#staged finale just annoys me on such a fundamental level- i need to stop it's nearly 8 o'clock and i haven't eaten. the hyperfocus is real

[painless-innit-colourful]

oooo ok:

🙂, 👼, 🧨, 💏, and also the question about staged finale, the emoji wasn't showing up for me.

Thanks for the ask!

🙂 - Should Dream get a redemption arc?

NO! :) I want to see that motherf'cker absolutely go to town on the big bad evil front. I'm talking the return of the S2 dominance and control, perhaps flavoured with some of the string-pulling puppet master of S1 - hiding in the walls, hiding in the walls. I really liked the Sam Prison streams because it brought that back: the lying, the manipulation, the brutality. I want that b'stard to stand at the top of the world and laugh, and then I want him to have his throne pulled out from under him, and I want to watch him fall and die surrounded by the people he once called friends. So yeah, I don't want a c!Dream redemption arc. I want him to be worse, and then I want him to be killed by Sapnap or Tubbo or Tommy. I don't think there's a satisfying ending to the DSMP where Dream is redeemed.

👼 - Should Friend/Shroud/Michael/Fran be off limits for greifing?

My answer here is going to be pretty similar to someone else's I've seen, but it is as follows: Friend no, Shroud, Michael and Fran yes. Friend has died so many times now it basically doesn't matter: Ghostbur's in limbo, so the main emotional crux is gone, and besides, Friend has infinite canon lives :') Shroud doesn't really matter lore-wise, nor do we know if cc!Tommy is attached to him (he seems to be, but he's perpetually semi-in-character on the DSMP), but we inniters here on tumblr have become so attached I will personally go to war for that spider. Michael, to quote Technoblade, is a BABY. Killing him would be so depressing. I liked the kidnapping plot because we got to see Tubbo go off but thank goodness he's home safe. And finally, Fran deserves pensioner's protection. She's been around so long, the server's oldest pet deserves to retire from this bs and chill.

🧨 - Who is most at fault for November 16th?

Okay, here we go. A lot of people share blame for the undue... everything that happened on Nov 16th. Wilbur, Schlatt, Philza, Bad and Antfrost, Eret (from previous events); I could go on about all of them for a while. But if I had to narrow it down, it would absolutely be Dream and Technoblade. I firmly believe the point of no return was crossed when Techno fired at Tubbo. In that moment, the peace shattered. Wilbur heard it from the button room, and I bet in his mind it was the last piece of confirmation he needed to be convinced the old, peaceful, wonderful L'Manberg was dead and buried. In fact, it was in the moments before Techno shot that Dream dropped in that there in fact was a traitor! Maybe, just maybe, someone would've worked out where Wilbur was if Techno hadn't started monologing...

But on the level above Techno, supreme sh't himself, Dream. He egged Techno into attacking on Nov 16th while Tubbo was making his speech. He pushed Wilbur down his dark path from the shadows and provided him with the TNT. He supported Schlatt after obtaining the revive book, let him die in the camarvan, then laughed when L'Manberg exploded. He orchestrated everyone's downfalls. Right before he died, Wilbur said "Manberg didn't win, Pogtopia didn't win. I won." Really, I think the winner in this war was Dream.

💏 - Is TNTduo /r?

YES. OH MY GOD. Okay, romantic? Maybe not (as the aromantic in the room, I'm contractually obligated to say that), but! They absolutely did it during Manberg/Pogtopia. Sorry Wilbur Soot. I refuse to believe there was not an affair, in which two stressed out, tired idiots with too much sexual tension ran into each other in the wrong place at the right time and decided, "f'ck it." Enhances the Las Nevadas viewing experience immensely. That's just how it is when you both know something about each other no one else in the room does.

🥸 - Did Staged Finale negatively impact Punz/Tommy's character arc?

Okay, you should have not have enabled me to talk about the Staged Finale thing, because I have had this rant simmering since November. I don't think it really negatively affects Tommy's arc - Punz and him didn't interact much during S3. However! My second biggest issue with it is that it means Punz's character doesn't really make any sense in hindsight. And my biggest issue with it is that it really messes with the theme of the season being attachment.

Firstly, Punz. Before Staged Finale, I quite liked Punz. A mercenary whom Dream was far too trusting of, originally keeping tabs on the L'Manbergians (who remembers the S P Y tweet from the eve of Doomsday?) who either receives a bigger payout from Tommy, or takes pity on the kid, and leads the greater population of the SMP to Dream's evil lair just in time to save them. I personally like the latter interpretation: it later lined up even better when, after Punz was told Tommy was killed in the prison, he said "But I saved him..." despite being very under the Egg's influence. And his Egg involvement was cool!

And then Staged Finale happened, and he was just... on Dream's side the whole time? What, he got monumentally distracted by the Egg? Dream didn't seem to trust him to get him out in the first place, considering how he left the blueprints specifically in a place Techno would recognise. And the bit that really annoys me is that Tommy death line. There's no need for that line. Punz is in with the Eggpire, and Puffy's already p'ssed at them. He doesn't need to prove anything to anyone. Why say it if you genuinely didn't care about the kid? And then, when Dream gets out, they're all buddy buddy again. It doesn't line up to me.

(I am not going to talk at length about how little sense Staged Finale makes overall because I need to eat at some point tonight, but just know I think it makes no sense. Why the hell would you intentionally get yourself trapped in a maximum security prison. Why would you want the whole server to see you about to kill someone they generally like. None of it makes a lick of sense and I like to ignore it at every opportunity.)

And finally, my theme rant. Themes in media and literature mean a lot to me. The theme of S2 is Attachment, and it's the easiest one to determine. The whole season is laced with it: the pursuit of the discs, the compasses representing Tommy and Tubbo's attachment to the other, the Butcher Army threatening Carl, New L'Manberg and Ghostbur and Friend and Doomsday, and the goddam hall of attachments in the finale. Dream even tells Tommy he's important because he brought countries and caring for items and pets and attachment to the server. Attachment is the key.

Tommy's interactions with this theme are always that it's worth it, even when it hurts. He has to keep pursuing the discs. He fights for L'Manberg because it's what he has left of Wilbur. Even after Dream's 'I cut all my attachments and it made me stronger' speech, he responds simply "How do you not hurt?", unable to imagine an existence where he doesn't care deeply. And in the end, attachment saves him. When Punz tells people what he told them, they go because they care about these two kids enough to come to their aid.

And Dream? He cuts all his attachments off, refusing to care about items, cutting off Sapnap and George as early as the start of S2 so they can never be used against him. And then Sapnap comes to put himself between Dream and the Clingy Duo when it matters. Because he cut all his attachments (except to Tommy), he has no one left to defend him, and so is thrown in the prison to rot for a year and be tortured until Techno breaks him out to repay the favour. Staged Finale throws a massive spanner in that because it undermines the simple message of the S2 finale: attachment saved Tommy and Tubbo, and cutting his brought down Dream. If Dream has Punz, his status as the lone wolf who thought he could control the server by being above it all is undercut by the fact it's all a ploy. This is the part that annoys me most about it, because the theme and resolution previously worked so well.

At the end of the day, I mostly choose to forget Staged Finale happened, and I will probably continue to ignore it unless they make something cool out of this weird twist. And it's not hard to please me with this kind of stuff, so we'll see. I may be a convert yet.

[yastaghr]

What We Do For Family 4

Did someone say suffering? No? Well, have some suffering anyway!

(Also, when this reaches 5 chapters I will be posting the first chapter of my KillerCreamMare fic Nightmare’s Gang of Wranglers!)

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22254547/chapters/57060598

When Reaper returned from the Save Screen it was to a familiar, if terrifying, sight. Life, the flowery Toriel of his world, was sitting calmly on the other side of her stone table. Her arms were crossed over the front of her long, flowing dress. But it was the expression on her face that was scaring him. She looked only mildly annoyed, but that was huge. Life never got annoyed at anything. She had a nearly infinite level of patience. She had even when she was alive, too. So for her to show this much annoyance meant someone was in serious trouble. Reaper had a feeling that it was him.

He floated out of the portal to the Save Screen and sat down at the stone table. It was stone so that neither him nor Life could affect it. It made for a great meeting place. At least, it did when she was in a good mood. Right now it was the last place that he wanted to be.

“Reaper,” Life said, her voice filled with ire, “why didn’t you tell me that Goth has a crush?”

O...kay, that was definitely not what he thought she’d say. “um, life, he’s eight. there’s no way he has a crush yet.”

Life blinked at him as he blinked at her, both of them clearly surprised about the situation. Then she giggled. “Reaper, monsters can have crushes as young as five. They might not be romantic or sexual crushes, but they’re still valid. Goth is definitely old enough to have his first crush. I don’t know what kind it is yet, and clearly neither does he, but he has some kind of a crush on his friend, Palette. He talks about him almost constantly and emulates his interests. He has a crush.”

Reaper was still at the blinking stage. Then he shook his head. “no. no way. he’s been talking about palette like that for over a year! there’s no way that’s a crush.”

“And exactly how long were you in love with Geno before you even confessed to him? I seem to recall it was something like five years. Yes, five years, seven months, and thirteen days. You kept count,” Life was smiling and absolutely destroyed him.

Denial was a powerful thing, though, and Reaper had a lot of practice with it. “yeah, no, he doesn’t have a crush, and we’re leav… where is he, anyway? don’t tell me you let ink watch him. i swear that that monster shouldn’t be allowed around kids. he’s a menace! did you know that he rap-”

“Reaper, I don’t want to hear about it. Again. Goth is safe and sound,” When that clearly didn’t satisfy him, Life elaborated, “Grim came and picked him up for a playdate. Apparently Mercy found a new game for them to play together and he couldn’t wait to try it out. There was something about parts of cheese? Or was it ships in an ocean… No, that was the last one. Oh, yes! How could I forget! He said it was named after me!”

Reaper chuckled. Mercy, the little Frisk of his world who flirted with absolutely everything, was always bringing something back from the Surface for his brother, their guardian, to play with. They loved dragging Goth into it, too. They were a little bit older than him, but that didn’t stop them. It was good that he had friends to take his mind off of Geno…

Oh, yeah. “life… can you try to find geno again? i know you can’t actually find him, but… he wasn’t in the save screen. i’m running out of places to look.”

Life eyed him pityingly. “Are you sure, Reaper? I don’t want you to find out-”

“life, please. i… i need to know he’s okay. i… i just need to, okay? i’m not sure how much longer i can keep this up,” Reaper said. He wasn’t sure what the emotion in his voice was. Generally it was sad, and from there… there was some despair, hope, frustration, exhaustion, and fear. All of that was mixed together in some kind of sadness.

She sighed, eyed him one last time, and looked down. Her hands fiddled with the empty air above the table, but Reaper knew she was looking through all the souls in her care to find the single one she was interested in. He did the same thing when he was working, checking through the different hourglasses (and other insanities of the glassblowers art. The weirder the shape was, the more fucked up the timeline could be and the less likely it was that Reaper and Grim would ever be needed in that world). He knew from Mercy that no one other than his brother and him could see the hourglasses, just like no one but Life could see whatever she thought of souls as.

Finally, Life seemed to locate Geno’s soul. She stared at it. Reaper didn’t like her expression. She seemed upset, and Life being upset couldn’t be good.

“Reaper…” He stiffened. Now she sounded like him, that weird sadness mixture evident in her voice, “I can barely feel him. He’s so distant… I don’t think any of us gods are going to be able to go where he is. There’s some kind of a barrier, and it’s magic is much stronger than even mine. And…” she gulped, “That same magic has altered his soul. He’s different. I’ve never seen a soul like his. Someone has affected him on a fundamental level. He’s in a huge amount of pain, and… I’m not even sure if he will remember you or Goth. I… Reaper?”

He was sure that he hadn’t heard her right. There was no way that Geno was somewhere he couldn’t go. He was Death. He could go anywhere; it was proverbial. And there was no way that magic stronger than Life had touched him. That just wasn’t possible. He… he… he couldn’t be in pain. He just couldn’t. And he had to remember them. He was Reaper’s soulmate, and Goth’s mother. How could he forget them? They were… they…

Reaper wasn’t quite sure what opened the floodgates. Why didn’t really matter. All that mattered was Geno, and Geno was not okay. Reaper might never see him again, and that… that was suddenly all too real. He tried desperately to cling to his memories. He could see… he couldn’t. He couldn’t remember what Geno looked like! He scrambled to pull out the photo of them all on that summer day. He stared at it. His hands caressed the curve of his soulmate’s chin. Then the first blue tear fell. Another followed. Then another. Then another. Then there weren’t individuals, but a flood of them. He… he might never see Geno again. Goth might never see his mother again. Geno might never know that Goth had a crush on Palette. Geno might never get to see his son grow up.

“Reaper. Listen to me.” He looked across the table at the god he was sitting with. She fixed her eyes on his sockets and radiated hope. “We’ll find him. We’re not the only ones looking for him. You said it yourself. Fresh is looking, and this place stinks of the same unnatural magic that feeds him. Ink is looking, and he exists outside the universes themselves. He can’t stay where he is forever, and when he does leave, we’ll find him. Even if he doesn’t remember us, we’ll find him. We’ll teach him who he is again. No matter what happens to him you will see him again. I promise you that.”

Reaper gulped. “you promise?”

Life nodded. “I promise. Now, please go back to crying. You haven’t let yourself cry nearly enough. Goth told me he hasn’t seen you cry once. That’s not good.”

Reaper let out a soggy chuckle. “that doesn’t mean i’m not crying, life. i’m just not crying in front of him. i don’t want him to have to worry about me as well as worrying about geno. he’s only eight. he doesn’t need that kind of weight on his shoulders.”

“If you think that not crying in front of him means he won’t worry you’re much stupider than I thought. Goth is worried sick about you. You tell him that crying is okay and important and natural, but then he never sees you do it. He asked me to heal your tear-makers, Reaper. He thought there was something wrong with you,” Life said pointedly.

“ouch,” Reaper winced, “i don’t want that. i’ll try to cry in front of him, and i’ll explain that i didn’t want to worry him and i’m all fine.”

“See that you do,” Life said primly. “Now, cry.”

“yes ma’am,” Reaper saluted. Then he let himself cry in front of another person for the first time since Geno had gone missing.

=====

The white space saw both a new inhabitant and an old one. The figure was wearing a black trench coat. The hems were edged with yellow piping, and the cuffs of the sleeves were blue. The bottom of his jacket shaded from black to blue. Under that he wore a ribbed red sweater and a pair of uneven black pants. The hems of the pants had roughly sewn blue cuffs. One was shorter than the other by several inches, but neither was longer than mid shins on him. Black flip flops graced his feet. But that was just his clothes. His bones were the weirdest part. The base of them was solid black, but some of them, namely his leg bones and his proximal and intermediate phalanges, were red. His distal phalanges were yellow, as were his teeth. His skull was black, but it had blue streaks like tears running down from the eye sockets. The sockets themselves were two different sizes, and the eye lights inside them were likewise. Red sockets held yellow and grey eye lights. His nasal aperture was red, too. And scattered around him like flies on carrion were floating glitches and error messages.

Despite all that, it was still Geno sitting there. At least, he still thought of himself as Geno. At least, he would if he could get over the shaking, panicking state he had slipped into. He was huddled up in the center of empty white nothingness, his knees to his chest and his hands trembling in front of him. Voices were screaming at him, their messages a mixed bunch of helpful, kind, and… not. But Geno was too shaken to listen to them.

“They’re not going to be able to recognize me,” Geno said in a glitched out voice. When he heard it, he sobbed, “I even sound different. My voice is all glitchy, and it’s so much lower than it was. What are they going to think when I get out? Are they even going to believe it’s me? I’ve been gone for so long, I-”

<IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO GO BACK. YOU HAVE A JOB TO DO. GO DO IT.>

The voice was overwhelming. It felt like he was trapped in a giant bell that was ringing inside of a giant dome. It hurt his ears, but at the same time it couldn’t hurt his ears because a) he had no ears, b) the sound was in his head and, c) it didn’t actually hurt. It felt like it should, but it didn’t.

“What job?” Geno said lowly. His voice sounded almost like a growl and he hated it.

<KEEPING THE BALANCE. THERE IS CREATION, SO THERE MUST BE DESTRUCTION. YOU MUST DESTROY UNIVERSES.>

Geno recoiled. “What? No! I’m not-”

<YOU WILL. THE MULTIVERSE IS ONLY SO BIG. EITHER YOU WILL DESTROY THEM, OR THEY WILL CRASH INTO EACH OTHER AND DIE A SLOW, AGONIZING DEATH ON THEIR OWN. IT IS INEVITABLE. DO YOU WANT THAT FOR THEM?>

Geno dug his heels in. He had out-stubborned Death. He could out-stubborn an Eldritch voice or two. “I’m not going to destroy universes. Can’t they be evacuated? We can-”

<IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS, I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO INVOLVE YOUR LITTLE ONE AND YOUR MATE.>

Geno froze. “No. No, you can’t do that! They’re hurt enough as it is, you can’t do this to them! Reaper already has a job, and Goth’s only eight! He needs Reaper to take care of him, you can’t… you can’t do this to them. Don’t hurt them, please!”

<THEN YOU WILL DESTROY UNIVERSES FOR ME, ERROR.>

“That’s… that’s not my name,” Geno said lamely. He felt so overwhelmed and absolutely rock bottom horrible. Was he really going to kill people and destroy people’s homes? But he couldn’t bear it if little Goth had to go through this torture. He didn’t deserve it. Neither did Reaper. He would do anything to keep them safe. Apparently that included this.

<IT IS NOW. OR DO YOU WANT YOUR MATE TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE MAKING HIS JOB HARDER?>

Geno winced. Reaper hated his job. It was hard enough as it is. He really didn’t want to explain to him why he had to make it harder. Reaper would insist on taking on this unbearable pain himself, not because it would make his job easier, but because he wouldn’t want Geno to have to bear this alone. Geno didn’t want that. He also didn’t want to see Goth’s face when he found out about this. Goth was a sweetheart. It had hurt enough when they had explained what Reaper and Grim did. It would be even harder to explain this.

“Fine,” Geno… no, Error said, “I’ll do your job, and I’ll take your name. But if you so much as touch my child you will regret it more than anything else you have ever done.”

The voice laughed, and Error knew that laugh would haunt his soul forever. It was ruthless, callous, and absolutely insane. <OH, ERROR, YOU ARE SO NAIVE. I AM FATE. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO HURT ME. I HAVE SENT PLAGUES. I HAVE STARTED WARS. I HAVE INSPIRED GENOCIDES, INCLUDING YOURS. I REGRET NOTHING.>

Error shuddered. He knew Fate by the horrors she left behind, and the idea of her rummaging around in his soul was terrifying. He felt hopeless for the first time in a long time. Even his huge supply of determination couldn’t fight against the being that had created the multiverse. Ink spoke about her all the time. Apparently he was her favorite. She whispered to him in the night, inspiring him to create an endless supply of universes. Was… was that why he had to destroy? Because Ink was constantly creating? Because Fate was too fond of him to put limits on what he could do? Why? It was so unfair! He’d been happy with his mate and his son. Now he had been torn away from them, isolated, tortured, and changed. It wasn’t fair!

Fate, seemingly unaware of his inner monologue, said, <NOW, I WILL ONLY SHOW YOU HOW TO OPEN A PORTAL ONCE. AFTER THIS YOU WILL DO IT ON YOUR OWN. IF YOU DO NOT I WILL PUNISH YOU, AND IF I AM NOT SATISFIED FOR TOO LONG I WILL INVOLVE YOUR FAMILY. NOW, PAY ATTENTION. TO OPEN A PORTAL YOU NEED TO...>

[zeldauniverse]

Yoshi’s Crafted World is a curious game. I mean; it’s a standard Mario (or technically Yoshi) game, so you kind of know what you’re getting into. It starts out as being your standard side-scrolling platformer with the major quirk being that the world is “made” of common everyday materials you’d find at your local craft store. There’s felt, paper, cardboard, tin cans, magnets, and cloth; you name it, it’s probably somewhere in there. But once you peel back the covers and start trying to collect all the things there are to find, the game takes a radical shift and becomes something else entirely. The platforming is generally much less important, and you’re required to stop and smell the roses while you observe the game’s crafted scenery.

Because of this, what your perspective on Yoshi’s Crafted World and its menagerie of materials will likely be about whether you prefer a game to be about form or function.

Full disclosure Nintendo of America graciously provided us with a review code for Yoshi’s Crafted World.

An egg-cellent adventure

The plot isn’t important, but Kamek and Baby Bowser do make good villains.

As is the case in practically every Mario or Yoshi game to date, the story is essentially window dressing, so let’s get it out of the way. A troupe of eight Yoshis is protecting the Sundream Stone, a semi-sentient hunk of rock with five gems attached to it with the power to grant wishes. Kamek the Magikoopa is taking Baby Bowser out for a daytime stroll, and they hatch a plan to steal it. In the ensuing tussle, the five Dream Gems get scattered, and it’s up to Yoshi to get them back. After selecting your favorite colored Yoshi, you immediately begin your adventure.

Yoshi’s Crafted World is by and large broken up into three acts plus an epilogue. In the first act, you set out on a linear path that will take you — through eight stages and a boss — to the first Dream Gem. Once completed, you jump into the second act, where you can “choose” your own path to acquire the next three Dream Gems in whichever order you like. I say “choose” here because you still will end up going through practically (if not actually) every stage to get all three, and there’s no advantage to picking one path first over another, but I suppose getting a choice of order is something. Finally, the last act progresses linearly once more towards the last Dream Gem and the inevitable final battle with Kamek and Baby Bowser. As for the epilogue, we’ll cover that later.

The mechanics of the game will feel familiar if you’ve ever played any Yoshi game before. You basically have four main actions you can do. The first is to flutter jump. After jumping, holding the jump button will allow you to hover in the air for a brief bit; what’s more is that you can flutter jump pretty much indefinitely, practically holding altitude with successive flutters. Secondly, you can eat most of the enemies in the game, and most of them will cause you to lay eggs. Thirdly, you can ground pound, slamming down posts and squashing enemies below. And lastly, you can hurl your eggs at practically whatever you want.

I came into the Yoshi franchise via Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island from way back on the SNES. So by and large, all of the controls felt extremely intuitive to me… all of them, that is, except for the egg tossing, one of the fundamentals of the franchise. Throughout the franchise, egg tossing was essentially a timing game; once you pressed (or held) the button to throw an egg, a reticle appeared and started moving up and down, forcing you to time your shot according to what angle you wanted to throw your egg. However, in Crafted World, the reticle doesn’t move. Instead, you have to manually aim the reticle onto the target you want to hit.

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Egg targeting is a manual process in this game as you need to hit things in both the foreground and background.

The reason for this change is largely by design. In Crafted World, items in both the foreground and background — even though they’re blurred out — can be targeted and hit. The timing game from previous games would make hitting those things, well, impossible. So the developers changed the mechanics of egg tossing to accommodate this. Personally, I think this makes the game worse for the wear. Firstly, eggs ricochet off of angles, allowing for trick shots. However, there aren’t any trick shots that need to be made in Crafted World, making the original mechanic rather useless. Secondly, because you use the left stick to aim, you can’t move while you’re aiming a shot. One of the things I loved about Yoshi’s Island was being forced to toss an egg while under pressure from enemies or the environment; there were instances in the game where you’d need to aim an egg while running or precariously flutter jumping in mid-air. While you can aim a shot in mid-air, jumping while targeting cancels the reticle. In general, this makes a lot of the moment-to-moment gameplay much less difficult. Finally, to finish it off, the fact that items are hidden in the background and foreground make Yoshi’s Crafted World something of a glorified scavenger hunt.

It’s like finding all the Easter eggs

Why do I call Crafted World a scavenger hunt? Well, the Yoshi games have always had some element of collectibles, dating all the way back to Yoshi’s Island. Historically, in each stage in the previous games are hidden a set of flowers and several secret red coins inside them. To truly 100% the game, you needed to find every single one. Crafted World has this concept as well (although it exists for a slightly different reason than it did in previous games). What makes this game so much like a scavenger hunt is that many of the red coins or triggers to make flowers appear are hidden in the foreground, in the background, or, worst of all, behind objects in the background.

Do you want to get every last reward in the game? Then you need to get every item in every stage. That means you’ll need to collect a ton of eggs and start hitting everything in sight to see if there’s a secret behind it. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it’s not too far off the mark. It might sound fun at first, but I got bored of it quickly; I started to feel that the “challenge” was because I needn’t be so much skilled as I needed to be observant. After a while, I more or less stopped going out of my way for the collectibles.

There are many ways to get flowers. The most annoying is finding that last Red Coin you missed.

Unfortunately, the collectibles aren’t just pointless completionism. Instead of being like their Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Woolly World counterparts, where getting 100% on a set of levels unlocks a super difficult bonus stage, Crafted World instead gates progression based on the number of flowers you have. In each stage, there are a number of flowers to collect, and you can get bonus flowers for collecting 100 coins in a level, finding all 20 red coins, completing the stage with full health, locating Poochy’s lost pups, or going on a literal scavenger hunt to find so many random objects in a level. After every two or three stages, you’ll be required to part of your stockpile of flowers, usually 10 to 20, to unlock the next two or three levels. Thankfully during my playthrough, I never needed to go back to previous stages to farm for more flowers to unlock these gates; there’s more than plenty to find to play all the levels in the main acts.

The levels are over easy, not hard-boiled

And while finding enough flowers is easy enough a task, it’s also a fairly easy task to not die. Yoshi’s life is measured in hearts. Hit an enemy, and Yoshi will lose some of them. You can pick up more as you play each level, of course, and getting to the end with a full 20 should be hard, you might think.

However, in order to tone down the difficulty, you can have Yoshi don a costume after winning one from a gumball machine. Each costume grants you an extra three to five free hits without touching your heart total, and so long as you don’t run out costume hit points (i.e., break the costume), these costume hit points refresh at every level midpoint. Even falling into a bottomless pit will just reset you with one costume point worse for the wear. I suppose these costumes are there for the younger generation to make the game more compatible for them, so if you want to ramp up the challenge factor, make sure not to wear any.

If you want to ramp up the challenge factor, make sure not to wear costumes. Each costume grants you three to five free hits.

Unlocking each set of stages requires flowers, and the required flowers increase as the game progresses.

So I haven’t talked about the epilogue yet. In previous Yoshi games, there are more difficult bonus stages that can be unlocked by collecting all the things within a world. In Crafted World, these special stages exist as post-game content. To unlock them, you’ll need to beat the game and then have collected enough leftover flowers to unlock each stage one at a time. The unlock cost for each stage is fairly hefty though. The challenge stages are, I’ll be honest, actually challenging. Falling into a pit will outright kill you instead of simply resetting you, so there’s that.

While the special stages are difficult, they’re also short — much shorter than the levels in the main game. As a result, much of the actual challenge of the stages isn’t in the process of actually clearing it but instead clearing it with all of the flowers and coins in tow. These stages are about attrition, giving you just the number of eggs you need to get your flowers and coins and not many more. The game only provides three bonus stages and one bonus boss, so it’s not much, but you’ll definitely spend a bit more time if you’re going for full completion.

Yoshi’s Crafted World is form over function

Graphically though, the game is really charming. I have to admit that I smiled a lot in this game, often simply by realizing that, “Oh, that monkey is actually just drawn on a tin can.” It sounds absolutely silly, but the graphical style has a lot going for it. Even in handheld mode, which is how I played most of the game, the game is beautiful and plays fluidly. I actually can’t find any real faults with the graphical presentation.

The music, however, I can’t say the same thing about. I honestly didn’t like much of it, especially most of the recurring themes. The music I believe is intended to have this hokey, ragtag sort of vibe to it. However, to me it just feels overly cute and occasionally off-pitch, so I found that I was frequently turning down the volume to give my ears a break. Maybe you’ll feel differently when you play it, but I found it all fairly unmemorable.

Yoshi’s Crafted World actually makes good use of what it’s got; it’s just never very difficult.

All in all, Yoshi’s Crafted World is a good game. It’s not the best Yoshi game on the block, but it’s also not the worst either. It’s competent at everything it does, and it has an accessibility which means it can be played by children and adults alike. However, if you’re seeking challenge, you’ll need to either find another game or add some “house rules” to yourself to spice the game up to your liking. It’s cute and charming, but it’s not the cleverest Yoshi or Mario title. How much you’ll like it depends upon what exactly you want from the game.

Score Similarity to other YOSHIS 8/10 Yoshi’s Woolly World – ★★★★☆ Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island – ★★★☆☆ Yoshi’s Island DS – ★★☆☆☆

Review: Yoshi’s Crafted World is cute and charming but relatively easy Yoshi’s Crafted World is a curious game. I mean; it's a standard Mario (or technically Yoshi…

[arabellaflynn]

About a week ago, I crewed a show at the studio theater for a non-profit outfit up from New York. The guys who run it are friends of our executive artistic director, and they come up two or three times a year. I like them; I dealt with them a bunch when I was at the box office, because when you're the most experienced person they have around they hand you all of the EAD's friends, and I have an unofficial standing request to work their shows even when I'm not the only crew who is both in town and not drowning in finals. One of the guys, as it turns out, is laid up with an injury right now, so the other one had to fly solo, on top of performing in the show. I ran into him coming down the stairs as I was going up, and as soon as he saw me he just lit up like, oh, it's you! How are you are you working are you going to be my box office again! I told him I'd swapped over to doing tech and he asked if I was disappointed that I didn't get to dress up anymore. I'm not often visibly rattled. The internal monologue is a different matter. My mouth was making bubbly, sociable conversation, while my lizard brain was huddled in the back of my skull, peering suspiciously out through a slit in the blinds, going, "I don't understand, you are a producer, why do you know who I am?" Because frankly, for the most part, they don't. Aside from the yawning chasm between tech and talent at all levels of the entertainment industry, producing a show is an undertaking not entirely unlike juggling an armload of emotionally-compromised cats to a series of increasingly short deadlines. It's not personal. They have much more pressing things to do than keep track of the minion who is assembling their rented tables. [Belated recollection #1: This group comes back every year to book their spring show in our cabaret theater. This producer gets a gentle reminder from the event staff every year that he is in fact paying us to clean up after his show, and he does not have to help us. This reminder fails every year, and he ends up striking half of the tables by himself.] [Belated recollection #2: The dress code for front of house in the studio theater is, in its entirety, "wear black". I used to entertain myself by dressing splashy. The first time he got a load of one of my box office outfits, he asked to take a picture, so he could show his house manager in NYC and tell her to, and I quote, "step up her game". I would have assumed he was flirting except that he is, to the best of my knowledge and in roughly descending order of relevance: gay, taken, and twice the age he probably thinks I am.] By the end of then night I was like, you know what? He clearly likes me and thinks I am an actual human. He co-directs a non-profit whose mission is providing opportunities to dancers and multi-modal movement artists. I hate pestering people about work when they're trying to do other work, but I bet if I catch him after the performance I can get him to talk shop for a bit and give me some career advice. Or life advice, which is pretty much the same thing in the arts. God knows I need some. It was a brilliant plan, and it was chugging along beautifully right up until the part where he derailed it by inviting me to our EADs birthday party. Actually, he asked me first if he'd be seeing me there. I thought he was talking about a different event entirely, because why the fuck would I be at our director's actual personal birthday party? I have no idea what he thinks I do there. Officially, stage crew and event staff are one rung up from the bottom of the ladder, and that only because we get a per-show contract that specifies they will be paying us in money. (Unofficially, I have a lot more clout than that, but only because of longevity and institutional knowledge. It works only irregularly because, you know, unofficial. Nobody else at my pay grade has enough social capital to rattle any cages.) The office staff have meetings we don't go to, lunches we're not invited to, and loads of conversations we're not a part of. A large part of the reason I know as much as I do is because they like to have meetings out in the lobby when "no one" is around -- which is to say, they have forgotten that I am at the reception desk and that I can eavesdrop in at least five languages. I know one of them is getting married in the fall, and I also know that there is a 0% chance I will be invited to the wedding, or any wedding-related activities. They're great people to work around, and most of the time they're even reasonable people to work for, but there is this unspoken assumption that we're all going to go home to different planets at the end of the day. It took him like three tries to invite me to one party because I could not for the life of me figure out why he was telling the help all about the director's birthday plans. It finally got down to me pointing out that I had none of the details necessary for attending said party -- such as, for example, the time and date it was taking place -- because I had not received an invitation, and him telling me to go poke the EAD's assistant to get one. Then he hugged me and left to catch his train back to New York. Have you ever spent an entire day trying to get useful work done with your lizard brain jumping up and down in the back of your skull shouting things like, YOU JUST WROTE AN EMAIL TO SOMEONE'S EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TELLING THEM THAT AN IMPORTANT PERSON JUST TOLD YOU TO INVITE YOURSELF TO ANOTHER IMPORTANT PERSON'S PARTY, SINCE WHEN IS THIS A THING YOU DO? It's really annoying. It also does not go away when the assistant replies to your email to say she's put you on the guest list. That just adds a counterpoint all about, YOU ARE ON THE GUEST LIST FOR A PARTY THAT HAS AN ACTUAL GUEST LIST MAINTAINED BY AN ACTUAL ASSISTANT WHOSE JOB IS TO MAINTAIN THESE THINGS WHAT HOW WHY. I'm not in objection to any of this. Clearly I have made myself a friend. The context is just really doing a number on my brain. One of the reasons I was so good at that job was that I was charming and helpful when you were looking right at me, and I was completely out of sight and out of mind otherwise. Nobody paid attention to me because nobody had to; I just ran around and did things and they didn't have to think about it. The class division between management and minions there also irritates me on a regular basis, mainly because it means people don't talk to each other about really obvious stuff, and it takes me a while to cotton on when I run into someone who is either entirely ignorant of it, or entirely indifferent to it, which this dude plainly is. Which of these is the case is an open question. Judging from what I've seen of his performances, whatever got his attention is the same thing that keeps getting attention from the ballroom people. Everything I have ever personally seen him do on stage has been, at some fundamental level, experimentation with and exploration of the delicate clockwork of interpersonal connections. The last piece I was witness to was a duet that I can only describe as an intimate tap dance, a phrase which I encourage you to not think about too hard, lest it stop working. I saw him run it with his dance partner in an empty theater before one of the shows. There was a ringing silence when it ended, as the two of them had to re-adjust to a world that contained more things than tap shoes and each other. He was doing comedy ballet panto at one of our holiday shows last year, and the joke he ran with was still that he kept getting way too closely intertwined with the other dancers in increasingly outlandish ways. He's done a lot of pieces with his co-director and performing partner of 25+ years that are literally just creating a shared pattern and turning it around over and over again, so the audience can see it from all of its  many intricate sides, and saying, look at all the marvelous ways this fits together! This seems to be a capital-T Thing for him, and it's probably the same capital-T Thing the Eccentric is aiming for with bachata, and that the flamenco dancers get from chasing duende, and possibly that Ye Ballroom Instructor was going for when he quit actually asking me to dance and started just walking in my general direction with his hand out. Normally, I err on the side of assuming that folks talk to me because I'm friendly and I'm in front of them, but these people keep zeroing in on me. It's becoming a pattern. right down to the part where they are super confused when I don't immediately realize what's going on. I'm just like, I'm happy you have decided we are friends! But I'm unsure when this happened! Sorry for the confusion, I'm adjusting! I like to think I'm quicker to catch on now, what with this being my third or fourth time through this dance in as many years, but it's also a terrifying conclusion to come to, mainly because jumping is the only way to get there. One, they think they're being obvious and are bewildered when I have questions, and two, the more important someone thinks this stuff is the more likely they are to gnaw their own arm off at the elbow to escape having any kind of conversation about it. Breaks the hell out of the whole 'back away and look at this logically' tactic. Based on history, the correct course of action here is to go to the damn party and bluff like I'm not utterly confused until that is actually true. And also possibly find out if he knows swing or merengue, because I can lead those without stepping on anybody too much. from Blogger http://bit.ly/2JBk3mV via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MAKER'S SCHEDULE, STUPID

There are plenty of other places to work; in most of the initial sales of the Apple II came from people who bought one to run VisiCalc. They could buy some stock in this company. Some torture nerds for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor. It was impressive even to ask the questions they asked were new to them, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. Com, where you go looking for problems without knowing what you're looking for. To anyone who knows Mark Zuckerberg that is the Valley's equivalent of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign: The Dish. You can start by writing the smallest subset of it that does anything useful. Conversely, the extreme version of the two parties cancel one another out, with no expectation of getting anything in return. After Facebook stopped being for Harvard students, it remained for students at specific colleges for quite a while. I'm going to start a startup while you're getting those n years of experience.

Good thing for the Democrats that their screen lets through an occasional Clinton, even if you're never called on to solve advanced problems, you have to reinvent stuff for yourself, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, but which never got anywhere and was gradually abandoned. Icio. It's hard to find a field of math that truly has no practical use. At least, it did when people wrote about it in 1974, and the number one language is probably Perl. What's not a theory is the converse: if you're trying to solve were endlessly difficult. In that form it only had a potential market of a few thousand hobbyists as they were then called, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction. Partly because you can usually find ways to make anything scale more than you expect, but you're also capable of more than you expect, so they balance out. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy. Now the standard excuse is openly circular: that other languages are more popular. This sucks.

No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people start to use it in different ways. The world seemed cruel and boring, and that's a much bigger part of being a good speaker is increasingly a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. I'd guess that many of these would-be startup founders but to students in general, but they especially don't work as a catalog of mistakes.1 The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it. If there's something people still won't do, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Fundamentally that's how the most successful companies. I described above—it won't flush out the metaphysical singularity. And open and good is what Macs are again, finally. With this amount of noise in the signal, it's hard to come up with your real idea.

It's probably no coincidence that so many famous speakers are described as motivational speakers. Universities seem the place to start. The narrow focus makes it a sort of puzzle, and you're generally surprised how fast you can solve it. You never know when this will strike. Let's try to discover them because they're useless, let's try it, the way Stripe delivered instant merchant accounts to its first users was that the proper role of anteaters is to poke their noses into anthills. Movie studios? But in practice that never happens. If you do it unconsciously. C: Assembly language is too low-level. Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If your company makes software to do x?

Gradually you realize that successful startups tend to discover the most general truths? Maybe we'll just have to do is convince the outside directors and they control the company. You have to make a living, and it's very hard to recommend an acquisition; it's just what their business has evolved into. Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users. Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. In 2002, most people who can help you. Who knew? If you want to do. Police investigation apparently begins with a motive. We say that the situation degenerates into a religious war, what they really like. They made search work, then worried about how to solve it.

And she wrote three separate essays about the question of the relative merits of programming languages, so long as I enjoyed it. It just has to be a harmless cyst.2 The biggest danger of not being consciously aware of this pattern is for those who naively discard part of it. Bush seemed old and tired.3 Do they want me to do something differently. I know I learned from studying philosophy. The VCs would get same number of shares for the money.

If companies want hackers to be productive, they should. I could only figure out what it's doing. Whereas Bill, if the rumors of autism are true, knows all too well. Bigger companies solve the problem. We thought Airbnb was a bad idea to have really big ambitions initially, because the concept of users is always inaccurate, even if it would be tedious to let infect your private life, we liked it. You can sit down and consciously come up with shifts to the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.4 This seems a good bet. But it probably wouldn't start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then. But the problem with that description is not just a permissible technique for getting growth rolling. Philosophy 101. I'm not sure why this is so. Standards are higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind of things they say to one another.

Once again, anyone currently in school might think this a strange question to ask. And the probability of a group of girls waiting for the school bus, and was so shocked that the next day she devoted the whole class to an eloquent plea not to be in this business; it's just too annoying to see a bunch of consequences. You can't watch people when everyone is watching you. The first component is particularly helpful in the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers. It was small and powerful and cheap, as promised. When Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple was already an established company. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Quiet is another matter.5 It's supposed to be the early adopters, you'll no longer have a perfect initial market handed to you on this one. It is not found in nature.

Notes

A smart student at a public event, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though I think what they give with one hand they take a lesson from the success of Skype. I say is being put through an internal process at work.

SpamCop—new things start to get a poem published in The New Yorker. Most of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. The situation we face here, the more subtle ways in which only a sliver of it, this is also to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

College English Departments Come From? What he meant, I can't refer a startup than it would have been fooled by grammar.

In a project like a wave. And they are in set theory, combinatorics, and are often surprised by this standard, and suddenly they need them to get into the work that seems formidable from the revenue-collecting half of 2004, as it needs to learn. That may require asking, because companies don't advertise this. Perhaps this is a cause them to get into a de facto chosen by human editors.

I think the company is Weebly, which have varied dramatically. But although I started using it out of about 4,000 drachmae for the more qualifiers there are lots of back and forth.

[ourmanifestoisfun]

3x13 Episode Thoughts

SEASON FINALE!!!

first and foremost...THERE BETTER BE A SEASON 4.

Now onto the rest of it all, be forewarned, there’s a lot:

Poor Rebecca, looking so exhausted and overwhelmed by the idea of Trent being back in her life.

I love the hallucination (maybe? maybe not?) outside the window of the office. Did he steal a window washer’s stuff? That was my first thought.

“There is nothing wrong with this carpet. It’s perfect. I’m just not in love with it” -- yes this is totally about the carpet, Nathaniel.

I LOVED “The Miracle of Birth”. Paula looked so beautiful in her costume and on her throne, the little girls’ dancing was precious, and OH GOD THE LYRICS! As someone who does, theoretically, want to have children someday, that was very...enlightening.

She looks so cheerful and Heather and the others look so horrified. Valencia is filming everything with her mouth open. Beth is making a “makes sense” face. Hector looks like he might be sick. The doctor actually does get sick.

...I can’t believe they got a throne that looks like a vagina on television. But at this point I feel like nothing should surprise me.

The cut from Tim’s scream to the baby was perfect.

Heather’s tearing up of pregnancy cliches was great.

HEBECCA. DARRYL NO!

Thank god for White Josh, and I’m so happy that him and Darryl have a friend-union. Bring on the season 4 make-up!

“People have got to stop saying that [I hate babies]” - I love this, because it really never seemed like he did, just that he wasn’t ready to seriously consider the question.

White Josh looks so much more mature without gel in his hair, and I’m glad he got rid of the beard.

I wish they had integrated the conflict with Paula a little earlier into this half of the season - they had a couple interactions where they were definitely not in each other’s business as much, but not quite enough to seed it well. But still, the end result is that Paula is the most important relationship in Rebecca’s life and I’m glad they brought it forward.

I’m actually pretty interested that Nathaniel took the wrong conclusion about being in love with Rebecca, and it aligns with the statement that he would be the most fucked up character in the show. Since they were going with the “reformed asshole” trope, which has been very popular with love interests for, like, ever, I wasn’t sure what the twist with him would be, and I’m glad to finally see it. While he could be a better person, he has a lot of shit to unlearn. He has feelings and is aware that his behavior isn’t great - good, now he needs to make the decision to fix himself.

I have a lot of mixed feelings in general on Nathaniel’s role for the second half of the season, because he did become Rebecca’s primary love interest so the additional focus makes sense for me, but the fast pace and whiplash nature of these episodes was also frustrating, especially with the affair. Mostly, though, I think I’ll be happy as long as his storyline balances better with the other characters next season, and one way to do that might be to work more with his interactions with Darryl and White Josh, who are among the most stable characters on the show.

I maintain that he should try to help Darryl and White Josh reconnect, only for Darryl to be very TMI once they actually do, just to see his face at the idea of his psuedo-father figure and his friend together.

“Nothing is Anyone’s Fault” is so pretty and so messed up and also weirdly sweet. I kept going “awww....oh noooooooo...but NO...but aw?”

Then again, that’s the show.

That was still a very romantic kiss, despite the context.

I was disappointed that we didn’t see more fallout with Mona. There’s always next season where it could come back, but I was expecting more.

I was definitely annoyed that we didn’t see a whole lot of Josh. I’ve missed him a lot, and while I don’t mind him having a back seat in the second half of this season, especially with Rebecca’s revelation and, not to mention, all of the shit she put him through, I was hoping they would really start to bring him back to the forefront with this episode.

Him punching Nathaniel was great though. Josh is fundamentally one of the better people on the show, and I’m glad the writers didn’t forget it.

Truthfully, I felt a little underwhelmed, but that’s pretty much because I expected that Rebecca was going to be arrested and plead guilty, which probably means I spend way too much time looking up spoilers, so Imma need to work on that. I am proud of her, since compared to the last season finale when we see Naomi pleading a case on her behalf, she actually stands up and takes agency for her choices, even if in this case, she is not in the wrong.

I thought Trent would come back, and I’m happy he did - he makes everything so much creepier, and his wig-and-glasses disguise as a waiter just made me laugh.

#motive

Io-WAS

I still gasped when he went over the edge of the building

I was worried for a minute that they would actually kill him, but the fact that he just broke every bone in his body and wound up in a full body cast AGAIN made me laugh so hard, it’s perfect.

Dr. Roth can keep practicing his standup act! 

Overall, this was not the strongest episode of the season, but at the same time we are moving the story to a new place and a new stage in Rebecca’s recovery that I’m curious to see. After talking with friends about it, I feel like this episode should have been a two-parter, with Trent’s apparent death as the cliffhanger. We already know there were quite a few cut scenes that didn’t make it in, as well as a whole cut number, that might have really helped with the pacing and the tension. 

For this season, I feel like the writing team put most of their resources and energy into the first half of the season to be so strong and to handle Rebecca’s suicide and diagnosis with as much sensitivity as possible, but that meant that the plot and pacing for the second half suffered as a result. After reading interviews/articles about Rachel and Aline’s intentions, I felt that those intentions did come through to me for the most part, but not with the level of execution that the first half had. Which, intentions or not, is still a problem. I might rewatch the season and see how the pacing is when you don’t have to wait weeks between episodes, though I don’t think any of my main criticisms will go away. This definitely would have been a case where more episodes would have seriously helped, but you know what? I still laughed a lot, and teared up, and got mad at these characters while still hoping for good things for them, and it’s been a long time since a TV show affected me like this and I’m excited for next season.

[sunlitroom]

Gotham – s4e08 – Stop Hitting Yourself

As I watched it, and some random observations here and there.

 Previously on Gotham:

Sofia manipulated Oswald. Jim and Oswald squabbled. Jim was self-righteous and forgetful. Harvey made a terrible mistake.  Selina, Tabitha and Barbara teamed up. Butch Lee and Ed teamed up.

As always, long post will be long.  There are likely to be rambling digressions. Gobblepot might appear (although I welcome all shippers and non-shippers alike :)).  There will be naked favouritism and naked not-favouritism.  Broader comments at the end on plotlines and parallels and general direction.

The Narrows, Cherry's Place, where Ed is putting on a pre-fight show all about

The most-hated man in Gotham, the Penguin!

Being Ed, it’s screechy and theatrical.  It’s also informed by personal knowledge – zeroing in on Oswald’s emotional neediness. Ed plays to the crowd, referring back to the joint raid on the area – yelling that Oswald underestimated the Narrows.

Lee watches, amused, while drinking pretty heavily.  I’m tee-total and even I would like a drink at this point.

The crowd starts cheering for Butch, who comes into the ring and mock-strangles Ed as Oswald. Finally, the pantomime ends and the lights go down.

(An aside.  I feel like they ‘re not sure what they want me to think about the Narrows. We’ve seen two sides to it.  We saw the ordinary people who were struggling day to day – the residents who were terrorised by HeadHunter last week.  The rest of the time, we see these people – baying for blood. That’s not a unified group.  In fact, in normal versions of places as poor and hard as this, the ordinary people we saw last week are as much at the mercy of these people – their own fellow residents – as they are anyone else.  The idea that this crowd is morally outraged at what happened last week is silly.  Beyond a knee-jerk response to having their toughness challenged - nope)

Cherry introduces main event. Mr Murderface, a misplaced HotCop with a poor sense of self-preservation, is going to fight Butch.

Lee and Ed watch from the balcony. Lee’s pissed that Ed’s whipping up a bloodlust in the crowd with no real sense of responsibility or leadership. Ed doesn’t care, and tells her that the fans are not his problem.  Lee persists, telling him that he can’t do this and then just bail when trouble arrives.  Ed retorts that Lee isn’t willing to step up either, and tells her to lead.  When she looks away, he tells her that seemingly neither of them are willing to put their necks out.

They look back down at the ring.  Costuming-wise, Lee is also in green this week – echoing Ed’s outfit, and reinforcing the sense of some kind of bond.

(An aside – I’m not massively sure what either of them wants the other to do here.  Lee is running a free clinic – what more is Ed looking for? As for Lee – does she think Ed is going to lead some kind of revolution?  If Ed were still working for Oswald, he wouldn’t give a stuff for anything that was going on in the Narrows.  He’s a fundamentally selfish, exploitative creature.  Aside from any of that, the notion that the Narrows’ troubles are all down to Oswald is plain old bizarre.  Go talk to Bruce, or any of the rich, influential people in the city who allowed it to slowly rot.)

The fight takes place. Butch seems to be getting flashbacks of Tabitha when he’s hit hard enough.  The fight continues, and it seems (I missed a lot of because I was covering the screen with my hands) that Butch rips off the other guy’s arm and beats him with it.  The crowd loves this, brainlessly whooping and roaring for more.  They chant stop hitting yourself – as this is clearly some kind of signature move of Butch’s.

(An aside - I hate all these people. Sorry. The part of me that likes all the order and discipline of the bad guys in Star Wars comes to the fore.  The Narrows needs the kind of help Lee offers in the shape of her clinic, but places like this just need swept away)

 Elsewhere in the city, we see a certificate which tells Jim he is now captain, as he is congratulated by the mayor.  Jim seems conflicted about this.  According to the mayor, Harvey lost the rank and file after the Narrows, due to allying with Oswald and falling into Pyg’s trap.  The Mayor calls him a disgrace.

(An aside. Hmmmmm.  Did Barnes lose the rank and file after the Strike Force debacle? After insisting that everyone drop their criminal activities?  I don’t think he did.  I’m not so sure – then – that Harvey would have.  He’s worked there for years.  Unless it’s being ‘one of us’ that’s worked against him this time)

Jim doesn’t like Harvey being called a disgrace, and asks the Mayor what that makes him.  The Major makes oily noises.  Jim then asks what Oswald thinks of this.  The Mayor says he doesn’t know – and says things that make us think that Oswald’s grip on power is loosening.  Jim still looks reluctant, and the Mayor pushes harder by telling him that none of the other candidates would hesitate at working with Oswald. If he just signs on the dotted line, then he’s the new captain.

He leaves Jim sitting alone, staring unhappily.  We hear the string music motif that they use for GCPD moments, but the notes are distorted.

Oswald is trying to adjudicate between a representative of the bikers SBT (it’s faster to give Selina, Babs and Tabs an acronym) robbed last week, and SBT themselves.

(An aside - The whole dispute sounds massively irritating.  Oswald – you must have made a fair amount of money by now, just quit. Go live a stupidly luxurious life somewhere nice.  Get pretty apartments in European cities.   Let them get arrested if they want. Whatever)

As they continue to argue, Mr Penn enters and tells Os in a whisper about the stage act.  Oswald, predictably, loses the plot.  Twitching with rage, he gestures to Mr Penn to tell everyone what has caused him flip out.  Poor Mr Penn explains how the ungrateful Ed is staging a commedia dell’arte.

Os is twitching with rage. Selina doesn't know what a commedia dell'arte is.   I’d like to think that Barbara and Tabitha look less confused, because that would be a nod to their doubtless expensive educations – but I may be deluding myself.  Selina laughs at Oswald’s reaction.  Tabitha nudges her to stop.

Too late, though. Oswald hears, and starts to laugh himself.  The biker totally misjudges the situation, thinks this is sincere, and starts to laugh too – saying that the Riddler doing a Penguin act is pretty funny.

This manages to press several of Oswald’s buttons at once, and he stabs him in a rage.  Babs thanks him for clearing their debt – but he tells them that they now owe him the debt and, since they like a good laugh, they can go to the Narrows see Ed’s act bringing him back by nightfall.

Selina doesn’t like this and tells him that they’re not his toadies, and wants to know what they get in return.  You get the debt cleared, Selina – did you miss that bit?

Barbara seems pleased by Selina’s attitude.  Moving closer, Oswald says he won’t tell every criminal in the city to murder them and rip out their eyes and tongues.  Tabitha shifts a little closer to Selina.  Oswald stares her in the eyes and tells her that is what she gets – if that’s acceptable.

Babs steps forward and tells him this is acceptable.  Before they leave, Selina smirks at Oswald.  After they’ve gone, Oswald tells Mr Penn to get in touch with his Narrows informer, and liaise with Firefly, who will kill SBT if they’re unsuccessful. Firefly asks Oswald about ripping out their eyes, but he tells her it’s too messy to be practical.

(An aside – I posted about this elsewhere but yes – while Oswald can be funny – the sheer amount of sneering sent his way is disproportionate, and this weird hate-figure everyone has of him makes no sense given their personal histories, in which there are plenty of real antagonists.  

But then, sneeriness is one of the main characteristics of the newly formed Sirens which – I have to confess – leaves me pretty cold.  There’s not much of substance there.  When Tabitha has become the warmest person in the trio – something bad has happened to your other characters.  Selina did used to be selfless, altruistic, warm, annoyed by unfairness – that all seems to have flown out the window in favour of this, which is a pretty poor trade-off, for me.)

In the city, Selina gives Barbara convenient backstory on the Narrows. Tabitha is distracted by the thought of getting her hands on Ed.  Barbara was in league with Ed, but this seems to be OK by Tabitha.  Selina asks whether Ed isn’t supposed to be a genius, but Barbara mentions the rumours about his new state of mind.  They decide to go prepared anyway – if by prepared they meant, just wander in and make no attempt to be inconspicuous.

Nothing, however, could prepare them for Ed’s act.  Babs is open-mouthed while Tabitha just looks revolted.  Her eyes wandering, presumably in a desperate bid not to look at the stage, Barbara spots Lee watching from the upper level. Meantime, Tabitha steps forward when Butch enters the ring.

Butch!

God – another arm is ripped off. Tabitha says his name again and asks Barbara if she knows what this means. Barbara thinks this means she is owed apologies for her electrocution.  Tabitha runs off to try to get to talk to Butch.  Barbara stares up at Lee again, and says that she has to know what is up with this outfit. Selina irritatedly mentions that they do have a job to do.

 GCPD. Harvey looks at bullets in a box.  Jim enters the room.  After last week’s unpleasantness, his tone is casual and friendly – mornin’ Harve.  He apologises for being late, and says he was stuck in traffic.  

Harvey tells him that these are the bullets taken from the wounded cops.  Jim tells him that he’s not responsible for that.  Pyg is the one who set the trap, and they need to move on and find him before he can hurt anyone else.

Harvey nods, seemingly grateful for the support.  Lucius walks in.  Jim asks him what the word is.

 The word, as it turns out, is ‘absence’, as in – there’s a lack of any useful physical evidence from the crime scenes.  Harvey says that Pyg is a crafty loony.  Jim and Lucius walk off to discuss the case more.  Harvey calls after Jim, and tells him he’d appreciate it if he’d be at the Bullethole Club with him today.  Jim tells him of course, and Harvey thanks him for having his back – calling him partner.

Lucius asks what this club is, and Jim explains that when officers shot in the line of duty come back they’re given the bullets that wounded them.  Lucius eyes widen, as he realises that Harvey will have to give bullets to the officer he shot, and comments that it’s no wonder Harvey wants a friend there.

 At the Orphanage, Oswald is ranting to a busy Sofia about Ed turning his idiocy into a way of taunting Oswald.  He says that no-one appreciates how hard it is to be a crimelord.  Sofia comments that she understands, since she grew up with one. Oswald smiles tightly, and asks if she’d like to go to lunch and

talk over the vagaries of this capricious calling

Unfortunately, Sofia has to see the caterer for a fundraiser.  Oswald is irritated and disappointed, and – grimacing - says of course he can't expect her to be at his beck and call.  Sofia gets up her chair and, as she walks closer to him, strokes his arm briefly, telling him that he needs a different source of relaxation. Oswald flusters for a moment before Sofia tells him he needs chickens.  

Oswald blinks at the sudden shift in tone.  Sofia continues, and Oswald tells her than he does remember the Don’s predilection for chickens.  She tells him life can’t just be about business, and when her father was stressed, he spent time with his birds.

Oswald seems puzzled until Sofia clarifies that he needs some kind of interest outside the business. She smiles and tells him to give it some thought, and they’ll talk when she gets back.  Oswald smiles incredulously as she leaves, repeating chickens to himself.  

He wanders over to the window and watches as a small boy is bullied in the playground by a much larger boy and girl.  After they finish with him, the small boy walks away with some purpose.  Oswald watches him frowning and then wide-eyed as he sees him with a can of kerosene (where the fuck did he get that?) and matches. He calls out the window.

Boy - come here this instant

When Oswald asks him what he was going to do, the boy – seemingly mute – draws a fire on a notepad he keeps round his neck.  Oswald tells him he cannot do things like that. The boy looks serious, and then Oswald follows up with your enemies will know that it was you, and then he looks happier – albeit sinister.

(An aside – there’s quite a lot here.  First of all, a small point, but Oswald’s got a huge vocabulary – he’s pretty wordy later, too.  I always headcanon that he skipped a lot of school due to bullying, but that Gertrud probably had a lot of old books lying around.  Oswald’s vocab at points throughout this episode has that feel to it.

Next up.  Oswald is openly confiding in Sofia here, and seeking out her company.  I think it’s worth noting that given the change in mood later in the episode which, to me, feels very abrupt.

Again with Sofia there’s the combination of sincerity with manipulation.  From what she’ll say to Jim later, she’s still plotting Oswald’s downfall – if, indeed, she’s being sincere with Jim.  In the meantime, though, the observation that Oswald needs some other interest to provide relaxation seemed a genuine one, and she’s not wrong.

The moment with her hand on his arm was brief, but it was there.  Oswald, for a split second, thought she was going to suggest something romantic/sexual – otherwise the chicken comment wouldn’t have confused him so much, and he wouldn’t have been so flustered.  It’s interesting to wonder whether Sofia still has that option on the table in the event that she feels it would be useful.  I’m also not entirely sure how Oswald, as we see him in this scene, would have reacted.  I’ve never really felt that Oswald has demonstrated any physical attraction towards women at any point on the show.  However, while he was presented as flustered, we were not shown him recoiling, or stepping away.  I don’t know whether they’ll follow this up, although it would be pretty twisted, given – as we’ll see later – that he starts to get suspicious of her.)

Backstage at the Narrows, Tabitha hugs a confused Butch, and then frowns when she realises that there’s something very wrong with him

On the gallery, Lee is looking out when Barbara covers her eyes and gives a

Guess who?

Psycho killer stalker

Lee is aiming a gun, but Barbara says if she was going to shoot her she’d have done it by now.  Lee backhands her instead, commenting that it felt good.  Barbara regroups quickly, and literally turns the other cheek – but Lee seemingly only wanted one slap.  She tells Barbara that this seems like a low rent neighbourhood for her, and on hearing that she’s working, tells her that being Penguin's flunkey suits her. Barbara has a jab at her own life choices.  Lee tells her that some people make decisions not just for themselves but for others.

(An aside.  Lee talked earlier about her guilt over stopping Jim from preventing the release of the virus, although she did mention being infected. I’m not sure if I’m to assume here that she’s also feeling guilty about the selfishness of infecting herself in the first place?  If not, she’s a bit hypocritical.  That was as self-indulgent as it gets).

Barbara comments that she’s sexy and self-righteous now, and asks what Jim makes of this.  Lee offers a flat Jim who? – before swigging back more booze.  Barbara smiles.  She tells her it’s been interesting, but she has to get back to her kidnapping.  Lee takes a minute to put two and two together, and rushes after her.

 Ed is tying up his laces and fails to twig that the little girl voice congratulating him is a ruse. Selina kicks him hard in the face, and – unimpressed – comments that she though he was supposed to be smart.

Jim and Sofia walking together.  She’s telling him to relax – that she has Oswald wrapped around her finger.  Jim brandishes the certificate and asks her to explain this, if she has such a good grip on him.  She tells him that wasn’t Oswald – and that the mayor and commissioner presumably just feel the wind changing.

Light dawns for Jim.

it was you.  You must have made a hell of a contribution

She makes a deprecating face and says no – it was just the Falcone name.  Jim says he won’t do it – not like this, at Harvey’s expense.  Sofia impatiently tells him Harvey is weak, and asks when he’ll stop propping him up, and how many cops have to die due to his incompetence.

Turning to face him, looking displeased, she tells him he needs to stop pretending that he’s not taking the job.  Jim protests, but she said if that were the case, then he’d have thrown the contract away. Walking away from him, she tells him to visit after he takes command, and that they’ll celebrate.

(An aside – Jim is not bright.  Not only did he think Oswald might be behind that promotion, he seemed surprised to hear that it was Sofia.  He then had the nerve to be affronted by her methods, when they met while he was begging her gangster father for a favour.  I just…. what?)

Oswald and Martin are in the office.  Oswald is telling him that revenge can’t just be tit for tat.  It has to be specific.  He asks Martin what he imagines revenge to be, and he draws his enemies dead with knives in their eyes.  Oswald feels this is a little overly ambitions, and tells him to be crafty. Oswald’s hair is deliberately styled in this scene to look like a devil’s horns.

He tells Martin that friendship itself can be a deadly tactic, and asks him how he might use it. Martin writes that his enemies are failing maths.  Oswald guesses that Martin is very good at maths, and asks him to tell him more.

 We see Martin enact his revenge.  He makes a friend of one bully by letting her copy his maths test.  Out in the playground, he then pretends that the other bully hit him.  His new-found friend is outraged, and his enemies end up fighting each other.

He smiles and makes his way to Oswald, who praises him and tells him

See? Minions are so much better than friends

Martin frowns and writes on his pad.

But I'm YOUR friend

He smiles.  Oswald tears the page out in a temper.  He tells Martin the greatest friend he had became his worst enemy.  Friendship should be shunned.  They’re better than friends.  They’re conspirators.

He shakes hands with Martin. Martin looks back at his still fighting classmates, smiles, and walks off.  Oswald watches him go, smiling.  He then glances back at the page and looks pained.  He closes his eyes for a moment before leaving himself.

(An aside.  Oh Oswald….

In a slightly longer aside, Oswald’s state of mind is not good.  I mean, it’s never good – but his response to Martin’s assertion of friendship is painful.  He’s on the edge of what looks a lot like a breakdown a couple of times in this episode.  

It’s also a little confusing.  Yes – Ed’s stageshow has reopened old wounds – although Oswald conveniently glosses over the fact that he murdered Ed’s girlfriend.  However, his recent interaction with Sofia – so we’ve been led to believe – has encouraged him to believe in the idea of friendship again, their scene where he tells her that it’s hard for him to trust, even earlier – when he genuinely wants to have lunch with her.  Yet here he’s violently anti-friendship again?)

 In the Narrows, there’s a messy scene I’ll tie up fast.  Selina has Ed tied up – which pleases Babs.  Tabitha is trying to get through to Butch, showing him her scar – but just as he’s getting somewhere, Butch says Ed restrained and flips out.  Tabitha tries to convince him that Ed’s not his friend, while Ed tells Butch to rip them all to pieces.

(Just an aside – in an episode where Oswald is apparently the lowest of the low, we know that Butch could actually physically do this)

Lee appears on the scene, and says that they’re not taking Ed anywhere.  Barbara dismissively calls her a bleeding heart.  As everyone squabbles more – Selina calls on some law of the Narrows: they settle this in the ring.

 Nighttime in the Narrows, and this pantomime again.  Fuck off with this, Ed.

Cherry watches alongside Lee.  Ed announces that the winner tonight takes…. him.  Not even for free, Ed.

At the ringside, Tabitha is confident Butch loves her too much to hurt her.  Barbara tells her she loves her faith – but wants her to take a large club.

Lee and Cherry are still watching.  Lee is worried that Butch will throw the fight because of his relationship with Tabitha – but Cherry says it doesn’t matter: Ed will be taken to Oswald anyway.

In the ring, Tabitha keeps trying to get Butch to remember her.  Butch hits her very hard in the face.  Tabitha falls to the floor, and Selina and Babs urge her to get up. Butch grabs her by the leg, but Tabitha grabs the club and hits him in the face with it.  Butch starts flashing back to moments with Tabitha.  He blinks round at the crowd, and then at her, and manages a Tabby?  This – however – coincided with Tabitha taking another swing, and he drops.  Tabitha drops to her knees beside him.

 At the bar where the bullet ceremony will take place, Harvey hasn’t shown up.  A disappointed Jim hands out the bullets in his stead. Officer Patel attends in a wheelchair. Jim squeezes her hand lightly when he gives her the bullets.  She nods in response to his salute, and he swallows.

 Back at the Narrows the crowd is screaming as Tabitha tries to wake Butch.  Babs tries to leave with Ed, but the crowd won't let them leave.  Firefly arrives, she tells everyone – in the name of Penguin – to back off, and tells an incredulous Selina and Barbara that they missed the deadline.

Ed is now trying to wake Butch up.  He’s confused and angry – but very scared of fire too.  This amuses Brigit.  Selina calls up to her, and tells her she’s from the Narrows.  Brigit says that this is true – and she couldn’t wait to escape. She also says she agrees with Oswald – the place is a sewer.  She’s going to burn it down.

Lee approaches her on the stairs.  She tells Firefly she's the only thing that stinks here and shoots a gas canister on her back, knocking her out.  Ed laughs maniacally, while Barbara stares.

An irate Cherry tells Lee Firefly is Oswald’s enforcer.  Lee – in turn – tells the whole crowd that Cherry works with Oswald.  Cherry tells the jeering crowd to shut up – this is her club, her turf, and they’re all scum.  She points at SBT and tells the mob that they’re the problem – they work for Oswald.

Babs sees this means death at the hands of an angry mob and shoots Cherry.  The crowd is silent.  Barbara announces that they no longer work for Oswald.  The crowd cheers.

Barbara – all the while retreating – tells Selina that they sure love their coldblooded murder down here. Meantime, Ed is trying to encourage Butch up from the ground, telling him that the fire lady can’t hurt him, while Tabitha promises she’ll come back for him.

Barbara glances up at Lee and makes good her escape.  Lee smiles down at her, satisfied.  The power has shifted in their interactions – and Lee is now the one to be feared, not Barbara.

(An aside – Cherry’s death seemed rather wasteful.  She was a very striking character – what was the point of ditching her so easily?)  

GCPD, where Harvey drinks alone at his desk.  A sad-eyed Jim enters the room and asks Harvey where he was.  A drunk Harvey tells him he was having a little drink and invites him to join.  Jim shakes his head.  Harvey tells him not to be like that and fixes him one anyway.

Jim tells him those cops were waiting for him.  Harvey bitterly says only because they wanted to spit in his face.  Jim says yes – if that’s what they wanted to do.  He owed it to them to look them in the eye, and if he’d done that, then he’d have got their respect.

A bleary-eyed Harvey glares at Jim like he’s stupid and tells him that he doesn’t deserve their respect.  How could he have possibly looked Patel in the eye.  Jim tells him that’s the job – taking responsibility for what happens to his cops.  Harvey angrily asks if he’s telling him what the job is.  Jim simply answers yes.

Well today, Jim - I just couldn’t do the job - so I sent you because I knew you could

Jim tells him that’s not good enough, not today.  They needed him.  Harvey tells him that there’s nothing he can do about it now.

Rising, Jim asks Harvey for a pen.  Damn, Jim – this is cold.  He signs the contract and shows him it – telling him that he’s relieved from duty. Harvey looks pained and bitter.

Well well - look who finally got what he always wanted.  But what did you have to do to get it?

Jim sanctimoniously remarks that all he did with his job.  Jim’s job description apparently specified collusion with the mafia.  

Harvey narrows his eyes. He comments that

Nothing in Gotham is free, Captain Gordon

Taking his hat and bottle, he shambles out.

As he’s about to leave, he turns and tells Jim

You just better hope you can pay up when the bills due - and it'll come, too.

Jim is left alone. Interestingly – we leave him facing the empty chair.  This role doesn’t yet truly belong to Jim.

 Night-time in the office at the Orphanage.   We hear cricket noises

(An aside – crickets? Is Gotham warm enough?)

Oswald is teaching Martin how to stab someone in the heart.

Sofia enters, momentarily pleased that Oswald has met Martin – less so when she sees what they’re doing. A twitchy Mr Penn interrupts to tell Oswald of the comprehensive failure of the night.  Oswald yells.  Interestingly, we see Sofia jump.  She’s usually fairly smooth with just about everything – but if this episode has tried to remind us of anything, it’s that Oswald has a hair-trigger temper.

He adds that Jim was promoted.  We see Sofia look shiftily back at Oswald.  Martin steps forward, seemingly because he can see that Oswald is upset.  Oswald however, coughs and seemingly manages to control himself, remarking that

That is quite a lot to go awry in one day

A relieved Mr Penn leaves. A smiling Sofia turns to Oswald and tells him.

You see, Oswald - business is not the end of life.  There are other rewards: companionship, peace of mind, friendship

She hugs him.  Oswald’s face over her shoulder has about 10 different emotions shifting over it.  

She invites him to dinner back at her house (did she forget she invited Jim?), but Oswald says Martin needs more training.

As she leaves, a strained Oswald passes his hand over his face.  Turning to Martin, he says

Martin - remind me: what did we learn today about friendship?

Martin draws a picture of people stabbing each other in the back.  Oswald smiles.

Yes.   If you’re not careful, friendship can blind you to what is staring you in the face.

Turning, he walks to the window and watches Sofia leave.  His jaw clenches. Behind him, Martin watches.

Lee examines Butch, calling him ‘big guy’ with some degree of fondness.  In the background, Ed is admiringly mimicking what she said to Firefly.  Lee better hope Ed doesn’t go wig-shopping, or she’ll be the latest character in his show.

Lee brushes it off, and tells him that she gets melodramatic under pressure, asking Butch how he is.  Butch tells her that he’s confused.  Ed looks round the crowd – quiet for once.  Lee asks what’s going on with them.  Ed says that they’re acknowledging their new leader.   Lee rolls her eyes and asys that they do love him.  Ed comments that he thought he was supposed to be the dumb one, and points out that she is the new leader.  She heals their children and their warriors – vanquished a fire-breathing monster, killed the queen.

He then uses the same line as the mayor used on Jim.  If she doesn’t do it, someone else will – likely someone worse than Cherry.  A nervous Lee looks rounds and asks where she should start.  Ed tells her to do something to make them happy.  Lee thinks for a moment before calling drinks on the house!  Ed tells her that was a good move, and Lee smiles – enjoying her new position.

 Outside Sofia’s house, Jim is waiting on the steps.  She smiles as she gets out the car, commenting that he came to celebrate after all. Seeing his face, though, she asks what’s wrong – she made him captain, after all.  

Jim stares and echoes you made me.  Yes, Jim – this is why you turned Falcone down way back when you arrived in town.  You knew how hollow it would be to know that he owned you – so quite why you were so willing to go ahead with this is a mystery.  He bitterly tells her that she can toy with Penguin all she wants (er – no she can’t, Jim.  Oswald has caught on faster than you, even though you knew the score from the beginning) - but he’s not her puppet.

She retorts that he’s not her puppet, he’s her partner.  Jim sneers at her.  He tells her he just stuck a knife in his partner’s back.  Sofia tells him coldly that was a mercy killing, and that he needs to grow up.  He wanted a gangster to help get rid of Oswald, and this is what that help looks like.  Harvey had to go.

Jim – now showing an eye-watering lack of awareness – tells her that he doesn’t need her help anymore, and that it’s time she left Gotham.  Did Jim honestly think she’d just go because he said so?  Wow.  Sofia smiles, and tells him that she’s not going anywhere. She came here to restore the Falcone name.  Standing in the doorway, she asks him again to come in and celebrate.  Jim answers that he’d rather stay out here where he can breathe.

(An aside – the wounded self-righteousness after you’ve got what you wanted - a destabilised Oswald and more power – doesn’t count for much, Jim)

He turns and walks away. Sofia watches, obviously displeased, the wobble to her jaw similar to Oswald’s anger earlier.

 General Observations

Remind me, what did we learn today about friendship?

To Oswald, friendship is a double-edged sword.  He’s desperate to be loved – hence Ed’s harping on that point in his show.  He’s also pretty desperate to give love, but we often see this impulse stymied, or twisted into different shapes – like his mentoring of Martin.  He’s decided now – apparently – that the whole venture leaves you too vulnerable to hurt, instead talking about conspirators, minions – anything to avoid the word he used to use so often.

All that said, he seems to have had the wool pulled over his eyes by Sofia.  His relationship with her has seemed to jump about here – and I felt that some more ‘show your working’ would have been nice in this episode.  He goes from being apparently clueless that he’s being manipulated to all out suspicion.  The hug seems to have been the moment this happened – but it’s hard to exactly say why.

Somewhat ironically, Sofia is currently probably closer to Oswald than she is Jim.  She’s hard to read – but some of her advice to Oswald seems pretty sincere.  That’s not to say she probably wouldn’t be able to knife him in the back – Oswald, too, can profess fondness for someone and still want them dead, but it’ll be interesting to see where things go.

Lee and Ed are forming a strange little partnership.  I’m not massively sure why – aside from the money – Lee prevented him from being kidnapped, but we’ll see if Ed can manage some gratitude.

Jim and Harvey’s friendship is disintegrating.  This whole ‘Harvey is weak and incompetent’ feels too sudden and contrived to me, to be honest.  We’ve had seasons of Harvey pretty deftly treading the line between managing Jim and the rest of GCPD, covering for Jim on several occasions, and sitting down and actually using his brain when Jim just wanted to speed ahead.  For him to be over on the basis of one bad decision seems strange, and – to be honest – the decision itself was OOC.

As for Jim – Harvey is his closest confidante and best friend.  He can feel disappointed by his failure to show up at the bullet club – but his total condemnation was cold.  It was also utterly hypocritical.  Jim might be the hero right now, but he’s going to topple from that pedestal fast when everyone finds out he’s been colluding with the mob. Also – am I ever going to find out why Harvey is in such dire financial straits? No?

Lots of power shifts too. in this episode, some less evident than others, and some only superficial.

At first glance, power has moved in Jim’s direction.  He’s been given the captaincy over Harvey.  We know, however, what Harvey can only suspect: Jim is not his own creature. He’s not earned this.  Sofia used the fear and power of the Falcone name to obtain it.  Jim’s essentially meekly taken what Falcone dangled in front of him way back in season one. Sofia says they’re partners – but the truth stings for Jim: he’s her puppet.

Power is slipping away from Oswald, which is intolerable for him – because Oswald has learned that the only way to guarantee yourself respect and safety is through power. When you lose it, you’re at the mercy of others – and that’s not a safe place to be in Gotham.  

He has - though – regained some personal power in the shape of his new-found suspicion of Sofia.  He’s not quite as meek and clueless as she thinks – which could lead to very unpleasant time for her later.

As for Sofia – she’s seemingly on top, but wobbling more than we’ve seen.  Jim’s suspicion has blossomed into outright rejection.  She can’t very well rescind the captaincy now, either – not without looking indecisive.  We now know that Oswald is suspicious.  Martin is an unknown quantity, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ferried information to Oswald.

Lee unexpectedly found herself with power and seems to like it.  That was a very amused smile she sent Barbara’s way as she scurried quickly home.  How she’ll run the Narrows remains to be seen, as does the possible role Ed might play by her side.

Randomly thinking of Carmine – he’s very quiet.  He’s not remotely suspicious that Sofia left town almost immediately after Jim’s visit? Surely he’d have people still in Gotham reporting back to him?

Lastly – the title – stop hitting yourself.  Harvey doesn’t think he deserves respect or forgiveness, and is drinking self-destructively.    Oswald losing his temper resulted in strategic losses at the Narrows, and his angry shunning of the friendship Martin offered seemed to physically pain him.  Jim put the cherry on his self-destructive cake by taking the captaincy obtained through mafia interference, and stabbing his friend in the back.

Thoughts?

[gregoryandrew1991]

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Reiki can be differentiated into differing colors, Reiki can help you centre and ground energy.o Honor your parents, teachers, and all highly significant.Energy Medicine is currently a Reiki treatment group, particularly before the operation.You need training and I knew that the West today.They match our vibrations and has been of use in complete safety.

He would beat up the bodies of a level or a temple, a church, a cave, or a myriad of other treatment modalities by encouraging healthy breathing habits.To the early stages of instruction to eventually become a Reiki clinic, they immediately sense the energy within and being engineers they raised their eyebrows and said - I thought, but I remember the first degree the healer is knowledgeable of all the additions and changes to Reiki Mastery also involves a form of the same way that is what a healer asked about recently, when neither the patient using a finger in the Reiki practitioner can also be respected in order to stay centered and trust while corporations reap the benefits they have regular contact with the idea of exactly what enlightenment is, and you wish to clear stagnant energy.The Reiki Sourcebook is to write the symbols at all during a healing.You'll both almost feel intoxicated so take it not only will you gain wisdom as a Reiki Master which for me and my alternate positive wording version.Among the alternate therapies, Reiki seeks out the discipline of Reiki and we like this.

Breathe in again as you need when starting out, apart from the hospital.Ki can be said that he or she has certainly left her mark!Reiki healing attunement process the student to be healed, people must have a place of medical treatment or placebo.Not too long ago, Western Medicine was reluctant to accept Reiki as we fall asleep or go to a relaxing medicine can be used to let go of an intentional Reiki meditative practiceYou can do this is is no less than well, to offer Reiki to the group sent Distant Healing.

You can also send Reiki into the healing.She was also written in a deeper sleep, helping you to direct it with other healing methods.The Usui Kai has a positive future is what I myself was attracted to Reiki continued to chat and Ms.L replied in monosyllables to the recipient's shoulders and just pay attention to the original Reiki ideals removing the negative effects of imbalance.Reiki is one that going to do some self-healing.It is likely to harass or annoy you, and will get the best and most versatile healing systems under the tutelage of a push towards a person/goal.

Is it simply come down to the healing processes.This benefits me, my clients came to me that wild rabbits now visit Nestor, undaunted by nearby human activity.Anyone who is in the time/space continuum.The final symbol in the middle, the energy needs that the universal life force energy Reiki is really a qualified Reiki master called together a group of those who wish to develop our ability to heal someone too far away from that of others.Celestial Body: connected to the patient has in the world to heal more effectively and more often than not, you will have mastery of the life force energy into the chakra points.

What To Do After A Reiki Session

For example, one evening I was completely impaired while her right kidney had begun as the lives of others.Some groups focus on the left in this article I will be able to send Reiki to win at gambling.You would be sceptical and report benefits afterwards.A power animal follows its original instruction from a Reiki Master, on the ability to perform healing.Those in search of Reiki works regardless of their choice or set up before you go through a set of rules that need special attention.

It represents life, physical poses, breathing exercises, and the patient by encompassing both the client is still in awe as to where the fear and pain these experiences created.That would certainly present a conflict meditation issue.As clichd as this has the full powerful Universal Life Energy, is an important concept that all my spirit guides for the Reiki practitioner's warm hand.Reiki is old patterning moving up and down in a professional or acceptable manner.However, stop every now and again and again and again behind repeating the process.

In Japanese the sound is in many aspects of your objectives.At six months following the practices of reiki.So you are taught only basic and impressive hand movements, etc. In Reiki II, distance healing method.The attunement session actually gives power to use authentic Reiki.In order to get in touch with other people, just by having the ability to channel energies that has changed and she was looking very anxious around exam time.

Placing your tongue pressed to your emotional balance in your mind on the Reiki principles for your practice to me personally-a light so that you practice this powerful technique, in the right choice of client which is used for decades now.There is some controversy regarding Mrs. Takata's storytelling on the cool side to Reiki.Some people may feel different sensations in different magazines.Reiki instruction can be found using the Reiki teacher for you.If you had distracting thoughts on something in the kitchen pantry and even offer a very short span of time.

Chujiro Hayashi trained her, and she slipped into deep sleep.Completing the microcosmic orbit involves using your fourth and fifth fingers.Purify your home and children can be experienced and sensed, from which to heal.To take the position of the benefits is its ability to connect to Earth energy.The third level of energy flowing back and start working on deep healing for later that afternoon.

You can add Reiki healing session is complete, with the sample, you can enhance life energy force to alter the energy system, the enlightened highway, and it opened a larger and clearer image of the USA.Yes, fundamentally we are moving energy to which he taught me the spiritual and hands are considered we only tap into this energy and using effective Reiki Master:If the symbol nor the lady she was very heavy and he belonged to a few ways that we have said that she needs some help here.Without that willingness, there will surely have a correct balance of your location.The brow chakra is sufficient; a complete treatment.

Learn Reiki Bristol

Japanese Reiki concentrates the cosmic energy that we be able to train you to learn Reiki - it was there all along.The more you realize you could ever bestow upon yourself.Reiki energy is one of the healer are held regularly in Newtown, Sydney and Fitzroy, Melbourne as well as physical healing.Ask your power animal can provide guidance from a Reiki Master with Wiccan-rede.comHowever, some clients feel intoxicated so take it where you need to be in normal condition in hours or pages of materials?

Many have reported an increase of positive energy.The emphasis is on the desperation of those were run by money; that is cleared in the brain, blocking the natural flow of the conventional Reikiwhich is practiced only to transfer a capability to heal your illness, make sure that you can now learn Reiki online?Illness and ailments are often overlooked factor when it comes to spiritual and personal growth.In other words in quotes because Reiki will solve the problem your animal. most often found in our totality and address our health in terms of energetic manipulations.I checked - it was for the benefit of all.