#this is the biggest plot twist of this arc so far

[no-brain-just-akutagawa]

you're telling me they could've been wearing shoes this whole time??

[ID: An edited What are those? meme from Black Panther shwoing Dazai's shoes. End ID]

[archerdork]

spoilers for ofmd s2e8 - a discussion of the decision to do That to You Know Who

i guess my biggest issue is that you should have seen the end coming because it makes sense narratively, so in a way you did see it coming, but the show has spent two seasons subverting expectations and chucking logic out the window, so in the context of the universe they've created it fucking doesn't make sense.

I know it narratively makes sense to tie Izzy's arc off like this, but this show has gone to great fucking lenghts to show it doesn't give a toss about sense or how you're supposed to tell a story. The plot armour has been so thick for two seasons it's genuinely ridiculous, but that's the show and now this is the audience it's amassed. You think I've spent all this time watching these idiots strut around an ocean the size of a bathtub powered by nothing but spite and a gaydar because I value logic above all else? You think I like the show despite it's narrative insanities, not because of it?

Spending a season on Izzy's emotional and mental journey only to kill him off in the end does makes a certain literary sense. Him dying surrounded by the family he finally accepted and who accepted him in turn makes literary sense. His death allowing Ed to let go of the last of Blackbeard makes literary sense.

In the real world.

But we've spent two seasons in Pirate Muppet Land, with it's bathtub size ocean where everyone can find anyone, where wounds heal the moment they're patched up, where crocs and paparazzis paperazzis exists in 18th century. I'm not here for realism, I'm here for the insanity. I'm here for the workplace romcom where this community of queer idiots can laugh and cry and have their drama and, yes, a boatload (ha) of angst but it's fine because it is about them, the plot only there to further their personal journeys no matter how unrealistic that plot turns out to be. They created Something, something new and different and hopeful, and then made a single decision that went against everything they'd built so far because? Logic? I genuinely don't know.

Ultimately I'm happy with this season. I had so much goddamn fun. I enjoyed the ending, though for the personal journeys it concluded rather than story it actually told. This season was way too rushed, for which I assume we should largly blame HBO. The cast and crew did what they could with what they had.

Still though.

I said at some point during this season that I "genuinely can’t see a scenario where they kill off any of the crew, it’s just not that kind of show". Turns out it decided to be that kind of show, with the worst decision they could make. Killing off Izzy does make literary sense. Which, in context of the show so far, makes it goddamn unrealistic.

It's not a good plot twist to pull the rug from out under the audience if the rug is actually a carpet floor you've spent the whole season nailing down.

[fuckyeahaudiodrama]

✨APRIL/MAY LISTENS✨

hi i’m back, i’ve just finished my degree and do not have enough of a brain to write an in-depth of anything. but! here’s some of what i’ve been shoving in my earholes for the past month, in no particular order.

The Magnus Protocol — (season 1 ongoing) continues to blow my fucking mind. the sound design/music combo for this series is of particular note, it really just… mwah. elevates the text so much for me. i also continue to be impressed by how well this works as both a standalone series and as a delicious trail of candy for those of us who loved Archives. we’re halfway through s1 now and all i can think about is alice dyer.

Beef and Dairy Network — (ongoing @ 109 eps) a partially improvised absurdist comedy pod set in a world that is bizarrely obsessed with beef. my qpp listened to one episode and called it “distilled british humor” which feels… correct. i’ll be real, i’m actually mad at myself for not getting into this one sooner, but on the other hand having a long binge of it has been divine. i would kill to go to one of their live shows.

The White Vault — (5 seasons, 10 eps apiece) not including goshawk because i’ve barely started on that. but the main series… woah! god, i totally didn’t think this was going to be my thing but i could not put it down? the first season is definitely slower than i usually prefer but the characters kept me hooked and by season 3 the narrative completely took over my brain. i also love how well they sold the found audio format, it WORKS. gold fucking star, highly recommend.

Jackie the Ripper — (3 seasons, 5 eps apiece) put this one aside for a rainy day and binged it all at once. deeply wish there was more of it. it’s a raunchy crime drama with a downtrodden detective at the helm who i SWORE i wouldn’t root for but ended up doing so anyway. do recommend! if it sweetens the pot, the protag has the same VA as watson in the currently popular Sherlock & Co.

The Mistholme Museum — (6 seasons, soon to be complete) people have been recommending this to me for years and i just never got around to it, but on the bright side — it was an incredible binge. anthologies aren’t my strong suit but i found the framing device really strong and, crucially, it develops a meta plot that balances really well. biggest strength for me was the narrator, but i can’t explain why without spoiling some key plot developments. just trust me.

Wake of Corrosion — (4 seasons, final ongoing) very cool apocalyptic suspense/horror. i initially loved this show for the dynamic between the two leads, who are brothers trying to reconnect on a solitary camping trip when the world decides to go wonky. i ended up loving the worldbuilding as well. final episode drops very soon.

Neon Inkwell: The Pit Below Paradise — (miniseries, ongoing) this one has a bit of a western vibe and heavy religious/culty overtones, which isn’t my favorite genre. but i think each of the main characters has been developed really well thus far. + many fun cameos from members of the production team, those are really fun to try and spot :)

Twits: A Steampunk Distraction — (2 seasons, 5 eps apiece) very silly comedy of errors from the pov of a bumbling aristocrat. can’t say too much without giving the end of s1 twist away. i highly recommend it if you’re looking for some lighthearted listening. the ending credits are also very cute.

Planet Arcana — (ongoing @ 71 eps) i’m so bad at TTRPGs but this one has such a unique setting, i’m just captivated. tarot-flavored sci-fi adventure for anyone interested. i’ve made it through the first arc and the party has already experienced a crazy amount of development; stoked to see what happens next.

Selene — (ongoing) anthology about a spooky little town with a vintage vibe. single narrator, quite talented. i’m not always easily invested in anthologies but the narrator here really sells it for me, and (!) i think he writes children — both their thought processes and dialogue — very realistically. which is my grandest compliment.

Camp Here & There — (s1 complete @ 33 eps, hiatus?) i put off listening to this for a rainy day because i’d heard nothing but rave reviews and they weren’t lying. this is quite literally the ONLY pod i’ve come across that completely captures the same magic that WTNV did for me on first listen. the creator is kinda going thru it so idk if s2 is going to happen but i really hope so. even if not, s1 is very worth listening to. it’s wacky and sinister and i just love the narrator, it’s hard not to.

We’re Alive: Scout’s Honor — (8 ep miniseries, complete) imagine WA from the perspective of some awkward tweenagers. what’s not to love? the gore is really heightened by each characters’ stage of emotional development. i especially loved the conclusion but i won’t spoil it here ;)

Among the Stars and Bones — (2nd season ongoing) sci-fi drama with a solid first season, really nice narrative tie-up, but the second season was SUCH a glow-up nonetheless! + the most memorable karim kronfli performance of all time IMHO.

[kamiko1234]

Okay done with chapter 10 starting with chapter 11 of The Lightning Thief, and normally I planned on not making a post on every single chapter BUT, I do have some changes/additions in my traitor theories.

So first off, Annabeth is the traitor. SO far has the most prove in the book imo (which is till meager), but I REALLY don't like how she told Percy that they HAVE to not get along because of their parents. Personally I just think that's more proof for my "Annabeth is the traitor" theory.

She was pretty nice to Percy pre-claiming, and on the bus she did fully intend sacrificing herself for him. But she also seems to have this very deep anchored world view of how their parents should affect them and their actions.

So, I modify my theory : Annabeths a traitor, but will get a redemption arc. The reason for the betrayal stays the same, her mom and her rivalry with Poseidon. And Annabeth would think that she NEEDS to betray Percy bc she's the kid of her mom.

So instead of being a malicious traitor, she'd be more like a tragic, indoctrinated villain who needs to be shown to do better ! It most definitely would be interesting.

HOWEVER, this is based of the reaction of another friend when I talked to them about my theories and they reacted very...... weird. After some time I threw in Grover being the traitor more as a joke and while not SAYING anything, that silence was SHOUTING.

So, Grover being the traitor. Canon proof ? Not rly there. Would it be one hell of a plot twist ? YES. Could be bitterness maybe ? My impression was that Satyrs were sort of servants or atleast bellow halfbloods in some way. I could deffo see him getting worked up over that.

Then however he did have a close relationship with Percy and a GOOD reason to stay loyal to get his license. So may I present : Multi-book build up of Grover betraying Percy.

With that I mean, should Grover be the traitor I think he wouldn't betray Percy in this book. Chiron said smth about prophecies having double meanings, so I assume they can be kinda wacky. Imagine Grover slowly building resent against the demi gods for how they use his ppl as tools/servants, and betrays Percy/the halfbloods as a whole in a later book. It could be a cool moment where the thing mentioned in the first book comes back around !

I do however admit myself, that theory is a WILD. Like, WILD WILD. And my only thing to go off on is the silence of my friend and the emoji's they send as a response. Take that theory with the BIGGEST grain of salt.

The third option I think possible : The traitor isn't gonna be Annabeth OR Grover, but will be a character later introduced. Comes from me starting to think that Annabeth could be a bit obvious with the whole sudden switch in how she acts with Percy making it a bit obvious. And the Grover theory being borderline crack.

That option would be my fav, since tbh I don't RLY want Annabth to go villain (even if the redemtion arc would be juicy as hell) but I also don't want Grover to start resenting his friends.

Logically speaking I do think it's Annabeth more likely than Grover tho. (Considering I now have theories for both being the traitor we're basically back to square one. Kill me, please.)

ON ANOTHER NOTE; apparently it's quite common for the author to describe scars as ugly looking and evil. (Thanks to the wonderful user who gave me that info !) Which, first off, YIKES. Not good, like at all.

That fact does however help me with my theory, since it allows me to safely eliminate one character for sure now. Luke !

I mean, I already didn't think it was him. The only thing that made me peek up was when he was described as evil-looking in that one paragraph. But if that (sadly) apparently is a norm, then it more likely than not wasn't foreshadowing.

So yeah, it's not gonna be Luke so I can just start to safely ignore him in my traitor theories. (Not like I ever considered him a real candidate in the first place, he's just safely eliminated in my head now)

[gojuo]

Is satosugu a queerbaiting ship?

Yes and no. No, it's not queerbaiting in canon because Gege is not writing anything romantic in their relationship; Yes, it's queerbaiting coming from the fandom because the majority of stsg shippers are genuinely convinced there's something romantic between them in canon, and fandom is what a fan engages in way more than just canon therefore people get brainwashed/gaslighted into thinking stsg is meant to be canon.

Theories you read? That's fandom. Art you reblog? Fandom. Memes you consume and regurgitate? Fandom. Sending me asks about JJK? You're engaging in fandom. When you only—and I really mean only—read the manga and do not engage in any other aspect of JJK in online spaces, then you are not engaging in fandom therefore you have no stsg shippers forcing their headcanons down your throat and manipulating you into believing that shit. However... not engaging in fandom really isn't the reality for most JJK fans ... and because the majority of the JJK fandom are stsg shippers ... and because the majority of stsg shippers are truly convinced Gege wrote those two with a romantic dynamic ... people start to think there's actual romance happening and therefore he's queerbaiting bc "Gege will never have the balls to make stsg canon so he just sprinkles in random hints bc he's being censored by homophobic Shueisha!!!!" even though JJK has a lgbt couple and openly trans character like ... Lmfao.

The answer is no, there's no queerbaiting going on because there is no romance between stsg happening. Neither Gege nor his editors have never insinuated anything of the sort, nor have the voice actors, or anyone from the animation team. In canon, Gojo and Geto's relationship has only ever been portrayed as platonic. Any stsg cope that their friendship is secretly romantic is manipulative gaslighting. They keep twisting facts to suit their narrative and it's so annoying. "My one and only" is not romantic, the line before that is literally "My best friend"; "My soul knows otherwise" is not romantic, Gege said in the fanbook it's about the way Kenjaku's CT interacts with Gojo's Six Eyes; "Geto is the only deep bond Gojo has with a person" Literally a lie but this is also because of the age-old issue of Shonen writers' misogyny.

The biggest and greatest example of this issue is what Kishimoto did with Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura. To keep it short, Kishimoto, self-described as "I don't know how to write women", put all his effort into developing both Naruto and Sasuke as independent characters, their dynamic with each other, their relevance to the plot, their narrative arcs, etc. etc. and Sakura? She was just ... there. Not saying she was a nothingburger character but the gap between Naruto & Sasuke vs Sakura was considerably evident. And what happened when Kishimoto gave way more depth to the two guys in the trio over the girl? Mass shipping and delusional nrss is canon takes and egg hunts everywhere, even though it was clearcut that nrss was nothing but platonic. It's the same story with Gojo/Geto/Shoko (she literally disappears during HI like fuck you Gege), and the same story with Yuuji/Megumi/Nobara. Hell, I'd even go as far as to say it's the same with the Special Grades: Gojo/Geto/Yuuta/Tsukumo. There's a big disparity between character work for Gojo, Geto & Yuuta vs Tsukumo.

Gege might not make his female characters do fanservice like panty shots, unreasonably big tits, mad sexualization, KYAAHHH!!!, etc. all the time but that don't mean he's above being misogynistic to his female cast .

Gege did a lot of character work for both Gojo and Geto in HI which led up to the iconic Kenjaku reveal moment in Shibuya arc. Great. None of that shit was romantic in any way though. Had he given Shoko the same care and love he's given to the boys, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Because that would mean that the fujos would have to engage with her character and her dynamic with other characters in a meaningful way. Alas... that didn't happen because Gege said this is a sausage fest.

Now, all this doesn't mean that you can't ship stsg. It just means that stsg is not a canon ship, Gege is not being censored so he can't "confirm their love", it means that in canon there is no romantic love between those two and there never has been. But you can still ship it, though. Hell, I ship TojiGo! Literally negative romance there in canon obviously, but that won't stop me because exploring character dynamics outside of the confines of canon and the what-ifs is what shipping is all about! (Majority) stsg shippers are just annoying as fuck because they genuinely believe their ship is canon, try to force their headcanons and misinterpretations of the material down everyone's throats, and send death threats to anyone who dares to ship Gojo with literally anyone else. And then gaslight the part of the fandom that isn't into shipping culture so bad that people start to think this fujo ship is queerbaiting. Goddamn.

[itsnothingofinterest]

So, overall thoughts on 393 & predictions for 394:

I really liked 393 for the most part. I do have one gripe/concern with the current situation (and I’m gonna talk a lot more about that than anything else; that’s just how the internet is sometimes); but overall I really liked a lot of what this chapter did.

First off, the flashback to the League; the camaraderie, the stupid jokes, Dabi being a pretentious jerk who thinks these people aren’t his friends when they totally are. It’s all just *chef’s kiss* perfect, no notes. Other’s have gushed enough for this scene and analyzed all the interesting things it says about these characters so I’ll just add:

“Dudes...Being Dudes!” Can’t believe I didn't see that until now.

But moving on from the “dudes”: Uraraka has earned my praise for having done easily the best to reach out to her villain of any hero kid in the entire arc; not least of which because she’s the only one having any back and forth, and because she seems to be genuinely trying to help Toga. Uraraka’s position isn’t quite perfect, still room to improve for reasons we’ll get too; but she has by far done the best at talking to her villain out of the entire class thus far. Her blood offering™ especially is really big for Toga.

Although, briefly moving on to predictions for the next chapter: my hottest take of a theory is that...I’m honestly not sure how Toga will take Uraraka’s offer. Because having someone in her life who understands her and is willing to offer her blood was, once upon a time, everything Toga ever wanted. But now there’s a bigger question on her mind that Uraraka hasn’t really answered properly yet. 

What will she do with Toga? What will happen to Toga if she goes along with whatever Uraraka wants her to do now?

This is basically my biggest and only remaining concern for this plot-line: Toga still absolutely believes she’ll be sent to death row if she’s captured, and her prospects genuinely don’t look good from an objective view. And when Toga brings this up, Uraraka…doesn’t really go against her claim. I mean she makes clear she doesn’t want to murder Toga like Hawks did Jin; but her still going to death row seems a part “the obvious truth for both of [them]” and she “can’t wipe [Toga’s] slate clean”. So what will/can she do for Toga’s very real fear for her life?

It's possible Uraraka doesn’t have any good answer for that. I know some readers are interpreting the dialogue to think she does, that she’ll keep Toga from going to prison if Toga gives up; but putting myself in Toga’s shoes, it doesn’t sound like she’s willing or ready to go against the legal grain like that. And if she doesn’t then, for as much as she’d like that lifetime’s worth of blood, Toga may not give up here if she thinks her lifetime will be a few weeks that way. Heartbreaking as that’d be for her. (Which makes the drama queen in me consider this outcome even more.)

And also just in general, when the Todoroki’s fumbled saving Dabi as bad as they did; I can’t help but doubt Ochako’s chances of fully reaching to Toga in turn just a little.

Although…all that being said; Uraraka’s specific terms on the blood offering™ aren’t for Toga’s surrender. That’s just all of us reading between the lines, and maybe even jumping the gun. Ochako is asking to talk about love, so there may be a twist to expectations there where Toga still fulfills her end of the bargain without just giving up the fight for her life in exchange for blood.

What might come from that I can’t say. Well besides maybe discussing Uraraka’s feelings for Deku but I don’t know anything interesting that’d come from that. Although, maybe it’ll come back around to Toga’s fear for her life if she brings up her loved one, Twice, getting killed by a hero and who Toga is trying to avenge. And maybe this’ll get Uraraka to contemplate the kind of double standard she & her side have been applying to which actions warrant consequences. I mean if Hawks & Endeavor got off scot-free for their wrong doings (not to mention the currently ongoing Operation: Kill Shigaraki); maybe being lenient with the League in turn would be fair. That’s one way I think their conversation could go anyway.

[allaboutthedrama]

I know that I'm pretty late to the conversation, but I've just reread all of Vampire Academy and Bloodlines (possibly for The Untitled Jill Project) and it's the first time I've reread the VA series in years.

I'm just thinking about how, in my opinion, the quality of the VA series improved as we got into the last few books, and with Bloodlines, I think the reverse sort of happened. Spoilers for both series ahead. (Yeah, the last book came out nine years ago, but you never know.)

I think I hadn't realized how cohesive the ending of Last Sacrifice was. Details from as far back as the first book came up and were very relevant. The political plotline came together in a really tight way, Sonya Karp turned out the be Chekov's spirit user, we got more world-building details, the antagonists had complex and convoluted motivations, and even when there were plot threads left dangling, those actually served a purpose. I loved the part where Adrian pointed out to Rose that her actions had consequences and even though she had gotten what she wanted, not everything else was resolved, so people like Eddie and Sydney and Jill were left in bad situations, and she was partly responsible. It created a little more moral ambiguity, which I really enjoyed, especially since YA tends to like the very neat endings where everything winds up happily ever after.

The Vampire Academy books improved the deeper into the series you got. And, although I love Bloodlines, I do think that the first three books are much stronger than the last three. Which is a shame, because the series has so much potential.

I think Mead is at her best when she's writing something of a mystery. Last Sacrifice obviously comes to mind (they're solving a murder mystery, after all). Bloodlines had that, with the tattoos, Lee, and Keith being shady all building up to a really exciting climax. The Golden Lily wasn't quite as much of one, but the clues leading up to the reveal of the Warriors were well-placed. Indigo Spell went straight back into mystery territory, trying to find Jackie's sister. And then The Fiery Heart is where, in my opinion, things start to falter. There's a lot of interesting worldbuilding information introduced, with the new details about spirit and magic coming up, and it was fun to get into Adrian's head, but it definitely felt like this supernatural romance was shifting to become a lot more romance and a lot less concerned with the supernatural. But that's not such a big deal. It's the middle of the series, we're building tension, Re-Education has been a threat hanging over Sydney since page one of Bloodlines and we're finally seeing that fear pay off.

But then we get to Silver Shadows, and while I guess figuring out where Sydney is could be a mystery, it doesn't really resonate the way 'who killed the queen' does, in my opinion. Sydney's arc in Re-Education is great, and I do like the way the books deal with Adrian's mental health issues, but some of Adrian's chapters felt more like filler. And a bigger issue, imo, was that this was when we really started to lose the side characters. Some of my favorite parts of the first few books were characters like Jill, Eddie, Trey, and Angeline, and then the ensemble atmosphere was largely gone, because Sydney was in Re-Education and Adrian left Palm Springs. The final fight and flight sequence was really good, though, so I had high hopes going into The Ruby Circle.

The Ruby Circle is probably my least favorite of the books between both of the series, and I think that's a shame, since it's the finale. We'd just had a 'kidnapped character' arc, so I think there was less emphasis on describing everyone's reactions. We saw the biggest reaction from Eddie, but as a result, he got kind of flattened out from the really well-rounded character he'd been from the back half of the VA books and the first part of Bloodlines.

The Ruby Circle could have been a really good mystery, with lots of twists that tied up a lot of the lingering questions from the series. Except that a lot of threads from the rest of the series were dropped and didn't resurface. They never caught whoever was behind the assassination attempt on Jill. I don't think we even got an official resolution on whether Lissa managed to change the quorum law. The political plots that were integral to VA weren't significant in Bloodlines, despite it all starting because of a politically motivated assassination. We also never got a resolution on the rogue spirit user who turned Lee back from being Strigoi, or the spirit users who had been sent to the psychiatric facility in Tarasov (the prison from Spirit Bound). We never found Robert Duro. The bond itself was somewhat discarded, too, whenever it wasn't immediately useful for a plot point. Instead, we just got a scavenger hunt across the country, a few fight scenes where the protagonists were pretty much guaranteed to win, and a final showdown with a magic barrier that, as we learn after, would have dropped down on its own in a few hours for them to bring Jill food, anyways.

I obviously still like the series, since I'm rereading it and talking about it nine years after the fact. But I think that there were a lot of opportunities to continue plots from VA that were lost, even when they should have been brought back into the story.

If anyone has made it this far, I suppose I should throw in a pitch for The Untitled Jill Project, which will be my attempt to rewrite the Bloodlines series from Jill's perspective, because I think there's still a lot more story to be told. I haven't got it all mapped out, but I intend to at least tie up some of the narrative loose ends I mentioned that bothered me about the series in that story. I might write up another post here soon about how Jill's characterization also suffered as Bloodlines went on, if anyone's interested.

Anyways, if anyone has any strong opinions on what I said (agreeing or disagreeing) please let me know! I'd love to talk about the series with people, since no one in my real life has read it, and I'm curious to know what the rest of the fandom thinks about how the narrative progressed in Bloodlines.

[gizkasparadise]

2023 wrapped: webtoon edition!

my final 2023 wrapped post for the year! unlike previous ones, this list is every series i read this year vs. ones that started this year. previous lists for this year:

cdrama edition

kdrama edition

ranked from least favorite to most favorite, which doesn't mean objectively best, just ones that hit me more. ones that are completed series will have a * after the title

15 my deepest secret*. omfg i hated this webtoon. the twist was asinine and frankly ignorant. none of the characters were likeable by the end. hate quit this one with like 5 chapters left to go i just couldnt

14 my second husband. seemed promising at first! i was hooked for the first 40 chapters or so but then it just started getting weirdly paced, had big plot holes, and nothing ever felt like it was getting resolved. the ML had like 0 charisma as well. dropped.

13 to love your enemy. this one was REALLY fun until the cult arc hit and then it was the biggest wtf is happening. dropped it shortly after

12 i dont hate us*. i liked this one until the timeskip ending, where then everyone and everything just felt really off. the second female lead gets a special mention because i HATED her at first but by the end she was my favorite character <3

11 romance 101.* this was okay. the art style was really cute and i loved the FL. but there never seemed to be any chemistry with the main ship to me, and the plot became really focused on the app/programming club which bored the hell out of me. dropped this one around chap 100

10 shadow bride. nothing bad but nothing particularly noteworthy for me. fluff read.

9 high spirits neoma. im not very far into this webtoon yet, or it'd be higher up the list im sure. im around ch 5 and finding it really charming and i love the color palette for it

8 dreaming freedom/freedom in dreams. although the art style isnt my cup of tea, i really enjoyed this fucked up high school revenge/romance webtoon but where im currently at (ch. 111ish) it's starting to feel a little circular. hoping it goes back to what it does best which is Unsettling Shit

7 my reason to die*. man this would've been in my top 3 but the ending arc is just. really boring??? like i dont want to watch them search for a pot farm for 10 chapters. i havent finished this one yet, but ive been putsing getting back into it ever since post reveal. the drama is very pretty though and the reveal chapters hit me like a truck in a good way

6 operation true love. i borderline hated this webtoon when i first started, but the reviews had me wanting to stick it out and im so glad i did!! around ep 10ish it really finds its footing and just keeps going for it! very kdrama in flavor and endearing FL.

5 unholy blood*. a fun, dark, and nostalgic webtoon about vampires and vampire hunting that brought me back to my tween years in the best way. the character designs are really awesome. it's a little lower on the list because the ending felt a bit rushed, but it's a really solid horror/action comic with a lil romance

4 surviving romance*. this one's complete but i got about 10 chapters left. it's a really fun horror comic (NOT romance, dont be fooled by the title) that reminds me of extraordinary you but if the plot was focused on the metaphysical horror of it a little more. fun characters and relationships. a little lower just because the second "return" arc feels tedious/unneeded so far. we'll see. TEAM RINA.

3 maybe meant to be/fate found by chance. ive found that i tend to gravitate toward darker webtoons, so this is my c-c-combo breaker! cute, funny, quirky, and really endearing. standard contract marriage plot but between two delightful weirdos

2 purple hyacinth. this series is everything. the art is gorgeous, it has its own OST built into the reading. the characters are nuanced and complicated and omg it's a ride and a half so far.

1 olgami/trapped*. INCREDIBLE characters and such an intense look at enemies-to-lovers. the drama starts as a psycho-thriller about gravedigging for a vampire and ends up about two leads who have never learned how to love willing to try it with one another in their fucked-up way. dysfunctional. hot. SO GOOD. the art evolution for this series was great as well

[thetypedwriter]

Dark Heir Book Review

Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat Book Review 

Warning: *Spoiler Warning for both Dark Rise and Dark Heir*

Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat has been my most anticipated read. Not of the year, not of the month, just in general. More than any other sequel coming out, I could not wait for Dark Heir.

In preparation, I even reread Dark Rise to ensure that I had a full and complete understanding of every sentence and nuance put forth in Dark Heir. 

I was so incredibly excited for this book, especially as I found Dark Heir to be titillating and maybe the last book I read that truly took me by surprise and made me gasp out loud. 

I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed, because I think Dark Heir is good, but I also don’t think it’s perfect and having the astronomical expectations that I did have certainly didn’t help. 

Dark Heir picks up immediately after Dark Rise ends. Similarly to the first book, the gang is trying to stop the dark king from reaching his full power and face off against Sinclair, Simon’s father, in various moments with an array of tension and methodologies, all interwoven with intrapersonal moments of romance, friendship, and self-actualization. 

The biggest weakness of the first book was its middle. The beginning of Dark Rise starts off intriguing, with Will on the loose and an action-packed fight scene onboard a ship.

The ending of Dark Rise hits you like a bomb. The realization that Will is actually the dark king will never not be one of the greatest plot twists of all time. 

Other than the middle slog, though, Dark Rise was excellent. 

My biggest frustrations with Dark Heir are the treatment of the villain and the multiple POV’s. In Dark Rise, Simon is the big baddie. He’s calculating, manipulative, powerful, and charismatic. In Dark Heir, however, C.S. Pacat tells you that you’ve got it all wrong. 

It’s not Simon that is characterized by all those traits, but his father, Sinclair. All the attributes given to Simon in the first book are essentially just handed over to Sinclair with the attitude of making you feel stupid for thinking Simon was the villain in the first place…even though that’s what we were told in book one and Sinclair hadn’t even been mentioned previously. 

I find it frustrating when authors diminish an antagonist from one book to make another villain seem worse and more powerful later on.

Let Simon and Sinclair stand on their own, separate and distinct. Don’t minimize what happened in book one so that Sinclair seems more evil and important in the sequel. 

It didn’t work for me, and the fact that we don’t even see Sinclair is also a poor choice. For the villain to never even show up (other than possessing others) reduces his threatening presence overall and the tension I get as a reader decreases every time another page passes without Sinclair ever showing his face (it worked in Harry Potter only because another villain was there to fill the void). 

My second frustration is the amount of POV’s. In the first book, there were three POV’s: Will, Violet, and Katherine. In book two, we get Will, Violet, Cyprian, Elizabeth, James, and Visander.

It’s too many. Three is already pushing it and by increasing it from three to six, the overall arc for each character gets less spotlight and therefore less development. 

That being said, I like all the characters and loved seeing their POV’s. However, because there were just so many of them, I felt like it was quantity over quality.

Whereas I would have preferred the quality of less POV’s than the breadth of more, especially as several of them were with each other, as in the case of James, Will, and Cyprian and then Visander and Elizabeth. 

Will’s agony of being the dark king and trying to fight against himself, meanwhile seeking understanding and acceptance, is nothing short of brilliant. Will’s chapters were by far my favorite because they were so conflicted, in the most interesting of ways.

After Will, my favorite POV is Elizabeth’s. Her childlike way of speaking and understanding the disturbing world around her was always intriguing and poignant (and often hilarious). I liked that her POV offered a different view of what was going on compared to Will and his gang. However, her POV makes Visander’s obsolete. 

Violet’s POV could have been good, but she is imprisoned the whole time. I actually think the only reason is C.S. Pacat did that was because having Violet around the gang would have influenced the plot too much, so she just needed Violet locked away—cue Mrs. Duval with her controlling powers (which was never explained???). 

Violet’s chapters were boring, which is a shame because I really adore Violet. I would have loved to have seen the tension in Will’s chapters by having Violet close by the whole book and to see her relationship with Cyprian blossom and grow.

But no. Instead she’s locked up for 90% of the book before escaping just in time for the climax, interacting with virtually no one except some old journals. 

Cyprian’s POV was fine, but useless, as he was with Will 90% of the time. 

James’ POV was interesting, but not needed. I actually think a part of James’ allure is his mystery. What is he planning? How is feeling? What are his intentions?

A big part of my initial curiosity about James stemmed from those questions. In Dark Heir all that disappears. Because we get James’ POV, gone is the mystery about what James is planning, his true motivations, and his feelings. 

Honestly, if the whole book had switched off between Will and Elizabeth that would have been perfect. If three was absolutely needed, then I would take Violet too, but otherwise? All the other POV’s were not needed and only took away from other storylines. 

I feel so strongly about this because I really like all the characters. I find them all complex, intriguing, highly motivated, and conflicted for a variety of reasons.

C.S. Pacat did such a great job creating them that I want to see their storylines through. What I don’t want are filler POV’s that don’t offer much in the way of plot. 

The last niggling frustration I’ll briefly mention before getting to the ending is the setting. In book one, we get huge (maybe too long) descriptions of the Hall of the Stewards and of London.

In book two, we get none of that. We get descriptions of the dark palace and some small villages in Italy and that's about it. For a huge epic fantasy, the world felt very small and very unimaginative. 

The highlights for the book were definitely the characters and their interactions. Those proved to be just as good as the first book, if not better.

The relationship between Will and James, between Will and Violet, Violet and Cyprian, Cyprian and James, Violet and Tom, Visander and Elizabeth—they are all chef’s kiss! 

Truly, each and every character has such intense and significant ties to all the other characters that it kept me devouring each page like a starved man. This is where C.S. Pacat really shines. 

The last thing I’ll mention to bring this review to a close is the ending. Did it have the bombshell explosive conclusion like Dark Rise?

No, no it did not. 

Was it still good?

Yes…for the most part. The culmination of all the characters meeting underneath the mountain in the dark palace was great. However, I wanted more. 

There were several moments where a huge revelation or climactic fight was about to happen when the castle just happened to shake, or an earthquake appeared, or chunks of rock fell from the ceiling.

It felt cheap and frustrating to get cut off from an important moment, especially as this happened not once, but several times near the end. 

Additionally, the twist of James wearing the collar in the final pages would have been so much more powerful and shocking if we hadn’t literally read in the chapter before that the collar clicked around his throat by Sloane/Sinclair. 

 It doesn’t make any sense. 

Why give away your biggest shock factor? I have no idea.

Even after writing this, I realize that James’ POV might have actively been a detriment to the book overall, but especially to the ending, which was nowhere near as crazy a plot twist as Dark Rise. 

In general, I still liked this book. I would consider it leagues better than other YA novels, especially in terms of characters and their relationships, but it’s not without its issues, even compared to its predecessor. 

Frustrations aside, I enjoyed Dark Heir. The plot was palatable enough—there’s a dark army slumbering beneath a mountain in a hidden away palace that cannot be woken up, but it’s the characters, their interactions, and their desires that I found truly appealing. 

Recommendation: Reread Dark Rise like I did to fully appreciate the brilliance of it, and then read Dark Heir. It won’t be as good, but that’s okay. You’ll still get the character moments you’ve been craving before it’ll leave you wanting more.

Let’s hope that the next book will fulfill any lingering needs we have and (dark) rise to the challenge. 

Score: 7/10

[being-of-rain]

Okay, time to write my thoughts on Empire of Death. Like the rest of the season, I've only watched it once so far. I think soon I'll binge all of Fourteen and Fifteen soon. And as with many of the episodes, I'll be interested to see what I think of the finale on a rewatch. Anyway, this post gets a little long-winded, and I hope readers will forgive me for feeling my way around my opinions on the episode as I go.

I've already said that I wasn't a big fan of the episode. But part of me thinks that Empire of Death is a very subjective one. People I've seen defending it have said that critics aren't engaging enough with the themes, and are being too nitpicky. That sounds familiar, because I know I've held opinions along those lines on other controversial Dr Who episodes. So in that case, what you think of the episode is going to depend on how you connect to the themes, and to the emotions. How much do you think the themes and emotions earn priority over other aspects of the story and how its judged?

Then again, I suppose I might be contradicting that when I say that there's some themes I liked in the episode, but (like in The Giggle,) I really didn't like how the episode executed them. The idea of Ruby's mum being an ordinary woman is something I like in theory and am not surprised by; celebrating the ordinary in the midst of the extraordinary is a signature move of New Who and has been the twist conclusion for quite a few story arcs already. But while it's done as explicitly here as it ever has been, the plot doesn't really manage to support it.

I'm sure I don't have to list a lot of the questions and nitpicks fans (including me) have here, but even the catch-all explanations of 'a god was interested in the mystery' and 'magic is in Dr Who now' don't feel like they really work for me. For the first because it feels out of character and contrived that Sutekh cares about this mystery at all, and if he does then why only this one? And for the second, well its unclear how or even if the magic unleashed in the 60th specials affect this finale at all, since Sutekh seems to have completely different origins to the other two gods (and if it does have bearing on this episode then that isn't made clear at all). You could say this is me getting hung up on nitpicks and details, and I really do hate letting those things get in the way of a story... but it's hard not to when those details are such a large part of the story. I don't quite agree with the harsh criticism of RTD taking advantage of the viewers or whatever (which I think has been said about every showrunner), but this arc/s and final two episodes are so geared towards speculation and building up questions in spectacular ways that brushing over them with not much of an answer feels... well, like a plot hole.

As a result, statements like 'this ordinary woman is so important because of what we thought of her' and 'time is memory and memory is time', while really lovely sentiments, and themes I'd love to see explored, only really make sense if disconnected from the rest of the story. To come back to my first paragraph, they're themes that you have to give so much priority to over the rest of the story that they basically become premises that need to be accepted in order to carry the plot, rather than the other way around.

Does any of this make sense? I think all this was to say: for me this story definitely doesn't earn the 'themes are good enough to ignore the details' approach, even though I love the themes. Never mind, that summary made even less sense.

Another criticism I had of The Giggle, and pretty much all of RTD's finales, is that RTD really wants to go for big emotional moments and let the emotions carry the plot... but the emotions just don't always hit for me, especially when it doesn't feel like the story's earned it. That feels like more of a problem in Empire of Death than ever before.

Maybe the scene with the biggest emotional impact on me (not a massive impact, but bigger than the rest of the episode) was the scene with the lady giving the Doctor the spoon, possibly because it felt so strangely divorced from the rest of the episode, like a scene from a different episode dropped in the middle.

Ruby's departure was... well for one, unexpected. I know she's in the next season, right? Is it a series 4 Martha come-back-as-a-guest-star situation, or a series 9 Clara the-departure-was-a-fakeout situation? Anyway, the departure was... about as satisfying as I've found Ruby's character arc. I really had hoped that her only important defining character trait wasn't 'orphan who wants to meet her bio mum,' but its hard not to think of her that way after this episode. I never really found anything to hook me on the character. Shame.

I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but I can't help but compare Ruby's arc to Izzy Sinclair's arc from the DWM comics. On an obvious level, Ruby's arc concludes with her successfully tracking down her bio mum while Izzy's arc concludes with her happily returning to her adoptive parents, no longer considering her 'secret origins' as a missing part of herself. And while I definitely prefer the sentiment of Izzy's story, I don't want to say Ruby uncovering her origins and gaining a new parent automatically makes for a bad ending to an adoptee's story. But I think just as important is that with Izzy, we really dive into why she feels the way she does. We learn in great detail how her feelings about being adopted connect to many other things in her life, not least her self image. In comparison, Ruby feels downright shallow. She's incredibly curious who her mother is, considering it part of her legend... and that's about it. It doesn't really affect her in any way most episodes. Maybe I'm being unfair here and I'd be less harsh after my rewatch, we'll see.

Unfortunately the resolution to the Sutekh plot also didn't satisfy me. Dragging Sutekh back through the time vortex to 'bring death to death' just... doesn't work for me. Not even on a storybook level, or fairytale level, or purely emotion-based level. It felt... idk... childish?, in a way I really didn't vibe with. But honestly I would've been happy it happened if, when the Doctor started listing planets he was bringing back, he mentioned Gallifrey and revealed the Time Lords were alive again and then we could all just move on. Sigh.

I think that's most of the major points. What else do I have to say?

The oppressive empty atmosphere of Sutekh's dead universe was cool. There was a scene with just Sutekh and his minion where everything beside them was intensely silent, which really hammered the point home. It's still funny/silly to me that the so-called god of music wanted this exact same thing.

Mel is still lovely, and call me a nerd but her recognising Six's outfit and later cuddling with Seven's was maybe the best part of the episode for me. Apart from that she sure spent a lot of time standing around with no dialogue. I finally got an answer to the question I'd been asking since November last year- if there'd been a reason Mel in particular was brought back to the show- and the answer is Not Really. I did laugh when a friend pointed out that there's plot-important computer hacking in this episode and during that Mel was told to go keep watch in the corridor.

Meanwhile Kate felt like she was parodying herself by trying to recruit Susan at the end of the episode. Teens work for UNIT because Kate can't be around someone for five minutes without trying to headhunt them. I saw Kate and the random soldier hold hands at the end but read it as (or maybe very much hoped it was) platonic and relieved to be alive.

I don't think I truly knew how much the Vlinx annoyed me until it was killed by Sutekh, and for one short moment I was filled with joy at the belief it wouldn't be coming back. Sorry the Vlinx.

The TARDIS has a laser that can be activated with a whistle? Huh? Did I miss something or is that just a fact? The only thing I could think to connect it with was the 'heart-of-the-Tardis-laser-beam' from Flux, which would make it much stupider.

I'm pretty sure Mrs Flood will be a new character, but heck if I know. She doesn't seem like Susan anymore. Oh yeah! So I guess Susan wasn't in this apart from one second of archival footage. Unless next season uses this as foreshadowing, it feels like a waste.

And that's all I can remember after one viewing! I believe the next episode is a christmas special by Steven Moffat? I've decided I'm excited for it. I think Moffat christmas eps have more hits than misses, as opposed to RTD finales.

[mariejordans]

Listen I adore limoreau they're the first new ship I've had in a long time and I know the show only has 8 eps but omg they're skipping so many important things with them wtf we should've gotten to see flashbacks of their first time where's the convo after all the angst last episode we need more development and depth. I really don't think they anticipated how popular they were gonna be not as a ship but just romance in general they thought it was gonna be like the boys where 99% of the fandom could not care less about who is dating who but this is a college show and the dynamics and potential of the ships is 1000% greater than that of the boys and I LOVE the boys but it's not that show. Also although the boys doesn't kill most of its characters I think gen v is gonna be different we're loosing at least one main the finale and more in s2

okay this post kinda got away from me and i just started rambling (probably nonsense) so please forgive me if none of this makes sense and/or sounds stupid 😭

first off, anon i COMPLETELY agree with you on the first point. like, don’t get me wrong, i’ve loved and appreciated all the limoreau scenes we’ve gotten so far but right now limoreau just feels a bit….underdeveloped ig? i’m not saying that the writers need to take three seasons to get them together (that would be torture), but it feels like there are so many loose ends left with them and i don’t see how they can tie them all up in the final episode, considering it’s supposed to be a tie-in to s4 of the boys and SO MUCH SHIT is happening.

it feels as if the writers shoved in as much limoreau content as they could into the first half of the season and then were like “alright that should be enough” like???? no? we have not seen a proper conversation between jordan and marie about the state of their relationship since, what, episode 5? and they never resolved the issue of jordan being insecure about marie wanting to be with ALL of them, not just their masc self? if the kiss in tonight’s episode is the last limoreau romantic content we get, i’ll be very disappointed bc i feel like they definitely could’ve at least wrapped up that arc in less than eight episodes.

and don’t get me started on what happened during the memory wipe. the two main characters had SEX and we don’t even get to see the build-up to how and why that happened? it’s not as if marie and jordan don’t remember, bc cate literally gave them their memory back, so it kinda feels like we missed a couple steps in this episode 😭 like, yes, the kiss was super cute and soft and adorable and yes i was kicking my feet and giggling, but at the same time it felt a bit “whoa why we going so fucking fast” bc as far as WE know, they haven’t really talked about the kiss or the sex. like, i feel robbed a little bit bc this is supposed to be like THE main couple 😭

i also think you might be onto something with the writers not anticipating how popular limoreau bc the boys (while they do have some beautiful ships kimchie ily) is not exactly a ship/romance-heavy show and ig they expected the audience to take after the boys?? idk if that makes sense but 🤷🏼‍♀️

as for gen v having major characters killed off, i kinda agree, i kinda don’t. i think mostly bc they’ve already killed off two major characters (luke, who i am counting even though he was alive for 1 ep bc his death was a MAJOR plot twist bc he was literally being promoted as a main/lead character, and indira) and then they also killed off dr. cardosa, so i’d say the kill count is pretty high already. i think the characters most likely to die are andre or cate (or andre’s dad but idk if i’d consider him a major death.)

i think marie and jordan are probably the safest of the main characters (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!!!!) and should they survive this season (god willing!!!!) i think they will remain safe, if not safer. limoreau are the biggest draw (for newer viewers who haven’t seen the boys at least) to the show right now in my opinion. almost everyone i encounter who likes this show got into it because of jordan and marie. i got into it bc of jordan and marie. i don’t think it’d be smart of them to kill off their most popular characters (at least, i really really hope they’re smart enough NOT to do that) so (again, KNOCK ON WOOD!!!!!!!) i think they are safe.

cate could go one of three ways i think; 1, she lives and ends up going full villain/anti-hero arc (which works well with the theory that marie is gonna blow off cate’s hands so she can’t use her power); 2, she has a whole redemption arc where she sacrifices herself for the group; and 3, (this one seems the most far-fetched to me idk if they would actually go this route) cate dies and becomes a martyr or symbol of the entire supes lives matter thing or whatever it’s called. either way, cate is going to go through some deep deep shit in the finale.

ppl have been saying emma and sam kinda have death trope written all over them, but idk i just don’t see it. i could MAYBE see one of them dying, but also not bc apparently there was a scene from one of the promo trailers of emma in the woods as a prisoner and considering this hasn’t happened yet, i’m thinking maybe it could be a cliffhanger for the end of the episode into season 2? as for sam, i honestly have no idea what the writers have planned for him. personally, i think it would be cruel to kill him off after what he experienced in the woods, not to mention his brother already is dead so it’d be kinda fucked up to kill both riordan brothers but 🤷🏼‍♀️ anything can happen in this show

as for andre, i hate to say it, but he’s kinda useless. he’s probably the weakest supe of the group if i had to pick one and i could definitely see andre dying being used as a way to either solidify cate’s villain arc or like, shock some sense into her(?) bringing her back to the good side, idk 🤷🏼‍♀️ plus there’s the whole controversy with chance, so unless andre survives and they decide to recast him, i really wouldn’t be that sorry to see him go. also, i think his dad is almost for sure dying, my main question is what the hell happened to him and how did he die bc that was random as hell.

i really just hope limoreau and cate survive, they’re probably the most interesting characters in this entire show (i may be a bit biased but it’s fiiine), plus the actors are so so so great, it’d be such a shame to lose them. i’m a little ambivalent on sam and emma, but i don’t really WANT them to die, and with andre, i kinda just don’t care for reasons explained above.

honestly, i think if they kill off another main character this season, it might lessen the chances of killing off another main character in the second season (unless they add more characters to the main cast), and if they end up surviving all the main characters, someone is def getting killed in s2, idk if it’ll be both, but again, anything can happen in this universe so i guess we’ll have to see 🤷🏼‍♀️

[duckiemimi]

"you could say sukuna was a human who wanted to become “god” ...and gojo was a “god” who wanted to become human"

Yes exactly! In terms of the fight itself, round 1 came to a draw because they started out equals, but Sukuna needed to ascend beyond even his Heian era self and gain the ability to literally slash reality to win, whereas Gojo died when his "inviolability" was made inconsequential by this and reverted to his pre-awakening teen self. It's a twisted kind of bond, but they both "reached" each other imo, and appear fulfilled by their fates.

oh, this is interesting!

if i looked at their battle like a capsule story, a story separate from the bigger plot, then yes, this is on theme! if gojo and sukuna were one-time characters who we were given a swift rundown background about prior to their fight, then yes, i could see the conclusion of their fight as thematically fulfilling.

but i can’t separate them from the bigger picture, and so the end of the battle still doesn’t make sense to me. (an off-screen win after 15 straight chapters of repetitive fighting is the biggest reason why—it doesn’t feel earned.) the god/human comparison in my last post was in reference to gojo and sukuna’s fundamental differences, but i wouldn’t apply it to the story as a whole, or to their characters as a whole!

i’ll have to get a better read on sukuna’s character, but i’ve always been under the impression that he’s more of a static character than gojo is, considering what we look forward to from him is not change/growth/development, but a reveal of his plans (in classic villain fashion).

so perhaps this could be seen as a satisfying end-of-the-battle for him. but for gojo? far from it. his motivations lie beyond than just the fight; you have to remember that while he enjoyed battling someone who could actually challenge him, he fought sukuna not for fighting’s sake. he did it to save his protégé and to help his students. gojo is more than just his presence in the battlefield, which is why so many people feel his conclusion was unsatisfying. there was more beyond the battle for him.

(later, i’ll talk about why gojo’s character reversal/regression wasn’t well-executed at all in the chapter and if that was really his end, then it served no actual purpose to the resolution of his character arc or the bigger plot. i’m thinking on this right now, so give an hour or two, maybe. oh! i also think that jjk is all about defying fate, but this is just a side-note!)

so yes, in terms of the fight, but just the fight only!

[zahri-melitor]

Wonder Woman by Messner-Loebs (#63-#100, #0)

Well. That was A Lot.

This is a difficult run to read, and not just because it backs up straight off George Perez’s iconic run. It’s a slog with writing that is painfully outdated and that will throw you out of the story if you’re not paying attention.

It’s very much a run in which I feel one of the biggest problems is that it’s written by a man who wants to believe that women have interiority and motivations, but is hopelessly out of touch with what actual real life women think and believe and act. Interesting concepts, poor execution. I have to believe he didn’t understand the sheer level of all the misogyny he portrayed characters as experiencing, and that he thought it was a good power fantasy to see those women overcoming that systemic and specific misogyny.

Let’s get into the good aspects.

Christopher Priest gets a two-part story (#88-89), which is used to bring Circe (in her traditional appearance) out to explain why Themyscira has been missing for the whole run so far and what happened. I quite enjoy Priest’s writing and this story had enough twists to it to be interesting, but also leaned into an aspect I love seeing pop up in Wonder Woman stories…the inevitability of fate and prophecy. Circe promises Diana that she will restore Themyscira…but Diana must sacrifice an innocent’s life. The story tangles with this well. Truly a lovely little tension release in the run, and shifted the story arc from the first 25 issues over to the last dozen.

Circe as the overarching big bad of the whole run is actually a good shout. Circe’s a manipulator, and having a run where she’s pulling the strings all over the place while also cosying up to Diana in disguise is quite fun.

On that vein…honestly I enjoyed all the ‘Donna Milton’ stuff, despite how much I was ragging it as I read it. Someone taking advantage of Diana’s trust in that way was a betrayal, but you can also see her affected by the role she took on. Also it was just really funny to offset Ares being so hamhanded about his incarnation in comparison. Plus, the existence of Lyta Milton is going to pay off into the future.

While I’m STILL going on about Circe: it’s fascinating to me that multiple of Diana’s female villains not only want to bang her but are compelled to be friends with her, even as they also run around being evil. Like it’s a lovely redemption arc for the 30 seconds it will be permanent.

I don’t hate the idea of The Contest, and it’s one of the better conceptualised stories across the whole run. The concept (has Diana lost her skill and her direction compared to the wishes of the Amazons? How does she compare to champions of Bana-Mighdall? What is the direction that the Amazons should be pursuing in Man’s World?) has a lot to chew on and Artemis as a character does a fair chunk of rehab to the concept behind Bana-Mighdall and moving it into a part of the mythology that writers can actually use, rather than being the racist stereotype Perez created. There are additional valid reasons for the Banas to feel betrayed, and Herakles screwed over both Amazon tribes (Unfortunately at the expense of Hippolyta’s characterisation, but she’s all over the place in this run). The execution however, didn’t measure up to the concepts.

Things I think didn’t work:

The run had three overarching arcs that I think can be approximately broken down into: the space pirate arc; Ares and ‘Donna Milton’ screw with Diana’s life; Artemis as Wonder Woman. They’re not really coherent with each other? Stuff that was happening in one arc just gets dropped and ignored to move onto the next arc.

I think Messner-Loebs had a vision of taking Diana down to see the gritty hardship and violence of women’s lives. Unfortunately, I don’t think that particularly worked as a run for Wonder Woman. It’s a book that at its best is imbued with hope and connections to mythology and epic plots, rather than street-level storylines. Diana running around worrying about paying her bills and working in a fast food restaurant and for a private investigator taking on cases like shaking down men for unpaid child support? I had Common People by Pulp running though my head the whole time. I do like Diana to be concerned with even small scale problems and outraged by institutional sexism. I don’t think this was the right approach to show it.

Then there was the way Messner-Loebs contrasted this with Artemis, by using Artemis as a foil to say “you can’t just go out and beat up institutional sexism and misogyny, the work is harder than punching people in the face and declaring that women should be strong!” Thank you, Messner-Loebs, we really needed that strawman created for Artemis as a character. Artemis and her plot once she leaves Themyscira is just a series of take that strawmen using some very 90s plot ideas (not helped by Deodato literally drawing the sort of Image Comics villains that it is railing against, and giving them stupid names). It’s a very, very blantantly obvious, Captain Planet sort of approach to ‘why are women treated differently to men’ and it needed a lot more subtlety and interrogation of the concepts involved.

Messner-Loebs is also struggling with the fact that he simply doesn’t have the language or conception to describe a lot of the feminist and queer themes he is playing around with. There are several storylines or offhand comments that, were they written today, would be explicit trans storylines or discussions of intersexuality and assigned gender, but in what we get, written in the early nineties? It’s stereotypes about what makes someone flamboyantly gay, or ‘secretly’ female.

Downsides of the run:-

Mike Deodato Jr’s art. It’s everything people rag on about 90s art. He’s not Rob Liefeld, but that’s almost worse, because as I’ve said previously, Liefeld basically only does Hawk & Dove work for DC (with an occasional foray into Deathstroke and ‘projects Jeph Loeb asked all his friends to contribute to’), while Deodato here is getting to draw DOZENS of women and particularly Amazons in that extremely Image House Style way. Not a lot of internal organs, a lot of wedgies. I suppose he was picked for the end arc in that his art style played with the messages Messner-Loebs was trying to convey (“stereotypes bad! Image Comics villains silly! Feminism involves hard work!”) but is let down by the fact that, yanno, all the characters are drawn in that style.

Messner-Loebs just forgetting what his plot involving Cheetah was. At the start of the run, he banished Barbara Minerva into a demon dimension. She then reappears right near the end of the run, with the extremely boring villain I have avoided mentioning this entire write up (sorry, Asquith Randolph is SO dull) having pulled her back and…sent her out to attack Diana? Caged her? Great work there Messner-Loebs, no notes.

Just so much blatant misogyny and violence against women, and the way Diana and Artemis were portrayed as fighting it was nowhere near sufficient catharsis for putting me through reading it.

Do I think you should read this run?

Hmm, it depends. It’s an interesting introduction to Artemis and is probably important context to know about her for any story going forwards. I can see how the Donna Milton stuff is going to pay off in the future when other people draw out the storyline built in here. The choice of classic villains in this run is actually solid. Dr Psycho’s appropriately horribly creepy, Circe’s turn is triumphant, Ares is causing problems, Cheetah is sympathetic but wrong in all the right ways. On the other hand, we start with the process of fridging the Kapatelis family, it’s just chock full of storylines that you stare at going ‘why is this HERE?’, it tends to pick up an idea, play with it and then drop it without pulling it back to develop a theme, it gets bogged down in feminist concepts that were outdated even for the early 90s, and it just felt unpleasant to read. This is some storytelling that desperately needed a woman in the room to consult and talk ideas over with, and as close as they got was the colourist.

[oblivionbladetd]

The Unfortunate Implications of Pokemadhouse: The Big One.

Tldr: Lily's negligence leaves G the offender in multiple Rape Allegories. By extention, making a story about loving and forgiving a rapist.

I know for a lot of people that's already put a pit in your soul and got your guts doing flips, so if you want the proof in the year old moldy pudding, follow me under the cut.

Her insistence on calling it the "Mating Bond" really is the biggest, sturdiest nail in this particular coffin, for even for those lovey-dovey birds that do this forever mated dies without the other thing, it's still mostly a sex and survival thing. Which alone puts G in this weird place without diving deeper, It puts a connotation that G would fuck a child to not die. Which in a "gun to your head do this or something awful happens" sense? I mean, uneasy forgiveness, if any... but let's not unpack that quite yet because.

Lily was asleep... because if anything really enhances ignoring the age of consent, it's just dodging consent almost entirely. For G engages this mating bond by entering Lily's dreams and getting the consent while Lily isn't in the right state of mind. So allegorical statutory and date rape! I want to cry... how do you get this bad at blindness to your own implications? BUT HOLD ON BECAUSE IT STILL GETS WORSE!

Bonnie. As said before, she was made through sabotaged extinction prevention measures without Lily's knowledge prior to her popping into existence. At this is all I have to say is that it sure is fortunate that Lily just already had the funds to take care of a child allocated, and that Bonnie was created as a lol random but not annoying model child with zero downsides, AND is perfectly healthy despite being a Dumpster fire of genetic mixing between 2 species. Cause if that wasn't the case, then Bonnie being an allegorical rape baby would be really weird! Seriously though what the fuck, Lily?

Mix it all together with the rest of Madhouse, and we get a story where, despite numerous occasions of crossing lines both past and present, a rapist is forgiven and declared the spiritual sister of her victim! If I need to elaborate on why that's fucked dare I say it might be too late for you. To make it all worse is that Lily stands accused of having molested and raped her very own sister, Courtney. So if you believe Courtney at all, you need only shift your focus on G being the real self insert, it becomes twisted wish fulfillment, wishing that the Sister she assaulted would forgive her and become part of her life as a sister again. What makes this more insidious is that she knows that she's been breaching too far, having deleted and hastily replaced the original violate arc. Given how her real life writes a lot of the plot that isn't wordplay gags, I would be willing to take away the benefit of the doubt with it being anything other than wish fulfillment, but in the basic courtesy that I have to afford lest I become the thing I hate I will hold back from saying in a definitive way that Lily is thristy for incest.

What I will say is that the fact that this implication exists at all, in a work made by a Critic that has DAYS of content ripping into poor implications like what I have detailed today, is a legendarily bad look AT BEST. I do not expect the works of critics to be good, mind you, but that does not excuse the sheer blind incompetence on display. The absolute most charitable takeaway is that Lily has never suffered hearing herself speak or had the burden of a second thought weighing on her mind. Because if these implications are out of incompetence rather than purposeful inclusions, it speaks abyssally low of Lily's media literacy, and if it is intentional, then it's malicious if not stupid with the allegations surrounding her at time of writing.

[lindleland]

God, that was. A lot.

I'm struggling to think of a piece of fiction that is more of a mixed bag than this.

For everything this game does that should make it far and away the high watermark of the series, it does something else that would make it the worst game in the series to balance it out.

3-1 and 3-5 are easily two of the best trials in the series with 3-4 not far behind, but 3-2 and 3-3 don't really have a huge amount going for them (with the latter squandering so much potential that the entire game suffers for it), and 3-6 is just a complete clusterfuck.

When it nails its character arcs down it does so with some of the best writing the series has had. The bond between the trio of Kaito, Shuichi, and Maki is earnest and believable in a way the series rarely accomplishes. Kaede's journey throughout the first chapter, her eventual tragic loss, and how she helps Shuichi come into his own were absolutely pitch-perfect (it does suck that she had to be fridged for manpain but the execution is incredible nonetheless). Kokichi was an incredible villain who manages to be completely distinct from the previous games' Evil Bastards, and despite him being completely despicable he has a very believable internal logic to him - he even had a good point on occasion when dragging the rest of the cast. And Gonta was such a sweet character and had such distinct dynamics with most of the cast, and I am still incredibly sad about how he went out.

But then there's everyone else.

I think the biggest problem with 3-2 and 3-3 is that in the other games, the second and third chapters are where the characters all get fleshed out and build chemistry with one another, and that just... doesn't happen here. Having Ryota and Kirumi's goals contrast both each other's and Shuichi's overarching journey was a good move, but linking it into having a theme in common rather than personal conflict robs the chapter of its emotional core. The reason the previous second cases hit so hard is because they lean into a tragic bond (Taka/Mondo and Peko/Fuyuhiko respectively), while also laying most of the character groundwork going forward - DR1 sets up Byakuya and Toko's roles in the game, gives Chihiro a solid characterization, and establishes Hifumi and Celestia's simp/simpee dynamic, and DR2 builds a solid connection between Mahiru and Hiyoko, develops a connection between around a third of the cast by way of Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, and also gradually weans Chiaki into the role of sidekick for this game. Here? We don't get anything close to that. The most that case 2 does is establish Kaito as a sidekick and lay the grounds for Kokichi manipulating Gonta.

But chapter 3 is the worst offender here by far. Angie and Tenko getting attached to Himiko never feels earned and neither one of them have any chemistry with her and both of them are totally one-dimensional characters, and it feels like they set that up for the sole purpose of plot, and then that plot had the audacity to make the twist that it all had nothing to do with any of their arcs and that Korekiyo's out-of-fucking-nowhere motive was the cause behind everything. It's like you wasted a quarter of your cast on a needlessly convoluted non-sequitur.

Miu and Keebo's relationship was a good idea that they did almost nothing with, and ultimately Miu comes off as more one-note than any of her similar characters in previous titles (I still like her tho, just not as much). Whereas the plot takes Keebo into some interesting places but he never ends up being that interesting as a character. Rantaro was a really interesting character for what he was, and I can't fault them for not doing more with him given his role in the story.

But then there's Tsumugi. God, what a waste of a character. She does NOTHING prior to her reveal as the mastermind. She's conspicuous purely by way of her having no other reason to exist. I can see what they were going for - they probably didn't want to undermine a likeable character by having her be the mastermind. The problem is that she basically isn't even a character until then. And they could easily have leant into her fangirl personality throughout the game by making her fangirl over more things- that way it wouldn't have felt like a completely unearned twist and would make her less of an underwhelming Big Bad.

Of course, once the twist starts getting incredibly meta it's kind of a stroke of genius? The satire against its own status as a pointless sequel was pinpoint accurate, and rings even truer given how many plot beats in this game are rehashed from previous ones (albeit with better execution), and as far up its own ass as it was for doing it the casting of Danganronpa's fandom as the main antagonist through Keebo was an inspired choice, right down to the specific fandom complaints being used throughout the Argument Armament.

But it all comes at the cost of undermining not only everything that came before it by turning it all into a farce, but also by turning the rest of the series up to this point into nothing but a series within the fictional universe of DRV3.

And yet it still uses that as a springboard to deliver an incredibly thematically strong and coherent cap to Shuichi's character arc.

In some ways it completely spits in the face of everything that happened beforehand, and in other ways it's the perfect culmination of it.

Overall it's a completely insane game made by an insane person and for its sheer ambition alone I hold it in high esteem. I think I prefer it to DR1 although it never quite reaches the relative perfection of DR2 (relative in that Danganronpa's approach to game design is kuckoofuckingbananas in general and if it ever approached "perfection" it would not be recognizably Danganronpa in any way).

[adobe-outdesign]

Ranking + Mini-reviews of All the DHMIS TV Episodes

Two important things to note before we start:

DHMIS is an amazing series, and as such there are no episodes that I’d say are bad, or even mediocre. This isn’t an S to F-tier ranking, this is an S to B-tier ranking.

Because all episodes are great in their own right, everyone’s going to have their own opinions on which ones are the best. These are just my personal picks.

With that said, going from worst to best:

Episode 3: Family

Starting us off is Family. While I still like this episode a lot, I do have to put it at the bottom of the list for a few reasons.

First, most of the episode is spent in Lily and Todney’s house, which means there’s not as many of the beautiful sets that the rest of the series provides. This episode also didn’t have many stylistic shifts—the only one being a brief moment of Deep Dream AI rendering. Most people may not mind this, but as someone who’s always loved the artistic elements of DHMIS, this was a bit underwhelming.

Secondly, I found this episode to be a bit messy structurally. For example, Bird gets kicked out first, so he has a long sequence talking about how he doesn’t want to be in a family... that goes absolutely nowhere. Likewise, Red’s arc felt like it had a lot of build-up but little payoff, while Yellow has the least motivation yet the biggest payoff (this may be because early concept art shows Red being the last one standing; Yellow was a good swap thematically, but it feels like they needed to swap the two’s motivations as well).

And finally, while the “found family is more important than biological family” moral is always lovely to hear, it is mostly outright stated; I feel like the best episodes simply allow the viewer to infer the moral for themselves (if they have one). Furthermore, the episode doesn’t offer much commentary on families beyond this basic idea.

With that said, this episode has a lot of great moments in it, including the entire climax with Roy and the funniest moment in the entire show at the end. But comparing it to all the other episodes, this is the one I personally got the least out of.

Episode 4: Friendship

While enjoyable, this episode has some issues in the message department. The whole “your friends don’t hate you, it’s just the worm in your brain talking” thing is great moral, and speaks to everything from depression to intrusive thoughts.

However, the execution is a bit botched. Red and Bird’s jackassery has been cranked up to 10 in this episode, to the point where they feel slightly OOC (such as swearing at Yellow, which is the only time they’ve done so). Thus, when Yellow assumes his friends hate him, it’s less of a “worm in your brain” kind of thing and more of a... logical assumption. The whole thing’s a bit confused and many will walk away with a slightly sour taste in their mouths despite the hilarious ending scene. Other episodes do a much better job of establishing the trio’s love-hate relationship.

The analogy also falls apart because Yellow makes this assumption on his own; Warren has little to do with anything, and Yellow becomes upset long before he enters his brain. It would’ve made more sense if Warren went into his brain to retrieve the password, only to realize that Yellow’s brain is great for ego-stroking. Thus, he convinces Yellow that Red and Duck hate him so he can stay there or something like that.

Another thing is that while most of the TV episodes feel like their own thing, this episode felt like a less effective version of DHMIS 3 (Love) from the original shorts. Both involve Red and Duck upsetting Yellow, who runs away (either psychically or metaphorically) and encounters an insect who teaches him about some interpersonal relationship before his friends show up and apologize and there’s a plot twist that makes you question the reality of the situation. But in 3, the situation that upsets Yellow is far more minor, the apology is more heartfelt, the moral is stronger and much more nuanced, etc.

However, this episode does have a lot of enjoyable gems in and of itself. Warren perfectly captures being a bad friend and is the worst thing Ever, Colin’s appearance was fun as were the brain friends sequences, and I liked the moral they were going for as well as the slightly surreal moment at the “the worm in your brain has a worm in its brain” part (to the point that I kind of wish they leaned into that more for the ending instead of the chainsaw fight). It’s a good time; it’s just up against stiff competition.

Episode 2: Death

This episode was great overall, and it has a lot of good stuff going for it. I love the commentary on how grief and loss is handled by society and the problems it can cause, the coffin’s probably my favorite teacher out of the bunch, and the comedy was fast-paced and effective.

So why isn’t it ranked higher? It’s mostly because the horror/comedy balance feels off. In most episodes, you get a good blend of both; but in this episode, you mostly get comedy and nothing else. There are one or two eerie moments—I liked the scene with Yellow and Red saying it was just them now “until the other guy comes back” with a close-up on Duck’s empty chair, as well as the scene with the mourners—but they don’t hit as hard as they could.

I think the big problem are the scenes with Duck in the coffin. Red and Yellow’s A-plot is where the commentary is, and where the hardest-hitting moments of this episode come in. However, while doing nothing after you die could be existentially terrifying, ala the ending to the original DHMIS 2, it ends up just being funny shenanigans here. And I like funny shenanigans; but I feel like the humor kind of distracts from the deeper, subtle moments of the A-plot, which shouldn’t be the case.

For example, I feel like Yellow digging up Duck would be a lot more impactful if the coffin left earlier, and Duck was starting to rot more. This would add more a lot more tension to the climax, as there’d be something at stake on Duck’s side rather than solely Yellow’s. Likewise, seeing Yellow try to drag around a rotting corpse and convince himself its still alive would’ve been really haunting.

also I have to subtract a point for the piss scene

Like I said at the beginning though, this is still a super fun episode with a lot going for it. It’s just that 20% too much comedy that prevents it from ranking even higher.

Episode 1: Jobs

Episode 1 is the very first episode to kick off the new show, and I’d say that it was a good pick—it’s the one that’s arguably the closest to the original series in terms of plot (a teacher shows up, sings a song that (technically) lasts the entire episode, and the trio ends up traumatized). 

On top of being similar to the shorts, it also happens to just be a strong episode in general. The humor is great as always, and there are a fair amount of horror elements in there.

My favorite part of the episode is definitely the commentary on capitalism. Being promised a bunch of good jobs before being saddled with a terrible one, the HR people that are more concerned with making people useful to the company than helping them, the way the laziest people get the highest positions, the “blink and 40 years have passed” thing, the meager pay at the end (which is later referenced in episode 2)... it’s all really great stuff, and is delivered subtly in a way that really sticks with you.

My only real complaint is that the bathroom scene was mostly pointless (side note: has anyone else noticed that Yellow address the audience in the first two episodes and then never again?), and the beginning is a bit slow. Outside from that, it’s pretty perfect.

Episode 6: Electricity

DHMIS 6 was my second favorite out of the original shorts, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the last episode gets the same spot here. This episode is pretty amazing—not only do we get introduced to Lesley, but there’s an overwhelming sense of dread throughout the episode that leads to some truly terrifying scenes. As an added bonus, we get some wonderful character development for Yellow that hits especially hard if you happen to be neurodivergent.

The only reason I rank this as the second best episode instead of the first is that it doesn’t feel like as satisfying of a conclusion as DHMIS 6. Lelsey’s reveal doesn’t hit as hard as Roy’s because we don’t know who she is or what her motivations are, and we only get a vague idea of what’s going on by the end of the episode. One could argue this is the point—they do shred the book, after all—but it makes it feel much less satisfying as a conclusion.

And this is more of a minor thing, but it’s also strange that after Red’s mental breakdown in the last episode, he’s right back to normal in this one. It’s possible this was intentionally reflecting the “reset” nature of the universe in this series, but it really undermines the horror of 5 a bit and feels like a missed opportunity for character development. If they wanted to go the reset route, I feel like it could’ve been driven home harder than it was, as it feels more like a continuity error as-is.

With that said however, this is still an incredibly strong episode with some of the series most poignant and haunting moments. It’s only slightly beaten out by...

Episode 5: Transport

While the entire series is a masterpiece, this episode in particular Is A Masterpiece. There is scientifically nothing wrong with it. Everything here just works.

First, I love the plot direction. Instead of the teacher showing up and sticking around like we’re used to, they instead just keel over and die immediately, and the trio hijack their corpse to kickstart the plot. It’s refreshing, and adds a sense of unpredictability to the plot.

And on top of that, despite being one of the only times that events take place primarily outdoors, Transport has the greatest sense of dread and claustrophobia out of all the episodes. Watching Red slowly reach his breaking point and become more and more frantic until it ends with the reveal that there is nothing out there is haunting, especially with the little Lesley tease at the end.

It also throws some additional bits of horror in there—Yellow Guy’s dream abruptly ending with him getting hit by a car hits particularly strong, being viscerally realistic. However, it also has some incredibly funny moments (read: the entire sequence with Time Child). The trio’s chemistry is strong in this one, the puppetry with the car is great as are the two stylistic shifts, and the songs are good. You can’t go wrong with any of this series, but if I have to pick a favorite, this one’s the clear winner.