#particular arc of the story but that one arc is like barely 20% of the overall thing and i dont really have a solid premise here bcoz there

[addicted-to-the-knife]

Because I want it as official canon in my head for your friend file 🗂️

Top 5 Hugh Dancy roles & why

jdwkhfsjhfsj hi, hello, thank you! x') <3

1. Nolan Price (Law & Order)

you know it. my man. I'm so in love with him, it's not even funny anymore. and I love who he could be if the writing of that show wasn't what it is. he could be a breath of fresh air, considering he'd been a defense attorney for ~20 years and switched to being a prosecutor; but somehow they managed to never bring that up or use it to make Nolan a better character after the first two or so episodes. I mean, they never utilise him like a real character anyway, so idk what I expected. but anyway! I love him because he's incredibly caring in every way. he clearly loves what he does and he wants to do what is right. he's not afraid to admit when he's wrong and do better. he's prepared to listen and work something out. and his experience as a defense attorney, who also worked with Project Innocence, allows him to view defendants differently. like he hasn't lost that part where he knows that they're also human beings with their own stories that should be respected. he's more aware of his part in the system as a prosecutor than most of the DA's office is, and I really appreciate that about him because it makes him a better attorney and a much more interesting character. (again... that's who he is and should be; but the writers haven't really delved into that in a while. he's almost unrecognisable at times in the newest season, unfortunately.)

2. Will Graham (NBC Hannibal)

I mean, duh. it's Will Graham. the character that introduced me to Hugh Dancy back in ~2018. no, but seriously. I see myself in him. a lot. too much for comfort. but even that is sometimes strangely comforting because even the ugliest parts of myself are things I appreciate in Will and can live through him without, um, consequences or feeling bad about myself. I love that we met him as somebody who's so determined to help others even at the cost of his own life, and have that turned around into somebody who acts selfishly and manipulatively, but who also hasn't lost that goodness about himself. somebody, who enjoys violence that he's tried to avoid for so long. all because the right (or wrong, depending on who you ask) person saw the truth inside him and managed to shine a light on that in an irreversible way. I just love his entire arc so much. it's something that feels very personal to me.

3. Cal Roberts (The Path)

the man that desperately needs a hug and therapy. so much therapy. I love him so much for once again being a very complex character. we meet him as this cult leader that is misleading everyone around him, manipulating them, and barely holding on by a thread most of the time. until we find out why that is. until we see and realise what lies beneath and why he is the way he is. and I need to wrap him up in a blanket and shield him from the world that has hurt him so much... honestly such a grandiose performance from Hugh, like always, but this one sticks with me in particular because it's so depressing to watch it all unfold and for Cal to only become worse with every episode (in the way that it becomes harder to push away his traumatic past, but he's too afraid to face it completely, so instead his psychological state becomes worse the longer it all goes on, and the consequences of his actions become overwhelming and pile up to make everything much harder for him). I don't know how many times I just wanted to sit down and cry for Cal while I watched the show.

4. Luke Brandon (Confessions of a Shopaholic)

cannot stand the movie (that's not entirely true. I like it as a rom-com, but Rebecca is insufferable and makes it very hard for me to sit through the entire movie); but Luke is very special to me. honestly, perfect man. 10/10, I wish my future husband was like him (or Nolan. either one of them. preferably Nolan, but... let's not aim too high, lmfao). I mean, come on. that charming British accent, the fluffy hair... the fact that he's all about saving money and making that accessible to those that need the advice most. that's the thing that made me love him so much. that he thinks about the "common people" and the ones most reliant on saving money. those who are usually lied to by companies and other advisors. the fact that he technically comes from money and rejected that. UGH, I'm so weak for characters like him.

5. Adam Raki (Adam 2009)

the character that basically holds up a mirror to my face and makes me feel so many things that I don't really like (because ✨trauma✨), but appreciate that I'm not alone with. personally, I think he's a well-written, and especially acted, autistic character. extremely accurate for those that are similar to him. while I share traits with Will, like hyper empathy, I also share maaany traits with Adam. and it's just... nice. to see that. to see him be a grown adult that learns and adapts, but doesn't change who he is, and that he gets to do what he enjoys in the end. I'm also glad that he and Beth didn't stay together, after all. as jarring as that was for me the first time around, I realised that they weren't good for each other; and I'm pleasantly surprised that they weren't forced to stay together by the writers just so it was a typical romantic movie ending. I love the realism of the difficulties and the ups and downs, as painful as it can be to watch for me. you know how much it triggers me. so I often avoid a re-watch. but it sticks with me, and I appreciate Adam for the character he is; especially for the time the movie came out in.

#honorable mention: Caleb Garlin (The Good Fight) #thanks for the ask :3 jdhfdhj i could write essays on each character so thank goodness (/sarcasm) i'm so brain fogged today lol #because otherwise this would be MUCH longer oops hfdgsgskjgfjk #hugh dancy

[valorxdrive]

Soooo there are a lot of KH games. As someone who's only played the 1st and 2nd and the GBA Chain of Memories a long time ago and had a bout of rekindled interest, which ones should I play to get a decent understanding by the time KH IV runs around? Or is like all of them necessary?

Welcome! So I really wanna try breaking this particular question in the most down to earth way I can. Kingdom Hearts is ultimately going to be like an Investment into a novel you’d come to read either online or from bookstores.

The amount of depth you’ll receive is by how much you’re willing to cover. By ‘decent’ I’m picturing just enough to get the primary gist, but that said, Kingdom Hearts is a series where its strongest banner to prosperity is made by getting involved with the said characters in their respective journeys in order to really anchor down upon a series that explores upon one’s connection with others, also the consolidation of identity. This in itself will require a dive into all the games.

To get an understanding for the wider world that solidifies its make up, to understand the character’s struggles and why the surrounding cast is connected and comes to care so much for each other alongside the overarching mysteries of the series. There’s no quick way to reach that, the investment pays in the regard of understanding when you settle into the drivers seat yourself.

That said. They’ve released material for the handheld games 358/2 days, ReCoded, and KHUX’s back cover. They will offer more than enough coverage on their particular stories for you to make due with. outside of KHUX’s.

A lot of the new arcs story stuff is going to play off the history of this content. Being on mobile has made it CONSIDERABLY more difficult to eat up the said content, and with this I really do understand. Since information on the opposition’s latest intentions and hints for the future, things like Xehanort’s backstory, it’s all stuffed into things you’d virtually have to look into online.

So in short if you want to be left with as little questions as possible, I’d recco just covering it all while really taking it at your own pace. Back to my novel allegory when it comes to the series, it truly does span that length across 20 years and counting, and there’s no real compact/bite-sized way to really consume all of that in a satisfactory fashion. Thus, the investment comes with how inspire you are to stick for said ride.

They’ve attempted this in the series, but in those little synopsis, it was bare bones to the point people really didn’t feel in the know in order to give that scale of emotional investment and intrigue the series is famous for. It at best just accomplishes bullet points to what in the game series. You can check that here!

@dreams-of-cerulean

#dreams-of-cerulean #| Bottle Mail #I hope this helps!

[solarisgod]

EXTREMELY SELECTIVE AND PRIVATE MICHAEL " MICAH " XENOWAKE , AKA " ST . CRY " , OF ORIGINAL CANON : LET SLEEPING GODS DIE , AS TRAGICOMICALLY NARRATED BY CHIMERA [ 22 , XE / IT , OSDD1 SE ASIAN ] PERMANENT LOW ACTIVITY / SINGLE STORY DRIVEN / STRICTLY 20+ ONLY * A STUDY OF REBELLING AGAINST THE NARRATIVE ITSELF , THE IRONY OF BEING AN AUTHOR IN A STORY , AND TELLING YOUR FEARS DESPITE IT ALL : " I WILL ALWAYS FORGIVE YOU . " ————————————————

AFFILIATION : ANGELWISE , BLUEACTED , CRYPTLUX , CRYPTNOX , DETSTRANGE , EVERBEYOND , GOREUROBOROS , HELLREBIRTH , MORDCODE , ONCEHAUNTED , ONCEHUNTED , SUNSUME

" THIS IS MINE , " SAID MICAH , TEETH BARED , RAGE BORNE . " THIS IS ME . "

        -— ——-— —— 𓁹 —— —--— ——   LOOK / LISTEN / ALTERS / INSP / WORLDBUILDING / ARCS   CALLS / PROMPTS / CANONS / CONNECTIONS / DRABBLES         -——-— ——-— -—-— ——-— ——

GENERAL : Extremely selective, private, and low activity. We're rarely on here or have the energy to socialize so please don’t expect a lot from us, and we rarely follow first or back because we prefer to be in our little corner handling our heavy hyperfixation on Micah as we are not affiliated with any rpcs. We usually do not follow our mutuals’ other blogs when we prefer to keep our dash small, so if you want to follow us from a different blog, you're more than welcome to do so! We mirror-format with our writing partners and be aware that paranoia inducing language with word repetitions and fourth wall breaking use are sometimes present in our writings. We are extremely selective to have romantic dynamics with Micah. In this blog's current timeline, Micah have lost their partner recently few months ago and even though they may still find themself wanting to be in a love relationship again, we would prefer this form of relationship to be done if the connection between the writing partner and we are very close as it is between our muses, while the romantic dynamic is a heavy slow burn. Here is a post that further explains this aspect. Any other dynamics are okay to establish anytime, however. Micah have endless verses and versions of them, so if there's any particular that you'd like to explore with, feel free to request, otherwise we will write Micah in your muse's main verse, if not strictly our own instead. We have both animated and live action faceclaims for Micah.

DNI CRITERIA : Do not interact with us if you are under the age of twenty or you fall under any points of these criteria ( 1 + 2 ), in addition if you use faceclaims who are problematic and if you fetishize Asian individuals / are associated with the krpc. We are EXTREMELY selective with those who are over thirty because it's unfortunately a pattern that we would get disturbing experiences with older adults, both on here and in real life, so this major interaction selection towards this age group is done for our personal comfort and safety; we'd rather be the one to follow first than to be initially followed. We do not interact with those who writes and / or have some form of interest in the following characters and medias ( *exceptions to close friends / us following first ), but not limited to : Endeavour, Makima, Helmut Zemo, Homelander, Jason Carver, Kilgrave, Soldier Boy, Stormfront, Billy Hargrove, those from *Game of Thrones / House of the Dragon, Attack on Titans, Hetalia, Harry Potter, *DSMP ( anti Dream + Jschlatt ), and those who works for Hydra from Marvel. We also softblock / do not follow back those who happen to be affiliated / heavily associated with people who we are not comfortable with seeing in our space. Please do let us know non-anonymously if we happen to interact with someone who poses an actual threat to the community.

BLOG SYSTEM   :   This blog is loosely plotting oriented. As Micah is an unpredictable character, we prefer to develop storylines and dynamics more naturally as opposed to heavily plotting them out. Establishing the basic elements are fine, though we avoid plotting too heavily and do not fill out interest trackers with plot and dynamic based options when we can not predict how a plot and dynamic will go with them. We highly rarely have the muse to make starters, so sending prompts are the easiest method to start interactions or turn into threads; we will not do unprompted asks as a method of starting interactions if we don't have much going on between our muses. If we become mutuals through you following us first but do not express interest by the end of the first week, such as sending us a prompt or approaching us to plot / chat, we will cut mutuals. Hardblock is always done to show it is our doing instead of Tumblr’s ( unless we state that we went on a softblock spree as of lately, which you are welcome to refollow, though we may hardblock if we really can’t see us interact ), though it is often not personal; we hardblock mainly if wecan no longer sense our chemistry regardless of how long we have been mutuals, even after the first day; it's usually not anything personal. If we notice we have been hardblocked first, then we will do the same in return.

CONTENTS : This blog along with the original series Micah is from contains the following triggering contents, but not limited to : Cannibalism, ( mass ) death, derealization / depersonalization; experiments, existentialism, eye themes ( horror, gore, scopophobia ); fourth wall breaking, general horror ( body, gore, psychological, etcetera ); grief, mentions of abuse ( physical, emotional, sexual, child, etcetera ), religious themes; mental illnesses, murders, nihilism; paranoia inducement, repetitions, sexual themes; mentions of self-harm, suicides, and suicidal ideations; traumas, unreality, violence; and world endings. Please proceed carefully or do not at all if uncomfortable with any of the triggers in question. We tag everything as accordingly while we use #trigger cw and #nsft. We do not need anything tagged and we do explicit threads and prompt replies with those who we and Micah are very close to. To avoid plagiarism, we will not share a lot of details on our universe / project on here and instead only provide them if we are friends and you asked, but, essentially, it sets in the world where generations of beings known as Antigods exist, having meta awareness as a knowledge that they are a character, and most Antigods are known to protect the Mundane and Miraculous from malicious spiritual beings called Metaeide that are created after their fears and traumas.

IC IMPORTANCE : 1 . Saint Cry is an alias that Micah goes by with a special costume and mask when they are doing their job as a Saint. It is part of the institution's policy that Micah and the other BBF Saints have to follow as they can not reveal their secret identities to anyone unless utterly necessary. Therefore, your muse can not know that Micah is Saint Cry and vice versa unless we have discussed it out or I have given you permission that your muse can. / 2 . This is optional, but if wanted, you may request for either Micah ( public identity ) or Saint Cry ( private identity ) when sending a prompt or liking a starter call as it gives us a better idea of how you want us to write for you. / 3 . Micah have the Awareness, which means they are aware that they and everyone else they interact with are a character in a general continuous storyline, essentially treating Micah's Awareness as themself being omniscient, so they will know and learn about certain things about your muse as time proceeds, though we will never take personal advantages out of this fact.

OOC IMPORTANCE   :   1 . Having emotional detachment as a defense mechanism that was developed over time, it is difficult for us to have personal connections with people, hence, we may often have trouble initiating conversations and replying consistently, but we try my best as we do want to interact in some ways.  / 2 . We am not interested in engaging with angst focused plots and threads often due to severe mental health issues. We will approach if anything becomes too much, but please keep this in mind when interacting / plotting with us.   / 3 . As Micah's alters and DID are often referenced in and out of character, we do not have DID, but instead we have OSDD-1b, one of the two partial forms of DID. We are highly passionate of DID / OSDD-1 as we wish there are more characters with either conditions accurately portrayed to raise awareness and have systems, including us, feel seen and validated. Nevertheless, please politely point out to us if we happen to portray DID inaccurately. We are always more than okay to read what others have to share to us regarding them as we are always willing to learn further and do better from our mistakes. Any hate towards DID / OSDD ( i.e., saying they're not real ) will never be tolerated. Fuck off forever if you're like this.

NAME : Michael Xenowake NICKNAMES : Mike, Mikey, more commonly known as Micah ALIAS : Saint Cry

SEX : Intersex GENDER : Transmasculine agender PRONOUNS : They / xe / it ORIENTATION : Biromantic demi-bisexual

AGE : Verse dependent, usually written as an adult ( 30s ), although, mentally, their age can be at a child depending on their current mood and mental state; usually age regresses if worsens or after goes through a painful / intense situation BIRTHDATE : April 1st, 1989 BIRTHPLACE : Los Angeles, United States DATE OF EXITING : April 30, 2022; became an Antigod after having a near death experience

EDUCATION : High school and university graduate with two degrees in drama and literature. OCCUPATION : Originally a metafiction novel author for a living. Now works as a Saint Hunter at Break Beyond of Force. Micah is generally given missions, also known as Miracles, to exorcise Metaeide that are a threat to the public or a targeted individual, as well as they are tasked with resolving incidents an Metaeidos was involved in, such as murders. Occasionally writes short stories and poems whenever possible. ETHNICITY : Korean LANGUAGES : English, Korean, Latin, Greek, American and British Sign Language

CONNECTIONS : Adoniram Maddox ( childhood best friend, dating ), Head Angelparadox ( second head of Break Beyond Force, private mentor ), Hero Sweet ( phantom Antigod friend ), Healer Steel ( android Antigod friend ), Warlock Moonglade ( friends; one-sided from Micah, private mentor ), Hero Sun ( rival and enemy ; one sided from Sun )

SPECIES : Antigod ORDER : Order 4, meaning that Micah is few of the strongest Antigods to exist while they have complete awareness of the fictional reality and The Narrative with its canon events and details in order, as well of the Audience's existence while they can interact with them; although Micah is registered as Order 3 out of protection, having to pretend that while they know they are in the story, they can not determine how it goes or ends nor they have no access to interacting with the Audience. ANTIGOD ABILITIES : Enhanced body and mind and soul, enhanced stamina and durability along with reflexes and willpower, dream walking, heightened senses, pain resilience TECHNAI : Has the ability to create and manipulate fire and water ( base Techne ) THREAT LEVEL : Average to extremely high

PHYSICAL DISORDERS : Synesthesia ( link to full details to be added ) MENTAL DISORDERS : Amnesia, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder, Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder ( link to full details to be added ), Generalized Anxiety, Insomnia DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS : Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder OTHER HEALTH CONDITIONS : Experiences mutism and / or age regression when facing extremely stressful or painful situations. May speak in third person as a coping mechanism to dissociate themself with the stressful / painful situations they’re in, though it is still an occasional case that they do this without even realizing. In addition, Micah have Autism.

KISMET MARKED WITH : Haunting ( causes : had lost their parents from an undetermined death cause during infanthood, had lost their boyfriend to an incident they almost died from; both causes occurred from pre canon ), and Fate ( cause : is currently involved with the All Ending Prophecy shortly after Exiting; current arc / ongoing canon ). KNOWN MANIFESTED METAEIDE : An Order A Metaeidos of their first parents with half of their bodies stitched together while lacking eyes, and an Order A Metaeidos of their late partner, Adoniram, with postmortem injuries from the fatal incident he died in.

BUILD : Mesomorph, have broad shoulders and back, while the arms along with back and thighs bear defined muscles; stands at the height of 5'11". COMPLEXION : Fair and brown, have very light freckles on the face and darker on shoulders, with a smile or grin usually present. HAIR : Short, black colored. EYES : Gentle right brown and left blue with a warm and loving gaze, it is always easy to see what emotions are being experienced just from the look of their eyes alone. VOICE : Suave and sonorous, as well as soothing and easy to detect emotions within, while the volume is usually a tad higher than usual without realizing. POSTURE : Either highly relaxed with the slouches of the shoulders and stance, or intense as constantly moving, twitching, squirming, and / or fidgeting. Is usually looking around anywhere but the individual they speak to, though doesn’t like maintaining eye contact. SCENT : Sweet flowers and art supplies, strong, welcoming, with a hint of sea salt.

ZODIAC SIGNS : Aries Sun, Libra Ascendant, Pisces Moon MBTI : ENFP-T, the Campaigner ENNEAGRAM : Type Seven, the Adventurer MORAL ALIGNMENT : Chaotic good - neutral TEMPERAMENT TYPE : Sanguine POSITIVE : Adventurous, cheerful, curious, daring, energetic, enthusiastic, idealistic, imaginative, passionate, playful, romantic, sentimental, witty NEUTRAL : Absentminded, aggressive, amusing, artful, casual, competitive, dreamy, emotional, outspoken, preoccupied, sarcastic,  sensual, stubborn NEGATIVE : Childish, careless, disruptive, distractible, destructive, gullible, impatient, impulsive, indecisive, irresponsible, lazy, troublesome, wayward LIKES : All forms of arts and music and literatures, acting, arcade areas and amusement parks, bubbles, cloud and star gazing, collecting, colorful visuals, exploring, flowers, folklore and mythology, jokes and puns, learning about everything and everyone and everywhere, late nights, lights, love, magic performances, music boxes, nature, outer space, physical touches, rain and thunderstorms, singing, sea, sky, snow, soft materials, spending times with friends and families, sugary and spicy foods, swimming, traveling, writing. DISLIKES : Abusers, feeling angry or facing angry individuals, being alone for a certain period of time, being stared at, being watched at while struggling, boredom, confrontations, complete darkness, enclosed spaces, forgetfulness, having identity related issues, hypocrites, lack of control, lies, making choices on the spot, nightmares, prolonged silence, reminders of dark past, rules and expectations, serious and judgmental individuals, sleeping, stories with bittersweet or tragic endings, sudden changes, sudden loud noises.

After Micah had lost their partner to the fire by an unknown cause and became an Antigod, they have been trying to adjust the double life of being a civilian and a Saint, using their new position and powers for greater good as they attempt to hold onto the smallest sense of humanity that they could gather despite being an Antigod. 

ALTERNATIVE VERSES :

BEYOND EVIL : Adult aged. TO BE WRITTEN. ( Affiliated with dngsk. )

BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA : Aged 14 - 17. Micah is a Day Class 1-A and Night Class 1-O student at U.A. High School through official recommendations, having to be transferred from America to Japan so they can train to become a Pro Hero with, under a secret identity for this case, permission to exorcize malicious spiritual beings known as the Metaeide. Class O focuses on the trainings involving the Metaeide and the arts of exorcising them. Originally, Micah was thought to be quirkless, though their Quirk strangely became activated at the age of fourteen after having a near death experience, along with developing a Awareness that makes them become aware that they are a character as they know what would happen in the story of Boku No Hero Academia, having the ability to manipulate Fate. Despite Micah being slow and uneasy with their Quirk and Metacore, because they had displayed many potentials, they were still recommended to U.A. High School. Micah have a Quirk called Syzygy that gives them the ability to create and control fire and water. Since somewhere in season six, their quirk evolved into their own style now called Shooting Stars that can form and manipulate lightning and ice.

CHAINSAW MAN : Aged 20s. TO BE WRITTEN.

DEAD BY DAYLIGHT : Adult aged. Set in a year in a half of year working for Break Beyond Force, after Micah had caused the sun to disappear for the world to be claimed by the cold unending darkness, it was a cruel timing for the Dark Fog to appear and take them to be played with in a game made by the hands of the Entity. While considered to be a survivor, Micah would always try to negotiate with the Killers, hoping that one day, they can see the light and be able to work with the Survivors and have them all finally leave this realm of horror.

DEMON SLAYER : Aged 20s. TO BE WRITTEN.

GENSHIN IMPACT : Adult aged. While Teyvat have always known that there is the Seven of Archeons, there is more than what meets the eye when there is the eighth Archeon who resides over the ether region over Teyvat, known as Aestrae, the Wanderer of Stars, whose divine ideal is Love and presides over the element of Astro. Micah is an extraordinary being created beyond Teyvat and their celestial parents decided to be raised in Aestrae to hide their truest identity with the powers part of it. However, it wasn't long until Micah fell over the border of Aestrae and landed on Teyvat, and everything became a blur before knowing, Micah happened to be affiliated with a group of Antigods like them who wish to protect Teyvat from the Metaeide and the Godtellers. Since then, they travel across Teyvat, determined to bring the endless light to the world.

HONKAI : STAR RAIL : Adult aged. Micah is a stellar being who was created among the stars. When their celestial parents heard about the Nameless and the Astral Express, they had Micah raised by the Nameless, giving Micah the life where they could do more than just wander across the galaxy while held down by the chance of being taken in the evil hands of the darkness who would want to use them for their powers. When the Cancer of All Worlds claimed the star rail, Micah soared across the galaxy as a shooting star before they were held down by the Astriferous, the descendants of Astrimore who is the unknown Aeon of Love that presides over the Hope path, found within the Ethereal Evermore that is an ancient, space-faring civilization of Astriferous following the Aeon Astrimore and a faction. As Micah got older, they met an entity who had asked them to join the Break Beyond Force and seeing their potentials with the group, Micah enrolled to protect the galaxy from the Metaeide and Godtellers that not only reside in the worlds but across the galaxy as well. After seeing that the Astral Express has been restored one day, wishing to be part of the Nameless once more, they were able to find their place back to the group, using the Astral Express for both the commute and to get to once more appreciate and love the worlds with the galaxies and the universe itself.

JUJUTSU KAISEN : Adult aged. TO BE WRITTEN.

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION : Aged 14 - 18. TO BE WRITTEN.

THE WALKING DEAD : Adult aged. After a few months of working for Break Beyond Force, the world breaks apart with a zombie apocalypse. Even when the dead in rotten flesh with ever hunger has been thriving, Micah can still see the world is still full of Metaeide, thriving just as much from the world's fear and traumas specifically made by the zombies, as now most Metaeide have taken after the appearance of the walking dead; Micah will have to survive while trying to differentiate the real zombies from the zombified Metaeide, looking for the cure to end this madness all at once.

TRIGUN : Adult aged. Micah doesn't remember much of their childhood, only knowing the fact that they were raised in Hopeland Orphanage, and there were many times when they were taken into a family, just to return to the orphanage. It's until the Evermore family from a city decided to adopt them. They were raised well and had succeeded in being a grand creator of arts and writings, though, after the fire incident that had caused them to evolve into an Antigod and resulted losing their partner, they eventually fell into working for Break Beyond Force that fights against the Metaeide across the planet. Determined to keep the world alive from being drowned in their fears, Micah travels across the planet to do their Miracles. Though, as they continue to work, they will find certain things that will tell them that they may not have first existed in No Man's Land.

#𓁹 ༑ ࿐ྂ ⩇⩇ : ⩇⩇ ⚠︎ [ 𝙴𝚇𝙸(𝚂)𝚃 : 𝙶𝙾𝙳 ] * ‹ PINNED POSTS . ›

[newberyandchai]

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (2017)

I have quite a backlog of books to catch up on, so let's get the ones I didn't particularly care for out of the way. (I know; it's surprising me, too.)

The Girl Who Drank the Moon redeemed itself in the end, but as someone who doesn't consume much fantasy, this book suffered from some dialog problems I couldn't get past. Like the perfect hair day with one strand out of place, or the most beautiful painting with one barely noticeable smudge in the corner... as disappointed as I am to admit, what I brought to this reading experience hindered my own enjoyment of the story until the last third or quarter of the book.

A brief plot summary: A town at the edge of a forest "sacrifices" a baby every year to a witch. However, the witch in question has no idea why the townspeople leave a baby in the woods every year at the same time, so she takes the children and delivers them to other towns past the forest so they can be raised in loving families.

In the process of traveling with one particular baby, the witch accidentally feeds her pure moonlight, which gives her uncontrollable magical powers. The witch raises the girl herself and locks away her magic so she can't accidentally hurt anyone, but the girl's magic slowly reveals itself in confusing ways as she approaches her 13th birthday (hello, puberty metaphor!).

Eventually some of the townsfolk discover the reason behind the child sacrifices and learn they're being manipulated by the upper class. Without spoiling anything, a character called the Sorrow Eater is shown over time to be the true villain by maintaining and feeding off the townsfolk's constant despair. In the end, the girl is reunited with her real family, comes into her magical powers, and says goodbye to people (and creatures) she loves to begin a new life.

It's important to note that I read a book by this author a few years ago that I also felt lukewarm about. The best way to describe the author's writing style is fairytale-esque:

“Once upon a time, something terrifying lived in the woods. Or perhaps the woods were terrifying. Or perhaps the whole world is poisoned with wickedness and lies, and it's best to learn that now."

But the main literary sin is — in my unprofessional, unwarranted opinion — the unnatural dialog, namely (pardon the pun) the repetition of character names and terms of endearment.

"Yes, child."

"Hush, boy!"

"I didn’t mean to, darling."

"You will surely forget, Xan."

"Where are we running, uncle?"

"You don't despise anyone, Fyrian."

I've found that fantasy novels tend to do this frequently out of necessity just to remind the audience of everyone's complicated names. In this case, it just feels like shoving in exposition where it isn't needed. Hear me out: repeating a character's name can be an endearing quality that makes them memorable, like Sam Gamgee's "Mr. Frodo," but when done poorly, it's distracting and breaks the reader's immersion.

(Bad movies do a better job of showing how unnatural exposition in dialog can be, I think.)

With that complaint out of the way, I enjoyed how all of the characters' story arcs were brought together in the end and tied in with one another. Everyone's fate was connected, and I felt a strong sense of love at the end that made the path to getting there feel mostly worth it.

I think this is a book I would have loved maybe 20 years ago in 3rd or 4th grade (has it really been that long?), but for now, let's go with a 6/10 and a tentative Recommendable rating.

#the girl who drank the moon #newberymedal #newberyaward #newbery #currently reading #booklr #books #reading #books and reading

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Do you have any thoughts about the clones situation? I only mostly hear about it from anti-Jedi people and how "being nice slavers doesn't change the fact that they are slavers", so I was wondering if you have anything to say or any post to recommend?

There's a perfect post by @trickytricky1 but I want to say a few more things. This thread right here is also pretty good.

The issue with the Clones is that it's pretty much impossible to examine their in-universe treatment without taking the irl writing decisions into account: namely, that most of what we know to be very, very wrong with the Clones' situation is barely acknowledged by the creative team, to the point we can pretty much assume they just don't care beyond what's convenient for a plotline. I mean, beside a few select characters Filoni is particularly fond of, the majority of the Clones are narrative props: they're here to be killed off to heighten the tension, to be comic relief, or to highlight a particular trait of the Jedi they're serving under - and of course, they're here to execute Order 66. I love them to bits and it often annoys me, but it's true. Just look at how little anybody irl seems to care about Cody, arguably the second most important clone in the franchise and the most important clone within the army: he barely got any screentime in TCW and was instantly sidelined out of the one arc where he had a chance to be the lead, he didn't appear in Rebels, and he wasn't even mentioned in TBB s1 despite his role in the squad's creation. Or consider how the Clones being overgrown children who should look only 20-ish and behave very differently from normal adults is never properly brought up - not even in Rebels where Rex is treated like a old geezer instead of the 30 year old he is, or in TBB, or with Cut whose adopted children are maybe five years younger than he is. We have to face it: the story never was and never will be about the Clones, and so the writers don't seem to think much about their condition a lot of the time.

Hence why I feel like when characters don't behave like they ought to regarding the Clones, it's often not so much that the narrative is telling us there's an issue, and more like the writers couldn't be bothered to explore that particular theme. I'm not just saying that in relation to the Jedi: Suu Lawquane marrying a 12 year old (who is supposed to look 24 but really look 50 because of the animation) is not framed as insanely wrong on all levels, for example. Also, we don't ever see Bail and Padmé speaking up for Clone rights. Realistically, given what we know of their personalities, would they have? Probably, yes! Their silence very likely has nothing to do with a moral failure that the audience is supposed to recognize, and everything to do with nobody irl thinking that would be a good storyline.

As for the Jedi's relationship with the Clones, what I always got from it is this: the Jedi were drafted along with the Clones, couldn't do a lot about the whole situation, befriended them just so Order 66 could be extra heartbreaking, and we weren't meant to dig too deep and find loopholes or what-could-have-beens or alternate ways it could have gone down, because Order 66 was pretty much written in stone. The Jedi were always going to die, as far back as ANH, before there were even Clones in the Clone Wars - and they were going to be friends with the Clones before the Clones were even fully people (think about all the nice interactions between Obi-Wan and Oddball or Obi-Wan and Cody in RotS, back when the Clones obeying Order 66 was that they really had very little will of their own). The more and more messed-up implications of the slave army came along the more the Clones got humanized for the sake of angst, but the beats of the store were already there.

I already went a bit into this tension between what we see onscreen and the issues the writers didn't feel like exploring here (on a post about Obi-Wan's behavior on the Citadel).

Now, forgetting all the irl stuff, are the Jedi actually slavers? I'd argue that they aren't. The Senate voted to have an army - it's a big plot point in AotC. The Sith paid the Kaminoans and fabricated the war. Jango sold his DNA. The Senate drafted the Jedi. ("A lot of people say, “What good is a lightsaber against a tank?” The Jedi weren’t meant to fight wars. That’s the big issue in the prequels. They got drafted into service, which is exactly what Palpatine wanted." - George Lucas)

That particular dead horse has already been beaten, but what were the Jedi supposed to do beside fight side by side with the Clones? Not fight? So Sidious could declare them traitors to the Republic ahead of schedule? Fight and petition for Clone rights (which, again, is an issue never touched upon in canon one way or another after Slick - whom I'll get to later - so we simply can't say that they never tried)? Like Sidious was ever going to let legislation hindering his plans pass? They were caught between a rock and a hard place, which was always the point of the war. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

What's more, the majority of the Clones don't think the Jedi are slavers (see first posts linked and posts linked below), with the notable exception of Slick. The majority of the Clones we see love the Jedi, and we know it's not a case of blind hero-worship, because they are very quickly suspicious of Krell and don't hesitate to take him down.

I feel like Slick was a bit of a red herring, because he came along very, very early (s1ep16) - way before we had any indication of that the chips would be a thing. He feels a lot like a reminder that 'hey, this story is going to end badly' because the Clones will turn on the Jedi and kill them all rather than an actual exploration of the messed up slave army deal - because Slick is unequivocally characterized as a villain. He killed a lot of his own brothers, didn't deny that Ventress had offered him money, tried to frame a member of his own squad for his actions, and was perfectly ready to kill Rex and Cody for all his talk of loving his brothers. The post I linked goes into a bit more, but he's not a desperate innocent.

Finally, there's the problem that the majority of the Clones we see want to fight for the Republic. The cadets from Boba's Death Trap episode (s2ep20) are excited to meet Jedi and get to fight. 99 wants nothing more than to be a good soldier. The Domino Squad want to pass, and their episodes present them going off to the front like a victory - even when we already know they're marching to their death. Choosing to fight is Rex's whole arc in the Deserter episode (s2ep10):

CUT: Come on, Rex, admit it. You've thought about what your life could look like if you were to also leave the army, choose the life you want. REX: What if I am choosing the life I want? What if I'm staying in the army because it's meaningful to me? CUT: And how is it meaningful? REX: Because I'm part of the most pivotal moment in the history of the Republic. If we fail, then our children and their children could be forced to live under an evil I can't well imagine. CUT: If you were to have children, of course. But that would be against the rules, wouldn't it? Isn't that what somebody programmed you to believe, Captain? REX: No, Cut, it's simply what I believe. It doesn't matter if it's my children or other people's children. Does that meet with your approval?

Yes, it's incredibly karked from our perspective - you have millions of boys who were spoon fed propaganda about a Republic that doesn't care about them and that they barely know, and in the end their sacrifices amounted to very little... But - and I'm genuinely asking here - wouldn't denying them the right to find their identity in their role as protectors be demeaning too? Obviously they deserve so, so much better, but TCW still treats their choice to fight proudly as meaningful. And in the end, it wasn't entirely for nothing either: the Jedi and the Clones did save billions of people according to Hera.

What we were supposed to take away from the Jedi-Clones interactions in the Prequels imo isn't 'the Jedi were nice slavers' but really that they were the Clones' best and only friends.

Mace spends a lot of his screentime protecting them. We see most of the Council protecting or saving Clones at least once each. Really, the Jedi are constantly shown saving the Clones or caring about them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Again, @trickytricky1 has some of the best content: this compilation vid is particularly great. I'm pretty sure Sidious gave the Jedi the Clone army (and not the droid army) because he counted on the Jedi's compassion towards the Clones and their eventual trust in them to work in his advantage (see this thread) - and heartbreakingly enough, he was right.

Imo, TCW and later Rebels - and even, to a lesser extent, RotS - always portrayed the Jedi and the Clones as close friends and the karked up circumstances don't change that. They don't have a 'nice slavers & their slaves' dynamic, they are friends.

There's a reason why the first TCW episode was about Yoda telling three Clones how unique and important they all are (see here or here). There's a reason why we see the Clones being so protective of their Generals (see Boil and Obi-Wan here). There's a reason why Obi-Wan so passionately condemned Grievous for having an army with no loyalty and no spirit (here). There's a reason we got this:

They were best friends. The entirety of Star Wars failing to address enough just how terribly the Republic treated the Clones doesn't take away from that.

That makes the whole Jedi-Clone story a whole other level of tragic, where the Jedi genuinely tried to know and care for their men because there really wasn't anything else to do, and the Clones were grateful for that, and in the end both the Order and the Clones were used and destroyed. No matter how badly some themes and plotlines might have been handled, I genuinely can't ever believe that we were meant to see the Jedi as slavers in this situation, as opposed to victims - albeit in a different way than the Clones - who were doing their best.

#ask #anonymous #long post #meta #my meta #jedi and clones #commander cody #captain rex #jedi order #jedi positivity #in defense of the jedi #fives #obi-wan kenobi #jedi council #mace windu #yoda #slick

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “The Final Word”

Well, we made it to the finale, everyone, and if you're reading this it seems you've survived the watching of it too. Barely. To say that some questionable choices were made across these 20 minutes is... an understatement.

But before we delve into the episode, I want you to cast your mind back to November 7th, 2020. A horrible year that heralded a horrible RWBY volume. There, coming off the shaky writing of Volume 7, I posed a number of questions and concerns that the show needed to tackle, with the promise that we would return to these expectations in four months time. Now, here we are! Let's refresh everyone's memory, yeah?

Taken directly from that recap, what RWBY promised us, through various teasers and Q&As, included:

Emphasis on Ruby’s leadership and how Summer’s death has impacted her

Insight into Ren and Nora’s flaws

May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part

More information about The Long Memory (Ozpin’s cane)

Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them

Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)

Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful

And you know what? They did all this. In the spirit of being fair and honest to this show, RWBY succeeded in delivering on everything they promised... it was just our foolishness that expected that these ideas would be delivered well. Ruby's leadership took center stage in the form of her hiding for multiple episodes and then others telling her she's still The Best before the plot dropped a solution into her lap... one she could have used at any point prior to this. Summer's death certainly has an impact, though it's an impact born of a crazy reveal that Summer likely isn't dead, but turned into a horrifying grimm monster. Ren and Nora both delve into their flaws, but heaven forbid either grow from that reflection. Ren learns that if he pushes past his primary flaw of keeping his emotions buried and actually expresses his doubts for once, he'll be yelled at and ignored until he admits how wrong he was. The "real" flaw is being a bad friend, with "bad friend" equaling "Not agreeing with Ruby 100%." Meanwhile, Nora considers that maybe she shouldn't rush in recklessly and hit things with her hammer... which is why she rushes in recklessly, hits something with her hammer, gets grievously injured, and is told that this is just who she truly is. No growth there, not unless we count her sudden desire to figure out who she is without Ren... but that exploration hasn't started yet. Too bad she wasn't the teammate separated at the end of the volume!

Meanwhile, May did indeed have a larger role to play, one I quite liked, it's just that this role — like all the others — inevitably circled back to realizing how wonderful Ruby is. May challenges Ruby to make a decision, but instead of being the catalyst for Ruby's growth, May becomes another forgotten side character who does a sudden about-turn regarding her perspective, leaving the group with the contradictory message that Ruby is actually doing her best, she's just a kid, no need to try any harder... everyone who claimed otherwise up until now was mistaken. May is another Cordovin. She's another Qrow. She's another Maria.

Fun fact: we don't even know if Maria is alive right now. That's how little she means to the show!

Actually, wait... anyone remember this nonsense from Volume 7? 

I was too lazy to change the date.

Moving on, Ozpin's cane turned out to be a stakes obliterating bomb that came out of nowhere, makes no sense logistically — how do battles store energy that only hurts grimm? — yet nevertheless seems to have killed Hazel? It's a disaster of unanswered questions. Similar to the disaster of our two day timeline when, I'm fairly sure, we've had an unnatural number of sunrises and sunsets. I'll have to take a look back at the volume as a whole now that it's complete to be sure of that though. As for our themes... did we really explore the idea of respecting someone even if you disagree with them? Because Ironwood wasn't shown any respect. Ren wasn't shown respect. I think the closest we got was Oscar calmly validating Yang's worry about getting buddy-buddy with Emerald, but the whole point there was that Yang was wrong. She wasn't wrong, but that's what the text would have you believe. She is indeed "very suspicious and distrustful," but that's hardly unjustified in these circumstances. I'm still boggling at the fact that it took the group three volumes for forgive Ozpin, even while he was actively working to assist them, yet I-helped-destroy-Beacon-and-tried-to-kill-everyone-you-love Emerald is the group's new BFF after she... ran away with Oscar? She didn't save him, she just went along for the ride. At the very least we might have gotten a scene where Penny was like, "Hey, why are you all laughing with the woman who just tried to kill my dad?"

But oh yeah, the story doesn't remember Pietro exists either. His daughter is DEAD and he hasn't been on screen since Episode Five, let alone there when she passes.

I had my own list going in, including such expectations as "Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this" and "Queer baiting, queer baiting… you’re on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake." Obviously these needs were not met.

So what, given this mess of expectations, did we end up with?

Our finale — for some reason — breaks the one word title trend with "The Final Word." It's an expression that refers to the final word in an argument or a discussion, the idea of winning by making a last, devastating point. It can also refer to making the final decision on something, which is the best way I'm able to apply the title to this episode (outside of any “final” comparisons). Penny's death is certainly all about choice and making some kind of decision... but on the whole, this title doesn't feel like it fits well. Not like "Worthy" or "Creation" or "Risk." The two latter titles had obvious connections to the episode in question through dialogue and plot, while the former was a deliberate callback to Watts' speech. "The Final Word" feels... less obvious in what it’s trying to say.

That's a minor nitpick though. Let's get into the meat of the episode.

We open on the grimm whale still disappearing, which is weird. I get that it's massively bigger than any other grimm we've seen, but they all turned to dust near instantaneously and it's been, what? At least an hour since Oscar blew it up? Likely longer when we factor in their walk back to the manor, the fight with Ironwood, fixing Penny, and this entire evacuation. It certainly makes for a nice visual, but like so many details in RWBY, it raises unnecessary questions along the way.

The important bit though is that amidst the whale carcass a blob of evil is swirling about. Salem, obviously. 

She’s not reforming in time to actually do anything though, don't worry.

Instead, we cut to the Ironwood vs. Winter fight and there's at least some dialogue this time. Ironwood yells that he's sacrificed everything to keep Remnant safe. Winter yells back that he actually sacrificed everyone else. Obviously, Ironwood should be called out for things like, you know, his unprompted murders, but instead they have Winter listing stuff that she was never shown to have a problem with before. The embargo? "Squeezed Mantle until it broke?" She, as Ironwood's second hand, understood and supported both the decision to close the border and the need to collect resources for a plan designed to take out Salem. I hate that no only did she turn without an ounce of hesitation or grief, but now they're having her act as if Ironwood forced these decisions on everyone, rather than everyone supporting him through them. We all remember Volume 7 when Ruby pressured him to finish Amity, right? And in trust RWBY fashion, most of these words are meaningless. Mantle "broke"? What does that mean? The class disparity did not come about through Ironwood: that's been in the works for generations. The lack of resources made things harder, yes, but when they were reclaimed by Robyn nothing improved. Watts is the one who turned off the heat and Salem attacked Atlas, leaving Mantle alone. Now, all the citizens have escaped through magical portals. So how is Mantle "broken" exactly? More importantly, why is Winter upset over this vague, nonsensical dilemma when she could be yelling about Ironwood wanting to bomb Mantle?

Again: this woman watched Ironwood shoot the councilman, shrugged, and continued to believe in him up until she realized his bomb threat was real. That was one of the main reasons why I thought the councilman might be alive, with Ironwood only shooting a warning shot past him. Because this is how you react to a good person unexpectedly killing someone else

whereas this is what we got from Winter and Harriet.

Hell, Weiss has more of a reaction to Yang telling Ruby things aren't super great right now.

So either Ironwood didn't do something that bad, thereby justifying these tame reactions (unlikely, given where his character ended up), or we should believe based on the animation that everyone was super chill with him killing an unarmed civilian. Which is then directly contradicted when they're like, "You're going to shoot Marrow? Bomb a city?? How could you do such horrible things??? 😲" Friends, buddies, fictional pals... you already watched him murder a dude.

The point is, there's a lot for Winter to be upset about, but she's not upset about that. There's a lot that Winter herself believed in, but the writing has forgotten that. This entire arc went off the rails a volume ago.

Also, why is Ironwood fighting with that giant gun? This is his final battle, presumably ever, and he's wielding this awkward, sluggish weapon we saw him randomly pick up two episodes ago? Let him use his regular guns! Give us a fantastic battle like he had with Watts! Instead, RWBY's final showdown consists of him using this no-name weapon as a unwieldy club in some of the most boring choreography we've seen to date. It doesn't help that this fight needs to share time with three others. Instead of an epic showdown, we're given glimpses of the battle before continually cutting away from it. 

During that first cut we return to the Team RWBY battle where Penny, doing her best to stay out of Cinder's reach, is whisked away on Weiss' wasp.

Too bad she didn't do that for Yang...

Jaune and Nora watch this horror unfold until Jaune says, "Priority one!" and they split. Except... what is priority one exactly? Helping the civilians? I guess, because they don't enter the fight until the very end of it, when everyone else seems to have made it to Vacuo. And you know what, I like that. For once it feels like the group — or at least the B Team — is acting like huntsmen, putting the needs of the people over their own, personal desires. I'm sure Nora wants to help the group after Yang's (presumed) demise and that Jaune would like nothing more than to get his hands on Cinder, but they put those grievances aside to do the work they signed up for. Good job!

My only real gripe is that we don't really see this struggling in the animation, I'm just assuming it's there. In particular, there's a moment when Jaune sends Nora through the portal for reinforcements — not knowing they can't return — and they seem a little too jovial when, by this point, three friends have died.

There's letting your cast be supportive, and then there's having them ignore that three teammates have perished in an abyss. It really doesn't help to sell the idea that Yang, Ruby, and Blake are in any danger here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Penny tells Weiss that since Cinder is really just after the Maiden powers, she can buy the rest of the group time to escape. Weiss, obviously, isn't fond of this idea... and then the both of them are blasted off the wasp by Cinder's fire. Which they deserve, frankly. They're just having this casual conversation about sacrifice while in the middle of a battle. Did they somehow forget that Cinder can fly too?

Note that multiple attacks from Cinder, another blast, and a hard landing on the pathway gives their auras a knock, but doesn't break them. The primary defense for Yang's aura shattering in a single, simple hit was that everyone is exhausted and running on little to no power... yet here the rest of the cast is, tanking multiple hits as we've come to expect. There is no explanation for Yang's defeat except that the writers chose to ignore the rules of their world for a dramatic death scene... even though that drama was erased a week later as half our team falls into the void too.

We'll get to that though. For now, Cinder corrects Penny's belief with "I want it all" and proceeds to try to finish them off, only for Blake to arrive, having made her choice from last episode about who to help. It's a legitimately nice attack, but I happened to pause at the bEST MOMENT

Anyway.

We leave that fight to return to Qrow and Harriet who have, off screen, started an entirely different battle. What I mean is, last we saw Qrow had broken through the windshield of the airship, roughly pinned Harriet, and was taunting her about getting the fight she wanted. Now, suddenly, he's going “You’re making a mistake, Harriet, what happened to Clover—” as if he's been trying to talk her down this whole time. It's jarring, especially when we consider that Qrow had a volume long "kill Ironwood" arc that was dropped because... Robyn reminded him that murder is bad? RWBY feels like a storytelling pinball machine. Characters bounce from one personality to the next, one perspective and another, round and round until you don't know where they'll end up.

Harriet screams for Qrow to just shut up already and honestly? Same. I love Qrow, he's one of my favorites, but I can't deny that he's been done dirty like so many others since Volume 6. I love who Qrow was, not the mess RWBY has created the last few years.

Time to delve back into fic after recapping!

Sadly though, this strange dialogue wasn't the only "wtf" moment. Harriet is still trying to drop the bomb — which is its own mess of confusing motivations — when Vine and Elm show up on Harriet's ship. Elm begs Harriet not to do this "because you’re our friend!”

Am I glad that they finally acknowledged that the Ace Ops have always been friends? Sure, but why did we spend two volumes claiming otherwise? They were friends, a fantastic team, then Harriet announces that's a lie and we get a bunch of "Team RWBY is superior because they're actually friends" messages. Except this entire time we're still watching the Ace Ops be kind and playful with one another. But they're not friends, the story says. Not friends as they fight these battles. Not friends as they grieve for Clover. Definitely not friends as they react in horror at Ironwood nearly shooting Marrow. No, there's nothing there... until Elm claims there is! Then Harriet reacts in shock. I have friends?

Except Elm was labeled the one "just following orders" by Yang. Elm is the one who shook off Vine after the whale exploded. This isn't the story of one character, Harriet, thinking she was alone and then realizing that people do care for her, this is a story that, seemingly at random, had this group being BFFs or acting like they hated each other — and at each point the visuals are contradicted by the story's message. When they act like friends, we're told they're not friends. When they don't act like friends, we're told they really have been this whole time. I mean, do any of them even care that Marrow teamed up with Qrow and Robyn to take them out five minutes ago? All three were going along with Ironwood's scheme until they were physically stopped, but now Elm is convinced this is a bad decision she needs to talk Harriet down from with the power of friendship?

None of these characters are characters, they're just slapped together reactions based on whatever the plot needs. Who is Elm? I've got no clue. Her personality changes every episode.

Also, love that Qrow moves to stop the bomb from dropping and Harriet screams at him to "Get out of the way!" rather than just... attacking him? She even throws her hands out like she's having a temper tantrum. This feels like schoolyard bickering, not a life or death struggle.

Even though, you know, the audience is aware that the people of Mantle have already been evacuated and Qrow's group is aware that Atlas is falling on top of Mantle as they speak, so... why does the bomb matter? It's going to, what? Destroy the city thirty seconds before Atlas does? Oh no, the horror.

Things then, if you can believe it, get even worse. The bomb is still about to drop, so instead of doing anything to stop it — I mean seriously, we know it takes four people to shoulder the bomb's weight, but you're telling me Qrow and a reformed Harriet can't snag it in a pinch? — Qrow sits there, looks at Clover's pin... and the bomb careens towards the side of the airship instead, stopping.

Because I guess Qrow has good luck now? Or always did and somehow never noticed it? Or his semblance evolved?? Again, we don't know, but it's a bad moment any way you slice it, imo. Qrow has always been defined as the guy with a bad luck semblance and, much like Penny's android struggles, the allure was in watching him overcome those challenges, not having the show erase the challenge entirely. Especially when we don't even understand how it was erased. Qrow just... stops drinking, stops caring for Ironwood, stops wanting to kill Ironwood, stops causing bad luck, I guess. RWBY takes major character traits and flips them off like a light switch, leaving the audience with no emotional tether. We didn't watch Qrow overcome his drinking, or realize he can't bear to kill Ironwood, or discover a way to live life with the horrible hand he was dealt, he just blinks one day and those things are gone. Why? No one is sure. Not even the writers, I'd wager, because otherwise they would have written explanations into the text.

Many in the fandom insist that any basic information provided by the story amounts to "hand holding" when in fact there is a massive difference between the sort of unnecessary exposition that bogs down a tale, and having facts enough for the audience in its entirety to be on the same page about what is actually happening. For example, recently someone argued strongly that the "Penny is human" take is incorrect because Penny isn't human, she has an inhuman body made entirely of aura... yet where in the world does this exist in the story? Ambrosius may have been unsure about what Penny would be prior to removing her robotic parts, but that ambiguity is gone once her body forms, the equivalent of worrying about that gun only for a flag with 'BANG' to appear instead of a bullet. Worrying about something doesn't mean that something actually occurred. Penny appears human, expresses human sentiments, and then, this episode, dies as a human. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and succumbs to the mortal peril that all ducks face... it's probably a duck. As I said in a recent ask, I implore the fandom to stop writing RWBY's scripts for them. Or rather, do so in some amazing fanfics. Don't do it on critical posts as a means of insisting that your revision is canon.

So Qrow has good luck now, maybe, but this character change doesn't amount to anything because Watts remotely starts the bomb's countdown.

At least he’s entertaining and competent. We had that for a time. 

Back to the main battle, Neo is kicking Ruby's ass. Why? Because there's no consistency in power levels in this show. The ancient woman who hasn't fought in decades dances circles around Neo, highlighting how weak she supposedly is, yet now Neo dances circles around our main character. None of us should expect fights to follow the logic of the world, only what drama the plot wants to stir up. Ruby is eventually knocked down from a hard hit — yet her aura's intact! — and is saved at the last second by Weiss tossing Neo into one of the portals. 

Far more of a problem than the power leveling is that Ruby gives no indication here that Neo just murdered her sister. Again, that's what the characters are meant to believe, yet Ruby is as stoic as she would be fighting a bunch of White Fang grunts. If you showed this scene to a RWBY fan on its own and asked, "What do you think happened prior to this?" the answer would be, "Uh... nothing? Ruby is just fighting Neo like she did on the airship in Volume 3." Nothing about this scene — from dialogue to animation — sells the idea that Ruby just lost the person most important to her in the world.

When we do finally mention Yang, it's Weiss who goes, “Come on, we have to do this for Yang” and the delivery is... meh. Honestly, I normally don't pay much attention to the voice acting, but I had a problem with most of Weiss' lines this episode. The "Leave her alone!" during this fight and later a "Get back!" as she attacks Cinder both fell really flat for me. Given the devastation and charged emotion that's supposed to be here, we can't give her anything better than generic cries that, again, she’d throw at any grunt? In that later scene the animation absolutely helps sell Weiss' distress, but the dialogue is common and the delivery has no emotional punch, leaving it feeling like Yang is just hanging out in Vacuo and they promised they'd beat the baddies before catching up with her. No one but Blake is acting like Yang died.

In fact, we see more emotion from Ruby when Weiss shoves her back, taking the brunt of Cinder's blast.

Weiss' aura breaks, not that that's a danger or anything. Everyone falls before they're injured, Winter gets the Maiden powers, Ren barely has to fight. Losing aura in this show used to be a moment of peril, where just last volume Winter was bruised, bleeding, and now needs an assistive device because she had to continue a battle with no aura. Now it's a joke. Aura breaks left and right across the volume with no repercussions attached to that.

We see a bit of the Blake and Penny vs. Cinder fight where Cinder blasts Blake off the edge. Penny rushes after her because at least one character remembered that they can fly.

Ruby, meanwhile, remembers that she can fly when it benefits her. After getting hit down onto a lower level and watching Crescent Rose plummet, she taunts Neo into an attack with a move that's actually quite good. I like the confidence with which Ruby riles her up and I like the strategy of darting behind Neo to knock her off the path instead. “Whatever you wanted, I hope it was worth it."

The only thing I don't like is that this speed and ingenuity had to disappear to justify Yang falling.

Cinder breaks Ruby's aura from behind though, sending her over too and grabbing onto Neo's leg. In an obvious moment born of the trope, it looks as if Cinder is reaching to help Neo, only for her to snag the Relic instead. “You should have never threatened me," she tells Neo and to Ruby: "you should have never been born.” 

Love that they erased all that cool growth from last episode! And by "love" I mean "hate." As I said last recap, I'm not going to pretend that Cinder's character isn't riddled with problems, but realizing she was stronger by teaming up with Neo and Watts was one of the best things they've ever done for her. It made Cinder dangerous again and showed Watts' speech having a clear impact. It also made her more entertaining, creating a new dynamic among the three villains. Now though, Cinder is just... Cinder. The same boring, stupid Cinder we've had since Volume 4. She betrays Neo and then later betrays Watts.

So Cinder kicks Neo and Ruby both over the edge because why would we want to make her interesting? Neo falls, but Ruby has friends there to catch her! Unlike Yang. Jk. Weiss’ aura is gone and Blake actually tried both times, so major kudos for her. Using momentum supplied by Penny, she snags Ruby and hooks her weapon into one of the pathways... only for Cinder to cut the ribbon. Both plummet and once again Penny has a more believable reaction to all this, just like she did last week

Speaking of reactions, does anyone else find it weird that Cinder finally succeeded in killing Ruby and... doesn’t seem to care? 

No? Just me? 

At least we get that good animation with Weiss I was talking about before, even if the dialogue is lacking. I love that she snagged Blake's weapon and uses it to try and take out Cinder, shaking the whole time. Those are some great details. 

Back to the bomb, Qrow is trying to escape, but Harriet says there isn't enough time to get out of the blast range. "I've killed us all." Vine has the solution though, using his semblance to wrap up the airship, thus containing the blast when it goes off. His final words are to reassure Elm that he can give his life, "if it means saving all of my friends." Just in case you missed the part about the Ace Ops being super close this whole time. Even though they also weren’t. Trying to eat your cake too, RWBY? 

Frankly, I didn't feel much of anything during this scene, not when Vine made the sacrifice, nor when Elm and Harriet look on sadly while Robyn pilots them away (that's her contribution this episode). 

All I can say is, good on RWBY for not killing one of the three dark skinned characters, or just murdering the Ace Ops as a whole. What the story is going to do with them though, who knows.

Jaune and Nora have that ‘You can do it!’ moment after three of their friends have presumably been killed. I swear, about 80% of Jaune's scenes do not work tonally and oh boy, things only get worse from here.

First though, I like his entrance. He slams into the fight against Cinder and lines up with Penny and Weiss, who is still dual-wielding her and Blake's weapons. That's an epic shot.  

It looks as if they stand a decent chance against Cinder — Weiss' lost aura notwithstanding — except then Cinder's arm starts going crazy and she gleefully announces that Salem has returned.

Working on a time limit now, Cinder unleashes a volley of attacks that Penny steps in to protect the other two from. It's here that Cinder grabs hold with her grimm arm.

It's here that Penny dies. Again.

For the third time.

Friends, I am tired. This moment honestly deserves the most epic of rants, but that, in turn, requires energy. Energy? In this economy? Ha! That's hilarious. Taking this seriously though, the problem here can — as usual — be boiled down to a single question: What was the point?

Penny died in a horrible attack that shook the cast and audience both to their core.

That emotional impact was erased through her resurrection.

The resurrection did not create a new emotional impact for our heroes to grapple with.

Penny is given the Maiden powers, solidifying the fact that she's always been a "real girl."

That lesson was erased when the story decided to make her human for unexplained reasons (because no, she never needed to be human to survive the virus).

Penny then dies, passing the power to Winter... who was set to get the power in the first place.

We have, once again, come full circle. You can take Penny out of the story and nothing changes. Does Ruby lose any lessons or emotional growth? No. Does anyone survive who would have otherwise died? No. Does her getting the powers lead to someone unexpected snagging them upon her death? No. Penny's existence was filler. She was put in the story to take up time and, that done, was removed from the story once again. It's a choice that wouldn't be half as horrible if that filler hadn't done so much damage along the way.

First is the obvious: that Penny didn't deserve this. As a character, she didn't deserve to be brought back just to be killed off again, seemingly without narrative purpose, serving only to draw in viewers who RT knew loved the character. Second, keeping her in the story led to her entire arc unraveling. Initially, Penny died as an android in the world's eyes, but those who actually knew her — Ruby and Pietro — mourned the girl she really was. Now we have this horrible message that being a machine isn't real enough, so she has to die as a human being. It's a disservice to her character and, as an allegory for many minorities, downright insulting to the audience. Third, this offensive 'better to die as a human than live as a robot' message is wrapped up in the claim that Penny finally gets to choose something — “Let me choose this one thing. Trust me” — but she already did that when she chose to take the Maiden powers. We already had the better written version of this last volume!

And the fourth issue...well.  

Fourth and fifth are the real kickers. Fourth is that Penny's death was an assisted suicide. She explicitly asks Jaune to kill her so she can ensure she's thinking of the right person when she passes (never mind that her thoughts would probably be on Jaune while this is happening) and that's... pretty horrible. Look, I'm no purist. I like a great deal of dark, gritty stories whose plot exists to make us uncomfortable. That's a valuable emotion that fiction can generate. The problem is not that RWBY is tackling a sensitive topic, but that they aren’t tackling it well. Yes, they put in a content warning and (from what I've heard) a suicide helpline as well, but providing the already necessary resources is not the same thing as writing that kind of scene with respect and care. All of the above tells us that, no matter what RT may have intended, that respect and care weren't communicated to the audience. Like Yang, they didn't even bother to keep Penny's death within the rules of their world. Jaune is right there ready to heal her and Penny says no, there's supposedly not time.

Um... since when?

Jaune's aura boost is instantaneous. The second he amplifies aura is the same second the healing starts and their talk could have been spent saving Penny. There was certainly time to save Weiss in Volume 5. To have a character go, 'Nah, it's too late' when the solution is right there is the ultimate cop-out. Suddenly announcing that the solution will no longer work For Reasons is not a legitimate limitation and it's made doubly insulting that RT didn't simply use the limitations already available to them. Jaune has been running low on aura since the whale. He then expended a great deal of aura boosting Penny to keep the virus in check. Every other ally has had their aura broken in this fight so, there. That's your solution. Have Jaune take a few hard hits from Cinder, his aura breaks, and then when Penny is mortally wounded he no longer has a semblance to heal her. It's that easy! Yet instead they had Penny reject help so that she could ask to die. That's what's offensive here.

Finally, reason number five... why is this moment given to Jaune? That's another easy solution: Jaune has gone through the portal and can't get back to heal Penny. There. Done. But logistics aside, this scene should have gone to any other character. Who is Jaune to Penny? Or Penny to Jaune? No one! They don't have a relationship. I get that the writers didn't want any of the girls at her side because then it would be hard to justify Penny not passing the power to them (which I get: making one team member a Maiden changes the show drastically), but you know who should be there instead of Jaune?

Pietro.

Pietro, who built Penny as a weapon and who was never given the chance to apologize for that. Pietro, who told Ruby he could only rebuild her once more, setting up an expectation that he'd sacrifice himself for his daughter (despite the complicated racial issues that would bring up). Pietro, who watched Penny plummet and has no idea what happened to her, let alone that she's been made into a human girl. Pietro should have been at her side, saying goodbye to his child and helping her complete her last wish.

And it would be so very easy to pull off. All it takes is a single line where Penny remembers that her father exists, asking Ruby to ensure a portal opens up in Amity. There's a quick reunion along the pathways before Cinder attacks. We hear a cry of despair as Penny falls and she looks, seeing her father racing towards her, though she thought he'd already made it out. There, you’re done. We open ourselves up to a lot of attacks whenever we say, "Why didn't RWBY just do ____?" because those who vehemently defend the writing like to go, "Oh, you think you could write RWBY better?" and no, I don't. I struggle with long-form storytelling and massive casts. I don't think I could do justice to the sort of show RWBY wants to be, but I do think I'm a decent enough writer to spot when there are major problems like this. The question of "Why doesn't Penny remember that her beloved dad exists?" and "Why, out of that massive cast, is Jaune the one to do this deed?" are both things that a newbie writer can spot, and a sometimes okay writer can figure out how to fix them both simultaneously. A good writer will start thinking about themes — what might it mean for Pietro to kill the creation he made? — and a great writer will find a way to pull that off without having that insulting, discomforting feeling pop up. At this point, our RWBY crew feels less like new writers making mistakes (because they're not new, not at all), but rather just writers who haven't bothered to learn from their mistakes after eight years. That's a lot harder to watch.

Because putting Jaune here doesn't just mess with RWBY's internal rules (not using his semblance) and it's not just useless in terms of Penny's development (she doesn't know him outside of "dude who boosted my aura for an hour"), but it also falls back into a pattern I thought RWBY had finally broken from: making Jaune the story's emotional center. This is not the JAUNE show. It's the RWBY show. Yet here, once again, we have Jaune in the spotlight. Why, after a whole volume of Ruby avoiding making decisions, does Jaune finally make the hard call? Why, after a scene where Penny asked Ruby to kill her, does Jaune do that deed? Why, after a divisive arc where all the grief for Pyrrha went to Jaune, is Jaune now set to shoulder the grief of Penny? At least Jaune had a relationship with Pyrrha, even if Nora and Ren did too. Yet with Penny he seems to be there solely because the writers can't bear to keep him out of that center spot for long. All of Team JNOR make it through to Vacuo... except Jaune. Jaune falls into the abyss too because, if the show goes this route, we apparently can’t have a volume just about Team RWBY, the main characters. The main characters are separated from the rest of the team and it's Jaune, not Oscar and Ozpin with a connection to the lore, not Nora or Ren whose development now hinges on them learning who they are without the other, it's Jaune who follows the title characters into a new dimension. 

The issue is not whether Jaune deserves to grieve over the truly traumatic thing he just did now that he’s done it. He obviously does. The issue is the writers setting up a scenario where Jaune is situated to do that emotional work in the first place. 

I like Jaune as a character. I don't like how the writing uses him as a character. RWBY is built on the idea that these four girls are the heroes of this tale, not the expected blond, blue-eyed, sword wielding guy we’ve seen in so many other stories. So why does that guy get the most important scene of the finale? Yes, Jaune had much less screen time this volume than he did in the past, that’s a good thing given the number of important characters RWBY has to balance, but that hasn't erased the problem of him being given significant moments that should be going to title characters. Does Ruby’s team rescue Oscar and take on Salem? No, Jaune's team does. Does Ruby's team save Penny? No, Jaune's semblance keeps her grounded and then holds the virus off. Not everything is a problem — we've also got good choices like having Ruby defeat the Hound and Ruby's team take on Cinder for the majority of the fight — but that doesn't erase that Penny’s death wasn’t something Jaune should have been a part of. Not unless he was going to heal her. Doing better than they have in the past doesn't mean that RT isn't still slipping when it comes to giving him undeserved focus.

They took one of the most controversial characters, controversial because of how much emotional focus he's gotten in the past, and had him help a fan favorite commit suicide while he cried about it, showing more emotion for a near stranger than our title character showed for her sister. This is a character who, up until two or three episodes ago, had no connection to the victim and still has no reason to thematically be the one committing this act. That is why the fandom goes, “The crew loves Jaune and does everything they can to put him in the center of the action.” Ruby, as main character and Penny’s first friend, is the obvious choice here. Pietro, as Penny's father, would be a good choice too. Hell, Nora is a better option given their moment in the Schnee manor this volume. Or Winter given their moments in Volume 7! Have her escape Ironwood, find Penny, receive the powers, and then finish him off. Literally anyone would be better than Jaune, not because Jaune is a bad character, but because Jaune has no emotional stakes here and putting him in a position where he could heal Penny but doesn’t is massively stupid. No one should be surprised that a lot of the fandom is upset about this. It was one hell of a reach to give him this moment and, since Jaune's problem has always been getting too much screen time and emotional nuance compared to our main cast, it's no wonder this act brought up a lot of bad memories. RT fell back into an old pattern after two volumes of improvement and they did so at the worst possible time. 

The tl;dr is that Penny's third death is a writing travesty, just like her second. I shouldn't be surprised, given that this is the same volume that tortured a kid and the only thing they did with it was have him blindly trust his torturer... yet I find myself surprised nonetheless. Because Penny had such potential as an android Maiden and, as much as I personally hated it, potential as a former android learning to be human too. But why explore any of that when you can kill her off instead? Again.

As a final, far smaller note about this scene, we have the continuing problem of what purpose Cinder's arm is serving. If everyone recalls, its threat comes primarily from the fact that she can "siphon off" power from other Maidens.

She did it to Penny during the Amity battle and now she does it again, a great deal of green energy absorbed into Cinder. So what's left to give to Winter? Why doesn't Cinder become noticeably stronger with each successful theft? Like so much else in RWBY, we're told it exists without actually seeing the impact of that. Winter isn't a weaker Maiden for having lost power and Cinder isn't a stronger Maiden for having snagged it. It's just.. there, hanging out and looking vaguely menacing, I guess.

Outside of this unnatural not-transfer, we get to see how the power normally passes as Penny meets with Winter in some in-between place. It's a soft, heartfelt scene... with the exception that Winter says, “You were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just the machine. Just following orders."

I don't know how any viewer can doubt that RT now believes machinery = evil. Penny's machine body is magicked away so she can be a real-real girl. Yang announces that the arm she worked hard to make a part of herself is just "extra." The man with half a metal body is made this volume's villain and losing his second arm is, by the authors' own admission, a symbol of his lost humanity. Mercury with two metal legs remains a bad guy while Emerald and Hazel are hastily redeemed. Tyrian with his cybernetic tail is the most devoted crazy of the bunch. Maria, blind and in need of assistive lenses, is so forgotten by the story she was left in the tundra nine episode ago and won't be mentioned again until next volume (if then). Pietro, the guy in the wheelchair, is forgotten too, despite it being his daughter who dies on screen.

Now Winter, also bearing an assistive device, says that she's the real "machine" here and tells Penny, now human, that she was always the "real Maiden." I don't know what happened to make RT do a 180 lately, but the disability rep is no longer what it was.

Penny reassures Winter that she'll always be a part of her and then passes on, for good this time.

The rest of the episode feels lackluster, if I'm being honest. Images of Cinder beating Weiss are intercut with Ironwood beating Winter, getting her to a point where her aura breaks. 

But then the powers appear and, as we'd expect, she easily turns the tide. 

Gorgeous animation there. 

But RT once again rewrites earlier scenes by having Ironwood claim that the "destiny" he chose for Winter has finally arrived — isn't that Cinder's MO? — and Winter shoots back that he chose nothing, this was a "gift." Except, it was never about destiny or orders? This was why Weiss' anger in Volume 7 was ridiculous. She acted like Ironwood forced Winter to accept the powers and Winter told her point blank she chose this. Ironwood didn't decide anything, he offered and Winter chose... kind of like how Penny is choosing now. I hate how nearly all of Ironwood's character has been ignored or, during times like this, outright lied about to make him seem super duper evil. He tried to bomb a city! You don't need to make him seem evil anymore, that job is done! Like their sudden change regarding disability, RT now seems to be allergic to nuance. Heaven forbid Ironwood be allowed to have valid points like he did in Volume 3. No, if you've got an antagonist every single thing they've ever said must be twisted into a display of their evilness.

Unless you're Hazel, who Oscar trusts for #reasons. Unless you're Emerald, who the group immediately embraces. Unless you're Cinder, who gets to cry on a rooftop and secures the trust of her allies long enough to betray them again.

But Ironwood? Nah, screw that guy.

Salt aside, the fight is pretty boring. Winter literally just throws up a wall of ice and Ironwood's blast rebounds, taking him out.

Winter flies through the portal and we return to Jaune. His sword is broken by Cinder, so weapons should be quite the problem in Volume 9. 

There's a bit of sword vs. sword Maiden battling — this episode really pulled heavily from both Volume 3 and 5's finales — before Cinder gets smart again and attacks Weiss, currently trying to escape with Jaune. Weiss goes right off the edge and Winter isn't able to reach her in time. That's the entirety of Team RWBY, lost to the magical void.

Kudos to Winter's VA and the writing here though. This feels like an appropriate reaction to losing a sister. Screaming, sobbing, falling to her knees and beating the floor... Ruby, take notes.

A roar sounds through all the portals though, the sort of roar a pissed off witch might give. Jaune convinces Winter they need to leave Cinder behind, but before they can escape Cinder... makes a new wish?

Look, it works on all the major fronts. Cinder has the staff, check. We've basically established that Ambrosius can make an unlimited number of things per era, check. We know the previous thing disappears when a new wish is made, check. My only question is the timing. In all honesty, I'll have to re-watch the scene to be sure, but at the time it felt like the portals began disappearing almost the second Cinder left. Did she really have time to summon Ambrosius, deal with his explanatory nonsense, and get him to make a new wish without any fiddly concerns? Sure, fire is just fire, but it still felt like way too much happening too fast off screen.

Either way, the portals are gone and Winter makes it through in time, but Jaune does not. He falls through the void along with Team RWBY. And Neo.

Neo is the only addition I'm looking forward to here.

We get a few shots of our other characters as Winter arrives, saving the day by taking her grief out on the grimm. So glad something came of Ren breaking his aura again! Maybe they'll be more fighting at the beginning of Volume 9? If we see any of this group outside of 9's finale. My worst fear right now is that we'll spend an entire season away from the main action — remember how I said it would be stupid for Team RWBY to go on a side adventure while Salem is attacking the world? — and when they return there will have been some major time skip. Salem has destroyed most of Remnant, only pockets of survivors remain, it's all dark and dystopian... and oh look, every bit of character development happened off screen. How did Nora discover who she is without Ren? She did it while Team RWBY was gone. That merge we've been teasing for five years? That happened while you were gone too and, btw, Ozpin has ceased to exist. So sad, right? Not that anyone will actually mourn. Just take comfort in the fact that his last line was an "Oh no" about Ambrosius and his last major scene was apologizing for how the group treated him. Emerald's redemption? Off screen. Winter's grief? Off screen. Any and every one of these challenging beats to tackle can be waved away with, "We went through that arc while you were lost in the magical realm. Just get to know our new, improved selves now!"

Please, oh writing gods, don't let that happen.

Though I do worry because my last prediction came true.

But we all knew we’d end up here. My current theory? The portal should still be open at the vault. Winter will fight Ironwood, escape through it, and it will close right before he escapes too. He’ll fall with Atlas and everyone will act as if it’s some beautiful, poetic justice for him to perish with the city. 

Ironwood didn't make a break for the portal — too busy being unconscious — but we got everything else. Winter left him, he falls with Atlas, and this is some poetic justice, I guess. Really, it's just an undignified death. I'd hoped for a sympathetic kill, something that showed the characters still cared about him even if they knew Ironwood had to be stopped. Baring that, I'd hoped for an epic battle that took him out with style. Instead, no one even bothers to kill him. Ironwood is now beneath the entire cast, not even worth finishing off. Winter casually tosses his blast back at him and leaves. Cinder throws out a "that's checkmate" and leaves. I don't think Salem even looks at him. Ironwood (presumably) dies with no one and nothing, just a casualty of the city Team RWBY made fall. And I say "presumably" because the audience isn't even given the satisfaction of being sure he's passed on. Like Hazel, Ironwood's death is this weird, ambiguous moment that, based on the other character reactions, isn’t meant to be ambiguous. Is he dead? Most likely. Is it possible, based on what we've seen, that he'll pop up two volumes later like

Yes and, memes aside, that sucks. I don't want to be wondering for the next couple years if Ironwood survived and if they'll bring him back just to drag his character through the mud again. Move on.

But no, we don't even get that.

I've spoken at great deal about Ironwood both in these recaps and on my blog more generally. Last week, I said I'd covered it all and there was no need to rehash it all again. I stand by that, so let me just conclude this travesty with a final note: if your bad guy's final moment is using the last of his strength to point a gun at the actual villain of this story, and you don't realize the problem of how this image contrasts everything else the story has insisted about his character? … I just don't know what to do with that.

Oh, actually, final-final note: Ironwood’s semblance is officially a Schrodinger's semblance. It is both canonical and noncanonical simultaneously. Wooo. 

Cinder tells Salem she used her wish to "add more flames to the first of Atlas" and we cut to Watts, trapped in a roaring fire, unsuccessfully trying to break his way out. Wow, I hate that too! Next to Tyrian, Watts was our last remaining, entertaining villain. He carried a lot of the last two volumes and, I had hoped, was going to add some bright spots to the coming volumes as well. Apparently not.

Just another waste.

In addition to this casual, second murder of her ally, Cinder successfully convinces Salem that Neo killed Ruby and Ruby used the Lamp's last question, but she's back in her good graces since she snagged the Relics anyway. “You’ve done well, Cinder. Our work here is done" and they leave, blasting off like a less cool Team Rocket as Atlas plummets into Mantle.

Let's spend a second to tally things up then, shall we? What happens if Ruby, instead of throwing a moral fit, says, "You're right and we never should have lied to you, or betrayed you. But we want to help now. You get the Relics and the Maiden to safety in Atlas, if you can, we'll defend the people of Mantle"?

Well, they can still tell the world about Salem and call for help, much more easily now since Ironwood would likely just give them the code rather than them needing to spend an episode stealing it.

The Staff at least may not have ended up in Salem's hands and the group could have actually focused on getting the Lamp back (also solved if they'd been smart and just put it in the vault to begin with).

Mantle would still have been safe because Salem was never interested in Mantle to begin with.

Atlas wouldn't have fallen.

Ironwood wouldn't have died.

Penny wouldn't have died.

Even Vine wouldn't have died!

Our heroes unambiguously made the situation worse. Rather than banding together with their allies to fight the real enemy, Salem, they pushed until they made enemies of Ironwood and the Ace Ops both. Then they asked for help — which a pinch of logic said would never arrive — and twiddled their thumbs waiting for it. When it was clear none would come they...did nothing. They sat around, upset that the people were in danger, but not willing to do anything about it. It's only when one of their own, Penny, is threatened that they kick into high gear, hitting on a solution that they could have posed to Ironwood from the very start if no one liked the fly away plan. Yet instead of taking a few minutes to brainstorm other ideas — doing anything other than denouncing Ironwood to the rest of the group and attacking the Ace Ops — they spent two days sitting around, fixing minor messes they’d helped to create, then rushed through the portal plan, messing up the wish and stranding an entire kingdom in a sandstorm, with only Winter now to protect them from grimm.

Fantastically done, team. 

The villains won, yes, but not because the villains were smart and compelling. Watts' hack on Penny and the heat petered out to nothing and Salem... well, she sat around for the whole volume, expending energy only to torture Oscar and try to (unsuccessfully) stop some escapees. Neo and, miraculously, Cinder did the most damage, but only in the final hour, with this "damage" being that our characters fall into a void that we now know looks remarkably like a paradise! Everything bad that happened was a result of our heroes being stupid and stubborn. That's a compelling story to tell... but RT isn't trying to tell it. Our heroes caused so much damage, yet that damage goes unacknowledged — or worse, ignored into silence like with Ren — and everything else is waved away with the magic wand the series claims isn't there. The cold doesn't kill anyone. Oscar has no problems walking off the torture. Nora hops back out of bed. Ruby one-shots the Hound. The civilians lost to the void must have survived too. The entire kingdom successfully makes it to Vacuo... unless you count the massive army we never saw making use of the portals, but who cares about them, right?

The villains won, there was indeed something resembling consequences, but none of it was emotionally satisfying. Not even when the series tries so hard to insist that emotion is there.

Qrow watches Atlas fall, mouthing Ruby and Yang's names, but it's too little, too late. Where was this care for his nieces when he was obsessed with killing Ironwood? When did they care about him? Was it when Ruby shrugged at his arrest, when neither cared that he was missing, or when they were designing an escape plan that didn't include putting a portal where Qrow could reach? RWBY markets itself around the found family-ness of its cast, but they're done a poor job in recent volumes (not others) of convincing me that most of these characters care for one another. We went from Ruby denouncing all adults, to Ruby pulling an Ozpin with Ironwood, to Ruby watching blandly as her sister falls to her presumed death. This is my hero? This is the simple soul we're supposed to rally behind? Ruby doesn't feel like a character who cares about other people anymore and, given that she leads the charge, neither do most of her friends. Or, when that emotion appears, it's jarring and undeserved. Jaune cries over Penny's death? That's tonally and characteristically backwards.

This volume was the culmination of so many mistakes over the past two years. No, Covid couldn't have made things any easier for the crew — the fact that they got a volume out at all is amazing — but the pandemic isn't to blame for the problems in the story. These seeds have existed since Volume 5, with some (like Jaune) going back even farther. I don't think we're ever going to get that flawed, but emotionally fulfilling RWBY back. The show has dug too deep and unless it somehow manages to create a clean slate — those time travel ideas get more and more alluring! — there's nothing they can do but keep on digging. At this point, I can only hope that the series does wrap up within the next two volumes, rather than dragging RWBY to a Supernatural-esque length.

Our final shot of the episode proper feels fitting for what this volume has been. Atlas and Mantle flood rather than exploding, something that makes a certain amount of sense, sure, but definitely wasn't what I was expecting. And after all these shocking images — Penny dying, the grimm attacking, our main characters disappearing in a puff of gold dust — we end it all with bits of random debris. It's strange and underwhelming. Out of everything you could have done with the options you had, you choose to do this?

Of course, RWBY always has an after-credits scene (RIP Raven's, still amounting to nothing). Here, the sounds of water return to show us a beach. Crescent Rose imbedded in the sand, mirroring its classic pose in the snow.  

There's a tree. It's a very different kind of tree from what we saw in Volume 6, but the height and shape is nevertheless reminiscent of Light's domain.

A tree of life, anyone? After all, the group has fallen into a dimension created by a Relic, the gift of Light himself. It certainly seems as if RWBY is heading towards another encounter with the Gods, though what that will look like and how narratively satisfying it will be remains to be seen.

As for our bingo board, RWBY certainly pulled its weight! Only three squares got gold stars: Watts and Jacques didn't manage another team up because both are dead, Oscar didn't apologize for getting shot because he was too busy being tortured, and Qrow didn't drink likely because he didn't have access to any alcohol across the whole volume. Can't say that's a stellar result. The final image is something to behold though lol.

What a mess.

And on that less than exciting note... we’re done. This has been the volume of desertion, with a large number of fans telling me that they will no longer watch RWBY, but baring something entirely unexpected in my future, I'll be back next volume, for whatever that's worth. It never ceases to amaze me that even one person would give these nonsense recaps the time of day, so in all seriousness: thank you for reading. You rock.

Now go forth and fill the hiatus with great RWBY content!

✌️

#suicide tw #rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby the final word

[2am-theswifthour]

The 8 Theory-Folklore’s Commentary on Youth

Yesterday, I took note of @taylorswift​ and her careful attention to the number 8.

“Not a lot going on at the moment” had 8 words. The 8th track is “august,” which is also the 8th month in the year. She has 8 deluxe editions of her album. Many attributed this to Folklore being Taylor’s 8th album. I thought it meant either a.) we needed to pay very close attention to track #8 or b.) that 8 references infinity, a.k.a “forever and ever.”

To my surprise, I was actually selling Taylor Swift short.

When listening to the album, there’s a lot of back and forth in emotion and circumstance. I was confused about the order, especially when the strikingly sobering “hoax” followed the self-aware almost-tranquility of “peace.” Then it hit me. There are two schools of thought going on.

There are 16 tracks on Folklore (excluding the bonus track none of us have heard). 16/2=8. This means there are 2 equal emotional song threads on the album. In other words, you can get two drastically different lessons listening to each group of 8.

When you separate the even numbered tracks from the odd numbered tracks you get the following:

Odd

the 1

the last great american dynasty

my tears ricochet

seven

this is me trying

invisible string

epiphany

peace

Even

cardigan

exile

mirrorball

august

illicit affairs

mad woman

betty

hoax

Odd Interpretation:

Starting with “the 1” and “the last great american dynasty,” the lyrics are very upfront in showing that the protagonists are making fully intentioned mistakes. “the 1” says, “in my defense, I have none for never leaving well enough alone” (I see you “ME!” reference). In “the last great American dynasty” it says, “she had a marvelous time ruining everything.” These characters’ folly is their youth-induced selfishness. They’re casual in the harm they cause because they distance themselves from it. They’re fine with what they don’t look at closely. When you’re young, you make a mess of things in service of YOUR need. Your need for companionship. Your need for the thrill of danger. Your need to make your mark, to be somebody, to leave something behind. The marvel of the excitement and the chase and the very vitality of teens to 20-somethings’ shenanigans blinds us to the scale of our destruction…

…until you have no choice but to face the consequences of your recklessness.

The next track, “my tears ricochet” is not your average track 5. It functions as a pivoting point. Now our narrator is the hurt party, the one baring the brunt of callous treatment. Fickle mistreatment is no longer so casual. Now it’s a torment, and the tormentor learns the scale of their damage. So much so, that they get burned too. They learned their lesson at a terrible price, but what’s most important is that they learned.

“seven” is a long-overlooked memory revisited. In this picture of naïve innocence, the narrator tells of their childish belief in the impossible. Through magic and play pretend and fantasy they are invincible. They have all the control in the world to control the world they live in. Obviously, this is a flawed perspective that everyone eventually grows out of. Fairy tales don’t solve real problems. The point is that their sense of self-importance is in service of a stronger moral compass than the first two songs. If we accept our responsibility to others, to do what we can to ensure their welfare, are we not better and more satisfied people for it?

“this is me trying” hears that lesson and attempts to walk the walk. Part of being responsible to your fellow human is taking accountability when you fumble. The narrator doesn’t know what to say or how to make it right. What they do know is that they’re here, they’ve put the bottle down, and that they’re willing to try what’s necessary to heal what they’ve hurt.

“invisible string” gives us the reward we’ve been waiting for. The narrator says, “cold was the steel of my axe to grind for the boys who broke my heart, now I send their babies presents.” This is someone who has gone from lashing out in anger at a partner from a burned relationship to genuinely wishing them well in their next stage in life. It’s a powerful testament when you can recognize that youth drives us all to make hurtful decisions and that no one is immune to change if they truly want to change. When you let the anger and lies go, the strings that tied you to them fade away. All that’s left is the string you want to hold onto. The string tied to the one who matters, because you’ve made the conscious decision to deduce that their worth as a person should equal yours. It’s a painful path to traverse through, but when you do it’s all worthwhile. That’s why the narrator can say with confidence “hell was the journey but it brought me to heaven.”

In any other album, a song like “invisible string” would be the quintessential emotional payoff for this story arc. However, because this album is a masterpiece, we have a different payoff point in “epiphany.” “epiphany” takes us out of the world of a romantic relationship. We hear descriptions of war and nurses dealing with the despair of this international pandemic. This point in this emotional thread is that it powerfully declares it’s not enough to do no harm nor is it enough to just empathize with your romantic partner. You MUST show your responsibility to your fellow man. Stand beside them. Empathize with them. See them as whole human beings. Do good by them. In other words, it is our duty to do right by everyone, for everyone bleeds, loves, and dies.

The 8-song selection ends with “peace.” The song begins by saying that their, “coming-of-age” has come and gone.” I believe this (along with “invisible string”) to be the most overtly “Taylor Swift” track in perspective. This is her speaking as herself. She lets us know that she’s grown through taking her mistakes, and the mistakes she learned through folklore, into account. She is overly aware of her flaws and feels she pales in comparison to her partner. Rather than allow those insecurities to manifest in unchecked rage or resentment, she takes it as a challenge for herself to do better. She knows she can never give him complete peace (due to inside and outside factors), but she can make the choice to give him unselfish promises and embrace the entirety of her partner’s life. This is a person who has learned the value of selflessness in love and life, which makes this whole thread worth everything.

Even Interpretation:

“cardigan” foreshadows the eventual failure of the even path. The odd interpretation I just described culminated in the narrator finding their place with “the one” because they’ve left everything petty and casually cruel behind. In “cardigan” it says “chase two girls, lose the one.” On top of this directly referencing the first track, it also implies the partner’s self-destruction. By toying with two girls, James is losing “the one.” I don’t think losing “the one” means that you keep one of the two of them. I think it means that engaging in that kind of behavior makes you into a person that isn’t ready, or worthy, of “the one” that they are meant to be with forever. Meeting and keeping “the one” has to require each partner to love themselves and their partner wholly, truly, and selflessly. They can’t be a cardigan you pick up and only wear on the weekends. They must be a wholehearted commitment.

“exile” shows the blowout from “cardigan.” The two couldn’t stay together, and Bon Iver’s (character’s) toxicity comes out full force. He thinks her new man is lesser than him. He’s prepared to throw punches despite being at fault over a hundred times. He’s seen the film before, and he didn’t like the ending because it didn’t work out for him. He wants her under his thumb, not having learned from his prior relationships that that just can’t work. They leave out the side doors, neither fully ready to confront the problems head on.

“mirrorball” is daring in its shift of focus. While all of the tracks I’ve mentioned thus far have dealt, in some way, with the problems that result from a young person’s selfishness, this song doesn’t do that. This song illustrates an extreme that young people participate in at the opposite end of the spectrum; radical selflessness. To be selfless means that you should never allow something that harms someone else to happen just because it benefits you. Young people, girls in particular, are often groomed to interpret selflessness differently. Their definition is synonymous with accommodation. Change your looks, change your personality, don’t object, and embody what your partner wants so that they’re happy. That’s why the symbol is the mirrorball in the song. It reflects everything in the room but itself. By explicitly not factoring in their own sense of self-respect in a relationship, they are unknowingly and tragically enabling their partner’s mistreatment. To be clear, that doesn’t mean abuse is their fault if they have low self-esteem. It’s not, even remotely. But not having the capacity to defend your self-worth is what keeps so many drawn into toxic relationships there for so long. This radical selflessness manifests itself in the other woman too. In “august” it explicitly says that she was living on the, “hope of it all” and that she would cancel plans in the name of a potential hookup with someone who was never hers. The idea of radical selflessness culminates in “illicit affairs” when one of the women deals with their addictive compulsion toward someone who treats them like a cheap lay. Their relationship is a secret that leaves her feeling used in parking lots and as though any trace of her is gone. These three songs have taken the desperate hopelessness of “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind” to the extreme.

Many have speculated that “mad woman” is a commentary on the Taylor/Scooter conflict and I’m inclined to agree. However, if I were to assign an interpretation that goes with my theory, I would say that “mad woman” details the unforeseen consequences of a tormentor’s abuse. When a toxic partner performs bad behavior, their expectation is that they will always be found in the right. After all, Taylor noted on her previous album that for men, “everyone believes [them].” So in the face of lies about her character that everyone believes, she gets rightfully angry. Her anger is their affirmation. For many, a woman being angry on her own behalf is “crazy” and “irrational.” What kind of a society have we set up? A society that promotes women to lack self-worth and, should they find it, they’ll meet a whole other exile.

“betty” is our complete look into James’ perspective. On its own, it sounds like a big romantic gesture to get behind. However, this path is very clear to put “cardigan” first. “cardigan” says, “I knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired and you’d be standin’ in my front porch light.” Lo and behold, in “betty” he shows up to her party when she doesn’t want to see him and asks if she would, “kiss [him] on the porch in front of all [her] stupid friends.” It’s an absolute punch in the gut. Betty knows in “cardigan” that he would come back after he had his fun with another girl, but that she would take him back when he saw momentary value in her again. James in “betty” claims he didn’t know anything, but that’s just an excuse. He knew what he was doing, he knew that he would be able to pick up her broken pieces with ease, he knew he could isolate her from her friends, and he knew that he could capture the imperfect “comfort” of that cardigan again.

This path ends in the final even-numbered song, “hoax.” In the odd numbers, “peace” shows a lesson learned. This even path shows what happens when we don’t learn. The seeds of youth-driven mistakes have led us here. The narrator wants nothing outside the pain of this faithless love. Without learning what it means to be selfless, the traumas of these young relationships create a never-ending cycle. The narrator knows that the “love” is a “hoax” but doesn’t care because that’s all they have. There’s no point to wanting anything else. Without the perspective of age, of truly going beyond that, they’re stuck in a truly dark place.

Final Thoughts:

Taylor Swift is an exceptional artist for a lot of reasons. No one makes albums this good this far into their career. Most artists teeter off after two or three because they retread. Their audience inevitably gets bored of them e same thing time and again. Repeating themselves is something that a lot of artists do because they want to go with the formula of what works. With Folklore, Taylor has done what few artists have dared to do. She’s allowed her discography as a place to uncompromisingly expand her worldview and challenge her listeners. She’s not reiterating previous lessons to make another quick sale. Instead, every album prior has been a steppingstone. As she said at the Time 100 Gala, she has truly turned her lessons into her legacy. From a variety of narrators, she has brought what I decree to be her best album to date. This wouldn’t happen for anyone else 8 albums into their career, but she’s done it by devoutly embracing age’s wisdom.

Learn from the highs and lows presented in these paths. As all good folklore does, it teaches us how to live better. It is our duty to live selflessly and with self-assured dignity. These writings, I have no doubt, will become integral to the legend that is Taylor Alison Swift.

#folklore #taylor swift #ts8 theories #ts8 #the 1 #CARDIGAN #the last great american dynasty #exile #MY TEARS RICOCHET #mirrorball #seven #august #this is me trying #illicit affairs #invisible string #mad woman #epiphany #betty #peace #hoax

[thebibliosphere]

Hi bibmum, I tried to start watching the witcher because its all ive been seeing on my dash lately but i could barely get through the first episode. The witcher character telling a rape victim that she's the bad guy for killing her rapists? The "if i have to choose between a greater and a lesser evil, i refuse to choose"? Just. So nasty. But you seem to really love it so im just wondering if it gets better bc the first episode sucks.

I’d need to watch it again cause I don’t remember that particular line with Renfri (not doubting you, I just don’t remember how bad it is), but I think one of the key things about understanding Geralt’s character dynamic is that you’re not actually supposed to like him as he is at the start. 

He’s someone carrying a lot of trauma and with that a whole heaping side of depersonalization which can often come off as inexcusably cruel and callous from the outside, and we really don’t get into the whole “being a Witcher has something like a 99.999% fatality rate and that’s just how many die as children in training” thing for quite a while yet. 

The whole “witchers have no emotions” thing isn’t just some throwaway line meant to make them seem “othered” from humans or the “strong flawed silent” type we often have for heroes in popular fantasy media. He’s legitimately been conditioned to have zero emotions by his training, and part of his survival instinct is to maintain that facade by ignoring his own emotions because the thing about trauma is once you open that box and start trying to unpack it all, it’s impossible to put it back. And in Geralt’s case, opening up to things and becoming attached and caring is going to get him killed. (Not to even mention all the people that will die if he’s not around to slay monsters.) 

That doesn’t make any of the shitty things he says or does right, but as someone who deals with depersonalization as part of my own trauma, I thought the show actually handled his development quite well as the episodes progressed. You see him coming to terms with the fact that, shit, he can’t be impersonal anymore, he can’t stick to just his training because his training isn’t enough. His training got that girl killed. His training makes him the monster. And he knows that. And he’s determined to never let it happen again.

Thus begins his arc of growth, showing that Geralt is someone who does care, he does have profound compassion for those around him (if not always empathy) and he wants to help people so badly, but other than being a brute for hire, he’s not sure how to do that.* 

And then because fate is nothing if not a laughing trickster, Geralt suddenly finds himself flung into things that demand more emotional energy and depth than a  teaspoon and oh boy, does it never rain but it pours. Like the shiny, shiny bard who is basically ten people’s worth of emotions in one body and is determined, nay, decided to be friends and keeps following Geralt around like a lost puppy singing that fucking song. Or the witch who is seemingly hell-bent on her own destruction in the pursuit of what looks like power, but is actually just a desire to be in control of her own life after centuries of abuse, gaslighting and manipulation (and who, like Geralt, doesn’t know how to be “normal” and perpetuates the cycle of her own abuse because control and manipulation is all she’s ever known). Or the child who by the law of surprise is suddenly his. He is for all intents and purposes a father now, the one thing Witchers are never supposed to be, and just what the fuck is he supposed to do with a child? 

So he does the whole “run away thing” for as long as possible, because Christ, that’s a lot of scary emotions right there. That’s more emotions in the span of about 10-20 years than he’s dealt with in the some near 100 years he’s been alive. But he can’t keep running, he knows that. Destiny is an active force in this universe, and it will come to find him. It will hold his feet over the fire and hold him accountable for his actions, and worse yet, it will go after the people he loves if he doesn’t. 

So yeah. There are lots of things all the characters in the Witcher say and do that are Problematic. No one is an unproblematic fave, everyone is messy, ugly, broken and sometimes just outright cruel. Some parts of the show made me deeply uncomfortable (I’m thinking of the orgy scene with Yen in Episode 5 which is big yikes for a lot of us, though I have more thoughts on that than I have room for on this post) but there were other parts that made me realize that if the writing keeps up as it is, and we get to move beyond the “meet the characters” stage we’re currently in, this show has the potential to be phenomenal. 

So to finally answer your question? Yes, it does get better as the episodes go on. But there will still be moments that raise the yikes meter, but those moments are, I believe, intentional. The show wants you to have strong reactions to things and to throw your hands up and go “come on man! do better!” because we know they do get better. We know from all the other source material we have, that what we are seeing in the show right now is just the messy beginnings of a very complex story. 

And also just because the hero says or does something in the narrative, doesn’t mean the show is promoting the bad things as “right”. If anything it wants you to question it more because it’s the hero doing the thing, and heroes are supposed to be better than that. And we know they do, because deep down at its core, the Witcher is a story about a trained monster killer, who goes out of his way to help the monsters. Sometimes he can’t help them and death is the only option. But we’re all faced with things we’d rather not sometimes. Including the reality of our own actions, and Geralt is someone who is wading knee-deep in them.

(*As an aside: we see him at his best when he’s dealing with monsters and animals because they’re not complicated in the way humans are. He talks to his horses because he’s able to show Roach love and affection and care, and it just comes off as good horsemanship, and likely wouldn’t have been discouraged during his Witcher training. And he’s able to help monsters, because, well, he likely sees himself in them.)

#the witcher #long post #meta #mintedpotters

[touchstarvedsam]

I was really gonna ignore that "superior"natural thing but I saw that they seem to have some talented artists. So I thought maybe they are doing something interesting (even if it's destiel) so I checked out their Google doc and omg I'm HOWLING! Eileen calls Sam moosie, Cas calls Dean squirrel. Dean calls Cas kitten, Sam calls Eileen otter. They say it's just a incollection of ideas that might not make it into the project, but you get a sense of what you're dealing with there. And this is from1/?

A brief perusal to see how much attention Sam gets compared to Dean & Cas (a word search gave 27/87/100 results for each respectively, so not too much attention to Sam. But sure, Sam is the favorite character of some of their writers). I'm sure a deeper reading will unearth more (like, Dean saying you are home to Cas, who says we're not at the bunker, Dean replies but you are home. That sounds like something Dean would say. And Dean wishes a tulpa into existence 'cause he misses Cas too much)2/?

They say they want to eliminate plot holes but it seems what's a plot hole depends on whether it serves their ship: purgatory stays (we know they love that arc) even if it makes no sense for Crowley and Cas to go through that much in S6 when apparently there are many ways in and out. Cas, the guy who failed at almost everything he's done, is a "master strategist". Every other retcon of later seasons stays as long as it serves ship purposes. Sam gets his fair share of attention but Dean is the3/?

One who teaches Cas about being human including the textures of food (Sam and Cas pbj moment erasure) and Cas should be the one to teach Jack about his powers (no mention of Sam and Jack's relationship). Other ooc things: Cas rides a bike and when Dean asks says it reminds him of flying. After Cain, Dean takes Cas to the farm for bees (?). Cas and Dean snuggle. Knowing Cas is alive gives demon Dean strength to fight to be cured? Dean speaks enochian to Cas. Cas making a mixtape for Dean. 4/?

Cas being in regarding Dean. "Baby jack walking around in cas’s trench coat going “I’m an angel”." Home alone type ep with Jack. Dean kissing cas's forehead when he's dead in 13.01. Crowley is Jack's godfather and gets him a hellhound pet. Sam has a pet fish? Dean sings you're my sunshine to Cas as he sleeps. "Uncle Gabe". Apparently John dropped Sam and Dean off at Bobby's all the time? I don't think this is canon? Keep 15.18 but change 19&20 (of course). There's no drama or angst like 5/?

Kevin's death or Crowley's death or anything that might add tension to the story. Unless of course it serves the ship so plenty of trauma for Cas including darkness (from the empty) and sharp objects (from Naomi). A small mention of Sam's trauma with Lucifer, thank God, but it's interesting that they have so little Sam. They can say they'll flesh out more arcs for Sam but it's clear he's not a priority from how he's not present where he should be. For example, Dean will explain everything 6/?

To Mary and break her out of her brainwashing. But where's Sam? She's his mother too. Other than Eileen Sam's most meaningful relationship seems to be with his pet fish (still confused about that). Even if this project gets better in the future, which I doubt, it's clear what the direction here is. It baffles me that they think this is superior to the show we have, as problematic as the show is. I wish them best of luck but I don't have any high hopes for this. Thanks for the laughs though. 7/7

Sorry for that long ass rant in your inbox. It's in the middle of the night but I'm cackling after reading their doc and I had to share it with someone. I thought you might find it amusing as well. Hopefully all my asks go through. On the one hand, I feel bad hating on a fan project. But the way they've positioned it ("superior"), the blatant disrespect to Sam, and all the shit their side has pulled since the finale (and long before that) has really irked me. Again, sorry.

I just- this whole thing was a whirlwind of nonsense, it took me a whole week to process it. I don’t even know where to start here, or if I want to just yeet my laptop out my bedroom window into the snow. They really consider their ideas superior to the original show? More like Inferiornatural, to be honest. Superinferiornatural? They can’t even seem to characterize them correctly, let alone come up with a decent plotline or idea.

So we’ll start with the nicknames, since that is where you started. The whole thing is painfully out of character, but the worst (and funniest) of them all is Dean calling Cas “kitten,” I might actually laugh myself into an early grave with that one. Dean gives nicknames to shorten people’s names (besides Sam; Sammy is the only person who gets an extended nickname). He’s not going to give someone a longer nickname than the original nickname he uses for them! And Cas wouldn’t actually give nicknames, especially not giving Dean the nickname Crowley gave him??? Otter?! Moosie?!  W H A T. Can we move on from grade school kiddie crush nicknames?

I’m currently manifesting Dean saying “kitten” in his gruff voice with that lip curl he does sometimes and I’m cracking up about it. Thanks for the amusement, heIIers.

Of course Sam would only be mentioned 27 times to Cas’ 100 because Sam means nothing to them. He’s only ever either been in their way or a cheerleader for that horribly characterized ship of theirs. I just love how, in order to make DestieI, they have to butcher the characters so irreparably that they’re unrecognizable. Good for them, they can’t even have fanfiction of their ship where the characters keep their canon personalities. 10/10 would laugh at again.

I love the Sam erasure. It’s true to the heIIers’ character at least. They’re a one-trick pony. I’m so used to it by now that I’m totally desensitized to their bullshit. But Dean speaking Enochian? What? When and how did he learn that? I can’t see Dean in his 30s sitting there willingly to learn the language of the angels. Not even if his “kitten” is the one to teach him. Dean doesn’t give a fuck about that. If any of them is going to learn Enochian, it’ll be Sam, and they can fight me on that. I will kick anyone’s ass that argues.

I hope the mixtape Cas makes for Dean is just 4 hours of that Spaghetti song by The Wiggles because Cas sucks at doing human things.

I’d love to see the Sam erasure in the Regarding Dean one. Just swap Sam out for Cas? So Cas is the only one Dean recognizes? Hmm. Where would Sam go? A smoothie place? Yeah, as if Dean would remember the angel who he’d barely known for 8 years at that time over Sam who he’d known since he was 4 years old, lol. Sure, Jan.

The entire 5th ask is WILD, nonnie. A pet fish? Dean singing you are my sunshine? Dean kissing Cas’ forehead? LMFAO. Crowley is Jack’s godfather. The KING OF HELL is Jack’s GODfather. I’m- hgfjdksl I’m sure Dean who was ripped apart by hellhounds would love for Jack to have a pet hellhound. Yeah. Absolutely. “Uncle Gabe” yeah, fuck that guy in particular. Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t erased Eileen to make SabrieI endgame in their fic. SabrieI is the Sam version of DestieI. It’s just as nasty and abusive :) which was why the heIIers ship it. They’re into abuse. It’s their shtick.

I do wonder what the point of the fish is... Sam has always loved and wanted a dog... you’d think they’d give Sam a dog... but I forgot they don’t pay attention to the show unless the episode has Mushy in the credits. I literally saw a heIIer say they skipped episodes if Mushy wasn’t in the credits... so they don’t know how to characterize Sam or Dean, but from this message they don’t even know how to characterize Cas who seems to be their precious uwu baby angel so I’m not surprised. I can’t wait for them to start releasing this shitshow. It makes for good fodder to make fun of them all over again. They really watched a grand total of 146 out of 327 episodes and thought, “Yeah, my opinion about the show definitely matters,” and I think that’s fucking hilarious.

Sorry for taking so long to respond! Hope I did a good job, nonnie. <3

#anti destihellers #anti destiel #hellers really can't characterize worth shit huh #this is honestly sad and pathetic #hellers are good for nothing if not for laughs #long post #sorry guys #anon #kiri answers asks

[c-is-for-circinate]

One of the major issues with the M9 refusing to ever take or maintain a nemesis for any amount of time is that defining arcs the way we did in Campaign 1--based on the enemy Vox Machina was fighting--doesn’t quite work the same way.  Y’all know how I love me some arcs, though, and I think I���ve got a pretty strong sense for how I’d split them up given the chance, at least from where we’re standing now, so hey, why not write it down so I can reference back to it in thirty episodes when I’ve been proven wrong about where the story’s going all over again?

Arc 1: Getting to know you (OR: Okay, I’m with these assholes.  Why am I with these assholes?)  Episodes 1-25. 

Once upon a time when I was young and very cocky, I wrote an enormous overview of this particular arc, and I think most or all of what I said still stands.  ‘Nuff said.

Arc 2:  Things fall apart (OR: Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.  What am I willing to lose?)  Episodes 26-30.

It is barely four episodes, it is barely an arc, and if I were trying to divide up the series to talk about it in an end-of-campaign episode I’d include these in the previous set, but narratively, this is its own story.

Arc 3:  The cure for everything is salt water (OR: I love them and we’re not talking about it or anything else that matters.  What is required of me?)  Episodes 31-48, give or take.

I very much consider the pirates arc to be the emotional avoidance and recovery arc.  After just barely surviving Shady Creek Run, the team flees the empire entirely and puts to sea.  Plot-wise the story is about U’kotoa and snake cults and piracy, but emotionally it’s all about the characters figuring out, individually and collectively, how to try to be okay and how to begin to step away from the people they thought they were in order to take care of each other.  I do want to rewatch and write an analysis for this one day, about Jester learning the difference between romance novels and real life and Nott spending two months at sea and Beau learning to wait, and Fjord for maybe the first time in his life learning to say no.

(Interestingly, the arc is where the group really starts to resolve the questions from Arc 1.  They’re together because of friendship, and loyalty, and love.  Friendship and loyalty and love are worth a lot.)

Arc 4:  Xhorhas (OR: Now that the shit has hit the fan it’s time to step up and deal.  What do I actually want?)  I call this episodes 49-69, again give or take, because there is such a sharp break when they lose Yasha.

These are the episodes when they stop avoiding the world that was going to shit behind them, and discover they have to actually make decisions about it.  They confront the idea that Xhorhas might be okay and war is complicated.  For the very first time the Mighty Nein has to consider taking sides.  This arc starts with the group alone and helpless in Felderwin, moves through their ascendancy as heroes of the Dynasty, and ends with the Nein using their strength and power just carelessly enough to free something horrific.  Episode 56 in the Bright Queen’s throne room neither begins nor ends this arc, but it does define it: the entire story here is about the M9 coming face to face with the fact that they actually do have power in the world, and they can do something with it--and maybe they have to.

(Again--they haven’t quite settled anything lingering from Arc 3, but they’re starting to make a pretty good dent on answering the questions of Arc 2.  They always knew they weren’t willing to lose each other, but now they’re finding out, for sure, what they are and are not willing to sacrifice on behalf of the rest of the world.  They don’t know for sure what their yeses are, but they’re figuring out their nos)

Arc 5: The aasimar in irons (OR: We are desperate and we cannot stop but we have to be stronger now.  What can we actually do?)  Episodes 70-86. 

Just like the Iron Shepherds, this is a desperation arc, but these episodes specifically weren’t about the M9 coming to terms with just how desperate they could get.  They already know just how desperate they can get.  This arc, following on the discovery in Arc 4 that they have power, is now all about dealing with the consequences and limits of it.  They cannot defeat Obann in open battle but they can complete a step in Caduceus’s personal quest, they can face dragons, they can rescue an archmage.  Beau is an Expositor and Fjord is a paladin, and they are not always strong but they are not slaves, and at the very very end, Yasha isn’t either.

(I’m the weakest on this one because, following the pattern of the story finally resolving major questions about two arcs after they’re first really essential, we haven’t answered this one yet.  It is very, very good at bringing back the question ‘what is required of me?’, though, and presenting us with a team that knows how to take care of each other, that will bury Fjord in magical items and hunt Yasha to the ends of Exandria, that no longer needs to ask what their responsibilities are before they set forth to stop the Angel of Irons.  They already know.)

Arc 6:  How we live now (OR: So this is who we are, after all that.  How do we move forward with ourselves?)  Episodes 87-present.  (My guess: this arc ends between episode 105 and 110.  They’re averaging just under 20 episodes each, so we’ll see.  I suspect episode 97 may have been the climax of a lot of things.)

We’re still in the middle of this arc, but here’s what I’m seeing: an entire party confronting the fact that they have changed so very much in the past 90-odd episodes, and now somehow have to figure out who these new selves are and how to keep going.  Nott is Veth and desperate to leave, to stay, both and neither.  Beau is terrified and self-sabotaging.  Caduceus’s family is going home, but he isn’t, not yet.  Jester is a devoted acolyte and the founder of a cult and so utterly torn.  Fjord still isn’t sure what being a paladin quite means.  Yasha is throwing pit fights and eating seafood and struggling through the aftermath of the entire last arc.  Caleb has admitted to love.   The question here is, has to be, what have I become and what do I even do about it?

(They haven’t entirely resolved what do I want yet, but on the other hand--yes, they have, haven’t they?  They want peace, and they’re going to fucking get it.  They want each other so badly.  They want Essek alive and redeemed and they want Trent Ikithon dead.  They want so many, sometimes-contradictory things, but--they know what those things are, now.  They’re admitting to them out loud.  They just don’t know how to get them yet.)

I don’t think there’s any predicting what major arc might come next, or what big questions it will ask of the characters, but I do think we can start to guess at what questions it might answer.  I expect the next five or ten episodes to be full of characters wanting things and not sure what to do about them.  I expect the twenty or so episodes after that to be a marathon of outward competence as the party struggles in some brand new direction I can’t even imagine just yet.  I expect arc 8 to have real plans for whatever the future actually looks like when all the adventuring is done.  I expect to be dead wrong about all of it.

#critical role #driveby meta attack #cr spoilers

[uniarycode]

Digimon Adventure Reboot, Episode 51

Joys of sploilerish knowledge benith the cut

- I guess I Sorta got my wish? They changed the opening by…taking the sound effects out again?

- Relaxing chilling all cool

- Guess who’s back? Garbage, that’s who

- Rude, Tentomon

- You’ve heard of pocket Koushiro, now get ready for pocket Wisemon

- Bokomon, and more than 1

- This tree is like the inside of a computer, somehow, I’m sure.

- Ancientwisemon…ancestor of wisemon? Big if true

- Now we see eight crests there, but OG fans know more than that exist, as was explicitly shown in 02. I think the omission of one in particular is on everyone’s minds, even though it was just a digiegg, that’s right, the crest of Darkness

- You didn’t think I make everything about Ken or Daisuke did you?

- “You can say they existed since the beginning of this world” or 1999, which is like the beginning of the world, if you think about it.

- Why would the researchers call them crests? Words mean things; crests trace back to clan/family heritage. Why are these not glyphs, why won’t this show give me extremely pedantic in universe answers to unnecessary questions with simple out of universe explanations.

- Bbys

- The eye is back

- Uhh, Didin’t the angels summon them there, does Wisemon not know about them? Tailmon is right there, does she not remember this?

- “Even with Millleniummon gone this has not stopped” uh dude that was a like 20 minutes ago, wait for news to spread.

- “there’s an even bigger bad” is literally the least interesting way to frame this and I don’t like it.

- There are known unknowns, and it was good

- Soundbirdmon back after years of irrelevancy?

- Kirby…wait that’s trademarked…Burpmon

- Patatail fail

- (Tailmon is already adult, why isn’t she fighting with the rest?)

- If only there were some way to obtain more power….

- This Digimon gets stronger the more it eats, we can barely handle it, so the answer is of course to feed it more….

- Whatevs

- The great catastrophe is about to begin, give or take some episodes of filler

- Compasses in different directions, so……Separation arc, why would we need a separate reason to focus on all kids at this point in the story, hmm?

- Guess who’s the special snowflake

- So in the world-altering fight that involved Wargreymon launching out of the atmosphere and channeling unfathomable amounts of energy, it was the dragons who willingly transferred some power that got fatigue.

- everyone: “Hot spring! :D” Tailmon: “Water? D:”

- (didn’t that hot spring get destroyed when Jou met Yamato again?)

- The squads are: Taiora, baby sitter Jou + pupper, Kou and the brain gang, Mimi and servant # 100, and Yamato’-is-not-doing-anything-Gabumon-just-wanted-to-run, his well-established character trait.

- I wonder what might happen on this separation arc revolving around the crests.

- Oh, next encyclopedia is of Hououmon, in an episode title after Hououmon, I really wonder what’s going to happen on this separation arc revolving around the crests.

- (tbh I heard a rumor that episode 52 was Nefertimon based and tried not to put much stock into it, glad to have.)

- I was kinda hoping this episode might tell us…..something? Really anything? All we got was some tree lore and a McGuffin hunt. It worked a little as an arc starter….but still, maybe we could learn something about what the heart means?

#Digimon #Digimon adventure 2020 #Digimon adventure reboot #Digi spoilers #psi spoilers #Digimon adventure psi

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog, Chapters 20-24

By garn, it’s been a while.   This ‘ere’s the “Age of Empire” arc, followed by two one-offs, “Call to Power” and “Ultima Online”.  

Last time, Hellsing sent Alucard, Seras, and Pip Bernadotte to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to find out more about Millennium.   But Millennium was expecting them, and sent Tubalcain Alahambra to attack Alucard almost as soon as he arrived. 

Recall that the only reason Hellsing knew to check Brazil was because of a tip offered up by their Catholic counterpart, Vatican Section XIII, the Iscariot Organization.  Iscariot knew about Millennium because they had discovered that the Vatican had helped them move men and materials out of Nazi Germany and into South America.   Which brings us to this chapter, which is a flashback showing how Iscariot found out in the first place. 

The date on this chapter really helps me understand all of this, because when I watched this scene in the anime, I thought it was taking place in the present.   But no, this is set back in July, barely a week after Seras became a vampire.  Note that Bishop Maxwell already knows a great deal about this by this point.  He’s not talking to this guy to learn more, he’s confronting him about the crimes he’s already discovered.

This rando bishop he’s talking to was one of the guys who helped Millennium during World War II.    He claims to have been deceived, but Maxwell knows the truth: that he and the others helped Millennium because they knew they were secretly researching vampires, and wanted in on some sweet, sweet vampirism.

This is a recurring theme in Hellsing, where Millennium gets a lot of help from various patsies by promising to make them immortal. Dandyman got all those SWAT team guys to help him by promising immortality to their superiors, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Dandyman himself was just a rube that joined Millennium thinking it was a path to greater power, when in fact they only sought to use him as a test of Alucard’s abilities.   And so it was with the treasonous bishops in the 1940s.   They helped Millennium move to South America, but their research in Europe was destroyed by Hellsing during the war.    And the above page shows us our first look at young Walter, before he retired to the life of a butler.

And now we see Heinkel Wolfe, the star of “Cross Fire”, Kouta Hirano’s three-issue manga about gun-toting assassin nuns.   “Cross Fire” was featured as backups in the first three collected volumes of Hellsing, which works out nicely, so we can recognize Heinkel as she debuts in this story.    She executes this bishop for his unspeakable crimes against the church.   

And really, it is a pretty horrific thing that this guy did.   I mean, I thought about it the other day, how this guy’s pretty high up there in the ranks of the Catholic church.   He doesn’t just go to Mass on Sundays, he’s devoted his whole life to the faith, and then he just turns his back on it as soon as there’s a hint of a chance that he could become an immortal vampire.   And then it falls through, so he spends the next several decades just sort of hoping no one will find out what he did.  It’s a pretty dark thing, though it’s easy to overlook in a whole series of dark moments.

Back in Brazil, the news media and authorities still can’t make any sense of the Alucard/Dandyman battle.   Alucard and his pals escaped in a news chopper and Al must have hyp-mo-tized the pilot to cover their tracks.  

Meanwhile, the mysterious guys who were watching the Dandyman from afar, well they head back to their secret lair.    The Major is the guy in the glasses, and the Captain is the guy in the big coat.   There’s also the Doctor, who sort of defies description, but we’ll deal with him later.   It was the Major who ran the vampire research project back in the 1940s, and the Doctor who conducts all the research.   The Doctor had been pretty confident about all the powers he gave to the Dandyman, and was dismayed to see Alucard defeat him but the Major doesn’t mind at all, because he’s got plenty more vampires to throw at this particular problem.  

They board a blimp, the Graf Zeppelin III, bound for Jaburo, Brazil.  I looked up the Graf Zeppelin to understand the reference, and it turns out the first two were aircraft carriers, not blimps.   These were planned during the 1930′s as Nazi Germany began to re-arm for World War II, but by the time the war actually started, Hilter had lost interest in the project, and the German Navy focused instead on U-boats.    Both Graf Zeppelins were left uncompleted, so maybe this blimp is named after them as a reference to abandoned Nazi projects that could be revived somehow.   As for Jaburo, I looked that up and only found references to the Gundam franchise, so I’m pretty sure this is just a fictional town.

Meanwhile, Alucard and his team check into a motel, and he calls home to report that he successfully absorbed Dandyman’s memories when he killed him and drank his blood.  He now knows everything Dandyman knew about Millennium.   Integra orders him to return to London immediately, as the Queen of England herself wants to know what’s going on here.   Al wants to know if Tegs enjoyed all the violence he caused in Rio, but she’s like “stfu.”

Up to now, Seras and Pip had been scouting around, trying to find some way to get out of the country, but there’s no planes and no ships available.  They were, at least, able to bring back some McDonald’s.    Wait... MacDooolnald’s.   See?  Giorno drives his vampire dad to MacDooolnald’s, but Seras goes out and gets it and brings it back for Alucard, because theirs is a much healthier relationship.

But Al wants to steal a plane.    Pip and Seras don’t take this well, but now I finally see why Al is suggesting this.   He was ordered to return home at once, so this seems like the only way.  

Then Alexander Anderson shows up and starts punching the shit out of Al, because why not?  

Everybody draws their badass weapons to escalate the fight, including Seras, who picks up her giant cannon, but Anderson just thinks it’s funny, and it snaps him out of his fightin’ mood long enough to explain why he’s here.

Seems the Vatican wants to get Alucard back to London as well, so they sent Anderson to tell them about a private plane they arranged just for this purpose.  

Meanwhile, in Jaburo, the Major reports back to his “superiors”, but he refuses to explain what he was doing in Rio.  The Major claims he’s under special orders from Hitler, and these orders supersede all other command structures.    Basically, all these colonels and generals have little choice but to sit back and watch Millennium operate without them.   The Major gives them only a thin veneer of respect, and barely at that.  

Enter Zorin Bltz, a lieutenant in Millennium, who explains it neatly for the reader.  The Major set up all this Millennium stuff after the war, only for these other officers to show up on their doorstep later, probably seeking refuge in the postwar world.   They know there’s vampire stuff going on here, and they want to be vampires too, but the Major isn’t interested in that.  I guess he figures if he turns them into vampires, they would try to pull rank on him.

But the old timers are also extremely curious about the Major’s goal.   He’s used the research to create a thousand vampire soldiers, but what for?   The Major explains that he’s out to “savor the joy of war.” 

Let me pause here to talk about werewolves.   Millennium also has at least two of those: the Captain, and Chief Warrant Officer Schrödinger.   As he returned to Jaburo, the Major asked Schrödinger about “the other werewolves”, and he said they would be along shortly, but we never actually see those guys.   Unless Zorin Blitz and Rip van Winkle are supposed to be werewolves, but I’m pretty sure they’re not.  

On the plane ride back to England, Alucard has a dream, reliving his defeat at the hands of Abraham van Helsing a century earlier. 

In London, everyone’s waiting for him to show up, including representatives from the Vatican.  Heinkel wonders if maybe Anderson flubbed his mission to give Alucard the plane, but Maxwell explains that they had to send Anderson to Brazil, because he knows Anderson is loyal to a fault.   If they sent just any old operative, there’d be too great a risk of that guy defecing to Millennium for a taste of that sweet vampire power.  

Then Alucard finally shows and pays his respects to the Queen of England.   Let’s face it, this is Elizabeth II, I don’t care how the art hides her in silhouette. This story depicts her as being such an old woman after all this time, but it’s 2021 and she’s still alive today.  Alucard praises he beauty.   I get the impression he finds human aging to be something precious in his eyes.  

Alucard explains what we’ve already been over: That Millennium is the new name for the culmination of that Nazi vampire research project in the 1940s.   Alucard and Walter put an end to the project in 1944, but the Major somehow escaped and kept going.

Then Schrödinger appears in the room, to the shock of everyone.    He claims that he is “everywhere”, a talent which allows him to show up anywhere in spite of security.  He claims to be an envoy from Millennium, and sets up a Zoom call with the Major.

Basically, the Major declares war on Hellsing and Great Britain, and on Alucard specifically, by name.   He has no goal, which is basically another way of saying that he wants to fight war for its own sake.   There’s no strategic objective to any of this.   The Major finally has his army of vampire soldiers, and now he wants to take them out into the field and see what they can do.  

Oh, also he has his “superior” officers brutally executed on the video feed, which seems kind of dumb, since neither Hellsing nor Iscariot knew about any of those guys.  Ties things up nicely for the reader, I guess.

Alucard is overjoyed at the prospect of destroying the Major all over again, and Integra orders him to kill Schrödinger while Seras shoots the Major’s iPad.  Then QE2 orders Integra and Alucard to destroy Millennium, like they hadn’t already been workin on that.  

And yeah, there we are.

#2021hellsingliveblog #hellsing #alucard #seras victoria #sir integra hellsing #alexander anderson #pip bernadotte #the major #the captain #enrico maxwell #heinkel wolfe #zorin blitz #dammit i'm not gonna tag every single character you figure out who i missed

[yaboylevi]

The Zeke problem seems to be a meta problem from Yams. It seems to me Isayama doesn't know how to solve the Zeke being killed (cheap) fanservice AND make Falco fly at the same time without even eating the Beast Titan. Its like Isayama is struggling with what to do with Zeke, and you cannot give ethic lessons in your manga whole trying to figure out a way to kill Zeke. I believe Zeke will join Levi, but his delayed presence in the manga looks more like Isayama scared to actually develop Levi

Sorry for the long post, I am mostly rambling. I agree that it is a meta problem on Isayama’s part. 

He is especially having troubles with his characters in this final arc, I feel. Aside from the fact that he admitted he doesn’t know what actions the characters will take, which is...uh, weird, because it means he doesn’t have a clear vision for each character arcs, or isn’t especially thinking about their overall meaning, in my opinion, and it shows... Well, aside from that, I feel like Isayama has been struggling with showing a natural development for all his characters, as of late.

Particularly, the ending of the characters who have already received one has been all over the place, or not properly set up most of the times. I’m talking about the most recent deaths of Magath, Hange and Shadis, which felt more like ISYM didn’t have a use for these characters in future chapters, so he just conjured some rushed message up, quickly wrapped them in it, and got rid of them. In particular, I got this feeling with Magath, but mostly with Hange - the author didn’t know how to keep Hange in the story, so he offed them to benefit the vision he had for another one (Armin).

The same happened with Porco, who seemed to “be” a character mostly because someone had to inherit the Jaw long enough for them to pass it, at one point, to Falco, but I’ll give Isayama that at least Porco wasn’t a part of the story since the beginning as Hange was, and his death felt very fitting for his character.

Isayama has always had problems with endings, though, and I mean with ending a character’s life: just think back on Mike, whom, he admitted, he killed off too soon; Ymir, one of the most interesting characters in my opinion, who got offed off-screen for the simple reason that she knew too much at a moment where ISYM didn’t want to reveal certain cards. Bertolt’s death (or rather, the aftermath) was also treated poorly.

The remaining cast has also been suffering from a lack of steady, organic character development:

Mikasa was written in a way that won’t allow her development until she confronts Eren, so she’s been mostly on stand-by for a whole arc.

Armin, similarly, isn’t changing at all, is constantly faced with chances to grow and overcome certain setbacks, but it’s obvious this will happen only when he will face Eren head-on. His deathwish (ch.126?) was never developed and was sprung on us for dramatic effect - contrary to Reiner’s, which felt organic and had good built-up.

But Reiner’s arc in itself is all over the place too, in my opinion, though it’s marginally better than others.

Half of Connie’s plot line (avenging his family by killing Zeke) has been canceled out of the story because I suppose it would be too bothersome for Isayama to write, and the remaining half was resolved in one chapter, in a cheap and cheasy way that felt like snuffing out a candle after seeing it burn for a while. “Dark!Connie” was a super interesting concept, a natural development since Clash of the Titan arc, his indignation and pain finally reaching a peak gave a breath of fresh air to such a background character. Such a shame.

Levi has been stuck on the same few lines and opinions for the whole arc, being offered some chances of self-reflection, but getting nothing, no change out of it (though this is a constant in his character arcs and it feels very awkward). A big chunk of who he was was also reduced to the barest of bones.

Historia... well... her few appearances barely had any agency, and the parts where she was allowed to speak were an incoherent mess that still needs explaining. Many feel she was reduced to a plot device, which is very poor writing if most of the fanbase feel this way about such a great character.

Hange, again, was presented with a VERY interesting dilemma, and it was solved (more like, a resolution was avoided) by offing them.

Sasha was used for thematical moments, and killed for it.

Gabi IS a thematical character, so her presence was rather compelling after all, though at times her character arc was so on the nose it felt awkward.

Annie...I’m unsure. She was kept out of the story until the last moment only to have a very interesting crisis, culmination of her many struggles, from when the series had solid characters, only to muddle it with uncalled-for romance, that wasn’t even particularly impactful on any of the characters involved. I used to think romance in this manga had purpose and enriched the characters, taking yumihisu as the only example, but I was wrong, and it’s just some cheap little drama.

Eren...his development has been so obscure and his behavior so out of left field and confusing, that the fandom - and Isayama - have said it’s the new mystery of the story. 

All this to say that Character consistency and plausibility have been suffering for the whole arc. Zeke’s writing, in retrospect, has been consistent. ISYM has set up some interesting themes, dilemmas and ideas with him, as well as a natural progression and built up to a solution to them, but he’s stalling in their resolution, or rather, actualization.

Maybe it’s because there are too many characters, maybe it’s because he needs to get to the point Zeke can be relevant again, but compared to other characters’ treatment, I find the stalling re:Zeke way more believable, as it started the moment his existence was overcome by Eren’s in Paths. Other characters, who should play an active role, are simply moved from one point to the next with barely any real “content” to them and their psychology. 

tl;dr: Isayama set them up to follow a certain direction, but he’s struggling with its delivery, because he had to stall it in order to make it happen at the right moment - which coincides with the end. But this makes them appear static and weak presences in the story, and the plot a chore that has to be painstakingly unraveled. Characters and plot aren’t working as a single unit.

Going back quickly to the issue between Zeke and Levi, I haven’t had the impression Levi will get what he wants in regards to Zeke since Zeke escaped the very first time in Shiganshina. So I am not sure if it’s been my wishful thinking all along, or what, but I have always thought the fandom is drunk and should go home about this particular topic XD I don’t think ISYM is setting up Levi to kill Zeke, at least not in the way that the fandom (and Levi) wishes. Hints that it cannot happen have always been stronger than the opposite, to me.

But I will say that everyone’s behavior towards Zeke is written very weirdly - I mean, they allied and could find it in themselves to mostly forgive Reiner and Annie (AND PIECK! why does nobody acknowledge what Pieck did?!) even though 20 chapters ago they brought an all out attack from Marley to Paradis, and yet, even if they know what Zeke went through, they cannot spare a single humanizing thought about him. Maybe it’s because of his plan, but I cannot imagine is worse than Marley and Reiner calling for Paradis extintion or Eren for the world’s. So I cannot tell if it’s a meta issue (Isayama’s messy writing) or if he’s purposely potraying them to be hypocrites, or if it’s just a very awkward transition that needs to happen between “using Zeke as a scapegoat” and “acknowledging that it’s Eren that needs to be stopped directly, no easy escape route on this”.

#snk spoilers #shingeki asks #zeke jaeger #zeke asks #snk meta #Anonymous

[renatogpadilla]

FFVI as a D&D Campaign:

OK, so I've been watching "Critical Role" (Campaign 1, Episode 31, no spoilers!) a LOT lately and it got me thinking how FFVI (arguably the BEST "Final Fantasy" game out there) is essentialy that. The biggest moments could be atributted to CRAZY rolls! I can see each of the characters being played by one of the people at the table! * Marisha as Terra Branford: Would be phenomenal. Her mentality is kinda in-line with Keyleth's. The "Kill Their Own Emotions" moment in the boat shakes the table as a whole. And when it's time to run an orphanage and protect her kids from Humbaba, the emotion in her voice destroys everyone in the Party. The "Mama?" moment becomes the most fan-arted moment for her character until the final fight. Her Trance ability is agreed to be the coolest looking skill at the table. To say nothing of the way she'd react to the whole Slave Crown bussiness!

Matt: "She killed 50 imperial soldiers in a few minutes." Marisha, and the whole table: *S H A K I N G*

* Taliesin as Locke Cole: "Treasure Hunter!" every single time somebody calls him a thief or a rogue. The "Rachel" story would be absolutely heartbreaking with Taliesin's expressions. The solo-sneak through the town while meeting Celes would be one of the highlights of the Campaign... That and his frienship with Terra would only be accentuated by Taliesin's and Marisha's irl friendship. Not to mention him puking on the ship would serve as some comedic timing straight out of "Critical Role"! Also, "That bow looks good on you" LAUNCHES the ship to heights undreamt of.

* Sam as Edgar Figaro: I mean, COME ON! IT WRITES ITSELF! Besides, it would be enjoyable to see him use his -Artificer- Machinist abilities as creatively as he does! Can you IMAGINE him rolling high enough one day and then he just creates the Noiseblaster? And with that he pulls out the microphone every time he uses it and proceeds to shout some thing Scanlan would be proud of... Not to mention his friendship with Sabin would be amazing if played by Sam! "The little shrimp has become a mighty Lobster!" You can HEAR Sam Riegel's voice come out of that! And the two headed coin? Now THAT's a Scanlan! This without mentioning the violations of the Geneva Convention that the Bioblaster would certainly entail...

* Laura as Celes Chere: I mean, OBVIOUSLY. Meeting Locke in the dungeon? The apparent betrayal? THE OPERA HOUSE?! "I'm a former General, not some... Opera floozy!" TELL ME you don't hear Laura Bailey saying that! And then she rolls a Natural 20 on performance and EVERYONE looses their shit! Her Runic ability is the target of MANY close saves. Also, the way Locke and Celes' interactions happen, she'd be perfect opposite Taliesin. The chat on the bridge in Albrook? HEARTSTOPPING. The attempted suicide? You KNOW Matt would call the sesion there!

* Travis as Sabin Figaro: This one was obvious. Monk/Barb that gets mistaken for a bear, and acts like an absolute teddy bear around Terra? Yes. Gods above, YES. "You think a tiny thing like the end of the world was going to be enough to keep me down?" You heard Grog too, right? The moments would be worth MILLIONS. The Opera house and Travis going "Why is everyone singing?" and then getting more and more into it! Him holding up the house for Celes! "MISTER THOU"... But best of all, and probably the single most famous Sabin moment EVER, The Phantom Train:

Matt: The train tracks suddenly lurch to the side. Even after this long and hard-fought battle it seems *chukles* it seems this train isn't letting you get away with your lives. That brings us to you, Travis! Travis, on his 5000 IQ shit: I grapple the train.

Entire Table: ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?!?!

Matt: No way in hell are you gonna- You know what? Roll for it. *Picks up dice for the Train* Taliesin: He's dead. He's so fucking dea-

Travis: NATURAL 20.

Entire Table: *Silent disbelief, everyone looks at Matt*.

Matt: *Also in disbelief* ...Rolled a 1.

Entire Table: *Inintelligeble gasping and hyperventilating*

Travis: I'm going to use my last Blitz as Meteor Strike and suplex the Train!

Matt: *Looking at the sheet, knowing damn well what's about to happen* Go ahead and roll for damage...

Travis: *Rolls for damage*

Matt: *Braces for impact* How do you wanna do this?

Entire Table and the Internet: *EXPLODES*

The Fanart keeps coming, even YEARS after the Campaign is done...

* Liam as Setzer Gabbiani: Since he's LITERALY "Mister Steal Your Girl", I think Liam would be PERFECT. Just imagine him getting set up as this suave and smooth rougue who wanted to kidnap a beautiful singer and then gets Laura instead! (Which isn't entirely wrong...) IMAGINE his expresions and his dissapearing under the table laughing as the others barely climb aboard The Blackjack. THE ENTIRE PARTY giving him shit for a low roll on a Wisdom Check (the double-headed coin) and him segwaying that into joining the party, only to find out that he actually knew all along... Priceless. The total and undistilled heartbreak as his ship falls apart, him trying to reach out for Terra and everyone falling on different places. And then meeting Celes a year later and doing the whole Daryll story... Liam would be the one to steal the audience every time he takes the spotlight! Though he would be a little like Percy in the sense that he doesn't get much to do until his arc happens.

"Money, Money, Money!" every time he throws coins to attack, the loaded dice (in character, not at the table?) and the card throws would make him so stylish in a D&D setting I'll be surprised if somebody hasn't done it already.

* Ashley as Relm Arrowny: She takes forever to join because of her constantly being away for filming, but once she's here? HOO BOY, does the fun keep coming! Her paintings coming alive and helping them fight? Her giving Sam shit for Edgar's love life? "Fuddy-Duddy!" becoming A Thing? All of those moments would be hilarious... But probably her most notorious moment comes when they find her a year later, serving a posessed brush, telling her to paint, paint, paint under the Magic House... "Keep painting until I'm complete..." The party snaps her out of it before she finishes the greatest painting she's ever done, her Magnum Opus, and then the painting coming alive prematurely in order to force her to finish... To give her form. And then the Lakshmi boss fight happens... Matt: And with the last of her strength gone, the banshee-like apparition dissipates into mist, and before any of you can react, Relm's magic brush begins to glow, like it had when you first came in here. The glow slowly creeps off the hairs and darts! Off towards the mistified form of it's mistress, enveloping itself into a thicc layer on top of the mist, swirling around... and around and around.

Ashley: Oh god, now what?

Matt: The colors dissipate, and Lakshmi unleashes a terrible wail! *DM monster noises* As it is now joined with this colorful cloud... And it compresses, smaller and smaller... And more solid until it's not mist anymore.

Marisha: *Gets it* ¡WAIT A MINUTE!

Travis: *Exited* ¡OH SHIT, HOLD ON!

Matt: The fog dissipates... And the calm returns to Relm's senses. Ashley you are now holding an innert, ordinary paint brush. However! Floating in the air, you see a crystal with a small glowing core, the particular essence of Life embeded in the middle, Terra you *points at Marisha* feel this and recognize it instantly, as it falls to the ground, and bounces a couple times... A brand new shard of Magicite.

Party: *FERAL LOOTING*

"Lakshmi" becomes the most PAINFUL fanart to make, and it's ALWAYS the one that's valued the most among the fandom.

The rest of the Party (Strago, Umaro, Mog, Cyan, Gau and GoGo) can be the guests that come over every once in a while (I particualrly see Wil Wheaton as Strago Magus, Mary McGlynn as GoGo and Will Friedle as Clyde "Shadow" Arrowny) with Shadow coming and going with the excuse that "His contract is up" (and let's face it, after surviving/witnessing the Phantom Train? My contract would be up too...) and coming back whenever his schedule/the plot allows. Eventually, everyone comes together for one last session and the battle with God Kefka. Setting their affairs in order, the reveal of who Shadow really is during a lone chat with Strago shakes the Critters to their core. Everything makes sense! Why Interceptor went straight to Relm when they met... Why his nightmares kept showing a village of magic users, yet they never mention Shadow in Thamasa! The group is RATTLED and wether or not he survives at the end becomes a HEATED argument between everyone at the table. Only Strago knows the truth...

The sendoff on The Falcon with everyone saying goodbye and seeing what the World will bring next is regarded as one of the most emotional scenes in "Critical Role" history... But the most completely DESTRUCTIVE force in this entire cast is Matt Mercer as Kefka Palazzo:

The personality... the narrative... The absolute slime in his voice when he poisons Doma. When he kills Leo and brings forth the Light of Judgement. Matt definitely has his moments playing Ultros. He's fun! And Emperor Ghestal was more of a political "Darth Sidious" villain. But Kefka? OH, LORD. NOBODY was ready for Kefka. "Enjoy the barbicue!" gets memed to no end, while also sending a horrible shiver down people's spine whenever somebody brings it up. Truly, the villain to end all villains. I can see it happen so vividly... If anybody wants to talk about this more, PLEASE hit me up! This just feels too good! Until off course the party moves on to their next Campaign in the setting for "Final Fantasy 5" but that's a whole OTHER can of worms!

#Critical Role #FFVI #FF6 #Final Fantasy #D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #Critters #CritRole #The Returners #Vox Machina #The Mighty Nein #DM

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Why I stop short of hope

I’ve found that I tend to reel myself in when discussing Mike and Will. I will argue in favor of the legitimacy of the signs and foreshadowing. I will passionate argue about the strength and closeness of their bond. I will point out how the show has gone to great lengths to depict their friendship as being unique and special compared to other relationships on the show. I’ll bring up how all of Mike’s story arcs have involved Will from the start. I’ll write a long post on how hard it would be for Will to grow up gay in a time before the internet. That last one in particular is currently my most popular post, surpassing others in likes and reblogs by far. They give people hope, or, at least, I like to think they do.

Then, sometimes almost immediately, I will turn around and counter myself. I’ll say how there’s alternate explanations. I’ll say that we’re seeing what we want to see. I’ll say that Stranger Things has heavily marketed the show around Mike and El, as unhealthy a relationship as it is. I’ll say that they barely ever mention anything about Mike and Will. I’ll mention how El was originally supposed to die for good in Season 1, but they decided to bring her back in an increased role. I’ll argue that it’s likely that they’re setting Will up to be gay, but that his feelings will be unrequited. This has made people sad, even mad at times.  How can I be so positive about this on one hand and yet so negative on the other hand? How can I be so pessimistic about something I so firmly see evidence for? It’s because that’s how I’ve been conditioned. Buckle up, you’re all about to get an insight into hawkinsschoolcounselor’s life.

I was born in 1982. For reference, this would make me about a couple years younger than Holly Wheeler. My early childhood was in the 80s, and this is what drew me to Stranger Things in the first place. I came of age in the 90s, which, despite only being a few years later, was a radically different time in some aspects, but alike in so many others. What I didn’t know yet back then was that around 1997 I would realize I’m bisexual. It was not an easy admission to make.

I’m not from a particularly religious family, but we were all raised Catholic, which included attending a Catholic elementary school through the 8th grade. My hometown wasn’t exactly a small town like Hawkins, in fact it was a suburb of a major eastern US city. Still, there was little talk of homosexuality. I really knew next to nothing of it for the longest time. There were insults and references that I barely understood, even into my early adolescence. I laughed at the Blue Oyster Bar scenes in the Police Academy movies, not realizing that gay bars were a real thing. That gay people were real people. Gay people were played for laughs, at best, in the 80s. 

The 90s brought a bit of a larger perspective, both for me and the country as a whole. Cable TV and the blossoming internet resulted in a wider range of ideas being available. However, LGBT representation in the media had not really gotten better. In fact, they arguably got worse. The 90s seemed to be the decade of gay tragedy. Now gay characters seemed to be shown for something other than cheap laughs at times, but they very rarely got anything resembling a happy ending. Some more progressive shows were somewhat sympathetic to gay issues, but even then they were played for laughs to be “palatable” to a mainstream audience. Movies and TV shows often depicted gay characters committing suicide or being beaten/murdered. Gay panic was a big thing then, both in media and real life. Then came October 1998.

Matthew Shepard was a young guy, early 20s. He met a couple of other young guys while at a bar. The men offered him a ride home. Matthew Shepard never made it home. A cyclist found him bound to a fence. He didn’t survive The men were arrested for his murder, and the “gay panic” defense was used. Everything that was seen on TV was now very real. I was 16. I had maybe only acknowledged my own sexuality for about a year at this point, and very few people even knew. The fear was real. This could happen to me. 

This was a time where I needed hope, but there was little to be found. For every Birdcage, there was a Philadelphia. Even then, Birdcage’s comedy often came on the back of gay stereotypes, and Armand and Albert’s relationship isn’t really depicted as healthy. The message I was receiving through my formative years was that gay people don’t get happy endings. Granted, representation in the media has gotten so much better, but, at least for me, it’s too little, too late. I’m old and jaded. Years of internalized homophobia and fear have left me cynical. One of the reasons I took up counseling was to help young people get through difficult times without losing their hope like I did. I don’t enjoy being this way, but the damage is done. I am so sorry if anything I’ve posted or said in a private chat has made people feel that I want them to give up hope. Please, have the hope that I find it so difficult to hold on to. 

I want so badly for Mike and Will to be happy together. It would almost seem like a personal victory, like everything that I went through would have been worth it. I can nearly feel my younger self brightening at the very thought that two boys, especially in the 80s, can find love and be happy. But that same younger self is terrified at another sad ending, or, possibly worse, another example of gay-baiting. But, please, don’t let my fear of hope, of disappointment, ruin your own hope. I do believe it’s a good thing to have a devil’s advocate, but if I’m ruining anyone’s good time then I don’t deserve to be here.

[tomakeitbeautifultolive]

Listen, I might be playing the devils advocate, but I don't think Dany's fate in the GoT finale was due to D&D being sexist.I think it was just because D&D can't write for crap.

It’s not about intent.

Allow me to begin by saying that I completely understand the knee-jerk reaction that people have to the term ‘sexism’. It’s very polarizing, and when men read the term, they immediately go on the offensive. That’s not what I want at all. I don’t use the term to alienate or exclude men, I use it because it’s the dictionary definition of what I’m trying to convey:

sex·ism (noun): "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.“

That said, allow me to play devil’s advocate here and say that I do not believe the writers intended to have an underlying sexist message. They are more oblivious than they are malicious. It is born of sheer ignorance (lack of knowledge or information) and the privilege to ignore it because, as males, it doesn’t affect them.

Let’s put aside the dozens of articles that came out after the finale calling out the sexism. You guys know me, I like to pull receipts, cite my sources, and throw in some visuals to help aid my point.

For most of the 70+ hours of Game of Thrones, Daenerys actually does not fall victim to these sexist tropes. Honestly, that is what subverted my expectations for seven seasons. That Dany always teetered on the edge of these tired, overused tropes about women, yet she remained steadfast in her ruthless yet good nature, her moral compass was always aligned even if it didn’t match the viewers, and she was a gods-damned hero, straight through to episode four of season eight.

But the demoralizing reality is that Daenerys was hit with trope after trope in the last three episodes. In the final hours of the show, the writers pulled a bait-and-switch, giving us a ‘shocking’ heel-tern whose only foreshadowing was a very bad retcon job full of double standards. And so many fans, such as yourself, justify it. Not because the show foreshadowed it, but because these tropes are so, so ingrained in our brains from decades of media feeding us these narratives that we now expect them.

In the end, Daenerys succumbs to numerous sexist tropes:

'God Save Us From the Queen’ trope

“The Good Kingdom: A lovely, wealthy country ruled by a benevolent king, a wise prince, and a fair princess loved by the populace. But what’s that? There’s a queen? Oh, brother, we’re in trouble.”

Disposable Woman trope

“This character has a familial or romantic relationship with a protagonist, which allows creators to derive heart-wrenching sorrow from her death.”

Evil Infertile Woman trope

“Women are often divided into "breeders” and “the barren,” with the latter coming off as cool and distant at best, and malicious and desperate at worst.“

The Double-Standard Trope

"A double standard occurs when members of two or more groups are treated differently regarding the same thing. Gender is one of the most common causes of double standards.”

Hysterical Woman trope

“This trope characterizes women as less rational, disciplined, and emotionally stable than men, and thus more prone to mood swings, irrational overreactions, and mental illness.”

Woman Scorned trope

“What’s the only type of woman more dangerous than a Mama Bear? A woman who’s been dumped or otherwise done wrong by her significant other. Especially if she’s been hiding some sanity problems.”

Women Are Delicate trope

“Even if women have toughness, competence, strength or stability, it’s less than what their male peers are capable of.”

The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask trope

“They don’t want a young woman, or they don’t want any woman, or they just don’t want this particular woman on the throne.”

Tropes in and of themselves are not bad, but very outdated tropes that are associated with the emotional or mental ‘fragility’ of women are. Why? Because they reinforce deep-seated and subconscious stereotypes of women that audiences hold.

“It’s just a show/book! Who cares!”

People have been turning to art (including literature) for years for meaning, for philosophical guidance. Most people in my own country turn to one book to both find and justify their morality (the bible).

“Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it’s the only place where we can keep track of ideas.”―Reza Aslan

It’s not just a show. The art and media we consume helps shape who we are, for better or worse. When men refuse to consider the consequence of their sexist narratives simply because it doesn’t affect their own lives, it inadvertently causes harm for others who don’t share their privilege.

And it’s not just Daenerys. She’s just the figurehead.

There was a great article from BBC about how much women actually speak on Game of Thrones:

I can already hear the counter-argument brewing…

“So what? There are more male characters!”

Yeah. There are. And that’s a problem, too.

Of the top-grossing 1,200 films from 2007 to 2018, 28% of films were led or co-led by women. Meanwhile, around 49.6 percent of the world’s population is female.

By featuring so few women and by giving women who are featured 20% of the airtime to speak their minds, the writers are unintentionally devaluing the speech and opinions of women. This inspires the audience to devalue women in a subconscious way.

Whether or not it intended to, Game of Thrones and its shocking 'heel-turn’ has very troubling sexist and political implications (amongst other things).

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m blowing this way out of proportion.

Tell me it’s just a show or a book and every single fan knows how to separate fiction from reality (they don’t, go look at Maisie William’s Instagram comments following her season eight sex scene for proof of that). Meanwhile, here in actual reality, we see things like this:

@thescarletgarden1990 informs me that over in Italy, political figures are using Game of Thrones advertising in their campaigns, too:

Translation: “Invaded by masses of Others? Not Today. Immediate naval block, let’s defend our borders.”

What makes it worse is that, at least Donald Trump, identifies with House Stark. Or, those who rule the northerners. The people who showed their blatant racism toward the only two black named characters. And the writers never bothered to critique the problematic behavior, instead, rewarding their people with independence and driving those pesky evil foreigners ’back where they belong’.

I’ve barely had time to scroll my dash and I’ve already seen a troubling amount of harassment towards Dany fans via anon asks (including myself, though I just block the IP and delete but I wish I’d saved them for proof).

Why? Because the ending justifies their personal narrative, this bad writing confirms their worldview. Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, the same thing is happening in reverse in response to the takedown of a figure like Daenerys Targaryen:

“Khaleesi’s heel turn is particularly troubling for fans who might have felt a true sense of connection to her character following her epic story arc, which has seen Dany escape some awful circumstances to literally walk through fire, free the slaves, bring Dragons to the north and help rally the troops to defeat the Night King. She has basically been Abraham Lincoln, Hercules and Winston Churchill combined into one person riding a dragon.” (x)

The point here is that the show is doing its audience of 19,300,000 viewers a great disservice by succumbing to very outdated tropes and double standards, and sending troubling messages as a result. For instance, a woman can do countless heroic or selfless things, but you should never trust her! She needs to be tempered. Women cannot wield power responsibly. There are endless messages you can take away from this ending and the dialogue that led us to the show’s conclusion (my personal favorite being ‘Cocks are important’).

And the fans who want to say 'you’re overreacting’ to everyone who speaks up against it are only aiding in this ongoing legacy of 85% male writers who get to tell our stories, poorly, and reap all the rewards.

Sure, all of this could be solely the result of ‘just bad writing’…

Nevertheless, it is what it is.

#answered #anti got #anti d&d #daenerys targaryen #daenerys defense squad #game of thrones #got #season 8 #sexism #i have a boatload of asks i will get to later eep!