#thinking about rewatching beyond evil again

[greatdisaster]

he mad

[coughdropenjoyer]

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[tansyuduri]

Merlin Loregasm Rewatch S1E3

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my rewatch of Merlin focusing on the lore. I am a giant nerd so pretty excited about this. THE MARK OF NIMUEH!

Gaius saying that people must not see this and they would panic is likley NOT just because this looks magical as hell. See we know from later episodes that while Gaius has mastered herb lore for many ailments and injuries and anatomy as well (This is also important as it also hints that Christianity has not spread and thus it being forbidden to cut up human bodies to learn how they work is not a thing.) He and thus likly Camalot in general still base medicine on the Humors System.

This system attributed most illness to an imbalance of the four bodily fluids or humors. (Worth looking up if you wanna know more) NOW since in the system everyone has a diferant balance of humors it could explain individual illnesses A LOT BETTER than many plagues (Why would everyone suddenly have the same imbalance of the Humors) This would usually lead to the idea that an individual's chance to get or die from the plage was due to preestablished susceptibility to the plague (explained later) Or the heavens being angry. WHY PLAUGE HAPPENS usually was attributed to Miasma (explained later in post) or the heavens being angry. AND YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE THINKING THE HEAVENS ARE ANGRY.

Gaius is VERY ahead of his time in medicine by thinking that illness could be spread though air, food, or water later on. It hints that despite the humors system being in use medical understanding is more advanced in Camalot then it was most of the medieval ages. This is very possibly due to the fact that despite killing sorcerers (Or perhaps Gaius being an exception because he learned pre purge.)

Old pagan knowledge of herbs had not been crushed. AND what's more no one was going around murdering regular herbalists ETC suspecting they were evil magic users, Mostly because they had REAL magic users to hunt. Still the spread by water air or food we see mentioned later is WAY Ahead of its time.

Okay Gwen giving her father smoked pigeon as a seeminly every day meal perhaps continues my conept of Gwens father being a HIGHLY skilled blacksmith that serves the knights.

Meat was a rarity for the medieval commoner (We see this a lot in what Gaius and Merlin eat reguarly. Meat is a treat for them.) Pigeons were likely not eaten widely as anything but wild meat until the Norman period. Which means someone had to hunt and kill that bird. Which means this meat was bought or traded for. Which means Gwens family had the money for treats beyond the bare essentials (If we ignore history due to the show's anachronism we still have to compare this to Giaus and Merlin's usual food. (I know they talk about dresses later when he gets a really good job but we'll talk about that then. I'm also assuming this is everyday fare for them based on how they act.)

Okay its time to talk about how Gaius and Merlin talk about disease spreading through water or contact or food is HUGELY Advanced for its time. See from the forth centery BCE to the early 1800s CE Disease was a result of the humors, The anger of the Heavens, or Miasma (bad air emitting from rotten organic matter or other things.) This means that despite humorism being the main theory there is SOME understanding in the Merlin world that disease can be spread many ways. I really don't think they have germ theory though so I think they are just more advanced.

"He's got a grave Mental disease" AHHHH OKAY! So this means the Merlin world has a concept of Mental illness and that it's different from regular body illnesses. And this knowlage is common. Again this is HUGLY advanced for the time. So Humorism is the main theory! BUT They have concepts like infection, Mental illness, and an understanding disease can come from many places. All I can think is that this comes from having Magic in the world. And being able to actually study Anatomy. The people of the Merlin world understand the world better than most because they have more tools to study the world.

Okay so I love how Merlin plays fast and loose with magical creatures. (Especially because I can too writing my Merlin fics) I think the Afanc might be based PARTLY on the folklore Afanc but also had a bit of the Jewish Gollum in it with the born of clay thing. ANYHOW The Afanc is a creature from Welsh Mythology Its a lake monster that most closely resembles a crocadile, beaver, dwarf. It prayed on swimmers mostly or people who fell in water. There is a lot more but it is interesting that some Legends say King Arthur killed it!

Okay! So! see this candle!? This was a historical early method of keeping time. Each mark would be about an hour and as the candle burned down one would know the hours had passed! OPnce gunpower showed up they would sometimes put a bit in each hour as an alarm of sorts! I don't think this is a Gunpowder version!

So yeah this came from greek philosophy and was a thing for most of european history. The elements Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. were viewed as the building blocks of the world. Originaly air was viewed as Aether and filled the world in the absence of the other three. But in the Merlin world it is definitely Air as it's is later called wind. (Aether later came to represent heaven or the spirit as a 5th element)

These also related to Humorism discused before

Saying The Afanc born of earth and water can be killed with fire and air is one of two times the four elements get brought up in relation to magic in the series. (The other refers to a healing charm.)

Most other sorcerer created creatures we see can just be killed with fire and are not specifically corresponded to any element. This leads to the idea that this is kinda a rare thing. WHAT I do find interesting is that we KNOW the four elements correspond to certain types of healing in the Merlin universe (like I said other mention refers to a healing charm) And the Afanc is spreading magical disease. THAT might be why the elements are mentioned only here when it comes to magic-created creatures.

I find the wording here realy interesting because it talks about mirroring the spirit of life, not creating it. I'll have to contrast it with later talk about the spirit of life and death but this kinda implies even anciant sorcerers on their own can only MIRROR life not create it. Its not real life they make. Even Merlin's spell to create a butterfly at the end of the show means "to work, shape, bring into being or form" according to @catsconflictscopicsandchamomile My old English studying friend! (it is also used in OE translations of Genisis to mean make a life so it could mean Merlin is creating life and mirroring god, but if he could do that why not just bring Arthur back) SO it is likely this holds fast to the rule life cannot just be created!

HOLD ON. Is he just referring to Arthur's birth? It could just be Arthur's birth and his efforts through the purge, or has Nimueh pulled evil magic on Camelot post purge before?

[darkstarofchaos]

Yet more EarthSpark S2 spoilers.

And now for some general thoughts about the season itself.

Where was Nightshade during all this? They are a main character, why did they not have so much as a subplot in another character's focus episode? People talk about Thrash getting sidelined, but he had a whole episode plus a paired episode with Twitch. Nightshade is barely there, and when they are, it's either a battle scene or sharing the scientific spotlight with Wheeljack.

Speaking of Thrash, I liked his episode. I would like to think finding a random Quintesson on earth and then shooting it into space will have repercussions later in the season, especially with the Quint lore in the final episode. But now that the Decepticons are just flat and evil, I might not even watch that far.

Why are the Decepticons interchangeable now? Starscream and Shockwave are the only ones allowed a personality beyond "smash stuff". And yes, I'm counting Breakdown in that, because he's a shadow of his former self, and the whole thing with him being a parent to Aftermath got dropped after five minutes. And you know, I might be giving Shockwave too much credit, because disagreeing with your leader on one course of action isn't a personality trait. And Starscream's ultimate goal is apparently just smash stuff. So you know what, I'll amend that, why do none of the Decepticons have a personality beyond smash stuff?

Like. Twitch ends up in the Decepticon base in the guise of Spitfire, and we don't get a single characterization moment. I guess the Cons all just stand and snarl at each other when they aren't on missions.

On the other hand, I don't understand why so many people were confused that the Decepticons were following Starscream, because why wouldn't they? He seems to have been doing a fine job, judging by the number of Emberstone shards the Cons had. I get that most Starscreams can't get support to save their lives (often through no fault of their own), but the Decepticons here seem to have no reason not to follow him.

Moving on from the Decepticons, I'd have to call the trailer episode and the carnival episode the worst of the lot. The whole subplot with Robbie having a crush was the most uncomfortable thing I've had to sit through in a while, and I would not voluntarily watch it again. And the trailer episode was just tedious. I get having something more relaxed in between the Spitfire two-parter and the finale, but couldn't they have found any other plot for it? People rag on the bear episode, but at least that had a nice little lesson about not messing with people's prostheses rolled in. This episode was just. Nothing. But it did come with a distinct lack of squicky "feeling your brother's crush through your psychic bond" stuff, so I'll give it that it's rewatchable.

Okay, this was a problem with S1 too, but that psychic bond has to go. It's creepy and invasive, and it's only going to get more so as the humans get older and start exploring adult relationships. At least give them some way to close it or otherwise shield themselves from it (it's also a constant plot hole, because characters often end up in danger that the others somehow don't notice. Like, is there a range on this psychic thing? How far apart do they have to be before they can't feel each other anymore? This thing is not explained well enough, and I don't see why it even needs to exist).

Assorted episode nitpicks:

That is not how you dispose of hard drives. Why did you not wipe them before recycling.

No food ever touches the plates on the dinner table in the Quintesson episode. I am unreasonably bothered by this.

How did none of the adults think to address Spitfire's insistence on being part of the mission by pointing out that Twitch is older and more experienced than her? Like, yeah, Spitfire probably wouldn't have cared, but someone should still have put their foot down and said she can't go on a mission until she's had some training.

Megatron, you are the only non-participant who can fly and the final stretch of that obstacle course was over a ravine. Why were you not in a position where you could quickly help out if someone fell? Twitch wouldn't have had to go back to save Alex herself and the whole thing with Spitfire being mad because she crossed the finish line first wouldn't have happened if you had positioned yourself more strategically.

Actually, Megatron proposed the race, Megatron wasn't close enough to be helpful during the race, and Megatron said they needed to let Twitch and Spitfire sort things out themselves, which resulted in Twitch getting bodyswapped. Every problem in this episode was Megatron's fault. Optimus, why are you not vetoing any of this? Why are you just standing there and letting Megatron pit kids against each other? You're a leader, do some leading!

On the other hand, Megatron wanting to resolve everything by letting the arguing parties fight it out is on brand for him, so like. Kudos for characterization, now get an adult in here.

[loisfreakinglane]

What are your top 5 Dollhouse characters and episodes and also just moments in general?

okay okay okay lettuce get into it! i must warn you ahead of time, i am about to ramble incoherently for entirely TOO LONG!!!!!!!!!!

top 5 dollhouse characters:

priya. always priya. my judgey dorky lil vagabond. she's an artist she's a world traveler she's a survivor. she confronts her problems head on, she is brutally honest. she doesn't give a fuck about money or prestige. she loves loudly, through acts of service. infiltrating a military compound to save tony. coming back to the dollhouse to save her friends. introducing baby tony to his father. i love her rage and her perseverance and her bitterness. i love her willingness to forgive and start anew. she's an all timer for me.

tony. priya's other half. i really want to crawl inside his brain to try and understand him. what is it that made him sign up for the dollhouse to recover from ptsd, only to immediately turn around on his release day and sign up to be a soldier again- only with no individual identity, part of a mass hive mind. he had no wants for himself, not until he met priya and she became the center of his world. he could be so cavalier, so lighthearted in the face of horror. making smalltalk with priya in the middle of a gun fight. joking that she should wound him if he was imprinted with someone evil, but to ~stay away from his junk~ did he only truly value his personhood when it came to protecting priya and their son? I DON'T KNOW BUT I KEEP FLIPPING HIM OVER IN MY BRAIN LOOKING FOR ANSWERS.

topher. on first blush- an amoral asshole, so focused on stroking his own ego with his giant genius brain, he never stopped to worry who was peering over his shoulder. i think he gets dismissed as a dick a bit too much, when on rewatch, his biggest flaw to ME was naivete and carelessness. he convinced himself he was a good person- he ~fixed~ priya, he ~cured~ a fuckton of soldiers' ptsd, he imprinted echo to reach out to abused children. and he never worried that the dollhouse couldn't be trusted- he trusted adelle, he trusted her ability to retain control. he's a goofy, dorky childish dumbass. and he ends the fucking world (or at least heavily speeds up humanitys downfall). but his arc from careless dick high on his own prowess to traumatized, guilty, grieving, desperate to actually be a good person for once. and that's not even taking the epitaph's into account! and whatever it was in that decade between the hollow men and the epitaphs that drove him entirely off the deep end. anyway topher makes me sad and i love him and i think his ~redemption arc~ is very engaging

boyd. STOP JUDGING ME. DON'T DO IT. I LOVE WHO I LOVE. okay like first off- obviously- THE WRITING IS A MESS. THE REVEAL IS A MESS. WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH IT ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE TAKEN AS A WHOLE. but right now, coming off this rewatch? i just??? love him???? i love my evil dad, a total wackadoodle mastermind, taking an entry level job at his own fucking company because he's fixated on a new innovation he discovered- caroline, her weird body quirks, her innate capacity for revolutionizing the dollhouse tech. he was so intent on guiding her progress while pretending to be some lowly ex-cop. and then he went and fell in love with his coworkers. much as he ruined their lives, he had genuine love for echo, adelle, topher. perhaps claire. (when did she become clyde? was it right after she left the house?) beyond them, i'm not entirely sure how far his adoration spread- i like to think he was fond of priya and tony too. he guides echo's development, he's genuinely upset when he is removed as her handler. he prods topher about his sense of morality for 2 seasons straight, pushing him to consider the consequences of his actions. helping topher and priya cover up nolan's (righteous, justified, absolutely self-defense) murder. he throws more and more opposition adelle's way until she takes charge. he wants them all to be their best selves- and he wants them all to save each other. AND BE A FAMILY. TOGETHER FOREVER DURING THE APOCALYPSE. and there's something very funny to me about him hating paul, while he spent two years arguably pretending to be a man very much like paul.

caroline. echo. i still struggle to grapple with the differences. is this like a holy trinity thing, is caroline just another facet of echo, alongside all her other imprints? is echo a facet of caroline? have echo and caroline turned into the same entity? did echo truly remain the porchlight, waiting for caroline to come home? YOU KNOW WHAT DOESN'T MATTER. tho carolecho should be considered nonbinary i am just saying. both alpha and echo should be enbys. sometimes i struggle with echo when her plot becomes very paul-centric, because while i very much love tahmoh and enjoy paul in his dynamics with other characters, the echo/paul relationship is not for me. but outside of that? i love her. i love that she's a warrior, before and after becoming an active. her fixation on rossum, her willingness to lie, manipulate to get to them. she found rossum first, and that got them interested. and her wacky health stats got them laser focused. she wanted so badly to save animals, save humans, save the world. having the weird bodily capacity to manufacture a vaccine was just a bizarre stroke of luck. but it was her choice, again and again and again, to do good things, to help people.

honorable mentions: adelle dewitt. laurence dominic!!!!!! ivy. alpha. margaret bashford.

TOP 5 EPISODES!

204 belonging. our priya-centric episode. the only priya-centric episode? which is very unfortunate, but hey, I'll take it. finally seeing her whole story. priya taking her power back, priya getting her revenge, priya making her own choices. priya/tony content. topher grappling with his complicity in horror. obviously he has always been complicit in horror but now he finally has to confront it head on, and it makes him second guess everything up to this point. and it makes him struggle with his relationships with both adelle- who he thought he could trust, who pushed him to do the wrong thing out of self preservation, and boyd- who he still believes he can trust, who protected him and priya, and helped topher do something fucking HORRIFYING for the right reasons. topher choosing to help priya, for real this time. after the bullshit help he was fooled into giving her. with a side of!!!!!! echo is still BECOMING herself, still exploring her mind, but this time it's boyd figuring her out, warning her of potential consequences from her actions, but helping her anyway. hiding her secrets, giving her the keycard for future use. god boyd in this episode..... warning echo of the consequences of her future actions, and helping topher deal with the consequences of HIS actions. helping cover up a murder. well. an act of self defense. righteous revenge. THE BITCH HAD IT COMING. which was soooooooo cathartic and beautiful and i LOVED IT.

209 stop-loss. OUR TONY-CENTRIC EPISODE! c'mon you knew i had to do it. another priya/tony episode. one of our only episodes featuring the crime fighting trio we could have had for multiple seasons in echo/priya/tony. echo getting to use her abilities to access her imprints. the journey we see tony take during this episode tho- being discharged from the dollhouse, given a pile of money and a new future. we got bits and pieces of this process through madeline, but it's given more time and depth here. seeing that although topher may have ~cured~ tonys ptsd, he is still isolated and traumatized by his experiences. and he knows something is missing- he sees priya in a club, only it's not her. and of course he's immediately swooped up by a rossum adjacent military outfit using active architecture to create a hivemind army. it was VERY dark angel x-7 series in a fascinating way. this should have been a multi-episode arc, but i'll take what i can get. echo and priya saving tony, tony having to overcome mind control to save priya. IMPECCABLE. but also! seeing our lil group of freedom fighters truly start to form! boyd, echo, topher, ivy, paul, priya, and tony. and our brief glimpse into adelle as THE BAD GUY. as well as! finally seeing adelle hit what we later find out was her breaking point. she got drunk, she got shot down by tony (in deleted scenes), she has that amazing moment where she goes down into the dollhouse, strips off her clothes and showers with the actives. this is the moment she chooses to join team TAKE DOWN ROSSUM. she had regained control over her house, but this is when she decides to take her power back. she's not playing rossum's game anymore.

108 needs. this episode!!!!!!!! our first time TRULY MEETING caroline, priya, tony and madeline. i mean i'll be upfront- i hate the beginning of this episode. i hate a dream depicting two women in a madonna whore dichotomy. angel devil shit. i hate it. BUT ONCE WE GET PAST THAT!!!!!!!!! 10/10. even the reveal that this ~awakening&escape~ was manufactured doesn't impact my enjoyment because the feelings are real, the experience is real. we get to see priya and tony be in love without understanding where that came from. madeline grieving a daughter she cannot remember. priya confronting the man who stole her life. tony protecting priya, the way he was unable to with joe hearn. and caroline- caroline gets to confront adelle and topher over the morality of their actions. and she gets to lead the dolls out into the light (which i do have to ask- they're 8 stories underground. did they take the elevators in shift? did echo ride up and down with the gun out every time? how did this go? you know what ignore me i don't need to pick this apart). which- what a goddamn moment. and to top it all off with the discovery that it was all claire's idea- and boyd takes issue with her over playing her own games with the dolls. she views it as necessary for their emotional states, but is he wrong? this was such an emotionally cathartic episode. and so so important for me and my connection to these people we usually only ever see as other fake people

109 a spy in the house of love. FLAWLESSSSS. first off, the framing device. following every active throughout their imprints day. missing bits and pieces every time. i loooove playing with perspective- everyone seeing different aspects, having different parts to pick over. priya and echo in parallel roles of a sort again, both hunting down a spy in very different ways. the revelation that dominic OF ALL PEOPLE was a fucking spy for the nsa. topher showing his soft side again when he suspected boyd and gave him the chance to run. in retrospect, while dominic was obviously... not a 10/10 person..... he tried to kill echo, he was prepared to torture and kill ivy, and kill topher and echo, to keep his cover....... he wasn't actually wrong about the dollhouse? the technology WAS too dangerous to let run rampant. adelle WAS naive to trust rossum. and echo WOULD be the one to bring this entire house of cards down. too late, but still. we also get to see the softer side of adelle here. she's not all boss bitch, she has vulnerabilities and dreams, she breaks down after dominics betrayal. she has no one to confide in but a person who is not real. oh my god not to mention! the reveal to paul that mellie is a doll!!!!!!!!! there are too many secret dolls this season probably, but the emotion with this reveal was so intense. it was so heavy and hurtful, so damaging. a great episode for topher, for dominic, for echo, for adelle. and at the end- adelle genuinely believing echo's progress is a GOOD THING because it protected the house. one of the best ENSEMBLE episodes.

212 the hollow men. not a choice i would have expected, but hey. i fucking loved that episode. much as it's hard to make sense of boyds secret evil mastermind identity, the reveal in context of this episode hits so hard and works so well for me. and the twist back around from 'boyd is evil' to- but also he still loves you guys a lot and wants to hang out forever while the world burns down around you! makes me feel so many feelings actually. clyde!whiskey is stupid hot. the mellie/paul teamup is fun until it's horribly depressing, and it makes me wistful for a timeline where these two actually did fall in love in some fashion. the chemistry is there, whether she's mellie or madeline. priya and tony coming back to save everyone- and the return of topher!tony. the hints toward tony's future with him already starting to be programmed with extra skills. the fakeout happy ending quickly followed up with an apocalyptic ten years later. everything here worked very well for me on an emotional level. echo and boyd still striking that beautiful balance of devotion, only now it is twisted and ugly. god truly just watching boyd navigate this episode, still basically acting the same way with the rest of the characters, but we see so much more in his face. there's an edge there, there's an eerie undertone. for however much this was sprung on us so suddenly, harry lennix was up to the task of selling it. he truly deserved more time to explore this aspect of the character.

#5 is more dubious and i wonder if it'll retain its top slot once i'm a little more removed from this rewatch but i'm rolling with it for now. it doesn't escape my notice that 4/5 of my top episodes heavily feature priya/tony lmao i am what i am. other top contenders- 110 haunted, 113 epitaph one, 210 the attic, 211 getting closer.

FAVORITE MOMENTS! i'm actually gonna use this slot here to talk about some of my favorite like...... ideas? things that keep bouncing around my brain? random shit!

priya/tony are the only ship that don't exist in a multiverse that perfectly fit that quote about how in every universe i will find you and i will choose you. also for years there, enver had appeared in the avengers as a young cop in modern day, and in agent carter as a war vet in the 40s. and in agents of shield dichen was an immortal inhuman we saw in both the 40s and modern day. so for literal years there i had a long running daydream about her the tragic immortal, and her love, the man constantly reincarnating. AND THEN AGENTS OF SHIELD WENT AND MADE ENVER A TIME TRAVELER WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH DICHENS DAUGHTER. I MUST LOL AT MYSELF. another impeccable ship, tho. has to be said. daisysousa5ever

the whole thread throughout 111 briar rose through 112 omega about sleeping beauty. echo telling susan to think of herself as the prince, who is fighting to save briar rose. she is both the prince and the princess. 111 making us think it is paul who is coming to save the sleeping beauty echo from the dollhouse- we even have him literally waking her up from her sleeping pod- the end of 111 revealing it was actually alpha who came to wake echo up from her doll-state and bring her back to life by making her MORE like he is- only for 112 omega to flip that entirely on its head and give us echo and caroline as two separate entities. echo given the chance to save caroline, first as a human girl trapped in the wrong body, and then on a hard drive. they kind of ruin it at the end by having paul catch the hard drive of caroline, but hey. whatever. I'M STILL SAYING ECHO AND CAROLINE ARE THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF THIS STORY.

i have little use for mag and zone as characters on their own merit, but that little moment in epitaph two where they ask what the other did before the apocalypse. it's something that always fascinates me in postapocalyptic content, who people were before they became an apocalypse survivor. kind of reminds me of lost in that way too.

topher v echo as progenitor of the apocalypse and the messiah respectively. adelle v boyd as parallel mentor figures. the initially villainous presenting character who eventually chooses good, ends the series trying to save humanity, and the character that initially presents as heroic, only to reveal he had evil, selfish motives all along. adelle and boyd have pretty equal parental/mentorship claims to echo and topher (tho adelle/caroline had a deeply sexual vibe i am just saying). it's just..... fascinating how they all four relate to each other. and the men both die, boyd in echo's efforts to stop the apocalypse, and topher in his own effort to END the apocalypse. echo ends her story underground, isolated and yet surrounded by (and filled with) people. adelle on the surface ready to shepherd a new flock into the light. there's just!!!!! a lot to pick apart and play with!

sort of thinking a lot about how the first time paul met topher in 111 he tased him and then alpha helped him carry topher into the office. then the second time the three of them were in that office together paul found topher on the floor, having been attacked by alpha, and lifted him onto his feet. there is SOMETHING THERE eating at my brain. and that being the like...... last act paul had as his actual original real self, pre-dollification. THINKING THOUGHTS.

multiple times characters call out how protective echo is of sierra. i want so so so much more of that. plz.

topher!tony. dominic!tony. TOPHER!TONY. GIVE ENVER AN OSCAR FOR THIS TV ROLE.

the TO REMEMBER wall of photographs. especially its appearance in epitaph one, it always makes me so weirdly emotional? that wall, the song, the pictures of cast and crew. 10/10

i'm gonna cut myself off here or i'll never shut my mouth

THANKS BABES <333

[seventhdoctor]

Soulshipping rambling: Just how does Judai relate to his past life? How does that affect his relationship with Yubel?

Bunch of musing below, now updated with screenshots while I'm reposting stuff that never made it to tags because Tumblr is a functional website. I think this is the last repost but it's gonna be me yelling a lot about these two.

(Also, happy anniversary to these guys! GX episode 155 aired October 3, 2007.)

In their original lives Judai promised Yubel he’d only love them, after Yubel had already voluntarily become a monster dedicated to protecting him. In the present Judai remembers their past lives while Yubel is trying to destroy the universe, tortured into insanity by a combination of his mistake and the Light of Destruction’s corruption.

Before Judai remembers, he only sees Yubel as his mess that he has to clean up - if any emotional attachment remains, it's buried within his memory twice over. But once he remembers, he instantly flips from "you’re evil and deluded and I will stop you at any cost" to "I accept your love (metaphorically), you need healing and I will risk my entire existence to help you."

(Episode 153, after Yubel explains Spell Chronicle)

(Episode 155, Judai chooses to do that. I haven't stopped thinking about this moment since my rewatch)

What exactly is he thinking at that moment when he flips? The decision to fuse with Yubel is about taking responsibility (growing up and redeeming himself for his mistakes) as well as - or even more than - a matter of love (acting on his feelings about Yubel). But also, there’s so many angles to what he’s feeling about those two things, and how much of each factors into exactly why he chooses to fuse their souls.

The flashback to their past lives is brief, less than three minutes of mostly exposition, and you don’t really get a full sense of just how much Judai connects with his past life beyond the line "I remember… They’re me and Yubel in our past lives" (paraphrased) before he watches his past self make that defining promise.

How much does he remember? Does he feel like a continuation of his past life in that moment, or like the next version of the young prince? I feel the answer to that question changes the meaning of his decision to fuse their souls together, in essence ensuring they can’t be separated again as a gesture of love and/or responsibility.

If he feels a sense of continuity with his past self, then that decision is a continuation of that promise to love Yubel, and an as-it-should-be reunion between guardian and guarded.

If he views his past self as someone connected to but separate from himself, then continuing that promise is more of a decision he takes upon himself to stay connected to someone he still feels tied to.

...Or maybe not. Maybe it’s simply a sense of duty to someone he’s hurt, someone he promised to love in another life and feels obligated to love in the present.

(Judai's smile when remembering his friends transitions into a determined expression just before he declares a fusion of his and Yubel's souls. Also, get rekt Amon.)

How much responsibility does he feel to uphold the vows of his past self? How much responsibility does he feel to heal someone who’s been hurt badly because of his mistakes (which, to be fair, were made because Yubel was attacking his neighbors to begin with)? Complicating this question is the massive sacrifice Yubel made to become what they are, a transformation that persists through lifetimes all for Judai's protection.

Yubel is tied to the past in a way that Judai doesn't have to be. Does this change the nature of what Judai feels toward Yubel? Is loving Yubel Judai's obligation, his nature, or his choice? Can it be multiple of these things, or all three?

You could argue it's none of those things, really; you could say Judai owes Yubel nothing and doesn't care about Yubel at all, but simply fused with them to save his friends and the world. I think that interpretation ignores how Judai's attitude towards Yubel visibly changes once he remembers the true depth of their connection, though, and what that says about how he views them.

But without direct word about what Judai was thinking during this moment, in the end the exact feelings Judai has about Yubel and the fusion are a matter of interpretation and/or headcanon. Regardless, it leaves room for a lot of fascinating questions about how their past bears upon the present...which are never revisited for some reason.

Well, that's what fandom is for I guess. The only value I have to contribute to the GX fandom is yelling about Soulshipping so here I am.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

some more interview 1994 movie rewatch things that made me insane:

- they live in 90s subtext land, so the narrative swapping of louis having a dead partner and child and gaining a new partner and child in lestat and claudia

- what if there is no hell, what if they don’t want us there!!!!!!

- louis’ moral quandaries next to how he reacts with revulsion when approached for help by one of lestat’s victims. he’s just kind of fucking evil the entire time (obviously) and the way his depression and moral despair leads to utter apathy and cruelty despite his constant abstract sense of guilt— which eventually also leaves him. like he does need that guilt bc otherwise there’s absolutely nothing. and the culmination of his arc is exhausting even his grief and arriving at that nothingness.

- lestat giving claudia a doll every year on her death day :C

- the scene!!!!!!! where claudia pretends to want to make amends with lestat. who is being petty and angry at her, but clearly through the lens of family, wholly unaware that claudia is completely against him now and ready to see him dead.

- that beat when he’s cruel to her, and she’s like “why do you say such things?” he’s just quiet for a moment. and tom cruise’s face really does go on a journey there! acting! and that next to the glimpse of real vulnerability when he asks her “do we forgive each other then?”

- claudia saying “one lesson you taught me, never drink from the dead.” the caged birds in the background! while lestat keeps thinking this is just an increasingly mean prank! it takes so long for him to understand what’s actually happening, even after she admits to poisoning the twins and letting him drink dead blood. him demanding to be put in his coffin because he thinks louis at least would obviously help him

- and then!!!!! the way louis just walks in on all this, completely unaware, because claudia left him out of the planning after he initially rejected her idea of a mutiny. but once he does see what she’s doing, he doesn’t care enough to prevent it. he is only really effected enough to lift caudia so that lestat’s blood doesn’t get on her skirt lmao

- “you missed him.” “he was all I knew” the way this is the OG kill your toxic fatherspouse storyline

- when lestat shows up again!! STILL speaking entirely in a familiar and familial context, and how him attacking claudia is the only thing that rouses louis enough to actually hurt him. also just love the way this story uses a good cleansing fire to signify an upending of a stage of louis’ life

- the way that, reflected in louis’ anguished apathy, the other characters all see whatever they want to see. basically whatever would fill the void in their own empty lives.

- that scene where even claudia and madeleine’s ashes crumble into nothing

- lestat showing up yet again, entirely decrepit. that scene carries so much weight. the way he is still talking about claudia, still thinking about bygones and louis just says “that’s all past.” louis so unfeeling and having withdrawn fully into himself that he can afford to be indulgently amused by lestat’s fears, how he cringes at electric light. how he walks away completely uncaring. he’s just literally beyond everything and anything

[claudemblems]

KAT!! omg you're really making me want to rewatch this show 🤣 please 14+15 for william moriarty! it's always the most fun to write about characters you love 💗 💫👍

Moon you watched Moriarty the Patriot??? I just started watching it recently but it's SO good I cannot believe I didn't watch it earlier!!! Thank you YouTube for recommending me a random clip from the show so I could finally be convinced to watch it

And of course, thank you for requesting Moon <3

William Moriarty

Prompt 14: they roll on top of you, cradling your head between their hands as they kiss your nose

Prompt 15: ^ placing a kiss on your forehead as they mumble how pretty you are

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

After a long day spent ridding the world of its evils, there was nothing you wanted more than to let your exhaustion melt away in the comfort of William's arms, safe and secure from the perilous city of London.

"That was quite the performance you put on, darling," William said with a soft smile. "You led those villains right to their deaths, and they were none the wiser."

"Well, you were watching, so of course I had to make it a show worth remembering."

William laughed, causing your heart to swell in your chest. That was a rare sound to hear from him nowadays, especially with the way he'd practically been buried in his work.

"You truly took my breath away. We make quite the perfect couple, don't you think?"

"If your definition of a perfect couple is getting away with murder, then I'd be inclined to agree."

"We're just settling the score board one move at a time. With you aiding me, my opponent's king has practically fallen right into my lap. Before long, they'll be met with their rightful checkmate."

You hummed, wrapping your arms tighter around William's waist. When you were this close to him, you could hear the steady rhythm of his heart, a pleasant reminder that he was still here, living and breathing, not yet taken by the dark powers of this world.

But you were taken by surprise as William rolled on top of you, a yelp involuntarily leaving your lips. He smiled upon hearing it, but instead of throwing a playful tease your way, he took your face into his hands, gazing down at you with a fondness so palpable that it made your heart leap in your chest.

"Have I ever told you how much I love you?" he whispered, his thumb gently caressing your cheek.

A blush bloomed on your face, no doubt growing as red as his bright ruby eyes. "Yes, many times, in fact."

"Is that so? It seems to me that I haven't said it enough."

"William..."

Before you could utter another word, William brushed his lips against your forehead, letting his touch linger there for a few long moments. "You are so beautiful. Every part of you."

Your skin grew warmer at his sincerity, his words almost too much to take in. How was it possible for someone to look upon you as if you were the most precious thing in the world? Who could make sense of the way their adoration for you only seemed to grow day by day, something far beyond the capacity of human understanding?

You may never fully understand it, but all you desired in this life was to be loved by William until your very last breath, and, if given the chance, to love him in the life that came next.

"The angels themselves would marvel at your beauty," William said, giving you another kiss. "Truly, I must be the most fortunate man in the world to have you." Followed by another kiss, and then another.

"I could say the same for you," you replied, laughing at the kisses that left a ticklish sensation against your skin.

"No, darling," he replied, meeting your eyes once again. A determination filled them, accompanied by a sense of complete certainty. "I am the lucky one." With one last kiss pressed against your lips, William smiled. "Because I get to love you."

[butterflydm]

wot 2x5: damane (thoughts on darkfriends and other evils)

includes book spoilers through book 14: a memory of light

Very much looking forward to examining the scenes again when I rewatch this weekend, but my brain is just going... a mile a minute, so I wanted to put some thoughts down before I go to work today.

So we got to see Darkfriends Getting In Each Other's Way this episode, which is a classic. Hilarious, love it. They are selfish AF and each have their own agenda and mostly all hate each other.

(in theory, this should have been what separated Our Heroes from the Darkfriends, but in the books, Our Heroes ALSO all got in each other's way a lot so... I do feel like the show is maybe setting Our Heroes up to be more supportive of each other than they were in the books. but that is a side note. Back to the Darkfriends!)

The Clown Car of Black Ajah is already looking great! It cracked me up earlier in the season when poor Alanna was having a scene with tons of other Aes Sedai and every single other character who spoke in the scene was Black Ajah. You are Surrounded, my darling!

Thoughts: did Liandrin Compel Sheriam? (aka does Liandrin not know that Sheriam is also Black Ajah) Very possible! Sheriam and Liandrin have gotten in each other's way a couple of times this season. I was so glad that the show namedropped both Compulsion and Tel'aran'rhoid in this episode!

I have to say, that Liandrin was able to make it back to the Tower with her excuse does make me wonder if she'll be able to snag that coveted 'merger with either Alviarin or Galina' role (which would let her at least put off her Bad Book Ending for a while) after all. The problem is that if the Wondergirls make it back to the Tower at all next season, her cover is completely blown because Nynaeve knows beyond a doubt that she is shady AF.

Liandrin and Suroth absolutely despising each other and each of them fantasizing about the other one kneeling to them: chef's kiss, no notes. Liandrin fucking Suroth over in the last minute both because she immediately hated Suroth's guts and because she couldn't help but give Nynaeve a fighting chance: fascinating. I do think Liandrin was incredibly disappointed when she got the note that it was time to take the girls to Falme -- I mean, I don't think she gave a shit about selling out Egwene (and Elayne was an accident of fate) but as Nynaeve sussed out in the Ways, she absolutely wanted to recruit Nynaeve to the Black Ajah and get her on side that way.

Suroth's spikiness with Ishamael! (someone last night suggested that Ishamael is cosplaying as her truthspeaker, I think? which would make sense with how he's behaving) When she had her little tantrum and suggested that, sure, maybe the Dark One Chose him and all, but he's not BLOOD. Amazing. That's the arrogance that we expect from the Blood. Again, perfect, no notes.

Love love love that we are already getting the set up of a potential division within the Seanchan by explicitly having Turak say that they are here to fight the Shadow. The Seanchan Civil War that never happened remains one of my greatest disappointments with the books. To already be setting up some seeds for a reason for the Seanchan to split in half is great (a little while ago, someone suggested that instead of getting the Sharans, we would get the Seanchan being split in two, and I would heavily support that notion, for sure).

The show also seems to be (early on) setting up the idea that some people choose to believe that living under the Seanchan isn't so bad if you swear to their oaths... but making it clear what a selfish position that is. The New Innkeeper tells Perrin this, but then when Perrin asks about the old innkeeper, we learn that she's off following the caravan to Falme because her granddaughter was one of the girls kidnapped by the Seanchan. So New Innkeeper basically got a free inn out of taking advantage of other people's misfortune. Plus then we had Perrin very pointedly telling Aviendha (when she asked why he saved her) that people shouldn't be in cages.

(Because the Whitecloaks are ALSO 'evil but not the Shadow' much like the Seanchan are, or Aridhol was -- and, like the Seanchan, the show is already setting up the cracks of a potential division within the Whitecloaks in the future)

Verin: Investigator was also a fantastic thread. I love how she managed to get her fellow Brown Ajah Sister (I will look her name up when I do my rewatch) onto the trail of the Black Ajah just by implication. We can see the ways that she successfully has been sussing out who (else) might be Black Ajah by catching people in lies without letting them know that she's realized that. Starting the Black Ajah Hunters storyline this early can only do good things for that entire plot thread, I think.

So... Barthanes... probably a Darkfriend like in the books. Is Anveare a Darkfriend? I tend to lean on 'no' though it WOULD be funny if a Darkfriend was responsible for the Shadow's plans for Rand completely falling apart because Anveare couldn't resist spilling info to her big sister in order to impress her. (I do think that she and Barthanes might think Moiraine and Rand are hooking up tho; especially since they went off to share a bedroom at the end of the episode)

I am also intrigued by the fact that Fain is clearly still a Darkfriend in Good Standing with Ishamael, because we've definitely gotten Hints that the dagger is influencing him (the Fade nailed to the doorway). And Shadar Logoth was evil, but it was an evil that despised the Shadow.

I was also intrigued by Ishamael claiming that Mat was ~born mine~ -- because he had a shitty upbringing with crappy parents? because he was already in a bad enough place at the start of the series that he was stealing from other villagers? because... some other reason...?

I'm also trying to remember if Ingtar and Ishamael shared any Looks this episode (Ingtar definitely gave Loial some wtf looks and they both recognized Egwene when she showed up, obviously).

This episode did such a good job setting up the various 'bad guys' that will dominate the series going forward. Genuinely thrilled.

[delyth88]

X-Men rewatch 6

X-Men: Dark Phoenix. I hadn't seen this one either. That might have been a good thing.

Okay. I think filmmakers should be banned from telling this particular story ever again.

I mean I guess this wasn't awful from a general movie point of view, but from a fan and character point of it really went in to destroy, didn't it? Like, I now have an unpleasant taste in my mouth. It took what I had come to love and just broke it.

Sigh.

I can't say I wasn't warned.

But this is unlikely to get a rewatch for a looong time if ever.

Both films that have tried this storyline have sucked. Not being a comics reader I wasn't sure which parts were fundamental to the story, so going into this one was a bit like Russian roulette - which characters are going to die this time? Given I'm now a certified Charles Xavier fan I am selfishly glad it wasn't him this time, but Raven? That was totally unnecessary. (As a Loki fan I am completely allergic to killing off beloved characters for shock value and to make your new big bad look more powerful. Just stop it. Okay?)

But beyond that, what I hated the most about this was how they twisted everyone just a little too far in to the evil mirror universe. *rolls eyes*

It was rather excruciating to watch Charles talk of superheroes and later be cut off by the president. Which I can only assume was there to make sure the audience knew that the other's were right about how he was being overconfident and putting people in harms way, and... I'm not exactly sure what else. The moments where this thread worked best for me were when it was more personal conversations. (Although the kitchen scene with Hank just seemed out of almost nowhere.) Jean's conversations with Charles I thought worked better - we could see how it looked from both sides and how Charles genuinely thought he was doing the best thing for Jean. I truly thought she was going to kill him again, so it gave me hope that he go through to her in that moment.

It's a shame Raven wasn't around to have a heart to heart with Charles. I think that would have been enlightening. And Hank seemed to change so abruptly that it didn't feel convincing.

Perhaps if it had been a couple of years for me between Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix it might have seemed more natural. But coming directly after three movies that had a really strong bond between the characters to this, I really felt I was missing some backstory here.

Thinking about this I've also realised there weren't any moments in this that felt like there was as much of a connection between the characters as the first few. Each one of those had at least one knock out moment for me between Charles and Erik, and sometimes the others.

Although, I did feel the weight of the world building and the previous films when Charles tells Erik that if they fight here on the streets of New York they will have lost what they've been working for. It has been so much work to get to a world where they are not feared and hunted, and the exchange with the guard and Nightcrawler in the transport about how the guard's kid had looked up to him hit home. :( And then we watch them tear it apart. But somehow it didn't ring as true to me as the other key decision points in the previous films. I had been thinking to myself that they had had remarkably believable motivations for each of the characters for their actions, and the scale of them, up until this film. :/ I dunno. There was just something missing.

Maybe it was that the key relationship this time was between Charles and Jean, but it just was as strong as the one between him and Erik that has been the foundation for the last three films.

And now, help me out here. What actually happened at the end? Did Charles just decide to retire and leave the school? Did he just feel too guilty? Did he feel he needed to leave because he had gotten too above himself? Was he pushed out? Is he homeless now? Or did they just rename the school in Jean's honour and he's stepped away from the day to workings of it, but is still welcome there? Did Erik just offer to help him move the his island? I'm not clear. Whatever it was he clearly was unhappy about things, but I WANT TO KNOW MORE! lol

I thought it was interesting that Erik really did seem to have settled down to live a peaceful life. I appreciated how he was prepared to defend his people, and then help the authorities escape. And here again, I think it really needed to have hit home harder that Raven was dead, because it just didn't seem to work for me that he was so dead set on killing Jean.

Still, I did enjoy seeing them all working together on the train.

I did appreciate Charles eventually acknowledged he'd done the wrong thing by Jean to Hank and the others on the train, and there did seem to be some sort of redemption for him through Jean's forgiveness. But not fully, maybe only not from himself. I don't know.

I missed the light and energy of the Charles from the previous films.

I do wonder if that's part of the formula for the X-Men - the contrast between Charles and Erik. The continual hope for something better from Charles, and Erik's quest for vengeance. And when you disrupt that balance the line goes slack. Here Charles took on too much of the darkness, and there was no-one left pulling in that direction anymore.

Y'know, if Raven had been injured such that Jean thought she'd been killed but had survived and then been able to have that conflict with Charles I think that would have been more satisfying. She could have been fighting for the family she loved and the ideals they had originally set up the school on. I think to have seen her, the person who has always been sceptical of hope and seeing the good in people, going up against Charles and being the example of what he used to be before he got too carried away would have been more powerful. And then her and events bringing him back to the place he needed to be.

Maybe this was meant to be a lesson on becoming too entitled and arrogant. But the resolution sucked.

Hmmm... what else can I say.

Oh yeah. The weird aliens. I don't really want to say this, but I think they needed more screen time. lol They felt like such a side plot. Who were they? Why did they want to take over earth if they could just use the power of the pink space lights to terraform Mars or any other planet? Did the blond one have enough of the power from Jean to do that? She certainly seemed to have significant power of some sort after Jean transferred some of it. All in all they didn't spend enough time on them for me to care about them or feel any sort of sympathy towards their cause. They may as well have been a random natural phenomenon.

Oh yeah. Her Dad sure seemed to be a jerk. And again that shouldn't have felt that way to me.

So yeah. A very unsatisfying film.

[jacksprostate]

having finished rewatching the movie recently, me and @a-forsteri I think nailed down a little about what fundamentally is different about the dynamic between the narrator and Tyler in the book vs the movie. Beyond the book being more violent and dark and the narrator being much less reserved about participating in all of it, I mean.

Fundamentally, the strife between Tyler and the narrator in the book is the narrator's failure to commit to anything. Blowing up his old life — blew up his condo, still goes to work. Saying fuck you to his job — acts like shit, takes until Tyler intervenes to actually 'quit' (he doesn't but Tyler does kill his boss so basically). Hell, even hating his job — he does, plenty, but he stores all his feelings about his boss in Tyler and pretends Tyler's feelings have no source in him. Pursuing his ideal of changing things — joins and creates fight club, project mayhem, immediately backs out once Tyler is shown to not be real. He does project mayhem assignments, doesn't even quit his real job. Tyler does it. A gift to him. The thing he wanted to do before he died. Thinks about suicide constantly — doesn't actually kill himself, never fully lives, either. Killing Tyler — he tries repeatedly because he gets it in his head, but fails repeatedly until he shoots himself to evade the cops. And that in itself is arranged by Tyler. Tyler tries leaving the narrator and that does manage to make the narrator commit to being fucking annoying, but not much more. Still not actually making choices with impact. The narrator had to know the fight club men wouldn't kill him. He backed away from the edge. Tyler ultimately creates a circumstance to force the narrator to choose and commit to life or death. Tyler is trying to make the narrator better even if it means the narrator chooses to kill them and even if it means Tyler is the evil guy intending to martyr them — if that's what's needed for the narrator to choose, then fine.

In contrast, the movie focuses more on his inability to let go of his old life. Slide. Tyler will haul him kicking and screaming and one day the narrator will thank him. Tyler says relax, let me do what I'm doing. The narrator can't let go — gets cold feet about mayhem, can't imaine sex with Marla, quits his job but only on orders of his new boss. Refuses to grow beyond him. Dependent as always. He can't let go of it. Tyler gives him a near life experience, tells him about the future he is crafting for him, and leaves him to sleep as Tyler works to secure their future. All the narrator has to do is let it happen. Let himself become the person who is free to change his life. Let himself evolve and break things, stop clinging to his past. Again, Tyler is trying to make the narrator better. They are less separate— Tyler doesn't ever tell the narrator that he has essentially given up on him, they're going to live separate lives now, he says the narrator has to forget everything he knows about them. And when he tells the narrator the truth, he says we don't have time for this. He will hold the narrator down, he will put a gun to his head if that's what it takes to force the narrator to let go and let it all happen. It is all always steps in his plan. For the narrator.

Both Tylers, making little chrysalises.

Book Tyler? I don't know if he wants the narrator to become him. He's more independent. He still cares, the narrator is still his purpose, but it was the narrator's refusal of Tyler giving up on him that provoked Tyler to his artfully megalomaniac ending.

Movie Tyler, he does. He wants the narrator to grow, become what he wants to be. That's Tyler Durden. Maybe they merge. But The point is— if the narrator would let go of who he was, every step takes him closer to who he wants to be. Tyler. And Tyler has less actions that speak of his own desires and grown independence, even with how much he does and plans, because it's all for the narrator.

Tl;dr

Book: narrator's lack of commitment, more independent Tyler, narrator pushes them into the climax

Movie: narrator's unwillingness to let go, less of Tyler as an individual more as the vehicle for the narrator's enlightenment into him, Tyler pushes them into the climax

Both: Tyler ultimately acts to benefit the narrator as he sees it

[estrophore]

Signalis Post (barely coherent thought vomit)

So I finished signalis on Monday and i think ive just about recovered enough for me to make a gush post about it on tumblr dot com, which i think i have to do cause i dont think any other game has really hit me as hard as this one. Spoilers obvs.

Being pre-transion, with that associated depression and closing off from oneself, ive always found it difficult to get out my feelings, even in private with just myself, and yet signalis has filled me throughout with its beautiful romantic melancholy and left me genuinely sobbing for the gay robot and her space girlfriend (almost worried that if id played this game on estrogen it might actually have just killed me on the spot). the only other times i can think of where i really cried were playing We Know The Devil near the beginning of the year, which really fkin hit the part of me that struggles to accept myself, and that time i rewatched the last episode of she-ra after reading the ‘Word War Etheria’ fanfic, which brings the characters so much more to life i fell for them all over again.

Signalis is a game that calls back to a lot of classic horror like resident evil and silent hill, which i havent got round to playing any of yet, but i think nostalgia works both ways sometimes and i’ll be playing them sooner now. sometimes horror gets stereotyped as all death and violence, some games fill themselves with skulls and corpses, and big ugly monsters and basically shout ‘DEATH!’ in your face repeatedly and it all just comes off as a bit garish and ridiculous and not actually very scary really. Signalis sits at the other end of that scale (with some of my other fav horror games like soma, cry of fear) where its environs are most usually just… quiet. Still. Muffled. Sad. just as often as theres tension or creeping fear because of this i find theres a strange kind of comfort too. Maybe its just that in most other genres of games theres so much of music, UI elements, pickups and interactibles with vibrant design. Here, theres room for your mind to just occupy the space. A soft fog. A dimly lit room. An empty train. Snow out a window. Liminal spaces that dont expect anything from you.

Signalis is a game thats just simply, unapologetically gay, and i dont think i would have been quite so invested in Elster and Ariane’s relationship if they were a straight couple. Its why representation is important, if art’s way for us to explore our emotions then its important to have media that we can relate to. Even Adler’s role isnt typically masculine. Our replika characters are manufactured, designed for certain roles in the base. Notes from the tough Stars and Storchs in the shooting range, the dollish Eules with the fairy lights and music player in the dorm. I couldnt help but think of groups of Eules sat around chatting, together, and im yearning for that feeling of togetherness, of understanding a friend that closely. I somehow missed the couple in the mineshaft (next playthough, ill find you v_v ). Despite the harshness of life in the Eusan nation (especially for the gestalts) the characters in it are defined by their feelings of belonging and hope. With the obvious parallels to east germany, i think of posters of cosmonauts and space travel from the time. Propaganda, sure but also made with the genuine belief in something greater. When the events of the game take this away, well, we find the last Kolibri, whod rather lose herself than lose her [ah. Im not sure theres a word here to properly describe the relationship they embody]. Its a game defined by loneliness.

We dont lie up at night scared by some corrupted android. We arent stuck with horror at the flesh everywhere, not on its own. We lie awake thinking about Elster and Ariane’s love for each other, the horror of their decline, the futility of trying to hold on forever. Its existential horror done perfectly. It shows an ending postponed and stretched far beyond its limits, and so squarely reminds you that you do, in fact, have to die one day. You’ll break down. One day you’ll say your last words to the people you love and you wont even know you have. Ariane’s final few diaries arrive with the full force of the narrative behind it, like a spear through my heart. For the record, I got the promise ending. Im still sad. It's a game about raging desperately against an unfair ending. I might think about this game for the rest of my life. I would sincerely say its an artistic masterpiece, by the sure definition of video games as art.

I like that the story leaves a lot open and abstract. I think it makes the emotional themes takes centre stage more. And i havent had nearly enough time to sift through it and come up with my own takes, we’ll need a few more playthroughs for that. And theres so much more to say that cant go in just these few paragraphs! Signalis is a game about two girls who had to run away from everything to find someone they belonged with. The universe may be cold and bleak, but you have to try, you might just find something beautiful, even if it doesnt last forever. I think if anything, we should all have the chance to find love and happiness like that, and we shouldnt have abandon a world that doesnt work for us to do it.

[starkdirewolflove]

X-Men ‘97

I had recently rewatched the original series so when it was hinted that the two part story One Man’s Worth would be a clue/tie in for the three part finale I knew it was gonna be about Nimrod and time travel shenanigans. When Fitzroy kills Xavier it creates the dystopian timeline where the X-Men never existed and Magneto is mutantkinds leader and greatest hero, Bishop and Shard take dystopia Storm and Wolverine to the 50’s to stop the assassination of Xavier, fail then go to the future and travel back to stop Fitzroy again only they are being targeted by the Nimrod sentinel who is sent to make sure Xavier dies and humanity can live as the dominant species. The second time around goes better since they are just able to stop Xavier dying and seemingly destroy Nimrod. The dystopia timeline gets erased, Bishop gets lost in the timeline on the way back but eventually links up with the X-Men in their fight against Apocalypse in the Beyond Good and Evil arc. Now with Bastion’s backstory being revealed in Tolerance is Extinction Part One it shows that Nimrod wasn’t really destroyed he fused onto the janitor at Xavier’s university who was married to the waitress at the diner Xavier and the others were at and they turned out to be Bastion’s parents and he was conceived to be the first human/sentinel hybrid and grow up to destroy mutants.

So basically everything that is happening is Bishop’s fault cos his future is so shit he keeps travelling back to the past (90’s present) to make things better for himself but every time he does he makes things worse for the present timeline, his future timeline and even Cable’s time even further in the future.

Also I was a bit disappointed Val Cooper wasn’t actually Mystique in disguise, she was just a two faced bitch that was working for the bad guys all along while pretending to be an ally to the X-Men then got scared when she got caught in the crossfire of a genocidal attack. I think her releasing Magneto played into Bastion’s plan because he knows Magneto is gonna go nuclear on humanity after Genosha and seeing all the world leaders that backed up Bastion’s plan while he was being held hostage and every mutant on the planet is gonna follow Magneto now. Even Val Cooper agrees that Magneto Was Right.

[bl-bracket]

4, 8, 16, 24 for ask game

4. Favorite Side Character

Okay this is so hard cause I love side characters so much. I think in terms of who has given me the most brain rot, I gotta go with my son Sound from My School President. Like angsty lonely gay teenager being adopted against his will by a group of weirdos (affectionate)? It's like they made a character specifically for me to project onto. I'm constantly torn between wanting to shake him around in my teeth and wanting to give him every good thing in the world. He's just so!!!!

8. First BL

So way back when (like 2017), I somehow discovered 2 Moons (the original one). Now I had never seen or heard of bls before beyond like yaoi manga, so like a full length live action tv show was so revolutionary to me and I could watch the whole thing on youtube? wow! I was obsessed (especially the ming/kit story line). Now, I wouldn't rec the drama nowadays but like little old me was shook and told all of my friends at school about it. BUT somehow I never watched another bl or show from Thailand until 2022 when I saw people posting about Not Me on the dash/trending tab and decided to watch and then from there I got into the BL fandom proper. Anyways when I saw people posting about Triage I was like so shook because I knew those guys!!!! I, for the record, have not seen 2 Moons 2 nor rewatched the original in so many years.

16. Favorite Trope

Ok so there are many tropes that I love a lot, but nothing gets me more excited then some good ol classic identity porn (side note: I really wish that it was called something else because telling my irl friends that I'm into identity porn is the worst). But yes I love it when characters have a secret identity and then when they interact with the same person in both identities? ooo that's the stuff. Guardian is my favorite example of this. Like all the work Shen Wei put into keeping Yunlan from realizing he was the Black Cloak Envoy? The quick identity switches? Zhao Yunlan putting the pieces together slowly? Ugh it's just so good, especially in romance stuff where like the character is falling for both identities and doesn't know what to do. I also love a good character reveal, particularly when they're revealing that the character who seemed very ordinary and normal is actually very powerful and cool. (another reason why I love it in Guardian). It can definitely be dragged out too long (I have not watched Miraculous Ladybug other than a couple episodes in my French class when I was younger but I have heard much about the infamous love square that is two people), but like it's definitely something that needs to last for a considerable amount of time in order to really scratch that itch in me. 23.5 kinda did this with the Earth/Ongsa thing, but while I did love that, I wouldn't label it was being the same as Shen Wei/Black Cloak Envoy. Like with Ongsa it was more of a mistaken identity/miscommunication thing while I like it when the character already has an established alter ego thing that they don't intend the LI to get close to, if that makes sense? Anyways this is a quite long of saying I like when characters are revealed to be more than they seem.

24. Dream Actor Pairing

Look I'm not breaking new ground here when I say that I want Jeff and Bible to do a drama together. It's so evil that Kim and Vegas didn't have any interactions. I think they would kill it (no pun intended) playing a couple in a drama. Other than that, I'm not too sure? There's a lot of actors I really like and want to see more of or think could act well with another, but I don't have many other I need these two to play lovers that haven't already? Like I would absolutely love to get Gawin/First again (Danyok was not enough for me) or for Tor and Gun to actually get to play lovers some time.

[noegrets]

What do you dislike about Yoshio? I stopped keeping up a long time ago (around Bell Tree Express) and for the anime, much earlier, I just now later anime originals were usually not great, with a few nice exceptions...

In super short: we don't like his episodes because he ignores established characterization to be able to make jokes, and his jokes are extremely juvenile. He seems to think old people are inherently funny, he seems to think scatological humor is the height of comedy, and that having characters wildly gesticulate or dance is a sure recipe for hilarity. It's a type of humor that, beyond being extremely juvenile, also reads to us as mocking and mean-spirited, as the targets of his humor are portrayed as laughable, vapid, stupid, gay, and/or old. Which is gross and we don't want to pollute ourselves with this stuff. So, since all of his episodes are anyway out-of-character excursions mostly just to make fun of old people, we decided to skip them entirely.

Our first incident with this guy's writing does not even come from Detective Conan, but from Digimon 02. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but the first arc's plotline is about Ken, a child genius in the real world becoming an evil dictator in the digital world. He doesn't understand that he's not simply playing a videogame, and when he finally realizes the truth, there are serious repercussions for Ken that he now has to face. And then there is an absolutely heartbreaking episode about Ken's trauma about the death of his older brother and how he has been in the role of replacing his dead older brother, which has been unaddressed and festering and at the core of all of his problems.

And sandwiched right between the episode where Ken found out after fucking around for the whole first half of the series, and the trauma backstory episode, there is an episode that was written by this guy (although we didn't learn that tidbit until much later). We pre-emptively apologize for making you read this. The episode is about the main heroes accidentally walking in on an old tortoise digimon who was enjoying a piss. The tortoise is so mad about being interrupted in its joyful piss that it chases the kids for the whole episode. Antics ensue. And whenever the tortoise thinks it's safe to piss, the kids witness it again, restarting the cycle. Eventually the tortoise gets to piss again alone.

We were rewatching Digimon 02 after many years, and when we got to this episode, we stopped. The next day, we just said, …why don't we watch something else.

The first episode he contributed to Detective Conan is the "Tokyo Barls Collection" (episode 943). The entire episode exists solely because of an extended pun between garuzu (transliteration of the English word "girls") and "ba" (Japanese for "old") - what if there was an idol group, consisting of all old ladies, and they were the baruzu? That's the joke. That extremely stretched out pun that barely even counts as a pun. During the episode, we meet the four old ladies, who are all just recolored copies of like, Wendy Oldbag from the Ace Attorney series, and they do dancing antics and are so so so funny because they are so so so old. Kogoro and Conan are also in the episode, but they both act extremely out of character, and they just get to be the vehicle by which we meet these old ladies so we can laugh about how they dance even though they are old.

In the next episode written by this guy (episode 955), the Detective Boys stumble into a village where everyone is dressed in bug mascot costumes, and they participate in a human bug-catching contest, and… weren't we watching a mystery murder series? When we came around again to this episode on our rewatch, we knew we didn't want to see it again, and this time, we went to the wiki to learn some context for this off-the-wall incongruous zaniness, and that's when we realized this bug episode was written by this guy, who is the same guy who wrote the Tokyo Barls… and the pissing tortoise in Digimon 02. And certain episodes of Lupin III red jacket, and we would have to do a whole rewatch of the series to be sure (we do plan to), but in our hazy memories, we have a feeling that our least favorite episodes were written by him. In our opinion, the Lupin III red jacket series has a quality that wildly fluctuates between supremely excellent and absolute shit, and it would only make sense if the absolute shit was contributed by this guy.

So yeah, this information freed us: this man's writing has been our nemesis for our whole lives, and now that we can simply check who was the writer of a certain Detective Conan episode and see it was him, we can decide we don't want to see it. We are in charge of our own destiny. Never again will we be tormented by this man's weird obsessions.

Continuing in our rewatch of Detective Conan, we made it into kind of a game to not check beforehand, but, if we're watching an episode and either of us has the inkling that it's by that guy, we stop and check. And so far we've been right almost every single time, and often within the first 3 minutes. We almost admire the stylistic consistency, except we hate it. For example, we start watching an episode (976), and Kogoro has been hired to find a lost pet armadillo. Ding! Armadillo mentioned. To puerile sensibilities, armadillo is a funny word and a non-standard pet. So we raise our eyebrows. In the next minute, Kogoro searches for the armadillo in the fish market of Tokyo, and insinuates that the armadillo was butchered and sold as tuna, and the fishmongers blast him out of the market with a hose. Ding! Racist joke about foreign meat, and Kogoro is out-of-character, because for all of his vices, Kogoro's greatest skill is being polite and copacetic. Kogoro proceeds to make this same faux pas a few more times, getting blasted out of the market again and again, learning nothing from the experience. Ding! Slapstick comedy and mindless repetition. Defeated, Kogoro decides to leave the fish market and calls a taxi. The taxi driver learns that he's the great Sleeping Kogoro, and turns around in the seat to ask Kogoro if he will marry him, as the car swerves wildly through the highway - but he meant to be present as his wedding, not as the groom. Ding! Homophobic joke, plus more slapstick comedy. By this point we have more than enough evidence, and we stopped watching. This is how episodes with this guy go.

Nobody make this into a drinking game or you'll need to go through the entire Black Organization before the commercial break.

Only in one case did we watch the whole episode and then only at the very end, when people started dancing, we realized it was his work (episode 1119). Though, even the wiki mentions that this episode is unusually sedate and serious for this guy's writing. Maybe he's improving. Maybe people are stepping him to save the show before he kills it. Who knows. Though, it's not like it's a good episode or anything we would particularly want to praise or even rewatch, just one that didn't cross a line for us.

We do want to say that we actually really enjoy a lot of the anime original episodes in Detective Conan, and a big part of why we started doing our ongoing series of anime episode reviews was to talk about the anime original episodes and how some of them are among our top favorite episodes. Some surpass the canon material, in our opinion. After all, the anime is largely responsible for Takagi, Shiratori, Chiba, Azusa, about half of Kogoro, most of Eri as a likeable character and not a nasty appendage of Kogoro, Eri's prosecutor rival Reiko who remains anime-original but is really cool, Fumimaro (or as we call him, "squirrel cop"), and Yuya "Eyebrows" Kazami. So don't let this one guy, who only came in around 2019, cast a shadow over all the good anime-original episodes. There is still plenty of good about the anime series. We still just skip anything that we realize is by this guy.

[coraniaid]

I realize I've posted quite a lot about The Wish today without really talking about the whole doomed alternate universe angle, but that's mainly because I just ... don't find that part of the episode very interesting?

As I've said before, Buffy's strength has never been its worldbuilding or its plotting, and this episode is no exception.  As an actual attempt to answer the question "what might Sunnydale be like if Buffy had never come to town?'' it's all a little underwhelming.  Where is Luke?  Where is Darla? Where is Jesse (and if he was never vamped in this universe, why not)?  Why does school end early (suggesting some sort of non-vampire authority trying to protect people), but forbid Cordelia from driving a car (thereby forcing her to walk home in the dark)? Why is there still school at all?  Why don't the humans just wait until it's light outside and leave town?  Did this reality have a 'real' Cordelia that our Cordelia physically replaced?  Why, if Cordelia's wish was only that Buffy never came to Sunnydale?  Why didn't her memories change too?  How and when exactly did the Master get free? Why did the Mayor let this happen?  Did Spike and Drusilla still come to town last year looking for a cure for Drusilla?  If so, why is Angel still alive?  Is there a particular reason why Willow, of all people, seems obsessed with torturing him in particular?  Did he fail to protect her when she was alive, or did he kill the vampire (Darla?) that sired her? Did Jenny still come to town to keep an eye on Angel? Where is she? Why does Giles insist on having White Hat meetings in the library at night instead of in his big, well-supplied, vampire-safe house?

These questions have no answer, and even typing them out like this feels like seriously missing the point (well, the last one is a question that we're not supposed to ask in the regular show either).  You could write fanfic trying to answer them (and I'm sure that people have), but they are far beyond the scope of this episode.

And ultimately we're just being told a shaggy dog story here: once Anyanka's power source is destroyed, we snap back to the moment of Cordelia making her wish and nobody has any idea what happened.  None of the characters can learn from or be changed by this episode's events. (Okay, yes, Anya will be changed the next time we see her, but she'll also be a mostly different character who just happens to share the same name.)

So we're left with metaphor, the show’s usual strength: what can the writers tell us about the characters through this story of a world where Buffy never came to Sunnydale? And the answer is ... not much, especially after the show goes for the shock twist of killing Cordelia off mid-episode. 

Buffy would be much more like Faith if she didn't have her friends?  OK, but this is not news.  That has been explicitly the point of Faith's character for a while, arguably since her first episode. Giles thinks a world where he's no longer a Watcher and the town he lives in is overrun by vampires who keep killing people he tries to protect would be bad?  Yeah, me too.  Obviously there's some striking visual symbolism in Willow and Xander killing Cordelia and then Xander killing Angel (and being killed by Buffy moments later), and in Oz helping to kill Willow, but it just doesn't really mean anything.  These versions of the characters don't know anything about their 'real' selves, so these moments don't mean much to them, and the versions of the characters we've been following will never know about any of this at all.

Don't get me wrong: The Wish is a solid, fun episode. I enjoyed watching it, I'll enjoy watching it again next time I rewatch the show, and I get that having an alternate universe episode where everyone is evil and bisexual is any case all but mandatory for genre television. It's fun to see Mark Metcalf chewing the scenery as the Master again, and it's not like I'm immune to the appeal of Alyson Hannigan as vamp!Willow.  But there's just nothing much to say about any of it, is there?  

Uh. It was sad when everybody died hating each other, but then magically they hadn't and they were friends again, and that was nice.