#will try and make a set of them for every ep !! (there are 8 iirc)

[petekaos]

As they say, you can choose your friends, not your family. Firoz is my friend.

Shahid Kapoor as Sunny and Bhuvan Arora as Firoz in

FARZI (2023), dir. Raj & DK Episode 1: Artist

[sleepymarmot]

The Untamed liveblog, eps. 8-15

8

The rabbit scene was already in the previous episode! What is this editing? Are these episodes from different cuts of the show or something?

Why is it unmanly to hold rabbits? Also DON'T THROW SMALL ANIMALS LIKE INANIMATE OBJECTS FOR FUCK'S SAKE

Ok but I'm getting concerned for these rabbits. Did Yi feed them before? Has WWX been feeding them since then? Are they gonna be alright? This is very important!

Does the phrase that LWJ keeps really mean "How boring"? That doesn't make much sense.

Oh so that's the name of the guy who hangs out with WWX... I've been wondering for several episodes

wtf is happening in the falling petal scene

I'm getting the feeling that a full-sized adventure got condensed into two scenes. WTF does "The Yin Iron deprived the peony, the leading flower, and the true Lady Florist was held in captivity" mean???

Anyway why are you sharing this top-secret info, that even your siblings aren't allowed to know, with a buddy from your class?

Clever trick, Wen Qing!

9

Am I finally getting a back-to-back fight?..

So, if the statues steals people's "spiritual cognition" (=souls?), and the Wen guy making them into puppets was a separate thing, then why did their spiritual cognition return not when the statue was subdued, but when Wen's bird was killed?

Wait, since when does Jiang Cheng know about the Yin Iron?

10

WWX is SO offended someone wants to be more smug and insolent than him

So now they're talking openly about the Yin Iron right in front of those two strangers...

How did they start the conversation at night in one location and continue at daytime at a different location, and not the one where the characters were heading

Seriously who tf calls their castle "The Unclean Realm"

Does Xue Yang's face not get tired from non-stop smirking? Is it frozen like this? Is he this world's Joker?

omg did LWJ just smile at hearing WWX's voice

Alright, when 10 minutes ago I thought "Meng Yao, sweetie, kill that clown", this is not what I had in mind

SOMEBODY GIVE MENG YAO A HUG (after some emergency medical care) HE HAS DONE NOTHING WRONG IN HIS LIFE. Can Xichen adopt him now?

11

Wow, the Jiangs seem to have an actually healthy family relationsh-- *the mother shows up* Uh, nevermind

Why is the Lan Grand Master suddenly dying?

LWJ gave up himself and the Iron shard just to save one traitor?!

I hope everyone enjoys their time in Morrowind! (They obviously won't)

12

*insert a quarantine joke here*

Wow, LWJ switched to the protective mode very unexpectedly (Is that because he just lost his entire clan and therefore the primary subject of his loyalty? and the next in line, to everyone’s surprise, was WWX?)

this beast is the least convincing special effect I've ever seen, including 60s Doctor Who

13

"stranded together and tending to each other's wounds while trying to repress your feelings" in a TV show instead of AO3 makes me feel like I'm in a parallel dimension

for a few wild moments I thought he was going to suck infected blood out of his leg

Just! Do! It! The long fucking stare where he's Considering killed me.

"Let's trigger your crush's PTSD to make him talk about it" and other useful therapy tricks

14

I really didn't get what LWJ was doing in the fight scene. He was describing a technique of killing with strings physically, right, not with the sound they produce? Which made me think he had a spare set of strings on his person, which would have been a refreshing change from all other fictional battle musicians who never carry backup, but from the montage sequence it was pretty clear he just collected bowstrings, and also iirc he summons his guqin anyway. But also it really doesn't look like he accomplished much behind injuring his own hand.

you can have hurt/comfort in both directions, as a treat

dude, just relax and don't try to make it less awkward

a whole-ass flashback to their Meet Cute, no less!

please do not flash back to That One Scene like it was something cute and ruin the whole montage

so he knew the main group escaped, then?

What's the cave timeline? Did it take the two of them several days to prepare the attack on the monster, and after WWX passed out, he hasn't awoken until the rescue, as the editing suggests? Or was there an unseen period of time where WWX and LWJ sat together in a cave, slowly dying from hunger and having no interesting conversations to show whatsoever? The former sounds a ton more convincing, but gathering arrows and bowstrings is a job for several hours, not several days...

I have already written a post about having mixed feelings in response to female characters written in a misogynistic way; here is just another example. Lady Jiang's shrill insults make me want to curl up, cover my ears and close my eyes to hide, or to shout back to chase her away. And at the same time I hate that someone deliberately presented a woman speaking her mind and reasserting her right as a co-lead of the household in an offputting way, to show how she's ruining the family by not being docile and submissive enough. And -- I still don't have anything to like in her to spite the misogynistic writing; should I invent something out of principle, or should I play along with the misogyny game?

As someone more familiar with Japan than China (fantasy or not), it breaks my brain every time I notice people wearing shoes inside lmao

For the first time in this show, after I thought "give him a hug already", a character actually did it on screen

15

After watching 7 episodes in one day, I am finally skipping the opening sequence for the first time

even when the mother fights the bad guys, she somehow does it in a shitty classist way. the purple whip and the combat handmaidens are cool tho

the trio screaming for their father departing to certain death was the first thing in the show to make me cry

kinda wild how the show fluctuates between: 20%: a compilation of time-tested relationship tropes :) 80%: well that was nice while it lasted but back to the plot. HELLO NAUGHTY CHILDREN IT'S PARENT DEATH AND CLAN DESTRUCTION TIME

--

Unrelated to anything above, I'm still hoping for a scene (maybe near the end of the flashback for maximum dramatic irony) where WWX says jokingly to LWJ "Whose funeral have you been dressing for?", with the answer hanging in the air but remaining unsaid: "Yours, Wei Wuxian" (wouldn’t work at the point I’m at rn, for example, because he’s currently mourning his entire clan)

[vrainsrewatch]

episode 10 thoughts

i don’t have as much to say about this episode as i thought i would, but that’s probably because it’s mostly dueling. we do get our first master duel of the series, though, and that’s pretty cool! 

ah, yes, the start of a beautiful rivalry.

seriously, i could talk all day about how i love the way these two interact and bounce off of each other in the earlier eps like this, and how i adore the ryoken reveal and how much good it did for both of their characters and arcs, but i probably shouldn’t lol. i will say that i think they have my favorite rivalry in all of ygo, but again, i still haven’t watched zexal (shame me more), so who knows how i’ll feel about that once i finally get around to it.

anyways,

this little reoccurring thing is so cute, honestly. i love the way they change it up throughout the show, too, with “i thought AIs didn’t pray?” and everything. it’s a really nice and subtle way to show ai becoming more and more human and also showing how their relationship develops, too. stuff like that makes me really happy.

THE IGNIS ARE NOT YOUR CHILDREN, SHITSTAIN, YOUR SON IS RIGHT THERE. seriously, though, the ignis are not his children. it’s kinda terrible that he thinks like that when he has a living, breathing son who wants nothing more than to have his love and approval. and on top of that, it also really shows what he thinks of ryoken, too, in a less obvious way.

he didn’t raise the ignis. once they were created, they fucked off into the network and created the cyberse world and governed themselves without his interference. to be this upset over his own decision to take them out despite only being their creator is really telling of how much of a hand he actually had in raising his real son, and it’s certainly not a good look.

people hate on him all day long for a myriad of things, and i don’t blame them, but honestly objectively, he’s a terrible person. a perfectly fine character, there’s nothing particularly inconsistent with his writing, but an awful, awful person lol.

moving on.

setting the scene for all of rev’s future duels, lmao. seriously, the OG trap card thing was so hype every time, and made me always look forward to his duels. can’t wait to get to that part lol.

we also get the chess pieces again, and man, i really underestimated how often they were brought up in the early episodes lol. i still don’t think they needed to be a big presence going forward, but i understand why people are irked they were just dropped. that said,

you actually have a reasonable point? after your bs on aoi and akira from episode 8, i wasn’t expecting that lmao.

again, the imagery in this series can be really amazing. i actually love this shot a lot. the colors, the symbolism... prisoners of destiny certainly comes to mind, and it’s good foreshadowing that they are both still locked in the past, completely intertwined with the other’s, even if they don’t know it yet.

THEY CHANGED IT??? LITERALLY ONE EPISODE LATER??? HOLD ON, I FEEL LIKE I’M MAKING THIS UP.

OKAY I’M NOT CRAZY. 

i’ve never heard people talk about this, but seriously??? at least be consistent about it in the episodes right next to each other lmao. oof. on that same note,

ah yes, back before rokkets had come to the TCG so CR was still calling them varrets. good times. 

back to real analysis lol

i love how quickly playmaker picks up on this. part of why i don’t care that yusaku never lost a single duel is because of shit like this - he’s incredibly intelligent and his ability to understand a board or an opponent quickly is amazing. i’ve heard a lot of people complain about his lack of losses, and like, i get it, the angst/character potential watching him lose an important duel would’ve had is amazing, but it honestly makes sense he never lost.

the series shows him just picking up his old deck and getting right back into it once he gets fed up, but if you don’t think someone with trauma wouldn’t practice meticulously to make sure he never had to worry about a panic attack due to losing, i highly urge you to think about it a bit more lol.

and while yusaku never lost, he did have what, 3 ties in the series? 2 to rev and 1 to bohman iirc, so that’s not... terrible.

oh speaking of which, i love how revolver forced a tie in their speed duel. it’s implied that it was planned from the very start, and i find that so interesting. how difficult would that be? to plan for a tie? it really shows how intelligent revolver is.

speaking of rev,

what a dramatic asshole lol. i love you.

and also,

this is.... sad. it really makes me think that, try as he might not to, he holds some resentment over his father never being around/present much in his life and takes that anger out on cyberse. he’s not sympathetic to his father feeling like he’s killing a child - and nor should he be - and instead says that he understands that they need to be destroyed. it’s not an i’m sorry father or anything remotely in the same vein as that. 

and again, i will reiterate it should not be, fuck dr. kogami, revolver should be angry his father is a neglectful at best piece of shit, and honestly this is a good reaction in some ways, but it’s really, really sad. it’s so sad to see, and i really wonder if he had the love and affection he should’ve had growing up (and I KNOW the KOH did some good things for him, but they were working on restoring his father in the network, and probably had no fuckin clue how to take care of a child) if he wouldn’t have grown to hate the cyberse/ignis so much, and maybe could’ve been more easily persuaded that due to their free will, they could make their own choices on humanity.

but hey, i digress. 

and this is the first scene where we see that ai might be growing on yusaku! whether you take this to mean that he knows ai is useful to him in duels, or that he’s actually forming a connection already with him, it’s hard to deny that he really does worry about ai, even this early on. i love it. they make me soft.

i mean, i guess it’s not that early anymore, it’s the 10th episode. but still lol.

might watch another tonight if i can! we shall see~ if not, i’ll be home all day tomorrow, so i’ll definitely be watching some then!

[farfromdaylight]

strange bedfellows

BEEN A WHILE SINCE ONE OF THESE, HUH... i actually started watching this episode in october (i watched up until the break), but then nanowrimo happened and i set it aside. i'd like to get through the underdark arc this month, but not sure if i'll be able to.

anyway, this is episode three of my critical role rewatch! as before, there will be spoilers for the whole campaign in these posts.

(also, psst, go check out the critical role fansite i made!)

when we last left off, grog had just had just gone catatonic, and lemme tell you, those X_X glasses on travis still make me lose my goddamn shit.

Laura: "Do any of us know any magic that could heal him-- any magic, or--" Matt: "Do you?" :') i love when matt deadpans

"As they talk, Grog slowly flatulates."

oh my god i forgot that the chat used to buy them food

you know, one of the things i really liked about this initial arc when i first watched it was the slow reveal of information. matt drops just enough information to keep the players and the viewers on their toes -- it's enough to spur them forward, but not enough to tell them the full scope of what's going on. in many cases they never find out every detail, because their path leads them elsewhere.

so here, the duergar tells them about k'varn, and doesn't tell them anything useful, really -- doesn't tell them anything more than that k'varn is some entity in charge, and we don't actually find out what k'varn is for like 6-8 more episodes. but we know that there is something called k'varn out there, and later in this episode when we meet clarota we start getting more of the picture, but still not all of it.

in general, matt is very, very good at showing his story rather than telling, and since it's something i've always struggled with in writing it was one of the things that really drew me to the show. i try to analyze everything i watch/read/play/whatever, and the format of critical role (and d&d in general) makes it particularly interesting.

anyway back to watching

wand of magic missiles! is this the first magic item they found? 🤔 god this is episode three and i can't remember if there was anything in 1 or 2... i don't think they found anything else. i did laugh a bit when they bought the water breathing potions in ep2 because iirc those ended up being pretty useless, given keyleth can cast it whenever. (they may have used them once? god this show is so long, i have a pretty good memory for this sort of thing but with a show this long it's impossible.)

HAHA OMG scanlan says something to the effect of "you know, grog might wake up if a lady kissed him" and laura very awkwardly kisses travis's face

it's pretty subtle until quite late in the show but vex and grog's dynamic is fantastic and laura & travis are so good at playing it up

grog giving keyleth a giant hug after she heals him is so good but then grogleth is always good (for real tho grogleth is A+++)

oh wow i completely forgot that one of vex's favored enemies was demons, did that come up ever

(was orthax a demon? god i know they went to the nine hells and not the abyss but i still get this shit mixed up)

lmao they're talking about what to do about what the dangers ahead given the brain-sucking creatures ahead and Keyleth asks: "Do we have a bunch of mirrors? So we could look around corners?" and i'm just sitting here like man u don't even know

(i should probably bring it up now, because it's gonna come up sooner or later -- tiberius is my least favorite character but i tend to err on the side of not mentioning it rather than constantly grousing about it, because it's been discussed to death)

omfg this bit:

Scanlan: "Okay, listen. Leave me behind. I'll follow the party with the hostages, see where they go (don't worry I'll be invisible) -- go back, tell our fellows, get them across the bridge, we'll meet here in about an hour."

Vex: "Scanlan!"

Scanlan: "What? I'm super brave and hung! Come on, let's do this!"

Vex: "...Alright, I'm down."

i love scanlan and vex's relationship and while it's very understated throughout the show i love the little moments they get

oh man i totally forgot about this plan they came up with with the whole deck of illusions thing. what a strange bookend with the deck of many things.

HALLUCINATORY TERRAIN OH MAN i forgot how great that spell is

this episode marks, i think, where i got hooked on the show. i enjoyed it before then, for sure, but this was where i Really got into it. there was action! there was drama! there was danger! there was clarota holy shit. it's a great episode and marks how awesome it is. the first two eps are good, but this is where it became clear just how much potential this show had.

also vax nearly losing the flying carpet is fucking hilarious

the whole argument about them going exploring or not ends with vex and keyleth losing the vote... and then they steal the flying carpet and go exlporing and find clarota 😂😂😂

keyleth: finds a mindflayer in a tunnel, immediately offers it a flower. i love her.

god matt's clarota voice is So Good

"When I get that feeling~🎵 I want Clarota healing~🎵 Clarota healing is something that's~🎵 good for you~🎶"

and that's a wrap on the episode! man i wish i hadn't left it for a month, the second half is So Good.