhealthily obsessed with Cersei and Twincest, so they probably thought it have them an extra good reason.)

And there’s a really good reflection in this between the two brothers – Jaime starts out the villain, but ends up the underdog hero, Tyrion starts out the underdog hero, but ends up the villain.

But, in changing Tyrion’s character, if indeed it does, it then also has a knock on effect for so many other things.

The theory also said that he might negatively influence Dany, when they meet. For example, help to slowly bring out her suppressed mad/dark side, encourage her to take Kings Landing (which the theory points out Tyrion actually ends up hating because of how the people there view him.) So perhaps if Tyrion’s influence is so vengeful in the books, maybe’s Dany’s own turn to madness makes much more sense. And the lack of Tyrion’s negative influence in the show, undermines this. And this could then make Jon’s decision to have to kill her much harder etc.

So, I do think it’s quite possible, looking at Tyrion’s side, that they gave him a very different story arc, and so had to swap it up with Jaime’s endgame.

The show has certainly mixed and matched up characters from the book, so this would help explain why the main beats are still GRRMs, but why they didn’t just work for some of the characters. So not completely made up and ruined, but they just weren’t able to make the pieces fit together properly in their changed version. (And I do think they could have easily done a much better job, so I’m not letting D&D off the hook.)

Now, back to Jaime, because as much as I love all the characters, I’ll be honest, it’s only really Jaime and Brienne who I obsess enough over to properly theorise about.

Why do I think this works so well for Jaime? Well, first off, the whole him dying in Cersei’s arms just does not make any sense at all to me (hence all my super long posts about it). Especially if we take into account how over Cersei show Jaime seems in series 8, until that scene in episode 4. He behaves like he’s completely cut ties with her, fallen out of love with her and has fallen truly in love with someone else instead – Brienne. This is even more obvious in the books, where Jaime actually burns Cersei’s letter where she’s begging for help. And when he looks back on it later, he’s dreading retuning to Kings Landing and facing her. In fact, he thinks that Cersei might well die, but there’s nothing he can do anyway and perhaps she deserves it. Granted we do have 2 more books to go, but this is like the complete opposite of his ending in series 8, that I think it’s highly unlikely it was meant to happen in the books. A LOT of stuff would have to happen for book Jaime to change his mind now.

But as they gave Jaime’s ending to Tyrion, as per our theory, then what do they do with Jaime? Well, why not have him die in Cersei’s arms and fulfil their Twincest fix. Have Jaime be the bad brother Lannister, not Tyrion.

In fact, I don’t think D&D knew what to do with Jaime either, as he changes so abruptly in the show. It’s like they had to try to cover Jaime’s actual plot points from GRRM (which I’d assume were things like fighting the dead, getting together with Brienne), but then suddenly have him change his mind and rush back to Cersei... Also, as much as I loved Jaime in early series 8, he doesn’t really do anything pivotal. If you take him out of the equation and have him never even in series 8, the actual storylines all stay the same anyway. So, for me, this further adds weight to the idea that, in swapping Jaime’s endgame with Tyrion, they were left with the same problem, what do we then do with Jaime?

It’s like other aspects – they try to change one thing, but by changing that, it affects everything else so what you’re left with doesn’t make sense for the characters.

Now, so far I’ve talked mainly about the show, because overall I do think the main plot points in the show will happen in the books. And if you consider the role reversal between Tyrion and Jaime, it makes more sense why what happened did happen (which makes no sense in the show story itself).

But this is where I start to tie the various theories I’ve read together – it also makes a lot of sense in the books, for Jaime to not die, but instead be Bran’s Hand.

Other than the wonderful symmetry we’d get, as mentioned above, there’s a few things that happen in Jaime’s arc just in the books that make it even more possible, which I’ll talk about now.

So, most of this comes from Jaime’s fever dream, or also called his Weirwood dream. Now, there’s lots of analysis on this dream on the net, and there’s lots of ideas, some conflicting, of what it could mean. It’s not all relevant to this particular theory, so I’ll just summarise it. Basically, in the books, Jaime doesn’t go back to save Brienne from the bear straight away. Instead he travels quite far away with Bolton’s men, and goes to sleep on, what we assume, is a Weirwood stump. At the same time, Jaime is also suffering from a fever due to his hand becoming infected. Now, that means he’s potentially delirious, but also the dream is potentially prophetic. The Weirwood trees are those magic trees that Bran uses to have visions and to find the first Three Eyed Raven. I’m sure there’s more about them in the books as well. But it’s this potential for it being prophetic that I’m most interested in here.

Ok, so the dream starts a bit like a nightmare – Jaime is led somewhere underground that’s dark and feels dangerous by lots of ghosts. He first assumes it’s under Casterly Rock, and indeed he thinks he’s surrounded by the ghosts of the Lannister family. He’s scared and naked (eg vulnerable) and his father, sister and Joeffrey come. Cersei is holding a torch – the only light in the world for Jaime, but they leave and Jaime is left scared again in the dark. Before they go, he begs them for a sword, which Tywin says he gave him, and he begs Cersei to not leave him. Jaime finds a sword and as he touches it, the blade flames blue, providing some light. Now, a lot of analysis on this part of the dream tie it to Jaime’s metaphorical death, (ie of the old Jaime going to Hell) or breaking away from his family so they leave him. The light of Cersei’s going out, and instead a new light on Jaime’s sword coming, could also then symbolise that he’s breaking away (or about to) from Cersei and finding himself, his own light, instead. I also think, as we know Tywin and Joeffrey die later in the books and show, that it’s also foretelling their deaths. Which means it’s likely that Cersei dies before Jaime in the books, hence why he leaves her and he can’t follow. So this firstly means Jaime can’t die in Cersei’s arms.

Now, the next bit of the dream gets interesting, because who shows up next, after Cersei and his family has gone? Brienne of course! She appears (also naked) and Jaime imagines she looks not only more like a woman now, but also that in the light she could also be beauty, and a knight. This is generally taken to show Jaime’s growing (and so far subconscious) attraction to Brienne – and that he sees her as both a warrior and a woman. Now she asks for a sword, and also asks to be able to keep him safe, as she has pledged this and must keep her oath. A sword appears and Jaime gives it to her, and it also starts burning with blue flames.

Now, I think these two swords represent Oathkeeper (the one Jaime gives to Brienne in series four) and Widow’s Wail, which Jaime gets after Tommen dies in series 7. And these are two Valyrian steel swords that were from the melted down sword Ice, which used to be Neds. Now, I don’t think this is coincidental, but again I’ll come back to this.

Brienne is there to help protect Jaime, but she also asks him what’s down in this dark place (which may or may not still symbolise Casterly Rock or another place). Jaime says doom, and Brienne is worried it’s a bear (foreshadowing her being in the bear pit later). We hear, but don’t see Cersei saying that if the flames go out, Jaime will die.

In the next part of the dream ghostly, mist like figures appear and Jaime recognises them as his former Kingsguard and then Rhaeger, the heir to the throne before he was killed in Robert’s rebellion. These ghostly figures accuse Jaime of not keeping his oaths and seem about to attack. Jaime tries to plead with them and give his reasons, and Brienne is still there ready to defend him. These ghosts likely represent the internal guilt and self-hatred Jaime still has for killing the Mad King, but also for not saving Rhaeger’s own children, which were murdered on Tywin’s orders. As the ghost like figures continue to accuse Jaime, the flame on his own sword goes out, and the ghosts rush in, and then Jaime wakes up. As soon as he wakes up, pretty much, he demands Bolton’s men take him back to Harrenhal, where he then saves Brienne just like in the show.

Now, I read a lot of people saying this foretells Jaime’s death, that his flame goes out, but I disagree. I think the fact that Brienne has a matching flame, on a twin sword to his, means that Jaime doesn’t die – after all Cersei says flameS. Instead, I think this ending to the dream foretells that Brienne will actually save Jaime – that as long as she is alive, Jaime will also be.

Now, onto more foreshadowing theories from this dream – I think the ghostly, mist like figures also represent the White Walkers, and that him and Brienne are there facing them means that they will indeed (just like in the show) stand together to fight them in the books. As this has also happened after Cersei has left Jaime with his now dead father and son, I think it means she’ll already have died by this point.

I also think his guilt and the mention of Rhaegar’s children, which Jaime feels guilty about failing to protect, will also tie into Jon’s storyline. As the only surviving child of Rhaegar, I think once Jaime finds out, and Jon, Jaime will pledge himself to protect/serve Jon to make up for this guilt. I then think, based on this, that Jaime will effectively save Jon’s life in the battle with the White Walkers and then, Brienne will have to save Jaime’s. After all, she says in the dream she pledged to protect and save Jaime.

Now, the reason I think the end of the dream means Brienne saves Jaime, is not only because her flame keeps burning in the dream, but also because, as soon as Jaime wakes up, he decides he has to save Brienne. As we are going with the idea that this dream is prophetic from the Weirwood stump, it seems very important that Jaime rescues Brienne, so she can be there to fight with him. And what better reason than having to save him, when his own light (the sword flames) has failed?

And those swords – two halves of one whole, from Ice, the Stark’s sword. Turning into blue flames and helping them in the battle against the dead. Likely at or near Winterfell like in the show… When the books have a theory about a special sword called Lightbringer, wielded by the hero Azor Ahai to defeat the Others..

Soooo, perhaps this is really going into the realms of fan theory, but I definitely think that ICE could be Lightbringer, and that Brienne and Jaime, with Jon (who imo is the Azor Ahai character) will be imperative in helping to defeat the White Walkers. And that Jaime will fall in this battle, and Brienne will have to be there to save him so he doesn’t die.

Now, you might ask, what does all this random dream theorising mean for Jaime becoming the Hand of the King? Well, first of all I think it foreshadows that both Jaime and Brienne have a major part to play in the battle against the dead – much more than in the show. And that as Jaime is near death, it was super important for Brienne to be there to save him. And that it was super important for Jaime to give Brienne the sword Oathkeeper, and have Widow’s Wail himself – two halves of the same sword. So, all this must happen, and Brienne must save Jaime, which is why Jaime was given the prophetic dream in the first place. After all, if he hadn’t of saved Brienne, none of the above could go as it should…

And, this is where Bran comes in and this is more my own idea than anything else, so forgive me if I’m just not understanding the books properly. But as Bran himself sees visions through the Weirwood trees, which I suspect are due to them being sent either by the old Three Eyed Raven, or markers from Bran himself in the future, or perhaps fate or another unseen magical force. Then I wonder if the reason why Jaime was sent this vision, is because of Bran – and also the White Walkers. That Jaime had to help in the fight, but also had to be saved by Brienne. (Maybe even because it’s through his interactions with Brienne that he does become a better person and chooses to fight). And he had to be saved, because it was his destiny to be the Hand of the King to Bran. And also to save Jon so Jon can defeat the White Walkers. And that perhaps, this saving of Jon by Jaime is another reason why he is chosen as the Hand of the King.

I would also like to add in here, my other theories for book Jaime, which can lead him up to being Hand of the King, and tie up other loose ends in his story arc. So, the books and the show deviate a lot for Jaime after series four – he breaks away from Cersei much earlier and he’s currently off on an adventure in the Riverlands with Brienne in the books. A story arc not put into the show, featuring Lady Stoneheart (LSH). Now, she is a re-resurrected, zombie like version of Catelyn Stark, who is hell bent on revenge for the Freys and the Lannisters for the Red Wedding. She’s threatened Brienne with the death of Pod, unless she brings her Jaime. (At least that’s what most people infer from the books, it’s left open ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Now, my theory on this is that somehow Jaime and Brienne will have to fight each other in a trial by combat (echoed in the show itself by Brienne’s line about maybe having to fight Jaime). Of course they won’t be able to kill each other and will somehow be able to escape from, or kill Lady Stonehart.

So, why am I mentioning this? Well, GRRM himself has said he was disappointed they didn’t include the LSH plot in the show. Instead, D&D completely cut it out and sent Jaime to Dorne instead (as in series 5, which isn’t in the books). But for GRRM to say he wanted it in the show, makes me think there’s something very significant that is going to happen from it – either to the characters, or their relationship. Something which will later prove to be important in the rest of the story. This makes me think that Jaime and Brienne have a much bigger impact on the overall story arc than they were given in the show. And if it is more important, it makes the idea they’d have an important ending as well – Hand and LC of Kingsguard respectively – make more sense. And perhaps add more weight to the idea that Jaime HAD to save Brienne.

Now, after LSH, my idea is that Jaime will have to go back to Kings Landing and Cersei – but not in a romantic way. I think, like in the show, Jaime’s going to have a story arc that takes him on the role of commanding the Lannister’s forces against Dany’s when they get to Westeros. And if we assume Cersei does die before the battle with the undead, maybe this is also when Jaime kills Cersei – if he is the Valanqar, the one prophesised to kill Cersei. Or it could be someone else…

I then think the battle for Kings Landing will happen before that of the White Walkers, so Jaime then goes to help in the North, and catches up with Brienne again, who has been busy saving Sansa after her and Jaime parted ways (on good, but still unrealised and not yet acknowledged romantic terms) after LSH. I then think, like in the show, Jaime and Brienne will get together near the end, but this time not only will there be no Cersei for Jaime to rush back to (and throwing his character arc out the window like he does in the show), but he will still live to then become King Bran’s hand.

Of course, there’s still so many unknowns, and all, none or bits of this could happen, so I really hope we do get to see the last two books and find out what really happens.

But until then, I’m going to stick with the idea that Jaime marries Brienne, and becomes the Hand of the King and survives!

There, that’s the end of my theory – several all tied together really. I’d be interested to know what people think.

I know that my later reasons are more random ideas, but I do think, above all, the idea that Jaime is going to be the Hand of the King, not Tyrion, helps explain why the show didn’t really make sense for those characters (Jaime's 180 change at the end being the main one). But also just the wonderful symmetry of a redeemed Jaime fulfilling the role of Hand, for a King he once tried to kill, after he became a better person after losing his own hand…

[the-celluloid-correspondent]

The Witcher: Season 2

Geralt of Rivia, a solitary monster hunter, struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove to be more wicked than the beast he hunts.

Please be warned that I am someone who has not read the books but is very familiar with the world through the games. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Season 1 of The Witcher was pretty good. Despite there being some problems with the worldbuilding and the storytelling, the series easily showed that it can improve with more seasons and a larger budget. Yet, somehow, the second season has taken a mighty dip in quality despite having a more straightforward story. It is somehow more convoluted than the first and feels like a pitiful melodrama trying to replicate Game of Thrones rather than the world of The Witcher. Nothing within this series screams the world that author Andrzej Spakowski created.

Oh, where do I begin? The majority of this season feels like filler. Many of the plotlines truly go nowhere in this season, and when the plot does develop, it happens so quickly that it's over in a blink of an eye. This makes pacing makes the story feel incredibly uneven and convoluted. The writing has also taken a massive dip in this season as well. I am personally fine with cursing but this series went from mostly elevated dialogue to every other word is "fuck". Furthermore, what book fans have told me is that this series takes a massive turn from the novels. With Eskel being killed, I was immediately insulted, remembering him from the games and I know he plays a big part of the story later on in the novels. The showrunner's explanation is bullshit and felt they killed him because they can and they actually don't care about Spakowski's work. The action scenes are okay but nothing really fancy. The dramatic camera movement was more annoying than anything else. Overall, this series is a massive disappointment.

The acting overall in this series is also a mixed bag. Henry Cavill proves yet again he is the best thing about this series. I truly feel sorry for him because he seems to be the only person working on the series who truly cares for the world of The Witcher. Anya Chalorta and Freya Allan both gave pretty good performances in this series. Kim Bodnia feels miscast as Vesemir. Mecia Simons is okay has Francisca, but they turned her character into an irredeemable one and ruined her. What is even more frustrating is that they are clearly going to make her into a misunderstood character. However, the biggest miscasting of this series is easily from Mimi Ndiweni as Fringilla. If you have read the books or played the games you clearly know why she is miscasted, but even the actress can't pull off Fringilla in any convincing way and was cast simply to check a box. Overall, it feels like one massive disappointment this season.

With the bigger budget, it is clear that the production value increased within the second season. However, nothing within this series feels Slavic. The music tries its best but it is just hollow and meaningless. Even though the series does have some good soundtracks, they just don't mix with The Witcher. The costumes are fine, but they have no identity to them. They just feel like standard fantasy garments but with no real culture to them. The visual effects are much better in the second season, but still feel cheap at many points. The only point where they don't feel cheap is in the first episode of the second season. Overall, I would expect this series to have at least some cultural identity to it but instead feels like a generic fantasy.

The biggest problem I have had with this series since day one is that it completely shits on the cultures that influenced The Witcher. If you are unaware the world of The Witcher is heavily influenced by Slavic mythology and culture. The games by CDProjek Red near-perfectly capture this wondrous culture. However, in the series, it is nowhere to be found. Slavic culture has no representation in Western media and this series could have brought this culture to western audiences. Instead, they forced modern and forced "representation" requirements in order to please the people of Twitter. They completely threw out the culture and the people these stories came from in the name of representation. The showrunners have proven they are massive hypocrites and really don't understand what representation really is.

I am sorry if this review feels like a rant but it needs to be stated. It feels like no one within this series except for Henry have shown that they care about the world of The Witcher. I hope Netflix reads this and starts making some changes to the show leadership.

I am giving The Witcher: Season 2, a C-.

[the-bejeesus]

To Those Who Say “I’m not gonna catch up on One Piece until it’s finished. Why would I watch/read 1000+ episodes/chapters when I don’t even get to know how the story ends?”

      Now for the past few years, when I came across somebody who said this, my rebute would be something like “Well the series is great already. It doesn’t really matter if I don’t know how it ends, because the journey itself is enjoyable.” or “Man if that’s your excuse, who you gonna explain why you read/watch stuff like Berserk, Hunter X Hunter, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and My Hero Academia? Newsflash, they aren’t done yet.” But it came across my mind that I can now apply a completely different approach:

“If you start watching/reading at this pace right now, it will be over by the time you catch up.”

      If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll know that for awhile now Oda has been saying that he plans to end the series in just 5-4 years. Now he’s made lots of claims in the past that turned out to be ridiculous. However, many One Piece researchers have compiled his claims and found out that they only get more accurate as time goes on, with the most ridiculous claims being found to be myths. And with the most recent claims of ending the series in less than 5 years, even his editors who are usually skeptical have started to trust that he can do this. After all, he has officially set there to be only one more saga (which isn’t necessarily one arc, but it’s either going to be 1-2 major arcs or an anthology of 5-6 shorter arcs). And now that we can trust this claim, we can essentially extrapolate how many chapters/episodes are left and what pace we have to binge to catch up at just the right time.

If you plan to read the manga (black and white):

The manga in black in white is a perfectly fine way to enjoy One Piece. It’s what Oda draws, it’s how he intends it to be viewed, and best of all, it will be the first version of publication to finish.

     Out of the 1223 weeks since the first chapter published in July 19, 1997, 1000 chapters have published, meaning on average he publishes 42 chapters per year, or in other words, there are only 10 hiatuses per year (including holidays where WSJ does not publish). Now if I wanted to be more accurate, I’d only look at the chapters published this year, to exclude outliers like how he had no hiatuses for the first 200 chapters, or how he had a 4-week hiatus during the timeskip, but 2020 has been a bit crazy, so we’re not doing that for this or any of the others.

     Going off of this, the final chapter would be chapter 1212 in December 28, 2025 (yes, the 28th would be a Sunday again.) So here’s how you’d calculate the pace in which you need to read One Piece, and really this is how we’ll calculate it for every version)

     Now I know math is boring, but the reason I’m showing this to you is because the amount of weeks until One Piece ends will vary based on when you start this binge. Chances are you aren’t going to start the day you see this post, and there’s an even greater chance you won’t see this post the day it’s posted. For every example I’m going to assume you started binging on December 28, 2020. Now let’s try to use it for this example.

     And there’s your answer, just read 4-5 chapters per week. By the end, One Piece should be nearly over or have very recently ended. To put that into a different perspective, you could purchase and read just two volumes per month and you’ll be at prime pace. Or you could read one chapter every day, but only on weekdays.  If you want to, you can see this calculation in action in graph form.

     While this is a very rudimentary graph, it’s a basic visualization of what we’re calculating here. We’re calculating what speed we need to binge to catch up at exactly the right moment. I say exact, but ultimately no one can predict how many chapters there will be exactly, nor how many hiatuses Oda will go on during it. It will be important, as you’re nearing the end, to find a spoiler-free way to keep up on how close One Piece is to ending. To know whether you ought to speed up or slow down.

If you plan to watch the anime (subtitled):

For years now people have hated on the anime “terrible animation!” “terrible pacing” but at the end of the day, it’s the more popular version. Or the more viewed version I should say. And personally, I think that once you acknowledge its problems and learn how to deal with them, it’s a perfectly fine experience. There’s enough good voice acting and enough good storytelling that you’re easily able to ignore the problems. Plus, the animation has substantially improved since Wano.

      Now for this we’re going to have to change a lot of variables to get this right. We’re going to have to adjust when publication started, and recalculate when One Piece will end by looking at how slowly the anime adapts the manga, and how behind it is. The anime aired on October 20, 1999, and has aired 956 episodes since then. This means on average they air 44.9 episodes per year, meaning there is pretty much only 7 breaks the entire year. With these 956 episodes, they have adapted 955 chapters, making the pace almost exactly one chapter per episode. However this is really inaccurate, considering all the better-paced arcs earlier on in the story. Looking solely at episodes 2012 and onwards, the anime adapts at a pace of 0.65 chapters/episode.

     Knowing that there are roughly 212 chapters left, and Toei adapts at 0.65 chapters per episode, we can assume that there are going to be roughly 324 episodes left. That sounds like too many, but keep in mind that there will be several, several instances where the manga will be on hiatus whereas the anime will keep on airing. Knowing there are approximately 324 episodes left, and that the anime only takes about 7 breaks a year, we can assume that it will take 7 years, or 374.49 weeks before the anime will end. So now we have the information we need to do the math again.

x = 1280/374.49

x = 3.417 episodes/week.

     It may seem like a more relaxed binge, since you get a whole 2 extra years to binge, and you only have to do 3-4 episodes per week, compared to the 4-5 chapters. But keep in mind that these episodes are 24 minutes each. Still not at all bad, but you will be spending more time on it overall.

If you plan to watch One Pace:

One Pace is a fan project that edits the anime so that filler and padding is cut, other edits will be made to make the anime more manga-accurate, such as reorganizing scenes, or adding title cards where absent. Originally only used by a niche number of One Piece fans, One Pace has grown in popularity, and has tried to improve its quality to accommodate more fans, such as making their episodes Dual Audio (meaning you can switch between the dub and original Japanese audio tracks), and including Spanish subtitles.

      You’d think we’d have to adjust for when One Pace began, how slowly One Pace catches up, and the works, but there’s not much to calculate. Fortunately for us, no matter how far behind One Pace is on editing the current arc, they always like to wrap things up just a few weeks within when an arc ended, if not the very same week. So really all we have to calculate is how many One Pace episodes there will be by the end of all this, so that we know how many you’ll need to watch per week.

      Looking solely at what they’ve covered so far, One Pace has taken 573 episodes and condensed it down to 259 episodes. That’s a pace of 2.21 anime episodes/ paced episode. Earlier we calculated that there would be 324 episodes of the anime left, making for 1280 episodes total. This would mean that there would be around 578 One Pace episodes by the end. And One Pace would probably wrap up in, let’s say 376 weeks, because as I said, they’ll probably finish editing the final arc a week or two after the last episode airs.

x = 578/376

x = 1.53 episodes per week

      Now that’s a relaxed pace. 1-2 episodes per week? That’s so slow, I’m not even sure if I’ll remember what I watched last week next time I watch some episodes. The only problem is some of the pre-timeskip still haven’t been edited. They’ll probably be done by the time they finish the final arc, but that’s not gonna work out fast enough. You’ll hit your first roadblock about 7 weeks in when you need to watch the Baratie arc and it’s not done. And don’t even get me started on how many arcs aren’t done in dub or Spanish sub yet. Hopefully you could just switch to the anime or manga when you hit these arcs, readjusting how many episodes/chapters you need to watch/read when you do. But that’s a bit of an excessive amount of math for something that’s supposed to be fun. So yeah, if you’re still convinced you shouldn’t get into One Piece until it’s ended, maybe this is the option for you.

If you plan to read the manga (Colored):

Since 2012, Shueisha has made a colorization of One Piece. It’s not a fan coloring, it’s as official as it gets. Many consider the color schemes portrayed in this version as the most canon, as the majority are pulled straight from whatever colored illustrations of Oda’s they can find. And quite frankly it makes the manga at least 10 times more beautiful. It’s especially great if you have trouble interpreting dense, small black and white panels.

      This one is a doozy. You’d think all I gotta do is calculate how far behind the colored manga usually and just adjust from there, right? Wrong. Because how far behind the colored manga is, or how frequently they release volumes in full color, is one of the most inconsistent things I have ever seen. You wanna see what I’m talking about? This is how they’ve chosen to release each volume since 2012:

Volume 1-12: July 15, 2012

Volume 13-23: September 28, 2012

Volume 24-63: December 4, 2012

Volume 64-65: April 4, 2013

Volume 66-68: December 20, 2013

Volume 69-70: August 25, 2014

Volume 71-72: September 16, 2015

Volume 73-75: October 4, 2016

Volume 76: December 2, 2016

Volume 77: March 3, 2017

Volume 78: July 2, 2017

Volume 79: September 4, 2017

Volume 80: December 4, 2017

Volume 81-82: March 3, 2018

Volume 83: October 4, 2018

Volume 84-86: August 2, 2019

Volume 87-92: September 16, 2020

     How I am supposed to find out how long it will take for Shueisha to colorize the final volume of One Piece is beyond me. I guess the first step would be to look at how far behind the manga each release was on average, but I’m going to ignore all the ones before 2013, because those were clearly just Shueisha catching up really fast cause they just started and didn’t want to be dozens of volumes behind forever. So of the 14 publications between 2013 and now, on average the last chapter of the last volume they colored was 97.78 weeks after that chapter had published in Weekly Shonen Jump. This means that if the final chapter of One Piece is chapter 1212 on December 28, 2025, then you can expect the final colored volume to publish November 14, 2027.

x = 1212/359

x = 3.37 chapters/week

     So if you prefer the manga but don’t want to read 5 chapters every week for 5 years, this might be a better option for ya. But yea, I have no doubt my prediction is at least a little off for this one.

If you plan to watch the anime (dubbed):

Unlike the 4KidsTV and Odex dubs of One Piece, the FUNimation dub is a perfect way to enjoy One Piece. The DVDs come with enjoyable commentary and a marathon mode, great for binging.

       FUNimation’s releases of the dub are inconsistent, although not nearly as erratic as the colored manga release. However, there was recently a 2-year hiatus we only just got out of. Since Episode 1′s dub in May 27, 2008, the dub has gotten as far as Episode 614. But that’s only looking at the DVD releases. If you’re willing to stream on FUNimationnow, the dub is as far as 641, and if you’re willing to digitally purchase it from an e-shop such as the Microsoft store, it goes all the way to Episode 654. With that being said, that would mean that on average, FUNimation dubs 1.004 episodes per week. Although if we go back to before the two-year hiatus so as to exclude it from the average, it’s actually 1.10 episodes per week. Not a huge difference, actually. And then if we look solely after the two-year hiatus, it’s actually 2.25 episodes per week, which is insanely faster. It’s hard to tell what the future of the dub will be. I can’t assume they’ll go this fast forever, so I’m just going to take the average of all 3 and say it’s 1.45 episodes per week. Don’t know if that’s the best mathematical approach, but the number seems about right.

     So knowing that the dub is at Episode 654 and looking at our previous guesstimation that the anime will be 1280 episodes long, we can predict that it will take 431 weeks before the dub catches up and ends. That would be in 2029! Sounds quick at first until you notice it’s 4 years behind!

x = 1280/431

x = 2.96 episodes per week

      Looks like it’s almost exactly 3 episodes per week. Not as much less of a workload as I expected, compared to catching up to the sub. You know, I figured those 4 extra years would make you binge a lot slower.

Final Thoughts:

      There’s a lot of my math that was estimation, approximations, extrapolations. Feel free to correct me or fact check me, especially if you plan on using this. I figured this would be a fun thought excercise. There’s also a lot of smaller variables I simply didn’t want to take into account because of how long this is already. For example, reading the black and white manga. The calculation can vary slightly depending on if you read it the day it’s published (which I assume would have to be a fanscan unless you can read Japanese), reading the weekly publication legally on Viz.com, waiting for the physical volume release. The dub can also vary depending on whether you buy from Microsoft, wait for the FUNimationnow release, wait for the DVDs, or wait for the Collection sets. So feel free to take this into account.