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tenebraevesper · 4 months

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Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 2)

Welcome back to the second part of my analysis of Shadow's character in Sonic Prime. I will admit, after re-reading my previous analysis, I realized that this wasn't becoming an analysis of just Shadow's character, but also Sonic's, considering how much they influence each other and their interactions help each other to develop. I know I'm getting ahead of myself here, so I'll just take it step by step.

Note, this part will only cover the first half of Episode 09: Avoid the Void, since it is a very Sonic and Shadow-centered episode, meaning that there is a lot to talk about (and there is also a limit to the number of screenshots I can post).

So, let's dive in!

Episode 09: Avoid the Void is the turning point in Shadow's relationship with Sonic and is also the point where the Sonadow ship really took off. I will try to keep things professional and just focus on the character analysis, but I'm certain that I speak the truth when I say that Sonic Prime definitely shows us the appeal of this particular ship.

To start off, we have a flashback showing us what exactly had happened to Shadow after he entered The Void. He attempted to follow Sonic as the latter was launched into New Yoke City, but after failing to pass through the gate, he was knocked back, losing the Chaos Emerald in the process.

Shadow then tries again to get through the gate, each punch showing us a flash of what is going on with Sonic while he is in New Yoke City, including information about the Paradox Prism energy and Shadow's point of view in regards to what happens when Sonic uses his Prism energy.

Shadow quickly realized that he can use this to talk to Sonic, but as we know from before, Sonic either thinks he is hallucinating or leaves Shadow on read. The explosion of energy that Sonic then releases knocks Shadow back to a different gate, which I'll talk about in a moment. We then follow Shadow as he tries to find a way to contact Sonic while he is sent to different Shatterspaces.

As we already know, it doesn't really work, but Shadow is determined to contact Sonic at any cost, and once Sonic is sent flying out of No Place, Shadow manages to stop him by kicking a crystal at him, leading us to the scene from the previous episode, where Shadow reveals to Sonic that not only is Green Hill gone, but also punches him for his troubles. As I had said before, Sonic definitely deserved that punch for being so reckless.

Shadow then keeps fighting Sonic out of sheer frustration, with Sonic asking him to just leave him alone, not realizing that this isn't just some Shatterverse Variant of Shadow, but actually the Shadow he knows.

''I'm stuck in here, and it's all your fault, Sonic!'' ''Yeah, yeah, what else is new? Wait, how do you know my name? Unless... *gasp* Shadow, you're... you!''

''The real you!''

Sonic is absolutely elated when he realizes that this is the Shadow he knows, immediately hugging him. It really shows how much he missed a familiar face, not caring that Shadow beat him up just a moment ago. Honestly, it's sooooo adorable!! (≧◡≦)

''The only me!''

In contrast, Shadow is not happy about the reunion, pushing Sonic away and leaving the azure hedgehog saddened. I cannot fault Shadow for this reaction because he was stuck in The Void for who knows how long, having to track down Sonic and processing the fact that their home is now gone thanks to Sonic. I suppose that beating Sonic up was also just him venting his frustrations.

''You just don't listen. What part of our home doesn't exist anymore are you not understanding?'' ''What did you just say?'' ''What do you think I've been trying to tell you? When you broke the Paradox Prism, you broke our reality. Green Hill is gone! It doesn't exist anymore!''

Remember when I talked about Shadow and Sonic having issues with communication? Well, it seems that they have finally reached their breaking point. This is the first time Shadow has explained to Sonic what is going on and this is also the first time Sonic actually listened to him.

Sonic is obviously devastated, having not intended for this to happen. He acknowledges that this is his fault and how things keep getting worse, and I will add that, even if Sonic had a plan to get the Prism Shards and fix things with Nine's help, he had been still going from one Shatterspace to another without any proper aim or focus. Fortunately, things are about to change.

Shadow just sighs, realizing that Sonic really has no clue what he's doing, and decides to explain the situation to him.

''Follow me!''

What is up with that dramatic stance? I mean, Shadow can be a bit dramatic, but still. X3

Sonic follows Shadow, wondering how he ended up here. Shadow explains how he chased him up to the cave where the Paradox Prism was just about when Sonic shattered it, so he used the Chaos Emerald to teleport out, but when he reappeared, he was in The Void, stuck between the Shatterspaces.

As Sonic and Shadow stand before the New Yoke City gateway, we can see Shadow eyeing Sonic's shoes, or rather, the tech on his shoes. We'll get to it later, but it is clear that Shadow had been forming this plan for quite a while now.

Sonic wonders whether Shadow has been able to see him this whole time, with Shadow replying how that was only possible because Sonic kicked up Prism energy every time he got fast, thinning the veil to The Void. He was basically opening a portal through the gateway, with Sonic figuring out how that was how he teleported into No Place. Shadow kept tracking him from gateway to gateway.

''What's down there?'' ''Not sure. From what I can tell, it's an eternity of darkness that decays all life.''

As Sonic points into what appears to be a black hole, Shadow explains what he thinks it is, remembering the loss of the Chaos Emerald. Honestly, while listening to their conversation, I felt oddly calm. I guess it feels sort of strange, but also soothing, for Sonic and Shadow to have natural conversation, trying to make sense of their situation. I really love these quiet moments.

Sonic then wonders why Shadow hadn't followed him in, with Shadow explaining that while Sonic can enter the Shatterspaces, he can't... with one exception.

''When you unleashed a shockwave from New Yoke, it blew me to the outer reaches of The Void, and led me here. And for reasons I haven't figured out yet, this gateway let me in. Maybe it's because the Shatterspace isn't fully formed. Maybe it's decaying. I'm not sure. But, it's not whole.''

''Like a ghost.'' ''So then, what is this place?'' ''Come see for yourself.''

I'll stop here just to praise Shadow's VA, Ian Hanlin. Shadow's voice really conveys his emotions and I could just spend the whole episode just listening to it. He's serious and calm, but his voice is also oddly soothing as he just explains things to Sonic, with no hint of anger in it. He is just trying to make sense of things not even he understands.

He and Sonic then pass through the gateway...

...and while Shadow manages to land on his feet, Sonic just faceplants.

I just love how Shadow rolls his eyes here, it's hilarious. He's so used to Sonic's antics.

Moving on, Sonic starts exploring what appears to be Green Hill, except it looks like it has all life drained from it. While he is excited to see his home and his friends, he slowly comes to a very horrifying realization.

''What's wrong with them?'' ''It's a Shatterspace, Sonic, just like the others. Cruel version to make us suffer.''

Sonic's friends are stuck in a loop of saying the same thing over and over again, looking like ghosts of their former selves. Sonic is devastated, with Shadow voicing his thoughts on this place, this Ghost Hill. I think it's really telling how he claims that this place is cruel and created to make them suffer. He clearly cares about his home and he probably had his own moment of processing what Ghost Hill really was.

Sonic wasn't the only one suffering.

I think this is a good place to say that Team Dark doesn't appear to exist in this universe, and Shadow and Rouge don't appear to be friends. I believe that Sonic later says it himself, but yeah, Shadow is friendless in Sonic Prime, so seeing this shot of him glancing back at Ghost Rouge is kind of heartbreaking when you know their history.

Shadow considers Green Hill his home, and even if he isn't close with Sonic and his friends, he cares about them. He also understands Sonic's pain.

''How do I fix this?''

Sonic is finally hit with the full realization of what his recklessness had caused, asking Shadow how to fix it.

I will be talking more in detail about it in Part 3, but knowing what we know, I believe that Shadow here is on the fence of whether he is going to help Sonic or do things by himself.

From what we saw so far, Shadow has seen a side of Sonic where the latter finally listens to him and understands the consequences of his actions, and whenever he was asked to explain things further, he always makes a grimace and sighs. If he wanted, Shadow could've told Sonic nothing or just kept him out of loop, and actually gone with his own plan. Instead, he tells Sonic everything he knows and, even if it's a small part of him he won't acknowledge until much later, he knows that he will need Sonic's help in some capacity.

However, knowing what the rest of the episode holds for us, and knowing Shadow in general, it would take him another fight to understand that his own plan won't work.

#Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 1)

#Shadow the Hedgehog (Sonic Prime, Character Analysis - Part 3)

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)

#Ten's Thoughts #sonic prime #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonadow #sonadow prime

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Dark”

Welcome back, everyone! Can you believe it's been six weeks already? I can't. Something something the uncomfortable passage of time during a pandemic as emphasized by a web-series.

But we're here to talk about RWBY the fictional story, not RWBY the cultural icon. At least, we will in a moment. First, I'd like to acknowledge that shaky line between the two, growing blurrier with every volume. A sort of good news, bad news situation.

The bad news — to get that out of the way — is that we cannot easily separate RWBY from its authors and those authors have, sadly, been drawing a lot of negative attention as of late. This isn't anything new, not at all, but I think the unexpectedly long hiatus gave a lot of fans (myself included) the chance to think about Rooster Teeth's failings without getting distracted by their biggest and brightest production. There's a laundry list of problems here — everything from the behavior of voice actors to the quality of their merch — but as a sort of summary issue, I'd like to highlight the reviews that continue to pop up on websites like Glassdoor, detailing the toxic, sexist, crunch-obsessed environment that RT employees are forced to work in. A lot of these websites requires a login to read more than a page of reviews, but you can check out a Twitter thread about it here.

Now, I want to be clear: I'm not bringing this up as a way to shame anyone enjoying RWBY. This isn't a simplistic claim of, "The authors are Problematic™ and therefore you can't like the stuff they produce." Nor is this meant to be a catch-all excuse for RWBY's problems. If it were, I'd have dropped these recaps years ago. I'm of the belief that audiences maintain the right to both praise and criticize the work they're given, regardless of the context in which that work was produced. At the end of the day, RT has presented RWBY as a finished product and, more than that, presents it as an excellent product, one worth both our emotional investment and our money (whether in the form of paying for a First account, or encouraging us to buy merch, attend cons, etc.) I'll continue to critique RWBY as needed, but I a) wanted fans to be at least peripherally aware of these issues and b) clarify that my use of "RT" in statements like, "I can't believe RT is screwing up this badly" is meant to be a broad, nebulas acknowledgement that someone in the company is screwing up, either creatively (doesn't have the skill to write a good scene) or morally (hasn't created an environment in which other creators are capable of crafting a good scene). The real, inner workings of such companies are mostly a secret to their audiences and thus it's near impossible for someone like me — random fan writing these for fun as a casual side hobby — to accurately point fingers. Hence, broad "RT." I just wanted to clarify that when I use this it's as a necessary placeholder for whoever is actually responsible, not a damnation of the overworked animator breaking down in a bathroom. Heavy stuff, but I thought it was necessary (or at least worthwhile) to acknowledge this issue as we head into the second half of the volume.

Now for the good news: RWBY has reached 100 episodes! For any who may not know, 100 is a pretty significant number in the TV world because, when talking about prime time programming, it guarantees syndicated reruns. Basically, networks don't want audiences to get burned out with a show — changing the channel when it comes on because ugh, I've seen this already, recently too — and 100 episodes allows for a roughly five month run without any repeats, making it very profitable. RWBY is obviously not a television show and doesn't benefit from any of this (hell, modern television doesn't benefit from this as much as it used to, not in the age of streaming), but the 100 episode threshold is still ingrained in American culture. Beyond just being a nice, rounded number, it is historically a measure of huge success and I can't imagine that RT isn't aware of that. Regardless of what we think of RWBY's current quality, this is one hell of a milestone and should be applauded.

All that being said... RWBY's quality is definitely still lacking lol.

Our 100th episode is titled "Dark" — keeping with the one word titles, then — and I'd like to emphasize that, as a 100th episode, it definitely delivers in terms of plot. There's plenty of action, important character beats, and at least one major reveal, everything we'd expect from a milestone and a Part II premiere. The animation also continues to be noteworthy for its beauty, as I found myself admiring many of the screenshots I took for this recap. There are certainly things to praise. The only problem (one we're all familiar with by now) is that these small successes are situated within a narrative that's otherwise falling apart. It's all good stuff... provided you ignore literally everything else surrounding it.

But let's dive into some examples. We open on Qrow starting, awoken by the thunder outside. Robyn has been watching him and makes a peppy comment about how none of them will be sleeping tonight, followed by a more serious, "Sounds bad out there." Yeah, it does sound bad, especially when they all know — thanks to Ruby's message back in Volume 7 — that this is due to Salem's arrival. I think a lot of the fandom has forgotten that little detail because people often discuss Qrow as if he is entirely ignorant of what is going on outside his cell. Even if we were to assume that he's forgotten all about the pesky Salem issue (the horror of Clover's death overriding everything else, perhaps) he still knows that Tyrian is running loose in a heat-less city with a creepy storm going on and, from his perspective, the Very Evil Ironwood is still running the show. So it's bad, which begs the question of why Qrow (and Robyn, for that matter) hasn't displayed an ounce of legitimate worry for everyone he knows out there. Thus far, their interactions have centered entirely around Qrow's misplaced blame and Robyn's terrible attempts to lighten the mood, despite the fact that a war is raging right beyond that wall. It's another example of RWBY's inability to manage tone properly, to say nothing of balancing the multiple concerns any one character should be trying to juggle. Just as it rankles that Ruby and Yang don't seem to care about what has happened to their uncle, Qrow likewise doesn't seem to care about what might be happening to his nieces. When did we reach a point where these relationships are so broken that someone can be arrested/chucked into a deadly battle and the others just... ignore that?

So Robyn's otherwise innocuous comment immediately reminds me of how badly the narrative has treated these conflicts and, sadly, things don't improve much from here. We are thankfully spared more of Robyn's jokes when Qrow realizes that what he's hearing can't be thunder. A second later, Cinder blasts through the wall — called it! — and Qrow instinctively transforms.

The only downside to this moment is that the whole ceiling falls down on Qrow and the others because APPARENTLY these cells don't have tops on them. Seriously. As far as I can recall we don't see the stone breaking through the forcefield somehow and this looks pretty open to me.

If it is... you're telling me these crazy powerful fighters who practice landing strategies and leap tall buildings in a single bound —

— can't just hop over this mildly high electric fence to get out? Qrow can't just fly away?

We're, like, two minutes in, folks.

We transfer to Nora's perspective as she wakes up, seeing Klein giving her the IV. He tells her not to worry, that "you and your friend are going to be just fine." What friend? Penny? Klein went upstairs prior to Weiss hugging Whitley or Penny crash landing outside. I had thought them bursting through the door with another unconscious friend was the first time he learned what the big bang outside was, but apparently not.

Penny is, obviously, a mess. While I now understand the choice to make her blood such an eye-catching color when that's crucial to the Hound's hunt, I still think it looks strange visually. Like someone has taken a copy of RWBY and painted over it. It doesn't look like it fits the art style. More than that, it implies some rather complicated things about Penny's humanity, especially in a volume focused around her being a "real girl." Real enough for Maiden powers, but with obviously inhuman blood that isn't even referred to as "bleeding." Penny "leaks" instead.

Toss in the fact that she's literally an android who is made up of tech — recall the running gags about her being heavy, or it hurts to fist-bump her, to say nothing of keeping things like multiple blades inside her body — yet Klein says that her "basic anatomy" is the same and he can "stitch up that wound."

I'm sorry, what? Whatever Penny looks like on the inside, it's not going to resemble a human woman's anatomy, and Klein might be able to stitch the outer layer of skin she's got, but that won't do anything to fix whatever metal bits have been broken underneath. Penny isn't a human-robot hybrid, she's a robot with an aura. Penny has knives in her back, rockets in her feet, and a super computer behind her eyes. When our clip introduced that Klein would be the one to help Penny, my initial reaction was, "Seriously? He's a butler and a doctor and an engineer?" But RWBY didn't even try to get away with a Super Klein explanation, they just waved away Penny's very obvious, inhuman anatomy. Yeah, I'm sure "stitching up" an android wound is just like giving Nora her IV. I hope the surgical sutures he used are extra strong!

In an effort to not entirely drag this episode, I do appreciate that Whitley is allowed an "ugh" moment about the non-blood covering his shirt without anyone calling him out on it. That felt like the sort of thing the show would usually try to make a character feel guilty about and I'm glad that, for once, he was just allowed to be frustrated without comment.

Then the power goes out and May calls, which raises questions about what state the CCTS is in and when scrolls are available to our protagonists vs. when they're not. But whatever. She's checking in because she just "saw another bombing run light up the Kingdom" and —

Wait. Bombing? Salem is bombing the city? I know we've seen explosions in the sky, but I'd always just attributed that to evil aesthetic. Why does this dialogue sound like it's from a World War II film and not a fantasy sci-fi show about literal monsters launching a ground attack?

May looks pretty against the sky though. I like her hair color against that purple.

I'm admittedly grasping at positives here because we finally return to her "You have to choose" ultimatum and — surprise! — May has pulled back completely. Ruby says that once they've helped Penny, "We'll...we'll do something!" which is once again her avoiding making a decision. Ruby still refuses to choose, instead falling back on generic, optimistic pep talks. They'll figure out how to stop Salem later. They'll think about the impact of telling the world later. They'll choose who to help later. Ruby keeps pushing these problems into the future where, she hopes, a perfect, magical solution will have appeared for her to latch onto. When that continues to not happen, others pressuring her to actually do something and stop waiting for perfection — Ironwood, Yang, May — she panics and continues stalling for time. Wait an episode and the narrative supports her in this.

Because initially May was forcing Ruby to decide. Now, May enables her desire to keep putting things off. "Don't beat yourself up, kid. At this point, I don't know how much is left to be done." That's the exact opposite of what May believed last episode, that there was still so much work and good to do for the people of Mantle. This is precisely what the show did with Yang and Ren's scenes too, having people call Ruby out... but then return to a message of, 'Don't worry, you're actually doing just fine' before Ruby is forced to actually change.

None of which even touches on May calling her "kid" in this moment. That continues to be a convenient way of absolving Ruby of any responsibility. When she wants to steal airships or Amity Tower, she's an adult everyone should listen to, the leader of this war. When the story wants to absolve her of previously mentioned flaws, she becomes a kid who shouldn't "beat herself up." I said years ago that RWBY couldn't continue to let the group be both children and adults simultaneously, yet here we are.

So that was a thoroughly disappointing scene. Ruby gets her moment to look sad and defeated, listing "the grimm, the crater, Nora, Penny" as problems she doesn't know how to solve. Note that 'Immortal witch attacking the city I've helped trap here' isn't included in that list. Ruby is still ignoring Salem herself and no one in the group is picking up where May left off, challenging her to do more than wring her hands over things others are already trying to take care of: Ironwood is fighting the grimm, May has gone off to help the crater, Klein is patching up Nora and Penny. Ruby, as one flawed individual, should not be expected to come up with a solution to everything, but she does need to stop acting like she can come up with a solution to everything when it matters most (office scene) and rejecting others' solutions when they ask for her help (Ironwood, May).

If it feels like I'm dragging the flawed, traumatized teenager too much, it's not in an effort to ignore those aspects of her identity. Rather, it's because she's also the licensed huntress who wrested control from a world leader and violently demanded she be put in charge of this battle. Ruby, by her own actions, is now responsible for dealing with these problems, or admitting she was wrong and letting others take the lead, without purposefully derailing their plans. She doesn't get to suddenly go, "I don't know," cry a little, and get sympathetic pats.

But of course that's precisely what happens, courtesy of Weiss.

During this whole scene I kept wondering why no one was celebrating Nora waking up, especially when Ruby outright mentions her. Have they just not noticed given all the Penny drama? Because Nora absolutely woke up.

Aaaand went back to sleep, I guess. What was the point of that POV shot? No worries though, she'll wake up again in a minute.

Willow arrives and announces that they can fix the power (and Penny) using the generator at the edge of the property. I'm convinced RT doesn't actually know what a generator is because the characters are acting like it's some super special device that only richy-rich could possibly have. Whitley says that it's the SDC executives who have their "own power supply" and that it's "extremely unfair." Now, don't get me wrong, a good generator powering large portions of your house can run you 30k+, but you can also get one that plugs into your extension cord and powers your fridge for a couple hundred. There's absolutely a class issue here, just not the one Whitley and Weiss seem to be commenting on. They make a generator sound like the sort of device that only a politician-CEO could possible have and it's weird.

Likely, it sounds weird because it's a choppy way of getting Whitley to bring up the wealth disparity so he can then go, 'That's right! We're crazy rich with a company housing tons of ships! We can use those to evacuate Mantle.' Awkwardness aside, I do like that the Schnee wealth is being used for good purposes, but... evacuate where? To the city currently under attack by a giant whale? In a RWBY that wasn't determined to demonize Ironwood, this would have been a great plot point during the office scene instead, with Weiss offering her services to Ironwood, even if the group decides that a continued evacuation still isn't possible.

Instead, we get it here from Whitley. Do I need to point out the obvious? That Whitley is the MVP of this episode? He's done more good in an HOUR than the group has managed in a year. Give this kid some training and make him a huntsmen instead.

We're given a (very pretty!) shot of the shattered moon because it wouldn't be RWBY if we weren't continually reminded that gods once wiped out humanity before destroying part of a celestial body... and absolutely no one talks about that lol.

Blake's coat might not make any sense for her color scheme, but it does make her easy to spot as she and Ruby run across the grounds. Oh my god, they're actually doing something together! It only took eight years. They even get a lovely talk where Blake admits how much she looks up to Ruby, despite her being younger, and once again I'm struck at how much more I would have loved this scene if it had appeared elsewhere in the series. It is, indeed, as sweet and emotional as all the RWBY GIF-ers are claiming... provided you overlook that this is the exact opposite of what Ruby needs to hear right now. She doesn't need to hear that she's more mature and reliable than her elders when she's functioning under a "We don't need adults" mentality. She doesn't need to hear that not knowing what to do is totally fine, not when that led to her turning on Ironwood, despite not knowing how to stop Salem. She doesn't need to hear that "doing something" — doing anything — is a strength, because Ruby keeps avoiding the big problems for smaller ones she's comfortable with, like standing by Penny's bedside instead of deciding between Mantle and Atlas. Blake's speech is heartfelt, but it's a speech that suits a Beacon days Ruby who is having some doubts about her leadership skills, not the girl whose impulsive — and now lack of — actions is having world-wide repercussions. Everyone is babying Ruby to a staggering degree. It's like if we had a med show where the doctor is standing by the bedside of a coding patient, fretting between two treatments. 'Don't worry,' their colleague says, patting their shoulder. 'I've always looked up to you. You'll do something when you're ready' and then they continue to watch the patient, you know, die.

Also: who does Ruby look up to? Everyone talks about how much they depend on and trust Ruby, but who does Ruby look to for guidance? A number of her problems stem from the fact that she has rejected the advice of everyone who has tried to help her improve: Qrow, Ozpin, Ironwood, even Yang. Ruby is presented as the pinnacle of what to strive for in a leader, rather than a leader who has only been doing this for two years and still has a great deal to learn.

Anyway, they get the generator on and the Hound shows up.

I am begging RT to just make RWBY a horror story. All their best scenes the last three years have been horror I am bEGGING —

Anyway, while Ruby waits to be eaten we cut to Willow and Klein, the former of which is reaching for her bottle, pulling back, reaching again, all while her hand shakes. This is good. This is what we should have gotten with Qrow. Which isn't to say that their (or anyone's) addiction should be identical, but rather that this is a far more engaging and complex look at addiction than what our birb got. Willow tells us that she doesn't drink in the dark despite bringing the bottle with her; tries to resist drinking when she's scared and ultimately fails. Qrow just decided to stop drinking after decades of addiction, seemingly for no reason, and that was that. Why is a side character we only met this volume written better than one of the main cast?

Blake manages to call Weiss about the Hound and she asks if Whitley can handle the airships without her. I mean, I assume so given that Weiss is looking at the bookshelves while Whitley does all the work lol. He makes a teasing comment about how he can if she can handle that grimm and she comments that they still need to work on his "attitude."

No they don't. Weiss stuck a weapon in her kid brother's face. Whitley made a joke. Even if Weiss' comment is likewise meant to be read as teasing, it's clear that we've bypassed any meaningful conversation between them. That hug was supposed to be a Fix Everything moment even though, as I've laid out elsewhere, it didn't even come close.

We cut back to Ruby getting thrown through a wall into the backyard and the Hound creepily coming after her. She's freaked out by this clearly abnormal grimm and Blake is weirdly... not? "It's just a grimm. Just focus!" Uh, it's obviously not. Have we reached the traumatized, sleep-deprived point where the group is sinking into full-blown denial? I wouldn't be surprised. They've been awake for like... 40+ hours.

Because the Hound knocks Ruby out with a single hit. Just, bam, she's down. "Focusing" is not the solution here.

Weiss calls to warn the others about the grimm, telling them to stick together. Willow (understandably) starts freaking out and flees the room (classic horror trope!). Klein is left alone when Penny wakes up with red eyes. Oh no!

Don't worry. You know nothing meaningful happens.

She shoves Klein before (somehow?) resisting the hack, her Maiden powers going wild in the process. Just when it looks as if Penny might cause some serious damage, Nora wakes up, takes her hand, and says, I kid you not:

"Hey... no one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do... It's just a part of you. Don't forget about the rest."

Okay. I want to re-emphasize that I love hopeful, uplifting, victory-won-through-the-power-of-love stories. Istg I'm not dead inside, it's just that RWBY does this so badly. I mean, what is this? It has similarities to the character shouting, 'No! Resist!' to their mind-controlled ally, but this is not presented as a desperate, last-ditch effort by Nora. She just speaks like this is the most obvious truth in the world. If you don't want to have your mind taken over... just don't! It's that simple. The problem definitely isn't that Watts has changed her coding and has implemented a command she can't override, it's that Penny has forgotten about the "rest" of her personhood.

And this works. Granted, not for long, but we leave Nora having successfully calmed Penny down and until her eyes unexpectedly go red again scenes later, we're left assuming that this is a permanent solution. That, imo anyway, is taking the Power of Love too far, overriding the basic reality of Penny being hacked. It’s not a personal failing she must overcome, it’s an external attack. I would have rather had Nora react to the scars she saw on her arm, or have a moment with Klein, or get some love from the group. Not a wakes up, falls asleep, wakes up again to save Penny with a Ruby level 'Just ignore reality' pep-talk, then back to sleep again.

So Penny isn't attacking her allies, or mistakenly hurting her allies with wild Maiden powers. Not that the group doesn't have enough to deal with, but still. Weiss arrives to help with the Hound and attempts a new summon, only to fail when two minor grimm burrow up into her glyphs. I really enjoyed that moment, both for the wing visual and the knowledge that Weiss' glyphs can fail if you break them somehow (which makes sense). Also, I just like that she failed in general? Weiss is, as per usual now, about to demonstrate just how OP she is compared to the rest of the team, so it was nice to see her faltering here.

The Hound tries to make off with Ruby and Blake does an excellent job of keeping it tethered. Ruby finally wakes, only to realize that the grimm is actually after Penny since it's staring at her power up through the window, no longer trying to escape. Moments like this remind me that there's someone on RT's writing team that knows what they're doing, at least some of the time. The assumption that the Hound is after Ruby as a SEW, the surprise that it's actually Penny, realizing it holds up because Ruby is covered in Penny's blood and Blake is not... that's all nice, tight plotting. More of that please!

The Hound drops her and Ruby's aura shatters when she hits the ground. I want everyone to remember this moment as an example of how strong the Hound is. The group may be tired, but unlike YJR they've been sitting around in the Schnee manor for a number of hours, regaining strength. We saw the Hound hit Ruby twice — once through the wall and once to knock her out — and then she falls from a not very high distance for a huntress, yet her aura is toast. That's the level of power and skill the Hound possesses. Decimating YJR, knocking Oscar out, same for Ruby, avoiding Blake and Weiss' hits, soon to treat Penny like a ragdoll. Just remember all this for the episode's end.

Blake tells Weiss she'll take care of Ruby, you go help the others. Yay breaking up the duos more! Bad timing though as the new acid-spitting grimm pops out of the ground and Blake is now left alone to face it.

Weiss re-enters the mansion, knowing the Hound is somewhere nearby, but not where. Suddenly, Willow's voice sounds through her scroll with an, "Above you!" which... doesn't keep Weiss from getting hit lol. But it's the thought that counts! Willow has accessed the cameras she's set up throughout the manor, watching the Hound's movements, and I have to say, that is a WAY better use of her separation from Klein than I thought we were getting. I legit thought they'd have Willow run away in a panic, meet the Hound, die, and then Weiss could be sad about losing her mom.

It does say something about RWBY's writing that this was my knee-jerk theory, as well as my surprise when we got something way better.

The Hound runs off, uninterested in Weiss, and she asks Willow to keep tabs on it. It heads for Whitley next (also covered in Penny's blood) and very creepily stalks him in the office with a, "I know you're here." Whitley is seconds away from being Hound chow before one of Weiss' boars pin it against the wall. He runs, then runs BACK to finish deploying the airships, before finally escaping assumed death. Goddamn this boy is pulling his weight.

I assume all these ships are automated then? I hope someone takes a moment to call May. Otherwise it's going to be super weird for the Mantle citizens if a fleet of SDC ships just show up and hover there...

I don't entirely understand how Weiss saved him though. She's nowhere to be seen when Whitley leaves and he runs a fair distance before he and Willow encounter Weiss again. We know her summons don't have to keep right next to her, but are they capable of rudimentary thought, attacking an enemy — and an enemy only — despite Weiss being a couple corridors down and unable to see the current battlefield? I don't know. In another series I'd theorize that this was a deliberate hint, a way to clue us into the fact that Willow, someone who we currently know almost nothing about, had training in the past and summoned the boar herself. Weiss and Winter certainly didn't get that hereditary skill from Jacques. Hell, we might still get that, Weiss reacting with confusion next episode when Whitley thanks her for the boar, but I doubt it. That scene with Ruby and the Hound aside, the show isn't this good at laying groundwork and then following up on it.

Case in point: Weiss says, "I didn't forget you" to Whitley after he gets away from the Hound, the moment trying to harken back to her promise to Willow. Key word is "trying." Because she absolutely forgot him! Weiss threatened and ignored Whitley until he proved his usefulness. I also shouldn't need to point out that, "Don't forget your brother" does not mean, "Don't let your brother die a horrible death by abnormal grimm." Weiss acts like her saving him is a fulfillment of her promise, rather than just the most basic of human decency. And also, you know, her job.

So that part is frustrating. The entire Schnee dynamic is a mess, from Weiss making a joke of her father's arrest, to Willow (presumably) fixing their relationship by putting a hand on her daughter's shoulder. Okay.

Then Weiss cuts off the Hound by summoning a giant wall of ice. My brain, every time this happens:

YOU COULD HAVE FIXED THE HOLE IN MANTLE'S WALL.

Moving on, Blake's fight against the acid... thing has some great choreography, including Blake using her semblance which we haven't seen in AGES.

I really like the fight itself, just not what Blake is shouting the whole time. "I need you, Ruby! We all need you!" This has really gotten ridiculous. Ruby is presented as everyone's sole savior despite failing time and time again. It's not that I don't think Blake as a character should have faith in her leader, it's that I don't think the writers should be crafting a story where everyone puts their unshakable hopes in an untrained, disloyal, impulsive 17 year old. I mean, Ruby is currently unconscious, yet Blake is acting like if she doesn't wake up — she, as an individual, if Ruby Rose does not re-join this fight — then all is lost. If Ruby doesn't save them, no one can. Which is, of course, absurd on numerous levels. Blake doesn't need the passed out, aura-less Ruby right now, she needs the still very healthy Weiss pulling out multiple summons and an ice wall! Use your scroll and call for backup again.

But of course, Ruby wakes up and kills the new, terrifying grimm with a single hit. It's a preview of what's to come with the Hound and it's just as ridiculous here as it will be there.

Speaking of the Hound, am I the only one who thought this was... cute?

I can't possibly be the only one. That head-tilt is exactly what my dogs do and my brain instinctively went, "Aww, puppy!"

Murderous puppy.

The Hound realizes none of the Schnees are who it's looking for and runs off. Penny, meanwhile, has been fully taken over because, well, that's just what's convenient now. She resists long enough keep Amity up, then succumbs, then resists to apologize to Ruby, then succumbs, then resists because Nora asked her to, then succumbs once it's time to knock her out. If RWBY was willing to commit to consequences, Penny would have been taken over and that was that. The characters would need to deal with whatever outcome happens as a result. Instead, the show very carefully avoids any of those pesky consequences by having Penny successfully resisting at key moments, despite no explanation of how she's managing that.

She shoves Klein again (Klein is having a Bad Time) and starts walking down the main steps. When Whitley wants to know where the hell she's going, Penny mechanically responds that she must "Open the vault, then self-destruct." I suppose the change Watts made was the self-destruct order? Ironwood obviously wants the vault open, though not necessarily Penny's death. Think what you will of his moral compass, she's a damn powerful ally — a research project, perhaps — and a Maiden to boot. At the very least, her death may give the powers to someone even worse.

God, please don't let them have brought Penny back and made her a Maiden just to kill her again.

The Hound arrives though and, as said, knocks Penny out. We're back to square one with her, then. Note though that this attack is near instantaneous. She grabs its hands one second, is hanging limply the next. Wow, the Hound sure is a terrifying antagonist!

Not for long.

"That's enough," Ruby says and one-shots it with her eyes.

Now, I want to talk for a moment about the implications of that line. "That's enough." Obviously Ruby is #done with this situation and emotionally unwilling to let the Hound kidnap Penny (congratulations, Nuts and Dolts shippers), but there's a meta reading here as well. Not intentional, but glaring to me nonetheless. Basically, the idea that the Hound has, from a plot perspective, done enough. It has served its singular purpose. It kidnapped Oscar and now it dies. Never-mind how insanely powerful we've established the Hound to be, never-mind how Ruby's eyes also work or don't work according to whether anything of actual import is on the line. From a plot perspective "that's enough" and the Hound can be disposed of instantly. It got Oscar and gave us an episode of filler creepiness. Move along now.

The idea behind Ruby's eyes isn't bad, but the execution absolutely is. RT has undermined a huge portion of the stakes by giving their protagonist an instant kill-shot that always works precisely when she needs it to. Starting with the Apathy, we have yet to get a moment where Ruby's eyes fail to save the day when she really needs them to, no matter how incredible the challenge. The Hound was very intentionally written to be a grimm outside of the group's current power level. It thinks, it talks, they literally can't touch it. This creates the expectation that the group will need to grow stronger — or at least become smarter — in order to surmount this new obstacle, yet Ruby's eyes undermine all of that. The group hasn't grown in years, the show just makes enemies weaker as needed (Ace Ops), or has Ruby pull out her eyes as a trump card. It wouldn't be that bad if we'd at least gotten a good battle out of it, one where the group gets close to defeating the Hound on their own, but needs Ruby's eyes to finish it off. Instead, she literally walks up without any aura, announces to the audience that this antagonist's time is up, and blasts it out a window.

Granted, Ruby's eyes don't completely finish it. The Hound pulls itself to its feet and we see this.

Yup, that's a guy and yup, those are silver eyes.

I would like to issue a formal apology to the "It's secretly Summer!" theorists in the fandom. I mean, I still think it would be ridiculous (and at this point highly improbable) that Ruby's dead mother has actually been a grimm mutant this whole time, just hanging out in Salem's realm while she waits for the plot to start before attacking the world, and then sends some no-name faunus dude after the group instead of their leader's mother for extra, emotional torture... but you all were definitely right about the “It's a person” part! I... don't know how I feel about this. Admittedly, it seems to be a logical continuation of the other grimm-human hybrids we've seen — namely Cinder and Salem herself — and it finally explains why Salem wants Ruby alive (even though it actually doesn't because WHY did she want more SEWs for Hound grimm when she wasn't even attacking back then? And already has all these other insanely powerful tools??), but at the same time, it feels like it's complicating a story that doesn't need further complications. The group fights monsters and has an immortal enemy. You don't need to add 'Some of those monsters are secretly human' to the mix.

It doesn't hurt that this twist is giving me Attack on Titan vibes, which, ew. A dark time in my fandom life, folks.

The Hound staggers a few steps before Whitley and Willow dump a suit of armor on it. That's all it takes to kill the most dangerous grimm we've ever seen: a single flash of silver eyes and some heavy metal. This also wreaks havoc with the implication that Salem wants SEWs alive because they create such powerful grimm. Obviously not. I mean yeah, normal huntsmen are going to have serious problems, we’ve seen that this volume, but any other SEWs nearby will take a Hound out instantaneously. For a villain with so many other powerful abilities — immortality, magic, endless normal grimm, her nifty soup — Salem would be much better served just killing SEWs straight out. Clearly, creating Hounds isn't worth the effort.

The Hound leaves some bones behind and Ruby collapses to her knees, overcome with the knowledge that this was once a person. Again, uncomfortable Attack on Titan parallels.

We finish our premiere with Cinder clearing away rubble to reveal Watts. Honestly, I like that we ended on this because her rescue is hilarious. She just slings him over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes and blasts off with her magic fire feet. Fantastic.

Note though that with this scene we've seen almost everything from the clip and the trailer. What's to come in the rest of Volume 8? No idea. Outside of Winter leading the charge with the bomb, we got it all here.

Time to update the bingo board!

I'm crossing off "Introducing new grimm that are quickly abandoned." Between the Hound and acid-dude both falling to a single blast/cut from Ruby, we've more than earned this square.

It doesn't look as if we'll get another Watts-Jacques team-up now that he's left, but you never know.

Maria's got me worried. I feel like her Yoda fight against Neo is the one thing she'll be allowed to do this volume, but given that we didn't see anyone except Ruby's group this episode, we don't yet know whether the story is now ignoring her and Pietro, or if they'll re-appear in another episode like YJR.

Qrow is free. Will he get a drink before trying to murder Ironwood? Perhaps.

Still no bingo :(

All in all, the episode was by no means horrible. I think there were lots of horrible parts, but also some legitimately well executed moments, fun action, and scenes that I can easily imagine as squee worthy if you lean back and squint. Everything is comparative and in the growing collection of bad RWBY episodes, this one isn't securing a top slot. Which doesn't mean I think it's good, just... not as bad as it could have been and primarily only bad due to long-running problems, not things this specific episode has done. That's my bar then, so low it has officially entered the underworld.

Still, RWBY is back and a part of me is eager to see where this volume takes us, for better or for worse.

Until next week! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby dark

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gelo-p · 3 years

Note

It may be a long request, but what memorable moments (scenes) for each characters from OddTaxi caught your eyes the most ? (included images as well) It will be interesting to hear it from you, as someone who reviewed each episode of this series.(and was fun to read) I can wait if this take some time to answer back, no need to rush(> ◡ 0) Honestly ,this show is so unique & such an underrated gem!! It's like you said: "DAMN. ODDTAXI WHY YOU SO GOOD"

LOL thanks, I’m flattered that you found my weekly ramblings fun to read ^^; I didn’t intend to review the series though. I was planning to just make a series of minor complaints about an otherwise good story, but... well. It was clear by episode 5 that the writing was deeper than I thought.

Having said that, here are my favorite moments for each characters anyway!

(●'◡'●)

------

Taeko-san

Episode 8.

Suddenly acting all cutesy and embarrassed ^^;

------

Nagashima

Episode 1.

I was just surprised to find that he’s in the first 5 minutes of episode 1.

------

Kabasawa

Episode 9.

DEYM, SON @_@

Maaaaybe focus on catching Dobu? Also what the hell, 10k yen to assist on catching Dobu???

Slow clap. Brilliant, mate.

Episode 9.

I did feel bad for him though. In his pursuit of fame, he’s bitten more than he could chew. This scene stood out to me for a different reason though:

Who apologizes in less than a minute???

------

Shibagaki

Episode 6.

It didn’t initially carry much weight, but once you realize he did this to try and remain relevant in the entertainment world, it’s kinda sad. Especially with Baba getting all the attention recently.

Episode 6, ending credits.

------

Baba

Episode 6, ending credits.

Contrast to Shibagaki, Baba is experiencing one hell of a high in his career. Can’t entirely blame him for not focusing too much attention on the N-1 contest anymore. This entire exchange with Shibagaki was so memorable because... it just shows how different their careers have become.

Also, just right before this scene, it was shown that

HE’S ACTUALLY DATING NIKAIDO WTF

------

Kuroda

Episode 3.

This scene where Kakihana thought Kuroda was talking to him was just hilarious. Not to mention once you hear him speak, you realize...

He’s voiced by this guy.

-----

Donraku

Episode 1.

This annoyed the hell out of me. I thought this was one of those typical Japanese TV commentary panels. When I wondered if “Don-chan” might be Donraku, I thought of this scene and concluded “Nah, can’t be him. Would you act all calm - let alone appear on TV like that - if your daughter was missing? Nah.”

How wrong I was of course, but this scene has always stuck in my head.

Of course, the president of the agency being in the shot was probably meant as a clue of some sort... But we didn’t know that yet, did we?

Episode 11.

------

Kakihana

Episode 5.

This was just so awkward to watch. 🤦‍♂️

Episode 9.

I still feel bad for him at the end of it all, of course. He just wants to move on and throws the ring away... but he realizes how much it cost. ^^;

(Finally, of course there’s also that scene with Kuroda from earlier)

------

Tanaka

Episode 4.

This scene. I’ve ranted about it before already :v

Episode 9.

Does this count? Of course we now know that this was actually Little Daimon, but at the time, I was so annoyed at how overpowered Tanaka was made to be.

------

Imai

Episode 8.

Episode 11.

Imai’s love for Mystery Kiss (well, Nikaido) is probably greater than all our love for ODDTAXI combined.

A true man of culture.

------

Big Daimon

Episode 1.

DIRTY COP! DIRTY COP RIGHT HERE- *bang* ughh

------

Little Daimon

Episode 7.

This was the moment I started considering that Odokawa really has nothing to hide in his closet. It would have been extremely risky for him, considering how straight of a cop (albeit a little naive) Little Daimon is.

Episode 12.

This was a genuinely sad moment for me. Your brother, who you decided to punish evil with, was part of the evil you’ve been trying to punish all along. That’s gotta hurt, man.

------

Dobu

Episode 9.

Dobu’s actually quite a nice guy, huh? I mean, yeah, not really, but come on. He did let Kabasawa off with a life lesson instead of a more serious beating.

Episode 10.

Really? :))

Episode 12.

Again, DOBU SHOULD HAVE JUST SHUT UP. “IT’S A SILHOUETTE BRO, THAT’S NOT ME, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.”

Also, I kinda refuse to believe Dobu would use his silhouette for the game. We couldn’t even tell who the hell ditch-11 was but suddenly *poof* it’s Dobu’s silhouette!

I would have preferred if Tanaka’s story of sending a message was true. It would be much more believable. Then Tanaka sends another message to ditch-11 then and there...

And then Dobu’s phone rings. Surprised pikachu face.

Also, Dobu quit playing some time ago but was still Rank 1??? What the hell?

------

Yano

Episode 7.

When Yano was introduced, I was amazed that they actually made him rhyme all his lines (or at least introduce some rhythm). Even the translation was keeping up!

Episode 8.

He’s an asshole, but he makes funny faces.

Episode 12.

Funny faces :))

------

Sekiguchi

Episode 10.

Sekiguchi provides a very good example of how bad guys can use your social media data. This is practically a PSA.

DON’T POST TOO MUCH PERSONAL INFORMATION ONLINE!!

Episode 11.

I still need an explanation why Nikaido had to do the lifting WHEN SEKIGUCHI, A LITERAL HUGE THUG, IS RIGHT THERE. It’s not like he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, he’s already filthy AF at the 2nd pic!!

Episode 12.

About to be “arrested”, still worried about Yano’s rhyming. ^^;

------

Yamamoto

Episode 2.

Right off the bat, we immediately know that he... has his own share of secrets.

Episode 5.

...But that he also genuinely cares for the girls.

...To some extent, as shown in that entire taxi ride :))

------

Ichimura

Episode 3.

“Oh no.”

Obviously, anybody who shows interest in you, Kakihana, after you misrepresent your salary... probably should be red-flagged. Of course, we the viewers immediately know that she’s being tailed by her manager, so we have an idea that she’s being roped into it.

Episode 8.

I can’t even-

------

Nikaido

Episode 2.

This Nikaido - she’s seen some things.

Episode 7.

Damn, probably done some things as well! D:

Also, that entire thing where Sekiguchi refused to carry Mitsuya’s body?

Nikaido is strong!!!

Idols are scary, man.

------

Mitsuya

Episode 11.

It’s saddening because Mitsuya genuinely wanted to support Nikaido. Had she not gone to the office that night, things would have been much different for all of us.

------

Wadagaki

Episode 5.

“Why is she helping Tanaka???” Of course, I thought she was Mitsuya at this point.

Also, she really loves karaage, huh. I wondered if that was a clue, but I guess not. ^^

...It’s not, right..?

Episode 13.

Need I say more about this scene?

------

Goriki

Episode 1.

THIS WAS CONFUSING, MAN.

Episode 1.

Also, that entire exchange about cassette tapes and Bruce Springsteen ^^;

“Damn these guys are old” LOL

-----

Odokawa

Episode 1.

I like how... rude he is :))

Episode 3.

And so done with bullshit :))

Episode 8.

I do remember when he sneezed while taking the photo, in order to hide the shutter sound. Smart :^)

...

Odokawa’s in a weird position because even though he’s the main character, I remember him more for moving the story rather than being a character, if that makes sense. Sorry! >_<

Episode 13.

Of course, there’s the entire sequence of him flying his taxi... But again, that’s more of a nod to the story, not him. If it counts as “memorable scene involving Odokawa”, then there you go! That final sequence was just beautiful to watch. ^^

------

AND FINALLY!

------

Shirakawa

Episode 2.

Shirakawa’s just a straight-up lovable character. I love that Odokawa can’t handle her XD That entire taxi ride scene was just brilliant.

Episode 2.

And then she tops it all off with that power move with the front camera.

Episode 3.

PLUS SHE CAN DO CAPOEIRA!

Episode 10.

ACTUALLY USABLE-IN-COMBAT CAPOEIRA!

Episode 13.

EVEN UNDERWATER!

Where do I sign up for the Church of Shirakawa???

Shirakawa’s just too damn memorable for me. ^^;

------

Goddamn that was the longest ask I’ve ever answered. I hope my answers were at least satisfactory XD

ODDTAXI AOTY!!

(I didn’t realize answering this kind of question would be hard work :’D Compiling screenshots to make a somewhat objective point is surprisingly easier, huh)

#odd taxi #oddtaxi

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precuredaily · 3 years

Text

Precure Day 204

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 Go Go! 06 - “King Donuts Awakens!” Date watched: 8 January 2021 Original air date: 9 March 2008 Screenshots Transformation Gallery Project info and master list of posts

mood

The character re-introduction arc reaches its epic conclusion and shows us where Rin has wound up after her moment of self-realization in the Y5 finale. It turns out, she wound up constantly tired. Relatable. Let’s dig in!

The Plot

Nozomi and Rin are on their way to Natts House to prepare for the grand re-opening. Rin is visibly very tired and confesses that she was up late the previous night.

images with sleepy auras

As they arrive at the store, they run into Syrup.... or more accurately, he runs into them, carrying an urgent letter from Milk. (Remember this, because Syrup sure doesn’t) However, just then, a brilliant light erupts from inside of Natts House, so they all rush in to see what’s happening. They find everyone gathered around a table with the Rose Pact in the middle, glowing, and then it opens up and King Donuts emerges, fully awake. Then he yells at everyone to stop staring at him.

blinded by the light...... how does that song go again?

After the opening, the gang tries to introduce themselves to King Donuts, but he assumes it’s another Eternal trap until Coco and Nuts reveal themselves. Instead of being relieved, however, he just pivots his anger onto them for being incompetent and letting him get attacked by Eternal. So yeah, not off to a great start here. While they watch the goings-on, Rin yawns, and this further annoys the already irate king. Growing frustrated, he tries to leave, but finds that there’s a barrier around the Rose Pact that’s trapping him until he fully recovers. As you may imagine, this does wonders for his good mood.

I’m not yawning because I’m bored, I’m yawning because I’m bored AND tired.

Cut to Eternal’s headquarters and a very fatigued Scorp drops a huge report on Anacondy’s desk, mentioning he hasn’t slept for six days while writing it. However, she dings him on numerous minor errors, deeming it unusable, and tells him to combine it with the previous report and redo it. Exhausted and holding a stack of paper half his height, Scorp collapses and the pages fly everywhere. I have to say, Koyasu acting tired is a fun change of pace for him.

these are the eyes of a man who has lost all hope

Back at Natts House, everyone is still trying to appease King Donuts. He insists he’s fine already but in attempting to demonstrate this, he wears himself out quickly. Karen offers him the apple she snapped a few episodes ago, but he refuses to eat it because he doesn’t trust them. The girls give up on him for now, because they need to get to work opening up the store, but they notice Rin has fallen asleep.

Nozomi advises them to just leave her be, trying to get Syrup to help them pass out fliers instead. He refuses and wants to know why they don’t wake Rin. Nozomi explains that Rin was busy all day with sports clubs, tending to the family shop, and watching her siblings, so she stayed up all night designing accessories because it was the only free time she had. (I am very familiar with this concept.) She also admits that Rin didn’t tell her this, she deduced it because she knows Rin and how she works.

With that settled, the remaining girls, as well as Coco and Nuts, get to work handing out fliers. Syrup, however, stays behind to look over Rin, because he refused to help any other way. He muses over his situation.

At that moment, Rin wakes up, and Syrup asks if she really was up all night designing jewelry. She realizes her old friend Nozomi has read her like a book. She admits to feeling guilty that she not only stayed up late working, but she couldn’t come up with any ideas, and now she’s missed out on handing out fliers as well. She feels useless (big oof) and contrasts herself with Syrup, who she says is working hard to get to the Cure Rose Garden. Syrup disagrees and insists she works way harder than him. At this point, King Donuts, who has been listening in, interjects and commends Rin for being critical and analytical of herself, saying it’s the key to self growth. I feel like there’s a missing line in here about not slipping too far into self-doubt, but regardless, Rin remembers she’s supposed to be at futsal practice and runs off before the end of the King’s speech.

“Gah!” - Natsuki Rin, 2008

After she’s gone, the king and Syrup discuss how hardworking she is, along with the other girls. Also there’s a gag where King Donuts didn’t recognize Syrup until he turned back into his fairy form which further establishes that Syrup has a bit of a negative reputation far and wide.

Meanwhile, at the practice field, Rin isn’t doing a whole lot better at futsal than she was at jewelry design. As a result of staying up late, she’s still tired, so she’s missing passes or overshooting goals. She even accidentally kicks the ball over the fence and into the woods, so she goes to retrieve it while yawning some more.

It’s here that she is confronted by an equally sleepy Scorp, who asks her to hand over the Rose Pact so he won’t have to write up his report, and he can sleep. It’s kind of pathetic, kind of comical.

Scorp turns the futsal ball into a hoshiina, so Rin transforms as well. Syrup swoops in to save her from Scorp but drops the Rose Pact, so King Donuts tries to talk down the villain. However, Scorp is undeterred and even sees more value in having one of the monarchs inside the Rose Pact. The other girls show up and transform, temporarily distracting Scorp (as well as the king, who is surprised that they’re the legendary warriors) but he then continues his advance until Rouge punches him away. Then she hears Lemonade screaming as the Hoshiina tries to fling her off, so Rouge rushes in to kick it and rescue her friend. Scorp once again tries to capture the Rose Pact, so Rouge separates from the team again to protect the fairies, but Scorp captures her instead and taunts her about trying too hard to do too much by herself and says she’ll only ever be halfway finished. This hits Rin at her core and she is unable to resist an attack from the Hoshiina, but at the last moment her teammates jump in front of her to defend her. They remind her that she’s not alone, they’re there to help her, and then Dream gives an inspiring speech about how Rin always challenges her situation and works harder than others, so they’ll always support her. Scorp is unimpressed, but Dream rushes him with a Shooting Star. Feeling newly motivated, Rin also performs her new finisher on the Hoshiina: Fire Strike! She summons a fireball at her feet and then kicks it into the monster, which of course dissolves back into a normal futsal ball. Scorp flees, muttering about how he’ll have to include this in his report as well.

As the dust settles, King Donuts admires the Precures, and then has a seemingly random realization about the Rose Pact and the Red and Blue roses, or rather, the lack of blue rose. In case you had forgotten that plot point.

the answer will surprise you

Back at Natts House, King Donuts opens up a bit more to the girls and they chat back. However, he quickly reiterates that he doesn’t acknowledge Coco and Nuts as rulers yet. When they ask Syrup to help them with the shop, he reminds them that he’s only here to deliver a letter from Milk, and he finally hands it over to Coco. (took him long enough) It turns out the letter says there’s an emergency in Palmier Kingdom and everyone needs to come there quickly! They want to go but aren’t certain how.... until they remember Syrup has the convenient ability to travel between worlds. He initially refuses, but King Donuts cleverly appeals to both his pride and his kind-heartedness, causing him to think about the conviction all the girls have shown in their solo outings thus far, and he agrees to take them. So just as quickly as it opened, Natts House is closed again and the gang boards Syrup to fly to the Palmier Kingdom. As they rise into the air, they soar forwards into a watercolor warphole, surrounded by floating lights. They fade to white and the credits start.

The Analysis

Something I truly appreciate about this episode is that it picks up from the first series finale, and shows that Rin hasn’t magically become a top tier accessory designer, she still has moments of artist’s block, and she really struggles with just finding time to create, which impacts her social responsibilities. (sounds familiar) Rin’s struggle is a recurring theme, and I'm always glad that unlike certain later shows, they don’t glamorize her sacrificing sleep, they just portray it as something people sometimes do even if it’s not in their best interests. Contrast with that episode of Go Princess, you know the one. It’s a straightforward cause and effect: Rin stays up late designing, so she’s tired the next day, and that influences her interactions.

It has some positive responses, such as getting King Donuts to recognize how hardworking she is and swaying his opinion on the girls; and some negative impacts, like kicking the futsal ball too hard and over the fence. With all that said, I must once again remind you all not to sacrifice your well-being for your goals, even if I’m bad at following my own advice.

King Donuts (or Doughnuts if you prefer) is an interesting character. At first he’s paranoid that he’s in another Nightmare trap, but as he grows to accept his circumstances he warms up a bit, especially when he hears about how hard Rin is working. He remains critical of Coco and Nuts, understandably so, since their negligence led to him being attacked previously. However, he doesn’t dislike them, he is sharp-tongued because he wants to make them better kings. Physically he resembles a diminutive dragon. It’s not the most apparent visual but when all four Rulers are together the pattern begins to become obvious. More on that ~eventually~.

although they’re all in the OP so, ya know, clues

A secondary theme throughout this arc has been to show Syrup starting to acclimate to the girls and begin appreciating their hard work and way of doing things. He’s still stubborn and wants to do his own thing, but it takes less arm twisting to get him to go along with the girls’ requests. Usually. As he admits to King Donuts, he respects their work ethic and their devotion to the causes they love. He entered the picture as a loner delivery boy who just wanted to do his job, but getting roped in with the Precures’ misadventures has opened his eyes somewhat. He’s going to be fun to watch as the show continues. However, he has a reputation, as we’ve seen. We don’t know exactly what the details are but several characters seem to have a low opinion of him, and we’ll find out more about that in coming episodes.

The fight in this episode is interesting in how..... not interesting it is. It kind of fools you into thinking more is happening than actually is. There’s a lot of talking and not as much action as you would expect. The Cures and Scorp or the Hoshiina will exchange a few blows and get thrown around, then one of them starts lecturing the other side about their beliefs. Sure, all Precure shows have elements of this, I can remember a few other fights that were more talk than combat, but it seems particularly egregious this episode. I do like how Scorp’s mocking has an effect on Rouge though. She’s already feeling really unaccomplished and then he goes and tells her she’s useless without her friends. It starts to weigh on her heart, but her friends quickly step in and say hey, we love Rin, she has us to support her, it’s okay if she can’t do it all by herself. As a result of this quick pep talk, she unleashes Fire Strike, her new finisher, and boy does THAT shine. It’s the first soccer-themed Precure attack in the series, and more will follow in subsequent years.

Compared to some of the other finishers, Fire Strike is more straightforward. Rouge creates a ball of fire and kicks it directly into the Hoshiina. It’s less over the top than her teammates attacks (flying into the enemy, twin whips, flying discs, or an arrow made of water) but the animators manage to punch it up a bit with some suitably dramatic effects that sell how fast, hard, and powerful this kick is. Also I have to say, the shot of Rouge bringing her leg all the way back to ready the kick is really cool.

Her leg is cocked and extends past her head. If you’ve ever tried this you know it’s hard, so even if you can make a drawing do anything, it still looks impressive, and the next shot where she’s kicked it is gorgeous. The flame walls, the way she’s lifted slightly off the ground, the way the ball is warped, all convey a sense of power and motion. Yeah, she’s just kicking it straight ahead, but you get the sense she could kick it through a brick wall.

I do have to say, on the negative side, the framing device of the episode feels a little forced. If this letter from Milk was so important, Syrup probably should have pushed it on the girls a little sooner. Maybe just dropped it off with Nozomi when he first met her in the morning. They still could have seen King Donuts awakening but they would have made moves to go straight to the Palmier Kingdom instead of doing all that work advertising and opening the shop only to have to close it again right away, and skipping Rin’s moral quandary. Since those are at the root of the episode, it might be hard to cut them, so alternatively, to keep them, the episode could have been written such that Syrup could have received the letter at the end, so he wasn’t holding onto such an important and urgent letter all episode long. It’s the little things. And on that topic, I find the third act (fourth act?) after the fight to be a little too goofy. Syrup finally hands over the letter, then they all hem and haw about how they’re going to get to Palmier Kingdom and they beg and plead Syrup to do it until he finally agrees. The only truly funny part to me is Nuts lamenting that he has to close Natts House after he just opened it.

Also there’s this ending sequence.

vimeo

This is the single worst thing I have ever made in the name of this project.

It’s overall a well-thought out episode and it smartly moves between story elements, smoothly concluding the character reintroductions and setting up the Blue Rose arc that follows. I appreciate how seemingly unconnected events flow into each other and they lead to the King seeing that the girls are legitimately good people. It’s probably the most cohesive episode of this arc, although I still think the character reintroductions peaked with Urara’s. The others have been good in different ways, but there’s a deeper bit of heartfelt emotion that episodes 2, 3, 5, and 6 just haven’t been able to match.

Next time, Milk’s emergency turns out to be largely imagined, and we meet a new villain. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 kettei!

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Yes! Precure 5 Go Go!#YPC5GG06 #PCD204

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sunsmitten · 4 years

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This is something that’s been bothering me lately and i feel the need to give my two cents. im starting to see homophobic comments abt gay ships on my dash and while the people saying them may not think it’s homophobic, it is. no one has to really read this, it’s just something i want to put out there. it’s my personal experience with a group of people that were very Straight Ship centered, heteronormative, and would frequently make the very same comments others are starting to make here: “gay ships are being shoved down my throat so now i hate gay shipping and want nothing to do with it” or you know, stuff along those lines. if two people rping two girls kissing or two boys kissing bothers you in any way, literally, in any way at all, it is homophobia. and here’s a good chunk of how shit like that grows and can become something very harmful;

when i very first started rping on tumblr i had made an oc ( both the oc and blog are looooong gone by now ) that wasn’t very attracted to women romantically or sexually. he didn’t define his sexuality, but throughout that blog i made it clear he wasn’t really into women.

i eventually made friends with this group of people who also rped on tumblr. in the beginning everything was fine, great and fun! but after some time they would make me feel bad for only putting my oc in a relationship with a man. in order for me to be included and not repeatedly discarded by them, i would actively have to put my oc in a ‘straight ship.’ and unfortunately, that’s what i did. i immediately noticed a difference with how they treated me when i finally shipped my guy oc with one of their girls oc’s, and i would have to repeatedly sit through them saying transphobic and homophobic comments abt other people’s ships and muses ( it was the transphobia in this community that made me leave in the first place ). they would constantly express their bitterness towards m/m and f/f shipping on the internet bc it was “more popular” than their m/f ships, and when i would try to explain how that wasn’t a good viewpoint to have, I would be ostracized, guilt tripped, and forced to apologize and ‘admit’ that i was wrong.

as i got older and more comfortable with my sexuality, i really only ever viewed/read content centered around m/m and f/f because like. im gay. and i wanna see gay shit, ya know? but that didn’t really fly with them. they’d would continuously make me feel guilty for this, call me misogynistic for liking m/m and f/f over m/f because to them being gay and wanting to see gay content makes me hate women, and i was called the big word itself. Heterophobic.

one of the girls in particular, we’ll call her S, was very keen on telling me how awful of a person i was bc of my preference, how ‘straight shipping is oppressed’ on the internet and im only ‘feeding into the oppression.’ for 4 years she would manipulate me and make me feel guilty not only for the type of media i consumed, but for my sexuality in general. it got so bad to the point that i would have frequent panic attacks and i still got the throw up stain on my carpet to prove it ( i got one so bad bc of her i puked all over my bedroom floor and then fainted ). when i would try to reach out to the others abt what was happening behind the scenes, i’d either be ignored or my feelings were invalidated. to me, she was toxic, to everyone else, she was a wonderful friend. but that doesn’t excuse or make her treatment of me ok and it took along time for me to realize that.

again, please keep in mind this went on for 4 years. this started when i was finally comfortable with myself and then to be thrown in and stuck in this situation bc i was too much of a coward to leave really fucks with a person. her distaste, hatefulness, and bitter attitude for gay people/characters/shipping was all taken out on me every week for 4 years. i’m doing my very best not over-dramatize this but yeah, it was every week for 4 years she would send me paragraphs of how terrible i was for just being me. how shitty i was as a person, how im a terrible friend, how the content i liked wasn’t fair to her, a straight person, that i was predatory for being a masculine identifying person looking at other guys, and how lucky i was to have a friend like her that tells me when i’m ‘in the wrong.’

near the end of last year she sent me another one of these multi-paragraph messages. at this point, i had finally become very aware how fucked up of a person she is and how i was never in the wrong through any of this like she originally made me believe. instead of agreeing with her and apologizing, a ended up snapping back. i told her how i felt, how she wasn’t being fair to me, and that i felt she was being very homophobic. admittedly, her response wasn’t at all like i had expected. She apologized, told me i had opened her eyes to some things and she’ll work on getting better. this made me happy! i thought that maybe we could continue our friendship without anymore of the BS.

after that i took a good break from being online. i needed some time for myself and i needed to think some things over about my life. during this time, i realized how lax i was with S, how i let her and that whole friend group get away with so many things and i began to wonder if i should even go back. even after that talk i had with her, she was still very defensive against homosexual relationships and would get angry if someone expressed more interest in gay media than straight media.

i was away for a good couple months, i was healing and rising above that bad mentality she forced on me. i logged out of all social media and messenger apps so there was no way her or anyone from that group could contact me. i hadn’t heard from her in months, until i received a letter in the mail. She wrote me a letter. A two paged letter. A LETTER. A REAL, WHOLE ASS LETTER. just so she can continue to try and tear me down. she started by telling me how much she missed me, a little starter paragraph kissing my ass until it, very abruptly, turned into the usual “youre shit, terrible, bad, you have no respect for me or anything i create, you hate me bc im a straight woman-” you get it. but this time i didn’t care! nothing she said in that letter got to me like it used to. the only thing that bothered me was her persistence to make me feel bad. she genuinely wanted to continue to hurt me. but with that time away and probably because i was so used to it by then, it didn’t faze me.

i eventually went back to social media and kept my distance from that friend group. i still considered them my friends, bc when things were good, i had a lot of fun! and wanted to keep that in my life. But, I blocked S. I blocked her on everything so there’d be no way for her to contact me and if she wrote me another letter, i would simply rip it up. i made it clear i wanted to go our separate ways with no hard feelings, i didn’t talk to anyone abt what she had done. no mention whatsoever. i carried on my merry way bc i was moving past it. She did not.

When she figured out i had blocked her, she threw a tantrum. she twisted my words and painted me as the villain by showing out of context screenshots of what i had sent in response to her second to last message ( the one before the letter ). she told the people i was still friends with that i abused her for years bc she was straight and put me on full blast on the internet. she did this because i blocked her.

it all happened in the time span of a second; i lost all my friends, i was blocked by everyone and not only called a piece of shit by her, but by everyone i still cared deeply about. i was forced to delete all my social media accounts so i wouldn’t continue to be put on blast. for a week i was upset bc really, who wouldn’t be? but after that week i realized that if these people i called my friends just took S’s word for it and were all so eager to tear me apart bc she said so, they were never my friends. they never cared about me so why should i care if im not with them anymore? it was a real eye opening moment and my dudes, im doing fucking great. im so much happier without them all in my life and i can finally do the shit i want. be gay and indulge on harmless gay content.

so! to make the moral of the story clear. The people that are so butt hurt over gay shipping being more popular than straight shipping are people not to be trusted. it may seem unfair to lump them all into a category, and im not saying they’re all as toxic as S, but their mentality is homophobic. disliking anything gay bc it’s not straight, is homophobic. straight people are constantly represented in every source of media and if someone is bothered by the fact that gay people are indulging in gay shipping in the rpc, they are homophobic. there’s no way around it.

im still getting over S and all that she did. i know without her i wouldn't be as tough as i am now and unapologetic with what i like, but there’s a good part of me that wishes i never met her or that friend group. bc of her i struggle with my self esteem and my own internalized homophobia that only formed after i met her. i’ve come along way in the months after i officially cut myself off from them, but i know this is something that’s going to take some time.

#➴ OOC.☼#PSA;#sorry it's a long ass story but i feel like it needs to be said #im so so so tired of people complaining abt gay ships getting more traction than straight ones in the rpc #and anyone i see complaining abt it i immediately dont trust.#i rly went from 'im sorry im gay i dont mean to offend u :(' to #'idc abt ur straight feelings. die mad abt it. straight? i dont fuk with u.'#and that's what we call character development.#i was bullied relentlessly bc i liked to see two guys and two girls kiss and bc i AM a bro that wants to kiss another bro #by insecure straighties #Gay and Bitter

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cowboyshit · 4 years

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@adampage tumblr did a dumbass thing and messed up the read-more to where I couldn’t put it under one so I had to delete your ask and I’m making a separate post for this disaster of a ramble hoooo boy i hope you’re ready for what you’ve unleashed

adampage asked: ma’am I know you’re high off your rocker but if you have time would you please critique hangman’s playlist for me bc I want to know your thoughts 🥰 anyway yeehaw

OH MY GOD yes???? yes I fucking WILL?????? let’s just pump the breaks on what i was doing right the fuck now, get his playlist in front of me (even though ive been listening to it nonstop and have so many things to ALREADY SAY) and talk about this shit. im sorry if this isn’t coherent im pry just gonna ramble. (edit to add now that I’m done: ITS FREAKING 3252 WORDS LONG LMAO OH MY GOD)

first and foremost. I Love It. let’s just slap that down. get that out of the way. ITS SO GOOD. SO FUCKING GOOD. also this is going under a readmore cause YEAH. it’s THAT LONG.

let’s start first with mr. adam ‘i taught graphic design when i was 20 and learned adobe illustrator and photoshop to design my own tshirts when i was an indie wrestler’ page’s cover image. wait. no. back up - look at the profile image he chose for his profile. it’s not a selfie. it’s not a picture he snapped with his camera. it’s a screenshot of the “has been drinking” moment on aew dynamite. what a lovable FOOL. he really saved that and put that as his profile pic im skjdfkjfd okay now swing back to the anxious millenial design with the signed hangman adam page for the cover. he designed that. I swear he did. I swear he did that. I could be wrong but I just feel it in my bones. that was him. also, THAT should have been the vintage shirt. cowboy shit is cute but ANXIOUS MILLENNIAL COWBOY? I NEED THAT AS THE SHIRT!

okay now let’s get into the songs. wait. before i go through it I do want to say something about the playlist overall.

I can’t decide if this is because he shares so many similarities to the character hangman adam page, but so many of these songs apply to his character like, this fucking playlist plays like a hangman adam page THE CHARACTER playlist. like this is the playlist i’d find on 8tracks back when that was the “thing” in fandom where every song makes me go “OMG THAT IS THAT CHARACTER” like. I don’t know if he did that purposefully as an extension of the character? or if it just happens to line up because of how similar he is and his story is to his character but SOME of these songs wooooo boy they get deep dont they? when you compare them to the character?

okay. songs.

so I know some of these, especially the classics, summertime of course, but for the ones I didn’t know I love them so much. they have such a vibe that just fits him, and they’re all so good???

rather low by nick shoulders is one I didn’t know and I fucking LOVE it. and look. it goes from Long Time Gone by the Dixie Chicks. Long Time Gone about being away from the country life, from home and if my THEORY is right about this playlist hitting the character, hangman is struggling with being lost, without a family. it goes from that to rather low, which talks about not being welcome at home. like “I told you once I told you twice, I’m steeped in verse and cursed in vice” ajdskjds GOOD lyrics. beat slaps. song slaps. I love it.

okay so we go roll on mississippi which is soft compared to the two upbeat songs that just hit us before. calms you down after that high energy beat rather low had. lets you breathe. AND it’s got a sad, soft, longing pull to it, falling in with more of those “lost” from home themes. “You're the childhood dream that I grew up on. Roll on Mississippi, carry me home. Now I can see I've been away too long.” UGH! and also, it’s just a good fucking song.

then we go to a song i haven’t heard and love, going places by aubrie sellers. it’s a little bit funkier, but still soft. also groovy as FUCK. and it obv talks about GOING places. so maybe the first three songs were about the home he’s left behind, but now it’s about where he’s going. and man this song just SLAPS.

A CLASSIC is next, 1970 something illegal smile by john prine. it has that classic soft croon, such a good country sound and it’s a little bit playful. it makes you wanna smile and sway back and forth. it’s a good song. fun. but it’s almost a little bit. dark? “ Won't you please tell the man I didn't kill anyone. No, I'm just tryin' to have me some fun. Well, I sat down in my closet with all my overalls, tryin' to get away from all the ears inside my walls. I dreamed the police heard everything I thought, what then?” it just makes me think of when his character “killed” joey ryan. I could be looking too far into it but, that’s what popped into my head.

OKAY NOW this next one. fuck yeah I DIG this song. I hadn’t heard this song and it quickly went into my liked songs. and if we’re following his character, the lyrics hit HARD. “ I've lost the will to try this worthless lullaby. Its melody won't fly me past oblivion. I bet it would be nice to find that paradise, a world of sparkling light beyond the setting sun. But I don't dream anymore” ugh !!!!!!! UGGGHH!! SO GOOD?? and even the slight upbeat to it. “would if I could but I don’t dream anymore” uuuuggghhh SO GOOD. love this song. one of my faves of the whole list for sure.

the next two back-to-back are CLASSICS and fit the hangman adam page character so damn perfect. i’ve even looked at lyrics from merle haggard’s i don’t want to sober up to night for adam in the past akjfdkjdsf it’s fucking perfect. and then followed by dwight yoakam’s honky tonk man?! amazing. we go from from fucking heart-wrenching lyrics if you think about them for him: “ I don't want to sober up tonight. I don't want to act like things are alright, and I don't want to change just to make you think I'm happy. That's my right, I don't want to sober up tonight. I want to keep my mind a little hazy. I don't care if all my friends think I'm crazy. The way I treat myself I might be a little crazy But that's alright, I don't want to sober up tonight. I'm here to drown another day of misery. I'm in here to spend one night without a mem'ry and the way I'm drinking now there won't be any memory. But it's alright, I don't want to sober up tonight” to HONKY TONK MAN. HONKY. TONK. MAN. “ Well I'm a honky tonk man and I can't seem to stop. I love to give the girls a whirl to the music of an old jukebox, but when my money's all gone, I'm on the telephone singing, hey hey mama can your daddy come home?” ajhsdjksdjkf like. look. partying hangman, drunk, swinging a girl around in the country bar???? cause he refused to sober up and just wanted to have fun? anyways regardless if there’s a connection or if im reaching, these are some good classics to pull out right here. honky tonk man will ALWAYS bring the party back up.

another song I didn’t know but now love? happy reunion by colter wall? this is a good freaking cowboy song??? and it’s a cute story???? about what a cowboy does during his day??? what the fuck? riding along the range with his dog, helping the cow, getting the calf back that’d gotten lost???? CUTE? anyways this is a vibin as HELL song and if it’d come out when I was still raising cows my ass woulda been blasting this shit as I drove to feed the herd for SURE. this song is a whole ass vibe and I’m digging it.

okay. walk through fire by yola? another i didn’t know (which - so far it seems all the songs that arent classics - spare dixie chicks - are from 2019) and I am obsessed with???? it’s so good? and fuck just such a good love song??? “Standing on the side of the river. Staring across the great divide. I'd give all my gold and silver just to get to the other side. Your love is like a rescue vessel, carries me through the night through these flames of destruction. I know you're gonna make it right. I know, I know you're gonna save my life.“ LIKE? HENLO????????? FUCK!!!! THATS SO GOOD. that whole song I could post all the lyrics tbh. and the way she CROONS it ugh. yeah. I love that song.

FUCKIN YES. DOLLY FUCKIN PARTON. youre not gonna make a country playlist and not include a dolly parton song boy i KNOW IT. and the song choice??? hm? remind you of a CERTAIN COWBOYS STRUGGLE WITH NOT HAVING A HOME???? “What difference does it make which way I go, got an empty feelin' down inside. Still I need to stay alive and who can tell what waits beyond this road. I'm a drifter” ajdfshjsd god I love dolly. and of COURSE he does too. i’m so pleased by this choice I can’t stop smiling. ugh. love this. love dolly.

sandpaper oneside, rubber other by the bobby tenderloin universe what do you know? another 2019 song I didn’t know and yet absolutely LOVE. I also am loving how he does a mix of classics with newer (but still almost classic-country sounding, maybe like. classic meets modern) country music in this playlist. AND WHAT A SONG. it’s so good? and again, just makes me think of the character. “there are two minds inside me. that’s one life too many. but i keep moving slow on both sides, strong as I can be.” tell me that doesnt make you think of hangman adam page. and it has such a... sad vibe. “i cant believe the things i am. as much a lion as a lamb” !!!!!!!!!!! ugh such a GOOD LINE. THAT SLAPS. LOVE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ugh this song. especially the back vocals of the woman that comes in later on? it’s like. ethereal. beautiful. fucking beautiful and almost haunting. paired with the sad lyrics? UGH. gorgeous.

long white line by sturgill simpson i do know and LOVE and it’s got a fun, uplifting cowboy beat following the more slow, sad croon of the last song. it’s SO COUNTRY. the way it’s sung? SO COUNTRY. and also ajdfskjsd adam. “I woke up my baby was gone without her I don't need no home” and “Gonna' push this rig 'til I push that girl out of my mind. If somebody wants to know what's become of this so and so tell em' I'm somewhere looking for the end of that long white line” kjdjkfdkjf this is just such a country song, and it fits SO well, especially after that previous pick.

now we go from two new songs to another classic. another (i think) 1970s country hit. lonesome, on’ry and mean is SUCH a classic country song. it has that good old sound, and the story it tells too. and just, I can’t stop thinking about hangman just “ Been driving these highways, been doing things my way. It's been making me lonesome on'ry and mean.” ajdskjflkf it’s fair to say that character IS lonesome, on’ry and mean right now. anyways, fun country song regardless and I DIG the addition.

okay back to a newer song and holy shit. this is my personal favorite of the new songs he introduced me to. this song I LOVE this song. fuuun FUN beat, makes me want to fucking GROOVE. I love love love this, and I love the way the singer sings? it just makes me wanna UGH. just wanna sway to it. the whine in the croon I just love. and the BEAT. the beat is so fucking good. and the lyrics? “I'm that wholesome Midwestern boy that you want to bring home to your mama. Even though I bring you joy, baby I'm not the toy you wanna play with at night. Too many things I've seen. Too many people and places I've been. I'm thinking about doing those things I shouldn't be doing. Something I've never done before. I want something to fuck me up. Need somebody to fuck me up. Everyone feels like it. Fuck me up, fuck me up, fuck me up” ajdsjkds I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH “Well I might go and get drunk and stoned 'cause it's better than being only crazy. If I ever come back, wherever I end up at is where I was supposed to be.” it’s so perfect for his character it drives me crazy. this is a song I’d listen to and first, groove to, and then be like THIS SONG IS HANGMAN. love this song. absolutely a favorite.

the next song though. the next song. fucking hangman adam page and his love of biscuits. southern biscuits by seasick steve oh. my. god. this BOY. THIS COUNTRY BOY. THIS BISCUIT LOVIN COUNTRY BOY. this is such a damn good addition. not only is it so fucking country, almost. spoken/sung? the soft hum with the fucking banjo??? and of COURSE of course he knows and loves this song I can’t with him. and it hits you with the: “ Southern biscuits, nothin' better in the world 'less they're made for you, by your southern girl.” and I go UWU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

two new songs so guess what? classic time. BALANCE. HE’S KEEPING BALANCE. I swear he’s done this purposefully and I could be crazy I could be giving him more credit than is due but I swear he’s picked the arrangement of songs too. because this is too coincidental. so, we’ve got our classic livin on the run by david allan coe. what a DARK song to go with. about a man who murders a woman and lives on the run (again, can’t help but think of the joey ryan murder thing, but hey. that’s just me grasping for straws) regardless if it ties or not, it’s a good classic and it’s fun to croon to even if its uh. dark but sung like. upbeat? almost???

okay, another classic and, to me, one of the sexiest songs on this playlist. I fucking love this song. it’s sexy with an underlying of dark. she literally seduces and knocks the guy out and robs him blind and he’s STILL craving her summer wine like. this song is SO GOOD. so fucking good. the way the music swells with the storytelling is beautiful. “Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring, my summer wine is really made from all these things. Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time, and I will give to you summer wine” is just so ajkdfskjdfs ugh i love this song

and guess what? two classics so we’re swinging to a newer song. left turn on a red light by blackfoot. oof. I didn’t know this song and it hit me, it’s so good and I know im saying that about all of them but Honestly. “ Sun shines down on the desert, and it seems to make my life a haze, and I dream of my childhood sweetheart,and the freedom that I had in those days.” UGH. “ Will I always be a rambler? Will the ones I love always keep tellin' me, "You stare too long in the mirror, son, someday you'll be too blind to see.” HELLO???? those lyrics? SO GOOD. and again applying them to hangman just makes me FERAL SCREAM.

cowboys and hippies by cody jinks is such a hangman song it’s almost unreal. if I was going to REALLY reach I’d say it almost reminds me of the way the crowd pulls him back. “At some old honkytonk bar that I know by the smell, some old drunk on a barstool on a Merle Haggard tune. That's my kind of room. Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys. They don't care about no trends, they don't care about songs that sell. Yeah, tomorrow I'll be gone, so tonight everybody just sing along, raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys” GOOD LYRICS. this has the same sad undertones too as a lot of these songs have too.

ugh. I love him sincerely for this next one. blue skies is one of my favorite songs, but blue skies by willie nelson? YES. my grandpa used to play willie nelson ALL THE TIME and I love this version. an uplifting song to follow the heavier songs. I’d like to think of a hangman who has the blue skies from now on. all of his blue days gone. this song is such a classic (cover) that just. good pick. I love this.

alright, so we’ve got a classic but he’s chosen the version from bojack horseman which makes me think that might’ve been the first time he heard it, but that’s neither here nor there. stars is a BEAUTIFUL song. and boy am I happy we had blue skies before this cause fuck. how sad? how emotional?????? “People lust for fame like athletes in a game, we break our collarbones and come up swinging, some of us are downed some of us are crowned, and some are lost and never found” fuck. fuck fuck fuck. and the last two lines, thinking about hangman? “So if you don't lose patience with my fumbling around, I'll come up singing for you, even when I'm down.” FUCK. my HEART. good pick but OUCH. good but ow.

summertime by orville peck is next BLESS finally an orville song I was gonna lose it on him if he put a playlist and DIDN’T include an orville song. interesting though he went with summertime, the newest, and not any of the ones off pony. but! it follows stars well. its soft, lull, and the lyrics are so hangman now that I put it in this context. “Catch 'em by surprise and chasin' the horizon, nothing holds me down. Askin', "Where the time's gone?" Dreamin' with the lights on, tryna keep your eyes on something along the rise" anyways I know YOU know this song well it’s so fucking good. has that same soft pull a lot of these songs have. the way that chorus swells though? the secondary vocals??? ugh. yeah this was a great choice, I’m glad he went with summertime. it fits the vibe of this playlist so well.

we’re ending on a song with such a country sound to it (i mean all of these do), a bit more upbeat, a bit more funky. “Some say I'm a wild man, drink too much nectar from the corn” and also “Oh the school, it wasn't for me. I earned my stripes a different way I learned to sing harmony and go play out on the stage” definitely makes me think of hangman for SURE. it’s a funky song to end on, and if you keep listening to the playlist on repeat like I do, it even falls into long time gone really well.

and of course this is assuming you’re meant to listen to them one after the other and not on shuffle. I’m sure it still works on shuffle but I LOVE the flow of this playlist listening to it one after the other.

love this whole playlist. and my identifying it with the character could TOTALLY be reaching, but of course I’m going to think of him and analyze his selection of *these* songs specifically to put out to all of us. out of EVERY song he likes. he didn’t include... hmm cowboy take me away, for example? shoulda been a cowboy??? the vibe of the overall playlist FITS “anxious millenial cowboy” it has an underbelly of sadness to it. and I dig the fuck out of that.

overall 10/10 I love this fucking playlist thank you goodnight

#hangman page #ashley answers #ashleys talking again #tw: weed #tw: alcohol #ANYWAYS what i'd said before is #if you read this whole thing i think im obligated to marry you #also. i forget to mention the title of some of the songs i talk about but it follows the list the whole way down #sorry how non-coherent it is i just. lose it.

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 5 years

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starhearth: episode five

Second Month of Spring, Day 5-6

Early in the morning, while the last of the rain from the day before is still petering out, the explorer who promised to trade us some cricket golems returns.

[ID: A screenshot of a notification box titled ‘The explorer returns!’ The text inside the box reads, “The explorer returns!--I’m back! It looks like you’ve made me the 5 Wooden Window Frame I asked for. Are you still interested in 2 Autonomous Cricket Golem in exchange? I assure you, they are more useful than any normal person at carrying things!”]

Once activated, the two little golems quickly go to work picking up items and moving them to the stockpiles. These guys will be very helpful to us. As more and more of the villagers become crafters or warriors and spend most of their time focused on that, there are fewer and fewer people to do the necessary work of just hauling stuff from one place to another. The cricket golems will help pick up the slack.

[ID: A screenshot of the item stockpile, containing animal pelts, bones, strips of rawhide and blocks of wood, as the two golems pick up items from the stockpile. The golems are dark gray and rectangular in shape, with four stubby legs, small square gray heads, two glowing yellow eyes, and two glowing rectangular antennae.]

More good news: we’ve got enough food and networth to pick up another villager.

Now, I realize that you may have increasingly been thinking, as this game continues to progress, “uh, where the hell is SPOCK? you’ve literally included LESLIE in your roster before SPOCK? what are you even doing here” or something along those lines. Well, you can rest assured I did not forget about Spock. The reason I haven’t made him a villager yet comes down to one simple thing: I had no absolutely no idea what to do with him. There is no position available to the Hearthlings that even remotely corresponds to ‘science officer’. Herbalist, maybe, at a stretch—but there are multiple characters who fit that job better by virtue of being actual medical professionals. I thought about making him a warrior of some kind, since Spock takes out a fair amount of foes throughout the series, but that didn’t seem to fit him very well. Spock’s not a warrior at heart. He’s just a guy who’s willing to nerve pinch a bad guy or two if the situation calls for it.

But of course, we’ve gotta have Spock in here somewhere. So in the end, after much deliberation, I decided...to make him a Weaver. Weavers are a crafting class that refine fibers and animal pelts into thread, leather and cloth, which can then be used either by the Weaver to make clothes that provide various benefits to Hearthlings, or by other crafters to make things like bows and armor.

My reasoning for this? Spock’s fabulous sense of fashion. That’s it. That’s literally it.

[ID: A screenshot of Spock’s Character Info window, which shows that his mood is content, his stats are 6 Mind, 5 Body and 4 Spirit, his class is Worker, he has the trait ‘Night Owl’--represented by a crescent moon icon—and his mood is being improved by the ‘Pioneering Spirit’ buff. Below, Spock’s portrait is seen in the information box at the bottom of the screen, showing him to be a white Hearthling with brown eyes, short square black hair, and thick black eyebrows.]

Spock has an impressive stat spread—6 Mind, 5 Body and 4 Spirit—and the trait Night Owl. You might remember that Kirk also has this trait; it makes the Hearthling stay up later at night and wake up later in the day. So Kirk and Spock can keep each other company. As it should be.

The character appearance options aren’t exactly equipped to make Vulcans, so the best I can do is give Spock some really big eyebrows. Unfortunately, a strange graphical glitch results in those eyebrows floating in the air next to his head instead of remaining on his face as eyebrows usually do.

[ID: A screenshot of Spock the Hearthling running over the grass with his eyebrows floating at the right height, but to the right of his head instead of on it.]

my god, those NBC execs were right all along! his eyebrows are demonic!

Well...it’ll probably sort itself out.

Meanwhile, McCoy needs to build himself a cauldron so he can craft potions. This requires a bit of stone. Once we start mining for ore, we’ll have more stone than we know what to do with, but for the moment we’re fresh out. Luckily there are some boulders standing out in the fields around the village, so McCoy goes out to break those down for stone. Apparently he doesn’t much feel like picking it up afterward, though, because he just kind of stands there while a cricket golem comes to collect the stone instead.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy standing in the grass staring at the stockpile and doing nothing, while behind him a cricket golem picks up a block of stone.]

what? did you not get your coffee today?

Once the stone is in the stockpile, though, McCoy—begrudgingly, I assume—goes to craft a cauldron out of it, and begins brewing some potions. A few energy potions made from the ad hoc little herb garden will make everyone move a bit faster for a while, which hopefully will speed up production of the tavern.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy bending over a bubbling cauldron next to his workstation in the grass. The information box below describes him as ‘crafting energy tonic.’]

Uhura has befriended another rabbit, this one named March. I really hope March and Thumpy don’t breed, because if we get into a Trouble With Tribbles situation I don’t think my CPU will be able to handle it.

[ID: A screenshot of the camp with a small rabbit sitting next to the empty hearth, while Kirk patrols nearby and McCoy gets something from the stockpile in the background.]

Night Owl Spock stays up to finish putting the roof on the tavern after everyone else has gone to bed. He’s not completely alone, though; he’s got his eyebrows to accompany him.

[ID: Spock walking across the roof of the tavern in the dark, eyebrows still hovering next to his head.]

The next morning is warm but a bit rainy. With the tavern itself completed, all that’s left is to place all the windows and doors. Everyone chips in to help.

[ID: A screenshot of several villagers walking across the grass towards the tavern, each carrying a door or window. Rand is selected in the information box below, which says she is ‘placing Wooden Door.’]

Some more Entlings attack...or rather, they try to, but they’re up on the cliffs surrounding the town to the north, and can’t get down. So they just kind of stand there angrily for a while before wandering off again.

[ID: A shot from the front of the tavern, showing four Entlings standing on the cliff some distance in the background.]

The tavern is finally finished, and everyone takes a moment to celebrate.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy, Rand, Chapel, Leslie, Spock, Chekov, and Scotty all standing in front of the tavern with their hands in the air as confetti and clouds of dust fly up from the completed building.]

There’s not much time to stand around, though—now that the building is complete, it’s time to start moving things into it. Eventually we’ll make individual houses for people and use the tavern as, well, a tavern, but for the moment it’s more pressing to just get everyone under a roof, so the beds are moved into what’s theoretically the tavern pantry. Well, almost all the beds. One of them can’t be moved for a while, because Kirk is sleeping in it.

[ID: A screenshot of Kirk passed out in the one remaining bed next to the berry bushes.]

The berry bushes and herb garden are also moved over to be closer to the tavern, and the outside storepiles decommissioned in favor of moving all our supplies into some more neatly organized boxes inside. Scotty queues up some more storage boxes as well as a few more beds to support the growing population, but he needs wood to make them, and building the tavern has used up our whole supply of it. So a few people are sent to cut down some trees. Just cutting down the trees growing nearby has given us enough wood so far, but that’s not going to be a sustainable solution forever. We’re going to need an orchard for wood, so a few acorns are also planted out back to get that started.

One of the felled trees drops a bee’s nest. This is actually a good thing—a Herbalist can collect the bees and put them in a hive which will supply honey. McCoy is sent to go pick up the bees, but he decides he’d rather get a drink instead.

[ID: A screenshot of the field behind the tavern, mostly cleared but with a couple of tree stumps in the corner. One of the stumps has a swarming bee’s nest on the ground next to it. McCoy is running away from the stump, and the information box below says that he is ‘getting a drink.’]

Yeah I can’t really say I blame him.

#starhearth #starhearth episode 5

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ncfan-1 · 5 years

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Three Houses: Master Tier Additions

So, something I’ve noticed since Three Houses’s release is that there is some level of dissatisfaction with the master classes and a desire for more diversity. The master classes tend to heavily favor riding-oriented units, the massive nerf to the Mortal Savant’s speed growths can easily wreck a unit promoted to Mortal Savant, and so on. Personally, I am not someone with any influence over how the master classes work in Three Houses, nor how many there are, but I will admit wishing that some changes could be made—and that new master classes could be added. Here are some changes I would make, and the master classes I would add on—keeping in mind that I’m not an expert in FE game mechanics, and there may be things you guys think of that I didn’t.

For existing classes:

- Remove the gender-lock from all classes, not just the master classes. Linhardt’s a born Gremory, Lysithea’s a born Dark Mage/Bishop, and I was going to say that the Pegasus line could keep the gender-lock because the Wyvern line is a perfectly viable alternative, but damn it, let Hubert be the Pegasus Knight he’s always dreamed of being.

- Remove the -10% speed growth from Mortal Savant. Seriously, I don’t know what they were thinking with that one. A 0% increase in speed growth would have been fine; for the most part, you’re going to be promoting units with already-decent speed growths like Felix, Catherine, and Lysithea to that class, so it’s not like a 0% increase would hurt them too much.

- Let infantry magic units use gauntlets. I understand not letting cavalry or fliers use gauntlets, but the magic users, too? Like, the developers seriously thought Dorothea wouldn’t be prepared to throw down if the situation demanded it? That girl used to have to fend off attempted kidnappers and murderers when she was a songstress, and she broke their arms as a deterrent. She was 100% ready to fight Ingrid’s would-be fiancé in that one paralogue, and 110% ready to fight Bernadetta’s dad. Also, there are magic gauntlets in this game. Magic. Gauntlets. Seriously; the Aura Knuckles scale attack power off of a unit’s magic stats. And don’t tell me they’re something you can give to a Mortal Savant. Let. Magic. Units. Have. Gauntlets. Let Dorothea punch people 2k19.

Now, onto the classes I would add to the Master Class list of Three Houses, if I had that kind of power.

The first thing you guys are going to notice about this list is that there’s a lot of classes on it. Well, it seems to me that the Master Class list should have the greatest diversity of all the tiers, the better to make the best use of a unit’s strengths. When a unit is first starting out, their skills and knowledge are limited, and thus, so are the number of beginner classes they have to choose from. You either know swords (Myrmidon), lances (Soldier), axes or bows (Fighter), or magic (Monk). But as time wears on, you hone your skills, train in other weapons and related skills, and discover you had talents you were never aware of, your horizons broaden, and more options become open to you. Hence the need for a massive Master Class tier list. Furthermore, while some of these classes would be the natural progression from a class in the Advanced tier, in keeping with the pattern this game has been establishing, not all of them are. And some of them you need to be planning to get a unit into since pretty much the beginning of the game.

1. Gold Knight

I’ve only played Awakening, Fates, Echoes, and Three Houses, and I haven’t played any of the DLC for the former three games, so I’ve only encountered this class in Echoes. But I loved the Gold Knight. It was a truly awesome class, and Mathilda was a fearsome tank once promoted to Gold Knight. For use in Three Houses, it would also serve as a good promotion for the Paladin that doesn’t involve putting a ton of time and effort into grinding the Heavy Armor skill level for riding units, or grinding the Riding skill for armored units.

Requirements for Gold Knight:

- Lance: A - Riding: A - Authority: B

You may be curious about the Authority requirement. Well, this goes back to my knowledge of what the Gold Knight is. Mycen and Zeke are both renowned generals; Mathilda, even as a Paladin, is regarded as a charismatic leader and a paragon of Zofian knighthood. These are people who have earned the respect and admiration of everyone around them, and thus, I think having an Authority requirement (and a fairly high one, at that) for the Gold Knight class would be appropriate. On top of that, part of the promotion to Gold Knight would involve a +10% increase in charm growth rates, thus making the Gold Knight’s gambits more and more potent as time wears on.

This would be a decent class for Dimitri to promote to, one that would actually be able to make good use of his budding talent in Riding. Other candidates include Sylvain, Lorenz, and Ferdinand. Leonie’s also a good candidate.

And I promise, this is the only cavalry unit on this list, though there are two three flying units.

2. Dread Fighter

I know Dread Fighter is a DLC class in Awakening, and maybe Fates as well, but my sole experience with it was as promotions for Gray and Saber, and damn, was this a fantastic class. Once Gray promoted to Dread Fighter, I could actually take him into late game battles without worrying about an arcanist one-shotting him; it was great. (Yeah, I know, I know; I shouldn’t have been directing him towards parts of the map that had arcanists on them to start with. I’ve learned better since then.)

Anyways, requirements for Dread Fighter:

- Sword: A - Brawl: A

This class would be a viable alternative to Mortal Savant for characters like Felix and Catherine, especially since I envision Dread Fighter getting a +10% increase to speed growths.

I considered making Apotrope (the class skill that automatically halves damage from magic attacks) a skill Dread Fighters learn automatically upon promotion, but it occurred to me that that would make this class incredibly broken, and while a Dread Fighter-only run would probably be fun to watch, it’s not very balanced. So Apotrope is the skill Dread Fighters learn upon class mastery instead, and unless you’ve been seriously grinding your units, it’s not likely to be something they’ll pick up until the last couple of chapters of the game (Though just peeking at screenshots of the map, it sounds like something that would be hella useful on the final map of the Blue Lions route).

3. Dark Flier

Personally, of my three Pegasus Knights in Awakening, Cordelia, Sumia, and Cynthia, I only made Cynthia a Dark Flier. Call me cautious, but I like to have as many healers on the field as possible, and to me, Falcon Knight seemed like a better option. But Dark Flier is a popular class, apparently, and I can see why. A flier that can use offensive magic, if they’ve got decent Defense/Resistance, would be a potent vanguard unit in any army.

Requirements for Dark Flier:

- Lance: C - Flying: B+ - Reason: B+ - Faith: B+

The Flying requirement is based on the Flying requirement for Falcon Knight also being B+. As for the Lance requirement being C instead of A, I made that because the Dark Flier is more magic-oriented than physical-oriented. Odds are, you’re going to be promoting units that were previously magic units, rather than flying units, to this class. And since, according to Serenesforest, Falcon Knights get a 5% buff to their resistance growths, Dark Fliers should conversely get a 5% buff to their defense growths. Again, it’s more likely people will be promoting magic users to this class, and since magic users tend to be a bit frail defense-wise, a 5% buff to defense would be a great thing for them. The Dark Flier’s natural role is to be the magic user that can kite in, take out a low-Resistance unit, and then Canto their way out of harm’s way.

The Dark Flier doesn’t get Lancefaire like Falcon Knights, and they don’t get Black Magic, Dark Magic, or White Magic Uses x2 the way a Gremory would. Basically, you’re trading the massive pool of spells at a Gremory’s disposal for the versatility of a magic user with much higher mobility than infantry mages. Instead, upon promoting, Dark Flier learns Avoid +10 and Canto as a Falcon Knight would. And similarly to the Dread Fighter, Galeforce should be the Class Mastery skill, since learning that right away would make them incredibly broken.

As for who might do well in this class, I would probably indulge myself and bust my ass getting Hubert’s Flying skill up to A so I could fulfill his dreams and make him a pegasus knight who can use magic. Practically speaking, there are other classes that would serve him better (sacrificing Black/Dark Magic Uses x2 is probably not the smartest move, especially considering he’s also got a negative modifier in Faith), but I still have a soft spot for this class for him. Interestingly enough, Flayn comes to your army with a positive modifier to Lances and Faith, a budding talent in Reason, and though she doesn’t have any modifiers to Flying, she starts out with a D rank in that skill. I suspect the developers wanted us to consider the Pegasus line for her as a possible alternative to any of the magic classes, especially considering she also has a negative modifier to Riding. If Dark Flier was a class in this game, she’d be an ideal candidate for it.

4. Malig Knight

Most people who have played Conquest have stories of how many times Camilla pulled their army’s collective asses out of the fire. Even if she gets RNG-screwed badly upon level-ups, her bases are good enough that she’s still viable throughout much of the game, and her versatility as a flying axe and magic unit is excellent. And since this game could use more variety in Master Class flying units (and I’m not fond of Awakening’s Griffon Rider, though given that the heraldic symbol of House Blaiddyd is Loog riding a griffin into battle… actually, yeah, I’ll make an entry for this one, too), Malig Knight gets an entry on this list.

Requirements for Malig Knight:

- Lance: C - Axe: B - Flying: A - Reason: B+

The Malig Knight is somewhat more balanced regarding physical vs. magic fighting than the Dark Flier, hence the Axe requirement being lower than Wyvern Lord, but still fairly high. The Malig Knight retains the weakness to bows and magic of the other Wyvern units, but makes up for it by being able to dish out magic right back. Like the Dark Flier, Malig Knight doesn’t learn Black Magic, Dark Magic, or White Magic Uses x2, trading a deep well of spells for high mobility. The Malig Knight will get 5% buffs to their magic and resistance growths, and will learn Savage Blow from Fates (a skill that enables the unit, when it initiates battle against an enemy, to reduce the HP of all enemies within a two tile radius by 20% after the battle) as its Class Mastery skill.

5. Griffon Rider

Okay, I’m only putting this one on the list because the heraldic symbol of House Blaiddyd is Loog riding a griffin into battle. It has world-building significance, and I’ll admit, the idea of someone riding a griffin into battle is a cool image, even if I didn’t like this class in Awakening. So. Griffon Rider.

Requirements for Griffon Rider:

- Axe: B - Sword: B - Flying: A+

I’ve put Flying at a higher rank than it is for either of the canonical flying Master Classes or the two previously mentioned on this list. This is because of a headcanon for me, that Griffons are harder to tame than pegasi or wyverns, and more difficult to direct in battle.

Mechanically, Griffon Riders are basically Glass Cannon: The Unit (As opposed to Awakening, where their growth rates are so average as to make them essentially mediocre). They have high strength and speed (though their speed isn’t as high as the likes of Falcon Knights or Dark Fliers), and given my headcanon about how hard Griffons are to tame and train, their luck and dexterity isn’t bad, either. Their HP growths are great. But their defense and resistance are both low. Griffon Riders in this game have the same weaknesses as Griffon Riders from Awakening; they’re weak to arrows, beast-slaying weapons, and wind magic (Other kinds of magic do not deal effective damage). You have to be careful about where you place them on the map if you don’t want them to get bum-rushed and killed in a single enemy phase.

The biggest appeal of the Griffon Rider is its exceptionally high mobility. Falcon Knights and Wyvern Lords start out with 8 movement, and the same goes for Dark Fliers and Malig Knights. Griffon Riders, on the other hand, get 9 movement. The Griffon Rider would be effective in its ability to, say, swoop in to rescue an infantry mage being closed in on by an enemy unit with higher movement than them. Any unit can be effective if used correctly, even if it’s in a class I don’t particularly care for.

6 and 7. Sorcerer and its Faith Magic equivalent (Sage?)

The Gremory embodies the saying “A jack of all trades, while master of none, is often better than a master of one.” Gremory is a fan-favorite as far as classes go, and I can see why. The fact that the Gremory gets Black Magic, Dark Magic, and Faith Magic Uses x2 makes them quite potent as a unit, competent in all forms of magic, though I suspect the fact that it’s the only infantry unit in the Master Tier that specializes in magic might make us appreciate it a little more than we otherwise would.

But, for these two units, let’s talk about a couple of Masters of One.

Requirements for Sorcerer:

- Reason: A+

If you aim to make one of your units a Sorcerer, you had better start training their Reason skill up early, because it can be hard to get Reason up to A+ if you’re trying to train a unit up in any other skills. The Sorcerer learns Black and Dark Magic Uses x3, learns Black Tomefaire as well, and learns Seal Resistance as a class mastery skill. However, this comes with a trade-off. Anyone who is classed into Sorcerer loses access to Faith Magic. Therefore, you have to really think about who you want to promote to Sorcerer. Hubert would be a decent choice, since he has a positive modifier in Reason and a negative modifier in Faith; the same goes for Dorothea, if you never foster her budding talent in Faith. But if you have a unit with a good Faith spell list, you might think twice about classing them to Sorcerer.

I’m not certain what to call the Faith Magic equivalent. For right now, I’m calling it Sage, though I know that in other games, a Sage is typically a red mage, rather than a pure white mage. Saint is a class unique to Seiros, so I don’t think it would be appropriate for this class. Anyways.

Requirements for Sage:

- Faith: A+

This really is the Faith Magic equivalent to Sorcerer. The Sage learns White Magic Uses x3 and White Tomefaire, at the expense of losing access to Black and Dark Magic. Like, a character like Marianne, who has an excellent Faith list, or Manuela, who has a positive modifier in Faith and a negative in Reason, would be good candidates for Sage. Someone like Lysithea? Well, you’d think twice, wouldn’t you? I mean, yeah, she gets Seraphim and Abraxas, but damn, look at her Reason spell list. It’s all about the tradeoffs you’re willing to make.

8. General

The thing about armored units in this game is that you get two infantry units, one for Intermediate and one for Advanced, and then you have to switch gears and start furiously grinding riding skill if you want to get them into the Great Knight Master class. And that’s okay for a unit like Ferdinand, who has a positive modifier in Riding and a budding talent in Heavy Armor. But if you’re trying to get Dedue up to Great Knight, grinding Riding is a pain in the ass. Hence, the need for an infantry heavy armor unit in the Master Tier.

General requirements:

- Axe: B+ - Lance: B+ - Heavy Armor: A

I’m not averse to the idea of training up skills for a Master Class that weren’t required in the closest equivalent on the Advanced Tier, though something as disparate as riding was an unpleasant surprise. Unless we’re dealing with a character with a negative modifier in Lances, Lance skill will be something much easier to get up to snuff, as an infantry unit can actually gain skill XP in battle, unlike with Riding skill.

The General gains 1 movement upon promotion, going from 4 movement to 5 movement, the same as a Gremory (And, for the purposes of this post, a Sorcerer and a Sage). Like the Armored Knight and Fortress Knight, the General’s specialty is to be a high HP, high defense tank that can shrug off blows from non-armor breaking weapons like they just got hit with a piece of straw. Magic can hurt a general quite badly, but unless they’ve been getting RNG-screwed badly on level-ups, or they get hit with an especially potent spell like Meteor (or as I like to call it, Death From Above), odds are they’ll be able to tank at least two hits.

A General learns Lancefaire, Axefaire, and Weight -5 upon promotion, and learns Wary Fighter from Fates as a Class Mastery skill, thus preventing attacking units from doubling. Like an Armored Knight and a Fortress Knight, a General is good for holding down a chokepoint and letting frailer units like archers or mages pick off enemies from behind them, but their higher mobility make them more viable for moving around the map and picking off physical-oriented units.

9. Adventurer

Adventurer was a Nohrian class introduced in Fates. It, along with its Hoshidan rough-equivalent (in terms of mechanics, rather than class description) of Priestess was a combination Archer and White Mage. Depending on the situation, the Adventurer works better as either an offensive unit with its skill in bows, or a support unit in its skill with staves. On Conquest, there were only two first-generation units who had access to this class, Niles and Shura, and the utility of having offensive units who could heal on Conquest’s maps was certainly useful.

Adventurer Requirements:

- Bow: A - Faith: B

For Three Houses, I’m envisioning the Adventurer as a unit somewhat more attack-oriented than magic-oriented. It can only make use of Faith Magic; no Reason Magic for this class. Basically, the Adventurer is a seasoned thief who has learned healing magic, the better to patch itself up when it goes on expeditions alone, and to act as a healer to the rest of the team when going on raids. Like the Thief and Assassin, the Adventurer learns Locktouch upon promoting, though this class is more bow-oriented, while the former two are more sword-oriented. The Adventurer has high Speed, Dexterity, and Resistance, average Magic and Strength, and is somewhat frail Defense-wise. I mentioned the Thief and Assassin, but this would be a viable promotion from Sniper as well, since it has the same Bow skill requirement as Sniper, and so long as the unit in question doesn’t have a negative modifier in Faith, it won’t be that hard to get their Faith skill level up to B while you’re waiting for them to reach Level 30. Especially if you’ve already been paying some points into Faith.

So, Adventurer. Hits hard, has a good chance of critting enemies. Bit of a glass cannon, and as far as Faith Magic goes, works better as a utility healer than an offensive magic-wielder, though if you promote a unit with a Faith spell list like Marianne’s to Adventurer, that can change. They do well with the Magic Bow.

10. Master of Arms

You know how I called the Gremory a jack of all trades? Well, the Master of Arms, introduced in Fates, is the ultimate jack of all trades. As you will see directly below, promoting to Master of Arms requires training up more weapons skills than any other master class, but while they all require fairly high skill levels, none of them are super high.

Master of Arms Requirements:

- Sword: B - Lance: B - Axe: B - Bow: B

In Fates, the Master of Arms could only use the first three weapons on that list, but Three Houses being the kind of game it is, and Master of Arms being the kind of name for a class that it is, I feel that the Master of Arms should be on the high-end of competent with multiple weapons.

Is this easily attainable? No. There are no characters in Three Houses who have proficiencies in all four of these areas—Ashe, Ferdinand, Petra, Seteth, Claude, and Cyril come the closest, with three. Hell, the avatar only has a positive modifier in one of them. You’re more likely to encounter characters who have negative modifiers in at least one of them—Mercedes has negative modifiers in all of them, aside from Bows, which she has a Budding Talent in. It will not be easy to get someone up to snuff for Master of Arms, and that’s the point. The Master of Arms is a seasoned combatant who has learned to fight well with multiple weapons, and knows the answer to roughly 90% of the problems combat will throw at them. That is not easy to accomplish.

Stat-wise, the Master of Arms will have high dexterity. Dexterity is the Three Houses-equivalent of skill, and in case I haven’t hammered it in hard enough, it takes a lot of skill to get up to B in four different weapons. Their strength and speed will be slightly above average, magic will be mediocre (but that isn’t really relevant, since the Master of Arms doesn’t have access to magic), and like the seasoned, versatile combatant they are, their defense and resistance are both fairly high.

Since the Master of Arms is a jack of all trades, they do not learn Swordfaire, Lancefaire, Axefaire, or Bowfaire upon promotion. After all, they are not a specialist in any one weapon. Instead, they learn Seal Strength upon promotion, which allows the Master of Arms to, if they initiate an attack against an enemy and land a hit, to reduce the enemy unit’s strength by 6, recovering 1 point of strength by turn. Their Class Mastery skill is Defiant Dexterity, which allows the unit in question to gain Dexterity +8 when its HP is at 25% or lower.

Anyways, here is my wishlist for additions to the Master Classes of Fire Emblem Three Houses. I suppose I can hope for at least for a couple of them to show up after more of the Expansion Pass DLC drops. (And for them to remove the gender-locks on all of the classes.) Given their popularity, Dread Fighter and Dark Flier might show up, at least.

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #Fe16 #Meta #Master Class Tier

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syranaluvr · 6 years

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Kousuke in ch.63: w/Nol

So I’ve seen a decent amount of this floating around and just wanted to give my two cents on the matter. In summary, I think his behavior was problematic at times but not as bad as people are making it out to be.

I’m gonna break down my thoughts on his interactions with Nol, mainly: (1) Kousuke blaming Nol, (2) him not interfering with the arrest and in a separate post bc this got way too long: (3) his talk with Shin ae at the hospital.

This gets a bit long with the screenshots and all so under the cut it goes!

First, Kousuke blaming Nol

So I have seen a lot of hate for this and it’s understandable considering we readers already feel so bad for Nol and know it was not really in his control, so of course people are gonna bare fangs at anyone who yells at him. But still, I think Kousuke should be cut a little slack.

This is right before Kousuke starts yelling and its the most harrowed we’ve ever seen him. Someone he cares for is possibly seriously hurt and going to the hospital, his mom is being totally embarrassed and humiliated (yeah I know the readers probably don't give a flying fuck but come on, it’s his mom), his father is witnessing the whole kerfuffle and a huge scene is being made out of the family which is something Kousuke has been shown to be worried about way back in the beginning. He is probably stressed out beyond belief, but what he is the most concerned about is Shin ae (obviously).

So he is mad at Nol for dropping them. And that kinda makes sense? Like we know that Nol was traumatized by Mrs. Hirahara which is why he just let go instinctively but that’s not what Kousuke saw. From his perspective, Nol is having some trouble pulling them up but he’s managing to at least hold them in place. Kousuke hears him asking for help and Mrs. Hirahara offering assistance and then Nol lets go. That’s it. His hand didn’t slip. There was no “Oh no I can’t hold on!” or “You’re slippling!” From Kousuke’s point of view, Nol literally just let go for no apparent reason, letting them both fall, resulting in Shin ae hitting her head and passing out. So yeah he’s mad.

Kousuke thinks Nol might have let go because of their bad relationship, though even he thinks that’s ridiculous based on how he says it. Like he didn’t expect Nol to do something like that, but in truth, he knows he probably doesn’t know Nol that well, and the fact is Nol did let go so there must have been some reason for him to go all ‘long live the king’ on him.

Would it have been better if Kousuke actually asked Nol why he let go and talked to him about it? Sure. But as stated before, the situation is crazy. There’s a lot going on, he wants to get to the hospital asap, and at the end of the day, these two brothers don’t have a good relationship so coddling Nol isn’t exactly on the top of his priority list. (If he was a better brother then maybe he would have given him the benefit of the doubt, but alas, they are not there yet).

Okay now this, I did really have a problem with. Though from Kousuke’s point of view, Nol letting go did play a role in Shin ae getting injured, he also knows that her being drunk/drugged and fighting the mom, etc. is also to blame for her falling into the pool in the first place. So saying its “ALL thanks to you” is not right. However, I think from a story standpoint I know why that line was included. A big part of this chapter was a Nol guilt-fest. As we could tell from his face, Nol already felt guilty and what everyone else said just rubbed it in. In this webtoon we only get Shin ae’s thoughts conveyed in words, so in order to show Nol’s guilt in future chapters I’m pretty sure that he’s going to flashback to the its ‘all thanks to you’ line. So in my opinion, that line is serving more of a plot device role than much of a reflection of Kousuke’s thoughts and character.

What’s also worth noting is that Kouskue isn’t mad at Nol for dropping him into the pool. He’s mad because Shin ae was hurt. We don’t usually get to see Kousuke getting emotional, so this anger at Nol is also indirectly conveying how concerned he is for Shin ae, furthering the idea that he cares about her (let us not forget that this is a love triangle). If someone you care about gets hurt, it’s natural to get angry at whatever is to blame. Is Kousuke mad at his mom and Sang chul? Probably. But in this moment, Nol is also to blame and he’s the one standing beside him. So it sucked that Nol had to get yelled at like that because he doesn’t deserve it, but that was a pretty human reaction from Kousuke. It wasn’t Kousuke just deliberately being mean to Nol.

Okay that was long but I promise the next part is shorter.

So onto Kousuke not trying to stop Nol from getting arrested.

As a sort of aside, it seems like the arrest happened pretty quickly tbh. It was basically ‘you’re under arrest-suspicious vial-get in the car’. Kousuke had already started walking away and maybe there just wasn’t any chance to interject. But even if he could have, that still doesn’t mean Kousuke is a horrible person for not doing so.

Firstly, he may have thought there was no point in trying at that time. Many people saw Nol drop them, and he probably heard them talking about calling the cops on him. So he probably knew that in the situation they were in with all the other witnesses, he didn’t have a good chance of convincing the cop to stop. It would just be making an even bigger scene that amounts to nothing.

Also, there is still a chance that Kosuke is going to help Nol later on. As we saw back in the chapter in the mall where the lady threw soda at Shin ae, Kousuke is not one to get involved in the most direct way. Back in that chapter, Nol directly went up to Shin ae and the kid to help. Conversely, Kousuke reported the lady to security and bought Shin ae a new shirt. Two different ways of approaching the same situation. I feel that Kousuke may do something similar here. He didn’t directly go and try to stop the cop, but later he may go through alternative routes to get Nol out, especially after he can gather some more information on everything that happened.

So quimchee draws particular attention to Kousuke’s reaction to Nol getting arrested here. His expressions can be difficult to read, especially since as he said himself his natural face is basically a scowl, so some people might see this as a dismissive face. But personally, I think it might be showing that he’s thinking. Maybe he’s like ‘okay I was mad but I didn’t want him to go jail, yeesh’ or it could be him regretting blaming Nol like he did. Or it could be him filing this as something to address later, because getting to the hospital is his top priority but this Nol-going-to-jail thing isn’t something he’s going to just ignore. We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

That’s it for Kousuke and Nol, now onto --> Kousuke’s behavior with Shin ae at the hospital... -->

I know this got insanely long, but I just have a lot of thoughts and wanted everything to be explained as clearly as possible. I hope it didn’t seem too bias and made logical sense. If you agree or respectfully disagree feel free to message me about it. I’d love to talk about anything I Love Yoo related :D

#i love yoo #kousuke hirahara #yeong gi #shin ae #webtoon #quimchee #nol #ihad this pmuch ready on sunday but its been such a hassle to post omg #yootip #even tho i tried to keep this mostly ship free tbh #mine #myily

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moczothe1st · 6 years

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Let’s Play Fire Emblem IV: Genealogy of the Holy War, Part 23: An Altenuous Situation

Part 22

Welcome back to another week of Let’s Tolerate Thracia. …. I mean, let’s play Fire Emblem IV. When we left off, we had just recruited the world’s worst hostage, and were about to send him back to save his doofus father. Let’s check out our new kid!

So here’s Cairpre. He’s… he’s certainly around. His Major Bragi holy blood and all those staves in his backpack should be enough to tell you he’s actually the second child of Claude and Sylvia, making him Lene’s younger brother. How he ended up in Thracia, away from his sister and adopted by Santa Claus, will have to be a story for another time because right now we’re summarizing his unit and he’s… okay. Basically another Claude. He starts off at level one, which is not as big a problem as it could be because he should never, ever be in combat anyway, and comes in with several long-range healing staves that will make his level shoot up fast. He’s just another healer, really. Not a bad healer, but nothing super impressive.

He starts the long walk back to his adopted father to recruit him while Patty just keeps right on stabbing some helpless dude, like a hero.

Good job, Patty! The healer down south of her who kept patching that guy up should push her over the edge to another level, and she’ll be close to promotion. And with him gone, other units who were busy keeping her target standing still can move to clear out Hannibal’s castle.

Mook: If you wish to claim it, you must first claim my life!

There was absolutely no need to do that. He’d have disappeared peacefully when I recruit Hannibal anyway. I just wanted the free experience points.

Patty is learning to become a cannon lately, huh? When she promotes she’ll just wreck people. Lana also gains a level from warping our remaining promotion candidates back to home base to pick up their new clothes, with Lene’s help.

Your mom would be proud, sweetie. But not as proud as I will be of our four shiny new promotes!

Oh, that’s beautiful. Tinni in particular is a standout here, because promoting to War Mage lets her use swords (which… no), Staves, and pushes her Thunder rank up to A so she can finally buy her mom’s old Thoron tome.

And Patty is here too! Cairpre even gains his first level just from zapping the army with his Fortify staff. A good one, too. I’m so proud-ish of him. And from here, Seliph is finally close enough to recruit Altena…

Altena: My brother, Prince Leif, has explained the truth to me, and I can no longer oppose you. If you please, I’d like to join your ranks.

Seliph: Princess Altena?! … Ah, yes. That’s right! Prince Leif has told me everything, and we’ve both prayed you would come… He’ll be so glad to know you’ve joined us. You’ve made a difficult but wise decision.

(I like the implication that the entire drama with Altena was something Seliph knew about, but just kind of slipped his mind.)

Altena: … I can still scarcely believe this has all happened. And yet, the moment I gazed into my brother’s eyes, I understood everything.

(Platonically! She was gazing into his eyes platonically! God, I hate that I feel the need to specify that.)

Altena: His eyes revealed my father’s warm gaze… and as clear as if it were yesterday, I felt for a split second as if I was swaddled in my mother’s gentle arms…

(PLATONICALLY!)

Seliph: I admit I’m still not entirely sure what King Travant was trying to do with you. I still cannot see what would have led him to spare you and bring you into his home after murdering your parents…

(… It was the holy spear of the gods that only she can wield. Why do so many people have trouble grasping that?!)

Altena: I’ve heard he once told my brother, Arion, that he sought to use the power of Leonster’s holy lance, Gae Bolg, as his own. For that alone, he needed me…

Seliph: You were little more than a tool to him?

Altena: I… I’m still not entirely sure. For all his cruelty, he still treated me as if I were his true daughter.

(… When?)

Seliph: Did he, now… I suppose I’ve never known much of his ways.

(That’s cool, neither did the writers.)

Altena: I must as a favor of you, milord. It’s about Arion… we need to help Prince Arion!

Seliph: Certainly! I’m hardly eager to fight a man of his fine caliber, if what I’ve heard is true. The only question is, can we convince him?

Altena: I’ll do my best to persuade him again. All I ask is a little time. Please, milord!

… and having had that dopey mess, also let Cairpre recruit Hannibal.

Cairpre: Lord Seliph freed me from Luthecia!

Hannibal: Cairpre?! Y…you’re safe!

Cairpre: Yep! Listen, Papa…. I want to join Lord Seliph’s army. Thracia’s changed so much lately…. I want to fight to help all of its people, and bring back the old Thracia!

Hannibal: Heh… you’ve grown into a splendid young man, Cairpre. Very well! I, too, shall serve Lord Seliph.

Cairpre: Yes! Thank you, Papa! First we’ll help free Thracia, and then together, we’ll challenge the Empire!

See, Altena? That was a nice normal discussion that didn’t make either of them look like total doofuses who weren’t paying attention to the war they were in. Ah, well, let’s take a look at the newbies.

So here’s Hannibal. He… well, let’s not mince words, he probably wasn’t worth the effort of recruiting him. He’s not a bad unit, inherently, being a General with Pavise, Vantage, and Adept (though with only 11 speed, it’s unlikely he’ll be activating that third one very often). It’s just that the majority of his stats are only ‘decent’ at a time in the game when many units are approaching ‘godlike’, and like Arden before him, he has a lower movement range than everyone else in a game where you’ll quickly find yourself wishing everyone would just get a horse. He’ll get a little use, but honestly most of the time he’ll be staying at our home base to make sure no random reinforcements sneak up and steal it from under us.

And after two borderline duds, we finally get our shining diamond of the map. Altena is a monster; even unpromoted her stats are already mostly equal or better than Hannibal’s, and she’s got more levels left to gain than he does with better growth rates on top of it, thanks to coming with two different Holy Blood types, Major Nova and Minor Baldur. She’s also a flying unit, meaning Fee no longer has to go everywhere alone, and comes into the army carrying all of Quan’s old spears, including the truly awesome Gae Bolg coming at last back to our hands after we barely got to play with it last time. It may not be the almighty nuke that Forseti or Balmung are, but +10 each to Strength, Skill, and Defense is nothing to sneeze at. Our two combatants can now head into nearby castles to face the Arena. I suspect… there will be slight differences in performance.

Altena: Seven wins, gained two levels: +3 HP, +2 Strength, +1 Speed, +2 Defense

Hannibal: Six wins, gained one level: +1 Strength

One of these two had a better performance. Though, in fairness, Hannibal getting creamed did let Lana gain a level from healing him.

Much better! Okay end turn.

Legion of Doom: I suppose it was unavoidable… Fortify our defensive line. Until reinforcements arrive, we must defend the castle at all costs.

Brock from Pokemon: Heh, no matter. The rebels’ little rampage ends here. Ready, men? We’re going in. The Emperor himself’s put a handsome bounty on each rebel head. We mustn’t waste a chance to claim it for ourselves!

So there’s our next issue. The invading Grannvale squad to the north is fairly nasty. Entirely composed of promoted cavalry units and packing two healers with them; they’re hard to wear down in a single turn, and if they all get a shot at the same unit they can definitely take out all but our strongest kids. So, you know, don’t let that happen. To the south, at Grutia castle, is almost the opposite; a veritable swarm of ballistae, so Fee and Altena can’t even really get close, and a Dark Bishop with a siege tome. Once we get close to them they’ll break like cheap glass, but getting there can be risky, to say the least. We’re going to split up; it’s a bit tricky, but in general the ballistae are not a huge issue compared to the bishop miniboss, so anyone who goes for the southern castle mostly has to have enough resistance to take a shot from him, or enough speed and luck to reliably dodge him. I go with Seliph, Leif, Nanna, Ares, Larcei, Shannan, Julia, Arthur, and Lana. The rest of the army will be blocking off the pass to stop the incoming cavalry. Ideally, we’ll get a situation where we can split their attack across several people and then crush them on the return trip. A few turns over movement, and we find ourselves…

Not even close! Everyone was too far away, and that first one snuck up on me real good. I didn’t realize I’d put Lester at the edge of someone’s movement. I was so caught off guard I didn’t screenshot the combat (he dodged. Go archery!). So our first step right now is to back the Hell up.

…

Well, okay, second step.

That’s for swinging at my squishy horse archer, jerkass. I draw back everyone to create a battle line that’s split in the middle by the castle; this should be drawing out a big chunk of the enemy without letting them focus fire on one character. End turn!

Not bad, other than the fact I forgot to equip Finn with his big-people spear and he got a little creamed. Cairpre, care to patch the team up?

Good kid. Rest of the team, rock out!

…. I really dislike that we couldn’t kill that fucking mid-boss. He hits like a truck and he’s annoyingly fast. I… don’t want to end the turn. I see it going badly. But… *sigh*… let’s see…

…. Yeah, I knew that was gonna happen. I knew it. Dammit. Reset.

Okay. This time, we are going to be brave and run away. Once more, kill the outer layer and flee. Go, my brave cowards!

And with this, the only character in the boss’s attack range is Arthur, who is parked in the castle and wielding Forseti. Yes, I am a vindictive person. End turn!

… That’s it?! You didn’t even take a shot, you fucker! Fine, fine, Arthur will come to you.

Congratulations, Musar, you managed to land a single blow. That is more than most of the foes he slaughters can achieve. Arthur also gets the droppable Tornado tome from this boss, meaning he can sell the Elwind he’s been using for his sister to pick up later, or maybe it can go to Lana after I get a chance to promote her, haven’t decided yet. Cairpre even gains another level after healing Arthur’s boo-boos.

Good kid! Not very bright, but talented in his own way. Now, hey, who wants to slaughter?

*sniff* Not bad at all. All that remains of this enemy force is one healer that Patty can chew on to her heart’s content. I have Lana warp Lester back to the home base to promote, and on the next turn she can do the same to Arthur. This army is really coming together! To the north, I’m going to let Cairpre have most of the villages; he’ll need money to repair his staves after spamming them to gain levels on this map. Lana will too, of course, but she…

Has a booooooooooooyfriend. Ulster is rolling in cash and he’ll only be getting more, since he barely needs to spend anything these days, relying on nice normal swords instead of legendary money sinks, so I’ll just have him give Lana all his wealth next turn.

Now, to the south, it’s… *sigh*… time to wade into the Ballista Storm, I suppose. This will be annoying, so I’m just gonna smash it as quickly and brutally as I can; Ares, Leif, and Seliph, go right for the boss and kill. Everyone’s on a horse so they should only have to spend one turn being shot at before they reach and take out the boss. Eeeeeeeend turn!

And you know what, let’s just stop there? It’s like seven more shots of just that. I hate ballistae so much.

Judah: This world is Lord Loptyr’s to smother in darkness!

I appreciate that I somehow managed to miss the cool-looking part of the Fenrir spell and got the weird hit-flash moment where the whole screen turns randomly blue. Now then, our turn, and let’s try to end this fast.

*whistle* Leif, I always forget just how much of a monster promotion turns you into. Up to the north, meanwhile, we still have an army. I know, I forgot them too.

You do you, Patty. While Patty torments a priest… again… Lene takes this time to chat with her newly-recruited and long-lost brother that she doesn’t actually know.

Lene: Wait, you’re from Darna too?

Cairpre: You’re familiar with Darna, Lene?

Lene: Yep! I grew up in the abbey there. They told me my mom was a dancer, who left me there when I was about two years old. That’s why I’m a dancer now. I was thinking that maybe, if I did the same thing as her, one day I might find her again. It’s kind of embarrassing, but I taught myself everything I know about dancing.

Cairpre: That’s really great of you, Lene! I, er, guess I thought wrong about you…

Lene: Not a big fan of dancers, Cairpre?

Cairpre: Not really…. At least, not unti I met you, Lene.

Lene: Awww! Thanks, Cairpre!

Cairpre gains +1 Luck from this, because…. Look, you need to stop asking questions. I also choose not to zap Arthur home after all; he doesn’t need his promotion, and I want him to shut up and marry Julia already, so I’m gluing them together for now. Maybe they’ll hook up, maybe they won’t, but either way I’ll demand they sex who they are told to sex. Instead, Lana just heals someone and levels…

And Lester takes his promotion.

Not a super impressive promotion, but… a promotion. The turn ends there, and the enemy phase is a desperately sad event, with ballistae firing and missing again and again. It saddens me. I’m sad.

Look at that! Even Oifey doesn’t respect them.

In any event, Patty finishes bullying the clergy and Cairpre zaps her…

And we dismantle some siege equipment.

And that’s that! The current section of map is over, so I take a few turns to move folks around; Cairpre starts trekking north to get his fortune, while the rest of the army splits up, most of them heading south to hook up with Seliph and co., but Patty, Ulster, Lana, Shanan, Tinni, Faval, and Altena are staying in the north to reinforce our assorted castles. Thracians are tricky and they can fly, so you can’t leave your castles unattended for a second on this stupid map. The first time I played I actually managed to lose all of them but Meath just through sheer force of stupid.

And it is on this exciting note that I leave you for the week, gentle readers. Seliph, will you play us out?

(You may remember the previous update wherein Arion just suddenly turned into a rampaging douche. That state of events has stuck.)

Lewyn: I suppose that stubborn dracoknight pride compels him to fight to the bitter end. I was hoping the legendary Arion of Thracia would be a wiser man than this… Seliph, I hope you understand we can’t turn back now. This last battle needs to be fought.

(Well, yeah, dude, his family has been trying to kill us for two weeks while we politely ask them to go away.)

Seliph: I don’t understand him. Why would Arion insist on fighting such a futile battle… how can he be so callous? Does he not understand the grief he’s inflicting on Altena?

… And hey, for once, Lewyn doesn’t spout some pseudo-philosophy at us! This really is a bright note to leave an update on. See y’all next week!

Total Resets: 27. I knew that boss was a bastard and I still let myself get caught off guard. For shame, me.

Part 24

#let's play #let's play fire emblem IV #Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War #fire emblem 4 #Genealogy of the Holy War #my writing #lp #fire emblem #long post #they're all long

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sieben9 · 6 years

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“quite a common fairy” impressions

Confession time: I have an irrational weakness for disneyfied-nice Tinkerbell. I know, neither accurate to the book, nor the movie, but that's how it is. So, ever since I realised this show was going to Neverland, I've been quietly going "please don't let her be evil, please don't let her be evil..." and look! Not evil!

Bitter and very pissed off, but not evil.

Also, in what seems to have become the background chorus every time the character shows up: What the hell, Blue.

I have to say, though: at least in this case, Blue was obviously _meant_ to be the antagonist of Tinkerbell's story. At least she's just a tyrant, not a hypocrite.

...yeah, that's still not all that great, is it?

And yes, I know, broken record, but Regina, do you really think this is the right person to advise you on managing your inner darkness?

I'm just saying.

Anyway, what I "loved" most about this entire subplot was Blue's rationale for not helping Regina. Namely "her mother was bad and her teacher is worse". I mean... it's not like she picked the first one? And if you'd been more useful than a chocolate teapot, she wouldn't have had to pick the latter. That quote about how all evil needs to succeed is for good people to stand aside and do nothing? Congratulations, Blue, you're flying, talking proof of that.

Not only that, you actually punished the one person willing to help a scared and miserable young woman.

She was trying to HELP!

All in all, the flashback mostly felt like setup to the cave scene, leaving aside the weirdness of soulmate-seeking pixie dust missiles. I'm assuming that they'll meet at some point in the not-too-far, and I'll mark myself down as "cautiously optimistic". (Though I'll freely admit, if it were down to a choice between that and "I'm talking about our magic, Emma, the magic we make together ::nudge-nudge, wink-wink::", then... yeah, sorry, Robin.)

Why do you do this to me, show?

Special mention to this moment here, where Regina goes through all the stages of grief, including some that haven't been named yet, only to jump alllll the way back to denial and run like hell.

That was some good acting there...

Henry's plot in Neverland was short, but nerve-wracking. Though I was weirdly proud of Henry for just straight-up trying to shoot Pan. He didn't even telegraph it. Just "uh-hu, interesting argument, have a bolt to the face". Yes, it didn't work, but it's the princinple of the thing.

Pan, don't call Neal a "spawn". It's rude. And people in glass houses, etc.

And we see the beginnings of Pan winning Henry over. ::sigh:: Of course Henry will listen to "only you can save magic". The boy is so desperate to be a hero... By the way, I'm assuming that Pan is lying unless proven otherwise. I think I found his tell -- it's whenever his lips are moving.

Just... hang tight, Henry, will you? Pretty much your entire family is coming to get you.

Over in the "adult" plot in Neverland: David is getting worse and might die before the month is out, but won't tell anyone about it. Which may not be fair to his family, but is entirely too understandable. Just don't, y'know, actually die, buddy, OK?

As for the cave scene... Holy wow. That was some good television.

I think this may have been the most direct and honest Regina has been with anyone about the mistakes of her past, including Henry. Something about Tinkerbell's antagonism might have brought it out, because Regina doesn't share it any longer. (Mind you, she obviously didn't look forward to this talk, either, but that's understandable.) She's ready to admit what she denied back in the flashback: she was scared, and she was wrong. More than that, she had been clinging so tightly to her anger that she couldn't let go, and so she chose the "easy" way out. (Hint: it wasn't. Not in the long run.)

And I know her main motivation for helping Tinkerbell out of her own pit was to get her help in finding Henry, but I was still oddly proud of her. There goes my reforming villain, helping other people find their own way back to the light. ::wipes away a tear::

Though maybe giving her your own heart to crush was going a bit far.

I applaud your conviction, Regina, but not your survival instincts

I assume that she saw Tinkerbell's eyes when she had that arrow at her throat, and decided that no, this woman didn't actually want to kill her. She just needed Tinkerbell to realise that, too.

Also, this bit here?

"With Henry, I finally did something right"

Rude.

Meanwhile, in the Enchanted Forest...

Best. Screenshot. Ever.

I have come to the conclusion that Mr Neal "I use emotional blackmail and also endanger a small child to get back to my family" Cassidy has a lot more in common with his dear old dad than he'd like anyone to know (including himself). I mean, it was a good plan and I don't think the little hobbit was actually in any danger, but... yeah, that whole thing was quite telling, wasn't it?

Far too adorable to be bait

And I may joke about the screenshot, but I do appreciate the parallel between the flashback with a struggling young Bae being dragged away from his new family by the Shadow and the adult Neal jumping after the glowing-eyed demon and holding on for dear life, because damnit, he's getting back to his family this time, and screw whoever tries to stop him.

Of course, this is what happens next, because Neal just attracts this kind of crap:

Illustration next to the dictionary entry for "FML"

OK, I know this looks bad, Neal, but on the other hand, please consider: he is just one single (very long) teenager and you are a fully grown man. I’m not saying “break his nose and run like hell”, buuuut...

As an aside... yes, I know there was another thing happening in the well-lit present day plot, but I'm genuinely upset about that and I won't go into it here. Screw you, show, that wasn't just rude, that was cruel.

#ouat #once upon a time #quite a common fairy #sieben watches ouat #sieben talks #by the way writing ''tinkerbell'' with complete sincerity #is really really weird

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teamendgame-blog · 7 years

Text

Back at it again with the long post and theories...

Oh hey Rosewood residents,

Kate here <3 And I'm back at it again with the long post and theories! First things first, I was out of commission for 2 weeks with the worst flu and ear infection of my life.. coincidentally the same week PLL was NOT on. I BLAME YOU FOR THIS, MARLENE!! I also ended my Memorial Day weekend with a trip to the ER, so it’s been less than fun over here...

But while I've been too sick and weak to type, I’m never too sick to think so grab a little snack (and a PLL-mom approved glass of wine) and buckle in to hear my crazy take on this ride that is Pretty Little Liars EndgAme! I'm going to break my thoughts down into sections so y'all can easily skip around if you would like!

First things first (I'm the realest)... (I am also old and found that funny - don't judge me!) Let's travel back to what feels like forever ago... and the reveal that Ali is, indeed, carrying Emily's baby. I wanted to make the following point but then was bedridden, so the original thought comes before we viewed 7x15... *WHO'S YOUR DADDY -- THE ALI/EMILY BABY REVEAL*

Yup. They went there. We finally have confirmation (btw, BRILLIANT acting by Sasha in the reveal scene at the baby store!) that Ali is carrying Emily's stolen-egg baby. I saw a lot of reaction to this in the fandom, a lot of "I knew this would happen" (the best one being my amazing brother's live blog response!) and a lot of "I was afraid they would do this".. I saw a lot of comments bashing the storyline and a lot praising it for reiterating just how well-and-truly-evil AD actually is. But I didn't see ANY reaction that mirrored my own... IN A SHOW WHERE SO LITTLE IS ABLE TO BE FIGURED OUT (by a fandom who spends hours and hours rewatching, blogging, theorizing, screen-capturing), WHY DID THEY MAKE THIS SO OBVIOUS?! Yes, I realize I could be giving the showrunners too much credit here, but as an adult in her mid-thirties who has spent an abnormal amount of time trying to figure out answers and outcomes for this show and constantly figuring out NOTHING, WHY WAS THIS SO EASY TO DEDUCE. Well, to answer that I'm going to reference a movie many of you are probably to young to have seen... Years ago, a brilliant suspense/mystery movie called The Others came out (it starred Nicole Kidman - remember her!?) Anyway, the movie was awesome and mysterious and about halfway through anyone who is paying attention starts to put together the clues and its SO exciting but then you almost get annoyed that the characters in the movie aren't putting 2 and 2 together, but you're all proud of yourself for figuring it out, and BAM! Seriously out of left field the twist comes and you realize you were COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY WRONG and just lead to believe you'd figured it out... [side note: I watched this movie multiple times after my first viewing with friends who were seeing it for the first time and let me tell you, at the same point that I originally "figured out the mystery" they did too and were SO DAMN SMUG about it, one going as far to say "You know, I actually find it sooo hard to enjoy movies like this because I'm too smart and always figure it out and get bored waiting for the ending"... yeah, she shut up really fucking quick when she saw she was wrong). ANYWAYS (sorry, I ramble)... I'm kind of wondering if this whole Ali/Emily baby thing was made obvious to throw us off in a way. So many of us saw it coming and because we had "figured it out", we didn't think to look beyond waiting for the confirmation that we were right.. MARK MY WORDS, THERE IS MORE TO THIS THAN WE ARE SEEING because we've all been so stuck on having figured it out or being mad about it... What I keep coming back to is who the father is and who did the insemination... Ali tells Emily she remembers the procedure when she was locked up in Welby. THIS IS A HUGE CLUE OR POINT TO CONSIDER. I mean, clearly all official places in Rosewood are run by a bunch of dumbfucks (Rosewood Police, I'm looking at you.... until the delicious Furey showed up that is) and yes, clearly "Rollins" was lying about his identity in order to be a practicing doctor there... but they ARE NOT going to let some rando in a black hoodie and gloves come in with a turkey baster and shove it up some patient's hoo-ha. THIS HAD TO BE AN INSIDE JOB! Maybe Rollins was playing the AD game and was forced to do it? That I don't know. We DO know that AD stole Emily's eggs... so somehow, Emily's eggs were fertilized and inseminated into Ali... I'm still thinking on this one... I would love if someone would think about it too and tell me their thoughts because seriously, I think they duped us here (brilliantly!) by making the baby storyline obvious and having us focus on THAT rather than the real clues being shared...

Now that we've seen 7x15 and know that Ali is going through with the pregnancy and know that Emily wants the baby and know that they are trying to figure out who the father is, I feel like I am right in their being more to this.

*7x15: IN THE EYE ABIDES THE HEART*

Before I theorize, I just want to point out that I feel this was one of the best PLL episodes ever and don't think Troian's directing is a coincidence.... clearly this woman is talented, thoughtful and really GETS how this show should be done. Absolutely brilliant from start to stop and OH MAN the acting has been spot on from all of them.. And now onto the details.

*SHADY, SHADY EZRA AND THE NEAR HIDDEN EARPIECE*

Ohhhh Ostinato. You shady little bastard!! Gavin and I noticed at the same time that Ezra had a small, clear earpiece in his ear while he and Aria were arguing (as he was preparing to head to the airport). Now, let me start with this: I DO NOT BELIEVE FOR ONE SECOND THAT HE IS TROTTING OFF TO HELP NICOLE. I have been SOOOOO suspicious for a long while now about this... we only have his word that he's "helping Nicole". Yes yes, there was the article Aria saw in the magazine while she was with Holden, but those pictures were all clearly taken on the same day. Do I think *some* of the times he's gone he's been with Nicole? Yes... But the little hidden earpiece was a major point for me that he's hiding a shit ton!! Gavin and I saw it and he included a post with screenshots, so check it out! Ostinato is up to NO GOOD!!!

FURTHERMORE - let’s discuss this whole Wren & Ezra business... From the previous episode’s sneak-peek both Gavin and I were CONVINCED that he and Wren weren’t meeting for the first time... and after seeing the episode, I am even MORE convinced! There is NO WAY these two are being introduced for the first time (great acting, boys!) And beyond THAT... let’s look at the following facts -- Ezra was SO set on going to see “Nicole” that he had the fight with Aria (again, as I said above, I don’t believe for a hot second that he was flying off to Maine to see Nicole and her family...) We saw on the flight boards that there were a bunch of delays... then Spencer spots Ezra as she and Wren are clearly arguing... Ezra and Wren “meet”.... and then Ezra magically decides to skip out on going away!? NOT BUYING IT!! I think he stayed in Rosewood because of Wren... AND THEN when Ezra is telling Aria that his flight wasn’t delayed he just “didn’t get on it”... and then the camera pans over to his bag and we see a glow like from a phone ringing.. MY MONEY IS ON THAT CALL BEING FROM WREN!!!

*MONA, MONA, MONA...*

So I hadn’t crossed Mona off my suspect list... until the last episode. Again with the brilliant acting! Her fan-girling over the board game while at the same time the devastation crossing her face that she didn’t create it... pure genius AND also really changed my mind on her possibly being involved... I think we all need to pay attention to the “clues” that Mona gave us about who could have made the game... WHO IS THIS MONSTER!!

*RANDOM THOUGHTS*

- Fuck, that comic book is cool... I gotta say, this whole Charles and Lucas friendship surprised the hell out of me and I LOVE IT!

- As many have pointed out, did you see how the “A” in Lucas’s signature on the comic is the “A” a?! Lucas was TOP of my suspect list... but with a revel regarding him coming tonight I don’t think he’s the final AD... AGGH!

- WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE NUMBER 214!!!!?!?! Its shit like this that gives me hope that this storyline has been brewing all along....

- How long before Snapchat releases that creepy-ass Aria filter!? Honestly though, that was super amazingly creepy! I’ve seen a lot of people say the face looks like Paige, like Sydney, like Melissa (my first comparison was to Marlene actually...) but I feel like the clip at the end (YAY FOR AN A ENDING!) indicated that the face and voice are completely digitally generated and not someone talking live with some sort of filter on... Maybe cause AD has a British accent (WREN WREN WREN) or a recognizable voice to the PLL!?

What did you all think!? Any comments, ideas or further pieces to examine!? I can’t wait to hear what you think and can’t wait to see tonight’s episode!!!!!

Kisses, -K

#pretty little liars #PLL #PLL thoughts #pll theories #pretty little liars finale #endgame #pll endgame #pll season 7b

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