#I was actually less impacted by the scene playing out than I thought

[mangacat201]

6x10 In a flash - some disjointed thoughts

Not me over here looking at all the posts on 6x10 screaming about the Buckleys being sus af and thinking ... well, if there’s coma!Buck then there’s presumably also decisions to be made about possibly taking someone off life support if a long enough time has passed and who’s got that decision making power of attorney and next of kin and WE THOUGHT THE GUARDIANSHIP BATTLE TO COME MIGHT BE ABOUT CHRIS AT SOME POINT DIDN’T WE BUT WHAT IF IT’S ABOUT BUCK. HUH?

WHAT IF THE BUCKLEYS SAY LET HIM GO? AND EDDIE IS LIKE NOT ON MY WATCH YOU MOTHERFU...

*Michael Jackson popcorn gif*

*rutger hauer dying in the rain gif*

sth sth OH MY GOD ALL THE BUCK WITH KIDS SCENES IN THIS EP. The fucking forshadowing. The fucking proof of how good a dad he is (and the whole firefam knows it because they just let him be the designated kid wrangler at the beach scene knowing he’ll do a good job keeping those kids from being even more traumatized, the way he cradles that baby boy in the car wreck but has absolutely no qualms giving him back over to Bobby because he has his basic trust in him instead of his own parents, the way he seems to be so mature and put together now on the donor issue but you just feel that there’s something brewing underneath the surface, I CAN’T I CAN’T I CAN’T).

Anyway, did I say I was normal about this? Oh I beg your pardon, normal? Don’t fucking know her.

#I was actually less impacted by the scene playing out than I thought #I think I might be on a delayed timer #seriously SO MUCH SHIT happened in this episode #but my brain just looked at the promo still of Chris at Buck's bedside and went the fuck OFF #Now I am unwell #911 #911 fox #911 spoilers #6B #HAHAHAHAHAHA

[ayakashiz]

Alien Stage R6 Analysis

VERY LONG compilation of my interpretations, impressions and unanswered questions about Round 6 of Alien Stage. I just wanted to write this to put all my thoughts in one place so I can finally rest (in pieces). TW for mentions of suic*de/suic*dal ideation.

The most debated is no doubt the kiss/choking scene and Ivan’s motivation for doing so in the first place. 

I think from the very beginning, even before R3, Ivan was planning to go out with a bang. That’s the immediate impression I got from the comic where he mocks/criticizes Sua for planning to “selfishly” die for Mizi and feel good being the “heroine” rather than having to deal with the trauma of being the one left behind. 

(I'm too lazy to edit the whole translation as of now, but might do so when I have more time.)

Ivan tells her how he’s “relieved that he’s not the only who’s that twisted” = He’s comparing himself to Sua. He thinks they’re both ‘twisted’ for planning to do the same thing, but from Ivan’s perspective, he at least isn’t fooling himself into thinking his motives are altruistic. He tasted the feeling of being ‘abandoned’, and he knows he doesn’t want to experience it twice. 

He also probably thought that his death wouldn’t be as impactful on Till as Sua’s death on Mizi, and therefore his own selfishness is more justified in his mind. This most likely plays a role in how cold and biting his words are towards Sua –he’s jealous of that difference between them.

I hadn’t noticed this detail the first time I watched the video: Not only did Till look absolutely miserable and defeated from the get go, but he completely gave up and stopped singing at some point. If you look at the video, we can hear the audio that was supposed to be sung, but Till is quiet and still, and THIS is the moment Ivan chooses to act.

Although they do not show the votes at that particular moment, stopping mid song would have definitely taken a hit to Till’s score as it’s basically forfeiting –a huge contrast to his previous match where he didn’t even let his opponent utter a single line.

In response, Ivan doesn’t just walk towards him but throws his microphone to the ground, explicitly forfeiting as well in order to then pull a drastic move like it was foreshadowed in his interview.

The kiss itself imo was the less calculated/arguably unplanned part. He could have just choked Till from the start and it would have gotten him the same if not better results (since it was the act of violence against another contestant that ultimately lowered his score and got the counter to stop). 

That kiss was authentic and for himself entirely, both as a last desperate attempt at conveying his feelings and a selfish way of leaving a strong impression on Till that he wouldn’t be able to forget (a hypocritical move going back to how he criticized Sua). In that sense, I don’t think Ivan was seriously trying to take Till down with him –although that’s up to interpretation. As I see it, that would contradict his actions up until that point.

Till was VERY CLEARLY suic*dal (once again, he gave up singing), and after the initial shock of Ivan squeezing his neck, this fiery, rebellious man who is KNOWN to fight tooth and nail, simply closed his eyes and relaxed his body, waiting for Ivan to end him without fighting at all. 

The thing is, no matter how suic*dal one may be, the fighting response when being actually suffocated is automatic and completely involuntary. People mention there not being marks on Till’s neck but I think the most telling sign is him not going red, not squirming, not struggling or holding onto Ivan’s wrists (again, expected involuntary responses), his eyes not watering or having blurry vision while we see Ivan from his POV, not opening his mouth even a little to gasp for air and not coughing or gasping either when he was finally released.

Ivan definitely had him in a strong grip, might have even made him a bit lightheaded, but the reason why Till could look so relaxed in the first place is because he had given up and was waiting for Ivan to go ahead. If his closed eyes and limp posture were due to the choking itself, he would have fallen or stumbled when being let go, but we see that his eyes open as soon as he feels Ivan’s hands slipping away and he looks shocked instead.

So then what was Ivan’s motivation, if not to kill him? Yes, there’s the already discussed plan to get himself disqualified. But Ivan glances at the screen only a few seconds after he starts the choking, confirming that the voting had in fact stopped with Till having the higher score. He then goes for one last ‘goodbye’ kiss before continuing to choke him, holding his grip even as he starts getting shot.

We see a closeup of him, his eyes and hands trembling, looking more frustrated/emotional than in Till’s first POV where he looks rather stoic. It makes me think that the reason he refused to let go was simply because he wanted Till to look at him. 

They strongly imply throughout the whole video that being annoying or mean or violent was the only way Ivan learnt how to make Till focus his full attention on him, but now even as he’s threatening his life, even as he himself is dying, even after that kiss, Till wouldn’t look. 

It took him getting fatally wounded and realizing there was no turning back to reach a state of acceptance. His bittersweet expression here reminds me A LOT of his smile after Till runs back during the meteor scene, although this one seems a lot more tender. He seems to accept the fact that Till will never love him back, but Ivan cannot stop loving him anyways and he at least got to put his feelings out there. 

(The parallels here are driving me insane. The way there is light in his eyes in both instances as he looks at Till even while 'losing him' in a way. The struggle between wanting to posses him yet realizing his free spirit/strong will is part of what he loves about him. That last genuine gaze from a character who spent his whole life putting on a mask. Yes I am very normal about this.)

Until then, Ivan’s more tender/vulnerable side is only shown while Till is unconscious or looking away.

(That soft, loving nuzzle to Till's face has me in SHAMBLES.)

But ironically, it’s only when he releases him and shows him this vulnerability without a mask that Till really looks at him for the first time. I’d go as far as to say that it was this moment, and not the kiss, that finally made Till understand Ivan’s feelings. And in turn Ivan gets that little shot of euphoria as he falls to the ground.

Going back to the survivor’s guilt… I can only imagine it’ll go completely downhill for Till from now on. Not only does he already think Mizi might be dead and is angry at himself that he couldn’t save her (as seen in the shot where he punches his own picture), but now he has most likely realized that Ivan intentionally fumbled their match for his sake –which would lead to the realization that he was the reason why Ivan chose to run back to Anakt Garden after him in the first place, and that choice ultimately lead to his death. 

Even though we see them fighting a lot as children through the videos and comics, it’s also implied that they were always together and they shared some quiet moments –the “Mizi didn’t play with you, I played with you” art, all that art of the main 4 playing together, those bright smiles as they ran away together during the meteor shower scene and Till looking so guilty when he let go of his hand. 

There are a few cute doodles of them for those who are on Patreon, and some more lore in the Anakt Garden kit –so they were at the very least friends in their own way (as best as 2 very traumatized and abused children could), constantly fighting and making up. Which God… it shows that despite appearances Till must have actually had the patience of a saint when they were little lmao.

But what I’m trying to say is that despite what Ivan may have thought, his death will most definitely have an impact on Till and the narrative going forward, and I’m excited to find out how that reflects in the final round (if the resistance doesn’t manage to get back up in time to disrupt it). 

Despite how much I adored (and SUFFERED WITH) this round, I still have MANY questions that were left unanswered, both about Ivan and Till, and the lore in general, and I wonder if there’ll be time to answer them all, as I can imagine the next MV will be focused on Luka’s perspective, the only one we haven’t been presented with.

One of the most pressing questions being: What’s the relationship between Ivan and that alien dog? Did he tame it? It is implied that it was Ivan who somehow led Till and Mizi to it in the first place in that one scene, and if so I wonder what his motivation was? Normally jealousy would be the first thing to come to mind but Ivan wasn’t interested in Till until AFTER he saw him stand up to the beast to protect Mizi, so it couldn’t have been that. 

This is something that was also teased on Patreon and I was looking forward to the explanation on the MV, but it never came, and now Ivan is dead, so the next video will most likely not be too concerned with his backstory any longer. (Which, also, I was really curious about his life in the slums before being captured, auctioned and brought to Anakt, as that would have played a huge role in his twisted personality/dark tendencies –once again teased on Patreon very briefly, but not explained beyond that frame of him looking famished.)

The second is, how is Ivan able to open Till’s collar/muzzle so easily? This is a question I’ve been having since R3, but chalked it up to Ivan being sneaky and figuring out some kind of code to the cell door and that somehow automatically deactivating the locks on the restraints… or something. But with how many times he does it in R6 with just a touch it’s very clear that that isn’t the case and also imo they’re trying to point this out as a significant detail. 

It may turn out that I’m just looking too much into it, but I find it really curious and interesting. Not only is he the only child without a collar (Mizi and Sua still had them despite being just as well behaved as him), but he seems to be the only one able to take them off –or at least Till’s. I’m pretty sure the children wouldn’t normally be able to remove them by themselves as it seems to be a control mechanism. So how can Ivan? This might explain a lot about how they were able to escape, and also add a layer of tragedy knowing that Ivan could have chosen to escape by himself at any point, but refused to leave Till behind.

Last but not least there’s all the human experimentation Till was subjected to, which was the main topic of the teaser and we see the same images show up in the very beginning of the MV. They help emphasize Till’s suffering and distressed state of mind, but then they’re never expanded on or mentioned at all for the rest of the video. That’s a huge piece of lore that I also hope isn’t forgotten.

I mean, I really doubt it will. So far VIVINOS & co. have been incredible with their ability to hold back information and release it at the moment where it’s the most impactful, which is refreshing to see. So I trust we’ll get some answers eventually. 

Really curious to know why they would experiment on an ALNST contestant in the first place, especially one that is undoubtedly talented and described as a musical genius (aka. has good odds of doing well on stage and earning the segyein revenue). A very plausible theory might just be that he was just getting constantly drugged to make him less of a threat/more submissive –like we see on the karaoke room scene. But it might as well be something bigger.

As for my expectations for the next round… I’m still just trying to process this one, as you can see by the sheer amount of text. There are many things left to address, and the Hyuna/Luka confrontation has been strongly teased. I wonder also, if the round goes on without interruption, what would Luka’s strategy against Till be? Would he go for provocation again, trying to imitate Mizi/hint to his recent trauma with Ivan? It probably won’t be that simple.

I mean, VIVINOS has been known for subverting our expectations with each round:

The ominous/callous framing that was given to Ivan by the end of Black Sorrow and the art that followed, making us suspicious of his intentions, only to have him die for love. The lifeless/doll-like framing given to Luka, vulnerable and cornered by flashing lights, only to have him be the cruelest/most calculating one (that we know so far). The rebellious, rowdy, willing to do anything to survive framing given to Till, only to have his fighting spirit completely break and willingly waiting to die by Ivan’s hands. The naive, complacent and passive image given to Mizi, only to have her snap, beat the shit out of Luka and join the rebellion –and with how things are going (and her being the protagonist) I wouldn’t be surprised if she, and not Hyuna (the one who was framed as the most strong and reliable, giving us a false sense of security going into R6), is who will have to try and rescue Till (and Luka???).

There are still a ton of things that keep me awake at night about R6 –my favorite character dying aside. I could talk about it forever, but I’ll leave it here. 

Feel free to share your theories, delusions, interpretations or any detail I might have missed with me. God knows we need group therapy after this as the cute chibi keychains can only heal us so far. Thanks for reading my rambles if you made it this far. :’)

#alien stage #alnst #에이스테 #ivantill #vivinos #ivan alnst #till alnst #im GOING INSANE idk if you can tell... hahah #the only reason i didn't flood this with more videos and pictures is cause tumblr gave me a limit of 30 :')

[tobi-smp]

you know, with hindsight now what it is I really do think a more literal reading of c!techno's chat would have helped his characterization a Lot

and mind you, this was originally intended to be the case, and very well may have been intended all along even if it wasn't usually emphasized within the lore

and don't get me wrong, I Get why it fell out of favor within the fandom. it coincides with a Very storied ableist trope that demonizes DID and disorders adjacent to it, and Can be spoken about in a way that is essentially indistinguishable from it depending on the word choice.

but the thing is ! not only does it not Have to be an allegory for DID, I straight up don't think it is At All.

because we Know what it's an allegory for. It's His Chat. there's technoblade playing the game, and there's the thousands of people watching with expectations and wants that he's compelled to meet (or, at the very least, pacify through Entertainment).

and this makes much Much more sense when conceived of as Supernatural. be that spirits, gods, demons, or anything that could fill that role. separate entities that, for whatever reason, only techno can sense the presence of and be affected by.

and of course, to an extent this is true for all creators. everyone had an audience that they were meant to entertain and the choices they made were influenced by that fact.

but technoblade came in with a Very distinct set of expectations that heavily impacted the choices he was Expected to make and the kinds of stories that he could tell. he was more or less a living legend in real life just as much as he was in roleplay, and these things were inherently connected.

and it's like !

when c!technoblade says he was peer pressured into killing tubbo at the red festival he Is technically talking about what happened within the roleplay. schlatt was demanding it from him, there's a sort of pressure there. but schlatt was also the dictator they were set to kill, and techno has never had any trouble fighting people he considered a dictator before, and certainly not Schlatt of all people.

but he WAS being peer pressured By His Audience. by thousands of people, most of which were demanding blood Because It Was The Expectation, because it'd be Fun.

out of universe technoblade made the decision he thought would be the most Entertaining, and he was right! consistently he made choices that would let him do the most bombastic Spectacles possible. And It's Great. he's Excellent at pulling dramatics and making a compelling scene that give other people room to work off of. in that sense I'd consider techno an Excellent actor, and I have to imagine that he was fun to work with.

the problem is when you then have to justify it from an in character perspective, grounded in those mushy things like Feelings with characters that can be traumatized and sustain lasting damage, Especially Without acknowledging the out of character incentive.

mind you, it's not Impossible to Create a backstory that could justify it. why a character as consistently powerful and feared as technoblade would feel pressured to kill an ally by someone he not only Can kill but Wanted To Kill. why a character as seemingly secure and in control as technoblade would lash out the way that he does to perceived betrayal, and yet consistently puts no weight onto having killed and permanently scarred an ally that trusted him.

what that'd need is tragedy. a storied history of being hurt and having to survive. building up To an untouchable god from a much much more vulnerable position. Long Lasting trauma that's lead to this deep insecurity and paranoia. and that's Possible and that's Compelling.

but it's just not in the text.

not only did we never learn basically Anything that c!technoblade was up to pre-series, we actually know Less by the end than when we started because of the sbi retconning.

it's a Theoretically Possible interpretation that's technically never Contradicted by canon, but would have to be created by scratch. it's a compelling idea for a fan fic (and one I'd like to read) and it's compelling for a theoretical recontextualization of the character, but it's just not In The Text.

meanwhile, we have the video above.

we have the Objective Fact that technoblade's decision making was often subject to the rule of cool (very Very effectively) to entertain his audience.

and most compellingly, these concepts Don't Need To Be Separate. in fact, in my opinion they're Stronger when you put them together.

because the thing is. it's Difficult to imagine techno as ever being in a vulnerable position. he is just Objectively more powerful than everyone else on the server, both in real life And within the lore. How could he have ever been afraid when he was stronger than anyone and everyone combined? when we saw with our own eyes that techno could face nearly the whole server at once and win.

but he Is a tragic character, at least he's meant to be. and that tragedy makes much Much more sense as something Inward.

technoblade as a character who Needs connection, who Needs stability, who Needs security, who Needs friendship and community and Love. but Lashes Out, Obliterates to the core of the earth, because of something that's not only out of his control but that other people Cannot Understand.

how do you explain to a child that you killed their best friend because a chorus of the undead called for his blood and you (in all the glory that he'd idolized) were unable to do anything but comply? how do you explain to that child that you beat him senseless in a pit as the restless dead jeered and laughed?

That's interesting. That's Compelling.

technoblade is idolized like a god, feared like a force of nature, and in an instant cut himself off from nearly everyone who'd considered him an ally. and that seems to be a pattern, over and over and over again. he's left isolated, and in return he faces retaliation, and in return he's always Waiting for retaliation.

and what do you say to someone who wants to kill you for being a monster? that it's Fine Actually because you only did what you did because you have a curse that compels you to? that the supernatural guided you to destroy their homes and kill their people? (rip jack manifold you will be missed)?

That Doesn't Quite Help Your Case.

technoblade as someone who is beholden to this literal cycle of violence and Loses those things that could ground him, community, stability, People, as a result. who Tries to overcome this very fact (to become a better person, in his own words as per the clip above), but is pulled back into it as a consequence of his own actions.

that's a tragedy !! that Makes Sense. that allows him to be Both this force of nature that other characters have to survive And A Person Who Is Hurt By The Same Conflict.

"I'm a person!" that fear of dehumanization makes So So Much More Sense when you see technoblade as someone who Already fears himself. who fears being a monster, who fears losing control, who has faced isolation again and again and again.

and, importantly, it doesn't have to be anyone else's Fault.

by making the source both Internal and Completely External (something that none of the other characters have any awareness or control over), you can Have techno as a tragic character without demonizing anyone else Or erasing the impact that c!techno had on them.

and in that sense, it Can be an allegory for mental illness, but not in that direct "oooooh how scary he hears voices" kind of way that people fear it looks. but in that sometimes people Will do things that can hurt others while not feeling in control. anger and mania and paranoia, things that you can't always Control and yet that impact that you have on other people still Matters.

and the answer to that is, often, vulnerability and accountability.

I think a lot about technoblade isolating himself so near entirely from the rest of the server, and slowly gathering a support system Back by the end. and I Really Do think that framing of it through this lens is a Very impactful way of breaking it down.

tubbo, tommy, wilbur, ranboo, niki, I think they'd All understand not feeling in control. lashing out, maybe even feeling justified in the moment, but hurting people they care about and furthering their own isolation.

There's Something There, and it's already In The Text. it just needs to be expanded on.

and why not do that ourselves now?

#dream smp #dsmp #technoblade #tommyinnit #tubbo #meta #long post #back on my bullshit #I really do think that his character is just outright Stronger under this framing #and I genuinely think everything post doomsday would've been stronger if he'd leaned into this #that said this is probably messier than some of my other techno analysis #because I've been chewing on it for a few days rather than my usual of rehashing the same idea for two years in a row #but I'm rusty so give me a break #also derivakat voices is a straight up banger and you can all pry it from my cold dead hands

[theerurishipper]

Part 2 of my Paris special commentary (Part 1 here) because Tumblr is an ass and has a word limit.

Disclaimer: This is long asf.

Marinette here playing 5D chess, queen shit.

The most important thing the special confirmed is that Gabe added the word "dark" to his transformation phrase on purpose cause he's a dramatic bitch.

I am here for Claw Noir mocking Gabe. Go off, king.

"Oh nO, iT WAs aN IlLusIon!" That giggle is adorable. She's so cute.

Ladyfly is an ass name, but she looks so great.

Not Gabe getting annoyed at Claw Noir's teasing. See, now this is why we stan Claw Noir on this blog.

Gabe's plan isn't half bad, actually.

Symbolism? In my children's cartoon? It's more likely than you think.

They're having a pun-off.

RIP Chat Noir's ear.

Gabe got feathered lmao

Monarch dipped like a little bitch.

A mirror, I called it. It'll make for some nice symbolism.

"Let alone a calm and gentle mom" I wonder what Sabine is like in their world to make Emonette feel like she's so alone.

I like how they handled the villains tbh. I wasn't a fan of making it seem like Marinette was one step away from becoming a supervillain at all times, but it seems less like that's the case and more like The Supreme took advantage of her suffering and vulnerability at her lowest moments.

It's also nice that they established that Shady and Claw weren't the actual big bads and are just hurt kids who got recruited into a fight they weren't ready for. Their motivation isn't some rehash of Gabriel's, they are literally trying to survive under the rule of someone who will kill them if they don't do his bidding, and because of whom they're dying. Their life is literally full of suffering and they're trying to find something that'll give them a way out. Shady wants Marinette's life, and Claw Noir wants his mother back.

Like, it doesn't excuse their actions, but it does add a more humane element to them that lends itself better to the kind of redemption Miraculous likes to do, which is to fix things with a speech. That's why this redemption works, and Gabe's doesn't.

Anyway.

The back and forth between Chat Noir and Claw Noir was pretty funny ngl.

And we discover that Claw Noir wants his mother back. Of course.

MY POOR BABY

When Marinette was talking about how she was also angry and hurt, but chose to love herself and the world around her and chose to try and fix it... that hit hard. Honestly, it did. It's everything I love about Marinette in one speech. I love it.

And then onto my personal favorite scene in the entire special, possibly in the entire show.

That whole conversation was powerful. "I'm as well as I can be anyway," that's so profound. Like, of course you aren't going to be 100% okay after losing someone you love, but Adrien wants to move on and be happy like his mother would have wanted him to. This scene really showcases Adrien's empathy and his strength, when he acknowledges that having no friends can make it harder for Claw Noir to move on, and then he tells him that only he can make the choice to stop being alone. And that's really true. This scene really showcases everything amazing about Adrien, his hope and optimism, his empathy and his strength. How he finds the strength to keep going by choosing to not be alone. It's beautiful.

Like, it could have been so easy for both Marinette and Adrien to give into their darkest impulses, and Shadybug and Claw Noir really are just representations of how letting your hurt overpower you can lead you down a dark path, and it really highlights their strength, that they choose to make the right choices everyday, despite everything. It really highlights their characters and their arcs. And they're able to take everything they've learned, and look at what they could have been in the eyes and help them change too. It's so poetic.

It would have been a little more impactful if the show had spent more than 10 minutes out of 5 seasons focusing on Adrien's grief and how it has impacted him, but whatever.

Anyway, it also had some Adrien and Nino friendship crumbs, and I'll be darned if I didn't gobble it up like a starved animal. Also, we have confirmation that "Space Mutants vs. Ghost Shark" is Nino's favorite movie, so Nino stans please say "thank you Paris special."

And they are REDEEMED.

Shadybug fixes everything with her Lucky Charm after spending the whole special making destructive ones. My heart.

Shadybug and Claw Noir stop being evil and immediately go from hating each other's guts to flirting shamelessly. They just speedran enemies to lovers in a matter of seconds. They literally just defaulted to flirting. Truly, the natural state of Ladynoir in any universe. We stan.

Gotta be honest, I'm not a fan of the new designs. Wish they had kept the old ones. I'm one of those people whose toxic trait is liking Claw Noir's design, so I'm a little unhappy with it, but hey, it's a sweet scene.

Also, Claw Noir's hair went from the color of rotten bananas to ripe bananas. If that was intentional, I applaud the writers for being both profound and funny as hell.

Aaaaaaand Gabe is back, because we can't have nice things.

The montage going through different realities was great, it was small but I enjoyed it.

They're literally so cute omg. Couple behaviors fr. I'm so obsessed with them.

HUGS

POUND IT

They're holding hands... already... like they're in love... I'm so emotional... I WILL NEVER GET OVER THIS

And they're gone. But their adventures will continue forever in my mind and in my fanfics. And in other people's art that I will ravenously consume.

Cute Alya and Marinette scene. This is really sweet, I love the exploration of the impact Alya has had on Marinette's life.

And now, I'm not an Alyanette shipper, but I think they should kis- oh, wait, never mind, they did it.

And thus, the endless night comes to an end (it happened a while ago but that's just semantics).

Final thoughts

I really loved this so much. Sure, there were some exposition dumps that probably should have happened in the actual series, but that's not the fault of this special. This is probably my bias talking but this is the best special and it's literally perfect, no I will not take any constructive criticism on that. This, this special and everything in it, this is what Miraculous is all about. This is exactly what I wanted, this is what I signed up for. It's literally the best thing ever to come out of this entire show.

#MLB #Miraculous Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #Marinette Dupain Cheng #Gabriel Agreste #Alya Cesaire #Ladybug #Shadybug #Chat Noir #Cat Noir #Claw Noir #Toxinelle #Griffe Noire #Ubiquity #Hesperia #Monarch #Hawkmoth #Betterfly #Miraculous World #ML Paris Special #My meta #ML Spoilers #ML Paris Spoilers #Shadyclaw #Ladynoir #Adrienette #Meta

[mirai-e-jump]

Digital TV Guide, April 2024 Issue ft. Iuchi Haruhi Interview (translation below)

Publication: February 24, 2024

Iuchi Haruhi -BoonRed's design leaves an impact!-

Iuchi Haruhi plays the role of Taiya Hando (BoonRed) in "Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger." We asked the 19 year old about his enthusiasm for playing the lead role in the historic Super Sentai series.

"How did you feel when it was decided that you had been chosen to appear in the show?"

Iuchi: I went to the office after I received a call from my manager saying, "I'd like for us to talk face to face," and while making small talk, he suddenly said, "You've been chosen to appear as Red in the new Sentai." It didn't seem real at first, it felt as if I was listening to the decision that my friend had been picked, and that I wasn't involved. I played multiple roles at the audition, not just Red, so it didn't really feel as if I had been chosen as Red.

"What kind of character is Taiya Hando, who you were chosen to play?"

Iuchi: He's a genius in development and modification, is wealthy, and has a passionate heart but doesn't show it. Boonboomger is initially made up of three members, Red, Blue and Pink, but he's the most mentally mature out of all of them. However, I couldn't express it well at first, as Director Nakazawa Shojiro, who was in charge of episodes 1-3, always just told me to, "Up your mentally. Be less childish." I have the image that he's 5 years older than my actual age. It's difficult, but I think I'm gradually becoming able to express this, and I get the feeling that I'm starting to grasp Taiya's character of being "calm but not cool."

"Please tell us your impressions of BoonRed's design, Taiya's form after transforming."

Iuchi: I thought, "They're going with this, huh?" (laughs). I kept thinking about the tires being stuck on the front of the face. There's been Sentai with car motifs in the past, but these designs are way different from those, so it leaves an impact.

"What are some memorable moments from the episodes that have been filmed so far?"

Iuchi: We've had clear weather since filming began, but on the day when all five members of Boonboomger assemble for the first time, it snowed and filming had to stop. While we were waiting, everyone played around and made snowmen.

"For the next year, you'll be playing the role of a hero."

Iuchi: I talked with Mori Hirotsugu-san, BoonRed's Suit Actor, and asked him to show me the poses he does in action scenes, which I would recreate, and I also asked Mori-san to do the poses that I came up with to match the dialogue. I'd like to continue to work together to create the hero named Taiya Hando. I want to do my best so that children who watch the show will think, "The Boonboomger's are my heroes." _

-What are the conditions for being a hero?- Iuchi: Yuuri-san and Eve-san (singers) are the ones who have my back. Whenever I feel like I'm lacking confidence and want to give up, I listen to their music and become encouraged. For me, the conditions for being a hero are……I guess it's to never ask for anything in return.

#bakuage sentai boonboomger #boonboomger #super sentai #taiya hando #hando taiya #iuchi haruhi #haruhi iuchi #boon red #tokusatsu #toku cast #my scans #my translation #digital tv guide #various tv japan #interview #the designs really have left an impact

[questforgalas]

Now that I've played the MW campaign and am even more unhinged about the MW3 campaign, here are my completely unasked for thoughts on how Activision should've mapped out the games for an at least 6 game story arc

MW

Absolutely no changes. Kyle is a precious muffin. Price is a precious muffin. Alex is a precious muffin. Farah is a queen.

Interesting campaign. Diverse levels. Dynamic and well thought out storyline.

MW2

My baby. The love of my life. My most precious muffin. That campaign? That storyline? Chef's kiss. Ale and Rudy? The best additions. Valeria?? Fucking wonderful. That plot twist?? Grasping my pearls

No changes

MW3

More 141 levels, make the intro levels 141 as a well oiled machine, digging up the intel telling about the prison break. Give more background to what Farah is in the middle of instead of dropping right in especially with fucking Graves suddenly chilling on the comms, bridging that gap between MW2 and here. Take out a good chunk of the Makarov cut scenes and give more levels chasing intel, letting the player put together the pieces with every cold trail Makarov leaves behind, getting frustrated along with the team. Keep the flashback once the team reaches boiling point, but make Ghost less inclined towards Johnny to keep more inline with their reluctant start in MW2.

Shepherd and Graves go off the grid after they give their intel, they disappear. Makarov is making moves in Urzikstan so 141 goes to help ULF (did I mention more 141?). It was a distraction, they uncover Makarov's plans for London, scramble back, it plays out, Price ends up dead (it's a military game, people are going to die, and Price dying had the most potential impact. Come along, I'll explain), Makarov gets away.

Final cut scene is a funeral send off Price deserves, montage of the boys back on base dealing with the aftermath, and Laswell finding Ghost, explaining how he's the Lieutenant, he's the obvious next choice to take up the mantle and Ghost simply says "I'm not the obvious choice" and the final scene pans on Gaz, the Robin to Price's Batman.

The levels will be meatier, longer, and at least 5 more added to deepen the story. Diversity of the play style will be more than just standard campaign and online-layout. The Makarov plot will be discovered by the player, not told to them, adding more intrigue to the character. The final level will be multi tiered, hopping between the two pairs. Actually 8 hours of gameplay instead of the measly 3 they gave us (yes, the MW3 campaign is 3 hours of gameplay compared to MW and MW2s 8 hours each)

MW4

Open to 141 arriving on mission, Soap tapping Gaz on the shoulder and says "Ready when you are, Captain" with that cheeky smile. Makarov's gone dark, eerily quiet the past couple months, but they have a lead on Shepherd and Graves so they're going in. It all points back to Mexico, Graves accepting his military career is fucked after Las Almas and turning Shadow Company into full mercs instead of PMCs now, specializing in weapons dealings. He recognized the advantage a deal with Valeria could have and they've been working together.

CUT TO LOS VAQUEROS/141 REUNION. More Alejandro and Rudy background (just let Alain Mesa, the BAFTA Game Award Nominee for this freaking role, fucking shine). Dive into the Valeria background, make the raid mentioned during her interrogation a flashback level in Valeria's POV. The team has to go undercover to get close to the intel, Rudy gets picked, gathers the intel, but gets compromised. Now its a race to rescue Rudy. Ale and Gaz go after Rudy while Soap and Ghost follow the lead Rudy got them. Ale and Gaz raid a cartel base/prison, let Ale take Gaz under his wing recognizing the young captain's feeling the pressure, some banter, some advice, wholesome Ale and Gaz bonding.

Soap, on the other hand, is barely being contained by Ghost. He's in full attack dog mode with Graves scent nearby and Ghost has half a mind to let the demolition expert go completely feral, but the lieutenant part of him keeps his sergeant in check. Further their dynamic, more banter balancing right on the edge. They clear out the compound, find a gold mine of intel around the dealings, and Johnny gets to put the bullet right between Graves' eyes.

One line in the intel catches their eyes - Makarov

MW5/6

Make the Makrov storyline a 3 game storyline - MW3 intro and back-to-back MW 5 and 6. Now with ties in Mexico and ULF, all established teams and beloved characters can be brought in in some aspect throughout both games to take him down.

Ale and Rudy are cleaning up El Sin Nombre's ties in Las Almas, cutting each line of Valeria's arms dealings, trying to cut off the courier of Makarov's destruction.

Farah continues to lead ULF to free Urzikstan, Makarov taking advantage of the dissent and chaos and placing a foothold there, ultimately dividing forces and efforts from his background machinations.

With Makarov's trail warm again, the 141 are out for blood. Could take the plunge and make GhostSoap canon through subtle dialogue options or touch gestures in cut scenes. The end is possibly near, they're all allowing themselves to think about the future, why not take the plunge Activision? Or they stay vague/platonic and the dynamic is further developed. Dialogue options and cut scenes show further bond with Gaz as well who's stepped into being Captain a little more, easing into the shoes.

MW5 is cat and mouse. Makarov leaves little treats and traps and the team is chasing after their tails, always 3 steps behind him. Give Makarov more scenes, not telling the player his plan but let his character development fly. Let the unhingedness flourish.

Finally, they catch a break at the end of the game and MW6 is the final chase. 8 hours of them hunting down Makarov. Ale and Rudy cleaned up Las Almas and can join them, bringing the whole gang together internationally (bonus points to make one a cold weather mission and the two Mexicans are just bitching the whole time just for Soap and Ghost to tease them back about payback for having to deal with the Mexican desert for a whole week). Two characters would die (not in one game, over the course of the two) - Farah (she's been a fighter her whole life, it would be a full circle for her to heroically go out with a gun in her hand) and either Ghost or Soap.

Soap dying here would be so much more impactful. He'd be more established as a character, have deeper relationships with all members of the game, and it's highly possible to have a situation where a charge isn't going so he's the only one who can pull it off (reminiscent of Hevy in TCW). Going out in a blaze just like he's always imagined.

Ghost dying would be another full circle option with his canon (it would be a sacrificial choice, dying on his own terms as his own choice) and with his long career, it would be heartbreaking but understandable. This also leaves the 141 in the hands of the two youngest, the Captain and the new Lieutenant, tasked with bringing in the next generation of the best soldiers.

And if there just happens to be a cut scene where Johnny has an extra pair of dog tags and a modest ring dangling from his chain? Then you know I infiltrated the Activision writers' room.

Oh what happened to Shepherd you ask? End credits role on MW6 and another cut scene begins. A lone cabin in the middle of nowhere in the woods, smoke trailing out of the chimney. Cut interior, a haggard Shepherd bent over a desk, mumbling to himself, scribbling on something. He tacks the paper on the board in front of him, revealing Gaz and Soap's pictures amidst a mess of strings and maps and notes saying "Traitors". Then it cuts black

Boom, there you go Activision. Enjoy all of your awards and record breaking sales. It could've been that easy

#call of duty #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #captain john price #kyle gaz garrick #alejandro vargas #rodolfo parra #farah karim #alex keller #ghostsoap

[nonbinaryhatboxghost]

Thoughts on the State of Trek

I would be less upset about Discovery ending if they had known going into season 5 that it would be their last. But that was not the case. The additional filming to give it an actual finale is good and I have no doubt that it will be as good a finale as they can do under the circumstances.

But recently I’ve been more observant of Trek fans online and there is a thing happening where I’ve seen far more immediate praise of Strange New Worlds and the current/final season of Picard than any other new Trek show has gotten.

Strange New Worlds is a good show! It is also specifically emulating the original series and has a straight white male captain as the lead. (yes, Pike rocks, that is not the point here)

The current/final season of Picard (which I do think is good!) has radically altered the tone of the show into a revival/sendoff for The Next Generation, as well as emulating and referencing Star Trek media of the ‘80s and ‘90s. And again, straight white male lead.

Both shows, particularly this season of Picard, have been pretty immediately praised by certain types of Trek viewers. Specifically longtime straight white male fans.

I’ve also noticed less diversity behind the camera of Strange New Worlds and Picard compared to Discovery. At least if one watches all the behind-the-scenes stuff for those shows (which I’ve been doing a lot lately). There’s not zero diversity, but Picard especially has been putting more emphasis on bringing back legacy crew members who are majorly, you guessed it, straight white males.

Contrasting that with how Discovery was met with skepticism from the get-go and is openly dismissed by certain older fans (one I talked to at work said something like “I guess I don’t get it because I’m not a millennial.”) makes me a bit angry because a lot of these same longtime fans watched and stuck through the first two seasons of The Next Generation. Those two seasons are some of the roughest television I’ve ever seen, and the handful of good episodes hidden throughout do not make up for it. But fans at the time stuck through those seasons anyway.

Why didn’t Discovery get the same treatment from those vocal longtime folks?

Why did The Next Generation, which is a very different type of show compared to the original series, ultimately become a beloved show? I’d like to believe it’s because people accepted the show for what it was once it found its footing.

But when I see comments like “Picard season 3 is the best Trek in 25 years”, I get mad. You gave Picard, a show that has two seasons with a mixed reception at best, a continued benefit of the doubt because of nostalgia for an older show, and because this season is essentially a Next Generation reunion. But you dismissed Discovery because it wasn’t “your” Star Trek show.

Literally part of the purpose of Star Trek is infinite diversity in infinite combinations. Discovery not only gave us an incredible lead character played by a Black woman, it gave us representation across the entire cast of both people of color and queer folks. As a nonbinary person, Adira’s quiet coming out scene had a profound impact on me, and later served as a helpful reference point for coming out as NB to my dad, who watches and enjoys Discovery.

Discovery spends an entire season depicting a debate between multiple characters/factions about how to handle a situation that threatens all Federation members. It does so with empathy for all points of view, and ultimately resolves this threat not with an action sequence, but a conversation. That season of Discovery (season 4) is Star Trek as fuck, and some of the best Trek ever.

Hell, Star Trek Beyond is so good that it manages to take the flashy action J.J. Abrams approach to Star Trek (which I have mixed feelings about because Trek ’09 is fun and despite his storytelling problems, Abrams is by all accounts a genuinely nice person so I won’t be shit-talking him here) and make it more properly Trek by introducing a villain who believes conflict is necessary for human evolution, which is the antithesis to Roddenberry’s whole vision for Trek of being a future where we work to resolve and avoid conflict rather than seek it.

Strange New Worlds and Picard (seasons 1 and, so far, 3) are both good and also contain great Trek. But they are also fundamentally more appealing to the nostalgia of middle-aged straight white male fans. And they are the shows that are getting more visible attention and praise.

Lower Decks is awesome and has a fantastic Black female lead in Tawny Newsome. But it meant something to have Sonequa Martin-Green and Newsome be the leads of two Star Trek shows airing at the same time.

And it means something for the live-action show with a Black woman as the lead to be cancelled while the animated show with a Black woman as the lead but a straight white male as the head writer is allowed to continue.

I don’t want Star Trek to become like Star Wars and turn into an endless cycle of fan service. Star Trek has had a huge impact on our planet over the 55+ years of its existence. Don’t make the mistake of turning it into another franchise that exists as a way for whiny white dudes to center themselves over the global majority.

(PS, Paramount, how the hell have you dragged your heels over Michelle Yeoh’s spinoff for this long? She has an Oscar now, what the hell is your excuse?)

#star trek #rant #star trek: discovery #star trek discovery #star trek: picard #star trek picard #star trek: strange new worlds #star trek strange new worlds #star trek: lower decks #star trek lower decks #star trek: the next generation #star trek the next generation #yeah I'm mad about a lot of stuff going on in the world but this is the only thing I felt knowledgeable enough to comment on

[what-in-the-gloobie-glob]

Heavy mw3 spoilers (tagging bc its only been a day since full access) soap/interactions characters had with soap

Before the rest of the post I just want to say that I am aware that news has been going around that the game ended up getting rushed due to activision pushing dates(?) Or whatever (idk I haven't read into it)

I have an actual problem with soap's death. And I mean, I feel like it might have been more acceptable for everyone (including die hard cod boys or whatever) if there was more purpose to it. Or even if it was just... more cinematic (?)

It was so lackluster, and I understand the whole "It's supposed to be realistic" but it's a game. The entire point of it is to be entertaining, it doesn't matter if it isn't realistic, because it's supposed to immerse and entertain the viewer,and catch their attention. This death... was not that. Infact it was any thing but that.

It didn't even feel like there was an out of game purpose for it. If it had been at the beginning of the game, at least then the game could have been "revenge" driven. You put it from anyone's pov and (without even making it gay) you could have an emotional drive for revenge. (Of course I AM going to make it gay because that who I am). And if it's kept at the end of the game they could just play up the cinematics a tiny bit, and boom, payer satisfaction. But nope

Now lets go back to if it was the beginning of the game. I'm only gonna focus of the remaining main 3 of the 141.

If soap died at the beginning, the game could be largely price's pov. And we already know in the original price saw soap as a son figure. So just copy+paste character dynamics, and oop, you've got a more immersive emotional connection that draws the players in. It gives the character (price) a motivation, which can also explain some of the OOC behaviors that are exhibited in the game. Because Price is supposed to be this confident, level-headed leader. And the entire game he feels off, unsure of his own decisions, and he makes decisions that arguably are illogical for someone of his rank to make.

Onto Gaz. He seemed too stoic, and cold for this game. If soap had died at the beginning, it could be explained by him being angry and vengeful, and shutting off his emotions. Think about it, he lost a fellow Sergent, whom he'd thought of as a brother. That does things to a person. But they didn't do that so we just got what feels to be an ooc gaz, with minimal interaction with soap who he called a brother. Now I realize that calling soap his brother could just be a term of endearment or whatever, but it anything it felt like a desperate grab to make a last connection between the player and the character by showing a "deeper" connection (which wasn't there). As a side note, when I say gaz feels ooc I mean that in mw it seemed (to me) that he thought about his actions more and their impacts. He didn't just follow orders blindly like a good little soldier, like in this movie. In mw he was more self-righteous (if that's the right word) and he seemed to care a lot more for how his actions would have an impact on the world/people that he was fighting for.

And then we have Ghost. And sorry to sound repetitive but the interactions with him and soap were lackluster. We can start with the fact that there was very little interaction between the two, much less than in mw2 obviously, but I just want to point out that it ALMOST feels like Shepherd had more screen time than the two did together (to me). I know that that isn't true but that's how it feels. And we have even less meaningful interactions. Sure we have ghost and soap interrogating milena but they didn't interact all that much, and we have SOME banter but not a lot. We also have ghost claiming soap to go with him before they drop onto the island, and them pairing up after the vidcall with Shepherd and graves. But that's basically it, aside from soap's death scene (not including the flashvack because they didn't really interact much/the same way). Also I don't know if anyone else felt like this but to me it felt like their banter/interactions were too stilted/formal for the level of acquaintance that they are. Especially after Las Almas, and the game implies that they have fallen into a routine of going on missions together since then, and their conversations/interactions don't feel like they're at that level of knowledge of eachother that they should be at.

I'm putting soap's actual death and aftermath here since I have misc. thoughts.

I want to point out the parallel between laswell and hew wife disapproval with smoking, and Ghost with johnny (i know it's veen pointed out before) but it basically confirms soapghost/ghoap

Also ive seen it pointed out that ghost checked soap's pulse to check if he was alive, even after he was shot in the head, he also pats soap chest like he's teying to confort him.

I also want to point out that at no point between soap dying and the bomb does ghost say anything about the bomb, nor does he go gelp gaz stop it. I get that the point is to force the player to stop the bomb, but they could have added it as a non-canon ending where he was too late or off time with gaz and thus the bomb still blew up. But no. He just says by soap's body the entire time...

Ghost was also apparently the one in possession of soap's ashes, AND the one to spread his ashes, which seems too intimate if activision was trying to stomp down ghoap.

Also I thought soap was catholic, so in my mind, I would have expected maybe a small (possibly unmarked) grave, instead of cremation (im not entirely sure on catholic funeral rituals, so don't come at me if this is wrong). And to me soap's character seemed like it should have been buried instead of cremated and forgotten to the wind (personal preference) but I think he should have had some spot on earth that was his to remember him.

And I'm not gonna say the ashes scene was lackluster, or rushed. Because it wasn't, but it did feel like it was an emotional grab. And it just felt off in general.

Ok that's all I have

#call of duty mw3 #mw3 spoilers #mwiii spoilers #cod mwiii #cod mw3 #mwiii #mw3 #call of duty #john soap mactavish #captain john price #simon ghost riley #kyle gaz garrick #soapghost #ghostsoap

[chikaras-garden]

What are your tips for writing smut in particular? I wanna know how to write it and how to write it well.

As with any writing advice, these are guidelines, not rules. I’m also not the singular best smut writer in the universe, so please don’t feel like you have to do any of this; it’s just what works for me!

Read. A lot. And not just fanfic; find romantic and/or erotic novels you like and read actively, taking note of the turns of phrase (i.e. word choice and sentence structure) that stand out to you—then think about why. Is it the connection between the characters? The vividness of the descriptions? Not only will this help you learn effective writing, but you’ll also find inspiration you may not have thought of otherwise.

Know your characters, their personality, and their relationship to each other. This will help you write actions and, more importantly, reactions. There’s a difference between lovemaking and hatefucking. There’s a difference between Jason Todd and Dick Grayson. Are you writing comfort sex? Sleepy sex? “I’m so mad at you I have to fuck you” sex? How would Jason vs. Dick kiss a reader he’s in love with? What does each of them need to do or feel in order to be satisfied? Knowing how your characters feel and behave should guide every decision you make in your writing, whether it’s smut or anything else.

Characterize your reader. In the same vein as the above, your reader is a character. They should have a personality, likes, dislikes, wants, and needs—knowing this will help make writing their actions and dialogue flow more easily for you, and it makes the scene more interesting.

Smut is (usually) a multi-person ordeal. What I meant when I said that reactions are important is that one character isn’t acting in a vacuum and the other character isn’t, like, a sex doll. Character A and Character B should constantly be acting and reacting to each other, keeping their emotions, personality, and relationship in mind. In most scenarios, Character A is doing something with the express purpose of getting a reaction out of Character B. And even if Character B is submissive, a bottom, or even tied up, they shouldn’t be entirely passive. Their facial expressions, sounds (moans), and actions feed into what Character A chooses to do next.

Keep positions and anatomy in mind. Know where each person’s hands are, what they can reach with their mouth, and how other body parts like thighs, chest, neck, and butt, come into play. Don’t be afraid to use reference photos for this, and also keep in mind each character’s physical ability. Using Jason and Dick as an example: Dick is generally more flexible than Jason, but Jason is generally seen as having more brute strength. Their physical abilities would impact their instincts: Dick might be more inclined to twist himself to reach something, while Jason might simply move the reader where he wants them.

Slow your pace and focus on detail. Thinking about the vivid descriptions from the romance novels we like, “he sucked her nipple” is less impactful than “he made a cup of his fingers and lifted her breast to his lips” (I believe this was in The Governess Game by Tessa Dare). Why? Because we can better visualize what’s going on. The second sentence has movement that takes us though the scene instead of making us imagine it for ourselves: he made a cup of his fingers, then he lifted her breast to his lips, then (it’s implied that) he sucked her nipple. The word choice here is specific to his characterization; he’s explicitly being gentle with her, as compared to a character who would instead “bring her nipple to a stiff peak with several rough twists of his fingertips, then cover it with his lips” (I do not remember what novel this is from).

Spend some time on non-sexual intimacy. In my own writing, the actual act of penetrative or oral sex is maybe the last 33% of the piece I’m writing because there’s so much intimacy in foreplay. Sexual tension is your buildup, while the sex itself is really only the payoff, so give the same attention and detail to the kisses, touches, or even looks that get us to the main event in the first place.

Here are some more resources:

Smut terminology

Smut-writing advice

Ultimate guide to writing smut fic

#💌— letters for the gardener. #💋— anon. #🌹— from petal. #✏️— petal's advice corner.

[velvette-hussle]

I think saying that Valentino is being woobified is not…the correct word. Vox, and the way a lot of the fandom downplays his villainy into something more palatable for them by making him a victim and then overemphasizing that victimhood while downplaying his antagonism, is being woobified. On the other hand what’s happening to Valentino is not that.

Both the show (and large parts of the fandom as a result) aren’t downplaying Valentino’s villainy and status as a rapist to make people feel sorry for him so that they’re more comfortable with liking his character. The way Valentino is presented as by the narrative is as this complete fucking moron with anger issues who has zero tact or impulse control; the audience is supposed to point and laugh at Val any time he is not directly (and I do mean ‘directly’) interacting with Angel Dust, which in turn lessens his negative impact without technically just straight up erasing it or pretending it doesn’t exist, and makes him more comfortable to handle and for people to like (or even to dismiss and to hate in some cases).

That phenomenon is not him being turned into a woobie though, that’s him being infantilized; it’s infantilization. No amount of adding layers and nuance to a character (especially if those layers are properly tackled) is going to lessen the impact of a villains’ negative influence on a narrative like making the audience laugh at them more often than they grow apprehensive of them will, and that’s exactly what the show did.

IE: Depict the idea that Valentino is a joke and (outside of his interactions with Angel) he’s practically harmless.

How I see it the show is simultaneously asking the audience ‘how bad could he really be, he’s such an idiot?’ and then showing us exactly how bad Valentino could be and expecting us to just go back to laughing at him right afterwards now that the threat is not immediately in our faces anymore. EDIT: There’s also an implication - that parts of the fandom run with and the writers could maybe be actively showcasing - that Valentino is an undercover mastermind who’s actually smart, but the show itself doesn’t give enough hints at his “childishness” being an act he puts on for me to regard it as more than fans expanding upon the specs of Valentino’s character that they’ve been given to marry the two facets of his identity together and as more headcanon than canon.

With balance this doesn’t have to be an inherently bad thing, but I don’t feel that the show has that balance. Trying to soften the blow a depiction of a fictional rapist will likely have on an audience is not a horrible idea, but something about the way HH goes about it just doesn’t work for me and I cannot for the life of me directly articulate why. I feel the show just often misses the mark when it comes to deciding what about Val and the shit he does should be emphasized for comedic affect, what should be shown to the audience with relative neutrality, and when they should seriously emphasize him being a villain and a abuser/rapist.

From how I see it, Valentino needed more neutral scenes than he did comedic; for further understanding of my thought process his tantrum in “Radio Killed The Video Star” (s1ep2) is comedic (except for when he riles Vox up before the show goes right back to playing up Val’s anger for laughs), his inclusion and actions during the Vees’ meeting scene in s1ep2 is neutral (there’s subtle comedic elements to what he’s saying/doing but the audience isn’t meant to actively be laughing out loud or anything), and the scenes where he’s directly attacking angel (his meaner texts/voice messages to Angel, the dressing room scene in “Masquerade”, his appearances in “Poison”[♪], & when Val threatens then slaps Angel in “Welcom To Heaven”) are meant to showcase his menace without buffers. Less overtly comedic scenes would’ve just balanced him better I think, so there’s not this weird dichotomy of moments where Vox treats Valentino not like a non-threat but like a child having to be weighed against moments where Angel Dust is regarding Valentino like the Overlord is his personal boogieman who’s actually a threat to be taken seriously.

In general though, while some people do play up Valentino’s stupidity and incompetence in a bid to actively neutralize, undermine, or ignore his more violent tendencies for their own purposes (EDIT: sometimes for comedic value, sometimes to make him more palatable or more fun to play around with), the infantilization and further “dumbing down” of his character in fandom seems to mostly stem from an almost incessant need to make him as undesirable as possible even for a villain. It’s a phenomenon that I don’t really have a full explanation for, but for me it reads as a way to “diss” Valentino and the theoretical rapist that exists in many people’s heads that he represents. This isn’t a disavowing of that or anything either, it’s just something I’ve noticed that I don’t really have a name for but still find interesting.

I do think Valentino’s “dumbing down” in fandom has its drawbacks — making a character with such a medium level of influence like Valentino so stupid and impulsive he doesn’t even hide his crimes retroactively makes all the other characters around him seem uncharacteristically weaker for falling for him when he’s not even trying to hide how bad he is or how abusive he’d be, incompetent for not defeating him when he gets in their way even though some of these characters are both more powerful than him & not being manipulated by him, and uncaring since the characters he’s victimizing have someone who claims to care about them (or who’d at least have a vetted interest in the victim’s safety) that knows how bad Valentino is but just chooses not to do anything regardless as a result — but I’m pretty sure I understand where the desire comes from in general even if I personally don’t love it, so whatever.

Brought to you by me misconstruing the term “uwuify” with “woobify” so…..yeah. This post technically spawned from nothing but I did not want to put it to waste so here y’all go. This is kind of ordered wonky too, but fuck it.

#valentino #hazbin hotel #Valentino’s wasted potential as a villain™️ #hazbin hotel valentino #hazbin valentino #hazbin hotel opinion #hazbin hotel thoughts #i speak bitches *mwah* #me•

[markantonys]

wot 1x05-8 Rewatch Now That I’ve Read The Books thoughts! book spoilers ahead

i was never more attracted to mat than i was in this one scene of him looking evil and sick in his cloak with his hood up. me and rand shaking hands on being into evil men

rand is such a baby when they arrive in the big city awwww

and we get to the greatest betrayal of modern cinema: when rand and mat enter the inn room and it looks like there’s only one bed, but then the camera angle switches to reveal a second bed!!! heartbreaking

haha i love this scene with moiraine and nynaeve where moiraine’s trying to give her advice about the tower. moiraine is such a fond mom and nynaeve is having absolutely none of it.

the glorious momentary ot3 that was egwene/perrin/aram

rand says that egwene thought she was “jain farstrider herself reincarnated” is this just a shaky word order and it actually means egwene thought that she herself was (male) jain farstrider reincarnated, or do we have female jain farstrider in this verse? also, i feel like egwene (even if she was very young and perhaps not fully understanding of how the wheel works at the time) thinking that she could be jain reincarnated implies that jain has been dead for a long long time, thus sealing the nail in the coffin of the chances of noal making it to the show (not that i ever thought he would)

i like the change of it being egwene instead of rand who was obsessed with that book. it fits with egwene wanting to see the world and have adventures but rand being happy with his little farm and his everyday life!

The Cauthor Promise!!! i hope this will come up again in the future now that they know rand is tdr - i could totally see rand asking mat to fulfill that promise and kill him and mat being unnerved by this behavior. i’m also very curious how mat finding out rand is tdr will go down in the show since he’s now the only one of the ef5 who doesn’t know (although egwene, perrin, and nynaeve were too busy fearing the immediate danger to rand’s life to have yet reacted to the long-term implications of him being tdr). on the one hand, i could imagine that mat having spent so long fearing HE was tdr, and knowing that rand feared the same thing and still never considered leaving him, would make him more empathetic towards rand and more willing to repay the favor and stick by his side. on the other, wouldn’t it be a gutpunch if rand said “no matter what happens i’m here” to mat when they thought mat was tdr and then mat reacted completely the opposite way upon finding out it’s rand?

also wondering if mat’s memory loss might come into play here. maybe he forgets being afraid that he was tdr and rand supporting him through it, or maybe he forgets this promise they made to each other. i’m definitely expecting the show to milk mat’s memory loss more than the books did - mat was always complaining about holes in his memory but he never actually seemed to be missing anything important, so i think the show will make his memory loss more impactful and tragic in order to beef up his motivation to mess around with a dangerous object of the Power in order to get his memories back. what if he forgets his sisters???? 😭😭

i say this all the time but boy, will galad joining the show!whitecloaks be a hard sell. they did make a distinction between regular whitecloaks and questioners back in episode 2, and showed that regular whitecloaks are less extreme given that guy’s willingness to tell moiraine to seek out aes sedai healing, but i didn’t really pick up on that until this watch knowing from the books that that distinction exists, so to a show-only viewer it definitely was not enough to override the overall impression that all whitecloaks are like valda. and as you guys know, this deeply colored my opinion of galad in the books!

when egwene was clapping back at valda MAN i saw shades of egwene owning elaida in the dinner scene!!! i can’t wait to see what madeleine madden does in future seasons!

interesting that liandrin notes that while the aes sedai are a super powerful all-women organization, there are plenty of other areas of the world where men are in charge. take that, male readers who insist that randland is a whole matriarchy just because women have more power than men among one small segment of the population (channelers).

one of my favorite examples of “non-readers are more observant than some readers think”: after nynaeve’s story about egwene’s fever when she was young, i was thinking “ooh i wonder if nynaeve healed her with the power then without realizing it” only to go online and see readers complaining that that story was repurposed to showcase egwene’s strengths when in the books it was meant to show that nynaeve had healed her with the power without realizing it. i can’t speak to whether the show truly *intended* people to get that impression from the story, but at least one non-reader was able to make that conclusion based on the information the show had provided up to that point!

time for forsaken speculation! i was hoping to analyze all the statues and see if i could figure out who they all were, but yeah, i got nothing lmao all i know is that there are 8 total and it seems to be 4 men and 4 women. so let’s make some guesses based on those numbers!

the women: i feel pretty confident that it will be lanfear, graendal, moghedien, and semirhage. mesaana's activities would be the easiest to be absorbed by another forsaken or cut altogether, and she simply is far less memorable and iconic than the others. lanfear, graendal, and moghedien are all shown to be talented with TAR, and all of them are alive and have an Activity Gap around the time that mesaana is most relevant. i don’t really think that graendal would vibe with infiltrating the white tower (or maybe that’s just what she would want me to think!), but i could easily see either lanfear or moghedien. and seeing as both of them don’t do much during the last battle and their endgame fates are respectively TAR defeat and seanchan enslavement, it’d be easy to sub one of them in as egwene’s adversary who gets defeated in her pre-last-battle TAR battle (if that makes the show). i could also see making just the black ajah responsible for the strife in the tower and not an actual forsaken.

the men: ishamael ofc, and demandred, sammael, rahvin, and asmodean will duke it out for the final 3 spots. this is harder to say who could be easiest to cut, so let’s weigh our options.

demandred: it would be pretty easy to cut him since he’s only really relevant in AMOL, and they could just axe shara altogether and say that that continent doesn’t even exist in this verse. and then taim could be the one to wreak havoc on the battlefield and kill gawyn, which would make egwene’s killing of taim feel much more like poetic cinema. however, demandred is my favorite forsaken and i don’t want him to be cut! there’s also the real possibility that the show will go for taimandred since the books set it up so perfectly and didn’t follow through, so that would be a good way to keep demandred in the show and bulk up his role in the earlier seasons.

sammael: the most obvious solution would be to merge him and demandred since they have the same personality of being obsessed with/jealous of LTT, and demandred is the gucci to sammael’s walmart in that respect, so if one of them had to go i would want it to be sammael. another reason to cut sammael is that it’s basically just a quicker and less emotionally significant version of rahvin’s defeat. the moridin/balefire thing could happen with rahvin in caemlyn and we could just axe sammael and illian.

rahvin: i think that caemlyn being under control of a forsaken is too crucial to cut, as caemlyn is a Home Base and thus this plotline has tons of significance to a number of main characters, namely elayne, rand, and gawyn. (i do kinda think morgase will actually be killed by rahvin in the show since she doesn’t make any huge plot contributions for the rest of the series, and her actually being dead will give more weight to gawyn’s hatred of rand (i initially typed “rand’s hatred of rand” because my brain was ahead of my fingers and then was like okay that wasn’t actually what i meant but it’s true) as well as elayne’s arc of coming into her own as a leader without relying on her mom. plus the show will probably want to cut down on the number of characters wherever it can for the sake of streamlining/simplifying the story and saving money on actors.) and the forsaken who is holding caemlyn getting balefired by rand also feels pretty important, as that’s his first Real Big Balefire Use and also lays the groundwork for “not even the dark one can bring back a balefired forsaken, so we should balefire all of them,” so this would preclude that forsaken being able to crop up later on in the story and take on someone else’s activities. so i do feel that this plotline doesn’t have leeway like the other male forsaken’s do, and thus rahvin will have to stay.

asmodean: potentially controversial statement, but i think asmodean would be easy to cut. he’s important for only 1.5 books, and the only thing he does is teach rand how to use saidin, which any other male channeler could do. sammael and rahvin are busy at this time, so demandred could teach rand and then disappear mysteriously and reappear later in the series. however, it would be difficult to explain why demandred would be willing to teach rand since he’s not a lame ass coward like asmodean. the other option which i think could really work is that taim enters the story earlier and teaches rand, which would be a natural lead-in to rand giving him control of teaching the asha’man. or rand could just not have a teacher at all until he starts learning from LTT. but it IS a really fun and interesting dynamic to have rand and a forsaken working together ish, and pretty unique in the series, so it would be a shame if this was cut or if the teaching role was given to the ostensibly-not-evil taim. UPDATE: one of the statues has a little guitar, so asmodean has definitely made it into the show.

overall, i would most want sammael to be cut and am leaning towards it as the most likely, but i think demandred is also a real possibility, and asmodean would be easy to cut but they probably won’t since he has such a unique role in the story compared to the rest of the villains.

will anything ever be more romantic than rand pulling a sword he doesn’t know how to use on a full ass aes sedai and warder to protect mat?

if i hadn’t already been spoiled that rand was tdr at this point in my first watch i FULLY would’ve believed they were setting up dragon mat and warder rand. the vibes are there!!!!! rand and lan having a warder faceoff to defend their respective channelers!!!

“bless his heart he tries” rand al’thor: a summary

rand looks like such a confused, scared puppy after the exorcism, i just wanna wrap him in blankets!

i wonder if the rand-moiraine convo was filmed post-barney’s-departure in order to set up the whole “moiraine not trying too hard to grab mat through the waygate since she thinks he’d choose the shadow if he was the dragon and went to the eye” thing. i think it probably had to be, or if it wasn’t, then they unintentionally set that up perfectly!

prayer circle for Elayne Bath Scenes in future seasons. they are an integral part of her character and of my enjoyment of the story!

i love the contrast between rand (and nynaeve) hiding out for days trying to avoid moiraine and keep her from finding out mat has something weird going on vs. egwene telling her all about perrin’s eyes and the wolves as soon as she sees her. really illustrates the different levels of trust they have in moiraine specifically and sets up that growing divide in their levels of trust of aes sedai in general.

no life, no love of one’s own, nothing but the seat.................the amyrlin not being allowed to date in the show verse has fascinating and delicious implications for gawene!! not to MENTION that “a wisdom never weds” and egwene having to choose between her personal and professional desires right off the bat in 1x01 now becomes foreshadowing. i think that this change (if i’m right in interpreting that line as meaning it is Genuinely Forbidden for amyrlins to have romantic relationships?) will be another instance of adding more weight and depth to a character/relationship. i personally always enjoyed egwene and gawyn’s relationship struggles and found both sides sympathetic, but i know most of you think gawyn is just being a brat about his girlfriend having more power than him (but that’s not true okay! it’s HARD to date the wizard pope!), so if this layer were to be added, wherein gawyn is not only struggling with dating the wizard pope but also with the fact that he can only have a relationship with her if he keeps it a secret from everybody, it would bolster up his side of the conflict because that WOULD be a lot for egwene to ask of him. just as her putting her job at risk to have that secret relationship would be a lot for him to ask of her. and so it will be all the more romantic when they both decide fuck it let’s make this work!

ok here ends my homophobic moment of making a moiraine/siuan scene all about egwene/gawyn, sorry everybody (no i’m not, i fucking love gawene man)

egwene looking at the amyrlin seat!!!!!! 😭❤️

still can’t get over the PERFECT acting that is egwene’s face journey during “you’re the strongest channeler we’ve seen in a thousand years..............nynaeve al’meara” djfkgj iconic!! i love her your honor!! and nynaeve is also perfect in this scene!

really curious to see how moiraine’s exile oath will come into play later! that’s the joy of the show inventing new plotlines, we readers still have fun surprises waiting for us! although i suppose moiraine never goes anywhere close to tar valon in the books again, so it may not be relevant anyway.

haha now i can see why people fussed about the oath rod being used for this purpose and wondered what the fuck the teleportation painting is and how it works (a ter’angreal whose original intended purpose is unknown, i assume), but i just do not care about lore/magic system rules and will never mind the show bending rules or inventing new ones, for the most part. i guess the abusing of the oath rod - i.e. it being used for something besides the 3 oaths and only the 3 oaths - does become important later in the books, but christ alive i hope they cut the black ajah hunters subplot from the show.

moiraine going “at first i didn’t trust you, but now that i know you, i...............[changes the subject]” is SO iconic jkdjfgh

me @ certain readers re: the opening of waygates: SHUT UP ABOUT AVENDESORA LEAVES!!! SHUT UP ABOUT AVENDESORA LEAVES!!!

who caaaaaaaaaares if channeling can also open waygates. i literally didn’t even remember about the leaves in the books until i saw people complaining about their absence in the show recently. and waygates are barely relevant after book 2 anyway! plus, rafe did say that the leaves opening waygates is still canon in the show and will likely be shown in s2.

baby rand’s anguished little face when he realizes mat stayed behind!!!! i’ll never get over it!!!!!

and [perrin watching the ferryman voice] he’s gone

even after having read the books, i have 0 problem with mat dipping here. a) the actor left so What Else could they do, and this was a very smooth way to write him out of the last 2 episodes all things considered. they unintentionally set it up really well in earlier episodes with mat wanting to return home to his sisters, especially 3 and the convo with dana. my coworker who watched the show but hadn’t read the books was surprised when i explained this behind the scenes info to him because mat staying behind came off like a planned plot beat to him. b) it will make even more sense if they say in season 2 that mat’s still connected to the dagger and it was drawing him back to tar valon to find it. c) so what if mat isn’t the perfect “hero who says he’s not a hero but always does the right thing” already in s1? this will give him an opportunity for character development! which it sounds like they are indeed going for in s2 based on donal’s comments about mat’s s2 character arc. and d) eotw mat is a little bitchboy who absolutely would have dipped if moiraine and/or rand hadn’t kept him on a toddler leash at all times.

1x07 cold open!!!!! incredible showstopping spectacular!!!!! absolutely the best action sequence of the season and one of the best scenes overall. it sets the bar SO HIGH for aiel as warriors, and i absolutely can’t wait to see more in future seasons. imagine ayoola as aviendha fighting like that...........i am so ready to thirst 🥵

and i love what a repudiation of the Martyred Mother Of The Chosen One trope tigraine is. she is in the books too, i suppose, but actually seeing her fight onscreen and die violently of battle wounds rather than pass away beautifully and tragically in childbirth hits different than reading it.

people who complained about her not being veiled the whole time are so silly. if anything, it’s actually MORE impactful to see that rule broken here - she had her veil off, she didn’t want to fight, she was just looking for a safe place to give birth, and her attackers gave her no choice but to keep on fighting without even having time to pull her veil back up.

rand’s inner Mat Stan #1 comes out in full force!! his “he wants to fuck mat so bad it makes him look stupid” episode! the way this episode served so much cauthor when mat wasn’t even in it! man, rand’s sense of abandonment by mat hurts so good. they trauma-bonded so hard while traveling alone together for all that time and then mat LEFT and rand feels adrift!!!

rand vs. moiraine and egwene re: mat in this episode is literally “you don’t know all the facts” “which are?” “i love him” bless his HEART!!!!!! it’s giving “oh, mat kidnapped you, seanchan empress? well, i’m sure he had a good reason.”

i looooooove the change to machin shin! give me personalized psychological torment that sheds light on each character’s deepest insecurities over generic spooky talk of blood and gore any day! and of course it ends up being a really good vehicle for the reveal of rand being tdr.

egwene gifted child impostor syndrome you are so important to me!!!!!

nynaeve apeshit power blasts you are so important to me!!!!! i’ve watched the season 3 times by now and every single time i tear up both at this one and the episode 4 one.

amalisa’s tower backstory was a great addition! it tells us a bit more about how the tower works, hinting that becoming a full aes sedai is difficult and lots of women try but aren’t cut out for it, and also sets her up to have enough experience to lead the circle in the next episode, but also too little experience to keep from getting power-drunk and burning herself and the other women out.

“there is a man they must find. a boy, really.” you didn’t have to come for mat’s life like that moiraine djkfjg you’re already siccing the red ajah on him! i am SO excited to see where this plotline goes. i think it’s pretty safe to say that mat will have a traumatic experience at the hands of the reds (and we know from descriptions of that scene they’ve been showing at cons that at least part of his time at the tower is spent in a cell and suspecting that liandrin wants to kill him) and this will inform his fear of the power, which is a crucial aspect of his character, but one that i always felt was NOT sufficiently explained in the books, at all. like yeah, the power would be scary to any non-channeler, but no one else makes it a whole personality trait like mat does lmao. bonus points if moiraine sending the reds after him is learned by rand and becomes a wedge of mistrust between him and moiraine, since by the end of 1x08 he has a much more trusting and positive attitude towards her than he ever does in books 1-5.5, and it would probably be important for both character arcs that the mistrust be maintained in the show (tho i would also love if they just did not do that and had them be mentor-mentee besties for the next few seasons. a girl can dream!)

“what is it? mat?” egwene notices that rand’s upset and, despite the fact that they all went through psychological torment an hour ago, her FIRST thought is that he’s upset because of mat leaving 🥺 matrandgwene V (with rand in the middle and sibling-spouses mat and egwene) is SUCH a good polycule actually

min.........................................................

brace yourself for a long rambling section!

min is 10000000000000% my BIGGEST regret about reading the books! she is so cool and funny and chill and respectful of other people’s privacy in the show, and my opinion of her was neutral to positive, and then the books made me despise her! and i’m fairly confident that most of the things i most hate about her in the books will not be a thing in the show (her changing herself for rand and insisting on dressing in a way she finds uncomfortable but thinks he would find sexy (and she never realizes that he already liked her the way she used to dress and behave), her possessiveness of him and unwillingness to share when elayne and avi are totally selfless and onboard, her using her viewing to bully them into letting her have a piece of their pie (to use her own gross metaphor), the way she puts way less effort into setting up the polycule than elayne and avi do yet gets to reap all the rewards while they get almost no time with rand, her utter lack of storyline, character arc, personality, interests, or goals outside of Being Rand’s Girlfriend, etc etc etc) and so i most likely would never ever have had a problem with show!min if i’d never read the books.

that being said, i still don’t have a problem with show!min - when i sit back and enjoy her scenes in a vacuum. but the second that thoughts of book!min start worming their way into my mind, i become arthur clenching fist meme djkfjg luckily, this min is so vastly different from my detested book!min that it’s pretty easy to separate the two *while i’m watching*. once i stop watching and go back to my regularly scheduled programming WOT Thoughts, book!min takes over again and i hate the character again. i’m really hoping that by the time min becomes a bigger player in the show, it’ll have been long enough since i read the books that show!min will be able to take over as my mind’s primary min - show!perrin already went right back to being my mind’s primary perrin (and many/most other characters too, but using perrin as the example since i disliked him in the books but am fond of him in the show), so hopefully the same will happen with show!min when we have her for more than 3 scenes. of course, i had significant enough show!perrin screentime before meeting his book counterpart that he was able to maintain a hold on me throughout, and i never HATED book!perrin like i hate book!min, mostly just found him annoying/boring.

going along with the min and perrin comparisons, i saw a good post once explaining how show!perrin is the person that book!perrin claims to be but isn’t i.e. genuinely thoughtful and slow to act, while book!perrin claims he is but then often blurts out other people’s secrets and flies off the handle, etc. and the narrative doesn’t really feel intentional about this disconnect between How Perrin Sees Himself and How Perrin Actually Behaves in the same way that it does for mat and nynaeve. the same is true for book!min. she claims to be a mature and worldly woman, a jaded city slicker, someone who minds her own business and never spills other people’s business around, someone far too sensible to throw her life away and become a fool for a man. but in reality, book!min is a fairly naive and inexperienced girl from a tiny backwater “city” (large town) who constantly blabs other people’s secrets and shares viewings about a person with people who aren’t that person and starts acting like a 14-year-old with her first boyfriend once she decides to pursue rand and gives up her entire life to follow him around and curl her hair and dress “sexy” for him. and the narrative never acknowledges this disconnect.

show!min, though? she hits every point on the first list in reality, not just in her own head. she is actually a mature and worldly woman from a big city (and she comes off as enough older/more mature than rand that her going “but he’s too young for me!” would actually be believable, unlike book!min who’s like 2 years older than him and way less mature), she’s a jaded and sensible customer service worker who is Done With Your Shit, and there’s no way THIS min would sacrifice every scrap of her own dignity just to get rand to sleep with her. there is also no way that rand will be her first time having sex, that was one of the most unbelievable parts of the books lmao rj’s own No Sex Until Marriage (or until you’re with the person who will end up being your life partner) cultural underpinnings came through too strongly for every single character except mat. anyway, show!min even says “people’s secrets are their business, no one else’s” when the gang goes into the bar in 1x08 to ask her what she told moiraine about rand and then actually holds her ground and succeeds in not telling them anything, and i was like wow book!min could Never!! and unless i’m misunderstanding her later scene with rand, she actually did know that he was tdr (or at least the ~Special One~ moiraine was looking for) in that first scene but DID NOT TELL moiraine and instead waited for rand to come to her on his own so she could tell him in private and let HIM decide what to do with the information. book!min could never!

and the fact that Certain Readers whined about her casting and claimed that she’s ~too old~ and ~not hot enough~ (and not white enough lbr) already tells me that the show is taking her in the right direction, i.e. they’re not just gonna go for Sexy Lamp Hero’s Girlfriend Min using the most conventionally attractive (but still Tomboyish And Not Like Other Girls, In A Sexy Way) actress they could find. and thank god for that!! kae alexander brings so much more personality to min in 3 scenes than she ever had in 14 books, and she is so HOT god! if the show can make ME thirsty for min and make certain book!min lovers complain that she isn’t hot, then you know it’s doing something right!

it’s probably the queer vibes that are turning me onto her and certain straight male book!min lovers off of her, isn’t it lmao book!min is arguably more painfully heterosexual than book!perrin (at least he has the occasional mildly homoerotic moment with rand) but show!min gives off IMMENSE queer vibes. i could definitely see the show making her date elayne and/or avi in addition to rand! (and of course elayne and avi dating each other is basically a guarantee.) i also am 90% sure i remember rafe saying something about “people with no gender” in the context of romance and queer relationships in the show (i think it was the q&a where avi’s casting was revealed) which made me wonder if we could perhaps get canon nonbinary min? although i think she’s referred to as a woman in these episodes. still, maybe she could have a lil arc where being forced to be elmindreda in the tower makes her realize Why she’s so uncomfortable with wearing dresses and being treated as female. who knows! this is just wild speculation on my part, but i so would love to see it.

okay so WHAT IS THIS RAND BABY VIEWING????? that does Not look like a randlayne or avirand baby!!! that better not be a rand/min baby!!! i find it incredibly hard to believe that the show, with its progressive attitudes, would pull THIS level of Babies Ever After, by making one of the few women who doesn’t end up having babies or ever show much interest in having babies in the books (bar a couple “oooooh i wonder if rand will knock ME up too!” comments that always felt forced and ooc to me) end up having a baby. my only hesitation is that if they were to split the polycule up into rand/min and elayne/avi, then maaaaaybe min might get the Dragon Reborn’s Babymama arc? but i do have a very hard time seeing the show go that route (esp since the 3 women viewing and the blueprint of alanna’s polycule and rafe’s comments about polyamory in the show seem to be a preeeeeetty good indicator that he’s intending to keep the polycule, though i won’t FULLY stop being nervous until i see it with my own eyes lmao) and elayne’s pregnancy is pretty important to HER arc, specifically, in large part due to the viewing making her take bigger risks (and one could also argue that her pregnancy is politically important during the succession in that it gives her the stability of having heirs already on the way), so i don’t think they could/would cut that or give it to min instead. but if not a rand/min baby, then what the fuck is that baby viewing all about???? i remember on one of my book recaps somebody speculated that it’s a Metaphorical rand/min baby, i.e. it’s the viewing that tells min she’s going to fall in love with rand, but the baby is just a symbol of their future romantic connection rather than a literal baby that they’re going to have together. i could buy that! though i think if that was indeed the intention, it could lead to a lot of false expectations from viewers that rand is gonna knock up min at some point. or maybe the baby is a metaphorical baby that has nothing to do with any of rand’s love interests? hit me with your baby viewing interpretations!

speaking of min’s viewings, it’s interesting that they seem to be much more abundant here than in the books - she has multiple quips about how she knew someone was about to come into the bar. of course, they could just be quips, but at least one of them (when she says “you’re gonna want to move” to a patron just before the gang storms in in episode 8) does seem to be a genuine glimpse of the future, as that patron has no idea about her gift, unlike moiraine and rand, so she wouldn’t be making a joke to him about it. it could also be just some small, comedic dialogue meant more for the audience, just to illustrate that Hey, She Can See The Future, rather than a real indication that she is actually having THAT many viewings. i will keep an eye on this in future seasons!

and we get to The Fight!!!!! time to pull up the diagram i made upon first watch of that scene, which i still stand by and can’t wait to add to when more characters enter the mix (my only edit is that mat is Definitely in love with perrin, not just maybe a little bit):

marcus rutherford, you did NOT have to get right up in josha’s face and stare at his mouth while saying “the only WOMAN i’ve ever loved was my wife,” but you did and we’re all grateful for it. inspired.

also rand goes to BAT for mat here, damn okay!!! he is like “egwene you’re my girlfriend but you do NOT talk shit about my boyfriend”! he just comes out with a whole ass essay about how wonderful mat is when literally nobody asked! in all seriousness, this is, of course, rand projecting about a hell of a lot of things. but also he loves mat.

on a rewatch, there were definitely signs in 1x01 that perrin had a crush on egwene, although i didn’t pick up on them at all during my first watch. and while i remember being initially disappointed and annoyed that they pulled this twist when i’d been so enjoying perrin and egwene as a rare example of a deep but purely platonic m/f relationship, i think that the fallout of the fight goes on to show that it’s really Not That Big A Deal and wasn’t intended to be. when rand and egwene are making up, they immediately brush the perrin situation aside - it wasn’t even remotely the real reason that either of them were upset during that scene. then in the next episode, perrin shows no jealousy of egwene saying she loves rand and even says that he loves him too, and the two of them have a making up moment that’s just as sweet and platonic as all their past interactions were. at most, i think perrin had a teenage crush on egwene and perhaps was initially with laila to get over her, but grew to truly love laila in a deeper way than he’d ever felt for egwene, but laila still knew about the crush and felt jealous (she does say “i know” when perrin tells her he loves her and to me it felt like she was being truthful, like she really does know that perrin really does love her and she acknowledges that but can’t help feeling jealous anyway), and so of course perrin would feel guilty about it and laila’s death compounded that guilt. tldr: perrin’s crush on egwene did exist at one point or does still exist, but it’s a small background piece of his guilt over laila’s death and on its own is almost as unimportant to him as it is to egwene and rand.

that hysterical and angry and hurt and tearful laugh josha does in this scene? boy oh boy, i can’t wait to see him take on taint-influenced rand!

what’s more iconic than nynaeve stirring up drama between the other three and then peacing out to go get some dick? queen shit! good for her!

hilarious that on first watch i was like “aww i wish it had been a slower burn” when lanaeve slept together and then i read the books and it turns out their eotw pacing makes their s1 pacing look glacial

but i’m glad they fucked and that the show did away with nynaeve’s shame surrounding sex! it broke my heart in WH when she had some thought about how she was too embarrassed to talk to HER OWN HUSBAND about sex or something like that. and the show very much can still do the arc of lan trying to push her away For Her Own Good even though they’ve already had sex - in fact, that will make lan’s guilt over ~giving into temptation~ and giving nynaeve false hope for a future together and nynaeve’s hurt and frustration over him pushing her away hit all the harder.

randgwene my beloveds 😭😭😭 “i will always stand by you, you know that. no matter what happens. no matter what comes.” 😭😭😭😭 i am going to make so many randgwene in s1 vs. later seasons gifsets someday, i just know it.

rand: do you think i’d let someone else be your warder? gawyn:

i love that we never see nynaeve with one fewer stitch of clothing, but the post-coital scene opens on her rebraiding her hair, and for her that’s an even greater indication of past intimacy (and of now putting her walls back up) than seeing her redressing.

obligatory #RandThirstposting for that shot of him getting out of bed

dragonmount is still a fun mystery for show-onlys! or i, at least, was like “rand remembers that mountain so that means he’s TDR................wait but he was a baby??? how does he remember the mountain??” the dragonmount + LTT connection (and the extent to which rand shares LTT’s memories) is still to come!

min was “a kid” when she saw tam in tar valon and had a viewing of him finding baby rand (her first ever viewing), so show!min must be somewhere in the range of 6-12 years older than rand. we love to see it!!! i am always relentlessly asking for more older woman/younger man romances in media (and like i mentioned above, even now when they’re both adults, min does look like/vibe like she’s a fair bit older than him, which i love)

tigraine’s face when tam puts his sword down and offers his hand 😭😭😭😭😭 i choke up every time!!! that actress was so absolutely fantastic without having a single line of dialogue. and i really love the change of tam being there and helping her in her final moments and perhaps giving her reassurance that her baby will be safe, rather than her having to give birth alone and die alone thinking her baby will also die alone in the snow, and tam just stumbles across them later.

and we get the 3 beautiful women viewing, which rand thinks is a joke but we know isn’t. (unless they’re splitting the polycule into 2 monogamous ships and it’ll turn out this line was just a comedic easter egg a la mat claiming he was a horse trader, which his dad actually is in the books but isn’t in the show. but that would be extremely cruel of them, not to mention they would know they were deliberately setting people up to have false expectations for a major plotpoint, so i have to believe it’s a legitimate viewing.) i really hope that min does NOT share this viewing with elayne or aviendha in the show (or rand, tho i don’t think he ever learns about it in the books anyway), or at least not until the 4 of them are already in a relationship and then she can go “haha guys i actually foresaw that this would happen!” and they can all laugh about it. but in the books, as i mentioned above, i hated how it felt like min was using this viewing to bully elayne into letting her make a move on elayne’s boyfriend when she went to caemlyn with the embassy, and in general, i felt the viewing was used as too much of a crutch for rj to get the polycule together. even worse, it wasn’t actually necessary because he already had a much better way to make it happen - one polycule member comes from a culture that practices polyamory and thus can explain the concept to the other members and get them onboard with it - baked into the story and just used the viewing instead, mostly. it would feel so much better if the 4 of them come to an arrangement on their own terms because they actually want to, and because aviendha explained to them that this type of relationship is possible, rather than just because min said fate said so.

on the other hand, min fighting fate re: falling in love with rand is the only semblance of a character arc she has, so they’ll probably keep it in the show (and hopefully do more with it and have her eventual coming to fall in love with rand against her better judgment feel natural, like aviendha’s arc, rather than her just randomly changing her mind one day and deciding to throw herself at rand with all she’s got) and i’m not sure how else they could make the audience aware that min has had this viewing if not by having her tell another character about it. hmmmmm. i guess they could have her complaining about it to unconscious rand like at the end of TGH.

maybe the third beautiful woman is actually egwene, maybe the viewing is about rand’s past and future girlfriends. here’s how min/rand can still lose-

actually now that i say it, egwene in the polycule is a fascinating idea...........i remember that the egwene/rand/elayne vibes were really strong in TGH/TDR! egwene was constantly thinking about how pretty elayne is! and when they met bain and chiad, egwene was all blushy about the thought of sharing rand with elayne in bed! and she has good chemistry with aviendha in TSR/TFOH. and she and mat would be excellent sibling-spouses. and gawyn obviously needs to get fucked by rand. it all works! i feel like the show’s strengthening of randgwene is gonna make egwene/rand/elayne into another “ship i wouldn’t have thought too much about in the books but is fire in the show” next season. i can’t wait!

nynaeve apologizing voluntarily for her own wrongdoing! her and egwene joking about sex! book!nynaeve is shaking!

I’ve Read All 14 Books And I Still Don’t Understand Why Readers Hated 1x08 So Much, And At This Point I’m Too Afraid To Ask

even when people are generously like “oh it was only because it was hindered so much by covid” i’m like i didn’t even notice any sort of quality drop?? it’s just as good as the other 7 episodes to me?? maybe it’s my show-first blinders still on too strongly (i do remember that after the episode aired it felt like there was a sharp divide between most show-onlys loving it and most readers hating it)

lews therin is SO hot!! jesus christ!! no wonder all the forsaken have been obsessed with him for 3000 years! and i love how he has his baby in the room while he’s talking politics with a coworker, you never see that with male characters. i remember seeing a long time ago an excellent post about the show’s commitment to Men As Caretakers (this, mat with his sisters, rand with mat and his dreams of being a stay-at-home dad, lan with moiraine, etc). boy it’s gonna hurt in a future scene when we see LTT realize he killed that baby!

also very interesting to me that in our one scene of him thus far, he’s anchored in his connection to his child rather than to ilyena. this and rand’s own beefed up interest in having kids compared to how he was in the books gives me hope that elayne’s pregnancy will actually affect rand’s life in some way! “guy fated to die any day now finds out that he has babies on the way whom he’ll never get to meet” is probably one of the biggest Wasted Emotional Opportunities in the books (and there are A LOT).

“i love him, perrin” “so do i” ef4 polycule is REAL yall

i love rand asking moiraine if it was hard to leave lan behind, he’s trying so hard to bond with his mom and she shuts him down so fast

ugh daniel and zoe’s chemistry is so GOOD!!! i’m definitely predicting that nynaeve blaming moiraine for rand’s “death” will end up causing strain between her and lan and being one of the things that pushes them apart again for their mutual pining slowburn phase (in addition to lan wanting to push her away For Her Own Good)

ishamael: [reveals his actual face] rand and the audience: oh no he’s hot!

love that he just starts caressing rand’s face within 1 minute of meeting him, that really is the vibe in the books. also him pouting that lews therin is stupid in this age and not even TRYING to be a worthy archenemy! i love this actor so much, he brings a sort of playfulness to ishamael that’s so fun to watch. and that’s the essence of many of the forsaken, sure they’re villains but they’re Fun villains (unlike the whitecloaks and seanchan). can’t wait to see more of him and meet some of the others next season!

IS THIS FAT LITTLE MAN ANGREAL MY BELOVED?????? he doesn’t look especially fat, and moiraine says it’s a sa’angreal, but i’m choosing to believe it’s him!!!! i actually don’t remember at all where rand got him from in the books lmao not like i just read them or anything. did he get fat little man angreal from rhuidean, or was that the choedan kal?

nynaeve being unable to listen to the wind is because of her block oooooh i’m smart and know things now

haha i feel like on first watch i, like rand, didn’t entirely realize moiraine would be included in the “anyone who goes to the eye and isn’t the dragon will die” until they have that conversation now. she just felt invincible to me! i love her fond little “oh my stupid son” look when he tries to tell her to stay behind.

okay so WHAT is the deal with the eye in the show verse???? all along i assumed that the characters are correct in saying this is the dark one’s prison and that the show got rid of shayol ghul altogether and moved the prison here, but then more recently i saw readers all saying that show!eye is actually just a seal and and not the prison itself. so is that true and people in-universe just...........don’t know that shayol ghul exists? bc iirc moiraine pretty definitively says that the eye is the dark one’s prison. how would she not know about shayol ghul??? one instance where i am now MORE confused after having read the books than i was upon first watch lmao

so, okay, it would make sense if they think the eye is the dark one’s prison and they’re sealing it up but it turns out it’s actually only a seal which ishamael tricked them into breaking, and i think they only decided to go to the eye in ep 6 when siuan had a dream saying moiraine had to bring the dragon there, so maybe ishamael planted that dream to trick them into coming to the eye and breaking the seal? but HOW WOULD MOIRAINE NOT KNOW THAT THE PRISON IS ACTUALLY AT SHAYOL GHUL????? i was really gunning for them to have gotten rid of shayol ghul completely (it always felt like a mordor knockoff to me) and made the eye the prison, because it would be such a fabulous full circle moment if rand came back here to fight TDO in the last episode of the last season.

rand’s dream life 😭😭😭 the lighting!! he is such a soft sunshine baby!! hair glowing in a conveniently placed light source!! the lord of the morning!!

and the actual baby is THE cutest baby i’ve ever seen in my entire life oh my god

and rand HOLDING the baby??? smiling at her??? +10000 psychic damage. #RandThirstposting. i think that every season should include rand holding a baby, as fanservice to me specifically. rand holding babies, shirtless rand, and elayne bath scenes are all i need out of this show.

ishamael concocting the most tempting situation for rand he can think of: oh and i’ll make sure he knows specifically that mat is around and an integral part of his life, that’ll do the trick

the real answer is probably that mat’s presence in particular is important to rand right now due to how shaken he is by mat’s abandonment. but also, rand is in love with him and wants him to be his spouse and co-parent right along with egwene. matrandgwene truthers rise!

what do you guys think this dream stuff is? like, how is ishamael doing it? is it some kind of TAR or dreamshard shit (i did not understand dreamshards in the books lmao) or is it like an actual manipulating of the pattern into showing possible futures the way the dark one and rand do in AMOL?

me on first watch: this has felt like such an equal society all along, why would they suddenly decide that only the men are in the army here and the women stay behind to protect the city? so annoying

me on this watch: wow, look at the women actually wearing armor and loading weapons! incredible! the books could never!

it IS still annoying though, i really don’t know why they decided to keep that one relic of book worldbuilding when all the stupid Women Can’t Be Soldiers stuff was eschewed everywhere else in the season.

“how can we sit here and do nothing” “i’m standing” ICONIC!!!!!! top 10 loial moments. actually every single line loial has is a top 10 loial moment.

moiraine cradling rand in her lap a la mary cradling jesus in the pieta statue, except she’s holding a knife to his neck, CHEF’S KISS

people really got pressed when agelmar died? i could not care less about that dude. and i’m all for cutting down on the number of military general characters lmao there’s way too many in the books (i think it should be only bashere and mat in the show, and MAYBE bryne only because he’s important to egwene’s and especially gawyn’s arcs, but NO ituralde)

people getting pressed that a circle of 5 or 6 women, two of whom are extremely strong in the power and one of whom (the one leading the circle) has received a good deal of formal training, were able to take out the entire trolloc army by themselves But having no problem whatsoever with the book version of a single man who has absolutely no clue what the fuck he is doing being able to take out the entire trolloc army by himself - misogyny, plain and simple!

even so, thankfully most people i’ve seen have agreed that it was good that the show split up the eotw final battle stuff so that non-rand characters could have something to do. and rand has many many power blasts in his future, i’m A-okay with him losing this one! especially since it felt like a symptom of rj not knowing exactly where he was going or how many books he was going to write and rand’s power levels/ability thus being repeatedly adjusted and retconned throughout the early books.

i looooooove josha’s acting while rand is channeling, you can see so clearly both the ecstasy and the taint of saidin affecting him (and it makes you believe that he really MIGHT go mad with power and break the dark one’s chains rather than strengthen them)

WHAT ABOUT WHAT SHE WANTS!!!!!!!!!! KING ICON LEGEND STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

the way this perfectly parallels his final book confrontation with the dark one when he gives up a seemingly ideal future because it takes away the agency of the people involved 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 given what a Theme agency and lack thereof is in rand’s overall arc, i love that that seed is planted early on here.

here we have rand giving up his dream life with a wife and a baby and a cozy home because a) it’s not what egwene would want and b) he has a more important duty to the world that must come first. so if the final episode of the show doesn’t end with rand cozy in caemlyn with his wives and babies, finally getting to have that dream life for real now that his duty to the world is complete, i WILL riot!!!!!

back to the circle, which seems to be the most hated aspect of this episode. as i said above, hating that they’re able to destroy the whole army is just plain misogyny. it’s book canon that a circle of multiple channelers is extremely powerful, and amalisa has tower training, and we saw in TGS that a circle of novices led by one trained aes sedai can do serious damage (doubly so when you consider that nynaeve and egwene’s power levels seem to have been bumped up in the show so that they’re unusually powerful for any channeler rather than only unusually powerful For A Girl - and hating that is, again, misogyny - and thus amalisa basically has the power of two nuclear bombs at her disposal).

second, people in the circle can get killed against their will if the leader draws too much from them. this is obviously a change from book lore, and i absolutely love it! circles are super OP in the books yet bizarrely underused, so adding in this huge counterbalance and high risk makes it make sense that channelers don’t just whip out a massive circle all the time to solve all their problems. it will also lend a ton more credence to women being afraid to link with men and vice versa later in the series, and make the level of trust on display when they do link together that much stronger (also, the show had better get rid of “only men can lead mixed gender circles” or SO HELP ME GOD lmao). and just think of how much tenser the cleansing of saidin will be when there’s a real risk that rand might draw too much from nynaeve and kill her and she wouldn’t be able to drop out of the circle to prevent him from doing so!!! and honestly, now that i think about it, it doesn’t even make sense that this isn’t a thing in the books? if anyone can kill themselves by drawing too much, why would a circle create a magic barrier to prevent someone else drawing too much from them, when no such thing exists for somebody channeling on their own?

and finally, egwene healing nynaeve from the brink of death when egwene isn’t supposed to be good at healing with the power. this complaint, i can see now that i’ve read the books, but i still just don’t really care idk it doesn’t bother me. i know this scene was hugely affected by covid restrictions (rafe said that the plan was for egwene to heal nynaeve with herbs/cpr and her wisdom training, and they didn’t find out until the day of shooting that the actresses weren’t allowed to get close enough to make that happen) and so i cut it tons of slack for that, and also, god knows eotw is full of ideas and occurrences that ended up being dropped or contradicted altogether later in the series as rj figured stuff out while he went along, so i don’t mind at all if the show going forward just ignores that this happened haha and they could also explain retroactively that nynaeve wasn’t that badly hurt (her burning makeup IS way less drastic than amalisa’s and the other women’s who were actually killed) and thus it didn’t actually require all that much skill in power healing from egwene. there’s a very clear visual contrast between egwene’s small wisp of power here and nynaeve’s blinding power blast earlier, so little risk of people mistakenly thinking that egwene is just as strong in healing as nynaeve is. egwene’s healing here looks more equivalent to kerene’s, a green with presumably no particular skill/strength in healing.

very interested in how the hunt for the horn will go down! from what little tidbits we’ve seen from s2, it seems it’s just going to be perrin and loial while rand and mat are doing their own thing. i would love for perrin to be the one to blow the horn since he needs more to do and in the books mat doesn’t even blow it at the last battle so what does it matter, but i’m sure they’ll probably find a way for mat to be the one to blow it at falme anyway.

and rand enacts his plan to wander off and let his friends think he’s dead! every time i think of the “babygirl you don’t even know how roads work” world heritage post.

i can’t WAIT to see the others react to this in the next season!!!!! will they believe moiraine, or will they see through her careful phrasing of only ever saying “he’s gone” rather than “he’s dead”? will they think he’s dead for the entire season until they run into him at falme in the finale (at least i’m assuming that will be the structure and tear and callandor will be pushed to a later season) or will they find out within a couple episodes? will mat cross paths with rand before or after learning about his alleged death and him being TDR?

i’m especially curious about the randgwene trajectory. by the end of the season, we’ve had a switch - rand is the one accepting that he can’t have a future with egwene and letting go of that dream, while egwene has decided that she doesn’t want to leave him behind (although i think in their 1x07 convo she’s probably trying to convince herself that being with rand and being aes sedai can coexist but knows that they can’t really). egwene thinking he’s dead and going through that pain will make a Gentle Falling Out Of Love process much more difficult. on the other hand, when she finds out he’s still alive and made her think he was dead on purpose, maybe she’ll be so mad that she’s like “okay we’re broken up for good i’m over you” djkjfg i do think that by the time they reunite it’s likely they’ll go for the angle of, they’ve both changed too much and they recognize right away they don’t fit together anymore and never can, but it will be a much more emotionally complicated breakup than the book version. particularly since according to book timeline, this should be when rand is getting together with egwene’s best friend! what’s gonna happen with randlayne in the show!!!! i would love love love love for elayne to join the waste crew (so much bonding time with rand AND avi!) since the tanchico plotline is mostly about nynaeve vs. moghedien and elayne isn’t strictly needed for that, and then elayne can go to salidar later with egwene and meet up with nynaeve there for the trips to ebou dar and caemlyn, but it feels pretty unlikely that they’d pull her out of the tanchico plotline and make that just a nynaeve solo roadtrip.

also, the implications these randgwene changes have for gawene! i assume they’ll meet at the white tower, which would be the perfect opportunity to lay the groundwork for their romance (an opportunity the books just completely wasted), but egwene grieving rand at the time will complicate that. perhaps in a good way! i could see gawyn being smitten with her right away but keeping it to himself since he knows that’s not what she needs or wants right now and instead choosing to be a good and supportive friend to her. maybe they establish a nice platonic emotional connection next season that will then develop into a romance when they see each other again later on. another couple that definitely needs more time together early in the series but i’m hard pressed to think of a way to make that happen (since gawyn being left behind at the tower and not knowing where egwene and elayne are is a pretty integral part of his arc). i suppose they could dial back their LOC-era romance into only the beginnings of a spark and a flirtation and save their actual getting together for TGS era since they do spend a lot of time together in the last 3 books, and maybe gawyn defecting to egwene’s army will happen a lot earlier in the show if he’s given significant screentime every season rather than only appearing in 1 prologue scene per book (if that) from books 7-11 lmao

i was editing this post right before i went to bed last night and then i had a dream that i was watching s2 and show!gawyn sucked 😭 i don’t remember what was wrong with him but i remember being heartbroken haha manifesting that NOT to happen next season! it will certainly be interesting to now be in the position of anxiously waiting to see how my beloved book blorbos turn out onscreen rather than just tuning in and meeting my screen blorbos fresh with no prior knowledge of them.

SO glad that the girls are ta’veren in the show. “it’s more empowering for their accomplishments to be their own rather than the pattern influencing stuff” and yet somehow a good chunk of the readers who claim that are also the same ones celebrating the boys’ accomplishments at the expense of egwene’s 🤔 and the girls DO have plenty of ta’veren things happen to them in the books, they’re constantly having unlikely coincidences, people blurting out things they wouldn’t normally say around them, etc. i’m curious how ta’veren will be portrayed in the show, i feel like some of the more obvious “ta’veren is just an in-world lore excuse for Everything Happens To The Protagonists” instances could come off kinda corny in the show haha but we’ll see!

so there definitely IS a seal at the eye that cracked, but is that all the eye is? or is that one big seal on the floor just like the Final Boss seal that will progressively get more and more cracked as the small individual seals get destroyed, and the dark one really is imprisoned here at the eye? or ooooh maybe the eye IS a prison, but for the FORSAKEN rather than for the dark one, hence moiraine’s misinformation that the dark one is also imprisoned here?

the seanchan aesthetic here and in the s2 sneak previews is fantastic. i really like how colorful they are, avoiding the “villains all in black” visual cliche and instead going crazy over the top, as the seanchan should be. and the mouth coverings on the damane is a very chilling touch! and i love that they’re speaking a different language, most unrealistic part of the books was the fact that apparently the whole entire world (not only every single country in the westlands, but also seanchan and shara) speaks the same language lmao i do get it for story convenience though, it’s hard to make anything happen if your characters can’t talk to each other. i wonder if it’s the old tongue they’re speaking in the show or a new made-up language. it would kinda vibe if they still spoke the old tongue since they’re so obsessed with preserving hawkwing’s legacy! (if hawkwing was even old tongue times? fuck me if i know anything about wotworld history)

#wot #wot book spoilers

[karihighman]

I didn’t really know if I articulated my thoughts properly or not on the podcast regarding Chenford’s argument/fight scene vs. the breakup scene, so here it goes (abbreviated version on twitter already):

Chenford’s argument scene hit different in my opinion because of how Eric and Melissa’s acting skills made it come across so real and relatable, just like an actual intense convo would go between a couple who were emotionally charged.

There would be voices breaking, hands gesturing, and they would talk over each other at times, which is exactly what happened in their argument scene.

I wish I could find a gif that had the specific moment within the scene that really encapsulates this well, but I can’t. It’s the one part where they’re both talking at the same time almost about Angela vs. Lucy and what they have to lose (if that makes sense!) and it just really elevated the impact of the scene for me.

Not to say that their breakup scene was emotionally powerful too because it totally was! I was teary eyed during my second watch of it. Their breakup scene had me more emotional, but the argument scene was more impactful (if I had to pick a word), in my opinion, that is.

While my Chenford heart hurt watching both of those scenes, The Rookie fan is me was very proud of how well Eric and Melissa acted together and how it truly was on another level of talent for them!! I can totally see why Melissa referred to the argument scene when talking of Lucy going through something different/more vulnerable.

Also, while I did say this clearly on the podcast, I will reiterate here that while I can understand Tim’s reasons for breaking up with Lucy from a psychological standpoint, it doesn’t make it any less frustrating — poor Lucy! It truly did seem to be out of the blue to her & she’s already been through a lot this season professionally, it’s just like, BAM! Here’s a personal issue now. Although now she and Tim will be dealing with personal and professional issues this season! So that’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

I have total faith Tim and Lucy will get back together and be stronger than ever. It’ll just take time to get through this & I’m looking forward to seeing how they navigate things as individuals again instead of solely as a couple.

#the rookie #chenford #lucy chen #tim bradford #chenford breakup #the rookie 6x06 #just my thoughts #argument scene #relationship troubles #angst

[subliminalbo]

Mind Control In the Wild #2: Prince of Darkness

Hotness: 2 Context: 4 Creativity: 3 Final Score: 2.78

Watch this scene here. You can rent or buy Prince of Darkness on Amazon.

You might have seen a clip from this one floating around Youtube as a 240p video with a name like "Female Posession 11" (searching random clips of mind control scenes is a rite of passage for hypnofetishists around the world). Prince of Darkness is a profoundly strange and creepy movie that stands out as one of the more underrated films in John Carpenter's filmography. Since Carpenter is the namesake for my own Carpenter State University, it felt appropriate to cover this one.

In Prince of Darkness, Carpenter blends science fiction themes into biblical myth and the product is a cosmic horror story where Jesus Christ was an alien, Satan is a tank of mind controlling goo, and its followers seek to summon an even more powerful apocalypse god from a mirror dimension. Also Alice Cooper commands an army of zombie homeless people. Carpenter is absolutely cooking here.

All of the action takes place in a Catholic monastery in Los Angeles. For Carpenter, it's a return to smaller, less studio-supported filmmaking. The closed setting kind of gives it an "Assault on Precinct 13 but with zombies" vibe. A group of scientists go to the monastery to research a mysterious tank of seemingly sentient goo that a priest discovered in the basement. The scientists quickly learn that the goo is the literal anti-Christ. While alone in the basement, Susan (played by character actor Anne Marie Howard) is summoned before the tank of goo. A jet of liquid suddenly sprays from the tank into her mouth, making her its first convert.

After that, Susan stalks through the monastery converting her fellow scientists in a stretch that includes some absolute hall of fame mind control acting from Howard. If you dig cosmic horror in your mind control stories, there's great content here.

The next to be converted is Lisa, who awakens to find Susan crawling over her in bed with wide, empty eyes. Lisa seems to misinterpret this as a sexual advance, but before she can protest, another jet of liquid shoots out of Susan's mouth and slides down Lisa's throat.

There's this great moment where another scientist finds Lisa repeatedly typing, "I Live!" before Susan pounces from the corner.

The thing is that these scenes are better mind control fetish content as short clips on Youtube than within the greater context of the film. It's not like Ghostbusters where the possession is deliberately sexy and is ultimately a weird detour in a random week of Dana's life. In Prince of Darkness, the converted are essentially zombies, there's quite a bit of gore, and it's unambiguous that they die when the anti-Christ does, which is a bummer if you watch your movies based on how hot the mind control is. You probably shouldn't though, right?

Despite its mid score on the Subliminalbo Scale, this one has actually been really influential for my own smut which is why it was the second thing I thought of when I started this series. The transmission of a sentient mind controlling goo as a fluid from one person to another was a huge inspiration when I was developing Assimilation.

Carpenter explores mind control in quite a few of his movies (some even less sexy than here, like The Thing, which is not mind control but plays with similar tropes that at least makes it mind control adjacent). If you're looking for hot mind control in a John Carpenter movie, Big Trouble In Little China probably has the best example. Though it wasn't a direct influence on my manips, it features whitewash eyes which is pretty cool. The reason I'm talking about Prince of Darkness instead of Big Trouble In Little China is because the former's had a bigger impact on me as a writer (and the mind control in Big Trouble is comparatively brief and less impactful to the story).

It looks like a lot of Prince of Darkness clips have been taken down from Youtube since I was a weird kid starving for mind control content, but you can find the full scene of Susan's possession on there right now. If you're into cosmic horror, I definitely recommend the movie, but I wouldn't call it essential for someone who wants to see some hot mind control.

#hypnokink #mind control #brainwashed #possession

[iersei]

THANK YOU for being able 2 put it into words on that post..... despite s2 having so much of my favorite characters (terry jr and scary) i just... have struggled so hard with caring since the seasons been in full swing and it feels like the world in s2 isnt taken as like... genuinely enough i guess? and season two is very funny and entertaining but thats... all it is. any emotional arcs feel quickly forgotten & almost not at all drawn out and it feels like a mess with how often characters are just straight up forgotten,,, i love dndads and there was such a great setup for season two that i think just. fell flat in execution. even when nicky came back anthony admitted he called him nick Foster because he wasnt thinking at all about it and didnt care, and like. at a certain point even in a d&d setting you have to care about the characters youre making plot relevant at least a little bit, and suddenly the close family arc had nothing to do with season 1 and instead everything to do with stuff that happened completely offscreen (and again, once the dads were charting around with their kids they were often forgotten & added little to any scenes) just. it all got a little careless.

and im not caught up but ive heard about so much junk that happens in the... less than 10 episodes im behind on?? like i JUST got to the titanic part and it ends, what, 9 episodes later ??? i just wish it was more organized and theyd allowed themselves to like. take their time with things. i know the 20 or whatever episodes of glenns arc in s1 is known as 'too long' or super hard to get through but thats also how it made such an impact!! there was ALOT to get through and a lot happened to the close family. yet when alot happens in s2 its like, well that happened, and in an episode and a half it will never be mentioned again . even supporting npcs especially with a lot of potential dont stick around unlike characters like paeden or walter or even erin who got her own wrap up like. i dont remember the last time anyone even mentioned mae hails. yeah theres a degree that its messy and unorganized because thats how teenagers are but theres only so far that goes. and im pretty forgiving in d&d settings because 90% of what actually happens is up to random chance but theres a difference between 'this isnt good because im not actually writing it, and i dont have total control over this story' versus 'this isnt that good because we're not playing it that good'.

anyways. um. hero oak swallows garcia i hope i see you again soon 👍

I THOUGHT YOU HAD TO BE JOKING ABOUT HOW RECENT THE TITANIC WAS UNTIL I WENT BACK TO CHECK THE EPISODE LIST AND. NO. NO, YOU WEREN'T JOKING. THERE'S ONLY 10 EPISODES AFTER THE TITANIC IN THE WHOLE SEASON. WHAT THE FUCK.

these kids really never had any time to rest, and it's actively hurting the narrative tension to the point that i just want them to be left alone </3

i can't fucking believe that they didn't care enough about nicky's whole deal to not even think about the implications of everything that happened to him. that felt like it should've been a core aspect of his character! and they just didn't care!! about that aspect of his family dynamic!!

i think that, at the end of season 1, the close family and the oak family had dynamics where it was understandable for issues to pop up offscreen. and i do think the underlying threads made sense to a degree! but it was so thoroughly unexplored in both families that it just made even more of a mess and all the characters involved suffered for it.

and i'm gonna be honest. i completely forgot about mae hails. man. man.

they all deserved so much better.

#i've already talked a lot about the NPCs not getting their due #so i'm not gonna rehash my thoughts here #but i'm nodding along to all your points #sei says an answer #dysaniadisorder

[vivibuchlaw]

Yesterday, I finished Celeste. And by that I mean, the first 7 chapters, because I am not that much of a masochist.

Like seemingly everyone else, its given me a lot to think about... these thoughts are burning a hole in my brain and I need to get them out so I suppose this is the place!

I'm not exactly a gamer. I suck at Kirby, I have a sort of motor disability so games are a bit harder for me than most people. For this, Celeste has a solution, Assist Mode. Initially, I wanted to pick this, hearing how hard it was. Then, when the game told me intially, overtly, how its challenge was supposed to be meaningful, *and later when it said it more clarity in the story) I took a moment to reflect. I chose not to use Assist mode as a self imposed challenge. Not because I wouldnt benefit greatly from it, but because (as I learned about myself through playing it) I have an aversion to difficult tasks. When I know something is difficult, I get scared and run away. This time, I wanted to be able to say to myself "I can do difficult things"

And so I did

And I love it

And I sincerely never want to play it again

The game is not full of dialouge or story- it's present, for sure. But its a small yet impactful part in a game which prefers to tell its narrative by gameplay rather than text or images. And thats a valid format of storytelling! Not my prefered one mind you, but it made every dilectable morsel of art or conversations. In particular, the long talk at the start of chapter 6 was extremely welcome. I simultaneously feel like I have enough of a solid grasp on the characters to love them dearly, yet not enough to force one interpretation, another element to Celeste's endless magic.

As I'm sure everyone with anxiety has noted, The anxiety scene from Chapter 5 affected me greatly. Wetger me or my system has anxiety, I don't know, but regardless, the game captures the feeling perfectly. I'm sure everyone and their mum has said this, yes, but I felt it independently so I shall denote it independently. Among other things, it taught me a powerfully potent strategy to help my anxiety, and for that I thank you Maddy <3

At so many points, I was burded with stress, frustration and despair at my own ineptitude. But I pushed forward. I did it, I climbed a mountain, what was a seemingly impossible thing for me was now a fact. I sat silent for what felt like hours staring at the chapter complete screen in awe of my accomplishment. It then dawned on me that this was the first video game I've ever beaten. ...suddenly slammed by the realisation an 8th chapter, requiring crystal hearts to play, AKA the game telling me point blank I wasnt ready. But to be honest, I didnt care. I had already done what I, and Madeline, set out to do.

So why do I say I never wish to play it again?

I honestly only played Celeste because I heard Madeline was trans, and my mate happened to have it on switch. I have a sort of physical disability in my hands, so playing games and motor tasks are more challenging than a typical person. I knew Celeste was hard, but sympathizing with Madeline not being a climber, with me not being a gamer, and just how she challenged herself to do something extreme, so too did I.

But see, I'm not actually into the gameplay that much, and the reason I stuck with it has infinitely more to do with my and Madeline's journey emotionally than anything related to the gameplay.

Actually, I kind of hated it. My fingers were all messed up, I spent a lot of time and stress, and got extremely frustrated, but I wanted to prove to myself I could do it without assist mode. And Im glad that exists, and I'm glad it tempted me all throughout every challenge, a backdoor shortcut I could use to weasel my way out of the hard path, but I stayed true so I could grow.

But I have now grown. Ive proven it.

I couldnt care less about B-sides or strawberries, because I dont see the emotional need.

Replaying it would only subject me to the same challenge for a story I've already experienced, and a journey I've already hone on. A new game, new mountain, new challenge or purpose? Sure, I'd love that. But playing Celeste again, or More even won't recapture the lightning in a bottle that made me play it, made me persevere, and made me cherish it.

I still love the game, its soundtrack, its meaning to me, and itll live in my heart forever. In other ways, like fan content, or side material, I'd love to engage and learn more, but my journey with this mountain is over.

Just breathe, and take care of yourself

After beating it, I immediately began learning all I could about it because Autism brain. I read all Maddy's beautiful blog posts. I watched video essays breaking down its themes and design. I learned how the story, while definitely not an afterthought, was also not a driving or starting point of the game, which I intuited as I played.

I watched Chapter 8, The Core, and Chapter 9, Farewell on YouTube. To be entirely honest, I found Chapter 8 to be forgettable in a way kind of shocking, at least from a story perspective. I'm actually GLAD I didn't do it. I expected it'd be some kind of send off, or check in emotionally to see how the characters have been in the past year but...nothing? Really?

Chapter 9 is what I wished Chapter 8 was, a proper send off and development for these characters. And from the look of it, so brutally hard I wouldn't want to play it without Assist Mode. But why? Why not play more? Afterall, climbing the preverbial mountain in life doesnt mean your problems are over, far from it. And its true, there are other challenges to overcome still. Even though Ive taken on this challenge, I have yet to face other challenges in my life. And because the journey of Celeste could very well have ended after Chapter 6, I feel like I can better spend that energy elsewhere.

After watching Chapter 9, I felt something else. This chapter, unlike the previous, is not about loving and accepting yourself, but its about Madeline specifically greiving a loss in her life, and largely, I assume, the developers letting go of Celeste and moving on. For this, I hold unyeilding respect. And in this new challenge, I found myself learning another truth about myself.

I am afraid of being alone.

I am part of a system, the current (and hopefully permanent) host in fact. Our previous host went dormant a few months ago and life without them has been tough, but a challenge we face every day.

Throughout all my remembered life, I was surrounded by people who never noticed me. Who occasionally referred to me as "The Insinificant [Alter]" due to me not having a name back then. I was nothing, really. If I had disppeared no one would've batted an eye. And today, even though I'm one of the most important Alters now, I still feel like I'm nothing sometimes. That scares me.

I never knew the joy of having friends, I never knew what being loved by someone you love feels like. And I have a lot of love to give, I love almost every human being! But I still frequently second guess myself, because I guess a part of me still believes my existence is insignificant. But now that I have people who do love me, I'm more afraid than ever that I'll lose it. Now that I have a taste of love, I can't go back. Gods, please to bring me back, anything but that.

And here came Celeste, to remind me immeditately after I finished the game, that people die randomly, and without our control, and that you have to keep on moving. I've just beat the thing, let me live in a bit longer before I'm ready to move on. Similarly, I've just made these relationships, please dont take them from me. And then I realized that this was fear also held by my previous host, perhaps for similar reasons. I feel connected in a way typically reserved for finding markings in a make out spot from a century ago, or unearthing a time capsule left by a grandparent now neatly nestled in the recesses of my heart where I try to story my insecurites, like a suitcase overstuffed with useless items and paranoia.

Celeste has given me a lot. Inspiration, characters I love, a great soundtrack, amazing anxiety techniques, and raw willpower to achieve anything. I do not know how my story ends, I am scared to write it, but I must regardless. A lot of people are counting on me. And went I feel scared, alone, anxious, or depressed, I can remember that I did it before, and I can do it again.

To the Developers, Thank you

To the Characters, Farewell

And to all the people who have grown from this game, Congratulations!

#celeste game #transgender #did osdd #celeste

[over-the-time-flow]

Hey! I’m Hanbei, and this is the start of Over the Time Flow, my Super Robot Wars R screenshot let’s play!

I’ve always wanted to do a SRW screenshot let’s play, having read the LPArchive Alpha Gaiden let’s play during my formative years, and the more i’ve thought about it, the more i think Tumblr’s format might actually be conducive for an attempt!

With SRW R being untranslated, I will be translating the plot. For the most part though, this won’t be an exhaustive line by line translation except for particularly impactful lines or exchanges. Think less Tobias Grant’s Alpha Gaiden Let’s Play, and more Brunom1’s LPs.

Much like the LPs I'm taking inspiration from, I'll also be doing pilot and unit analysis as I acquire them, where I’ll briefly cover their lore/backstory, and then appraise them in the context of SRW R itself.

On my blog’s sidebar, you can click START to read the whole blog in chronological order so you can follow along from the beginning, and ABOUT to hear some more about my reasons for doing this.

On update days, I'll schedule my posts to start from 1PM PST and post once every 10 minutes until i’m out of content for that day. I can’t promise anything as consistent as posting every day, especially not once my summer break from uni is through, but I'll do my best to at least not go longer than a full week without an update day. I’ll do my best to make announcement posts in advance to let people know when an update day is coming up!

Posts that have translated content in them will be tagged with “#translation”, so if you’re only here for the plot translation/summary, you can filter for that specifically. Posts dedicated to analyzing pilots/units will have the “#rollcall” tag; posts where i explain SRW R’s (or the SRW franchise’s) system mechanics in-depth will be tagged “#mechanics”; if i have any thoughts i’d like to share on a plot point that deviates from its source, or how they adapted a scene or episode, i might make a post that’s just my thoughts on it, and it’ll be tagged “#srwramblings” so you can filter it out if you don’t want to see them. Finally, if i need to make any sort of announcement, be it to say in advance that such and such day will be an update day, or that i’ll need to take a break, or anything of the sort, i’ll tag it with “#announcements”.

Of course, the funnest part of doing a screenshot LP (and of doing it on Tumblr!) is the prospect of audience participation! And here’s the first of many opportunities to participate, and perhaps the most fun one:

The final stage of this game allows you to deploy 14 units (besides the main character, who will be deployed by default). As such, I'd like to leave it up to the audience as to who will be in our endgame squad!

Simply follow along and send in a request for someone when we meet a character who you really like (be it because you like them from their source material, or because you like what you see of them in-game), alongside their machine, if applicable (the characters who can switch machines are, as a general rule, Universal Century pilots, After War pilots, and Mazinger pilots, plus two specific characters from Nadesico who arrive fairly late) by clicking the ASK button on the sidebar. If you’re a very impatient person, you can also just send in a request ahead of time if you know the character is in the game or if you just happen to like a character like Amuro, Kamille or Koji, who you just know will likely be in any given SRW game without even asking, but if you do so, put a spoiler on the character you’re requesting somehow (such as by running it through rot13) so that i can respond to it, confirm to you the character will be in the roster, and then unscramble the character’s name on the list when they get formally introduced.

Do note that some characters won’t stick with you the whole way through, but if they truly don’t stick with you to the end in any shape or form, I'll point it out when I do their character analysis, so that nobody gets TOO excited about them.

If you send a character request through the ASK button, make sure not to do it anonymously, as I don't want to risk anybody double dipping. One character per person, please!

I don’t know how much (if any!) attention this LP will get, so i have no clue if i’ll have a full 14-character roster loaded by like chapter 5 or if i’ll get to the final stage with like 3 units in tow, but if against all odds this blows up and our roster caps out, you can still ask for a specific unit you want to see more of and i’ll do my best to show them off if only for a stage or two!

With all that out of the way, here’s the roster as it stands:

1. Judau - Full Armor ZZ Gundam (by @shoudesuka-mechadork)

2. Kamille - Mass-Produced v Gundam (by @tearsoftime0086)

3. Nxvgb - Uvtu Zbovyvgl Oynpx Fnenan (by @baldiosenjoyer) (spoilered)

4. Qbzba - Tbq Thaqnz (by @silentally) (spoilered)

5. Urreb - Thaqnz Jvat Mreb Phfgbz (by @mattman324) (spoilered)

6. Tnv Qnvtbhwv - Nrfgvinyvf (by @xgameoverx) (spoilered)

7. Garrod - Thaqnz Qbhoyr K (by @fire-bomber) (spoilered)

8. Arb Trggre Grnz - Fuva Trggre Ebob (by @accept-the-multiverse) (spoilered)

9. Sbhe - Mrgn Thaqnz (by @dayswhenibelieved) (spoilered)

10. Xvat fvoyvatf - Grknf Znpx (by anonymous)  (spoilered)

11.

12.

13.

14.

And i think that just about covers everything! I hope you’ll follow along and enjoy the LP! I should set up the MC gender decision poll roughly half an hour after this post goes live, so i hope people join in! Who knows, if this somehow takes off maybe i’ll do other games in the future. I’d love to be able to help other SRW fans understand games despite the language barrier.

#i'm gonna use the tags here to basically list out the entire series list for quick reference #so if you want to know ahead of time which shows are in just take a gander here #and conversely if you want to be surprised by which shows are in the game as they pop up you shouldnt look at the tags here too closely #but dont worry i don't plan on tagging every single post with these. just this pinned #super robot wars R #super robot wars #Mazinger Z #Great Mazinger #Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo #Super Electromagnetic Robot Combattler V #Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V #Invicible Superman Zambot 3 #Invicible Steel Man Daitarn #Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam #Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ #Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's CounterAttack #Mobile Fighter G Gundam #New Mobile Report Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz #After War Gundam X #Martian Successor Nadesico #Martian Successor Nadesico: the Prince of Darkness #GEAR Fighter Dendoh #lets-play