#tried to summarize the plot today and ended up going into a whole Thing about how donna and laura were in love

[lesbianrobin]

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity. 

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax. 

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind. 

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective. 

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow? 

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally. 

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.” 

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway. 

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season. 

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still. 

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered. 

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

[myshyyangel]

BLs of 2020 *year in review(>×<?) *

Hi, it's me again. I just wanted to say first, this is my opinion, second, please, do not send me any message to tell me how wrong I am. THIS IS MY OPINION, feel free to comment on the post BUT don't send me messages threatening me. Anyways, as I said yesterday, today I'll do my list of bls that stood out to me and why, I mean the best lol.

7. Gameboys - good.

So gameboys, Woah! It was good. Great script, acting on point and direction. It was different obviously, but it managed to stay on top of "bls based on the pandemic that we are living while the bl was being filmed". The acting is on another level, it's funny in the right places and serious too. There was not much of one side and then nothing from the other. My problem with bls is how they tend to be unbalanced, and even if Gameboys was filmed during dark times, it managed to surprise everybody *I'm sure*. The side characters were not overwhelming, and the acting was good too. Yes. We love to see it. Re-watch value 8.5/10

6.Why r u - good-ish.

Why R U, so I was skeptical with this one, but I wanted to see how Saint (whom character I hated so much in LBC) would turn himself around and prove that he is a good actor. And boy, he did not come here to play. Zee was good too, and Tommy and Jimmy. Now, aside from them, it was a mess. So that's why my grading is good-ish. I skipped half of everybody else's story. These two couples were the saving grace, and like here's my thing... Overload. Wanting to cover a lot but you don't have to. Anyway, I'm glad we got to see the whole story completed now. It was a good series, the writing was a little questionable but the acting was there. The story was cliché, but still. Puuur. Re-watch value 8/10 but like only if it's the main couples. 6/10 if it's the whole series.

5.Mr. Heart - good, cute, aksjaks melt my heart.

Sooo... I just loved this series. The thing is, the actors were so likable and loveable that I didn't even care about how short it was. But I did re-watch it and some things need some work. The script was one of them, it was kinda confusing, but as I said, the actors are so charming that you need to watch it again just to pay attention to the whole thing. Anyways, the direction was good, and the color palette... LOVED IT. The story itself is a little cliché like almost every bl that came out this year. Re-watch value 8/10

Now MY TOP BLS OF THIS YEAR.

4.Where your eyes linger - excellent

First off, LET'S GO KOREAAA YAAASS. second, mmm Viki girl- I had to subscribe just for this series. Third, ugh It was so good. The acting, the script, the direction, the colors, the acting, aksjaksk what else can I say?. The production team did know where to take the series and in such a short time. Both actors shine and their chemistry is palpable. The music was perfect. I mean, best of the best when it comes to bls. I hate to compare but, how come Korea made this bl and it became UNFORGETTABLE and half of the bls that came out were all the same? I think it was bold to separate the main characters, I thought it wouldn't happen cause you know... Cliché. BUT IT DID HAPPEN and the best part is how the end comes fully in circle. Anyways, re-watch value 10/10.

3.Gaya sa Pelikula - unforgettable

This series is everything you wish every bl was in 2020. The lessons that they tried *and succeeded*to teach the audience, how to call an LGBTQ+ person, HOW YOU CAN BE RAISED BY PARENTS WHO ARE CONSERVATIVE and still not act like an AS*HOLE, the script was magic, the direction was on point, the acting. This series would go down in history as one of the best bls. Thank you to the actors, to the crew, and everybody else. Re-watch value 10/10.

2. 2gether - excellent

Polarizing at best. 2gether marked me, yes, it did. From the acting to the story. Yes, I know, "there are hundreds of bls similar..." not to me. And there's just so much I can take from this series, I even wrote a long character analysis on this app, but I'll summarize. Growers, there's character development, there are jokes and seriousness. And the plot is new *to me* so I was surprised. No character falls into the same category as other bl characters, and the energy the actors bring is just amazing. The color palette (yes, I am obsessed with it, it gives me different moods that's why I feel like it is important in a series) was beautiful, the music used was EVERYTHING, my only complaint is the direction, too many cuts (GMMTV girl you better stop). The cast shines. The finale is what was polarizing, no kiss, but I was sooo okay with it. Re-watch value 11/10, yes, I've seen it many times after it ended.

MY NUMBER ONE IS...

1. Cherry Magic. Excellent, unforgettable, chef kisses, best BL IN THE WORLD.

Cherry magic is the perfect example of why you don't need to have 45 minutes to make a good ss series. 20-24 minutes and we still got this much. Character development was there, cute moments... Everywhere to be found, the script is A HUNDRED for me, the director did not get me dizzy *giving actors screentime TOGETHER IN JUST ONE SHOT was just loveable, thanks*, the acting: out of this world. When you watch Cherry Magic, you feel like you are part of Adachi's world, or like you are watching a little kid growing up and you feel proud because of the decisions he takes. The same thing with Kurosawa, I've never seen a bl character like his, the guy is confident but respectful and it just makes you wonder if you'll ever find someone like that. The side characters didn't outshine but were not at the corner. That's what I call BA LAN CE. This is my favorite bl series of all time (which used to be DarkBlueKiss). I hope we get to see more, NO SPECIAL EPS PLEASE DONT RUIN IT. Re-watch value 1000000/10

What you guys think? What are y'all favs bls of this year? Some series I'm still on it like ITSAY and Hello Stranger. While there are some new bls that I'll review when they end.

Credits to the creators of the gifs, I do not own them, therefore if you see yours, message me and I'll add you, thank you.

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[userholland]

Elaborate on why you didn’t like Cherry? I wanna know your opinion! :)

before i start, i am not saying that i hated this movie or i dislike it because it’s not a marvel film. i tried to go in with an open mind and i had read the book prior so, i was very anticipated for this movie! i am also not bashing on anyone else’s opinions about this movie as well, this is my personal opinion and if you don’t like that, that’s fine! i’m summarizing in points and calling it...

“liz’s cherry review: you can not like a movie, but enjoy the actors in it and understand the message. 🍒”

if i had to grade this movie, it would be at least a C- and the reason is because this movie was completely flashy to me. the characters were one dimensional, the directing was confusing, the dialogue was blunt and choppy and overall, i think they cut out so many great parts of what the book was and what made me want to see this film.

what i liked:

- the raw and real details of what going through addiction and withdrawal is. i think as graphic and comedic as it was, part 4/5 was always the hardest part to get through. you not only see the downfall of two characters that solely depend on each other, but you see that they also can’t save each other and what their demons. as we see, emily slowly disengages from cherry unless she needs to shoot up or needs pills. while their relationship wasn’t perfect, you still wanted them to both find some kind of hope and i think that is mainly supported by tom & ciara’s acting. it was nice to see in interviews that they actually formed a bond behind the screen and they could trust each other when it came to filming multiple scenes of “shooting up heroin” with real needles.

- the message of how veterans can feel like the country they fought for can also turn against them. even though it wasn’t as boldly executed as i thought, i think that the “aftermath of war” homage was necessary for this film since it’s sort of the reasoning for what cherry’s actions after in part 5 and 6. it’s something that real soldiers have to deal with, experiencing trauma and the urge to fight back when it’s suddenly stripped away when they are sent home. they have to go back to living normally, but they don’t know how to and i think again, it was very raw and it’s something we all need to hear/realize. yes, the army and the military overall today is controversial and always has been, but it still comes with terrible consequences that young men go through and some of nothing to turn to and feel betrayed.

what i disliked:

- the relationship and entire romance of cherry and emily. (aka leaving out some huge subplots that could have built up their relationship more). from what i remember about the book, this is not the cherry and emily i pictured. they weren’t some dumb kids who fell in love then got hooked to drugs. they were this dysfunctional couple who lied and cheated to each other, hoping they would both end the toxicity of their back and forth relationship, but they still persisted and soon, they were both violently torn with wanting to be normal, but they had to get high. there are multiples times in this film where emily is more than supportive and admits she loves cherry a few times, but in the book, she wasn’t there for him most of the time unless they were getting high together. they got divorced and they both cheated at least once on each other and i think that it would have been nice to see the struggle of their relationship and to question what kind of relationship it even was. i wanted to see the battle of “are they truly in love or are they using each other with the past they used to have” love that was in the book. i think they were brightened up too much and it’s sad that the main focus was their relationship throughout each part of the film, when reading it, to me, was really was like pulling teeth. while i can’t deny the chemistry of the characters on screen was amazing, i just didn’t like how they made them fluffy.

- the soundtrack. i’m not gonna explain much because this is truly opinionated and possibly a bit petty, but none of the songs or even instrumentals stuck with me. it didn’t make me emotional, it didn’t add to the scenes. they just weren’t for me.

- the one dimension i felt with emily’s character. now, i will say that ciara bravo acted the hell out of this role and it was amazing to see what she was given and she just ran with it. probs to her 100%, but i did think that emily’s character was completely underdeveloped in this movie. like in my previous point, emily was sort of a vice to cherry rather than a shoulder to cry on. he wanted her, he had her, he lost her a few times, he got her back, but he realized he ruined her. their whole relationship was manipulated, and i think the part where she yells at him in the bathtub is one of my favorite parts of the movie because that’s the emily i wanted to see more. she was the emily i read from the book and she was also dealing with her struggles with her home life. i think they could have given her more time.

- the madison scene. i was expecting madison to have a bigger part in part 1 where she’s only mentioned and obviously cherry had a sort of weird relationship with her, but they only explained it in a 2-3 minutes. it made it seem like she was just temporary from the start, which yes, she sort of was, but they ended up having sex & then he left her and even thought about her a few times. i just think that they could have either added more or completely cut the scene. but quoting the book there was nice too... i guess.

- everything felt rushed, and maybe that was their purpose, but i think this could have been something much more developed. what i keep saying is that this should have been a six part series. not only do you have an hour dedicated to every single part, but you also just have development of characters. that’s why we get invested in tv shows is because the characters have trials and tribulations of who they are. it was stressful and a bit boring to sit through a 2 1/2 hour movie in all honesty. i’m not saying that “oh this movie isn’t for people who have short attention spans”, but rather i would have liked to see more plot.

- the ending. i... hated the ending. it may be my least favorite part of the movie when it’s supposed to be the conclusion. maybe it’s just because a movie like this, i expect characters to be faced with the unknown, but this is a movie based on real life. the author has his own life now after jail and to see that ending? i was disappointed. instead of transition scenes of cherry’s “growth” in jail, i would have liked them to have short scenes of how his life in jail is like a god-send a bit. how he was able to step away from all the chaos he caused and he recovered somewhere with no vices around him. i don’t think it was a movie that had a “heart-warming” ending because you go through this rollercoaster of a relationship only for him to be waited for when it was not like that in the book.

overall:

i think this film was... okay. i could go on and on about the small things, but in short words, i disliked it because of it’s directing. i blame the russo brother’s execution on it, not saying that the overall product was terrible. i know some people had the same opinions and i can see why. do i plan ever watching it again? never. it’s not a movie that’s for me or a movie that i want to see pan out again because it was really hard to watch, not because of the gore or sex, but because it is a movie about struggle and pain. you don’t want to side with these characters, but goddamnit you want them to get some fucking help. great job to tom and ciara and it’s nice to know they are actually friends and trusted each other so much with this. i really hope to see them in more projects together in the future!

[not-majestic-bluenicorn]

Cravity’s League of the Universe Theory UPDATE

Season 3 Hideout: Be Our Voice & The Awakening: Written in the Stars

Hello! My name’s Ori and I write k-pop theories and fanfics and today I’m revisiting my Cravity theory cause apparently I didn’t update for Hideout Season 3 even though I thought I had lol This is going to be a mini update since there isn’t much to add, but let’s get right into it.

Arc 1: Hideout Season 3 Main Plot Points

During the prologue of Season 3 we finally get to see more about Woobin, Seongmin and Minhee. At the beginning they hear their names being called by Wonjin, who’s probably using his power to convince them to meet the others. Then we get to see a little of their private lives.

First Woobin is studying in his room when he spots a dead butterfly and revives it. He then tries to take the elevator to leave his apartment building but he ends up getting too scared and gives up; the instagram account also confirms his fear of elevators. He then presumably leaves to spend some time at the arcade. From Minhee, we get to see how carefully he cleans and takes care of his room, making sure even the smallest object is in place, before his alarms sound and he has to get ready to leave. 

[Gif: Woobin picks up a dead butterfly, the scene cuts and we see the butterfly flying again.]

Seongmin is at the bus stop at night, waiting for it. We know from the Instagram posts he doesn’t want to go home so ends up choosing to go to the arcade and he forgets his cellphone. Minhee finds the cellphone and upon touching it discovers Seongmin’s plans and goes to meet him there. At the arcade, Seongmin struggles to play with the dart, but when he closes and opens his eyes again, suddenly he’s nailing every single shot.

[Gif 1: Minhee picks up Seongmin’s cellphone at the bus stop and has a vision of Seonming playing with darts and failing all his shorts.

Gif 2: Seongmin is at the arcade playing darts, he closes his eyes and after he opens them he does a perfect shot.]

Minhee arrives during this and gives Seongmin his cellphone, which is when they notice they both have similar stones. Woobin also notices this and joins them. They notice Seongmin’s injured hands and Woobin heals him, revealing his power to them.

[Screenshot: Woobin standing with his back to the camera. His arm is up as he shows Seongmin and Minhee his stone.

Gif: Woobin grabs Seongmin’s injured hands in his and his hands start to shine as he heals Seongmin. The scene fades to white with the light coming from his hands.]

After a cutscene, we see the other six at their hideout. Wonjin is explaining that Seongmin and Minhee are a year younger than them and that Woobin is his and Hyeongjun’s classmate. He also mentions already calling them and Allen adds that he’s dreamt of them as well. Finally, the three of them arrive and introduce themselves.

[Instagram screenshot: A picture of a table with pictures of Minhee, Seongmin and Woobin sprawled on it. The caption reads “The friends from Allen’s dream that he talked about. Friens that Allen introduced to me. I’m sure they could hear my voice will they? Finally today! #photo taken by Hyeonjun

Screenshot from Epilogue: The nine members sitting around a table in their hideout.]

In the epilogue, they’re all spending time together at the hideout. Wonjin and Taeyoung are talking. Seongmin is repairing something for Hyeongjun. Serim, Jungmo and Minhee are with Revue when Jungmo tests Serim’s power by asking him what is the color of the third cloth in his wardrobe. Serim correctly guesses it’s a purple hoodie. We also confirm Jungmo’s ability to communicate with animals. Finally, Woobin is asking Allen if he can predict which team will win tomorrow’s game, to which Allen responds that’s not how his power works, before they’re interrupted by Seongmin asked to be healed by Woobin.

The scene cuts to them playing a board game. Taeyoung tries to cheat by freezing time but Hyeongjun discovers and stops him. Suddenly, Allen looks up and all the lights around them begin to turn off before they look at the camera and the final light goes out. Then, Allen wakes up to Woobin calling him. Finally, in the Hidden Film we see all but Seongmin and Minhee celebrating their graduation.

[Gif: The members look around as the lamps they were using for light start to turn off on their own.]

What is happening?

Before we update the character profiles let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on. First of all, they’ve finished reuniting and Hideout is over just as we had predicted. This means the stasis stage of the story is over and now we need a trigger. While I think that The Awakening: Written in the Stars is sort of a little break while they work on the next part of the story, because we didn’t get any films or updates on the Instagram account, I also think that the title has more meaning to it than that.

First of all, the simple phrase “the awakening” already feels like a trigger because the word itself alludes to the start of something. I also think it might be literally referencing Allen waking up from the vision he has in the Season 3 Epilogue. Yes, I’m pretty sure the whole last scene is a vision, and while it’s a little different, it does preserve that 4th-wall-breaking aspect we’ve seen in some of his visions before, so it’s not a stretch.

What does this mean for them? Well, simply put, danger is coming, and whether they like it or not, they might have to start learning real soon how to better use their abilities. To be honest, I’m still not sure Starship is gonna go full superhero on them, because most of their powers are very passive, but we’ll see!

Updating the profiles

Now that we know a bit more about our last three characters, let’s summarize what we know and then make a list with their powers.

Minhee

He is an extreme perfectionist, to the point that every single thing must have its place and it seems that he has a very detailed routine to keep order in his room. We can also see that he has quite a lot of alarms that establish the order of his day. He doesn’t seem to have an adverse reaction to disorder though, and simply seems to enjoy the act of keeping his space clean and perfect, because we don’t see him do that with the hideout.

[Instagram screenshot: A picture of a perfectly organized shelf with the caption “Neat and tidy. Finished cleaning up my room.”]

Seongmin

Seongmin hates being home, to the point we don’t even get to see his house in any of the videos. He doesn’t mention it in the videos but he’s pretty verbal about it in the Instagram posts. It is quite likely he has a bad relationship with his parents and he seems to wander around a lot. He is also extremely prone to getting injured apparently. Someone help the lost puppy.

[Instagram screenshot: A picture of Seongmin sitting on a bench at a bus stop with the caption “Not yet... don’t wanna go home like this, should I go there again?”]

Woobin

Woobin lives in an apartment complex and he seems to be a good student. The one thing that definitely stands out about him is his fear of using the elevator. It’s still unknown if it comes from any particular elevator-related trauma or if maybe he has major claustrophobia caused by something that isn’t specifically related to elevators. However, he’s pretty terrified of them and although he’s been trying to overcome it, it hasn’t worked for him at all.

[Instagram screenshot: A picture of Woobin’s hand as he presses the button to call the elevator with the caption “Please, just for today...”]

The powers

Finally, the list:

Serim - People-focused psychometry, he obtains information about others, seemingly by accessing their knowledge and memories. So far his ability has only been seen with the members.

Allen - Precognition through dreams, he has dreams in which he’s able to see the future. All dreams seem to be tied to the members so far.

Jungmo - Animal Telepathy, he’s able to understand and communicate with animals.

Woobin - Accelerated Healing, so far we’ve seen him heal small injuries and bring back to life small creatures.

Wonjin - Telepathy, he can communicate with others through the mind, even if they’re far away. So far his ability has only been seen with the members.

Minhee - Future-focused psychometry, this one is still in doubt since we’ve only seen him use it once, but he seems to be able to see the future of the person who last touched the object.

Hyeongjun - Legit, no idea, what is your deal, child?

Taeyoung - Time stopping, he’s able to completely stop time for everyone else except Hyeongjun. He can continue moving and doing things normally when he does it.

Seongmin - Enhanced accuracy and precision, again this one is still in doubt since we’ve only seen him use it once, but he seems to be able to perfectly nail every shot he makes.

Conclusions

Cravity might actually be in danger, depending on what Allen’s vision meant. One thing is for sure though, the story is starting to move forward. On the other hand, someone help me with Hyeongjun, I accept suggestions.

[avatar-state-kate]

The lack of any sort of Futurama meta on tumblr while disappointing for me who would like to read it, is not surprising. Seeing as the shows run and prime predating this hellsite. However as I am now revisiting the series and believe that it has earned a place in television history as one of the great animated series I believe that an introductory meta of the series would be a nice thing for tumblr to have.

If this meta seems vague, I am trying to keep it spoiler free as the target audience is potential viewers. Going forward I might make a more detailed version of this if people are interested. Now without further ado.

The premise:

Futurama is an animated adult comedy originally produced by Fox and later revived by adult swim that follows Philip J. Fry, a delivery boy from 20th century New York who is accidentally cryogenically frozen on New Year’s Eve of 1999 for 1000 years. The show follows his exploits in the year 3000, where he joins an intergalactic delivery service and goes on adventure of the week style escapades.

What is it about:

Any good show is always actually about more then it’s premise. I would say Futurama is about 3 things primarily: 1) sci-if media, 2) the legacy of the 20th century, and 3) the meaning of life comes from our relationships with other people

Let’s break those each down.

1) Sci-fi Media

Futurama is a nerd show that knows it’s nerd media. The series regularly devotes episodes to exploring tried and true sci-fi tropes, namely those popular within film and television. Time travel, parallel dimensions, interstellar travel, dark holes, string theory, robot uprisings, the works. The show does not just name drop these tropes (ahem Big Bang) but actually plays them out, sometimes straight and sometimes inverting these tropes.

Some of the strongest exploration of tropes comes in the form of the main cast. Fry as the Luke Skywalker/destined hero type, Leela as the badass alien babe, and bender the helpful robot. Except Fry is playing up the Everyman to his most farcical self, alien babe Leela is chronically single and solves her problems with her fists rather then with her feminine wiles, and Bender is the most self serving person in the whole series, doing everything to inconvenience his crew and practically nothing to help.

The comedy is not based on pointing at references and saying look a thing from science fiction, but by actually being science fiction, pointing out the things that are stupid and praising what’s good.

2) Legacy of the 20th century

There is an adage within literature/film critique that any story about the future is really about the present. The setting of the future a space in which to explore the fallout of what we are doing now.

Fry being from the year 1999 is deliberate, as it not only provides the audience a point of access character, but it contextualizes the future through the past. Many of the shows plots will directly implicate the 20th century as the cause of the problem the crew must tackle now.

From environmental issues, the colonization of Mars, and the rule of corporate monopolies, Futurama is to a degree a satire of the early 2000s and onwards.

3) The meaning of life comes from our relationships with other people

When Fry first awakens in the year 3000 he is initially very excited to have left his old life behind. Futurama isn’t the sci-fi of today but that of the 50s and 60s where the future is an aspirational place. Here Fry is expecting to shed his old life, where he was poor, had a shit job as a pizza delivery boy, and a cheating girlfriend, for something better.

Unfortunately his job assignment chip in the pilot is as a delivery boy, and through the series we see that really the future offers a lot of the same. Fry is still poor, with a shit job, and usually girlfriend-less. He’s still a nobody.

When Fry is defrosted he meets Leela, a one eyed alien who was orphaned on earth, and bender a robot disillusioned with his factory job. The three are completely alone at the beginning of the series, without friends or family. By the end of the episode they have each other.

Futurama is a comedy that isn’t afraid of sincerity or sentimentality, a rarity in adult comedy particularly of the “edgy adult animation” variety. The show is willing to sacrifice a laugh for heart and these relationships, the ones forged in the future and the ones Fry lost to the past, are the soul of the series.

As the Luke Skywalker type character Fry is destined to go to the year 3000 to save the universe multiple times. However futurama is not a show about destiny, if it were its finales (the show was cancelled and revived multiple times) would centre on world saving exploits. But they don’t, “Idle hands are the Devils Play Things” and “Meanwhile” are about Fry and Leela’s relationship, how they care for and love each other.

Being an adult comedy from the early OO’s some of the jokes did not age well, and the style of comedy is certainly not to everyone’s taste. But Futurama is a series that is able to blend high concept science fiction and social satire with tender character moments, which is a feat worth acknowledging. If not for the display of craft then for the message at the heart of it all.

You’re not nobody to the people who love you. The meaning of life, the universe, and everything are the people you meet along the way.

@shrinkthisviolet I am tagging you because this is my case for the show. Which I can summarize as a resounding check it out

[diavolodigitale]

L’appel Du Vide: 01 What a Way to Start

Not that anybody is really reading it here, but I decided to follow through with this story no matter what.

All chapters: 00 - 01 - All stories in PDF

Rhys is the CEO of Atlas and Jack’s AI is back, surprise, surprise! Now Rhys is dismayed, Jack doesn’t care much, and the events of Borderlands 3 are just beginning to unravel. Is there any way to fix the plot of this game? Would it be any better if Rhys had to cooperate with Jack this whole time? Well, this is your chance to find out!

Spoiler: yes, dammit, it would. Everything’s better with a bit of Handsome Jack in it.

Genres: Fix-It, Developing Relationship, Alternate Canon, POV Third Person, Humor, Drama, Plot-driven (kind of? well, it has plot)

Pairing: Handsome Jack’s AI/Rhys (they’re still just talking, dammit)

Characters: Handsome Jack’s AI, Rhys

Rating: M for Mature but not in this chapter lol

Size: around 3000 words (chapter 2/11)

Sun set and rose, another day began. Rhys shaved off his moustache.

“Mornin’, sleeping beauty,” said Jack, who was sitting in Rhys’ chair when the latter one entered his office wearing only red bathrobe and home slippers.

“Morning,” replied Rhys, eying Jack wearily. Jack almost expected him to be surprised by his presence all over again, but it seemed like Rhys did not, after all, convince himself that the events of the previous day were just a dream, which, depending on how one looks at it, might even be considered personal growth. “Let me say how much I appreciate you not stalking me while I sleep. Just so you knew,” he said, painfully aware of Jack’s realness and determination to stay.

“Actually,” began Jack, idly following Rhys’s movements around the room with his gaze, “I watched you for some time, but your face looked so stupid that I started having these fits of hysterical laughter, so I left not to wake you up accidentally. I care for you so much, after all, and… Hey!”–he suddenly sat upright in the chair and pointed at Rhys’s hunched miserable figure–“that thing from your face disappeared! I could’ve sworn I saw it yesterday...”

“And now it’s gone,” concluded Rhys with a sigh.

“Phew, great job, pal. It was so awful, I cannot even begin to describe.”

“What? I thought you liked it,” said Rhys, nonplussed.

“Yeah, about that… I lied. Didn’t want to tell you this, but with that moustache, I wouldn’t let my kids anywhere near you,” said Jack and cackled.

Rhys scowled. He got rid of his moustache precisely because Jack told him he liked it, even despite the fact that it was particularly hard for him, considering the meaning it supposedly held. Since the day before he had this strange desire to do everything in opposition to Jack. Perhaps, it was deeply rooted in his former traumatic experience with the AI. Or in the fact that he had always been kind of mischievous, either one of those two.

“I see you’re in a good mood today,” said Rhys, making himself a morning coffee. He couldn’t say the same thing about himself – half of the night he spent persuading himself not to bang his head on the wall until Jack left for good. As a temporary means, it was as good as anything, but certainly wouldn’t be a reliable way to get rid of the AI forever. In any case, it seems not to have worked for Rhys previously, so he had to come up with something else. Changing the prosthetics took time, and he didn’t have that precious resource at his disposal in the needed amount.

In the end, when he finally managed to fall asleep, it was at the thought that he was actually a little sorry for what happened with Jack’s hologram during their last confrontation. Despite all the evil Jack had done, he used to be a significant part of Rhys’s life and helped shape him into what he was now. Most importantly, he taught him not to trust anybody and to always swing for the fences. Now, being the CEO of Atlas, Rhys could clearly see that this strategy worked perfectly.

“Oh, by the by, I took some time to look through your files and check out this Kawatagi guy we talked about yesterday. Must say, he’s a very promising candidate. Maybe, I should’ve chosen him as my successor instead of you-know-who,” said Jack in a conspiratorial tone, stroking his chin and narrowing his eyes. “Instead of you, I’m talking about you,” he added in a normal voice.

Rhys sighed, gently lowering two sugar cubes into his coffee. Here we go again.

“First, why the heck did you rummage in my computers without my permission? Second, his name’s Katagawa, more precisely – Katagawa Junior. And a candidate for what? Wait, don’t say anything, I don’t even want to know. Now get out of my chair,” said Rhys and proceeded to try and shoo Jack away with a few careless waves of his hand.

“It’s not like you can’t sit here. I’m just a hologram, you know.”

Jack was grinning, of course. Rhys looked down at him with his tired sleepless eyes and sighed the fortieth time this morning.

“Remember when we first met, you called me weird? Now you’re the one being weird, congratulations.”

“Oh, come o-o-on, don’t be so bo-o-oring.” Jack disappeared from the chair and reappeared on the sofa, lying on his side with his head resting on his hand. “You know, I think I’ve now seen enough of you to bet with confidence that you don’t have any friends. I bet I was your closest friend (and don’t forget that I was your imaginary closest friend), ‘cause I don’t see how someone can tolerate that attitude for long.”

Don’t worry, Rhys, he won’t get to you, you’re thick-skinned now, you know that, thought Rhys and put his mug on the table. He sunk into his chair and turned on the ECHO device to check for any new messages.

“Actually, I do have friends,” he said in his best I-am-not-offended tone.

“Yeah? Anybody in particular?”

“Zer0, for example. I am proud to call him my friend and I’m sure he’s proud to be called mine.”

“Zer0, yeah… wait, who’s that again?”

Rhys rolled his eyes. Some things just never changed.

“One of the vault hunters who… took part in your elimination, so to put it,” he answered carefully.

“Oh, yeah, that filthy bandit, I remember him! Well, not him killing me, of course, but I think I saw him somewhere. Didn’t he have that mental condition? I remember him saying some gibberish instead of speaking like normal people do. Yeah, right,”–Jack laughed–“I can see you two dorks being friends.”

“How could I have survived this long without you trying to offend me all the time? Unbelievable.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking! Or was that still your thought? I always forget I’m in your head. Anyway, to summarize our conversation so far, we’ve established that you’re a pathetic loner with only one creature in the whole world you can call a friend of sorts. You never seize to amaze me, Rhys.”

“There’s also Vaughn,” said Rhys through his teeth, beginning to lose his patience.

“And that is…?”

“You remember Vaughn, don’t you?”

“If I’m asking who that is, then, apparently, I don’t,” answered Jack, making the irritation in his voice sound as blatant as possible. “Why do you carry around that thing people call a head, huh?”

“He used to work for Hyperion with me.” Rhys threw a quick glance at Jack, looking for any sign of recognition on his face, but there was none. “Is short, wears glasses?” Still no signs. “Has a six-pack?” he said in his last desperate attempt to make Jack’s memory serve its purpose.

To his surprise, it actually worked. Jack snapped his fingers and rolled over on the sofa.

“Oh, that ne-erd, yeah, I remember him. Where’s he now?” he asked, not even trying to pretend that he really cared about the answer.

“He’s on Pandora, doing some bandit stuff. Guess he is working for the…” Rhys suddenly stopped, hastily thinking about what he had almost let out.

“For whom?” asked Jack indifferently. The answer still didn’t matter much to him, but he just couldn’t bear the thought of Rhys keeping something hidden from him.

“For the… err… for, well, you know… coughmson coughders,” replied Rhys, sounding like he was choking on something, and started loudly typing on the table, pretending that he was incredibly busy with his emails.

“What? Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Rimzon raide-ez,” indistinctly said Rhys into his fist and cleared his throat.”

“God dammit, Rhys, what the fuck are you saying there?” shouted Jack with annoyance and jerked up from the sofa. “Should I stand right behind you all the time to know what comes out of your mouth? Even your thoughts are more distinct than that.”

Perhaps, scared by the prospect of Jack constantly following him closely, even closer than he already did, Rhys gave in.

“It’s the Crimson Raiders, for god’s sake!” he yelled and landed his fist heavily on the table. He then took a deep breath to calm down and added, “He works for the Crimson Raiders. I just didn’t want to tell you.”

“O-oh. O-o-o-oh, I see how it is. He’s with team idiots now, isn’t he? Well, good to know. Now we’ve proven that all your friends are either stupid or nonexistent. Great.”

Rhys’s left eye was glowing as he was interfacing with the devices in his office. He took a sip of his coffee, scrolled down the list of new casualties reports and tried not to take what he had heard close to his heart.

“Now that I got my daily dose of humiliating you, let’s talk business,” said Jack and laced his fingers together as if he had a very profitable offer for his interlocutor. “I think we can squeeze something out of this Katamaga,” he began, and Rhys immediately exerted himself. He did not like the sound of that. “I think there’s more to him than you see. He doesn’t just want Atlas, you see, he very obviously wants you to work with him. What a fool! That’s a perfect opportunity for us to rob him of everything he has, including his pathetic corporation. I mean, I never liked Maliwan, but if it’s a gift horse… Who am I not to take it on your behalf, right?”

“I appreciate the thought you put into it, but I already have another plan, and it definitely isn’t allying with Katagawa Jr. He’s an obsessed psychopath and I don’t want anything to do with him,” replied Rhys confidently. He shivered even at the possibility of having another Jack-like associate.

“Enlighten me then. What genius idea has your corporate mind produced?”

“First, you have to promise not to yell at me. My head aches and I won’t endure any more than you already being here and talking to me,” said Rhys patiently, already predicting Jack’s reaction to what he intended to share. There was no way to keep it a secret, so he wanted to at least soften the blow.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Jack and yawned.

Rhys braced himself. Discussing this would surely be no easy matter.

“I want to make a deal with Lilith. She helps me defeat maliwans, and I give her something she wants in return.”

There was silence. Then there was a snarl and a nondescript squeal.

“WHAT. THE FUCK. ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! MM, RHYSIE, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?” Jack appeared standing on Rhys’s table right before him. The sight made Rhys spit out a bunch of his coffee. “You’re joking, right?” Jack squatted down to see Rhys’s face when he spoke. “Out of a-a-all people in these 6 goddamn galaxies you choose her? I see you’ve been a very bad boy in daddy’s absence, completely out of your mind!”

Rhys raised his index finger and burbled, “You told me you won’t yell. I specifically asked you not to yell, Jack.”

“What am I supposed to do then, huh?!” Jack disappeared and in the next second was already standing at the window with his arms crossed, thoughtfully observing the Atlas soldiers running around outside. “I thought you can’t disappoint me more than you already have, but it seems like you always manage to conquer new heights.”

“Look, there’s really no point in talking about this. I’m my own boss now and this is my decision. I was the one to rebuild Atlas from ruins, so I’m sure I’ll be able to take care of it. Please, Jack, I’m tired and sick and I don’t want all this.” Rhys sighed wearily and rubbed a coffee stain on the table with the sleeve of his bathrobe.

“Okay. Okay-okay-okay-okay, hear me out. Just this one time, just once, let me tell you something.” Jack turned to Rhys and Rhys gave him a little nod after considering for a few seconds. It’s not like he really had a choice, he just liked to think he had a firm grip on the situation. “Tell me, do you remember Lilith doing something, anything for the sake of somebody else?”

“Um, yeah, she killed you, actually,” replied Rhys confidently.

“No-no-no, honey, she didn’t do it for somebody, she just wanted to have her revenge on me,” said Jack, stressing what he viewed as essential pieces of information to make sure Rhys REALLY got what he wanted to say. Were he not a hologram, he would probably be shaking with rage as he did it. “She wanted to destroy me, because I destroyed her boyfriend who just wouldn’t let me wipe those bandit asses, which, by the way, included his, off my planet. She couldn’t care less about all those people that died, about Crimson Raiders, about her other “friends”. She is a murderer, just like you, me, like any other person on that goddamn planet. The only difference is that she, unlike us, didn’t have ANY good will.”

Jack’s intense stare made Rhys turn away. AI’s words made him consider what he knew of Lilith, but he felt almost wrong when doing so. He shook his head, trying to scare the thoughts away.

“You just hate her, that’s all. She may not be the best option, but when choosing between her and Maliwan, I believe, the choice is obvious.

“Is it? Is it, though?” asked Jack furiously with his eyes almost bulging out. “Let me tell you one thing. Two things, actually. Despite how surprising it might sound to you, I’m actually happy that she killed me. You know why? Of course, you don’t, otherwise we wouldn’t have this conversation now, dummy. So, I’ll be kind enough to explain. Even after her betrayal, I didn’t finish her off, which means I am better than her. “What is the second thing, Jack?” you might ask. Well, here goes: she is a stinking bandit. A bandit, and the only thing you should do with bandits is kill them, but I’m sure this much you should know by now.” After finishing his rant, Jack exhaled loudly and adjusted his unmoving hair with a swift motion of his hand. To top his speech off, he asked, “Still better than Katagawa?”

Rhys, however, still remained unimpressed.

“Jack, he killed his entire family to become the CEO of Maliwan. I imagine you would think it’s a reasonable thing to do when you want to run the corporation so bad, but I’m sure you know I disagree with that.”

“And what do YOU know about his family?” asked Jack, clearly upset by the lack of expected reaction. “Do you even know anything about the way he runs Maliwan? The only thing I know is that now they are more successful than ever (even though I hate to say it). Use your brains, kid, and you’ll go further than you could’ve hoped. One of these two alliances will bestow endless opportunities upon you while the other one will almost certainly get you stabbed in the back.”

“I hear you. I hear you and I disagree. I’m sorry, Jack,” said Rhys and shook his head apologetically. He was already imagining what would such a start of his day lead to.

“Oh my god, how can you not see that you have more in common with him than a skag and a grinder! He sees something in you, and that something makes him crave for your favor with such persistence. Just imagine how much you can squeeze out of him if you give him the tiniest thing in return. It’s simply a gold mine!”

“He wants us to merge, that’s enough of a reason for me to refuse him,” said Rhys with utter disgust.  

“So what? Don’t worry about that, cupcake, you’ve got me, and I’m here to help. Who says we’re gonna merge?” Noticing how Rhys was shaking his head again, Jack leaned closer, trying to make the atmosphere more… companionable, and continued in a calmer voice.  “Believe me, I know that Atlas is your child and you would never sacrifice it. We’re gonna… adjust the conditions a little, little tiny bit. No merge, only the alliance. How does that sound?”

Rhys thought that Jack was once again confirming what a masterful negotiator he was. No matter what objections Rhys had, he always did his homework and learned his weaknesses. The long-forgotten feeling of a threat sitting right at his side returned to Rhys as he caught himself thinking over the possibility of allying with Maliwan. Don’t budge, Rhys, don’t let him see that you have second thoughts, he’ll eat you alive.

“Completely unachievable,” he was only able to utter.

“Come on, stop screwing around, will you? You’re wasting time with your fidelity to stupid principles. Have I ever given you any bad advice?”

Rhys chose not to say anything. It was as good an answer as any other. The leftover coffee in his mug already went cold and he frowned in disgust when sipping on it.

“Okay then, I’m beginning to grow real tired of this, so you better listen here, you little dipshit, and listen carefully…” Jack’s tone was once again peremptory and his eyes were drilling into Rhys’s soul. “I’m tryna help here, so stop pretending you’re a princess who lives in a tower filled with her little cute ponies and chooses to believe there’s no filth around her. Just do what I say and you’ll be on your road trip to success. And you’ll thank me later, believe me. If you choose not to do this, however, I’ll follow you around all the time, saying what a sore loser you are. All day, all night, Rhysie. You know me, I’m restless, and I can come up with millions of ways to make you hate your life. You won’t sleep, you won’t talk to anybody, you won’t eat your fucking lunch without me standing one centimeter away from your ear, whispering how much you suck. Now let that sink in. Once it has, give me your final answer.”

Jack’s eyes were glowing. His whole body was glowing because he was a hologram, that’s just what holograms do. Yet even though it was his permanent state, an unchangeable condition, his eyes looked different.

He really is serious, thought Rhys to himself. Well then, guess I’m going to die of starvation, sleep deprivation, and lack of human contact.

“Fuck you, Jack. Fuck. You.”

“Is that a yes?”

[wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey]

Kdrama recs Part 1

Hullo and welcome to the kdrama life @camsthisky​! The following list is not in any particular order, other than the fact that I start with a more rom/com vibe and head toward more romantic/action or action. All the following kdramas are set in the modern day, and part 2 of my recs for you will be either darker kdramas set in present day or historical dramas.

Let the list begin!

1. Strong Woman Do Bong Soon: 

Do Bong Soon is a v smol woman who has super strength and who wants 1. To create her own video game 2. Get her police officer crush to return her affections. Which like, police officer is kinda cute but he ain’t that special. Bong Soon winds up becoming a bodyguard to Ahn Min Hyuk, the extremely rich, kinda spoiled, ridiculously extra CEO of a gaming company who does not like the police for secret reasons, and sadly does not have a good relationship with his family. (He a lonely boy underneath everything.) Min Hyuk finds out about Bong Soon’s powers, is in TOTAL awe of her, offers to train her in fighting, and literally falls head over heels for her.

The caveat with this show is there is a subplot or two that annoy me, BUT I just use the 10 second skip button and it is totally worth it because the romance is super cute—SUPER CUTE (also I have a list of favorite actors and Park Hyung Sik is def on it—one minute he is an adorkable, blushing bby the next he can be intense and sad)

He cute

2. Her Private Life: 

Hello fake-dating!! Ryan Gold (an adoptee who didn’t live in Korea for a while) is a former artist who stopped painting because he couldn’t deal with his Stendhol (?) syndrome (among other traumas). Deok Mi is the classy art curator of a famous museum who definitely does not have any secrets she wants to keep from the world—well, other than the fact that she is the number one fangirl of kpop idol, Cha Shi-an (who also appreciates art) and has a major crush on him. Ryan becomes director of the art museum and there is a whole thing with getting Shi-an involved in an art show.

Following this and a series of unfortunate events a false rumor starts that Deok Mi and and Shi-an ARE dating. It’s a little complicated to summarize, but basically what you need to know is that Ryan and Deok Mi become a fake couple so there won’t be a scandal for Shi-an or violence done to Deok Mi by rabid fangirls. I enjoy the fake-dating trope a lot, and how it becomes real for both of them! The leads are played by Kim Jae Wook and Park Min Young, who both have incredible range. Lots of soft moments in this one! Good kisses, a scene where the faves bake together, and also Ryan wears a lot of deep v-neck shirts and jackets which is an attack on me personally.

The show also contains a bit of angst, which I LOVE. Hand-holding becomes an important theme 😊

RYAN NO

3. Crash Landing on You: Rich South Korean heiress/fashion designer Se-ri accidentally winds up in a North Korean village, and really REALLY wants to go home. Mostly because there are no scented candles or spa-like bathtubs in the vicinity, but also because she could easily disappear into a NK jail and never return. A North Korean captain named Ri Jeong Hyeok finds her and decides not to turn her because, one, he’s a good guy who doesn’t want to turn an innocent person over to what might be her death, and two, turning her over might get his four underlings in trouble for reasons. Said underlings are his family, basically, and they are a deLIGHT. One is an argumentative proud sort who likes to drink and to feel important and who tries to provoke (and gets provoked by) Se-ri at every opportunity, one is a lover of banned South Korean dramas, one is a 17 year old bby who misses his mom, and one is the silent but most loyal follower of the captain. 

Besides all these people, there are two other characters (including a surprisingly wise conman) who become faves and major players in the plot.

There is a great mix of humor, romance, found family, and angst, and I love it very much. A few things don’t go the way I want them to near the end, but a bit of imagination and fanfic can fix anything 

ALSO I FORGOT THE CAPTAIN GETS SUPER SULKY FROM TIME TO TIME AND IT IS HILARIOUS

Show of hands, who thinks they will meet again

4. Are You Human Too: A FAVORITE SHOW OF ALL! TIME!

What do you do when your husband dies and your evil mega-rich father-in-law takes your son away from you and keeps you from seeing him ever? Well, if you are scientist with more genius than positive coping methods, you build yourself a robot son who looks exactly like your real son. Great solution, am I right?

Nam Shin III is the name of my favorite robot son, played by the inestimable Seo Kang Joon. He is the purest bby you will ever meet, being designed so that he never lies and so that he will immediately go to hug anyone who cries. He seems quite a contrast to the bitter human Nam Shin, who hates his gilded prison life, hates his Grandpa, and tries to sneak away from his right hand man, Secretary Ji Young Hoon, his only friend in the world. The girl in the show is Kang So Bong, an ex-UFC fighter who was so badly injured she had to quit. She is at first a bit jaded and mercenary because of her past, but she has a golden heart that just needs to be reminded of its existence.

Not going into details to avoid spoilers, but everything upends when the robot Nam Shin has to take the place of the human Nam Shin. The show is a soft, funny, angsty exploration of what it means to be human, with some good found family throughout. The character development is phenomenal, and the connection between So Bong and Nam Shin III is *chef’s kiss*. I just want to give a shout out to Seo Kang Joon who plays a duel role like you wouldn’t believe, to SKJ’s smile, to the soundtrack, and to the character of Young Hoon, a loyal, steady, and self-sacrificing secretary that we do not deserve  (gosh tho he looks good in blue!)

Look at my robot son getting a long-looked for affirmation! (his lil smile!!!

5. W: Two Worlds: 

This show unique because it  meta as HELL! Oh Yeon Joo is a junior doctor and the daughter of a webtoon artist whose big hit, W, is coming to a close. Much to her surprise, she gets pulled into the world of the comic where she encounters and saves the main character, Kang Chul, a former Olympic shooting champion who was blamed for the murder of his entire family, and whose sole desire is to find the real killer. It’s a good romance between them, and I also love Kang Chul’s relationship with his hyung, which, tho it is not always a main focus, is present and wonderful. Kang Chul himself is both intelligent and adorably bratty, charismatic and angsty, soft and fierce, and he is one of my favorite kdrama characters for sure.

As for the meta, the show does a fantastic job exploring the rules of the comic world, of how one can enter and leave, the importance and power of main characters and supporting characters, and the purpose of an author. There is always another twist coming, and it is just so much fun!

UM SIR PLS POINT THAT ELSEWHERE

6. Healer: 

I watched half this show and never realized that the female lead is played by Park Min Young, same actress as in Her Private Life. Someone had to tell me lol! She’s just so good at playing different people. In this show, she is Chae Young Shin, a reporter for a celebrity tabloid who has big dreams of becoming a famous reporter who investigates stories that actually mean something. She is a bit quirky, very cute, very brave, and probably one of my favorite female leads. She lives with her dad above his coffee/teashop bakery and is friends with all the ex-cons he has defended while doing his other job of lawyering.

Anyway this show is more of a romantic/action drama. To get an idea of the titular Healer, picture what you would get if you took some of Batman and Nightwing’s aesthetics (wearing black, hanging out on rooftops, punching people, flipping around, etc) and put them into a night courier who likes to watch National Geographic and dream about one day going off to an island where he can live all by himself for the rest of his days because oh yeah he is a loner whose only friend is an older woman who sets up his jobs and whom he has never actually met.

There is also an older reporter that Young Shin looks up to, the fun tabloid office where she works, a heck lot of mystery surrounding some tragedy involving a group of reporter best friends/found family back in the 80’s/90’s, and of course both members of the OTP have childhood trauma that has made them who they are today. One of my favorite things that happens in the show is that Healer has to go undercover for a while, Clark Kenting it up in Young Shin’s tabloid office, which overnight becomes a real news agency for reasons.

The action is LOTS of fun, and the romance is really soft and cute, and better still, when there is a misunderstanding or something that gets in their way, they almost immediately talk about it and resolve issues. They TRUST each other and give the benefit of the doubt where many tv couples would break up or get in big fights. I find it (plus the character development) very refreshing.

I couldn’t find a gif of my favorite fight sadly. This will have to do

7. Lawless Lawyer: This has Lee Joon Gi. Watch it.

Just kidding, there are many other reasons to watch the show, but it is true that Lee Joon Gi is one of my favorite actors. The man has phoenix eyes, a jawline that could cut silk, diamonds, you name it, and such a deep well of emotional acting that it literally kills me when his characters rage/weep/love/etc.

Anyway, in this legal thriller/romance/action drama, LJG’s character Bong Sang Pil is a beautiful, very extra ex-gangster/now lawyer who opens his own office, ready to fight villainy and avenge his mom with the law or with his fists, whichever is more useful at the time. He has a right hand man named Manager Tae and recruits a bunch of thugs as his minions, and they all become a weird sort of family as the show goes on.

Ha Jae Yi is a quiet badass lawyer who has no time for sexist idiots and gets her license suspended for smacking one of said fools. She gets recruited to assist Sang Pil, and they find their goals align as both their mothers were destroyed by the villains.

Speaking of the villains? EXCELLENT acting by them all, like they need to go down obviously, but you can’t help but be in awe of a few of them or even get attached to one or two in a weird way. Props to the show for having one of the best female villains I have ever seen

What an icon

Here you get two gifs of him

Sorry I needed to make it a magical three lol

~~

Tune in next time for historical dramas and modern dramas that are a bit darker!

[you-are-my-neverland]

so. it’s finally time to talk about [my] nano.

i’ve kept my nano project pretty under wraps so far, mostly because it’s been out of my hands. i wasn’t actually planning on doing a for real for real nano; instead, i thought i would dedicate some time to my fanfic (spoiler alert, but i haven’t yet) or work on finishing up revising fairbone (spoiler alert: i did revise one chapter, but i still have like half of it left to go and a nov 30 deadline...rip). if that didn’t work, i thought i would pick a wip i started over the summer or one i had half developed (let’s just say the ideas note i have really boomed over the summer and like...yeah). in conclusion, there were many wips ready for me to work on them, including ash heart, which i really want to write but haven’t figured out how to.

instead i started a new wip.

well, it’s not necessarily new, persay. it’s an idea i’ve had stewing since like late september/early october and planned out a good portion of. however, deciding to start it was a last minute decision - and by last decision, i mean that on october 31st i finished developing the barebones of character development and basic plot lol and then gave it a go. it’s honestly been going crazy well. as of today (november 9th), i just hit 21.2k words. i’m hopeful about this year, while also not wanting to jinx stuff, but like...wow. but writing is has made me realize that, wow, this book is going to be crazy long probably...like i’m 21k words in and we’re still like in the exposition idk what’s going on. but hey, i finished planning out the rest of the basic plot for it today!!!

right. onto the wip details.

honestly, the only reason i haven’t introduced this wip is because a) i want actual stuff done on it and like a proven commitment, because i feel like too often i introduce wips i don’t actually go anywhere with and i hate it, b) i don’t have a set title and c) i actually have no idea how to summarize this.

the novel i’m working on right now is the first of a projected trilogy. i say projected because i have a vague idea that it belongs to a trilogy, but like not a lot of plot except some vaguely connected ideas that should happen in the future. in it, i used a lot of characters from these violent ends, which i tried to write for camp april 2020, but like just their basic barebones; i changed a lot to fit the story, of course. 

not to sound nerdy, but it is like....harry potter inspired, but ONLY in the magical boarding school sense. of course, right now all i have is magical boarding school shenanigans, which i don’t really like because i feel like it unfairly sets the book up as like fun magical stuff when it’s really about murder & politics & student activism (+ a lot of other things ending in -ism). the whole activism part came from watching the trial of the chicago 7 and i was like, bingo, this is what this story needs. 

kay but ANYWAYS. onto the story. like i said, i can’t really summarize it, but there are lots of themes of classism, feminism, the affect on youth and youth’s effect, manipulative adults, revolution, terrorism, sibling dynamics and found family vibes, like all that stuff...packaged into a magical boarding school off the coast of maine setting...recipe for disaster!

mainly i’ve been writing in ophelia’s pov, because she’s my main girl and she’s problematic, but also she’s trying her best and just having a little difficulty fitting in. some other main characters are her twin brother, sebastian, and two other boys, asriel and vincent, who have an initially animistic relationship with ophelia (& kind of each other?) but it’s like enemies to friends (to lovers?).

anyways. here are some carefully curated excerpts below the cut:

i. vincent and asriel meet on a train (ch. 1)

The boy pursed his lips together. “It’s unusual,” he said, finally. “That’s all.” But he was looking at Vincent as if he was noticing him, which meant he was lying, or at least withholding the truth about something. He added, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Do you mean geographically?” Vincent replied, raising an eyebrow. “Because I’m from New York.”

A small glimmer of a smile appeared on the boy’s lips, though it vanished as quickly as it had come. “From the Magical World,” he clarified. 

“What gives it away?” Vincent asked sarcastically, waving a hand across his body. “My impeccable taste?”

“Among other things,” the boy said.

ii. sebastian and ophelia discuss grief on a ferry (ch.2 )

“You and mom talked?” Ophelia asked, surprised. She hadn’t exactly been keeping track of them, but she was sure she and Sebastian had spent much of the day together, as they were wont to do.

Sebastian looked at the floor. “Yeah,” he answered, hoarsely. “At least she wants to talk about Des. Dad doesn’t, and neither do you.”

Ophelia sighed, wondering why, today of all days, her sister was haunting them. Maybe it was because there should have been three people heading to Rijevduct, instead of two. Maybe Mother Magic was reminded of the loss of one of her own. 

“I’ve let her go,” she said. “You should too. We have too much of our lives ahead of us to mourn Desdemona forever.”

“I don’t mourn,” Sebastian said, words uncharacteristically sharp. “But I do grieve.”

“Isn’t that basically the same thing,” Ophelia mumbled, closing her eyes and feeling the press of a headache behind them. 

“Sorrow,” Sebastian said, the word a soft shudder. “And sad endings.”

“What?” 

“That’s what makes a good tragedy,” Sebastian answered. “I read it in a book.”

iii. headmistress alexeyev gives a speech (ch. 2)

“Eight years ago, seventy two students were slaughtered here. Some died on the very spot where you now stand today.” Ophelia glanced down at the floor, seeing the motion repeated instinctively around her as well. She looked over at Sebastian, who had closed his eyes instead, a pale flush meeting the faint color in his cheeks. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, tennis shoes scraping against stone as he toed them against the floor, as if he was shaking something only visible to him off.

“It was a tragedy,” Headmistress Alexeyev continued. “I say this because it is the truth. It was a tragedy, and not one that should never have happened.” She inhaled; Ophelia saw her chest rise, shoulders with it, in a sharp motion before she exhaled, body rearranging itself into poise once more. “I speak of this to tell you to assure you that Rijevduct is safe. I know there have been continuous doubts over the security of this school since that day eight years ago. I cannot, of course, guarantee that you will not come to any harm here. I cannot tell you that Rijevduct is the safe haven you were taught it was growing up; events have already proved that it is, in fact, not as impenetrable as one might think.”

Ophelia frowned, confused as to the line of reasoning. She had thought the whole point of the year of transition was to make sure that Rijevduct was infinitely more safer than it had been—and they had all been under the assumption that Rijevduct was virtually impenetrable until the massacre, which had led to the heightened security measures they saw today.

“I can, however, promise you that I, and everyone here today, will do anything in their power to keep you safe,” the Headmistress said. Next to Ophelia, Briar bowed her head, lowering her eyes and swallowing, the action almost a convulsion of her throat and mouth. Ophelia brushed her hand, lightly, in question, and the other girl just shook her head, looking away purposefully, so that Ophelia lost sight of her face and her sad eyes.

“These next three years will be far from easy. Gone are the sheltered lives where your parents could kiss your injuries goodbye, or sing you to sleep at night. Rijevduct is far from the cold, real world, but it is close enough when it comes to not asking you what you want first. This is an adjustment period. This is learning how to survive—and I will tell you this; surviving means many different things to many different people. You will have to decide on your own what this will mean for you, and how you will apply what you are taught here to your futures. Be wise. Be proud. Be humble. Cry. Laugh. Live. As your Headmistress, I, along with your professors, will be here throughout your time.” She raised her glass, “To the worthy,” and then drank, turning and walking back to her seat, which she lowered herself into gracefully.

iv. sebastian pov! (ch. 3)

There was a dead girl in Sebastian’s first period Magical Theory class. She was sitting diagonal from him, on the Glass side of the classroom, in an empty chair, staring straight ahead at the chalkboard. Sebastian tried not to look at her too obviously, his eyes straying from the open book in front of him to her cautiously, beneath the sleeve of his sweater.

She was sitting blankly in the chair, scraping her shoes against the ground, though they could not leave any scuff marks. Though she was the same faded shades most girls were, Sebastian could make out her pleated pale blue plaid skirt, which brushed around her knees, and the stained white blouse that might have once been spotless, but had been marred forever by the circumstances surrounding her death—objectively, that was to say, with blood. Her dark brown hair fell into loose curls around her shoulders, little silver studs glinting dimly, unable to catch the light. Her knee high socks now pooled around her calves and ankles, revealing a rotting bandaid on one of her knees. One of her tennis shoes was peeling at the toes, looking as if it had been ripped apart. 

Her fingernails had all been pulled off. Sebastian was good at analyzing ghosts by this point; he recognized the bloody flesh and bone of the nail bed. There was also blood matted across her head, trickling down her temple, with bruises covering her body; they peeked out from beneath the collar of her shirt, blackened across her cheekbones with a sunken quality in particular to one of her cheeks, as if the bone had begun to cave.

Subjectively, she was far from one of the worst that Sebastian had seen.

[hobbitkiller]

She-Ra, Supergirl, and Tangled: A Tale of Three Female Relationships: Part 1

*Spoiler warning for SPOP, Supergirl, and Tangled:TS*

As of right now, three of my favorite pieces of media are She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix, Supergirl  on CW, and Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure on wherever you can beg, borrow, or steal it ‘cause Disney Channel is the worst and only the first two seasons are on Disney+. 

All three of these shows are lead by strong, supernaturally/superpowerfully gifted blonde female characters whose destiny is to save the world. They also heavily feature a close friendship between said main character and a female “best friend” (Adora/Catra, Kara/Lena, Rapunzel/Cassandra) that have a lot of shippable chemistry. 

All three of these relationships also become toxic during the run of the show. (Like, try to kill each other/take over the world/mind control the human race level toxic).

So, if you’d like to come along with me, I thought I’d break down the similarities and differences between these relationships and why I find some more compelling than others. This will be a multi-part thing, ‘cause I have a lot to say.

For today’s installment, I’m going to break one of the cardinal rules of literary analysis: assume they’ve read/seen it. So, I’m gonna do a little book-reportesque summarizing, because I don’t know who’s seen all three of these shows.

PART I: BEGINNINGS

Let’s start by looking at where these relationships stand at the beginning of each show.

Adora and Catra

Adora and Catra grew up together as child soldiers for something called “The Horde” (or the “Evil Horde” to the rebellion). Growing up, they were taught that the Horde was a force for good and order and were trained to help take down the Princess Rebellion. Adora and Catra were raised by the Horde’s second in command, Shadow Weaver, who made no secret that Adora was her favorite and that she thought Catra was worthless. One day, Adora, who was recently promoted to Force Captain, commandeers a skiff to help cheer up Catra who was upset that Adora was going out into the field without her.

While out in the “Whispering Woods,” Adora gets knocked off the skiff and has a vision of a sword. Later that night, she asks Catra to cover for her so she can go back to find the sword. She finds the sword as well as two members of the Rebellion, Bow and Glimmer. The rebels capture Adora, but, through spending time with them and seeing the Horde attack a defenseless town, Adora realizes she’s been on the wrong side of the war. 

Also, the sword can turn her into an 8 foot magical princess warrior called “She-Ra.”

During the attack on the town, Adora helps the townspeople only to discover that Catra is part of the attack. Adora asks Catra to come to the Rebellion with her now that she’s realized they’ve been fed lies their whole lives. Catra’s response is basically, “No, duh. Of course they lied. That’s what the Horde does.”

The two go their separate ways, Adora joins the “good guys” in the rebellion and Catra goes back to the Horde where she is given Adora’s promotion.

Kara and Lena

This relationship doesn’t start until the second season. A bomb is planted on a plane/spaceship hybrid thing called the “Venture.” Kara (Supergirl) and Clark (Superman, obvs) go talk to Lena about it because she had conveniently not shown up for the launch. It turns out that the whole explosion was a plot to kill Lena financed by her brother...Lex Luthor.

Lena and Kara immediately have chemistry, and Lena encourages Kara to become a reporter. For the first part of this season, Kara ends up using Lena as a source and for help on both reporter and Supergirl business, and Lena ends up considering Kara her only friend in National City.

The two continue to work together and become closer throughout the show, but Kara holds back from telling Lena her secret identity to the extent that Lena soon becomes the only person in their friend circle who doesn’t know that Kara is Supergirl even though Lena has had many interactions with both.

Rapunzel and Cassandra

Cassandra is an original character made for the Tangled animated series and was not in the Tangled movie. 

After Rapunzel is reunited with her parents at the end of the movie, Cass becomes her Lady in Waiting. (Though the position in the show is more of a hybrid between a historical Lady in Waiting, who was more a member of the court and personal assistant, and a “Handmaiden,” who’s more of a servant that helps with chores/dressing/etc. The two terms are often used interchangeably in the show.) 

Although Cass resented the job, as her life’s ambition was to become Captain of the Royal Guard like her adoptive father, she and Rapunzel become incredibly close as Cass sees her role as servant, friend, advisor, and protector to the princess who had lived in a tower most of her life.

On the day of Rapunzel’s coronation, Rapunzel becomes overwhelmed by her new responsibilities, the thought of being stuck in a castle her whole life, and Eugene (Flynn) proposing at one of the worst possible times. Cass sneaks her out for a night of freedom and shows her some mysterious black rocks that had grown around the site where the magic flower that gave Rapunzel her magic hair used to grow. When Rapunzel touches the rocks, her hair magically returns (but is now indestructible and can no longer heal).

Cassandra, Rapunzel, and Eugene attempt throughout the series to discover the origin of these rocks which are slowly destroying the kingdom and how to stop them.

PART II: WHERE IT WENT WRONG

So, we have three incredibly close female relationships in these shows, but they all go very, very wrong at some point. What happened to these characters?

Adora and Catra

This relationship was antagonistic from the very beginning of the show wherein Adora and Catra were set up as foils. This is interesting in one respect because this is, by far, the longest relationship out of the three, and yet we only get to see flashes of the positive parts of their relationship.

After Adora leaves the Horde, Catra is conflicted, and clearly wants her back for much of Season 1, but the toxicity and darkness of this relationship is written into the DNA of the show and is prominently displayed in the opening credits (at least for 1-4). (For any who don’t know, Catra’s the one that looks like a cat-person)

Catra is clearly placed on the “villains” side from the very beginning. (Though, if you watch enough She-Ra, you realize there’s a whole lot of moral gray-ness, and basically every villain has some sort of redeeming quality. It’s great.)

So, in this show, we come into this relationship basically at its breaking point.

Kara and Lena

The interesting part of this relationship is that there are really three characters involved, Kara, Lena, and Supergirl. Kara and Lena have a much different relationship than do Lena and Supergirl, which is something Kara occasionally forgets when she wonders why Lena isn’t as nice to or supporting of Supergirl as she is Kara.

Supergirl’s and Lena’s relationship started showing cracks fairly early, with Lena frequently accusing Supergirl of treating her like a villain because her last name is Luthor (to be fair, there is a little bit of justification for this). Things become more tense when Lena continues to do things in secret like experiment with a substance called Harun El in order to try to give people super powers or, the biggest point of contention--Lena finds a way to create Kryptonite and does so secretly without informing the government or Supergirl. Kara is understandably upset that her best friend is making a chemical weapon that makes her feel like “nails are running through her veins,” while Lena doesn’t realize that she has basically made a weapon that specifically targets her best friend and best friend’s cousin, and so doesn’t understand the extra layer of hurt Kara is feeling.

Where things fully come off the rails for both Supergirl’s and Kara’s relationships with Lena is the end of Season 4 when Lex Luthor (whom Lena has just shot in cold blood) reveals that Kara is Supergirl and Lena was the only person who didn’t know.

Lena, who has well established trust issues, sees this as a betrayal and begins working in secret on both her project that she believes will save the world (at the cost of everyone’s free will) and on manipulating and undermining Kara. This gets revealed toward the middle of Season 5 when Lena gives up the pretense of still being Kara’s friend.

Rapunzel and Cassandra 

Some of the cracks in this relationship showed up early in the show, particularly in the episode “Challenge of the Brave” when Cass wanted to prove her worth as a warrior in a competition, only to find, to her horror, that Rapunzel wants to join for fun and is very good at it.

Things really escalated, however, in the second season. Cass feels increasingly disrespected and overshadowed by Rapunzel leading to an argument in which Rapunzel essentially pulls rank on Cassandra, reminder her of her station. Cass sings an amazing sad song about “Waiting in the Wings.”

(Shout out to the amazing Eden Espinosa!! Also, the emotion the animators are able to give Cass *chef’s kiss*)

Things only get worse when, at the end of the episode, Rapunzel chooses to ignore Cass, who thinks she can save them from a possessed tree (yes, a possessed tree) without Rapunzel having to use a dangerous incantation called the “decay spell.” Rapunzel instead does the incantation, which she can’t control, and ends up badly hurting Cassandra’s right hand (more on that later). 

This leads to more resentment that Cass tries to bury. Cass also gets more information not revealed until the beginning of the third season, which leads her to steal the Moonstone, AKA the magical object they had been traveling all season to get to with the hopes that Rapunzel could destroy it to stop the black rocks. 

Cass takes the Moonstone for herself and sings another badass song at the beginning of Season 3.

Okay, the summarizing is pretty much over with. The next installment will include actual analysis and not just summary in the following topics:

“Mother Knows Best”

Chosen Ones

“Little Boxes”

Hope, if anyone read this whole thing, that I will see them there! : ) 

[whatsyourcolor]

Psycho-Pass 3 - Episode 8 review [SPOILERS]

After going through all the stages of grief yesterday, here are my thoughts on episode 8 of Psycho-Pass 3 and of this season overall if anyone cares to read. If you have been reading my other reviews, you have an idea of what this will be, so read at your own discretion. This last episode manifests the vision for the whole season and what they tried to accomplish and how they failed in doing so. I tried summarizing the episode, but got bored, considering the first 20 minutes or so are random clips thrown together with no coherent transitions between them, so I’ll just deal with the aspects that interest me. 

1. Kei breaking bad and the ills of tokenism

Mao confesses her “sins” to Kei which include a lukewarm sense of revenge and a lack of reasonable online practice (such as not trusting people online.) Her story is clumsily connected to the incident where a PSB inspector died and the other one was institutionalized. It would’ve been mildly interesting if Mao had been the active agent in informing Asuzawa of the investigation because of rightful anger at a perceived injustice, causing the death of someone in Division 1 (Irie, for example) and then having a redemption arc where she helps bring the sucker down. But no, we get the story of a coward who got involved with bad people, got scared, and hasn’t followed any of their instructions since, hoping that they’ll forget about her. 

So the writers have her telling this story to Kei, just so that they can justify his ambivalence later in the episode. What if, he too, could get what he wanted? So many ways to plant the seeds of this internal conflict that we now have to explain to ourselves because the writers didn’t have the time for it. Instead Kei frowns, grunts and punches so that we, the viewers, can see he’s upset. But where’s the chipping away at an inherent sense of morality and at his psyche to the point where he’s abating a congressman in his escape? What’s the switch?  Some people say it’s Maiko, even though just one episode before Kei was telling her that they should believe in Sibyl and that her hue will recover. So which is it? Does he trust the system or does he not? Why do we have to guess? Where was all this ambivalence throughout the season? The writers could’ve set up his internal conflict so much better, tie it with the corrupt ideals of the terrorists, show him tempted to go down that path. He’s the immigrant, he’s the one who can offer the point of view that’s so muddled and lazily written for the other immigrants.  

Time to start cooking meth, Kei. 

To add insult to injury, Kei becomes a Fox not because of a deliberate, motivated decision, but because, like Mao, he clicked the wrong link and now he owes them a favor. What if they hand’t spent the whole season demeaning the power of Sibyl, putting it in the background as an inconvenience, instead of a real system of control with real consequences (the, ummm, whole premise of Psycho-Pass)? Just how the whole terrorist plot was rationalized as a way to make Sibyl “pay for its crimes against immigrants,” even though we don’t see what actual crimes Sibyl committed, why it committed them, we don’t even know what Sibyl’s stance is in regards discrimination and xenophobia. Crap on a cracker, we don’t even know why Sibyl deemed that allowing immigrants in was a good idea. They could’ve set up Maiko and Kei as protagonists of this season, giving us their point of view as conflicted immigrants who survived war and famine, who have to dye their hair, answer “yes ma’am,” endure xenophobic insults and be powerless in order to keep each other. Have them lose each other, their own values, their own morality as power appears in the form of an invitation to be a fox and get back at the system. Have Maiko be deemed a latent criminal who’s beyond all recovery be the switch, but that would only work if Sibyl is still the big, bad guy and Bifrost appears as the preferable bad guy in the eyes of Kei.  Give us flashbacks of Maiko and Kei’s traumas together, show us why he’d make the decision to flip to have her back with him. A reason doesn't not equal a motivation. The latter suggest a process, an acquiring of a view through experience, a lie that the character believes or a truth that they hold. “Maiko’s been in jail for a day, so I accidentally became a fox” would be laughable (and believable) if one didn’t care an ounce for this show. 

It seems like the writers wanted the world of Psycho-Pass to be relevant to today’s issues and so they used the topic of immigration to signal that. It worked in the PP Movie (warlords, refugees, etc) because they had kept the same philosophical thread about human will, power and systems of authority since Season 1. The complexities of that dialogue are lost in this season. They wanted to make some characters neutral, such as Karina or Venerable Auma, or the sister or O’Bryan, have them pass as misunderstood or misjudged and have the whole conflict of immigration be a problem that could be resolved if all these people just got together and sang Kumbaya. 

2. Arata is Jesus and Asuzawa is a troll

When you need other characters to remind you of the importance of the protagonist or the villain, it’s perhaps because those characters are poorly written and can’t stand out on their own. When Toyohisa Senguji smokes from a pipe made from the bones of Rikako Oryo, you know the man is the most sinister psychopath that was spawned upon the earth. You don’t need anyone to tell you that. 

Arata seems to have a destiny imprinted on him that he is special, or so we’re told. Sybil wants to integrate him, Mika wants him to stay a detective, the Bifrost is interested in him, his father appeared to be an important dude, yet I can’t think of a single thing he’s done that’s special or unique. He could’ve also have much more of an internal conflict, but we only get hints (yes, even in the last episode) that his dad was a complete prick. It’s never clear beyond “curiosity for humans” what his deal with Karina is and why he gives her a pass, to the point of snubbing Kei, even when Karina is a total hypocrite who fired her immigrant secretary. Yes, the one who threw herself in front of her kidnappers to protect her. 

It happened right after she donated her kidney to me, true, but she did always put too much sugar in my coffee. I can’t have someone like that in my team! 

With Asuzawa something similar happens. He’s called “clever” and “cunning” and we’re meant to believe it. He’s supposed to be deft, predicting the next bend of the road, being two steps ahead of everyone, but that takes time to write, so instead let’s make both the MWPSB and MOFA look incompetent and let’s have Asuzawa be called a “mastermind” just because. The whole mission to capture him is ridiculous. Asuzawa meets the congressman, says he’s going for smokes and never comes back. Kei meets him, helps him escape. Kogami and Ginoza let the pathfinders escape again. The only new revelation we have about him is that he’s an ex-enforcer who was tortured by Arata’s dad. According to Asuzawa’s secretary, Shindo senior used to manipulate people with his powers. 

Who you callin’ Spookie Boogie? I’m known in the commufield as Growly Grumpy. Credit to @azweidos​ 

3. Locking horns for incompetence

Finally the MOFA and the MWPSB meet to share intel on the Bifrost and they know as much as we know, but this meeting was needed because otherwise they couldn’t have inserted Kogami and Gino in the whole mission to tackle Asuzawa. Mika and Frederica are still competing to see which one of them is more obnoxious, while Asuzawa leaves through the front door of the building as if he hadn’t caused 95 of the 100 traffic accidents in Tokyo that year. 

Well, so much for carrying a gun! Not an obstacle for this octogenarian. 

4. In defense of criticism

There’s this general feeling nowadays that criticizing something means you’re spreading negativity, like we’re supposed to be part of a like-minded cult or a mental hive like Sibyl that’s perpetually content, even when given a mediocre product. The problem with this season is precisely that: it’s not bad. It’s perfectly mediocre. And it’s not because the old Division 1 isn’t there. It’s not because Akane is in jail (and we still don’t know why). It’s because they couldn’t deal with the elements that they themselves created for this season. The idea of the world of Psycho-Pass spreading is brilliant, the idea of an elite that’s exempt from Sibyl's judgement is brilliant, the idea of an outsider point of view is brilliant, but they overestimated their own abilities and underestimated their viewers. There’s only so much disbelief and rationale we can suspend before we realize they’re playing us like a fiddle. There’s only so much a villain can grin to hint at us that they knew what they were doing all along. 

Some argue that this is because the creators want to make Psycho-Pass into a franchise as if that means everything and anything is justified to the point of bastardizing the ideas of the show and reaching the point of absurdity where it parodies itself (you think I didn’t notice those Madeleines?) Is the hope of the creators to bury Psycho-Pass into the ground while they laugh their way to the bank? Why should I care about their money, or how much money they hope to make? I care about the end product and that’s what I base my judgement on. 

5. The Shinkane reunion 

See, the creators aren't dumb. They knew they had to bait us somehow because this season alone won’t stand. Not only that, but they know us so well they saved their budget to keep the best quality for this scene. I’ll just paste what I said about it yesterday.

I thought it was sweet how Akane backpedals against the door with a tinge of pleasure on her face, like she wants to hear his voice and feel that he’s on the other side. I loved the smiles they gave to each other and how he comforts her. I think it’s evident this is not the first time he visits her. 

It was lovely. It would’ve been lovelier if it had been tied to the overarching plot of this season, but that plot barely held itself together. So let’s bask on those few seconds we got until they bait us again to watch the 2020 movie. 

[datleggy]

a list of every anime i love/recommend, accumulated over the last 10+ years

1. NATSUME YUUJINCHOU 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

The main character is a teenage boy named Natsume, whose parents died when he was too young to remember them properly. He’s passed around random relatives homes, but because he can see yokai (spirits), he’s ostracized by classmates and his foster families (ALL HIS CHILDHOOD FLASHBACKS ARE SO FUCKING SAD) and eventually very distant relatives (an older couple who never had kids of their own and have so much goddamn love to give D:!!!) take Natsume in, and the story basically starts from there. 

It’s a very heart-warming story following Natsume’s new life in this new town, accepting his ability to see yokai, forging new relationships in the form of friends and family, and even with the yokai themselves. 

This is honestly probably my favorite anime/manga period, because it’s so sad but so cathartic and you watch as the main character grows and learns to trust those around him, and finally gets the unconditional love he’s always deserved, not to MENTION THE FACT THAT THEY DO A WHOLE EP WHERE NATSUME IS TURNED BACK INTO A LITTLE KID AND IT IS SOOOO GOOD OMG

Plus for those of you who enjoy whump, this show has a decent amount of it. Mainly emotional whump, but also some episodes where Natsume is injured or sick--as well as I believe one where his companion (the chubby cat on his shoulder who’s actually a pretty badass yokai) gets shot with an arrow and is down for the count. 

10/10 would and have watched again. 

2. KODOCHA NO OMOCHA 

SUMMARY/REVIEW:  The main character is a sixth grader named Sana. She’s a gifted actress on a t.v. show everyone likes and she’s silly and fun, very intuitive and surprisingly empathetic for a child. 

Her main problem is in school, where Akito, who she deems the leader of her class’ wolf pack of rowdy rude boys, lets them terrorize not just the teacher, but all the girls in class, as well. 

I don’t really want to give a lot away, so I’ll just state the obvious. This anime/manga is shoujo, which means that it does focus on a romantic relationship throughout the series. Mainly the one between Sana and Akito. Sana is absolutely oblivious about her own feelings, while Akito is a stubborn little shit. 

I remember watching this at like, age 12 maybe? And I really enjoyed it because (although I do enjoy your typical silly doesn’t take itself too seriously slice of life shoujo) this particular anime, while super funny and light hearted at times, was also really dramatic and even kinda dark, which was surprising considering the characters ages and the general kid-friendly vibe (especially the opening for the anime). 

3. DETECTIVE CONAN

SUMMARY/REVIEW:  Our main character is initially Shinichi Kudo, teenage detective, who’s on a date with childhood sweetheart Ran (whose father also happens to a detective but like....not a good one lmao), when his nosy ass self decides to go and check out some shady business and gets “poisoned”. 

The poison he’s given is intended to kill him, but what it actually does is turn him back into a child. And now, as Conan Edogawa, (who’s 7 but like....we just supposed to believe all these cops and detectives on the force are cool with a seven year old wee lil babe on these really gruesome ass crime scenes??? lmaoooo) we follow him on his adventures as he solves crimes and tries to solve the biggest mystery of all, his own! 

I absolutely LOVE this anime/manga, even though I’ll be honest, there is SO MUCH FILLER, but I like the characters enough that I really don’t mind. The show is at least 900+ episodes in at this point, and there are a total of 26 movies so far, last time I checked. 

Also, the show is a whump fangirls’ dream come true. The main character is thrown out of windows, balconies, shot at, and in one occasion actually shot, he’s had broken bones, sprains, almost been blown up or drowned/burned, been sick, and oh, his occasional transformations from child to teenager are incredibly painful. 

This show is probably at fault for my love of whump, since it was one of my first animes at like, age 9. smh. 

4. THE DEVIL IS A PART-TIMER!

REVIEW:

I’m not even going to summarize this one. The title does it for me. This is truly one of the funniest animes I’ve ever seen. Motherfuckin Satan works at a McDonalds part time and it is the BEST. 

Technically I would count this show as a kind of harem, but only because there are like three main girl characters after the overlord Satan himself. I usually dislike harem type animes but the way this is done is sooooo good I couldn’t resist. 

I would watch a million filler episodes of Satan trying to solve problems at his minimum wage job tbh. I love every single character, I love the plot, I love everything about this anime! In terms of comedy (with the occasional plot driven serious moments) this is IT bro. 

5. BLACK BUTLER

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

The main character is Ciel Phantomhive (roughly 14 years old). His parents are killed, his house is burned to ashes, and he’s kidnapped (around age 9 or 10 I believe) and abused. During this abuse Ciel calls upon a demon to free him and help him get revenge on those who harmed the Phantomhive household, which is where Sebastian, one “hell of a good butler” comes in. 

We then follow Ciel and Sebastian on their path of vengeance, and along the way we meet Ciel’s human servants, three very clumsy and seemingly bad at their given tasks characters (i love them all), and some of his extended relatives and connections. 

My favorite thing about Black Butler is the art, both in the anime and manga. Everything is so detailed and pretty! 

The characters are interesting, the plot is dark but they manage to make most of the series overall pretty light-hearted and funny in general. Though of course there are chapters/parts of the series that get really grim (which duh, the whole thing focuses on revenge so...) 

I have to say, the arc I enjoyed the most has to be the movie, Black Butler: Book Of the Atlantic. It is beautifully drawn and sooooooo entertaining. 

6. INUYASHA 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

Our main characters are Inuyasha, a half-demon, who’s been in a sort of spiritually binding coma for the last few decades, and fourteen year old Kagome, who falls into an old well in her family’s shrine and finds herself being transported into another time period. 

Together, she and Inuyasha travel across the lands in the feudal era to find the scattered shards of the shikon jewel, a powerful jewel which grants anyone who possesses it ultimate power. 

I was too young to stay up and watch Inuyasha on adult swim, so my mom would tape the show on a VCR for me to watch the next day after school--yes, I’m old old. lmaoooo I ADORE this show. 

It’s so good! It’s got everything! A tortured lil half-demon with a sad past who’s stubborn and rude but got a good heart! A fierce and equally as stubborn main protagonist, who’s whole ass family knows exactly where she goes off to??? and are supportive af????? like???? her mama packs her and her squad of demon/exorcist/demon hunter pals bentos?!?! lmao i love it. 

The characters are awesome and funny and likable as all heck, and of course they all have their sad backstory, but like, unlike some animes (lookin at YOU Naruto) they don’t go mega overboard on it, at least not without some plot behind the episode. 

7. YU YU HAKUSHO 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

Before I even start in on the summary, ya’ll should watch this soley bc of the cute ass 90′s style animation alone. LOOK AT ALL THAT SHINY HAIR!

ANYWAY. Main character is teenage hooligan and overall cutie pie Yusuke! He gets struck by a car and fucking DIES in the first episode after shoving a little boy out of the way, only to end up in the spirit world where the head honcho up there (who looks like a wee baby) tells him “Oh shit, didn’t expect you to like, actually do anything self-sacrificing EVER so like, you’re not on our list of people who were supposed to die today...” 

And uh, I don’t wanna give anything away, so I’m just gonna say that if you haven’t seen this anime yet, you definitely should! It’s hilarious and dramatic, the fight scenes are very well done, all the side characters, who eventually become main characters are a blessing (specifically Hiei, who’ve I’ve had a crush on since I was 12) and the ending is a satisfying one, which you can’t really say for a lot of media. 

8. CHRONO CRUSADE 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

I still get weepy when I think of this anime, so all I’ll say is it’s about a badass demon slaying nurse and her demon companion and some very tragic shit. 

It’s a great anime overall, especially if you like crying yourself to sleep at night :) 

9. GHOST HUNT

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

The main character is high school student Mai, who is hired by Naru, the head of a Shibuya psychic research, and together, with a group of questionable exorcists/psychics, they encounter paranormal phenomenons and some outright scary shit. 

I’m not really a fan of the horror genre tbh but I do like mystery, and the series deals with that quite a bit. They deal with each case for several episodes so nothing feels too rushed. 

The series is really fun in a creepy, wtf is that way. I recommend the manga, only because it’s more detailed in terms of plot than the anime. 

10. ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM 

SUMMARY/REVIEW: 

I didn’t really make this list in any particular order but if I had to say, Assassination Classroom and Natsume Yuujinchou probably tie for BEST ANIME PERIOD! 

This anime is about a weird ass “alien” creature, no one knows where it came from or why tf it’s here on earth, all they know is that in one year it’s threatened to blow the world up. 

His only request to the government is that they let him become a teacher for Class E, the worst class of Kunugigaoka Junior High School, and he will stay put, so that they can attempt an assassination on him during this one year period. 

AND LISTEN! I am a shallow hoe, so I literally never would have read this manga or watched the series had I not been roaming Barnes and Noble one day with my S.O. and picked it up to read as a JOKE! 

I was hooked after the first chapter and I am soooooooo glad I picked this manga up, bc it is absolutely not the type I would normally go for, cover art wise. I finally, after many many years, learned not to judge a book by its cover bc LORD this anime is so goddamn good, you don’t understand! Like, I’ve watched it so many times and still laugh at the same parts, cry at the same parts, am proud af at the same parts! like, this anime is an instant classic and should definitely be more popular than it is. 

assassination classroom and natsume yuujinchou????? MASTERPIECES! 

[queenofcats17]

Unraveled by Timothy Lawrence

I’ve never written anything in the Borderlands fandom, but I saw this post by @0pixer and I guess I’m writing it

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Timothy Lawrence’s life has significantly improved now that Jack is dead and he’s managed to get a job that doesn’t involve killing people. He’s very done with killing people. Rhys has given him a job at ATLAS doing...Well, his official job has something to do with media relations or something. Mostly he makes weird videos where he goes weirdly in-depth about various subjects. Usually books. Sometimes movies. Once he deconstructed a Bunkers and Badasses campaign with the help of Rhys and Vaughn. He’s gained quite a following.

Today, his video opens as it often does, with Tim standing in front of a black background which he may or may not pin pieces of paper to in some strange string board. He’s grown his hair out a bit since joining Atlas, and his ginger hair has started to come back along with his freckles. Today he’s wearing a sweater with a cartoon cat on it.

“As you all probably know, I have an English degree. Before I started working for Jack, I went to school for English. I was going to be a writer.” Tim’s expression is some mix of irritated and existential wondering who his life had ended up this way.

“Anyway,” he clears his throat and continues. “I have an English degree. And today I’m going to use it. To take apart this awful romance novel!” He holds up a book with a giant grin. It looks like something you’d pick up at the drug store and has a stylized illustration of Handsome Jack and a swooning damsel on the front.

“I’m going to tear this apart.” The glee is readily apparent on Tim’s face. He looks absolutely ecstatic to destroy this book, both figuratively and literally. Because he will be burning this once the segment is over. “Despite being told that this is a bad idea and it’s just a book, I’m going to do this anyway!” 

“As if we could stop you.” Sasha’s voice comes from off-screen. Tim disregards this, his smile widening. 

“Vaughn and Fiona found this while scavenging the charred remains of Helios for supplies.” Tim opens the book, flipping through a few pages. “They were just going to burn it for fuel, but then Fiona read a few pages and it was so bad she brought it back so we could all laugh at it.” He starts giggling in anticipation. 

“I kind of remember Jack having these things produced, but, well,” he pauses and lets out an undignified snort. “He had a lot of shitty propaganda produced. I’m pretty sure Rhys owned all of it.”

“I did not!” Rhys’ indignant voice comes from behind the camera.

“Bro, half the stuff in our apartment was Handsome Jack merch.” Vaughn’s voice comes from behind the camera as well. There’s a huff, presumably from Rhys. 

“Alright, fine, but I didn’t have that.”

“Well, as an expert on all things Handsome Jack, you wanna tell us how the Jack in this masterpiece measures up to the real thing?” Tim asks with an innocent smile. 

“Why would I know?” Rhys asks. “You were the one who worked with him!”

“But you were the one who had him in your head,” Vaughn says. “Oh, I never really asked, but did he see your dick? I always kind of wondered if he did and he made any comments or-” There’s a muffled screaming sound from off-screen, presumably Rhys yelling into a pillow.  

“Anyway, let’s move on~,” Tim says in a sing-song voice. “So. First off, what is the plot of this book?” His expression grows comically grim. “That’s very important to talk about if we’re going to tear this thing apart.” 

There are various stifled giggles and snorts as the others in the room try to keep themselves together. 

“The book follows Felicia, an accountant from Atlas who gets sent to Pandora by her,” he pauses and flips to a page. “‘Horrible heartless bastards of bosses’.” 

“Definitely not biased.” Fiona snorts derisively.

“Why would you even suggest that?” Sasha gasps, although it’s clear she’s trying to fight back laughter. 

“Felicia has been sent to Pandora to deliver an important document, but she’s a delicate flower who isn’t suited to Pandora’s harsh climate and inhabitants. She can’t survive in this awful awful world.” Tim continues to summarize the book as if it isn’t propaganda disguised as a trashy romance novel. “Almost as soon as she touches down on the planet, bandits kidnap her, sure that her employers will pay handsomely to have her back. But they abandon her to the locals! Felicia is lost in despair until...” He looks dramatically up at the camera. “She’s rescued by none other than Handsome Jack!”

There’s a dramatic gong crash, followed by a panicked yelp. 

“Warn me before you do that!” Rhys’ muffled voice hisses. 

“Sorry,” Vaughn whispers back.

“Both Jack and Felicia are wary of each other, they are from rival companies after all, but Jack cannot let a defenseless woman suffer in the company of bandits.” Tim bites back a condescending laugh as his showman act starts to break. “So he kills all the bandits, which might be the only thing in this book that actually seems plausible. Anyway, after he kills all the bandits he takes Felicia back to Helios. There’s a lot of that whole enemies to lovers trope, along with Atlas trying to convince Felicia to secretly spy on Jack, but in the end, they fall in love and have a lot of sex. Very very in-depth sex. More in-depth than I am comfortable reading.”

“Is the sex accurate?” Sasha asks. Almost immediately, Tim goes bright red. 

“Fuck! I don’t...I don’t know!” He stammers. “It’s not like I watched him have sex!”

“So he didn’t make you have sex for him or anything?” Fiona asks. “I thought he’d have at least one person he made you take his place for. He seems like the kind of asshole who’d do that.”

“He didn’t want me ruining his reputation,” Tim mumbles, still partially hiding behind the book. “He thought I’d get nervous and freeze up. Which, uh, I...I did do a few times.” He quickly shakes his head, taking a deep breath. “But that’s beside the point. The point is, this is an awful book! Not only is the grammar awful, but the story structure doesn’t even make that much sense.”

He puts the book down, dragging in a box with a bunch of pieces of paper inside.

“I’ve written down my complaints,” he starts tacking up pieces of paper on the board with thumbtacks. “Firstly, how did Atlas manage to contact Felicia again after she gets onto Helios? They say in the book that all her Atlas tech is destroyed and go into great pains to describe how the bandits discarded her personal belongings and ripped off her clothes. There’s no way they’d even know she was alive, especially with how many precautions Jack takes to keep people from knowing she’s there. And they don’t even give any explanation for how Atlas figures out she’s on Helios! Second, why on Earth would Jack bring a woman he didn’t even know onto Helios? Sure, he thinks with his dick most of the time, but he didn’t get to be CEO of Hyperion by accident. Do you have any idea how paranoid he was? I couldn’t even take a piss in peace the whole time I worked for him...”

The next few minutes are filled up with Tim picking apart every inaccuracy and issue with the book, with a healthy dose of him complaining about what a dick Jack had been to work for. No one stops him A good portion of his rant is also taken up by him talking at length about how this was not how sex worked. 

“Has this person ever had sex? Because this is not how it works. I can count on one hand the number of sexual encounters I’ve had, but none of it was ever like this. I mean, for fuck’s sake! I don’t think this person has ever even seen a vagina, much less tried to bring the owner pleasure!” 

The more notes he tacks up on the board, the more disheveled he gets. His sweater is quickly discarded, his hair comes out of its ponytail, and his shirt becomes untucked. Sasha and Fiona can be heard laughing uproariously at various points throughout the video.

“Also! The creatures!” Tim jabs a finger into another note. “This author has obviously never spent any time on Pandora because neither varkids nor skags act anything like this!” He turns briefly away from the board, gesturing to someone offscreen. “Joining me to talk about these inaccuracies is Sir Alistair Hammerlock, whose sister I am both very attracted to and incredibly afraid of!”

“I would very much prefer not to speak of my sister.” Sir Hammerlock walks in, looking a tad uncomfortable. “Saying her name tends to summon her. Like some sort of witch.”

“Then let’s talk about skags and varkids and how they’ll kill you!” Tim says brightly, with an almost unhinged smile. 

“Well, that is something I’m more comfortable with.”

Sir Hammerlock launches into a speech about the finer points of skag and varkid biology and behavior. Not all of it is relevant to Tim’s critiques. Most of it is not relevant to Tim’s critiques. But it gives Tim some time to collect himself and look less like an insane professor. And Sir Hammerlock seems so delighted to be talking about the fauna of Pandora.

“In conclusion,” Tim says when Sir Hammerlock has finished. “Please don’t try any of what you read in this book. You will die. Painfully. Probably screaming.”

“Yes. Quite.” Sir Hammerlock nods, glancing at the notes Tim has tacked up and Tim’s still rather disheveled appearance. “I’ll be seeing myself out.”

“We’ll be sending your payment in the mail!” Vaughn calls after him. Tim turns his gaze back to the camera, gleeful and giddy once more.

“This book is so bad.” He giggles. “I hate it so much. Which is what makes this next part even better.”

“Should I get out the trashcan?” Sasha asks. 

“Yes. It is time.” Tim’s smile grows. Sasha appears with a large metal trash bin, which she deposits in front of Tim. Tim drops the book into the trash bin and Fiona appears to squirt some sort of liquid inside. It’s quickly clear that this liquid was lighter fluid, as when Tim strikes a match and drops it into the trashcan a pillar of flame shoots up. 

“The evil has been cleansed!” Tim cackles, sounding eerily like Jack. He’s illuminated eerily by the raging flames and actually looks a bit menacing. The camera cuts off after this, presumably so that they can put out the fire. 

[dunewizard]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance - Day 15

The questions I’m answering can be found here!

April 15: Free day! Write about any topic you want!

I have a few things to say today. 

In this post I talk about coming back to running my own Dungeons and Dragons games. Theres also a paragraph tangent about Drow and RA Salvatores Drizzt series. Because Drow are my favs.

.

One thing I’m very excited about is the fact that I’m getting back into running my own D&D games. I lost the passion for it for a while. it wasnt right, I wasnt running my own work and the work I was running was depressing. I’m not big into gothic horror, at least not anymore - I sort of burnt myself out on the topic after I ran Curse of Strahd. So when i went to run it a second time because I “am comfortable/know the story well” it was right off the back of doing it already.  I felt burnt out. Especially because right after the first time I ran Curse of Strahd I immediately went onto Storm King’s Thunder, which is an entirely different campaign which you REALLY need to read the WHOLE thing and understand the working parts to get that story off the ground. 

There was an emotional investment and skill requirement that I just didn’t have and it turned what should be a fun and interactive hobby into simply a chore. I’m blessed to have had players who understood that I’m a player at the table too and my imput as DM is necessary to facilitate gameplay so without me the game shouldnt run. My heart wasn’t in it and I needed time away. Folks who have read my Blondie Talks tag would be familiar with the plight, it was around 6-8 months ago tho. I think.

I’m now coming back to being a Dungeonmaster and I love it so much. I have a fantastic team of players who seem as invested in the story and their characters as I am which honestly sounds too good to be true. But I see it in the way they play and interact with the game it warms my heart. I’m not running depressing Gothic Horror anymore and now I’m running a campaign set in my favourite setting: The Underdark! Undeground caves littered with danger and intrigue! Who knows whats around the next corner?! And DROW. I LOVE Drow. 

Drow are easily my favourite race found in D&D, and my main campaign theme is trying to show that evil is a choice and that no creature is inherently evil. Sort of thing. I dont know. I was mostly inspired by R.A Salvatore’s Drizzt DoUrden series, as “the only good drow” he goes through many moral conundrums as he considers the ideas that... well. Hes a Drow. Everything hes been told so far is that Drow are evil, and they do this and that. So much of what hes told hes like... I dont align with this... I dont agree. I will fight for my friends I wont leave them aside! Combo that with legendary skill with some swords and you got a killer character there dude, hes facing his own morality! Hes wondering whos evil and whos not!  One of my favourite conversations the book has  is when some Goblins are outside the Dwarven City of Mithrilfast, and the King waves his hand to say “Just kill them and be done with it”. Cattie Brie, his adopted daughter tries to appeal to his compassion by pleading him to only scare them off! With the poignant mention “what if they were drow?!” - knowing full well that Drizzt was RIGHT there in their court, and it was well established that Drizzt is a friend with noble intentions and a good heart. The fact that Drizzt was there made him think “What if there is a Drizzt among those goblins?” and to summarize the situation the King ends up not slaying the Goblins. Its hard to quite explain but the books go into much better detail about these concepts.

ANYWAY Sorry I prattled. I’m running a game set in the Underdark! My players are phenomenal and I’m seriously finding my passion for Dungeon Mastering once more. I cant wait to throw more challenges towards my players and I’m so excited to see what they do!

I lost the spark for Dungeons and Dragons for a little bit because of my DMing hiatus. I never lost the interest but everything in me questioned why I loved it still so much. I played as my main Wizard character named Hermes, my friend jake’s campaign was every Sunday afternoon and I loved it. We always made sure to do something on “D&D Day” even if we couldnt continue the main campaign. I’ve loved the game for the last 6 years and I cannot see myself ever dropping the game, its simply one of those infinite content sort of games! Its really helped me come out of my shell and improve my acting abilities and I love being a player and understanding plot hooks and trying to be a better player for new tables too. 

I couldnt think of a better way to spend my free time <3

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 6 “Our Way” (The Finale!)

We made it, folks. Volume 6 is finally over and my god what a disappointment it turned out to be. 

I’ve danced my whole life and I had an instructor once who gave a lecture on choreography, cautioning us that the order you put your pieces in is just as important as the pieces themselves. Though each comes together to create a whole, your audience is more likely to remember the first and the last piece—so make those two count. Volume 6 began strong with the relic and the lore, and then ended on a flat, uninspiring, illogical note. Sadly I know what part of the performance I’ll be remembering from here on out.

However, first let’s tackle what we didn’t get this episode. There was no flashback to Oscar at Argus, re-characterizing his outing as something significant that might actually impact his growth as a character. Rooster Teeth really just… did that. They gave us an exact repeat of episode four, had Jaune physically assault Oscar, no one stepped in, no one bothered to check if Oscar was okay, we set him up staring morosely at the door, a two week cliffhanger, and then we really got an episode all about Jaune’s emotions while Oscar bought new clothes and made these people a casserole. He immediately accepted an incomplete apology, went so far as to speak like he thinks he’s going to die… and the group just smiled at him. Because remember, right now they only care about outsiders—which Oscar still very much is—when they’re helping and not getting in the way. Which Oscar has now promised to do. The finale gives us a brief moment where Ruby tries to praise Oscar for his efforts and it just rang as incredibly hollow to me. It’s easy to be kind to people when everything is going your way. You show your true colors when things get tough. RWBYJNR has repeatedly demonstrated this volume that when push comes to shove they’re willing to throw Oscar (and Ozpin) under the bus.

I’d need an entire, separate recap to detail exactly how horrible their treatment of him has been and how worrying it is that the story continues to frame this behavior as not just acceptable, but the actions of heroes. Suffice to say, if you have friends who seem nice on the daily but use you as a punching bag whenever they need an outlet? Do me a favor and get far, far away from them.

In the interests of moving on, another thing we didn’t get was any mention of Raven. A few friends theorized that last volume’s end credits scene (where Tai spots Raven using his portal) might finally come into play, but no such luck. More importantly to my mind, Yang still hasn’t said anything about Raven being the Spring Maiden, so that continues to be a secret she keeps while heaping more judgement on Ozpin. We’ll get to that later.

We didn’t see that true reconciliation teased in the last shot of the opening. Ruby never fought grimm with arms like those, let alone in a sewer tunnel… even though one was right there at the farm. I’m honestly starting to believe what others are saying about whole episodes being cut to make time for GenLock. Something happened this volume because the writing took one hell of a nosedive. It’s not just that I don’t agree with the messages the show is expressing, it’s that we have dangling threads, confusing “twists,” and what honestly feels like half-assed storytelling. Like they knew they had to complete the volume but just weren’t feeling motivated, so they chucked together something shoddy and left it at that.

(We also didn’t get to hear what Ruby bought them all at the gift shop. I realize this is a comparatively tiny thing, but to my mind it was a missed opportunity. They could have bookended the premiere and the finale, revealed that tiny mystery, told us something about Ruby based on the gifts she chose—the fandom keeps complaining that she’s one-dimensional—and if she’d picked up something for Ozpin at the time, that would have been an easy moment to have the group start reflecting on their behavior, a reminder that just a few days ago he was an important member of their team. Obviously I doubt the gifts survived the train crash, but there’s no reason why Ruby couldn’t tell them about it; a quiet moment before they reach Atlas. Like the shorter season length though, this episode was short for a finale. We were barely given enough time for the plot, let alone any reflection.)

For now though, let’s dive into the actual episode. We open on a field where an airship lands, Neo transforming as she steps out. That really is a powerful semblance. She can create copies of herself, disguise herself, and (as we’ll see in just a moment), disguise a whole freaking airship too. Granted, that last one seems to take some effort, but as this finale will inform us later, it doesn’t really matter how tired you are. If the plot needs you to do a thing with your semblance, you’ll manage it. Somehow. 

Cinder arrives in a new outfit as well and, like Neo’s, it’s pretty damn skimpy? I haven’t bothered to bring this up before because on the whole RT writes it’s mostly female cast very well, but considering how many other criticisms I’ve got today, why not chuck out one more. Meaning, why do these designs continually have to promote sexiness over practicality? Weiss, Nora, and Ruby all fight in skirts—hastily justified as “combat skirts”—and at least half the women on this show fight in heels. Yang sports short-shorts. Both she and Blake have bare midriffs. Now Neo is in a top that looks like it’s held up by a prayer and Cinder is sporting lingerie-like knee highs. There’s just no reason to design characters like this, especially when a good chunk of your cast is made up of teens. Cinder says herself that Neo will soon need snow boots. Just dress her appropriately for the weather from the start. You know, like how we didn’t get with Team RWBY while traveling through a kingdom filled with snow. Apparently Weiss wearing a scarf is enough to combat hypothermia for the whole team.

And yes, I realize costume changes require new models to be made, but that’s precisely why you should design your fighters as fighters from the start. You’re battling giant monsters? No one would wear heels. Or skirts. Or expose their midriff. It seems pretty convenient that aura supposedly protects them, eliminating the need for armor, and yet now it’s only our most masculine character—Jaune—who still bothers to wear it. Neo and Cinder are just the most recent examples of, “Why the hell would you wear that to a fight?”

Well, maybe these two will freeze to death before they ever reach the group… They’re heading to Solitas too and though they didn’t do anything in this scene besides reveal new and impractical clothing, I was more interested in their brief discussion than I was in the entirety of RWBYJNR’s fight. At least I’m comfortable in how I feel about Neo and Cinder. They’re bad guys. They’re gonna do bad things that the story frames as bad. They’re usually fun to watch. I don’t get frustrated and confused whenever they come on screen nowadays.

Cinder says, “Someone once asked me if I believe in destiny…and I’m happy to say I still do” as we get a final shot of them planning their nefarious deeds. We’re getting a lot of references to Pyrrha this volume—this, the statue, Ruby’s memories later—and taken on its own that’s fantastic. In a season though where Pyrrha’s death is subtly ‘justifying’ the group’s awful behavior and acting as a reminder to the fandom for why they unjustly hate Ozpin? Ehh…

We close on the villains and open on our “heroes” with rousing music to signal the upcoming battle, which… isn’t really a battle at all. The Leviathan is steadily approaching Argus and the Atlas personnel are calling for Cordovin. She’s still stuck, yelling about how “This is your fault!”

And it is. However, once again Cordovin’s exaggerated attitude makes it easy to ignore the fact that she’s right. She’s racist! She’s arrogant! She’s screaming and sounds like a child! Clearly our group is the mature ones here. Look at how calmly Ruby faces her down in contrast… It reminds me of how people (particularly women) are told that they’re being “Too emotional” in this conversation and therefore all the points they’ve made are somehow invalid. Of course Cordovin is emotional. A group of kids just lied to her, stole from her, started a battle against her, and destroyed her mech right when her city is about to be overrun by grimm. I’d be screaming in frustration too.

Though of course, most don’t view it that way. I agree with what others have pointed out, that if we’d been given a calmer authority figure saying the exact same things—No you can’t go into Atlas. Why would I let anyone other than Weiss cross a closed border?—it would have been easier to see exactly how horrible the group’s actions are here. As it is, Cordovin’s personality acts as a distraction. One more way to present the group as heroic when they’re anything but.  

Yang and Blake arrive on the scene, wanting to know what the hell is going on. Yang asks, “Is that a giant grimm?” and Weiss responds, “Yes…and we just ruined the only thing capable of stopping it.”

That’s an admission of facts, not necessarily an admission of guilt. The group acknowledges that they ruined the one defense capable of taking out a grimm of that size, but as we’ll see, there’s no regret attached to doing that in the first place. It’s just summarizing the situation for Blake and Yang.  

Granted, we get a moment where Ruby looks worried/potentially sad as they fly away from Cordovin, but what does that mean here? Is she sad about what she’s done? Or just worried about this new situation? Their actions have been so extreme that the story can’t afford to be vague about the characters’ emotions here. Plenty of people will (and are free) to read this moment as Ruby experiencing fierce regret at her choices the last few hours… but it’s just as easy to attribute her expressions to fear about the coming battle. I’m not inclined to give these characters the benefit of the doubt here. They haven’t earned it.

Regardless, we cut to the airship where apparently Yang and Blake have already told everyone about Adam. That was not the sort of thing that should have happened off screen. By all means, be practical. There’s no time for a long-winded conversation with the Leviathan bearing down on Argus, so have Yang announce that they’re okay, yes something happened, we’ll explain things later. Now you’ve established that this very important information will be conveyed either on the airship later, or at the beginning of volume 7.

What a waste. This is the end of a villain we’ve had since the Black Trailer—the first time our protagonists have killed a fellow human being—and that admission is regulated to the 30 seconds it takes to fly from Cordovin to the middle of the fight. Ruby hugs Blake and tells her she’s safe, but that’s it. That’s currently the extent of the team’s reaction to this huge revelation and like JNR learning about Salem, the audience has no idea what sort of details they received. Do they just know Adam died in the fight or that they deliberately killed him? Did Weiss hear about the brand? We don’t know. Hopefully this conversation is given more weight in volume 7, but given what else we’ve seen lately, I’m not counting on it.

Maria then interrupts with one of the most jaw-dropping lines of the episode: “I suppose I have to be the bad guy and say it, but getting the lamp to Atlas is still our top priority.”

Are we for real right now? Where was this calm, level-headed, pragmatic Maria when she was pissing off Cordovin with cashews? Or cheering at Ruby rejecting all adults? Now she starts trying to think rationally? But of course, when she does stop her manic cackling it’s to suggest something horrific. Yes, Maria. It does make you a bad guy to want to abandon a city to the grimm you brought here. She realizes that everyone is dead if they leave, right? That without the mech or silver eyes Argus has no decent way of stopping that Leviathan? Maria is meant to be the Grimm Reaper, the greatest huntress of her generation, and the writers think it’s appropriate to not only have her encouraging a bunch of kids to recklessly commit treason, but then condemn a whole city to probable death for their mistakes?

No, the relic is not the top priority. The relic is a side mission. The top priority has always and will always be protecting humanity. At least Yang, Blake, and Weiss realize this. They say firmly that they’re not leaving and Ruby gives a little shrug like, ‘Guess we’re not leaving then.’

(They really like having Ruby treat her mistakes as jokes, don’t they?)

So Ruby announces she has an idea, the one the whole fandom saw coming a mile away, and the next second Qrow says, “Eyes up, everybody” because they’ve reached the Leviathan. Ha. Get it? Eyes up?

Okay. I’m done lol.

We get shots of the terrified Argus population, including Terra and Saphron. 

Ruby asks Ren and Jaune to mask the ship which, reminder, they shouldn’t be able to do. Ren maybe, but Jaune just used all his aura to protect himself and Nora from getting splattered by Cordovin’s arm. Then he was thrown into a boulder for good measure. Last episode he couldn’t even stand without hanging off of his teammates. Now we get exactly what I was afraid we would: the plot needs someone to Do A Thing so aura burnout is conveniently forgotten. Jaune gives a confident smile. Of course he can boost Ren’s semblance and cover an entire airship!

Keep in mind that we just saw Neo dropping in exhaustion after a second of using her semblance on a whole ship. Granted, her ship is bigger, but she’s also presumably at full strength right now. If we were bothering to follow the rules established by this world, I highly doubt Jaune would have been able to pull this off.

Meanwhile the Leviathan has easily taken out Argus’s first barrier. “It tore straight through…” Oscar whispers, reminding me that he hasn’t had many encounters with grimm. If I remember correctly he mentioned to Ruby that there was an occasional one on the farm (as expected), but they must have been pretty weak if an untrained kid can take them out with farm equipment. Oscar then goes straight to Haven, battles people at the Academy, gets on that train where he fought some manticores, but then he didn’t get to see the Apathy for himself. This seems to be one of the first times Oscar is seeing grimm at all, let alone one this deadly. No wonder he sounds shocked.

With the shield destroyed in an instant the Atlas personnel start giving the order to evacuate… when Ruby interrupts them. No worries, fine people. I have a plan! Wait, why should we trust you? “I’m a huntress.”

No you’re not, Ruby. Literally and symbolically, you are not currently a huntress. Ignoring for a moment all the stunts you just pulled, undermining everything a huntress is meant to uphold, that is a formal position. It’s a title that embodies great power in this world and you achieve that title by studying four years and graduating from an academy. You don’t get to call yourself a college graduate because you did one year and then studied on your own. Same with being a doctor, or a lawyer, or literally any titled position. Ruby (in continuing with the theme of this volume) is lying to that Atlesian soldier. She’s misrepresenting herself, claiming she’s something other than what she actually is: a half-trained teen with a current chip on her shoulder.

This is also another moment where she ignores Qrow when he yells for her to stop. The issue isn’t about who’s right here—whether Ruby should tell the others about her plan or not—but that Ruby is consistently ignoring everyone around her to charge forward with whatever plan she personally thinks is best. Qrow told her not to attack the Atlas military… look what happened. Qrow told her not to go stare down Cordovin’s missiles and try to make an impossible shot… look what happened. Qrow told her not to stubbornly stand her ground against a mech when the rest of her team is beaten and exhausted, and though Ruby survives, it’s only by the will of Plot Armor. She leapt into a freaking cannon. She knocked herself out. You’d think after all this Ruby would at least pause a moment to give Qrow the time of day.

It ultimately doesn’t matter though because their ship is still flagged as hostile. Atlas isn’t going to help them on what clearly looks like a suicide mission. We get a close up of Ruby daring to do what no one else can or will. “Fine… we’ll do it alone if we have to.”

…which is precisely the problem. Atlas backing off might feel like a consequence—Oh no! Their actions lost them their backup!—but all it does is get the extras out of the way (who just happen to be adults) so we can more easily focus on the protagonists (who just happen to be teens). It’s a reward. They don’t actually need the airships here, as the group is about to demonstrate, so this ‘consequence’ is absolutely meaningless. It would be something entirely different if, say, the story actually framed the soldiers as necessary to distract the Leviathan and Ruby had to admit her faults, begging them to help despite her mistakes; if the story made it clear that teamwork was a necessity. But there’s nothing like that. This is meant to read as the hero’s crowning moment.

Also, as an aside, why in the world would Ruby tell them to wait on the rest of their evacuation? What if—a wild thought here—something went wrong? Like literally every plan you’ve ever come up with? Isn’t it better to get people to safety while you try out your idea, just in case it all falls to pieces? This is just one more moment of Ruby’s overconfidence putting others at risk. She’s endangered her team, herself, and an entire city this volume… and has learned precisely nothing from it.

But we’ll come to that. Right now Ren masks the airship’s approach, conveniently keeping it up just long enough for them to reach the Leviathan, and then he’s out. They still didn’t make it in time though. The Leviathan sends out another stream of fire that takes out the second shield and hits the top of a tower in Argus. Needing to get closer, Yang and Nora distract the Leviathan while Ruby rides in on one of Weiss’ summoned lancers. I did appreciate Blake briefly supporting Weiss as she works to keep her semblance up. Whatever else, this volume has been good about brief, non-partner interactions. 

We hear Ruby encouraging herself as she flies in and then she chucks her communicator into the water to concentrate. I thought something would come of that? Why bother having Yang interrupt her if there wasn’t a serious issue (it takes another long moment for the Leviathan to turn on Ruby) and why full on get rid of the communicator if that choice wasn’t going to come into play later? Eh, whatever. Far from the first time we’ve had setups that go absolutely nowhere. This volume is full of them.

So Ruby does as Maria taught her: cycling through memories of her family and friends, trying to drum up that fierce desire to protect them. 

I did appreciate that Oscar, Qrow, and Maria get brief appearances… but again, the one team member who isn’t shown is Ozpin. Apparently Ruby now hates him to the point where he’s not even a part of her very generalized thoughts about who she wants to protect. I mean she met Maria three days ago and the woman now means more to her, apparently.

(For the record, I say this because Ruby knew Ozpin primarily in his headmaster form and is drawing largely from volume 1-3 material. We might have seen him in the new engine, easily. The shot of Oscar we’re given is also the one from the training room where Ozpin didn’t speak until Ruby left. Alongside Ozpin’s absence this volume, that’s the closest we’ve ever seen Oscar as only Oscar. That choice says a lot in my opinion.)

Eventually Ruby’s memories start to segue into darker thoughts and… okay. I’m confused now. Why is thinking about bad memories the thing that doesn’t let the silver eyes work? Not only were those moments where fierce protection would be at its strongest, but Ruby has only ever been in horrible situations when her eyes went off: Watching Pyrrha die, watching Jaune about to be killed, watching Blake about to kick it via Apathy. You’re telling me that during those times Ruby somehow thought about bright and happy things, not the horror of the fact that her friends were in the process of being murdered? If anything, those flashes of Yang without her arm or Penny cut into pieces should be the very thing that does set her eyes off.

Instead they fail. Ruby opens her eyes to find the Leviathan turning her way and then, as a friend of mine pointed out, she gasps out a “What?” and looks down at the relic.

No. That relic has very conveniently done nothing the entire time the group was trekking through the woods, staying at an abandoned farm, driving who knows how far, and running around a new city. You’re not going to tell me now that suddenly it’s the cause of the Leviathan turning away from people currently attacking it. Either the relic’s draw is strong enough that Oscar should have been in trouble on the train, or it’s not strong enough to act as a justification here. The relic is the new Qrow’s semblance: turning off and on when the story wills it.

In a panic Ruby yells for Jinn, which is less the “clever” choice Jinn says it is and more a potentially clever gamble. The last time they used Jinn every creature in her vicinity remained active. Granted, all those creatures were human or faunus then, but Ruby wouldn’t know if she would freeze the grimm as well. Regardless, her gamble pays off (because of course it does) and we get another example of how the protagonists are currently super special people who can never do any wrong.

Jinn: “You do not seek knowledge, but just this once I will give it freely…I will not allow you to use me without a question again.”

Why? That’s the question you have to ask for all your characters’ decision. Why are they doing this? What’s their motivation? Jinn provides none. She has no reason to let Ruby off the hook for summoning her without a question, especially since she frames that as another bad choice that she’ll (somehow?) punish Ruby for if she does it again. But this time, once again, our protagonist is let off the hook, purely because she’s the protagonist.

With this very generous second chance Ruby re-shuts her eyes, thinks only of the good times, including a memory of Summer Rose. The fandom has been waiting a long time to see her outside of a covered photograph.  

Ruby manages to activate her silver eyes. It works—mostly.

I mentioned previously how the show needs to introduce some downside to the silver eyes so that Ruby isn’t suddenly over powered against every grimm from here on out. This is a downside… but an odd one. The grimm turned to stone, but not all the way? Sort of just a stone encasing that it partly manages to break out of? Okay. I mean that works, but it’s a pretty easy downside to overcome. The grimm is still stopped in its tracks, giving the others plenty of time to take it out.

And, as always, pay attention to how it’s all framed. Despite not working exactly as she intended, this is meant to be a moment of victory for Ruby. She’s succeeded in her trial by fire. She’s single-handedly saved all of Argus. The music is rising, the people are cheering, people who have no idea what silver eyes are and will now start up legends about this girl. Who was the huntress with the magic-like power none of us understand? Ruby Rose. The girl who stood toe-to-toe against a Leviathan grimm and won.

This would indeed be a wonderful moment if it weren’t Ruby’s fault the grimm was there in the first place. Like her own claims of “I’m a huntress,” this moment misrepresents Ruby to the people. No one is going to learn that she’s the one who endangered them, only that she’s the one who came to the rescue. She’s fixing her own mistake and then allowing that to stand as a heroic act.

I was so looking forward to Ruby learning to wield her silver eyes. Not like this though.

Cordovin arrives with her pinned arm gone, ready to finish taking out the Leviathan, and she’s suddenly stupidly cheerful about it. Again, characters need motivations. If their outlook on a situation changes we need to see why that happened, especially when moving from such extremes. In a matter of minutes Cordovin went from shrieking at the group to not just sunnily helping them—which is a practical consideration. As she herself says, “I was sworn to protect the people”—but also letting them go.

….there is no reason to let them go. None. It goes against Cordovin’s entire characterization, the logic of the situation, and nothing has happened in the last few minutes to change her mind. This is the story at its laziest: “We don’t have a reason for Cordovin to let them go. She’s just gonna. Because they’re heroes.”

During this conversation we get an “I’m sorry” from Ruby and that’s admittedly something, but like Weiss’ comment about destroying the mech or Ruby’s worried looks, what is she apologizing for? Because she doesn’t seem very contrite right now. The framing isn’t telling us Ruby has anything to be ashamed of. She’s the star in this moment. So that ‘I’m sorry’ feels less like an admission of wrong doing and more, ‘I’m sorry I had to attack you and that it almost got everyone killed. But I absolutely had to. No doubt. So I guess I’m only sorry that fate screwed us over. It’s not like I had a hand in this mess or anything.’

All of which is to say: there are no consequences. None. Zip. Nada. No one in Argus died (despite the fact that all those flying grimm apparently bypassed the mass of terrified people to go battle with the airships on the opposite side of the Leviathan??), no one was arrested, no Ironwood or Winter, no Ozpin coming to their rescue, no problems with aura, the mech still manages to fight, the airship still manages to fly, no one was even reprimanded for their behavior. This volume we have seen the group betray a man they were demanding trust from, steal a secret they knew nothing about, force him to relive thousands of years of trauma while taking in the personal history that was never theirs to see, verbally and physically assault him to the point where he has to remove himself from their presence, they repeat that on an innocent kid days later, do absolutely nothing to make up for that, show no remorse for their actions, steal military property, plotted to mess with one of the few remaining relay towers the whole world depends on, beat up Atlas personnel, chucked them out of a plane, started and continued a fight with a special operative that endangered an entire city of people, destroyed a city’s primary defense, risked straining kingdom relations, nearly got friends killed with these foolish stunts ….and nothing. Not a single consequence, punishment, or reprimand. RT set up a situation where the group makes horrific mistakes and then had them learn nothing from them. Far from it. They’re rewarded, telling the audience that provided you have power—be it physical strength, access to resources, or the knowledge of a super secret mission—you can do whatever you want. There is no single stupid, illegal, dangerous, or callous thing you can do that isn’t ‘justified’ with, “Well I literally could do it, so I guess that means I’m allowed to do it, right?” Our title, “Our Way,” definitely embodies the morals we’re given this season.

I’m honestly disgusted with this volume. Just as a piece of media. This isn’t a story where we’re following anti-heroes and are well aware that they’re committing horrible deeds. This is a story about traditional heroes who are now using anti-hero means, something the story has just straight up ignored. I really didn’t think RT would take things this far… but here we are. This is apparently our group now and I personally think they’re awful.

And ugh, there’s still more of this episode. We cut to the group flying that night and Maria comments that “We should have just enough fuel to make it.” Wow you… literally didn’t think anything through, huh? No one even bothered to find out if they’d have enough fuel to not crash land in the ocean halfway there. Wonderful. 

We get another entirely illogical conversation between Qrow and Ruby. He tells her she, “Did good out there today, kid” despite the fact that Qrow was consistently (and correctly) trying to get her to not do the things she was doing. Is it too much to ask for Qrow to have a firm and honest conversation about her making reckless decisions instead of more unearned platitudes? And then Qrow lowers his bottle which… what? Alcoholism doesn’t work like that. Much more importantly, no one has tackled his drinking this season. Or the reasons he was drinking in the first place. Literally, Qrow’s semblance, his place in the war, Ozpin’s secret, none of it has been addressed. He has no reason to suddenly put aside his flask like he’s actually learned something. Does RT think we’re going to just imagine scenes that never actually happened?

(I mean, that’s what fic is for, but that’s… fic. The canon should at least be attempting to hit a higher bar. This is their job, not an unpaid hobby done late at night when you’re exhausted after your own full day of work.)

Qrow and Maria also have a conversation about how he was there to “Catch them when they fell. Literally, if I recall,” implying, again, something that didn’t happen. Yes, Qrow literally caught Ruby when she fell from the cannon, but that line is meant primarily in the metaphorical sense: You were there to support them, keep them from doing something stupid, steering them back to the right path, etc. That’s what Qrow tried to do, but Ruby consistently ignored him.

This is all such a mess. Though we do get some nice shots of Blake and Yang sitting together—lots of hand-holding now—and Weiss comments that she’s glad Yang was there for Blake. Yang corrects that they were there for each other, confirming the lesson they learned off screen at some point. 

A conversation starts up once again painting Ruby’s recklessness as awesome heroics. Among her clique she’s all bashful now, no more arrogance when there aren’t outsiders to push back against, and Ruby tries to foster attention off on Oscar. He corrects them about landing the airship… he didn’t actually do that himself.

Oscar: “I didn’t land the ship on my own.”

We get a flashback to him panicking as the ship crashes, but this time we hear Ozpin saying, “Stay calm. It’s going to be okay.” Back in the present Nora immediately freaks out, “He took control?!” and Oscar corrects her with no, he helped guide me.

Let’s unpack this a bit. First of all Ozpin would have been 100% justified in taking control, just like he was justified in taking control at Haven when Oscar was going to get them killed by stubbornly insisting that he fight Hazel. Like everything else in this volume, each situation has its own context. Just saying, “Ozpin took control of Oscar without permission” sounds bad, until you bother to acknowledge that dying is kinda worse. It’s like if I see a 14yo boy running towards a road an I yank him backwards. Technically I just took away his agency—I haven’t allowed him to keep running forward when he wanted to—but I did it so he wouldn’t get hit by that car. If Ozpin had taken control to keep three team members, including everyone’s precious leader, from dying a horrible death via airship crash… that’s a good thing.

But he didn’t. Even now, even after everything, Ozpin is so careful to give people as much choice as he can. He assessed the situation and decided that he could guide Oscar without taking away the use of his body, the sort of consideration most people wouldn’t even bother with during a time of crisis. And think about those lines. “Stay calm. It’s going to be okay.” The last time Oscar spoke to Ozpin he was forcefully stealing the means to allow the rest of the group to betray him. Now here Ozpin is, not angry, just endlessly reassuring. 

Then he leaves again. Everyone realizes Ozpin is still doing his best to give everyone what they supposedly want, right? I mentioned ages back that the group wants a contradiction, to have Ozpin fix their problems without having to deal with Ozpin as a person, and now he’s managed that. He comes in, saves their lives, then leaves so no one has to deal with the apparent horror of speaking to him. His level of selflessness is off the charts and it astounds me that anyone thinks this man is a cruel, manipulative puppet master.

…and then there’s Yang.

Yang: “Does that mean he’s been watching us this whole time?!”

Oh yeah. I don’t like Yang much nowadays. I forgot because the last couple of episodes the show isolated Yang with Blake. She’s good with Blake because she actually likes Blake and is probably in love with her. But put Yang with someone who isn’t willing to enable her misplaced anger (Maria, Ozpin) and suddenly she’s not a very kind person anymore. Like the rest of the group right now, Yang’s basic, human empathy doesn’t extend beyond the confines of their team.

Plus, what does that accusation even mean? She makes him sound like some sort of peeping tom and not the leader she was following three days ago. Yang realizes, right, that Ozpin isn’t allowed a body of his own? That he’s connected to Oscar? That anything Oscar sees Ozpin automatically sees too? There were admittedly questions about whether Ozpin was connected to the outside world while locked that deep in Oscar’s head, but Yang makes it sound like he physically left and then started stalking the group without their permission. She makes him sound like Adam.

I really can’t with this group right now. Man arrives to save the lives of the people who betrayed/assaulted him and their reaction is basically, “How dare you even look at us?” The worst part is, you know a huge chunk of the fandom is going to agree. No matter what Ozpin does, even literally saving our title character’s life, it’s somehow twisted into an act of manipulative cruelty.

Also gotta love that Qrow is sitting right there and apparently doesn’t care about this conversation. He only interrupts with a smile to tell them they’re in Atlas.

Which is, admittedly, gorgeous as hell. I do like these shots a great deal.

The only thing that ruins the view is the fleet of airships above, stationed like they’re expecting a battle. This seems to connect to the army we see Salem building in the post credits scene… but how in the world does Atlas know about something like that? Did Ironwood hear something and come up with an excuse to scramble the fighters? Or are they prepping for something else entirely? An attack from another kingdom?

Regardless, we end on one of the personnel telling the group, “Welcome home.”

After the credits we see Emerald and Mercury utterly horrified by something below. We pan down to see Salem creating grimm from the pool… and then making them grow wings. My first thought was, “That guerrilla is going to need a much bigger wingspan to accommodate his weight.” My second thought was, “Oh. Flying monkeys.” That should tell you something about what my brain considers a priority.

Hazel comes in and reminds Mercury and Emerald of an old saying: “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” That’s admittedly unexpected. Looks like after hearing that Ozpin reincarnated and ruined her plans for the Spring relic, Salem has decided to get her own hands dirty for once. I hope we get to hear more explanations for this because she’s apparently kept to the sidelines for generations and now, pretty randomly, decides to announce her presence to the world by leading an army? Who knows. It wouldn’t make less sense than anything else RWBY has given us lately.

And that’s it! We’re done! Hallelujah I need a break. Well, pseudo-break. I still intend to upload my other recaps to tumblr, dive back into our older episodes, and there are still asks to answer. So meta-ing is far from over, but it’ll be less intense than 4000+ words every Saturday lol.  

Thank you all so much for reading. I’d sill be writing these with an audience of one (me), but it’s way better when there are others as well. So kudos to you all—and happy hiatus!

Other Details of Note

Neo is fully wearing Roman’s hat now and Cinder canonically wears Louboutin heels lol.

A bit of an odd note, but Cordovin’s repetitive screams about “This is your fault” almost sound painful. Like she’s physically in pain. Obviously that’s not the case in any literal manner, but there’s something horrible about watching the group destroy a part of the mechanical body she’s currently inhabiting and then just abandoning her, watching as she tires and fails to move. I really can’t emphasize enough how callous this group has become to anyone not in Team RWBY or JNR.

I enjoyed the red of the Leviathan glowing under the water as it moved. Nice touch.

“Never get used to that view,” Maria says, once again framing her eyes only as a joke and never a legit issue when it presumably would be.

Yang has ditched the casing on her arm after Adam’s attack. Maybe she and Blake can go arm/weapon shopping together. 

[jennamoran]

The Horizon Campaign (29)

Link to the Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG, on DriveThru

Link to my storefront, on DriveThru

Let’s talk some more about the Horizon campaign(s)!

Previously,

We worked on our set of Main Characters and concepts, tied them to Arcs and colors and archetypes, built Rinley’s storyline, and got most of the way through their quests.

Then, we built quest 5,

Finished the quest set off,

And summarized what we had!

Before starting work on a new character: Sal.

And, flailing some more at his stories.

And, finally, getting them into somewhat acceptable shape.

Then we did a quick Sal quest before starting in on Entropy’s stories!

Then we updated those stories a bit!

Today, let’s whip them into shape!

             Today’s Prospectus

Looks like we’ve gotten far enough in development to just write Entropy’s stories straight from beginning to end, in functional and correct and cool-seeming form ... except for a hitch on story 5, which we’ll take two tries on.

So let’s go!

            And Rightwise Principal (Entropy II, #1)

He’s just really excited to be Principal!

He’s this guy---Entropy, I mean---this guy who doesn’t have a nose; whose hands are stained but not actually, like, bleeding all the time ... and sometimes he’s aware that he’s also sitting on the throne in a palace of black glass on an island of evil that circles around the sun.

And he’s had a stand-in being Principal for him, and that stand-in probably did have the whole bleeding thing, but I don’t know if we’ll go into it; but anyway, he had a stand-in running things while he focused on that world, and on getting his own ducks in order, but—

Now, he’s ready.

Now, he can take the oaths and get the robes of Principalship on and get this party going!

He’s taking over formally. He’s having his vesting ceremony.

And it’s great.

Is it great?

We get to meet his students. We get to learn about the ghost administration and the Night School. ... and the administration’s pretty ridiculous and tough to deal with, too; like, he can put in orders to expand the library and get results of it burning down, you know? “Let’s lighten this place up!” got a bunch more gargoyles. That kind of thing. He has to trick them to get anything at all productive done.

But, y’know, he is learning the right language with which to work. With which to do that.

He fences a little with Jasmine Apocynum, who tries to rip out his heart—but that doesn’t help her! (See below.)

Uh ...

We get to see how he’s setting things up with integrating the more acceptable monsters into the staff.

We learn the story of how the S.E.E.D. program membership was sealed by wish, and learn about the tiny class that yet remains.

All kinds of things ...

And it’s all a mess but he loves it; he loves it; because it’s not sitting on a grim throne in the evil world. It’s not living in his father’s shadow.

There’s hope.

And eventually, he gets from AA! AA! Awesome! to:

Q: “You’re the Principal.”

A: [smugly, feet up on the desk] “I know.”

And there we are.

             A Principal’s Heart (Entropy II, #2)

Over the course of the sports festival, deadly forces organize to take the Principal down!

He fences with Mourning or Lee Scathing or something like that and their plot to turn the festival horribly dangerous while also hyping up the board of directors to depose him because look how endangered the students are! I have a mental image of monstrous hall monitors bounding out of hidden rooms to attack people during the scavenger race. At the end, a vision of Entropy I shows up in the old auditorium to praise the winners of the sports festival and power struggle and encourage whoever won to strangle political opposition in its cradle with hands that drip with blood. Listening students, initially psyched, become concerned.

Entropy II wrestles a little with “is this what I actually am?” as he tries to work out what’s really going on in the Administrative Complex, occasionally taking board of directors or PTA members or students with him as he talks to the ghosts and monsters that work there. He tries to install his own agents there. He tries to stop the Sins from doing the same. Basically, he tries to get PC help and any vaguely sympathetic anyone-else help to get a decent control over the place because it’s all ... chaos and despair.

And at the end, he finds the desolate filing cabinet where they’ve kept some of the most important things they’ve stolen from him and never told him about, including a living picture of Attaris I; his official birth certificate and certificate of eligibility to be Principal; and his heart.

He puts it in his chest, getting his hands all bloody, and transcends.

They won’t ever stop being bloody, after that.

             A Principal’s Depths (Entropy II, #3)

Far away and circling the sun is an evil island. Before, there wasn’t much that Principal Entropy could actually do about it. He could rule it, he could set down the law, but the metaphysics ... well.

But now.

Now, he has touched on ... being more.

He’s hype to the idea that he can, if he can grow enough in himself, change things. Actually adapt the nature of the place. Impose the Code Novae he’s been thinking about. Make it better.

He needs to explore the meaning of evil and his own identity as a Magister/Imperator first and figure out how!

This isn’t just his own kick, though; like many an authority figure who gets into spirituality, he starts evangelizing to the whole place under his authority, encouraging students and faculty to engage in therapeutic self-improvement, even giving limited access to psychoactives and mysterious dissociating rituals. He gives everyone an introduction to his new spiritual advisor, a weird alligator creature from an unworldly tribe who supposedly knows how to get in touch with his true inner self.

As time moves on he announces a “scavenger hunt and essay contest” in hopes that people will find out or make up something useful about what a Magister/Principal actually is and should be. He plans to anoint the winner honorary vice-Principal or heir, depending on what degree the contendings of Jasper and the Sins have already been handled in Jasper’s Arcs—but is going to have to work hard to keep the Sins’ essays from crushing it in the contest and claiming that place themselves! Afterwards, Entropy I gives a stirring argument in defense of evil in the auditorium ... and incidentally, accidentally? points Entropy II to the way that the underworld of Horizon connects to the underworld of the evil island.

That underworld will form the labyrinth for this Arc, and the Principal will be exploring it as he looks for answers and a way to implement his goal of making everything better. He’ll be introducing students to evil creatures that he meets there and their lifestyles. Eventually he finds a shard of the old Seal of Time buried beneath the world, and with it some of the memories of Attaris I who built it.

He ventures deeper and deeper, fighting increasing mental influence from Entropy I and his own second self, until he reaches the evil world itself. The exact nature of what that means is going to be something that the player determines, but usually it’s going to be something like, either he brings a redemptive tool with him; or, by getting there he completes his understanding that’s forged by wrestling with that mental influence along the way; or, he proves that the island is actually just part of the actual world and not a separate “evil” world at all; or, having seen it, he blows up the path to get there and now it isn’t part of the real world and doesn’t matter ...

Whatever.

Something player-made.

He lays claim, in this fashion, in his mortal flesh, to the evil world and his tempered understanding of himself.

It is made anew.

             A Principal’s Path (Entropy II, #4)

Except ...

Is it?

Things don’t just get better because you have a spiritual revelation. Things may get better on the causal path beginning with a spiritual revelation, but it isn’t just a one-step kind of thing.

It’s not obvious how to get there from here! There are ways to go wrong!

He’s grown, he’s made his connection and his revelation, but the evil world’s a mess.

So it’s time for the Principal to set aside fanciful, vapor-headed things and turn to hard science:

Evilology.

He has got to build a team, and through that team, an invention, a steam invention, probably, to remake the evil world. And maybe ... the regular world, too?

To forge a new contract between “wickedness” and truth.

Go evilology! You are the science of the future!

He winds up challenged in his ideas by Glass Spider’s Heterodox Evilology, Orthogonal Evilology:

An evilology that’s been twisted 90 degrees off of true. An evilology that uses its powers ... for evil!

They face off at the first annual evilology conference in Horizon at the School and ultimately Glass Spider is forced to concede that his ideas don’t actually make sense and that he just didn’t like the idea of scientific evil being used for good.

There is an Entropy I announcement that makes no sense (either) because frankly Entropy I didn’t anticipate his successor holding an Evilology conference.

Glass Spider retreats in shame and fear.

As for proper, orthodox, parallel, proper evilology, though---

It doesn’t work without power, and this Entropy isn’t as good as the standard Entropy at repurposing evil creatures for such work. So his team comes up with the idea of using the power of the old Seal of Time.

They venture into it—maybe it gets literally discovered around then, to keep people from venturing in early—

They venture into it and study the ancient records of the place, and learn about Attaris I, and the Nobilis era.

Also, they salvage Attaris’ corpse.

Anyway, they’ve seized control over the place and found the key answers but that’s not enough, that’s just enough to point the way. To find the right future, Entropy must wander the various futures that the Seal of Time can show him, struggling against the spiritual influences of alternate himselves and possibly also against the spiritual influence of Attaris I who is not, like, completely non-ideological and pure, you know, even if she’s no Lord Entropy.

Eventually he finds the right path. The goal of evilology is achieved, and can now be implemented. The path to the future is assured.

He must venture into a sideworld, a future that currently won’t happen, to close down the future of Mourning’s wicked plans and make sure Mourning doesn’t interfere; also, and most likely afterwards, he must bury Attaris and his past.

             A Principal’s End (Entropy II, #5)

The funeral ends, and the period of mourning, too. It’s time to get on with life! Since the steam evilology world-realignment engine is going to take a while, Principal Entropy does just that.

He gets into Flying Fantasy Wizard Cards.

Maybe he just likes them. Maybe he thinks things are well in hand. Maybe he knows that’s the path he needs to take. Regardless, it’s goofy, and because the Principal allows it, it spreads to the whole school.

Only …

No.

             A Principal’s End (Entropy II, #5)

The funeral ends, and the period of mourning. It’s time to get on with life. Since the steam evilology world-realignment engine is going to take a while, Principal Entropy does just that.

He gets really into Clickable Rune Gods.

(This is different from Flying Fantasy Wizard Cards in that a fantasy card game turning out to be inherently actually supernatural is in the genre of “reifying fantasy imagery,” no matter how you justify it, while having click-base horror/fantasy figurine game figures with eerie runes on them turn out to be inherently supernatural is in the genre of “why did these idiots use real magic oh god whyy.”)

Maybe he just likes the click-base figurines, or the game they’re used in. Maybe he thinks that things are well in hand. Maybe he just knows from his timeline explorations that this is the path that he needs to take. Regardless, it’s goofy, and because the Principal allows it, and focuses on it, the craze for Clickable Rune Gods spreads to the entire school. He faces off against each of the Six Sins and possibly several other PCs in Clickable Rune God combat, as well as encouraging or setting up sales, tournaments, etc., and dealing with a few PC-related vignettes.

... until he learns, when defeated at the great Clickable Rune Gods tournament by a mysterious stranger, that he’d always just been a figurehead; that the original “stand-in,” set aside so casually, was the actual and original heir to Entropy I.

He is praised for his service; thanked; ... and disposed of.

A shadow of himself, a ghost, nothing more than an ordinary teaching assistant and not even really alive now, he descends into the Administrative Complex ... but, there, he rebels against his fate. Maybe with inspirational help from friends? Or just from ghosts who find the “original” even more annoying than the fake was?

He tries to tame the School to his will again. To make it his.

His identity compromised, he must mold it anew from the bits of himself given to others and the bits of his parents’ power hidden in the Seal of Time, the Administrative Complex maze, and under the evil island’s palace of black glass.

Ultimately, though, even reconstructing himself the Principal does him no good: he does not become the heir to Entropy I again, but only and just himself. But recovering that self does, at least,.give him the leverage to go one step further than he ought to be able to go; he does not rule, but he grabs limited access to the mind of the “stand-in” now ruling in his place. He can see into the world that it plans to make; the end result of the S.E.E.D. program that it hopes to build, with its father’s blessing ...

And lead it around to disgust with that; to rejection; so that they may die, and be reborn again, as one.

              ... and there we are! Story set three for the Horizon campaign. ^_^

[criterioncollectionashaiku]

Criterion Collection as Haiku: Paris, Texas

I’ve seen over 250 movies in the Criterion Collection, and one of my all-time favorites has consistently been Wim Wenders’ 1984 film, Paris, Texas. The movie has popped up twice this week in very unexpected ways: once last night at a dinner with friends, and also on Reddit’s Criterion page, where someone linked to an essay by Nicky Smith called “The Emotional Terrorism of Paris, Texas.” Smith HATES Paris, Texas, and I’ll explain why shortly. Her essay has definitely changed the way I’ve thought about the world within the movie, but I’m here today to provide a different read — one that explains why I’ve loved it all these years.

Needless to say, major spoilers ahead. If you’ve never seen Paris, Texas and would like to view it tabula rasa, then stop reading and come back after you’ve had a chance to watch and digest it.

First, let’s start with a quick plot summary: The movie opens with Travis (played by Harry Dean Stanton) walking through a desert. He’s dressed in a dusty suit, a red cap, and an unkempt beard. We come to learn that Travis has been missing for four years. No one has heard from or seen him until, one day, his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), gets a call that Travis is at a doctor’s office in a remote part of Texas. Walt and his wife Anne (Aurore Clément) live in California, but upon hearing the news of his brother, Walt immediately drives to Texas. By the time he arrives, Travis has left the medical office and is roaming the desert once again. Walt searches aimlessly for Travis and eventually finds his brother.

Walt is full of questions, but Travis remains mostly silent. The two eventually make it back to Los Angeles, where Travis is reunited with his now seven-year-old son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), who for the past four years was raised by Walt and Anne. Hunter’s mom/Travis’ ex, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), left Hunter in Walt and Anne’s custody shortly after Travis left, and she’s had limited communication with Anne since then.

The first half of the movie is about Travis’ return to humanity — learning to reconnect with his son and brother and sister-in-law. He slowly becomes more communicative, although he’s largely silent on what happened between him and Jane.

The second half of the movie begins when Anne tells Travis that she thinks she knows where Jane is. For a year now, Jane has been making monthly deposits in a bank account under Hunter’s name that she asked Anne to open for her. These deposits always happen on the 5th of the month, and they’re always at a bank in Houston. Travis asks what day it is, and Anne says it’s the 1st of November.

Travis is determined to find Jane. When he tells Hunter this, Hunter says he wants to come along, too. Even though Travis knows Walt and Anne wouldn’t approve, he picks Hunter up from school and the two drive to Houston to find Jane.

They spot her at the bank Anne mentioned and follow her to a peep show club. Travis leaves Hunter in the car, then goes into the club to confirm that Jane does, indeed, work there. The next day he leaves Hunter in a hotel room and goes to the club for the climactic scene between Travis and Jane. Because it’s a peep show, the glass in the room is one-way: Travis, as the customer, can see Jane, but Jane can’t see Travis. All communications is done through a telephone on Travis’ side of the mirror and an intercom on Jane’s side. Travis tells a story in the third-person that’s actually their story: a story of a man and a woman in love, but the guy gets jealous and possessive. One day the woman says she’s pregnant, and things are okay for a while, but then once the baby is born the mother has postpartum depression, and the two start fighting more and more. The guy starts drinking and becoming abusive; the breaking point is one night when he catches the woman trying to escape, and he ties her to the stove. He goes back to sleep and wakes up to their trailer engulfed in flames, the woman and the son gone.

At this point, the conversation flips. Travis shines the light in his face so that Jane can see him, but he can’t see her. She has a monologue about how she couldn’t care for Hunter by herself, that she had an emptiness inside her. And even though she loved Hunter, it hurt to talk to Anne about the boy, so Jane stopped calling. She also played out conversations in her mind between herself and Travis, all the things she’d say, but since Travis disappeared she eventually moved on. Travis tells Jane where Hunter is, and the movie ends with Jane and Hunter embracing while Travis watches them from the top of a parking garage across the street before he drives off into the night.

Whew. Okay, so that summary was a little bit longer than I expected. But I wanted to lay out some of the key points that I’ll get to in a bit. Before that, let me summarize Nicky Smith’s argument about why she hates Paris, Texas. Her critique is with the second half of the movie, when Travis kidnaps Hunter to go to Texas. The crux of the matter is that we don’t ever see Walt and Anne again, and thus we don’t witness the deeply hurtful emotional turmoil they’re going through. Moreover, the climactic scene between Travis and Jane, Smith argues, is problematic. “What’s criminal and irresponsible,” she writes, “is shown as heart-warming and fun.” She views Travis’ monologue as valorization of his actions, completely whitewashing his atrocious behavior.

I have a very different read on these points. Because for me, what I love about Paris, Texas, is the structural reversal of traditional story arcs. This is not a redemption story. We don’t start with a character we dislike whom we grow to like (or at least empathize with). The example I’m thinking of here is Citizen Kane, a movie I absolutely hated when I saw it in high school. I couldn’t get over how much of an asshole Orson Welles’ character, Charles Foster Kane, was. But I rewatched it maybe five or six years ago and had a slightly different take. I still think Kane is a piece of shit, yet isn’t the whole “twist” that Rosebud is his childhood sled supposed to be humanizing? It’s an element to make him appear more gentle, to get us to feel for this horribly despicable character.

Paris, Texas does the opposite. Here, we start with an inherently relatable character. Casting Harry Dean Stanton as Travis was a genius move, because Staton’s face — especially when rugged and sunburned — is one that conveys sadness. He seems so gentle and quiet, so hurt and broken that we, as the audience, are drawn to him. The film’s grammar tells us that Travis is our protagonist, and by virtue of being the protagonist we give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s a Good Guy.

But this isn’t true at all — Travis is horrible. He’s abusive and emotionally manipulative, as we learn in the scene between him and Jane. I don’t view Travis’ monologue as in any way valorizing his actions or whitewashing over them. Instead, this is a deeply affecting moment of reckoning — not of Jane to Travis (who has had plenty of time to do so already), but of the viewer to Travis. We have to come to terms that this person we’ve followed for the past two hours was (is?) a monster. This isn’t redemption because the movie never full exonerates Travis. I had to put the “is?” in parentheses a sentence ago because I’m not sure myself how much Travis has changed. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he hasn’t fully earned it.

Take Smith’s example of kidnapping. That is, indeed, a supremely fucked up thing Travis does. I’m not going to try to excuse that behavior, but I do think Travis’ actions aren’t quite as nefarious as Smith depicts. In the scene when Travis and Hunter are driving after Hunter cuts out of school early, Hunter says he wants to come along to find Jane. Travis responds, “What about Walt and Anne?” because he’s aware of how this is going to affect them.

A few hours later, when they’ve reached San Bernardino, Travis has Hunter call Walt and Anne from a payphone. And here’s where we DO see Walt and Anne’s emotional turmoil. Walt is borderline angry at Hunter for not being home yet, and once they find out Travis is taking Hunter to Texas, Anne sobs. This is the last time we see them in the movie, and I argue that it’s the perfect way to hint at their devastation without turning it into a melodrama. Immediately after the call, Travis reiterates that Hunter can go home any time he wants — just say the word, and they’ll turn around.

The subsequent scenes of Travis and Hunter making their way to Texas aren’t some feel-good buddy road movie — at least not in my opinion. Most of their travel is in darkness, notably how they have to sleep in a laundromat because Travis can’t afford (or doesn’t choose to make?) a hotel reservation. This is foreshadowing of Travis’ more reckless side, the part of him we’ll soon learn when he talks with Jane.

Also, returning to Anne and Walt for a second: the fact that the road trip sequence follows the call from the payphone highlights their absence rather than disregards it, at least to me. The way a musical motif can establish a mood for a scene, Walt and Anne’s distraught conversation hangs over the subsequent scenes like an air of discord.

As I said before, one of my favorite parts of Paris, Texas is the structural reversals. I’ve already mentioned Travis’ arc from sympathetic to unsympathetic, but I’d like to point out a couple more. First, Jane. Our view of her changes as the movie progresses, one that’s an inverse of Travis’: I think the movie tries to get you to dislike her from the beginning, only to side with her in the end. Although both Travis and Jane are absent parents, I feel like there’s more tacit blame placed on Jane. One example is during a scene when Walt projects home movies onto a screen. Here we see Travis and Jane and Hunter on a trip to the beach with Anne and Walter. Everyone appears happy, the way we’re told to smile for photographs. Of course, knowing what we know of Travis by the end of the film, this is more Jane pretending that everything is calm and good. However, upon a first viewing, when seen through Travis’ eyes, here we see a woman who has left her family and continues to be missing. How could she be so cold-hearted???

But of course she’s not cold-hearted. She’s anything but. Jane cares so deeply for Hunter that it hurts her too much to hear about his growth and development during those conversations with Anne on the phone. She’s flawed, too, of course, which is what I love about this movie — no one is perfect. Everyone is complicated. But here, in the case of Jane, we grow to empathize with her the more we learn about her story. As our opinion of Travis diminishes, our view of Jane seesaws upward. She is a survivor of domestic abuse and a mother who never really got to raise her son because she thought she was doing what was best for Hunter.

And here’s another one of those narrative reversals: while most stories clunkily reveal exposition at the beginning of the movie, here the exposition is crammed into the last 20 minutes. We learn more about these characters in the end than we do in the whole two hours prior. In that way, the exposition becomes a twist — and not a gotcha twist like The Sixth Sense, but a genuinely disconcerting and unsettling twist.

Okay, one last example, and it has to do with Travis. If the expected narrative arc is for a character to go from being lost to being found, this film does the opposite: it opens with Travis being found and ends with him lost, adrift in the night.

There are so many reasons I love Paris, Texas. The dialogue is honest, funny, raw. The cinematography is gorgeous — all the colors! Ry Cooder’s slide guitar score is unique and fitting. The acting is phenomenal (aside from Hunter, who is wooden, but he’s a child, so I’m not holding it against him). However, one aspect that I don’t think gets discussed enough is Paris, Texas’ narrative structural elements. There’s a lot to appreciate on the surface of this movie, but it should be no surprise — especially given the subject matter — that there’s way more going on underneath.

One-way glass prisms prisons of their past, pent-up penitence roamed free.