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spacemagicandlaserswords · 9 months

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The Clone Wars 5.19 ‘To Catch a Jedi' Reaction

I am now really pissed off about this whole arc. This entire time no one has believed Ahsoka. No one apart from Anakin and even his belief seems to be wavering, or at least tempered. No one has even bothered to stop and listen to her. No one has bothered to consider any other possibilities beyond the most obvious and easy outcome in front of them. Ahsoka is a child. Everyone involved in this has violently hunted down, traumatised and abused A Child.

Where is the famed Jedi empathy in all of this? I’m fairly balanced on the Jedi as a whole. I can see the good that they do in the universe. I am also aware that they are not without fault and can recognise where they make mistakes and cause harm. And boy did they royally fuck up this time.

I am fully aware that this is an outside perspective looking in on the situation as it unfolds while I already know the outcome and that Ashoka is being framed. But this is deeply uncomfortable and upsetting to watch. Probably one of the most difficult arcs and episodes out of TCW thus far. I am also fully aware that all of the evidence is pointing towards Ahsoka being guilty. But nobody even bothers to consider any alternative or other options. They just behave like cops and go with the easiest and most convenient option. There is definitely a point about police violence in here.

I wonder if Anakin is tempering his outward appearance of belief in Ahsoka because his belief in her is wavering or if he’s realised that he needs to appear more balanced and not emotionally compromised so that he can help her.

I am just so upset and pissed off for Ahsoka. She is A CHILD. I’d put her at around 15-16 here. Think back to when you were 15-16. Life is awful enough as it is. Can you imagine everyone in your entire life, everyone that you’ve ever loved and cared for, suddenly turning on you and refusing to believe you? No wonder she leaves the order.

Time to rewatch this episode and live-blog it. This is probably going to be a large amount of angry ranting.

I officially hate Tarkin. He’s in the same league as Krell and Nolan. I’m so glad he eventually gets blown up on the Death Star. Bastard deserved it.

Where is the evidence for what Tarkin is accusing Ahsoka of here? We didn’t see any of what he’s talking about in the previous episode? Where’s your evidence you pompous arsehole? Your accusations are also inconsistent. We only saw 3 clones dead last episode but Tarkin said she cut down 5 clones. At least get your lies consistent fuckwit.

Well at least Plo still believes in Ahsoka. At least somewhat.

“We deal strictly in facts and evidence,” Then where is your evidence? And why are your accusations inconsistent? *rage*

“This is sedition.” lmao you dramatic bitch (derogatory)

“Was there no way to stop your padawan before she escaped?” Yeah I could’ve jumped down there but I had to stand at the mouth of a pipe and look dramatic.

Anakin is being very balanced and contained here.

“With all due respect” i.e. with all the disrespect possible

Obi-Wan with an interesting point about Anakin knowing Ahsoka the best. And presenting it in a way that is balanced and logical rather than immediately jumping to the defence of his former padawan and current grand padawan. Though I’m sure a lot of the council members probably read it as Obi-Wan defending Anakin again, especially given that I’m sure he’s had to do that numerous times before.

“He’s emotionally tied to her.” No shit mate.

“I’d rather capture Ahsoka and find out the truth than let her run because of a lie.” Why isn’t anyone else considering other possibilities like Anakin is here? It makes sense that Anakin is because he’s Ahsoka’s Master but what about the rest of you lot? You’re council members. You’re supposed to be the best of the Jedi. I am mad. And disappointment.

Anakin alerting security on the lower levels to look out for Ahsoka is an interesting move. I’m still not sure if this is part of him trying to appear to the council like he’s not attached (even though he clearly is) or if it’s because his belief in Ahsoka is waning. Or that he wants to do things his way and bring her back safely and then find out the truth.

“Bring back this lost child” So you can recognise she’s a child here but that doesn’t stop you from hunting her down?!

Lmao of course there’s a thunderstorm. Of course there is.

Who are these guys? I’m assuming they’re cops for the lower levels of Coruscant?

Oh, that is the wrong person to be calling Ahsoka. Calling Barriss is not a good idea. Girl, what are you doing?

If Ahsoka had a Jedi communicator, surely it had a tracking locator in it and they could just track her to its last location before she enacted every movie cliche about these things and crushed under her boot?

A Jedi using a cloak as a disguise? No one will ever expect that!

The cloak Ahsoka traded for even has little covers for her horns. That’s going to make it even more obvious.

Some cops asking for tickets from passengers as the fugitive tries to subtly move away from them? How original.

A chase sequence on a train? How original!

More unnecessary acrobatics but ok.

Was that an Aleena on the train station platform?

Poor Ahsoka is not doing particularly well at running and hiding.

Of course there’s a kid. Ugh.

That was a really good example of how much this is impacting Ahsoka, and she admitted it as well. She was so panicked and focused on getting out that she didn’t stop to observe her surroundings and do all the normal calm Jedi stuff. Though given they spend most of their time cutting through doors and walls, reverting to type here does make sense.

That has got to be Ventress, right?

Wtf are those weird spider shaped ship things?

Wolffe, did you cut your hair?

I am trying really hard not to be too harsh on the clones in all of this. I know I made this point in the previous recap but it bears repeating. The clones are slaves. They have no agency. They have no other option but to follow orders. I know we had the whole Umbara arc about not following orders when they’re wrong and it’s a theme that’s cropped up a few times since as well. But I also think there’s a big difference between the situation on Umbara and what’s happening on Coruscant.

On Umbara, the 501st were isolated. They couldn’t contact anyone else because their comms were being jammed. They only had each other to depend on while being abused and mistreated to horrific levels by Krell. All of them were pushed to their breaking points (or beyond it) and they had no one else to help them. They were literally all on their own and did the best they could with the situation they were stuck in.

On Coruscant, there are a multitude more people involved. All in positions of power over the clones. The Jedi council. The entire Jedi order. The Senate. Palps. Whatever military nonsense Tarkin is part of. Any and all nat-borns. The clones are literally at the bottom of the pile. Even Ahsoka is in a slightly better position than them and wouldn’t be killed instantly, unlike if a clone was on the run *sobs in foreshadowing*

I’ve just realised that this whole arc is a huge amount of foreshadowing for what happens in the chip conspiracy arc. There’s a large amount of similarities too. Both Ahsoka and Fives are on the run. No one believes them. But the difference is only one of them makes it out alive.

Was that a tooka?

Called it. That’s Ventress.

The Senate put a bounty on Ahsoka?! On A CHILD?! What. The. Actual. Fuck.

“You have my attention.” Ok, Ventress is interested.

Ahsoka is being quite smart and grown up about this while talking to Ventress. She is basically being forced to instantaneously grow up and turn into an adult by all this and you can really see it here. I don’t know if this is the case for anyone else but I had a fundamentally life altering and defining event where my childhood ended and adulthood began. This whole arc feels very much like that for Ahsoka.

I have a lot of thoughts about Ventress. She’s as much a product of abuse and trauma as Maul and Savage are. But that doesn’t excuse what she’s done, nor does it excuse what they did either. She’s a deeply layered character and despite everything she’s done, I also find myself feeling sad for her and what’s been done to her. This is probably another thing I’m going to have to collate my thoughts about later but suffice to say, Ventress is a lot more than the one-dimensional femme-fatal villainess she was originally portrayed as.

Ah dammit, Ahsoka getting caught with Ventress is not going to help her case.

Oh, the music there is beautiful.

“Not everyone on Coruscant lives in a luxurious temple on the surface.” That theme about inequality from the last episode surfacing again.

No girl, why are you calling Barriss again. I know Ahsoka doesn’t know at this point but I’m busy wailing and gnashing at my laptop screen here.

I am also trying really hard to not be too harsh on Barriss because of the way this entire arc treats her character. I will probably collate my thoughts in my recap of the final episode of this arc but this is one of those times where you can tell that TCW has dated, and not well. This episode aired in February 2013 so I’m guessing it was written in 2012. And you can really tell.

With that in mind, Barriss is doing a very good job of acting the role of concerned friend that Ahsoka can trust. But you can see a little bit of her desperation and true intentions leaking out here in this comm call. Ahsoka nearly picks up on it when she says “How did you find this out?” but Barriss manages to cover it and misdirect her with a very cheery and friendly sounding “I told you I would do some checking.”

Nooooo Wolffe, what are you doing. I know he has to be here because Plo is here but why dammit.

How did neither Ahsoka or Ventress sense a bunch of clones closing in on them?

How does Ventress know about this abandoned warehouse?

Oh, Wolffe. I know he has no choice but to follow orders and that just makes it all even worse. Do Ahsoka and Wolffe ever cross paths after all of this?

Why didn’t all the clones just immediately stun Ahsoka and Ventress?

“Take a shot” Yes mate, why didn’t any of you do that?

Oh that was interesting, Wolffe fighting Ventress again. That has got to be a nod to how he lost his eye. I wonder if either of them knew. Wolffe might’ve if Anakin informed everyone that the person Ahsoka was seen with was Ventress. Though he also might not have in an effort to protect Ahsoka. I’m not sure Ventress would’ve realised. Or cared tbh.

Even with his bucket on, that’s gotta hurt. Poor Wolffe.

So a (former?) sith and a padawan can just easily take out a whole bunch of clones in a close quarters fight? I know suspension of belief is a thing and all that but even that is a bit of a stretch. Clones are supposed to be the ultimate soldiers and you expect me to believe that they a) didn’t take multiple opportunities for an easy stun shot and b) all got taken out by only 2 Force users, one of which is a padawan?

“General Plo Koon, we had Commander Tano, but she escaped with the help of Asajj Ventress.” Ah damn, I can see that line being the reason that Plo loses belief in Ahsoka and thinks that she actually did what she’s accused of.

That also means Wolffe knew that he was fighting the same person who sliced open his face with a lightsaber and made him lose an eye. Damn.

Where are Anakin and Plo in all of this anyway? Why aren’t they out there looking for Ahsoka as well? Why have they sent the clones out to do it? I thought the whole idea was for them, i.e. the Jedi, to go out and find Ahsoka.

Another tooka spotted!

That abandoned warehouse looks like a weird kind of shipping tanker.

“These are strange times.” FOREBODING KLAXON

Lmao at the tooka shadow being implied as Ahsoka.

Barrel straight to the face. That’s gotta hurt.

That’s gotta be Barriss, right?

Barriss, in the conservatory, with the lead piping.

It’s pretty clear that Barriss is the more powerful Force user and fighter. She seems a long way away from the almost meek and timid padawan we saw in early season 2.

Was that a very brief hint of Duel of the Fates?

The lightsaber fights have been getting better and better throughout TCW. It kicked up a notch at the start of season 5 with the fights between Obi-Wan and Maul and Savage. Then went up again in the fight between Palps, Maul and Savage at the end of the Mandalore arc. There was plenty wrong with the prequel trilogy but they did have consistently excellent lightsaber fights. From memory, this was because they hired a whole bunch of martial artists in a discipline that focused on fighting staffs who had been expelled from their own organisation because their fighting style was too aggressive and this ended up informing the fight choreography. Though this is going back many years now so I’m going to have to check that and establish if it’s not just my spotty memory playing tricks on me. I distinctly remember reading an article about it though. Memory is a funny thing. Anyway, that was one thing that stood out to me about the sequel trilogy. The lightsaber fights in that weren’t nearly as good as the ones in the prequels. So I’m glad to see TCW continue the high quality of lightsaber battles that the prequels started.

The evil character backlit by flames? How original! That’s about as subtle as the flames in the yellow eyes of Krell.

Poor Ahsoka. She’s trying so hard and it’s still not enough.

That grime on Ahsoka’s face made her look slightly like the Dark version of her from the Mortis arc. Which is probably the point.

Why didn’t you just stun her the first time Wolffe?

So now Anakin and Plo turn up.

Dammit, everything keeps going wrong for Ahsoka. Now the clones and the Jedi find Ahsoka next to crates full of the same explosive nano-droids used to blow up the temple (thanks for that exposition Wolffe). Can’t any of them see that this is all far too convenient and lining up too easily? Yes, yes, outsider perspective and all that. Still doesn’t mean I can’t feel upset for Ahsoka and how she’s been mistreated.

Oh that was definitely just a few notes from the Star Wars theme before it changed into something minor key related.

I’m still so pissed off and frustrated and upset and quite frankly disappointed by all of this. I just feel so sorry for Ahsoka. The trauma, abuse, mistreatment, and lack of belief in her is hitting really close to home too. That’s probably why what she’s going through is resonating with me so much and why I’m responding to this so strongly. This whole arc is affecting me a lot more than I thought it would. I don’t really know what else to add so it’s on to watch the final episode.

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nalyra-dreaming · 1 year

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what WAS up with the mirrors??? the one in her bedroom looked like it shattered for no reason. like the obvious interpretation was that she distorted or misunderstood what happened but the next episode depicted the events exactly as she recorded them.

Hey there! That is the question :) I first thought they would backtrack, but I'm now actually glad they didn't... it does come across as a dissociative hint, but I actually think it's more trust issue. Here's my two cents: Claudia shattered the bedroom mirror with her scream, symbolizing her shattered trust in her guardians... her parents. They read her journal(!) and though only Lestat admits to fully reading them, we see Louis open her diary. We know that he read them, later (at least). She must have felt pretty violated, I know I would have. And... she must have known they would continue to. It's a line that's been eviscerated, never to come back. Trust was almost impossible after this. And I do not think she trusted Louis a lot more than Lestat, but she could read his thoughts. She could... reach him (manipulate him), whereas Lestat is waaaaaay too much like her, which is also why they butt heads so viciously. He calls her "Evil of my evil" in the books, and yes, she is. The mirror at the end of episode 5 is a callback to that scene imho. Again, something shatters that cannot be repaired. Trust, a sense of self and safety. They had problems, Lestat may have held her, both may have yelled at her, but their home was always safe. Up until that point she was bodily safe there. Now, I have written about how Lestat was, totally apart from the DV parts that were to follow (I am NOT taking away from that here, please don't misinterpret me here) a soft coven master. He has tried to keep them as human as possible. If they had been made (i.e.) by the coven under Les Innocents (before, ironically Lestat came along and upended it), she would have been locked in a coffin, put into the wall until she would have been strong enough in madness to claw herself out of it. Just... imagine. (Lestat was absolutely right to just... flip them the proverbial bird, tbh). But for the two vampires he's sired in the New World... this burst of violence was a life-shattering experience. And they had nothing to put it into relation to, nothing, which in and by itself, had been Lestat's intention. Not only to be confronted with the fact that Lestat kept things from them. And massive things. (Flying? Hello?) No, but also that they could de-facto do nothing about it if he didn't let them. There was no scratch on him, nothing, though both went at him. And a part of me wonders if that is why Louis kept charging him, too, because it must be horrifying to realize you have no chance. In hell. Literally. And we know Louis hates being powerless. (It is also quite the testament imho that Lestat lets himself get hurt by Louis in the next episode, but that is another subject and a beast in and by itself.) So when Claudia sits there, upstairs, and sees herself hurt... she sees the bloodshed. The destruction. Her physical and mental integrity got compromised by those supposed to protect her. The mirror ties it back to the initial violation. And she breaks. And the pieces of her are never fully healed ("there's a darkness in her that wasn't there before"). One more thing, others have said it as well - but from the moment that her parents read her diaries... Claudia's diaries were also a tool. She knew they would read them. She knew she could use them to manipulate. If (!) and when she actually used them like this may be up for debate, but for someone as clever as she was...

So from that first mirror on - she was no reliable narrator anymore either. Which makes the fact that this was from her diary... and under Armand's influence confirmed by Louis later on... it just makes it all very suspicious. (Why would Louis not remember Lestat flying/floating during sex? It's even repeated that they float a bit in episode 6, such a weird little detail to include. For example. I know, there's this joke as to it being too good to remember, but... seriously? And this getting thrown off heights is something both Lestat and (supposedly) Amand experienced (at Lestat's hand). Where is the truth here?) I do think the fight happened, I do think Lestat got carried away, to put it mildly, because in order for the events to have happened that everyone agrees on that happened... well. Something must have happened. And... imho - it is something that Louis isn't particularly keen on remembering. OR Armand thinks it's better he doesn't, as he so likes to do.

#asks #thank you nonny #sorry for rambling!#I hope I make sense #iwtv #interview with the vampire #iwtv meta #amc's interview with the vampire #amc's iwtv #claudia de lioncourt #lestat de lioncourt #louis de pointe du lac #just some thoughts #book spoilers #mirror #armand #ask nalyra

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egipci · 7 months

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why should 14x10 be the jdm cameo?

lol ok I'm almost certain I've already obnoxiously brought this up to anyone who would listen --- and you know what, I'm going to do it again!

the short answer is: it would actually accomplish everything Lebanon tries to accomplish better. Which is namely 1. give us sexy old man JDM and 2. an excuse as to why he can't stay beyond the one episode.

Lebanon gives us the flimsiest possible reason as to why John has to leave-- because he's brought to the future from 2003, and his absence from the main timeline means chaos and disorder that leads to... Sam Jobs? You would think John's disappearance in 2003 would lead to the exact same thing as in 2005, i.e. Dean goes to Stanford to pick Sam up, and if he doesn't and the estrangement between the brothers continues, surely YED is still active in the world and out for Sam. If anything the alternate timeline should have been something like The End (though in good faith I suppose the Zachariah cameo is hinting at a delayed apocalypse?)

Lebanon's other failures include 1. a redundant rehashing of the Sam-John make-up we already saw in S5, which again John will not remember due to time travel, which leads to 2. no emotional resolution for Dean and John, despite the fact that it's Dean's wish that brings John back, and 3. the weird John characterization which has led to a fanon consensus that Lebanon!John is actually an apparition or an illusion of some kind and not the actual guy.

Now imagine John as part of Dean's illusory bar situation, maybe instead of Pamela, maybe he's there with Pamela. You can even throw Mary in there and have them have their sweet reunion moment. And then you can still have John be Dean's wish, you can still have a reason to kick him out at the end of the episode, you can still have Dean make the decision between this weird version of his dad and his shitty life he's now accepted, you can justify the weird John characterization, you can even have a moment of catharsis between John and Dean, perhaps as a play on 3x10, you can even still have them eyefucking each other over drinks. It just works better! It's even in character for AU!Michael who has a strong affinity to monsters (and djinns! it could have been a play on 2x20) and obsessed with his dad

MICHAEL: And, Sam -- oh, Sam… You know, Dean was his happiest when you quit hunting, leaving him with your dad, just the two of them.

It's so "right there" to me that I'm left like, Did I miss something great about Lebanon? Would this have been too boring and unimaginative? I don't know.

#I wrote a little flash about this also a while back #though it's not exactly s14 Dean in it #it's an au-au

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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where do i even begin

The focus in this episode is all over the place and also on none of the right things.

Let’s just start with the obvious: they didn’t even bother showing Alya's reaction to Marinette being Ladybug. We got nothing. Marinette revealing her identity to Alya is supposed to be a big deal, but the episode brushes it under the rug and even seems to lowkey blame Marinette for not telling Alya sooner, to the point where it outright lies and has Alya claim that Marinette’s secret was responsible for all of Alya’s Lady Wifi appearances.

It’s not like I’m surprised anymore when the show blames Marinette for like--anything, but the fact that this season seems to brag about its continuity by being on a firm timeline and then keeps going against continuity is really irritating.

And speaking of continuity, the Adrien pictures are back on the wall with absolutely no reason given. Narratively speaking, the show put them there so Alya would see them and think of bringing up Adrien to get Marinette to take a break, but the show can’t just do that if it wants to imply that it has continuity. Worse still is that this is the episode featuring “Charm Bug” (does her form have a name? I just call it Charm Bug and continue to do so), meaning that “Gang of Secrets” (where there were no Adrien pictures) has to take place before this and “Furious Fu” (where there are also no Adrien pictures) has to take place after.

At this point, they might as well just confirm that “destiny” is a real force and the ladybug miraculous is messing with Marinette’s room and twisting her emotions to make the love square endgame because--yeah, that’s all it is at this point.

The other thing is that Alya shoos Marinette away from her guardian duties so Marinette can go comfort Kagami (let’s be honest, the best part of the episode was Alya being like, “but what about Adrien?” and Marinette was basically like, “what about Adrien?”), which sounds great, but then it all goes back to Adrien, because of course it does.

Not only that, but the episode mocks Marinette for worrying about Kagami. Not only does Alya doubt Marinette’s concern, but Kagami isn’t at all affected by the break-up and isn’t even touched by Marinette’s worry.

The thing is, I get where Marinette’s coming from, because this is the Kagami who told Ladybug in “Heart Hunter” that she (Kagami) and Adrien were perfect for each other to the point where Kagami prioritized her potentially getting together with Adrien over her friendship with Marinette. Also keep in mind that Marinette is Kagami’s only friend, and it makes total sense that Marinette would expect Kagami to be devastated by the break-up.

But because it’s Miraculous, the show makes Marinette look like an idiot for being concerned for Kagami, as if saying, “Silly Marinette! Kagami’s not like you! Kagami is a strong independent woman!! You’re just so over-emotional and you were ridiculous for being sad about your own break-up! You should be more like her!”

I also don’t like it because it presents Kagami as this character who really does feel nothing due to the show not letting her. She was angry at Adrien, obviously, but she was also immensely upset and it made sense when she put so much effort in trying to get him to return her affections.

Buuuut no. Kagami is just annoyed by Marinette’s efforts to try and get her back together with Adrien (it’s not that her anger isn’t warranted, but that’s all they let her feel instead of any genuine sadness over the break-up).

And of course, there’s no mention about Marinette literally trying to help get Kagami back together with Adrien and how selfless that is on Marinette’s part. Obviously I don’t agree with Marinette disregarding Kagami’s feelings (I do hate though how the episode refused to have Kagami explain why Adrien upset her, which would help Marinette understand because she seems to think there’s a misunderstanding/Kagami doubting herself), but the episode refuses to acknowledge Marinette’s good intentions because it’s Marinette and because she’s supporting Adrimi and not the love square, so they’ll make her look as bad as possible. This led to the fandom talking about Marinette and her oBsEsSiOn with Adrien instead of saying UM HI YEAH MARINETTE IS DOING A “HEART HUNTER” 2.0??

(The show also does this consistently, by the way.)

Another thing the show won’t acknowledge is that what Marinette does with Kagami is extremely similar to what Alya does with Marinette. Alya has ignored Marinette’s agency, physically pushed her towards Adrien, and locked her in a room with Adrien no matter how many times Marinette has told her no and that she doesn’t want that.

But because it’s Marinette and because what she’s shipping is Adrimi (i.e: a ship that interferes with the love square), the episode absolutely tears her apart for it. If Alya’s meddling was treated the same way - where she’d be constantly put in the wrong and punished for it - I wouldn’t say a word about this, but we know that’s not the case from “Reflekdoll” (where Reflekta targeted Marinette and Rose of all people) and “The Puppeteer 2″ (hey, remember when Alya did all of that and then it was the museum staff who did nothing wrong who got the worst of Puppeteer’s wrath?).

And this isn’t even taking into consideration that, once again, Marinette has learned something from someone else because they were never called out or punished or learned (originally being Adrien/Bustier where she “learned” to trust Chloe and see where that got her???), and then she’s the one who gets the heat for it.

Might I also add how insulting it is that the episode before this had Marinette saying that she “didn’t want to focus on love,” and then immediately afterwards, Alya is pushing for Adrienette and the episode itself won’t let anyone shut up about Adrien?

Like, this is the episode where Marinette does guardian stuff, gets an upgrade in Charm Bug, and yet the episode hyperfocuses on Aaaaaadrien. He doesn’t even do anything; he’s just a black hole that inhales all available attention and magically pulls all the characters towards his general location.

Then the episode keeps breaking its own continuity as an excuse to make things more about Adrien and also more about the love square, like saying that Marinette carries her disguises everywhere when it’s really just an excuse for Marinette to conveniently have the umbrella so that they can recreate the umbrella scene (by the way, the line from Marinette about “recreating Kagami’s moment where she fell in love with Adrien” is both incredibly forced and incredibly obvious because we’ve never even seen how Kagami fell for Adrien).

And when you already know how the show goes, it all becomes so predictable, which is a huge problem. By the time you hear Marinette say that she “didn’t want to focus on love” last episode, you already know what’s going happen. This episode reaffirms Marinette’s crush on Adrien, which is weird because it’s not as if there was ever any doubt in the first place? The show didn’t even try to convince its audience that Marinette was actually trying to move on, which gives the scene no impact when it happens. We already know that Marinette isn’t really in denial (she’s not stupid) and is very likely saying that she’s not in love with Adrien because admitting it hasn’t gotten her anywhere and she’s repeating something to herself is an attempt to make it true (which is a common coping mechanism for people with self-esteem issues/anxiety), so the scene is just for shipping fuel.

We’ve seen future episodes that show that Marinette hasn’t made any actual progress, hence being another piece of evidence towards my theory that the show does it on purpose to get the Adrienette fans to freak out when anything happens even if it’s reversed in the end. It’s particularly frustrating because it denies Marinette of agency yet again, with her saying something and the show then going lol okay but what if--

It’s gross, and made more so by Kagami watching Marinette and Adrien from a distance and saying that they’re “made for each other.” I’ve talked many times before about how the show is too lazy to have actual chemistry between the love square so they’ll just have characters say that they’re meant to beeeeee, so I won’t go into that, but really, actually think about what Kagami’s saying here.

This is the guy that, in her eyes, abandoned her repeatedly on dates and lied in order to get away from her. She stated outright that Adrien had disappointed her to the point where all of her feelings for Adrien seemed to have completely disappeared and she didn’t even want to be friends with him anymore (at least for now).

Yet, the show had Kagami not only say that line, but told Marinette directly that Adrien was perfect for her. This means either one of two things, neither being good:

- the show intentionally had Marinette do all this so that Kagami would feel embarrassed for Adrien and thus fix all of Adrimi’s relationship problems without Adrien having to do any work to earn her trust back (notice how Adrien in this episode is an “extra good boy” this time around, probably even more than they usually try - keyword: try - to portray him)

- Kagami’s opinion on Adrien hasn’t changed at all and she’s essentially saying that Marinette belongs with this guy who has hurt Kagami, betrayed her trust, and will probably do the same to Marinette

And obviously the show doesn’t think about any of that. It just wants to push for the love square. The only reason there was any focus on Kagami at all was to have a reason to get Marinette to go to Kagami, for Kagami to get angry at Marinette because - as we all know - Marinette “has to mess up and learn in every episode,” so there’d be a reason to go to where Adrien was, and so Kagami could become the next local shipper for the love square.

Marinette didn’t even get to figure out the magical charms by herself; Rena Rouge gave her the answer. It was like the show saw her doing guardian work and shoved her out the door because the only thing she’s good for is being part of the love square. Alya gets seconds of time shown with her looking over the grimoire to figure out the trick, which makes the whole thing underwhelming and rushed when Rena comes up and tells Ladybug that it’s essentially “just been about her” the whole time, meaning it’s just the show yet again being like “see, Marinette? If you’d just figured this out bEfORe...” (note that the episode never tells Marinette that she’s unnecessarily guilting/blaming herself)

But yeah, despite the episode not giving Adrien anything to do, characters talk about him constantly, Marinette somehow doesn’t get the spotlight she needs despite getting a power-up form, and the episode feels the need to constantly railroad Marinette exactly where it wanted to go, not for her, but for the love square, which has always been about not her. It’s already bad when the episode itself is bad, but when it has so much to throw in and delivers on absolutely none of it, it just makes it all the more painful.

#category: salt #episode: Mr. Pigeon 72 #other: ml spoilers #other: ask and answer

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whentheynameyoujoy · 3 years

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Yup, Sure Was a Finale

I had an epiphany. The reason why I never re-watched the final two parts of Sozin’s Comet even though I’ve popped in episodes at random many times over the years isn’t that I can’t bear the sadness of seeing one of the best, most engaging narratives out there come to an end.

It’s simply that the finale isn’t all that good.

Some honorable mentions of what was enjoyable.

(+) This

Just this.

(+) The Church of Zutara has another convert

“Are you sure they don’t get together?” Hubster, 2020

(+) The tragedy of Azula

And the fact that it’s acknowledged as such. I hope Zuko will do his best to get her help and have a relationship with her…

(+) Sokka being a big bro

And the whole airship sequence in general. It’s wonderfully paced and plotted, with moments of humor, real stakes, Toph being both badass and a scared crying kid, Sokka strategizing and protecting, Suki saving the day, and non-benders being instrumental in thwarting the bad guy firebender’s plans. Would be shame if Bryke never portrayed them this capable ever again…

And now for the main course.

(-) Blink and its over

The wrap-up feels too quick (hashtag Needs More ROtK-style False Endings). A part of this is due to how fast the story goes from the thick of the action to hastily tying up a bunch of loose ends, but the larger issue is how Book 3’s uneven pacing comes home to roost. After spending half a season on filler episodes that at best subtly flesh out established characters while dancing around a huge lionturtle-shaped hole, and at worst contradict the theme of “no one is born bad” with “you’re a hot mess because your great-grandfathers didn’t get along too well”, the frantic “go go go” rush of the second half screeches to a halt with “they won and everyone was happy because now the right people have power and it will be all good from now on yup nothing more to deal with baiiiii”.

Yes, I know, it’s a kids’ show. But goddamn, this particular kids’ show has proven so many times it can do better than the expected tropiness. Showing the characters in their roles as builders of a new world was the least that could have been done.

Oh well!

(-) Ursa

We’ll never know. There will never be a story that delves into this. Yup. Shall forever remain but an intriguing mystery. Is good, though. Mystery is better than a story where Ursa shares her son’s penchant for forgetfulness. Imagine how embarrassing that would be. Speaking of which…

(-) What does Mai see in this jerkbender?

Look, I like to harp a lot on the mess of inconsistent writing that’s Mai but let’s unpack this scene from her perspective, shall we?

Zuko forgot about her! It totally slipped his mind that the one person who prioritized the safety of his dumb ass was rotting in the worst prison in the Fire Nation—because of him! And she was rotting there long enough after the final Agni Kai for the news of Zuko’s upcoming coronation to spread and her uncle to feel sufficiently secure to release her. But then the coronation scene is attended by every single member of Gaang & Friends that was imprisoned?

So what this tells me is that either a) the invasion force had the ability to break themselves out the whole time and for some reason decided not to exercise it until after the war was over, b) Zuko forgot about them as well and no one thought to remind him there were prisons full of POWs until Mai arrived, or, and that’s even better, c) Zuko took care to free every single resistance fighter while making sure Mai would be the one to stay behind bars.

Never thought I’d say this but Mai? Honey? You deserve so much better.

(-) “What does Katara want?”

Asked no one in the writers’ room ever, apparently.

This is not so much anti Cataang as anti romance stories that pay attention to the needs, opinions, and wants of only one partner in general. Over the previous 60 episodes, Katara actively expressed romantic interest in Aang exactly, wait for it,

Once.

And it got retconned out of relevance by the following two interactions where the possibility of a romantic relationship came up, making the Headband dance pretty easy to reclassify as just one of those examples where Aang “teaches” Katara to have fun (as if one of the main obstacles to her having fun wasn’t him constantly fooling around and offloading his duties). And because the writers not only didn’t succeed in portraying Katara’s internal state of mind, but also failed to root her reluctance to pursue a relationship in outside circumstances that could change, her sudden state of unconfused once Aang steps into the spotlight has a single canonical explanation that as much as approaches coherency.

The fact is, though, that trying to interpret canon Cataang from a Watsonian perspective is an exercise in foolishness. Because there is no Watsonian justification for the ship and never has been. Bryke simply conceived of Katara as nothing but a tropey prize for Aang, never saw her as anything beyond that, and were perfectly happy to go on and immortalize her as a passive broodmare for the rest of her life.

And I fully intend to die mad about it.

(-) Iroh dips

OK, it’s been long apparent that the show doesn’t intend to do anything about Iroh’s complicity in AzulOzai’s regime in any meaningful way, and that his sole motivation for doing anything whatsoever is Zuko whom he views as a replacement son which is supposed to be good for some reason. But the finale has him abandon even that, and instead turns him full-on YOLO, idgaf anymore. It really throws Iroh’s supposed love for Zuko into doubt when his last act in the entire show is to take a half-educated 16-year old with no political savvy or an heir to secure a dynastic continuity and plomp him on the throne of a war-mongering imperialist regime where the entirety of the militarist and ruling class is guaranteed to fight him tooth and nail for power.

(I sure hope Mai’s ready to start popping out babies by tea-time otherwise the whole country is fukd in about a week)

Christ, how hard would it be to have Iroh keep the throne warm for a few years while Zuko is getting ready to succeed him? Not only would it make the whole FN reformation bit quite likelier to occur, it would require Iroh’s hedonistic ass to actually sacrifice something for once. And not having Zuko ascend to power, instead spending some time bettering and educating himself first, would be a wonderful message that no matter what you endured and overcame, you never stop growing. A kids’ show, remember?

(-) The conquering of Ba Sing Se

Gee, I feel so blessed to have my attention diverted from battlefields which actually matter to an old dude vanity project I would have been perfectly happy to assume resolved itself off-screen.

The White Lotus in general just bugs me. I was fine with the individual characters and their overall passivity when they were portrayed as lone dissenters living under circumstances where it wasn’t really possible for any single person to mount a meaningful resistance. But as members of a far-reaching shadowy organization that’s left the real fight to a bunch of kids for 59 episodes straight and didn’t turn up until a perfect opportunity presented itself to take control of the largest city in the world and bask in the spotlight?

Yeah, no.

Similarly to the lionturtle-ex-machina, the White Lotus represents a huge missed opportunity for a season-long storytelling. Here’s just a brief list of what they could have been doing throughout Book 3:

orchestrating a Fire Nation uprising;

gathering those directly persecuted by AzulOzai’s regime to help Zuko keep his hold on power once he’s crowned;

establishing themselves as a viable alternative to Ozai;

sabotaging Fire Nation’s war efforts from the inside;

countering Fire Nation propaganda (Asha Greyjoy’s pinecones, anyone?);

running a supply network to alleviate the suffering of Earth Kingdom citizens.

Instead, they sit on their asses until the time comes to claim personal glory.

You know what, good on Bryke for making me conclude that in comparison, the Freedom Fighters were perfectly unproblematic, actually.

(-) Fire Lord Dead-by-Dawn

Yes, a kids’ show, I know! But ffs, this is the same kids’ show that came up with Long Feng and portrayed courtly intrigue, kingly puppets, secret police, spy networks, and information wars. Was it really too much of me to expect something other than “enlightened despot solves everything”? Especially if said enlightened despot has persisting anger issues, no personal support system, no base of followers, and no political experience whatsoever?

If Zuko’s actually serious about regaining the Fire Nation’s honor (i.e. by dismantling the country’s military machine, decolonizing the Earth Kingdom, paying reparations to everyone and their lemur, and funding any and all cultural restoration projects Aang and the SWT come up with), then there is no way, no way in the universe that he doesn’t face a civil war, deposing, and execution within a month.

One reason why his future as a Fire Lord seems rather bleak is that little’s been shown about the actual subjects of AzulOzai’s regime. While we get a vague reassurance that “no Toph, they’re not born bad” (le shockings), they largely remain a voiceless uniform mass of brainwashed clapping seals. What is their view on the Fire Nation’s crimes? Do they associate their condition with their country’s war-mongering? How will they react when Zuko starts dismantling the country piece by piece to rebuild it, bringing it to economic ruin? What will they do when noble Ozai loyalists come out of the woodwork and begin rounding them up under the banner of “Make the Fire Nation Great Again?”

I have no idea, and Zuko doesn’t either because he’s unironically more qualified to rule the Earth Kingdom than his own people.

You know what would have been better? Fire Lord Iroh, White Lotus pulling the strings to maintain the regime, and Crown Prince/People’s Champion Zuko travelling the Fire Nation with Aang and an army of tutors to promote the new boss, only to realize that absolute monarchy is kinda crap for the people he’s one day supposed to rule and gaining their support by ceding some power to them.

I’d laser holes into my TV due to how much I’d enjoy watching that.

(-) All hail Avatar Rock

Literally and metaphorically. Aang doesn’t sacrifice anything, gets everything, and the clever solution of going about getting said everything is handed to him on a silver platter, requiring no active participation on his part whatsoever.

He doesn’t work to unblock his chakras, spiritually or physically.

He only speaks to his past lives to get a pat on the back and a bow-tied solution he could mindlessly follow.

Energy-bending doesn’t require any sacrifice from him, leaves no lasting marks, and only serves for the narrative to praise him as the rare individual that’s unbendable and thus so very very special.

The most infuriating thing is, however, that Aang is clearly shown as being able to beat Ozai without either the Avatar state, or energy-bending.

And he chooses not to. From this moment on, Aang no longer fights to save the world. He fights to preserve his beliefs, going directly against the instructions of his past lives and effectively reneging on his duties as the Avatar.

Again.

It’s not like you can’t portray Aang’s faithfulness to his spiritual beliefs as the key to beating Ozai and saving the world. But that’s not what the show did. There is no link between Aang sparing Ozai and securing a better future, quite to the contrary—Ozai’s survival ends up being a massive problem for the continuation of Zuko’s rule, and consequently a threat to the world at large. His survival benefits Aang and no one else.

Aang’s spiritual purity and his status as a savior of the world are allowed to coexist only due to a deliberate stroke of a writer’s pen.

And I hate it.

Welp, nothing to do about it now except to bury myself up to my tits in fix-it fics I guess.

#atla #atla rewatch #meta #zutara #anti bryke #anti-kataang #anti-aang #anti-maiko

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Moving on to Episode 4 of Word of Honor, and y’all.

Wait, first: If you’re new or just visiting, this is a re-watch, so there are SPOILERS not just for this ep but for the ENTIRE SHOW. Maybe a lot of them. Scroll away and come back later if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled. (They’re all gonna be tagged “word of honor episode reax”)

A couple of big things, first:

So, right up front, I don’t know for sure that this is the first time we’ve heard the word, but it’s the first time I’ve twigged to it in this re-watch. As Zhou Zishu and Chengling are leaving the inn in the morning, at the very beginning of the ep, Wen Kexing asks why ZZS continues to call him gongzi and wants to know if he’s still too much of an outsider for a less formal form of address. He uses the word 外人 (wairen) (at 2:30) for “outsider,” which is how the subs translate it here. Anybody who’s been around for these flailing reactions since the first time I watched the show might remember that I made a deal about this somewhere around in the late 20s of the episodes, based on a post from someone that I scrolled quickly past while avoiding spoilers and that I have NEVER FOUND AGAIN and am STILL LOOKING FOR, that alerted me to the use of this word and its nuances in ep 25. There’s a conversation there about WKX possibly taking over some of Chengling’s training at Siji Manor, and WKX demurs, calling himself “外人.” Youku translated it there as “someone else,” as in having “someone else” train your disciple, and ZZS responds with “And you’re 外人?” again translated as “someone else.” This actually seems to mean “stranger,” or “outsider,” as they do actually translate it here in Ep 4 - presumably someone who’s from outside your sect, at least in the Ep 25 instance, in which WKX is labeling himself that while he’s in the midst of his upcoming crisis, trying to keep his emotional distance from ZZS and Siji Manor. It’s used again in Ep 26, when ZZS finds WKX giving training advice to Chengling, and it’s one of the ways they have WKX and A-Xiang reflect each other, when she uses it in Ep 29, and rejects it as a description of herself, in order to claim a place in Cao Weining’s sect/family (which, now, knowing … GOD. My HEART). Anyway, I found it super-interesting that WKX is using this word here in Ep 4 to push against ZZS’s boundaries, in contrast to the way he’ll use it later, to try to fortify his own walls against ZZS and Siji Manor. I begin to suspect that he doesn’t want to tell ZZS who he actually is because, maybe, just a little bit, he wants ZZS to figure it out, to recognize him, to truly know him (zhiji) without him having to spell it out. We kind of travel back around to this idea near the end of the ep, when WKX is questioning ZZS about the Baiyi sword, and ZZS tells him that their relationship is like the fish that ZZS unsuccessfully tried to cook and threw on the ground – raw (i.e., unacquainted) – to explain why he keeps shutting out and shutting down WKX. Only we know now that isn’t entirely true, and WKX certainly suspects it isn’t entirely true. (Also, just an observation, ZZS says in that later scene that he’s not interested in who WKX is. DON’T TELL HIM THAT, my dude, now it’s going to be 3,246 episodes before he’ll give you any personal info.)

Also, just a note – I think we make the switch from Zhou-xiong to A-Xu in this ep. (ETA: No! I have been reliably informed by @janedrewfinally that this switch happened back at the end of Ep 3 (at 41:18), and it seems to be part of what precipitates the Completely Reasonable, Not At All Flirtatious, Utterly Heterosexual No Really, Like Bros way that ZZS takes WKX's wine jar. You know the incident we mean.)

The second thing that I really started turning over in my head here is the developing relationship between WKX and Chengling, and this is one of the things that took me so long on this one, because I wanted to go back and look at those two, specifically, in the previous eps again, and revisit their interactions both with and without the mediating factor of ZZS. The first time WXK sees Chengling is in the marketplace at the end of Ep 1 when Chengling ends up giving his token to ZZS. But I think the first time WKX sees Chengling is maybe when WKX’s sitting in the cutout window with his drinkie during the massacre of Mirror Lake and ZZS draws the Baiyi sword to protect Boatman Li and Chengling, just before they make it to the boat and float away back to the mainland. I don’t know how much of the beginning of the fight in the abandoned temple WKX then sees before A-Xiang makes her entrance, but there’s a lot of Chengling flinging himself in front of Boatman Li and ZZS in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar to the way Zhen Yan will fling himself at his parents’ bodies in flashback in a later episode, and then WKX definitely sees dying Boatman Li charge ZZS with Chengling’s care, then make Chengling bow, in a parallel to the scene we’ll get later when Qin Huaizhang accepts Zhen Yan as a Siji Manor shidi. In Ep 3, there’s a lot of weird sympathetic looks from WKX as A-Xiang berates Chengling over dinner (she doesn’t quite have this jiejie thing down yet, and she’s probably never had someone younger than her to take care of) for not taking care of himself so he can be strong and get his revenge for his family’s deaths. This time out, Ep 4, we start with the beggar gangs coming after Chengling, which has some resonance with the former Ghost Valley Master and his Ten Devils standing around the bodies of Zhen Yan’s parents and debating what they’re going to do with this kid before they steal him away. You can see WKX’s eyes start to narrow as the lead beggar dude talks, and he eventually even asks them, “What are you going to do if he doesn’t want to go, take him away by force?” We get a LOT of cutting to WKX in this conversation, even though he ostensibly has nothing to do with this, it’s really a convo between Beggar Guy, ZZS and Chengling. WKX pulls focus, and he eventually provokes that fight, and sure, he wants to see ZZS fighting and hopefully get a look at the Baiyi sword, and he even may think that’s the extent of his ulterior motives, but I’m not sure that actually is the full extent of his motives, there. This episode is also when we really see WKX start to encourage Chengling to continue to press at ZZS about taking him as a disciple, including the first use of the infamous “Tough women can’t resist clingy men” saying. Chengling comments that he was just supposed to be Son #3 who stayed home and took care of the old people, and WKX comes back with the Extremely Significant Comment that “When the children want to fulfill their filial piety, the parents have died,” which is not only Extremely Significant, but also sounds like it may be a quote from a poem or other literature? Anyway, a lot of this is just to say, KINDLY AU ANON WHO WAS THINKING ABOUT WRITING THE STORY IN WHICH WKX GETS CUSTODY OF CHENGLING BECAUSE ZZS IS NOT AT MIRROR LAKE, ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE? Hopefully you are hard at work, writing, because I have been having thoughts about this relationship.

What else? Kind of chronologically:

First of all, it continues to physically pain me to have to look at that horrifying facial hair, ZZS. I cannot WAIT to hit Ep 6.

We open this ep on WKX rolling walnuts in his hand in a way that is reminiscent of SOMEONE who we’ve seen do that before – multiple times, given they put that shot of Ghost Valley Master in the opening credits. Nevertheless, I didn’t catch this right away on my first time through. It took me a few episodes, and then I FINALLY noticed the opening credits shot right in front of my face. Point to you, show. Once you know, this ep practically shoves it in your face, recreating not only the walnut rolling, but a dude getting held up in the air and choked out (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1 (and will see again)) before being slammed down on the ground with WKX crouched over him (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1). Later, WKX is concerned about his manicure (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1). It’s actually a little bit funny that both he and ZZS - a master assassin and a guy who literally skinned another dude (and maybe ate him?) to take his throne – are both so prissy about actual, literal blood. Anyway, is it significant or a coincidence that WKX waits until ZZS and Chengling are out of sight before actually going wild-eyed? You know the look I mean.

OH MY GOD, it’s Lovelace. I had blocked this dude from my mind. Eurgh. Nevertheless, there are a number of things I love about his scene, and all of them are related to A-Xiang, my feral beloved - from the way she clomps into the room, completely unworried about stepping the least bit gracefully while making her presence known and stomping (lit. and fig.) all over his dramatic little bit, to the way she berates him, threatens him with “Aunt Luo,” bares her teeth at him, and makes the eye-gouging motion at him. She is the best, and I adore her. I also love how she literally laughs in WKX’s face at his comment that maybe he just wants to be friends with ZZS, OK, is that alright?

The fight with the beggar gangs in this ep may be the first time we see something similar to the cage of spears maneuver in Prince Jin’s throne room all the way up in Ep … what? 30? … although it won’t be the last time we see it, and each time we see ZZS is perfectly capable of avoiding it or escaping it, making me suspect that Tian Chuang only “trapped” him in it because he let them, just like he only got taken back to Prince Jin in chains, in the first place, because he let it happen. We see it at 5:30 with the beggar gang’s staffs, when ZZS breaks it up by literally flinging another dude into the middle of it. We see it at 5:41, when he kicks his way out of the formation. And we see it at 8:15, when the sheaths have come off the swords, and he feints under them to break his way out. Just noticing.

When WKX is talking about the Baiyi sword as they all sit around ZZS’ sad little raw fish in the dirt by the lakeside, he mentions that Rong Changqing created three master works – the White Cloth sword, the Dragonback, and the “Great Wild Land,” per Youku’s translation. ZZS has the Baiyi sword, I assume the Dragonback is Ye Baiyi’s sword. Is the Great Wild Land actually the Ghost Valley? Given what we learn from Ye Baiyi in the back nine about Rong Changqing and his plans for Ghost Valley? Anyway, then we get some magic pipa playing, and ZZS (trying to, apparently) play WKX’s xiao in musical self-defense, and even though he leaves his opponent bleeding, WKX takes the opportunity to make suggestive comments about teaching him how to blow properly, just in case WKX’s been slacking on his act as a cheesy pick-up artist and anyone’s beginning to see through him. ZZS yells at Chengling for his lack of martial skill, then yells at him for crying, because that always works, particularly with traumatized teenagers who have had their entire family and sect massacred like, two nights ago. As a shifu, I’m not sure how you manage to inspire such devotion, my dude. WKX plays the indulgent parent, but also reassures Chengling that ZZS has good reasons for yelling at a traumatized, newly orphaned kid. I suppose he is getting him ready for all the yelling that’s going to go down once they get to Five Lakes Alliance and Chengling has to deal with Gao Chong and Shenshen. Chengling’s response, with WKX’s encouragement, is to ask to be ZZS’s disciple again. Was Han Ying (who I guess we’ve yet to actually meet at this point (EDIT TO ADD: NO WAIT, he was in Ep 1)) this much of a little dumbass to 24-year-old ZZS when Han Ying was 14? (EDIT 2 TO ADD: And who is writing this story, omg.) Although, ugh, that makes me realize that part of ZZS’s bad mood is that Chengling asking to be a disciple must be bringing up a shit-ton of bad stuff for ZZS about how he got all the other Siji Manor disciples killed. (Wen Kexing sees himself in Chengling, making his bow to Qin Huaizhang, one of the few good things that ever happened in his life, while ZZS sees all those red flowers on the mural back in his rooms in Prince Jin’s palace.) A final lakeside observation – A-Xiang pokes at ZZS’s uselessness as a cook here, and WKX will later ask him why he’s so utilitarian about food and drink, when they’re the greatest pleasures of life. (Really, WKX? THE greatest pleasures? Although that’s certainly an interesting comment given where we end up, in the end.) And it makes me begin to wonder – is ZZS so bad at cooking, and does he continue to avoid it, at least partially because he’s already losing his senses enough so that it interferes with preparing a tasty meal?

Also, we meet the Four Scorpion Assassins, and Pretty Arhat and Evil Bodhisattva have some pretty bold names, but now I’m back on my thing about the women in this show, and wondering what kind of enlightenment or release these two feel like they’ve had, and how it may or may not resemble the mindset of the women of the Department of the Unfaithful in Ghost Valley. I’m not well-versed in Buddhism, though, and am maybe not the person to take on how that religious symbolism is or is not used as a metaphor for female freedom in this show.

This is getting kind of long, so one last observation for now, and I think I may have mentioned this before: WKX has color-coded ZZS and Chengling as a unit in the robes he bought for them when he also rented out the entire inn. He’s not in the same color, but he is in a complementary shade and tone, which I find interesting. Also, his sash is sort of salmon, not the red of his Ghost Valley getup, but not completely divorced from it, either.

#wen kexing #zhou zishu #zhang chengling #gu xiang #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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johannas-motivational-insults · 3 years

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@ericamzdm I’ve read all three parts of your 5x06 pick apart and I think you made some interesting points. I’m going to respond to all of the posts at once (really just the first two, though) for the sake of clarity, and because a lot of the themes carry over and my remarks on them are more general. I’m doing this in a seperate post to avoid highjacking yours and so I’m not sending a huge ass post onto my followers’ timelines. (But interested readers should check out the original posts here: part 1, part 2, part 3.)

First of all, while I disagree with a number of your conclusions, I want to say thank you for putting into words why this episode (and in particular the fandom’s reaction to it) makes me really uncomfortable. I’m not actually sure how much of the problem is in the episode itself vs. the way people talk about it, but I agree said framing issue is there and the writers could have made it better with a few small changes.

I wouldn’t call Adora’s behavior in this episode abusive, with the possible exceptions of the mattress flip and backing Catra into the corner and pinning her arm. And even with those, you gotta remember that these two have been friends since they were little kids, and scrapping and physical aggression is just part of their relationship (remember Catra scratching Adora in 5x03?). Of course, it used to be playful/childish and now the context is different, so there’s room for disagreement there. Even if it is abusive it’s clearly unintentionally so, but Adora does have a very bad habit (we saw it in Promise too) of getting up in Catra’s face and using her superior size to intimidate, which is super uncomfortable to watch given how many times we have seen Shadow Weaver do the same thing to Catra.

Really, I think the crux of this matter is that neither Catra nor Adora is abusive towards the other, but they were raised in an abusive environment and picked up a lot of their tools for handling conflict from that environment. Further, I disagree with your assertion that Adora was abusing Catra back in the Horde. However, you are right that she picked up bad habits there and I think in a way Catra feels like Adora abused her because she was part of the system that abused her - while she tried to protect her from Shadow Weaver we know she also did some victim blaming. Adora wasn’t in a position of much influence and was trying to help, but I can understand the resentment there and why Catra felt the need to cut ties earlier in the show.

One thing you’re very right about, though, is that in this episode Adora did loom quite a bit and used intimidating body language that made me (and Catra) uncomfortable as an abuse survivor. I disagree Adora’s holding Catra prisoner but I think to Catra it might feel that way anyway, which is really the issue. As you noted there is a huge power imbalance here with Catra recovering from basically dying and being in her PJs and with no allies. And Adora definitely violates Catra’s boundaries again and again, so set on smoothing things over that she fails to realize her insistence on fixing things is making them worse. As is often the case with her, her intentions are good but she completely misreads what the other person needs from her and barges on with her way instead of listening to them. Adora’s complaint that nothing has changed is her fault as much as Catra’s imo.

I also agree the part where she is stomping around huffing and kicking things and complaining that Catra is a brat is a sign of her emotional dysregulation and Not Great behavior. Someone asked once if I found that behavior abusive and no I don’t because it’s not directed at Catra, but it is still hard to watch. I agree Adora’s categorization of Catra as a brat while lashing out physically feels a little Shadow Weaver (intentionally or not) and that specific word choice does imply that she looks down on Catra and doesn’t respect her agency/isn’t putting in the effort to understand why she is not being ‘convenient’. It’s not a good look, and it’s not clear enough that she’s in the wrong here. (Catra is in the wrong too, the issue is that Adora’s behavior is also problematic but is not sufficiently framed that way.)

This could have been such a pivotal scene if Glimmer had taken a bit of a different tack with Adora. In fact, I think that was what made the episode just not quite work the way it’s supposed to. Glimmer is a lot like Catra, and she has had a lot of similar conflicts with Adora. If Glimmer had done more to discourage Adora’s overbearing behavior and told her she needs to give Catra space and respect it could have done a lot for Glimmer’s character arc as well as the arc of this episode. Without that, you’re right, the moment when Adora backs off and gives Catra the space to choose lands more like bitterness and giving up as opposed to making a choice to respect Catra’s agency in the way she needs to if she wants Catra to feel safe to open up.

(Of course she does agree later on to trust Catra’s judgement and let her connect to the hivemind and that also shows development, but as you said it felt a little unearned.)

So yeah I disagree with your assertions that Adora is an abuser and that she’s holding Catra prisoner, but I agree with a number of your observations about the episode itself. I also agree that the framing of the episode made it seem more like it was Catra being the problem rather than Catradora having a hard time renegotiating their relationship and its boundaries. Adora is absolutely being overbearing in this episode and I don’t think it was properly addressed, i.e. it wasn’t clear enough that those problems they were both having were problems on Adora’s end too. And I think a different conversation with Glimmer could have fixed that, just a few lines. The episode showed both of them struggling but I think it does come across like more of the onus is on Catra, like she’s being unreasonable as opposed to being defensive for understandable reasons.

But like I said, some of this is actually more about the fandom’s reaction to the episode. Maybe the writers were hoping to get across that they both needed to work on their bullshit but the fandom has excused Adora because she’s the hero. To be fair, Adora’s mistakes in this episode are very in character for her, in line with her faults/insecurities in general, so maybe they expected us to understand she’s not handling the situation properly.

The fandom reaction to Adora flipping Catra’s mattress and backing her into the corner reminds me of the reactions to DT obliterating Catra with that speech in 4x13. I think on some level we like seeing these drastic actions because watching Catra spiral is frustrating and we want to see something get through to her. It’s satisfying in a way. But on the other hand, both those situations left her with this kind of body language:

And idk, I’m not sure that’s something we as a fandom should be celebrating. Especially considering that DT’s speech left Catra wanting to die and that this bullish behavior by Adora wasn’t really what flipped the switch. It’s pretty significant that the moment Catra asks Adora to stay is once she backs off and says she won’t force her to give her a place in her life. And I think we the fandom tend to overlook that.

So op, I wish you hadn’t come to some of the conclusions you did with your analysis, but I am grateful to you for starting this conversation. I was having a hard time putting it into words other than “it sets off tons of alarm bells in my head and does no one else hear that??”

#replies #ericamzdm #spop #5x06 taking control #catradora #adora #catra #shadow weaver #glimmer #abuse #anger management

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algernoninwonderland · 3 years

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So the Shanghai Special wasn’t nearly as terrible as I had feared it would be!

The good:

Superhero stuff that doesn’t involve fighting off villains. At last. Only took us 3 seasons but that finally happened.

The Cheng family. Well, Wang Cheng. He’s really a good guy. They hired Bing Yin, an actual Chinese actor to voice him instead of the white VA they had in season 1. That’s the bare minimum and I shouldn’t be praising this, but at least they did it.

All that sweet sweet Cheng family history. I loved every second of it. Cheng Xia Ping.

Bastille the Cockatoo.

All the background characters. Their models look actually finished, and good, with varied fashion choices, unlike these monstrous Parisians (though to be fair, we Parisians are a terrifying people). The Mandarin they speak isn’t gibberish, they hired actual Chinese-speaking people for that. Once again, bare minimum, it’s not praise as much as me noting this.

Some of the sets actually look like Shanghai! That hadn’t really been true of the New-York special, but here, the Bund actually looks like the Bund! Good job on that!

Some of Fei’s characterisation! There’s this nice internal conflict within her that I quite enjoyed (even though the way it’s shown… But we’ll come back to that later). Her character animation is pretty good which almost makes up for the more caricatural parts of her character. Thank you SAMG!

Expressive lighting. So much of it. It’s nice, and something the regular show was lacking. It’s genuinely good!

Some of the soundtrack is fitting and moody and isn’t orientalist nonsense.

These three kids. I want a spin-off series starring them and Fei.

Wow, antagonists who are adults and capitalists who exploit vulnerable kids are the bad guys and join forces. You know, not angry teenagers. Accumulating large sums of money is only truly possible through the exploitation of other people. Yes. I agree with you there, person that wrote that part of the script.

The Renlings and the Prodigious, from an entertainment standpoint. Cool concept, cool powers, I quite like that.

Hawk Moth getting vaporised. Take that, sucker.

Fei doesn’t turn into a blonde after all! They changed it! Wow! It’s the very bare minimum, once again.

The noodle thing is true!

The bad:

This whole eclipse thing. Was it really necessary? Sort of. Are we made to care about it? Sort of. Not really. Unfortunately not very compelling.

Why Marinette Goes to Shanghai in the First Place. I get that she’s a teenager with a crush but come on.

Some directing observations: Marinette looking at pictures of Adrien on her phone while her uncle is introducing her to their family. That would be fine if she weren’t the audience surrogate, really. The thing is, if she isn’t shown to care all that much about her family and only wants to see Adrien, if she doesn’t ask to know more, the audience is encouraged to feel the same way, i.e. to not care.

She isn’t shown to be spending time with her uncle at all. We get like two minutes at most with only these two alone. Because apparently Marinette getting acquainted with her Chinese family is not that important to her character. Newsflash, when you make a show, you get to decide what is important or not, unless the producers really force your hand. And so what’s important is that Marinette has a crush on Adrien. Wow, never heard about that one before.

All That Kung-Fu nonsense. Is every Chinese character playing a prominent role in this show proficient in martial arts in a way or another? In 2021? Could we stop making Kung-Fu this thing with sort-of-mystical elements in it, and chi strikes and whatnot? Xu Xiaodong would like a few words with you. Yes the fight choreography is decent, but c’mon.

All that “ancestral values” stuff. I mean, really?

The Ugly:

Not specific to this episode, but Marinette really knew nothing about the Chinese side of her family before? Her parents only planned on saving money to travel with her one day but nothing beforehand? Really? That’s terrible writing.

Fei’s backstory is a cliché wrapped inside another cliché from old Kung-Fu and Wuxia movies, and that’s because the special isn’t long enough to do everything it wants to do properly in just 50-something minutes.

These stupid voice-over moments. It feels almost amateurish. If your directing is strong enough as is, the images should be able to do the talking themselves.

Part of the music is good. Part of the music is utter rubbish with all the musical clichés about China you can think about wrapped into one neat package.

Yes it’s a show for children, but the moralising aspect is really shoved in our faces in an unsubtle way this time, and, more annoyingly, it’s very superficial. The whole “purity” thing… What is that even supposed to mean? The show doesn’t do its work, it doesn’t define what that is supposed to mean.

The Prodigious and the Renlings only raise more questions that probably won’t be answered ever, this worldbuilding continues to be a mess.

It’s always about the Love Square, isn’t it? It can’t not be about the Love Square. When some things happen that aren’t Love Square-related for more than five minutes, the special is yanked back to that. Yes, we know Marinette is infatuated with Adrien. Yes we know Adrien is kind of oblivious. We know that. You’ve been telling us that for three seasons straight. We haven’t forgotten. Now do something else for fifty minutes please, since this isn’t following the show’s regular continuity, this would be the perfect chance, right?

Overall, it’s pretty good, for Miraculous, but Miraculous shouldn’t be your standard for goodness.

Not unsalvageable/10, not a complete catastrophe but not nearly as good as it could have been.

#ml #miraculous #ml shanghai #ml s4 spoilers #ml critical #wang cheng #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #ml fei

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michaelburnhamfanclub · 3 years

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season three is where star trek discovery claims to have found its stride, and i must admit that with the season’s premiere, i was more than inclined to agree. however, now that s3 is complete and we’re able to take a holistic view of all of the resolved and unresolved arcs, i’m still pretty unsatisfied

with the s3 finale, it became clear that the season’s mission in terms of its protagonist was a concise one: to fully prepare michael burnham for the captain’s seat

i was thrilled when michael finally was promoted to captain, but it’s really worth examining the ways that the show went about its final preparations for such a promotion. there were a few major tenants to michael’s character arc across these thirteen episodes, and the following two themes are the ones i think are most worth unpacking in terms of what they do in service of michael’s promotion:

1. michael’s ongoing and complex relationship with isolation

2. michael’s inclination to subvert authority and protocol in service of what is right

i’ll try and unpack these a little bit below the cut

michael and isolation

ever since the very first episode of the very first season, michael burnham has been a character entrenched in her own isolation. in season one, michael found friendship and community on the discovery by forging bonds with sylvia tilly, ash tyler, and paul stamets and by redefining previously broken bonds with saru and the alternate philippa georgiou. one of the main reasons why s1 is kinda still my favorite season is this very aspect of it: michael’s success and the federation’s survival depended on the creation and strength of these bonds

season two continued michael’s experience of isolation by introducing her estranged and tortured relationship with spock. the major theme of michael’s character in this season was her instinct to “reach” for the people who always seemed furthest from her despite everything (i.e., she “reached” for her parents, spock, tilly, etc.). this was the final message she imparted to spock: the act of reaching for others will always be the most worthwhile thing, even if you are unable to ever touch them. michael was finally able to connect with spock only to be launched into the future

season three picks up on this theme in what i think is the most conceivably devastating way possible. michael is isolated for a whole year from the crew of the discovery, and when she returns into the fold, nobody reaches for her.

now, a huge part of why the first and third episodes hit me so hard is because i really thought they were going somewhere meaningful with this. she loses so much, and the gratitude directed towards her in the third episode is directly acknowledged as NOT ENOUGH. michael stands among her found family in the halls of the discovery, a family she has mourned for a year, and tilly says, “you let us go, didn’t you?” and there seems to be purpose to it

the first half of season three sees michael feeling lost, struggling to find a single reason why she should feel like she should belong with these people on this ship anymore. tilly and saru both clearly understand this, and instead of seeing any efforts on their part to welcome her back into their family, they further contribute to her feelings of isolation and make HER apologize for keeping THEM out of the loop (and yeah i understand that these apologies have to do with breaches in starfleet protocol but rn i’m only focusing on the interpersonal implications). the only meaningful connections that michael is able to maintain this season are with book and georgiou. and while i adore them both, georgiou leaves before the season ends and book is from the future and isn’t a discovery crew member, which makes it feel like when michael says she doesn’t think she belongs on the discovery, she’s RIGHT

this first half of development would’ve been all well and good if it had been carried out to its logical conclusion, which would have been the discovery crew fighting to make michael feel like she belongs, but that never happened. instead, we get unification iii, which is a great episode on its own, but it only resolves michael’s internal feelings regarding her place in starfleet, not the interpersonal tension that’s made her feel more isolated than she’s been since, like, maybe even early season one.

this is all to say that i don’t understand how this unfulfilled arc generates michael’s preparedness to stay on the discovery as captain, unless we’re going with the “the captain defines themself as separate from the crew because they’re the captain” narrative that star trek does admittedly love. i would be more into it if i was sure that discovery would actually explore that isolation with the care it deserves

it could be cool to potentially explore a discussion or resolution of this arc next season by bringing commander nhan back as michael’s first officer, another character who felt disconnected enough from the discovery’s crew to actually decide to leave, but idk i guess we’ll see

michael and authority

i’ve talked about how michael’s s1 character arc was a journey to learn how to subvert authority before. she starts the show as “the mutineer,” and this is a signifier we can’t forget

my roommate and i have also talked a lot about how the command structure of the discovery is so fucking weird, and i think a large part of it is because it naturally organizes itself around its heart, which is a position that michael instinctively and effortlessly occupies (though that is not to say that this effortlessness is not without its own suffering---michael being the heart of the discovery is what leads to the reinforcement of her martyr complex, though that’s not the focus of this post so i won’t dwell there)

season three’s essential question that it sets up with michael centers around doing the right thing her way or doing the right thing starfleet’s way. in her year alone, michael is finally able to define herself outside of starfleet, and she likes who she finds. this is one of the main reasons she struggles to reinsert herself into the crew of the discovery, this is the reason she rejects the idea of being the crew’s captain outright, and this is the reason saru gives for demoting her. this is the eventual reason that michael sends paul in an escape pod to the federation hq instead of immediately trying to jump for hugh, saru, and adira. this is the reason that she is eventually promoted to captain

tbh i would have had less issue with this storyline if not for a couple key details: (1) michael was punished for subverting starfleet protocol when other characters (like keyla or tilly) were encouraged or rewarded for it. (2) idk i feel like we’ve exceeded the bounds of the whole “needs of the many/needs of the few” ideological tenant, which was (i think) something that the ni’var president even SAID.

when it comes down to it, i just think that michael’s complicated relationship with subverting authority deserves a much more complicated storyline. i do think that this is something we’ll see more of in s4 because it’s always going to be one of the greatest tenants of her character, but that doesn’t change the fact that it seems to have fallen rather flat in s3 for me. i’d argue that this is because discovery doesn’t seem to want to commit to its serialized style as much anymore, but maybe that’s for another post lmao

i don’t think i’ve quite found a way to properly articulate it yet, but michael taking the captain’s seat was supposed to be the culmination of three seasons of buildup. however, the buildup that the show suggested in the s3 finale seemed to be based on things that michael had already earned by the s3 premiere. her relationship with authority this season felt. idk. maybe it’s because this was kinda the first time the show attempted to show michael as a subordinate on the discovery instead of as the heart of the discovery, but it felt like it just wasn’t the natural place to take that particular element of her characterization. i’m hoping that s4 will deliver on this front, but the main thing is that i don’t think s3 did

tl;dr s3 was not what i was hoping for in terms of furthering michael’s character, and now that she’s captain i would love for these two elements of her characterization to be explored to their full and complicated conclusions

#star trek discovery #michael burnham #god this is long #been trying to settle my thoughts for days and well here they are #as they exist today at least

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turtle-paced · 3 years

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A:tLA Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

This is what I mean by the recaps getting shorter. There’s still plenty here for a twenty-minute episode, it still moves the plot along, it’s just not as dense as those big plot-crucial episodes.

Book 1, Chapter 5 - The King of Omashu

(0:55) Previously, on Avatar, Aang owns up to being the Avatar. The Avatar who has friends all over the world. Aang realised he’d lost his friends and family, but Katara and Sokka decided to stick with him. The knowledge of the Avatar’s return became public, including to the Fire Nation.

(1:42) It’s winter in the Earth Kingdom, as we can see from the snow on the ground, but we’re also somewhere temperate enough that grass is still growing underneath.

(1:52) Aang introduces the city of Omashu (another cool design!), which he’s visited frequently in order to hang out with his friend Bumi. As the previously on reminded us, Aang’s done quite a bit of travelling around.

(1:58) Meanwhile, Katara and Sokka experience a bit of culture shock at seeing a city. Note that Katara focuses on the size of the city, i.e. the number of people, while Sokka focuses on the difference in construction. Without making a big deal of it, the show’s furthering its characterisation of Katara as most interested in social relationships and people, and Sokka as most interested in technology.

(2:05) After running from the burning village at the end of last episode, our protagonists start this episode by taking precautions and insisting that Aang wear a disguise. Learning! And note that they’re insisting on this even in a free, Earth Kingdom city.

(2:24) A mention of Sokka and Katara’s grandfather! I think the only one we get all series.

(2:44) The pan over the walkway to Omashu shows us some basic earthbending defensive fortifications. Aside from Omashu being basically a mountain with walls in the middle of a canyon, the walkway is narrow, sheer, and switches back and forth. It’s clearly not natural. Local earthbenders either raised Omashu or levelled the nearby mountains to give it a ‘moat’, then raised a high, narrow, switchbacked walkway. This has got to be the work of lots of earthbenders, over a long time.

(2:56) Aang says that Omashu is the friendliest city in the world, cut to our new friend the cabbage merchant being rudely dealt with by the gate guards.

Back on the defensive fortifications front, there’s no actual gate. Omashu needs a spot designated as a gate, but when you’ve got earthbenders aplenty, why bother having a permanent opening in the walls? Again and again we’ll see casual bits of setting design that show how the writers and animators actually put some thought into how a society where large numbers of people can manipulate various states of matter looks like. Here, we see it in the way Omashu is built.

(3:16) From the friendliest city in the world, to hovering a rock over an ‘old man’s’ head, just because. The war has damaged the social fabric of every society depicted in the series.

(3:31) “Bonzu Pippenpadalopsicopolis the Third.” It’s amazing that this isn’t the most ridiculous alias of the series.

(3:39) Major props to Katara for flawlessly going with it, though.

(4:10) Omashu’s walls open in three distinct stages. It is because most earthbending guards can’t open a wall that thick in one go? Who knows.

(4:27) Pan over Omashu, a free Earth Kingdom city. Lots of people, lots of green, the occasional bridge over a gap, and prominent ‘aqueducts’ for people to deliver things. Infrastructure in Omashu is based around earthbending.

(4:56) Aang flashes back to a hundred years ago series time, and what has to be only a few months previous, his subjective time. His friend Bumi has distinctive eyes and a noticeable gap in his teeth. He opens the flashback with a question for Aang and encourages him to think about their surroundings differently. Bumi also has a distinctive laugh.

(5:28) The fact Aang insisted on going to Omashu before anything else, after having accepted the Air Nomads were gone and that he can’t afford to stay in villages, is actually pretty heartbreaking. He just wants one slide down the mail chute. One chance to re-enact part of the life he lost.

(6:05) So much property damage. So much potential for people to get hurt.

(6:11) The joke here is that the Earth Kingdom soldiers were not prepared for three kids and a lemur to land a mail chute carriage in front of them, but again the context of this joke is that in Omashu, there are people being trained to go to active combat. The war gets into everything, even the comic relief.

(7:21) That poor cabbage merchant. It is not his day. Honestly, it’s fair enough Aang, Katara, and Sokka got taken into custody for that stunt.

(7:38) And so our protagonists get hauled into a big, empty, green-lit hall, with an old man in fancy robes. The old man reacts when he sees Aang.

(7:46) The earthbending guards address the old man as ‘Your Majesty’. The guard also shushes the cabbage merchant, saying that only the king can pass down judgement, handily introducing the monarchical structure of Omashu. Not as important as other monarchies we’ll be seeing, but yeah, it’s there.

(7:59) Close up on the king of Omashu, as he looks at Sokka, Katara, and Aang in turn. The king has distinctive eyes. This isn’t supposed to be super subtle. It’s way easier for viewers with knowledge of dramatic conventions to work this out than it is for Aang, who in-universe doesn’t have a director handing over a bunch of narrative cues. A few months ago, in his subjective experience of time, Bumi was his own age.

(8:15) The king of Omashu says to throw them…a feast! Which already shows us how Bumi works with expectations. The expected end to that sentence would have been “in the dungeons” or suchlike; “a feast” works grammatically, but isn’t what you’d think to hear.

(8:20) Pan over the feast. Lots of meat. Including chicken on Aang’s plate. Aang thanks Bumi for his hospitality, but says he doesn’t eat meat. Now this actually is subtle. Bumi recognised Aang, that’s clear by the end of the episode, if it wasn’t already. So what Bumi’s doing here is checking whether he can believe his eyes. Is this his old friend or just someone who looks like him? In his experience of time, it’s been a hundred years.

Note that even if vegetarianism was cultural to the Air Nomads, the overwhelming majority of Air Nomads have been dead for a century, and travel’s become much more difficult (particularly travel to Air Temples only accessible through airbending), limiting opportunities for others to learn about their cultural practices. Seriously, this is some excellent stuff from Bumi. Bumi knows Aang doesn’t eat meat. Who else would?

Aang’s dietary practices are also good characterisation for him. We know he loves animals, and we can understand his vegetarianism as a manifestation of how he respects life.

(9:04) The Kangaroo Island pun was exactly bad enough for Sokka.

(9:19) Then Bumi suddenly flings a drumstick at Aang without warning, testing his reaction. Which is airbending. Unlike people in previous episodes, Bumi distinguishes ‘the Avatar’ from ‘generic airbender’. Bumi knows it’s Aang in front of him.

(9:35) Bumi then becomes the next person to go with Aang’s ridiculous alias.

(9:58) Aang leans into the corollary of being the Fire Nation’s most wanted - the Earth Kingdom should see him as an asset. However, as the show starts showing us right here with the arrest of the party despite this reveal, the enemy of your enemy isn’t necessarily your friend.

I mean, in this case, yes, Bumi is literally Aang’s friend, but it’s not something the group can rely on. The show will go into more detail next episode and in a few other memorable instances.

(10:18) Bumi randomly decrees that Aang will face three deadly challenges.

(10:38) I do get a giggle out of the “who’s on first?” nature of the “newly-refurbished chamber”.

(10:50) Like the city walls, Earth Kingdom prisons don’t necessarily bother with doors. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but note that the light’s generated by mushrooms. (In the main hall, by contrast, there are crystal lights.)

(11:21) The party immediately starts planning their escape. Yet another situation that wouldn’t have been possible later in the series. This chamber couldn’t hold a trained earthbender.

(11:55) With the thwarting of Aang’s admittedly kind of half-baked escape plan, we get a skip to the next morning, when Aang wakes up completely alone in the cell. The terms of the deal are explained: Aang passes the deadly challenges, and his friends go free. If he doesn’t…something something. The danger is implied.

(13:00) The creeping crystal is arguably the most cartoony peril the series has included thus far. Until now, our protagonists have been dealing with deadly serious and actually pretty realistic issues - raiders, genocide, suspicious local authorities. The tone shift to “and now I will trap your friends in fast-growing crystal” is a jarring tone shift, which with hindsight we can take as a good indication that Bumi’s nothing worse than a troll. Avatar’s real villains would have thrown Katara and Sokka in a deeper dungeon or killed them outright. Even the one-and-done antagonists are more serious.

(13:30) “It seems I’ve lost my lunchbox key,” Bumi says. This episode isn’t even a little bit subtle about what Aang needs to learn (it doesn’t have to be, incidentally), and it will ultimately outright say what Aang learned from the episode. It’s Bumi’s over the top, trolling characterisation that helps stop the episode from being a dreary recitation of “Aang needs to think creatively to overcome obstacles.”

(14:01) So after Bumi sets Aang to fetching his lunchbox key from the middle of a waterfall with a ladder leading up to it against the flow of the water, Bumi says sarcastically, “Ooh, climbing the ladder, nobody’s thought of that before.” Which raises the question - how many people has Bumi tried this on? (My bet is that Bumi’s taught earthbending before and this is a standard lesson to get students to change up their thinking.)

(14:17) Also worth noting is the fact that after one unsuccessful attempt to get the key, Aang immediately changes his approach as he realises his previous angle won’t work. He’s entirely capable of learning Bumi’s lesson, and probably would have got there on his own eventually. Bumi’s just speeding this process up a bit.

(14:48) As we see when Aang gets the key on his third attempt. Didn’t take him long at all, really.

(15:02) On to a more pointed lesson, and one that applies to the viewers evaluating what’s going on in-universe. Bumi wants Aang to retrieve his pet, Flopsy. On screen, the viewer sees a cute rabbit.

(15:13) As soon as Aang says “come here, Flopsy,” however, he’s attacked by some sort of…sabre-toothed gorilla-goat?

(15:38) Until Aang’s shoulder-deep in a crevasse trying to catch the rabbit and going “hang on…”

(15:43) Aang addresses the sabre-toothed gorilla-goat by “Flopsy” and Flopsy, who is a very good boy indeed, very well-trained, stops on a dime, tail wagging. So there we go. Flopsy looks scary, but never meant to harm Aang.

This is a very gentle reminder to a boy who just learned that he’s the only survivor of a genocide but has duties to the global community, from a man who’s in contact with Fire Nationals working against their nation’s goals - don’t judge by appearances. And like I said, it’s a reminder to the viewer, too.

Also Aang’s enthusiasm for Flopsy is adorable. He gets past the scary exterior in a heartbeat.

(16:24) Our first look at an earthbending arena! Unsurprisingly, it’s underground.

(16:31) Bumi gives Aang an actually very simple final test - a duel. In which Aang may choose his opponent. Two very scary weapon-users leap down from above to flank Bumi. “Point and choose,” Bumi says.

(16:56) Aang points at Bumi. “Wrong choice!” Bumi says. For the first time in the episode, he stands up straight, and when he takes off his purple robe, he’s in remarkably good shape for a man of 112. He’s one step ahead of Aang here, anticipating that Aang would be smart enough to see that Bumi’s a valid choice, but twelve years old enough not to question why Bumi would leave this loophole.

This is the inverse of the previous point. Where Flopsy looked dangerous and actually wasn’t, Bumi doesn’t look dangerous and is.

(17:32) “I’m the most powerful earthbender you’ll ever see,” Bumi says. Almost certainly not - but given his helpless old man performance here, I think Bumi would be able to appreciate blind little Toph kicking serious ass.

(17:43) This is our first proper look at earthbending. In this episode we’ve seen it used to open doors, deliver mail, and threaten hapless travellers, but Bumi brings out a fight scene. He quickly and explicitly calls out Aang’s tactics (typical airbending tactics, he says) as predictable evasive techniques.

(18:01) “Sooner or later, you’ll have to strike back,” Bumi tells Aang. We’ve already seen Aang’s difficulties with this.

The fight scene itself is a brief class on how a creative bender can shut down a predictable one, and one that shows Bumi knows airbending tactics as well as earthbending strengths. He stops Aang taking to the air by collapsing the ceiling, leaving Aang at risk of getting hit from behind by falling rocks. When Aang tries to use airbending-assisted speed over the ground, Bumi breaks the ground up, forcing Aang to slow down and swerve into the path of other attacks, and later dissolving the solid ground into dust beneath Aang’s feet. That’s two ways Bumi has to slow Aang down.

Meanwhile, Aang’s offense is casually blocked, and Bumi’s good enough to block when Aang dodges a rock that was going to hit them both.

Aang might be an airbending master, but this fight scene with Bumi shows how he’s outclassed as a combatant, at the moment. And yeah, that’s the sort of tactical depth the show’s bringing to a two-minute fight scene, because the point of this fight scene is to establish something about how Aang fights.

(19:59) The fight finishes with the biggest demonstration of non-Avatar State bending we’ve seen yet. Bumi hauls a giant chunk of rock into the air, Aang generates a tornado to redirect it. In the spirit of Bumi’s lessons, Aang uses the opening when Bumi’s forced to block his own rock to follow up with his own attack (having worked out that while his own offense isn’t good enough to defeat Bumi, Bumi may be vulnerable to his own attacks, and can’t recover instantly).

But as we saw when Bumi was one step ahead of Aang when he said “choose wisely,” Bumi’s anticipated that attack, too, and has a countermeasure - he grabs half the rock he just split apart and holds it over the both of them, the surface area too great for Aang to dodge if Bumi dropped it. Nevertheless, Bumi’s made his point and seen the improvement he wanted to see, so he calls it a match.

(20:45) “What’s the point of tests if you don’t learn anything?” Surprisingly deep educational philosophy here from Bumi. It’s not about the mark, it’s about the learning process.

(20:55) Bumi’s final question is apparently random: “What is my name?”

(21:10) The “Rocky” joke was too bad even for Bumi.

(21:35) Katara shows her own quick wits as she helps prompt Aang into the line of thinking he needs to work out Bumi’s name.

This is also where Aang spells out the whole “think outside the box” thing. This isn’t a bad episode. (This show has two, maybe three, bad episodes. And even then those episodes are more just total nothings than they are actually bad.) But it’s this sort of heavier-handedness that makes season one the weakest of the three sseasons.

(22:00) Heartwarming moment. Aang’s old friend might now be an old friend, but he’s still the same person. They’re still glad to see each other.

(22:30) Here comes Sokka with his brains. Why do any of this?

(22:44) Aside from the fun of messing with people, Bumi says that Aang’s got some big problems on his plate. The world has changed. He also gives Aang Ozai’s name.

In response, Aang thanks Bumi for his wisdom. I suspect that what Bumi’s saying about confronting the Fire Lord and defeating the Fire Nation hasn’t sunk in properly, and that he’s not thinking about these things as things he’s actually going to have to do. But dealing with that is a plot point for future episodes.

(23:17) The episode leaves off on a much more positive note than previous episodes. Aang gets his slide down Omashu’s mail chutes, with the very friend who inspired the escapade to begin with. At the cabbage merchant’s cost.

#a:tla #fine toothed comb edition

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statusquoergo · 3 years

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Can we talk about how much of the ending montage of the finale was just marvey moments? They weren't even chronological, it was all these other moments with other people (the one clip of Jessica was from the 'How do you know I'm thinking about Mike Ross?' 'Who else would it be?' scene) interspersed with classic marvey faves especially from the pilot, like Harvey just kept coming back to meeting Mike as the thing tying it all together, his underlying theme at the end of his journey was Mike Ross.

p.s. re: the ending montage, it's even more obvious if you watch it without the music somehow

We sure can talk about that ending montage! (Before we get into the Marvey-ness of it all, though, I just gotta say that especially watching it out of context, and especially with the soundtrack muted, Donna approaching Louis at the elevators and then him biting his lip and them holding hands as the doors close definitely reads to me as a Lonna moment.)

So. Structural critique. A couple of things read weirdly about this whole setup; first of all, they cut immediately, and I mean immediately, from Harvey looking...nostalgically? Mournfully? Reverently? at the painting his mother gave him of baby!Harvey watching Lily paint that stupid duck painting to the first clip of the montage, i.e., Mike’s briefcase breaking open at the interview. So this is either a “Look how far we’ve come” overview, in which case I’m confused that it starts off with a reference to Lily, since she doesn’t come up again so the painting has no referential anchor point, and the montage itself doesn’t specifically reference Harvey’s childhood or life before coming to the firm in any way (which isn’t to say it’s not a nostalgic overview, but if so, it’s very poorly arranged), or it’s a commentary on important people in Harvey’s life, in which case it sure is interesting that we go straight from Harvey’s mother to Mike, given that literally the only link between them is that Mike showed up at her funeral to support Harvey.

Getting down to a granular level, the clips in the montage are:

1. Mike crashes Harvey’s interview (s01e01) 2. Harvey lectures Mike about the importance of a good first impression (s01e03) 3. Jessica advises Harvey to support Mike in being himself (s04e02) 4. [Flashback] Harvey and Louis give each other shit right after Louis becomes a junior partner (s02e08) 5. [Flashback] Harvey and Donna's first meeting (s04e16) 6. Harvey invites Mike to come with him to visit Ava Hessington (s03e03) 7. Harvey yells at Mike for not coming to him when Jessica threatened him (s03e01) 8. Mike tells Rachel he’s a fraud (s02e16) 9. General cycle of clips of everyone supporting each other over Harvey’s dialogue that “We’re not just colleagues, or even friends. We’re family.” (s05e10) 10. Mike does finger guns and Harvey swerves out of the way (s01e01) 11. “Life is like this. And I like this.” (s01e10) 12. Mike and Rachel reunite when Mike gets out of Danbury (s06e09) 13. Harvey and Donna make out (s08e16)

And for a bit of analytical commentary:

1. The start of the series and introduction of the premise, this is an obvious choice. 2. An interesting direction; possibly a commentary on Harvey’s general life philosophy, this could also be interpreted as a continuation of the Harvey-Mike dyad established in the pilot being the show’s central focus, particularly when one considers that it comes on the heels of Harvey’s rather...interesting first impression of Mike. 3. Lacking context, this is just an excuse to showcase Jessica in the montage as Harvey’s mentor; with context, it’s easy to interpret as another reminder that the show is centered around Harvey and Mike as a pair. 4. This is a weird moment to choose because while it fits the direction of Louis’s ultimate story line quite well, from struggling in Harvey’s shadow despite his considerable accomplishments to becoming head of the firm, it doesn’t fit in with the other incidents Harvey’s recalled up to this point; this is for the benefit of summarizing the show, not consistency with the direction of Harvey’s thought process. 5. Another moment for the benefit of summarizing the show that comes otherwise out of nowhere. 6. While this gets us back on track with Harvey’s train of thought prior to the Louis interruption, it really has nothing to do with anyone other than Mike and Harvey; in fact, it’s very much about a moment of reconciliation between the two of them. (On the surface, it’s merely circling back around to the Harvey-Mike dyad, but if you want to go full conspiracy theorist, it’s like...an apology to the viewer, or to Mike, that the narrative got distracted for a minute. And that’s an extremist interpretation that I’m not advocating as truth, but it’s also kind of funny, so I’m mentioning it anyway.) 7. Harvey needs Mike. Harvey needs Mike to need him. There’s not a whole lot of maneuverability in that one. 8. The interesting thing here is that the clip stops right before Mike and Rachel kiss. Showing it would require an extra two seconds of footage and could have been fit in, but the way it’s cut puts the emphasis not on them as a couple but on Rachel’s sense of betrayal after Mike’s deception. 9. The first clip of this montage-within-a-montage is of Rachel hugging Louis, which follows naturally from Rachel interacting with Mike as a way to ease the focus from Harvey-and-Mike to...literally anyone else, but also sets up this quick cycle of clips as kind of a catchall for “characters being supportive of one another because they’re not just colleagues they’re also family but also we need to fit in everyone who isn’t Harvey and Mike because this is technically an Ensemble Show™.” 10. Okay what the fuck, there’s absolutely no reason for this to be in here except to emphasize Harvey and Mike’s camaraderie and easy friendship. It’s from the pilot, for crying out loud. 11. This one is a little bit of a wildcard in that it both re-centers us on Harvey and Mike as partners (reading just slightly deeper into things, Harvey hired Mike in the first place in part because he likes taking risks, but also, having Mike around makes his life exciting), and could also serve as another general commentary on Harvey’s life philosophy. 12. Yet again, this is a Mike-Rachel moment that ends right before the Machel part. Mike walks out of the prison gates and Rachel gets out of the car, but they don’t noticeably move toward one another, let alone actually hug. Maybe this is out of sensitivity toward Meghan’s status as the Duchess of Sussex? (Or it’s a liability issue, I don’t know.) 13. This makes sense as a conclusion to the montage because the final season is largely focused on the Darvey narrative, or trying to establish the Darvey narrative, but it also comes out of nowhere in that very little of the rest of the montage has featured Harvey and Donna as a couple, or even a pair, with the exception of their first meeting (which was right on the heels of Harvey and Louis interacting, making it less an intimate start-of-something type of scene and more of a “Hey remember when the show was just about these six specific central characters, well, now we only have three of them left” tag).

In summary: Boy that sure is a lot of Marvey and Marvey-adjacent content for a series of clips that are supposed to be about everyone but are in fact badly disordered and don’t tell much of a cohesive story. Looking back, especially with this legend of episode citations, it really does seem to be a pretty slapdash collection of some editor’s favorite scenes, or more likely Korsh’s; it doesn’t even have a very smooth emotional trajectory, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened in no particular order. Oh well, I’m sure they had fun putting it together probably.

Thank you for...asking? Well, thank you for bringing this up, anyway!

#marvey #analysis #Anonymous

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megashadowdragon · 3 years

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What Noctis Learned: a tl;dr essay

So I've been thinking about this for a while and seeing so many posts/articles/character analysis on this game has finally prompted me to put it down in words. This is going to be a giant spoiler for the whole game so if you haven't finished it or Episode Ardyn yet then do that before reading this.

Everybody good? Okay.

I've heard lots of people look at FFXV as a coming of age story, with the main character changing and growing from a somewhat lackluster teenager to a responsible adult and in some respects that's absolutely right. It is a story about Noctis' growth from a reluctant and poor leader into a Kingly King like his dad (get it? Regis? Kingly King?). But then people usually follow that up with stating that Noctis started out as a selfish guy who didn't appreciate his friends thought he was too good for them and....wha? Were we playing the same game? Were we watching the same story?

Noctis has always appreciated his friends. Noctis has never thought he was better than them. That was never his issue. In fact, the issue is somewhat the opposite problem. Here me out:

The lesson Noctis needed to learn was about sacrifice. Not just self-sacrifice, although that's certainly part of it. But the heavy burden of sacrifice that only Rulers experience. He needed to learn how to sacrifice others or let them sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The theme was laced throughout the game from the beginning.

Everyone sees Regis as a great King. What makes him so great, though? Well, he knows how and when to sacrifice, not only himself but others for the sake of the future. He takes on the burden of knowing that people are dying for him, and for his kingdom. The Crystal is just a big old reminder of that burden, and so is the Wall, a physical representation of what it means to sacrifice.

Everything outside the Wall has been sacrificed to the enemy so that everything within the Wall may have peace. And then when it's revealed that Regis must sacrifice his only son in order to save the world, he accepts that burden too. He also accepts than in order to let his son realize his destiny, all of Insomnia must be sacrificed.

When Noctis rages at Cor in the tomb, it's because he doesn't agree with his father's sacrifice, both of himself and Insomnia, in order to save Noctis. He doesn't accept that noble burden. He rejects it and is plainly not ready to take his rightful place as ruler. He sees that a bunch of people just died for him, including his family members, and he doesn't think he was worth that sacrifice at all.

When Gladio demands to know before the fight with Titan if Noctis is "of Royal blood or not" it's because he feels the weight of his own father's sacrifice and needs Noctis to understand that he is ready and willing to do the same. If you'll note in the scene, this happens after Noctis has recklessly tried to dart ahead of Gladio and prevent him from doing his job (i.e. shielding and sacrificing his own body for the King) and he wants it reaffirmed in Noct's mind to accept that duty. To accept that yes, he might actually need Gladio to die for him and since Gladio's going to that extent he needs to know that Noctis will actually be worthy of that sacrifice and continue on to fulfill his destiny.

Luna's sacrifice in Altissia, followed by Ignis' blinding and then his moment of doubt where he actually asks Noctis to halt their journey basically represents the lowest point for Noctis, where all his fears seem justified. Noctis fears that he's actually not special or "chosen" at all, he can't save everyone, he couldn't even save the one person he thought he was meant to save, and now Ignis who already sacrificed his eyesight for him is voicing out loud his fear that all this sacrifice might be too high a cost.

So Noctis falters. He doesn't put on the ring. He doesn't head for the Crystal right away. And Gladio becomes upset, not because he thinks Noctis doesn't care about Ignis, but because him not pushing on despite the sacrifice kind of renders it pointless. And Gladio doesn't know that Ignis himself kind of tipped the scales on Noctis' reluctance to sacrifice others for the good of the kingdom here.

Then Prompto gets yeeted off the train, Gralea happens and the sacrifice of Noctis' last real link to his dad, the Regalia. And Noctis has to go it on his own, using the ring's power to survive, and here's where people like to say that being without his friends makes Noctis appreciate them. But I think being without his friends actually makes Noctis realize that he HAS to continue on without them, that his destiny still needs to happen with or without his friends and family surviving to see it. He's starting to accept the true burden of being a leader.

The scenario before he enters the Crystal has him needing to choose between fighting with his friends or possibly leaving them to die in order to fulfill his Calling. Ardyn taunts him with this choice, calling him selfish for abandoning his friends.

Ardyn himself never learned the lesson of sacrifice, which started the entire problem in the first place. As a healer, he refused to accept the deaths of others, and thus kept taking more and more Scourge into himself rather then letting a single person be sacrificed, even to the point where it would damage the future envisioned by the Gods. While we're obviously supposed to regard Somnus as the other end of the extreme; sacrificing people pointlessly for his own gain, I don't think we are supposed to view Ardyn's refusal to sacrifice anyone as a good alternative either. A good leader is supposed to know when and how much to sacrifice for the good of the nation, so when the Crystal rejects Ardyn it's because he hasn't learned how to sacrifice.

So we get to the timeskip, Noctis baked in the Crystal and now he's all done and ready to accept the true burden of being King. No turning back, no preventing his bros from sacrificing their own lives for the effort, no changing his mind about whether it's "worth it" or not. Noctis finally learned the burden of sacrificing for the future, one that he won't get to be a part of.

Originally, the Lucis Caelum line was meant to be a sect that worships Etro, Goddess of Death. Some remnants of the story still show this, what with the Ring of the Lucii requiring blood sacrifice or at least a sacrifice of lifeforce in order to gain its power, the theme of skulls and the significance of the colour black for the royal family.

All this long rambling is meant to say is that FFXV is a story about the main character learning how to accept the burden of noble sacrifice and not really about a lazy slacker learning how to stop whining and appreciate his friends.

source: www . reddit . com/r/FFXV/comments/ol3te6/spoilers_for_the_entire_game_what_noctis_learned/

comments :

Noctis's lesson is also exemplified when he has to encourage his own dad to deal the final blow that sends him to the void. It mirrors Noct's own reluctance, and the choice to push onward anyway, when the sacrifice feels too great to bear. It solidifies the fact that he deserves his seat on the throne.

I agree overall, though I'm also inclined to think that sacrifice itself is intended to throw value judgments into the starkest possible relief by demanding the loss of a lesser good for the sake of a greater good.

Regis makes the astoundingly vast sacrifices that he does because the salvation offered by the Chosen King is the greatest available good. And it takes Noct a long time to understand that because his value judgments are off -- he can't bear being responsible for the loss of an individual even if the alternative is the loss of every individual.

And yes, I think that Noct's choice to let his friends hold off the daemons while he went ahead to reach the Crystal is the point where he truly understands what's required of him... and that it is a very effective reflection of the difference between the point he had finally reached and Ardyn's continuing rejection of that dynamic.

One interesting thing about Ardyn is that he is willing to sacrifice others for his plans, but his value judgments are still really wonky. He went from valuing individual persons to such an extent that he risked being completely ineffective to valuing nothing but himself and his own desire for revenge. Somnus' value judgments are wonky, too, of course, because he over-values his own ambition.

As for the ultimate conclusion of Noct's growth, he develops a quiet confidence in his value judgments that allows him to take risks and accept sacrifice without second thoughts. ("A king pushes onward always, accepting the consequences and never looking back.") Just before he ascends the throne, his friends have to stay behind to cover for him again... and he doesn't think twice about allowing them to fulfill their duty by doing so. Then he willingly endures an agonizing self-sacrifice knowing that doing so will bring about the much greater good of the world's salvation.

#ffxv #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #noctis lucis caelum #ardyn izunia #ardyn lucis caelum #ff15

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luxuriantegg · 3 years

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POV: you're watching Loki episode 5. Loki and Sylvie share a blanket, and then five minutes later sylvie’s like “we’re the same :)” which comes after them holding hands to cause a Nexus event, Mobius implying they're in love, and Loki appearing to want to confess some sort of adoration for her before being pruned,,, and so far, it seems the showrunners/writers are on board w/ calling it a love story,,,,,,,,,,

let’s dive a bit into this ship.

(note: i'm not going to tag this as "syl//ki," and i will not put any ship in the body text without the "//", but tumblr may take the "syl//ki" out of "anti syl//ki" and put it in the ship tag. that's out of my hands. you need to block "anti syl//ki" if you don't want to see that.)

when it comes to defending or being anti syl//ki, I think a lot of people sort of missed the memo on or forgot about the fact that Loki is a frost giant. I have looked on both Twitter and Tumblr and literally have not seen a single person talk about it in the selfcest debate so far. I've probably missed something. So if you have seen this argument, well, here it is again!

so, syl//ki defenders will say,

It’s not selfcest because they are genetically different. They might have different parents since they were adopted by the Asgardians.

If they were genetically similar, then they would also be genetically similar to Boastful Loki and Alligator Loki.

First of all. Loki’s last name is Laufeyson. Sylvie’s last name is Laufeydottir. Due to the naming conventions used here, both can be assumed to be children of Laufey. I realize we haven’t seen Sylvie’s Laufey, but who’s to say they look any different than the one we saw in Thor? Furthermore, there’s nothing to suggest that they weren’t adopted by the same exact couple (i.e., Odin and Frigga or some variation), and if you’re not ok with Thor and Loki, you probably should consider this. Probably. We'll really just have to see what happens if they develop Sylvie further. Who knows, they might get cold feet in the last episode and actually make her Enchantress (Sylvie Lushton) proper.

The second point really pisses me off not just as someone who loves Norse mythology but also just. The race card. Does no one remember the fact that Loki is actually supposed to be blue? He’s not genetically white. There is nothing in his genes that command him to be white. That is a disguise (originally put on him by Odin if I’m not mistaken? feel free to check me on that).

Loki could literally be any gender and/or any color he wants to be. Hell, we've seen him shapeshift into Steve Rogers briefly and Odin presumably for a good while. Really, it's hard to pass judgement on the relationships that the other Lokis have to their respective timelines. We can only make assumptions based on the evidence we have. (but also have fun with headcanons of course)

(also the funny part about bringing up Boastful Loki is ,, everyone is always like “well, are you trying to tell me that our Loki has the same genes as Boastful/Hammer Loki? 🙄🙄🙄” and like, they won’t come out and just say one is white and one is black like,,, :) they’re trying so hard not to sound racist it’s hilarious. AND THEN TO PUT ALLIGATOR LOKI IN THE SAME CATEGORY. LAUGHABLE. str8 up.)

But concerning the alligator, in Norse mythology, frost giants can have kids that are really just. Out there. Jormungand is a snake that can wrap itself around the world, Fenris is a gargantuan wolf, and Hel is a half dead child. Those are just Loki’s kids (note: in the mythology. they also exist in the comics as his children, but I am also aware that Fenris and Hela are not his children in the MCU and trust me, that peeves me a lot). I’m sure there’s more examples though. So like. Potentially????? Yeah, Loki Prime could be genetically similar to Alligator Loki.

Furthermore, according to this Gizmodo article, Alligator Loki is a Loki (2021) creation, and they admit to playing with the idea that Alligator Loki may not even be a Loki. So take that how you will.

So my verdict is that Loki and Sylvie are the same person with different looks, possibly some difference in genetics, depending on the mother.

(note: Loki is marked in his file as genderfluid, technically we cannot know what he was assigned at birth. we only know his pronouns. he could be AFAB. Sylvie may be AMAB.)

I don’t ship lok//ius, and I don’t care if Loki gets with a girl (I actually really like Loki and Darcy) so don’t come at me with the biphobia excuse that’s running around. I will say that yes, I would adore seeing Loki in an mlm or wlw relationship. Yes, it is really cliché to have the two opposite gender-presenting leads get together. Yes, I want to see Loki and Sylvie as friends/family. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m just here to ask if this is selfcest or not.

So yes, Syl//ki really does appear to be a selfcest ship and like, if you’re willing to own that, own it. It looks like that’s how the show’s going so far so,, uh,,, enjoy it if that’s something you want to do I guess. I’m ,, probably not going to though. But congrats on the canon! If it is!

I’m not asking you to stop shipping it, if you do. I'm not even asking you to ship with caution. Overall, I just hope I made you think a little more about it and maybe get a discussion going that doesn't revolve around the same arguments we've heard for the past three weeks.

Because like, it's not hurting anyone to ship it, and if you send hate speech to any shippers or the showrunners, literally what is wrong with you???? there are civil ways to discourse, my lord.

Personally, if I had to ship it, I would only do so as a self-love metaphor, and I think that's as far as I would take it. As it currently stands, it's on the same level of Oncest, so like. it's weird but honestly it doesn't hurt anyone. (and if you don't know what Oncest is, give this video by Sarah Z a watch.) Really it all just amounts to this test from Buzzfeed that you've probably seen in fandom memes before. So you can use that as your squick-o-meter when it comes to this ship.

I will end this by saying I am not pro-ship. Inc//est and pedo//philia have no place in fandom and thinking these are okay could lead to harmful thinking in real life, especially with regards to children in fandom.

Selfcest is not technically on the same level as inc//est, and yes, I know, in the words of the great Buzzfeed Unsolved team, "anytime you have to say technically that's not great" but I really mean it here. We can still say technically here.

TL;DR: yeah syl//ki is more than likely selfcest. don't send hate to people who ship it tho (this includes the showrunners).

#antisylki #loki spoilers #tw selfcest #ALSO IF REY//LOS DONT SHUT UP ABOUT HOW SIMILAR THE SHIPS ARE I WILL GO FERAL #i was already a little peeved with the boastful loki discourse but they just pushed me over the edge #AND WHERE IS SYLVIE'S POSTMAN #am i the only one who remembers that #also you might think im waffling but im really just trying to cover all my bases

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shihalyfie · 4 years

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No, Miyako and Iori’s Digimentals were not switched, can we please stop endorsing that

There’s a really common argument that Miyako and Iori’s initial Digimentals should have been “switched” (i.e. give Knowlegde to Miyako and Love to Iori), and accusing the series of trying to pigeonhole Miyako into a “girl” box by giving her the two Crests that originally belonged to her Adventure predecessor girls (Sora and Mimi). While I am not ever going to say that Adventure or 02 were the paragon of feminism, I seriously take issue with this reading, not only because of the fact that I feel it’s a misreading of Miyako and Iori’s characters to consider these Digimentals inappropriate, but also because the “alternative” suggestion of swapping them is an even worse misreading of what said Digimentals are actually about, and would result in an extremely unfitting result.

I would say that the major reasons these misconceptions get drawn a lot are mostly pertinent to the following:

A common misreading of the actual meaning of the “Crest of Knowledge”

The fact that Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori’s initial Digimental traits actually kick in the most in the latter half of the series, after they get their second set -- i.e., the secondary Digimentals are actually more obvious than their first set, even though the secondary ones are the ones to get focus episodes. (For a brief example with Daisuke, his “courage” resembled reckless foolhardiness for a lot of the first half, but at the end of the Kaiser arc and the entire second half it became very clear that Daisuke was still standing resolute in the face of what he knew were increasing stakes, which is a much, much more genuine show of courage.)

If you do want to make the argument that Miyako got this treatment “because she’s a girl”, you might as well argue that she was initially built from the ground up as someone who mixes core personality traits from Sora and Mimi. But she was absolutely not “pigeonholed”, and, again, I think it’s a severe misreading of her character to think that she was.

All quoted translations are by Ryuu-Rogue (Adventure) and PositronCannon (02).

The Crest of Knowledge

The Crest of “Knowledge” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s tempting to read it as simply “knowing a lot of information”, but note that there’s nothing really virtuous about that. You could easily be someone who “naturally” has a knack for studying or information, and then takes that information to be a smart-aleck who lords over everyone. Considering that the Crests were normally supposed to be about personal growth and virtues, “knowledge” seems like a very poor and incidental thing to be valuing.

In actuality, Adventure’s episode in relation to Koushirou and the Crest of Knowledge (episode 24) made it very clear that being intellectual had nothing to do with it. The entire episode revolves around Koushirou willingly giving up his “inquisitive heart” to the point where Tentomon considers him basically having thrown out himself. Koushirou spends the duration of the episode blindly accepting pseudoscience until Bubbmon snaps him back to his senses, and the “epiphany” that powers AtlurKabuterimon’s evolution later in the episode is as follows:

Koushirou: Staying ignorant isn’t what makes me, me! Wanting to know everything is part of who I am!...My inquisitive heart...I’m sorry for throwing you away. I want to know. I want to know!

The “actual” meaning of the “Crest of Knowledge” is defined here: it’s not about how much knowledge you currently have, it’s about how much knowledge you want to have -- wanting to not only have more information, but to also understand more. This is what fuels Koushirou’s character throughout all of Adventure -- he’s the one who can’t let something go whenever something interests him, and therefore he becomes the team’s valuable analyst and the one making the most progress in understanding the Digital World.

So when we get to 02 episode 2, and Iori claims the Digimental of Knowledge, Koushirou has this conversation with him to indicate him worthy of it:

Koushirou: Iori-kun, what do you think of the Digital World? Iori: What do I think...I don’t know, I just got here. Koushirou: But you’re thinking something, aren’t you? Iori: Yes...I have my own theories, but new questions keep popping in my mind and I want to know more. Koushirou: You have a really curious mind, as I thought. Iori: A curious mind? Koushirou: If you have any questions, please ask me. We’re your friends, and we’ll always help you out.

Just in case there were any ambiguity, Koushirou clarifies the “actual” meaning of the Crest of Knowledge right then and there: it’s not about having knowledge, it’s about curiosity, and that’s what we’re supposed to be looking out for with Iori’s character for the rest of the series.

Nevertheless, this conversation in episode 2 is a little misleading, and probably comes off as performative to many because Iori doesn’t actually show that much interest in the Digital World for the rest of the series, even though Koushirou had expected him to be like-minded in this regard. But what does happen is that once the Kaiser arc passes, and we reach the second half of 02, Iori starts to entertain some very interesting questions in regards to his stubborn insistence on black-and-white morality.

His first major shake to his frame of morality is episode 29, when he realizes that pacifist principles don’t mix well with a Digimon that professes to having no desire beyond wanton destruction.

In episodes 34-35, upon seeing Takeru gung-ho against BlackWarGreymon and the darkness to levels that disturb even him, he immediately goes up to Yamato to get answers on what’s up with Takeru without hesitation.

In episode 43, he starts to contemplate his stance on pacifism again after the SkullSatamon army ultimately forces the kids’ hands on breaking their anti-kill stance.

He asks his grandfather about his father in episode 47, and, upon coming face-to-face with Oikawa in episode 47, starts actually questioning him about his motives before he learns about Oikawa’s connection with Hiroki. The framing of the scene indicates he is very desperate to understand how Oikawa’s mentality could possibly make sense. Once he learns about the connection between the two, he gets even more desperate to understand how a friend of his father, whom he admired so much, could end up like this.

Eventually, his experiences with Ken and Oikawa lead him to become a defense attorney in the 02 epilogue, which is reiterated in side material (Spring 2003, Character Complete File, etc.) to be representative of his desire to “understand the hearts of criminals”.

Iori is not Koushirou, and his curiosity is not tied to intellectual pursuits or the Digital World, as much as he very much wants to understand morality and other people. He starts off the series with a very black-and-white view of it, but the more his intuition about it starts to crack, the more desperate and interested he gets about getting to the bottom of it. It’s a very unconventional way to see “knowledge” when such a term is usually applied to intellectual knowledge, but when you see it in terms of the Crest’s actual definition of “inquisitiveness and curiosity”, it fits like a glove.

What of Miyako? Well, she’s certainly got a lot of intellectual knowledge in the way Koushirou has, in terms of being good with computers, but...that’s...about it, actually. Unlike Koushirou, she doesn’t seem to be motivated by a drive to learn anything new with it. She can be curious about things, but that’s in the same way that everyone has a least a little of each Crest virtue within themselves to some degree; it’s not a driving part of her personality, and in fact, while she’s certainly not dismissive or callous, she sometimes even has a tendency to shut down at things she doesn’t understand and ask that it be simplified for her. In that light, “inquisitiveness and curiosity” actually feels very unfitting.

In fact, Miyako’s “intellectual” pursuits of being good with computers actually have very little to do with her character or personality. She has it as a peripheral hobby, and she engages in it, but unlike Koushirou, who uses his computer work as a way to gain more information and analyze things further, Miyako’s computer work really seems to be largely in the range of hobbies for her. A lot of her work is portrayed as favors for other people -- she helps fix Iori’s family computer, she helps out Yamato’s band, and she’s helpful to Koushirou as his junior -- in fact, the most pertinence Miyako’s computer abilities have with her actual personality is how much it puts Koushirou in her high esteem. So in actuality, all of that ties more into...

The Crest of Love

The Crest of “Love” is too often conflated with the potential for romantic love, especially because Sora was involved in the franchise’s most infamous love triangle, but the name of the Crest is actually aijou, i.e. “affection”. It’s a pretty neutral word, all things considered, and it has to do with being affectionate with and supportive of those around you.

Miyako starts off the series as a bit shallow and sometimes self-centered, but the way she interacts with Iori (someone from the same building quite a few years younger with her) already demonstrates that she’s open-minded about making friends and being friendly. On top of that, Miyako immediately demonstrates herself off the bat as being emotionally sensitive (see how she endears herself to Jou and Mimi in episodes 5-6 and has a bit of a mental health crash in episode 10).

Again, episode 2 tends to be a bit misleading, especially when Sora explicitly compares Miyako more to Mimi more than herself when she guides her towards the Digimental of Love. But observing Miyako’s behavior in most of 02′s second half indicates she is actually more than worthy of her title:

Starting as early as episode 3, she brings food for people, and does this a lot. She does this partially because she has privileges when her family runs the i-Mart, but she’s very much doing it to show her affection for all of her new friends -- it’s implied she’s the ringleader behind the “picnic” idea in episode 6 so that everyone can have a bonding session, despite it (at the time) having no relevance to the territory war and the fact that she’d just met everyone. By the time of episode 33, the way she cheerfully keeps in touch with Koushirou during her trip to Kyoto and brings souvenir yatsuhashi home for everyone (Koushirou included) indicates that she’s always got her friends on her mind.

Anytime she likes something or someone, she is perpetually open about her feelings and makes it very clear that she likes such a thing. Again, see how she immediately endears herself to Mimi, and later Michael in episode 14. (14 is interesting in that her “purity” is front and center that episode, because she calls herself out for being too straightforward about her own shallowness, but it’s worth noting that the way she manifests said shallowness is by being openly affectionate.)

Episode 24 has her notice that Daisuke’s feeling left out when Takeru and Hikari walk off on their own, and immediately assign him to nursery care duty where he can have fun and feel a little fulfilled teaching them soccer. This is a very often-overlooked scene, but she had basically no motive to do this except to make Daisuke happy, and the way she looks on the scene fondly indicates she’s very proud of herself for doing so -- she knew exactly what she was doing there, and is actually far more emotionally in touch with others than she’s often given credit for.

She is the second most proactive (behind Daisuke) to bid for Ken’s acceptance into the group, and while she initially seems to take a slightly more passive approach than he does, she immediately goes into given name basis with him (before Daisuke does, even!), takes a personal investment in seeing him become friends with Iori in episode 30, has a stake in reaching out to both Hikari and Ken in episode 31 (and is self-conscious about her running-her-mouth behavior being too insensitive), and Ken’s emotional well-being and welfare is a perpetual thing on her mind for the rest of the series (see: her going out of her way to accommodate his worries in episode 46).

Although Miyako’s propensity for affection is actually quite clear throughout the entire series, I do really think it’s the second half of 02 that brings it out the most, because her way of connecting to otherwise emotionally closed-in characters like Hikari and Ken ultimately demonstrate a lot about how outwardly proactive she is about those feelings, and how integral she is to keeping the group of friends together -- there’s very good reason she’s often referred to by third parties as a “mood maker”, someone there to keep everyone in high spirits.

And what about Iori? It’s hard to argue he doesn’t have love, of course. He has a very deep and passionate love for those around him! But, again, while he does have a propensity for it, that doesn’t mean it’s a trait that necessarily defines him, especially because his stubborn and passionate hatred of certain things ends up making the others have to pull teeth a bit with him at times.

Of course, one could argue that it comes out of his love for the things he wants to protect. But, nevertheless, I would still say it’s rather inaccurate to say that the trait defines him nearly as much as it does Miyako, who is openly and passionately affectionate, actively tries to be open-minded towards new things in her life, and spends a lot of her time doting on others and her hobby work doing favors for her friends.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #miyako inoue #iori hida #inoue miyako #hida iori #shihameta

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stray-tori · 3 years

Text

Making peace with TPN S02E04 (anime-only)

Post summary: my problems with the episode, possible explanations for why and how to minimize the problems. also some speculation.

The thoughts are mostly based on the anime in a bubble, aside from the segments where I mention otherwise.

#0 - My mixed feelings about staying anime-only

This is strange, because... I’m not really hype for next week? I want more, but not in the same excited way I did before. Because I simply don’t know what to expect anymore.

I want to stick as an anime-only so I can deliver stand-alone thoughts as this... clunky and stumbling adaptation makes its way towards the finish line (obviously it won’t be done this season but, yeah ---- i mean, hopefully not, who knows what they’ll do at this point).

But another part of me is just... more excited to read the manga to see what it is like and what the differences are, after the anime is done (which was always my plan, but I was never really actively excited about it pff-). And I feel like your anime approach has failed when I’m moreso looking forward to reading the source material eventually. I do hope that with ep5 they’ll get back on track and this feeling will fade. That they have a meaningful plan and reason for why ep4 felt so messy and disjointed - a reason why it had to go this way, because I feel like they just wanted them out of the bunker, but this is not the way imo (more on that in the next segment)

#1 - Leaving the bunker - mix of feeling “rushed” and “waste of time”

I feel like where the anime is going, they kind of wrote themselves into a corner in Episode 4. The story setup was leading them to this place (i.e. the bunker), but they obviously didn’t want them to stay there long.

What is the problem? / The way it was setup, we got about an episode of them being there (too few to have emotional attachment to the place) and then being chased out when things went well. In a way it is both too soon, but since nothing really worth the ~1 episode “fluff” happened there in the end, it feels pointless or as if we just wasted time, just for them to leave in the end.

Imo, the bunker is needed for two things, 1) being the first goal for them to go to, so the story isn’t aimless right away and 2) info dumps. Most of the children’s content can be repurposed during their forest time or doesn’t seem relevant right now.

For the record, I personally think that they got found out makes sense in-universe,

WM said he was found out, it’s not unlikely the farm knows that bunkers exist and might even have a vague idea of where they are

that there are multiple could be assumed by the army guy saying, “That’s how shelters usually are” -- If the world has been like this for 1000 years, what other purpose than human survival in a demon would could shelter even have?

I don’t think the pursuers communicated it back (got lucky, Ray) because if they did, they wouldn’t show up a whole month later.

they could have just observed them, they’ve been on the surface quite a bit.

(though I also agree it should be confirmed how the farm found out)

I’m just questioning the impact it had on me as a viewer (which is little) - the world is rigged against them, they can’t catch a break in a system this powerful chasing them and I think part of the confusion and “wait we’re back at square 1??” (literally) is intentional, to evoke the feeling of something being lost. If possible, I would keep the spirit of this idea (see “it’s a trap” in the next segment)

So what can we do to fix it?

Skipping the bunker / I don’t think we can remove the bunker outright. I suppose they could have had them just go straight for the new location by having the last keyword be another puzzle instead of the phone recording giving it away directly. But that might have too few things happening. That way they also would have gotten more time on their own to be wandering OR Mujika and Sonju might have been with them longer (which would honestly make sense from a meta point, too. I feel like they were a little short-lived.)

Less time in the bunker / if it feels pointless anyway, get it over with quickly

More time in the bunker / stay longer and have them do something else. Maybe they prepped to already go back to GF, time has passed and then they get raided. Problem: why did it take the farm force so long?

To be honest, I’m not sure that would have been much better so I’m personally more inclined to fix it with a very tightly connected problem, which will be the next segment:

#3 - the HELP wall scare was pointless

What’s the problem? / the scare was used in between two segments of “the happy life in the bunker”(TM). The segments are the exact same feeling to me personally, just fluff. The scare changed NOTHING. Nothing that was revealed justifies it existing.

Pre wall scare: WM is an ally, the bunker is for escapees

Post wall scare: WM is an ally, he got discovered, the bunker is for escapees, there were escapees there before (?)

The wall doesn’t even have anything to do with WM. And we didn’t get enough details on the HELP wall, even on its own. Was the book and the “HELP”s from the same person? Why were they going crazy there? What did their siblings die from? It can’t be food, so it must have happened outside. Where they picked up by the Task Force(TM)?

The “don’t give up” is nice, but our crew didn’t need that pep talk I think - i guess with Minerva gone, they lost a hope for allies, but at the same time he gave them coordinates where to get support. If they didn’t get that and now were on their own, I’d get the whole uplifting book more, personally. I guess the tragedy here is that WM is dead? Maybe I’m not emphasizing with the characters enough on this.

. So what can we do to fix it?

Give more details to the wall / i.e. answering the questions posed above. Maybe show more of the diary. Maybe two were left and one killed themselves (they scribbled HELPs and were crazier) and left the other alone, and they decided they’re leaving for the human world. It doesn’t change that the scare doesn’t mean much, but it would at least be a little more personal.

Change the wall / remove the helps, leave the names and the counting. It would be a tragic reveal (instead of a over-dramatic scare) to see that people had died (around) here, making them scared for their own lives (I guess that’s kind of implied to be happening but since it doesn’t linger, I didn’t really notice.)

It’s a trap/they definitely know of the bunker / it’s not “help” but “run” which was a warning someone put there because they figured out the farms knew of the bunker (or they got attacked and one couldn’t leave). It being a trap would make sense because even as it’s now, I’m just assuming they vaguely know of the bunkers’ existence anyway. Then it wouldn’t be “yay bunker life! - scare - yay bunker life! - BOOM” but instead “yay bunker life! - it’s a trap... what do we do?” - you can still have the info dumps & the phone call and then they either realize it’s a trap and just leave (removing the problem of the....... interesting raid scenes), and BOOM (haha) you’re where the anime is now, since the troup got nom’ed anyway and aren’t a threat anymore. The mission would still fail since they’re gone, so Isabella’s plot is in tact too. I think this would also partly solve the bunker problem, because now something actually changed about the setup we know. It’s NOT the safe bunker anymore. It changes a lot about the world too - the farm knows of them so how much more of the WM support net is affected? It makes you think more about the larger scale implications (and ligns up nicely with the “I was discovered” talk from James, therefore making the wall shown at the same time relevant), + the bunker has another reason to be there, to reveal that. Personally, it would change our perception and understanding of the situation, which imo would make up for the lacking investment in the bunker itself. It would also prompt them to leave faster (likely), thus eliminating the “we spent so much time here for nothing” thing. If you really want to you can even have them stay anyway, since it’s the only thing they have and they opt to just leave on the first sign of someone actually being on their back. This requires a better night watch than Don though :D

#4 - The little things

Missed drama - the episode was pretty casual about a lot of things; testing potentially dangerous food (fair because it was a nice segment), their new home being gone (fair because no attachment) and them seeing humans being eaten right in front of them (WHY WASN’T THIS MILKED). It makes it all seem like it’s not a big deal - which I guess in a survival story, it kind of isn’t. But I still feel like there wasn’t really any impactful moment this episode it just kinda went “brrr” and now we’re back to episode 1.

for real, please milk the wild demon eating people / he just kinda goes "nom" and the children are there and run. It feels like the anime itself barely takes it seriously - it's the first time (I think), they see a human get eaten by a demon and I feel like that could have used like a close up shot, and some more disgusted reactions by the children. I get that it's a world where that just happens but I feel like the anime just didn't take or see the change to do something more personal with it. I like it as an element at its core because it makes sense; they shot around, attracting the demon and I also like the irony of being saved by a wild creature. Even if that now chases you.

incompetent soldiers - why do they have guns? they can’t HARM / KILL the quality food, so WHY GUNS? -- People with guns are usually incompetent in anything because they just can’t hit anything, but that at least makes sense here. Still, what was the plan? Sheer intimidation? They’re the farms’ force right? Why don’t they know how to deal with wild demons? Possible answer: to prevent humans with guns knowing how to eliminate their higher ups :D doesn’t change that it makes them look stupid. Bro really got defeated by getting a cup thrown in his face. To be fair this specific one didn’t seem to be the brightest bulb, why the “huh?” when he found Don??? Is this relevant I’M SO CONFUSED.

where’s the character moments? - when they got to the bunker, everyone else kind of got the focus, and the main cast just didn't have any of those character moments anymore that made the previous episodes, especially episode 2, so touching and emotional for me. Don't get me wrong, I love the kind of fluff content with the children a lot but I kind of missed some.... it feels like it's more event driven (#BOOM) than character driven now, and idk how to really attach to that? Especially since with ep4 we didn't even really learn anything new (aside from a name and that he was indeed good and is now dead I guess).

#5 - Why?

Warning: this goes a bit into comparisons (nothing concrete though), and I obviously don’t know more than I picked up from fandom reactions.

My guess is that

“So... I cannot at this point say that we are going to animate the entire story to the very end. We are not at a point where we can say that. Sorry. (Laughs)”

from the MAL interview might be a factor. It seems they wanted to tell their own spin regardless (which I personally respect) but maybe they thought that unless they had a two-cour, it would be hard to keep up the investment the first season set up with what was originally in the manga (I had heard that it would be a weird pacing to do 11 episodes and maybe they wanted to make sure viewer engagement was high).

> “We know that there are viewers who, after they watch the anime, want to continue on and read the manga, and there are viewers who have read the manga first and are now watching the anime.”

(I’m not sure if “after the anime” means after a season or after the the whole adaptation)

Their goal is definitely an “unique” experience. And they seem to at least be aware that some people watch the anime first, so it has to make sense in a bubble.

I can’t say if I would have preferred a slower start into whatever the manga has that caps off at 11 episodes (idk how much rewarding stuff could have fit in there), since they probably fear of not being able to do a complete adaptation too. And I feel like as I’m getting it, they are trying to quickly reintroduce what people cared about in s1 --- in Isabella’s case, maybe a bit too early. there was barely any time to really miss her imo.

But I’m also not sure if whatever they’re aiming for will be rewarding. I hope so, because I don’t want their efforts to go to waste. And I don’t want to come to dislike it.

I can admit faults, ep4 is definitely a lowpoint even without knowing the alternatives. Just that for me, it is annoying little things and not the shocking deviations from the manga.

#6 - Hope

I have hope though because Isabella’s stuff was good, and now that they’re over the no-return divergence point, they might be able to... (meta spoiler) not repurpose manga scenes without any buildup (is what I’m getting) anymore :”D, because they really only set themselves up for disappointed with that. It might seem like a homage but it’s moreso out of place, the people who read it aren’t happy because you didn’t earn it (and of course they’ll compare) and the anime suffers from it because it can create unnecessary confusion forced in just to make a reference.

Ironically I think they’re too stuck in the manga too and could have benefited from a blind perspective.

I don’t really mind anything overall I think (world is against them, that’s fair, being out on the run again is fine, the demon “rescue” is fine), the execution / some details of episode 4 were just... strange. idk where they are going with it and maybe that really was the best way to transition but until I know where it goes, I can’t really judge that. Highly doubt it though.

I really hope they completely just do their own things now with some base elements from the manga.

A lot of what I talked about in this post ended up making me appreciate the crumbs of intention. The realization that previous escapees didn’t make it (not all of them, anyway) and WM being dead, and then having that uplifting message. The message of “you don’t get to rest, you’re on your own again”. The irony of the wild demon being their (temporary) rescue. The past escapees.

Ironically, I wanted to dunk on the anime but really, all I feel is more content now. Would I have preferred some fixes? Yes, but I see some semblance of meaning in it even with the errors.

Thanks for reading this goddamn essay.

#tpn #tpn s2 #tpn anime #tpn s2e04 #the promised neverland season 2 #tori talks #tori has opinions #long post

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