#can we talk about how incredible this entire sequence was

[ariaste]

The Magic Trick You Didn’t See: Being An Analysis of Good Omens Season 2

(or: Neil Gaiman, Your Brain is Gorgeous But I Have Cracked Your Sneaky Little Code And Have You Dead To Rights*) (*Maybe)

***

Soooooo I just spent the last 48 hours having a BREATHTAKING GALAXY BRAIN EPIPHANY about Good Omens Season 2 and feverishly writing a fuckin16,000 word essay about the incredible magic trick that @neil-gaiman pulled off. 

Yes, it’s long, but I PROMISE your brains will explode. Do you want to know how magic works? Do you want to know what Metatron’s deal is (I’m like 99% sure of this and it’s EXTREMELY FUCKING GOOD)? Do you want to know about the Mystery of the Vanishing Eccles Cakes and the big fat beautiful clue I found in the opening credits? Do you go through the whole inventory of Chekov’s Firearm & Heavy Artillery Discount Warehouse? 

Here is the essay, go read it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IXS11XN46lziHRb6eUpM17yK0BQkRqke1Wh64A_e0/ When ur done u can tell me I’m an insane crackpot, and u know what, i won’t even be offended

In case you don’t know whether you want to bother reading the whole enormous thing on google docs, I’ve put the first couple sections of it under the cut. JUST TRUST ME OKAY, HEAR ME OUT, THIS IS VERY EXTREMELY COOL, NEIL IS GOOD AT HIS JOB--

Proem

A dark theater. The rustling of the audience: clothes, breathing, whispers of anticipation. The lights come up. A man enters, stage left. He is a magician—a master magician—and he performs for you a magic trick so good and so subtle... that you don’t even notice you’ve seen it. 

You know there must have been a trick—after all, you came to the theater to see a trick performed, didn’t you? And he claims to be a magician. So there had to be a trick somewhere. There had to be.

But maybe there wasn’t. Maybe there was just a man on a stage, talking to you, telling you a story with a strangely unsatisfying ending you didn’t quite understand. 

I know. This is a weird beginning to an analysis essay. But hear me out, because I have to explain the mechanisms of the stage before I can show you what the trick was, where the trapdoor was hidden, and how Neil Gaiman pulled the whole thing off so gently and elegantly that you didn’t notice a thing. Ready? Here we go.

The Facts As We Know Them

Let us begin by establishing a baseline—some fundamental, logical assumptions that underpin the magic trick. These will seem obvious as soon as I say them, which is precisely the point: They are self-evident, loadbearing foundations for my entire argument, and if I don’t point them out, I’m going to sound like a crackpot conspiracy theorist. (Which! To be fair, I might be. I could easily be wrong about all this—but I don’t think I am.)

Our baseline, loadbearing assumptions that preface my Grand Unified Theory of Season 2: 

1. Neil Gaiman is extremely good at his job.

2. Neil Gaiman loves these characters and wants with all his heart to do them justice; likewise, he has a great deal of respect, love, and admiration for Terry Pratchett and is striving VERY HARD to write the show the way Terry would have been happy with.

3. The devil, as they say, is in the details: Neil Gaiman and the entire Good Omens cast/crew are fully capable of doing extremely subtle detail work, as conclusively proven in Season 1 Ep 6, specifically the whole sequence of the body-swap scenes.

With me so far? Great.

The Elephant In The Room

Season 2 was... odd. It was odd, wasn’t it. This isn’t a matter of whether you loved it or hated it—there was just something odd going on.

I spent the entirety of my first viewing very much enjoying myself and being very happy to be back with these characters and this world, but I was also liveblogging to my groupchat as I went, and a theme soon began emerging:

“Neil, what are you doing? Where are you going with this?” “What in god’s name is going on here? I’m so lost lmao.” “What is going on with the music situation?” “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE NEIL” “zombies, ok, I trust u to pull this all together in the end, Neil, but I still don't know what you're up to” “What is going on LOL” “Incredibly what is going on here” “NEIL! WHAT IS HAPPENING!” “Literally what is happening” “Neil Gaiman why have you constructed a regency au for mystery VIBES reasons” “just????????? lesbians????????? dancing what's HAPPENING. just all the background characters are gay here ok sure sure sure NEIL GAIMAN WHAT IS HAPPENING--” “mmmmmmm neil what u doin”

All these are copied verbatim from my liveblogging, and apparently I am not the only one to have this reaction. And to be clear, I was having a good time! I came out to this theater to see a magic trick, and this Neil Gaiman guy on stage is a master magician—but I didn’t see the trick, even though there must have been a trick. 

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the season. I wanted to like it! Indeed, there were many things that I liked about it! But I felt a bit muddled and jumbled up and confused—I felt like there was something I didn’t understand about it, and so I couldn’t yet understand how I felt about it either.

I started chewing on this question in a friend’s DMs: Why is season 2 so fucking odd? What is going on here, Neil? What are you up to? The matter of whether he was up to something was never in question. I knew that he had to be up to something. Writers are always up to something, and as I watched season 2, it was as if I was watching Neil scamper around the room with a mischievous expression as he messed with things here and there and made little tweaks and adjustments to the arrangement of all the Chekov’s guns he’s stockpiling on the mantelpiece. 

You see, Season 2 has some very bad writing in it. HANG ON, DON’T ARGUE WITH ME YET! THIS IS NOT A JUDGMENT CALL!! This is the rug that the trick’s secret mechanism is hidden under!!! This is the hidden mirror that makes the trick work!!!!! This is the trapdoor in the stage!

Yes, of course I will explain myself.

Neil Gaiman is a master magician, but I am a pretty damn good magician myself—I’m a professional fantasy author who has published nine books, and I teach workshops for apprentice writers online and at universities—and if there is one thing I have learned about the process of achieving mastery of your craft, it is this: 

Regardless of what medium they’re working in, the apprentice artist is concerned primarily with achieving realism via an expansion of their control—control of their brush strokes as they paint a photorealistic eye; control of their deck of cards, the mechanisms of their magic tricks, and where the audience’s attention is being directed; control of all the little factors of voice, plot, character, setting, suspense and surprise that go into writing a good story. However, the master artist has achieved that control—so much so that it often looks effortless to an untrained eye—and sometimes the master artist returns to a messy, amateurish style simply because they have control even over this too. 

As an example, consider Picasso and his entire body of work. He begins as an apprentice focused on achieving control, doing portraits of people that look like people—like what we expect a portrait of a person to look like. Then, as he grows in skill and gradually achieves mastery, he pulls away from realism. He develops a style, he experiments with faces that don’t look like any human alive  colored in ways that do not appear in nature. He expands his control. His work becomes abstract. Towards the end of his life, he starts experimenting with what’s called “Naive art”, something that a 5 year old could theoretically draw... but you have to achieve mastery before you can do it on purpose and have it look good. 

On one hand, Neil Gaiman is extremely good at his job. On the other hand, Season 2 has bad writing in it.

What does that tell us?

Well, we know from our Baseline Assumptions that Neil Gaiman is simply too good of a writer to fuck up through garden-variety clumsiness and lack-of-control the way an apprentice writer would. Additionally, he cannot fuck up by accident in this case because I am positive that the man is scrutinizing his work on Good Omens far too closely to let anything slide—for Crowley and Aziraphale’s sakes, for David and Michael’s sakes, and especially for Terry’s sake. The stakes are sky-high, and he cares too much to write a weird, kind of “bad” season by accident.

Which leaves only one option: He did it on purpose.

(Am I sounding like a crackpot conspiracy theorist? Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I’m gonna get SO MUCH MORE CRACKPOT.)

If he did it on purpose, then the natural question to ask is: WHY!?!?!??

It’s a great question. Not “Why?” in terms of why he as an individual person with emotions would decide to do that, mind you. More like, “What purpose does this serve for the structure of the narrative?” There is a story he is intending to tell, and out of all the choices he could have possibly made, for some reason this one was necessary and correct in order to achieve that end goal—so what was that reason?

See? Intentionality. He knows exactly what details he left in, and he did it on purpose. (Editing! It’s important!)

So there has to be a reason. It’s like when a master magician “casually” rubs an itch on his nose—why did he do that? What is he sneakily slipping into his mouth by hiding it under the excuse of this little gesture that does not even register to you as meaningful? (If you haven’t watched enough stage magic to know what I mean, watch this.)

This question is, of course, impossible to simply answer out of thin air without any further evidence. It is a dead end—so we must adjust the question and come at it from a different angle.

The one I settled on when I was chewing on this was: Well, okay, what do I mean when I say “bad writing”? What is it about S2 that makes it feel so goddamn odd?

The Pledge, The Turn, and... The Conspicuous, Expectant Silence

There are three parts to a magic trick: Pledge, Turn, Prestige. 

First, the Pledge: You show the audience something ordinary. Second, the Turn: You make that ordinary thing do something extraordinary, like vanish. Third, the Prestige: You bring the ordinary thing back.

To quote the 2006 film The Prestige just after its explanation of the first two parts: “You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet, because making something disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back.”

You have to bring it back.

When I teach apprentice writers, I call this a “setup-payoff cycle”. Achieving control and dexterity with this tool is crucial, because the setup-payoff cycle is the engine of the story—it’s what makes the story run. You can have a setup-payoff cycle at any scale—I have read ones that were a single sentence long; I’ve read ones that were two books long. Additionally, all jokes, no matter how long they are, are structured on a setup/payoff cycle. These cycles work precisely the same way a magic trick does:

You set up the audience’s expectations. (Optional but generally considered stylish and elegant: You give those expectations a firm jolt to throw the audience off-balance.) You pay off the audience’s expectations in a way they weren’t expecting, while saying “TA DA!!!!” really loud with your arms flung wide.

Audiences really like this. A setup-payoff cycle executed just right makes the audience’s brains light up like Times Square and hammers on their mental “reward” buttons like nothing else. It’s like you’ve personally handed them a cookie and a gold star. They go wild for this.

Here’s an example of a setup-payoff cycle, though it’s not a perfect one—and you’ve probably heard it before, so you’re not going to be throwing chairs and tearing down the theater from sheer glee:

The Setup: Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? The Jolt: (the joke starts over and repeats several times without reaching the payoff (aka the prestige) while the audience grows more and more annoyed and frustrated about the unfulfilled expectations, until finally...) Knock knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? The Payoff: ORANGE YOU GLAD I DIDN’T SAY BANANA?

Good Omens Season 2 feels so fucking odd because the setup-payoff cycles are incomplete—nearly all of them are, and the ones that do close the loop do so in really weird ways which, as a professional author, make me feel kind of, “Bwuh?????? But where’s my cookie? Excuse me??? Sir???? Neil????? My cookie, tho???”

When I realized this, when I finally put my finger on why the whole season was giving me some uncanny valley heebie-jeebies, a chill ran down my spine. (The rest is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IXS11XN46lziHRb6eUpM17yK0BQkRqke1Wh64A_e0/ I’M GOING TO GO STARE INTO THE ABYSS NOW BYE)

#good omens #good omens season 2 #ineffable husbands #neil gaiman

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Superstars!

Superstars is out! And guess what? It's good! It's a worthy new entry in the series, and I mostly like it. Mostly. Except for the handful of parts I don't. As usual, allow me to share my thoughts.

(For the record, I got the PS5 version of Superstars. I can't speak for how it plays on older hardware like the Switch, or how the weird Steam version that seems to make you log in with Epic runs. But I encountered zero performance issues, personally.)

General thoughts

The thing is, aside from two notable flaws I'll discuss in greater detail below, I can sum up my feelings on most of Superstars quickly. You see, it's... a Sonic game. This will either be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. It's not a bold new take on the series that'll blow you away, but they also didn't fuck it up. There's no catch this time! There's something refreshing about that straightforwardness, given how rare it is to get a regular-ass New Sonic Game from Sega. It's just a new classic-style game where you can play as Amy, set on a new island with all new zones, and Fang is in it! This might be damning with faint praise, but that's what it says on the tin, and they did a good job overall.

(It also has co-op. That's nice. I didn't play it in co-op.)

It plays exactly how it should. At no point did anything feel Wrong. The graphics might not have the absolute highest fidelity, but I think the character models look really nice, and the levels look appropriately good with vibrant color palettes. A couple zones like Sky Temple gave me Klonoa vibes, which I like. One zone is an absolutely incredible homage that I won't spoil. The story here is minimal (as expected), but there are a few good moments of telling the story through the gameplay, particularly one very cute sequence with Trip. I did find a couple stage gimmicks moderately annoying (Speed Jungle 2 and Press Factory 2, looking at you), but like... I could say the same thing about Mania, and also damn near every other Sonic game ever made. There's always That One Level. Superstars may not raise the series to new heights, but it generally executes well on the standard beats of the series. It's an easy recommendation for all fans of 2D Sonic.

Really, aside from the two big flaws (we'll get to them), this game's greatest crimes are simply not being quite as good as Mania, and also coming out the same week as the more creative and polished Super Mario Bros. Wonder. If we hadn't gotten Mania, I would easily be calling this my favorite 2D Sonic game since... what, the Advance trilogy 20 years ago? I like the Rush games, but if you asked me to replay one or the other, I might have a better time with Superstars. And, yes, it beats the hell out of Sonic 4. It's not even close. Anyone who says this game is exactly like Sonic 4 is just being a hater.

...I guess I would say that $60 is a bit steep for this, but you know it'll be on sale for a more appropriate $30-$40 in a few months. This isn't a Nintendo game we're talking about here.

Nice little tweaks

Superstars also features a number of welcome quality-of-life updates over Mania, bringing it more in line with the design ethos of modern platformers.

You have infinite lives! No more getting a game over on the final boss and having to redo the whole final zone - or, god forbid, the entire game

Time overs are gone! It'll warn you before you go over ten minutes, but I have no idea why because it doesn't kill you anymore

The game features a hub from which you can easily replay previous levels, rather than needing to beat the game or put in a cheat code to unlock the level select

This means you can easily go back and hunt for any special stage rings you missed. However, as a tradeoff, it seems like you can only get one Emerald per zone now, rather than being able to get Super Sonic by the end of the first or second zone

You can swap characters between levels! No more having to start a whole 'nother save file to play as Tails

And those characters even have optional little movement tutorial rooms available from the hub, which is great for new players who may not know about things like the Drop Dash

And, finally, checkpoints now feature arrows pointing in the direction you were supposed to be going, in case you forget upon respawning

Of course, while you might not be getting game overs, Superstars certainly compensated with some bosses that kicked my ass.

Bosses

Here's what I would consider notable flaw #1.

I have mixed feelings on the bosses in Superstars. I don't think many of them are poorly designed - in fact, a lot of them are good, and offer fun moments of spectacle. But for a 2D Sonic game, they're REALLY long and drawn out, and by the late game this was starting to get draining.

Bosses tend to be the type where you have to dodge their attack patterns for a while until you get the chance to hit them exactly once, MAYBE twice. A few bosses seem to have quicker options if you abuse your post-hit invulnerability or play as a character with a double jump, but many will either be completely invincible or run away to the background for long periods of time, making it impossible to damage them outside of the allotted windows. And even if it seems like you'll be able to get in a second hit, many bosses turn invincible and skip ahead to the next attack pattern as soon as they take the first hit. Again, most of these fights aren't BAD, but because of this behavior they sometimes take almost as long to beat as the entire levels preceding them. This didn't bother me much early in the game, but against the more challenging bosses towards the end that kept killing me several minutes into a long fight, it got tiring. The final boss of Story Mode probably took me like an hour.

While this certainly isn't an uncommon style of boss design, part of me suspects they did this for the sake of co-op players. For one, playing in co-op means that you don't necessarily have to start the entire fight over if one person dies, so I assume the length is less of an issue. But in particular, true classic-style Sonic bosses that you can just hit repeatedly with good timing would go down in a few seconds against a team of four players. Likewise, the swarm of clones from the "Avatar" Emerald power would probably obliterate every Genesis era boss with one button press. So I get why every boss needs all these invulnerability periods, but still. I at least wish they'd made some of those attack patterns shorter and given you more frequent opportunities to deal damage.

Emeralds and their powers

Speaking of the new Chaos Emerald powers: they're neat, I guess? They're fine. I didn't use them much. Actually, I kept forgetting I even had them - although the game will play a noise and show an icon in the corner of the screen to remind you any time you reach a spot where a specific power is useful. Avatar, the first power you get, is at least good for getting a couple free hits in on the trickier bosses. Yellow's ability to slow time is obviously good, but, again, I always forgot I even had it and made it through just fine without it. I was also pleased to realize that the swimming power is useful for the water levels and not just for climbing up waterfalls.

Oh, and the new grappling-based special stages kind of suck, but they're not the worst, and I'll at least give them credit for trying something new. (Motion Sickness Zone from Sonic 1 does return as a bonus minigame, but I only did it once lmao.)

Battle Mode

I haven't played Battle Mode. Couldn't tell you if it's good or not. It did, however, give us official designs for Metal Tails and Metal Amy after all these years, and also it let me make this:

...Okay, enough beating around the bush. Let's talk about the thing that REALLY drags down the experience.

The soundtrack...

(This lengthy section on the music will feature some light spoilers for things like zone names and themes.)

Now, don't get me wrong. There are some bangers in here that I've been listening to on loop. But this is one of the most inconsistent soundtracks I've ever heard, and I'm not sure I've ever played another game where the music has such a sharp dip in quality in the back half.

As anyone following this blog knows, prior to release I was a little obsessed with trying to gauge what the soundtrack would be like. "Jun Senoue" and "new Classic Sonic game" naturally evokes the memory of Sonic 4, but from the start we knew Tee Lopes was involved as well, and almost all of the music previewed before released leans more towards the sound of Sonic Mania than anything else. I was hopeful! I was excited! Jun deserved another chance at doing another classic Sonic OST, and Tee is one of my favorite game composers of all time between his Sonic material and other works like the TMNT: Shredder's Revenge OST. I frequently thought back to this Sonic 4 remix medley by Jun and Tee as a reminder that these two could really be the dream team, bringing out the best in each other's work.

Sure enough, the front half of the game is largely dominated by the Mania sound, whether it's a track by Tee himself or one by an in-house Sega artist that's compatible with his style. Pinball Carnival Act 1 by Rintaro Soma (an up-and-coming composer who wrote a bunch of the Cyber Space themes in Frontiers) takes obvious inspiration from Mania's Studiopolis Act 1, to the point that I was shocked when Sega posted the track and revealed it wasn't written by Tee. Act 2, however, forges more of its own sound by leaning into the act's spooky haunted carnival theme. And despite being the music lead, the only level theme that I know for sure was written by Senoue in the front half of the game (Bridge Island Act 1) was actually arranged by Tee Lopes to give it more of that Mania sound. Hell, the level clear jingle is literally just the one from Mania. A few level themes by other composers don't quite match that style, but they fit in well enough.

But there are early signs that this sound won't be consistent throughout the game. Our first warning of things to come is the boss music:

When early copies started floating around and the soundtrack leaked, many, many people hoped that this was merely a placeholder, like the literal Sonic 4 Episode II music used in the earliest previews of Speed Jungle, and that it'd get replaced with a day one patch. Oh, those poor, innocent fools...

Even if you don't mind the poor production with the returning Sonic 4 faux-Genesis sound, this is a very simplistic thirteen second snippet of music that then plays a second time in a higher key before it loops. This wouldn't be the end of the world if the bosses were as short as the ones in the Genesis games, of course, but they're not! This theme is used for a ton of lengthy fights throughout the game, including an EXTREMELY long and tedious autoscroller boss at the end of Golden Capital Act 2. Maybe I would've enjoyed the bosses in this game more if they were paired with some earworms that'd get me hyped up and sell how cool and exciting the fights are supposed to be, but grating songs like this just made the minutes spent fighting those bosses feel like an eternity.

Still, boss music (and menu music) aside, all of the level themes in the front half of the game ranged from decent to great, with the peak easily being the phenomenal Lagoon City Act 2 by Tee Lopes. And then... I got to the back half of the game. And the Mania style completely disappeared, replaced largely with the dreaded Sonic 4 sound. That isn't the style for EVERY song in the back half, but even the ones that try something different tend to be weaker than the material from the first six zones, with less engaging melodies and less intricate arrangement. Many sound straight up unfinished, leaning on extremely basic synth patches with no personality. And there isn't a single track from Tee in the back half. He just disappears from the project altogether.

What this means is that we go from this absolute banger by Tee Lopes in zone 6, which elevates what's otherwise a bog standard desert level to a thrilling adventure:

To... this, in zone 7:

It's EXTREMELY jarring!

The thing is, this is actually one of the better tracks in this style. I have to assume this is by Senoue, because you can totally hear a good Adventure or Heroes era Senoue track in there once you get past the crude synth replication of the Genesis era Sonic sound. Senoue is still a great composer, as you can hear clear as day with Bridge Island, but he's working with a restrictive sound palette that doesn't play to his strengths at all. If only he'd bust out that damn guitar, or at least pick some better synths.

(And no matter what people will tell you, no, this is not an accurate recreation of what the Genesis's YM2612 chip really sounded like, nor is it representative of what it CAN sound like at its best. Go back to the Streets of Rage 2 or Ristar soundtracks if you need a reminder.)

While I can at least see what the Press Factory tracks were aiming for, some other faux-FM synth tracks are just really bland. They don't have anything interesting going on, and they also don't seem particularly tailor made for the levels they accompany. They're just attempts to mimic what Sonic 1-3 sounded like on a very literal level. Take, for instance, the Golden Capital Act 1 theme, AKA "we've got Sky Sanctuary at home." While the better level themes in this game enhance the mood or even completely carry the vibes of a level, the weaker tracks can really suck all the air out of the room and make a level feel like more of a slog.

What kills me is that there are, in fact, a couple examples of how to do throwbacks to classic Sega FM synth music well on this very soundtrack! They're just not the Sonic 4 type tracks. I love the Frozen Base Act 2 theme, presumably composed by legendary Sega composer Hiroshi "HIRO" Kawaguchi, who's responsible for all-time classic arcade soundtracks like Fantasy Zone, Out Run, Hang-On, After Burner, and more, as well as the hacking and pinball themes from Frontiers. Maybe to an untrained ear this doesn't sound all that different, but it has a catchier tune, better instruments, and stronger production overall. I'm also a fan of the track for Sky Temple, which isn't perfect, but it blends a few Genesis-esque instruments like the Sonic 1+2 snare with other instruments for a richer sound. If the whole soundtrack sounded more like these examples, I'd definitely be complaining less.

I really just have to wonder... how did this happen? How did this end up being so inconsistent? Many fans on social media are jumping to the conclusion that Senoue is just extremely stubborn and refuses to ditch the style from Sonic 4. I can't deny this possibility, but some things just don't add up. The almost complete lack of "retro" style music in the promotional material. The fact that the style just suddenly shifts halfway through the game, then disappears for the final zone, as if that's not the note they want to end on. The complete lack of any tracks by Tee Lopes in the back half. The focus on the Mania-style tracks in the bonus "mini soundtrack." And most perplexing of all, the fact that three of the first tracks you hear in the game were Senoue compositions that were given extra attention with arrangements from Tee Lopes.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it almost seems like they straight up ran out of time.

Perhaps Jun wanted more of his tracks to get full arrangements from Tee, or for Tee to contribute more songs, but things were down to the wire and they chose to leave in some of the raw Sonic 4 style demos. The soundtrack being crunched out in a matter of months at the end of development would certainly explain why Speed Jungle had to be demoed without its music a mere four months ago. It'd also explain why a game that's only a few hours long needs NINETEEN composers listed in the credits. And also the fact that multiple zones just have completely different, unrelated music by different artists across their acts. Did they need multiple artists working on different acts simultaneously, completely independent from each other with no time to cross reference each others' work, due to extreme time constraints? I'd buy it.

Ah well. It's not the end of the world. I've heard worse Sonic music. But I'll always think of what could have been...

At least the final battle with Eggman at the end of Story Mode has a pretty kickass boss theme, which ALMOST makes up for how bad most of the preceding boss music is (and the fact that that very difficult fight doesn't have a checkpoint between phases and took me like an hour to beat lmao). It even seems like it might be written by longtime Phantasy Star Online composer and recurring Sonic contributor Hideaki Kobayashi. That's the guy who wrote NONAGRESSION!!!!!!!

The postgame

Speaking of beating Eggman! It turns out Superstars has a good deal of postgame content, as merely beating the last zone with all the Chaos Emeralds doesn't take you to the true final boss. In order to do that, you'll need to do something else.

Before we hit the big spoiler warning, I'm going to give any future players who are still reading a warning. If you value your sanity... don't force yourself to do all the postgame stuff. Don't make the mistakes I did. It's not worth it, and it may very well knock your personal score for the game down a couple points.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SPOILERS FOR THE STORY, UNLOCKABLES, AND THE POSTGAME BELOW THIS POINT

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

----------------------------------------------------------------

The bonus scenario

Sonic Superstars has a big surprise in store for anyone who beats the main story. For the first time since... what, Silver? In 2006? We finally have a brand new playable character in a new Sonic platformer! (I wouldn't count the player avatar in Forces as a full-fledged New Character.) Yes, after the credits roll, you unlock Trip as the super-secret fifth playable character. I was really excited to see this. Trip is cute, even if her masked appearance from early in the game is perhaps a more unique design than a Sonic-ified lizard girl who can only vaguely look like a real sungazer lizard. She IS the first new Sonic character Ohshima has designed since the '90s, though, so she gets points for that - and she gets even more points for literally turning into a dragon when she goes Super. We love a girl who can turn into a dragon, don't we folks? And her playstyle is fun, too, with a double jump and the ability to roll along walls and ceilings.

But Trip isn't just playable. Like Knuckles before her, she gets an entire alternate story mode of her own, which somewhat remixes the level layouts, generally makes things more challenging, and swaps out Eggman for Egg Robo. I was so excited to see this! It really felt like the game had so much more in store for me than I'd anticipated.

...Then I spent probably around three hours attempting to beat the new final battle with Fang at the end of Trip's Story. And it made me regret doing Trip's Story at all.

Once you learn the patterns, a lot of them are actually piss easy. But the difficulty comes down to a few misguided factors:

The fight is LOOOONG. On a successful attempt the whole thing will probably take the average player about, like... seven or eight minutes? Maybe longer? This is where I really started to get pissed at the game for making me wait through these stupid attack patterns before I could attempt to hit the boss once.

The fight is divided between two phases, one with Fang in a vehicle and another with him in a giant robot, with no checkpoint between them. Dying to one of Fang's bullshit attacks on the second phase means having to redo the ~5 minute first phase all over again. And, worst of all...

Fang has multiple projectile attacks that are guaranteed instant kills, even if you have rings.

Also there's a stupid desperation headbutt attack that can really easily catch you off guard and kill you, but I only got that far in the fight once.

It's the instant kills that got me. If those fucking immobilizing net attacks just made you drop your rings, or you could at least wiggle out of them by mashing buttons (EDIT: apparently you CAN do this but you literally have to button mash so rapidly that it's a crapshoot whether or not you'll physically be able to do it), it would have been totally doable! Kinda fun, even! Slow, but pretty cool in terms of spectacle. But nope! Three hours! Three hours on this! This is, without a doubt, the hardest boss I have ever faced in any Sonic game, period, and one of the hardest bosses I've ever seen in ANY game. All because of one attack pattern where making a tiny mistake means starting over.

The glitches didn't help, either. Something about the way the circular boss arena was set up in both stories' final battles seems to make the floor intangible sometimes for non-player objects. Occasionally my dropped rings, enemies I was supposed to knock towards Fang, or one of Fang's insta-kill projectiles would just fall through the floor randomly. This definitely wasn't my main problem, but it helped drive home the idea that this fight just wasn't worth my time.

After three hours of attempts, I gave up. I just went and looked up the ending of Trip's story, as well as the contents of the Final Story, on YouTube. Turns out I made the right call, because boy, that true final boss looks like dogshit. It's just a very dull fight against a big generic cartoon dragon. Apparently this is the thing Eggman was looking for. It appears and is defeated with little fanfare. I think I liked it better when I assumed the scary dragon being foreshadowed was just Super Trip.

...Also, hey, what's up with The End being very conspicuously visible in the background of the last zone?? I know it's just a cheeky cameo, but, like... isn't it supposed to be sealed away in Cyber Space right now? Should I be taking this literally? Does this have lore implications? This is one hell of a way to remind people that the timeline's been reunified, I guess

Closing thoughts

I really hate to part ways with Superstars on a sour note like this, because like I said up top, I mostly enjoyed my time with it! It's really just a small handful of particularly frustrating bosses and the inconsistent soundtrack that drag it down. Other than that, it's solid as a rock. Maybe wait for sales if you're not dying to play it, but it's definitely worth playing for any Sonic fan. Just... skip the true ending. I would have stepped away MUCH happier with this game if I'd done that.

I wanna try to end this on a more positive note but I'm tired, so, uhhhh... look, you can unlock a Metal Nights skin for your Battle Mode bot!!

Anyway back to jamming to about half the soundtrack on loop while pretending the other half doesn't exist, and looking forward to the continued Fang Renaissance with his upcoming IDW miniseries

#tkp post #other media

[possamble]

do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up

i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.

she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.

never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-

i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:

okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.

the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page

she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later

so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions

"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"

"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"

Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.

I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.

On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.

Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.

And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.

Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.

Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it

and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks

And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.

(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)

The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)

I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.

and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured

In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.

(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)

#asks #dungeon meshi manga spoilers #marcille donato #manga panel analysis #this is probably riddled with typos sorry #readmore cut bc it got long lmao #i ended up babbling about it bc it's such an important character detail to me #bc like... wow. she's so normal about it. she's literally just chilling. #the only thing that really bothers her is the material reality of it and how people treat her #the stereotypes the stigma etc. etc. #otherwise it just.. #literally doesn't factor into her criteria for self-worth at all #the basic truth is that marcille likes herself on a fundamental level #she's not plagued by a deep and festering self-loathing the way a lot of characters in her archetype are #she likes herself and is proud of her successes and accomplishments #its just that shes terrified of failure and can have *episodes* of self-loathing when she fucks up #but who doesn't yknow #i know its a very slight nuance that makes very little difference in how her 'overachiever' problems manifest but its there #the sword of abandonment issues that hangs over her head has nothing to do with her self-worth or self-esteem or meeting her own standards #it has to do with the fear of not living up to *other* people's expectations and not being useful enough to be worth keeping around #she's good enough for herself but she's always so so so scared that she's not good enough for other people #i wont say much about what ryoko kui is saying using this as an allegory for real world racial biases but #dungeon meshi's treatment of marcille's relationship with her being half-elf is so incredibly important to me because it gets it so right. #a trauma about inferiority or being a half-being isn't inherent to the experience of being 'of two worlds' at all #that's something that's unfairly drilled into people by their environment #the *inherent* anguish is the loneliness. the constant longing. the fact that you are always homesick no matter where you are #always just a little bit of an outsider and never fully at home #and dungeon meshi gets that. #edit: cleaned it up a little

[odusseus-xvi]

So, time to do a Baghera post or I'll go insane because yesterday's lore was INCREDIBLE and I canno't thank Baghera enough for the angst she brought, not that the other french are bad, but angst is not what I would use to describe what they got us (it was mostly anger).

I have to admit, the direction she took was NOT what I was excpecting. And yet it makes SO MUCH SENSE.

The first sequence where she comes back to her castle, it's so easy, it's so simple. It probably shouldn't be. Just a teleport pad. She is still shocked and we see it, she is walking around, "the others can't see me like this." She is broken, she goes back to check if her childhood room is still there, accesible, it is (still waiting for someone to stumble upon it and immediatly freak out at something new). She returns to her castle. She changes her cothes and she looks to the horizon. She escaped once. But she realises that doesn't prove that there is an escape... It proves the opposite. She wasn't brought here. She was brought BACK here. As much as you try to escape, if the Federation wants you here, they'll have you here. And with that also comes the realisation, she never had a life, she never had parents or a childhood, she was theirs, from the very beginning, they ALLOWED her to be outside, and when they wanted to remind her she was not her own, they simply took her back.

For a moment after she represses those feelings. She wants to think about something else, she doesn't want to talk about that. Let's get her daughter :D. You know the rest. (little comment when she was looking for Pomme I genuinely think she was about to cry irl. Like her eyes became red and her voice trembled, THAT FUCKING ACTING. She knew out of rp the eggs had been missing for a while but she played it perfectly) And when Tubbo explains all of that to her she realizes she has been missing for more than 10 days. 10. Tubbo is the only one connected. He doesn't react to the fact she's been missing. Did no one realise ? (Funny tidbit, out of character, she said to her chat later on "Holy that is a LOT OF informations... I knew about the eggs because twitter, all the rest though ? News to me that is a lot to process.")

And in what I would call a defense mechanism for her she starts forming a plan, she builds a secret investigation room, everyone knows her old one, she canno't reveal to the others what she is, and how she feels about it, she doesn't know how they would react. She starts building it, putting all the evidence and documents she gathered about herself and everything. "Now my priority is finding out what happened to the eggs, and to me."

And it's THEN when she is looking at all of those hints and proofs, that she breaks. Her look becomes empty, startled, scared, angry, everything. She is silent. She remembers how she was convinced Cellbit was a clone of the Federation, and how she couldn't trust him entirely. Now look at her. She was the Federation labrat all along. Without them she would be nothing. They are her family in a way. She burns any documents that links HER to the federation, no one can know. She gets out, looks at her castle. All this time, by building, by trying to escape, they were just making their own prison prettier.

"There's no escape"

Let's hope it becomes

"So that means we have to destroy the Federation entirely."

#qsmp #qsmp baghera jones #qsmp baghera

[celestianstars]

also can we talk about how incredibly intimate that entire sequence was between criston and rhaenyra I just 🥺 the slow taking off of his armor and the buildup before he lays her down!!! as he should!

#her little grab of his helmet and refusing to give it back…stop! so cute! #i know the direction they’re headed is pure pain but like I’m gonna eat this up #hotd spoilers #ser criston cole #rhaenyra x criston #rhaenyra targaryen #house of the dragon

[vroomvroomwee]

Something about the "you're the bad guys" scene doesn't feel right. And I'm not talking about the coffee theory or Aziraphale, somehow being forced to say it. And I'm not gonna focus on how harsh it was towards Crowley because that deserves a whole post for itself.

No, I'm talking about the contradictory nature of Aziraphale's statements throughout this entire scene.

First, we see him all giddy and bringing forward the news like it's the greatest thing to happen in all of history. Then we hear him say things like "Heaven is the side of good, of light." And it doesn't really make sense why he would be saying that, especially taking into consideration the arc his character took in season 1, where he abandoned any hope he had that Heaven was truly on the side of humanity and chose Crowley over them.

For a long while, I thought it was perhaps some sort of trauma response. When in distress, it's not uncommon for a person to fall back on old habits. Aziraphale saying those things comes as a result from simply being left without an option to say anything else and resorting back to the familiar, to the things he's believed for millenia.

BUT, then he says, "we can fix it," and you can see how contradictory that is to what he just said moments ago. And Neil being a phenomenal writer and Aziraphale being incredibly effing smart, this just doesn't make sense. How can you fix something if the thing that needs fixing is by nature good, pure, and overall incapable of wrongdoing?

And it struck me.

Now we know the Metatron masterfully manipulated both Aziraphale and Crowley, down to his attire, his maneurisms, his choice of words, his timing, the proposition itself, everything. But what if he downright lied about Gabriel?

And there is a sequence that happens off camera, a segment of their conversation we as the viewers didn't see. What if, he told Aziraphale, the reason Gabriel was fired was because he wasn't doing his job very well. And I mean in the sense that he wasn't performing the way an angel should be, with kindness and empathy and care. That he was discharged for being stubborn, and proud, and narcissistic, and egoistic, and arrogant, and selfish. All the things an angel shouldn't be.

And Aziraphale would have no reason not to believe him. Not when he has been personally witnessing Gabriel's mockery, passive aggression, and patronising behaviour his entire life. And especially not when he had no idea about the real reason Gabriel was actually fired since Crowley didn't have the time to tell him.

From what the Metatron has told him, Aziraphale now believes that Heaven HAS been good all along. It just had bad management. It's always been good and right. Someone has simply prioritized their own needs instead of diligently leading it.

Someone broke it. But he can fix it.

It's always been good, all it needs now is HIM.

And that's why, he just... doesn't GET Crowley's reluctance. He doesn't understand because he hasn't seen the things Crowley has seen. And whether the Metatron knows that Crowley knows or not, doesn't matter.

It's too late now, isn't it. The idea has already been planted in his head. All those times Aziraphale thought he failed as an angel because of how his superiors treated him have all been laid to rest by a more authoritative voice. His entire work as an angel validated in mere minutes. He was never in the wrong, and now he has a chance to prove it.

If only he knew how futile it is. If only he AND Crowley realised how manipulated they were. If only they TALKED to each other.

But it's too late now, isn't it. It's always too late.

#good omens #goodomens #aziraphale #crowley #goodomenss2 #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #good omens season 2 #aziracrow #goodomenss2spoilers #metatron #metatrash #burn in hell bitch

[kindestegg]

In my previous posts, I have spoken about Collector's good side quite a lot, their eagerness to learn from their environment, their ability to grow when around good influences, the growth they have shown around King, their love for titans and their compelling backstory... and have as well touched upon their flaws and their darker side.

But I feel like I am lacking in an exploration of their darker side in its own dedicated post like I have done for their growth and good side. And I feel like such a post is way overdue because recently I have seen a pretty concerning uptick in the sentiment that Collector "never meant to hurt anyone", that they don't know what killing is and that they were overall an unwitting pawn in Belos' plan. And that is... simply not the truth? There are several instances in canon that contradict this and I would like to dive into them in this post.

Let's start with a pretty controversial scene: the capturing of the Owl Beast. Now, there's a lot of people who have associated the fact that there are multiple collectors and that the collector in the Owl Beast's dream sequence appears bigger and has a different outfit to indicate that the collector that captured the Owl Beast is a different one.

Now, while I admit that that is a possibility, I would like to at the very least make some arguments for the fact that this could still be our Collector, and why that matters.

Let's start by the most glaring issue: the voice. The collector that captured the Owl Beast has the exact same voice actress, exactly the same voice as our Collector, and is in the credits as "the Collector". It is very hard to argue with that: even if we go with the theory that then all collectors must sound the same, that is an incredibly big stretch that has no real backing in canon aside from an assumption to try and explain away this clash.

Another argument often seen is that the collector seen here "sounds different" from our Collector as in their line delivery is different, as if the sadism in their voice and laughter would be enough to imply being a completely different person and uhhh...

Do you guys... also think that about the Collector in the Hollow Mind scene that properly introduced them? Because they sounded... kind of like that. But I'll touch on that soon. Back to the Owl Beast dream for now.

Another argument I have seen is that this collectors outfit is different and they are too tall/big to be our Collector... which once again I need to remind you of this?

This is a scene in which our Collector undoubtedly shows he can change sizes (becoming big enough to nearly fill up the entire room he is in, towering above everything) and the cape he's in is clearly different from his usual outfit.

And the ability that collectors have to change size is backed by the paintings in the archive halls: when in space they can be bigger than whole planets, even our Collector who is younger being nearly the same size as the planet, but when they actually go to the planet they adjust their size to the creatures on it, such as the trappers or in Collector's case, the titan babies.

There is also the matter of the Owl Beast clearly remembering the Collector and having a reaction even during the DOU to just the disc itself cracking, and later becoming frenzied when seeing him face to face. Sure, the Owl Beast could just felt threatened by any Collector, but... doesn't it make more narrative sense and have more significance that it's this Collector that it specifically has problems with? That was a REALLY strong reaction to just be a generalization.

Anyway, I briefly mentioned how Collector talks in Hollow Mind, and I feel like it really bears to examine it again and remind ourselves of it, not let it be forgotten just because he's recently been nice. As I said before, Collector is canonically someone who can be pretty sadistic and find something funny about suffering.

But... even this is something that the fandom has been trying to smooth away the edges of. I've encountered some people who, despite I'm sure just being well meaning fans of the character who want to offer a new perspective, inevitably attempt to defang him and imply that he did not know the draining spell would hurt or kill people, that the screams he imitated were something he wasn't aware was bad, and even that this extends to how Collector interpreted Belos and the grimwalkers. Essentially, through a lot of stretching and attempting to re-interpret the Hollow Mind scenes, Collector's being slowly made into a naive child who was being led around by Belos to commit crimes while somehow never learning anything from context clues.

This is essentially problematic because I feel like it misses the point of Collector's character and metanarrative purpose and turns them into something they are not. But I'll be getting to that around the end of this post. For now, rather than just going "you're wrong and that's it" (which would be rude to do!) I will try to, as kindly as possible, explain my reasoning as to why these interpretations feel like they are misreading the material.

Examining then, their behavior in Hollow Mind. Here is why I believe that they are aware of what the Draining Spell does:

First off, they mention that they and Belos will have revenge when reciting the second half of their poem. Why would they consider the Day of Unity a kind of revenge for both of them if they didn't know it would hurt people?

Similarly, the imagery they portray when talking about what the spell does definitely implies that they know the draining spell would at least affect people negatively, as they portray them blowing away into dust as well as having the sigils affect their bodies and similarly make them turn to nothing.

I know this happens rather in King's Tide, but it's something I want to use to reinforce my point: In King's Tide, Collector makes a point to say they gave Belos the draining spell, they taught him magic stronger than anybody's. I highly doubt Collector would teach Belos a spell that he didn't know the consequences of, specially considering his freedom was riding on this spell working, and Belos made sure to remind him of that every time.

Also to drive home the point he knows screams mean something bad, before Collector imitates Belos screaming and presumably lashing out at Hunter, he says that Belos was mad. So at the very least he knows that you can scream in anger.

I feel like people tend to get caught up in the fact Collector says it's like the world is singing when talking about his happiness and King snarkily responds that he wouldn't call people screaming singing. I can see how that could be interpreted as if Collector doesn't know screams are bad... but with the previous knowledge we have of this character, that makes hard to justify, and I'd like to call attention to the fact Collector never states he was talking about the people, King just uses the opportunity to point out people are screaming, and then lead onto how he should stop "freaking everyone out".

So, yes, Collector knew about the Draining Spell and all that it would entail, he likely even tailored it for Belos, and he also knows what Grimwalkers are in a sense and what is being done to them.

At the very least... he knows grimwalkers can be made, what they are called, and also insinuates they are to be played with, but is intrigued by the fact Belos keeps making them and then destroying them. We can clearly see that one of Collector's biggest flaws is his problem with rationalizing the environment around him, since he views things by what is most fun to do, he imagines putting all this effort into building something and tearing it down must be fun... ignoring that these are real people Belos is building, abusing and then killing.

In general, though, this ties to the running theme of Collector viewing anyone they haven't gotten to know and befriended with extreme disinterest. While they would prefer not to kill or hurt anyone, if the situation really calls for it as a means to an end, they will do so. There is no incentive for them to care for the grimwalkers and view them as people... so they do not. Their current only friend acts as if it's natural, so they act accordingly. King tells them they need lots of players for a game of pretend? That's easy then, just make everyone into puppets, and you don't have to worry about them as people. Dehumanization is perhaps the key word here, which ties into their themes also of bulldozing the environment and culture of the Isles, as well as their harmful escapism, refusing to see things for what they are and trying to only focus on having fun and feeling good.

I feel like it is important to establish and argue for this because many people forget that Collector's character isn't just meant to be a fully sadistic selfish villain or a genuine and kind naive child. What makes the Collector so great and interesting is that he is both those things, those parts of him mix up and dance around to create a character that fits in the narrative as a foil and parallel to multiple characters, as well as provoke interesting ethical questions to us, such as:

If a child is given the opportunity to hurt animals and people and does so, playing roughly with them and traumatizing them, what is the course of action to follow from there? Imprison them? Hurt them? Punish them in some other way? Where is the root of this child's destructive and harmful behavior? Why are they acting this way? What do they have to say about their actions?

And we do know the root: For the Future makes it a point to let us know of their backstory, that they were raised into a society that believed coming in and taking whatever they wanted was natural and anything in their way deserved their wrath. And that even if he did reject this notion in part, he cannot shake off entirely the influence this has had on him, causing him to find extreme acts of violence as a means to an end natural as well as to not consider how his altering of the landscape and culture of the Isles enacts cultural violence upon them.

The true tragedy of Collector is that they are a child that wants to learn and do good, and ultimately wants nothing more than to be free, to play, and to have friends, but because of the circumstances around them, what they were taught to believe in and the psychological torture they were subjected to inside the prison, and the fact Belos was the one person they had contact for the last four hundred years or so... they inevitably became also incredibly accustomed to violence, to taking what they want by force, to justifying as many corpses piling up as necessary to get what they want. They're terrifying, they're horrible, they're sad, they're tragic, they're genuine, they're willing to learn, they have so much potential, they are multifaceted and that is what makes them an interesting character, bad things and good things alike.

#the owl house #toh analysis #toh theory #the collector #toh collector #commander's orders #blinks cutely. hiiii. i finally wrote this. yay! the other poll winner is done!

[callmearcturus]

I find the idea of Benji having like 20 exgirlfriends, boyfriends, and personfriends; while Ethan has dated like 3 people in his entire life, to be hilarious, and now I'm going to integrate it into my headcanons for both of them.

I MEAN I tend to think that before the Prague Job, Ethan was an ethical slut, and it's implied he's having a threesome with Jack and Sarah. (I mean, I literally do not know how else to interpret that line, I have put on my Straight Person Goggles and that line does not make sense unless they are all three dating.) He's flirty and openly teases people.

Then the Prague Job goes fuckways, and Ethan's entire demeanor feels like a very sharp object that neither he nor anyone else knows how to handle. He def fucked Max in the back of that car (I feel like this is even implied by her later dialogue). But its not friendly and fun anymore, it's sharp and dangerous and almost his barricade Ethan is using for his own protection.

AND THEN THERE IS CLAIRE. Claire is trying her best to manipulate the shit out of Ethan, to keep his attention on her and her 'mourning' of Jim rather than the fact Jim is alive and both of them are toying with Ethan.

That extended sequence where Ethan and Jim are talking about "what happened in Prague" intercut with Ethan figuring out what actually happened in Prague-- there's a moment when Ethan pegs Claire as having killed some of the team, but he changes his mind and casts Jim in the role instead because... he doesn't want Claire to be part of this.

TAKE ALL THAT and marry it to the fact that Claire keeps initiating touch with Ethan, tries to get him to comfort her-- that scene with her sleeping on the floor and taking his hand to kiss it is tremendously fucked up.

(I once listened to a podcast that mentioned claire was kind of ethan's love interest and like WOW no. nope. that's not what's happening even a little.)

oh my god i'm rambling but WHAT I AM SAYING is that Ethan has immense trauma that is fueled by sexual manipulation and it honestly feels like it. Twink Ethan as an ethical slut had fun and didn't have to worry about this shit and was all about fair play. Then he has a brief stint as a bad boy that goes badly because robert towne can't write a movie. Then the next we see him he's GETTING MARRIED and leaving the game.

This post is already too long so lets continue. MI3 is fascinating because it's the one I hate the most but Julia and Ethan are tremendous, and the work put into humanizing him is amazing. He's enjoying playing as a doting husband (and 'playing' is inaccurate, he's not lying) and it actively trying to carve himself out of the IMF while multiple people (INCLUDING HIS BEST FRIEND LUTHER) undermine him.

But he still tries, and he leaves, and he's out.

And it all goes to shit. Which is this tremendous tragedy of Ethan Hunt frankly. He put in the work and-- you know the phrase "he's got skin in the game"? Well Ethan had a lot of skin in the game and he let it flay him on his way out just for a chance to actually be out.

GP Ethan is a wildly changed man, but in a way that honestly makes perfect sense to me. The trajectory of his character by design or by accident is an easily tracked arc. (I think McQuarrie gets me on this, or I get him, either or.)

After GP, there is simultaneously an emotional honesty to Ethan... but there's a physical distance. He's older, he's wiser, he's tired, and he's not dragging Benji or Ilsa into a pharmacy closet to have sex. That's not him anymore. But also, there is more raw emotion to everything he does. He feels like he's always on the back foot.

(He comes across as incredibly asexual to me honestly.)

Compared Twink Ethan flirting his way through MI1 to Fallout Ethan getting kissed by the White Widow and having ZERO reaction.

/clutches Ethan to my chest. i love this tired old man.

MEANWHILE: Benji is hot and has a hot bossy streak and has amazing fashion sense. He can get it, he just can't keep it because when Ethan has a job, so does Benji, sooooo yep. lmao.

#meri47 #long post #w h o o p s #mission impossible #ethan hunt #benji dunn

[bengiyo]

LITBC Part 4 Check In

I’ve been mulling over this book for the entire week, and even as I sit here to get my thoughts down I am still fighting back an intense melancholy that grips me. I know Young. I have loved Young. He is a beloved friend. He is a pain in the ass. He is someone I will always miss. He is someone I wish I could have been closer to. I am still thinking about that balloon.

I think what I’m happiest about is that Young seems to genuinely regret failing with Gyu-ho. I like that most of our time thinking about Gyu-ho is not spent on the mean things he wrote in his fictionalized version of Gyu-ho in his stories, and instead we’re hit constantly with small memories of their time together. There’s a passage from this section that continues to linger with me:

“Using all kinds of other methods to create Gyu-ho and write him as other characters, I’ve tried to show the relationship we had and the time we spent together as complete as they were, but the more I try, the further I get from him and the emotions I had back then. My efforts become something fainter and more distanced from the truth.”

I can’t stop thinking about the sadness of grief and what it means when we no longer have someone around. They stop being a person who interacts with us and shapes us, and they become only this memory in us, and the quirks left behind. It makes me sad because truly most relationships fail. A lot of us are going to have many loves, and a lot of them won’t work out. I love that Young is so bad about all of his relationships and we can see where he messed up with Gyu-ho. I hope that the next time I fall for someone I do a better job at recognizing what he needs.

I hope that all the other queers reading this book were able to find parts of Young they could connect to, and I hope that listening to his stories helps them.

I will be chatting about this book with others, and I hope Young’s sass comes through for them. He’s been one of the most engaging narrators I’ve gotten to read in a while. I love listening to him talk and the way he thinks. I just know he would get on my nerves in person, and I couldn’t deal with him all the time, but I do love him.

As for the adaptation, I am really looking forward to the sequence when Young and Hyung meet up with Hyung’s fake activist friends, and also the scene where he tries to strangle that man. I think I’m also really looking forward to the final scene where Young sort of collapses on a random porch in Bangkok. I feel like that shot is going to be incredible.

This book club has been a great experience. I want to thank all of you for sharing so much of yourselves and your experiences over the last month. I appreciate how everyone has taken to the spirit of the book club and kept up with the reading and adding on to everyone else’s posts. I can’t wait to react to the show and movies with you all, and I hope we find another good book in the future.

#Ben reads #love in the big city #litbc book club

[bropunzeling]

"he has to be tough, he has to roll with the punches, he can't let other people in! even with the sex positions it comes up! (but if u want more discussion about that u gotta ask about that one :))"

i would like to know

well if you insist :)

so obviously upon embarking on this fic one of the things i had to think about (which so often comes up in any fic with more than one sex scene) is the age old question of: how do i write several different sex scenes without them seeming repetitive? this is because i hate a sex scene that feels tacked on or superfluous or just - not important! not done with care! not here for plot or character development! i can't do unto others what i dislike.

this especially got challenging once (a) i decided to focus exclusively on heat sex as opposed to other kinds of sex, since that prioritizes one type of sex act and (b) i decided to set the personal challenge to not write any kissing until at least 2/3rds of the way through (which stems directly from seeing how you in home by now and becs in head above water both executed some really great "oh they're kissing - oh shit they've been fucking for tens of thousands of words and haven't kissed" moments, and me going like, well EYE wanna do that)

so in going into figuring out how i was going to do the sex scenes - and specifically the sex scenes with leon - i was like well, i know it's gotta have knotting, and i know there can't be kissing, what else do i need to know. and then when i was writing the first sex scene, i got to this bit:

“Fuck,” Leon says. He flexes his fingers slightly, stretching Matthew out. Matthew collapses to his elbows, biting at the meat of his forearm. “Look at you.” Don’t, Matthew wants to retort. At least he's not on his back. He doesn’t want Leon to be able to see his face. To see how stupid the heat is making him, how much he likes this. Even so, he’s not sure the lack of eye contact makes things that much better. He can still feel Leon looking at him, skin prickling up and down his spine from the intensity of Leon’s gaze.

and i was like ohhhhhhhh. that was what i needed to know. even when he's getting fucked within an inch of his life, matthew doesn't want leon to see him :)

so THEN it became a game of figuring out how they could have sex that (a) felt new and different while also (b) never letting them fuck (and ESPECIALLY not matthew getting knotted) while they were face to face up to and until the last partnered sex scene. you have matthew tucking his face into leon's shoulder! fucking against the door! matthew always flipping himself onto his hands and knees! matthew blowing leon so leon isn't looking at him wanting leon, it's leon wanting matthew instead! the other thing i did was a slow escalation of location - hotel room (neither of their space) - oilers heat room (leon's space, but in a very clinical/league sanctioned way) - leon's living room (leon's space, but like, sometimes you're just horny!) - leon's bedroom (uh-oh).

(i should also mention poor, poor josh, my poor entirely made-up dude, who really deserved better. in that sequence, he and matthew do fuck face to face, and of course matthew reacts incredibly badly afterwards and is a dick. again - he can't stand being seen when he's vulnerable like that.)

and then of course in the last sequence, they have sex like they've had it before, and it's a lot, and matthew's making leon go crazy by talking about thinking about him during heat (no wonder leon thinks matthew could be into him! no wonder he's trying), but again, it's like how it's been before. only the next time, once matthew's revealed that, once he's shown that he keeps thinking about leon despite trying so hard not to, despite telling leon that he didn't need him (lies), we finally can have the moment where leon kisses him, and matthew lets himself be kissed. lets himself be looked at. lets himself be scented.

and then matthew fucks it all up :)

(also this is why one of my favorite lines in the "matthew is in the swamp of his own misery" segments is this one:

It’s not even that he wants Leon to fuck him, to knot him, even though he does. It’s that he wants Leon’s voice, his attention. For Leon to see Matthew, just as he is.

you're in trouble now, rat boy!)

EDITING TO NOTE that also the reconciliation happens at matthew's place bc it is the first time matthew truly lets him in and yes i DID think about that one (for once)!

#ask meme #omega matthew

[greeenbeaaan]

What's your favorite scene from any season in Ninjago?

okok i have many scenes in ninjago that i just LOVE but my all time favorite scene has got to be the Oni Temple scene from season 8, episode 7. for multiple reasons:

first off the directing of that scene was phenomenal. the way the camera panned, how sometimes it hovered over the scene, the way everything flowed nicely, THE MUSIC??? I don’t know just every little detail the crew put into that scene was outstanding to me. the way the characters moved and interacted really had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Lloyd and Harumi are just two characters that every time they’re on screen together, it’s just so gripping and interesting to watch ESPECIALLY in this scene. the way she would cozy up to him and caress his cheek then BAM she’s trying to drive a knife into his side. like wow. or when the camera pans around Lloyd’s head like the gears in his head are turning as he’s piecing together the puzzle in his head about how Harumi is the Quiet One. just everything is fantastic.

the dialogue and voice acting was another thing i absolutely loved. No offense to Jillian Michaels (i love her) but i don’t think having her voice Lloyd for this season and especially this scene would have played out as well as Sam Vincent voicing him. Props to him for real, because the emotion he put into this scene was just so raw and you could really feel the heartache and anger that Lloyd was feeling. And credit doesn’t just go to Sam, it goes to Britt McKillip as well for her performance as Harumi because man- everything she said down to her little voice inflections was phenomenal. how she was able to go from this sweet and caring princess to this just evil and bloodthirsty villain was amazing. there is just so much to say about both of their performances in this scene and this season really.

AND THE MUSIC!! the way it swelled when lloyd was catching onto what was really going on. and if you notice, the music kind of backs off whenever Harumi is gaslighting him to make him believe it’s not her just for the music to kick right back in when he doesn’t fall for it and pushes her away.

i just love hearing Harumi explain all of her motivations for doing what she is doing and having the viewers sit there and be like “well shit i never thought about people dying during the Great Devourer incident” but like dude. people DIED. and we are like Lloyd, who definitely didn’t think about that either and when it hits him you can just see the range of emotions going through him. especially from something he caused (indirectly). like remember when you opened up all the Serpentine tombs? and remember how Pythor unleashed the Great Devourer? yeah people died that day. and yes we know you can’t save everyone and Harumi being a direct result of all of that was perfect.

who knew a like 6 minute scene of just two characters talking to each other could be so gripping? Sons of Garmadon is just incredible and I could talk about it for hours.

i don’t know i just really like this scene a lot and there is so much more i can say but i don’t want this ramble to be too long. long story short, i really love Sons of Garmadon and the Oni Temple scene is my absolute favorite sequence in all of Ninjago. some other favorite scenes i have are Garmadon’s sacrifice in season 4, “why would you touch the scary picture jay” “i didn’t know it would do that cole” in season 5, and literally the last 3 episodes Ninjago Seabound.

#lego ninjago #ninjago #sons of garmadon #season 8 #ninjago lloyd #ninjago harumi #lloyd garmadon #harumi jade #live laugh love harumi #lloyd garmadon needs a hug #so much appreciation for this scene fr #lord garmadon #ninjago garmadon #jay walker #ninjago jay #cole brookestone #ninjago cole #ninjago possession #ninjago tournament of elements

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Okay alright part 2 ive seen now. I think i can start to scribble down some rambly thoughts. Spoilers for Oceanic Magica against the volcanic witches part 1 and 2.

So this is going in a very different direction than I was expecting. First chapter, I wasn’t a big fan of this whole oceanic and volcanic witches segregation thing. Thought it was quite silly and that it made the witch part of the universe feel less diverse. Now my stupid ass is realizing that’s exactly the point.

So world of ice is currently more of a fantasy political drama. The world of the witches is divided between two parties that already don’t get along well which each other. They try their best to cooperate and make the magic world inhabitable and not destroy their entire system, but as we saw in the court of law in chapter one, it’s difficult. Both sides are screaming at each other during a legal session, can you imagine how their political debates are??

Their legal system is in shambles, as we saw when they tried to prosecute Magica and Grilla. The judges are 2 people, both incredibly biased to their own side, trying to make every session come out in their own favor. Magica literally gets a lighter sentence because she personally knows one of the judges.

The tensions between sea and volcanic witches are pretty high throughout their entire society (it seems they just get out more in court. Kinda like with football in our world), as we see in the second chapter as well. When the 7-2 volcanic witches arrive at Roberta’s (LETS GOOO BTW ROBERTA GOATED why is she so tall though) house and a bunch of sea witches arrive to help her, they immediately grab the chance to insinuate negative assumptions about them. And to make it even more clear, we have our villain proclaiming everything is going according to plan. Like it wasn’t obvious enough.

So let me lay it down ever more obviously. Basically it’s: witch society= two party system that doesn’t work. Bad guy is trying to stir up as much polarization as possible by framing two people from both factions as having committed a terrible crime. Those two people are Magica and Grilla fugitive lovers running away together trying to bring justice to the table and fix society. The whole ice world thing is just a metaphor for problems that we refuse to solve because we’d rather make the other look bad than working together.

So thats the basic gist of it for now. Im especially curious to see how Enna will handle it at the end. Now lets talk about the other fun stuff.

Grilla and Magica are still gay

Some nice character moments that are probably set ups for later (like how magica completely changes character the moment she sees the number one dime. Great scene now that i looked at it again)

Of course it’s not all politics. We also have a lot of great action sequences. And its still a MAGIC society in which this stuff is happening, and its all delightful.

AND ROBERTA KSKSBEKSKSM For some reason Facciotto made her like twice Magica’s height. Look at this.

They used to be the same height now magica has to stand on a stone WHAT DID THEY FEED HER

But I like Roberta she’s a sea witch which eh we’ll see how that turns out. Interesting that she has a whole island for herself. I thought she was more of a traveler. But nothing actually matters except for the fact that shes here and i love her.

Irma is in the magic equivalent of Coral Island. (OR IS SHE??? Oooooohh mysterious who is the figure walkinga round in her house then?) She looks like Juniper from pkna. I guess prison just makes you look younger. I’m gonna sit in a cell for a few weeks and see if my skin has gotten nicer.

The prison looks cool. I wouldn’t mind if it’s gonna be the main setpiece for next week. It honestly looks more interesting than Coral Island already but that could also be recensy bias.

Scrooge is a huge dick which is fun. Feels very Barks. Magica’s line to him: “I’m not a good person, but I would never want to get rich by profiting off a dying world”(very loose translation but thats the general vibe) is great. I’m not expecting anything special with him (he’a just a side character here after all), and you already know when he comes back he will have realized what is right and use what he got for good, but it’s still a nice classic Scrooge thing. It’s at least not DT17 or Rosa Scrooge. I’m sorry I love Gervasio but I’ve just seen too much Rosa Scrooge lately, so this is nice.

Have we talked about Facciotto yet? I feel like I have but I forgot. Doesnt matter because Facciotto deserves all the praise he can get. This is 100% his best work yet. Every single panel looks absolutely stunning. Feels like a completely different art style compared to like 10 years ago. New Facciotto begins here guys.

His designs for the new ocean witches are great too. Character wise i don’t really care that much, same with the volcanic witches. They kind of all blend together except for obvs Grilla.

So that was weekly rambly magica thoughts from me. Remember to ocean your witches okay love you bye

#magica de spell #disney comics #magica and the world of ice #ducktales #duck comics #who would have thought that magical political drama with magica de spell would be a good idea #only #bruno enna #guys i love him have i talked about how much i love bruno enna already #giuseppe facciotto

[animehouse-moe]

After-School Hanako-Kun and Good News

I had a feeling, a rather strong feeling after a hint left in the PV for After-School Hanako-Kun, and I'm very happy that it turned out correct. There's not a mountain of stuff to cover, but I think it's important (and very interesting!) things that have the chance to be of importance to the Hanako-Kun remake!

So, let's talk details. How about starting with the PV? Lerche was a little sneaky, listing Studio Hibari in parentheses, but I caught it pretty quickly as I was chatting about the PV with a friend. You might think, "Oh, but Hibari is Lerche's parent company, it could have meant anything", and in a way you would have been right. Except, this is the first time Hibari was credited on a Lerche anime- period.

So, everybody already knew about the changes with lead director Masaomi Andou, and character designer Itou Mayuka not returning. What we didn't know is how good the character designs and direction would be. Well, turns out its good, very good.

Lots of little pieces of expression and character acting, as well as some solid direction, culminating in scenes like Nene digging Hanako out of the pile of Mokke.

Depth is actually something that lead director as well as episode director/storyboarder Kitamura Masaki plays at consistently throughout the episode, and it works really well. It puts in perspective how "flat" the first season of Hanako-Kun is, and how much it relied on color design to really bring the best out in it.

Conversely, expressions can struggle here and there compared to the first season. An inevitable fate that the anime would suffer due to Andou's departure considering how they literally use manga panels for their storyboards.

However, the slight differences in facial expressions is something I'll gladly eat if it means that the animation can get a much needed upgrade. Sure, it's not sakuga worthy every other second, but there's plenty of fun and well done cuts like these two Mokke sequences.

And we can owe that to the massive effort Hibari has put into cleaning up this series. Yeah, they essentially dedicated an entire staff dispatch for this first episode. All the first key animators are Hibari, as well as all but 3 for the second key animators. In betweens and other smaller roles for the episode have also been parted out a great deal to Hibari's Vietnam studio, creating a nearly full force effort from the parent to support its child. And it does wonders for the series.

I was intensely curious to see how this spinoff anime would go over with Lerche before this first episode, but now I'm incredibly excited to see how they decided to upgrade the manga they're adapting, and how this might reflect on the quality of the Hanako-Kun remake slated to release this year.

#houkago shounen hanako kun #after school hanako kun #jibaku shonen hanako kun #jibaku shounen hanako kun #toilet bound hanako kun #hanako kun #tbhk hanako #tbhk anime #yashiro nene #amane yugi #anime and manga #anime #anime recommendation #anime reccs #anime review

[the-kipsabian]

Kip Sabian.

Please go off.

anon i respect you so much for this but i hope you know what you have just done LMAO

tl;dr - hes absolutely perfect in every way possible. love of my life

hes just.. so innovative. his character work is absolutely fucking masterful, no matter which one it is. all of them are so delightfully different from one another but you can still see the same man behind all of them and thats just talking about the range of the character work and the clear work and effort he puts into everything he does, be it just the characters themselves, the promos, in-ring work, anything. he always goes all out, hes creative as hell with them (name me one other person that gets over with a box on their head i dare you) and it truly shows how loving and passionate he is about this whole wrestling thing and that he just absolutely gets it. also he just has fun with it and it shows. anything from cocky indie superbad to coward best husband superbad to boxman to whatever the cringe failure era was lmao and now the sex idol. he just does it all and he does it flawlessly and i will throw hands with tk if he doesnt capitalize on this man soon i sWEAR TO GODDAMN

his in-ring work is incredibly good. watch literally any sequence hes ever had with orange cassidy and you see what i mean. hes improved from that too (since the last one of those was a quite long while ago now), he can hang with pretty much anyone. i like it the way he says it himself, he can literally make anyone look good and no one has ever complained about having to work with him in the ring. which says a lot about how good and talented he is imo. he can do it all, be it more grounded moves or recently hes been doing a lot more jumps and top rope moves which! exciting!! cause it just adds to his arsenal and shows off that flexibility even more and its just so insanely good. like fuck man if you can get someone who can hang one-on-one with someone like vikingo like he did a few weeks back, thats a fucking keeper. dont you dare forget that

im not gonna take this moment to talk about his promo stuff cause i will literally be here forever. watch this and get back to me later about why im right that hes incredible at this shit with the tone and again character work and just overall presentation. even if its now a bit more comedic with the sex idol, its still an absolute delight. also i could listen to him talk forever, he has my favorite voice in the entire world and his accent is delicious and good fucking lord

PRESENTATION. hes just really fucking hot okay. i thought he was cute before but my god. the hair, no matter the version, on point. the eyeliner, gorgeous. nail polish, good lord (he needs to bring it back tbh its been a while). the outfits, holy shit i cant say words. i have done an extensive gear study to show how truly insane he makes me about his looks, not to mention the goddamn casual fits/suit game. jesus take the wheel. his smile is fucking out of his world and the laugh lines he gets are maybe my favorite feature on any human ever. hes fucking delicious and what of it

also arms. i dont think i need to say anything more i have also turned into a back admirer girlie (gn) because of him so like. uuuuuh

AND THEN. hes just a fucking delightful human being in general. is he stupid and cringey? yes, but arent we all. it just shows how human he is. just like us. ive so many times wondered how if we lived on slightly different timelines, we might have genuinely been friends cause he reminds me so much of guys of the same age that i know and im friends with. like we would have meshed pretty well together if circumstances were different lmao. that just shows me how genuine he is tbh. hes just fucking nice, hes very supportive, tries his best to be a good ally (i have both seen this and have first hand experience on it so dont @ me saying im wrong or its performative, i have way too many cases to prove that hes fr fr) and.. yeah. ive never heard anyone that actually knows him say anything bad about him. he has his flaws, obviously, cause nobodys perfect, but he makes up for it with what ridiculously good he has in him. this is a man with so much potential and love to give to the world both in his personal and professional lives and hes just needs his chance to shine so fucking badly, in all areas of life

im gonna stop now before i get too emotional but. yeah. he means fucking everything to me 💜💜

#thank you for asking! <3 #Anonymous #i didnt even get into the personal importance of the boxman or his catchphrases theres SO MUCH MORE i could include into this #i tried to keep it brief i wanna do other things tonight LMAO #anon i respect you so much for this thank you i love you #box thoughts

[destinygoldenstar]

I Don’t Feel Well So I Rank The Ninjago Seasons (D Tier)

…

Boy am I glad I use Tumblr instead of YouTube, cause then I’d have to use A.I to talk. Well my voice is not pleasant to listen to either way, but you know.

So… I have been sick. For the past week. How fun, am I right? I still get brutalized at work and I’ve been exhausted and forced in bed with stomach bugs and floods of snot the entire time. It’s not well.

So I decided instead of sleeping again that I’m gonna rank every Ninjago TV installment that’s canon to the main Ninjago story. Cause seasons is just really not the right word.

And you know, Season 2 of Dragons Rising is coming out, so this post will get dated real quick.

So for what I’m ranking: the seasons of the main show, the pilot, Day of the Departed, and Dragons Rising.

And you know what, I’ll throw in the 2017 movie cause it’s significant even though it’s not canon to the main story so what I said is a lie…

And I know there are other Ninjago books that I haven’t read, but it’s questionable if they’re canon, so…

I’m just gonna talk about what I want. Ninjago’s lore is a mess. This is Lego’s Star Wars. Which… IS a thing, but you know what I mean. Ninjago is legos big cash cow.

So what do I think is the gold of Ninjago, and what do I think is… Day of the Departed.

(I’m going to post these by tiers. Because this post got so long already. Why am I like this?)

So let’s go:

Wow what a surprise, Day of the Departed.

The only special on this list is last place. Never seen that before…

Okay, but despite the obvious placement, I’m actually SOFTER on this than most people.

This was caught in a bad production era for the show as they were changing writing staff at the time, and the movie was coming out and was delayed to another year so they needed something to fill in the space.

This is what we got.

I honestly think a story about Ninjago’s version of the day of the dead that involves reviving the lost, and centered around the one ninja cursed into purgatory struggling to cling to memory IS a very powerful story… IF it was a full season and not a forty minute special.

Yeah I know, “How could you make this an four-eight episode season or something? It takes place in one day.”

Just rewrite it so that it takes place in a handful of days with the actual Day of the Departed being the climax, take time to focus on the ninja’s losses respectfully and how they each remember and honor them, build up a mystery of the revived souls, and center the story around Cole and his LITERAL existential crisis in his ghost form as he slowly feels being forgotten and disconnected with his loved ones, learn what the actual day means to the dead and purgatory like him, and have that climax with Yang where he unlocks his earth punch thing and Yang sacrifices his chance at revival to undo his curse on Cole so Cole can live his life and die properly in the future when his time actually comes.

Boom. You got a pretty compelling Ninjago season on paper.

But no. Instead let’s cram it all in forty minutes, only pay lip service to the topic of the day of the dead, and waste most of the specials screen time with the other ninja and NOT COLE fighting previous baddies for nothing but nostalgia bait. So that Cole’s concept of a character arc in the special becomes incredibly rushed. He confronts Yang, gets imprisoned by Yang, breaks out, gets taunted, and immediately gets proven wrong when the other ninja show up and he learns his lesson. Great character arc.

It’s still incredibly relevant to his overall character arc though. So it hurts more that it’s not given the pacing respect in this.

But no. Instead of focusing on the heavy stuff, the special would rather focus on fights with the other ninja who are not the main focus against the ghosts of previous villains. Again for nostalgia and nothing else. All of these fights are probably the most boring action sequences Ninjago has ever had and I cannot remember a single thing that caught my attention.

When they are going over the villains prominently displayed in the museum cause the host anticipated this disaster or something (Oh wait, considering who it is, maybe he did), why is NYA the one who says “Memories” to Chen?

I know it’s a small detail but it bugs me so much. Nya played the smallest role of that season besides Wu, she was not invited to the tournament and her role in that story was being a spy and mostly away from Chens torment. While the others did go through ton of Chen related trauma.

Out of ALL the characters that you could’ve had say the line “Memories”, you pick the ONLY character in this party that did NOT go through the s**t delivered by the character the line is directed at.

So yeah. This was so blatantly rushed that you can notice details like THAT which make no sense.

Yang is a joke of a villain and his plan doesn’t make too much sense. He wants to revive himself and his students, but why waste time making sure Cole suffers? With the backstory of trauma you have that YOU gave, Cole has no part of it, hell, YOU cursed HIM for no reason besides a mansion rule.

Bruh is playing the victim. SMH.

He wants to make Cole feel forgotten by the entire world, so he sent out the ghosts of the other villains on the ninja so they’d be distracted. Ignoring how Cole was already feeling this way at the start of the special and that’s why he even came to Yang, who KNEW this.

So really Yang is just wasting time. Just leave Cole in the back rooms and go through the portal and be on your merry way. You have your new mansion host. You’re free.

AND this kind of assassinates the character he was described as in Possession. Granted it’s not a huge deal cause in that season he was just a ghost in a temple and an episodic antagonist. But that’s all he needed to be. How Yang and his students died doesn’t matter to the story, and he worked not as a villain, but as a teacher. His morality was completely ambiguous the entire episode he appeared in there, and he came off as a wise spirit luring adventurists in his mansion so he could kill the weak survivalists with his mansion curse.

He was NOT a bitter moron who killed his students and himself by an accident.

I also just don’t buy his sudden redemption. Dude got punched really hard and that changed his mind to let Cole go instead.

As a kid the lesson I got from this was “If you want your elders to be nice to you, just punch them really hard!”

It’s honestly kind of funny looking at it ironically.

I think the most frustrating thing about this special is that it is a special.

Ninjago lore is already very confusing as is. But when it comes to the shorts, and the books minus Quest for Lost Powers, yeah they can be fun additions, but you don’t HAVE to watch them.

Casual fans can stick to the main show and lineup of seasons and still get a full experience with the shows story and characters and not get lost.

Or at least that’s how it SHOULD be in my opinion. But no. Because of this pesky stain, you force your entire audience to look at a HALLOWEEN SPECIAL, that is so hard to find in English now mind you, to see a VERY SIGNIFICANT PLOT POINT IN THE SHOWS STORY.

WHY?!?!?

I know I said the movie was delayed and that’s why. But could they not, I don’t know, use that time to instead flesh out Hands if Time. Maybe fuse in the specials content, minus the pointless past villain fights, with Hands of Times story to revive Cole as its own subplot. Rewrite some of the dialogue to be about the theme of time, maybe have one of the time blades be involved in the Cole and Yang confrontation (I’m imagining the freezing one but it doesn’t matter), and boom. Seamless fusion.

We do not need two Ninjago installments every year. Especially if they’re gonna be half baked as a result. We had our fill with Skybound in 2016. That’s all we needed. This special didn’t need to exist with this context.

Another obvious installment close to the bottom.

I already made a whole post about the movie and my extended thoughts about it.

TLDR is that while I, unlike some other people, appreciate the attempt of being it’s own thing and going by it’s own rules as an alternative universe, the problem is that it fleshes out its concepts little to none.

As a result, this version of the ninja are depressingly underdeveloped and have little to no believable chemistry with each other. And it has horrendous pacing so it’s not like we can explore this world besides “The city hates Lloyd”, with a very rushed conclusion that just abruptly ends without much time to process its ATTEMPT at a satisfying end. (Like, I think Day of the Departed had a much more satisfying and well paced ending)

And even THEN, that end that works on paper is completely botched in execution because of poor build up, and giving Garmadon nothing to earn a redemption.

“Forgive your terrorist parents, kids! Even if they leave you for dead! You’re in the wrong if you don’t!”

I usually love the Lego Movies, but with this one very few of the jokes landed for me. I don’t know, there’s just something way too juvenile about the delivery that feels more insulting than anything else.

I, as a fan, absolutely prefer the show, as this movie does an awful job at representing the show to newcomers. Though it’s not like it was trying to do that anyway.

But while I do dislike the movie overall, there’s some things I like, and I feel like fans hate this movie for most of the wrong reasons.

Im just personally sick of people acting like the movie is trying to be like the show and failing when that wasn’t even what they were going with, and I feel like we should be criticizing the movie instead for what the movie itself tried and didn’t succeed at.

The bloopers are better.

This is my least favorite of the main Ninjago season lineup.

And yes I’m talking about both chapters here. Honestly the separation between chapters really felt like an excuse to not release two Ninjago seasons a year like tradition.

For gosh sake just release the whole thing, or air an episode weekly. I’m personally really sick of this trend.

I have to be totally fair and say that I think the defenses of this season ARE warranted. This is not awful, and if the worst season isn’t awful then that showcases Ninjago’s quality. I can understand people defending the season. I don’t agree with any of their points, but good for you if you like it.

But I’m sorry y’all, there’s a reason why I can’t put this season anywhere besides last place… in terms of the main lineup. That has to do with my experience with watching Ninjago.

I often fly through the seasons before and after it no problem, always hooked.

Except for this one.

When I first watched this season, it did NOT click with me like the others did, to the point where I basically committed Ninjago watching sin. I put off the entire season about five to seven episodes in and didn’t pick it up again till MONTHS later.

I NEVER did that to Ninjago before.

But this season made me do it.

And it hasn’t changed. I fly through the rest of the story and then when I get to this season, I get stuck. I’m checking the runtime left, I’m scrolling on my phone, I’m doing something else and treating this season as background noise.

So… why?

Well one, it’s the second longest season tied with Crystalized.

Yes even with the shorter runtime of each episode.

Rise of the Snakes: 13 Episodes x 22 Minutes Runtime = 286 minutes

Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitsu: 30 Episodes x 11 Minutes Runtime = 330 Minutes

(I did the math for you. You’re welcome.)

At least Crystalized knew what it was doing with that extended time.

This season is completely aimless. We literally spend two episodes of the ninja getting nagged at by Wu to get off their asses and do something, then run around to find something to do. Then we spend another four episodes trying to get to that something, and only THEN, SIX EPISODES IN, we get introduced to the main villain!

That’s a whole sixth of its runtime wasted on pointless filler! It made me miss the filler of Season Two if I’m being honest, at least there those episodes were at service to character development for Lloyd. This seasons filler has none of that.

And that’s just the first of the seasons pacing problems. Once we do get introduced to Aspheera, she completely curb stomps the ninja and escapes to invade the city and it’s presented as high stakes!

And then we get a filler episode about the newspaper folk and the everyday lives of characters that are not the main ninja.

This is an idea I’m a fan of on paper. But it’s placed in such a FSM awful point in the story that it’s existence butchers the tone.

By that point, you lost my engagement.

This isn’t entirely the runtimes fault, it’s just that the runtime was utilized poorly. They could’ve, I don’t know, did build up to whatever the gosh some of these character arcs were supposed to be?!?

Aspheera isn’t a bad villain, she’s a decent threat, but she is derivative and badly utilized. There’s a reason she’s memed by even the show runners.

Kai’s character assassination in this has been talked about to death. I think it’s a little overblown especially in the Oni Trilogy when people complained he was dumbed down. There, he was still competent at his ninja job and he was NOT the focus of that story, rightfully not. Here, he’s advertised as the focus ninja but they have to DRAG him everywhere half the time. Literally!

This is barely even a character arc. He loses his powers, whines about it, quits, then goes back to the fight when a child who is a fan of his puts himself in danger, which is screwed up, learns that Aspheera has a dynamic with Wu that he lied about and he lashes out on him, apologizes because family, and then gets his powers back with a ‘YoU jUsT gOtTa BeLiEvE’ speech, which he basically has to cause otherwise people will LITERALLY DIE.

There is nothing for Kai to learn or grow from here. Supposedly it’s because he’s so arrogant about how his power can be utilized that once it’s taken away he feels like a nobody.

Except he does not use his powers any more than the other characters, and they don’t get any punishment or lesson regarding that. It’s all the scroll’s influence when it comes to them. And that is the lesson, backfired because the story then goes “Get your powers back or PEOPLE WILL DIE”

But yeah, Screw Kai I guess.

Or maybe it’s because Kai has to learn he’s special even without powers first, and he doesn’t need actual fire to spark fire because the power of love and friendship is all he really needs to spark fire!

Here’s the problem. From the start of the series, that has been something HE ALREADY F%#KING KNOWS

(Edit: I love this show to pieces. This show means a lot to me. I have a lot to thank this show for. BUT when it comes to stuff like this… GOSH DARN IT…)

I will say it though, this is the season where I have said to myself, “Dang, Vincent Tong is popping off in the voice acting department here.” He absolutely makes this bearable and sells the character. Not that he ever did a bad job before. Like, this season gave us one the best Master of Fire war cries I’ve ever heard. I just wish this phenomenal voice acting had a better script to back it up.

I do think the ‘he got stupider’ criticism is not very fair though. They all got stupider here. Kai just got the stupidest lines. That’s not his fault.

After aging up the ninja in the Oni Trilogy into young adults, the narrative decides to treat them like they’re teenagers again. And it’s very disappointing to have Wu back. At least back to his original role instead of doing something new with him.

Something I don’t say a lot, but feel like I should… I’m NOT a Wu Stan.

NOW HOLD ONTO YOUR PITCHFORKS.

I am NOT saying he is a bad character and written poorly all the time. In some seasons he’s actually great.

But this is my own subjective taste, and he just rubs me off the wrong way and annoys me half the time. I get him being cryptic and overly strict and acting out of ‘destiny said so’ to force kids into lives they don’t want is his intended personality and it’s involved in the shows theming. That personality type annoys me. I don’t need him to be perfect, I just need him to be a little more empathetic and not a flat out jerk when he does not need to be in some cases.

That and he makes some really stupid choices throughout the series that absolutely piss me off.

This is the season where he is possibly THE most insufferable to me.

After being lost in time and having to literally regrow his morals, a pretty harsh experience all things considered, himself and the ninja finally achieve victory and peace. There’s no bad guys to face. There’s no danger. Everyone is happy and together.

Until Wu decides that’s BAD for some reason and feels the need to nag the ninja about everything they do to get them back in action. To the point where they can’t even take care of themselves without a fear of getting beat up by a chicken! Or whatever else!

Now, to be fair, they could’ve made this look worse on Wu’s end. The ninja could’ve wanted to retire and go live their own lives or something and Wu could act the same. That would’ve been worse. And they should have at least been doing something besides being on a couch and hot tub considering the peace they wanted for so long. You can make the argument that Wu is objectively correct here, he just went about it the wrong way.

BUT here’s what made me side with the ninja in the end. Even if I can see Wu’s POV.

WU CAUSED THE ENTIRE PEACE TO BE BROKEN.

If Wu did not influence the ninja to go about finding a bad guy and an adventure, nobody would’ve gone to the pyramid, no one would’ve freed Aspheera, no one would’ve gotten attacked, no realm would’ve been genocided, and because of all those things, Crystalized would’ve never happened!

Wu’s own cryptic overly strict and forceful self caused everything to go wrong if you think about it.

But hey, maybe they’re setting up a character arc for Wu, like, maybe he emotionally feels stunted after his trauma from the Oni Trilogy and CAN’T move on with life. And realizing he influenced the ninja negatively here could be a moment of reflection and s character arc where he learns to be more lenient and find a value of life beyond the ninja career-

NOPE.

Wu takes no accountability for causing this, outside of what he did to Aspheera thousands of years ago. As though him imprisoning a maniac like her was wrong… somehow??

That’s not even touching on the story admitting Wu is responsible for yet ANOTHER villain for existing. Which is so overdone that I actually look at Wu even more negatively every time it’s revealed.

WHY ARE YOU GIVING YOUR STUDENTS A HARD TIME WHEN YOU YOURSELF NEVER TELL THEM ANYTHING THAT COULD BE VITAL INFO TO PREVENT BAD STUFF FROM HAPPENING?!?!?

And somehow Kai has to be the one to apologize to Wu, even though Kai is the blatant victim here, because… ”I’m big you’re small I’m smart you’re dumb I’m right you’re wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it” (A line from Matilda)

And then they don’t even use him for the Ice Chapter.

Speaking of, is the Ice Chapter better?

Yes… but not by much.

It’s at least more interesting because of the new setting and the genocide plotline (Here’s your more lighthearted season everybody). But the season has no focus as we’re constantly jumping from subplot to subplot.

Cole’s plotline with the Yeti is extremely pointless, and only happened because he had anxiety problems about everyone hating him for a mistake no one blamed him for. Which that of itself is more interesting than the actual plotline why did we not explore that-?

Nya gets the exact same arc as Kai, except it’s in her case practicality reasons. So it’s even more pointless of an arc than Kai’s is.

It also breaks all kinds of rules on how Elementals work in this show. You rip a master from their power, that power is GONE until they get it back. There is no ‘I believe’ and it’s fixed.

It worked for Lloyd because that was how his power of energy worked. And even THEN there was practicality in why the power strip even happened.

The siblings have no excuse.

I guess Akita’s interesting. But she’s one of the more forgettable side characters to me and she’s in dog form and whining for so long that I don’t care for her as much as I feel I should. I get why she acts like that. Still.

They also turn Zane into a genocidal maniac!!?!?! Which caught me off guard cause… WTF OF AN IDEA IS THAT?!?

Zane is the LAST character ANYONE would expect to EVER do something this horrifying and EVIL. Not even some of the villains do stuff this messed up.

Then the time being different in this realm is revealed as a thing and it’s the most attention I’ve had the entire season. He was here for YEARS?!?!

What in gosh name caused Zane to become THIS twisted and jaded, THIS HOPELESS, at the idea that his loved ones abandoned him with nothing but a scroll to rely on-

He was brainwashed.

…

Deep down, I knew that was gonna be the case already. So I can’t say I was mad at that answer.

What I got mad at was HOW they handled it.

The season advertised this as the fire and ice chapter. A rivalry between the two elements. I thought that was gonna have something to do with how they free Zane and handle the trauma he caused everyone in this realm.

Nope.

The fire ninja doesn’t even show up to this confrontation. Instead Lloyd, who already had a whole trilogy of a character arc in the spotlight and did not need or earn this moment, mercy talks Zane and that undoes his brainwashing.

That was way too easy.

Are they at least gonna address Zane’s trauma here, give him an emotional reaction about it, or try to apologize and make up for the damage he caused in the Never Realm-

Nope.

No one in the Never Realm shames Zane for what happened after he’s back to his old self. He doesn’t even apologize, let alone try to help them restore their land.

Nope. Everyone’s completely cool with forgiving a dictator.

I want to take an obvious jab at this decision… but I will get cancelled if I take it, so I won’t.

Point is, for all intent and purpose, this is one big season and… a MESS.

But I will give it this. This season is pretty. One of the best and most dynamic seasons in animation and editing. There’s SOME scenes I really like and are funny. Or really interesting.

I like how they address Lloyds trauma, that Cole scene I mentioned is very interesting, there’s some great fights here, the ninja dragging Kai’s unconscious body through the pyramid was HILARIOUS, as well as this line:

“You’re both too valuable to risk. It should be someone expendable… like Jay.”

“WHAT?!”

I like Jay, but I also like it when people bully him.

And I will give the season this. Unlike Day of the Departed and the Movie, the dynamic of the ninja, the best part of the show to me, IS PRESENT.

That’s why I put it above the other two. But this is a case where I like some clips rather than the whole thing.

Bet you all expected this season to be in the bottom three.

But it’s not.

Okay let’s get this out of the way. The criticism towards Crystalized is warranted.

The season tries to be this big epic finale of the show without executing the conclusion properly. The prison plotline goes nowhere aside from reviving Nya, which of course that had to happen so the ninja can stop being depressed and get into action.

The crystal council was wasted as a villain concept as aside from Aspheera they don’t do much to the plot.

Harumi had absolutely no reason to come back from the dead, as she is just flat out NOT the same character as she was in the Oni Trilogy.

This is the exact character Harumi haters point at to say she who she was in the Oni Trilogy.

No. No she wasn’t.

In my perfect vision she’s still dead and never came back at all. That sounds incredibly harsh but given all the murder and attempted murder she’s done… nah that was a justified end for her.

Don’t even get me started on Lloyd. He starts the season fine, but once he gets into the crystal council his attitude and decisions are insufferable.

He can’t make up his mind as a council prisoner whether he’s scared of them or not. He believes Harumi can be redeemed despite being TRAUMATIZED by her and past seasons showing the PTSD he got from HER.

I guess Lloyd is just a healed man who is trying to showcase empathy to others, even those that hurt him-

OH WAIT NO. Because he reunites with his father and he’s absolutely bitter about his existence the entire time! You know, the parent he wanted the love and company of his entire life?!!?!

MAKE UP YOUR MIND SIX WRITERS. EITHER LLOYD IS EMPATHETIC AGAIN OR HES NOT. WHICH IS IT?!

Lloyd doesn’t even grow out of this. He’s just whining the entire time to Garmadon about him being an evil parent and him not wanting to get his Oni form figured out. Even though that’s still a part of him and he has to learn to accept it to save the day.

That’s a neat idea. A great idea to wrap up your protagonists character arc-

NOPE.

Lloyd screws the idea still and gets deus-ex-machina’d to victory instead by the Golden Weapons.

Golden Weapons that DONT WORK THAT WAY.

They literally changed the rules of lore from the PILOTS just for this. They couldn’t think of ANY other non-lore-breaking way to have the ninja win.

At all?!

Why not have the weapons explode in divine power and take out the island the Overlord is on. And THEN Lloyd reacts to the weapons himself because they’re supposed to react to the Green Ninja out of destiny. I don’t know.

But let me tell you why they can’t do that. Because if they did that, the other four ninja would be sacrificing their lives. Yeah that’s what they do here anyway, but in that scenario, they would be guaranteed to be DEAD.

And we can’t kill our main characters at the end of the show like that!

(No I’m serious. I understand why they wouldn’t want to kill the ninja. I wouldn’t want it. I just want it to make sense if they are gonna survive.)

There’s a LOT wrong with this season. No one will stop whining about it. No one will stop till the sun blows up and Ninjago is somehow still airing. It’s almost like cartoon finales are bound to be controversial or something. What more can I possibly add?

BUT, hear me out.

Yes Crystalized has its problems. But it also has a some moments that are top tier. I’d say even better than the good scenes in Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitsu.

The whole premiere episode where we see the ninjas grief over the loss of Nya is very powerful. The solo Nya episode after that where she says ‘screw the afterlife, I’m going home.’

The heist is really fun and intense, though admittedly not as much as I would’ve liked. I wish they didn’t have the ninja pop into the Monestary in the middle then go back out for the staff, I would’ve done both missions in one so the ice power would be a tension point for the whole heist. But compared to everything else that’s a nitpick.

Zane has an incredible speech about his experience with emotions. AND he gets a very touching moment with PIXAL, who also has a great monologue and just… SLAYS this season. I love every scene with her this season.

The among us meme is EVERYTHING. Yes it’s funny, but it’s also perfectly fitting for the scene and it doesn’t distract from the tension of the scene as Lloyd gets discovered and knocked out.

The other ninja struggling to escape a cave in is intense and very powerful to see their union till the theoretical bitter end.

Garmadon gets an episode that’s really sweet and it’s very much appreciated. Garmadon himself is just a chad this season and it’s very hard to hate him.

The Weekend Whip as foreshadowing to the final plot device that helps the ninja in their final battle at the very end was GENIUS I LOVE IT OMG.

There IS some great stuff here. Even great whole episodes. Whereas Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitsu just had moments I really liked and not whole episodes.

And at least I am personally more hooked with Crystalized’s story right away and it gets started pretty quickly. In that sense, I do prefer Crystalized’s story structure on paper than the other one. The pacing in this season has its own problems too, but at least I’m more hooked with the plot of the ninja trying to save a loved one, a well established character and a member of their group, and the slow mysterious build up of the previous villains being recruited by this unknown force.

At least none of the ninja are blatantly evil maniacs and getting away with it this time. They come close at the start, but they don’t get away with it. They go to jail. There’s actual consequences. That’s something I heavily appreciate.

So yeah, this season has good reasons to not like it, but honestly, it’s kinda underrated??? All I’m saying is it’s not AS bad as you think it is. This is nowhere near Star Vs The Forces Of Evil level bad of an ending.

(Continued In Part 2, where I go over the C Tier)

#ninjago #ninjago day of the departed #the lego ninjago movie #ninjago movie #ninjago secrets of the forbidden spinjitzu #ninjago crystalized #ninjago lloyd #lloyd garmadon #ninjago kai #kai jiang #kai smith #ninjago nya #nya smith #nya jiang #ninjago zane #zane julien #ninjago cole #cole brookstone #ninjago jay #jay walker #Ninjago wu #Ninjago Garmadon

[genlossneg]

thank you for this blog im boutta post a lot of my suffering in here enjoy the essay

I’m not a ranboo fan at all, i just heard about a cool horror project from a name i’m familiar with and i was excitedly waiting for perhaps a new kid on the block with cool content and the resources to do so. I’ve seen what people with three coins and a piece of lint can do out of passion, and so i expected that someone that has far more resources out of the gate would be able to really take it out of the park if they were equally as passionate. I’ll just grab a couple of points and elaborate.

Intentionally bad.

This is the poorest excuse for low quality content I’ve heard. Not a single self-respecting creative that actually cares about their project would make something ACTUALLY bad. Anytime you see something that’s intentionally bad and yet somehow beloved, look DEEPER. Because behind that veil of “bad” is actually often a HUGE amount of effort and care put into something a creator cared about. 

Intentionally bad content is still made with the intention to be fun to watch, to be entertaining. There is very little entertainment found in any of the genloss bad content.

Lack of horror content

The main excuses i’ve seen is that they were scared of Twitch TOS, to which I say lolwhat. You had two whole years to contact twitch and talk it out with them and figure out what part of your project and show would fly and what wouldn’t, and instead you opted to really cut out any horror aspect at all for fear of being banned on twitch? And even then, content more gorey and disturbing than this is allowed on twitch. If Until Dawn flies on twitch, I think gen loss could have gone wilder.

And if they REALLY didn’t want to risk it, for the love of god at least be creative with your attempts to circumvent it? The goofy poor editing of the red in ep2 during the surgery sequence took me out of it entirely and confused me so much. You know what they could’ve done? TURNED THE LIGHTING A STARK RED. THAT’S IT. THE MOST BASIC THING, TO AT LEAST REALLY GET ACROSS THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG.

The acting

I was a theatre kid in highschool and let me tell you even the 13 year olds acted with more passion and devotion to the role than 95% of the cast in gen loss. Even during improv. You can tell that there is basically no script to gen loss and that its purely “X will happen then Y will happen and we need to fill it with conversation and improv” with zero direction on tone or anything. It was so painful seeing how little effort had gone into the acting. Ranboo can’t act for shit and should have gone through some acting classes before taking on a live show. The only ones that were visibly trying were charlie and jerma and the people who were frozen robots during ep3 (because as someone who had to stay frozen in pose hours on end for a play while on-stage, that shit is HARD)

Hetch’s acting was even more laughable, and his fakeout death was… something. An incredibly cartoonish “uguguhh” exiting his mouth- really? Also It was so frustrating to have his voice come from seemingly nowhere. There was no source to his voice.

It sucked so much seeing ranboo actually TRY to be better in his acting in episode 3 because when he suddenly started being intense it felt WRONG and out of character, because there was no natural leadup to him being like that. ep 1 and 2 were so bad that even when ep 3 was better it felt disappointing.

Lighting

Its already been mentioned by film student anon that the lighting is such a huge amateur mistake but I want to touch upon the creative aspect of the lighting a little more.

There was such an utter lack of using colored lighting to really set tones in scenes and it SUCKED. Like, already with the lack of outright horror blood and gore, they NEEDED creative lighting to at least intensify scenes! Add some damn flickering lights! Green lighting? Something- anything. Again, TEENAGERS have been more creative with lighting in a performance and all they had was four colors to work with and nothing fancy.

Camerawork

I wish they would have actually done good camera work. Set up some cameras in locations and acted in front of them instead of having someone follow ranboo around and having some “lore” explanation for it that makes little sense. Having moving cameras that are shaky and constantly cutting people frame-wise is just not pleasant to watch and does not add anything useful. On top of the camera quality jarringly changing between shots constantly it just… ruined the flow. 

in ep3, we had an explanation for why there’s a camera following ranboo, and we got some REALLY COOL ESTABLISHING SHOTS THAT…. made no sense in lore. Why would the “drone” following ranboo take establishing shots? It’s supposed to follow ranboo- but then later it gets dismissed and we suddenly have sharp camera cuts to what im guessing was a prerecorded scene due to the camera quality change and it just felt. So sudden and jarring? Like okay you just dismissed the camera and now we suddenly get a different non-canon camera because they remembered we actually need to still see whats happening.

Lore/Story

The lore and story we have gotten so far is so scatterbrained and nonsensical. + knowing that this project isn’t actually what gen loss was supposed to be (which: Why are you advertising it as gen loss then, ranboo? You’re just staining the name of your passion project). So much of genloss is in the “I guess” category of why things happened. But the consistensy also felt so off. From what I understand, Charlie is the slime demon, and was the guy on the gurney, and was also in ep 3 as  himself. And all those other versions WERE the ep3 charlie. How? Charlie died? twice? According to what has happened? But he’s alive anyway at the end until he gets killed again by a cheap backrooms monster? But supposedly everyone else did actually die? 

I just. Genuinely do not understand what the story here was. What the point was of everything. I’m not gonna ask who the characters were because the characters were just the streamers and nothing special or new. If you know the streamer, thats the “character”. It’s just godawful writing.

Viewer interaction

Viewer interaction was pointless and didn’t matter. Either every choice the viewers made was gonna happen anyway, or ranboo decided to ignore it lol. It felt like there was no impact to viewers doing anything to influence the show and the show probably would have been largely better had viewer interaction not been a thing at all.

also idk maybe making ranboo’s “character” aware of the audience from the get go would have been more fun as they could’ve been trying to get the audience to do anything while we’re just watching quietly. And they could’ve gotten more and more desperate with the audience as things went on. But then again that requires actual acting skills that ranboo barely has.

Just as some final words, this really feels like a case of someone who has never done anything like this thinking they can do this because they’re famous and well-liked online. I know ranboo makes a lot of money, so they certainly had enough money to make something good. Take some film classes or acting classes. Instead they became overambitious and made just a generally unpleasant show that is not going to make me want to watch any future gen loss content in good faith.

The entire show depends on going “MY STREAMER!!! THATS MY STREAMER!!!” and would not survive on its own merit. The hype towards gen loss was misleading on what it’d be, and the fans made amazing fanart that does not live up to the reality of what they got and i feel genuinely sad for them. The fanbase made a better interpretation of what gen loss is WITHOUT EVEN NEEDING GEN LOSS TO BE OFFICIALLY RELEASED.

also a final thing about the merch but why is the merch so bad lol. Its such boring design. The gen loss logo appears barely anywhere in the show itself. The fans could’ve had some sort of cool merch, like masks based off of ranboo’s mask and the showfall robot masks. Shirts and merch based off of the slime demon and warehouse master. 

Anyway sorry for the huge wall of text I have just been going insane abt this to my friend in dms enjoy

————————————————–

i could probably spend hours responding to all of this! thank you for the mini essay, you make a ton of great points. i really sympathize with the “not a ranboo fan” stance because my friends are way more fans of him than i am, and were way invested.

i personally haven’t heard any “it’s supposed to be bad!” defenses but i can totally believe there are people like that out there lol. i definitely in the “there’s no entertainment when it’s bad”. you’re entirely right about the lack of horror! i was so confused after the first stream and everyone was like “it’s not supposed to be horror yet! you don’t understand!” and then it took until the 3rd stream for anything significant to even happen, and even then it was weak.

charlie and jerma did so much for gen loss man, ranboo’s acting was just.. not that great and when it was, it felt so jarring. more interesting lighting would’ve been so fun! so much could’ve been done with that, and that’s especially clear when they switch cameras because they had the ability to film this incredibly and just.. didn’t. i feel like we didn’t get so much lore that we should have, especially with how long the streams were. i hope we get something clearer later on.

the idea of him being aware of chat the whole time would be cool, but idk if it would’ve worked with the “brainwashed” thing he was doing. overall i agree - gen loss was super hyped up and in this form, it didn’t live up to it as well as it could have. once again, ty for the mini-essay, it was a great read!

#submission #gen loss neg #gen loss crit