#that first season really was magic

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thinking thoughts about Abuela being back and with this backstory about her being taken in by charlatans and Eddies whole catholic guilt thing and how the two things kind of play into one another as an exploration of faith and being taken in by something.

Abuela giving all her money to the tarot card readers etc because she was searching for something - for connection (with Abuelo) - trying to recapture what she had lost, and How Eddie has spoken about trying to re-find the magic he had with Shannon - how Eddie hasn't actually fully reconciled the Shannon of it all when it comes to relationships and how his Catholic guilt connects into that.

How Marisol as a physical representation of Catholicism is part of that narrative - how Eddie is entering a place where he has to chose his path - in order to move on from Shannon he needs to fully square the hole - catholic or non catholic. And how that needs to happen first - before he can begin his queer journey!

[icewindandboringhorror]

sneeping with his legs up over his head for some reason... weird boye

[sailorfailures]

One eerie frame for every classic Sailor Moon episode, OP, & ED

🌙🖤 Happy Halloween!

[carebooks]

i made a video on Callum from the 5x08 episode. you know the one. paired with Taylor Swift’s illicit affairs based on this post:

hope ya’ll like it✨✨ @gender-cloud

[kyouka-supremacy]

:O

[ridleymocki]

Not that this show gives even the slightest shit about technicalities and plausibility, but one narrative reason Stede couldn't touch Ed's body before signs of life is it would've been warm. He would've known immediately.

[hell0mega]

the capabilities and powers that angels/demons have really confused me, especially with what we're shown in season 2. i feel like in season one it was always pretty clear what the limitations were for their powers, Crowley can do a bit more than Aziraphale can (and we now know why), but there were plenty of things in season 2 that felt like could've possibly been solved through devine or demonic intervention and it felt contrived that they weren't?

more under the cut cuz i went on a bit

i think a lot of these concerns come from the final fight, which honestly feels way too long. why couldn't Aziraphale miracle away the stairs? why couldn't he teleport away? they can teleport people as we saw with Adam (that was Crowley so maybe it's a stronger power). and with that, why did the angels believe the 25 lazarai miracle was to make the humans fall in love? and not even right away?? why could Crowley not miracle the wine bottles back together? seems like reconstruction is an iffy area but all the glass (and wine) were still there. he could've materialized more bottles as well, even if they'd be "fake." the idea of miracle blocking, let alone demons being able to do it, blocking BOTH kinds of miracles, INCLUDING a high rank like Crowley, seems CRAZY op to me.

why didn't they use miracles against the demons? Crowley can make absolutely giant holes in the ground that suck up grave workers, he can BRING A GUY BACK TO LIFE??, but he has to lie about rules of engagement to buy them time to get the humans away? he can stop time/space/individuals/whatever he's doing, why can't he do that to buy them time? you might think oh they're preventing themselves from drawing attention, but he doesn't work for hell anymore so why would he care, and they already have all the attention on them and are being actively attacked by dozens of demons right in front of a group of humans

aziraphale ended up using his halo which is taboo enough to start a holy war and yet he didn't try to do anything magical before that. they can change paintball guns into real guns AND make sure none of the bullets kill anyone purely by "chance" AND not have anyone involved notice they're no longer shooting paint, they can turn children into lizards and back, but they can't protect a bookshop more than just having vampire rules??

[cureblogging]

Gonna say something potentially controversial:

I think Heartcatch suffers from the Up phenomenon in that people remember it as an excellent, if not flawless masterpiece when it actually has One (1) excellent, if not flawless moment in the beginning and is otherwise nothing special.

[tuttle-did-it]

remember that time Tom Paris went really fast, died, resurrected himself by became a Time Lord, evolved into a salamander, kidnapped the captain who also turned into a salamander (and possibly would have also become a Time Lord), mated with the captain (apparently REALLY quickly, they weren't missing for that long??), had three salamander babies, abandoned the salamander babies and then he and the captain were magically transformed back to normal with not even a scar? and then it was never, ever mentioned again.

[talentforlying]

also forgot to post about it yesterday, but i have designated december 2nd as constantine's official catch-up day with his niece gemma!! they don't see each other often since she "quit magic for good" (or is very good at pretending she has) but the holidays are a hard time for them both and it's too awkward to explain every year why you avoid your last living relative, so they've agreed on early december for an annual short dinner and chat. sometimes they call on christmas day, but they never meet up; neither of them wants to do christmas without cheryl.

[theminecraftbee]

as we get into more grian stuff I’ll go ahead and admit to the probably most tutu-inspired bit of this au in my head, which is that in the theoretical fifty-episode anime of my imagination, the first arc is basically played entirely straight and goofy, with the goal of putting the spirits back in the jar and re-sealing magic being unquestionably the good guy thing to do and the Enemy being unquestionably bad. the main confounding factor here, of course, is that we as the audience know grian can’t be a villain, because he’s grian, and we know him well enough in his civilian form to know something’s got to break.

the second half, however, is the consequences of the first act. here’s where we start to pull in things like the civilian support group, or cub’s possession and subsequent partnership with the spirit of chaos. we get more of the public debate going on about the magical girl situation and public opinion. we start to get a lot more of grian’s descent and subsequent redemption. and we start to properly question the status quo the beginning of the story gives us: is “put the spirits back in the jar and seal away magic again” really the correct course of action? was the last great mage really a perfect hero? is scar?

do we follow the way we know the story should go, or do we choose a new path?

anyway I thought I’d mention this as I brought up grian’s arc because a lot of the grian stuff, from his perspective, ends up playing into the grey area that exists here.

[chirpsythismorning]

Obligatory I watched heartstopper s2 post and cried like a baby, obviously

[owl-with-a-pen]

So, I have reached the final episode of season 6 of my Supergirl rewatch and I just have to reiterate: they did Nyxly so dirty.

I still don't understand what they were thinking. Nyxly is the first person to pass the Courage Totem's test, she's inundated with empathy from the Humanity Totem, she's completely open with the Truth Totem and is granted access to the Love Totem by choosing the life of a child over her own quest for power.

So, why did they just bung her back in the Phantom Zone!?

It wasn't a satisfying ending, it wasn't even a character arc - it was a circle! She ended up exactly where she started. Sure, Lex's hubris being his own downfall made sense for him, but him being in the second leg of season 6 at all felt so unnecessary that that wasn't satisfying, either.

Here's how I like to imagine this story arc going, because I'm never going to have the time or energy to do anything with this idea besides writing it down like this:

So, we've got Humanity, Hope, Courage, Dreams, Love, Truth and Destiny. 7 Totems. 7 Super Friends. Say, each Totem was tied specifically to a member of the Super Friends and so we're given an episode per Totem exploring a member of the team and their unique relationship to what that core element represented for them. (They sort of did this in the show but only for a couple of the Totems and they never really committed to it as a theme).

Narratively speaking, the Super Friends are working together to beat the trials, which is exactly what a superhero team should be all about. Together, they represent the best the planet has to offer.

Except, that's not the point of the trials. To gather the AllStone, you have to do it alone. And who's doing it alone? Nyxly. Nyxly bares her soul to these Totems, she gains most of them independently without cheating and the further along she gets into the trials, the more she's able to overcome the very reason for her pain and anger that led her down this path to begin with.

The Super Friends aren't looking for power, that was never their goal, and so of course they aren't playing by the rules to gain it, they're doing it in a way that everyone equally shares a part of the burden and so the effect isn't as intense. For Nyxly, though, by gaining all 7 Totems and going through those associated trials, I like to think that by the end of her arc, she willingly gives up that power.

And maybe that's the whole point of the AllStone. Only someone worthy of power should gain it, and the only people worthy of power are the ones that don't want it. The AllStone isn't meant to be a weapon or even a tool used by an individual, it's supposed to be for the whole world to share. And so the very mechanics of the trial will either fail those corrupted by their thirst for power long before they get a taste, or teach someone the true values of their own humanity by fairly passing every test.

I know the show wanted to go out with a bang and a big-stakes CGI battle with all the trimmings, but Nyxly was never designed as a villain. She was hurt and angry, but that never made her evil. She was a fifth dimensional imp, all she ever did was cause mischief, and so having her face her own reality through the trials would have been a major grounding factor for her.

To have the final villain of the show willingly give up their power not because it was beaten out of them, but simply because they decided to feels right to me. They built up the stakes so high in this season to make Nyxly out as the most powerful villain they'd ever faced -- and so maybe the only way to beat her was for her to decide that the fight was no longer worth fighting.

I dunno, it just would've been nice if the AllStone had actually meant something at the heart of it, and that Nyxly actually had a satisfying end to her story that made sense for her character.

Oh well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[undertheknightwing]

I can't be the only one who noticed this but they completely ripped "athlete" from Jon's character and honestly it's very disappointing

[valentinerose529]

does anyone else get the feeling that RWBY might have done differently if it was a monster-of-the-week fantasy school type story instead of the chosen-ones-against-the-evil-mastermind path it's going now?

From a storytelling perspective, I think the plot could have been more consistent if it had remained in the schools with a smaller-scale plot. The gang moves to other schools as part of exchange student programs, and every few seasons end in an Amity tournament at the end of the school years, signifying the move to a new story arc. As the gang settles in the other schools, they get to uncover the backstories and whatnot of various characters.

This would require smaller-scale antagonists and villain-of-the-week setups with various cronies and schemes. Perhaps if it stuck with the season one villains: Ronan and Neo, whose main motivation was nefarious profit, and Cinder, whose original characterization was someone who was so cool and awesome that she simply had to be the best at everything, including gaining all four Maiden powers. You'd likely have to scrap characters like Salem and Oscar who are 100% related to the Big Destiny Plot, but honestly I think it would have remained consistent with the original vibes of the first few seasons.

And of course, you could return to the tried and true method of using classrooms for worldbuilding exposition--how better to explain your lore than to make the characters quiz each other with flash cards about the upcoming test on the king of Vale? Weapons upkeep class (perhaps taught by Professor Qrow, wouldn't that have been better than just hearing about him and Tai being teachers offscreen?) in which Ruby gets to present her scythe and excitedly talk about all the aspects of huntress weaponry?

I think i would have liked that better than the World of Remnant segments because I didn't even learn about those until halfway through season three. And I'm not the kind of person who likes having to find information elsewhere (a la authors posting important backstory details on Twitter), so honestly I would have liked the worldbuilding to, yknow, be in the story instead of as a side piece. But that's just me.

[funkily]

Hey is it just me or does empires season 2 suddenly ending Make no sense? Like I dunno at least for me cause I don't even think Lizzie's gotten the crown yet :( and in season 1 they gave everyone the chance to have a crown before ending it. It feels weird

tbf not necessarily everyone had a chance last season ! gem and pearl off the top of my head didnt get it . but yea the finale of s2 is definitely being rushed i think . it seemed like there was a lot of stumbling this season as they tried to figure out what they were doing this time around so it looks , to me , like theyre just kinda trying to . wrap it up