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bugsbenefit · 5 months

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hellfire in s5, and how it's Really not looking good for the members

the hellfire club is, in my opinion, one of the most obvious set ups for s5 and i never see enough people acknowledge how blatant the show actually is with it. because it's a directly addressed ongoing issue that slowly worsens over time and directly threatens three main characters (Dustin, Lucas, and Mike), at Least

there's a clear structured progression of the threat getting worse, with a major part of the s4 Hawkins plot being only Jason and his team chasing Eddie down, and by the last episodes of the show the rest of the town sides with them and joins the objective. however, we never get any consequence of the town agreeing with Jason, aside form the kids parents getting reaction shots looking insanely worried. the only thing even resembling partisan participation is a dogwalker (the same man that agreed with Jason first and then caused every other member in the town hall to also agree) informing Jason and co about there being someone in the Creel house. a single character ratting someone out is not pay off for a scene that rallies the entire town with anger and fear. especially because he was the First one to agree with Jason, arguably the next reaction, in parallel to the town house scene, will have everyone else also involve themselves

and everything Jason actually said in the town hall looks INFINITELY worse by the end of the season because he not only died the same day (how odd that must look), the town was also hit by a severe earthquake. (and hell-gates open in town but we don't know how people will react to that yet, or if it will even be immediately obvious to them)

like. it's a Terrible look. and with Eddie being dead now, the main target that represented the hellfire club in s4 and got the primary share of blame is now officially un-prosecutable

s4 also goes out of it's way to associate Lucas, Dustin and Mike explicitly with the hunt on Hellfire, ages before the whole town gets involved

Lucas is put on edge by the basketball's team hostility towards his friends constantly and has to actively lie his way out of the line of fire multiple times. the basketball team is also looking for Dustin to question him about Eddie's whereabouts, even going to his house where a confrontation only doesn't happen because he's not home. and they even manage to go out of their way to drag Mike into it despite him being out of town, when Jason starts a conversation with Nancy specifically to threaten her and then asks about Mike right after

which leads to the other thing; not only are all the kids already on Jason's radar, he's also getting more and more direct with the fact that he doesn't just want to have a nice chat with them (culminating in actually physically attacking Lucas by the last episode)

and if them setting all of the kid members of hellfire up for a bad time wasn't obvious enough, it's also fascinating to see the posters of hellfire we get over the season also show a clear shift in focus

when we see the hellfire club year book photo for the first time the focus is on Eddie. he's who Jason sees as the main culprit and when we get a close up of the burning poster we see Eddie

but when we see the hellfire club photo again 4 episodes later the focus isn't on Eddie anymore. not in dialogue and not visually

the shot is from the Wheeler's pov (Karen's specifically), and the only part of the picture that's in focus is the far right corner, with Mike and Lucas. (makes sense that's her son that's currently being implicated in satanic murders). Eddie never gets unblurred, he's not who the audience is supposed to look at in this shot. verbally Jason is also explicitly blaming the whole club now. it's not just Eddie who's "crazy" and killed Chrissy, it's the whole club who's responsible (it's also very notable that he's handing out yearbook photos of the whole club, not just Eddie. a really distinct prop choice. everyone in town now not only thinks hellfire is directly responsible for multiple ritualistic murders, they also know Exactly who's in the club)

and looking back at the season in hindsight, there's actually more than enough instances that would make the members of Hellfire look kind of guilty, or shady at best, even if someone were to do some research. there's multiple instances of hellfire members lying to the basketball team about hellfire member's whereabouts which definitely doesn't make them look more innocent in the team's eyes. not only do Eddie's band members try to brush them off, Nancy pretends to not even know about Hellfire when Jason asks about Mike, and Lucas goes out of his way to keep Dustin and Eddie's locations from them by deliberately lying and sending them to wrong locations

and that's on top of the entire montage of Dustin and Mike trying to find a substitute player for a single game on the same day a student with no previous affiliation to Eddie Munson dies at his trailer? that looks Horrible in hindsight. especially with them asking pretty much every other student, from almost every club, while both prominently wearing hellfire shirts. if anyone actually remembers them and thinks about the events post Chrissy's death they could definitely make some assumptions

it's just bad looks all around. and that's not even mentioning how they have the potential to look even worse in s5. if it got out Lucas was with Max when she somehow died and broke all her bones? would look horrible. or Dustin now associating with Eddie's dad? and we don't even know how he'll fulfill Eddie's wish to "look after the little sheep"

and even Mike, who didn't even have the chance to attract suspicion post e1 due to being out of town has a whole thing going on with his image paralleling Eddie, with being the other DM and having his s4 style be directly in reference to Eddie's looks

while there's building hostility towards the hellfire members, and the focus (both visually and vocally) switches more to the members Other than Eddie, by the end of the season there just hasn't been a chance for the townsfolk to respond to Jason's speech yet. they all agreed with him, but everything immediately went to shit the same night. however, even the last few minutes of the show, that always have the most direct foreshadowing for the next season, include a shot focusing on the rise of religion and the fearmongering that started with Jason's speech

which serves as a great reminder that the entire town hall just agreed with Hellfire being a satanist cult they need to stop

s4 ends with the hellfire set up being one of the most explicitly obvious plot threads that are about to be a problem for multiple main characters in s5. like the few other obvious established about-to-be struggles: the gates opening, Vecna still being alive, Max being "gone"; we've gotten a full set up there but no payoff yet

and then there's obviously the question of what the people would even DO in s5? they all agreed that Hellfire needed to be stopped, so... what now?

on one hand there's the interesting concept of the town refusing to help the protagonists but they could also be acting as a hostile force against them

say anyone tried to warn the town about the upside down or it's creatures, the chances of people listening to them talk about actual "demons" and reacting in any positive way is probably near 0. even if you saw a Demogorgon nibble on your neighbour an hour ealier, would you really listen to someone you think intentionally opened the Hellgate that let the creatures through in the first place?

but then there's of course the active antagonistic angle they could also take. Jason was calling for Hellfire to be actively opposed and stopped, not passively. and the show Does go out of it's way to show the overcrowded weapons store in multiple shots post Jason-speech

we're supposed to know these people are armed going forward. whether they're buying them to go hunting, or wanting to go shoot Eddie Munson, the weapons are there now... also ignore the 7 separate hellfire wanted posters in the opening shot of the store alone 💀(it's actually 9, i didn't circle the two that are cut off in the bottom corner. that whole board is just plastered with that one photo)

(the implication of what the guns are for couldn't be more obvious if they tried. again, also the scene where Jason tries to intimidate Nancy and directly asks about where Mike is. also the scene where Erica and co try to hide from the basketball team members in the store. the scene features, guns, hellfire posters everywhere, and characters specifically asking about the whereabouts of a member while other people are actively hiding)

and the weapons could play out in a positive way in s5 too, say the lady from next door gets hands on involved and takes shots at the Demobats in her front yard

but the reactionary, scared, and angry town that blames a specific small group of people for everything that's happening could also lead to MCs having to actively worry about getting shot by someone they've seen at the supermarket for 10+ years on top of the supernatural threat

TLDR: re Hellfire, none of these members will have a good time in s5

Edit (because i forgot to include these images and am silly)

Hellfire even makes it on the local news by the end of the season

and in line with the focus shifting from Eddie to the other hellfire members, the news anchor then goes to say that Eddie Munson is presumed dead after the earthquake but that that isn't enough for the town. the news even mentions the conspiracy theory that the hellfire murders CAUSED the earthquake. so anyone who hasn't heard Jason's speech, now they're getting it from a "reputable" source too. call that high quality journalism, let's throw the local highschoolers under the bus

we're supposed to remember the fear of the "satanic cult killing children" that Jason spread to the town. it's still there. and it's not just in the local town hall anymore, its being broadcast on live television. so just in case you didn't catch wind of who caused a "gate to hell" to open in your suburban neighbourhood the first time, the news anchor thankfully tells you who everybody Says is responsible, it's the 14-18 year old satanist serial killers duh

#the hellfire set up for s5 being so obvious gets me okay #i'm excited about it #watching s4 you can really just see how it progressively looks worse for the members #i'm just curious which route they'll actually go with it #mike wheeler #dustin henderson #lucas sinclair #st s5 #st s5 speculation #stranger things

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mediumgayitalian · 3 months

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HELLO omg i love your solangelo royals AU, their flirtatious enemies to lovers chemistry in part 2 is so cute 😭 not sure if you’re planning to write more in the universe (i’m already so grateful for what you have out!!) but i just gotta say i am so curious about nico seeking asylum, and what the circumstances were when he showed up, and i desperately want to read more of EVERYTHING in this paragraph:

“Will was annoyed with him the first day they met. He was annoyed the second time, seething, really, dragging Nico back to the sterile surgical suite to fix his torn stitches. He was annoyed when Nico first shouted at him, bewilderment at this random physician treating him like he was another resident of the palace, not the only son of Hades. He was annoyed, notably, the one time Nico came to the infirmary after spraining his wrist in sword fighting and, in Will’s words, “breathed too loudly.”

i hit that ao3 subscribe button so fast 🫠

anyway, love your writing and all the snippets you post!!!! thank you!!

hi hi hi!! you have been reblogging my stuff!! i am very grateful for it as it makes me feel appreciated enough to keep posting!!

i am absolutely planning more in-universe 😎😎 i want the main fic to be long, slowburn, and will pov; i have lots of scenes rattling around in my brain but i'm still working on an actual plotline lol. if i figure out a way to start it i'm just gonna start and hope the plot finds me along the way lol

okay so the asylum thing. i have Lore and im so pumped u asked so here is my rambling:

my idea, and this whole spiel is pretty heavily inspired by this royal au series i'm obsessed with by @gatesofember (with a sprinkling of setting inspo from this fic by @percyinpanties), is that each olympian/major god is a House. so like House Zeus, House Apollo, House Hades, etc. i just thought it was way cooler than kingdom lol.

nico has been fighting nonstop w his father since bianca died. just. constantly. notoriously. they do not get along. they argue about EVERYTHING.

one day, Prince Nico of Hades shows up at House Apollo, ass o'clock in the morning, barely clinging to his horse, exhausted, and claims asylum.

uproar. basically. like thats DRAMA.

of course apollo loves drama and also cannot refuse asylum without good reason, so he graciously accepts. some fun details about that:

nico is now, before a prince, an Asylum Seeker. by status, he is not royalty outside of his own House if he steps away from the role, which he lowkey has done by seeking asylum from his own House. he has very little say in anything now.

apollo, however, has granted him shelter in the royal wing of the House, granting him a royal suite of apartments as if he was a visiting diplomat/royal/House Hades representative. this does not, technically, change his official status, but it does make abundantly clear that apollo still considers him of royal status. aside from that, he's still a prince, and no one wants to make an enemy of a prince (since he can still easily return to his throne, essentially? like there are no laws stopping him from doing so. this whole situation is just Odd and Weird and Really Good Gossip), they were all gonna treat him like prince anyway. he has the fancy clothes and still wears his circlet and often sits in on apollo's fancy meetings and shit (apollo likes his nerve).

will could not give any less of a shit.

he is the only person in the entire House and probably beyond who not only does not give a shit, and does not give a shit to nico's face.

this is insane behaviour.

will is the house physician, right. so in term of respect, he has a lot of it, but he has no authority outside his own infirmary, really. he gets a lot more respect than his status calls for because he's prodigiously good at healing. like. people tease that he can raise the dead. he can't, but. you know. apollo is the House of Drama, really, so no surprises there.

will kinda holes himself up in the infirmary?? there are a few reasons for that. one, apollo is a very artistically inclined House, and will is not very artistically inclined, so he started working in the infirmary as a kid and basically stayed there lol. the court physician before him was actually apollo's oldest daughter, hygieia, whom will adored to a million pieces and who doted on him lol. (she got him a little physician's tunic when he was seven and he literally wore it until it was threads). anyways. he feels useful in the infirmary, and its also where he does all his studies, so he mostly stays in that area of the castle. two, he doesnt get boundaries very well. he also thinks hierarchy is deeply, deeply stupid. for his own safety his friends are like hey. maybe dont interact with visiting royals and diplomats and shit. because someone is going to stab you one day. (and will is like 'well i'll just fix myself then' and they're like 'will for the love of the gods. please.') plus the east wing of the castle (where the infirmary is) is rly well lit and beautiful and leads right to the gardens and the library, so will likes it there :)

this would usually be a great mix, right? nico, who has been treated very much as a prince his entire life and has had people either walking on eggshells around him or scared of him, who has never had anyone but his father and maybe his sister defy him in his life, chilling in the centre part of the castle with the rest of the more royal members, and will, mr Authority Who? Don't Tell Me What To Do, chilling out in the east. no need to interact with each other.

except.

nico is a dumbass who got hurt on his way to House Apollo. and did not tell anyone bc thats embarrassing. so he collapses right after asking asylum, and is carried to will's infirmary, who waits with his foot tapping until nico wakes back up and tears into him 😭😭 calling him the biggest dumbass to ever cross these lands and getting quite creative with it, really, absolutely running his mouth, and as soon as nico recovers from being bewildered (does not take long) he is like you??? cannot fucking talk to me like that???? i am the prince of ghosts???? fucker??? who do you think you are talking to??? and will is like i brought you back into this world, you fucker, i will send your ass right back out of it if you dont sit down and shut up and write down these recovery instructions. and nico is like ???? meanwhile the nurses in the infirmery who know will's stubborn ass are GIGGLING. like they think hes gonna die but at least its funny.

everyone lowkey expects nico to tattle to apollo and get will thrown out or something.

nico does not. which is weird, because, like, maybe he usually would?? but will makes him so mad he cant even think straight. the second hes released from the infirmary he stomps to his new quarters, seething. he shows up in the infirmary next day with the full intent to start an argument. instead, will tries to put him to WORK. and then gets irritable when nico refuses and kicks him out.

just absolutely insane behaviour. if anyone talked to nico like that in his House theyd be arrested, if not excecuted. hell, if will says this shit in front of apollo he might still get arrested, because what. but nico keeps going back and continues to get humbled by will basically every day.

and, ho ho, what happens?? does he maybe begin to care about will?? no. of course not. will is a pain in his ass.

insert part two here, blah blah blah, nico very obviously does care about will and its embarrassing

he realises right after this that he cares about will. although theres still a layer of denial over it bc will is his fucking nemesis, a pain in his ass, and also a Whole Ass Guy, so.

will begrudgingly allows nico to drag him out of the infirmary on occasion.

he has to admit, that when nico isnt being a diva, he is.

kind of.

charming.

a little.

if he had a knife to his throat, he would admit this.

maybe.

in terms of falling in love, they fall in love FAST. after that barrier of "you're so fucking annoying" "IM annoying?!?!?!" "yes glad you agree" crumbles, they both go TUMBLING off that cliff bro. will takes a cannon to every single one of the bitchy walls nico put up after his sister died, leaving him heart wrenchingly lonely. he treats nico like a person. and nico treats will like an equal, not someone lesser, in fact he treats will like hes not a prince, not a king, but a god. he reveres him. will has never felt this worthy of anythign in his life.

obviously, though.

its vague ambigious royalty times.

their relationship is forbidden and very, very secret.

nico, as a royal, wouldnt face many consequences, but will...

the issue is that will is the most frustrated by the secrecy. nico has always known that he would have to love in secret, he grew up in that truth. will has never lied about anything in his entire life. the whole royal hierarchy makes no sense in any way and pisses him the hell off. he doesnt like having to be cautious about the way he touches nicos shoulder.

4. wrote too many things in one block and got cut off 💀💀 turns out i DO have a plot omg. thank you for asking. GOD i love them so bad.

5. as for the paragraph you liked -- ME TOO I WAS SO PROUD OF IT. IM GLD YOU LIKED. im seeing now ive kinda mixed the first and second "will was annoyed with him" in my brainstorming but eh. ill iron it out later.

6. anyways!! thank you!! expect more for the royal au soon. not sure if im gonna do what i did on my other blog and start slowly updating & posting the long fic, or if ill add some more short ones as i write the long fic in its entirety before posting, but ill figure it out. i have lots to say about them and theres nothing more fun to me than writing secret relationship and rivals to lovers teehee

#THANK YOU FOR ASKING I NEEDED THIS SO SO BAD #ask #solangelo #royal au #brainstorming #longpost

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raccoonfallsharder · 4 months

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˚ʚ♡ɞ˚2023 in review

i was thinking about doing a "year in review" but then i realized that's just. everything so far. so you could check out the ˗ˏˋ★ˎˊ˗masterlist ˗ˏˋ★ˎˊ˗ if that's what you want.

here's the highlight reel though!

fluff. smut-free, can usually be read platonically or romantically ✮ spice. explicit lines or references ✩ smut. abbreviated explicit sequences ❤︎ smut. detailed/prolonged explicit sequences ❤︎❤︎

everyone's fave: ✩˚₊‧♡ Blackmail Material ♡‧₊˚✩ [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎ 18+ only MDNI | no use of y/n | f!reader | 3/3 parts | word count: 30,591. a classic tale of "that fuckin raccoon found your sex toy." post-endgame friends-to-lovers smut with feelings.

the one that started it all: ⋆｡°✩ The Very Boring Adventures of Space Pilot & Sweatshirt Girl ✩°｡⋆ [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎ 18+ only MDNI | | no use of y/n | f!reader | 5/5 visits | word count: 37,783. In Rocket Raccoon: Grounded (2016) / Issue #3, Rocket asks a stranger on the ferry to "make sure nobody does anything weird" to him while he naps, and the stranger just, like, abandons him while he's sleeping?? who does that? when a stranger asks you to watch their stuff in a coffee shop, it's a holy obligation. x100 if it's a hot local space pilot trying to catch some Zs on the ferry. get in loser we're gonna fix it. first installment in the ⋆｡°✩ Domestic Scenes in Space Travel ✩°｡⋆ series. comics-based but you don't need any comics background knowledge to ride this ride.

my very first kinktober!: °˖✧♡ kinktober 2023 ♡✧˖° [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎ 18+ only MDNI | no use of y/n | f!reader | 12 complete days | word count: varies. just a lot of raccoon smut (usually with feelings). mind the ao3 tags. minimal editing (ie, typos abound; concepts are superficial; in kinktober we say "fuck everything - including plot").

a fluffy anthology of eight oneshot reminders: ✩࿐࿔take what you need [COMPLETE / ONGOING] ✮ fluff | gn reader | no use of y/n | drabbles | word count: varies. the world is hard, and sometimes it's difficult to complete daily tasks & take care of yourself (aka rocket bullies you for your own damn good). this is about as wholesome as it gets (for me) i think. can be read platonically or romantically. mcu-based, meant to take place post-volume-3, but headcanon however you want ♡

my (current) personal fave oneshot: adorations 𖥔 ݁˖⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎ 18+ only MDNI | no use of y/n | f!reader | oneshot | word count: 4,518. you have a habit of complimenting rocket. he decides to give you plenty of reasons to keep doing so. aka rocket has a praise kink and no-one can convince me otherwise. mcu-based smut with feeeeelings. set sometime shortly after volume two. dirty talk, (light) biting, (light) degradation, use of slut as a term of endearment. fast-burn enemies-to-lovers & angst with a happy/hopeful ending. praise kink, obviously. part of ⋆ ˖ ⁺ ‧₊ ☽ anthology ☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

other notables! let me love your OCs ˗ˋˏ♡ˎˊ˗ ✩ over fifteen pieces of fanart for fellow gotg fans!

˚₊‧✶headcanons & minifics✶‧₊˚ [COMPLETE / ONGOING] ✮ fluff | no use of y/n | gn reader | complete | word count: varies. twenty-two headcanons, minifics, & drabbles! mostly fluffy, sometimes angsty.

Window Across the Galaxy ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ* ❤︎❤︎ 18+ only MDNI | rocket x f!oc | 23/27 chapters | wip | word count: pending. 23 of 27 chapters in this longform fic (to be completed this february!)

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ 2024 aspirations

january

Window Across the Galaxy ✧*:･ﾟ Chapter XXIV & XXV ❤︎❤︎

florescence❀, chapter four year three: flowering. ❤︎

✩࿐࿔ take what you need. just buy the damn thing already & it's fuckin' laundry day.

february

Window Across the Galaxy ✧*:･ﾟ Chapter XXVI & XXVII [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎

florescence❀, chapter five year four: formation. ❤︎❤︎

✩࿐࿔ take what you need. get some frickin' sunshine. ✮

⭑˚.⚘𖡼𖥧𖤣 windfall, part one: planting. ✩

march

florescence❀, chapter six year five: dispersal. [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎

✩࿐࿔ take what you need. have you taken your meds today? ✮

⭑˚.⚘𖡼𖥧𖤣 windfall, part two: ripening. ❤︎

･:*𑁍✧˚₊ eavesdropper ₊˚✧𑁍*:･ oneshot. ❤︎❤︎

april

⭑˚.⚘𖡼𖥧𖤣 windfall, part three: plucking. [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎

real *ੈ✩༄‧₊˚ oneshot. rating TBD

꧁:･☁︎ ⋆. cicatrix ⋆. ☁︎ :･꧂ part one & two. ❤︎❤︎

may

꧁:･☁︎ ⋆. cicatrix ⋆. ☁︎ :･꧂ part three & four. ❤︎❤︎

warm compress ☾.༊·˚⋆⭒˚｡⋆ oneshot. ✮

june

꧁:･☁︎ ⋆. cicatrix ⋆. ☁︎ :･꧂ part five & six. [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎

untitled⋆｡°✩ Domestic Scenes (aka Sweatshirt Girl) ✩°｡⋆"finale" [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎

july

᠊ᡃ࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊°.⋆｡✶˖ evasive maneuvers (practice expansion) parts one & two [COMPLETE] ❤︎❤︎

★♫｡°𝄞☕︎✎▤ other duties as assigned ▤✎☕︎ 𝄞°｡♫★ begins? [LONGFORM / SLOWBURN].

august

sunshine ☀︎ ⋆⁺☁︎⋆₊⊹ (sunshine expansion) unknown parts. ❤︎❤︎

★♫｡°𝄞☕︎✎▤ other duties as assigned ▤✎☕︎ 𝄞°｡♫★ begins? [LONGFORM / SLOWBURN].

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andmaybegayer · 4 months

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Look, I'll be honest, I got very little for you here.

Typically around this time of year I'm either still out wandering some wild place in South Africa or I have just got back home from said wandering and either one of those means I've got like, three or four books that I've just finished and a bunch of albums and probably some kind of photographic shenanigans.

These are not happening right now.

I am currently in an apartment in Prague with some visiting family I've been touring around so it is. Different. In light of this fact we're going to do our:

Last First Monday of the Year 2024-01-01

which is going to be a wrap-up of notable entries from 2023. It's true, I got some notes!

Listening (Music):

There is a clear winner for Most Important Album for me this year and that has to be Titus Andronicus putting out The WIll to Live. I picked up Titus Andronicus a few years ago on a rec from a guy on IRC and after putting The Monitor on loop for days I was so down with it. Unfortunately while the rest of their repertoire is honestly really solid punk, The Monitor is truly next level shit. The Will to Live finally closes that gap. It's so good.

There's a lot of good pull songs from this one but I do adore Baby Crazy which is just a breathless rundown of the core philosophy of the album. Part of what links The Monitor and The Will to Live is a very heavy handed metaphorical through line, The Monitor through American Civil War references and The Will to Live through the convoluted nuclear family analogue.

youtube

Truly no one is doing it like Titus Andronicus.

Listening (Podcasts):

Noted originator of the new weeklypost tradition @girlfriendsofthegalaxy was always talking about Friends at the Table and so I was like "Hey her taste is pretty good that's probably better than the median TTRPG podcast" and hey. It was. SO much more than I was expecting.

I started with Partizan which was at the time the current season, and hoo boy. F@TT does many things that handily sidestep a lot of my issues with RPG podcasts. By running tight little game systems with strong narrative focus and leaning more into the storytelling side than actual play (while still allowing rolls and player decisions to completely upend the plot) they get into the action quickly, have strong character driven scenes, and manage to hold my attention.

I will be open and say that the politics of Austin Walker's storytelling are very mixed. A lot of people act like these games are incisive political commentary but they only really hit that occasionally, which I think is good. Leaning into the weirdness of these settings is important, and trying to make them cleave too close to modern problems at all times would weaken them, compared to what they actually do well.

What If Han Solo Was Beyoncé. Remember: You Have Beaten Your Worst Days. Destroy Something Instead Of Understanding It.

Within four episodes of the start of Partizan, one half of the game has seen the death of a minor god and started a false flag operation with consequences that would persist to the end of the season. The game systems in play often outright prevent character death in all but the direst situations, but they replace that with dramatic character change. Clem becomes Obsessed, Valence becomes Righteous, Sovereign Immunity becomes Paranoid.

They are definitely playing "for the camera", if you aren't a fan of heavy allusions to other media as part of storytelling you will not like this, but they work it out well. There's a commitment to interesting storytelling that follows well into the next point, which is:

They are very good at getting into characters motivations. Clementine Kesh is despicable, she is terrible, and she's the central focal point of a huge run of Partizan. Hella Varal of the Hieron series is also a spectacularly character-driven entity, frequently a major driving force of the plot, doing things none of the players would really want to have happen. This also applies to Lem King, to an extent.

After catching up with Partizan I went back and I've been running through the backlog. I am almost caught up to Twilight Mirage, I might step out to listen to the current season since it follows directly from Partizan. I'll see.

Reading:

Without a doubt the big one this year was Terra Ignota. Absolutely lodged in my brain forever.

Terra Ignota is like the flipside of the Culture. The Culture assumes that its members are so far gone from their humanity that their utopian issues are almost incomparable to ours. The Hives are instead a utopian society built on a hard break from modernity that has left them very, very vulnerable to our modern problems. The approach Terra Ignota takes to gender, nationality, and family is set up to argue a very interesting case, not that those things cannot be changed, but that you can't just go cold turkey on them.

(The Gender is particularly forceful. Mycroft's haphazard attempts to reverse-engineer gender for his imagined Reader are so good, they perfectly replicate the internal experience of going to a very very queer environment with a brain that was still ultimately wired by the recent past.)

The actual plot of Terra Ignota is kind of secondary to the spectacle of all these Types Of Guys interacting and exposing their internal processes in a way that is so satisfying. The Hives are unusual in part because there's so few that probably appeal to the readers. I don't think pretty much any of Terra Ignota's expected audience have much interest in the Europeans, Masons, or the Mitsubishi, and while some of them might agree with the Brillists they are given so little screen time that it's hard to say. Really it ends up being the Humanist/Utopian debate at its core, with the Cousins there to balance it. As a result it's impressive that by the end I think most people I've talked to are less sure whether they agree more with the Humanists or the Utopians.

Watching:

Arcane, a one that I don't think I talk about too much, in part because it's so tidy. A perfectly wrapped gift of tragedy! Any story where at almost any point a few characters could just talk it out and resolve all their problems but they don't is *chef's kiss* to me. If you like Othello you will love Arcane is what I'm getting at here.

Arcane is such a gorgeous show, dripping with character, every single scene is so carefully considered. There's an extremely long (in time) close shot of Jayce throwing up over a bridge that I think of all the time.

Arcane is so clear and uncompromising in its presentation of its characters. I've said before that there's actually very little character development among any of the main cast, instead the show builds on bringing very strongly defined characters into conflict and exploring what they do next. This works wonderfully.

And the music! I have probably listened to the Arcane soundtrack a little too much. Basically the only time I went on spotify this year was to look at the Radio channels for songs from the soundtrack.

Playing:

Given that I spent so long playing Breath of the WIld this year you'd think it would be that and you'd be dead wrong. Not that great! It's fine! I like an immersive sim open world game but do you know what I actually do when I feel like I want to play a game just for the pure thrill of it. I go open TItanfall 2.

Titanfall 2 is the ideal first person shooter campaign. It is short and sweet and interesting and manages to keep you sufficiently overpowered without making you feel like it's easy. I played the campaign on Hard at the start of the year and it is the shooter I remember shooters I don't actually like as being.

The reason I play first person shooters is for the fast reaction twitch play. I do not care for long kill times, I do not care for gradually plinking enemies down, I do not want to think about a target for more than 5 seconds. Titanfall is absurdly fast if you play it right, you never stop, you optimize for shooting on the run, and you bounce around the field like a pinball. Delightful.

Titan Combat in the campaign is meh, it's so often just a slog against artificially toughened bosses, or figuring out how to deal with those little AI bots. It's fine. I like being a big robot. Titans are probably better in multiplayer. At some point I will install Northstar so I can try multiplayer lobbies.

Tools and Equipment:

The 3D printer! I have been in the orbit of 3D printing types for ages but now that I have one I can see why its an essential tool for so many electronics types. The ability to just Make The Thing You Need is so powerful. Printed items have their limitations but they all pale in relation to "I hit a button and the exact thing I need appears in 2-12 hours".

So many projects stall out because you need a bracket or an adapter or a flange or a box that you know all the specifications for but that will take two weeks to arrive or has to be ordered in batches of 200 or costs 10× as much as you're willing to pay.

My printer is cheap as shit, the Anycubic Neo cuts as many costs as possible without being actively bad, and it's still a great printer. It can do anything I need well enough that I can carry on with the rest of my life. It has the precision to do slip fit parts and even basic materials have the strength for fairly crucial components.

Like, sure, you can make a lot of these things quickly by hand if you have the parts available, but like, even if somehow all your problems can be solved by cutting a PVC pipe to the right size and shape, do you keep all possible dimensions of PVC pipe in a drawer somewhere? No, you run into a problem that needs 60mm pipe and you only have 50mm pipe and now you gotta go to the hardware store and buy 2m of pipe for a project that needs 0.2m of pipe. It is such a problem-solver to be able to fabricate arbitrary complex shapes from plastic stock.

Making:

The big one. The Penrose Quilt.

This took months for me and my mother to put together, and it came out exactly like we hoped. It's so good, it looks incredible, we put it together by hand with needles and thread and time, I sleep under it every night, it is the ideal item. Few things to build your handsewing confidence like backstitching probably over a hundred meters of seams.

This was a really ambitious project and yet we pulled it off. Absolutely ridiculous.

#Bandcamp #Youtube #last Monday of the week #last first monday of the year

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raayllum · 1 year

Text

Why S4 is Good, Actually: Part 1, The Rayla Edition

Re: basically just writing out my own thoughts but also responses to criticisms of Rayla’s characterization and (later) the Rayllum subplot this season. Not meant to change anyone’s mind, but to get my own thoughts out of my head so they can stop rattling around my brain. Also because this is the main part of the season I’ve seen people critique that I also care about discussing, mostly because all of it was some of my favourites and stuff I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate more and more about the season itself. As this is a meta post this is largely a one sided stance, I’m not particularly interested in debating, and I just wanted to write about how I appreciated the season’s overall consistency, what they did overtly, and what they left to implication to be expanded upon later. Okay? Okay.

To start with, we’re gonna talk about

Rayla in S4

Basically: they did a lot of interesting things with Rayla in S4 both overtly and heavily through implication that, when gathered together, paint a very clear and interesting picture of the ways she’s both stayed the same and has radically changed as a person, as well as why I think we’ll get to see a lot more of her psyche and what she (and possibly Claudia) went through during the timeskip.

So first, let’s start with the similarities:

1) Independent

Rayla is still fiercely independent in S4 just as she was in the previous seasons, if not in some ways more so, and to her detriment and her strength.

She also typically believes people can handle themselves with very little fuss, mostly because she generally can.

2) Cynical with a sense of humour

Rayla has always been a more cynical leaning person. Although arguably too idealistic and compassionate for her people, she is still typically the pessimist / wet blanket in the group (unless Callum is being grumpy over her safety and human impressions) and this carries over into S4.

She also still loves annoying Callum on purpose (“Ugh, I was teasing, Callum”) and maintains her typical more morbid sense of humour bordering on blase.

3) Protective and Compassionate

Rayla remains both protective and compassionate over the people she loves, rushing to Callum’s side when Claudia shows up, placing herself in front of the boys when danger arises, embracing and helping Zym mourn, and even being the one to check of whether Ibis was dead and keeping Ezran from having to do so.

4) Body language

Rayla still has her quirk of placing a hand over her left (previously bound) wrist when she’s uncertain and nervous. She does so in each of her reunion with the boys, and notably stands with both hands clasped when she first sees Callum again and is waiting to see how he’ll respond, and when she is at Ibis’ funeral.

5) Blame

The only phrase that Rayla consistently says is “This is my fault” or “all my fault” and sure enough, S4 delivers on that too when she realizes Soren has gone missing and that he may be in danger, as well as her repeated fear of continually “messing things up.”

6) Uncertainty

Rayla is a character often plagued by uncertainty, both concerning the choices she makes and where she belongs, and how those two things are deeply interrelated. This is particularly true in her imposed exile from the Moonshadow elves and being set apart from her troupe, her initial fear of the boys hating her in s1 and s2 upon learning about Harrow, her homecomings to the Silvergrove and to Katolis yielding very different responses. Callum basically completely iced her out even when she was braced for anything, and so it’s understandable she’s uncertain about how Ezran may respond, too (but more on the reunion scenes later).

Differences:

1) Purpose

Arguably the biggest difference between Rayla in seasons one to three and season four is her general lack of purpose in season four. This is not to say she doesn’t serve a purpose plot or emotions wise in season four for herself or other characters, but that she herself doesn’t have a mission anymore, and that’s behaviour we haven’t really seen from her (outside of TTM and even then, so much of it was dominated by behaviour and feeling like her mission maybe wasn’t actually over).

As far as we know (and again, I do think for a variety of reasons we will learn more in the future about what she and Claudia got up to during the timeskip), she comes back to Katolis to repair things with Callum, but seeing as he won’t talk to her, that’s basically a non-starter. And we see how rattled she is, given that in S1-S3 she always knew what she felt she should be doing - taking Zym back to Xadia, then freeing Pyrrah, then staying behind at the Spire due to loyalty to the Dragon Queen / royal family and her parents’ failures. But now just faced with her own failure without something to chase after, she’s not sure how to go about it.

She’s not even sure if they want her around. Furthermore, she’s been rattled enough by her time away / the response her return to not be sure about doing whatever she can to protect the world anymore, because she doesn’t want to impose, and because she’s been Ghosted once before.

The one moment she shows zero hesitation is when she sees Viren, and her old mission - her failed one - has been placed right back in her hands, along with a new one of hopefully saving her family. S5 is going to give her more than one purpose to chase, and I’m curious to see where it will go.

Although I started this section prior to the release of this interview, I also found this quote from the creators about Rayla in s4 and leading into S5 to corroborate this reading as well:

To me, one of the things about [the coin scene] actually has to do with [the fact that] Rayla has had to come back after two years of obsession and being mission-focused on finding Viren. Part of her growth is that she wants to be more normal and see if she can rebuild trust with Callum. Now, Claudia has basically handed her the next thing to be obsessed about.

2) Revenge vs Justice

So, like everyone else, I also drew comparisons back in the day when Through The Moon came out, and we had Rayla setting out on yet another mission to king of Katolis, a seeming reset of her inherently circular narrative that, like her first mission, would ultimately end up being fruitless, as Viren had to live to be villainous (or an obstacle) for another day). While the context was wildly different (Viren had done personal harm to her and her loved ones, whereas she knew very little about Harrow and even less about Ezran), even her letter reaffirmed the strong, mirrored similarities in her mindset from her first mission, plagued by grief and self doubt, and her second.

R (in 1x02): I have to do this. I’m sorry. I don’t want to, but I have to. R (in “Dear Callum”): You’ll wake up and try to stop me… from doing what I know I have to do. Leaving. But I can’t let you stop me, Callum. No matter how much I want to.

We know given Rayla’s “I can fix it” mindset and the deep shame she felt over her parents abandoning their mission and running away that she likely begged, or argued, for her right to go on the assassination mission to Katolis in the first place. We know that Rayla thought she was doing the right thing in going along on the assassination mission, that it was inevitable justice that could not be denied, a way to make up for her parents’ mistakes and to protect her people.

It’s not out of line for Rayla, once again lost, grieving, feeling powerless and fearful and so utterly ashamed, to throw herself into a quest to kill a human king. Yes, TTM was about Rayla wanting closure about her parents, but more so in some ways it was about her needing reassurance that Viren was dead. But after two years of nothing, she had to be feeling the weight of it. What if she can’t find something because there’s nothing to find?

I also think it’s important to consider both halves of her statement here as well.

R: We had something so special. But I became so obsessed with revenge that I risked losing the best thing I ever had. You.

The same way Rayla was able to let go of her anger in 2x07 at Callum doing dark magic, she’s able to let go (or at least try to) regarding some of her grief and obsession: “I can’t lose you like this. You mean too much to me.” Again, I’ll believe we’ll eventually see what made her come back, given it’s implied to be a very recent choice (roughly a week ago from 4x02) and she was furious at Viren as well (in addition to refuse risking losing Callum, as well: “I can’t risk you coming with me”).

So again, while ‘revenge’ wasn’t her primary factor in leaving in TTM, I can see how it would evolve into that after two years of relative loneliness and having little else but her thoughts to consider. It wasn’t like her decision to leave and go after Viren was ever well thought out, either. If revenge is something you take out of paranoia and grief, and justice is something you do for others, then yeah, I can see how that would fit Rayla’s definitions of each and move back and forth.

However, the way I think Rayla has actually changed the most during timeskip, is how much more

3) Jaded

she is in S4. This is the difference that stuck out the most to me throughout the season, largely given her scenes in 4x05 with Soren and even in the finale, yet it also provided an interesting and vivid contrast in her relationship with Callum. Whereas before in seasons one through three Rayla was typically a bit more cynical about their mission (“Great, I’m wet and miserable and we’ve saved no time at all” / “Really, that’s all we have to go on? Some mountain where the magical healer appeared three years ago?”) she still had a strong idealistic streak. She still believed that they, and herself, could make a real difference in the world. It was her relationship with Callum where she was a bit more skeptical, best shown when she clams up after their inopportune first kiss and subsequent misunderstanding: “We walk away, and this never happened.”

Now, that’s largely reversed in S4. She’s hopeful if unsure about coming back. She believes she can make a difference and they can talk things out, if she’s just patient (although more on that later) and gives him time, space, and understanding.

And despite witnessing the horror of his possession and hearing him talk about how it felt and how deep his fears run, she outright rejects his fatalistic conclusion. Perhaps because she’s seen him do the impossible before (connecting to a primal), because she’s seen his stubbornness and growth, and because she flat out refuses to consider the alternative that he’s right. How can she lose him and how can she possibly kill him?

However, this patient optimistic attitude, her steady belief in Callum’s survival, and arguably her core defining trait in previous seasons (“Rayla, you saved Bait!” “Rayla’s brave. She saves people” “That’s what makes her a hero. That’s what makes her Rayla’) is starkly at odds with her response to Soren in 4x05.

Being called a Dragonguard, a title that once made her nearly cry tears of joy for the way it honoured her parents, earns an eye roll here. A defenseless (not innocent) dragon surrounded by human guards was once enough to make Rayla leave her mission of taking Zym back to Xadia in order to free it. Now, in a scenario where she and Soren would have the numbers advantage, Rayla chooses to walk away without looking back and encourages Soren to do the same. Rayla cites that “There’s too much at stake,” but her priorities were vastly different before. Is it just doubt in her abilities after two years of failing to find Viren or Claudia and finding out they’d been causing trouble anyhow, trouble she could’ve prevented if she’d just been better?

Or did something else, more sinister, happen to her during the timeskip, an even greater failure that made her abandon her mission and choose to come home to Callum after all this time?

Either way, this was one of the most interesting scenes in the season to me, and I can’t wait to see it being expanded upon. But now onto some of the other changes, namely:

4) Patience

Rayla in S1-S3 is both a patient and impatient person. She’s caring and compassionate, as previously stated, but can also be impatient, perpetually pushing the boys to move forward faster, not wanting to waste time, etc. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t have room for some silliness or taking a scenic route, but even in her responses, she can be huffy and snarky.

However, in s4, Rayla never tries to hurry the group along. Partially because unlike before, she’s not the most experienced in the group (Zubeia is there for sections) nor does she have to keep the boys on task the same way as before. Their maturity, mixed with her uncertainty, keeps her overall more regulated.

This development is also in line with her gradual development from the first three seasons. Season three Rayla is far more patient, softer with the boys, and willing to indulge them than season one Rayla (even if she’s never quite the hard-ass she wants to be, most of the time) and part of this is due to her growing open-ness. 1x06 sees Rayla at her most impatient because she’s purposefully hiding something. In season four, given the way she left things, her impatience wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

That said, we still see glimpses of Rayla being impatient and affronted, particularly with Rex Igneous

but it is fun to see the way she’s matured, in a small manner, anyway.

5) Failure

This one is kind of a middle ground, as it’s hardly a resolved element of her character, even if we do see Rayla begin to make real development in season four as well. Failure has always haunted Rayla since her very first scene and a concept she’s wrestled with throughout every season. In s1-s3, we see her struggle between “failure = worthlessness” with her mission and her people, versus her failing and attempting to maintain her relationship with the boys as well. (More on each of these topics later.)

We do see this come back around in S4, though, specifically in Rayla’s admissions that

So while her view of failure isn’t exceedingly different, her determination to fix it and keep going at all costs has changed and faltered, a bit.

This is compounded a few times in the season four finale in brutally quick succession. Rayla discovers that Viren was alive and she let him live this long thanks to her failure to find him; she fails to catch the coins her family is imprisoned in; and is tricked by Claudia, failing to negotiate for the map or to stop the dark mage from progressing in her evil quest. It’s no wonder that Rayla has a fucking breakdown.

However, the biggest difference in how she views failure is that now, when she fails, she will at least purposefully show up to face the music and/or want to come back home anyway, and that’s huge, after the Silvergrove.

With Callum no longer having to run after her to drag her back (or bail her out, come hell or high water) — at least for now.

Previous Season Context

Last but not least, as previously alluded to, we have context from Rayla’s behaviour in previous seasons to provide additionally inference given her behaviour, changes, and choices. She takes Callum’s anger largely the same way she took his and Ezran’s in response to Harrow, since we know from her body language, dialogue, etc. that she knows she messed up in leaving the way she did. (More thoughts later on what, exactly Rayla thinks she’s at fault for, though.)

There are some differences, though. Unlike in 2x03 where Rayla let Callum walk away from her and then waited for him to approach her again, Rayla does advocate to stay, giving him room to express his hurt as much as she can, even if he’s unwilling to take her up on it.

The other big point of contention I want to address is the apology, or lack thereof. Not only are Moonshadow elves from a society where you rarely apologize in words, and instead make amends through actions (re: Ethari offering Rayla his hand > an apology as just one example) but as the show goes on, we see Callum and Rayla explicitly apologize less to each other. For example, they both say some rather nasty things (“Oh, you have a nicer word for it? Honour, redemption? It’s just pride!” “Then you don’t know me at all! You never did”) and neither apologizes. They simply calmly and gently talk things out when he shows up to deliver new information, and resolve the issue together.

Then, we have Rayla’s actual apology she delivers to Ezran (who notably didn’t get a goodbye by any measure when she left, per TTM):

R: Hello Ezran. I didn’t know if you’d want to see me again after the way I left. I’m so sorry that I—

This mirrors some of what she said to Callum (“Callum, I know my leaving hurt you”) yet also shows an interesting peek into her possible frame of mind. Rayla doesn’t apologize for leaving, just how she left. She regrets that it caused pain, she holds herself privately accountable (i.e. “I became so obsessed” when Callum is asleep) but doesn’t voice any of it aloud (again, more on that later). This is also still in line with why she left, partially out of grief, fear, anger, and compounded by the patterns passed down by her parents, specifically Lain and Tiadrin.

I also wasn’t put off by her “He’s just joking” line to Stella regarding Callum, since it’s 1) a decent attempt at some typical downplaying Rayla humour and 2) is being used to placate her protective cuddlemonkey. I also think there’s a few other layers going on under the surface.

C: Oh, so you disappeared for two years for no reason at all?! S: [screeches] R: Shh, it’s okay! Callum’s nice. He’s just joking.

The first is Rayla calling Callum nice even when he’s actively yelling at her and saying just about what could possibly cut her the deepest, yet also something she’s had to come to terms with in order to come back. However, on the prior point of apology, Rayla didn’t leave for nothing: she left to protect him.

I’ve got one more gift for you, Callum. It’s not cake or kisses, but it’s something more important than that. I’M GOING TO KEEP YOU SAFE. I have to. I love you too much not to.

She just has nothing to show for it except mutual heartbreak. Furthermore, we see Rayla take this straightforward, yet blasé stance before.

To me, the most important thing in the Reunion Scene isn’t that Rayla is overtly casual; she’s a mess and barely hiding it, clutching her wrist, constantly looking at and distracting herself with Stella as a coping mechanism, trailing after Callum with each perpetual wall, and fighting just to be able to stay and sit silently on a couch next to her boyfriend all night after he tries to leave the room and completely ices her out. (And Callum has a right to be angry, but say it with me: more on that later.)

She didn’t expect Callum to take her back and welcome her home like nothing ever happened. She hoped for it, maybe; braced for his temper and an argument. She had all day and all week to emotionally prepare for seeing him again, while he was caught completely unawares. What catches her the most off guard is that, in every situation she likely imagined, Callum not wanting to talk to her at all was not one of them, and given that he was a kid who liked to talk about everything, she’s not off base to feel that surprise, either.

She doesn’t see his eyeroll and his anger before he turns around; those happen with his back to her. The furthest they get is:

C: Rayla, what are you doing here? R: I came back. C: Yeah. I can see that. R: You look nice, Callum. (Cue post-sleep crusties almost confession levels of diaster) C: Right. Well, thanks. R: You too, Bait. All day, all week really, I’ve been feeling so nervous and kind of edge-frazzled, you know? But now, finally seeing you, I feel... still nervous.

He says short, clipped sentences to her that are mostly confused, heartbroken, and then awkwardly unsure of how to respond and process what’s happening. Nothing up to that point indicated any anger.

She’s not wrong to be thrown by an icier form of his temper, and she’s not wrong to stand her ground in the storm, either.

Verdict / Conclusion

Originally this meta was also going to include a further breakdown of Callum and Rayla’s characterization and arcs in S4 explicitly related to each other, but 1) I’m tired and 2) this is long enough, so the more Rayllum-y companion meta piece will be posted under “Why S4 is Good, Actually: Part 2, The Rayllum Edition” sometime later this week.

As for some closing notes, I’ll say this:

It is perfectly on brand for us to not get more insight on Rayla’s emotional state in S4 because she refuses to share it (just as she often refuses to share negative emotions or experiences) and particularly because she’s attempting to reconcile, and I’ll touch more on this emotional de-valuation and de-prioritization of herself in the accompanying meta because it’s one of the things that stands out the most to me in S4, tbh.

And precisely because she hasn’t fundamentally changed at all in the ways she needs to, that leaves Rayllum in both a simultaneously very dynamic yet very stagnant state that I think is heartbreaking, interesting, and a surefire work in progress in ways that can push them both to grow in the ways that they need to.

In many ways they’ve concurrently switched roles and are also more like each other in general, good and bad, than ever before, and I’m really excited to talk about it.

One of the most important things about Rayla has always been what she doesn’t say and even then, to not take her “I’m (obviously not) fine” ass at face value. Season four isn’t any different, I still think it reveals and nudges her character to where it needs to be at this point (also reframed with slower pacing in general in mind) and I’d be far more concerned if the season hadn’t ended with her running after Viren than I am with how it ended(?) at all. I’m excited to see where she (and everyone else in her immediate emotional arc periphery, such as Callum and Viren) go from here and how season four may be further re-contextualized.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading, and perhaps, that this put you a little more at ease regarding our favourite Moonshadow elf assassin girl and her big broken, compassionate heart.

#rayllum #tdp rayla #rayla #caylangst #s4 #tdp #the dragon prince #tdp meta #analysis series #analysis #listened to 'fast car' while writing this like a Freak #arc 1 #arc 2 #characterization #parallels

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faafi · 3 months

Note

Can you rank your favorite Loonatics from your least favorite Loonatics? Mine is like this:

1. Rev Runner(There's nothing sweeter than him)

2. Tech E Coyote (Too cool and shy for me)

3. Danger Duck (A little rude but funny)

4. Slam Tasmanian(No one mentions this furball. It's sad😭)

5.Lexi Bunny(She's cool, but I don't like her that much.)

6.Ace Bunny(I hate him. He's steals others' screen time, mostly)

By the way who is your favorite villian in Loonatics?

If you will answer it I will thank you😊.

Yes I can!

(this is a LONG post, so be warned lol)

IN MY OPINION, here is my ranking of the Loonatics:

1 — Rev Runner

Rev being first is for obvious reasons. He's SUCH a kind and generous person!!!!!!!!! How can you NOT like him!!!!!!

I will say that Rob Paulsen did an AMAZING job at voicing Rev. I don't think that I would have connected so strongly with Rev without Rob Paulsen's wonderful voice acting.

Moreover, everyone's voice acting is remarkable!

My ONLY complaint about Rev was that we didn't get enough of him. I still wish that we saw more of Rev on screen. Rev was mistreated SO MUCH in terms of screen time. It's so unfair. I swear, in some episodes, Rev is barely on screen for more than 2 minutes. :(

REV MY BELOVED

I don't have much else to say about Rev at the moment.

Who knows? Maybe I'll make an appreciation post all about Rev.

Maybe one day...

2 — Tech E. Coyote

Tech is definitely one of the most popular Loonatics, and it isn't only because of his appearance (although his appearance does contribute a lot). Tech is that perfect blend of nerdy and cool for my enjoyment.

I especially enjoy the fan interpretations of Tech. The fanfics that I've read show Tech's softer side a lot more. I wish that we saw more of Tech's emotional side in the show.

Tech isn't shown to be too emotional, at least on screen.

I do recall that Tech has some emotional attachment to his technology, most notably in Weathering Heights and The Menace of Mastermind.

However, other than these moments, Tech tends to be the most emotionally distant member of the entire team.

I wish that we saw more of Tech's emotional side in canon. I am very glad that Tech and Rev are more vulnerable with each other in the fanfiction. It's incredibly refreshing to see. I especially like the headcanon that Tech is autistic. It adds a lot to Tech's characterization where it shows Tech's meeker side. Besides, I already self-project onto Tech and Rev a ton. So I declare that Tech is autistic!!! LOL. :3

I will admit that Tech was often used as a plot device by the writers. Typically, I would be fine with powerful characters.

However, there are some moments where Tech is excessively powerful, and none of it is acknowledged in the episode.

For instance, in Sypher, Tech just recreates everybody's individual powers with suits.

What?

Honestly, I think that this idea could have worked if Tech only built one suit (*cough* REV *cough*). However, having Tech construct suits for all 6 members of the team seems very unlikely, even for his intellect.

In the same episode, the fight scene lasts a fourth of the episode.

During the fight scene, the Loonatics only defeat Sypher because Duck throws one egg.

WHAT?

I don't think that Tech making suits that recreates everybody's powers was necessary in this episode. Maybe I'm just overthinking this part of the episode. I just think that Sypher could have ended in a better way.

Tech is incredibly overpowered in other episodes of Loonatics Unleashed, too.

This can be seen in the first episode: Loonatics on Ice. Here, Tech is able to command a set of flying motorbikes from a remote AND make a flying boat.

WHAT??

In the same episode, Tech's lasers fail to melt the iceberg AND the jetpacks malfunction.

WHAT???

And none of this is acknowledged whatsoever.

WHAT?????

I think that at certain points of the show, Tech's power could have been better implemented. Thankfully, Tech's abilities are more balanced in other episodes.

(I apologize for bringing up the first episode so often in these asks. Loonatics on Ice is one of the weakest episodes of season 1, and it's a shame that this show began so poorly. If the first episode of Loonatics Unleashed was stronger, then I think that the public perception of this show would be way more positive. Honestly, I am tempted to write my own version of the first episode, but this isn't a priority of mine.)

With all of this said, I think that Tech's positive traits outweigh his negative ones.

As an aside, Tech IS Rev's boyfriend (and this fandom's collective boyfriend lol).

EVERYONE knows it...except for Tech and Rev!

Hahaha.

I know that I am ranking my favorites between individual characters, but I think that Rev brings out the best traits of Tech.

I think that these two complement each other's positive traits so well that it is a wonder to witness (both in canon and in fanfics).

Also, I just got confirmation from EVERYONE who worked on Loonatics Unleashed that Tech and Rev began dating after season 2 and are married and are madly in love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(THIS IS A JOKE; I AM JUST FEEDING MY TECHREV DELUSIONS; THE CLOSET IS MADE OUT OF GLASS; REV AND TECH ARE IN LOVE; NO ONE CAN CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE)

As a final point, just look at him. Cuteness overload. 2nd fav.

Enough said.

3 — Danger Duck

Danger Duck is a very interesting character to discuss.

I LOVE his power. It's quirky and it fits him perfectly.

His voice fits him perfectly, too. Jason Marsden was the perfect fit for Danger Duck. His voice accentuates Duck's personality so well.

Duck was present in a lot of episodes. And if he wasn't the focus of certain episodes, he at least had something to say. For wanting Rev to shut up so often, Duck was one of the team members who talked the most.

I think that Duck was one of the funniest characters on the show. In nearly every episode, Duck makes most of the jokes.

However, this comes at a fault.

At times, I think that Duck's positive character traits were weakened in favor of prioritizing comedy. And I think that that is a shame.

In my mind, I think that Duck doesn't want to intentionally hurt others. And so I don't like it when Duck makes comments that intentionally put others in physical danger.

For instance, I think that the weakest episode that features Duck is It Came From Outer Space.

Yes, I know that I've said that this is one of my favorite episodes of the show, but I can still critique things that I like.

In the scene above, Duck says a few lines to Ace about the "positives" of letting Melvin abduct Lexi. Later on, Duck makes comments about abandoning Lexi and dividing up her stuff. These parts are the worst parts of the whole episode, for these scenes weaken the previous interactions between Lexi and Duck.

I mean, Lexi and Duck go to New Chinatown together in the fifth episode of season 1!

Lexi and Duck care for each other.

Or at least, it is out of character for Duck to want Lexi to give herself up to Melvin without a second thought.

I think that it is fine to characterize Duck as callous sometimes.

I think that it's also fine for Duck to not be very smart either.

However, that doesn't mean that Duck wants to endanger others.

I keep ragging on Duck in It Comes From Outer Space because there are much better Duck-related episodes.

For instance, I love Cape Duck. This episode shows the more callous side of Duck's personality while still staying consistent with his earlier portrayals. Here, Duck does a press conference after claiming to have caught the Stomper.

I think that this scene works so well for two reasons:

First, Duck is clearly playing up his accomplishments. After all, he accepted the credit for capturing the Stomper, and so, he is using this opportunity to boost his social credit. Duck isn't maliciously targeting or endangering the other Loonatics here.

Second, the entire team can react to Duck's comments. In the scene right after the press conference, the entire team confronts Duck about what he says.

I want to analyze this entire portion of the episode since I have more to say about it; this section is already becoming lengthy...

My point is that Duck's portrayal in Cape Duck is much better than in episodes like It Comes From Outer Space. When Duck is written well, he is one of the most charming characters. However, when he isn't, he becomes one of the more grating characters to watch.

I really enjoy Duck's interactions with the others. I like the banter between Duck and Ace. They seem to have the strongest relationship besides Tech and Rev, and they genuinely seem to care for each other.

I don't know where else to put this, but here it goes:

Personally, I headcanon Duck as having NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). I think that his backstory as an orphan contributed to an unstable childhood environment. And I think that Duck didn't receive proper emotional support as a child.

I definitely don't think that the writers intended Duck to have NPD. Danger Duck is similar to Daffy Duck in this sense. I also headcanon Daffy Duck as having narcissistic personality disorder (especially in The Looney Tunes Show). It is heavily implied that Daffy Duck has some form of childhood trauma (Daffy doesn't remember anything about his childhood before the age of 15, his only clear childhood memories involve him and his grandmother). And it is quite easy to see how Daffy would have NPD (most notably in "To Bowl or Not To Bowl").

With that said, I would definitely like it if fanfic authors explored Duck's character more. Oftentimes, Duck is relegated to a comic relief in the fics that I've read. I would really enjoy it if more authors explored the possibility of Duck's NPD. And even if Duck isn't characterized with NPD in particular, I would still like to read more experimentation featuring this mallard.

As a final point...

LOOK AT HIM!!!

SILLINESS OVERLOAD

4 — Lexi Bunny

I enjoy Lexi.

Honestly, when looking for screenshots of each individual character, I found it difficult to find a shot where Lexi was the only character in frame. I think that this says a lot about her character.

Lexi works very well in the presence of other characters. In most shots, Lexi is standing besides someone else. She tends to ask a lot of questions, and Ace or Tech tends to answer them.

I think that there are a few faults in her character. Most of these faults relate to Lexi being too archetypal. After all, Lexi was the only woman on a superhero team in a 2000's cartoon. There were a few moments where the writers relied too much on this archetype.

Typically, Lexi is the only character who makes comments about beauty.

I also noticed that Lexi was crushing on this one mountain climber in The Hunter.

Thankfully, Lexi's crushes/love interests didn't become a pattern or a running gag (thank goodness).

Lexi's character could have been WAY worse, so I am glad that her character managed to stay enjoyable in retrospective.

As a final point, I really like it when Lexi and Duck work together. I have noticed that Duck and Lexi are paired up a lot, and they are really fun together. I even like their smaller interactions.

For example, in Going Underground, Duck says "You tell him, sister."

(shown below)

I think that this scene is SO cute.

I wish that the canon explored more of Duck's encouraging side, especially towards Lexi. It would have been interesting to see.

Overall, I enjoyed Lexi's interactions, particularly with Duck as her foil. She's fun to watch.

5 — Ace Bunny

I am not an avid Ace fan. Generally, I enjoy his character, but at times, his screen time eats up the screen time of the others (most notably from Rev and Slam).

I do like the fact that Ace is competent at his role as leader.

At times, I really enjoyed Ace's implementation in certain episodes. Honestly, season 2 uses Ace a lot better compared to season 1. For instance in Cape Duck, Ace is the person who discovers that there were "two" Stompers (the actual Stomper and his mother disguised as the Stomper). To me, this reveal was really well done in this episode, and it shows Ace's strong perception skills.

I wish that we saw more of this part of Ace's character in the first season. Of the entire team, Ace improved the most from season 1 to season 2.

However, other than this part of his character, Ace isn't a particularly favorite character of mine.

I especially don't like how Ace treats Rev. It's really inconsistent. Sometimes, Ace is happy around Rev. For instance, at the beginning of Sypher, only he and Rev went to the game.

However, at other times, he is incredibly condescending to Rev.

I wish that Ace and Rev's relationship was more consistent. It would have been really cool to see their friendship more in season 2.

As a final note, I still am mad at Ace in the episode The Heir Up There.

HOW COULD YOU, ACE???

Lexi and Slam would NEVER.

6 — Slam Tasmanian

Slam was treated poorly in terms of writing.

The only real thing that stands out for his character is that he is strong and was a wrestler before the meteor crashed. Oh, and that he eats a lot. That's his only joke.

That's really all that the canon shows of him. This is a shame.

I like how the fandom has taken to Slam's potential softer qualities.

In canon, I don't have a particular fondness to Slam. I think he's cool.

I just wished that he had more defined relationships with the rest of the team. This is especially a shame when Rev is not on screen, even in episodes that I like!

For instance, in Cape Duck (shown below), Rev is barely on screen; meanwhile, Slam just stands on screen and does nothing.

Why is Slam on screen if he is not going to talk???

In general, Slam only really talks when he is prompted by Ace.

His character deserves more justice.

Also, my favorite villain is...

Ralph Runner!!!!!

(Okay, I am half-joking here. Although I don't think that Ralph Runner is truly a villain, I do think that The Family Business is such a compelling episode because of Ralph Runner's character. After all, the audience only sees a portion of Rev's home life.)

My favorite traditional villain is either Melvin the Martian or Mastermind. I've already explained in further depth in another ask. The short answer is that both villains required the team to work together instead of solely relying on Tech's weaponry or the Loonatics' powers. Also, their designs are cool.

Thanks for the question(s)!

#loonatics unleashed #rev runner #tech e coyote #ace bunny #lexi bunny #slam tasmanian #danger duck #ask

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telomeke · 1 year

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MOONLIGHT CHICKEN – SOME PRELIMINARY RAMBLINGS ON POSSIBLE META

We're only two episodes in (soon to be three), but noting that Moonlight Chicken is an eight-parter – that means we're already a quarter of the way through. 👀

So (based on Director Aof's previous work, like Bad Buddy) I'm fully invested in believing that the first few episodes (at least the first two) are going to be reasonably heavy with planted elements that will reveal their true significance as the plot unfurls.

It's a bit of a guessing game at the moment what these elements are, but there are already some leading contenders. And how they'll be relevant to later plot developments remains to be seen, but we should be finding out pretty soon! 😍

Top of everyone's list so far has got to be the moon, of course. It's in the title of the series, in the theme song, it's the brand of Jim's favorite beer and it's the central element of the Mid-Autumn Festival (which is exactly when Jim meets Wen).

According to Chinese belief (remembering that Moonlight Chicken is set within a Thai-Chinese context), the moon is at its roundest and brightest on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The moon in Chinese culture and tradition is referenced in various ways, but its chief significance at the Mid-Autumn Festival is that it represents the concept of reunion, especially reunion of the family (paralleled by the belief of the moon returning to its fullest and most complete form at this specific time of the year). And I think this conception of the moon as a metaphor for idealized completeness (whether in home or family life, or even in your own heart) is especially relevant to Jim and Wen.

What we see in Episodes 1 and 2 is that their lives are still incomplete in some ways. Wen's home life is marked by emptiness, with his partner Alan most notable for his absence than anything else. The lack of even a household animal for companionship in the residence they share is made all the more stark when we see how naturally and immediately affectionate Wen is with Jim's pet cat at Ep.1 [2/4] 1.11. (Part of me wishes Jimbo was a rabbit though! Because in Thai and Chinese belief it's a rabbit that lives on the moon. 🐇🌙💖 You can see a bunny on Jim's beer can because of this.)

Jim, on the other hand, does have (found) family all around him – Saleng and Li Ming read like his surrogate children to me, and he's also somewhat of a patriarch to the neighborhood (everyone calls him Loong, meaning Elder Uncle). But Jim's is a one-parent family that is rambunctious, needy and sprawling, and in giving so much of himself he's finding it tough to cope alone (while at the same time mysteriously rebuffing all efforts to shift him away from his state of singlehood).

I think this point about the incompleteness of Jim's family life is also underscored right at the very start of Ep.1, when he steps out of his diner into the street at the end of the opening scene – in the forefront of the shot is a makeshift altar for Mid-Autumn offerings, which you can logically expect to be the focal point of a family's rituals during this season of reunion.

But Jim stands there alone, and contemplates the moon, the altar and the street with no one by his side. 😥

This moment of solitude is referenced yet again in the scene at Ep.1 [1I4] 11.58, when the kindly neighborhood auntie reminds Jim to pray at another moon festival altar, and then speaks of his (or his and Wen's? 🤔) future children – once again the idea of completing one's family is being evoked (with the subtext being that Jim's own family life has yet to achieve completeness).

I also think Auntie mistakes Jim and Wen for a couple, and Jim plays along by taking Wen's joss sticks from him to plant into the holder together (which is why Wen looks a little taken aback at his forwardness, but this moment nevertheless foreshadows their coming together later):

So far, so obvious. But for me the one element in Ep.1 that absolutely crackles with parallels and sparks of potential future significance was revealed at Ep.1 [2/4] 3.20, when Wen looks at Jim's DVD:

The subtitles are a bit of a mish-mash here, and do not match what Wen reads off the DVD cover.

The English title for this 1996 Hong Kong movie is Comrades: Almost a Love Story (and it's a much-loved classic of contemporary Chinese cinema). But its Thai name is very different: เถียน มี มี่ 3650 วันรักเธอคนเดียว, which translates to something like Tian Mi Mi 3650 Days of Love for You Alone. (The Thai title is what we hear Wen reading.)

The Tian Mi Mi part is actually a nod to the movie's Chinese title (甜蜜蜜, pronounced tián mì mì in Mandarin, and this means something like sweet as honey, i.e., very sweet). But it's not the literal meaning that's being referenced here – Tian Mi Mi is also the title of an iconic Mandarin pop song by the singer Teresa Teng, and indeed the extensive repertoire of the late Taiwanese chanteuse is heavily used in the movie Comrades: Almost a Love Story, not just as background music but also as a feature around which a lot of the plot revolves.

Significantly, Moonlight Chicken's own theme song is another of Teresa Teng's greatest hits – The Moon Represents My Heart (月亮代表我的心/yuè liang dài biǎo wǒ de xīn) and it's no coincidence that Moonlight Chicken's creators have chosen it.

youtube

Among all of Teresa Teng's recordings, The Moon Represents My Heart has also acquired an unexpected queer connection (see this explanation linked here). This surprising relevance to (Chinese) LGBTQ+ history and romance thus makes its use in this Thai-Chinese BL especially appropriate, in addition to the lunar reference. (Interestingly, the lyrics aren't so much about the reunion of loved ones, but more about the authenticity and unchanging nature of true love, with the moon here symbolic of that which is profound, constant and without guile.)

But the inclusion of The Moon Represents My Heart in this BL is also a nod to the songs used in Comrades: Almost a Love Story. I think they're making it clear that there will be other parallels between this movie and Moonlight Chicken, and so we should watch out for them too.

With that mandate in mind – Comrades: Almost a Love Story is about two very different individuals from mainland China (northerner Li Xiaojun and southerner Li Qiao) who move to vibrant 1985 Hong Kong in pursuit of their dreams for a better future. After a brief dalliance, their lives take them in different directions, and they only reunite, in New York City, after 10 years have passed. Their old feelings having remained true, and we are shown not just them getting back together, but also (in a flashback) that their pairing was always cosmically meant to be.

Moonlight Chicken's lunar symbolism at the Mid-Autumn festival (that of reunion) and its theme song are certainly called to mind by Xiaojun and Li Qiao's inevitable reunion at the end of the film. And the 10-year interval in their relationship explains why Comrades: Almost a Love Story's Thai title mentions 3650 days (approximately 10 years).

My Big-Brained Sweetheart (the other beloved BBS in my life) is watching along with me, and thinks that Wen's misreading of "3650 days" as "365 days" is signaling Moonlight Chicken's own trajectory for its two main protagonists – their proper coming together (or coming together again, if it is to be a reunion or reconciliation) may happen after a year, not ten. And I can't say I'm not intrigued by this idea.

So maybe they'll tie up Jim and Wen's story at the following year's Mid-Autumn Festival? With a resolution that calls to mind Li Qiao and Xiaojun's? The series' short run of only eight episodes means that this will precede 2023's actual festival by more than six months (taking Moonlight Chicken's timeline out from the past and into the future). Unless there's more of their story planned for broadcast when the Mid-Autumn Festival rolls around again in September 2023... 🤔

Anyway, that's not the only connection Jim's DVD movie has with Moonlight Chicken.

In Comrades: Almost a Love Story, the character of Li Xiaojun is played by the singer-actor Leon Lai (a superstar of the period). Leon Lai is better-known as Lai Ming (黎明) among Cantonese speakers (his surname is pronounced Lai in Cantonese, as it also is in his dad's Hakka dialect), but in Mandarin his name is pronounced Li Ming – and it's exactly the same name as that of Fourth's rebellious, restless character in Moonlight Chicken.

So Moonlight Chicken's Li Ming is named not after Li Xiaojun, but after the actor who plays him – I wasn't sure before, but now that the Mandarin subtitles are out I can confirm that this link is true. (There are many different Chinese characters that are phonetically rendered as li and ming – the only way to be absolutely sure of Li Ming's name is to see the actual characters themselves.)

But Leon Lai himself has acknowledged (in a Cantonese interview, cited on Wikipedia at this link here) that Xiaojun's story also parallels his own (they share the same surname 黎, and Leon was also uprooted from his Beijing birthplace in the north and moved to Hong Kong during his youth, when his Indonesian Hakka father shifted them there).

So Li Ming's story in Moonlight Chicken may well have parallels with Li Xiaojun's in Comrades: Almost a Love Story. I can certainly see how his yearning for a different life, possibly in the faraway west (when he was drawn to the Work/Travel scheme in Ep.2 [3I4]) could match how Comrades: Almost a Love Story's Xiaojun ends up in New York.

And there's still more. 👀

Li Ming's Chinese name (黎明) also plays off themes involving the moon, glinting with variously shaded meanings depending on how you illuminate it. This may have been why the writers chose to use Leon Lai's name instead of the character Li Xiaojun's – the layers of meaning are off the charts. 👍

The Li part of Li Ming (黎) on its own can mean muchness or plenitude, but it can also mean darkness or blackness. The Ming part (明) means brightness (and can mean both well-lit as well as intelligent, just like it does in English).

So one reading of his name is an abundance of brightness, but that's not the usual connotation. The words li ming together (黎明) actually mean dawn. Aside from signaling new beginnings, the dawn is logically (and poetically) also one time when the darkness of the night (li/黎) meets the brightness of day (ming/明). It is thus also a time when polar opposites (night and day, but also moon and sun) meet in a shared moment of reunion, echoing one of Moonlight Chicken's (possibly) central themes. 😍

This coming together of contrasts is also reflected in the Ming part of Li Ming's name. The character 明 (ming) that means brightness is itself made up of two characters that denote the two brightest elements in the sky – 日 (ri, that used to mean sun but is now more identified with day) and 月 (yue, that means month or moon – to refer to the moon formally it's usually combined with the character 亮/liang to form 月亮/yueliang, which is what we see in the Moonlight Chicken theme song title.)

So the Ming in Li Ming's name quite literally encompasses the conjoining of opposites (sun and moon) as well.

I've not fully decided who or what all this refers to yet, but a post by @respectthepetty (linked here) has more to say on the significance of the dawn in Moonlight Chicken and certainly helps point the way. 👍

For the moment though, the characters of Heart and Li Ming seem to me to be as much kindred as they are contrasting, despite their obvious differences in station. Both boys are trapped by circumstances in settings from which they long to break free – Heart within an oppressive, non-communicative family, and Li Ming in his uncle's world, where he feels he doesn't belong. In this, the plight of Li Xiaojun and Li Qiao as outsiders in Hong Kong and later New York also parallels Heart and Li Ming's fish-out-of-water situations.

And reading in tandem with parallels from Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Li Ming's name is undoubtedly signaling certain directions.

Both Heart and Li Ming are from different worlds (like Li Qiao's Guangzhou in the south and Xiaojun's Tianjin in the north, and also the dark night and bright day referenced in the dawn meaning of Li Ming's name).

But they are similar too, just as the sun and moon (that we can see in Li Ming's name) are both bright celestial bodies, and like how Li Qiao and Xiaojun are also bonded in their shared love for the songs of Teresa Teng. Like both sets of examples, (Li Qiao and Xiaojun, the sun and moon) it could be that Heart and Li Ming are destined to come together at some special point, in spite of their differences (as difficult or unlikely as this may be).

To escape the constraints of their vastly differing worlds, they'll need to find that secret third place (their own dawn) where their own union and new beginning can happen, and for their light to shine together. (I can see this perhaps applying to Jim and Wen too, so... nothing is confirmed! 😊)

Sorry to ramble, but they've given us a lot of food for thought. 🤔Now on to the rest of the show, and to see how much of this pans out (and how much will fall by the wayside). Episode 3 is taking us to Loi Krathong, so hopefully we'll get to see more of the Thai side of things as well. 🤩

#moonlight chicken #moonlight chicken meta

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waitmyturtles · 1 year

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CW: MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS FOR THE MOVIE “THE PORNOGRAPHER: PLAYBACK.” LONG POST!

I feel like there’s been something humming in the wind lately around the franchise of The Novelist/The Pornographer. We’ve seen a cameo by the incomparable Izuka Kenta in Candy Color Paradox, Yoshida Munehiro is about to cameo in The End of the World, With You, and The Novelist’s Twitter account has been buzzing with news about new DVDs and theater showings of the last installment of the franchise, The Pornographer: Playback. Miki Koichiro, the screenwriter and director of the franchise, has TWO shows out at the moment, the aforementioned TEOTWWY, as well the sessy-sessy Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu, the three seasons of which I am dying to watch as soon as there’s a solidly bad season of QL sometime in the future (which seems like will never happen in my lifetime, bless all these amazing QLs for coming out every season!). Couple all of this with recent reviews of the OG Novelist and Mood Indigo series by the fabulous @gillianthecat (here) and @respectthepetty (here), and I was happily reminded of good times of watching all of these parts way way back when I first discovered QL/BL in 2019/20.

When the amazing @lurkingshan commented on a stray thoughts post by @bengiyo that she had seen The Pornographer: Playback, I was VERY intrigued. With HUGE thanks and big ups to @lurkingshan, I watched it over the weekend, and here are my thoughts! I’m going to put up a break to keep y’all from getting spoiled if you want to avoid it.

First off, let’s make sure we know what all the installments are, and that we’ve watched what we’ve needed to get to the movie. We have:

1) 2018 -- The Novelist: the original meeting between student Kuzumi Haruhiko and adult author Kijima Rio

2) 2019 -- Mood Indigo: a prequel depicting the sexual engagements between Kijima Rio and his classmate, Kido Shirou

3) 2021 -- The Pornographer: Spring Life: a very short vignette set 2 1/2 years after Kuzumi and Kijima first met. They’re now in a long-distance relationship, and Kuzumi visits Kijima in the countryside at Kijima’s sister’s house, where he’s living as he continues to write.

(The first three works are all available on Viki.)

So I was BEYOND THRILLED to get to watch the movie and see all of this wrap up. If most of y’all only watched up to Mood Indigo, you saw Kijima re-meet with Kuzumi. Kuzumi, at that time, was just becoming a successful employee in the advertising business.

Spring Life hints that things are still going well for Kuzumi, and that he was looking forward to spending a summer break with his long-distance boyfriend. Most notably, the piece ends with Kuzumi jumping from honorifics, by asking Kijima if he (Kuzumi) could call Kijima “Rio-san,” which we know indicates intimacy. Kijima’s like, whatever you’d like, and the smile on Kuzumi’s face takes up the whole screen, it seems.

So then we finally get to The Pornographer: Playback, which begins during the same summer break. Continuing with the theme and mood that I like to call melosexual (the music alone of this franchise is SO INTENSE, let alone the heaty sex scenes), the guys head to a love hotel and do their thang. At the end of the night, as they’re getting dressed, Kijima finds a business card in Kuzumi’s wallet for a hostess club that Kuzumi is forced to go to with work colleagues.

Without divulging a tremendous amount more about the plot at this moment, the movie is basically structured around the push-and-pull of Kijima’s inability to move authentically closer to people -- not just Kuzumi, but also his sister, who Kijima disappoints repeatedly by backing out of family events.

Kijima’s essentially paralyzed by fear and insecurity that he is a terrible person -- one that is not worthy of love. His sister is so overwhelmingly angry about it that she essentially kicks him out of the house, and blames their mother for never calling him out on his namby-pamby bullshit (at least, that’s in her eyes). At another point in the movie, he frustrates Kuzumi so much that Kuzumi walks out on the relationship and heads back to Tokyo, a surprising move for the otherwise always-devoted younger companion.

It takes a serious scolding by a hospitalized and flirtatious owner of a karaoke snack bar (you read that right) for Kijima to get his damn head back on straight and fight for his relationship with Kuzumi. (And, HILARIOUSLY, I was cackling -- in the process of this, Kijima has KIDO -- KIDO OF ALL PEOPLE -- call Kuzumi on Kijima’s behalf, to get Kuzumi to talk to Kijima to reconcile. KIJIMA used KIDO to call KUZUMI. Lord.)

Okay, so what I’m really getting at here is that the movie showed that the whole franchise was missing two KEY elements that the first three parts did not have: comedy and authentic emotional connection. There was actually a little comedy in this! Besides the whole Kido thing (which I’ll get back to in a minute), there were a couple of bumbling moments that were designed to elicit some lightness, mostly with the snack bar owner, a flighty gal with a lovely son who tries to hook up with takes Kijima under her wing.

About the other element: we FINALLY, FINALLY SAW KIJIMA SHOWING SOME EMOTION ABOUT SOMETHING. He really regretted letting things go to shit with Kuzumi. Kuzumi called Kijima out for wasting Kuzumi’s time to leave work in Tokyo and visit the countryside. Kuzumi felt like Kijima wasn’t taking him seriously, and was constantly pulling back. I mean -- Kijima was living away from Kuzumi.... for what, exactly? It’s not ever clearly explained. And Kuzumi got angry and left.

This is a great time to mention the excellent post by @emotionallychargedtowel on pursuer-distancer dyads, because the Kijima-Kuzumi push-and-pull in this movie perfectly defined this dyad dance. When Kuzumi got fed the fuck up and pulled way back -- Kijima finally stepped into his emotion and owned his desire to be with Kuzumi.

Honestly, in the first three installments of this franchise -- I felt like Kijima really didn’t talk too much. I felt like he was far more defined by his brooding, his letting the winds take him to where he was at any given moment, ragingly sexual and lonely all at once. He simmered -- he was flinty, defensive, and used his sexual energy to dominate and burn the emotional energy all around himself.

The movie showed a TOTALLY different side of him. To me, the movie showed that his relationship with Kuzumi, long distance as it was, HAD a softening impact on him -- even to the point that Kijima dropped everything he was up to in the countryside to head to Tokyo and fight for the relationship. Kijima needed to be rendered totally alone, one last time, to come to realize that the connection he had with Kuzumi was worth fighting for.

And, yes, in the process of it, he brought back Kido in the mix -- which was also seriously poignant.

REALLY SERIOUS SPOILER HERE, y’all, especially if you love/hate/gaaahh that awful devil, Kido!

. . . . . .

Kido asks Kijima if they could have ever had the same kind of relationship as Kijima is fighting for with Kuzumi! AAAAAHHHH! AND! AND! KIJIMA SAYS, no way. We’re too similar.

WHICH IS TOTALLY TRUE! They’re both self-indulgent, selfish assholes! I mean, after that insane sex scene in Mood Indigo, Kido just fucking LEFT -- he just LEFT, and GOT MARRIED, and HAD A KID, and was like, peace the fuck out, I can’t actually be my honest queer self with you, Kijima, because I think that’s actually abnormal (oh, Kido, you internally messed up piece of shit, AAAHHH).

Whereas, as beautifully analyzed in @respectthepetty‘s review, Kuzumi represents honesty and openness -- the kind of traits that Kijima doesn’t have, but is aspiring to, in order to be with Kuzumi. AAAHHH.

I was seriously like, WHOA, WHAT AM I WATCHING HERE, at that moment. AND, AND? At the end of that scene? Kido wishes Kijima good luck. And says: “You better keep Kuzumi-kun. He’s a valuable asset.” Of course, what a Kido thing to say -- that humans are assets, commodities. But -- he sends Kijima off with good wishes.

And then.

Kijima reunites with Kuzumi. He called Kuzumi by Kuzumi’s name, Haruhiko. AND -- holy shit, y’all, my mind was blown. He tells Kuzumi that he loves Kuzumi by saying ichiban aishiteru.

I tell you, I was FLOORED. All throughout the movie, I’m like, “dang, Kijima keeps talking and talking, and I just don’t remember him TALKING all that much before in the other three series.”

And then he DROPS the ichiban aishiteru! And I think BOTH me AND Kuzumi are BOTH LIKE, WHAT THE DAMN, DUDE!

I’ve spoiled a LOT, but I won’t say more after this, except to say the following:

The ending was one of the happiest, LOVELIEST endings of a drama/movie I’ve seen in QL. Oh. my. god. Talk about SATISFYING. EVERY. CHECKBOX. MARKED. Takezai Terunosuke and Izuka Kenta were MAGNIFICENT. I had SERIOUS tears. They got in everything -- they got the heat, they got in FAMILY, LOTS OF FAMILY, GORGEOUS shots, FEELINGS. ALL OF IT.

@bengiyo made an excellent point recently in one of his reviews of TEOTWWY that it seems like Japan lately has only been doing high heat in stories about death. It’s an accurate point: all of the pieces of The Novelist came out well before TEOTWWY and Eternal Yesterday, the two most recent shows about death that had heaty elements. I kind of wonder about something. I wonder if other directors and screenwriters are like.... The Novelist did it the best. We can’t mess with that standard.

Because -- Takezai’s and Izuka’s acting in those scenes is BEYOND EXCELLENT. It was NECESSARILY EXCELLENT to end this franchise on such a warm, happy, COMPLETE high note.

Now that I can look back on all four parts of the whole franchise, what Miki Koichiro did for us by way of Kijima was to show the whole-scale growth of a man vis à vis love. This guy, Kijima -- a brilliant writer who was influenced by a sexually provocative teacher, someone who was left inexplicably behind by a tormented, internally homophobic lover/benefactor -- felt he was deserving of nothing. And then he found his something in Kuzumi. He nearly destroyed the relationship, multiple times. And as he fell and slipped while climbing the hill of happiness, he was able to get a stronger and stronger grip each time he tried harder. And he was supported by people around him, including family and random friends, to give him lift.

This movie was a lot more straightforward than I had honestly expected. I 100% expected more of the melosexualness of the first three parts of the series. Instead, what I got was a WHOLESOME (I can’t believe I’m using that word, but it’s true!), complete, and uplifting story of a man finding his true happiness in his lover, his companion, his chosen family. All of it certainly laced with heat, for sure, but also very deep, very convincing love.

It was utterly fabulous. It might be too emotional, maybe too family-oriented for some who preferred the dark heat of the previous installments. But Playback, in my eyes, was a perfect closing note for a man who honestly deserved happiness after the work, and the SELF-CHANGE he put in, to get love in the first place. If you are a fan of this whole series, and can get your hands on the movie, I beg you to watch it, even just for one of the best happy endings you’ll ever see in QLs.

#spoilers #the novelist #the pornographer #the novelist: playback #the novelist playback #the pornographer: playback #the pornographer playback #mood indigo #the novelist: spring life #the novelist spring life #the pornographer: spring life #the pornographer spring life #takezai terunosuke #izuka kenta #yoshida munehiro #miki koichiro

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cantsayidont · 5 months

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August 1978. The first year of non-adaptation STAR WARS comics was rocky: a lackluster serialized adventure in PIZZAZZ, with Luke, Leia, and the droids crash-landing on a world full of monsters, and a clunky SEVEN SAMURAI/MAGNIFICENT SEVEN pastiche in STAR WARS, with Han and Chewbacca recruiting a group of misfits to fight a bandit leader on a backwater planet, a tired plot burdened with too many in-jokes (the bandit leader, Sergi-X Arrogantus, is a parody of comics artist Sergio Aragonés!). They're pretty bad, and it was likely only the wild popularity of the movie that kept the series going.

With issue #11, cover-dated May 1978, Archie Goodwin took over as writer/editor, while Carmine Infantino (whom Lucas had apparently wanted originally) becoming the principal artist. Goodwin's first storyline isn't a great improvement, a convoluted and overlong mess involving a gang of starship wreckers on a water world called Drexel, sentient telepathic dragons (pretty obviously inspired by Anne McCaffrey's popular DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN novels), and a band of space pirates (first seen in #7, the first post-movie issue) with a refitted Imperial Star Destroyer. That storyline's most useful accomplishment is to bring the main characters back together, something that may have reflected behind-the-scenes negotiations between Lucasfilm and Harrison Ford, who had not initially committed to appearing in subsequent films. With Ford signed for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Goodwin was able to reestablish the character dynamics that had helped to make the first movie such a hit: the bickering triangle of Han, Luke, and Leia, with Chewbacca and the droids on hand for occasional comic relief.

I have mixed feelings about Goodwin's STAR WARS stories. He had a good grasp of the characters, his original characters are interesting, and he navigated the various Lucasfilm-imposed constraints as well as anyone could have. In particular, he uses the mandate to limit direct confrontations between the heroes and Darth Vader to good effect dramatically, staging a series of near-misses that serve to make Vader more threatening as a villain. On the other hand, Goodwin's individual plots tend to run on too long, which saps their momentum. For instance, the Wheel storyline in #18–23, in which the "Star Warriors" are trapped aboard a giant space-casino run by Leia's charming but unscrupulous former senatorial colleague Simon Greyshade, has a novel setting, good villains, and a creepy subplot about Luke having put himself in a catatonic state in his first attempt to meditate on the Force. However, what might have been a banger at four parts feels strained at six, with contrived subplots about Han and Chewbacca having to compete against each other in the Wheel's deadly gladiatorial games, and the homoerotic relationship between Greyshade and the Wheel's sentient master computer (which is less interesting than it sounds). Also, wherever Goodwin tries too hard for emotional impact, the results are often overly precious. This weighs down some otherwise excellent stories like "A Princess Alone!" (#30), a Princess Leia solo adventure in which Leia infiltrates an Imperial industrial planet to reach her former teacher from Alderaan. It's a good showcase for Leia, and the story's depiction of Imperial labor practices is suitably horrifying, but Goodwin eventually overplays his hand with a subplot about a young girl inspired by Leia's heroism, which ends things on a treacly note.

Goodwin continued writing and editing the comic book through the EMPIRE adaptation (in #39–44), but after that, he wrote only a few more stories and relinquished the editorial role to Louise Jones, shifting his focus to running Marvel's Epic line and to writing the STAR WARS newspaper strip. The newspaper strip is more polished than the comic book, aided by very attractive art by Al Williamson, but Goodwin's plots have the same weaknesses, and the energy level is notably lower than his earlier SW comic book stories. This is particularly pronounced in later reprints of the strip, which Dark Horse reedited in the late '90s to color comic book format, making the already somewhat laconic pacing feel choppy to boot. The comic strip also doesn't follow the same continuity as the comic book, which is distracting if you're familiar with both.

#comics #marvel star wars #star wars #archie goodwin #carmine infantino #terry austin #luke skywalker #han solo #leia organa #chewbacca #c3po #r2d2 #bob wiacek #al williamson

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aroaceineveryplace · 7 months

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but yasmin benoit was helping them create the character o, so it should have been okay? but she said they cut out stuff though :( so maybe there were other things that were left out. and she said she was disappointed. yasmin is aroace though.

Yeah. They had all the pieces to make it a truly spectacular season and to make O a truly spectacular character, but I suspect the entire process was rushed? Whatever it was, that the track did not come out well. I'll never complain about representation, but I do think the writing across the entire season did not hit the mark... with a majority of the storylines, not just this one (there were ofc some very notable exceptions, and I think those worked well because they were built up from before; like Aimee's track, Adam's track, Maeve's track, etc.) Of course, from what Yasmin is saying it's not the fault of the writers but whoever made the choice to cut out the scenes that were meant to build up all these tracks in a narratively satisfying way.

The way the track was played, O was the antagonist character. So we saw a lot of her lying, scheming, manipulating, etc. to keep what was hers. When she came out, there was zero build-up or hints to it, so it seemed like it was PART of the lying and scheming... and the whole school clapped and cheered which felt very off? Especially since she later voices her worry that no one would accept her or come to her for sex advice if they thought she was asexual. But that would've only worked if we HEARD other characters making casual aphobic comments, and seen - even in a minor way - her being othered because of all the reasons she says she felt othered.

Like someone on my other blog said, the being (aro)ace confession felt very much like when they put in a sympathetic backstory for a villain in order to get you to understand why they became the way they are. Of course, O isn't a villain exactly, but it did feel like a similar plot device.

Let's just say it's the first aro/ace rep I've ever seen on TV that didn't make me choke up.

Idk, I think it all just felt very all over the place and not well set-up. Not the fault of Yasmin Benoit, I'm sure she did her absolute best to help them make a nuanced, interesting aroace character. This season as a whole just had a lot of telling you things instead of showing you.

#Sex Education #Sex Education spoilers #anon #asks #also idk if this was in response to me saying that they called her ace when she's describing being aroace #even Yasmin uses ace as a catchall term #not sure if she uses the split attraction model or not #she has said she's aro as well but she mostly just uses the word ace so I suspect it's the same for O #a lot of people use only one or the other even though they are both #nothing wrong with it

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morgenstern16 · 5 months

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Fuck it, insane Fumiko theory time

You ever had an insane theory that when you first have it you're like "oh man this is actually crazy if it's true! it explains so much!" but then later you're like "no this is actually just stupid". Well today instead of focusing on my homework my brain decided to come up with a theory that everyone's favorite Public Safety Agent is actually Freckles-chan from all the way of the start of Part 2, disguising herself via the Skin Devil. This has been haunting me all day so I'm exorcising this thought right now so I can forget it.

Freckles-chan, as I'm calling her, has a weirdly minor but notable role in Part 2. She's introduced as one of Asa's bullies and as a target of Yuko's vengeance. (Speaking of Yuko, I miss her). Yuko kills the other bullies, but Freckles-chan survives her initial rampage.

However, she isn't so lucky with the resurrected Yuko, and it looks like Yuko will finish her off...

... except for an unlikely hero to step onto the scene.

Denji makes mincemeat of Yuko and attempts to dramatically reveal his secret identity to Freckles, only for Yoshida to warp him away (just before Yoru brains him with a Yuko Leg Sword).

That's about it for Freckles-chan, except for one weird thing. After Yuko and Asa's last meeting, there's a set of panels showing Asa, Yuko, and Denji lying down. Well, there's one other person shown: Freckles-chan.

Given that Fujimoto loves his foreshadowing, there's been a few theories as to why he decided to show an unnamed minor character in a line-up of very important characters. It could be that this is a plot thread he dropped later on or that Freckles is actually the host of Fami, like Asa is to Yoru, but my brain decided to connect her with a unresolved plot thread from Part 1: what happened to the last Aldo brother?

As a refresher, this guy was the last of a trio of American brothers who had made a contract with the Skin Devil, allowing them to take the appearance of other people. Unlike his brothers, however, this guy wasn't the worst human being in the world and was last seen trying to blend in with Santa Claus's minions (either that or they actually infected him, it's pretty ambiguous).

A lot of characters from the second half of part 1 are now showing up in Part 2, so how would that plot line show up again? Well, my brain said, clearly at some point Public Safety got a hold of him or a contract with the Skin Devil and had Freckles-chan make one with it. See, it's quite possible that Freckles is one of the few people around who've seen Denji's human form (yes Yoshida warped Denji before he could transform back, but it's possible she did see him and Public Safety, through their insane surveillance or w/e, found this out and conscripted her instead of just locking her up, having her impersonate Fumiko (either dead or on a covert mission) to keep an eye on Denji, perhaps in hopes that Denji would easy to collar around if an attractive woman keeps an eye on him, without sacrificing an actual agent. This, my brain said, would explain a number of weird things about her, like why she's so immature and calls Denji "Senpai" (she's actually a bit younger than him)

Or her weird and inconsistent behavior towards him (she's being fed lines to tell him but also confused as to how she feels)

And most infamously, her complete incompetence in a fight (she's a conscripted civilian teenager).

And with her running off, there would great potential to run into her former victim, Asa, who's now the host of the powered-up Yoru. I could easily imagine a terrified Freckles begging for her life in front of Yoru, and an amused Yoru letting her go in exchange for some kind of deal. It'd also be a way for Asayoru to find out that Denji is in fact Chainsaw Man. A neat little bow to wrap up a number of puzzling elements in Part 2 so far.

However, if you're obsessed with Part 2 as much as I am, you've probably spotted a few holes in this, particularly that this is rather convoluted for a CSM plot line. Also, she has to be a pretty good actress to pull off some of her lines and make them sound convincing, and she WAS competent enough to dodge Nayuta's chains at short range, which is a bit much for a random civilian teenager to pull off. It's also quite possible that Freckles will have a role to play, but not this one. I probably forgot some parts and flaws of the theory here and there but whatever I can just fill them in later.

#csm #chainsaw man #fumiko mifune #csm fumiko

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world-cinema-research · 2 days

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Head (1968) essay

Directed by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson

Written by Jacob Christopher

Roger Ebert:

"The Monkees themselves are a harmless lot, little pop-idol puppies who can't sing, can't dance, can't talk, don't need to. The movie fits them into a plot somehow reminiscent of "A Hard Day's Night" and then forgets them. They themselves admit, at the film's beginning, that they're a "manufactured image," and the film tries to dismantle and discredit the image."

This quote from Roger Ebert really shows how this movie presents The Monkees. There is not much rhyme or reason to how the film gets from one point to another. Throughout the movie they bounce from musical sets to antiwar commentary, to surreal humor.

One interesting thing about this movie is that the critical reception of the film was horrible upon release but more recently has become mostly positive. One of the older reviews goes as follows.

"Rafelson's first feature, made when Monkee mania had all but died, Head proved too experimental for the diminishing weenybop audience which had lapped up the ingenious TV series. It flopped dismally in the US, and only achieved belated release here."

The film was certainly based off of "A Hard Day's Night" and shares many similarities. The most obvious similarity is that both were movies made in order to capitalize on the success of a band. They are also similar in that they don't take themselves too seriously. Both films are Mockumentaries, employing a style that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, offering a look behind the scenes of these band members. The Humor in these movies is also very similar, often poking fun at their own image as a band. Also, both films had a soundtrack created by the band, and both soundtracks are from an album of the same name as their films.

The soundtrack of the movie is the album from the Monkees that goes by the same name "HEAD". The film also features several notable cameos, including Frank Zappa, Annette Funicello, and boxer Sonny Liston.

The film was also important historically. At the time of the creation of the film, the Vietnam war was ongoing, and celebrity culture was a big deal. Both of these topics are covered in the movie. The topic of war is covered in several scenes of the movie. There is a very clear antiwar agenda being covered throughout the movie that was very prevalent in America at the time. The topic of celebrity culture was one of the main themes in the movie. At the beginning of the movie, they state "Hey, Hey, we are The Monkees, to that we all agree. A manufactured image with no philosophies." This quotation is drawing attention to the fact that the band was essentially created to be marketed and did as they were told. This was a very common thing at the time due to celebrity culture and was something that they were trying to draw attention to with this movie. This was part of the reason why the movie jumped around with seemingly no rhyme or reason, to draw attention to the fact that they didn't have a coherent identity.

There is no room for argument in stating that this was most certainly an unconventional film. This film heavily pushed the boundaries of the film industry. This is one of the main reasons why it was received so poorly upon release. However, this is also the reason why it became such a classic afterwards. The film was full of awkward transitions, parts that had no plot, and jokes that wouldn't hit with most audiences. All in all, the film was strange and opaque, like a dream. The style of this film is one that I have never seen before.

In conclusion, Head is a groundbreaking film that challenged and reflected the cultural landscape of the 1960s. It shows the band, the Monkees, in a broken-down form, blending antiwar commentary, surreal humor, and musical sets. Although the initial reception of the movie was poor, over time it gained notoriety and is now known as a cult classic. The film critiques celebrity culture and the Vietnam war, pushing against social norms of the time. The film HEAD remains a testament to artistic experimentation and captivates audiences to this day.

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williamafton2030 · 3 months

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My opinion on Mimic and its implementation in lore

The Mimic is no longer a mystery to anyone so I'm just going to talk about who he is because everyone must know who he is (even more so when in a few months the anniversary of the boom that hit his revelation in Tales from the Pizzaplex with the story that bears the same name, The Mimic). Rather, I am going to focus on telling my personal experience with his introduction to the fandom and how he went from being a character I hated to being one of my favorite characters.

First I have to say that I was quite surprised by this plot twist because I did not follow Tales from the Pizzaplex and I had no idea what the stories were in them (this made me venture much later than this plot twist to read the history of GGY and knowing why they said that Gregory was Patient 46, but that is another story. The fact is that it was one day when I was even calmer that I came across a video that states that neither Glitchtrap nor Burntrap are William and explains his true identity and what the history of this new character is. I was very stunned because I could not believe that William was not one of these 2 characters when they had been apparently saying yes for years and I became discouraged and quite upset with this horrible retcon (or at least at the time I thought it was)

I went weeks without barely touching anything from Fnaf until the Ruin trailer premiered. I loved this trailer either for the entire horror setting it presented or for the Vanny Mask that brought us a great concept such as the VANNI network that I adore to this day. So what did I do? Well, I gave it a chance and I started to get interested in reading the Tales from the Pizzaplex stories or at least the two related to Mimic (The Storyteller and The Mimic)

I adored every bit of these stories and my hatred for Mimic, which had been very strong at the beginning, diminished considerably when I saw the potential he had as a villain and understood that it had not been a retcon. I understood that Scott had had this Help Wanted character in mind and the creation of Glitchtrap because the tears and drool he had proved it, in addition to his imitation of Tape Girl when we first entered the game, greeting us with that distorted voice. And of course because the scene of the tombs on the death screen finally made sense to me because William was dead, but his tomb represented in the center with that texture indicated to us that Mimic was imitating him and that he had him in the center like a king (This interpretation is not mine because several channels talk about it on YouTube but this scene finally made sense to me)

Another thing that changed my mind about Mimic when reading his story is realizing that he wasn't just a poor imitation of William for no reason other than killing people by imitating him. But Mimic for me is not only that and what seemed to be an empty character for me became a being who has an internal struggle due to the duality that exists in him where he wants to make friends but at the same time destroys and ends everything. the one he crosses paths with. In addition, it came "to life" so to speak since in the room of papers and drawings in the Pizzaplex we can find messages like "I can feel it." Although there was also the sadistic part like Glitchtrap and the part that hates being bothered as it is in the message "This is my home, leave"

All this made my affection for him notable but it wasn't until Ruin where I loved him even more (although poor Cassie didn't deserve it for everything she went through). I honestly loved that he appeared imitating Gregory's voice lines from Security breach like "The stupid door is not open." That seemed very macabre to me because it meant that Mimic spent the entire game watching what Gregory was doing, but at the same time I loved it.

The only thing that left me with a bittersweet taste was its introduction to the lore because they could have done better by giving more clues that we were indeed facing a new villain and it was not William Afton returning from the dead again. But for everything else Mimic is amazing and I really love its concept.

I sincerely hope that in future Steel Wool games they bring him back because I think he is a great villain and a great concept that gives a fresh air to the franchise.

Finally, I would like to point out that you should always give things a chance, even if you are not very excited about them because you may find things in them that you will end up loving. And above all, it is true that having Fnaf books is very expensive and not everyone can afford it, but you can read the stories or at least summaries, but above all the stories that you will not regret.

And this has been my personal opinion of the character of The Mimic. I have to clarify that this is my personal opinion and that if you don't have the same opinion as me, that's okay too since we each have our own opinions, all of which are equally valid.

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf mimic #fnaf security breach #fnaf tales from the pizzaplex #fnaf ruin #I need Mimic in more games #I love the concept and story of Mimic and I regret not having read its story from the beginning #but in the end I gave it a chance and I don't regret them at all #opinion about character

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