#like yeah it’s cool that they made an episode about death or morally ambiguous characters

[chemicaljacketslut]

a while ago i discovered that my sister and i use social media very differently. as per usual, i was attempting to peer pressure her into deleting tiktok. she agreed with me that tiktok is bad, but she didn’t want to delete it and brought up the point she usually does that she has friends on there. i suggested not for the first time that she do what i did, going inactive on all social media except tumblr. this was where our communication barrier started.

my sister said it would be too overwhelming to download another social media app. i suggested she talk to her tiktok friends on discord instead, something that had come up earlier in the conversation, leaving her free to replace tiktok with tumblr. this confused her; i think maybe she was reluctant to mix people with different platforms/friend groups. yk i get it, i’m nd too. she then added that downloading a new app would mean making new friends, which would be too many for her comfort level. which confused me, because i talk to one single person on here maybe once every few weeks and that is it. i engage in fandom and interact people through tags or reblogs fairly often, but i have little to no platonic obligations. so i told her to simply not make more friends, obviously, you don’t have to dm people. my sister, though, just became even more confused and said that making friends was the whole point, she can’t not make friends on social media.

and that was when i made the realization that she— and probably most people, if the name social media is accurate— uses social media for friendship and social connection, whereas i use social media to build a bizarre little museum of a home, mostly if not entirely for my own pleasure. which is probably part of why i love tumblr so much, because it is perfect for that.

#i understand her perspective however. please god PLEASE get off of tiktok PLEASE #im in an essay writing mood after finishing my metamorphosis one maybe i’ll write her an essay on why tiktok is bad #ohh ​she would hateeeeee that. would instantly be on the defensive thinking i was attacking her lol #she hates being proven wrong by me probably because im stubborn about it and will go to absurd lengths to win an argument #it’s like my sweet summer child please i am not attacking you im just saying please watch something other than childrens media sometimes #it’s hard bc she just worries me. i feel like she’s being a little bit developmentally stunted #but i can’t try and tell her that without shitting all over everything she enjoys #which is why im SO ecstatic that she’s started to like breaking bad after i made her start watching it lol #bc it has such excellent writing & im hoping it’ll help her learn to think more about her media #instead of everything being boiled down to ‘an evenly character did a bad thing #but the power of friendship conquers all & everything is resolved by the end of the episode’ #there’s a lot of amazing childrens media that deals with more complex topics. but it’s still childrens media #like yeah it’s cool that they made an episode about death or morally ambiguous characters #but it’s made for children to understand. it’s just an introduction #i’ve been rambling too long i’ve just been concerned abt my sister and feeling like im being too pretentious #ghost rants

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 2

Propaganda Under Cut

Allura

Lots of people (myself included tbh) ship klance (Keith and Lance). In s8 the creators made Allura/Lance canon (but then they killed her off and left the ending ambiguous it was weird). Anyway the fandom treats her like she's the most terrible bitchy woman ever but all she wants to do is end the war and avenge her destroyed home planet. Yeah she wasn't always the nicest or always the best, but you could argue some other characters in the show aren't either and they aren't treated near as bad as allura. people really just hate her bc Lance liked her. I don't think allura/lance are good together, but I still liked her as a character and thought she was interesting and had a lot of growth during the show. she DEF is not evil like some people portray her as in fic or talk about her in captions on posts. I've seen people say that they HATE her and that she's the worst and I'm like ??? let her live (well sort of ig she is dead now). lots of fic writers use her as the villain which is so interesting to me bc the show literally has villains like use them. anyway allura so perfectly fits the bracket description she deserves better.

I hate to acknowledge my time in this fandom but I hate the way the fandom treated her more. Allura was treated like shit no matter what side of the Great Ship War you were on because she was always a threat to the biggest ships (klance and sheith). At best she got put into Background Lesbian or Consolation Prize Shallura (Space Mom-zoned) (She was not a motherly figure btw. She was just Black). At worst she was violently demonized for being ~racist~ (kinda not cool with the alien race that blew up her planet for a few episodes), complete with misogynistic language hurled at her (she got called a bitch sooo much). Allura was a good and cool character and the show did her dirty but the fandom was somehow worse.

i apologise for speaking the dark magicks, but amidst the voltron fandoms many, many transgressions, there were a particular subset of people who just hated this girl. the infamous klance wars of the 2010s kept this perfectly fine childrens cartoon character in the sights of shippers everywhere, and she (and her voice actress im sure) were subjected to years of petty squabble blown up to global perportions. ive seen hate, ive seen rants, ive seen fanfics that made her homophobic. girls been through the ringer, and even though voltron was never the show its fandom wanted it to be, i believe allura deserved better

Mary Morstan

a controversial one i know, but it’s tumblr. how could i not? anyway shoutout to the writers for CANONICALLY killing her off for the non-canon ship. she was so cool honestly poor girl

Oh god where do I start? Constantly being turned abusive? Killed off (in canon!)? Constantly being removed from fic? I cannot stand the way she's treated, but it's 100% impossible to find Johnlock fic without the "umsympathetic Mary Morstan" angle. It's infuriating!

The fandom insulted Mary at every conceivable turn, refused to acknowledge her narrative importance or impact on the other characters, called for her death repeatedly, and even SENT DEATH THREATS TO HER ACTRESS because she had the AUDACITY to be a morally gray female character who was married to John (they did not care about the moral grayness of the male characters, but she was irredeemable, apparently-presumably because she was a "threat" to the main fandom ship). And though she was definitely sacrificed on a SPECIFIC mlm ship altar, she was still tangentially victimized by OTHER mlm ships too! For example, this fandom was willing to make up a character WHO LITERALLY DID NOT ACTUALLY EXIST to ship with different male character (who was morally...way worse than she ever was), as well as create swathes of content about two men who had maybe one canon interaction in the whole show, before even thinking about the possibility of making content for this character or even just talking about her in a way that wasn't overtly misogynistic and degrading. When Mary died in-story (in what, in my opinion, was an unnecessary, bullshit way), her death was, to this fanbase, not actually about her and was just seen as "proof" that the two male leads would now get together (they didn't). And this STILL continues to this day. People reduce her to "selfish bitch," completely ignoring any of her complexity by claiming that she's incapable of caring about anyone (despite helping to save lives on more than one occasion, as well as dying in an act of sacrifice) and insisting that any of her positive qualities MUST be completely fabricated. I've seen a lot of female characters get mistreated by fandom for a mlm ship's sake, but I don't think I've EVER encountered an example as bad as this one.

#poll #round 2 #vld #voltron legendary defender #voltron #princess allura #allura vld #bbc sherlock #sherlock #mary morstan #mary watson

[thirddoctor]

I'm thorn between liking and disliking 13th's characterization in spyfall. On one hand I feel very uncomfortable by the things that she did like erasing memories and especially what she did to the Master. As somebody who had met people who have been tortured during a dictatorship in my country (I'm Brazilian), it made me even more furious with her. However, I like that she's slowly becoming less generic happy goody hero as she was in series 11. So idk, maybe Chibs plans to make her more morally+

+grey and have her deal with her morals as 12th did. Which would be interesting. I really hope she gets confronted by what she did. Maybe by her companions, which would be cool because until now they were very obedient and didnt question her much. Just went with whatever the doc did.   Well, that's it sorry for the long ask. Just wanted to share my opinion on this ep. And also, I love your blog♡.

Yeah, I think Thirteen’s morality is fascinating and I’d love to see the show pick it apart, I’m just concerned the writers don’t actually realise the problem with many of the things she’s done. It’s something that’s been on my mind since S11, when she defended Space Amazon, claimed the problem wasn’t with the system but with the individual, and basically ignored the death of an innocent young woman. She’s a Doctor who sometimes seems more concerned with maintaining the status quo than fighting injustice (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab are good episodes, but the fact that both of them hinge upon the Doctor standing back and letting bad things happen is a worrying trend, and then there’s Arachnids in the UK in which she would rather let the spiders die prolonged, horrible deaths for the sake of her own moral purity than give them a quick end, and her speech to Graham in the finale about how he’ll be just as bad as Tim Shaw if he kills him despite the fact that Tim Shaw has committed multiple genocides and will continue to do so if not stopped). She’s not a straightforwardly good person, and that makes her a complex, interesting character... it just feels like she’s still being presented as right most of the time.

Her actions in Spyfall were not framed as wrong or even morally ambiguous---when she calls the Nazis on the Master and removes his perception filter, it’s a triumphant moment. When she robs Ada of her memories, it’s supposed to be sweet as she kisses her and tells her she’s smart enough already without knowledge of the future. Chibnall’s writing tends to be a tad clunky and on the nose, so if we were meant to view her actions as anything other than heroic, I think the show would’ve made sure to clue us in.

I do think though that we’ll see some questioning from the companions (we already got a bit at the end of the last episode), so it’ll be interesting to watch that play out. Maybe that will provide an opportunity to dig deeper into her character and expose some of her flaws.

#don't worry about the long ask I love talking about the show with people! #thank you! #Replies #Anon #Ranger shut up about Doctor Who #DW spoilers #DW negativity #not sure if this counts but just to be safe

[fatedfuturist]

things about my interpretation of tony stark. updated june 07, 2020.

here’s my exhaustive explanation for how i am not canon-compliant with the events and characterization of the mcu.

the reason for this is… well, there are several reasons, but i don’t want to stir shit up or just, in general, stomp on anyone else’s love for the mcu. and don’t get me wrong— i do love the mcu! but there are parts i’m critical of for personal reason, as we all have opinions on certain things. bc, yeah, you can love something, or someone, and still be logically critical about it or them.

anyway, here’s where my interpretation differs…

as per stated on my rules: i take inspiration for tony from multiple sources, including the mcu, marvel comics, the television show: avengers assemble, and my own personal headcanons. TONY IS ALSO ASIAN (SPECIFICALLY CHINESE) AMERICAN!!

i will admit that saying this isn’t particularly helpful if people don’t know, specifically, where i differ in terms of my interpretation of our dumbass genius. some of this info is scattered about on my blog, but here, it’s all consolidated into one post.

chen kun is my face claim, and i do use stuff from tony’s story from the mcu as a base. however, there are events and moments from the movies, that i selectively ignore due to personal preference; and then i build on top of my foundation with ideas, themes, and/or events from other sources such as the aforementioned sources listed above.

throwing this all under a read more because, like i said: exhaustive list. very. very. very fucking long. i’m serious– read at your own risk.

howard stark was an extremely abusive and absent father for all of tony’s childhood; tony did actively seek attention and approval from howard because he was rather aware of how famous he was and wanted the acceptance and validation from his dad; there wasn’t much shown in the mcu regarding his relationship with his father, but my inspiration for his father-son relationship comes from the comics;

an example of his verbal abuse: “you don’t want to be a sissy, now do you? stark men are made of iron!” (Iron Man, 1968);

an example of early exposure to alcohol: at age five, howard forced a drink into tony’s hand (which he did drink), stating that it would teach him “to be a man,” and that it’d “put hair on your chest” (Iron Man, 1968);

yes, this means that tony ‘forgiving’ howard in endgame is completely chucked out the window;

tony loses his parents the night of december 16, 1996 (not 12/16/1991), at the age of seventeen;

jarvis, the family butler, was more of a father to tony than howard ever was, and yes, this is why he names his first fully-functioning AI system jarvis;

tony was close with his mother, maria; she was his safehouse, and she taught him to be gentle and loving, and she also taught him the piano, which tony still periodically practices during his own time in private. in an avengers assemble episode, there is a piano in the tower that tony protects twice, which i reckon is because it has connections to his past with maria;

tony ain’t an old grandpa. i don’t see him being older than, like, 35–40 in the present time for my writing (chen kun is 44). this comes from comic and avengers assemble inspiration, which has been fairly ambiguous since they never mention his age. for plotting purposes in the mcu though, yes, he can be like 42–52 if needed.

tony is, by default, single unless otherwise stated. the reason for this is simply because i’m not big on tony / pepper in the mcu, and it’s not because i don’t like pepper (i love her as a character as an individual), but i just saw that the way they were written (so, this, yes, blames the mcu writers) was completely trash; they sort of redeemed it in endgame, but... in general, they had a lot of potential but then some writing choices pretty much ruined the ship for me;

this means that morgan does not exist unless otherwise specified and discussed, though i do enjoy the concert of tony being a dad to his own kid and breaking that cycle of howard’s shitty parenting;

i’m going to be as honest and transparent as i can: i do, for certain, love writing stevetony. they’re my primary ship. not simply in mcu dynamics, but from the comics and avengers assemble. however, like some can attest to, i will never force a ship on anyone. if you express no interest in them romantically? that’s fine. we can write them simply as good friends and comrades. i won’t stop writing or plotting with you if you don’t like them in a romantic dynamic. if you do like it that way? cool. i know it might be intimidating to discuss this given i look like complete trash for them, but i never choose who i will/will not write with based on whether we ship or not;

tony, publicly, hints toward being bisexual and biromantic a lot of the time as he’ll practically flirt with anyone at all times, but he never really openly admits it due to his oh-so ancient internalized homophobia (thank you for that one, howard and societal expectations of the time);

justin hammer is a long time rival in the industry, and often meddles with tony and his work all the time. it’s nothing new. the lack of foundation established in IM2 doesn’t provide much insight into their relationship. long story short (taken from avengers assemble): hammer is a punk bitch who’s jealous and tony is tired of him and will gladly beat his ass any day of the week whenever he drives a tank into his front door (which happens more often than not).

tony is fantastic with children. he loves getting to interact with children because he knows how excited they are to see him and/or iron man (seen in both the mcu and in the comics). this type of attention he’s okay about. if he can inspire children to do good things and be good people and be heroes in their own right, then he’s doing his job;

tony fosters the intelligence and dreams of bright individuals all the time by offering scholarships for high school graduates and post-secondary students, and also provides internship opportunities (equal opportunities regardless of race, sex, gender, religion, disability status, age, etc.)

we only see this occur with peter and harley in the mcu, but there are other kids— like riri williams! tony sees these kids for the bright minds that they have and he wants to help them and keep them safe as he knows these are the brains of the future.

let me run over iron man 3. like i said, i ignore some shit from the movies. tony doesn’t initiate the clean slate protocol, he doesn’t throw the arc reactor into the ocean, and he doesn’t remove the arc reactor from his chest. he will get surgery to get the shrapnel removed because if i were the follow the pain that comes with the comics, tony would literally be always on the verge of death at all times, requiring a chest plate to be recharged constantly to make sure the shrapnel doesn’t get closer– see? that’s a lot and i’m... lazy.

the reason for those choices are simple: clean slate protocol undoes his character progression;

the arc reactor is just a part of him as a person, stands as his heart;

avengers movie nights, (video/board) game nights, and training days exist and you will never be able to pry that out of my hands. tony always shows up fashionably late with coffee and pays for when shit gets broken by thor. team building exercises exist plenty within avengers assemble, including the fact that they share chores and decides who gets to do the next load of laundry from whoever chooses the short stick from the bunch.

tony has had anxiety and depression since he was a child. it just didn’t really flare up and get identified as a real, tangible mess of emotions and thoughts until he’d been kidnapped (and nearly died, at that). it got worse when he failed to address it until after IM3. into the present-day, tony deals with anxiety, depression, and PTSD all the time, but has improved (…sort of) when it comes to handling all of it, and certainly has grown to recognize similar symptoms in the people he cares about;

on another hand, tony has displayed symptoms of ADHD, but it’s not officially diagnosed, and some of these symptoms include, but are not limited to: hyperactivity (staying awake for days on end) and hyperfocus (hyper-focus on work), distractible (easily distracted when he’s not focused on something), rambling (talks a lot and often makes rather intuitive connections due to how busy his brain functions), impulsivity and recklessness (self explanatory), constant need to move around and/or do something (in meetings, he will be moving somehow, whether it’s tapping fingers or feet, or shifting around in his seat);

there are days where he feels inferior due to how human he knows he is (in comparison to most of his team), and other days, he feels as though he’s more machine than he is man. these feelings fluctuate depending on how he’s doing with his mental health, and/or if he hears and/or sees anything about him that points toward either idea;

there is always overwhelming guilt for those he can’t keep safe or people that die; tony doesn’t like to kill anybody (unless it’s robots, because… they’re robots, not human lives); though, if pushed far enough with no other choice, he will throw conventional morality out the window for the sake of protecting all that he believes to be for the good of the world;

tony isn’t jacked. he isn’t captain america fit, but he isn’t particularly thin, either. his body is sort of like a runner’s build (for visuals, refer to valerio schiti’s comic art of tony). i interpret tony’s body as a slight bit slimmer. he exercises, and being in the suit also is its own form of exercise. god forbid we discuss his eating habits, though. and–– he also isn’t short short, but he isn’t tall, either. he sits at 5’10”, which might be a little below the average male, but that’s about it.

speaking of eating habits, simply put: tony can’t cook for shit and that’s it. he’ll try to cook for his significant others’ on the occasion, but he can’t be blamed if he burns everything.

tony isn’t ‘woke’ or perfect, as it’s imperative to remember he grew up as rich and with financial and some social class privilege (since he was rich), despite the abuse and harassment he experienced during his youth. it’s taken him time to recognize this, and he realizes it really doesn’t cost anything to be a better person, which is why he tries to be better when it comes to his tone of voice when discussing certain topics he has no authority to be speaking of, and by taking action with simple manual labour when it comes to chores (so he doesn’t hire other people to do shit for him). he also knows he can’t be a man of ‘all bark and no bite’ when it comes to supporting people and causes, hence why he actively advocates for female and youth empowerment through both words and actions.

in regards to ca:cw events, i would prefer to ignore them. for specific-plotting purposes, this can be dropped, but i prefer the events of avengers assemble when it comes to ‘civil war’. it’s actually really simple:

tony was not honest about his intentions with the team regarding a robot that was initially made for him by howard, which ended up with an ultron reboot that nearly risked loads of civilian lives and the team’s lives;

steve confronted tony about it when they returned back to avengers tower. with tony’s insistence that everything was now fine, steve decided to resign due to tony’s dishonesty and lack of trust in the team;

this splits the team in half, where steve takes— well, they decided to leave since they didn't like tony's lack of honesty— natasha, the hulk, and the falcon to work under SHIELD as the ‘secret avengers,’ and tony, clint, and thor remain as leftover avengers (later with the addition of ant-man and temporarily, spider-man, in some missions);

in the end, they all join back together after learning to appreciate their differences and reconciling under the fact that there wouldn’t be any more secrets that could risk the world, and the team’s safety;

if i am to follow the events of the mcu— between ca:cw and infinity war, he develops nanotech for his armour, which is embedded into his very skin to accommodate for nanobots, which interacts via neural transmissions (visuals here);

tony recognizes that he lost his temper and let his emotions get to him in the moment, which fucked up shit that could’ve been talked through and fixed;

tony is an alcoholic. he recognizes that he always will be, though he’s always working toward sobriety. he certainly relapses every so often when things are rough and he feels as if he has no other options, but he’s aware that relapsing is part of the process of recovery. he has attended AA meetings (alcoholics anonymous), and has been AA sponsors for people in the past;

to skim through the events of infinity war and endgame should these be part of the things you’re curious about (this is getting really long and i’m sure you’re tired of reading this—how have you gotten this far?):

after returning from space, tony took a few months (~ five) to recover from those three months of malnutrition, dehydration, and the wound of thanos’ stab. tony sealed the front of his injury, but he sure as hell wasn’t seen dealing with the back end. during this time, he’s able to regain some muscle mass;

he lives on his own, retreating to the cabin to escape from the responsibilities of being a fallen hero who ultimately failed the people he was supposed to protect.

during the five year gap, he keeps in contact with the other avengers, but very rarely. they’re the only ones who know where he lives;

like i said— tony does not say any of that forgiving bullcrap to howard. victims of abuse don’t have to forgive their abuser, parent or not. let’s just imagine the entire interaction didn’t happen at all;

tony doesn’t die;

he used the infinity stones; but, to maintain consistency with what the mcu established w/ thanos: he sustained significant damage to his right arm, up to the shoulder and neck. it’s gravely scarred. the overall function of that arm also diminished greatly. vision out of his right eye is not as sharp as it once was, either;

a year of recovery and physiotherapy later, tony decides to amputate and go for a prosthetic. he works with shuri and wakandan tech to build an arm;

despite the end of the looming, world-ending thread, tony still battles resurfacing trauma. not every day is happy, but he is working toward recovery. there are days he doesn’t remember chunks of what happened due to the power of the infinity stones; sometimes, he doesn’t even want to remember it, anyway;

tony retires. sort of. for the most part. if the world really needs iron man, he’ll be there;

tony may have handed CEO-ship to pepper, but he still handles a lot of work for stark industries, and that’s what he primarily does post-endgame.

the multiverse and realm-traveling happens a-fucking-lot 

#✧ i just want to feel like i’m still living. ≻ headcanon. #well fuck this took over an hour #and now i need to go to bed lmAOOOO #the formatting seems a bit whack bc i just copied and pasted it from my notes #but oh well #MFDSJHFDJSDFS #fuck this got long #long post // #tw: long post

[asoue-sideblog]

Thoughts on the grim grotto?

I think it was my favorite of the S3 episodes. I really enjoyed it and there were a ton of things I was super happy to see adapted. There was a great moment where Olaf challenges the Baudelaires’ morality and says “I thought you Baudelaires always put your siblings first” which I especially want to highlight.

I thought Netflix Fiona was a much weaker character than the book version, but I liked her a lot.

In the context of S3, I think it contributed to absolutely gutting all of my favorite themes, motifs, and morals of ASOUE, so there’s a lot of relatively minor changes that in a larger context I find very frustrating. If what had happened in the rest of the season was more palatable, they wouldn’t be a big deal.

More detail under the readmore. Warning: pretty long. Also contains spoilers for episodes / book details beyond The Grim Grotto.

Fiona

I’m really glad they showed how the ways that Fiona acted like her stepfather were because of how he mistreated her and how she didn’t really understand what to do, rather than her simply being an obnoxious person who had decided on her own that that was a cool way to behave. That was exactly what I hoped for and I think that part of her characterization was done really well. However, unpleasable bitch that I am, I actually think they went too far in making Fiona sympathetic. To quote tumblr user atwq:

The overall theme of the show, however, seems to be that ‘when desperate, noble people can do things that look to others like wicked acts but are actually justified’ rather than the actual chef’s salad philosophy.

Book Fiona did seriously messed up things. She threw the Baudelaires in the brig for real and made them try to bribe or bargain their way out. Book Fernald wasn’t a reluctant villain who was with Olaf against his natural inclination to kindness - he was cruel and violent and had to be begged to spare a baby’s life and offered Count Olaf the Medusoid Mycelium for no reason with no hesitation - and that’s the brother Fiona was loyal to above all else. Klaus wasn’t just heartbroken because they had to part ways - she really did him wrong. Despite that, she wasn’t evil. As a reader, I could sympathize with her and forgive her for what she did. That made her a strong character and a great precedent to the Baudelaires sinking to similar depths in The Penultimate Peril.

I really like Netflix Fiona. Great acting, really fun character. Still weaker than book Fiona. Same with Netflix Fernald.

Also they simplified Captain Widdershins’ mistreatment of Fiona down to just him not telling her enough, lying about Fernald, and leaving for mysterious reasons, rather than like… him belittling her interests and making creepy statements about rewarding Klaus with her hand in marriage and leaving her in the middle of a life-and-death crisis without even a lie as an explanation. And then Fernald and Fiona reunite with Captain Widdershins happily ever after in The End - yeah, that doesn’t fix shit.

I didn’t like the direction Netflix went with Anwhistle Aquatics, but I loved how it contextualized Fiona offering the MM to Olaf as like… Fernald’s worst nightmare. I thought that was great.

I actually kinda liked Netflix Fiona/Klaus. The age gap doesn’t feel as present because Louis looks so much older than thirteen… of course, it still is present, so it’s still not really great. But Louis Hynes did a really, really good job playing Klaus as goofy and lovestruck. I think they had the most chemistry out of all the kid ships in Netflix.

I guess the rivalry between Fiona and Violet was okay-ish. The implication was reasonably clear that Violet thought Fiona’s mission was a bad idea (slash was trying to debunk Fiona’s mission so she could run off and meet Quigley instead) and Fiona didn’t want to admit that yes, it totally was. But it wasn’t really written great and it had a really strong vibe of “two similar strong-willed women will always fight at first” which is just such bullshit.

Weakening the themes of the book

In the book, Fiona and the Baudelaires did everything right. They found out where the Sugar Bowl would be. They went on a daring mission to risk their lives to recover it. It wasn’t there. Everything started going wrong and they never got to find out why. They never learned if their calculations had been wrong or if someone else had removed it. The reader learns it is the latter, but we never get to find out exactly who took the sugar bowl. The Baudelaires’ story fails to reward their effort with the expected result, because of the chaotic interference of the larger world outside of them, and not even the readers get to fully understand it. The world does not make sense; the world is not fair.

In Netflix, the Baudelaires see what happened to the sugar bowl, and it’s due to another important character. Both the Baudelaires and the readers understand everything that happened and it’s all part of the Baudelaires’ story. The feeling of cruel and incomprehensible randomness and complexity is gone.

(Although at least Kit sending Quigley was like… the one example of Netflix Kit showing the moral ambiguity and manipulation of book Kit. Sending a child after the sugar bowl, where he’d be trapped alone and helpless on the burned wreck of Anwhistle Aquatics - yikes, Kit.)

Likewise, the Anwhistle Aquatics story is stripped down to a basic version, which is explained in its entirety, and relates to characters that the Baudelaires and the readers know and care about. Burning AA is pinned entirely on the morally ambiguous Fernald, rather than casting doubt on ~super cool and noble~ Kit Snicket and a larger plot within VFD. We don’t get the implication that VFD was publishing propaganda stories to lie to the general public. And later, there’s no vague and concerning connection between the Baudelaire parents and Anwhistle Aquatics, because the planned tunnel in The End is not mentioned.

Furthermore, the villains are simply given a submarine by the gruesome twosome, rather than taking submarines that VFD had created. An extremely minor detail, but part of a larger trend of diminishing how VFD had created and empowered the firestarting side and all of their weapons.

Fernald’s statement about “there is no right side of the schism” comes across as one troubled man’s mistake rather than (as I interpret the book version of Fernald saying that, or whatever equivalent dialogue he’d said in the book) a terrible truth coming from a villain who’s right for all the wrong reasons.

#Anonymous #asoue #asoue spoilers #asoue s3 spoilers #asoue meta #fiona widdershins #the grim grotto #fernald widdershins #asoue s3 #long post #asoue netflix critical #negativity

[lucky-clover-gazette]

season 4 first watch impressions

under the cut are my thoughts and my new overall series episode ranking (spoilers)

ep1 - uss callister

- by far my favorite of the season

- a perfect blend of comedy and tragedy 

- i would have loved this as a full movie

- honestly nanette is amazing, like she owns her smarts and sexuality and never gives up i love her

- male coder: “it won’t work, i’ve already tried”

nanette: “well i haven’t” HELL YEAH

- i honestly loved all the ‘crew’ characters, even the gym rat boss

- i especially enjoyed the speech from the boss to robert, where he’s like ‘i acknowledge that i was an ass, but dude, YOU PUSHED MY SON OUT AN AIRLOCK’

- also the fuckin casual dialogue between the monster and bad guy and the crew

- OHHH BOY AND THE FACT THAT ROBERT’S GONNA ROT TO DEATH IN HIS APARTMENT BECAUSE HE PUT ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ ON HIS APARTMENT DOOR, HELL YEAH

- ‘oh my fuck’ 

- 10/10, watch it now

ep2 - arkangel

- preface: the kid playing young owen teague and his family were actually really close with my family when he and my little sister were kids. it was goddamn surreal to see that lil guy talking about porn when i remember him being, like, eight. but nice going nick, keep kicking ass lil dude

- okay so this episode was... conflicting 

- the opener made sense, but in some ways i thought it was TOO obvious and indicative of the episode’s message and tone. i can’t help but wonder if it would have been better just starting like five minutes in

- her father looked like counselor healy from orange is the new black, so that was distracting

- okay jesus christ lady, i get that losing your kid is scary, but implanting her with ‘optional’ optic spying and censoring software is such a massive violation of her privacy. like, it’s one thing when she’s tiny, but how the hell are you going to feel okay with yourself as a parent when she’s an adolescent? 

- the blocking especially pissed me off. that’s so fucking dangerous. either this woman is just very stupid, or very desperate

- at least the narrative established that it kind of was the latter. when her father gets sick, the mother has to care both for both her father and her child. that’s a lot. but still not an excuse for such mental violation of a quickly-growing human being

- young edgelord and sara are fucking adorable

- sara’s self-harm and rage issues are not, however,, and i’m glad that her mother took her head out of her ass and ditched the tablet

- is it just me or is fifteen-year-old sara kind of an idiot? like i get it she’s grunge and artsy, and i loved her giving a treat to the dog, but she seems to be almost hanging out with owen teague because he deals, and not despite it. like i get that i’m supposed to buy that their romance has kind of a subtext of him ‘teaching’ her about things, but like the underage sex and coke are kinda yikes. i feel like he definitely should have had more restraint, and although what the mother does is royally fucked, he and sara are also both to blame

- all right, so the smoothie motif. what a great narrative tool. the miscarriage pill was the most clever part of the episode. sara’s reaction was very well-acted, and the standoff between her and her mother was intense as hell

- i liked that sara’s rage issues remained into adolescence. i was glad that the tablet got wreckt, but i can’t help but wonder if it would have been more effective to have her rage-smash it prior to her mother coming come, leaving the pieces for her to find. the actual beating up of the mother with the tablet seemed to literal, too much sinking in the message. there were moments in crocodile and hang the dj that were the same way. 

- the ending, with sara hitchhiking in some stranger’s truck, was very smart. the ambiguity of a young girl, on her own, hopping in some stranger’s vehicle, is powerful without much explanation. any parent would be horrified by this; that’s what i don’t think we actually needed to see the mother screaming sara’s name and bleeding to understand the horror of losing a child to the unknown

- this one definitely gives me the most complicated feelings of the season; on one hand, it had a lot of great devices going for it. on the other hand, it was over-written and at times trying too hard to be ‘black mirror.’ the grey morality and ambiguous ending reminded me of a literary short story, which i love in my TV.

- 7/10, watch it if you liked most black mirror episodes that weren’t san junipero

ep3 - crocodile

- ah yes, the ‘i watch black mirror to be fuckin ashamed of humanity’ episode

- idk man, i liked it. it was bleak, and fucked up, but i’m all about that downward spiral. i liked that the story kind of began in three different places and then tied together. just as i had with ‘hated in the nation,’ i love police procedural stuff

- also damn, it was freaky as hell to see the straight-laced white blonde soccer-mom type being a despicable murdering sociopath!!! like, gotta go kill an entire family of POC, including a goddamn INFANT, and then see my kid’s show, that’s great. i was so happy when she got what she deserved. 

- all right, so i had one MAJOR PROBLEM with this episode: why the fuck did they make the son blind? the guinea pig twist was so GOOD, and mia fuckin killed a BABY, they didn’t need to further modify that!!! this is another example of black mirror doing just a tad more than it needs to make the audience feel horrible. 

- okay black mirror, we get it, that song is your thing, but can you maybe slide it in as a less glaring easter egg? 

- 8/10, but only if you’re into dark shit and bad endings

ep4 - hang the dj

- not nearly gay enough

- seriously, the entire episode i was unable to focus on the main characters because i kept looking around this Tinder-esque 20′s dating paradise and saw ZERO GAY OR LESBIAN COUPLES. i’m so surprised by this, especially after ‘san junipero.’ at first i was like, maybe this is like society’s way of encouraging procreation because of population decline, but that wasn’t the twist at all. no reason for nearly everyone to be hetero

- THAT BEING SAID, i see you. bi amy. even before the girl partner, i was aware that she used ‘they/them’ pronouns when referring to hypothetical partners. i just wish we could have seen more gay couples in the background (for example, at the choosing ceremony thing, it coulda been two dudes of something)

- uh okay, so everyone loved this episode, and it was okay. some of the banter and jokes were funny and relatable, but honestly, this wasn’t *that* good. the plot wasn’t super original (reminded me a lot of ep1 of hulu’s ‘dimension 404′) and the execution was kind of suuuuuuper basic. like, black suited Enforcers with tasers? a massive matrix wall? the whole thing seemed so predictable and just... basic as hell. 

- but shit man, amy was cool. loved that character in a vacuum. 

- honestly if someone could explain the reasons for loving this episode, i’d like to hear them. because i just don’t get it, man. maybe it’s because i’m gay, or young, or single, or unexperienced... but i just wasn’t very impressed

- 6/10, not even fuckin close to ‘san junipero’ lmao 

ep5 - metalhead

- black and white seemed sort of pretentious, not gonna lie. i think i would have preferred the dirty palette of ‘white bear’ post-apocalypse

- i am all for these female protagonists this season. hell yeah

- soo those corpses in the bed were heavy, but i actually kind of wish we got to see more of that? like, the remains of humanity after the dogs attacked? also, more small explanations for the dogs’ attack would have been interesting

- loved the chase and fight scenes. i can see how they’d be boring, but the moments of conflict between man v. machine were fucking awesome

- K N I F E  D O G

- anyone else get serious farenheit 451 vibes?

- the teddy bear thing was dumb. i don’t think we needed to see what was inside the warehouse. yet another time black mirror threw in just a little more than we needed

- okay so belle keeps alluding to the fact that she has safe family members out there somewhere, so am i to believe that there is some place where humans are safe from dogs? if so, why the actual fuck did she leave? i can’t believe it was just because of fuckin teddy bears

- alllllll the david lynch vibes

- 7/10, but you gotta actually pay attention to the visual details to get the best parts

ep6 - black museum

- BOOOOYYYYYYY! this entire episode i waited for the fuckin shoe to drop and then SHE! DID! THAT!

- the amount of callbacks to previous episodes was,, nice,, but also it was kind of annoying??? and unnecessary? 

- the museum owner was reaaaaaalllly annoying, which is think was intentional. what a fuckin sleaze. in comparison, i thought that jon hamm in ‘white christmas’ was still a somewhat charismatic narrator, but this dude was just yikes

- so, the first story was... kind of a lazy reach? idk, it just felt kinda like a parody of black mirror itself. i get the entire ‘mad science’ vibe they were trying to evoke, but as opposed to the next story, this one had very little to say about human nature. black mirror works its best when it tells stories that use technology as a way to analyze humanity; this one really didn’t (we all already know we’ve got weird kinks)

- the second story was better, but, like, SUPER heartbreaking. poor carrie. i don’t think her husband should have done The Thing at all, honestly, I don’t believe that he couldn’t have seen what happened next coming. it’s like the arkangel mom again; either these characters are just SUPER present-oriented, or just fuckin dumb

- the most tragic moment in this season was ‘monkey needs a hug.’ i felt nauseous 

- okay, now for THE TWIST! the accent drop was a great touch, and i loved that she was poisoning him the entire time. also fuck white men and supremacists, and fuck the museum dude for enabling them. 

- the ending was great. i liked that her mom was chillin with her. the building blowing up was very tarantino. loved her a lot

- 8.5/10, boring in the beginning but the end is worth it 

and now.. 

BLACK MIRROR EPISODES RANKED (AS OF SEASON 4)

1. U.S.S. Callister

2. Nosedive

3. Hated in the Nation

4. San Junipero

5. Fifteen Million Merits

6. Be Right Back

7. White Bear

8. White Christmas

9. Black Museum

10. Crocodile

11. Arkangel

12. Metalhead

13. Hang the DJ

14. Playtest

15. The Entire History of You

16. Men Against Fire

17. Shut Up and Dance

18. The National Anthem

19. The Waldo Moment

#black mirror #black mirror s4 #sam reviews #uss callister #arkangel #crocodile #hang the dj #metalhead #black museum #bm

[thebastardofgloucester]

Okay, so. Thoughts on the mess that was Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

- I can see why a lot of people had a big problem with Poe’s arc – mostly that it started him from such an obnoxious place that wasn’t entirely in keeping with his portrayal in Before the Awakening or the comics (honestly I think his character in TFA is sufficiently thin that it wasn’t really out of the realm of possibility). There’s also the component of the Angry Latino Man racist trope with his aggression towards Holdo and Leia. Leia slapping him was unnecessary. Leia stunning him so he flew back into a wall(?!) was really unnecessary, and combined with brutalization of the other characters of color was a Problem.

- But nonetheless I loved where it ended up. I did love Poe learning the brutal lessons of command, putting him in a place to be Leia’s successor as the leader of the Resistance. He is a hotshot pilot. Going from that to general, with all the need for long-term thinking that requires, is not an easy leap. So while I understand where people who hate it are coming from, I think that Poe’s journey to becoming Leia’s heir to the role of leader is the most compelling part of the film.

- God Luke was a mess. His grumpy old man act was funny but it hurt so much to see Luke, the beating heart of the OT, reduced to a bitter version of Obi-Wan, minus the hope of believing in the future. TFA and TLJ utterly broke Luke in a way that was just…too much. And god, he would never draw a weapon on his fucking nephew, no matter how scared he was. He might aggressively confront Ben, trying to get him to give Snoke up, go after the source, but killing his nephew out of fear? What? W H A T ?

- that said, that was the most meaty material Mark Hamill has ever been given and he fucking killed it, so props to him.

- What was Rey even doing through most of this movie. All the clarity and dynamism of her character was just sucked away and outside of some moments on Ahch-To she was either a prop in Kyle Ben’s narrative or a walking deus ex machina. She technically becomes the Last Jedi and turns her back on Ron but like…we didn’t see any of that? Does she even want to be a Jedi?

- look…I have been on the Rey Skywalker train forever. I am not happy with her being from unremarkable origins (assuming Kyle is telling the truth, and given that he is a manipulative abusive asshole he may not be) in part because it actually feeds the unfair idea that she’s somehow unrealistic (whatever that means in a space wizards franchise) or a Mary Sue character. She shows a level of skill, instinct, and power that has previously only been manifested by…Anakin Skywalker. That needs an explanation. Either she’s a Skywalker, or a vessel or champion of the Light Side of the Force, or some other shit, but there does need to be a reason. Luke and Anakin have a reason – they are Skywalkers, one Space Jesus and the other the son of Space Jesus.

- I have no idea what motivated Rey for so much of the film. Her quasi-Bespin going to Kyle thing was a fucking mess and required a lot of idiot balling. Rey is smarter than that. Rey saw Kyle murder his father – she would not just trust him enough to go alone. Basically Rian either did not get Rey as JJ Abrams made her or he didn’t care. Either one is utter bullshit. Some cool action sequences mean nothing without the character dynamics to back them up.

- God, Finn…Rian took the problematic aspects of Finn’s comic relief role from TFA and just…ran with them. I didn’t object to him trying to run off to find Rey – he has no real attachment to the Resistance. But his whole mission is just…pointless. There’s no follow up on his being a Stormtrooper who overcame his programming. We get some interesting stuff with Rose about his being a legend when he’s not comfortable in that role, and I kind of liked the way his self-sacrificing behavior was called out by Rose so he knew that besides Rey people actually cared about him, but…there were so many missed opportunities, and so many unnecessary injuries and physical jokes.

- I love Rose. I do. I don’t know that there was really a place for her in this story. Her ‘eat the rich’ working class background was cool, she’s a huge sweetheart, Kelly Marie Tran gave a great performance. Her romance with Finn was a rushed mess. A crush I can believe, fine. Love after like two days max? No. They didn’t earn that. Honestly if you are going to introduce your first significant woc you have to find more to do with her. It was nice that (unlike Leia and Luke) she got a chance to grieve her losses

- Kyle Ben’s eventually becoming the irredeemable supreme leader actually works pretty well, but how it got there…on the other hand…Kyle shows his true colors when he turns on Snoke…in order to take his place in the finest traditions of the Sith. He’s the full-fledged villain for episode IX. As it should be.

- What the fuck was Snoke. Why did the film bring him and Rey and Kylo together in an awkward and forced series of developments and then just cut him in half. We have no idea where he came from, his relationship to the Empire, his goals, his plan with Kyle and Rey and Luke…it’s just an enormous blank and we’ll never get an answer because Rian got bored and just decided to off him. It’s not like I care about him as a character, obviously. His death hardly upset me other than the fact that it was pretty bad writing.

- why the everliving fuck did we have to have YODA show up, basically to give a non-chalannt mea culpa and say ‘actually the Jedi were kind of shit.’ Like ANAKIN? Why the fuck would you not use the person the Order failed the most. Also Yoda looked fucking terrible I have no idea why they used a puppet AND CGI.

- On the plus side, Leia did a truly spectacular Force Thing (though that was some cheap shit by Rian spacing her like that). Then she was unconscious. She never got to mourn Han at all. She passed the torch to Poe, but I can’t help but be disappointed when so much was promised. Also…no one came to her aid? I know that in Bloodline her parentage being revealed ruins her reputation and strips her of her influence…but no one? What the fuck?

- DJ was just a useless character. Maybe they’ll be a payoff in episode ix, but he serves no purpose but to set up an inconsequential betrayal, unless you count Phasma dying (also a cheapening of her character as laid out in her novel) as a tremendously important moment. All the damage was done by Holto’s sacrifice. Finn and Rose and BB-8 were pretty incidental.

- the Porgs were stupid space puffins and despite myself I’m kind of fond of the stupid things. The crystal foxes were much cooler, of course.

- R2D2 and C3PO were props in this film. Chewbacca too.

- Luke…weirdly his facing his fears and sacrificing himself was one of the best parts of the mostly-okay third act? I liked the new, less flashy but still impressive Force power of projection, and he got some chance to say goodbye to Leia at least, and he got to lay down the law to Kyle Ron. But…he died alone. That’s not fucking okay. That’s a betrayal of Luke, the heart of the original trilogy. It’s just…wrong. And it’s sad and heartbreaking but not really in a satisfying way. And he never really passes the torch to Rey – he sacrifices himself to fix his fuck-up with Kyle. He deserved more than that. All the Skywalkers did.

- the space battles were pretty great, the whole tracking thing and the slow race was very Battlestar-y, even if the mechanics of the plot were a bit questionable.

- I need to read Leia Princess of Alderaan to get the backstory on Holdo. Her character was interesting (though we could have used more backstory or elaboration on how she became so respected a military leader) and her relationship with Leia was tantalising but there just wasn’t enough. Her heroic sacrifice was fucking awesome though. If she had to go out she picked a good way to do it.

- Billie Lourd got a character and lines and that was pretty great.

- Okay, minor nitpick that actually REALLY BOTHERED ME. Among the casualties in the opening battle appeared to be Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley, one of the protagonists of the Aftermath books, and the son of the delightful Norra Wexley. Like, first, Mister Bones would fucking swim through space and stab Kyle Ben with his vibroknives because he is Norra’s motherly love incarnate in a psychotic droid. And second, Norra deserved better. She’s probably dead now and that is bullshit in itself.

- Or it might have been another bearded guy, in which case like Jessica Pava his absence bothered me. Like…where did these people go?

- blowing up the bridge to kill Ackbar et al was just cheap bullshit honestly

- the war profiteering and moral ambiguity was not elaborated enough to justify its inclusion, honestly. I’m not averse to that sort of moral ambiguity but you have to earn it to stick it into a Star Wars film. They didn’t. And again, DJ was just useless.

So, yeah, to review – this is not a movie I was ever going to like. I got almost nothing I wanted out of it, it fucked over the Skywalkers royally in a way that left me feeling bitter and betrayed, it misused or wasted Finn and Rose, Rey’s character was inconsistent at best with little to no on-screen development. The opening was strong. The second act was an epic dumpster fire, particularly everything with Kyle and Rey and Snoke and everything that led there. The third more or less pulled the majority of story threads out and left them in an interesting place for JJ Abrams in episode ix to maybe do some interesting things, but the path it took to get there had…problems.

Rian doesn’t love Star Wars like I love Star Wars, and he really doesn’t like the Skywalkers. I guess that’s what some people wanted – for an end to the Skywalker-centric narrative. Personally I think that is utterly missing the point of literally everything about this series, but whatever, people will disagree.

The writing was overall clumsy to outright bad, with bursts of inspired storytelling but mostly buried under Kyle apologism.

Corvus fairly points out that The Empire Strikes Back is not nearly as good as movie as it is without the events of Return of the Jedi, so to an extent it’s hard to fairly judge the film when you don’t know where it is in the overarching story. But equally this film had so many opportunities to develop the characters and build the world and it just. Did not.

As for a rating, it depends when you ask me. I’d rate it somewhere between a 5 and 6/10. Maybe a 4 in some aspects. It’s not Attack of the Clones bad, but it’s worse than Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, A New Hope, ESB…I mean, I liked Rogue One more. Frankly Revenge of the Sith was more emotionally satisfying, especially in the context of the Clone Wars series. I’m never really sure where to rate The Phantom Menace. This might be better. I’m not entirely sure, and that’s pretty damning,

I’m just…so disappointed and frustrated and have basically decided to treat the new canon post RotJ as more of alternate universe than anything else. Which is kind of sad, honestly.

tldr; Anakin Skywalker Did Not Die For This Shit

#martinus watches the last jedi #the last jedi spoilers #tlj spoilers #a new hope for a new generation #rian does not love star wars like i love star wars

[shewasanamericangirl]

i just played the NDRV3 demo again (didn’t remember you can get a bonus from playing it...that is, playing it on the same system you’re getting the full game for) and i want to post my impressions of and predictions for the setting and characters and so on. it will both help satisfy my hype and distract me from this horrible cold i have. there’ll be a couple spoilers here from the previous games/anime, but the info about NDRV3 is all from the demo and official website.

the school, if you can call it that: okay, i’ve seen it called a prison and i’ve seen it called a school. fact is, it’s a ruin. the overgrown foliage gets me right in the aesthetic, damn. an aboveground ruin doesn’t seem like a great place to imprison anyone, though--you’d think it’s not that structurally sound. (opportunity for an unexpected death, maybe?) could it have been reinforced from the outside? i’m sure monokuma wouldn’t let all this take place somewhere the walls could be easily shattered by a few carefully aimed steel tennis balls from ryoma.

...oh my god. ryoma’s got balls of steel. i just realized that now.

the goddamn intro video: okay...so in the intro everyone has the same eerie fuchsia eyes as class 77-B in the OP for the later episodes of DR3 despair arc. on one hand, this series is too smart to do something like that coincidentally. on the other, this series is also too smart to recycle the same twist. it has to mean something, right? at this point the best i can say is “well, that’s probably gonna turn out to mean something” and move on.

kaede akamatsu: very cute. i like her musical hair clips. apparently she was made fun of for playing the piano from a young age, but why? it’s the most normal hobby ever. pretty cool if you’re good at it, too. (i...sadly...was not.) poor kaede just wants a peaceful and happy high school life with her friends, but i’ve played enough dongobongo to know that’s not where this is going.

K1-B0: excellent pun name which i really hope gets explained in the english version. my adorably awkward robot son. when i saw the first few character designs i thought he’d be the protagonist because, you know, the hair. i don’t want K1-B0 to die, though if he does, i’d prefer an execution over a murder just because i’d love to see the “robotic cinnamon roll” cliche averted more often. buuuuuut until proven otherwise, he probably is a cinnamon roll. his recording ability should come in very, very handy for providing evidence!

supreme dictator kokichi “i’m brother, LOL” oma: reminds me of todomatsu, because he manages to be both undeniably cute on the outside and utterly rotten on the inside. lay off my robot son, you little creep! in japanese he refers to kaede as “akamatsu-chan”; not sure if he’s acting cutesy or being inappropriately familiar. he’s a guaranteed red herring for as long as he’s still alive. i think he’s gonna get murdered. i’m going to enjoy this character despite him being a piece of shit. possibly homosexual; must remember to investigate further.

detective...wait...saihara? yeah, saihara: i want him to take his hat off already so we can see what his hair is like. what if *gasp* he has an ahoge, and it turns out he was the shadow protagonist all along??? anyway...his aptitude should be a big help in trials, and he’ll probably survive...for most of the game. i hope we don’t have to hear about his inferiority complex too often.

gonta “everybody’s bug encyclopedia” gokuhara: my other new son! he aspires to be a true gentleman, but he never wears any shoes! he’s the big strong one in this game’s cast, so odds are against him surviving chapter 4...they're not going to have a third character in this role die a heroic death, are they? i want to hear him talk excitedly about bugs, and i want to learn more about his wolf family too. love my boy gonta.

ryoma “i’ve got balls of steel” hoshi: okay, so...he was on death row...but then he was sent to this school instead? what? how does that happen?? he seems interesting! it’ll be hard to take him seriously when he’s got the same voice as gundam, though. i wonder if the fact that he’s killed before will ever make him a red herring, though there’s already three more likely red herrings from what i’ve seen.

??? rantaro amami: this guy’s capacity to stay cool under pressure and negotiate have got to be related to his SHSL talent. diplomat? politician? lawyer? hostage negotiator? he’s kinda cute...i have no idea what’s gonna happen with him. a murderer, perhaps?

gimp boy: *tabs back to official site* korekiyo shinguji. okay. that unfortunate mask is the first thing we all noticed about him and most likely the memento we’ll keep long after he’s dead. his questionable sense of morality makes him an obvious red herring, but it also gives me the sense he’s no murderer--i think he’d prefer to hang back and observe the chaos rather than actually kill someone himself, unless of course he has a burning desire to observe the beauty of a struggling, dying murder victim firsthand. very, very interesting guy. as morally ambiguous as komaeda, but sadly, not as good looking. probably gonna get murdered himself, and will find the experience ultimately beautiful. alternately, the most likely student to use the “feel free to eat anything you like” rule as an excuse to experiment with cannibalism.

himeno...himiko yumeno: *yawns* kinda gimmicky. i think her magic is in fact real, which would make it way funnier that she can only do magic tricks. probably gonna murder someone, because wouldn’t a magic show-themed execution be the best? perhaps she’d be able to pull out some genuine magic on the verge of death...only to get killed anyway.

tenko chisomething: damn i really thought she was gonna be cute up until she started being a dick to naegi in the demo. she surely has her reasons for being a sexist twat (to be revealed in free time #5) buuuuut i don’t think anything can make me like her. a possible red herring if a male student is murdered. will probably get murdered herself. i dare you, game: make me like her.

tsumugi: oh my gosh, she is cute. how i’d love to wear one of her creations! i love how kaede gets all bubbly over her. i’m expecting her to deliver on those promised anime/manga/video game references! no predictions yet for her...

tojo the ultimate maid-san: way too freaking cool. she got offered a job to take down a country? why couldn’t there be a maid this cool in fire emblem fates?? she’s so composed all the time, so i’d love to see what can genuinely ruffle her feathers. i’m guessing she’s a murderer. she probably has a katana concealed inside a broom like plum kitaki.

aja...augie...angie yonaga: clearly not the ultimate phlebotomist for a reason. just how much blood does she sacrifice on a regular basis? just where does it all go? okay, she’s gimmicky but cute. will probably live long enough to get on my nerves, but in the meantime, it’ll be fun hearing atua weigh in on things.

kaito: comes off as really smart in a really dumb way. i don’t know why he had to pass the astronaut exam before graduating high school so badly, but you gotta give him credit for succeeding. my instincts tell me he’s either a survivor or a murderer...but then, he probably wouldn’t be a murderer seeing as we’ve already had two executions involving rockets.

mako...maki: very, very cute. the first detailed character design we saw. up until meeting her in the demo, i was certain her talent would be something more action hero-y than child care. well, we know the core of her tragic backstory already. i hope she survives.

miu iruma: okay, she’s lewd. i can appreciate wanting to increase productivity when you’re sleeping. frankly, i’d love an invention that helps you breathe while asleep...though, actually, those already exist. maybe i’d go for the reading invention, then! i’d love to see her talent potentially come in handy. unfortunately i fear her dirty comments are going to achieve fukawa levels of annoyingness by the time she dies.

monokubs: oh look, merchandise opportunity! all they need is a purple one. i can get behind monokid’s fondness for going “hell yeah!” the demo lead me to believe monodam never talks, but he does in one of the trailers. so...who the hell built these things? not that i was all that satisfied by monokuma’s origins (aside from the fact that he is, in fact, made out of palm trees). i don’t think i’m ever going to give a crap about the monokubs...

i’d love to see if anyone else is making a post like this with their thoughts about NDRV3′s setting and characters! anyone who knows the story already, i hope you had a good laugh at how wrong i am.

#dangan ronpa #ndrv3 #dr spoilers #sdr2 spoilers #dr3 spoilers #honestly...i don't have a tag yet for ultra despair girls #zzs spoilers #there.

[taz-writes]

Since I'm biased towards Slytherins and Gryffindor-Slytherins, could you tell us more about Suenya, Talxin and Nyrene?

Ooh! Yeah I can, but be warned, I could write a whole essay on any one of these characters. This is gonna be LONG, so I’m putting it under a cut for the sake of everyone’s feeds. (Also I’m sorry I didn’t get to this sooner, I don’t know when you sent it but tungle is eating my inbox notifications I guess...) 

Nyrene is.... kooky. In the words of the immortal TVTropes, she’s a cloudcuckoolander. Ny is weird and unabashedly so, partially because she’s actually Like That and partially as a tactic to unnerve and disarm the people around her. That’s why I think she’s a Slytherin, her entire gimmick is deception. People don’t lie well when they’re faced with something (or someone) that completely contradicts their understanding of reality. Ny’s one of my oldest non-fairy OCs and her original characterization was a direct manifestation of my most infamous ADHD-fueled manic episodes, if that gives you any idea of what we’re working with here. She probably does have actual ADHD but there’s more to her weirdness than that, she’s deliberately exaggerating stuff and she’s also just a super dramatic person. Very smart, surprisingly emotionally mature, but sometimes flips out over random stuff. Her ethics are questionable. 

Underneath the kookiness, Nyrene’s incredibly clever. Her main power as purple paladin is the ability to manipulate time, typically by traveling through closed loops. This takes a ton of coordination, memory, and clever improvisation. She’s constantly keeping a record of everywhere she goes, everything she touches, everything she sees and hears, so that she doesn’t overlap herself by mistake. Paradoxes are potentially lethal, after all. As a result, she can be a bit spacey, which reinforces how weird she is... but you can’t underestimate her. She’s paying attention to everything. Like, she’ll miss being spoken to or miss random information for the sole reason that she’s too busy memorizing everything else. The proof of her intelligence is the fact that she does this successfully and hasn’t broken reality yet. No dead timelines allowed here. In theory, she could jump forward through time or even pause it, but she’s never tried--it’s not safe to mess around with that stuff, the consequences could be even more devastating than those of the closed loops she currently works in. 

Way back in the day when I first made these characters, Nyrene and Syzyga had a really close relationship--sometimes I shipped them romantically, sometimes they were just platonic BFFs, but they were always stuck together as a duo. In the current iteration of the story they’re still very close, I think Syz is the only person who really gets what Nyrene’s deal is. Anlied knows in theory that Nyrene’s smarter than she looks, but Syzyga gets it. Syz is also pretty good at making Nyrene calm down when Ny loses her temper or just freaks out about something. They play well together. 

Another big part of why Nyrene’s Like That is her origin story, she’s from Nemmonay. Nemmonay is the weirdest setting in the Nymiaverse, it’s basically just one island off the coast of Kelrie, but it’s walled up and has survived attacks by all three of the other realms on the continent. Nemmonay’s  home to a lot of pirates and criminals, anyone fleeing the law in another country or who just doesn’t buy into the “system” of normal society. There’s a whole little hierarchy and social order to it, but the Nemmonese system grows out of pure anarchy and things could tip over at any time. Nyrene grew up there as the daughter of a major Nemmonese power family. Her mom is even smarter and more ruthless than she is, Pagala Enkeli is on another level of badass. Pagala also raised Nyrene with um.... with a really questionable set of ethics. I mean, they’re anarchist pirate gangsters, some of that’s just to be expected. Nyrene got her goofball act from her mother and took it up to 11, Nyrene also got her intelligence from Pagala--Pagala’s a chessmaster type and Nyrene is chessmaster junior. Ny knows a ton of different ways to kill people, pick pockets, manipulate a fight, and just generally get what she wants. What she’s lacking in is a sense of social awareness. She reads people like a book but doesn’t understand that she shouldn’t always do that, she has strong battlefield instincts but doesn’t always realize that she can’t punch or time-loop all her problems away. that’s why Syz is good for her. Pagala tried to teach Nyrene manipulation and social savvy, but Ny’s just not that good at it. Everyone’s bad at something. 

Soenya’s different...so she comes from a pretty remote area up in northern Sapir. The Sapiran Empire is the biggest realm of Nymia by far, but most of it is very sparsely populated because of how barren and cold it is. Sapir’s got a lot of mountains, a lot of tundra, and only a small handful of places where people could reasonably expect to live the year in one place. I want to take inspiration from IRL northern cultures to start building these remote settlements, I’m still deciding if I want to lean more towards Siberian cultures or American indigenous groups in terms of reference. Either way, the point is, Soenya’s from a tiny place up on the northern Sapiran coast that’s very small and close-knit and cold. Before the Academy she had very little exposure to anything beyond her village/group, and she was one of the only magic users she knew. 

She’s uh... she’s enthusiastic about people. Soenya’s a constant flirt, wants to get in everyone’s pants, and if she’s not attracted to you then she’s peppering you with random questions about whatever’s on her mind. She’s nosy and can’t mind her own business. She and Nyrene butt heads a lot because they’re both very strange people, but in different ways--Nyrene is reclusive and likes to be enigmatic for effect, where Soenya is nearly impossible to unnerve, at least not in the way Nyrene likes to unnerve people. Ny doesn’t know what to do when she genuinely can’t freak someone out? And of course Soenya’s noticed this and uses it to mess with Nyrene right back... Soenya’s pretty clever. She’s not that book smart (for reasons explained) but she’s good with people and has strong intuition. She’s got that good good folksy knowledge. She’s also pretty competitive, and she tends to provoke Nyrene’s competitive instincts whenever she gets going, because they just cannot STAND each other. Nyrene doesn’t like that Soenya won’t react to her weirdo act, Nyrene doesn’t like that Soenya keeps flirting with her (and everyone else). Soenya doesn’t like that Nyrene won’t give her a straight answer, and Soenya thinks Nyrene’s behavior means she’s a medical oddity--who’s ever heard of a person going senile by the age of 20? 

Soenya’s the paladin of yellow and that gives her some serious trickster instincts. She can control weather (within reason), talk to animals once in a blue moon (elk/deer and rabbits are the easiest bc she grew up around them), and she gets a power boost when somebody underestimates her or doesn’t take her seriously. She’s super annoying in a fight. 

I’m still developing Soenya as a character, because her role in the story has changed a lot since her creation--originally she was an antagonist, being mind controlled by the villain from the very beginning and fucking with the heroes all the time. she was also banging the villain (which given the context and character ages is gross and creepy, @past me WTF!!!), and then I deleted her entirely from the story for a while because I didn’t want to deal with the baggage of that original character dynamic. I’ve brought her back because she’s a really fun character and I like her, I want her to be part of the good guy team now, but I’m still figuring out who she is. You know? So pretty much everything I’ve said here could change. All I’m sure about is that she’s still a flirt, just with people worth flirting with, and she really hates Nyrene. (It’s mutual.)

Of the three you asked about, Talxin’s probably the most thoroughly developed, just because he’s a little more straightforward? He’s a beaten-down guy who’s been through shit and who’s fighting to make sure nobody else has to suffer the way he did. Archetypal antihero stuff. He’s brave, and stubborn, and smarter than he looks. He’s also impulsive and reckless, leaving him vulnerable to the darker side of his powers. Talxin’s what you get when I rewatch the Star Wars prequels and get pissed about how cool and morally ambiguous Anakin deserved to be. 

Talxin’s small, and for most of these characters’ early development he stays that way in his friends’ minds. Fair warning, his backstory is HEAVY and really dark, and one of the things I’m most worried about in terms of actually executing this story well. He grew up basically enslaved--Elcrin has a really really broken system of generational punishment. Talxin’s grandfather committed a crime, what he did is irrelevant, and so the family line got stuck as “indentured servants” to pay for the crime. Talxin’s dad Temerius was supposed to earn his freedom at age 20, but the owner of the farm where they all worked framed Temerius for another offense to lengthen the sentence and trap his children with him. So Talxin grew up in a horribly broken system, being told that this was justice, while his parents raised him worshiping the colorgod Red as a champion of true justice--all things equal in death. That later became Talxin’s mantra as a paladin. When Talxin was chosen as the red paladin in early childhood, he was attacked by the lord of the farm for having heathen magic, and he panicked and caused a ton of destruction. He got arrested and taken to an actual jail (this all when he was like four years old), escaped a few years later, and he’s been in and out of prison. Being called to the Academy for formal paladin training was a respite, and in his eyes, a chance for a fresh start and the tools to free his family. And then the Academy fell apart and he got sent right back to where he came from.

So what you end up with, after all of this, is a kid with a horribly fucked up traumatic history and a massive amount of power at his disposal. Because redmages are rare and persecuted, Talxin proportionally has a LOT more magic than the other paladins, he’s the strongest one of the lot. He’s got a strong sense of justice and he’s very much willing to kill to make things right--all things are equal in death, after all, and his patron deity is a god of plague and decay as well as justice. And he’s fixated on getting vengeance for the cruel and unjust treatment of his family, who’ve been scattered on the winds during the few years he was at the Academy. 

Talxin’s... really, really brave. Brave enough that when he’s sent back to Elcrin after the Academy falls apart he goes right back to the system and starts breaking it apart, rescuing people from the law and stealing shit from the corrupt government and making a big loud mess. In a demon AU I once nicknamed him “frog Robin Hood.” He’s also smart enough to get away with it. He’s a minor antagonist for a little bit, even... he winds up losing control of his magic and going way too far. All of the colors have minds of their own to some degree, and Red is vengeful and destructive and bent towards revenge. Talxin goes on a killing spree, which is fine when he’s killing people who deserve to burn in hell, but he starts hurting innocents too in the process. He loses sight of why he’s fighting, the ideals and morals and drive for justice that led Red to choose him above anyone else. Plagues don’t just stop spreading once they’ve done away with your targets, famines hit the people he wants to protect so much harder than the people he wants to hurt. The other paladins have to step in and talk him down before he starts something he can’t stop. I feel like he’s stuck between Gryffindor and Slytherin in my head because although he’s so daring and brave, he’s also ambitious and willing to do some very unchivalrous things when pushed to the line. He’s got a difficult goal to reach but nothing’s gonna stop him. 

As you’d expect from a character with this kind of life story, he’s pretty serious. He’s quiet and keeps to himself, he’s always watching and listening... the main word I’d describe him with is intense. But at the same time, he’s got a great sense of humor when he feels safe enough to express it! He’s sweet and goofy, and he cares so so much about his family and friends and acquaintances and any random stranger on the street who looks sad enough. He also plays fantastic elaborate tricks on people who fuck with him, like, in a modern AU he’s the one who sneaks into your nasty ex’s house just to steal all their toilet paper and the batteries from the TV remotes. And then he leaves the doors open so they waste money on heating. He’s the god of April Fools’. When it comes to his primary objective, he takes himself and everything else very seriously, he’s willing to put aside minor moral issues for the greater good. But if you get him to come out of his angst shell and just be a person for a little while, he’s a genuinely good guy. He’s not quite at Batman levels, there’s still hope for him yet. He’s just lonely and angry and desperate for affection. 

Talxin’s very close with Nyrene and Syzyga, out of everyone at the Academy he probably trusts those two the most, but he gets along great with Pariya too once she shows up. He wants to like Soenya but he doesn’t trust her, something about her sets off his internal alarm bells. Anlied scares the living shit out of him. He may or may not have dated Syzyga at some point in the past, they were a couple in past versions of this story but I’m not sure their current iterations are compatible. He’s got an older sister named Elysia, Lyss for short, whom he hasn’t seen since he was very small. He’s been trying to reconnect with her ever since the Academy caved in but she’s nowhere to be found. Nyrene actually finds her first. 

So yeah! Those three! They’re a LOT, Talxin in particular is really fascinating to me. Nymia doesn’t really have a protagonist in the traditional sense, but I think Talxin’s the closest to playing that role, as his personal arc drives so much of the story so far. Whether he’s the hero or not, he exerts a major force of change on the world of Nymia, and everything he does is important. The others influence things, sure, but Talxin’s.... he’s that. He’s a big deal. He’s a symbol. 

Nyrene’s arguably the most fun to write, though, just because she’s so delightfully weird. It’s entirely in character for Nyrene to do something just because it’s funny, or just to see what happens next. She thrives on other people’s confusion. 

#taz talks #nymia #nyrene #soenya #talxin #thanks for asking!!! this was a fun rant to write today #in case you couldn't tell i really love these ocs #they're pretty old too #i think they're nearing their five year anniversary of existing? something like that #i made them near the end of sophomore year of high school #actually they might be turning six soon #WILD #soenya was inactive for at least three years i know that much #just b/c it made me too uncomfy to address the fucked up situations i put her in #she needed that time so i could reinvent her #Anonymous