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ericleo108 · 1 year

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Cosmic Luve Oct 2022 - Folklore

Prerequisites to this Taylor Swift Cosmic Luve Posts:

Sentientism 2022

The Chalice Mixtape Post

Cosmic Luve Aug 2021: Taylor Swift Renegade Response Track

Cosmic Love April 2022: Cary Charlotte or Mary

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Intro

Picking up where we left off, I’m getting friend vibes from Taylor. To bring you up to speed I have a theory the planet is conscious and communicates through telepathy. I talk about how this could be possible in my book “108 The Story of Discovering Earth’s Consciousness” which tells the story and evidence of how I came to the conclusion that the planet Earth is conscious and how she communicates. However, I still maintain and accept that it could just be a Verisimilitude allure to the theory. Sentientism is not in the book and is the belief that the planet has always been molding evolution like a God.

I don’t think these individuals and celebrities are intentionally making their art, media, or semantics about me. I think they are being used as a vessel by Gaia. Basically how it would work is Gaia would infiltrate your mind during trance. Like for Taylor it’s stream of consciousness and fiction and (as you will read) for Stamets it was a dream. Then she would give them ideas. The result is a song that sounds like it’s about me because it was influenced by Gaia who directed it toward me. I believe if this is happening to me, it is probably happening to others, but this is my story and my relationship with Gaia.

This post is about how Taylor’s Folklore album is about me from Gaia. I have a long history of thinking Taylor is speaking to me in her music. We have the Taylor Swift response song and post as an example. Taylor is being used as a vessel by Gaia. My argument would be by writing songs about her life Taylor is channeling Gaia and Gaia is using Taylor’s words and influence in conjunction with her (Gaia’s) telepathy to influence individuals.

Catching Up

As an update from last months CosmicLuve.com Sept 2022 - Hope about Emma Watson, I’m writing this because I finally got Disney Plus and watched Little Big Farm (which I thought related to Emma) and the Folklore documentary on October 18th. Before that I didn’t have enough material or coincidences to make a post. I was gonna wait a day, but I’m publishing this on the 31st to make it October’s entry. Happy Halloween! I did it now because I expect I’ll have another post for Selena’s documentary and Emma’s Pickle Ball coming out in November.

The only thing I have found I would add to Septembers Hope post was that Emma’s Prada perfume guide was 1:08 which I simply made a tweet about. I pointed out that Emma is following Sentientism, specifically worshiping Gaia (the Earth) through action and behavior. Emma is focused on Part Two of Knhoeing, which is sustainability.

In other music related news. I love Russ and his song “3:15 Breath” which I rewrote with lyrics about school shootings called “Bleed.” I’m have Young Heat remake the beat and I’m going to publish an original version early 2023. I want to collaborate with Russ and make an even better version. All this inspired me to make a homage track to Russ called “Russ in My Mind.” It took a couple month but Russ’s new song “Bet” could be interpreted (through cosmic luve) as a response to my track. You can see my perspective as an example from the Cosmic Luve July 2022 - Smoke Blunts Response Treatise.

Building off Knhoeing which is the science and educaiton of the planet and atmosphere’s consciousness, I watched Paul stamets on Joe Rogan. To Update the Blue post, Fungi could be Gaia’s brain. Paul figured out mushrooms had anti microbial properties from a waking dream. I wanna fill myself with as much knowledge as possible about a wide arrange of sciences just so I can have the possibility of grasping the natural world and her wonder while trying to synthesis a better solution to problems.

Taylor & Gaia

In my theory, and from my perspective, I see Taylor’s music as coming from Gaia. But I am an artist with a small but significant fingerprint and can’t help but think that Taylor knows about me and is saying these things while intentionally throwing it off as to not be caught. However, I think it’s much more likely that Taylor uses commonality and relatability in her lyrics so much that they happen to match up with my perspective. I guess only time will tell.

Unlike Folklore, which is what this post is about and why I think it’s to me from Gaia, I don’t think the album Midnights is about me with the exception of Sweet Nothing . “Sweet Nothing” sounds similar to “I Spy” by Kyle. It seems like it’s Gaia saying (like the beginning of I spy starts) that look around, life is good. It’s also from the perspective of Taylor that I never significantly respond to her music and all I wanted was “sweet nothing.” It’s worth mentioning that Swift’s “Lover” album came out on August 23rd, a day before my birthday.

Folklore Lead Up

In this folklore discussion I focused on strong discernible similarities between my work and the album. I want to show you my train of thought and point out the most poignant similarities. How well it came together and how easy it was to interpret this album from Gaia’s perspective given my theory is surreal. Swift said it was stream of consciousness and based off fictions. She basically let her mind go into semantics which is what I argue access is Gaia through behaviors like trance, or drugs.

It is important to the story to understand I went through a psychotic break in 2017 after making ‘The Chalice Mixtape.’ When I was in the throes of my schizophrenia I went off on Taylor. I would put on an act as characters that were sometimes directed toward her that were probably very disturbing. Folklore is about the retrospect outcome of that experience from Gaia’s perspective through Taylor.

In 2018 I wrote two treaties including the “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Reputation” treatises where I explained how her art was semantics directed toward me, which has since been deleted. Schizophrenia is a cognitive disorder so I thought the messages were coming from her internally.

I technically have schizoaffective disorder which is bipolar schizophrenia. So disociative and delusional thoughts with emotional outbursts. I was mad at Taylor for what felt like controlling me. Now that I’m on my medication and had years to think I believe it’s Gaia using Taylor as a vessle. I thought Taylor was doing this to “control my eugenics.” In retrospect this became inductive reasoning because I now think Gaia tries to control everyone’s eugenics and helps mold evolution and she’s like our stuart.

The 1

Now that you have the concept of Taylor’s role in Sentientism I’m going to explain my thoughts on each track and why I think it relates. First off the whole album has an Earthy, forestry image feel. I’m not really willing to be exploited for a record deal. So I’ll probably never be big. I’d rather be rich and anonymous that famous and broke. So I could of been the one. Back when I first got into music I thought I was “the one,” which probably was being talked about at the time because that’s what the name “Kayne” means. And schizophrenics have delusions of grandeur. I have a song were i reference myself as “the one” called “R Money.” Basically, I could of been “the one” but I never pursued my dream to that level due to mental illness and my experience with Gaia.

This brings me to the line “We were something don’t you think so.” I talk about how a computer screen opened up in my mind in my book; which brings nuance to the line “you know the greatest films of all time were never made.” As a message from Gaia, this is the start of the recount of that experience. This will come full circle by the end of the album and my experience with the line “Diggin up the grave another time.”

The “would of been the one” is a double meaning on relationships. I haven’t dated since 2012. “It's another day waking up alone.” I’ve been loving my cosmic luves for a decade, known publicly since 2017 (when I released The Chalice Mixtape). So it’s kinda a very real message from Taylor to me about how “it would of been fun” if I would of been the one.

“I have this dream you're doing cool shit. Having adventures on your own. You meet some woman on the internet and take her home.” These lyrics kinda describe the perspective, situation, and cosmic luve where I meet a girl from my internet blog and take her home after having an adventure.

Like the bridge asks, the one thing that could be different that would make everything different, would be if I hadn’t survived my 2018 episode, which is what the album seems to be about, and will come full circle by the end of the post. Taylor says the lyrics “I’m doing good I’m on some new shit, I’m saying yes instead of no” applies to the situation “where you’re updating a former lover on what your life is like now and trying to be positive about it.” That’s exactly what this album review feels like in retrospect from my perspective.

Cardigan

The music video is mossy, earthy, with a gritty feel like Gaia. The first, second, and third verses sounds like Gaia talking to me about my episodes with schizophrenia and how we came to know each other. The combination of these things is why I think the message is from Gaia and Taylor is just being used as a vessel.

Taylor sounds like she is responding to my track “Listen Alice” with the lyrics ‘And when I felt like I was an old cardigan Under someone's bed You put me on and said I was your favorite.” I put out the Chalice mixtape in 2017 when Taylor was being used as a lightning rod for slut shaming. The mixtape was a fantasy about how I met Marcus Lemonis who partnered with me to work with Taylor Swift where I met Emma Watson. In the first track of the mixtape I say “Listen Alice, always knew you were the baddest, some body please give this queen her Chalice.” So it’s like the lyric is a response saying “when no body wanted me, you made me feel special.” I wish that was true.

What makes this association even stronger are the lyrics that come right after from verse 2. “A friend to all is a friend to none” is a Aristotle quote. This could be taken as directed toward me because in one of my video journals I said I would try to contact Scooter Braun. I have since permanently rescinded that offer. But this is how I reference people in my music. I say a line associated with them, and then respond. Which Taylor’s next line is “chase two girls, loose the one” which is basically what “The Chalice Mixtape” is about.

The Last Great American Dynasty

This sounds like Gaia is talking about Rebekah Harkness or Betty. If you look at the overall appeal of the album, it’s kind of seems like a narration from Gaia on her perspective and how she has to influence.

Exile

This is one of those songs that could very well be about another person that Gaia is trying to communicate with. This could also be about the future, but it’s less likely with the lyrical content. I don’t know if I’m suppose to make anything of this song with the lyrics “you never gave a warning sign.”

My Tears Ricochet

Hearing Taylor talk about this song and how it’s about knowing someone and then them turning on you, it really reminds me of Gaia’s perspective. I have come to the conclusion that Gaia would have to see humans as dogs, and if she would institute punishment it would be like a human punishing a dog, more or less. Do murderous villians pray to God to? You would have to think, if the planet is conscious, can influence through telepathy, how would she respond to the prayers of a criminal mad man. I was angry in my schizophrenia epside, and this song is kinda like Gaia saying, from Taylor’s perspective, “what if you don’t deserve my help?” Look at how my tears ricochet.

Mirrorball

When I take a step back and look at this in reference to Gaia and the Earth, This song is about the sun. It’s a bright ball that reflects light in the center of the “dance floor.”

Seven

Taylor says this song is about how, for example, watching a child throw a tantrum in a grocery store and wonder “I feel you, when did I stop doing that when I’m upset?” So it’s “please picture me before I learned civility.

To me this is another song about my schizophrenic episodes. I was schizophrenic from onset until I consistently got on my medication from 2012 to 2019. I was mentally ill for 7 years.

August

August is my birthday month. Taylor describes in the folklore documentary how “there’s some idea that there is some villain girl that takes your man in any situation, is actually a total myth because that’s not the case at all, everyone has feelings and wants to be loved.” I think this song gives a glimps of cosmic luve using Taylor and my situation as an example.

This song has the sentiments of a real communication. It’s almost as if Taylor was fishing for more music from me but at the time I wasn’t releasing every month yet. I put out “The Chalice Mixtape” in 2017 when Taylor put out Reputation, then I made a bunch of posts about “Look What You Made Me Do” and the “Reputation” album in 2018 that have been deleted.

Then Taylor releases her album “Lover” on August 23rd 2019. This song seems like a response to how she did that, basically responded in her music and I basically did nothing (which is what I said “sweet nothing” could be about). It’s worth mentioning I always though “You need to calm down” was a message to me from Taylor (and Gaia) to take my medication. It’s also worth mentioning I have a song coming out where I bite Taylor’s style, and is about Taylor, called “Cosmic Luve Brownies” and will drop early next year.

This is me Trying

That sentiment from the last track is consistent with the title of this song. Maybe this is Taylor saying “I responded in August, this is me trying.” Taylor also seems to be recognizing my mental condition from this time as she talks about in the folklore documentary.

“I’ve been thinking about addiction and I’ve been thinking about people who are either suffering through mental illness or addiction, they have an everyday struggle, no one pats them on the back, but everyday they are fighting… but there are so many days no one gives them credit for that” Jack chimes in and says “it’s like doing your best and it’s not good enough.” “Not driving off the cliff is an act of trying” hits home especially in light of the end of this post.

Illicit Affairs

In the folklore documentary Taylor talks about how the album is not autobiographical or like something you read in a tabloid. Taylor clearly wrote this song about buying and getting addicted to illicit street drugs. But Aagain, this approach is from Gaia’s perspective. From Gaia’s perspective this song is about being in someone’s mind and the chian reaction that influence has on people.

I often think about how hard it would be to be Gaia and try to communicate. The mentally ill and substance addicted tap into trance to be able to feel her, but they don’t know she exists or mistakes it for a fictional god. This means she probably only has a real connection to the mentally unstable, which she would be trying to help. So there not mentally afflicted, it seems like Gaia would want it to be a one way communication. If you can see that then she “showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else.”

Invisible String

Taylor said she wanted to make the song about Every step you take brings you to your fate guided by this invisible string. My argument would be, what if that invisible string is Gaia? What if Earth’s magnetic field connects us all and the planet is conscious so it guides our cognition through telepetathy in order to influence our behavior. The whole point of cosmic luve is to realize every step you’ve made has lead you to this point.

This is one of the most direct instances of why I think folklore is referencing me via Gaia. When I was 16 I worded at Hungry Howies in Sturgis Michigan which had a TCBY (frozen yogurt) attached. Taylors lyrics pulled me in. “Teal was the color of your shirt When you were sixteen at the yogurt shop You used to work at to make a little money.” The only difference is that the shirts were burgundy like Howies, not teal like TCBY. How would Taylor know that? It’s almost like the album references me and intentionally throws me off “the old dusty trail.”

The second verse also seems to reference a point in my life. “Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to LA you ate at my favorite spot for dinner.” As you can read in my book “108 The Story of Discovering Earth’s Consciousness” I lived in Los Angeles for a year and the first California native place I was introduced to was In-N-Out by my friend Luis who bought me lunch. I was later also introduced to Del Taco by a coworker where I fell in love with their Chicken Tacos.

Mad Woman

From the perspective of Gaia this song seems to be exploring how this situation, of a one way communication and whose influence is conflated with fictitious gods, would drive anyone mad. I don’t know the extent of Gaia’s powers, and I don’t think she would have emotions, it would be more of a logical, parallel thinking consciousness, but as far as I can tell Gaia doesn’t like to be called names, at least that’s how she responds in my head. It makes me think, because no one knows where the planet got it’s name “Earth,” maybe she named herself and commands respect for her own sanity, just like parents teach and want respect from their children.

Epiphany

This song is about Taylor’s grandfather and the atrocities he experienced. Through the perspective of Gaia this gives a deeper example to “Mad Woman” because of the horrible things grandfather experienced he couldn’t even speak of, Gaia is in your mind and knows what you are thinking. If you think of it, in this sense, you’re not alone. The planet witnessed the atrocities, and knows your mental anguish, thoughts, and how it affected you.

In this way, and especially through other vessels Gaia can consol you. It seems the song is called “epiphany” because Gaia communicates through epiphanies. I call what she does “telepathic randonauting” and “points of realization.” She works in your mind in conjunction with the environment for you to have a point of realization, or epiphany. And this is just a reminder she’s with you through everything, the best, and worst times.

I think the realization of Gaia’s conscious influence comes full circle when Taylor is describing this track. She talks about the song and feels like “how did this slide into place? How did this come together?” Taylor is almost literally describing how her environment (i.e. Gaia) affected he life where it felt like everything was crumbling and then after an epiphany she worked on music and everything felt like it was fitting into place. The following paragraph by Taylor from the Folklore documentary really strengthens my argument”

“I often feel with this album, there have been times in my life when things have fallen apart so methodically and I couldn’t control how things were going wrong and nothing I did stopped it. And I felt I had been pushed out of a plane and scratching at the air on the way down. And I felt the universe is just doing it’s thing, it’s just dismantling my life. And this is a weird situation where ever since I started making music with you I’ve felt like that was the universe falling into place perfectly, and theres nothing I could do. One of those weird things that makes you think about life a lot.”

Betty

I think this song ties in the whole album and Gaia’s concept. Taylor says “I love this trilogy, the trinity of Betty, August, and Cardigan.” In my book “108 The Story of Discovering Earth’s Consciousness” I argue the planet, atmosphere, and sun are conscious. Betty brings this trio in where The characters like Betty, James, & unnamed; and Betty, August, and Cardigan, represent Gaia, the sun, and blue; or the sun, Earth and moon representing 108.

Peace

From Gaia’s perspective this song is about Global Warming. What if I (Gaia) can’t stop global warming, it’s up to you (humans), and I can never give you peace because I can’t solve your problem. You (Humans) have to do it. “But I'm a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm If your cascade, ocean wave blues come” could be interpreted as a reference to forest fires and ocean acidification in this context.

Hoax

From Gaia’s perspective it seem like Hoax is about realizing and appreciating Blue. As I talk about in my book, the atmosphere is alive and we are posioning it. What if we are killing Blue? What if what makes the atmosphere liveable is being destroyed by humans? Gaia wouldn’t be feeling sorry for humans that killed themselves by their own hand, but rather feel sorry for her conscious atmosphere that makes all life on the planet’s surface possible.

This is where my role in Gaia’s life comes into play. Gaia is basically telling me “no other shade of blue then you,” mean no other kind of life than you, “no other sadness in the world will do” means that our relationship is tumultuous because although humans could be responsible for the destruction of all life on Earth through global warming, there are good people like you fighting to fix it, and we need you.

The Lakes

The album ends on a track that seems personal. Not because it seems like it’s from Taylor to me, but because it seems like it’s from Gaia. It would have to be, because I have never told anyone this before. From Gaia’s perspective the album is about cosmic luve and how I, and others fit into their existence. In order to realize and conceptualize their influence I went through a schizophrenic episode.

You can read about the 2018 episode extensively in my book “108 The Story of Discoering Earth’s Consciousness” but I had a visual hallucination where a computer screen opened in my mind. It was intense and I wen through a range of emotions. One thing I didn’t want to put in the book was how I thought about committing suicide. I remember thinking about taking enough sleeping pills so I wouldn’t wake up, so it would kill me in my sleep. I was always on an empty stomach, and I have since learned that some sleeping medications on an empty stomach give me cringy anxiety.

I was in a very different mind state at the time where I was much more paranoid and I though the government was the reason for all the coincidences that I talk about now. Back then I couldn’t organize my thoughts, conceptualize what I was experiencing, or had a blog to make a historic reference. It made me think cosmic luve was the government maliciously masquerading hate as love.

One of the things that made me not take a bunch of pills, besides the cringe, was South Park. They made an episode about how Cartmen was faining suicide for attention and the song cartmam sang in the show was “ Eric we don’t want you to die Eric give life a try.”

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For sure, they were making fun of Logic’s suicide prevention number song. But in retrospect, it’s like Gaia saw my distress and infiltrated minds to make popular media that would reach me and help make the decision to not hurt myself. It seems Gaia also predicted the future because as the subject of the episode enunciates, this goes even deeper with distracted driving.

Around this same time I almost got in an accident from distracted driving. It was a snowy winter day and I met my mom every other Sunday for breakfast. Well I was running late and took a different way to save time. The roads hadent been plowed and I forgot their was a jog in the road. Right as I think I’m lost I ask my gps to directions verbally and it comes back with “captain crunch” which immediately upon hearing I slammed on my breaks.

I turned sideways, missed a tree as I went off road and squeezed between two trees as I accelerated to get back on the road after the jog. Not only I couldn’t believe I wasn’t injured, but I got back on the road. I got out and took pictures. I still think to this day Blue or a higher power saved my life by making me think to “crunch” The brakes immediately.

That’s why the lakes is about me. Michigan is the land of lakes. It’s surreal. In retrospect I think South Park really helped my subconscious and kept me from attempting suicide. It’s worth mentioning I heard Andy Grammer’s “You Saved My Life” for the first time on October 25. I talk about how South Park saved my life for the first time in my October 23rd Sunday live.

Thank You for reading.

#hip hop #rap #rapper #hiphop artist #music #taylor swift #mixtape #gaia #folklore

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achairwithapandaonit · 2 years

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okay so. I know very little about detective Conan except for stuff I’ve absorbed from tumblr etc. and I see you post about it a lot and I am Intrigued now. would you recommend and where should I start?

as it's been one of my all time favourite things for years i think i WOULD recommend it, but also with the warning of, this is over 1000 chapters and the plot progresses at a snail's pace.

as for where you start, i would recommend probably either the first chapter of the manga or the episode one remake - which is titled this on gogoanime

there's also this helpful episode guide which can show you what's anime original (and therefor obviously not gonna have any plot) and also what kind of important characters show up (ie. KID, hattori, black org, FBI): https://www.detectiveconanworld.com/wiki/Anime

(it also says the corresponding manga chapters, which is helpful)

i think a lot of the earlier mysteries were a lot more interesting so honestly i'd really suggest watching most of the earlier manga adapted ones. the animation might be old but from what i remember they slapped so hard.

moonlight sonata murder case is especially important to conan's character development. you'd be better off reading the manga version of the strange person hunt murder case cause it's actually VERY important to the plot and the anime fucked it up. kogoro's class reunion murder case lets kogoro be clever and solve something without conan tranquilising him (YEAH. that's,, a THING that i just realised u wouldn't know about. good luck deciphering what that means with no context.)

mountain villa bandaged man murder case isn't really relevant to the plot but i remember it after YEARS of not having watched it as possibly the scariest episode and being the epitome of 'ffs detective conan doesn't do scary murder like it used to' so do with that what you will.

so yeah, i would honestly recommend trying out some of the earlier grittier episodes (cause DAMN murder used to be so much darker in this series) and skipping anything anime original. if it doesn't have any of the symbols next to the episode on the episode guide i sent u then you probably won't miss anything if u skip.

uhhh also u can come and ask more if u want and this doesn't give u enough info.

there are a lot of really cool characters but some of them take a while to get introduced. hattori is introduced at the end of season 2 (he ends up basically becoming conan's bestie), kaitou KID near the end of season 3 (he's a magician jewel thief and he has his own anime called magic kaito 1412, so i'd really suggest checking that out if u like him. it's A LOT shorter than detco), and haibara near the end of season 5 (she is SO SO important to the plot). there are others?? but they're a lot later in and just don't register as much in my mind as a detective conan stable as haibara and hattori. maybe that's cause those two are actually his closest friends???

#ask tag #honestly it's so good #there's just SO much of it #i think it's earliest character arcs are the best #especially haibara's

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silver-wield · 4 years

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so after seeing cc whats ur opinion on zerith (ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT REAL CLOUDS “if only i were SOLDIER scene” and caressing tifa face in the reactor scene)

Hey, nonny! You probably thought I forgot about this. I didn't, I just think it's obvious what the answer to this is because we know how Cloud feels from Nojima.

As for Zerith, I don't ship it, but I support Zack, so if Aerith makes him happy then that's good enough for me 😁

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be smol, and not about FF7R but Icba to change my opener lol

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.

You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Please check my master post to see if I've already covered your question, thanx

Let's mosey!

No cut, I'm on my phone and it's crisis core, so I expect everyone knows what's up.

Recap time!

Grunt Cloud accompanies Zack and Sephiroth to Nibelheim, where he refuses to take off his helmet in case Tifa sees what a failure he is for not keeping their promise. Tifa dressed up pretty to wait for Cloud and is obviously disappointed he doesn't show because she never cared about soldier, she just wanted to be with him.

Tifa acts as a guide to the Nibelheim reactor. Sephiroth says this line to Zack, but it probably could be taken as an indirect line to Cloud, even though he isn't capable of protecting Tifa.

And in the next scene we get evidence of that and the implication Sephiroth's words were taken in by Cloud to prompt him to try and protect Tifa in the first place. Cloud wants to be worthy of her, so he could've seen this as a test. If he passed then maybe he didn't need to be a soldier and couple reveal himself, but he failed, so he doesn't.

It's probably embarrassing for Cloud to have Tifa help him when he's the one who wants to be strong enough to protect her. On the other hand she's really close to him, so he could low key enjoy that she'll care for him when he's hurt.

When Cloud wakes up in his room he laments not being a soldier because he failed to protect Tifa. If he were one he could show himself and have the courage to confess his feelings. It's a moment highlighting Cloud's feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem. He never considers Tifa might like him for who he is, not who he could become.

Zack warns Cloud off soldier. From Cloud's pov, he's concerned about his friend, but on the other hand, he needs to be a soldier so he can be with Tifa. It's a rock and a hard place moment.

Zack changes the subject from soldier to Tifa. He's obviously picked up on Cloud's feelings for her from the few words he said. This shows Zack is highly intuitive and empathetic.

Sort of. Because Cloud and Tifa aren't friends. They're neighbours. Cloud avoided Tifa growing up because he didn't feel like he deserved to be near her after he couldn't save her. He developed a crush on her, which deepened to love as he pined for her, but he has this grand misconception thanks to her dad that he needs to be better than he is to be worthy of her. Tifa never said anything. Tifa likes Cloud for who he is, even though he's distant and moody a lot of the time.

Yup, very intuitive Zack. This is why he'd urge Cloud to go after Tifa if he still lived, because he's seen Cloud angsty and pining about a girl he likes. He doesn't know the depth of Cloud's feelings, but he relates to them because he associates Cloud's feelings for Tifa with his own for Aerith.

And Cloud's reaction is to look defeated because he still feels bound by Tifa's father's words about needing to be strong to protect her. No matter how strong his feelings for her are he won't act on them until he thinks he can keep her safe by his side.

In conclusion

Cloud is an adorkable, shy soft spoken proud butt who feels too much. His love for Tifa drives him to be better, but it also makes him feel like he's not worthy. Not because of anything she said or did. It's because others gaslit him into believing he had to do a certain thing or be a certain way to be worthy of her, even though she literally never said anything of the sort. All she wanted was to see him again. Such a small wish and she's too shy to express it because it has the potential to turn into something big and she's afraid he doesn't feel the same way.

These idiots need locking in a room so they can talk lol

#final fantasy crisis core #CC Cloud character analysis #Scene analysis

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partnersatfazbear · 3 years

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I still have to make my Easter post...

I have a summer / beach themed Willry drawing I promise I’ll post for you guys. Probably will be a lot of sketches (composition) and a final peice that’s kinda whimsical. Like... playful/cute? Like you see those anime girls on posters in Otomedia and shit, but it’s gonna be our two bois. IDK what inspired it, but I am excited to have any inspiration at all.

I’m struggling a lot aka having my mid-life crisis... so I’m kind of figuring out what I want to do for the next twenty - forty years. I’ve thought about going back to writing (and self publishing). It is an expensive endeavor and I have no “fanbase” to speak of [aside you guys, but I’m not trying to push my personal projects on you even if I mention them now and then]. Writing isn’t even the hard part. I’ve got 12, maybe 14 books just sitting in my head. Since ‘98 (yes I’m old) I’ve only completed 2 manuscripts... however this is due to losing several due to tech issues, growing into a young adult, ect.

That’s depressing though? If any of you saw the art Scott put out for The Breaking Wheel story it’s so good. It’s how I imagined it.

My wife and I had some strain this last year so we have made Thursdays a day where we go mall walk and try to stay in shape. I’ve remade my savings by selling misc. things (truly, I wish I could own an anime/game store- in fact I will tangent a funny story below) and a little extra. Not trying to go crazy with it, but I figure I can get us a coffee to split once a week while we walk (although that kind of defeats the purpose). We’re gonna try to do more laps each time. There’s also the wonderful Peruvian booth and the salesman there... like I have to buy something every time I see him.

(I needed a new wallet and this one was amazing. My grandpa used to leatherwork and so this really reminds me of him.)

I have a strange fascination with the Inca history and culture and I even made a game demo I still intend to remake once (look up 2bitsgames on itch.io) but I may have lost the entire demo ... I think I have the assetts still, although I think I could make even better ones now. I’ve been itching to make a very traditional JRPG and this one is like Final Fantasy X (in terms of Yuna’s story) with some science fiction thrown in.

Now for that story I promised--speaking of wanting to self publish, I thought of porting my guides to importing games/anime into e-books or even Skillshare. I read horrible things about Skillshare lately, though. I think an e-book is still plausible, but not sure if there’s an audience for it. I have helped SO MANY people buy from Japan (not through myself) and that makes me feel like it would be a good endeavor...

I also am dealing with some minor health stuff and trying to distract myself by binging a new show. I just finished some Sweets / Chopped and Sweets / Nailed It thing (I actually don’t LOVE sweets unless its marshmallow) and now I’m watching Disappeared (think: Unsolved Mysteries). These kinds of shows GRIP me!

I keep straying further from FNAF, but I’ll get way back into it once the new book or Security Breach comes out. I just thrive on new content, so it’s hard for me to look at all my work and be creative with it when I don’t have new inspiration. However, if you guys want to try requesting art or one shot fics for Willry / Helliam, I am completely open to that idea and would make time for that.

I know this post is all over the place and I apologize. I have been organizing the apartment (see *some* of my Star Ocean collection below) which includes cleaning and cooking, trying to “earn my keep” while unemployed (my idea, not my wife’s). The Star Ocean collection is my baby; it’s the one thing I would never hate and means so much to me. ALOT of items wouldn’t fit here (sealed games, more figures, plush, can badges, towels, tote bags, a clock, resin kits, keychains, posters... it’s a lot guys. Let me also note this is mostly for Star Ocean: the second story and it’s remake). I’ve been seriously considering updating my HiddenGemToys blog with more reviews soon...

I job hunt but for now I am clearing out everything I can part with to build a savings so we aren’t struggling all the time. I have been playing the Mana games as you know, but I soon move onto the SaGa games, which is daunting. I counted 9 main titles although I’ve read there’s 12 games... so I have my work cut out for me.

#updates #willry #helliam #star ocean #star ocean the second story #mid life crisis

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indig0tea · 3 years

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Final 2020 Update: 2021 Goals!!

Cross posting from my devART

Also links to all my alts and shit will be at the end of the post if you need them!

So some of these may be unrealistic due to my struggles with ADHD/Depression Combo but. I wanted to get these down somewhere so you guys can see them and be aware..

Please note, my executive functioning abilities are absolutely Butchered on the regular by my ADHD alone, and the various stressors of 2020 have absolutely taken anything else I might have had in that department and tossed it out the window.

Something something something, financial stressors outside of my control sends me into shut down mode and I can't do anything productive or even fun until it's handled, but because I'm not doing anything productive, I'm not making any money, and the stressors gets worse and worse and it just ends up in a horrible cycle where I constantly want to die because I'm not able to create anything to relieve the stress! Which is why you've all seen... pretty much a standstill on my productivity save one or two pieces a month if I'm lucky

That said, I'm going to start trying (hopefully with some outside help/accountability to keep me on track while I'm unmedicated) to put a system in place that doesn't make me constantly want to die while like. maybe actually getting stuff done! So I'm making some optimistic goals for 2021 regarding both my art and ability to make money, so here goes!

I'm breaking this down into 3 parts:

Changes to expect regarding my social media, commissions in general, posting, etc;

Overall Goals for 2021;

and Goals for January specifically.

Changes to expect going forward from here:

I'm going to be making some changes regarding my social media accounts, including this one, mostly concerning when, where, and how I'm posting.

I am also going to be making some changes to my commission policies, prices, and payments in the coming year, namely:

Lastly, I will be making some changes to my art discord server!

Moving forward, I am going to be MOST active on my twitter and tumblr accounts. They're just easier for me to maintain in general, and although I hate twitter's formatting, it's just easier and faster, and frankly after deviantART and Instagram fucked with their websites/algorithms, it just makes the most sense for me as an artist.

I'm also going to be making an effort to make scheduled cross-posts on all my accounts. In the past, I've been really irregular about when and where I post things (most things got posted to my old tumblr account but never here, i rarely remember to post to instagram, etc).

This is going to include commission slots, finished piece dumps, etc.

I will also be making an effort to semi-regularly post sketch dumps, both digitial and traditional. I am also considering at this time offering a monthly digital download of my sketch collections, though I am undecided as I'm not really sure how many people would be interested.

Increasing commissions prices to reflect time spent working on specific commission types, as well as my personal cost of living.

Planning and announcing commission slots in advance.

Taking and finishing regular commissions to cover living expenses on a monthly basis

Payments will be exclusively through paypal invoice, and will be broken up in halves: first half will be taken up front after I have started and given proof of start (base sketch), the second half will be paid after completion, with WIPS given between first and second payment. Fully completed art will be given after receipt of second half. This is both for my personal protection as an artist, as well as for the comfort of the commissioner as my completion time can sometimes be long due to my ADHD/executive dysfunction.

Moving forward into 2020, my discord will be SFW, but 18+ only. This is a personal comfort thing. I'm 25 years old now, and just really don't want to spend time hanging out with teenagers.

I'm also going to start trying to schedule art streams again! Since this is the only place I can live stream due to my art computer's limitations, it just makes sense to like. Schedule them so more people are able to attend. I haven't decided exactly how that's going to look, but once I have I'm going to make an announcement and formatting guide somewhere for people to see so they can make an informed decision about joining the server.

I will also be regularly posting in the server again. This may or may not be cross posts from twitter and such, we'll see, but I DO plan on being more active there since it's been kind of dead.

I may also reformat the whole server again. We'll see!

Goals for 2021

Regular Adopt Sets -- 2-3 per month. Size, price, and number in set will be decided on case by case basis.

I'll be doing a monthly prompt for myself as well. This is just to get me back in the habit of creating things I like for myself to just feel... less bad about my art in general, and about making art. Also it'll be good for my artistic development i think?

Keeping a monthly sketchbook for warm-ups and in-between pieces. May be offered as a paid download at the end of the month, we'll see.

Might start a patreon? This is EXTREMELY dependent on what my userbase looks like. Tiers and rewards to be decided at a later date

Regular traditional sketches + scan and upload of said sketches. May also be offered in the monthly sketchbook.

Draw more self portraits & self-expression pieces! I don't know if any of yall realize how repressed I've been in the last year without therapy, and I did't either until I forced myself to pursue a vent piece earlier this month, and then felt immensely better afterward so. Going to start doing that! Maybe I'll feel better weee

Regular posting to social media! (see changes above)

Drawing less fantrolls bc I'm just bleh about them lately, drawing more original content!

Drawing fancontent that ISN'T homestuck? We'll see but I'd like to. I don't usually draw fan art bc like. Idk in my mind I don't feel like my interpretation of things is important or cool and I think thats a confidence thing and I'd like to change that so! I'm gonna start making more fan content.

Draw more full illustrations & backgrounds in general because I actually enjoy doing them it turns out?

Practice painting more !! Both traditionally and digitally....

Goals for January 2021

Finish at LEAST 1/4 of my art queue. I'm shooting for half, really, because fully completing it might actually kill me but! We'll see! Maybe I'll surprise myself. But I'm setting the goal low to keep my mental health problems in mind.

Finish and release the base set i've been working on, on and off. It's an homage to the old pixel doll days of 2009-2012, and the full sheet will be free to use (with stipulations, as I have some people blocked that I don't want using it). BUT! There will also be a mix and match .psd that will be pay to use (it'll be pay to use a, bc it'll be huge, and b, bc the edits to make it mix and match results in like 6 seperate bases in general so.... yeah. pay to use)

Finish the pay-to-use base pack i started in june (i may scrap and restart though, we'll see)

Possibly release all old p2u bases of mine in one pack on gumroad? price tbd but it will include old iterations as well as unreleased remakes.

Making some dainty-specific bases! One will be f2u, one will be p2u.

I have a whole dainty YCH set for january! I just have to finish the example... (:

Perhaps I'll be announcing a collaborative project later in the month! It depends on where each of us are at, at the time! We'll see! (: You should be excited though! It'll be a ton of fun!

EXTERNAL LINKS

Instagram

Twitter

Tumblr

deviantART

Discord server

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lamiahypnosia · 4 years

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Hype Train Keep A’Rollin, or, The Obligatory The Outer Worlds Deep Dive Rant

Okay so…

There’s like. Maybe three things in the game world I’m looking forward to.

Baldur’s Gate 3, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Peril on Gorgon. My interest in FF7R has waned, admittedly but my love of The Outer Worlds is still pretty strong.

I did preorder Shadowlands for World of Warcraft and there’s not much on my radar. I am debating checking out Mass Effect since as a person of taste I enjoy BioWare games.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is still contentious to me as I truthfully don’t care much for the tabletop RPG hit rolls and all that math shit. I enjoyed the first two Baldur’s Gate games because of the story, true. That’s my main draw, I love a good story. A good story and characters I’ll actually give a shit about. Is that so hard? Apparently it’s really fucking hard to do. But back to the Outer Worlds for a second. It wasn’t really hyped that much unless you count the obvious wink nudges to the New Vegas stans who were holding out hope that The Outer Worlds is New Vegas IN SPACE.

No, it’s not. It’s really not. As I mentioned in my review TOW is a new IP that can stand on its own two legs and sure it has a developer behind it that put out a really good game in eighteen months.

Yeah, the reason New Vegas is so sparse looking is because Obsidian could only snare the rights for Fallout from Bethesda for a little over a year so they reused assets from Fallout 3 hence why it has a DLC feel but not really, that sounds harsh. Was that too harsh?

For what it’s worth I give credit where credit is due. Obsidian busted their asses on New Vegas and it shows- the places are oozing atmosphere and the characters are outstandingly written. Too bad Fallout 4 only got that second one for the companions and don’t @ me, the companions are good and you know it. Even if Fallout 4’s story is a dumpster fire.

Fallout 76 is a dumpster fire too, not just because of the bugs and subscription platform it just…it was so full of potential, the atmosphere is perfect. Just not for an MMO. Wavy Willard’s Water Park is creepy as fuck to me, something about the decayed place of innocent fun. Though wouldn’t a water park be closed in October, because the bombs fell in October. I can’t recall if the old terminal entries were written in summer or what twenty five years before the bombs fell. This game is confusing.

Wastelanders feels unfinished and half-assed. That’s all there is to say about it. I don’t have the energy to talk about it. I was set up for disappointment. I still really enjoy exploring and crafting but I don’t enjoy inventory management (I’m a serial hoarder, ask my husband) and I really don’t enjoy getting pasted by a gaggle of level 14 cryptids while I’m level 42 because the hit detection in this game is pretty much non existent. I just wildly swing my super sledge and pray I can glitch my way through it.

Anyway.

I fell down the Reddit rabbit hole and boy, r/theoutworlds is chock full of New Vegas stans foaming at the mouth. People compare The Outer Worlds to New Vegas so much (same developer) that talking about one or the other on their respective subreddits is against the rules. I saw a review of some salty stan whining about how few choices there are in The Outer Worlds. What I hear is ‘Why is this literally not the exact same as Fallout New Vegas?! I want to be a capricious god with unlimited agency.’ The reviews are full of ‘I want, I wish, I miss.’ I made a shitpost a few weeks ago on Facebook about wanting to fight people regarding my opinion on New Vegas which is in a nutshell ‘It’s a good game, but I can’t get invested.’ The Outer Worlds on the other hand for all that it’s full of satire and black comedy had me invested.

So after my stellar review of The Outer Worlds you’re probably thinking ‘okay so where is your full disclosure essay, you love Fallout 4 and what you love you chasten’. Well now that you mention it…

From here on out there be spoilers, major spoilers for both endings of The Outer Worlds.

The Outer Worlds was NEVER stated to be an open world. I made a few minor griping points in my review about there rarely being new dialogue when you talk one on one with a character. I also think the combat is fairly standard but I don’t really care about that all that much plus the science weapons are fun. Trailers also showcased Ellie as a companion though you don’t meet her in Emerald Vale you meet her on the Groundbreaker. Also Ellie is boring.

She’s a doctor, a surgeon from Byzantium who got tired of the bureaucracy and her uptight parents so she became a pirate and…that’s it. Until you drop in to visit her parents and find out they faked her death and are living off the insurance payouts. They’re not even happy to see her because they’re keeping up appearances. All you can do is help Ellie commit insurance fraud to screw them over and Ellie is slightly less aloof from now on. That’s the character you wanna hype? Dr. Do Nothing?

Moving on. People latch on to Parvati Holcomb, the dorky precious engineer and her quest is to get things for a nice date with somebody who is already obviously into her.

She’s the cinnamon bun of the gang, full of sugar and no substance. Don’t get me wrong I love and must protect Parvati but she’s nowhere as interesting as Vicar Max or even Felix. She comes out of her shell because she gets a girlfriend. Whoop de doo.

Felix Millstone is an orphan kid from Groundbreaker who has a rebellious streak and that’s it. His personal quest is learning his old mentor is a Board bootlicker. The end. His whole arc is basically don’t meet your heroes which can include you if you’re a jerk. A filthy Board bootlicking jerk. He’s at least got a few more aspects to him, he treats Parvati, Ellie and Nyoka like big sisters and depending on actions made, treats Vicar Max like a big brother. Who were his parents? Why was he abandoned? DLC material please?

Speaking of Max.

Oof. Max is a fan favorite because priest kink. I don’t have a priest kink and we don’t kink shame here but Max is kind of an awful person. He’s mister holier than thou, only interested in his religion as a topic of debate. He’s not interested in guiding people and while you could say he spouts corporate approved platitudes he’s clearly not dumb. Far from it, he even immediately pegs the Stranger (the player character) as an outsider because they don’t look dead inside and you can call him out on how bad of a shepherd he is. Max never really gets better if you do his quest successfully. He does become less of a prick but I hold that he’s still a bad person. Maybe he’s open to not being a dick, and his banter with the other characters changes accordingly. His best ending indicates he does become a true missionary and even uses his combat skills to defend the town. It’s debatable.

Max’s character develops. He is a character who grows and changes. Sort of. Most of his character is based off how salty he is. So he learns to use the salt sparingly. Direct anger where it should go, ask questions in the right circumstances, stop acting like you know everything, embrace chaos.

It’s not like dodging the lesson is just to fit the irreverent tone. Nyoka is sad because her friends all died and that’s why she drinks. She’s still competent, trains Parvati with firearms and helps Felix with his drink recipe experiments. it feels good to help with her quest and her saying she lost a family but got a new one will give you the warm fuzzies.

SAM is a robot. I guess he’s funny in theory but I never use him. The ship ain’t gonna clean itself.

So now that I’ve thoroughly trashed all the beloved companions you might wonder what character do I actually like?

Okay. If my constant posts weren’t evidence my favorite character is Phineas Welles, the guy who wakes you up from cryosleep. Forget Parvati a second, Phineas is the best and most endearing character and I will fight you over this.

From his defiance of the Board to having the foulest mouth of the cast, his cartoony movements and love of puns, how could you betray Phineas to the Board for wealth and power? Also he builds a gun and names it Phin’s Phorce. I don’t care who you are, that’s adorable.

Still Phineas is interesting, he’s definitely a deceitful little bugger. Space grandpa, my left butt cheek. If you decide to side with the Board for whatever reason- money, you think Phineas is a liar- and skip the Hope to Tartarus for its inhabitants to be yeeted out so the elite of Byzantium can live in luxury while the filthy peasants are frozen Phineas gets pissed off and flies to Tartarus to start a prison riot taking Adjutant Akande hostage. You can try to talk him down and even if you succeed and try to talk him into surrendering to the Board he refuses, stating that he will not crawl back and beg them for forgiveness. Then he pulls a gun and shoots himself in the fucking head.

If you’re an immersion addict like me you might get on a lawful stupid ‘kill what I see as evil’ streak and you plugged Chairman Rockwell and Adjutant Akande because they’re bad evil guys you’re missing the point.

I’m not saying this is some kind of character deficit in you in real life but to get a better picture of how good the writing in The Outer Worlds is, hear me out.

I had a discussion with a friend asking what alignment Phineas and the Board would fit in. He said Phineas is chaotic neutral, bordering chaotic good whereas the Board is lawful neutral.

The Board is just greedy and they’ve lost their sense of identity which makes them a blank corporate face instead of individuals. They’re built up as this faceless omniscient entity but when you pull aside the curtain you find they’re just people stumbling about screaming ‘oh shit now what do we do?’ as becomes abundantly clear when you meet Minister Clarke. There’s a coverup happening because of course there is.

Phineas has kept his identity, his truth. If you think about it Phineas is only doing what he does to prove the Board wrong and that just happens to save the colony- an altruistic middle finger if you will. He’s standing off to one side pointing and screaming ‘see I was right!’

He had no qualms about sending you to your probable death- you were lucky but you still only had a twenty eight percent chance of not becoming a puddle. Phineas also had some rather jarring dialogue about shooting the members of the Board in the back of the head. His actions, his beliefs are absolute. And that, dear readers, is what keeps him from being chaotic good.

You can talk both Chairman Rockwell and Adjutant Akande into helping you and Phineas isn’t thrilled but he trusts you to handle it. It’s easier to shoot everyone and sweep our problems under the proverbial rug, isn’t it? Are Rockwell and Akande bad people? Maybe? A little, but mostly they’re ignorant and shit has to hit the fan before they’ll listen. But they do listen.

The pro Board ending puts me in mind of an old George RR Martin short story called In The House Of The Worm. It takes place in an old crumbling ruin deep underground where there two races, the grouns and the yagalla’hai, are constantly at war with one another. They fight, kill and eat each other. The yagalla’hai are nihilists who worship decay and don’t really give a fuck about that they’re probably all going to die unless they mate with the grouns and the sun is dying but sure let’s feast, dance, fuck and party all the time.

You can yeet everyone on the Hope into space and live a life of extravagant wealth til the end of your days while Halcyon crumbles apart around you. Meanwhile all your cuddly companions are miserable beyond human comprehension, their dreams crushed and that nice old man who saved you dies, betrayed and alone.

Do you feel good about yourself? Are you happy with how that turned out?

Nyoka makes an interesting point that Halcyon needs order. You can still talk to her like an edgy teenager who favors absolute anarchy. Yes, the colony needs order, they just need BETTER order. I think I had a point to make? Oh yeah, The Outer Worlds is fucking amazing and deserves every drop of hype and I cannot fucking wait for the DLC. That’s the post.

#the outer worlds #spoilers #major spoilers #i am not kidding there are spoilers #phineas welles #i love him so much oh my law

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

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The Promised (Never)land: a Thrilling Plan of Salvation

I’m happy to introduce Gaharet, our newest writer! You may have seen him haunting our comment section, but now you’ll see much more of him and insight on Beneath the Tangles. The eldest of ten siblings who are all avid readers, Gaheret is a is a Catholic lawyer from Spain, too tall for Robin already but not serious enough for Batman yet. Interested in heroism, wonder, hope and Christ, he looks for them from the realms of Philosophy and Theology to the Arthurian cycle, Dostoyevski, and comics. He discovered anime after University much to his joy, mostly through Beneath the Tangles. Besides here, you can also find him writing on his website (in Spanish).

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A happy childhood in a household by the countryside. A somewhat separated world. Loving parents, being the eldest of many siblings, new ones joyfully looked forward to and then received into the family where we watched them grow, good grades in class, a lot of books, small adventures exploring the forest not far from the house, and interesting conversations about people, deductions and discoveries, the past and the future with other kids as the sun sets. And then, as adulthood is approaching, the horror: the monsters. The parallels and coincidences are many, so it´s no wonder that I saw a lot of myself as a kid in the special children of The Promised Neverland (2019), a clever thriller with no less clever child protagonists dealing with themes of horror, family, love, and survival. My ordinary life back then had a lot in common with that of Emma, Norman, and Ray. That may be what has helped me to see, step by step, that my current life is not too removed from it either.

I´m pretty sure I’ve never enjoyed an anime as much as this one: it has so much in it of the shows I enjoy most, from the strong feeling of place in Haibane Renmei to the childhood/adulthood themes of Erased to the moral clarity in convoluted circumstances and hope against all hope of Now and then, here and there. But more than that, as I was watching it and meditating about the themes, I found so many parallels to my Catholic faith and my own life with God from childhood on that I can say it helped me to look at it with fresh eyes in a way few works of fiction, anime or not, have. It works perfectly without adding the considerations I´m gonna make, as a thriller epic. I´m not a manga reader, so please refrain from spoilers in the comments: also, I´m going to freely discuss the twists and turns of the first season (not to mention my own life): spoilers ahead.

I hope my first paragraph has managed to capture a glimpse of the powerful and Edenic attraction of that place, the House, an orphanage of sorts where sons and daughters live and grow as siblings, as there is usually something Edenic in a childhood with loving parents. The story conveys it in various ways, and maybe the most striking is the color symbology: From the opening, The Promised Neverland uses white and red to symbolize innocence and blood, so even the white clothes are reminiscent of the original nakedness of Genesis, which evokes the same idea. A world arising from unconditional love and deep union, image of the union of the Holy Trinity, worth exploring, powerful and stable, for us to grow with others and develop our unique talents while hoping for a future of wonders unseen.

And yet, something feels off. There are books, symbols, and pieces of the past here and there, and they point to something that has been lost. Some things are missing; some have changed. I believe this is a universal experience: Even as children, we tend to know there is a gap between the law we discover in our hearts and some aspects of reality, even if we don´t mind at first. Growing in a mostly post-Christian Spain was the specific form this uncanny feeling took in my case. The Cathedral of Leon is full of light and color much like the Temple of the Bible, but why was it almost empty, while the Temple was full of pilgrims? How come that so few people knew about Christian wisdom outside of my family and the books, while almost everyone in, say, a Dickens novel knew about Grace and Providence? And then the day comes when you meet face to face with something powerful and dark, and discover with shock and utter horror that there is something in this world, close to you, that could devour and destroy you and those you love.

Monsters who devour children are the primal symbol of evil in children tales, and one cannot but feel a primal fear seeing them. While the models of the monsters are predators in Nature, I believe that much like Christ warns us to be afraid not of those that kill the body, but of those who kill the soul, every fear, even physical, is an echo of the true fear that monsters symbolize: being destroyed by turning myself into a monster voluntarily, and for it to happen to the people I know and love. Sin, after all, is the worst of evils and the source of all the rest. To discover in your own darkness and that of others that this is a very real possibility, and to see the immense power of that darkness both in yourself and in the world with its “prince,” is a shocking experience. For me, a first shock was the sudden loss of faith of my entire class at school when we turned twelve (funnily enough). Suddenly they left God behind without a second thought, as if he were Santa, and all at once started behaving in ways I knew to be seriously wrong. The second was the dark and disturbing reality of my own sins. Even the good things, while remaining good, are tainted and compromised as you become more aware. The sins of the people we had previously trusted and the suffering and the death of the innocent in this world are perhaps the strongest signs of this reality. Norman and Emma suffer both at once.

Much as when Adam and Eve hide after the Fall and make excuses, or Cain suddenly fears a world of murderers even if he is the first, the worldly logic created by sin sucks us into it through our wounds and the wounds of the world. The passions, the animal wants and fears, have become disordered as a result. Even psychologically, when confronted with these signs of evil, we tend to lose hope in the goodness of the world. There is nothing more natural than than trying to survive at all costs, even disregarding others, and thus Norman first did as much. It feels like this is just what the world is. Other possible reactions are forgetting about that, go along with the crowd, and trying to live a superficial life, focusing on developing your abilities so as to remake your world, or a part of it at your own image (I´m looking at you, Ray, and to Lelouch Lamperouge), or build an armor and retreat into something not so far from the infamous eight-grade syndrome, as I myself did with the likes of Hikigaya Hachiman, or focus on recreating, Utena-like, the external circumstances of the time when we were happy, or running for just one bit of power, satisfaction, or pleasure that seems to be within our reach, becoming increasingly cynical about everything else. So, when Emma rejected all that and said, “I don´t want anybody else of my precious family to die!” instead, I felt a true bolt of hope. It strongly resonated with me, and here´s why.

A thrilling plan of salvation in the everyday world, born from a love strong and pure enough not to exclude anyone, humble, down-to-Earth, clever, difficult and wise but also full of simplicity and open to all (for everyone has a role in it), motivated by the desire to save, for everyone to live—does that sound familiar? “I don´t want anybody else of my precious family to die!” For me, it´s kind of an echo both of the “so that you may live” of the Deuteronomy, and the “I have come that they may have life” of Our Lord. To give us life, not a few or even many years more, but a new kind of life which destroys death for us and others. To save us. Of course, as a Christian, I knew and I prayed that people would be saved, and tried to help, to spread the Gospel, to live in charity. But perhaps my heart hadn´t felt with such intensity and hope that He really wants us, each of us, to live, to escape sin and eternal death, to be with Him, to bring us to a better house, a better land which we know a little because it resembles the first. Or more accurately, because the first resembles it: the first Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem. He cares about the rest of our sorrows, our needs and our hurts, and helps, as He did in Palestine, but he wants the endgame: We are under the shadow of death, and he wants us to live.

And how does he attract us to this plan? He promises us a new land; he promised it to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses and the Israelites, to the prophets and the exiled and to David, to Our Lady and to Joseph, to the Apostles. It had everything they could dream of and more: It had Him. He promised the patriarchs a people which will be theirs and without number, to Moses a free land in which to live in justice, to the prophets a Messiah and a new kind of kingdom, to David the eternity of his house, and to the Apostles that they would become fishers of men. He also gave them signs of hope, among them the deliverance from various sufferings and the earthly land of Israel. Much like this, Emma and Norman guide the rest to the Promised Neverland, and Emma´s love and their own past becomes a sign of hope for how they will live there. As all those who were called by the Lord, something has to be left behind, and the road forward is full of danger and uncertainty. The “follow me, and I´ll show you something cool” also felt hopeful, and very similar to the “come and you will see” of the Gospel: Reject the story of revenge and death you have thought for yourself, become a sibling for a lot of brothers and sisters, help and be helped in the way to the Promised Land. Or leave the things you deem riches and come for something new: I call you; follow me. It has always been the same for me: God has convinced me again and again that there is something incredible at the other side, something that includes me, Him, and His precious family, and all which is good, yet goes deeper than I can perceive now. Even as I stray, sin, and fall again and again, I continue to turn back to Him, because, like Peter, I know somehow that only Christ has words of eternal life.

The fact that some people we love are revealed to be servants of the enemy, yet they are included in the plan, and how both Mama and Sister are saved, was easily what made the show jump from really good to great, as the thorough defeat of utilitarian logic by a logic which doesn´t lose any of its cleverness or its strength, but gives them its true meaning instead. Ray and Norman were similar, but Norman was converted to love by his love of Emma. The way this loving, hard hope is gradually given to everyone as a call to serve the rest, come to be part of the sometimes mysterious plan under the authority of the elders and give the best of your peculiar abilities was very like the Church, and the mutual love of Emma and Norman, innocent and childlike as it was, recalled the words of St. Paul about marriage being similar to how Christ sacrifices Himself for the Church. A child is a great symbol of how we are to be before God, and these children are as innocent as doves and as shrewd as serpents. Trumping the logic of the world of adults, demons, utilitarianism, and Ray, and freeing the villains from it, was a great thing to see. How they become a sign for each other, loving everyone, yet being prudent and humble about what they can do (Emma´s decision towards the smaller ones) made me want to be stronger, wiser, and more loving myself, which I think it´s the very purpose of epic stories.

The Christlike sacrifice of Norman for the sake of Emma, the rest and especially Ray, to bring him out of the pit of darkness he got himself into, and the Shawshank Redemption way it is presented—darkness, violence, death of the beloved and the innocent, everything seems lost, then we discover it was all part of the plan—makes it even more compelling and more parallel with the Gospel: Is the same thing the Disciples experienced in the Passion, what Joseph and Mary didn’t understand at the Temple, and what we don´t understand every time we meet the Cross. Suffering is a mystery, and the plenitude of suffering, the biggest mystery. And yet, beyond our understanding, Christ has met us there and is fighting for us. The loving yet decisive goodbye of Emma to the House and to Mama was also memorable and unique: She truly has rejected hate and embraced all the good there was in the house, even when following the hopeful path and leaving. Jesus loved the Temple, even if it needed to be set of fire, and Israel. Is easy to hate those who harm us, the enemy, a natural impulse: We forget the menacing Mama is a wounded child too, one of the family, another lost sheep. But as Christians, we know Christ sees them also as the lost sheep, and fights for them too. Even during the Passion, He is praying for the last one of His executioners, working for their salvation. At His last moments, he fights for the soul of those crucified with Him. And Mama, at least, is converted.

The post-death Norman (whatever it may happen in the future) who walked for a moment at the side of Ray and Emma, made them feel his presence, caused them to remember his words, and disappeared again behaved very much like Christ does now (only He is alive and acts). Ray, redeemed from his path of revenge, letting go the sword, strengthening others as he was, and occupying his place with his limitations, is much like Simon Peter. He is the father of the orphaned flock, and Emma is the mother, as Mary, and like her she is the closer friend of Norman, and they walk with his spirit to the Promised Neverland. The family is divided in two, as Israel from the Church, yet will be united, as St. Paul tells us with passionate love. And the last scene, “This is our first day,” with the sun coming up in a world without our old certainties, dangerous but hopeful, was very like us experimenting with the fruits of Resurrection: The danger and the new life begins here.

=====

The Promised Neverland can be streamed on Crunchyroll.

#Anime #Christianity #The Promised Neverland #Yakusoku no Neverland #Articles #Author: Gaharet

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atrainernamedradish · 4 years

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Top 5 Favorite Rivals

Least Favorite list: https://atrainernamedradish.tumblr.com/post/190290513502/top-5-least-favorite-rivals

Top 5 Favorite Rivals:

5) Barry [Diamond & Pearl; Platinum]

I think people can agree with me when I say Barry either needs to lay off the sugar and caffeine, or needs some Adderall, because holy fuck he was so damned hyper it was unreal! And before someone gets mad at the joke let me remind you that there is some dialogue where he tries to count to ten, and proclaims he can’t even sit still to do so! Like sweet Lord Barry calm the fuck down lol!

Jokes aside, I thought Barry was a solid rival. He wasn’t mean-spirited about being so or always trying to act better than you about it. Sure, he was cocky, but he eventually learned that he had to put his ego aside to actually learn how to be that much of a better trainer. His teams were pretty solid too. He wasn’t the hardest person to face, but he wasn’t a pushover by any means. Sometimes his hyperness was a bit annoying, but nothing that bugged me for too long. He was a good rival to have when you’re trying to deal with the headache that is the other rival that is your boring opposite gender.

4) Marnie [Sword & Shield]

Marnie is an interesting character. When I first saw her in the reveals for Sword & Shield I thought she was going to be this arrogant punk (I blame the black leather and spikes :P), but when you actually meet her that isn’t the case. She’s actually someone who doesn’t have that much confidence in herself, at first though, but as you progress through the game she builds up to that. In fact, the only thing she was confident in was not taking over her brother’s gym and setting out to do her own thing. Besides believing how confident she was going to be, I was also expecting Marnie to have this annoying personality (but I feel like that was due to Team Yell being there more than anything), but once again she blew my expectations out of the water! Her personality was sweet and likeable and it was refreshing! Her team was actually a pretty powerful one and was actually fit her aesthetic! That’s actually rare for a rival in this series if I’m being honest… From her aesthetic that mixes hard and soft (which yay the girls will be getting her outfit which I adore and can’t wait to have on my alt character!), her sweet shy personality that eventually gets some quiet confidence behind it, and her battle prowess, I enjoyed her as a rival as opposed to the other two who either got shafted by the overdone formula, or the one rival trying to be the OG rival who we’ll never truly get back.

3) Blue (Green) [Pokemon Red & Blue (Green); Yellow (Pikachu Edition); FireRed & LeafGreen; Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee]

And speaking of the OG, here he is: Blue (or Green if your Japanese). Many Pokemon games after the originals have tried to replicate this character, and haven’t quite made one that is up to snuff. This character is a perfect blend of cocky asshole and a strong trainer. You almost liked how much smack he talked then enjoyed kicking his ass after the fact, and doing so wasn’t always an easy feat, even in the remakes (excluding the Let’s Go series since he isn’t your rival in that). He had almost the perfect team not only against your starter but to also counteract your team members that made up your team for said starter’s weaknesses. That’s why kicking his ass was all that much sweeter because he didn’t just hand it to you. He made you work for that victory. While I’m not necessarily someone who is looking for a rival that has to be an elite trainer or anything, it’s nice to not have a friendly rival who talks a big game but is always going to face defeat, and quite easily and quickly too, by your hands. There have been some other rivals that have been pretty tough to deal with, but not as challenging as Blue will ever be… There’s a reason you will find this asshole on almost every top rival list. He earned that spot. Because despite being that smack talking asshole that you have to work extra hard to beat… he is kind of charming. He’s the rival you love to beat.

2) Bianca [Pokemon Black & White; Black 2 & White 2]

I want to make this clear with about my opinions on characters in Pokemon: they don’t have to be the strongest to be my favorites or even liked for that matter, and Bianca is one of those characters as far as battling prowess is concerned. I like Bianca for her character arc as well as the character herself. I think this character gets a lot of hate for no reason other than her not being a strong trainer, or not automatically being this confident cool character that should be ready to adventure which is honestly sad…

For me, Bianca is a very relatable character who in my honest opinion is a very underrated character. She is a character who wanted to do something with her life, but wasn’t sure how to start or go about doing it. Her first attempt is by doing what all the other characters her age do and that’s to set off on her own Pokemon journey, even if she wasn’t exactly ready. As her story progresses she comes to realize that that isn’t for her, and honestly not every person in that world is going to go out there finding out that this is for them. Not to mention not everyone who sets out on their Pokemon journey is going to find themselves being these super powerful trainers who are always going to confidently beat everything in their path. Bianca getting picked on by Team Plasma was not all that farfetched. She was a brand new trainer experiencing new things making her an easy target for them. Your character could have easily been just as privy to Team Plasma. Generation V showed that anyone was susceptible to them. But anyway, I’m going a little off topic, Bianca did struggle, but her struggles eventually took her to her calling: being a professor’s aid. Which fits her and overall is a good story arc for her. She’s not your typical rival of going around trying to one-up you and getting on your nerves trying to do so. She’s a friend, a main character, and unlike the typical power hungry overused rival archetypes, she grew and I was happy for her.

Not to mention, Bianca is one of the first few characters in the series to actually really… notice that there is this big new world around you and it’s something to explore taking it in as opposed to rushing into filling the Pokedex or doing the Gym Challenge, and honestly that’s refreshing for a character! Because you cannot tell me that if you were to leave your home setting off on a journey traveling to many new places that you’d overlook everything? Probably not. You’d want to explore all the new sites. That’s the whole point of an RPG is to explore. I felt more immersed in Black & White than most Pokemon games because I had a character in my journey to make it feel like it was actual exploration instead of bare bones places with much to be had. Unova, as to other regions, had a lot more sightseeing options and a lot more to explore. Unova just felt big, kind of like Johto and Kanto for GSC/HGSS. Just, thanks Bianca for feeling like a real person, instead of one-dimension rival who either wants to kick my ass or is so boring that I wish they were annoying lol…

1) Wally [Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire; Emerald; Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire]

It’s like I stated with Bianca: a rival for me doesn’t have to have battle prowess to be liked by or be a favorite for me. Not gonna lie, I wish Wally had a better team, but unfortunately Wally falls under the earlier formulas of forcing trainers to use entirely new Pokemon instead only peppering their teams with a few new ones, but whatever…

Wally has one of my favorite rival arcs. He is a sickly kid who wants so badly to be healthier and have a Pokemon of his own so he could one day to set on his very own Pokemon journey like the other kids who have probably left by now on it. Nicely enough your character is there to guide and watch over him as he finally catches his very own Pokemon, even if later you were there to kick his ass a bit later on… While I do like how ORAS gave more facial expressions for this character to make you more sympathetic to him in the story… I wish they hadn’t had him show up after your battle with your dad to keep that mysteriousness of him actually progressing along side you on your Gym Challenge (yes I know you could read the gym signs to see that he’s doing it, but no one thinks to read those, let’s be honest!) before running into him at the end of Victory Road, but oh well. Honestly I wish they had had him in the Champion spot, kind of like what RBY did with Blue, but instead of knowing your rival was one step ahead of you as always you had the sickly kid you thought you sent home after a crushing defeat there instead who actually overcame it and decided to meet you there to prove he did so.

Overall Wally was an underdog and I like characters like that. You don’t expect him to become much more powerful after Mauville. He takes his defeat and he does his best to make up for it by having it push him. He wants to be stronger to prove to everyone, but more importantly to you, the person who was there to witness his journey from the start, how capable he was. Yeah, you do inevitably beat him, which is the fate of the main player in Pokemon, but when you do it you don’t think “aw man I beat another weak rival” or “hah! I beat your smug ass again!” you think of how it was a fun battle and a great progression in a well developed character’s story. And even then, Wally doesn’t take the defeat as a loss, but more as a way to push himself even further. He sees losing as a way to overcome something as to trying to cover up his frustration or to go packing home, and that is an admirable trait. Plus the final battle with him on Victory Road was pretty epic with that new theme of his as well as made me a bit sad because I had to beat him and all he did was smile and thank me… Made me want to cry lol… But that’s why Wally is my favorite rival. He has a great character arc, personality, and he makes me feel so many emotions that I feel like other rivals or characters couldn’t give me… Good job Wally you will always be the rival.

#rival barry #rival marnie #rival blue #rival wally #rival bianca

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listoriented · 5 years

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“B”een There

done that.

So here ends my time playing games that start with the letter B. Thanks for reading! It's been three years plus change. Back in early 2016 when I pondered how the world might look when I finished another letter, I never imagined, even from that unsteady ground, just quite how different things would become (in terms of global political-psychological landscape) - though really all the top-down drama happened that year, and everything since then has just felt like the normalisation and ratification of it, this splintered-systemic madness, the post-parody, post-fake fake-real. Or whatever you want to call it.

Nor did I imagine that it would take me so long. But, life. I went overseas, moved houses, moved cities, went through a breakup, started a PhD, rode a bike, read some books, faffed around. I anxiously played hundreds of hours of Rocket League; I ticked off every achievement in Mini Metro; I spent too long trying to remember what I was doing in Stardew Valley. I reviewed some games over at Gamecloud, which wrapped up earlier this year. Time accumulated in a predictable but upsetting way.

Beloved demigod of gaming blogs RPS went through a full staff turnover, pretty much. It's weird, man. VR happened but remains a bit beyond my periphery, even if it gets brought up from time to time in the groupchat. Battle Royale games weren't a thing a few years ago, then they became everything, now they are still a big deal, the biggest deal, or maybe a large-medium deal, or just a large part of the background - I honestly don’t know how to quantify this. Steam's ubiquity has slipped markedly, through a mixture of managed negligence and increasingly aggressive competition. The inherent limitations of being bound to one commercial distribution system on one hardware platform have always been at the back of my mind, but I do increasingly wonder if my time would be better spent on a project that dug through other veins. The answer is, for now, that sometimes you've gotten keep doing the thing you said you were gonna do, if no other reason than because.

Tumblr, our home since 2016, has gone through its own shifts and controversies in this time too. They no longer seem to allow unencoded links (so no-one ever knows what they’re clicking on), it became less friendly to adult content, and as of today apparently Tumblr has been sold on to wordpress. I don’t really know the implications of this last thing.

Some Maths

I played fifty one games beginning with B. Of the forty-eight that I'd deem to have some notional metric of completability, twenty-four of those I (often in the most flexible sense possible), "completed". 50%: Not as bad as I'd expected, TBH, especially as that includes a couple of painful six/seven game streaks where I didn't finish anything.

Ceremonious Award Giving for Games Starting with ‘B’

It is always hard to pick favourites, and from any given vantage point they tend to change. Nevertheless, an act of self-canonisation is in order, as is tradition. Given the nature of this project, I do put a lot of value in titles that surprise me in one way or another. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Bulletstorm were equal Best Goofy Action surprises (it pays having low expectations, sometimes), with an honourable mention to Brigador. The Banner Saga was the most surprisingly thought provoking. Davey Wreden’s autoficitive The Beginners Guide gets the Anodyne Prize for Most Enjoyably Difficult To Put In A Box.

Botanicula was probably my Favourite (total) Revisit, or the best non-surprise.

B was a letter characterised by a few high-budget action series (of which my favourite part was Bioshock 2 (Minerva's Den)), held up by substrate of modest indie things of varying impact. My attention span was all over the place, too. We had a lot of short forays with little to say, but there was there were also more than a few wordier attempts at thought. I'm bad at judging what makes "good" writing, particularly of my own, which I oscillate between accepting and loathing, but I can tell you which games/posts took the cake for length and effort: Baldur's Gate for longest playtime; Burnout: Paradise for highest word-count (and longest gestation period); Battleblock Theater for the most time-consuming method of putting a post together; The Beginners Guide for the most times played through a game in order to try and parse it; Braid for the most external reading and referencing.

I think the most absurdly Expensive-at-purchase game here was Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which also gets the newly thought of I Can’t Believe It Still Has Functioning Online Multiplayer prize. I'm handing the Most Disappointing badge to Broken Age, despite (or because of) already having played it a bunch before attempting it for the list, though Before the Echo (fka Sequence) takes the Aquanox Award for game I inexplicably sunk the most time on trying to finish despite not really enjoying. I hold the Most Contempt for Breach & Clear. Black Mirror had the Worst Voice Acting, and it was also the Oldest Game here (2003), at least in terms of no-significant-alterations though depending on how you want to factor in remasters and remakes, you might alternatively give that prize to Broken Sword (1996) or Bionic Commando Rearmed (1988). Blueberry Garden was Purchased Most Long Ago, in 2009, though the Aquaria Trophy for Longest Unplayed Incumbent goes to Bob Came in Pieces, which I'd bought in 2010 then never installed (it's pretty good, it turns out!). However, the special Emotional Closure Award goes to Baldur's Gate, with which I already had nearly two decades of fond, scattered memories, before finally finishing for the first time during this project.

More Maths

When I started this letter I had 438 games in my steam library. Right now I have 1049 games, which is almost exactly three times the amount I had when I started this blog in October 2015 (~350). I've played 70 games total. A further 57 entered the list behind the marker, into the exempt scorched land of the already visited alphabet, which means we're at 127/1049 = 12.11% of the way through the list, which is a +7% increase on where we were at three years ago. That's not nothing. But at 2.5% per year, it's not a lot. Globally, the average human lifespan is 68 years.

Terrifying Implications For the Future

The maths says that the current terms aren't working, that I'm drowning in a heady mixture of my own relentless consumerism, hesitation, and procrastination from this task which is itself an avenue of procrastination - that at this rate I will probably die (or certainly give up) before even getting to the halfway point, and that we can't continue like this in good faith.

So I'm going to get a bit reckless, even change the rules slightly, in order to try and breathe new life into this thing. All games must still be played for at least an hour - yes, that one stands. But. BUT. I'm setting a hard time limit of one week, from one game to the next, post to post. For now at least. No more lofty words about striving to "finish" games as a rule rather than exception. It's quantity over quality (pretending for a second that quality was ever a concern) from here on out, business over pleasure, irreverence over lengthy considerations, scrapbooking over essays.

On the bright side, this means I can have a weekly posting schedule. Let's say Tuesdays? Tuesdays seem like a good day for posting.

A couple of other things:

List Oriented now has a ko-fi tip jar, just in case you, dear reader, enjoy this blog - or did before it went completely silent for the first half of this year - and feel like helping to pay for my caffeine addiction and/or encouraging me to keep going with this task.

Another thing I want to do is compile a list of links to good places for games-writing and other things that I like, because a) I feel like such a page would be helpful for me to keep a record, even if for nobody else; b) my conception of the internet is permanently stuck in 2008 but also; c) it's hard to remember where to look for good things on the internet, sometimes, these days, given our habitual over-reliance on various platforms to direct us to CONTENT. But one thing I want to include is a list of other places where people are doing this kind of list-oriented project thing. I remember a bunch of them sprung up a couple of years back when we gained a brief and relative flash of notoriety, though I’m not sure how many stuck at it. If you yourself are doing one, or you’re aware of any others who are, Let Me Know!

Anyway, looking ahead. C. An obtuse but interesting letter. Not so many of the big-hitters. A buuuuunch of city builders and management games, a few influential and/or janky platformers, more than a handful of puzzlers, some famed RTS series, a heap of question marks, a coupla interesting art things and a few uh *squints* Shooting Game. Happily for me, a lot of titles that I've not yet gotten round to giving a go, so this will be all...fresh.

I have a vague memory from when I got through A, of looking ahead to C and thinking at least it was a much more compact section than B, at the time, some light on the other side of what I'd already known would be a slog. But here we are three years later, and now there's fifty seven such games beginning with C, so there goes that thought. You'd think, having identified the consumerist-excess problem that catalysed this stupid thing, I would have stopped buying game bundles at some point, made this ridiculous project a bit easier for myself, a little more plausible for everyone else.

But, we must continue. It's a new day. A new letter. A new schedule.

The way is long and it is littered with videogames.

above: “celebrating” my “achievements” with a ‘b’eer

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beyond-far-horizons · 5 years

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Thoughts on Dany + Jon Post Ending

Can’t get this out of my head so I’ll thought I’d get things off my chest. Doesn’t cover everything about this season and the way the series was handled over all by a long shot.

Spoilers under the cut.

I feel so sad, so heartbroken for Dany. For Jon too but especially for Dany.

I’ve read and seen enough think pieces to see both sides and see how the Mad Queen angle could have worked if things were done a little differently and might have been fantastic if heartbreaking if the turn had happened long before and was supported by better writing and development. Also from things hinted I’m now worried this is indeed where GRRM is going for the books (if he ever gets to the end...), if only because the bittersweet gut-wrenching feeling in my chest is what the Red Wedding would have felt like if I had been a fan at the time it aired. It is so very GOT to get you to invest in the Heroine’s arc, the Saviour, the power fantasy, the Chosen One destiny, just to turn it back on you and show you a villain instead. However the Villain Face-Heel turn has actually been done many times and in many cases much better.

The thing is, as so many have said, it just came too late and was unsupported by the writing especially this season. The seeds were certainly there but they weren’t nurtured and the key thing is we weren’t with her enough especially in the Bells episode to see that crucial tipping point.

But the worse part for me is the tragedy of Dany’s life and her dreams. It felt like ever since she came to Westeros she has been gradually stripped of all that she loves. We have been so anxious for her to come home and claim her crown that she’s heard about and suffered for all her life and ever since she made that journey Highgarden, Dorne and the Iron Islands were lost, Viserion was killed and zombified, Jorah was killed protecting her, most of her Dothraki and Unsullied were slaughtered, Rheagal was killed, Missendei was captured and killed - all through her trying to save her land and her people, all because she listened to Tyrion and co and gave Cercei chance after chance. Finally she was betrayed by the man she loved and stabbed to death while he professed his undying love and loyalty.

That look of shock and Drogon nudging her futilely then going nuts and finally carrying her off into distance all to Ramin’s transcendent score just broke me. It was awful. Awful that her personality just got slaughtered, that she would honestly say ‘they don’t get to choose’ to Jon, knowing what it is like to be sold and abused with no voice. That’s not Dany! Awful that after everything she has endured - the loss of her family and inheritance at the start of her life, the abusive childhood on the run, being sold and raped by Drogo, having to adapt to the Dothraki then losing it all along with her husband and child, wandering in the desert, being betrayed and having to fight and remake herself countless times, struggling to do the right thing in Esso and Westeros and through all that raising three dragons to adulthood and bringing magic back into the world. She deserved better than the shit she got, especially from the Starks in Winterfell - she came to save your damn asses! (or if they are going to be mistrustful PLEASE D & D give them a proper reason - spell it out, talk about the Stark/Targ history, give us some proper Robert’s Rebellion R & L stuff. Jon never brings up in S7 the fact that Dany’s father killed Rickard and Brandon and would have killed Ned & Robert too, not to mention Rheagar allegedly kidnapping Lyanna - it would have been a great way to level her haughtiness and keep the R + L = J theme going as well as highlight the potential Targ madness. That coupled with Sansa’s experiences of being betrayed and the Dothraki etc then yeah I’d get the distrust.)

Anyway I can’t look back at those poignant or badass scenes of hers in earlier seasons now. It makes me feel desolate and frankly dirty to feel I was cheering a tyrant in the making. I love bad guys, I even love tragic heroes that go crazy and kill those they love - (see Wheel of Time - The Dragon/LTT), but Dany never felt like that. Her heart felt too pure for that corruption. She lost herself and didn’t even see it - that’s not Dany no matter how much she has suffered. I possibly could see her losing it and then feeling deep remorse but not full on megalomania.

Also it has to be said I did feel the unconscious misogyny of Crazy!Queen has to be put down by One True Male Heir and Tyrion’s all ‘we tried to guide her and help her with her worst impulses’ like fuck that shit Tyrion, it’s not your fault the writers made you carry the Idiot Ball for the last how many seasons but your shit advice and betrayals have directly led to this, everyone knows Cercei ain’t gonna negotiate, you muppet! The only shocking thing is why she didn’t kill you all those times you were in her grasp! Again like others have said it’s the insidious message underneath - the crazy woman and her crazy emotions, not being able to escape your family history, Missendei dying in chains, Jamie forgoing all character development, saying he didn’t care about the innocent people and he really did love Cercei, Jon being exiled at the Wall again, forever an outsider. GOT has always been about subverting traditional fantasy archetypes and I never expected a happy ending, but this wasn’t the bittersweet finale of LOTR, this felt wrong, even though there were some great moments.

Props must go to Emilia Clarke though - she has come such a long way as an actress and I felt bad for her, reading about all her struggles for the role, fresh out of drama school, having to have brain surgery and everything. In those last two episodes she gave everything she had, she really did Daenerys justice even if the writing didn’t and so did Kit Harington (another actor who I had my doubts about). They really sold that scene and that made it worse.

As an aside I did actually enjoy the alternate reality feeling of the first half of the episode where Evil Queen Daenerys was keeping Pure Hero Jon prisoner and trying to convince him to ‘Join me and together we can rule-’ etc

(The part were he says for the nth time “You are my KWEEN!” and kisses her, I was like NOOOO Jon’s gone full Dark Side WTF?) But ultimately of course we got what we did. Again I was sad for him to have gone through all his Hero’s Journey - the Ice equivalent of Dany’s Fire and then like her to have had it be all in vain, there he is again, alone at the Wall with Ghost and all the other ghosts of his former life from Ygritte, to his family, to the Night’s Watch and of course Dany.

I’d be interested to see where GRRM takes this, I’m sure if he ever does write it it will be far deeper and more in keeping with the grand themes of Fire and Ice which will perhaps do justice to his characters. I hope he does and we get that chance.

For now, sad as it seems, I’m going to need time to detach from GOT and these characters and find a more wholesome, uplifting story.

#got #game of thrones #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #emilia clarke #kit harington #fantasy #grrm

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chaseyesterdays · 5 years

Note

So this is probably a tad late but I realized you are probably the biggest Star Wars fan I follow (okay maybe not probably) but I want your opinion on TLJ and to an extent TFW, like you honest impression and opinion. I have no problem asking off anon/sending a message if you’ve got some opinions™️, just state so.

Hi Anon! I’m perfectly comfortable answering anonymous messages or carrying on conversations via DM, so however you feel most comfortable is fine by me! I do have A LOT of opinions though and I’m probably not going to remember half of them for this post, so if there’s anything you want me to elaborate on or any other questions you may have, feel free to ask me however you like!

(I’m putting this under a cut because holy crap, this went on so much longer than I ever thought it would.)

Okay, first off: I think TFA had great potential as a film. ( I know you asked more specifically about TLJ, but I feel like I have to start at the beginning to get my thoughts semi-in-order. TFA introduced what could have been very interesting characters: a female orphan scavenger Force sensitive, a POC stormtrooper raised from birth for destruction but with a kind heart that ultimately guides him, a hotshot pilot with a gentle soul and a desire to do the right thing while remaining loyal to whom and what he believes in – even a female stormtrooper captain who could have had such a great backstory if they’d just let her. I can’t demonize TFA too much on not developing these characters because it’s the first installment in the saga, but still, where TFA failed is in its progression of the characters. I can almost forgive Rey’s overt Force abilities in the fight with Kylo Ren because yeah, we’ve seen the same with Luke on a slightly smaller scale, but it still felt a little bit jerky to me in terms of flow. Finn and Poe fared better in my opinion, but only because I felt like this new trilogy would give each of the new trio a movie in which to shine: TFA would be Rey’s and Finn and Poe would have what became TLJ and Episode IX to be more of the focal characters.

But here’s where I have issues with TFA. First, the movie was just a remake of A New Hope with different characters. I get that JJ Abrams was trying to appeal to the original fans while still providing that same magic to bring in the younger generations, but sheesh, the whole plot is essentially recycled with a few things moved around order-wise. Desert planet that isn’t Tatooine but looks like it, jungle planet that isn’t Yavin IV but looks similar, a “Death Star” that isn’t a Death Star but is essentially a Death Star, the death of a wise old mentor… There was literally no originality. I think JJ let his fears of fucking up the saga get the better of him, so he was too afraid to branch out and make the movie really great. He could have used similar elements and plot points as an homage to the first movie while still providing his own take on modernizing the film, or placing different characters as the focal point. In the end, even though I cried like four times watching it because Han Solo was one of my favorite characters and didn’t deserve to go out like that, I can’t rag on JJ too hard for TFA. He tried, but he fell flat on some things, and ultimately his treatment of an Original Trilogy character opened the door for some atrocities to be committed down the road.

And speaking of atrocities, that leads me to TLJ. Now, I’ll be honest here, I’ve only seen the movie once and fucking refuse to watch it again, but I’ve read a lot of other people’s reactions to it and examined some articles/YouTube videos explaining why everybody else thinks it’s such a bad movie, so I’ll call on what I remember for now and if anything else comes up in the future, I’ll let you know. But I’ll start here and now by saying that the reason TLJ was a failure from the start falls directly on the shoulders of Rian Johnson. Rian Fucking Johnson, Mr. Hubris, who literally said he set out to make a movie that destroyed fan expectations and worked to keep them guessing (if I remember correctly – like I said, I’ve sworn off TLJ content for awhile now just to keep my blood from boiling). The direction Rian took TLJ made no fucking sense and completely torpedoed the outline that JJ had for the movie, derailing the trilogy as a whole just because Rian wanted to be the smug, smart asshole who knew better than anybody what was gonna happen. As a result, the movie is full of plot holes and directionless actions and flat dialogue and ridiculous characterizations, and it’s not just a failure as a Star Wars film, it’s a failure as a movie in general because the plot simply doesn’t hold water. It’s literally a low-speed car chase with some cool effects that made half of its characters either useless, annoying, OOC, or redundant. It’s bad. My creative writing professors aren’t even dead yet, but if I’d turned in that script for one of my classes, they’d be rolling in their graves. (Did I mention I studied writing, grammar, composition, storytelling, character building and plot development for four years in college and make my living as a writer now? Trust me, I know my shit.)

First off, one of the biggest failings Rian Johnson had aside from the general plot was mistreatment of characters. The POC characters Finn, Poe, and Rose bore the brunt of that because Rian wouldn’t know how to write good POC characters if they literally smacked him in the face – hell, even the best of us white people are still learning. But Poe was reduced to an angry Latino stereotype, which made absolutely no sense considering his actions and attitude in TFA. He trusted Leia and the Resistance leaders and followed them because he respected them, not because he was blinded by them or whatever else anyone can try to insinuate. Admittedly he’s right to question Holdo because her actions make no sense and there’s literally nO REASON FOR HER NOT TO TELL HIM WHAT’S GOING ON, but he wouldn’t just fly off the handle and stage a mutiny like that. He would have talked to Leia about it repeatedly, talked to Holdo and others repeatedly, and Leia would have made Holdo see sense if she was in character AND SHE NEVER WOULD HAVE FUCKING STUNNED POE.

Ahem.

Finn and Rose’s storyline is harder for me to remember because I hated that cantina sidequest thing so much, but what I do remember is feeling like Finn wasn’t even the same person (he wasn’t, because Rian Johnson killed him and put someone else in his place) and Rose was just redundant because it felt like she was created to be a love interest so Finn would be with someone other than Rey (again, I’m fine with platonic best friend relationships, but considering the fact that Finn/Rey would be a biracial relationship and the big ship R*eylo is founded on a whiny white man literally abusing the female protagonist, it just seems like a blatant attempt to undermine the POC characters and relationships in the film). Now let me be clear: what happened to Finn and Rose is not the actors’ faults, as they were at the mercy of Rian Fucking Johnson, and it isn’t the characters’ faults that they’re so weak. That’s all on bad writing and Rian Johnson, and I’m in no way blaming anyone but him for destroying them. (Also, I don’t want Finn to die at all, but having Rose save him from sacrificing himself just so she could kiss him and declare love for him and keep fans guessing again is just…so bad, Rian. Why won’t you let your characters make sense.)

And then there’s Rey. If I’m remembering correctly, both Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill said they didn’t get back into character for TLJ because the characters they played, Rey and Luke, weren’t even the same characters in this film, and whoo boy, does it show. First off, I hate this term, but Rey was essentially a Mary Sue in this film. She had pretty much no training with Luke but somehow managed to be an amazing Force user anyway?? Look, I’m a naturally talented singer, but I didn’t just get good because of that, I got good because I worked hard and studied technique and worked with instructors who helped me take my natural talent and channel it and refine it into something better. That’s what Luke should have done. That’s what Rey should have gotten. But neither of them were in character so of course we didn’t get that. Instead, we got an angry, sullen Luke who tried to murder his nephew in his sleep, which NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED BECAUSE HE SAW ENOUGH GOOD IN DARTH VADER NOT TO MURDER HIM SO WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE DO IT TO HIS NEPHEW, HIS SISTER’S ONLY CHILD. No sense people. No sense.

Rey being a nobody is a controversial point because some people love the fact that a great Jedi can be anyone at all. I get that. But what those people don’t realize is that the Skywalker line came from a slave woman. She was a “nobody” in the grand scheme of things – no disrespect to Shmi Skywalker, who was a powerful woman and a goddess in her own right. Making Rey a Skywalker (either from Luke’s line or Leia’s) does not diminish the “nobody” thing. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes sense, because that lightsaber belongs to the Skywalker line and it wouldn’t just call out to anybody – my creative writing professors would have shot that shit down in a heartbeat. So I think Rey will actually end up being someone with a connection to the Skywalkers; some people theorized that “The Chosen One,” AKA Anakin born of midichlorians, could be almost an avatar-like thing, or Rey could be a reincarnation of Anakin if she’s not a Skywalker/Solo somehow. Kinda farfetched, but no less farfetched than the rest of this fucking movie, so whatever.

Tying Rey and Kylo together could have been so interesting if Rey was his sister. I loved the idea that Rey and Kylo were both Solo children of the Skywalker bloodline, representing the Light and Dark sides of the Force and proving that ultimately, the balance between Dark and Light is what defeats true evil and restores balance to the galaxy (after all, balance is not the absence of dark or light, but an equal ratio of it, and I firmly believe that being a Jedi should not be banishing all the darkness in you, but simply controlling it and centering yourself on the balance between love and passion and anger and pain). It would have made such a good story for Kylo Ren to be a double agent or a legitimately brainwashed young man struggling to do what he thinks is right and being misled but still using his gifts to support balance once he realizes he’s been led astray. Instead, we got literally the worst villain ever: he’s not intimidating, he’s whiny, he pitches temper tantrums, he’s selfish, he’s abusive, he’s impulsive… The writers can’t figure out what they want with him, because they’ve worked so hard to make us sympathize with him and like him and set him up like a misunderstood kid, but then they go and have him make the conscious choice to be evil but still be all those “good” things? It makes no sense. His character progression is all over the place because Rian can’t write and the Kylo he created is not even the same character as JJ put in TFA. And as a result, we now have just about canon proof that Rian wanted R*eylo, which is just another glorified abusive relationship that “stans” keep romanticizing. Gag me with a spoon. I’m done.

Also, who the fuck was Snoke? How was he so powerful? Where did he come from? How did he brainwash Kylo? Who trained him or how did he learn all he knew? How could he see everything and sense everything but not hear, see, or feel Kylo moving the lightsaber? Why were he and Phasma completely nerfed and killed out of nowhere with absolutely no character development or reason for dying? The world may never know.

And here’s where I get really angry: the sheer disrespect for the Original Trilogy characters. Harrison was ready to retire as Han, and I can understand that – I don’t like how Han went out, but I can almost forgive that because I don’t want the actors to be miserable. But what they did to Luke and Leia is unforgivable. Straight up, point blank. Luke Skywalker would never try to murder his nephew in his sleep. Leia would never stun Poe or send her son away or be a terrible, absentee parent. Luke would never be the person he was in that movie, because even in the depths of despair, Luke chose good, chose to see the good in others. He and Leia never gave up hope or belief that good would always triumph over evil. The Luke I saw in TLJ had none of that, and Mark Hamill himself said it wasn’t Luke, it was “Jake Skywalker” or some other nonsense. Mark is a genuinely kind and accepting person, so if you manage to make him angry about a character he’s played for more than thirty years, you’ve fucked up big time, and Rian Johnson did just that. And what’s worse, there was no reason for Luke to die aside from the fact that he just wasn’t convenient for the writers to consider anymore. Han’s death happened to let Harrison retire, but Luke’s was just to get the old generation out so Kathleen Kennedy and the other Powers That Be could do whatever they wanted in the Star Wars universe and milk that cash cow for all it’s worth. Now that Carrie’s gone, all real ties to the Lucasverse are gone, and I’m not convinced they weren’t going to kill Leia off anyway for the reasons I stated above. The blatant disrespect of that, of destroying characters I’ve loved my whole life, who literally kept me alive when nothing else did… It’s unforgivable. I wept like I lost loved ones watching Luke and Han die, and I refuse to do it again.

And here’s what it all comes down to for me: hope. Star Wars was founded on hope. The whole franchise was created in the wake of the Vietnam War when everyone needed something good to believe in, a clear divide between good and evil where good won simply because it was willing to fight for what it believed in, support others, love others, do the right thing. Even when the chips were down and everything was at its darkest in ESB, they always had hope, and in the end, hope won out. There are literally documentaries out there and books written about the success of Star Wars and the fact that hope is its literal cornerstone. The sequel trilogy destroyed all of that. There is no hope anymore. The Resistance is pretty much decimated at the end of TLJ, and at the hands of a government (not even a government??) that rose up out of nothing and destroyed like twelve planets with a flick of a switch and blew billions of people away (and of course we never hear another word about that because that can’t be important at all). Everyone is dying. There are no ships left. There are no forces – less than 100 people made it off that salt planet whose name escapes me and I don’t care enough to look up, and it might have been less than 50. There is no chance that the Resistance can rise up out of nothing and overcome that. Considering how far Rian derailed the progression of the trilogy as a whole, I don’t know how on earth JJ can come back and fix it with literally nothing on his side – all for the sake of shock factor (I swear, I shake my fist at Rian Johnson in my head at least once a day). I know the modern trend is to shoot for gritty, hopeless, “realistic” films because that’s what the current mood is in this country and around the world, but that’s not what Star Wars is about. That’s never been what Star Wars is about. The whole story was built on the foundation of hope, that good could rise and triumph over evil, and there’s simply no room for that in this sequel trilogy. Essentially, the sequel trilogy has failed because it destroyed what makes Star Wars “Star Wars” at its core, and for that, I will never forgive it. The prequels may have been dark, but they exist to show that while the good can fall, ultimately, they can rise again even if in the smallest of ways. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” The narrative is so convoluted and misconstrued in the sequel trilogy, and it will never be able to find that same foundation of hope again because Disney fucked up. As I said in 2017, “Star Wars is dead. Long live Star Wars.” So I’ll stick to my Original Trilogy and remember the good things that kept me going, the characters and actors that saved my life and made me realize that even in the face of darkness, hope and love can overcome all. That’s Star Wars to me. Honestly, that’s what Rogue One delivered, and if you take anything out of this, it’s that Rogue One is the only Star Wars thing Disney did right. But the sequel trilogy isn’t Star Wars, it isn’t even halfway decent storytelling, and I hope that on the day I die Rian Johnson and everyone responsible for TLJ can lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.

I probably left a lot out because I have so many feelings on this matter, and this response is like encyclopedia-long as is, but it’s the truth of what I feel, and I really hope I shed some light on the topic for you (probably way too much light, but I digress). Thank you for caring about my opinions Anon! I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to put my thoughts down, and if you managed to make it to the end of this ridiculous post, just know that my inbox and my asks are always open for any clarification or fandom-screaming or thoughts in general. Have an amazing day, and as some people whom I love very dearly used to say, “May the Force be with you. Always.”

#star wars #anti tfa #anti tlj #these are my opinions guys don't @me #I was actually asked for this lmao #thanks again anon i love u for this #forcie rambles #adventures of a panic stricken graduate #who probably could have gotten her degree in star wars lore tbh

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mnemehoshiko · 6 years

Text

Star Wars: The Last Jedi [BULLETPOINT TRASH EDITION]

A SPOILERS AND OPINIONS ABOUND AND POOR FORMATTING CHOICES

(with bonus citing of external canon sources mainly the visual dictionary leaks)

Short version: I FUCKING LOVED THIS MOVIE ON SO MANY LEVELS AND IASDFSDFDASFASDSFDSFDSFSSAFDSADFSDF

Long version:

I enjoyed TFA. But it was very much a safe remake movie because JJ can literally only do remakes and monster movies. I’m also still bitter over Into Darkness BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU’RE HERE FOR SO I’M GONNA MOVE ON.

I really enjoyed Rogue One. It broke new ground etc etc but it had the freedom to do that because it wasn’t dependent on anything ultra important.

TLJ had the awkward positioning of figuring out how to move the main story forward in new and interesting ways AND not remake ESB. And I’m going to be super honest, I was 20% certain they were going to go Rey Skywalker??? Mainly because fanboys are amazingly uncreative but also because it would be a very safe way to go. Ohhhhh, of course Rey has the force. It’s because she’s of the Skywalker bloodline. ALL MAKES SENSE IN THE WORLD AGAIN.

As soon as Luke tossed that saber off the cliff, I knew that all my expectations were going to be subverted. AND IT WAS AMAZING!!!!

AND ON THE TOPIC OF LUKE, there seems to be two camps the

HELL YEAH LUKE SKYWALKER camp or the

OMG RIAN YOU RUINED STAR WARS AND LUKE ANDFS@#EWREWRWE camp, to which I’m like

so like did you watch the Original Trilogy my dudes?

No really did you watch the “OMG SHE’S PRETTY WE TOTALLY NEED TO RESCUE HER!!”

the “WELP BRB HEADING TO DAGOBAH WITH NO WARNING BECAUSE REASONS!!!!”

“NO WAIT MY FRIENDS NEED MY HELP SORRY GOTTA GO”

“BRB I JUST GOT MY WORLD VIEW TRAUMATIZED AND I NEED TO FALL IN THE ABYSS LIKE AN EXTRA (TM) BITCH”

“OH HEY I’M GONNA FIGHT MY DAD IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT I HAVE NO TRAINING WHATSOEVER BECAUSE YOLOOOOOOOOO”

like Luke Skywalker lives on impulse

much like his father

like according to the visual dictionary, Leia was supposed to be his first student and she like said no due to like politics and family stuff

but lbr she probably looked at Luke YOLO Skywalker and was like....yeah no my dude you are a messssss

never be the first grad student

also like IF REYSKY was a thing

you’re basically saying

YES I WANT MY HERO LUKE SKYWALKER

TO DROP A KID OF A SANDY WASTELAND THAT EVEN HE BELIEVES IS NOWHERE

which like my dude, he’s from Tatooine and if he’s saying Jakku is nowhere. then like that place is like purgatory

like I STRONGLY BELIEVE if like Rey was his kid he AT LEAST would have dropped her

somewhere with reliable foster parents

and like water

LOTS OF WATER

OKAY I’M DONE RANTING ABOUT THIS

ANYWAY like I can totally believe with like Luke seeing the #darkness + probably Snoke’s influence in his head his immediate response was OMG WE GOTTA KILL IT and then went...oh wait this....is not a chill idea maybe we should talk shit out first/meditate etc

and like IMMEDIATE REGRET AFTERWARDS

honestly this is like textbook Male Skywalker bullshit 101

I HAVE DONE A THING!!! i regret everything now

THIS IS A HORRIBLE SEGUE BUT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY AVENGING SPACE ANGEL LEIA ORGANA!!!!!

*CRIES A LOT*

RIAN JUST LOVES LEIA AND CARRIE SO MUCH

*UGLY SOBBING*

LEIA USED THE FORCE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!

EAT IT FANBOYS!!!

FUCKING IT!!!

LIKE I KNEW BUT LIKE PURE PROOF IN FUCKING CANON

LEIA! IS! FUCKING! FORCE! SENSITIVE!!!!!

also i’m 99% certain Luke didn’t teach it her that trick so like my homegirl literally DID THAT

i just love leia so fukcing much and yes okay the cgi was kind of wonky BUT I DON’T GIVE A FUCK BECAUSE MY GENEARAL/PRINCESS JUST USED THE FORCE LIKE A BOSS THAT SHE IS

Also i just love Leia so much in this

like That Shot on Crait with her eyes over the collar is like

POETIC CINEMA

no really someone hook a girl up and give me that shot as a lock screen

Also that scene post mutiny showing up in a 3000-thread count couture bathrobe, a matching cane, and blaster? #AESTHETIC

also personal opinion but Billie Lourd in that scene wasn’t acting as much as oh god i’m in trouble face that all children go through

**MORE UGLY SOBBING*

OKAY LETS TALK ABOUT POE ONLY BECAUSE IT’S MY BLOG AND I DO WANT I WANT

*steps on step stool*

I DID NOT CARE ABOUT POE DAMERON IN TFA BECAUSE IT WAS SUPER OBVIOUS THAT HE WAS GOING TO DIE AND ONLY GOT TO LIVE BECAUSE OSCAR ASKED JJ TO LIVE AND OSCAR ISAAC IS PRETTY BUT LIKE THAT’S ALL I GOT OUT OF THE MOVIE.

*climbs off soapbox* Poe in this film GAINED SOME DEPTH, sadly it seems to be very polarizing and I think that’s in part due to the fact that it’s pulling on backstory from the EU, primarily Shattered Empire and the Poe Dameron Comics. Shattered Empire doesn’t directly include Poe but it involves his parents, Shara Bey and Kes Dameron. His mom, Shara, went on a mission with Leia and some others for some reason I can’t remember BUT ANYWAY SHE’S A BOSS. A HERO OF THE REBELLION. Poe literally grew up around heroes. One of his squad mates in Poe Dameron is another hero from the rebellion. He has a very wide-eyed view on the concept of heroism? For him it’s daring deeds and important war-changing missions, he’s very much a soldier and not at a leader. At least not yet. You get this immediately from the fight scene with First Order and the bombing run and the aftermath of it.

Poe sees what’s in front of him which is a destroyed Star Destroyer (?), Leia sees the whole picture which is a single ship destroyed at the cost of a significant part of their fleet. Yes, there were heroes but a resistance can’t survive on dead heroes.

You see this again in his willingness to go after the high-risk plan to somehow hack the main ship to get them to stop tracking them. He’s thinking YES THIS IS THE BOLD PLAN MISSION OF MY DREAMS!!! Except it fails, and yes I completely understand that this could have been avoid with like communication but to embark on communication? You need to let go of your ego. Ego is not a BAD THING, but sometimes it can prevent us from being our best self. The best leader we can be. And Poe does learn this as you can see with Leia passing the baton of leadership to Poe on Crait. As Poe realizes that a dramatic last stand isn’t worth the loss. It’s better to run to let the rebellion live than to die in a burst of glory. Those are the hard choices a leader has to make.

OKAY MOVING ON BECAUSE I SUCK AT TRANSITIONS, LETS TALK ABOUT ONE OF MY SONS, FINN TICO

I LOVE MY SON AND HIS TRANSITION FROM BEING A MERE FIRST ORDER DEFECTOR TO A MEMBER OF THE REBELLION !!!!!!! First I loved the fact that his characterization followed naturally from TFA which TO RECAP consisted of:

realizing that the First Order is a horrible idea;

getting the fuck out via some convenient pilot dude who (supposedly) dies;

meeting a girl who STRAIGHT UP ATTACKS HIM under the hearsay of a droid

realizing she’s the BEST THING SINCE TROOPER RATIONS and attempting to flirt because running away from a organization is best done in at least a pair

getting caught up in Resistance nonsense you are 1000% Not Here for because YOU KNOW THE FIRST ORDER and you know losing odds

aforementioned Girl is taken by the First Order and you’re like WELP GUESS I GOTTA TEMPORARILY JOIN this horrible idea to save girl

Tries to save girl but gets knocked out

END OF MOVIE

TLJ PICKS UP immediately after this in which his first and only thought is FIND REY AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS NONSENSE. THIS IS NOT WORTH DYING FOR Y’ALL ARE CRAZY. Which lets be real, you’re dealing with an organization.....that can destroy an entire space system that you have personal experience with. You’ve just been attacked by the First Order, the Resistance is worse off than they were BEFORE YOU WENT TO (attempt) SAVE REY. Finn’s main priority is WELP THIS IS A LOSING CAUSE GONNA GET MY FRIEND AND BOUNCE BECAUSE I DON’T WANT HER TO DIE.

Then it hit’s him like a shock. Figuratively and literally because Rose shows up.

BEFORE I TALK ABOUT ROSE I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT PAIGE ALSO KNOWN AS i was pretty sure she was gonna die but it felt natural-ish and I also know need to buy Cobalt Squadron for like TICO SISTER FEELS. But during that bombing run you immediately got the sense of

what she was doing was already extremely risky

YOU’RE IN SHIP FULL OF BOMBS

and that her last moments were of someone incredibly important to her

and like eventually TO ALL OF US AND MEEEE

I’m going to be honest and say that this plot was probably the weakest for the audience and for me. I understood what they were trying to cover but I feel some sections got cut for the final version.

BUT BACK TO CHARACTERS, FINN!!!!

had to deal with the struggle of moving past Rey as his sole guiding focus of his story?

Also people are like OMG WHY IS HE SO WIDE EYED ON CANTO BIGHT?!?! THAT’S OOC!!!

and i’m like my dudes

he’s never been outside of the pod of stormtroopers like EVER

HE’S FROM A LIFE OF MONOCHROME AND NOW INFUSED IN A LIFE OF COLOR

Finn: OMG THIS PLACE IS AWESOME Rose: this place is trash and I’m gonna fight it

Also can I give a shout out to that section where he’s explaining the plan to Poe and like Rose is like AHEM I’M HAPPY TO HAVE A FELLOW NERD BUT ALSO I CAN TALK!!!!

Poe on the otherhand is like....ah yes...cute nerds are talking....OH WE CAN BLOW SOMETHING UP FOR FREEDOM!!! YES SOUNDS GREAT!!!

Also his interactions with DJ are essentially him seeing a potential future for himself

and like trash meta moment, unlike Kylo “I Make Poor Life Choices” Ren, he makes the decision to reject that future for himself.

Like Finn’s arc in this movie I would argue is to stop being a passive observer in the narrative and to start CLAIMING his space in the narrative that is Star Wars

like FANON!Finn is very much the Resistance automatically accepting him and him become The Dude in The Resistance

this movie ACTUALLY DID THE CHARACTER WORK for him to become a leader in the Resistance

Look I really love Finn and he finally got the character development he deservessssss

MOVING ON TO MY NEWEST DAUGHTER!!!!

ROSE!!! TICO!!! BEST DAUGHTER!! GOOD DAUGHTER!!! MY SMOL ENGINEER!!

Okay, first off. I will like forever and ever be thankful to Rian for casting Kelly Marie Tran SO JOT THAT SHIT DOWN

BUT MNEME SHE ABUSED--

finish that sentence and i will unhinge my maw to consume your filthy soul

AHEM, I mean you’re entitled to your opinions

which are wrong

SERIOUSLY THO, every time someone goes “Rose straight-up shocked a black boy till he passed out!!!!!” I’m like

okay one, he’s canonically 23 years old

like as a black woman and one with a little brother I’m very cognizant of the impact of black violence in media and the constant view of black boys as adults

but also HE’S 23

two, Rey straight up clobbered him under the hearsay of BB-8 saying that “oh that dude has my dad’s jacket” compared to Rose catching him escaping via escape pods after catching 2/3 people doing the same thing earlier that day + losing her only living family

like if this is the hill you want to die on!?!?!?!?

I JUST REALLY ROSE BECAUSE SHE’S THE ENGINEER TAKE NO SHIT DISNEY PRINCESS OF MY COLD DEAD HEART SPACE

I just she’s so quick and smart but get put into the ANTI-SOCIAL ASSHOLE BOX???

like yes she’s very good and detailed at her job

She also wants to fight everyone

like if i wrote an academia au (but Mneme you do---) she would be like the HELLO CLASS THIS IS OUR EXAM ALSO BONUS POINTS IF YOU GO ON A FIELD TRIP WITH ME ^_^

Student: Dr. Tico, that field is a protest.

Dr. Tico: I HAVE SIGNS AND HANDCUFFS!!!!

I just really loved her arc on Canto Bight and her care for the little people and also the emphasis it’s not the wide dramatic actions that make the resistance but the people that make it thrive.

“We win by saving what we love.”

Mneme that kiss was sexless--

THE GIRL JUST KNOCKED A SHIP OUT OF THE WAY OF A CANNON, GIVE THE GIRL A BREAK

She’s be more than down to climb him like a tree later.

OKAY WHILE WE’RE STILL DEALING WITH THE RESISTANCE

I UNDERSTAND WHY ADMIRAL AMILYN HOLDO DIED AND THE SHOT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND ELEGANT AND JUST

#POETIC CINEMA

but also *UGLY SOBBING*

so like yes I understand that this probably could have been solved via OPEN COMMUNICATION but

Poe has literally just been demoted for flyboy antics

Poe initial interaction with Admiral Holdo consists of “soooo do you understand the situation” in front of a bunch of upper level brass

like maybe if he was like HEY HOW CAN I HELP it would have been better but he literally goes

HI ADMIRAL PLEASE LET EXPLAIN YOUR JOB AFTER I JUST MANAGED TO GET A HUGE CHUNK OF THE FLEET DEMOLISHED

cue Oscar Isaac’s prettiness

so like I understand but also I DISAGREE

also when Amilyn talks to Leia when Poe is like being carted onto the transport saying “I like him!” I’m 99% certain it was implied that she was also down to bang

actually knowing what I know from Leia, Princess of Alderaan

she’s TOTALLY DOWN TO BANG

OKAY LETS FINISH UP THIS NONSENSE WITH REMAINING TWO CHARAS ALSO KNOWN AS THIS IS A BIASED REVIEW AND IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU-KNOW-WHO YOU CAN LIKE STOP HERE AND GO

......

.....

....

*looks around* okay they’re gone?

*TAKES OUT MIC*

FIRST THING FIRST, I HAVE BEEN REY NO ONE SINCE FOREVER AND NOW I AM VALIDATED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD~~~~

It also follows from what Maz said in TFA, “you know they aren’t coming back.” This movie is Rey coming to terms with the failure that her parents inflicted on her, abandonment, and realizing that she doesn’t need some grand legacy to save the galaxy. Being herself is enough, and that’s so so beautiful to meeeeeeeeeeeeee. *weeps*

#POETIC CINEMA

SECOND, KYLO’S ARC WAS GEARED TOWARDS MEEEEEE!!! THANK YOU FOR VALIDATING ALL THE CHARACTER SHIT I HAVE BEEN SAYING ABOUT KYLO REN SINCE TFA THAT I THOUGHT WAS FUCKING OBVIOUS!!!!!!

Them: KYLE RON WAS TOTALLY DOWN TO KILL HAN AND UNREMORSEFUL. Me: ???? did we watch the same movie??

did you like look at the lighting in that scene???

the facial expressions??

LITERALLY EVERYTHING BEFORE THAT SCENE ABOUT BEING SEDUCED BY THE LIGHT?!!?!?

Kylo himself in TLJ: i didn’t hate him

THIS CONFLICT, THIS UNBALANCEDNESS CONTINUES THROUGH OUT THE FILM!?!? Also, I’m going to be hella honest

pre-TLJ: Renperor is such a horrible trope because Kylo Ren is a disaster human being who has no business and no interest (see Bloodline) in ruling??? LIKE YOU ARE ASSIGNING COMPETENCE TO MY SON WHERE THERE IS NONE

post-TLJ: alright, I can Work With This and I’m 99% certain he is going to be ousted because the FO is like who is this human disaster with the political savvy of a blunt post

like any credibility was lost as soon as he decided to have force tantrum when Luke showed up

and the SHOOT THAT SHIP OUT OF THE SKY!!!! moment

like my son leads wears his trash heart on his sleeve and EVERYONE KNOWS IT

honestly the fact that he managed to lie about killing Snoke is a miracle

but this CANON!renperor

this Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, which i am like laugh my ass of over, is not some triumphant Dark Fuck Prince??

He’s broken man who has thrown so so much into rejecting the light, becoming the monster that his uncle he feared he would become and realized that he done fucked up.

He tells Rey, Let the past die, kill it if you have to.

LITERALLY CANNOT LET THE PAST DIE

does copy his namesakes dramatic robe dropping so like there’s that

Also pre-TLJ: meh there’s a 50/50 chance he’s a virgin but lol it will never but touched on in canon

Post-TLJ: oh god he’s a virgin i will fight you on thissss

AND NOW BECAUSE I AM THAT PERSON REY AND KYLO’S OVERLAPPING ARCS

*SCREAMS* FORCE BOND FORCE BOND FORCE BOND

oh did i mention FORCE BOND!?!?!?!?!

Okay yes Snoke helped it along but like THAT LAST SCENE WITH THE DICE AND KYLO LOOKING UP AND SEEING REY

Snoke is dead bitches

what is it

it’s the Force

it was so good to meee

Honestly that face was peak “I’m disappointed but not surprised, I left all your shit on the porch. *SLAMS DOOR IN FACE*”

Like THE INTIMACY OF THOSE FORCE BOND SCENES

and like the evolution and like ASDFDSFSDAFDS

this was so good to me y’all

so good

no really i like never rec meta but like this *kisses fingers* http://corseque.tumblr.com/post/168629533017 good shit

THAT REGENCY TRASH PROPOSAL OF FAILURE

so good

so awful

congrats Kylo, you’ve surpassed your granddad in poor wooing skills

Like literally I can see Anakin standing next to him Force Ghost!Stylez and is just like appalled

so appalled

okay i’m done I’m going to think about star wars and start throwing all my money at the EU YET AGAIN

#tlj spoilers #reylo #finnrose #star wars #STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI #i just loved this movie a lot y'all #it was so good to me on so many levels #I AM LIVING

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