#but you are the tragic protagonist of the decade

[pookiecowpoke]

Based on this meme:

#been in an angst mood #sorry Arthur #but you are the tragic protagonist of the decade #congrats #my art #rdr2 #rdr2 fanart #arthur morgan #red dead redemption 2 #cowboys #red dead redemption arthur #meme #rdr2 memes

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 琅琊榜/Nirvana in Fire.

Nirvana in Fire is a 2015 historical series best described as either a complicated succession drama set in the premodern Chinese imperial palace, or the story of a man who didn't die a decade ago and has decided to make it everyone else's problem.

And really, I almost feel silly giving my glib little summary, because Nirvana in Fire is so well-known of a property. It's a classic for a reason, and that reason is that it's legitimately very good. This show is what happens when you adapt a solid story, get a bunch of very talented actors, and throw a huge amount of money at it. It's incredibly popular and highly acclaimed, and it earned all of the hype.

Still, while I bet there are few people adjacent to c-drama stuff who've never heard of Nirvana in Fire, I'm sure there are plenty who haven't watched it. After all, it looks like one of those slow, serious shows with a lot of ponderous talking and no joy. If that's the impression you've been given, I could imagine looking at the 54-episode commitment and saying, I don't need that in my life.

I am here to tell you you're wrong. It is a banger of a show. It's tense. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It’s exceptionally clever. It’s jaw-droppingly stupid. It’s romantic. It’s tragic. It has smart plots and bizarre subplots. And that's not even touching the thing with the yeti.

So in case you're one of those people who's heard of Nirvana in Fire, but has put off watching it for one reason or another, I'm here with five reasons I think you should try it.

1. Epic Shit

Did you like the Lord of the Rings? More specifically, did you really like the second Peter Jackson film? Great, then you're all set for this.

I guess I could have called this Game of Thrones without the dragons, but that's not actually the vibe at all. Game of Thrones is much more sensational and salacious, with all the blood and butts and what-not. The Tolkien comparison is more apt, I think, because Nirvana in Fire is equally about as wholesome as you can get in a property where dudes are still getting stabbed all the time.

This is a show about vengeance. And yeah, justice for the fallen, sure, that's fine too. But mostly it's about a bunch of good people joining forces to make sure the bastards who did wrong pay, with their lives as necesary.

The problem, though, is that these bastards are incredibly powerful, which means that a pure brute-force approach isn't going to work. Accordingly, this quickly becomes a story about the power of smart teamwork to exact retribution on some people who can (and did!) legally get away with murder -- and our heroes are some of the people with their necks most on the line if anything goes wrong.

Don't let the Middle Earth comparison fool you into thinking this is all epic swordfights. It's not. (I mean, for one thing, as well-funded as this project is, it doesn't have Peter Jackson Money.) The vast majority of the tension in the show comes from dialogue and slow, terrible realizations. The fight scenes are almost a relief from the nail-biting intensity of intimate conversations about getting a letter from somebody's ex-wife or returning a book.

All told, the show has that incredible almost-RPG vibe of going through all the little subquests and cutscenes you find along the way to defeat the final boss. The plot carefully unravels a multi-tendriled mystery told to you by people in incredible costumes. It doesn't get much more epic than that.

(Nirvana in Fire is also a cautionary tale about how you should be very careful with who gets invited to your birthday party.)

2. A chronically ill protagonist

Okay, right in the first episode, it is established that the main character has three whole completely different names and an old nickname. I'm going to call him Mei Changsu for the duration of this rec post, but let the record show that I could just have easily gone with one of the other three.

What you learn in that same first episode is that Mei Changsu used to be a palace insider, the cocky son of a noble family, only now nearly everyone he used to know thinks he's dead. Also, he's not far off from being actually dead -- he has an unspecified terminal condition that's mostly managed, provided he stays in his little mountain hideaway with his handsome doctor bestie and doesn't return to his old stomping ground and start kicking over hornets' nests.

So guess what he's about to do.

I have to make a note of how brilliant the casting is here: Hu Ge is an action actor! He is a kickpuncher of a man! And I think it's great that you can sort of see his frustration, as well as Mei Changsu's, at having to spend the whole series wrapped in countless layers of fabric and/or lying in bed while everyone around him gets to be the badass action heroes.

Mei Changsu's not faking it, either -- he's actually dying. He expends his energy where he thinks it's necessary, and sometimes that means he has to spend the following week in bed. He's constantly frustrated with himself for what he can't do anymore. He's racing a clock, and that clock is his own failing body. If he dies, the only hope anyone here has for justice dies with him.

He gets two love interests that the show treats pretty much equally. One's a lady general who wasn't even a love interest in the book. The other's the handsome prince who was initially going to be his textual romantic partner in same book, until the author hopped genres from danmei to general historical drama. I can't even call this a love triangle, because there's no competition. He just gets a wife and a husband -- in that he gets neither, because circumstances and his own illness keep him distant from them. He lies to both of then about his condition (among other things). He wants to be with them both and knows he can't be with either. And they in turn have to learn to accept what of him they can and can't have.

(Also, Nihuang (her) and Jingyan (him) are both incredibly gorgeous, which is exactly what bisexual genius Mei Changsu deserves.)

Obviously this isn't a perfect representation of life with chronic illness, largely because Mei Changsu is an incredily wealthy man who lives in a universe with what's basically magic medicine. However, I've seen the story's treatment of him and his condition resonate with a lot of chronically ill viewers, so even with the fantasy layer on it, there's definitely something there.

3. Dave

I have already told the story of how Meng Zhi became "Dave," but long story short, he's such a Dave that I legitimately forget his character's real name. He embodies Daveness. He's The Ultimate Dave.

Dave is an excellent fighter, a loyal friend -- and a terrible liar. He's possbly the only straightforward character in the entire show. When he's asked to be duplicitous, he's comically bad at it. Dave will never do a heel turn. I was misled at first by his semi-evil facial hair, but I have seen the error of my ways. Dave is pure lawful good.

And the reason I list Dave as such a selling point is that having a Dave means you always know what's going on. This is because Dave never knows what's going on, and he has no ego about that, so he asks questions, and other characters have to explain to him what just happened, and that is how you figure out what's going on.

It's an incredibly smart move on the drama's part, because some of the (very fun) schemes are so complicated that there's no way for you, the viewer, to understand them just by watching. Without the internal monologues and omniscent narration of a book, the machinations are opaque. You need things explained -- but why would the schemers explain their schemes? Well, Dave needs some exposition, so here you go.

So if you're worried that you might be left feeling stupid by a show where so many sneaky people are hatching so many complex plans, worry not! Like the good man he is, Dave has your back.

4. A Million Amazing Antagonists

If you like bad guys, this is a show for you. This show has brilliant bad guys all the way down. It has bad guys at every turn. It has bad guys for every taste. Welcome to Big Liang's Big Bad Guy Emporium, where we guarantee you'll walk out of here with a bad guy you like, or your money back!

(And yes, this set of pictures is also to say that their costume budget was entirely well-spent.)

Without getting too far into spoilers, I will say that the basic situation underlying the whole series is this: The emperor has done a lot of bad things, and he has enlisted a bunch of people's help in hiding those bad things, so much so that many of those other people have done even more bad things the emperor didn't even know about -- and then everyone has gone to great lengths to cover those up as well. Our protagonists spend the whole series unraveling this colossal shitshow and bringing people to task for their crimes.

So really, if you're going to spend 54 episodes taking down the baddies, they've got to be baddies you love to see taken down. And these are -- in part because all of them have crystal-clear, rock-solid motivations for their actions. Nobody here is a moustache-twirling comic-book-villain baddie. They're all bad for reasons that are very understandable in their individual contexts. And not a single one of them is going to go down without a fight.

5. World's Best Mom

(Sidebar: The fact that four out of five of my reasons to watch the show are individual or groups of characters should be your strongest indicator that this is an intensely character-driven story.)

This is not a Dead Mom Show. Okay, some moms are dead, but mostly this is a Moms Are Alive And Often Cause Problems Show, which is a lot of what makes the palace drama so delicious. But there is one Good Mom who stands out above all the rest: Consort Jing.

Played with perfect grace and devastating politeness by the stunning Liu Mintao, Consort Jing is a skilled doctor and excellent baker who starts the show with a low-level status among the women of the palace. She swallows down all kinds of mistreatment because she's not in a place to oppose it -- and when she can retaliate, it must only be through soft power. She loves her jock son with all her heart, but because of both their relatively poor positions in the hierarchy, she doesn't get to see him all that much. She wants to be an asset to him, while all the time she has to fear becoming a liability.

She is also the smartest person in any room that she's in, unless she's in a room with Mei Changsu, and even then it may be a tie.

There are lots of great characters in the show that I could have highlighted here, and plenty of them are women, but Consort Jing in particular never ceases to impress me. She is trapped in a gilded cage, married to a man who [lengthy list of spoilers that are traumatic to her in particular], and held hostage by how every time she even looks like she's out of line, it puts both her and her boy in danger. She's the most vulnerable of any of our good guys. Kind of like Wang Zhi, she's got to be clever or she's dead.

Consort Jing is not part of Mei Changsu's original plan. She figures out his plan and makes herself part of it -- and entirely remotely, as she and he aren't even in the same room until episode 40 or so. She puts herself in great danger to make sure he succeeds, not because it will necessarily do her any good, but because Jingyan needs him. This woman has been captain of the Mei Changsu/Jingyan ship for like twenty years already.

Oh, and did I mention her outfits?

I love you, Consort Mom.

Are you ready to watch it yet?

Get it on Viki! Get it on YouTube! Get it on YouTube but in a different playlist! (And also maybe get it on Amazon? Not in my region, but maybe in yours.)

I will warn you that it does take off running -- I think I saw someone say it introduces nineteen characters in the first episode? I was worried that I'd be too innundated by situations and flashbacks and names to be able to follow. By the second or third episode, though, I was rolling with it. So if you feel like you're struggling at the beginning, stick with it a bit. See if you don't feel it start to click.

...Man, reading over this post has left me going, oh, but I missed that! and that! and that guy! And yeah, the truth is that there are just so many great things about the show that limiting myself to only five (and being limited to only thirty images) was tough. I'm sure that people reblogging will add their own must-see elements.

Truly, this is a show that deserves its reputation. It may not be for everyone, but if this is the kind of thing that you like, it is a shining example of that thing.

Besides, you have to love a production where everyone was clearly having just a whole lot of fun being big ol' costumed dorks.

#nirvana in fire #lang ya bang #琅琊榜 #i made this #rec post

[lioncunt]

ok so.

1976. anne rice publishes interview with the vampire, a meditative novel she used as a way to understand and articulate her grief over the death of her five year old daughter. lestat is the fun antagonist (but really there isn’t a clear villain.) louis is anne’s grief projection of herself. armand is the wise but ultimately selfish second romantic interest. subtext that louis is in love with lestat, but it’s very much hidden beneath grief, as all his emotions are. this was intended to be a standalone novel.

1985. anne has thought about lestat for a decade and decides to make him the protagonist. she doesn’t like louis anymore (you could probably write a psychological essay on why.) lestat loves louis though! actually, lestat loves everyone! lestat is great in fact. and armand is fucking insane and tragic, and louis has always loved lestat and now they’re in massive massive love. and they will be forever, despite breakups and anne going back to the church and all the other crazy shit that happens for 30 years.

so they’re making a movie! except this movie is only interview with the vampire, and it isn’t really incorporating much or any of the rest of the series. lestat is his shallow antagonist self, louis is miserable, armand is old and wise. it’s the original vision of interview, without the 180 in characterization anne does. they don’t make the vampire lestat. they make queen of the damned but it sucks so oh well.

so amc is making a tv show! and they want it to be the ENTIRE SERIES. they WANT to put back in the fun loving and ultimately humanistic lestat that anne developed in the sequel onwards, the louis that deeply loves him, hopefully the armand that’s so complex and messed up. but the thing is, anne didn’t write those characters and relationships initially. she essentially retconned them, for the better. so in order to adapt ALL the books, necessary changes need to be made. lestat needs to be more layered, more lovable. louis needs to be more conflicted in the romance. there needs to be a CLEAR EXPLICIT INITIAL ROMANCE. they need to believably get to their dancing, living in a castle endgame. and the whiplash of the books just won’t translate to television.

so that’s the explanation of the change in loustat’s relationship from the book to the show. there’s reason for the other changes as well, but people have discussed that at length and no one’s discussed this so i thought i’d try and help people understand who may not know any of it.

#interview with the vampire #vampire chronicles #loustat

[panlight]

Bella wanting to be a vampire and loving it when she becomes one isn't inherently a bad narrative choice. It's just weird compared to the tone with which vampirism is portrayed like, literally up until the second Bella wakes up and is like 'wow this is amazing!'

Everyone else is talking about it in terms of being frozen, of fighting dark instincts, in rising above the hand you've been dealt, of loneliness, of stagnation, of longing for things you can no longer have, of the monotony of eternity. Even characters who have the kind of true forever love that Bella has with Edward talk about it at best as "hell's not so bad if you get to keep an angel with you." They talk about the thirst being painful and never fully satiated. SM talks about how the vegetarian vampire diet is almost as hard as starvation would be for a human, and that animal blood only dulls the pain, never really makes it go away (granted this was on the Lexicon not in the actual text. She may have changed her mind at some point, IDK).

So with all of the above, Bella's insistence that this is what she wants, not just because it's the only way to be with Edward but because of the "perks" and how she "wants to be Superman, too" seem like a weird choice. She's hearing from actual vampires that being a vampire kind of sucks, and she's like 'la la la la I'm not listening' and then she's . . . right, somehow?

It's like SM wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. She wanted the brooding vampire, the 'good' vampires who struggle and sacrifice and deny their darker nature. She wanted the tragic vampire, forced to exist as a monster but trying not to behave as one. The endless dark midnight. But then she also wanted a Happily Ever Fairytale and power fantasy where her protagonist realizes her full potential as a vampire while also finding a forever family. Edward's vampirism makes him feel like a monster; Bella's makes her feel like a superhero.

And it's just . . . it's just hard to make these two things work together in my head. Their worldviews seem completely and utterly different, and Bella being happy doesn't change the decades--in some cases centuries--of 'suffering tragic vampire' stuff the other vampires have been through.

[tossawary]

Ended up thinking about "Dragon Age" again, specifically mostly DA2 and time travel fics. I think Hawke is the second-easiest DA protagonist for an author to throw backwards in time or into another dimension (the first is the Inquisitor, whose game has canonical time travel), because Hawke potentially getting abandoned in the Fade in DAI is an excuse for anything to happen.

More importantly, I think Hawke is the FUNNIEST protagonist to throw back in time for a redo, because they're not put in charge of Solving The Apocalypse for the majority of their game. The Warden and the Inquisitor are dealing with kingdoms, with the Blight and the Breach, whereas Hawke is "just" dealing with a city state and spends most of their initial time there fucking around trying to support their family. But WHAT a city. Hawke would have to go back and deal with fucking Kirkwall again in all its early, awful glory, a real powder keg waiting to blow.

The amount of time spent in Kirkwall and its incredibly violent game missions isolated to this one location across nearly a decade gives it so much character that, to me, it's perhaps the most entertaining DA location to explore as a place where ordinary people actually live (though, admittedly, many places in Thedas are fucking terrible), and Hawke's tragic relationship with that place as its hero is fascinating to think about. Hawke would have a lot to feel sad about, coming back to this strange place, with both good things and bad things undone, but I find it amusing to imagine that Hawke also actually missed this terrible place and its peculiar version of normal.

Here's a 400 word ficlet of how I imagine Hawke's reunion with Kirkwall going. I don't intend to write a full fic, it's just a scene that came to me with surprising clarity while out on a walk, despite how long it's been since I played a DA game.

KIRKWALL (AGAIN)

Garrett looked over the dark streets of Kirkwall and had to wipe a tear away from his eye. "This place is a shit hole," he said, in the same tone of awe others used for incomparable beauty. 

In front of them, a drunken sailor holding a bottle of whiskey and singing a terrible rendition of the already terrible song "What Do You Do With A Tranquil Blood Mage?" wobbled into a vegetable cart. This caused several turnips to bounce across the cobblestones. The cursing grocer picked one of them up, yelled, "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE WALKING, YOU DOG-FUCKING BLIGHTER," and threw it at the drunken sailor, whose head was saved by the fact that he lurched over to throw up in an alleyway, and the vegetable smashed into the side of a house instead. 

Inside the house, there was a crash, and then the shutters of an upper window flew open, revealing a naked man holding a crossbow. He yelled, "I'LL HAVE YOUR BALLS FOR A NECKLACE, YOU POINTY-EARED COCKSUCKERS," despite the fact that no one nearby was an elf, and then fired at the street below him. His crossbow bolt lodged into a wooden message board, which was mostly covered in old, vandalized paper posters for the Blooming Rose and other like-minded establishments, and the quivering "crossbow bolt" was revealed to be a rusty fork tied to a butter knife with strong, covered in sparkly white and blue powder that glowed slightly. It matched the other mismatched cutlery already embedded in the wood there. 

The naked man with the crossbow slammed his shutters closed again. The people on the streets had ducked or raised a shield, but now easily went back to their business, apparently unsurprised and unworried. An old woman crouched down to the ground and stuffed the thrown turnip into the basket over her arm, then hastily walked away with her free loot. 

"I missed this city so much," Garrett said, and even he was a little horrified that he meant it so sincerely. There was no need for Carver to look at him like that. 

#tossawary dragon age #fic ideas #hawke #spoilers #hawke time travel au

[astrolavas]

what's your favourite toh ship?

i'm genuinely not sure, i love all of the "main" ones 😭😭

lumity is obviously iconic and (since it features the protagonist) we see every little way in which their relationship develops throughout the show; it has most on-screen content/development out of all the ships. we see how they start out as sort of "rivals", how they grow closer, we see them pine for each other, we see them confess, become girlfriends, we see them during their established relationship, etc. we see how luz helps amity become her own person away from her parents' hurtful influence, we see how amity supports luz when she needs it. you know, they're silly, they're so cute, they try to communicate best to their abilities, they dress up and travel together. they're so good, love them sm.

huntlow is the ship i probably think abt most since 90% of my thoughts ever as well as conversations are related to hunter, my #1 blorbo, thus: also to hunter's relationships with people + to hunter's closest friends. since neither hunter nor willow are the main protagonist, obviously there's not as much content/attention on them (+ shorter time too but y'know) but they're still so good and well-written. they value and respect each other so much, they fit together so well and their relationship is built on being equals, they're so silly, they're losers (affectionate), they started off as friends, they're always there for each other, and ugh! love them sm.

raeda has that small sprinkle of Tragicness in itself, like they're just so cool. starting off as childhood friends, then being together only to have to break up and drift apart for decades, until time finds them again and this time they make it work. ughhghhh again, love them sm.

they're all just... very different dynamics with such complex, three-dimensional characters, it's just! they're all unique. i love them all.

#short answer but yeaghg #feel like. lumity is probably my fav when it comes to how developed it is. raeda fav vibes-wise. and huntlow fav brainrot-wise. #nicole answers #anonymous

[that-house]

New D&D character!!!

Her name is Genevieve Sacrosanct Radiance Celestia Way and she has short white hair in a bowl cut and-

Vivi, as her friends would call her if she had any, is a recent graduate from Hero of Prophecy High, a boarding school for rich people to get rid of their kids who have too much Protagonist Energy

Given that Vivi has the little-known medical condition Alexandria’s Genesis which basically guarantees you’re gonna have some heroic shit happen to you, it was clear to notorious oil baron Shadowgod Way that he would wind up dying to give Genevieve a tragic backstory if he didn’t send her to Hero of Prophecy High

This campaign is set in a distant fantastical future, and Hero of Prophecy High is all that remains of the Catholic Church after 20,000 years of magic bullshit. It’s also no longer a high school and instead is a K-12 institution with no vacations or outside contact. All this to say that Genevieve has no idea what “being gay” is and still feels guilty about saying “frick” a decade ago.

She graduated solidly in the upper middle section of her class, but it turns out that colleges don’t accept credits from Hero of Prophecy High, and as far as the job market goes, “benching 300 pounds” and “knowing the weak points of a dragon” do you no favors in a city where flipping burgers needs three years of prior experience and a Master’s degree

She thinks her bowl cut looks cool and heroic, has never had a real friend, and can parry fall damage with a sufficiently heroic-looking three point landing.

[braininatankwithalaptop]

Has anyone talked about how envious Zach is of Zorian's life?

Zach is the classic fantasy protagonist/d&d character. He's an orphan with a tragic backstory and given a mission by the angels to save the world. But he doesn't know he's a character. He doesn't have parents, siblings, or even extended family.

Do you think that he used to deeply trust and rely on Tesen no matter how cold or dismissive he was? I wonder if there was a house servant that Zach clung to as his closest thing to a family and he could do or say nothing when they were fired, convinced that it was in the name of rebuilding his house. Based on his reputation and how people react to his success in the time loop I don't think he had many close friends at school either. Can you imagine how lost he was as a 15 boy being given two impossible missions (rebuilding his house and stopping the invasion) and then finding out how Tesen betrayed him and his family?

In the time loop he was alone for years without being able to make deep relationships with his newfound maturity and got blindsided by betrayal (again) by Red Robe.

Now can you imagine Zach comparing all of this to Zorian? Zorian was only in the time loop for about a decade. Zorian had a sister, two brothers, parents, and a friend he was decently close to before the time loop? When Zach reunites with Zorian he finds out he was able to convince Xvim, Kael, and Taiven of the time loop. If I were him I'd be wondering what I did wrong (or what was wrong with me) that I couldn't get as many people to believe me.

Now Zorian's life wasn't a cakewalk, and his time in the timeloop was much more stressful compared to Zach's due to the ticking clock and threats, but to Zach, Zorian was in a much healthier situation. His antisocialness could partly (not wholly) be attributed to not being aware of his empathy, but once he gets a handle on it (by becoming allies/friends with the aranea who can jury rig awareness of the time loop and retain memories) he flourishes. Zorian becomes much closer with his little sister and reconciles with his older brother, two connections Zach doesn't have an equivalent for.

I hope after the time loop Zach is able to get the life he's been hoping for.

#zach noveda #mother of learning #mol #zorian kazinski #I bet Kael is also a little jealous #as besides Kana it seems like he doesn't have any close family #and being a single parent raising your daughter you kind of need those strong bonds

[cellarspider]

Since I’ve been thinking about it all morning: here. A partial introduction to my favorite villain.

In the days of yore, when I was a teenager and video game hype was almost exclusively magazine-based, I saw a kid reading a copy of Game Informer.

“Hey,” said I, “could I see that for a second?”

The kid, not knowing what they were about to unleash, handed me the magazine.

I had seen this on the cover:

I had no idea what this was, but I knew that I wanted whatever it was selling.

I found out that this was an advertisement for City of Villains, an expansion to the previously-released MMO City of Heroes. I’d never played WoW with its Alliance and Horde split, so the idea was new to me. WoW also failed to present me with anything like the vibes of the newly-introduced lead villain, Lord Recluse.

Yes, they liked this art so much they did it twice, and I’m glad they did. More below the fold on why he was so appealing for a young queer kid, for those who are intrigued.

I’ll keep this focused on a single topic for now: The intensely queer vibes that Recluse acquired over the course of the game’s plot. Keep in mind that this game came out in 2004, so the actual amount of openly queer content was very minimal. However, CoH/CoV developed a reputation as an extremely queer-friendly space, with a community Pride event becoming a semi-official yearly celebration, complete with the devs showing up as major NPCs, custom assets, and spawning in unique raids that tanked everybody’s framerate. Equivalents of this have carried over past the game's tragic shutdown in 2012, with community-run servers still staging their own Pride events.

If the art above doesn’t make it clear, Recluse had a much-beloathèd archnemesis, Statesman. If the art above doesn’t make it abundantly clear, this was always an extremely fraught relationship, with a complicated backstory that became more and more tragic the deeper you got into the game lore, eventually bordering on cosmic horror. But one thing was for certain, this was Hark A Vagrant levels of obsession over a nemesis.

The game at first seemed to backstep on that: oh, it turned out, Recluse had once been villainous life partners with a woman who went by the villain name Red Widow. She died decades ago in the collateral damage of one of Recluse’s nigh apocalyptic confrontations with Statesman, and her death left him with nothing but his obsession. So sad.

And then when Statesman died in the course of the game’s plot, Recluse spiraled into depression and nihilism that was only halted when someone managed to dig Red Widow’s soul out of storage and resurrected her.

It was always deniably presented, but the implication was very much that the two were functionally equivalent emotional anchors to his psyche, and losing both of them was something he couldn’t survive.

Also, there was that one time that the game’s Valentine’s Day event was advertised with a heart split down the middle, half Statesman’s iconography and half Recluse’s, topped with a banner that read “AMOR OMNIA VINCIT”, meaning “LOVE CONQUERS ALL”.

And that’s without getting into the first tie-in book. A prequel starting at the end of the 1920s, it was a delightfully and deliberately pulpy book, which… centered around a complicated man slowly dying of lingering health problems after his exposure to mustard gas in WWI, and his very good friend, estranged from his family for unknown reasons, who’d devoted the last ten years to caring for the protagonist, and helping him seek a cure. This has carried on year after year, even though the man’s illness has made him unresponsive to the emotional needs of others, something they both know is going to culminate one day in the two parting ways.

…And then they get superpowers, and their relationship does not get any healthier from there. But what it does gain is a surprising trans metaphor as our now-antagonist slowly metamorphoses into the spidery villain I know and love.

I completely missed this back in the day. I have no idea if it was intentional. But there’s a scene where this man looks in the mirror and sees the first signs of his oncoming physical transformation, and he likes what he sees. He has no idea where he’s going, but he’s excited for it.

…And he’s started killing people who refer to him by his former name, in the most literal case of “dead naming” I’ve ever seen.

Throughout the rest of the series, Recluse is unapologetically who he is, putting him in that category of queercoded villain that doubles as a power fantasy. He’s grown physically monstrous and loves it. He has respect from everyone around him, either legitimately for his capabilities or out of fear of what he can do to those who don’t give him his due. A new demigod who is only matched by the man he’s never stopped obsessing over. He wins just as often as he loses, and often salvages something from his defeats in ways that nobody expected.

He is terrible. And he is wonderful.

#city of villains #lord recluse #I have so many more thoughts #and the canon is so wild and engages on metatextual themes so thoroughly that it really deserves more analysis #just in general #but for now #this will do

[random-senpai]

Y'know I joked about Fuuko getting a harem this timeloop but the more I think about it the more I think it's actually plausible. Tozuka loves to explore different genres in Undead Unluck. And with the popularity of the Harem genre he could easily play around with it. Fuuko and Andy's meeting was a twist on the classic "fateful encounter" in Shoujo manga where the female protagonist accidentally bumps into the male lead. So what if Andy's return is finding out that this time he has love rivals?

With most people he wouldn't have to worry because thanks to Fuuko riding arc she's unable to age so not many people would be able to be with her long term, but the people she's been getting vibes this loop with are able to be with her thanks to their negation abilities. With her completely changing the trajectory of their lives.

Feng - Unfade literally prevents him from aging and keeps him at his physical prime since it manifested earlier this loop. Thanks to Fuuko beating his ass he hasn't killed in decades and has grown embrace his role as a father (in a tsun way) instead of the messed up relationship he had with Shen the last loop.

Gina - Unchange prevents things from changing. In the previous loop she used it to make an unchanging shell of makeup to hide her age, but with the emphasis of growth of abilities this loop she might be able to prevent her cells from aging by making her own body "Unchanging". This loop instead of lamenting her role as a member of Union, she takes incredible pride in it. She's Fuuko's right hand woman, her closest confidant, her silly rabbit.

Billy - Unfair has changed massively this loop and is the most broken thing ever. Thanks to Fuuko he's taken a much more healthier outlook on life and allows him to express his true kind nature without being so self sacrificing. All he has to do is adknowledge one's strength and it lets him copy their ability. He can copy Andy's Undead without the convoluted backstab this loop, can copy Unfade whenever, and has already been shown to have copied Unchange this loop.

Hell they're even built like Otome Game routes

Andy is the fun flirty one that never really means anything at first and changes when he actually gets serious. Has (or had depending on when he comes back) the most screentime and is obviously the main route.

Feng is the tsundere that's reluctant to admit how he truly feel. Who also never leaves the MC alone and makes excuses instead of admitting his real emotions.

Gina is the bestie gal pal. She supports the MC no matter what and is the go to for infro. But she also has feelings deeper than just a friend and is the sole (barely hidden) Yuri route in the game.

Billy is the funny aloof older man (in concept. Fuuko is waaaay older than him this loop). He jokes around and acts like a dummy, but hides a tragic past and huge amounts of trauma behind his easy smile. Comes complete with the dead wife that 80% of rare Ossan options in otomes have.

I'm gonna throw this out there, but I think that when Fuuko gets to Unruin and saves him from his tragedy this loop, he's going to become obsessed with her and worship her like he worshiped God in the previous one. Maybe being like a messed up Yandere secret route.

So yeah good luck Andy. You're gonna need it when you come back to your girl.

#Undead Unluck #Anyways I love this for my good sis Fuuko #It's what she deserves

[abnerkrill]

Nik! Did you watch Rebel Moon? How was it?

Yes hello this is my 4 star review of rebel moon on letterboxd.

But first: a professional, somewhat critical review of rebel moon that engages with the film well, especially regarding anti-colonial themes, and isn't just knee-jerk regurgitated Snyder haterism:

And now more of my thoughts: [edit: Oh No, He Went And Talked For 3 Hours About It, Thanks For Coming To My TedTalk:)

No one has a better knack at putting together a cast list SO ATTRACTIVE TO THE BISEXUALS. read it and weep, boys. (Jena Malone is there too but really just for 1 set piece)

...Jena Malone's one (1) scene set piece features her as an alien spider woman with legitimate grievances against the Empire who now wants to kill kids because all her kids were killed. Like, so valid, girl. Also, did I say Jena Malone as an alien spider-woman? And this is just one scene.

Look, if that pitch doesn't hook you, this film may not be for you, and that's okay, but by GOD my people are the people who hear "Jena Malone alien spider woman" and perk up. I love you, freaks.

The cinematography is ace and always will be under Snyder's direction. music by Tom Holkenborg SLAPS. Costuming and design overall is super super strong. (People on this hellsite are always complaining about inadequate, boring as hell sci-fi design and you get RM and you don't appreciate it for what it is. WAKE UP.)

Costume showcase! Second from the right in this photo showing off those sweet sweet sci-fi costume designs is my beloved non-binary they/them revolutionary Milius. CANONICALLY non-binary, let me add. Imagine SW doing that lmaoooooooooooo D*ve Filoni would fuckin keel over and die

Kora! Our tragic female protagonist of color who's over 40, with a dark edgy sexy background. [KIDNAPPED AS A CHILD!! DEAD FAMILY!!! DEAD LOVER!!!!!!! SHE FAILED TO PROTECT HER WARD FROM ASSASSINATION!!!!! SHE IS THE MOST WANTED WOMAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!]

Bitches on tumblr LOVE taking failmen with sad backstories from media and blorbifying them, but the second it's a woman? please. If this was a man people would be writing the filthiest x reader smut you've seen since Mandalorian S1 came out. If this was a man you'd already have seen 20,000 fan drawings of her with her muscles and tits OUT. God where's my Kora fanart.

I personally have no problems with the plot of this movie (part 1 of 2) being "we must collect warriors to fight the evil empire." That's kinda fantasy story 101 and I still love new, varied interpretations of that plot.

If there's not much interconnecting plot because Kora's just gathering fighters, it's kinda like... that's the point, babes, they'll actually get to it in part 2. We're just at the "forming the team" stage. I revel in that part of a fantasy film and I always want it to be longer, so this film is like catnip to me.

Uh, yeah, this is getting long. More under the cut.

Entertainment professional nitpick time! I've seen someone say RM would be better as a TV show to introduce a new character each episode. And I truly don't think that fixes any of the problems this person has with the film, while introducing way more problems. (Who the fuck would go in on an original concept TV show where each episode introduces a new hero. You could not sell that pitch to a studio, ever, and viewers would instantly check out if they didn't like the introduced character of the week, and the same complaints would be made: it’s just a new character intro blah blah blah. This wouldn’t fix anything! It would very much make it worse!)

Me, like every day, through gritted teeth: that's... not... how... tv... works...

Like be realistic for a hot second with me. Television is not "long movie"—it is a different medium with different rules. Yes, the past decade has blurred many lines between TV and film, but they're still different mediums, and when people blur them ("it's a 10-hour movie!") the results often suck ass, because you either lack episodic structure or you lack feature structure. Snyder is a feature filmmaker who has never worked in TV. Whenever features people jump into TV, it's a whole other learning curve! They're usually terrible at it! You want Snyder to have to learn a new medium? You want him to learn 5/6-act TV structure from scratch? You want him to (horrified gasp) lead a writers room? Those are not his strengths, baby. Let him play in his space opera sandbox.

And I'm not done! You want the casting team to have to deal with the headache of getting feature film actors to star in a TV show? (Pay cuts! Longer commitments! TV production timelines!) You want to do that to me, personally, and fuck up the TV landscape some more by going, "Oh, we can basically just make a Longer Feature Film in TV"? Fuck off with that. TV has different production realities and different basic story structures. A [long] film [with two parts] is still a film, in structure and production practicalities.

Truly, Tumblr media studies brains (derogatory) at it again.

To each their own, but again, I think RM's structure is fun because it gives me more of the goodies (badass, varied character intros) for the price of one (2-hour film.) Like... that's the good stuff, that's often the most exhilarating part of a film for me. And contrary to popular belief, it's not intro to intro without rising tension or stakes. It builds tension as it goes because new facets of resistance against the Motherworld are explored in each character's intro scene. New ways they fight back, new worlds on which they fight back. And a ticking time bomb of the King's Gaze (king's gays lol) catching up.

Here, have a trailer bc Tumblr's mad at me for too much text in one block.

...I like the RM characters. I want to spend time with them and see what other zany shenanigans Snyder will have them do. (Alien bar fights! Taming a space gryphon! Lightsaber battle!) I like the side-quest-y, exploratory, space opera sandbox playground nature. It's fun, and like, again, if you don't perk up at the concept of collecting cool characters like action figures, this film may just not be for you.

To me it's a polycule. Like, the most messed up polycule in the whole galaxy, but it's a polycule.

Speaking of: THE CHARACTERS ROCK. Yeah, we're missing some significant character development because Netflix truncated Snyder's 4-hr, R-rated film into a 2-hr PG-13 version (likely to be able to release the 4-hr cut later, drum up new press, and get more eyeballs on the movie in total in a few months.) That's... not really Snyder's fault [even though he claims he's in on the plan... some part of me thinks it was Netflix's idea and not his. Stinks of studio meddling.] And it's not indicative of the quality of the actual film, which I currently see as more of an abridged version of the R-rated film that's gonna come out and fill up some of these story holes.

If people are judging the film for not being the 4-hour version, and then decide not to see the 4-hour version, that's their call, but it's kinda shitty to act like the 2-hr version is all there is. Like it probably wasn't Snyder's call to do a 2-hr cut! He's said that the 4-hr one is a whole different movie. I betcha the common criticisms (not enough character development, just jumps from character intro to character intro without interconnection, lack of structure) will be helped, if not outright solved, by the longer cut.

I think people are also happy to take a Part 1 of a movie if it's, say, Dune, and the source material has another part, so Part 1 is allowed to be fucking boring, whereas people don't give that kind of allowance to original sci-fi movies, WHICH IS A REASON WE DON'T GET ORIGINAL SCI-FI. If you're painting with as huge and cosmic a palette as space opera Rebel Moon, the 4-8 hours total across the 2 four-hour parts is kinda bare minimum for an epic. So... patience is a virtue? Let part 1 have elements of IT'S KIND OF A PROLOGUE?

What's that saying? If you want the rewards of space opera worldbuilding with an ensemble cast, you must submit to the mortifying ordeal of 2 hours of setup. Geez. Enjoy the wacky exposition or get out of the space opera genre.

Yeah, that leads me to the point of people who don't enjoy space opera are getting mad at RM for fulfilling the promises of the genre. You might truly be happier elsewhere. The whole thing is over-the-top, huge-scale MELODRAMA and I thrive on melodrama. If it's too cheesy for you, don't come to space operas!!!!!!!

On that note, people have said RM is too tropey and too Star Wars-y. But like I said. If you don't love the tropes get out of the genre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you aren't here for bloodier/hornier Star Wars get out of RM!!!!

Another big idea I would be remiss to skip over. RM is an explicitly, deliberately anti-colonial, anti-imperial text—far, far more so than any other mainstream sci-fi currently being released. Well-intentioned liberals love to tout Star Trek/Star Wars as progressive media but they really hedge and defang all their political commentary, especially in their 21st century franchise form—think the SW sequels/shows straight up woobifying K*lo Ren in realtime and the Trek shows that (while fun!) are really often just nostalgia bait.

RM is pretty fucking radical. Its theme basically is Kill Nazis—or in expanded form, something along the lines of "The empire will eat up everything of value in the universe unless it is met with unified armed resistance built on solidarity."

And just look at RM's casting. We're not colorblind here; we're very color-conscious. (That's a rant for another day, but I've really started to despise colorblind casting for its extremely well-intentioned-liberal "we're all the same" mentality. It just winds up erasing.) Anyway: RM features the explicitly American-English-Afrikaans empire vs. the Algerian Amazigh protagonist, Black freedom fighters, Japanese revolutionary... and like. Snyder's always gonna be into Vikings so obviously we have Space Vikings too, whatever. Look at me, I can criticize Snyder too! The Poor Sad Space Vikings are not the strongest part of the film!

...Anyway of course the empire vs. revolution is absolutely kind of Star Wars-y since RM is highkey Snyder's Star Wars, but it goes so much further than SW dreamed (or, perhaps, nightmared). SW's rebels/resistance continually get defanged because they're kind of foundationally space magic/singular hero's quest deals, and modern SW with the exception of Rogue One/Andor is just politically, socially stupid. In contrast, RM is about forming a coalition, without something like the Force to help you out. I could write an essay on the ways RM starts in the same place Star Wars starts but takes its politics so much more seriously, so much further.

While I'd argue "good politics" and "artistic quality" rarely correlate, RM is explicitly and doggedly a text about the colonial empire that exploits, enslaves, abuses, and seeks to utterly control marginalized people groups in its quest for domination—and god, I would LOVE to see a resurgence in very fanged, very angry political sci-fi.

One more aside. Snyder has been rightfully criticized for his earlier works basking in fascist-adjacent, hypermasculine aesthetics; 300 is notably super duper racist in how it depicts savage/monstrous Persians vs. Beautifully Good White Spartans Defending Their Culture. (more on "300 Bad" stored up in my brain if anyone wants THAT rant.) To Snyder's credit, none of his films since 300 have really done that—parts of Batman v Superman and his cut of Justice League purposefully poke fun at it. The hypermasculinity is kinda still there, but it's subsumed in the service of melodrama and mythic-flavored cinema, and it's kinda a staple of the action genre anyway, and if you're gonna criticize Snyder without criticizing EVERY ACTION MOVIE EVER, that's just more regurgitated Snyder haterism.

No one is doing mythic action like Snyder these days. No one has the balls and the command of melodrama & operatic visuals. And it comes clearly from Snyder's background in art & art history because all his shots are jam-packed with symbolism and meaning and allusion. So criticize the film for its weaknesses if you like but geez, if I see another post railing about the lack of CRAFT in RM, I will start biting. ALMOST NO BLOCKBUSTER HAS THIS LEVEL OF CRAFT. It's okay that you don't understand visual storytelling, babygirl, but please don't accuse Snyder of lacking craft.

Sorry, you've triggered Cinema Defense Mechanisms in me, I'm gonna have to sit down for a while after this.

I have more takes. Takes hot enough to fuel the King's Gaze (king's gays lol.) But I'll end with a funny observation: I transed my gender (cheers, shouts, hoorays) just about the time I was getting ready to watch Rebel Moon, and in one shocking, epiphanic moment I turned to my partner and went "Of COURSE I'm a man. I like Zack Snyder." So........... do with that what you will.

#rebel moon #dragoninthelibrary #rebel moon spoilers #long post

[artist-issues]

Okay what do you think of the idea that Maginifico was more of the Protagonist than Asha was?

Why? Are people saying that? What's the argument for that?

I guess neither of them has a character arc, unless you count Magnifico going from "bad" to "worse." And neither of them is a powerful static character, (like Steve Rogers, who doesn't change much throughout his arc but his strong character traits are an instrument of change to the characters around him.)

I mean. You could try and say Asha doesn't have an arc, but she causes change in the characters around her because all the Rosas people never stood up for themselves before she started singing.

But it wasn't impactful. Because she really didn't do anything except "challenge" Magnifico, and she'd already done that within the first ten minutes of the movie during her interview without it affecting any change. It wasn't her "challenging him" that made the Rosas people change--her challenging him just changed their circumstances a bit because it made him reveal himself as the villain...and then the Rosas people did what they probably would've done whether Asha was on that tower during his villain monologue or not--they just started wishing that he wasn't controlling them. 🤷‍♀️ Oh boy. How powerful.

That's the thing about this movie. Characters just...receive new information and act exactly the correct way in response.

Asha learns the King is doing something wrong? She immediately suggests the exact right thing for him to do and totally stands up to him, despite living her entire life under his seemingly benevolent rule and looking up to him as much as everybody else in her world.

The Queen learns that a handful of side characters are staging a rebellion against her husband of decades? She immediately joins them.

Asha starts to act a little bit defeated because her mom's wish is gone and the King is condemning her family? Her grandfather and mother, who have recently lost everything, are not affected badly enough to keep them from encouraging her to go save the day.

The tower ceiling won't open up? The goat who has never been in the tower nor displayed any intuition about how things work (and sometimes he has even forgotten where they're going or what they're doing) suddenly knows the exact right way to fix the problem just by looking around.

Nobody changes because nobody has flaws. Everybody's just a good person who's a little ignorant.

(sorry, didn't mean to go on another ramble about why this whole movie is bad.)

Anyway. The only "flawed" character is Magnifico. And by "flaws" I mean, "he's the bad guy, so he's wrong."

But that's not usually what we mean by "flawed." Usually by flawed we mean, "has weaknesses in their character that informs their wrong or bad actions and view--and those weaknesses are something they wrestle with." By the end of the story, a "flawed" character either takes steps toward overcoming these weaknesses or loses the wrestling match and the story has kind of a tragic ending. Like Anakin Skywalker at the end of ROS, or Peter Pan.

Magnifico could feel like more of a "protagonist" if he was "flawed" in that sense. But just like everything in this movie, his "wrestling match" with his flaws isn't believable or impactful. Therefore, his flaws aren't "flaws" like we just talked about.

Magnifico is just the stereotypical Bad Guy who doesn't wrestle with who he is, like Ursula or Maleficent--with no believable character arc, and therefore no impact.

Actually, they really really hamstring him.

He should have either been totally aware that he was being selfish and power-hungry from the first time we see him and owned it--like Ursula--OR he should've had a much more in-depth backstory, with a noticeable fear issue that causes him to strive for control at all costs, and a fleshed-out story of trying and then failing to fight that urge for control.

But instead of leaning toward one or the other, they just halfway-commit to all directions. One minute, Magnifico is singing a gentle song about protecting others and smiling indulgently at Asha's drawings or listening to his sweet wife--the next, he's making little one-liners or singing a quick verse in a song about how he shouldn't turn evil--and the next, he's casually saying 100% evil things like, "I DECIDE" at the top of his lungs, or "How's that 'taking your wish into your own hands' thing workin out for ya? OH WAIT, I DON'T CARE."

Pick one. If you're going to have him wrestle between good or bad, make him wrestle. Like Stitch or the Beast. If you're going to have him believe he's totally in the right at all times, even when he has to be cruel, make him really believe it's because he's right, through and through, like Frollo or Scar or Facilier. If you're going to have him be all-out nasty from the beginning and totally okay with that, like Ursula, Maleficent, Jafar, Hans, or Clayton, then make him that, through and through. Enough with tell-don't-show half-commitment to all of the above. Pick one, so that you have time to show any progression convincingly.

Rambled again. 🤷‍♀️ In conclusion, no, I don't think he's "more of a protagonist than Asha" because he's exactly as impactful, believable, interesting, and important as Asha—which is not at all.

#Wish #wish 2023 #wish Disney #Disney wish #Disney #2023 movies #critical #wish hate #wish love #asked #answered #critique #king Magnifico #Asha #writing #storytelling #meta #Villain #Disney villains

[dangermousie]

Do you like triumph of evil in your kdramas? A small rec list for the pessimist in you

If, like me, you got into kdramas way back when or like older kdramas, tragic endings are not a particular surprise - endings where one or both members of the OTP die were pretty common and even unsettling endings that remind you of the world being rather unjust (Bad Guys) also happen.

But I am talking about something more than that - an ending that really socks it to you, by making you feel the villains won, it was all in vain. I confess when well-done, I love the bleakness of that type of ending. So here are my five favorites for this sort of thing:

Hong Gil Dong (2008)

This story of a rebel fighting to overthrow the mad tyrant and bring justice to the people has the most thoroughly bad ending on the list. Who dies? EVERYONE EXCEPT THE BAD GUYS! I don't mean the OTP, I don't mean your fave secondaries, I mean everyone. The sheer realistic bleakness of the ending is breath-taking. Gil Dong, his OTP Yi Nok and the rest of the rebels are murdered by the forces of the king they put on the throne. The last shot of the story proper is them standing watching a shower of arrows coming towards them, staring at their death. The only survivors are the King and the secondary girl and both are monsters. The king is the man they put on the throne with so much effort but who cannot allow them to live because what they want is not to replace a bad absolute ruler with a different one (that he may have coped with) but to replace the system itself - to hold the king accountable, and he cannot have that. In the end, a mad tyrant has been replaced with a sane tyrant and the class system and the injustices of that society that wrecked Hil Dong, Yi Nok and the rest continue unabated. And secondary girl betrays Gil Dong because - for all her sort of crush - she never truly saw him as human, just a fancy peasant toy that should be thrown away and punished for not behaving as he ought. In the end, the good guys, the heroes, who fought so hard are killed and it's not easy acceptance for them either (there is a scene where Gil Dong, knowing they are all dead once spring comes, admits to Yi Nok how terrified of death he is that has haunted me for a decade plus) and the monsters continue on happily. Sure, the people recite stories and new fighters will rise in their place but it's very much of a "no happy ending in our lifetime" message.

At the time this drama came out, the Hong Sisters were known for their romcoms and this started out pretty goofy - watching it live as it got darker and darker was a hell of a trip and the ending made the fandom insane. But the more I thought about it, the more I loved it, the more fitting it seemed. I love all the other takes on rebels against the crown a la various other HGD and Iljimae adaptations but this one has, to me, by far the most fitting ending.

IRIS (2009)

Talk about bleak. This drama starts as your standard if high quality actioner about competent glam agents of a secret CIA type agency. And then it all goes to hell in a handbasket for our mains as it turns out a secret evil organization is the one that's pulling the strings, and our protagonist Kim Hyun Jun (played by Lee Byung Hun in my favorite of all of his performances) is sacrificed for complicated reasons that are only gradually revealed and begins his descent into hell. He starts the story as a competent, cocky sweetheart and transforms into a PTSDing shaking hands wreck. And you watch him fight so hard - fight through all the torments inflicted, fight to protect his loved ones and to keep his sanity, and fight to take the evil org down. You watch him slowly rebuild himself, and to slowly find happiness again with the woman he's loved all this time, Choi Seung Hee (played by Kim Tae Hee in my fave of her performances, who has unknowing ties to the org) and to fight over the org and inflict damage on it.

And then we get that ending, as he's finally found some peace and safety, and he's driving to propose to Seung Hee and as he sees her, he's shot in the head, point blank and he lies there, dying, seeing her but not able to reach her, tears falling out of his eyes as she waits oblivious for a man who will never come and it's made so clear that the org goes on, that nothing has been defeated and that it has all been for nothing - he's been killed as a punishment to him but also as a message to Seung Hee that nobody ever escapes - for her to find his body and realize it was all for naught. And it is also made clear that there was NOTHING he could have ever done to avoid this fate except if his parents made different choices before he was born (!!!) Talk about bleak. I sobbed for hours.

Ja Myung Go (2009)

I've just posted about this one so I am not gonna re-do the comments but yeah, it ends with the OTP death, the kingdom destroyed and the one winner is King Daemushin, the bad guy. The God of Battles wins again. Sure he lost a son but he's got other sons. Worth it, would think the old monster.

My Country: the New Age (2019)

The rest of the dramas on this list are older. This one is not. Our two main protagonists die in the end but that is not what makes it so bleak - what makes it so bleak is that nothing of what they wanted came to pass. In a way, it's a bit of a Hong Gil Dong redux situation - there is a new ruler on the throne but he's not any better than the old ones and he's cleaning up the people who put him on the throne. Hwi especially fought so hard for a place and then just to have some peace and he gets neither, the man he fought so hard to put on the throne being his murderer.

What Happened in Bali (2004)

Ooof, this drama! We have four main characters and at the end, two of them are dead, shot by the third one who turns the gun on himself. The only survivor is the ice cold secondary girl who would probably not pause sipping her morning coffee when hearing the news.

This is a story of people damaged and ruined by a bunch of monsters who suppress any hope and anything good and cause more and more damage - we watch the three mains claw at others and at themselves hoping for happiness and connection and love and it all gets dismantled and set on fire repeatedly and in the worst way. It's perhaps the starkest with Jo In Sung's Jung Jae Min - who you watch taken apart and driven to extremity slowly and gradually over the course of the drama. And his monstrous family ends up triumphant at the end - even in death and murder he was not monstrous enough for them to fit in - and now they will continue their lives.

PS The scene where he shoots Ha Ji Won's character right as she's just finishes telling So Ji Sub she loves JIS and wants to go back to him and she tells him "I love you" for the first time ever as she lies dying - that lives in my head rent free forever.

#kdrama #my country: the new age #what happened in bali #something happened in bali #hong gil dong #ja myung go #iris

[rose-tea-and-strawberries]

Trey: *Trying to explain Riddle is that way because of his mom*

Me: Give me a minute as I pull up my ‘Trauma Doesn’t Excuse Sh*t Behavior’ PowerPoint.

Say it with me, everyone: an explanation is not an excuse 😊

You know, the other day I was watching one of Ryan George's Pitch Meetings and when Producer Guy asked Writer Guy how the audience would root for the villain of the franchise and the response was "he's handsome" which basically explains most people's reactions to fictional men.

Prepare for incoming rant that has little to do with the ask

This probably might come as a shock because one of the main appeal of twst would be the whole villainous aspect/Disney Villain fanbase but I don't really like villains that much, at least, not romantically. Like don't get me wrong, I think that they're incredible characters and it would be so fun to sit down with one and have a conversation with one. Villain songs are so fun (I was literally singing ‘This Day Aria’ to myself the other day I haven’t heard that song in like a decade) and you can tell that that characters like Scar or Hades or Shere Khan or Jafar or Maleficent are having so much fun being deliciously evil and even the more serious, complex ones like Loki or Frollo are fun to pick apart so yeah I understand the hype. I just always rooted for the heroes and I guess heroic characters have always been more my type.

My mother absolutely loves Erik Destler and is forever salty that Christine chose Raoul (despite my many many attempts at arguing why Raoulstine is the superior couple - smol primary school me could not understand why my mum liked the chandelier dropper and was deeply concerned), my best friend has been in love with Heathcliffe since we were eleven, and my little sister has literally told me that her type of fictional men are the toxic red flags (not exactly word for word but she did explain why she likes bad boys over good boys when I was complaining about how my type (wholesome soft boys) always get sidelined for the arrogant, snarky bad boys - we're also very diametrically opposed on our views of friends to lovers (my s++ tier all time favourite and her loathing) vs enemies to lovers (I can't really stand it - Pride and Prejudice is the only exception - and that's literally all she consumes) so that might also be a reason).

Like, I understand the appeal of a Byronic hero (Mr Darcy has far too much power) - a closed off, broody man that hates everything but you? And will burn down the world to keep you warm? I can respect that there are people who dig that. But their not really for me.

The mild bout of insanity thirteen year old me had where I spent two months attracted to Edward Rochester is an outlier and should not have been counted (though that was during my wattpad phase so...)

But I can admit that I have yet to shake off my feelings for Dr Henry Jekyll, Victor Frankenstein and Dorian Gray (though to be fair, Mr Gabriel John Utterson the lawyer and cinnamon roll artist boy Basil Hallward do own my heart). And yes, Jeremy Jordan did make me question my morality as he did make my feelings for Light Yagami be too positive to be sane for a brief moment (Touta Matsuda is still my man, don't worry). But apart from them, literally all of my faves are what you'd call your traditional, morally upright heroes.

Basically what I'm saying is that my perception might be skewed because I've never had the whole 'villains are cooler' mindset when it came to stories. Yes, I love the villains as characters but I always liked their heroic foils more (goodness is just so attractive to me). You get lots of amazing heroic protagonists that have horribly tragic backstories and they're the ones I always fall for because the idea of being a kind sweetheart despite the world being anything but is just *chef's kiss* that's a kind of strength that's so swoon-worthy.

I guess that's why it's harder for me to look past the characters' actions in twst is because, well, they chose to do everything they did. They made a conscious choice to be terrible, despite understanding the consequences. Riddle may have been brainwashed into becoming a tyrant by his mother but he still admitted that he knew he was being horrible - he understands the concept of morality, of good and bad, and he willingly and deliberately did everything he did.

I suppose this text post I found on Pinterest would explain my point better:

#twisted wonderland #twst #asks

[floatingcatacombs]

Compile Hagiography Through Reading the Hyperdimension Neptunia Wiki

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 4

When I’m really bored on the computer, one of the things I'll occasionally do is explore the Hyperdimension Neptunia wiki. Neptunia is a role-playing series whose main distinction is being centered around moe anthropomorphizations of video game companies and consoles, which fascinates me. These are textbook trashy 6/10 anime RPGs, and release at a pace that suggests both a low budget and a pretty dedicated fanbase. I don’t mean to patronize, though. I’m not above this kind of stuff, I just can’t let a bunch of mid 30-hour JRPGs into my life at this moment in time. Rather, my angle of interest here is the origins of the Neptunia developer, Compile Heart.

listening and learning

You see, back in the late 80s and early 90s, a company called Compile was one of the greats in Japanese home PC gaming. Most of their early output was shmups for the MSX, although they dabbled in a bit of everything, including running a disc magazine to distribute games. Compile’s first hit was Madou Monogatari in 1990, a numberless first-person dungeon crawler with a focus on voice samples. It features a lovable cast, starring young magician Arle Nadja as she attempts to graduate kindergarten, viscerally decapitate an evil sorcerer, and fend off Satan and the girl who’s down bad for Satan. Plenty of remakes and sequels followed, and eventually Compile struck gold with Puyo Puyo, the platonic ideal of competitive falling-block games. To set it apart from the more faceless puzzle games of the era, they reused the Madou Monogatari cast, resulting in a cutesy aesthetic with occasional lingering bits of fucked-up lore.

After porting Puyo Puyo and its sequel to everything imaginable, Compile spent their mid-90s rapidly scaling the company, ultimately biting off more than they could chew. This was an era of serious change as developers moved towards 3D, and consumer preferences moved too fast for Compile to adapt. Some high-profile failures like Madou Monogatari Saturn and Puyo Puyo Dungeon sent the company into a fiscal downward spiral, leading frequent business partner Sega to bail them out by buying the rights to Puyo Puyo. Compile got to finish their in-progress work, including the gorgeous yet frustrating Puyo Puyo 4, but the writing was on the wall. Compile declared bankruptcy in 2003 after throwing all of their hopes and dreams into one last little game, Pochi and Nyaa. It’s a puzzle game with simple yet strategic mechanics that feels like something of a return to infancy for the developers. Also, it was released on the Neo-Geo in 2003! If you know anything about arcade hardware, that’s nuts.

The late 90's pre-rendered backgrounds combined with Sunaho Tobe's character artwork give Puyo Puyo 4 such a special look. Shame it's unplayable unless you're very good at chaining.

So Compile scatters to the winds and a lot of the non-shmup devs regroup at the newly formed Compile Heart, where they eventually hit the jackpot with Hyperdimension Neptunia and crank one of those out per year ad infinitum.

That was a pretty tumultuous history! And Neptunia seems like a way to process this? After all, the protagonist is named after and personifies the Sega Neptune, a cancelled 90’s console. Compile and Sega have intertwined histories and faced a similar trajectory. Rapid success in the early 90s was followed up by bad business decisions later in the decade, leading to a tragic exit from the industry that nobody wanted to see. Hyperdimension Neptunia wants to convey these scars to an audience who weren't necessarily around for it.

The first Neptunia game opens with the anime girl manifestations of Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox deciding that in order to break the sixth-generation console war stalemate, they need to team up against the one who poses the biggest threat. So, they get together and betray Neptunia, casting her out of the heavens. Obviously, this isn’t how it happened in the real world. The Dreamcast may have been awesome, but Sega was operating at a loss trying to support it, and the release of the all-consuming PS2 spelled doom. But this intro is closer to how it felt to Sega fans. It’s a mythical retelling of the fall, one that slots right in with the endless glowing retrospectives of Sega’s glorious but doomed last breath (My favorite is calling the console a “small, square, white plastic JFK”).

I’m no industry expert or historian, but I was around to see the Japanese game industry flounder during the PS3 era, when high definition brought with it new expectations and inflated development cycles. Obviously juggernauts like Capcom and Square Enix got out fine, but a lot of smaller studios went under at some point in the past 15 years. Hudson, T&E Soft, ASCII, Clover Studio, Imageepoch. In another world, beloved FromSoft could have fallen to the wayside just as easily.

That’s why Neptunia is really important, I think. It serves as a way to self-mythologize, to keep fragments of these studios alive no matter what happens to them later. It’s a snapshot of all the B-tier Japanese game companies at any given point, written by one such company. When some of them inevitably fold, the Neptunia series will act as one more eulogy. As a huge fan of Compile-era Puyo Puyo, it’s a strange but relieving afterlife to witness. I may never play these games, but I’m grateful for what they do, and it’s a very entertaining series to rummage through the wiki of, especially as someone with a known appreciation of OS-tans.

The second Hyperdimension Neptunia game appears to introduce the Gamindustri Graveyard, a burial ground for defunct game companies. Resting there alongside all the other fallen studios is 1st-Gen Compa, the spirit of Compile. She’s wearing an outfit adorned with Puyos, with ears resembling those of beloved mascot Carbuncle. What is just a random horny anime girl for one person is a loving tribute for another. It’s a meaningful way to send off the old.

…and so is raising the dead! In October, Compile Heart announced a new Madou Monogatari game, with Sega giving them the rights to use classic Puyo Puyo characters on the project. According to the press release, the development team includes many staff members who were part of the original incarnation of Compile. Hope springs eternal, somehow.

#12 days of anime #hyperdimension neptunia #compile

[yuseirra]

**P3R spoilers!! About the ending!!!**

I'd been holding out for a bit long because I was a bit afraid on how I'd feel and handle it, I was already aware about how things would play out for like a whole decade's worth of time now. The last time I played (before P3R was released, P3P-) I saved and left the game hanging on the day before the last day. I didn't want it to end knowing what would happen.

Here's the thing. I thought the ending would either break me or make me cry when I saw it, but it actually didn't! I'm actually happy. Did anyone feel the same way? My head feels so clear. I genuinely feel satisfied and fulfilled. As the protagonist. As myself I'm screaming a lil bit thinking GUYS... GUYS...(by guys I mean SEES) YOU'RE LATE!!! OMG GUYS!!! YOU SHOULD'VE COME SOONER and also going oh my god..I feel so bad for the protagonist but, there's this other feeling I'm having, feeling fully satiated about it all. I'm not even sad about what happened at all. I feel like I've done well.

I've been very absorbed with this game, right? so I've been playing from the protagonist's point of view(or how I think he'd have been feeling) and it's really strange, but, I feel like I know how he's actually felt about it all. He's really okay about all this. Of course he'd love to see his friends or stick around a bit more, but I think he feels that everything's going to be all right. There was this sense of relief and happiness so what he's said to Aigis is true. "It's okay."

I even chose to close my eyes on my own accord because I thought it made a good finale for my life. Death wasn't scary at all for his case.

Oh, but as a player, I felt so sad seeing him fall deeper and deeper into the sea (where is he going.. where is he off to.. well, we'll get to see that in the DLC but it's such a tragic fate for someone who's only in high school! Can't someone take over his place or sth, I rather he rests in peace!)

It actually feels different after finally having played this scene myself. I totally understand how he could be smiling in that final cutscene because I'd have done the same if I were to be him. It could've been better if his friends came up in time and he got to see their faces but seeing Aigis's smile wasn't half bad lol (I'm glad she was there with me because she's very lovely. I wish her the best.)

He's led a good life and it was wrapped up in a pleasant way. If I could feel this same emotion I've felt as I played this game in my last moments, I think I'd be really happy, and perhaps this COULD've been what they were going for. Nothing was sad about it from the protagonist's point of view. I understand it now.

but it'd be nice if he could see his friends and talk to them once more and make proper goodbyes. I'm looking at you Answer DLC that comes up in september, because this guy cares. He really loves his friends and it was nice to be him for the past three months I played this game, the 117 hours.

(I didn't intend to, but I ended up using the last save slot for the final clear data as well! :) it felt like a good closure.)

Wow.. this is a really interesting feeling. I didn't realize I'd ever feel this way about the ending. It was so unexpected, but that's exactly why I feel it was so cool! If anyone else has felt the same way I have, let's have a high five.

So death really IS something you don't have to be so frightened over. You can die feeling this fulfilled, and refreshed, even. I actually.. felt it through a game. Which is very meaningful! Mhm, I'm glad I gathered the courage to go through it all. Thank you persona 3 reload, you were a wonderful game and I had such a great time!

#persona 3 reload spoilers #persona 3 reload #spoilers #has anyone else felt this way? #I was all prepared to cry but I actually feel so refreshed.. #as if I'm reborn or something #it's amazing.. I had no idea I'd feel this way about this all #I wonder how I'd feel about my own death when it comes along inevitably #but it won't be so bad if I could feel like this.. in order to do that though #I really should 'venture with no regrets' like the op #because I feel the protagonist only felt this way bc he did just that #this is a really cool game!!