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bibibbon · 2 months

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Quirks and MHA society

Throughout the manga there is this reoccurring theme of people not being able to use and control their quirks and the quirk system being broken but honestly this plot point never really goes anywhere in my opinion or if it is used it's not used properly and never reaches it's fullest potential.

Like we see people break the law a bunch of times by using their quirks illegally and we see people state that they cannot control their quirks but nothing is done about it. We never see people arrested for quirk use unless said quirk use harms people.

If it's illegal to use your quirk then how is it that you have middle schoolers freely using their quirks in school or how normal members of the public use their quirks? Also what does this mean for people born with a heteromorphic quirk? Is part of the reason they're discriminated because they can't turn if their quirks or is it because so heteromorphic quirks make the user look more alien and less human? The government in MHA doesn't seem to be very strict about quirk use laws but states that it is (hori failing in show don't tell again🤷‍♀️)

What about people whose quirks are dangerous if they don't release it? What do they do? Do they just have to suffer or does the MHA government have a facility where people can safely release their quirk? This doesn't seem likely considering that izuku, ochako, Katsuki and miriko ran into someone who they(miriko and bakugo)deemed a villain for not being able to control his quirk. This case is treated as a one off incident but it really isn't. If one person has a quirk like that then that means so many other civilians do and they could of been pushed into villainy due to it. Hori establishes that the MHA universe lacks establishments that help people discharge/release or deal with their quirk but he never outright does anything with this plot point (it's mainly used to justify characters actions or villainy)

Horikoshi also introduces the half baked idea that quirks can influence ones personality and desires. This idea is introduced mainly in the MVA arc to ig justify characters (like toga and tomuras) actions and behaviours. I think it could of been a good idea if characters end up acting similarly or develop similar traits that come from their quirk however as I mentioned before the idea is half baked. Toga having an interest/craving in blood because thats how her quirk works makes sense but it's not heavily established. When it comes to toga we get mentions of how broken the quirk counselling system is and how instead of helping her to deal with a quirk that makes her have such a strong fascination and affection to blood it only made her suppress the urges until she went off the rails into full insanity. When it comes to tomura this idea is only used as an excuse (almost) for his actions, his quirk is used to demonise him and make him more of this completely psycho villain who loves to destroy things because that's his nature?!? When it really isn't.

Quirk counselling is a plot point with so much wasted potential. Like how did quirk counselling work? Was it a legal requirement or was it recommended? Did it actually help some people by helping kids understand their quirks, help them with control, offer any support equipment if needed to deal with the quirk and teach children morals? It seems like people with ordinary common quirks benefit more from the system then people with unique quirks that have unique side effects. We are told that toga's quirk counselling was full of adults not understanding and telling her that she is a weird psycho who is obsessed with blood instead of actually helping her. We see curious herself admit that there are many problems with the quirk counselling system and how it only benefited people with certain types of quirks and how it was basically a place teaching and breeding children to learn "right" and "wrong".

We see the quirk counselling system fail but it's never addressed. MHA chapter 22 shows how people with powerful or uncontrollable quirks tend to be failed by the system just like how toga and tomuras were. Eri is a special case you can't even know if she is just being trained or if she attends general counselling because in all truth we aren't told. Eri also faces the same problem where she can't have too much build up for her quirk or it will hurt her so shouldn't MHA dive deeper into the idea of quirk counselling and people not being able to control their quirks. Heck you even have all might state that he has noticed a lot of people can't control their quirks which brings the question is quirk counselling only for young people in elementary school and not for older people because people like midoriya who had a quirk in his teenage years was never forced to do any quirk counselling by the government?!?!?!?

Overall, in my opinion quirks in MHA is a wasted potential of a plot point and topic. MHA fails to truly delve and dig deep into topics like how the government fails in providing help with quirk counselling or establishments that help people deal with their quirks, or how less people know how to control their quirks being a result for the quickly failing system or how badly the law is reinforced . These ideas intertwining with quirk inequality and how it affects peoples day to day life could of all been interesting points to explore.

#mha critical #bnha critical #hori is a bad writer #horikoshi critical #mha #bhna critical #wasted potential #bnha quirks

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dongshancai · 3 months

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i never say this, especially for a slice of life kdrama, but samdalri is really set up to have a season 2. it doesnt even have to be a full 16 episodes—12 is honestly enough, maybe even 8 or 10 :0

there is so much potential to explore the side characters, but also to show how samdal supports yongpil and his dreams when he supported her throughout this entire show (i like the idea of yongpil being like “samdal is my dream” BUT THAT IS BESIDES THE POINT LOL). there has been complaints about how it almost seems like yongpil is too in love with samdal, but in the context of the story where samdal’s career and life pretty much falls apart, it makes sense for him to be the major support in the plot to complete her character arc of finding herself again. so i think it would be really nice to see it reversed and samdal supporting him in the hypothetical second season.

that also means we get to explore the side relationships that they teased throughout the whole show. i like that we really focused on samdal and yongpil and didnt give more than necessary screentime to the side characters (as many other kdramas do and it ends up being filler that no one cares about), but it almost seems like we didnt get ENOUGH.

our favorite haedal x dolphin boy NEEDS more screentime, and i really want them to explore more of the relationship of a family unit with hayul if they end up dating. also just haedal and training to become a haenyo—i wonder why they gave us that information so late, as well as hayul wanting to be a swimmer! that is such a good plotline on its own!! because then we also get to explore the relationship of ko mija passing on her beloved career to a daughter, and i think that is super intriguing.

i know jindal and her ex are somewhat comedic relief, but they also need to have a proper resolution? because he seems to really care for her, and it would be nice seeing him become someone she can rely on and eventually fall back in love with. i’m not sure which route would be better: him leaving his rich life or him completely inheriting the company, but both have a lot of potential. i think it would have to focus more on his character development rather than jindal’s, but i don’t mind seeing how their relationship plays out because it’s such an interesting dynamic and kind of unfortunate for them the way they broke up if they really loved each other. in fact, there’s also the minor relationship between him and jindal’s dad if his own relationship with his father isn’t the greatest

and i cannot belieVEE they introduced us to gyeongtae and eunbi AN EPISODE BEFORE THE FINALE?! AND THEN DROPPING THE “it’s been twenty years since his first love” LIKE HELLO?! THE POTENTIAL?! once again, another ship for comedic purposes, but it’s almost kind of sweet and i want to see more!! especially the classic “i wasn’t loved for me, but i can be myself around you and you don’t mind it” type of trope!! it’s very city girl x country boy too HAHA

i also just want to see more of eunu and see him and his wife and daughters!!! LET ME SEE HIM AS A DAD BUT ALSO LET THE OTHER CHARACTERS INTERACT WITH HIS KIDS!!! and imagine A LEGITIMATE CHA EUNWOO CAMEO that would be so FUN!!! especially if his daughter has a crush on him HAH

there is so much potential to expand on these characters for a couple more episodes and i really think they deserve it :’)

#welcome to samdalri #.txt #i just dont want it to end just yet #and i usually never agree with a s2 for kdramas but this one is almost setting it up in a way that we NEED a s2 #ALSO #ARE SAMDAL AND YONGPIL GETTING MARRIED?!#ISTG IF WE DONT GET A MARRIAGE SCENE I DEMAND A S2 #THEYRE ALMOST FORTY OMG 😭

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your-old-sins-tournament · 4 months

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12 YEAR OLD OCS; SIDE B

Hollystar [Orion] (she/her)

She is a warrior cats cat. And she becomes the leader of her own new clan because she is just that cool and epic. Like Starclan blessed her with the nine lives and everything. She had a forbidden romance with her deputy cat and everything

Elenora [@gentleralts] (she/her)

It's an ambiguous time period between 2007 and 2009, and a youth is sitting at their family computer. An online friend on a forum they frequented introduces them to a little website called tektek. This site had all the avatar building assets from Gaia Online (not the forum i frequented back in that day by the way) without having to own any of the items, providing an easy-ish way to show off your RP characters, or to just build stuff for funsies. This youth would not go on to make an actual Gaia Online account until 2017, having learned that tektek has been long shut down and Gaia had instituted a similar sort of avatar building function on their own website. It's just not the same ):

Elenora came about from playing around with what was available in tektek and making up lore for her and the world around her in my head. By this point in time I was kind of starting to feel The Shame™ around my creative interests and never saved whatever I built of the characters I made for this world and rarely drew them out. I even have a specific memory of tracing over one of those How to Draw Anime books to make Elenora and her sister and then throwing the drawing away in the shitty transparent plastic trashcan I had in my bedroom. However, since I recreated Elenora so many times in tektek I still remember what most of her base items were like a decade and a half later.

In Elenora's world, everybody is born with a specific power which is shown by the color of their eyes, hair, and the magic marks on their body. It was mainly elemental stuff like controlling fire or water or electricity or whatever, but a specific one I remember that wasn't an elemental thing was the ability to communicate with animals and get them to do what you want them to if you were powerful enough. Most people had one power type but it was still possible to be born with two powers, usually manifesting in a separate hair and eye color. The amount of magic marks on someone's body correlates to how much potential power they have, and once in a lifetime there's one person of each power born with all the marks, similar in the concept to the Avatar from AtLA but they're all separate girls that are born at the same time and the ones from the last generation don't die right when the next generation is born.

Elenora was born with full black marks, which gives illusion powers and control over shadows. However, she lives in an authoritarian society where those with black mark powers must be killed. She was born alongside a twin sister in a home birth, and their parents kept Elenora's birth a secret until she was able to use her illusion powers to disguise her marks. Things were all fine and dandy with Elenora honing her powers in secret until one day their house got raided and her sister sacrificed herself, claiming she was the one disguising herself to hide black marks instead. This sets Elenora off on a journey along with the ghost of her sister to find all the other girls with full marks and have adventures and overthrow her kingdom's government or something. One specific adventure plot I remember involved them running into a necromancer doing shit in the graveyard where her twin sister is buried, and her ghost merging with her zombie body brings her back to life. Unfortunately, I don't remember anything about what kind of personality she might have had besides "guilt over dead sister."

Description

A teenage girl with pale skin, pointed ears, black eyes, and black swirling marks on her body. She has long black hair tied back into a single braid, and wispy bangs. She wears a cream colored blouse. She is accompanied by the ghost of her twin sister, who has chin-length silvery-blue hair and red eyes

#ocs #bracket tournament #polls #ocs you made when you were 12 tournament #old sins #side b #hollystar #elenora

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jewishcissiekj · 6 months

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One of the things that upset me most about Dark Disciple & the Quinlan/Asajj romance is just how much it's the writers smashing their action figures together. In general, the entirety of Asajj's TCW storylines also severely lack thought other than somebody playing a game with their dolls.

Let me explain. Asajj has a lot of potential. Her character and themes from the get-go (concept art for AOTC Sith) are full of intrigue and mystery. You want to know this character and whatever is behind her, why is she doing all this, and how she got there. And TCW answers that question pretty well. She was a Nightsister baby who was given to a slaver and later trained by a Jedi Master who died, she encountered Dooku and trained under him, only to get betrayed by him and return to her Nightsister roots, causing the murder of almost all Nightsisters and her transition to a Bounty Hunter and …redemption? leading to her eventual death at the hands of Count Dooku.

The thing is, this story feels so all over the place for me. There are themes, sure, but other than a clear motivation, something is missing. There's no point to her character. When she's introduced in The Clone Wars movie, she's just a flirty villain for Obi-Wan to quip and play off of. In the end, when she dies, she furthers a male character's character development we never even see afterward. TCW has plenty of pointless characters, don't get me wrong. But her story starts nowhere and goes nowhere, only affecting her and having no real story importance or relevance outside of that. It also means nothing. There are no repercussions to Dooku taking on an apprentice, no, uh, how do I put this. Her story is full of themes but no meaning. No underlying plotline or development that feels natural and beneficial to her character. That wouldn't be a problem if she was just a throwaway villain, coming in once in a while to flirt with Obi-Wan or fight with Ahsoka. But because of the natural interest in her, the intrigue and mystery, they gave her a story. Not even a motivation, a story that came out of nowhere and in watching back might feel like just an elaborate build-up to Maul's return. Instead of looking at the character and, idk, thinking about how you can develop her current character and the yet-unexplored background with Obi-Wan and her relationship to the Dark Side, they threw her into that whole Nightsister bullshit. And then that wasn't enough and they made her a bounty hunter because they wanted a Boba Fett & friends episode. For the love of god, if she knew about the Nightsisters, why wouldn't she go to them earlier? You didn't tell us how she found out and who told her, so why THE FUCK would she go to Dooku after her mentor's death and not to her people? What of all things made her go to Dathomir in Nightsisters? Why would an ex-dark sider with (probably) knowledge of Dooku's most secret plans who just lost the people she just found go and be a Bounty Hunter? And what about that redeems her? What the fuck was she doing on Coruscant? If she hated Dooku so much and knew she couldn't kill him alone, why would a single Jedi help her do it? What is her motive and why was she so loyal to Dooku if she's just going to throw the Dark Side and her hate for the Jedi out of the window like that? Does she have principles? Character motivations? Is there a point to any of that?

Legeneds version aside, what does she mean? Is she the last survivor? Is she a failed apprentice? Does she just want to be loved but gets consumed by the Dark Side? She's all of these things but none of them consistently. If character development happened, I'd have no problem with her character changing. But it DOESN'T. Things just happen to her and we barely see any reaction to it from her. To me, she's kind of like Thrawn if we never got the (canon) books, empty and lacking any character motivation.

In Dark Disciple, instead of expanding on the actual character, they just kept on putting her in situations. Because we don't really see her POV anywhere in the book, and she's not written to express emotion openly, she feels like she was molded to fit the story instead of the story being character-focused and following her and Quinlan's development through a situation. The only time her character feels well-written in the canon era to me (not just in a fun comic story) is in Dooku: Jedi Lost, which actually shows us her perspective for once, and even if she still lacks motivation, it feels like a story of her character and not of her action figure. She has a character and a personality throughout all of Canon, don't get me wrong. I can't accidentally write her like Ahsoka. But a character and what the writers do to put it in a story are two different things.

And I know I said I wouldn't get into the Legends part of it all, but even in a few shorts and a handful of comics, there seems to be a much more consistent line of thought and an arc to her character than there is in the canon version. The best way I can describe it, tbh, is that something just clicks with the way her story and role are in Legends, while in canon it feels like 10 different people trying to put together 15 different jigsaw puzzles. Maybe it's the fewer writers, maybe it's the different approach to story-telling in general, it's just very different to me. Right now (since a May comic issue and excluding the mention in Ahsoka), there isn't any new Asajj content, so it's not really a problem. But if they ever do something new with her I need them to get their fucking shit together and make it make sense.

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taldigi · 3 months

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So I was rereading some of your old posts about the miraculous setting, and it made me wonder something. How interesting do you think it would have been if Ladybug Classic took place in a fictional city instead of Paris?

I would have liked them to actually have used Paris to its full potential. It would have been ideal.

The show runners are completely obsessed with cartoons and superhero media but It feels like they forgot that one of the most important characters in those pieces of media tend to be the cities! Gotham is a huge character of its own, so is metropolis and Spider-Man's New York. Hell, look at Miles Morales' New York.. a big part of those characters is their ugly side. Sometimes the setting is what makes the character shine the most. Sure Batman is cool right? But outside of Gotham City he definitely feels odd. (Coming from someone who only watched some cartoons when she was a kid and only experience with Batman is through the Justice League cartoon)

Ladybug's Paris is.. weird. It's like a shiny doll house version of Paris where everything is beautiful and the streets are clean and there's no crime so the police can be incompetent and they send their trash into space... But they still can have their little episodes where they pull in the entire police force to fight a single akuma based on the fact that it's a Chinese person rather than all the other akuma that were not. It's also weirdly futuristic. And I don't think I like that. That is a huge personal point but I think series based around ancient magical fairies trapped in magical artifacts probably shouldn't have a futuristic tint to it. Just make them superheroes with super suits instead of fairies with magic. Just go iron Man on them. That contrast might be interesting to some but it's incredibly frustrating to me as to why when fairies eat ancient potions suddenly again the ability to wear space suits. Even the characters having a weird hex overlay is way sci-fi for the setting. It's frustrating and I hate it. I know they wanted to give the suits a sort of texture but...

It's like solar punk done wrong. Or like eco.. vaugeism... There's a word for it, but it's not solar punk. Solar punk would be interesting. It's trying to be eco forward, but it's not doing well because it's not actually doing anything worth saying. And then again I haven't seen the recent episodes because I refuse to watch it. Though I hear the last episode has some pretty fucking weird decisions in terms of setting like how different characters in different grades can now intermingle and go to the same classes or whatever. I can't be asked to look it up.

They also never explore any other part of France. Which I think is odd. They want this to be a uniquely French story but they only really feel like expanding out into big major cities. Honestly them expanding out to New York and introducing their own Justice League or Shanghai or even dystopia France just kind of shows that they're all playing in baby mode.

Honestly what they should have done and what they probably would have been happier with is if they had just gone ahead and made it their own original city sort of like how Gotham is original and made it this funky futuristic eco city that they seem to have always wanted and they could have just made it really Chinese because that's clearly what they want to do with all of the kung fu and Chinese mysticism they're forcing into the show.

Something something in the daytime my name is Marinette but when the sun goes down I become ladybug and I watch over Miracle City. Something something. They could have even had like big art centers to do their history episodes in or have like a giant statue or a giant tower be sort of their big monument.. anything that makes the show uniquely French is interchangeable. There's nothing so intricately French about the show that It would ruin or severely damage the show if it changed settings.

As for ladybug classic... It's a chance to do Paris right I guess. I wouldn't change the setting. If I wanted to change the setting I would just play with my faewild characters instead..

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thebrisingamen · 6 months

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ESCAFLOWNE VOICE MEME; Read More for anyone who hasn't watched the series. Tons of spoilers ahead, you've been warned.

Introduce yourself! When did you first watch Escaflowne? What brought you into the fold? Hi, I'm Norse, an internet Elder. My Uncle knew I liked anime from my watching Inuyasha, and he would buy me and my cousins birthday/Christmas presents. He, however, never asked what anime I liked lol. He picked up the Fox VHS tapes and I watched them so much my father started quoting parts of them and the tapes had lines in them. Nothing else truly compared to this story before or since in anime, especially in other Isekai stories; no other story genuinely gives me a feeling that this IS another world; there's no overpowered protagonist, just a teenage girl and the worst powers to have during wartime.

Who is your favorite character and why? Was it love at first sight? Has any of their qualities or quirks swayed you on characters in other series? I like a lot of characters in the series, however, my psychotic boy Dilandau is probably my favorite. On the surface, he is just an insane, pyromaniac child soldier but there is SO MUCH to unpack with his character. Not only is he unstable and insane, when we get the reveal that Dilandau was/is a manipulation of Celena, it's very interesting. How many children were just like him in the Empire? He can't possibly have been the only "success" in the Empire. Aside from Celena, does he have any false memories implanted in him? Was his personality chosen for him or was in the influence of all the manipulation on his body and fate? With the Dragonslayers added in, are all of them also the same age as their commander? Does Zaibach regularly have child soldiers? He's just such a fascinating character to me, in these regards. I wish the transformation between Celena/Dilandau wasn't so thorough, though. Like that there were still some remnants of the Dilandau personality in her. Second favorite character is Folken, solely because of Paul Dobson voicing him, but his personality is also pretty interesting to me. As far as other characters, nah, I tend to like these psychos often, they just seem like they're fun.

Which side are you on? What do you think happens Post-Hitomi when she leaves? Who do you think will be the next opposing power? I think the show does a good job of showing us that there are no good or bad sides; even Zaibach only started conquering because their new leader gave them the knowledge and power to defend themselves at first and they lived in a barren wasteland. I am on Fanelia's side, however and I hope that they are able to restore their Capital City in full and that everyone is able to reach a tenable peace I think a lot of peace talks and treaties and marriages of political convenience end up happening between several of the allied countries and that there will be a pause in the conflict; Zaibach will more than likely pull back and maybe crumble from the loss of leadership and the split in power. Though they were wiped out militarily; I can't imagine General Adelphos spending funds on the Sorcerers anymore. I forsee similar issues that plagued Europe in our history happening to the world of Gaea, but I think that the next opposing power will likely be Basram or Zaibach, potentially Asturia if their influence reaches over to Zaibach.

Least favorite plot point? Was there something you think should have changed? What do you think would have made it better. I hate the love triangle here, as per usual. It makes sense and removing it would be bad because it is critical for our characters' growth, but I still hate the Allen/Hitomi interactions near the later half of the series solely because its there ONLY to delay Van/Hitomi. Which is the point, of course. I also really don't like the REVEAL that 'GASP' Emperor Dornkirk was...SIR ISSAC NEWTON?? All along??/ Like bitch how'd you fuckin' SURVIVE that long.

OTP? What kind of art and fiction would you like to see? What are some head canons you have for them? What is you NoTP OTP; Van/Hitomi; I think their romance is well developed and I like them. They definitely have more of an equal footing with one another and support one another, with believable roadblocks. SOMEONE PLEASE DRAW THEM KISSING WE NEVER GET IT IN THE SERIES. As for fan pairings, I actually liked Folken/Dilandau before some reveals, but honestly Folken getting TWO partners is pretty funny for me, even if it's in the afterlife. NOTP: Allen/Millerna or Allen/Hitomi; gross, he's SO MUCH older than both of them. Dilandau/Van is also a big No from me.

What would you like to see in a figurativ remake/sequel? Would you include more minor characters? Would you want a whole new story that could be a stand alone? Honestly, I'd love a stand alone or if it's a sequel series, mostly focusing on the internal politics of Gaea. Possible focus on Merle, Chid and maybe Dryden and Millerna. Or maybe just references too them, I have questions about the world but I'd like to leave the main story alone.

Movie, Series, Game, or Manga preference? What are things you did/didnt like of each? Series; The manga is awful and the movie is wildly different from the series. I'm most familiar with the series.

Do your favorite impression! Bonus points if you can do a conversation with a scene cut in! LORD VAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

What do you think about the idea of a re-dub? What are your feelings about the current cast selection for Van (and others if more are introduced)? Well since we had the Funimation re-release at the time of doing this, I think a new dub really forgot the deeper charms of the original dub; there's no depth of feeling to most of the voices and the acting feels phoned in, not to mention that several of the characters that are supposed to have a commanding presence and deeper voices don't, and it sounds the same as all current Funimation voice work...Awful and Samey. I find that Aaron Dismuke was actually a good choice for Van, same with Alexis Tipton for Merle, as while Aaron gave a slightly different flavor for Van it was still a good portrayal, and Merle seems to be an easy character for VAs to portray. However, once again Funi ruins things by casting Vic Mignonana (idc how to spell his last name) as Folken, like are you SERIOUS? He can't compare to either Paul Dobson OR Jōji Nakata in terms of rich toned voice, or a commanding sort of voice at all. And my boy, Dilandau, is ruined. My poor little meow meow isn't psychotic enough, isn't funny enough and isn't threatening enough. Joel MacDonald sounds exactly like 30-year-old man reading for a teenager and doesn't understand Dilandau's character at all, even on basic level. Bring back Andrew Francis. Basically the Ocean Dub is superior, if you're gonna watch in dubs imo. I prefer the sub just because Maaya Sakamoto as Hitomi is just BETTER than either English VA imo and both English VAs made me actively hate her for a lonnnng time. But if I watch in Dub its gonna be Ocean Dub.

Recite your top five characters by name. Dilandau, Folken, Van, Hitomi and Dryden

#escaflowne #The Vision of Escaflowne #They massacred my boy #dilandau albatou #is my favorite little psycho #and then Folken Van and Hitomi

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virginmiri99 · 10 months

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Insider anon calling in, here with the show and trusting Tommycrit & Co with it

To start off very general I had a great time, it was very genuinely entertaining and there wasn't a moment where attention or energy was lost. On the technical side it was well paced with a followable structure and characters you did get invested in as silly they were. The audience energy was good and well commanded, and though there were some issues with people staff did get involved. I feel like the way I'm going to describe it won't do it justice obviously because live shows are live for a reason and my memory is awful, but here's the skeleton of it all

(There were two acts, the first act ends after the explanation of the events during the doxxing and the second act starts off with them dealing with it. I'll split the asks to keep the doxxing story in one piece.)

The First act! (- doxxing story)

Slimecicle introduced the show over a video montage, with the joke that he was being held at gunpoint to praise Tommy in absurd ways, it was a great build up to Tommy's show 'character', which entered on stage soon after (surprisingly he was the only one who seemed different in person, or at least seemed smaller than I thought). His character in this is the grandeous, egotistical money-focused persona he tends to draw on hyped to the max (an insane amount of stage presence and full use of his body and exaggerated expressions, I feel like no matter where you sat nothing was lost in translation). The entire show is initially presented as a step-guide on how to be rich and successful and sexy like him - aka. you have to be him, and the steps are consequently a life story (the actual meta reason and purpose of the show does get stated out loud later on). There's alot of crude humour throughout the show and I'd say most of it landed for me personally. There was never a joke in general didn't receive a good response which is great for such a heavily packed live show where there's usually one or two that miss the mark, but seeing certain parents faces in response to the joke poking at Christians was funny in its own right.

As you can imagine, the life story starts off in the, that's right, the womb, where he was planning his potential and success, only for Jack, playing his dad, to come in and tell an unsurprising, embarrassing birth story. Jack's 'dad' character is also the same old man persona he uses alot, the one haunted by war crimes in 'Nam and ever disappointed in his son, so, nothing like Iain at all (maybe the comment about Tubbo being Tommy's boyfriend came from a real place). The running bit in the show being his refusal to hug Tommy (Tommy's actual dad being on the sidelines of the stage the entire time and having helped write the script added to the experience in retrospect). The dad character sort of plays the 'realist' and the downbeat character, with alot of dry humour and directly addressing the audience while also being just as exaggerated as Tom's - got most of the parents laughs.

Then we get the wonderful introduction of Binda, as played by Freddie Badlinu, who is the character of a literal stuffed dog Iain bought when Tommy was a baby and back when they were genuinely pretty poor (also alot of humour about wealth and class which landed great with a British audience, it'd be interesting to see with an American one). Binda as a character is very childlike, and is bullied by the other characters for it, often being sent off stage (much to the audience's sympathy and 'aww's). Pretty much a metaphor for childhood and innocence in the show, being the angel on Tom's shoulder and a great contrast to the two other characters. There was an introduction song (Freddie does have a brilliant singing voice!) and a dance sequence as is theatre requirement (it stretched a few beats too long but nothing too painful).

This continues with a few more stories (these stories are presented as 'oh woe look at these hardships it took to get where I am!' before cutting to an entirely minimal and embarrassing childhood story), how he had to be his own bully because he was a lonely child (Jack, also playing Tommy's mum throughout this with a simply longer wig), how he fought off a monster aka. Betty (A massive two-person puppet of a hound was used before the actual photo of Tommy and Betty as a puppy was shown, it was a genuinely an amazing puppet prop) etc. I'm not doing this part much justice in description because there was a fair amount and it played 'build-up'.

From this it leads onto the introduction of minecraft in his life, and the story of the hammock collar-bone breaking incident, as preformed by puppets in a prerecorded video! (Tommy suits puppetry concerningly well.) He goes on to explain the switch from Twitch streaming to YouTube after being inspired by YouTubers such as Captain Sparkles and DanTDM (big applause, though Technoblade got the biggest) and then the downfall after being told he had to study for GCSEs (there's alot of humour of Tommy being rude to his parents and it going poorly, being either physically threatened or threatened in the 'British mum' way, which the mum I was sat next to found very funny in particular).

And then we get Covid! This part landed very well humour beat wise and the photo shown of the moment Tom and Sarah found out GCSE's were cancelled was borderline renaissance (elation vs. horror-shock.)

YouTube goes great (as we know), dsmp mention (not as big a portion of the show as one might expect, barely mentioned after this) and the shows leads onto the first time Tommy goes to Brighton, again in a prerecorded puppet video and song! Puppets of Tom, Iain (?), Wilbur, Niki, Fundy, Philza, and Kristin were the main ones used, and all of them bar from Fundy and Iain sung a part in the song! Tommy's singing voice sounds incredibly young I will say, not as in unpracticed or unskilled at all, just generally young like some of his older singing clips - for some reason I thought it'd changed more.

There's also a part talking about lawyers and the wacky things such as having to copyright his own face, which lead to another song as by Freddie Badlinu in a Better Call Saul inspired outfit (my favourite of the songs Freddie sang, very familiar to another production but I can't put a finger on which one).

Up until this point the story arc of the show has been on a solid positive incline which no really conflict, and the tone has only been humourous if not absurd. At this point Tommy alludes to things going to shit and to the point of wanting to quit, and the title card behind Tommy begins to decay in a block by block fashion. This is the start of Tommy's character dropping the act and instead acting desperate and upset, as he begs vaguely for what is happening to stop (leading onto the doxxing part of the show...)

[PART 1]

Maybe I'm just on my period but this first part to the show is legit making me tear up rn this sounds so well put together and a great experience I'm genuinely impressed just reading your TLDR of it. It sounds like it blends together seamlessly and I'm just honestly proud with what they managed to create. Awesome.

#ask #tommy is the problem #insider anon #tmmyLiveShow #long post

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birlwrites · 1 year

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what's your opinion on regulus/lily? i love them, but i honestly don't like the fics because they often make snape not a bad person, but i digress. i tend to read the fanfic because if you don't get pro-snape things, you don't get anything at all with that ship.

(or, what about, for fun, regulus/lily/evan)

i think regulus/lily can be very cool, AS LONG AS it doesn't turn into 'dramione but make it marauders.' (this is actually a caveat i have with a lot of marauders' era ships - that the potential is there, but the dynamic is often just like it is in a popular golden trio era ship. i'm down for a LOT of ships as long as the characters and dynamics don't feel recycled)

i think if i were to write a regulus/lily fic, it would probably be grounded in the war, because i feel like they need very high stakes to really push them together (see ttdl LMAO) - unless they're in the same house or year or something like that where they naturally run across each other a lot

like (and this is just off the top of my head - if someone wants to take this premise and run with it, go ahead! i already have far too many wips afjlshgskdf), this would be my go-to:

due to various scheduling issues, regulus and lily are assigned to do prefect rounds together (a combination that would normally NEVER fly because they try not to put muggleborns and People With Close Personal Ties To Death Eaters on patrol together)

lily goes into it hackles up, in the direct wake of sirius's disownment, expecting the worst from regulus black

regulus goes into it mildly curious about this lily evans who he has only ever heard about in the context of a) snape or b) potter, but honestly he's preoccupied with Sirius Angst and Family Pressure Angst and lots of things like that

slow burn the fuck out of it. regulus will probably be the one who has to actually break the ice because just b/c lily is no longer expecting him to blow up at her for blood purity reasons it doesn't mean she expects him to be worth befriending

bond over being younger siblings with very complicated relationships with their older siblings

become close friends (and here you get the joys of the secret relationship trope before a romantic relationship even develops, because War and also Sirius)

(side note - much character work for sirius would be necessary to make sure he's not just Regulus's Shouty Dramatic Brother)

and then i don't know where it would go from there but i do really like the idea of them working together in the war. either as an 'they're on their own side' thing or as a 'infiltrated both sides, using them for their own agenda' thing. like let them have a safehouse that lily has stocked with hand grenades, that's my vision

regulus/lily/evan would be A HOT MESS (in a fun way afjslghskdjf i just mean i'm laughing thinking about it) - triple the complicated relationships with older siblings. evan 'flirting is my middle name' rosier vs regulus 'pine until i either have to confess my undying love or fake my death' black vs lily 'historically people have just fallen all over themselves to ask me out and i don't actually know how to demonstrate interest in someone' evans. lots of lighthearted bickering. lily introducing regulus and evan to modern muggle technological marvels (disco ball). they have 'study dates' which are actually just lily and regulus studying and evan being distracting. they have a black and white cat named oreo (evan thinks this is the most original cat name ever). regulus is tormented constantly by lily and evan attempting to invent new household charms whenever the mood strikes. he and oreo often retreat to the library (spare bedroom full of books and one (1) disco ball) for safety. lily has a secret diary in which she keeps track of Definitely Totally Very Real Muggle Inventions that regulus and evan don't know she lied about yet. they have GREAT photo albums

#should i make an inbox tag #main issue with lily making up muggle inventions that don't exist:#if she makes them sound too cool evan Will attempt to purchase them #or worse: regulus will attempt to purchase them For Evan #(regulus trying to Find The Thing is worse because he won't get bored)#lily still cannot wrap her head around their household budget #it just. doesn't exist. there is no budget. evan just buys whatever the hell he wants #lily says 'oh i love cats' and five hours later evan has adopted one #regulus enables him #evan loves oreos #regulus and lily are Coffee Connoisseurs (caffeine addicts)#regulus thinks dayquil is a genuine miracle #side note in this universe i'm deciding regulus 'weak constitution' black gets a bad cold #like at LEAST once a year #lily tried to invent a charm that would detect when regulus was cold and bring him another blanket #it failed spectacularly #evan keeps trying to explain what happened to their friends #and he's physically incapable of doing so because he keeps laughing #ok i think that's enough tags ajflhsdkjf

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beehati · 2 years

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i can't believe that something that creates itself in head of two nerdy men gonna bother me for the next 2-3 years but here we are. *sigh* let's talk about that triangle cus it itches my brain (its not anti-anything post, just trying to understand narrative here). so for a hot second i thought they may want to go for single nancy and leave her potential endgame up to everyone's interpretation, but now my theory crumbles since our infamous triangle is the only one who isn't set in the stone. choice has to be made. i just dont get why duffers would revive love triangle if characters involved in it will end the same place as the first time. s1!steve (even s2) could be used as a prop to shake up stuff between j@ncy but s5!steve is too developed and loved to treat him as simple obstacle in other ship (again). steve is that character who never gets pay off in final episode. s1? with nancy but framed as doomed rs. s2? heartbroken. s3? with new job and friend but no romantic fullfilment he craves. s4? heartbroken. again. steves gives this story so much and never gets much in return. this time he needs to be as strong side in this triangle as jonathan otherwise whats the point. that's why i can't imagine him not having happy ending in final season as well( i dont even consider anyone from triangle dying cus how lazy is that). but can we even talk about *truly* happy ending for him without nancy? i don't see it atm. he wants love but there won't be other love interests for him than nancy. not ending up in romantic relationship after all this set up in s3&4 feels pointless. would duffers (potentially) develop them by using that time jump (how bittersweet for my shipper heart! id take it anyways but...). it would mirror the way they were introduced to us in s1 tho. meanwhile nancy would have to work with jon again mirroring their plot in s1 but this time instead of getting closer they are la la landed - thanking each other for everything they gave one another but accepting they're in different places but they'll always have love for each other. full cycle, different outcomes. *sigh*

its 1 out of 1000 theories i'll have until s5 lands bare with me.

#just 11 pm rambles #i hate waiting so long to find out #stancy #stranger things

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hellshee · 2 years

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Now that you and anon mentioned Argyle (who I love with all my heart) I'd like to express my feelings on this. This is a personal opinion, I understand if people may disagree. I think Stranger Things would have worked better as an athology series. I don't like the Duffers that much as writers as after several seasons they get a bit lost. But at introducing interesting characters that last a season, so to speak, they're not that bad. I love the characters from Stranger Things! However, since the cast is too big, even the existing characters get a bit drowned out or lost in the background. Season 1 is perfect the way it is. Season two could have just focused on Max and Billy, with a new story, new town and monsters. Season three could have introduced Robin and possibly Erica (or other new characters). And finally Season 4, introducing Chrissy, Eddie and Argyle. Each season with its own new story, new location, and the focus on only a few characters, because the actors are really amazing and always give everything for the performance. Because of how things are right now, I feel like focus is lost or characters aren't being used to their full potential (like Argyle).

i never thought about this before tbh. a stranger things anthology.

i guess my main problem with this is that i'd still like to see the other characters in each season too. (have my cake and eat it too sort of thing) but it is an interesting idea. it's like different seasons, kids are dealing and fighting with interdimensional monsters, final season is eleven (and will too, in my personal fantasy) getting everyone together and finally putting an end to vecna or whoever and, well, going to college i guess (can totally imagine one of them go so we did all of this just to go to college? and study? what's next, work?? lol)

but you are right, i wish there was enough time and space that we would explore these characters a bit more. both the minor characters and the main characters. i think s4 was especially a bit messy with time because i feel like they didn't use enough filler scenes and the filler scenes they used weren't always in the right places. the pacing was a bit off and some parts were just action action action. which is fun, but it also felt a bit cramped at times.

i guess my solution to everything is always to have more filler scenes and don't rush things too much. i think there's a perfect balance between rushed and slow and stranger things is a bit on the rush side at times.

as a side note, the first season really is my favorite which pains me to say because will byers doesn't show up much in it and he's one of my most beloved characters, but i feel like season 1 of stranger things was peak television. of course i like all seasons, but season 1 is special to me.

#💌 answered 💌#anonymous

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your-old-sins-tournament · 2 months

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12 YEAR OLD OCS: SIDE B

Elenora [@gentleralts] (she/her)

Description

Darktuft [@spiri-phone9] (It/its)

Darktuft is some cat who was the mentor of my old warriorsona Ariespaw, it's pretty cool, I still kinda like Darktuft. It was a generally fun-loving, silly guy. It was also from a clan I made up (I think it was named NightClan? I forgot lol).

#elenora #ocs #ocs you made when you were 12 tournament #old sins #side b #polls #darktuft #bracket tournament

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tuesdayscanons · 3 years

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<< On the topic of Danger Mouse, I get confused by the show’s handling of Penfold’s crossdressing? I can’t tell if we’re supposed to find it a funny character quirk of his or something subversive and somewhat empowering??? Also, I’m confused by the show’s occasional nod to people who ship Penfold and Danger Mouse, but then they go and try to hint at a Danger Mouse and Professor relationship??? Finally, the actual writing for the female characters is sometimes not the best, but not always. >>

《 I'm not sure about the cross-dressing (kid's shows have an odd relationship with cross-dressing in general), but the shipping isn't much of a surprise. A DM/Penfold/Squawkencluck poly relationship is technically possible but you know the show won't go through with that. My theory is that they want to give fan service nods to the popular gay ship but don't want to anger heteronormative parents, so they use the one major woman character as ship bait. As much as I ship Fessie with DM on this blog (fun fact: I originally picked her up as a muse because a mutual needed a Professor to ship with), it still bothers me how Fessie seems to exist to help/be shipped with DM for the most part. Not like she doesn't get characterization and whatnot, but she tends to be put in the sidelines a lot of the time. And is it just me or does the show portray her as a wet blanket/nag when she's pretty justified in not wanting DM messing with her inventions without her consent? Or does the show want to portray DM as foolish, irresponsible, and inconsiderate? Not the best look for the main character, is it? 》

#ooc tag #answered #《 I'm not sure if the show was meant to have fleshed out characterization considering it's mainly comedic 》#《 and Fessie gets her moments to shine 》#《 but i still can't help but want to learn more 》#《 i know the show is mainly about how cool DM is...they say as much in the theme song 》#《 but then they introduce interesting side characters and never use them to their full potential 》#《 maybe i haven't seen enough episodes but i don't even know much about the colonel as a person 》#《 like he could potentially be interesting and he should have some character in theory...he's popular enough to warrant plushies 》#《 but he never really left an impression on me 》#《 which makes the focus he gets on merchandise and dvd covers kinda baffling 》#《 also...i lowkey think Fessie/Danger Moth is a cute ship despite not having seen them interact 》#《 but no one writes Danger Moth sooooo *shrug* 》#《 the DM rp community in general is kinda empty and inactive 》

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serpenteve · 3 years

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why we ship darklina

an essay literally no one asked for

Nobody needs a "reason" to ship Darklina. But considering this is a villain x hero pairing, it got me thinking about why we shipped it in the first place when the narrative and author so badly wanted us to root for the more sensible alternative pairing and why it became the most popular ship of the entire trilogy.

Personally, I find it really interesting (and low-key hilarious) that a lot of the reasons shippers gravitated towards Darklina can be directly traced back to how badly Bardugo bungled Alina's character arc, Mal's entire characterization and narrative role, Nikolai's wasted potential as an alternative love interest, and the noble intentions she gives the the Darkling.

Alina's Character Arc

Alina's character arc doesn't match who she is as a character. I've written more about that in this post, but a lot of readers were introduced to a passive and insecure protagonist who we were expecting to undergo a typical YA coming-of-age character arc where Alina acquires self-acceptance, confidence, and embraces the full breadth of her powers over the course of the trilogy. Instead, Bardugo gave Alina the kind of character arc that's usually deserved for power-hungry anti-heroines or tragic heroes with a fatal flaw to punish.

The plot offers a strange binary: either Alina suppresses and hides her powers and therefore stays away from descending into villainy OR Alina attempts to find Morozova's amplifiers in order to defeat the Darkling but then becomes corrupted by power in the process. Alina's journey to self-acceptance and exploring her own powers are unfortunately entangled with her relationship with the Darkling. The only way she is allowed to move forward through the plot is to succumb to the corrupting influence of the amplifiers.

For better or for worse, the first character to really embrace her powers instead of thinking she's a fraud or that she's weak or that she's an unholy abomination is the Darkling. He's the first person to recognize her power for what it is and accurately judge its potential and implications for the rest of the world. He advocates for her in front of the royal court, in front other Grisha who think she's weak, and even against Baghra who is initially a very ill-tempered mentor with little to no faith in Alina's abilities. He even rather ironically advocates for her even when the heroic person who's supposed to be supporting her (Mal) does not.

At the start of her journey, Alina is insecure and in constant need of assurance and validation. The Darkling's role as her mentor and guide into this unfamiliar world of Grisha makes him the perfect advocate not only for her powers but also to help Alina see her place in the world. However, once he is revealed to be the villain, Alina also fails to realize that it's time for her to advocate for herself and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Mal's Characterization & Narrative Role

When Alina loses the Darkling as an advocate in S&B, Mal steps up to take this role. Alina is still rather passive for the majority of the first book and it's Mal who originally wants her to have Morozova's stag as an amplifier if it will mean being able to stand against the Darkling. Bardugo intended for him to be a heroic love interest as a foil to the villainous love interest and I believe she mostly succeeds for the first book.

However, because this is a story about punishing Alina's "evil ambition" (despite there being very little evidence of that) Mal is supposed to serve as a voice of reason in the narrative. Once Alina considers the necessity of acquiring more amplifiers to defeat the Darkling, it is Mal's role to warn her of the potential consequences, to remind her of her inner humanity, and to ward against the corrupting influence of Morozova's amplifiers. Mal's declarations that he wants back the old girl he knew without any power is meant to drive an ideological wedge between them, yes, but he's also meant to be Correct™ because, again, Bardugo is writing a story about a corrupted power-hungry heroine who goes too far and needs to be punished rather than the arc we were all expecting and the one that Alina's character needs: a coming-of-age story of self-acceptance and personal growth.

Some point after the backlash of Siege & Storm, Bardugo seems to have become aware of her mistake and attempts to scrub Mal's character to be more sympathetic. There is a bizarre exchange half-way through the third book when Mal finally declares:

"I wasn't afraid of you, Alina. I was afraid of losing you. The girl you were becoming didn't need me anymore, but she's who you were always meant to be."

This is an interesting line because it's a complete reversal of Mal's narrative role so far. He's supposed to be her voice of reason that opposes her at every turn but readers interpreted him as being resentful of Alina's powers and angry that she was no longer dependent on him. Bardugo is forced to retcon Mal's entire role in the narrative from being a voice of reason that opposes Alina's quest for power to a supportive friend who will fight by her side. But this was never her initial intention and I believe this change was brought on 100% by audience reaction because she failed to understand the arc her heroine needed and the kind of story her audience was anticipating for such a character.

Needless to say, having your heroine's main love interest actively resent her quest for power until half-way through the third damn book did not endear many readers to Mal. Because Bardugo failed to understand the kind of character development her heroine needed and failed to understand audience expectations, we hated Mal. He became the embodiment of every toxic chauvinist we'd ever met who can't stand the idea of his partner's success and feels entitled to be the center of her universe. He was not the voice of reason. He was an annoying gnat hellbent on dragging the heroine down and away from her destiny. We did not want to root for him. Even the villain was more sympathetic than him because he could bring her closer to achieving the self-acceptance the narrative was obsessed with denying her.

Nikolai's Wasted Potential as a Solid Love Interest

Nikolai plays several roles in Alina's journey but most importantly in our discussions for why we ended up shipping Darklina, his entire potential as a serious love interest is wasted.

When we meet Nikolai, we have hitched our wagons to the Darklina train because despite being the villain, the Darkling is the only one who will allow the heroine to accept her powers and come into her own. Her heroic love interest, Mal, is actively sabotaging her efforts and holding her back from her true potential. But then, in swoops Nikolai and we pause, wondering if there may be a better heroic alternative after all?

In a lot of ways, Nikolai and the Darkling alike: they are eager for Alina's power and see her as a solution to all their problems. They may want to use Alina to prop up their own agendas, but unlike Mal, Alina's summoning powers are a massive plus, not a burden. Nikolai is the heroic alternative to our villainous Aleksander. So we wait, wondering if Nikolai will be the one to fix this mess of a romantic subplot. His royal connections offer an easy path to upwards mobility for our heroine and we sense that an alliance between them (even if it's initially political in nature) may bring our heroine closer to obtaining more power, influence, and self-acceptance not only for herself, but also for the oppressed minority she is a part of.

But, again, Bardugo is still obsessed with that "punish the heroine for wanting power" agenda so while Nikolai exists as another mentor figure who offers Alina advice on how to rule, how to appeal to other people, how to charm, how to win people over, and Alina learns and applies much of what she learns from him, he is not treated as a real love interest.

Despite Nikolai being written as a fairy tale prince (handsome, charming, smart as a whip, brave in battle, etc) Alina never actually considers him romantically. They are friends and allies at best and the only time she considers kissing him is only when she's pissed about Mal.

Nikolai's proposal at the end of Ruin & Rising feels like one last saving grace, one last opportunity for our heroine to take control of her life and make a dramatic change to break from the past. But this too is rejected because Alina's arc will never let her access any power. She does not reject Nikolai because she wants to marry for love. She rejects him because she has been "punished" for wanting power and has internalized that she must not seek any more power for fear of angering the plot gods (and Bardugo). She must return to being nobody in order to remain a good and moral person.

(And, of course, we resent Mal even more because who in their right mind would choose him over Nikolai? Once again, he becomes a roadblock on our heroine's journey to power. We grow irritated that the heroine is failing to grasp an opportunity to elevate herself. We throw the book against the wall. Why are we even following this heroine?)

The Darkling's Motivations

Still, all of the above might still not have been enough to pull the reader to the villain's side. But the Darkling is the living embodiment of Villain Has A Point™. He is not pure unadulterated evil. He is not Lord Sauron or Voldemort or the Terminator.

He's more Magneto, Roy Batty, or Ozymandias---a man who is part of an oppressed minority who longs for justice and power but is absolutely unhinged in his methods.

Alina runs away because she does not want to be a non-consenting weapon in hands. But we always end up wondering what would have happened had Baghra not warned her. What would have happened if Alina gladly joined the Darkling's side? There's hundreds of fanfics written precisely about this situation because despite the villainy of his methods, we wonder if Ravka might not have been safer after all?

If the Darkling had used the Fold as a weapon against Fjerda and Shu Han, would any of the problems Ravka faces in the later books even exist? Would any Grisha fall victim to the khergud programs or be killed as witches? The Darkling wipes out Novokribirsk and kills hundreds of lives, but how many would he have saved with the Fold as Ravka's greatest shield and sword? 🤷🏽‍♀️

And therein lies the problem with the trilogy inconsistent moral landscape. The Darkling is an anti-villain that exists in a narrative that is very black and white, unlike the rest of the books in the Grishaverse where our protagonists are anti-heroes who kill, steal, and torture their way through the plot with nary a judgmental glance from the narrative. We long to see our heroine give in to her dark side and get her hands dirty because watching a naive, passive, scared little girl grow into a ruthless powerful Grisha would have made for a hell of a compelling story.

But that's not the story Bardugo wanted to tell.

The Greg Trilogy

Despite taking place in a fantasy Tsartist setting, the Grisha trilogy is oddly anti-Grisha. The narrative doesn't spend much time trying to examine the context or implications of an oppressed minority group fighting for power other than to say "magic powers = evil". Nikolai skates by on a throne of inherited wealth, privilege, and imperialism but it's okay because he's charming and witty and the only monstrous part of him is the Darkling's curse. Literally everything is worse for Ravka and their Grisha after the destruction of the Fold but Ravka must move forward into a new age without relying on Grisha power but putting their efforts into new muggle technologies. Alina must be stripped of her powers and returned to her "old self" in order to be purged of evil.

Basically, it's all one gigantic ✨ dumpster fire ✨ of mismatched character arcs, incompatible moral aesops, inconsistent characterizations, wasted potential, unexamined plot points but it's a a dumpster fire we lovingly and spitefully embrace in fanfic.

We don't ship Alina with the Darkling because we're stupid abuse apologists who somehow missed the giant flashing moral aesop of the books---and honestly, who could have possibly missed them when it's shoved in the reader's face every other chapter? We ship Alina with the Darkling because the entire ship is the embodiment of wasted potential (and wasted ✨aesthetics✨ tbqh 👀). We ship Alina with the Darkling because we're sick and tired of stories where female power is demonized. We ship Alina with the Darkling because the plot gave us literally no other alternative to see our heroine succeed except to give in to her alleged villainy.

But most of all, people ship Darklina because Leigh Bardugo utterly failed in writing the story she intended to write because had she succeeded, Darklina would not be the most popular ship of the trilogy.

#darklina #sab meta #grisha meta #grisha discourse #wow im embarrassed by how fucking long this is #but you know i had to write it #anti leigh bardugo #its not really anti so much as it is just pointing out why her story flopped for a lot of readers #alarkling #viv metas

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spectral-kitkat · 3 years

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Miraculous Rant.

Where the hell do I begin…

Season 1:

The show was decent in season 1. Some episodes were just mindless filler and probably weren’t needed in the grand scheme of things but they helped us get introduced to the characters, we got to know the plot and the world our characters inhabit. It was good. The love story between Adrien and Marinette was cute and off to a touching and fluffy start.

Season 2:

This season was immediately better than season 1. It had character development, it went more into detail about the lore surrounding the Miraculous and we got to learn more about our characters and their families and the villian’s motives. (HM really went from “I wanna destroy the world” to “I wanna wake my wife from the coma she’s in”).

We got to see new heroes which was fun! We got new characters like Luka and Kagami.

The season finale was epic! The Miraculous team all taking down all the previous villains in the show was awesome. At the end we even got Mari kissing Adrien on the cheek. It was great! (Even though it clearly reset itself in season 3 cause it’s never mentioned again)

I really enjoyed season 2 and it’s probably my favourite out of the 4.

Season 3:

Season 3 was kinda good and kinda bad. We had some great episodes but this is where the show took the wrong turn.

Marinette lost some of her character in season 3. This was the start of her descent into being the Queen of Mary Sues. It’s also where she was crowned the Queen of Stalkers! Her character took a fucking nose dive in this season. We had so many moments that just creeped me the fuck out.

1. The ENTIRETY of Puppeteer 2 🤢🤢🤢 I could not stand that episode. When we reached the dreaded statue scene I physically had to pause it like 10 times. That scene takes about 3 minutes to watch… it took me about 20. I cringed so fucking hard because of the secondhand embarrassment I was feeling. That was not sweet, it wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t the least bit cute… it was a train wreck! It was creepy and stalkerish and it’s a wonder Adrien even spoke to her again after that atrocity!

2. LB delivering the present in Chat Blanc. Two words: STALKER BEHAVIOUR!!! I genuinely could not believe my eyes when I saw LB run her hand across everything in his room and then actually SNIFF Adrien’s pillow. Like WTF!!! 🤮 I’m pretty sure whoever was responsible for that scene clearly thought it was the equivalent of when someone gets their S/O’s jumper or something and it still smells like them. But this turned it up to the nth degree and way passed the line of sanity.

Adrien was extremely under-utilised in this season. He didn’t really do anything. The only episodes we got about him didn’t really focus on him. ‘Felix’ whilst focusing on Adrien’s family didn’t really feature him. ‘Party Crasher’ while a beautiful mess was more about Mari trying to get into the party than the party itself. ‘Chat Blanc’ again focused more on Mari trying to fix her mistake.

We got even more heroes in season 3, not in the right order but they were there. It was fun seeing everyone’s transformations.

Season 3 was also the season of destroying redemptions. The big one obviously being Chloe. Season 2 was setting up this amazing redemption for her and before it could go anywhere it was wiped off the face of the earth during the finale (and don’t worry we’ll get to that dumpster fire later). Gabriel also had any remaining sympathy ripped away from him. How did the guy who stopped Gorizilla from letting Adrien die when he only thought he was CN go from that to using his son like fucking baseball in Chat Blanc when he knew his son was CN. Like I knew you were a shit father but you still cared about Adrien in some way shape or form but after that episode I can see I was clearly mistaken!

Before we get to the finale I want to talk about probably my 2 least favourite episodes from this season: Desperada and Reflekdoll

Desperada:

I fucking hated this episode! The only good thing was Luka getting to be Viperion, other than that this episode was awful!

Marinette was a selfish cringey bitch. Completely ignoring Luka to gush about Adrien to Jagged. Brushing Luka off as soon as Adrien turns up. Immediately cuddling up to Aspik and flirting with him when she needed to focus on the akuma (something which she has told CN not to do many times before)

Adrien, I love you kid but Jesus Christ you were a dumbass in this episode! Aspik’s design was terrible! Aspik himself was awful. I know Adrien tried his best but dude you were given the Black Cat miraculous for a reason! He shouldn’t have tried to be Aspik but even when he did he should’ve called it quits after like 5 resets not 25,913 times.

The only person with a brain this episode was Luka. So well done guitar boy, gold star!

Reflekdoll:

This episode was annoying! It was basically the start of the Marinette can do no wrong streak! When they have to swap miraculous I was happy cause it meant we got to see new outfits and see how they each handle the different powers. It would also serve as a way to get LB and CN to see what their partners role is first hand. Until we actually get to it…

LadyNoire is of course amazing and needs no introduction to using this new miraculous that she’s never used before. She’s cocky and confident and basically just LB in Chat’s costume with his powers.

Mister Bug on the other hand is just useless. He struggles with this new miraculous (like anyone would!) and is stupid and goofy. He has to rely on LadyNoire to solve the lucky charm. They swapped miraculous so shouldn’t that mean that Mister Bug should get the lucky vision and the creative powers that the earrings give him.

Overall Reflekdoll is awful. It was shitty writing and the start of Adrien getting the short end of the stick.

And now the season 3 finale… Just what the fuck. That is my only reaction: what the fuck!

Chloe you poor fucking child! What did they do to you!!! So much potential SQUANDERED!!!!

What was the point in bringing in all these different superheros with unique skill sets, costumes and transformations if you were just going to immediately reveal them to the main villian so they can’t be used again. That’s stupid! If you wanted the shock value that is “Oh no HM knows some of the heroes identities!” Then keep it as only some. Have like Max, Kim and Kagami outside trying to find somewhere to hide but unfortunately they get hit. Or Nino and Alya are hiding but the windows open and they get hit. Have some of the heroes hide so they’re fine! Taking away every ally of LB and CN’s was a stupid move! (Even if they wanted Alya to become a spy have her as part of the like 4 that get revealed or something, it’s not that difficult)

Season 3 was 50/50 for me

Season 4:

So I know season 4 isn’t even halfway through yet but so much is wrong with this season already that I need to vent!

So my biggest problem with this season of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybitch and Rena Rouge, I mean Rena Furtive… shit, Chat Noir! Is that CN is basically pointless! Adrien has been flung over a rainbow and is only remembered when he’s needed as

1. Marinette’s love interest

2. Someone for LB to shout at

3. A plot device

He has basically been sidelined. Partners my ASS!!!

Adrien is being blown off by pretty much EVERYONE! It’s coming to a point where this poor sweet summer child is going to crack! And it is not gonna be pretty… I definitely feel like the writers are leading up to a big fight between CN and LB which will probably end with Chat Blanc 2.0.

I REALLY HATE MARINETTE/LADYBUG!!!! In Season 3 I said it was the beginning of her descent, well in season 4 she’s done it. She’s descended, she has hit rock fucking bottom. She is so unlikable I don’t actually care about her as a person. She has entered full blown stalker territory it’s only a matter of time before she starts killing people for even looking at Adrien! Not to mention that Miss Mary Sue here can’t do anything wrong! She never has to suffer the consequences of her actions, she is always perfect no matter what she does… it pisses me off!)

She’s the Guardian now big whoop. I know what it feels like to be stressed and under pressure so I do understand why she needed to tell someone about it all. I just don’t see why that person had to Alya! Especially considering she has someone by her side every akuma attack going through pretty much the exact same thing. I know she’s worried about CB happening again but as I said before the more she leaves him out the more she is actually pushing that to become a possibility! Plus it makes sense for them to reveal their identities now since LB is now the guardian it’s probably a good idea to know who holds the cat miraculous, she knows everyone else’s identities!

Even if she didn’t want to tell CN her identity she could still explain the situation to him. If she didn’t want to tell him anything (which she doesn’t anyway) then instead of Alya she should’ve talked to Luka! Her boyfriend for all of half an episode (thanks writers…). He’s so sweet and caring and clearly loves her so much! If she wanted someone to confide in then why not choose the person you clearly wanted to date but couldn’t because of that very reason! (Yeah I know it’s kinda a moot point now since Luka knows both identities but still). He wanted to try and comfort her so it would’ve been the perfect moment for it. That way you could still date him and he’d know why you had to suddenly leave dates halfway through! But no break the boys heart instead!

Adrien and Marinette were both such fucking idiots in the first 2 episodes. Like why would you start a relationship with someone when you know your heart isn’t in it! That’s called leading someone on and is a really shitty thing to do to someone! No wonder Kagami and Luka ended up akumatized!

Another aspect of season 4 I don’t like is Rena Furtive. Yes ok having a spy for your side is a good strategy but when said spy basically tells an important member of a duo that the 2 person job doesn’t involve them… it just really ticks me off! Alya you are the sidekick to LB and CN! Chat isn’t!

Miraculous specials:

The Miraculous World specials suck! Shanghai is better than NY but still has its problems. Both specials add nothing to the overall plot/lore of the show apart from trying to set up some weird cinematic universe…

NY special:

One of the worst things I’ve ever had to sit through! The plane scene alone I paused a few times. I want to say well done to Mari for trying to move on from Adrien (especially considering I’m pretty sure she’s dating Luka at this point) but I can’t help but think it’s just to give her character some pointless development that goes nowhere and doesn’t actually develop anything!

LB can pretty much fuck off at this point! I hate her! She put all this shit on CN (like she doesn’t know exactly how that feels). It’s like why does she get to go off on holiday but CN can’t. LB should’ve stayed in Paris for 3 reasons:

1. She’s recently become the guardian meaning it would probably be best that she stayed with the Mircle Box

2. She’s the only one who can purity the akumas

3. If she’s so sure about being the boss then she should take responsibility of Paris and the citizens.

What really pisses me off about her is what she says to CN during the big fight. “I can’t trust you”… surely you could have this conversation afterwards since you’re supposed to be focusing on taking down the villian! Plus everyone bashes Adrien for giving his miraculous up in this episode but look at it from his point of view: His partner and best friend just said she couldn’t trust him which in turn caused him to cataclysm someone and essentially kill them. That’s gonna take a toll on anyone, especially a 14 year old! He probably thought in that moment. “Ladybug needs a partner she can trust and someone who won’t mess up and kill someone. She needs a better partner.” It makes sense he renounces his miraculous! I’m just upset that in doing so he loses Plagg who is pretty much his only friend who actually understands what Adrien goes through at home.

When Uncanny gets CN to come back, LB acts like it’s not her fault in the first place that he feels inadequate! She didn’t even apologise for saying what she did! He apologised for lying about not being in Paris but nope LB wasn’t in the wrong at all and didn’t have anything to apologise for 🙄… (yes the LadyNoir hug was amazing but I just wish it was under different circumstances!)

Also are we not gonna mention Gabriel Agreste almost starting WW3??? He wanted to launch a fucking missile!!!

Shanghai:

As I said before, this special is way better for several reasons.

We got MariChat! (Best side to the love square imo). This special actually had some semblance on a plot. Fei, whilst a bit op, was a cool character. It was nice to see Wang Cheng again.

However once again there were many problems.

A big one being Marinette yet again! (What a shock! 😒 I’ll come back to this). Another was that once again HM’s motivation has changed. How is getting the Prodigious gonna help bring back Emilie??

Back to Marinette… The fact that the words “Huh?! There must be some kind of mistake! I always know what's up with Adrien! … His 5 first names and every corresponding name date, his yearly schedule, even his shoe size! If there were anything to know about him, I would know it!” come out of her mouth whilst she is flipping through his schedule that she keeps in her pocketbook is a hugh red flag!!! That is not cute or adorable! That’s messed up and Adrien needs to fucking run and maybe possibly go into witness protection… Marinette is a full blown stalker! Not to mention the GPS she has (that could just be the find my friends app on iphone but still).

It also is extremely rude of her to use not only her great uncle’s birthday but also a lie about wanting to know her Chinese heritage in order to go to Shanghai to stalk her obsession, I mean crush. This could’ve been avoided if the Dupain-Chengs were going to Shanghai for the purpose of celebrating Wang Cheng’s bday and then Adrien just so happened to be in Shanghai.

Also this means LB left Paris without telling CN! I know CN did the same but again he can’t purify the akumas. Plus he has a reason he couldn’t stay in Paris, Mari just went cause her crush did. Great guardianship there Marinette.

This was also the last time CN actually did something. Even if it was for a short while before LB and her female partner took over (the beginning of a theme…)

Other things:

There are 2 other things that I wanna say but felt they needed a separate bit.

In Furious Fu, Su-Han has a rule book that he uses to tell Marinette which rules she has broken. At the end of the episode he tells her that is she breaks 1 more rule that he will take the Miraculous and the Miracle Box off her, which fair enough but wouldn’t it be helpful to leave the rule book with her?! How can she be wary of not breaking anymore rules when she doesn’t even know what the rules are??

Now the big one: Master Fu…

Where do I even start with him. He is so fucking manipulative!! He is Asian Dumbledore!

He decides to leave these extremely powerful jewels in the hands of 13 year olds! Surely leaving the miraculous to someone in their 20s would’ve been better!

He clearly favours LB over CN even though the Ladybug and Black Cat are supposed to be partners! Wouldn’t it make sense for them both to be in contact with the guardian from the start?? He randomly started introducing rules such as if LB and CN find out each other’s identities they would lose their miraculous… what kind of bullshit rule is that? It also came out of fucking nowhere!

Final Thoughts:

But to summarise all of that: Miraculous is on quite a steep decline but I’m invested at this point and I am genuinely curious as to where the fuck this will go.

Marinette needs professional fucking help before the writers even consider canonising Adrienette cause at the moment she is not what Adrien needs!

Adrien needs to stand up for himself! He needs to pull LB to the side and tell her what he feels and what he’s going through cause he is on the precipice of a breakdown!

(Small point that’s more to do with the fandom: when searching for fanfics it’s really annoying that Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir Bashing is a tag but Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug Bashing isn’t. Why does everyone think Marinette can do no wrong???)

#miraculous fandom #miraculous ladybug #miraculous salt #adrien agreste #marinette dupen chang #marinette salt #master fu salt #ladybug and chat noir #fandom salt #thomas astruc salt #adrien deserves better #miraculous season 4 #miraculous season 3 #miraculous rant

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greysfall · 3 years

Text

My 4444-word review of NEO TWEWY (with personal illustration + heavy spoilers)

My overall critical score for the game is 7.5/10, while my personal enjoyment score is 8.5/10. This review is posted as I have 80% completed the game, got the secret ending and achieved the Angel psychic rank. I’ll first start with the main pros and cons as follows.

PROS:

- Enjoyable as a whole, still upholding the first game’s spirit in world building and sharing the same backbone - which was mostly revealed in the Secret Reports, it’s impossible to grasp the story without reading them.

- The new cast and new game is charming in their own way

- The old cast’s return is one of the biggest highlights for sure, it was fun and impactful. Everyone stays true to themselves and also had their own stories wrapped up nicely.

- Boss designs are cool, new pins are fun to use and collect

- The connection between the old and new cast is well written and executed, including but are not limited to the tension between the old and new protagonist, the weird but fun interaction between the 2 Composers, the new friendships revealed and formed

- Sho being in the main cast is something so uniquely TWEWY and uniquely Sho

- Still good music

- Still many fun side quests, some of them really uphold the same quirky spirit of the old game and some are surprisingly touching

- Many new nice stores and yummy looking foods to explore

- The map is really easy to memorize for me, it’s fun to travel around the “current” Shibuya to see all the differences compared to the past

- The social network is crazy and interesting to read through

- Has an anti-frustration system to help 100% complete the game more easily and earn money faster, so post-game is relatively managable.

- Overall, I really feel the efforts the team poured into making this as their passion project, not just during the development process but for all the last 14 years. They showed the vision of what they wanted to make, at the same time giving something to both the old as well as new fans.

CONS:

- The biggest problem with the game is scenario writing. The story is so heavily back-loaded. The director himself thought it would be better to balance out the tension flow by adding more at the beginning but gave in to the scenario writer in the end, probably due to time pressure. This results in an underwhelming execution of characterization and lots of wasted potentials for the first half of the game.

- I struggle to view it as a stand-alone game, since the backstory and the old cast both play such an important role in the core of the game. If someone plays this game without having played the OG, they can only enjoy it on surface value at best.

- The new cast is nice but most of them aren’t quite as intriguing as the old cast, maybe it’s cuz they’re all too nice deep down that they lack a little bit of an edge, of that batshit craziness that everyone in the OG used to have? I think some characters (Fret, Nagi) ended up weaker in terms of characterization because the writer is too afraid of making them unlikeable – which kind of backlashed cuz they only became likable in the most expectable way to cater for a specific group of fans. I would have wished for the other team leaders to be more crazy too, had they not suffered 30+ loops of the Game…

- The CAMERAWORK IS HELL.

- Gameplay does get tedious at certain points with all the time travels.

- Shiba is so badly written as a villain, some Shinjuku characters should be given more screentime cutting into Shiba’s– like Hishima or Kaie or even, Hazuki (though his limited presence also solidified his importance).

- Some of the main character designs, for example Beat’s hairstyle and his food reactions are hilariously bad. What’s the point of covering up most of his unique facial features?

- Some of the minor/side characters’ design are too cool for them to have such a small role (eg: Ayano, Eiru). Ryoji did get much screentime but is nowhere as fun as Makoto was.

- Overall the scope of this game is made a little too big for the team to handle as perfectly as the last game that was very compact, it felt somewhat rushed in development too so the missing pieces are clearly there in the final picture

The entry fee versus paying for it all in the end

An important difference between the Neo game and the original Shibuya game was that the Shibuya rule asked for an entry fee that is the Player’s most important asset, stated as a chance the Composer gives them to reexamine themselves. Meanwhile, the Shinjuku rule neither encourages nor allows personal growth and ultimately aims to erase as many Players as possible. It’s a pity we were never introduced to the full Shinjuku rulebook, as it seems like the system there focuses more on building up power and a grand government to compare with the individuality-driven system of Shibuya.

When you have to compare the new game and the original game (OG), this is an important factor to consider. Also, the OG has a serious storyline running through and through, locked with a different partner/GM creating unique atmosphere for each week and you don’t get to see your old partners again until the end. NEO’s team system does not allow such deep insight and communication between the Players. All of your teammates are always there throughout, the dynamic does change with each new addition but it is not as prominent as a partner change.

Another important factor is how the OG was built from scratch for a new platform as “something no one has ever seen before”, while Neo recycled a lot of old unused ideas from the previous development (check out this interview for more details). The development team for NEO lacks 2 key members and had a change of writer so the final product is not as strongly bound together as the last game.

The new cast is definitely inspired by today’s teenagers (from the view of creators), compared to the old cast they’re more sociable and always seem to take whatever works for them despite feeling unstable inside. They are all innocent and genuinely nice kids, avoiding to hurt each other to a degree that they end up keeping some sort of distance. They’re also unable to communicate at deeper levels, always stagnant at this half-baked stage of equilibrium without any motivation to get to the core of things. That is the cost of entering the game without an entry fee, without even dying or having a reason to be there/to fight seriously. These kids were stolen from the RG into a Game that was decidedly the worst environment for them to change or develop, just wandering around cluelessly to find a way “out” until tragedies started to unfold one by one and they ended up being charged the total sum of the price for their actions – ultimately losing everything in the end.

That is, I believe, a story arc which can resonate more to the youth of today rather than of my generation. If the message of the old game was to “listen”, enjoy life to the fullest and accept to trust others, the message of the new game is to “speak up” from the inside, trying to understand yourself and take actions instead of just going with the flow and finally, to take responsibility for such actions.

If Neku was handpicked by the Composer for being the special one with an all-dense soul to ensure victory of the game then Rindo was just a normal kid chosen out of random by Kubo to be his back-up plan, who just happened to have a high enough imagination to awaken the incredible power from his pin. Rindo was then officially chosen by the Composer as Josh picked up and handed the pin to him again, this time not as Josh’s personal Proxy – but as the Proxy to represent the normal people of Shibuya and via whom he could gamble if humans can fight for their own fate.

The underworld heroine and the hero with little of his own

Shoka is for me a refreshing and layered heroine. She’s the kind of character that took at least 3 trials of creators to form as a complete individual – that included Nomura who gave her the base design and Reaper background, Gen who gave a more cunning touch and the writers who made her English dialogues more punchy. Dishonesty equals “tsundere” is such a cliché, so the English writers tried really hard to avoid that trope in my opinion, while still letting her good intention come through.

She serves as the character who is informed of everything the players should have known, and there was almost nothing she could do about it. Almost. Until she met Rindo.

They were drawn to each other by sharing a state of “not having anything of their own”. They both started out with not being able to truly know themselves, Shoka even hated her RG life but also managed to mature from that stage before Rindo. She must have vibed with Shiki’s love and passion in the Gatto Nero threads, initiating her connection with Shibuya and understanding herself more. With Shoka as Swallow, they were able to open up to each other and offer mental support… but was still not getting to the centre of their problems because for all this time, Shoka could not tell Rindo the most important things about herself.

How did Shoka feel when she met Rindo at the UG? She probably didn’t want to hope that he would live the day until she witnessed the Twisters’ potentials. From the very beginning, they were both incredibly conscious of each other and also constantly frustrated that the person they happened to “notice” was such a condescending bitch/a clueless loser. The Shinjuku Reapers are overall quite drunk in power and uncompassionate to Players, Shoka included. She is also a master of dissociation, which results in her constant boredom, tone swings, haughtiness and subconsciously distancing herself from the friend – the boy she cares about – from false hope, as she judged from facts that it was a hopeless situation where nothing could ever be. Maybe she is naturally a bit of a chameleon just like her name suggests (Shoka 紫陽花 = hydrangea, the color-changing flower), so putting on an act and always dissociating herself from what’s important was easy, while hiding her contradiction was impossible. It was the ex-Reaper Beat who broke it out to her, that she should decide whether she really cared and wanted to do something for a change. He knew how it felt like to cross that line, and knew she wanted to too.

Shoka is endeared by many of the Shinjuku Reapers and has shown independent acts of kindness (the Shinjuku ghost), proving that her kind and truthful side is as real as her harsh and dishonest side – which makes her a nice mirror to the previous heroine Shiki, who also embraced a dichotomy of self-complex and self-love within her character. In the end, she was the first of the new cast to ultimately accept all that is important to her and independently made the decision to help save Shibuya despite all costs.

She was jealous at Rindo’s interaction with Tsugumi and Kanon but remained silent cuz she wasn’t at a place to have any say about it. She also didn’t reveal about Swallow because that would only add an awkward irrelevance to their current situation, as she was too ready to face erasure at the end of the Game. She only wished to “play a game” with him, be it FanGo or the Reapers’ Game. The tension that the team could only feel at the end, she’s felt it the entire time. The song “DIVIDE” is applicable to not just one bond in the game, but it always makes me think of theirs. There is always a “divide” between her and Rindo throughout the course of their journey, as the living and the dead, as a Player and Reaper, as someone who has a place to return to and someone who doesn’t, someone who knows little but wields too much power and someone who knows a lot despite not being able to do much.

“If only I had the chance to connect with you on the other side

But time goes on, and without us realizing it

The battle is getting heated

Time goes on, and without us realiazing it

Divided again”

To be honest, maybe I didn’t grow any affection for the new main cast from Rindo’s perspective but from Shoka’s. Since I started to sympathize with Shoka, I started to see the boy in a more “real” way. The real Rindo, behind his peaceful façade with others, would lash out on Shoka for her unfairly harsh attitude while none of the others cared. He could also subtly feel that mantle of unspoken secrets from her, her own contradictions, the unresolved chemistry between themselves – and not knowing what to do with it rather than to feel angry with all the unfairness he could not process. (As a Libra too, he’s triggered the most by unfairness!)

It is actually a positive development as he’s at least “reacting” to something strongly now rather than to keep evading his problems. During my replay, I clearly saw the difficult situation Shoka was in, her remaining harshness after the Motoi incident was due to her internal struggle with a mission to save her own life, versus a chance to really be with the team. Her decision was to do both at the risk of losing favour from both sides. Rindo started to accept her layer by layer, as the person who resonated the most to her contradicting nature from the start and knew that via learning her resolve, he has learnt his too.

Later into the game, she even got too much of his attention. Maybe even without knowing she’s Swallow, he’s familiar with her thinking direction and Swallow had always been closer to him than any other friend. It was only after she had to betray her important ones twice that she could start being truly honest. The scene when she died a 2nd time left a strong impression in me, the little reveal let Rindo know that he is also losing Swallow as he’s losing Shoka – and that only death could drive the last secret out of her. Her final “Later, loser” echoed through Rindo as it was the final truth, with only him remaining to hear it: they had actually, already lost everything.

Rindo was the boy who never dared to face all that matters to him until he lost it all, fighting an unfair battle in the faith that they would somehow still win. Shoka was the girl who always knew what was dear to her, but never dared to think she could be together with them ever after and still threw her all into a battle she knew was losing. I think they stir each other on naturally to fill out their gaps, similar to what the Shibuya game partner systerm would have aimed for. The end reward was a little divine intervention to help close up the divide between them once and for all.

During the game there was not enough space to process anything personal so at the ending when they officially became “friends”, it was an important affirmation of their bond. Some people complained it was friendzoning but it’s not, they just have arrived at the perfect place to start something more. “From now on, we will truly be together” – I read it as that kind of message.

The heroine from a lost battle, with her story taken away

After reading the secret reports and playing the game to be surprised of how small a role Tsugumi had in the main game despite being the “Hype-chan” thought to be a major character of the next TWEWY installment, many fans would feel sad at a missed opportunity to see the Shinjuku arc in full depiction.

It was shown clearly that, a Shinjuku arc was very carefully planned out and is a vital part of the whole story, yet it could not be made due to various circumstances behind the development scene. I would assume, that the team were not able to make a TWEWY game that ended on a despairing note, but it already happened in their mind, thus becoming a mental burden that forced them to break away from it and started the game anew with NEO. A significant part of NEO became the healing arc for the Shinjuku characters, especially for Tsugumi though I really wished more emphasis should have been placed on her rather than Shiba. We didn’t even get to see her brother – Shinjuku’s Conductor who had a vital role and instead was given the clueless Shiba, who had absolutely no idea what’s going on all the way until the last day in NEO. It’s as if Tsugumi has had her story stolen away from her, because her own battle ended with a saddening loss.

I think every time the game creators look at Tsugumi, they would feel that sadness too. Maybe to them, she is a bigger character than what is seen by the fans, as despite their failed effort to depict her story, she’s lived in their mind for all these years through periods of destruction, healing and rebuild. Though it is a pity we could not get to experience the full scope of the Shinjuku story, the creators was clear about the place they wished for it to arrive at.

Individuality, connection and the social network

The team system adapted from Shinjuku rulebook does not allow much room for personal development, as the team dynamic is closer to a work relationship forced to bear results, than a spiritual bond to max out all corners of understanding as found in the partnership system. The old Shibuya system allowed only 1 winner and 1 week limit per game, while the new rule declares for a 1 winning team and only the team at last place will be erased – the other teams will enter another loop. Furthermore, whichever team to challenge the unwinnable Ruinbringers will face the risk of ending up dead last followed by erasure. As a result, the longest-standing teams are most likely not the strongest ever recorded, but the ones who have figured out a strategy to simply survive until something changes, enjoying their newly found social constructs while they are at it. Basically, it is a system to hypnotise players into the illusion that they are still “living”.

Therefore, we as players would not get to the core of each Player individually as fast and directly as we did in the last game. The Twisters were able to stand out not because they’re powerful, they only started to have a real chance after growing enough to each form a meaningful and personal connection to another teammate. It did not come as a team, nor did it intiate from the existing friendship between Rindo and Fret. In fact, I did not find much solidity or anything truly note-worthy about the main team and new characters within themselves until they started clashing with other team members, Reapers and new recruits from week 2 onwards. Rindo found his personal development with Shoka (via a clash with Motoi and pretty much a mini dating sim between them), then via the confrontation of his role with Neku; Fret found his with Kanon then Nagi, the team learned about the real Neku via Beat, Neku entered the UG via Coco’s wish to save Tsugumi… it was not the team but their personal links that empowered them to fight and solve each of their problems.

The other team leaders may have failed because they did not form such personal links, after 30+ hopeless loops Fuya’s team all fell apart to pursue their own interest even at the cost of erasure, Motoi quit his KOL façade to work like a dog for the Reapers (probably to save just his own ass not his team), while Kanon dropped her tricks to find changes via honest cooperation in acceptance of a fair loss. The despairing note in that is huge without making much of a scene because their failure didn’t happen at their best effort to “win”, but in their last attempt to find a way “out”. Even Shiba got his way “out” in the end thanked to his personal friendship with Hishima and Tsugumi.

Something has shifted in the mindset of the game creators in the last 14 years, as both games are about “connection vs individuality” but the last game focuses more on connection between just individuals and this one on the overall network that is formed out of those individual connections.

The introduction of Beat into the main cast was truly the bridge between old and new, they helped each other out in several turns before officially recruiting him. Beat is a character whom a lot of fans including myself have felt somewhat concerned about after Neku disappeared from the RG, so when the new kids welcomed Beat with warm and organic interaction and Beat seemed happy, I started to feel like I wanted to help them out too! I think the overall team chemistry is enjoyable enough for new players, but I could warm up to the new kids more from the pov of a returning character – whom I’m glad to be Beat, as the older brother figure who is genuinely kind, fun, serious and upbeat at the same time; who is needed and needs the kids in return.

The social network is a fun and refreshing feature. You can read all of the crazy tidbits about Shibuya and the links each character have formed with the town people, it’s also fun to visualize how the characters act off screen. Characters’ profiles provide extra insight into their background too, like how it reveals Tsugumi has been friend with Coco during her time in the RG. During the game when not all characters have showed up, you can sometimes guess which empty spot will belong to whom. For example there is a 1 character linking to Neky that is not linked to anyone else, so I could guess that was Joshua, and that another character linking only to Joshua was probably Hazuki, hinting that the 2 Composers are related before either of them even showed up.

Hazuki only showed up for 5 minutes, but his presence is so vital and true to the game that I think he is the most memorable out of the new cast. The two Composers have such an intriguing bond, with their yin/yang or phoenix/dragon themes, opposite color design, the sempai/kouhai tone and the way they keep some sort of distance/work relationship as if it’s mandatory between Higher beings, yet at the same time they can talk so casually because they are truly equal – and different from one another. I have written a separate meta on them here.

Some people pointed out, that all Shinjuku characters’ names and themes are based off Hanafuda cards and the Phoenix in Hanafuda belongs to the Paulownia suit – which is Joshua’s name flower. This is so interesting because it feels like the creators somehow saw it as a sign to interweave the Shibuya and Shinjuku storylines together. Though it doesn’t come out much on the surface, it’s fascinating nonetheless considering both Josh and Haz had at some point interfered with the other town’s affairs.

“Shibuya tour with Haz” was such a special scene, as it happened between 2 characters who do not/no longer have a reason to care about Shibuya, on the subject of what is worth saving about Shibuya. Hazuki carried out the purification of Shinjuku and stepped in to restore Shibuya just as part of his job and unlike Hanekoma or Joshua who both possess profound understanding of humanity, he really didn’t know humans at all. Rindo’s irrational wish invoked in him a sense of curiosity, to try gambling on something irrationally and learning a bit of what his senior have experienced. With all the pieces put together, it provides an overview on Higher beings as a whole, and that Joshua and Hanekoma are really the odd ones out with Hazuki being somewhere in between them and the rest.

The old friends

It’s easy to have returning characters overshadow the new cast as they have already matured out of their personal story arc and stayed in our hearts for all this time. In the end, I have managed to enjoy both the old and new cast separately and altogether, and they will both find their own place in our memory of this game for the long term.

Sho is truly as crazy as ever, the game wouldn’t be the same if Sho is any less of what he is. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like Neky or Beat is younger than Nagi at all, with moments when it seems like Neky has aged 14 years instead of 3 years. His friendship with Coco surprised me pleasantly, and their interaction together with Beat was fun to watch. Rhyme’s found a new dream and her friendship with Kaie is precious too, especially considering that she can still talk to him online after the game ended. Josh and Neku’s interaction suggested that they have resolved the past and are on equal terms now, they even parted ways in good spirit and I don’t feel any worry about them like I did before.

Neku and Shiki’s reunion scene was beautiful, theirs is such a special bond that it has grown and supported them even without being able to see each other. I am so happy to see them all again and that they stay true to who they are, albeit looking more grown up, cooler and happier than ever before.

Overall, NEO can’t become a classic on par with the OG, but is definitely a good sequel and a good game in its own rights. I’m happy with whether or not there will be a 3rd game to complete the 3 monkeys theme, but if there will be – I hope the creators can really find the time to learn from the last 2 games and start over with a fresh mindset and strong core.

#neotwewy #neotwewyspoilers #ntwewy #ntwewy spoilers #neo the world ends with you #twewy #review #meta #neo twewy #shoka sakurane #rindo kanade #tsugumi matsunae

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shadowed-dancer · 3 years

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How the anime enhanced the Touya mystery

Season 5 of MHA just finished adapting the Endeavour Agency Arc. While everyone has their own opinion on how the anime adaptation is doing, I wanted to take a moment to praise something that (I think) they handled really well: The Touya Mystery. Today we’re going to walk through how the anime handled this plot point, and why it worked so well.

Proud to say this post is free of manga spoilers! Today we’re ONLY talking about the anime.

Intro: What is the Touya Mystery?

The Touya mystery is the ongoing mystery of what happened to the third Todoroki son. It is foreshadowed in seasons 2 and 4, but it exists in earnest throughout season 5. It is never explicitly stated, but is instead referenced in passing by the characters, allowing the audience to try and piece everything together until it is eventually confirmed.

Disclaimer

Obviously the manga has this mystery as well, but anime as a medium has certain factors that the manga simply doesn’t have. OPs and EDs are a good example, but there’s also the way hiatuses affect the way we consume the story, as well as how the breakdown of seasons clump certain storylines closer together then they were in the manga (compare 6 months to get through Joint Training in the manga, compared to 2.5 months for the anime).

I am also aware of the theories surrounding Touya’s potential connection to a previously established character. You’ve probably seen the theory at some point, but I won’t name names just incase some of you haven’t. Either way, this post isn’t about that theory.

Finally, I’m very well aware that most viewers may not have picked up on some of the stuff I’m saying. A lot of these points are minor details, and I don’t fault anyone for missing out on that. In fact, I’m sure there are some fans out there who never even realized there was a 4th Todoroki sibling because they just... didn’t care or pay attention. I’m going at this with the mindset of someone who is very, VERY analytical, not your average viewer who’s just here to enjoy the show.

The Set Up: Season 2

We are first introduced to the Todoroki siblings way back in Season 2, Episode 10 (Todoroki’s fight with Deku in the Sports Festival). During Shoto’s flashback, we are given this frame to introduce his siblings...

We have the white-haired brother, the red-haired brother, and the sister. In this scene, the red-haired brother fumbles his soccer move and ends up falling, causing his siblings to laugh. This added movement (which was never in the manga) causes the red-haired brother to stand out slightly more than his siblings.

Now, granted, I’ve seen quite a few people who didn’t realize these were Shoto’s siblings at first. They just thought he was watching his neighbours. That’s why, if their hair colours weren’t enough to clue you in on their relationship to Shoto, we meet the sister a few episodes later (Season 2, Episode 12).

She refers to Endeavour as “dad” which informs the audience that she is also Endeavour’s child, and is therefore Shoto’s sister. It then stands to reason that the two boys she was playing with (both of whom share their hair colour with her and Shoto) would be her brothers.

The Set Up: Shout Baby

Season 4, Episode 15 gives us a new ending sequence, Shout Baby, in which we see this...

Todoroki Family photos. On the left is a photo of Shoto on his first day of school (I double checked and the sign behind him indicates some sort of entrance ceremony). On the right, we are given a photo of the sister and white-haired brother as adults.

(Despite it not being explicit, you can tell that’s the white haired brother based on context clues. He looks so similar to the kid in the flashback that it doesn’t make sense for him to be anyone else. This is of course confirmed later in the season).

However, the red-haired brother is missing, which now launches the mystery of why. Why is he not in any of the photos? And then, as the frame pans down, we get this...

A torn, burnt corner of a photograph. For a while, I had some trouble making out what that blue stuff was in the corner, but a comment on Youtube helped point out that it is the exact same Sakura tree as the one in Shoto’s photo. You can even see the branch in the same spot.

So what does this tell us? Well, it’s the same place Shoto went to school, but the photo is burnt. Is it just a burned up copy of the same photo to symbolize how Endeavour ruined Shoto’s childhood? Or is it a photo of one of the other kids attending the same school, burned for mysterious reasons?

The actual answer is that it’s an Easter egg for manga readers who already know about the red haired brother but shhhhh we’re only talking about the anime right now.

The point is, we now have intrigue.

The Set Up: Season 4

Season 4, Episode 25 gives us our first full look at the Todoroki Family, with the siblings (sans Shoto) on a visit to their mom.

We get confirmation that the man in the photo from the ED is the white haired brother, and we learn their names as well, with the sister being named Fuyumi and the white-haired brother being named Natsuo! But, just like the ending sequence, the red-haired brother is missing.

His absence is never brought up, but this is only highlighted by the fact that Fuyumi teases Natsuo for not calling often ever since going away for college. His response ISN’T “aw come on, why do you only pick on me?” or “hey, at least I’m here! Unlike [red-haired brother]”. Instead he says, “aww come on, sis, I call you guys!”

No one calls attention to the fact that one of the siblings is missing. The red-haired brother is never even mentioned, which tell us as the audience that the characters know something we don't. Whatever reason they aren’t mentioning the 3rd brother is common knowledge amongst them, so there’s no need to bring him up.

But the anime ensures we remember that, yes, there IS in fact another brother. They replay the soccer flashback as Natsuo and Fuyumi watch Endeavour’s fight from their laptop, but we are also given this...

... Our second look at the red haired brother (played when Endeavour reminisces about his family). From this, we notice that the brother is significantly shorter than his siblings. It’s also worth noting that his bangs are in front of his face, meaning we never get a clear idea of his appearance (I’ll bring this up again later).

This episode also serves as the season finale, meaning fans were treated to an entire year of hiatus to theorize on the red-haired brother.

The Mystery Starts: His Name

Season 5, Episode 2 begins the mystery-of-the-missing-brother in earnest by providing us with this quote...

“Mom’s screams, Shoto’s crying, and what happened to our big brother, Touya”

Not only is this quote the first time the red-haired brother is being directly spoken about, but it also provides us with 3 pieces of information.

FIRST: His name is Touya. We now have something to call him besides “the red-haired brother”.

SECOND: He’s Natsuo’s big brother. At this point in the series, the age order for Natsuo and Fuyumi had not been confirmed in the anime, but we now knew Natsuo is either the second oldest child, or third oldest.

Touya being Natsuo’s “big brother” means Touya is either the oldest child, or the second oldest. But the fact that Natsuo says “our big brother” does seem to indicate Touya is the big brother to all of them.

This seems to be contradictory to the fact that Touya is just so small compared to his siblings in the 2nd flashback, but it’s certainly not impossible for younger siblings to outgrow the oldest.

(Yes I know technically their age order is revealed in episode 17 but I’m trying to walk through the experience live)

THIRD: We learn something happened to Touya. We don’t know what, but it’s implied to be bad. At the very least, it implies that whatever happened led to Touya no longer seeing his family.

The Mystery Continues: Quirk Singularity

In Season 5, Episode 3, the anime adds a fun visual while Deku explains the Quirk Singularity Doomsday Theory (the theory that, as quirks combine through generations, kids will end up with stronger and stronger quirks with bodies that cannot control them).

In the manga, this is just Deku talking to All Might, but the anime adds the same flashbacks Endeavour had during his Nomu fight for some visual intrigue. Not only does this flashback remind us that the Todoroki siblings exist, but it implies that they are somehow connected to the Quirk Singularity Theory (Shoto is shown as an example of how quirks combine to create stronger quirks, but perhaps we’ll learn some more about Touya to connect him to the theory as well).

The Mystery Continues: Touya’s Quirk

Season 5, Episode 7 gives us another flashback to Shoto’s childhood. Here, Endeavour comments on some very interesting details of Touya’s quirk...

“Touya was close. He had more firepower than me, but he had Rei’s weak constitution. He... was close”

It’s also worth noting that the English Dub of this scene has Endeavour end this line with, “He was close, until...”

So what does this teach us?

FIRST: The English Dub implies he was doing well UNTIL something happened. Was it the incident that Natsuo was referring to? Either way, it has once again created intrigue.

SECOND: Touya had a fire quirk, and it was even stronger than Endeavour’s (hey, look at that, kind of like quirk singularity, right? How the next generation gets stronger than their parents?).

Viewers may have been able to theorize that Touya had a fire quirk based purely on his hair colour (think of how Shoto’s hair represents which side produces which quirk) but this line gives us solid confirmation on his quirk.

THIRD: Touya “had Rei’s weak constitution”. Now, it’s debatable on what exactly a “weak constitution” means. Is this referring to his resolve? Was he too passive? Or is this referring to something else? (Perhaps Rei’s physical constitution?)

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but all the way back in Season 5, Episode 2 (the same one where we learn Touya’s name, go figure) we hear this exact phrase used in reference to the original OFA user... but ONLY in the English Dub.

Here’s what AFO says in the sub...

“My brother is frail”

...vs the dub

“My little brother has a weak constitution”

This gives us a direct reference point that a “weak constitution” in this series can be another way of saying someone is frail (and even if you don’t want to cross reference the dub and sub, OFA is portrayed as weak no matter what). This seems to tie in well with the fact that Touya was so much smaller and appeared weaker than his supposed younger siblings.

The Through Line: Arc Rearrangement

If you didn’t know, I’m here to tell you that the anime pulled a little sneaky on us manga readers by rearranging the arcs.

The manga originally went from Joint Training to (the upcoming arc) to Endeavour Agency, and while the anime has kept these events in the same chronological order, it changed the way they were presented to us. Endeavour Agency has been put first, which means we get more Touya information a heck of a lot closer to the rest of his reveals, compared to the manga.

Regardless of how you personally feel about the arc rearrangement, it works wonders for Touya’s mystery. Endeavour is sprinkled throughout many episodes of the Joint Training Arc in the anime, so it feels rather natural to go straight to the Agency Arc because Endeavour is acting as our narrative through line. He’s been a reoccurring presence, so it doesn’t feel as if he’s coming out of nowhere.

The Reward: The Photo

If you’ve been paying attention to the clues the series has left regarding the missing Todoroki child, you are rewarded in Season 5, Episode 17.

The episode is rather... flashback heavy, but it does a good job reminding us of all the Todoroki drama before we head to the dinner. And at the end of the episode (literally the last thing we see before the ED), observant viewers who have been keeping track of Touya are rewarded when we finally get to see...

... Touya’s face. The first instance where it’s unobstructed. There he is. The missing Todoroki son. He’s so cute!

(Also yes yes I know his hair is now white and I’m sure that was very confusing for anime onlies. However, I promise it is the same kid.)

But, perhaps more importantly, we learn the implication that Touya is dead. His photo is on a shrine where Endeavour is praying, and the shrine seems to be set up in a child’s room that has remain unchanged (small shoes, a soccer ball, and toys on the bookshelf, all of which seem to be too young for any of the living Todoroki siblings). Suddenly it becomes all too clear why the family didn’t bring him up that often, and why Natsuo was so upset about “what happened to our big brother, Touya”.

The Tease: What Comes Next?

Season 5, Episode 18 leaves us with a teaser for the future of Keeping Up With The Todoroki's.

Touya’s death is confirmed, and we even learn a bit more on the circumstances surrounding it, as we learn Endeavour feels responsible for whatever happened. We also learned that Natsuo blames Endeavour, hinting that he certainly played some part in it.

However, all of these hints lead to a story for another time (more likely Season 6, to be precise). I won’t spoil what exactly happens, but I can confirm that we eventually see Touya’s death and the events leading up to it through flashback, and I’m honestly so excited.

Perhaps I’ll make a part 2 to this post when the anime gets to that point.

Hope you enjoyed!

#bnha #bnha season 5 #todofam #toya todoroki #touya todoroki #enji todoroki #shoto todoroki #natsuo todoroki #fuyumi todoroki #bnha meta #bnha season five #mha season 5 #mha season five #bnha analysis #if you liked this please reblog I've been working on this for forever #just had to wait for today's episode to finish it off

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