Something about Steven Universe being asked why he wasn’t Pink Diamond when he should be and him screaming “SHES GONE” in the most bone chilling way that shook the world and broke the ground beneath him
Something about Lake breaking the train’s engine room in frustration after being denied over and over again, screaming and crying right at you saying that they’re not Tulip, not a sliver, not a null, or anything else that other people have labeled them, they are a PERSON
stoic illiterate unwilling assassin deeply in love with unfailingly kind rich sad gay man almost stabs his crush's brother because the brother cares so much and so genuinely for the gay man that he searched assassin's room out of worry and found knives and a mysterious letter before being interrupted by the assassin who then does not want to show him the letter which seems incredibly suspicious, only for a later scene (after the gay man interrupts them and thus stops any escalation from happening) to quietly reveal that the very sus letter in possession of this illiterate assassin is not in fact a sign he's lying about being illiterate.... it's just two pages of him practicing the gay man's name over and over in neatly spaced lines...... a reveal which he was going to STAB a man over because he doesn't know that the gay man's brother knows the man is gay and loves him with his whole heart and would never ever do anything to hurt him........ i will never get over this, how could i ever get over this, everything else ever is going to be downhill from here
Okay but like. Two things about the volume 8 statue [redacted] chapter.
Firstly. By god no amount of "yeah it was unhinged" comments on this website prepared me for whatever the fuck that was. I need at least 5 business days to process.
Second, was I the only one who read that scene as:
Hua Cheng, teeming with self-satisfaction to see Mu Qing near writhing with scorned disgust and fury: this was a 100% successful trip
Xie Lian: our statues are fucking in Mu Qing's palace oh god oh fuck what do you m e a n successful
Hua Cheng, smirk getting even bigger: this was a 100% successful trip
on a deep space mission traveling from an environmentally devastated earth with hope to restart humanity elsewhere
when they’re halfway, an explosion kills 3 crew and pushes them off course
the only witness is the Alternate who has no specific role, and she has to figure out who caused it & if they might continue to sabotage, while they're figuring out a way to get back on course with limited resources
flips between present and the past: of her childhood and training for the mission, her identity struggles, and relationship with her mother
questions the ethics of ‘restarting’ humanity elsewhere vs putting resources into fixing earth
ok so u know that feeling when u go out to a store and you notice that the cashier is Obviously Gay-- bc their hair/pins/vibe/whatever are a giveaway-- and u wanna let them know that you're Also Gay, but you cant mention it verbally bc that would be Weird, so u just sort of stare at them real hard hoping to telepathically communicate???
!!! To all the people posting AGAIN about the companions "scene count" and everybody just links "Source" it's an INCORRECT COUNT that I pulled out of my ass
PLEASE be aware of this
It's a scene count that 1 player made from memory!
Please stop sharing it as a fact that Astarion has WAY more scenes than all your other faves!
Wyll has fewer scenes than the others and that's about the only correct thing in that count
I am sure it's an honest mistake but OP forgot to count multiple Shadowheart scenes. Same goes for Lae'ezel (possibly Gale as well)
OP counted scenes for Astarion when similar scenes trigger for the other characters as well (on the same night). but OP only counted the Astarion scene and even counted it as "possibly romantic" because Astarion flirts in the scene and well.... that is part of his personality. that does not make a lot of his scenes "romance scenes" 🥴💀
(And Shadowheart's flirting didn't make OP count her scenes as "possibly romance scene")
You are so right in your distaste for Blades book 2. No matter how great things get near the end, a majority of the book was horrible. They led us along like mouse to cheese. It’s inexcusable to play with their audience this way.
I only wish more people were less willing to excuse PB’s mediocrity. The signs were on the wall for me when DLS was flat out better than Blades 2, and it’s narratively quite simple. The story told was well paced, thought out, and above all kept us waiting for more each week. I cannot say the same for B2. That is sad.
I mean I do understand why people still enjoyed it and were willing to overlook the negative aspects or didn’t have much of a problem with them to begin with. Blades 1 was a fan favorite, we all missed these characters a lot, and many people (myself included at one point) didn’t believe we would actually get book 2 because of all the bait and switches PB had done in the past. But the first two things are why I personally couldn’t overlook the glaring issues.
I can’t remember who the OP was now, but I remember seeing a post from when book 2 only had a few chapters out where someone said something about it seeming like the writers learned all the wrong things about what made the book so good, and I couldn’t agree with that person more! Yeah, book 1 was good because it was different from anything we had ever gotten before. But I think the main reason it was so good was because of the characters as individuals and the relationships we got to form with those individuals to ultimately become a family. Yet they didn’t really acknowledge those individuals or relationships in ways that did them justice for the majority of book 2. And on top of that, MC’s own characterization was inconsistent at times because the writers picked and chose when they wanted us to be a competent leader and when they wanted us to be virtually clueless for plot convenience.
Book 1 was also relatively straightforward whereas it seemed like the writers wanted to turn the sequel into their own personal commentary on religion, which is an incredibly complex topic in itself. They had some social commentary in book 1, but it was done a lot better in my opinion because it didn’t take so much of a front seat. They managed to make it clear that that commentary was important and relevant to the writers, the characters, and the readers living in the real world while never robbing book 1 of that fun adventure game used for escapism feel. Meanwhile, book 2 almost felt like ‘Rising Tides but make it religion’ at times. And that’s on top of all of the other issues I’ve already mentioned in my previous posts.
I will say that I can see how there’s usually a lot of pressure to blow things out of the water for a sequel to something so beloved, and that most likely contributed to how things played out. So maybe I’m being a bit too harsh in my judgement of everything. But I still find it very disappointing to wait so long for something just for it to be so messy and miss the mark by a mile