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#I think they were trying to introduce every single plot thread in the same episode and they did it so poorly
the-64th-gamer · 2 months
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I FINISHED MLP YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!
(Started December 3, 2022 - Ended January 1, 2024 - 413 Days)
Am absolutely mindblown to see such an amazing series go through 9 seasons and literally continuously keep getting better and better!!!!!!!
Its been very cool binging it so quickly compared to most old fandom members watching it through syndication. Similar to when I rewatched SU there's such a difference seeing ideas and characters evolve at normal pace than to sit there for years brewing in fandom content that makes you expect them to go a different path. Lots of what I've heard be controversial things like Slice of Life and Starlight in general were some of my favorite parts of the show!!
Fav episode is The Perfect Pear, I was spoiled William Shatner was gonna play someone in the series and was SO FUCKIGN EXCITED when I realized it was him and in such an amazing episode!!!!! The ending was so fucking sweet omg.
Second fav was Slice of Life cause I get it was fanservice but on its own it was a great change of pace in the season to focus on background and side characters!!! After that it feels like they focused on background characters way more and it was very rewarding.
Seeing ***every single shot of Derpy*** was the funnest part of the show, I have personal screenshots of every single time I spotted her and stopping in the middle of songs or big fights just to scream and snapshot them was such a fun scavenger hunt. It made me go NUTS to see them do actual stuff on screen (ESPECIALLY THE SCENE IN BEST GIFT EVER WHEN SHE FINALLY GOT TO SPEAK IN FOREVER). It was also hilarious to see all the error derpies with fucked up colors and hair!!!!! It stopped in the later seasons except a time where she had a purple eye in a single shot, and one where she had big mac's face???? I was having a blast.
Similarly I was also just watching every single background character all the time every time, got to figure out which ponies would be used for which locations, when they'd appear in other places, which special ones could show up anywhere, which ones would do funny stuff, seeing new super cute background characters come in like Sweet Biscuit and Rainbow Stars!!! As someone hyperfocused on stupid stuff this was so fun watching the background nonstop.
Favorite season was season 6 or 7. Starlight was a great link for the episodes and it was the most normal seasons while the writing had gotten really good. Season 8 and 9 are still super good and I love that they were so willing to be bold and change things up a ton to keep interest, but 6 and 7 are closer to the usual baseline episode stuff so they're the best to go back to if I wanna rewatch.
I think the early seasons were still looking for a longterm identity for the show but I think starting season 5 it became this really great constant escalation of things. I really expected the show to just linger around the same ol' topics but it it kept changing the characters lives, the plot, and circumstances a ton while developing old characters and introducing new ones! Out of everything I've watched so far it was like the most masterful way to run a longterm series I've seen. Never felt burnt out or that anything was dragging, but also never felt like it ever lost its core identity!
Season 9 also was just a masterclass on ending a series, every single episode focused on bringing back some side character to give them an interesting spin, or conclude some arcs left behind. There were maybe one or two normal episodes but even those didnt feel like filler! I think the show was at its best throwing new ideas out and then taking a break with a standard friendship problem episode in a normal location. After watching it I don't think there was any missing thread or interesting thing they didn't try out! (Though also the series is formatted well enough they definitely could have continued making tons of standard episodes)
I can't remember if it was season 2 or 3 but I think when they first started introducing like regular songs to non adventure/important episodes it was really off, didn't really mesh well having the show be so musical, but they definitely incorporated it better as they went along and its kinda crazy it worked out well.
BTW I've steered clear from almost all opinions on the show outside of what Ray tells me so I dont know what of my opinions are universal to the fandom, but holy shit the season 8-9 intro sucks so much ass, all of the timing is COMPLETELY lost, theres that stupid school zoom out shot thats just maud hitting a rock in the middle of the road as it slowwwwwly pans, the backgrounds are way too visually noisy in the classrooms and the castle and its just an absolutely horrible nightmare that was thrown together in a day.
But yeah great show favorite show best show!!!!! I now get to see a decade of fan content and reviews and discussions n such!!! I watched some that were time appropriate for the current season I was watching to avoid spoilers but nows time for the floodgates!!!!! I'm glad I'll be able to hold onto my opinions now though and seperate them from anything I'm gonna further see discussed by all the old fans. I'm sure there will be tons of complaints I never considered but as I see it now that was a perfect run of television that I love very dearly!!!! Its certainly changed my life going forward lol.
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timeandspacelord · 3 years
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I'm just gonna say it, cos someone has to:
The first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was... bad. It was just bad. The writing was bad, the cinematography was godawful, and I was way too distracted by those things to even focus on the acting (although I'm willing to bet it was actually very good bc Marvel does hire incredible actors)
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sirpawsies · 2 years
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A review of Higurashi Gou and Sotsu, or “5 minutes of fame for a lifetime of shame”
Disclaimer: This assumes you have at least watched the original Higurashi and Higurashi Kai
Wall of text, go
Higurashi Gou and Sotsu are a collective 2 seasons of a new Higurashi series. Originally presented as a remake of the original anime series, this series returns to Hinamizawa, June 1983, but immediately after the first episode it changes entirely into a different story than the original source.
Promising, yeah? It starts off strong during the first two arcs, which mirror the first two arcs of the original series while being different in the outcome, since Rika, now knowing she can break the loops, reacts differently to the loop. However, the repetitions aren’t the same. Most of this is written in a way that acknowledges the original series and taking it somewhere different, somewhere new.
Tataridamashi is where the differences are much more noticeable, with the group trying to get Teppei to lose custody of Satoko, already dealing with a different chapter of the original series (Minagoroshi-hen.) The arc is, for no real reason, 5 episodes long, with way too much time spent on building the group as the closest of friends (which we know by now) and having CPS say no just for the sake of not working on a case.
Nekodamashi pretty much boils down to showing why Rika is the main character and how much 7thExpac hates her, by having her try completely new approaches to loops, only to jump-cut to her being killed by someone new entirely, fucking up her mental even more. Please skip Episode 16, its just torture porn. There’s also a set-up for the finale, and flashbacks (?) of the end of Kai.
Satokowashi is the reveals: Satoko is the second looper forcing Rika back to the loop. Satoko becoming the looper boils down to her renouncing everything important to her (Her comatose, beloved brother) but also acknowledging Rika’s 100+ years of torture and saying “Yeah thats nothing gurl i want u” Which is out of character as fuck.
The latter arcs also introduce Eua, who is TOTALLY NOT FEATHERINE FROM UMINEKO. Bringing in forced tie-in to what was established to be a mostly independent series (Not counting Saikoroshi, which is non-canon anyways). Despite the absolute garbage of Nekodamashi and Satokowashi, I figured I’d watch Sotsu, as there were some interesting premises that were set up.
Boy was that a mistake
The first THREE (out of 4) arcs are PoV reruns of the first story, with sprinkled sass from TOTALLY NOT FEATHERINE. Most of the content is so identical to the question arcs that some of the more interesting reveals (Rina and Teppei remembering their gruesome deaths in the original stories, Mion with L5) go nowhere. Another thing of note is how much Eua jerks off the idea of Satoko being a Witch, and Satoko constantly making references to her and certainties. Because Umineko needs more jerking off, for some reason
And how does it all conclude? Kagurashi circles back to the moment where Rika learns Satoko is the looper, they both die there and then Higurashi becomes a shonen anime, with an entire episode dedicated to a DBZ fight (Shout outs to Chair) and then they
Stop
The show ends with Rika and Satoko on bad terms, the moral of the story is that friends aren’t for every second of your life and Witch?Satoko leaves the loops…
Wait, what??
What happened to the Umineko references? We didn't lead to it any further after the Witch remarks...
The memories from previous fragments? The single most interesting plot thread from Sotsu? Led absolutely nowhere outside of one arc.
The serious trauma Satoko forced Rika to endure? It ends up meaning nothing and they pout and split up for a bit?
Gou and Sotsu both join to build up to nothing. The show starts off so many threads and closes none of them well, with a tacked-on happy(?) ending that shat on everything the original series established.
To me, this show’s existence as it is proves that 7thExpac tacks on things thinking they’re clever, like Fate, but in the end it's all a poorly executed mess, like Kingdom Hearts
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itsclydebitches · 3 years
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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Dark”
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Welcome back, everyone! Can you believe it's been six weeks already? I can't. Something something the uncomfortable passage of time during a pandemic as emphasized by a web-series.
But we're here to talk about RWBY the fictional story, not RWBY the cultural icon. At least, we will in a moment. First, I'd like to acknowledge that shaky line between the two, growing blurrier with every volume. A sort of good news, bad news situation.
The bad news — to get that out of the way — is that we cannot easily separate RWBY from its authors and those authors have, sadly, been drawing a lot of negative attention as of late. This isn't anything new, not at all, but I think the unexpectedly long hiatus gave a lot of fans (myself included) the chance to think about Rooster Teeth's failings without getting distracted by their biggest and brightest production. There's a laundry list of problems here — everything from the behavior of voice actors to the quality of their merch — but as a sort of summary issue, I'd like to highlight the reviews that continue to pop up on websites like Glassdoor, detailing the toxic, sexist, crunch-obsessed environment that RT employees are forced to work in. A lot of these websites requires a login to read more than a page of reviews, but you can check out a Twitter thread about it here. 
Now, I want to be clear: I'm not bringing this up as a way to shame anyone enjoying RWBY. This isn't a simplistic claim of, "The authors are Problematic™ and therefore you can't like the stuff they produce." Nor is this meant to be a catch-all excuse for RWBY's problems. If it were, I'd have dropped these recaps years ago. I'm of the belief that audiences maintain the right to both praise and criticize the work they're given, regardless of the context in which that work was produced. At the end of the day, RT has presented RWBY as a finished product and, more than that, presents it as an excellent product, one worth both our emotional investment and our money (whether in the form of paying for a First account, or encouraging us to buy merch, attend cons, etc.) I'll continue to critique RWBY as needed, but I a) wanted fans to be at least peripherally aware of these issues and b) clarify that my use of "RT" in statements like, "I can't believe RT is screwing up this badly" is meant to be a broad, nebulas acknowledgement that someone in the company is screwing up, either creatively (doesn't have the skill to write a good scene) or morally (hasn't created an environment in which other creators are capable of crafting a good scene). The real, inner workings of such companies are mostly a secret to their audiences and thus it's near impossible for someone like me — random fan writing these for fun as a casual side hobby — to accurately point fingers. Hence, broad "RT." I just wanted to clarify that when I use this it's as a necessary placeholder for whoever is actually responsible, not a damnation of the overworked animator breaking down in a bathroom. Heavy stuff, but I thought it was necessary (or at least worthwhile) to acknowledge this issue as we head into the second half of the volume.
Now for the good news: RWBY has reached 100 episodes! For any who may not know, 100 is a pretty significant number in the TV world because, when talking about prime time programming, it guarantees syndicated reruns. Basically, networks don't want audiences to get burned out with a show — changing the channel when it comes on because ugh, I've seen this already, recently too — and 100 episodes allows for a roughly five month run without any repeats, making it very profitable. RWBY is obviously not a television show and doesn't benefit from any of this (hell, modern television doesn't benefit from this as much as it used to, not in the age of streaming), but the 100 episode threshold is still ingrained in American culture. Beyond just being a nice, rounded number, it is historically a measure of huge success and I can't imagine that RT isn't aware of that. Regardless of what we think of RWBY's current quality, this is one hell of a milestone and should be applauded.
All that being said... RWBY's quality is definitely still lacking lol.
Our 100th episode is titled "Dark" — keeping with the one word titles, then — and I'd like to emphasize that, as a 100th episode, it definitely delivers in terms of plot. There's plenty of action, important character beats, and at least one major reveal, everything we'd expect from a milestone and a Part II premiere. The animation also continues to be noteworthy for its beauty, as I found myself admiring many of the screenshots I took for this recap. There are certainly things to praise. The only problem (one we're all familiar with by now) is that these small successes are situated within a narrative that's otherwise falling apart. It's all good stuff... provided you ignore literally everything else surrounding it.
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But let's dive into some examples. We open on Qrow starting, awoken by the thunder outside. Robyn has been watching him and makes a peppy comment about how none of them will be sleeping tonight, followed by a more serious, "Sounds bad out there." Yeah, it does sound bad, especially when they all know — thanks to Ruby's message back in Volume 7 — that this is due to Salem's arrival. I think a lot of the fandom has forgotten that little detail because people often discuss Qrow as if he is entirely ignorant of what is going on outside his cell. Even if we were to assume that he's forgotten all about the pesky Salem issue (the horror of Clover's death overriding everything else, perhaps) he still knows that Tyrian is running loose in a heat-less city with a creepy storm going on and, from his perspective, the Very Evil Ironwood is still running the show. So it's bad, which begs the question of why Qrow (and Robyn, for that matter) hasn't displayed an ounce of legitimate worry for everyone he knows out there. Thus far, their interactions have centered entirely around Qrow's misplaced blame and Robyn's terrible attempts to lighten the mood, despite the fact that a war is raging right beyond that wall. It's another example of RWBY's inability to manage tone properly, to say nothing of balancing the multiple concerns any one character should be trying to juggle. Just as it rankles that Ruby and Yang don't seem to care about what has happened to their uncle, Qrow likewise doesn't seem to care about what might be happening to his nieces. When did we reach a point where these relationships are so broken that someone can be arrested/chucked into a deadly battle and the others just... ignore that?
So Robyn's otherwise innocuous comment immediately reminds me of how badly the narrative has treated these conflicts and, sadly, things don't improve much from here. We are thankfully spared more of Robyn's jokes when Qrow realizes that what he's hearing can't be thunder. A second later, Cinder blasts through the wall — called it! — and Qrow instinctively transforms. 
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The only downside to this moment is that the whole ceiling falls down on Qrow and the others because APPARENTLY these cells don't have tops on them. Seriously. As far as I can recall we don't see the stone breaking through the forcefield somehow and this looks pretty open to me.
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If it is... you're telling me these crazy powerful fighters who practice landing strategies and leap tall buildings in a single bound —
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— can't just hop over this mildly high electric fence to get out? Qrow can't just fly away?
We're, like, two minutes in, folks.
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We transfer to Nora's perspective as she wakes up, seeing Klein giving her the IV. He tells her not to worry, that "you and your friend are going to be just fine." What friend? Penny? Klein went upstairs prior to Weiss hugging Whitley or Penny crash landing outside. I had thought them bursting through the door with another unconscious friend was the first time he learned what the big bang outside was, but apparently not.
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Penny is, obviously, a mess. While I now understand the choice to make her blood such an eye-catching color when that's crucial to the Hound's hunt, I still think it looks strange visually. Like someone has taken a copy of RWBY and painted over it. It doesn't look like it fits the art style. More than that, it implies some rather complicated things about Penny's humanity, especially in a volume focused around her being a "real girl." Real enough for Maiden powers, but with obviously inhuman blood that isn't even referred to as "bleeding." Penny "leaks" instead.
Toss in the fact that she's literally an android who is made up of tech — recall the running gags about her being heavy, or it hurts to fist-bump her, to say nothing of keeping things like multiple blades inside her body — yet Klein says that her "basic anatomy" is the same and he can "stitch up that wound."
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I'm sorry, what? Whatever Penny looks like on the inside, it's not going to resemble a human woman's anatomy, and Klein might be able to stitch the outer layer of skin she's got, but that won't do anything to fix whatever metal bits have been broken underneath. Penny isn't a human-robot hybrid, she's a robot with an aura. Penny has knives in her back, rockets in her feet, and a super computer behind her eyes. When our clip introduced that Klein would be the one to help Penny, my initial reaction was, "Seriously? He's a butler and a doctor and an engineer?" But RWBY didn't even try to get away with a Super Klein explanation, they just waved away Penny's very obvious, inhuman anatomy. Yeah, I'm sure "stitching up" an android wound is just like giving Nora her IV. I hope the surgical sutures he used are extra strong!
In an effort to not entirely drag this episode, I do appreciate that Whitley is allowed an "ugh" moment about the non-blood covering his shirt without anyone calling him out on it. That felt like the sort of thing the show would usually try to make a character feel guilty about and I'm glad that, for once, he was just allowed to be frustrated without comment.
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Then the power goes out and May calls, which raises questions about what state the CCTS is in and when scrolls are available to our protagonists vs. when they're not. But whatever. She's checking in because she just "saw another bombing run light up the Kingdom" and —
Wait. Bombing? Salem is bombing the city? I know we've seen explosions in the sky, but I'd always just attributed that to evil aesthetic. Why does this dialogue sound like it's from a World War II film and not a fantasy sci-fi show about literal monsters launching a ground attack?
May looks pretty against the sky though. I like her hair color against that purple.
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I'm admittedly grasping at positives here because we finally return to her "You have to choose" ultimatum and — surprise! — May has pulled back completely. Ruby says that once they've helped Penny, "We'll...we'll do something!" which is once again her avoiding making a decision. Ruby still refuses to choose, instead falling back on generic, optimistic pep talks. They'll figure out how to stop Salem later. They'll think about the impact of telling the world later. They'll choose who to help later. Ruby keeps pushing these problems into the future where, she hopes, a perfect, magical solution will have appeared for her to latch onto. When that continues to not happen, others pressuring her to actually do something and stop waiting for perfection — Ironwood, Yang, May — she panics and continues stalling for time. Wait an episode and the narrative supports her in this.
Because initially May was forcing Ruby to decide. Now, May enables her desire to keep putting things off. "Don't beat yourself up, kid. At this point, I don't know how much is left to be done." That's the exact opposite of what May believed last episode, that there was still so much work and good to do for the people of Mantle. This is precisely what the show did with Yang and Ren's scenes too, having people call Ruby out... but then return to a message of, 'Don't worry, you're actually doing just fine' before Ruby is forced to actually change.
None of which even touches on May calling her "kid" in this moment. That continues to be a convenient way of absolving Ruby of any responsibility. When she wants to steal airships or Amity Tower, she's an adult everyone should listen to, the leader of this war. When the story wants to absolve her of previously mentioned flaws, she becomes a kid who shouldn't "beat herself up." I said years ago that RWBY couldn't continue to let the group be both children and adults simultaneously, yet here we are.
So that was a thoroughly disappointing scene. Ruby gets her moment to look sad and defeated, listing "the grimm, the crater, Nora, Penny" as problems she doesn't know how to solve. Note that 'Immortal witch attacking the city I've helped trap here' isn't included in that list. Ruby is still ignoring Salem herself and no one in the group is picking up where May left off, challenging her to do more than wring her hands over things others are already trying to take care of: Ironwood is fighting the grimm, May has gone off to help the crater, Klein is patching up Nora and Penny. Ruby, as one flawed individual, should not be expected to come up with a solution to everything, but she does need to stop acting like she can come up with a solution to everything when it matters most (office scene) and rejecting others' solutions when they ask for her help (Ironwood, May).
If it feels like I'm dragging the flawed, traumatized teenager too much, it's not in an effort to ignore those aspects of her identity. Rather, it's because she's also the licensed huntress who wrested control from a world leader and violently demanded she be put in charge of this battle. Ruby, by her own actions, is now responsible for dealing with these problems, or admitting she was wrong and letting others take the lead, without purposefully derailing their plans. She doesn't get to suddenly go, "I don't know," cry a little, and get sympathetic pats.
But of course that's precisely what happens, courtesy of Weiss.
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During this whole scene I kept wondering why no one was celebrating Nora waking up, especially when Ruby outright mentions her. Have they just not noticed given all the Penny drama? Because Nora absolutely woke up.
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Aaaand went back to sleep, I guess. What was the point of that POV shot? No worries though, she'll wake up again in a minute.
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Willow arrives and announces that they can fix the power (and Penny) using the generator at the edge of the property. I'm convinced RT doesn't actually know what a generator is because the characters are acting like it's some super special device that only richy-rich could possibly have. Whitley says that it's the SDC executives who have their "own power supply" and that it's "extremely unfair." Now, don't get me wrong, a good generator powering large portions of your house can run you 30k+, but you can also get one that plugs into your extension cord and powers your fridge for a couple hundred. There's absolutely a class issue here, just not the one Whitley and Weiss seem to be commenting on. They make a generator sound like the sort of device that only a politician-CEO could possible have and it's weird.
Likely, it sounds weird because it's a choppy way of getting Whitley to bring up the wealth disparity so he can then go, 'That's right! We're crazy rich with a company housing tons of ships! We can use those to evacuate Mantle.' Awkwardness aside, I do like that the Schnee wealth is being used for good purposes, but... evacuate where? To the city currently under attack by a giant whale? In a RWBY that wasn't determined to demonize Ironwood, this would have been a great plot point during the office scene instead, with Weiss offering her services to Ironwood, even if the group decides that a continued evacuation still isn't possible.
Instead, we get it here from Whitley. Do I need to point out the obvious? That Whitley is the MVP of this episode? He's done more good in an HOUR than the group has managed in a year. Give this kid some training and make him a huntsmen instead.
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We're given a (very pretty!) shot of the shattered moon because it wouldn't be RWBY if we weren't continually reminded that gods once wiped out humanity before destroying part of a celestial body... and absolutely no one talks about that lol.
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Blake's coat might not make any sense for her color scheme, but it does make her easy to spot as she and Ruby run across the grounds. Oh my god, they're actually doing something together! It only took eight years. They even get a lovely talk where Blake admits how much she looks up to Ruby, despite her being younger, and once again I'm struck at how much more I would have loved this scene if it had appeared elsewhere in the series. It is, indeed, as sweet and emotional as all the RWBY GIF-ers are claiming... provided you overlook that this is the exact opposite of what Ruby needs to hear right now. She doesn't need to hear that she's more mature and reliable than her elders when she's functioning under a "We don't need adults" mentality. She doesn't need to hear that not knowing what to do is totally fine, not when that led to her turning on Ironwood, despite not knowing how to stop Salem. She doesn't need to hear that "doing something" — doing anything — is a strength, because Ruby keeps avoiding the big problems for smaller ones she's comfortable with, like standing by Penny's bedside instead of deciding between Mantle and Atlas. Blake's speech is heartfelt, but it's a speech that suits a Beacon days Ruby who is having some doubts about her leadership skills, not the girl whose impulsive — and now lack of — actions is having world-wide repercussions. Everyone is babying Ruby to a staggering degree. It's like if we had a med show where the doctor is standing by the bedside of a coding patient, fretting between two treatments. 'Don't worry,' their colleague says, patting their shoulder. 'I've always looked up to you. You'll do something when you're ready' and then they continue to watch the patient, you know, die.
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Also: who does Ruby look up to? Everyone talks about how much they depend on and trust Ruby, but who does Ruby look to for guidance? A number of her problems stem from the fact that she has rejected the advice of everyone who has tried to help her improve: Qrow, Ozpin, Ironwood, even Yang. Ruby is presented as the pinnacle of what to strive for in a leader, rather than a leader who has only been doing this for two years and still has a great deal to learn.
Anyway, they get the generator on and the Hound shows up.
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I am begging RT to just make RWBY a horror story. All their best scenes the last three years have been horror I am bEGGING —
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Anyway, while Ruby waits to be eaten we cut to Willow and Klein, the former of which is reaching for her bottle, pulling back, reaching again, all while her hand shakes. This is good. This is what we should have gotten with Qrow. Which isn't to say that their (or anyone's) addiction should be identical, but rather that this is a far more engaging and complex look at addiction than what our birb got. Willow tells us that she doesn't drink in the dark despite bringing the bottle with her; tries to resist drinking when she's scared and ultimately fails. Qrow just decided to stop drinking after decades of addiction, seemingly for no reason, and that was that. Why is a side character we only met this volume written better than one of the main cast?
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Blake manages to call Weiss about the Hound and she asks if Whitley can handle the airships without her. I mean, I assume so given that Weiss is looking at the bookshelves while Whitley does all the work lol. He makes a teasing comment about how he can if she can handle that grimm and she comments that they still need to work on his "attitude."
No they don't. Weiss stuck a weapon in her kid brother's face. Whitley made a joke. Even if Weiss' comment is likewise meant to be read as teasing, it's clear that we've bypassed any meaningful conversation between them. That hug was supposed to be a Fix Everything moment even though, as I've laid out elsewhere, it didn't even come close.
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We cut back to Ruby getting thrown through a wall into the backyard and the Hound creepily coming after her. She's freaked out by this clearly abnormal grimm and Blake is weirdly... not? "It's just a grimm. Just focus!" Uh, it's obviously not. Have we reached the traumatized, sleep-deprived point where the group is sinking into full-blown denial? I wouldn't be surprised. They've been awake for like... 40+ hours.
Because the Hound knocks Ruby out with a single hit. Just, bam, she's down. "Focusing" is not the solution here.
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Weiss calls to warn the others about the grimm, telling them to stick together. Willow (understandably) starts freaking out and flees the room (classic horror trope!). Klein is left alone when Penny wakes up with red eyes. Oh no!
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Don't worry. You know nothing meaningful happens.
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She shoves Klein before (somehow?) resisting the hack, her Maiden powers going wild in the process. Just when it looks as if Penny might cause some serious damage, Nora wakes up, takes her hand, and says, I kid you not:
"Hey... no one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do... It's just a part of you. Don't forget about the rest."
Okay. I want to re-emphasize that I love hopeful, uplifting, victory-won-through-the-power-of-love stories. Istg I'm not dead inside, it's just that RWBY does this so badly. I mean, what is this? It has similarities to the character shouting, 'No! Resist!' to their mind-controlled ally, but this is not presented as a desperate, last-ditch effort by Nora. She just speaks like this is the most obvious truth in the world. If you don't want to have your mind taken over... just don't! It's that simple. The problem definitely isn't that Watts has changed her coding and has implemented a command she can't override, it's that Penny has forgotten about the "rest" of her personhood.
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And this works. Granted, not for long, but we leave Nora having successfully calmed Penny down and until her eyes unexpectedly go red again scenes later, we're left assuming that this is a permanent solution. That, imo anyway, is taking the Power of Love too far, overriding the basic reality of Penny being hacked. It’s not a personal failing she must overcome, it’s an external attack. I would have rather had Nora react to the scars she saw on her arm, or have a moment with Klein, or get some love from the group. Not a wakes up, falls asleep, wakes up again to save Penny with a Ruby level 'Just ignore reality' pep-talk, then back to sleep again.
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So Penny isn't attacking her allies, or mistakenly hurting her allies with wild Maiden powers. Not that the group doesn't have enough to deal with, but still. Weiss arrives to help with the Hound and attempts a new summon, only to fail when two minor grimm burrow up into her glyphs. I really enjoyed that moment, both for the wing visual and the knowledge that Weiss' glyphs can fail if you break them somehow (which makes sense). Also, I just like that she failed in general? Weiss is, as per usual now, about to demonstrate just how OP she is compared to the rest of the team, so it was nice to see her faltering here.
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The Hound tries to make off with Ruby and Blake does an excellent job of keeping it tethered. Ruby finally wakes, only to realize that the grimm is actually after Penny since it's staring at her power up through the window, no longer trying to escape. Moments like this remind me that there's someone on RT's writing team that knows what they're doing, at least some of the time. The assumption that the Hound is after Ruby as a SEW, the surprise that it's actually Penny, realizing it holds up because Ruby is covered in Penny's blood and Blake is not... that's all nice, tight plotting. More of that please!
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The Hound drops her and Ruby's aura shatters when she hits the ground. I want everyone to remember this moment as an example of how strong the Hound is. The group may be tired, but unlike YJR they've been sitting around in the Schnee manor for a number of hours, regaining strength. We saw the Hound hit Ruby twice — once through the wall and once to knock her out — and then she falls from a not very high distance for a huntress, yet her aura is toast. That's the level of power and skill the Hound possesses. Decimating YJR, knocking Oscar out, same for Ruby, avoiding Blake and Weiss' hits, soon to treat Penny like a ragdoll. Just remember all this for the episode's end.
Blake tells Weiss she'll take care of Ruby, you go help the others. Yay breaking up the duos more! Bad timing though as the new acid-spitting grimm pops out of the ground and Blake is now left alone to face it.
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Weiss re-enters the mansion, knowing the Hound is somewhere nearby, but not where. Suddenly, Willow's voice sounds through her scroll with an, "Above you!" which... doesn't keep Weiss from getting hit lol. But it's the thought that counts! Willow has accessed the cameras she's set up throughout the manor, watching the Hound's movements, and I have to say, that is a WAY better use of her separation from Klein than I thought we were getting. I legit thought they'd have Willow run away in a panic, meet the Hound, die, and then Weiss could be sad about losing her mom.
It does say something about RWBY's writing that this was my knee-jerk theory, as well as my surprise when we got something way better.
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The Hound runs off, uninterested in Weiss, and she asks Willow to keep tabs on it. It heads for Whitley next (also covered in Penny's blood) and very creepily stalks him in the office with a, "I know you're here." Whitley is seconds away from being Hound chow before one of Weiss' boars pin it against the wall. He runs, then runs BACK to finish deploying the airships, before finally escaping assumed death. Goddamn this boy is pulling his weight.
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I assume all these ships are automated then? I hope someone takes a moment to call May. Otherwise it's going to be super weird for the Mantle citizens if a fleet of SDC ships just show up and hover there...
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I don't entirely understand how Weiss saved him though. She's nowhere to be seen when Whitley leaves and he runs a fair distance before he and Willow encounter Weiss again. We know her summons don't have to keep right next to her, but are they capable of rudimentary thought, attacking an enemy — and an enemy only — despite Weiss being a couple corridors down and unable to see the current battlefield? I don't know. In another series I'd theorize that this was a deliberate hint, a way to clue us into the fact that Willow, someone who we currently know almost nothing about, had training in the past and summoned the boar herself. Weiss and Winter certainly didn't get that hereditary skill from Jacques. Hell, we might still get that, Weiss reacting with confusion next episode when Whitley thanks her for the boar, but I doubt it. That scene with Ruby and the Hound aside, the show isn't this good at laying groundwork and then following up on it.
Case in point: Weiss says, "I didn't forget you" to Whitley after he gets away from the Hound, the moment trying to harken back to her promise to Willow. Key word is "trying." Because she absolutely forgot him! Weiss threatened and ignored Whitley until he proved his usefulness. I also shouldn't need to point out that, "Don't forget your brother" does not mean, "Don't let your brother die a horrible death by abnormal grimm." Weiss acts like her saving him is a fulfillment of her promise, rather than just the most basic of human decency. And also, you know, her job.
So that part is frustrating. The entire Schnee dynamic is a mess, from Weiss making a joke of her father's arrest, to Willow (presumably) fixing their relationship by putting a hand on her daughter's shoulder. Okay.
Then Weiss cuts off the Hound by summoning a giant wall of ice. My brain, every time this happens:
YOU COULD HAVE FIXED THE HOLE IN MANTLE'S WALL.
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Moving on, Blake's fight against the acid... thing has some great choreography, including Blake using her semblance which we haven't seen in AGES. 
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I really like the fight itself, just not what Blake is shouting the whole time. "I need you, Ruby! We all need you!" This has really gotten ridiculous. Ruby is presented as everyone's sole savior despite failing time and time again. It's not that I don't think Blake as a character should have faith in her leader, it's that I don't think the writers should be crafting a story where everyone puts their unshakable hopes in an untrained, disloyal, impulsive 17 year old. I mean, Ruby is currently unconscious, yet Blake is acting like if she doesn't wake up — she, as an individual, if Ruby Rose does not re-join this fight — then all is lost. If Ruby doesn't save them, no one can. Which is, of course, absurd on numerous levels. Blake doesn't need the passed out, aura-less Ruby right now, she needs the still very healthy Weiss pulling out multiple summons and an ice wall! Use your scroll and call for backup again.
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But of course, Ruby wakes up and kills the new, terrifying grimm with a single hit. It's a preview of what's to come with the Hound and it's just as ridiculous here as it will be there.
Speaking of the Hound, am I the only one who thought this was... cute?
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I can't possibly be the only one. That head-tilt is exactly what my dogs do and my brain instinctively went, "Aww, puppy!"
Murderous puppy.
The Hound realizes none of the Schnees are who it's looking for and runs off. Penny, meanwhile, has been fully taken over because, well, that's just what's convenient now. She resists long enough keep Amity up, then succumbs, then resists to apologize to Ruby, then succumbs, then resists because Nora asked her to, then succumbs once it's time to knock her out. If RWBY was willing to commit to consequences, Penny would have been taken over and that was that. The characters would need to deal with whatever outcome happens as a result. Instead, the show very carefully avoids any of those pesky consequences by having Penny successfully resisting at key moments, despite no explanation of how she's managing that.
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She shoves Klein again (Klein is having a Bad Time) and starts walking down the main steps. When Whitley wants to know where the hell she's going, Penny mechanically responds that she must "Open the vault, then self-destruct." I suppose the change Watts made was the self-destruct order? Ironwood obviously wants the vault open, though not necessarily Penny's death. Think what you will of his moral compass, she's a damn powerful ally — a research project, perhaps — and a Maiden to boot. At the very least, her death may give the powers to someone even worse.
God, please don't let them have brought Penny back and made her a Maiden just to kill her again.
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The Hound arrives though and, as said, knocks Penny out. We're back to square one with her, then. Note though that this attack is near instantaneous. She grabs its hands one second, is hanging limply the next. Wow, the Hound sure is a terrifying antagonist!
Not for long.
"That's enough," Ruby says and one-shots it with her eyes.
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Now, I want to talk for a moment about the implications of that line. "That's enough." Obviously Ruby is #done with this situation and emotionally unwilling to let the Hound kidnap Penny (congratulations, Nuts and Dolts shippers), but there's a meta reading here as well. Not intentional, but glaring to me nonetheless. Basically, the idea that the Hound has, from a plot perspective, done enough. It has served its singular purpose. It kidnapped Oscar and now it dies. Never-mind how insanely powerful we've established the Hound to be, never-mind how Ruby's eyes also work or don't work according to whether anything of actual import is on the line. From a plot perspective "that's enough" and the Hound can be disposed of instantly. It got Oscar and gave us an episode of filler creepiness. Move along now.
The idea behind Ruby's eyes isn't bad, but the execution absolutely is. RT has undermined a huge portion of the stakes by giving their protagonist an instant kill-shot that always works precisely when she needs it to. Starting with the Apathy, we have yet to get a moment where Ruby's eyes fail to save the day when she really needs them to, no matter how incredible the challenge. The Hound was very intentionally written to be a grimm outside of the group's current power level. It thinks, it talks, they literally can't touch it. This creates the expectation that the group will need to grow stronger — or at least become smarter — in order to surmount this new obstacle, yet Ruby's eyes undermine all of that. The group hasn't grown in years, the show just makes enemies weaker as needed (Ace Ops), or has Ruby pull out her eyes as a trump card. It wouldn't be that bad if we'd at least gotten a good battle out of it, one where the group gets close to defeating the Hound on their own, but needs Ruby's eyes to finish it off. Instead, she literally walks up without any aura, announces to the audience that this antagonist's time is up, and blasts it out a window.
Granted, Ruby's eyes don't completely finish it. The Hound pulls itself to its feet and we see this.
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Yup, that's a guy and yup, those are silver eyes.
I would like to issue a formal apology to the "It's secretly Summer!" theorists in the fandom. I mean, I still think it would be ridiculous (and at this point highly improbable) that Ruby's dead mother has actually been a grimm mutant this whole time, just hanging out in Salem's realm while she waits for the plot to start before attacking the world, and then sends some no-name faunus dude after the group instead of their leader's mother for extra, emotional torture... but you all were definitely right about the “It's a person” part! I... don't know how I feel about this. Admittedly, it seems to be a logical continuation of the other grimm-human hybrids we've seen — namely Cinder and Salem herself — and it finally explains why Salem wants Ruby alive (even though it actually doesn't because WHY did she want more SEWs for Hound grimm when she wasn't even attacking back then? And already has all these other insanely powerful tools??), but at the same time, it feels like it's complicating a story that doesn't need further complications. The group fights monsters and has an immortal enemy. You don't need to add 'Some of those monsters are secretly human' to the mix.
It doesn't hurt that this twist is giving me Attack on Titan vibes, which, ew. A dark time in my fandom life, folks.
The Hound staggers a few steps before Whitley and Willow dump a suit of armor on it. That's all it takes to kill the most dangerous grimm we've ever seen: a single flash of silver eyes and some heavy metal. This also wreaks havoc with the implication that Salem wants SEWs alive because they create such powerful grimm. Obviously not. I mean yeah, normal huntsmen are going to have serious  problems, we’ve seen that this volume, but any other SEWs nearby will take a Hound out instantaneously. For a villain with so many other powerful abilities — immortality, magic, endless normal grimm, her nifty soup — Salem would be much better served just killing SEWs straight out. Clearly, creating Hounds isn't worth the effort.
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The Hound leaves some bones behind and Ruby collapses to her knees, overcome with the knowledge that this was once a person. Again, uncomfortable Attack on Titan parallels.
We finish our premiere with Cinder clearing away rubble to reveal Watts. Honestly, I like that we ended on this because her rescue is hilarious. She just slings him over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes and blasts off with her magic fire feet. Fantastic.
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Note though that with this scene we've seen almost everything from the clip and the trailer. What's to come in the rest of Volume 8? No idea. Outside of Winter leading the charge with the bomb, we got it all here.
Time to update the bingo board!
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I'm crossing off "Introducing new grimm that are quickly abandoned." Between the Hound and acid-dude both falling to a single blast/cut from Ruby, we've more than earned this square.
It doesn't look as if we'll get another Watts-Jacques team-up now that he's left, but you never know.
Maria's got me worried. I feel like her Yoda fight against Neo is the one thing she'll be allowed to do this volume, but given that we didn't see anyone except Ruby's group this episode, we don't yet know whether the story is now ignoring her and Pietro, or if they'll re-appear in another episode like YJR.  
Qrow is free. Will he get a drink before trying to murder Ironwood? Perhaps.
Still no bingo :(
All in all, the episode was by no means horrible. I think there were lots of horrible parts, but also some legitimately well executed moments, fun action, and scenes that I can easily imagine as squee worthy if you lean back and squint. Everything is comparative and in the growing collection of bad RWBY episodes, this one isn't securing a top slot. Which doesn't mean I think it's good, just... not as bad as it could have been and primarily only bad due to long-running problems, not things this specific episode has done. That's my bar then, so low it has officially entered the underworld.
Still, RWBY is back and a part of me is eager to see where this volume takes us, for better or for worse.
Until next week! 💜
[Ko-Fi]
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castielcommunism · 3 years
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i believe the consent rule was just a plot device to give the brothers any leverage over these more powerful cosmic beings while not giving them TOO much leverage bc after all not consenting is a pretty easy thing to maintain if coercion would negate attempts at possession. but then they very clearly didn't know what to do with it in later seasons: jimmy novak is invoked as an example of the debate about coercive angelic concepts of consent. the fact that consent is not revokable also seems incoherent: jimmy was explicitly unhappy and wanted to go home but cas had to be pulled out by other angels rather than forced out by jimmy's revoked consent. sam could revoke consent with gadreel. cas not revoking consent with lucifer enabled his continued possession. michael could overpower dean's revoked consent and also could jump back in after leaving: why didn't lucifer do the same thing with castiel instead of burning through multiple vessels? the message conveyed about consent is that these are continued invasions and the angels are in the wrong (except (?) Cas bc only a few writers were brave enough to actually comment on that and most of them failed to go beyond cas experiencing remorse for his actions) but it's not making a nuanced statement about anything bc it serves primarily as a way to carry plot. you could probably read into it 500 different ways depending on your politics and which chunk of the show/characters you're interested in. this definitely threads into the larger conversation about how the characters view their bodies as tools and this is commented on ("daddy's blunt instrument") but never actually engaged with. the writers sense that true engagement with the themes of bodily autonomy would make spn a trap of a psychological horror where everyone is condemned, and they're trying to write a 40 min episode on a teen show network where the sexy hero beats the also sexy monster. spn, ur body politics are simply diabolical
Yeah I definitely agree with you, I think that it’s mostly just a plot device. I’m assuming the intended reading is that it’s supposed to showcase the brothers’ capacity for free will in the face of their own destiny, since that’s the main theme of the show when that angel rule was introduced.
The thing that drives me up the wall is that like, there definitely are things in the show that are an intentional commentary on really big things like religion and free will - it was a conscious and explicit choice to represent heaven as this amoral-at-best antagonistic institution that has almost no sympathy for human suffering. But the plot devices (like the angel consent rule) that allow that to be explored are also part of the text itself and say a lot of very interesting/contradictory things that contribute to that commentary. I mean I know this is an issue with every single piece of media (no author can account for every possible interpretation of all elements of their story, etc), but with spn specifically it really is maddening because it’s not always clear what was just a very weird unintended consequence of a plot device and what is like an actual conscious part of the text, because those things are so closely linked together and the show tries incredibly hard to not be “political” (ie it is ridiculously politically incoherent). Drives me bonkers!!!!!
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Hey! Feel free to ignore this long question but it was just something I was thinking about. I’m interacting with this fandom for the first time since about mid season 12-ish, I was an avowed deancas meta reader and I’m trying to catch up on some goings on. Something that’s really been bothering me since it went canon was something I was trying to figure out since I left: what happened during the carver era? Was he setting it up to be canon, because I can’t not see that when I watch s8 and 9, but post-Charlie dying it all seemed so disorganized, and bad. He set it up perfectly then lost the thread totally. Do you have any insight on what happened there? And 2, if I couldn’t stand the first half of season 12 but really liked 15x18, do you think I’d like the rest of the dabb era? How does it compare to peak carver era? Thanks for reading and no pressure! Forgot how much I love this meta stuff and now it’s all I think about again lol
Hi there! 
I think Carver era behind the scenes might end up being something we have to wait for tell-all interviews to understand... At least Dabb was there for all of it so maybe after the show is over, someone might grab him for a sit down to explain some shit and go over the old territory :P I’d guess that Carver was not committed to canon in the same way but he was open to exploring and expanding the relationships and Cas’s character just because he liked Cas and these dynamics, and definitely wasn’t adverse to at least ironically thinking of Dean n Cas in a certain way, hence the “jilted lover” thing. 
I think also there was generally less of a cohesive overall voice to the show from season 8 onwards, which is not a bad thing in that it meant we began to really see each individual writer putting their talents out there (or not-talents) but does mean the interpretation of Dean n Cas or gay subtext in general was an absolute rollercoaster, depending on who was writing, because combining looser control on the creative direction per episode along with a deeper focus on character overall... Bobo could roll right up in season 9 and immediately start serving Destiel but Dabb had been writing since season 4 and it was still season 8 where he first starts flexing any what would become shipper muscles :P 
Considering how Carver era fizzled out and Dabb took over with a stronger sense of what to DO with the dang show and what radical burn-it-all-down steps that involved to take it to a conclusion, including absolutely freewheeling the plot for a little while, throwing spaghetti at the wall and even letting Buckleming serve total curveballs and all, for the sake of really digging into character stuff instead, I do think the change is obvious again. I don’t even know if Dabb took over MEANING to make Destiel canon, but that he was absolutely of the mind that Cas was important and a TFW ending would be necessary. And then once he spent some time on that, the obvious answer that Destiel was integral hit at last through some sort of self-reflection on what the fuck they’d been writing all this time as it came to tying up loose ends. 
Honestly the writers he picked kinda do obviously compliment Destiel but maybe it was even just having so many fresh young voices at the table all at once that LATER shifted the conversation into “why the heck wouldn’t we do this?” after they settled in. 
Anyway, I’m not caught up on the current season, but I would say that Dabb era was as far as I watched, loosely written on the plot front and managing Buckleming nonsense about as deftly as a bunch of excellent writers who are trying to have a consistent vision but need to constantly work around someone lobbing bricks at the story can do. But it got better and better as it went on, because it was focussing more on the emotional stuff and the character dynamics, and taking them all seriously. Season 13 was an important shift in really taking Destiel seriously, and from the sounds of things Dabb was maybe considering Destiel by season 14 and ready to hit the ground running with 15? 
I personally think that Dabb era really started to be very very good as soon as Jack was properly introduced, especially as I spent a whole hiatus dreading him and convinced this was a terrible idea (he’s buckleming spawn, from one of their worst episodes overall behind their true classics like the racist truck) but Dabb wrote the first episode with Jack and it made him instantly endearing, and his whole story was well-handled from then on, making even some of the more garbage characters at least temporarily interesting or at least relevant or to make the scenes they were in easier to endure. 
So I’d say try again and power through until you’ve given Jack the 4 episodes at the beginning of season 13 they use to introduce and explore what he means to the show, and see how you’re feeling about those dynamics and storylines, as they really are where the show goes from then onwards. 
I also have to admit that season 9 is my favourite Carver era season, and overall I don’t like the seasons so much as loving certain episodes, and having a whole lot I don’t like in between. Dabb’s crack team of writers demonstrated what it was like to enjoy every single writer except Buckleming, and have a much more reliable run of episodes in a row consistently so if I was comparing them, especially with hindsight, Carver era is really left in the dust for me. My only regret is that Buckleming never retired early and left the show in the hands of competent adults for a full season.
To really emphasise how much I trust the writers these days, I’m pretty much assuming without watching them that the dozen episodes I haven’t watched will be good and I’ll have a great time watching them, and that Bobo’s last episode will be amazing quite apart from the bizarre mark it left on the historical record. 
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nikadd · 3 years
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i’ve said this in the tags of the previous spn post i reblogged but i just wanna highlight how the writers kept aborting sam’s storylines before they really got to the part where it became a Storyline. with dean, those things were more noticeable, e.g. demon!dean, bc it’s the A plot. with sam, unless you were really paying attention to every single subplot (as i like to do bc i like seeing things begin and grow into something else, which is probably stupid of me to do so on this specific show but still) you wouldn’t be able to really tell what his story was supposed to be. it’s not about him losing his THEE main character status, but losing his A main character status, bc at some point his story mostly hung on his screen time, rather than anything else.
this is going to be off the top of my head and i’ve only seen the show once, but here are some thoughts on his storylines and what i think killed them. if i don’t remember something, honestly i think it says more about the validity of my argument, because i have a pretty good memory on plot-related things, and if it’s insignificant enough for me to forget... yeah. this is not going to be whether i liked certain storylines, but whether i think they were strong enough to really be called a storyline. also, i’ll be mostly talking abt sam vs dean, as 1) a good portion of cas’s story is an extension of dean’s story and 2) this is just the lens i’m using for this. i’ll try not to blame specific writers/actors for this, just the story as a whole:
seasons 6-7: even though these seasons are considered to be comparably the worst out of them, i think they balanced sam’s story considerably well in regards to his subplots. soulless!sam, working with the campbells, lying to dean, being suspicious of cas, dealing with the fall out of getting his soul back, loss of memories, gaining back his memories, ptsd, lucifer hallucinations... there was a lot going on with sam, and these things did make sense in the cause and effect fashion.
season 8: the whole amelia thing... confused me, but i once read this really good meta that said that amelia never actually existed and it was all a part of his hallucinations which i think i’ve kinda accepted. a good chunk of this season is dealing with kevin, which is technically for both dean and sam, but bc i think in the future kevin was going to be more of a sam’s responsibility i’m going to start counting kevin as sam’s plot. then there’s also mistrusting of benny (same as mistrusting cas in s6? sam mistrusting dean’s significant others? hmm), which is really an extension of dean’s plot, but i’ll take it, as sam made active choices on his part about the whole thing. then as the season comes to an end, besides what’s happening with cas, it really does have a major arc for sam, seemingly capitalizing on the last two seasons, though i wish there was a stronger thread of them throughout the season.
season 9: this was the first season i watched live AND i had not seen the end of s7 and entirety of s8 by that point, so i didn’t know how sam ended up in the hospital, but i was willing to go along with it. the whole gadreel plot was pretty interesting (and i do hate kevin’s death), but i can see how gadreel was more of a dean plot than a sam plot, as sam was largely unaware of what was going on until later. at the same time, i think this made sam dean’s plotline in this cas via gadreel, so you can really go either way with that. by the end of s9, the whole thing is switched, and dean is sam’s plotline bc of the mark of cain. around the end of s9 is when i think is the start of losing sam as a character, because such a large portion of this season was about dean.
season 10: i swear to gd idk what sam’s plot is in this season besides curing dean in the first few episodes. i just read through the ep summaries on wikipedia and i cannot tell you what he’s doing there really besides research. this season introduces rowena who is going to be a part of sam’s arc in the future seasons, but she’s mostly all about crowley in this season, and honestly? i like that they gave her some time to develop as a character before making her a part of either sam or dean’s story.
season 11: just my imagination was a pretty good episode that gave us a glimpse into sam as a character!! i liked that whole thing!! but immediately after we are getting sam seeing lucifer again. (also ik that jared actually expressed his dislike of having sam work with lucifer due to, well, their history, and i fully agree that it should have been dealt with very differently. but oh well. the only character whose faults they like to ignore more than lucifer’s is john winchester, and ain’t that saying something.) then lucifer becomes more of a castiel issue, which automatically makes it a dean issue. i wish they kept lucifer more of a sam issue and i wanted sam to kill lucifer :) bc he deserved it :)
season 12: here we have a significant sam storyline where he is working with the BMOL, by extension from mary. the significance of it directly corresponds to him having to lie to dean about what is going on, because as soon as dean is involved, it just automatically transfers the plot line to him. the relationship with mary ends up also being more of a dean thing, even though they clearly have very different relationships with their mother. also eileen is killed this season for no reason (aight i said im not gonna blame specific writers but we all know who did that silly number), as if they literally want to kill sam’s plots. edit: forgot about this, but the ep with the culty family who had a psychic daughter??? whom sam tried to save?? and i bet he doesn’t actually know that ketch killed her later??? okay yeah they kind of pulled a good one with that, even if heartbreaking. AND THEN they had sam work for bmol...... okay yeah you see how that was a sabotage of sam’s story.
season 13: i wanna say that jack was definitely a large part of sam’s story this season and i’m glad for it. besides benny and cas, sam was always the one to say that a supernatural creature is not a monster, and i liked that they brought this part of sam toward the light (re: magda in s12.... wait. see: edit in s12). dean’s plot with jack extended to his relationship with cas, and you really don’t have to be a heller to see that. also, this is when we really get into sam/rowena and witch!sam. also, we get some sam/gabriel interaction, as gabriel has always been more of a sam thing than a dean thing, i’ve appreciated it. then the whole lucifer thing... anyways. they should have had sam kill him. honestly? they should have somehow made sam michael’s vessel to really go galaxy brain on that.
season 14: sam being the leader of the new hunter network is a SEXY idea and what should have remained for the rest of the show but fuck if this show hates having nice things. also, i liked both the sam & charlie and sam & cas collabs, bc even tho they were both always more of a dean thing, i enjoy those characters having one-on-one plots with sam as well. also this season continues sam caring for jack with both sergei and lily sunder connections, furthering the witch!sam plot, but still not enough to really put it forward.
season 15: the season starts with sam’s connection to chuck, and i genuinely enjoyed that storyline, and i wish they made the whole thing last for longer, maybe even into the finale. (i think there are so many plots on this show that they like to Have but then Not Do much with them.) then obv they have sam/rowena arc continue, with him making her the queen of hell (pls look at this post i’ve made abt it before bc i think the whole thing is actually Hilarious) and then furthering witch!sam storyline with resurrecting eileen. (in some way samwena and saileen are actually extensions of each other and maybe could have been samwenaleen but yk. a girl could dream. maybe throw gabe into that as well).... after that... there’s nothing really. i mean, sam goes out to meet with the surviving hunters, but it’s just that. and i don’t even count 15x19 and 15x20 really because 19 was more of a joint story with dean and 20 was well. that. i think i would have accepted the ending if they actually built to it.
in the end of the day, i think sam had a few stories that were either aborted by poor writing or by transferring much of the burden to dean. i think having so much lucifer in the middle of it all without Really addressing sam’s feelings about it was probably the biggest clue that the writers didn’t Really care about his story as much. leading the hunters, rowena, eileen, witchcraft, jack (i will argue that jack had a significant relationship with all of his dads) were all good parts of it, but severely underutilized, and it makes me sad. i just edited the s12 part about magda, and i think that part was especially upsetting, as they gave us a glance into sam’s savior nature and then took it out. anyways i hope this made sense, and if anyone wants to add anything in reblogs/tags, feel free, i’ll read everything.
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vbartilucci · 3 years
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tl;dr - Eric Wallace has no idea what he’s doing with The Flash, either the character or the show.
Let me make something very clear - I like Eric Wallace’s work in comics. Mister Terrific lived up to its name. He knows hos way around the characters. This isn’t a case of some Hollywood guy coming in a thinking he knows better than 80 years of writers and fans.
One of the biggest problems started as far back as season four - all the fucking murder. The season-long arc featuring The Thinker had a maddening pattern - introduce an interesting new character, sometimes an innocent person with newfound powers, sometimes a new villain, but it didn’t matter, because The Thinker would find them and kill them. No point getting to know anyone, they’re dead. And it was maddening. The Flash kept getting handed loss after loss, and things just got less and less fun. And doubt not for a moment, that is what I am looking for on this show - fun.
Now as an aside, I have to lay some of the blame here with Geoff Johns.  When Geoff brought Barry back in the comics, he was the one who made the decision to change his life story, and place sadness and trauma at the center of it. And what’s worse, he saw fit to leave it there, even after it was revealed it was put there by the reverse Flash. So, there’s that.
I’ve already gone on about how much I hated the season finale from last year, and yes, I’m fully aware that much of it was out of his hands. but part of the reason it was so bad tied in with the way the whole season was paced. There was no joy - like with The Thinker before, the new villain was handing the team losses left and right, and there was absolutely no hope in sight. I grew increasingly enraged last year when they wouldn’t give Flash a single reason to feel he was making progress. I kept hoping week after week that they’d end the “Iris in the Mirrorverse” subplot, not only because I wanted there to be some sense of “we’re turning the corner” to the narrative, but simply because I wanted it to fucking end.
But then, after endless episodes of no success, everything was resolved in one single episode. Yes, it was done by Barry appealing to Mirror Monarch (Thanks for not going with “Mirror Mistress” BTW) and her humanity, even tho we learned only like the week before that she WASN’T human, but whatever. But after a whole season of build-up, the last episode was an out of left field mess that started and ended faster than you could even process. Iris’ return was given like five minutes, and the resolution of ever single plot thread from the whole season even less time. Some were resolved with less style that Doc calling from from off camera “Hey, everyone, Duke’s out of his coma!”
I think I can summarize my single biggest problem with the show in recent seasons in one word - pacing.
Eric has been packing the show with So. Many. Subplots. And he gives none of them space to move or time to breathe. Subplots with real potential interest wither and die, and one that should be one-and-done are left to annoy us for weeks.
Case in point - the “Death of the Speed Force” plot  could and should have been a far more interesting and up-front story. But it had nothing to do with the main story at all, and seemed to exist for no reason other than to put another stumbling block in Barry’s way. And I get it - when you have a guy that can run at light-speed, every episode could be three seconds long if you don’t give him a reason to not just run.
So, let’s take all of these thoughts and apply them to this season so far.
First off, All The Fucking Murder is back. After Barry convinced Abra Kadabra to stand down and maybe even become an ally...nope, no point getting interested, the Big Bad came along and just killed him. Now, did he HAVE to die? Nope - he could ju8st as easily just gotten really really injured, so much so that we wouldn’t even see him again all season - that would have been enough to make the point. But no, let’s just kill him - that’s how you do thing in comics, right? 
Secondly, the pacing problem is back. The idea of trying to force Frost to take the meta-cure had the potential to be a positively riveting idea - the ACLU should have been in that courtroom as soon as it was presented as an option. It could have been a b-plot for weeks, being played as an analogue for SO many social issues. But nope, he shot his wad in one episode.
Meanwhile, what SHOULD have been the A-plot of the episode, the sudden and inevitable betrayal of the personification of the Speed Force was pushed to the rear, and dropped out of nowhere in the last scene. Which once again puts us in the same place where Barry will be at odds with powers and abilities. Yawn.
The only saving grace is that allegedly rather than a single season-long plot, the show is crafted as shorter “graphic novels” for like six to eith episodes. So at least we won’t have to wait the whole year for it all to end, and hope against hope that maybe the next story will be better.
But based on past performance...I’m going to remain depressed.
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portiaadams · 3 years
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Top 5 Boardwalk episodes
1. Home
IT INTRODUCES MEYER AND RICHARD! OF COURSE IT’S MY FAVORITE. But when I watched BWE for the first time, this was the episode where absolutely all the threads laid out in the first six episodes came together and the picture they wove was *shudders*. Nucky burning down his father’s house while Teddy watched; Meyer trying to play Chalky; Lucy sitting alone in the movie theater; Richard and Jimmy’s first meeting/first kill...the whole thing is just perfect. 
2. Gimcrack and Bunkum
Again, this episode felt like the point where season two came together. Boardwalk Empire has so much magical realism infused throughout the run, but in this episode it’s so *apparent*. I actually believe that Richard’s entire encounter with the dog/old men in the woods is a hallucination. He’s in the Pine Barrons for god sakes! Plus, they were so careful about hiding out-of-season shooting, but the Richard scenes positively luxuriate in the bare trees and fallen leaves. For a scene that takes place on *Memorial Day*. 
The whole episode is aces, though. Jimmy doing such a great job giving the speech, while Angela watches proudly, utterly unaware of the undercurrents with Nucky, who is glowering from the front at Jimmy’s success? The fight between Nucky and Eli? The off the charts creepiness of the Gillian/Jimmy scene in the bathroom? And I love Nucky’s plotting (it’s so smart, and I don’t always think that about his plots, although this one rebounds back on him), and I love when real-life people like Attorney General Daugherty and his, ahem, friend Jess Smith show up. But the Jimmy/Richard scenes are my favorite in the series, including the scalping of the odious Jackson Parkhurst. Never before have I cheered the death of a senior citizen.
3. Margate Sands
Season Three is very loud, and Margate Sounds starts with a beautiful montage of men dying dancing from machine-gun bullets, but the finale feels so earned. Everyone is there because of the decisions they made, both good and bad. The scenes with Eli and Nucky, especially about the car, are warm and make them feel like siblings in a way I don’t think the show always managed (Eli often felt like another neglected sorta-son, like Jimmy, which sometimes felt purposefully done and othertimes not so much). Getting Al Capone and Chalky together was *brilliant*. All the wheeling and dealing with Rothstein and Andrew Carnegie? Perfection.
And obviously, all the Tommy stuff breaks my heart, and I love the detail that he won’t go to Gillian while she’s offering sandwiches and Oreos, but runs to Richard, whom he just witnessed blowing someone’s head off. I chewed my nails off watching the rampage the first time.
Every single thing about Charlie and Meyer is outstanding in this episode. Particularly, Charlie trying to make up with Meyer in the hallway, and then the whole scene with AR/Masseria. Also, Masseria is straight-up terrifying in every scene but especially that one. Meyer talking Charlie down because if not, they are both dead? You can feel the danger they were in. 
In the end, though, Gillian broke my heart the most remembering the Commodore-and Nucky-did to her. Richard leaving Tommy with Julia (don’t get me started on Paul’s insta-redemption, the only dumb as hell moment in the whole episode) is a close second.
4. Eldorado
Mabel’s story is absolutely horrific on every level, but I think the biggest success of the flashbacks was fleshing her out. Because she was great! Bold, bright, and conniving. It made her loss so much more real. And she was particularly great in this episode, where you see that’s her own coping techniques that probably led to her undoing.
But this episode mirrors Margate Sands in such interesting ways. Nucky walking through the Commodore’s house for the first time mirrors his walk through it at the end of MS looking at the aftermath of Richard’s carnage. And watching Gillian’s story, which she relives in flashback in MS...JFC. 
Season five is Charlie’s season, and he and Meyer bring the goodness. I cheered when they finally got Narcisse. I can’t believe we haven’t got a miniseries or something, because BWE ended just as their stories heated up (Meyer taking out Nazis? Hello?).
5. Family Limitation
This episode is good for many reasons. Chicago Jimmy is the best Jimmy. Torrio was a much better mentor, who wasn’t afraid to smack Jimmy down but also celebrated Jimmy’s strengths, than Nucky. Being away from Gillian was good for Jimmy. I loved that the rich lady Margaret goes to for advice isn’t judgemental-she’s very pro-Temperance, so-but utterly practical. She gives Margaret advice about birth control. I love it.
But I love this episode for Charlie. Although his relationship with Gillian has some disturbing subtext, due to the fact he’s just a year older than Jimmy, it’s delightful all the same. And the scene where AR calls and tells Charlie, as Gillian rolls her stockings on in the bed behind him, that Gillian is Jimmy’s mother, not his wife?
I LAUGH EVERY TIME. 
Honorable mentions to basically every season two episode, a lot of season three, and the whole back end of season one.
Also-I was writing yesterday so my head is still there and as I wrote this I had to take out a whole section because Nucky isn’t actually Richard’s father-in-law. Whoops.
Thanks!
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skybird13 · 4 years
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Ace Ops Theories
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Okay ya’ll, so I need to take a very small break from Tumblr (tomorrow and maybe Thursday or even through Friday) because I am starting to develop a hyper fixation and that is just... not healthy. But as a temporary sign-off, I thought I would offer my thoughts on the whole Five Ace Ops thing floating around and how that might work out. I’ll be coming at this mostly from the perspective of a writer/storyteller using the threads we already have to speculate on where the Ace Ops could conceivably go.
[Slight spoilers for vol 7 episode 9 ahead]
The Traitor Theories
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As far as the traitor theories go (regarding any of the Ops) I just don’t see it happening this late in the volume. At the beginning of the volume and with the proper set-up, I could totally see where people were coming from, but at this point, I’d give it a less than 1% chance of happening (I won’t go all the way to 0% because I’m not CRWBY but... if pressed, I’d put it down at a 0.0001% chance). Not a single one of these people has been set up to be a traitor. There has been no foreshadowing, no hints, nothing nefarious brewing under the surface or in the background where the Ace Ops are concerned. At this point, exposing any of them as an agent of Salem would come out of left-field narratively speaking. 
Closely linked to this point is the fact that there is no mystery around how Tyrian and Arthur have been accomplishing their goals in this volume. If you’re going to have a surprise traitor amidst the protagonists, that mystery really needs to be there with the antagonists. But we never had to wonder how Arthur got his access to the Mantle systems; he wrote the code for it. And once Jacques handed over his elevated system credentials in exchange for Arthur rigging the election, Arthur had all he needed to do everything he has done to this point.
The only other active antagonists are Cinder and Neo and we already know how they got their information: Neo’s infiltration. That alone gave them more than enough intel to wreak all kinds of havoc. Neo is going to go after Ruby and, thanks to Neo’s spying in Schnee manor, Cinder knows that what she needs is at Atlas Academy. They also just showed up on the scene and would be very unlikely to have cultivated a traitor contact already. We have received no indication whatsoever that anyone on Team Salem is aware of the Winter Maiden being housed at Atlas Academy. If that was a piece of intel they had, I might be convinced to bump up my traitor theory score to 3%, but even that by itself wouldn’t be enough. 
Likelihood of a Traitor Amongst Them: 0.0001%
One of Them Will Die
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A possible Ace Ops death is the other dominating theory for how their team will be cut down to four members. I don’t have a whole lot of evidence against this theory, but I also don’t see much in the story that would support it either.
RWBY has a track record for character deaths that have an impact. Pyrrha is the obvious example of this, and even Lionheart’s death had some power to it. Here was a trusted member of Team Oz who had given in to fear and turned on everything he once stood for, and the truly tragic thing about his death was that he died a coward.
There are exceptions, of course. Sienna Khan comes to mind as a character who was introduced only to die. I will admit, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this decision. I know that the whole point of it was to push Adam’s story forward but considering nothing more ever really happened with that plot thread (Adam taking over as leader of the White Fang) there are a number of other ways they could have gone about that. Sienna denouncing and exiling him from the White Fang probably would have pushed him towards the same end.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say CRWBY was going to kill off one of the Ace Ops. 
Clover Ebi seems to take the brunt of this theory but I honestly don’t see this happening either. I am a huge Clover and FG fan, full disclosure, but from a purely narrative perspective, the implications of his character are just a little too big to go to waste. He’s the only other one in the RWBY-verse with a luck-based Semblance, and since he’s been paired with Qrow all volume, he is clearly going to play a massive role in Qrow’s continuing development. I know Qrow has taken a backseat in this volume but his character arc is far from over. He’s sober, true, and that was a major step for him, but all that self-hate and baggage from his past isn’t going to go away just because he stops drinking. A huge part of his character and his attitude has always hinged on his Semblance and on how much he hates himself for it, and that is something he is going to have to deal with at some point. Clover is the only one who can probably help with that, especially since we’ve seen in-show evidence that he has much more control over his Semblance than Qrow does. Add to that the sheer effort CRWBY has put into developing a relationship between them, and Mr. Clover Ebi is not going to be the one to die. 
I think the most likely death candidate is Harriet. True, she hasn’t had a whole lot of development that would make for significant emotional impact, but consider where she is in episode 9: she’s the only one accompanying Ruby  (who has a giant ass target on her back that she’s not even aware of) down into Mantle. They are most definitely alone and, judging from the time between the group jump from the airship and when Ruby and Harriet finally bail, they’re not going to be close enough for team backup when Neo comes. 
However... I still don’t buy this one. Neo is good. Excellent, even. But taking on a fully trained huntress and Ruby, who has only gotten more skilled since their last encounter, wouldn’t be the smartest move on her part, and Neo is nothing if not smart. I think it’s far more likely she’s going to create an illusion to draw Ruby away from Harriet, isolate her, and try to take care of her that way.
I sort of talked myself out of a higher rating for this possibility while writing that, but I’ll still concede that it’s not out of the realm out of possibility.
Likelihood of Ace Ops Character Death: 33%
[[Bonus: Likelihood of Clover death: -111985878% Because... just no. It’s not even wishful thinking on my part. My writer’s soul will literally disintegrate if they waste his potential.]]
Clover Leaves the Ace Ops/Is Assigned to Accompany the Teams When They Leave Atlas
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Yeah, so... not gonna lie, I am extremely partial to this theory and I think it’s becoming more and more likely as the story progresses.
The most obvious reasons that this would work are the ones I already mentioned: he has been very closely tied with Qrow all volume, and very special and careful attention has been paid to crafting every moment they have had together. You don’t generally do that unless two characters are going to be very, very significant to one another. He’s the only one who might be able to help Qrow figure out how to control his Semblance, therefore catalyzing the next sensible major step in Qrow’s character progression. The speed with which CRWBY hauled ass to tie him to Qrow also can’t be overlooked or overstated. They are not going to go through the effort of giving them scenes together and establishing chemistry between them only for it to fizzle out.
Clover is also the only member of the Ace Ops without a complementary partner inside the team structure. And guess what? Because of the nature of his Semblance, he isn’t going to find that partner in anyone but Qrow, and I can guarantee you Qrow will not be remaining in Atlas unless something drastic happens. He’s not letting his kids do this shit on their own.
But even outside of the purview of Fair Game and Clover’s relationship with Qrow, there are still logical reasons for why James might end up sending him or giving him the choice to go with the teams when they leave Atlas. 
Episode 9 was a huge obstacle tackled for James. He not only loosened the death grip he had on everything, but he also learned the truth about Salem and took it in stride (still so proud of him!). In order to continue his theme of learning to let things go a little, it is completely plausible that he would send one of his people to be with the teams to help them along. It won’t be Winter because she has too many established ties to Atlas, especially if she becomes the winter maiden. Same goes for Penny: too many deep ties to Atlas and she’s still the official Protector of Mantle. The only one that makes sense is Clover.
Then you also have the fact that Clover is the elite of the elite in Atlas, and therefore highly skilled. I just don’t see James sending the teams off into the world to find the other maiden and reach Vacuo without some assistance. James himself is going to stay in Atlas because that’s his place, but he can certainly send someone he trusts completely to help them out. Again, Clover is the one who makes the most sense for this. Not because Clover is the only one James trusts that much obviously, but because he has been narratively set up for it.
There is also the slightest hint of foreshadowing to this outcome in episode 3 when Clover catches the Dust and says “What would you guys do without me?” I don’t think he’d go without some initial hesitation, but I think his team would ultimately be supportive of the decision. 
So how high do I put this on the scale?
Likelihood That Clover Leaves with the Teams: 90%
Yes. That high.
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stillwinterair · 4 years
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Pretty sure this thing is rife with typos and inconsistencies because I spent way too long writing this and Refuse to proofread, but, some notes from the writers’ room (my brain) on my Personal Mental Sequel Trilogy Rewrite:
On paper, I think the Kylo/Snoke situation as it occurs is really compelling. Killing Snoke midway through the trilogy was a stupid move in the context of the trilogy we got, but could have very easily been made to work well with a few changes... many of which in The Force Awakens.
(This is gonna mostly be focused on Kylo Ren, but in this version of the story he’s far from the focus, it’s just kinda what I would want to see from a villain)
The ultimate goal in my own personal version of the trilogy would have been to make the late-second-act twist (this trilogy’s “I am your father” moment) be Kylo Ren becoming Supreme Leader, and cementing himself as the big bad. But to do that effectively... we have to make Kylo Ren more sympathetic. We have to trick the audience into thinking he’ll come around. As it stands... the movies don’t actually do this. A certain subset of fans certainly think they did, but there’s really no buildup to “Bendemption” aside from a single scene where he’s hesitant to kill his mom, I guess. Other than that, he’s all evil, all the time.
He should still do all the same things: slaughter a village of innocents, torture multiple people, stand idly by as his fascist regime destroys the seat of galactic government. But give him moments of pause before they happen, and feed into the “pull to the Light” with whispered voices calling through the Force, begging him to stop. Every time, he almost listens... but he pushes them away. And every time he pushes them away, something in him changes. He stands taller, grips his blade tighter, and his power with the Force grows a little stronger.
Now, another crucial building block to the twist: move Kylo’s “doesn’t wanna shoot Leia” scene up a movie... and give it to Han.
The scene plays out as we see it in TFA: Han Solo pleads with his son to come home (I would have had them find Luke by this point for the sake of a trio reunion but that’s an entirely different thread to follow). Kylo Ren -- or, perhaps, Ben Solo? -- grips the silent hilt of his lightsaber, visibly unsure. Is he going to submit to his father? Does he plan to kill him?
We don’t find out. Not in this movie, anyway.
A blast rings out. A bolt hits Han in the chest, his eyes glaze over, his fingers drift from his son’s cheek, first slowly, then altogether. He tumbles aside, falling to his death. The camera pans: someone, perhaps Phasma or Hux, is looking down the smoking barrel of their rifle. They salute, then quickly take cover as the distraught and agonized trio of Rey, Finn, and Chewbacca begin firing on them.
Rage fills Kylo Ren’s eyes. He tenses. His lips twist into a twitching grimace. It seems entirely focused on Phasma/Hux. Bands of white-hot electricity trace the lengths of his fingers.
And then it all subsides.
He turns on his heel and pursues our trio, and the film proceeds as we’ve seen it, except again, Luke is also there. I’ll figure out that puzzle piece later.
EPISODE VIII:
Snoke should be heavily involved here, very clearly the puppet master pulling Kylo’s strings. Kylo is clearly haunted, though: those whispers we heard throughout the last movie are growing louder. Who are they? Jedi of the past? The souls of the dead? Anakin Skywalker himself, his spirit shattering itself into a million little pieces trying to push past the jagged barrier of Dark-side energy Kylo Ren surrounds himself with?
But Kylo needs to be less composed in this movie than he is in TLJ. No standing around calmly or stoically, he’s constantly on edge, looking over his shoulder, feeling judged by everyone and dreading it. Kylo Ren is tortured and haunted and it feels like at any moment, the facade will break. Clearly, the source of all his problems are because he isn’t being who he’s supposed to be, right? Clearly he could turn around at any moment and become someone better, right? Right?
Rey ends up before Snoke and Kylo Ren again, because she thinks Ben Solo can be saved, because the narrative is at least putting some work into making us think he can (“he’s haunted by the choices he’s been making, why wouldn’t he turn back to the Light?”). Snoke plays them against each other, yadda yadda yadda, but it perhaps becomes apparent that Snoke has an ulterior motive:
He doesn’t want Kylo Ren anymore. He wants Rey.
He toys with them, makes them duel to the death, but there’s a lot at play here: Snoke wants the strongest to survive, to shape them into a more worthwhile apprentice. Rey fights defensively, refusing to give up on Ben. Kylo is as aggressive as we’ve ever seen him, more conflicted than ever, raging against the voices in his head. Turn away from her, and strike him down, they say. Join the girl, rebuild the Jedi. Come back to Luke. Come back to your mother. The voices are familiar: Jedi from the past, friends who have died along the way. And then a final voice rings out, more ghostly than the rest: Come home, son, says Han Solo, an echo of his soul which has left a stain on the Force surrounding his son.
He knows what he has to do.
The electric currents we saw in our previous episode return, stronger now. The ground around him is charred, ash-black. Years of so-called “Gray Jedi” in Legends jump back to mind: are we actually going to see a Light-sider using Force lightning? you might wonder. All of his energy goes into a singular blast, aimed at Rey...
But it arcs past her, decimates Snoke’s guards. The Supreme Leader stands, shocked and enraged. He challenges Kylo: “You dare slaughter your own allies? You, boy, are nothing but a worm! But it matters not. I never needed you, anyway. The girl will take your place, and you’ll die as they did.”
Snoke attacks, but his mastery of the Force is nothing compared to what comes next: a torrent of lightning from the fingers of Kylo Ren.
The blast knocks Rey back, flings Anakin’s lightsaber from her hands. But when she stands, there’s a smile on her face. She did it. She won. The evil in Ben Solo has been vanquished, the Light has prevailed, and the First Order is finally defeated.
She asks him to come back with her, back to Luke, to Leia, to the Jedi. He can start again, help rebuild, save the galaxy.
He turns back to face her, and his eyes are bloodshot and yellow. He’s seething. He extends a hand, and an offer: join him, let the past die, create something new. Feel the power of the Dark side. There’s nothing like it. There never has been, and never will be.
This is the true Kylo Ren. The first steps of his manipulation were led by Snoke, but it was the taste of power that led him the rest of the way. It seduced him. Consumed him.
We cut back to the lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker, lying on the ground far away. We see Ren and Rey far in the background, standing opposed, but they’re out of focus. The lightsaber is all we can truly see. It begins to shiver, as if being called by someone. Presumably Rey. We cut back.
Rey refuses his offer, refuses the power, tempting as it may be.
“No? Then you’ll die as he did. As all your weak friends will.”
Another torrent of lightning bursts forth from Kylo Ren. But Rey makes no moves to defend or attack: she’s utterly in shock, confounded by this turn of events.
When the lightsaber ignites, it isn’t Rey who’s holding it. It’s Finn. Lightning crashes into it, holding it back, long enough for Rey to regain control, Force-push Kylo, and for the two of them to run.
Rey and Kylo’s Force bond from TLJ is maintained, as is the ending shot of Rey closing the door of the Falcon in Kylo’s face... but with it comes a darkness. The bond is severed. The door has been closed forever.
The twist of the Original Trilogy’s second act was that the villain was of our hero’s blood; in the end, it saved him.
The twist of our Sequel Trilogy’s second act is that the tortured soul we thought might have been a hero, never was one and never could be. You ~subvert expectations~ but in a way that builds the mythos and actually pays off a plot thread. Looking back at all of Kylo’s moments of tortured almost-goodness, the realization hits that he always had a chance and never took it, that the whispering voices which followed him, his pull to the Light, were an annoyance that pushed him the other way.
Anakin, Luke, and Ben were easily corrupted by the Dark. The difference is, Anakin was manipulated, Luke had the force of will to be a hero anyway, and Ben reveled in the Darkness. These are the Palpatine genes resurfacing.
And then in our Episode IX, we wouldn’t [re]introduce a new (well, old, but new to this trilogy) villain in the LAST ACT, but would instead build the story and mythos of one villain throughout the trilogy, off the puppet master when his role is done, and let him flourish as the evil bastard he always should have been. And then the Force-ghost of Anakin Skywalker can show up and basically confirm that he hasn’t been around because he’s been trying for decades to reach his grandson, that it consumed all of his power, etc.
Anyway. This is a lot but we could have had a really compelling villain here but they didn’t do fucking ANYTHING with him
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2010s Art: Music, Games, and TV
So I love all forms of art. It may not seem like it since I tend to stick mainly to movies, with the odd cartoon or video game thrown in, but that’s really because movies are more my thing due to not being massive time investments. Like, don’t get me wrong, I gamed, I watched TV, I listened to music, but it was a lot more casual than my deep dive into becoming a major cinephile.
With games and TV, it was mostly issues of money and time respectively. I have a few consoles, mostly Nintendo and Sony ones, and my wife helped me experience Xbox games, but I just don’t have the money needed to experience every good game that comes out. With TV, the time investment is the biggest roadblock, especially when all the best shows have hour-long episodes these days. With movies, I just have to spend 90 minutes to two hours on average; for TV, it’s countless hours I could be watching movies. As for music… well, I listened to a lot, I just don’t feel totally qualified to properly rank and list songs and albums.
So instead of the big decade-spanning list for movies that I’m doing, I’m going to go over some things I enjoyed from the past decade and maybe a few things I didn’t in music, TV, and video games. Here’s a little guide so you know what stuff is something I consider one of my absolute favorites in any given medium - if it’s from this decade, it will be in bold, and if it’s from a previous decade but I experienced it this decade, it will be underlined.
Television
I figured I’d get this out of the way first since it’s the medium I have the least experience with. Let me put it this way: I have seen only one season of Game of Thrones, the first one (and by all accounts I dodged a bullet by dropping that show). I also had the misfortune of jumping in to The Walking Dead right as it was gearing up for its abysmal second season, which turned me off that and led to me only watching an episode here or there. 
I had better luck watching live action shows on streaming. I managed to get through almost all of Pretty Little Liars on Netflix, which was a chore in and of itself; it’s a good show, but boy could it ever get arbitrary and frustrating. Speaking of Netflix, I think it goes without saying that Stranger Things is their best effort; from the likable cast of kids to the awesome soundtrack, even though it never really surpasses season one the show always has something cool going on in one of its plots. My other favorite from Netflix would probably be their take on A Series if Unfortunate Events, which is how you do adaptation expansion right; everything they add feels like it’s in service of fleshing out Lemony Snicket’s dismal world, as well as giving Patrick Warburton an incredible dramatic role as the Lemony narrator himself.
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Amazon managed to score two hits in my book. The first is the unbelievably fun and charming Good Omens, a miniseries that somehow got me to love David Tennant and Michael Sheen more than I already did. The second was the gory joyride that is The Boys which while not the smartest or most original superhero satire is definitely the most fun.
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While I didn’t watch the whole show and would not consider it one of my favorites, I do want to give props to Hannibal for introducing me to Mads Mikkelsen. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the only person aside from Hopkins worthy of playing everyone’s favorite cannibal. Another show I DO consider a favorite despite slacking on keeping up with it is Ash vs. Evil Dead; I only needed to see a single season of Bruce back with the boomstick to know this show was a masterpiece.
On the animated side I have much more to talk about. Not since the 90s have we been spoiled with so many genuinely great and varied cartoons. We got Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe… really, Cartoon Network raised the bar this decade and made up for an awful 2000s. They even finally gave Samurai Jack a conclusion, which despite the mixed results, was still a real exciting phenomenon to experience.
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Of course, my favorite CN show came from Adult Swim. I am of course referring to Rick & Morty, a fun sci-fi adventure comedy that attracted the most obnoxious fanbase possible in record time. While certainly not a show you need a high IQ to understand and having an atrocious third season, it still manages to be funny and thought provoking in equal amounts. Seriously though. Fuck season 3.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is another great show that I sadly fell off the wagon of around the fifth or sixth season. It never got bad of course but it never really engaged me like the older episodes, though what I’ve heard of the last season makes me wish I’d kept up with it. It was a great show with a lot of heart and character, and I’m not sure we’ll ever see a show like it again.
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Netflix did not slack in the animation department; I didn’t catch their most famous show (it’s the one about a certain Horseman) but I did catch their fantastic take on Castlevania, which as a huge fan of the series was a real treat. Where the fuck is Grant though?
My two favorite shows of the decade, however, are what I see as the pinnacle of East and West: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Gravity Falls. 
JJBA is a series I had vague passing knowledge of, only knowing its existence due to seeing Stone Ocean referenced on the Wikipedia page for air rods when I was younger and, of course, the memes that spawned from Heritage for the Future, which were inescapable back in the day. As soon as I got into the series, it became one of my biggest inspirations, teaching me you can be deep, complex, and filled with great character interactions while also being so batshit insane that every new and absurd power is incredibly easy to buy (looking forward to the rainbows that turn people into snails, animators). They managed to get through the first four parts and start up the fifth over the decade; so far my favorite part is four, mainly due to the magnificent bastard that is Yoshikage Kira (played time perfection by D.C. Douglas) and in spite of serial creep Vic Mangina playing the otherwise lovable asshole Rohan Kishibe.
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Gravity Falls on the other hand is just a fun and engaging mystery show that manages to excel at being episodic and story-driven all at once. There’s only one or two “bad” episodes across two seasons, and it lasted just as long as it needed to, wrapping things up with a satisfactory ending that still gave fans a few mysteries to chew on. It also gave us Grunkle Stan, perhaps the greatest character in all of animation, the pinnacle of “jerk with a heart of gold” characters who is hilarious, badass, and complex all at once. This is my favorite western animated show…
...but then the last year of the decade threw a curveball and, if I’m being honest, is on par with Gravity Falls: Green Eggs and Ham. Netflix really wanted us to know 2D animation is back in 2019; between this show and Klaus, the future is looking bright for the medium. It’s a fun, funny roadtrip comedy that knows when to be emotional and when to be funny, and it’s all filtered through the wubbulous world of Dr. Seuss. It’s just a wonderfully delightful show.
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And on the subject of JoJo, I had a kind of love-hate relationship with anime this decade. The attitudes of anime fans turned me off from anime for a long while. Sure, I checked out stuff like Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online, but neither series really clicked with me. The main anime I loved this decade were ones that started in the 2000s and ended in the 2010s, like Dragon Ball Z Kai and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I suppose I did enjoy My Hero Academia, which is a really fun show with an awesome and varied cast and great voice acting. Love Froppy, best girl for sure.
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One of the most unfortunate things about this decade was how many great shows got screwed over by their networks. Sym-Bionic Titan, Thundercats, and The Legend of Korra were all great shows in their own right but were treated like shit by their respective networks. It really makes me upset that stuff like that not only happened, but continues to happen to this day.
But let’s not end on a bad note; let’s talk about the astounding returns old shows got. Invader Zim got a movie as did Hey Arnold, with the latter in particular finally wrapping up the dangling plot threads, but those are actual TV movies so they don’t really fit here; what DOES fit is Static Cling, the triumphant return of Rocko’s Modern Life. A forty minute special, it follows Rocko and his friends as they navigate the modern age, trying to bring back Rocko’s favorite cartoon. Rachel Bighead’s arc in this in particular is pretty groundbreaking and awesome. 
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Also awesome was the first few episodes of Samurai Jack’s return, though it did end up petering out halfway through the season and ended on an anticlimactic note. Still, Tom Kenny’s Scaramouche, the sheer amount of continuity, and the awesome final curbstomp battle against Aku are worth giving this a watch. And if nothing else, stuff like this gives me hope for future revivals. What will we see next? Gargoyles comeback? Batman Beyond continuation? KENNY AND THE CHIMP REVIVAL?! Chimpers rise up!
Music
Much like everyone, I listened to a lot of music this decade. There was a lot of shit, and I definitely used to be one of those “wow no one makes good music anymore” morons, but I grew out of that and learned to look in the right places.
Let’s start with the albums I loved the most. Continuing her meteoric rise from the 2000s, Lady Gaga drooped her magnum opus, Born This Way, an album that successfully showcases her skills as she takes on numerous pop styles. No two songs sound the same, and with a couple of exceptions every song slaps. While we’re on the subject of pop stars, Gaga’s contemporary and lesser Katy Perry managed to hit a home run with the fun bit of pop fluff that was Teenage Dream.
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Weird Al was sorely missed for most of the decade, but what albums he did drop featured some of his best work. While Alpocalypse doesn’t hold up quite so well, it’s still solid, but even then it is blown out of the water by Mandatory Fun, an album that just refuses to stop being funny from start to finish. And that’s not the only funny albums this decade; aside from artists I’ll get more into later, George Miller AKA Filthy Frank released Pink Season as one of his last great acts as his character of Pink Guy. The album is as raunchy and filthy as you’d expect. And then for unintentional comedy, Corey Feldman dropped Angelic 2 The Core, an album so musically inept that it ends up becoming endearing; it’s The Room of music.
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As I gamed a lot this decade I got to experience a lot of great video game soundtracks, but the two I found to be the absolute best were Undertale and Metal Gear Rising’s. I couldn’t tell you which soundtrack is better, and I’ve actually made a playlist on my iPod containing my favorite tracks from both games. Pokemon had solid soundtracks all decade, but they definitely were better in single tracks such as Ultra Necrozma’s theme from USUM and Zinnia’s theme from ORAS.
And speaking of individual songs, there were a lot I really loved. The disco revival in the easel ide half of the decade lead to gems like “Get Lucky,” “Uptown Funk,” and… uh, “Blurred Lines.” The controversy to that one might be overblown, but it sure isn’t anything I really want to revisit.
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Corey Feldman may be the king of unintentional comedy, but this decade was seriously ripe with so bad it’s good music. The crown jewel is without a doubt the giddy, goofy “Friday,” but I think the equally stupid but also endlessly more relatable Ark Music production “Chinese Food” is worth some ironic enjoyment as well. 
Meme songs in general were pretty enjoyable, though it came at a price. Remember when everyone tried to be funny by ripping off “Gangnam Style?” Remember when people took that Ylvis song at face value? Irony and satire were lost on the masses. I think the best mene song of the decade, though, is “Crab Rave,” a bouncy instrumental dance track with a fun music video and an absurd yet hilarious meme tacked to it. And then we have “The Internet is for Music,” a gargantuan 30 minute mashup featuring every YTMND, 4chan, Newgrounds, and YouTube meme you could think of (at the time of its release anyway),
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Then we get into artists. Comedy music was great this decade, with Steel Panther and The Lonely Island putting out great work all decade, but by far my favorite funny band is Ninja Sex Party. Dan “Danny Sexbang” Avidan and Brian “Ninja Brian” Wecht are pretty much my favorite entertainers at this point, with them easily being able to go from doing goofy yet epic songs where they fuck or party to doing serious and awesome cover albums where Dan flexes his impressive vocals. A big plus is how all of their albums are easily some of my favorites ever, with not a single bad CD, and that’s not even getting into their side project Starbomb. These guys are a treasure.
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Then we have Ghost, a Swedish metal band who play up the Satanic panic for all it’s worth. These guys captured my interest when I heard the beautiful “Cirice” on the radio, and despite that song rocking the fuck out, Imagine my surprise when it ended up being only middle of the road awesome for this band! With killer original songs like “Rats,” “Mary in the Cross,” and “Square Hammer” to a awesome covers like “Missionary Man” and “I’m a Marionette,” it’s almost enough to get a guy to hail Satan. I think they appeal to me mainly because they have a style very in line with the 80s, most evident on tracks like “Rats.” 
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While I’d hesitate to call him one of my favorite musicians yet (he is really good so far though), one of my favorite people in entertainment is Lil Nas X. From his short but sweet songs that crush genre boundaries to his hilarious Twitter feed, this guy is going places and I can’t wait to see what those places are.
And finally, the guy I think may be one of the greatest creative geniuses alive and who has nearly singlehandedly shaped Internet culture with everything he does… Neil Cicierega. While it’s not like I only discovered him in the 2010s - the guy has been an omnipresent force in my life since Potter Pupper Pals debuted - he definitely became the guy I would unflinchingly call the greatest artist of our time over that period.   Whether he’s releasing the songs under his own name or as Lemon Demon, you can always be sure that the songs are going to burrow into your brain. His Lemon Demon album Spirit Phone, which features songs about urban legends and the horrors of capitalism, is easily my pick for album of the decade. And then under his own name he released three mashup mixtapes: Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence, and Mouth Moods. All three are stellar albums, but only Mouth Moods has “Wow Wow,” the bouncing track about homoerotic bee-loving Will Smith and outtakes so good they deserve to be on the next album.
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Video Games 
Having a PC this decade was great because it let me experience a lot of games I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, like Half-Life, BioShock, Earthnound, Mother 3, and Final Fantasy VI and VII. All of these and more are among my favorite games of all time now, but we’re here to talk about the stuff from this decade I consider great.
It’s hard to talk about this decade in gaming without mentioning Skyrim. Yes, it has flaws and the main storyline is a bit undercooked, but there’s so much fun to be had dicking about in the wilderness it’s hard to be too mad. And if you have mods, there are endless opportunities to expand the game. The same is true for the other game I have sunk countless hours into, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Not only is there a thriving modding community, but it has been supported and encouraged by the creators and some mods have even made the leap into becoming fully canon! It’s always a blast to revisit and see how far I can break the game with item combos.
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Surprisingly, Batman managed to get not one, not two, but THREE awesome licensed games this decade! Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and the unfairly maligned Arkham Origins all kick as much ass as the Dark Knight himself. The former two reunite Mark Hamill and Kevin McConroy as Joker and Batman while the latter features numerous stellar boss battles. The combat in these games is so graceful and fluid, you WILL feel like Batman at some point, be it after flawlessly clobbering two dozen mooks or silently eliminating a room of thugs before they even realize you’re there.
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Pokémon had a bit of a rocky decade; it started out strong with the fifth generation, the best games in the series with a great story, region, and sidequests and then just went downhill from there. Not incredibly so, of course - the games were always fun at least - but gens VI through VIII were not the most graceful steps into 3D. Still, every gen managed to produce some of my all-time favorite Pokémon. Gen V had Volcarona, Chandelure,  and Meloetta; Gen VI gave us Hoopa, Klefki, the Fairy type in general, and a gorgeous mega evolution for my favorite Pokémon, Absol; Gen VII had the Ultra Beasts and Ultra Necrozma, some of the coolest concepts in the series, as well as Pyukumuku; and Gen VIII gave us Cinderace, Dracovish, Dracozolt, Polteageist, Hatterene, Snom, and Zacian. And those are just samplings mind you, these gens are full of hits.
Bringing back old franchises yielded amazing results. Look no further than the triumphant return of Doom in 2016, which had you ripping and tearing through the forces of Hell with guns, chainsaws, and your bear fucking hands. This game is HARDCORE. Less bloody and gory but no less awesome was the return of not just Crash Bandicoot, but Spyro as well in remakes that are easily the definitive ways to experience the games. And don’t even get me started on the remastered DuckTales!
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Platinum games did not fuck around this decade, delivering Bayonetta 2 and Metal Gear Rising. The former is a balls-to-the-wall sequel to the amazing original Bayonetta that, while lacking in bosses quite as impressive as the first game’s, is more polished and has a fun story and a better haircut for Bayonetta; the latter is an action game so insane it makes the rest of the Metal Gear franchise look tame in comparison. The latter in particular is in my top ten games ever, with every boss battle feeling epic, all the music kicking ass, and Raiden truly coming into his own as a badass.
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Speaking of Metal Gear, the divisive The Phantom Pain easily earns its place here. While much fuss has been made about the game being “unfinished,” it still has a complete and satisfying ending even if it doesn’t totally wrap up the dangling plot threads the young Liquid Snake leaves behind. The overarching themes as well as Venom and his relationship with characters like Kaz, Paz, and ESPECIALLY Quiet make this game, with his and Quiet’s being particularly beautiful and tragic. The Paz quest, Quiet’s exit, and the mission where Snake has to put down his men after they get infested with parasites are all some of the most heartbreaking moments in the franchise. But it’s not all tears; there’s plenty of fun to be had harassing Russians in Afghanistan while blaring 80s synth pop from your Walkman. Oh yeah, and fuck Huey.
The Ace Attorney series also thrived, with both Spirit of Justice and Dual Destinies transitioning the series into 3D a lot more graceful than some other franchises while still maintaining the with and charm the series is known for. And if that wasn’t enough for my point-and-cluck adventure needs, Telltale had me covered with The Wolf Among Us and the first season of The Walking Dead. The stories and characters of those games are so good, it’s enough to make you sad they never got a timely sequel or sequels that weren’t shit respectively.
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This decade is when I really got into fighting game, though I’m not particularly good. I supported Skullgirls (and am even in the credits!), and got into Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle (and I also got into its spiritual predecessor, Heritage for the Future). But by and large my favorite fighting game of the decade and the one I’m actually pretty good at is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the most ridiculously ambitious crossover in video game history. The fact that the game is STILL getting more characters added is a testament of how insanely great the game is because instead of being mad that there’s so much DLC, people are going rabid waiting for news of more. It’s such an awesome, complete game out the door that the DLC feels earned rather than half a game being held hostage. Other devs, take note!
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A lot of franchises put their best foot forward for sequels. God of War III was an awesomely bloody finale to the original journey of Kratos, with more epic bosses than ever; now he’s off fighting Norse gods, and I hear that game is even better! Portal 2 is just an absolute blast, and easily surpasses the first game on the merit of having Cave Johnson alone; the fact we get Wheatley and the malfunctioning personality cores honestly feels like overkill. Then we have BioShock… 2. While it’s certainly not as good as the first game, I think it was a lot of fun, and it got way too much flak.
 I think it definitely aged better than Infinite which, while still a good game in its own right (it’s hard to hate a game with a character as endearing as Elizabeth), definitely was not warranting the levels of acclaim it got with such a muddled narrative. “Overrated” and “overhyped” are not words I keep in my vocabulary and I certainly would not describe Infinite as such, but I do feel like people got swept up in the gorgeous visuals and the story bits and characters that are effective and so weren’t nearly as critical of its flaws. It’s still a good, fun game with an interesting world, but it pales in comparison to the other two BioShocks. I feel like The Last of Us is in a similar boat. That being said, I couldn’t tell you why; it has a great story, good characters, plenty of replayability, and fascinating enemy design. But despite all that, I appreciate this game more than love it. It’s the Citizen Kane of video game sin that regard at least.
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I’d be remiss to not mention the big indie successes of the decade. Shovel Knight is easily one is the greatest platform era ever made, taking everything great about the platformers on the NES and SNES, removing the bullshit, and delivering numerous bonus campaigns with unique playstyles. Then there was Abobo’s Big Adventure, a marvelous mashup of all sorts of games starring the beloved Double Dragon mook as he goes on a bloody quest to save his son. It’s a blast and there is tons of variety but some sections are definitely as hair-pullingly difficult as the games that inspired them. And then there is Doki Doki Literature Club, the free visual novel that brutally subverts your expectations. Sadly, I do feel the game loses some impact on subsequent playthroughs, but it’s still a great, effective story that skillfully utilizes meta elements.
Still, the greatest indie success of them all is Toby Fox’s masterpiece, Undertale. Charming, funny, emotional, and populated by a cast of some of the most fun and lovable characters ever conceived, this game was an instant smash and is still talked about to this day. Sure, things like Sans have been memed to death, but it’s hard to not just love and cherish the beautiful world Toby Fox managed to create. This game may not be the greatest game of all time, but for what it is I wouldn’t hesitate to name it the game of the decade.
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There was a lot of great art in the 2010s, and while I couldn’t get around to all of it, I’m so happy with what I got to experience. Here’s hoping that the 2020s can be just as amazing!
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moved99999999999 · 4 years
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U guys wanna know what I think about that hell hotel show
I feel like twitter’s very tired of seeing ppl talk about Hazbin Hotel, so I putting my opinions on tumblr where they belong. I’m not a “professional critic” by any means, but I’ll try my best given what I know. And don’t worry, I’ll be incredibly nit-picky to suit the internet’s needs.
I’m gonna mainly focus on HH itself instead of Vivzie’s accusations because that's a WHOLE other can of worms to open.
During the time of me writing this, I haven’t watched any YT reviews, but I’ve read a few threads criticising the show, so take that as my social influence bias.
My ted talk is allllll below the cut. Enjoy~
Context: 
My first exposure of Vivzie’s work was her “Die Young” animation that I came across around 2016. Instantly I fell in love with how “smooth” and lively her animation was, and especially the fact that it was hand drawn. Animation like that was extremely rare to come by (and still is) and seeing her execute it so well with such complexed characters was amazing to my fetus self. 
A few years later and I see the first trailer for HH. I instantly went OH I RECOGNISE THAT STYLE AND THOSE CHARACTER TYPE DESIGNS and was looking forward to what it had to offer. 
On “opening day” I watched the pilot ASAP to avoid my opinions from getting warped by all of the key-mash memes and post call-out bitching (literally the extremes of the HH opinion spectrum), and overall.....
I thought it was good. 
Not ground breakingly amazing, not horrifically terrible, but charmingly good.
(Ok now it’s actual review time)
Animation Quality:
As a hand drawn animation that has the freedom to get creative with its shots, a lot of effort was clearly put into how everything moves (it definitely didn’t take any lazy flash puppet shortcuts for the main sections of the show) and I can appreciate that. However it tends to be... rather inconsistent, most likely due to the varying skill level of the animators on the project. It’ll be nice and smooth one minute, and then awkward and choppy the next which can make the viewing pretty confusing at times. I’ll be honest I found myself overlooking these inconsistencies due to the characters and backgrounds themselves being very visually engaging, especially considering how over designed some of them can be (which I applaud the team for handling cuz wow that must have been painful). However, the needle thin and exaggerated art style makes some things incredibly hard to look at. While it helps with adding fancy details, it hurts in catching peoples eyes in the right place.
It’s also chalk full of little details, visual gags, and references that are hilarious to look at if you have the luxury of pausing every two seconds (the news segment and Sir Pentious turf war w/ Angel and Cherri are good places to look). But I feel like these lil details were put in at the cost of some some continuity errors (Charlie not wearing her coat in one shot, and having it back on in the next, papers being blank, etc.) and lip-syncing issues which really shouldn’t be happening considering all of the detail they were able to put in. There are also some shots that have just SO MUCH detail put into them, only to be shown for less than a second. I get that’s the cost of animation sometimes, but save the detail for the shots that need it, because at that point you’re just causing the animators to waste their efforts.
However, I was surprised at how professional the soundtrack and editing was. Not one but THREE songs in this single episode was really surprising, and the variation and quality of each was great (as cringy as Charlie’s song is)
But overall, the production quality is surprisingly good for a project like this, the editing, sound effects, and sound track act like a cherry on top. Of course there are some noticeable drops in quality, but given time and a budget, it has enough chops to look like an actual show.
Writing: 
As far as overarching plot goes, it seems like it’s going to be one of those procedural shows that tries to be serialised, but it’s a creative twist on hell and has an interesting premise to begin with. You can get really creative with seeing how you’d dive into getting redemption out of all of these seemingly lost causes, and I’m sure there are many people willing to know the backstories our main cast. As a pilot, it did it’s job of launching the plot very well, setting up the premise of the hotel and introducing characters in a very engaging way. I was legit really interested in each segment with who in introduced, and it didn’t feel like I was being overloaded with names to remember (which can be a problem for many medias and introductions). The cohesion between each scene is VERY smooth, and I genuinely enjoyed some of the cliché cuts/gags. 
Unfortunately I can’t extend this interest to our main character. Charlie is one of the most generic tropes we’ve ever seen. She’s a boring Disney princess who has a “cute happy positive goal to change her world” and the only thing that would make her more generic is if she wore a dress and cried “I’m tired of being so privileged”. 
(Although it’s impossible to tell, I honestly think Viv is just projecting through her, especially considering how horrifically accurate the hotel’s opening mirrors the internet’s reaction to the pilot itself)
I would be more forgiving if she was a supporting character or someone less important, but she’s the freaking protagonist, arguably the character that has to be the most interesting. Angel’s personality seems to be “flirty porn star”, and while that’s just as bad as being a boring Disney princess, at least he gets a few jokes and has a profession more interesting than Charlie’s. Around the end of the pilot he just seems like he’s getting involved because Viv likes giving him attention. If he’s supposed to be leeching off of the hotel, wouldn’t not care if it survives or not?
(There’s that whole stereotype issue that everyone keeps bringing up, but I genuinely think that’s BS because people are blatantly ignoring the fact that Angel is a porn star, Vaggie is portrayed as helpful, and that the show takes place in H E double hokey sticks.)
The transitions may be smooth, but the dialogue pacing can get really awkward at times. This paired with the animation sometimes having awkward quality drops makes some movements incredibly jagged, and has some detailed shots show for incredibly unbalanced screen time as mentioned before. 
I don’t have enough to give voice acting it’s own section so I’m just popping it down here:
The voice acting is legitimately better than several big name projects I know. It’s consistent, great at expressing the character’s mood properly, and each voice fits each character perfectly. My only gripes are that Alastor and Sir Pentious tend to grain on you after awhile due to them keeping a single tone for too long. 
Character Design: AKA the only thing I have legitimate experience with.
First thing’s first. The characters are WAY too over designed. There are so many markings and accessories that are incredibly unnecessary. I think the mindset for these characters was “the more complicated and attractive the better”, which makes them look like they’re designed by an edgy tumblr artist (heck I fall for this too some times).
Especially if a character is going to be animated, you have to keep in mind the value of simplicity. You absolutely don’t have to fill in your character with markings and trinkets to make them look unique, I mean just look at the gen 1 pokemon starters. Thanks to the limitations of the game, the sprites were forced to be simple, and it was that simplicity that made them such unique and varied creatures. You can tell Blastoise is a bulky water blasting turtle just with a quick glance. 
Many of the characters suffer from over complication, but I’ll look at Husk for example. He has these stripes all over him that do not contribute to who he’s supposed to be at all, and only look like they’re added to make him more unique. The markings that DO help are the little card suite marks on his wings, because those at least infer he’s linked to a casino/gambling type of theme. I would say his outfit helps as well, but formal wear and bowties are worn way to often by the main characters, which brings me to another problem.
They may look different, but they feel way too similar. From the same skinny body type, to generic head shapes, to outfits, the focus characters just don’t stand out amongst each other. Even the ones with interesting features still suffer from feeling generic. I’d say Sir Pentious is a good example of this. He has a serpentine/naga body and clever hair style that make his concept really creative, but his skinny body type, complicated eyes all over his tail, and generic “young but supposed to be at least middle aged” face just push him back into obscurity. He’s even wearing the SAME outfit as Alastor (who's an even worse offender of that generic face problem), and unless Viv has some plan to link the two, I’d say the characters need to stop using a dress code.
A successful character design can to tell you who the character is just by looking at them. You should be able to tell if a character’s personality, function, age, the universe they belong in, and if they’re important or not, and that’s a big problem when it comes to the background characters. If you pause on one of the extras for a minute you can see all of the effort put into designing them, and that takes away so much attention from the main cast. Not only that, but they have actual variations in their body types and outfits, which makes them more intriguing than who we’re supposed to be interested in.
Regardless, this pilot has potential, and if they can get someone to comb out the flaws, you can end up with something good. No one can deny a legitimate animation was made here, and the team successfully executed the start of a story, and that’s something anyone can look up to.
TLDR: The pilot is good. It has some major flaws, but it has potential to be a good show.
If you actually read this far epstein didn’t kill himself.
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mithrilwren · 4 years
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So, hmmm... I saw The Rise of Skywalker last night and... I have notes.
Nothing I say here is going to be super original, probably, but hey, I’m going to talk it out anyway. 
I walked out of that movie saying, again and again, that that script needed about 6 more rounds of polish. It is frankly baffling to me that a Hollywood movie, with so much money and so much time and so much investment thrown into it, could make it to filming on a script that disjointed. So many times, an avenue was proposed as the ‘only’ solution to the current problem, only for that to be unceremoniously dropped and for another avenue forward to miraculously appear. We never got any explanation for what Finn was going to tell Rey before they fell into the sand pit, despite it being built up multiple times as something significant. I’ve seen speculation that it was that he meant to tell her that he was Force-sensitive, but that particular plot thread was treated with so little fanfare by the rest of the script that I barely realized its implication until after the movie was done. Because of COURSE the fact that Finn is Force-sensitive is important - it means Rey isn’t the last Jedi! That’s huge! But the film makes no effort to re-contextualize the audience on that fact, because Finn and Rey never discuss it. They don’t even speak after the final battle. (I would love to see Folding Ideas do an editing breakdown of this movie, akin to the one he did for Suicide Squad, because it deserves a comprehensive, hour-long run-down of everything that went wrong on both a scene-by-scene and structural level.)
I saw a number of reviews that likened the script to fanfiction, which is... one of my least favourite forms of cheap criticism, because it nearly always betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what fanfiction is, and what its specific flaws tend to be. Instead, the term is used as a synonym for ‘bad writing’, which is frustrating to say the least. Fanfiction, on the whole, tends to be highly character and relationship-centric. That can come with its own pitfalls, but it’s baffling to apply that label to this movie, which spends so much time jumping between action sequences and macguffins that we almost never have time to linger with any characters in a meaningful way, or to develop the relationships between them beyond single, unsupported lines about how much they mean to each other. The exception to that is, possibly, the relationship between Rey and Kylo - and I don’t mean relationship in terms of the highly-controversial ship (that’s another whole conversation that I have no interest in diving into) but just in terms of two characters having multiple interactions with each other that change them as people in some way. Even that relationship felt rushed, but it was more than most of the other characters got.
My main gripe about the ‘Rey Palpatine’ twist is not so much that I think it’s bad, inherently. There are interesting things they could have done with that idea, even it’s not the direction I personally would have chosen! My main issue - and again, this is not a hot take, this is just common sense - is that this was so clearly not something they were building up to in the other two films, and so it comes completely out of left field. I have to wonder what someone who’s only seen this new trilogy thought of this plot thread, because the movie doesn’t exactly take a lot of time to explain who Palpatine actually is? There’s a large degree of assumed knowledge from the audience, because in lieu build-up in the previous two movies, you need the lore of the previous movies to even begin to contextualize what’s happening. What does the moment where Rey uses lightning to destroy the shuttle mean to someone who never saw Luke being blasted to the teeth with the same? Where is the creeping horror that the original trilogy managed to build around this shadowy figure, pulling the strings in the background? Who is this dude, anyway?
I’m probably in the minority who (on paper, if not in actual viewing pleasure) liked The Last Jedi quite a bit. I think that its writing was the strongest of the three. It had the most interesting things to say, and while I might have enjoyed watching The Force Awakens more, I was more interested in thinking about The Last Jedi. The biggest problem with the Palpatine twist is, of course, that it throws out every salient point TLJ was trying to make, which just feels... petty? TLJ exists, it is part of the anthology, and to pretend that most of it never happened and blatantly contradict both its reveals and themes, even if you (yes, you, JJ Abrams) didn’t like them, deprives the story of any chance of a coherent or satisfying arc. And that frustrates me, not just as a viewer, but as a writer. Because if there’s one thing that the writers involved in this movie should have learned from fanfiction, is that it is possible can spin gold from what you’re given, even if its imperfect, and elevate what existed before through your own creativity. But there was no effort made to reframe the unpolished elements of TFA and TLJ into a coherent three-part story. Instead, they went the route of ignoring what they didn’t like, and cherry-picking in what they did. Totally fine if this was a standalone episode, but it’s not. It’s part of a trilogy, and by throwing out the second act, you’ve gutted the entire heart of the story. *shakes my head*
There were definitely parts of this movie that I enjoyed. Every time the main trio was on screen together, it was a joy. All three of them were giving their all, and it showed. I liked both of the new characters introduced! The other former Stormtrooper, whose name I can’t recall, was vivacious and bright and I lit up whenever she was on screen, and I desperately wished the movie had taken the time for Finn and her to discuss their shared pasts more, because there some much interesting there. As much as I’m aware that it was likely a cynical tactic on the part of Disney to no-homo Poe, I didn’t hate his interactions with his old flame(?) at all, mostly because the relationship was ambiguous enough between them that it was just playful and fun, rather than wholly contrived. I actually found the shared visions between Rey and Kylo some of the most engaging scenes in the film - just visually and as a concept, the whole idea of trading physical objects between the two spaces? Pretty cool! 
But overall, I came out of this movie feeling like the best thing I got were a lot of details that I’m excited to see people incorporate into trio fic, and not much else. This is a movie that begs you not to think too deeply, lest it all fall apart at the seams, and just enjoy the spectacle of it all. And for me, who tends to get distracted during flashy action sequences and choppy edits, that didn’t leave me with much to chew on, or reasons to see it again. 
(PS. Rose, they did you so dirty, and I’m so, so sorry.)
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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years
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Dollhouse season two full review
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How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?
100% (thirteen of thirteen).
What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?
44.96%
How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?
Eleven, six of which had a cast of 50%+.
How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?
Zero.
How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?
Eighteen. Twelve who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.
How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?
Thirty-three. Twelve who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.
Positive Content Status:
Rubbish. As with the first season, the show suffers seriously for having no moral compass, it indulges in misogynistic violence and voyeuristic sex crimes as a mainstay, and any attempts to critique its own content are marred by hypocrisy and excuses (average rating of 2.76).
General Season Quality:
Also rubbish. While the majority of the cast are doing a fantastic job despite flimsy, problematic material, and there are a bare few episodes that could be considered good, altogether there’s no cohesion to the story, it lurches and fast-tracks and skips over anything that seems like it would have been a good concept to explore, and in the process it manages to lose any semblance of being about something. It’s just an excuse to stretch some acting chops on different kinds of character templates, and even that, it did badly.
MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:
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...so. I guess it’s a ‘nevermind, then’ on the exploration of any of the show’s own invoked themes re: personhood et al. I really thought they did more in that arena, but outside of a handful of single scenes sprinkled across the series, they really never did dig in to their existential concepts or anything that could approximate a broader narrative purpose beyond ‘let’s get Eliza Dushku to embody common sexual fantasies’. It’s ok to do some prompting of meta discussions for the audience and then leave them to fill in the blanks with their own musings, but not at the expense of bothering to say anything about your own subject matter. If you don’t have anything to say, then don’t ask people to listen to you. Keep your gross rape fantasies to yourself (or share with your therapist, damn), and leave the storytelling to people with a story to tell.
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Everything that was wrong with season one is still entirely intact in season two, they fixed zero of their problems - they’re still fetishising and excusing rape, shamelessly objectifying and brutalising women, steeping the series in misogyny for no discernible reason, failing to achieve a basic moral underpinning to their content, underusing their quality acting assets while over-using their worst ones, and of course - as above - completely ignoring the need for a cohesive purpose to their own story or even just a ground-level sense that they knew what they were doing (or at least what they WANTED to be doing) with the arc of the narrative. Indeed, not only were all of the first season’s flaws intact, but season two even managed to make many of them worse! Off the top of my head, I’m not sure they made a single good character decision in the entire season, but I’m gonna save that conversation for the full series review so that I can properly compare the changes from one season to the next; there are plenty of other sins in season two to keep me busy for now. The lack of a moral anything (compass, backbone, compunction, whatever you want to call it) became a much bigger problem as the show attempted to escalate the scope of conflict with outside forces - largely, the Rossum corporation who runs the Dollhouses in service of their E-vil Plans - despite its own characters having committed all the same atrocities variously and knowingly, and the sketchy characterisation did a poor job of convincing that some magical moral something-or-other had taken hold between the seasons to give these characters new ethical dimensions that aren’t just blind hypocrisy. But, the biggest flaw of the season - relevant to all other issues but most especially to the lack of a central narrative theme or sense of meaning behind it - was the arc of the...’story’ that the season told. It was a Goddamn disaster, kids.
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Pro tip: if you happen to, say, make a tv show that performs badly in the ratings in its first season, but you score a second season anyway, and you’re not confident that you’ll ever get a third...don’t try to jam all of the possible plot you imagined for a long-term series down into one season. It’s also probably a good idea to NOT end your first season with an ambitious flash-forward to an apocalyptic future which you are now irrevocably committed to bringing about in your regular narrative in spite of having only thirteen episodes to do it; a problem compounded by the inclusion of ‘flashbacks’ within that flash-forward, depicting events that you have now made canon only to turn around and nullify your own story by changing your mind about how to have it unfold (in the course of insisting on trying to make the whole thing unfold immediately, with plot that should have taken at least half a season to be explicated instead being fast-tracked into the subplot of a single episode). Don’t do that. Especially, don’t do that if you’re gonna ditch any kind of meaningful character arcs or thematic discussions or anything which would give your story a sense of purpose or cohesion or a mission statement of any kind (have I mentioned that yet? It’s mildly important to storytelling). Choosing to roll out a series of rapidly-accelerated plot events with all the nuance removed for streamlining is patently useless - you’ve removed everything that would make those plot events have value. That’s assuming that there were character beats (beats! Not beatings! This show has an excess of the latter; criminally few of the former) or narrative explorations or conceptual deliberations or somesuch in the original plan, anyway, and the first season did not do a great job of suggesting that there were (just...a better job than season two did). At any rate, better that you spend your time well and sadly never get to conclude the story like you wanted, rather than screwing over your own idea trying to just deliver the cliff notes. Cui bono?
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Let’s consider what we got this season: thirteen episodes, and the first three are total Imprint of the Week fodder. A certain amount of episodic adventuring is expected, yes, but it’s a good idea to actually inject some useful plot machinations in there at the same time, and the first three episodes were very weak on both the one-off plot and the inclusion of significant long-term detail. The first two episodes are especially bad for being boring, inconsequential, and failing to capitalise on any interest drummed up by the end of the previous season; both also include teensy extra scenes of Senator Perrin pursuing his investigation into the Dollhouse, though neither creates any tension or interest around it, they literally just amount to ‘here is a guy, he’s gathering evidence’. It’s not exactly a thrilling or detailed introduction to the ‘Dollhouse plant in the government’ plot which comes to a head in a two-parter a few episodes later and then never impacts the story ever again. The story has no chance to build before it’s over: it’s introduced, it escalates, it’s nonsense, and then it’s done (the fact that the entire plot turns out illogical in the extreme really, really steps on any attempt at relevance or use). If you’re not gonna try and make the plot thread at least functional, why waste two whole episodes on it? You’ve only got thirteen, and you already wasted the first three! 
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I say they wasted the first three episodes, but arguably, it’s more than that: episode four was ‘Belonging’, with the unfortunate decision to explain how Sierra came to be in the Dollhouse by expanding on the existing rape narrative with her abuser, Nolan, and while the episode in itself mostly works (in spite of itself, really), it’s not of any long-term importance outside of some character building/expansion, which is not a complete waste of time but, also, is not turned to a particular purpose. We didn’t need to lose an entire episode on this; we could have built and expanded upon character while dealing with some meaningful plot content, instead of indulging that ol’ rape obsession some more. Similar flaws exist for most of the other episodes of the season - though not entirely useless, spending an episode on an unfocused and largely meaningless Alpha visit in ‘A Love Supreme’ or fast-tracking through Victor’s backstory with the overly-ambitious and ultimately irrelevant military tech in ‘Stop-Loss’ is not a good use of the limited time the series had left to tell its story. And then there was the terrible ‘Meet Jane Doe’, which gave us a time-skip and a bunch of rushed plot to do with Echo learning to master the many personalities composing her identity while Topher mocked up a doomsday device out of thin air back at the Dollhouse: the single most excessively stupid example of what should have been at least a half-season’s worth of plot, instead crammed down into a ridiculously contrived subplot in a single episode. If you’re gonna try and tell several season’s worth of plot in thirteen episodes, you gotta COMMIT, man: hard plot, every episode is essential, every one of them advances your central narrative in some significant way even when it appears you’ve just done an episodic plot, it’s all vital to the endgame. Don’t think you’re gonna tell a few years of story in three episodes, and spend the rest of the time on fetish fantasies. Don’t be that stupid. 
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As I noted when it happened, ‘The Attic’ is the only genuinely good episode of the season, and not least because it’s the only episode that does a passable job of making it seem like the plot has actually been going somewhere, for a reason, and with intention. It’s still very much a too-little-too-late situation, and the episode does all the heavy-lifting on introducing the puzzle pieces to complete the plot at the last minute, rather than having any of those pieces seeded at an earlier point in the series (the way that pre-planned things in a story that is going somewhere for a reason usually are). It gives us a last minute mystery to solve - who is Rossum’s shadowy founder? - though that turns out to be a very ill-advised mystery (for the calibre of the reveal, for the stupid convenience of having a shadowy founder to rail at, and for the obvious pointlessness of pretending that there’s a singular Boss Battle to be had that will magically dissolve the power of the corporation and its various pre-established players (Harding, Ambrose, and now the addition of Clyde 2.0 as well as ‘the founder’)). It also gives us a final mission - to take out Rossum’s mainframe - though that turns out similarly ill-advised in a more low-key way, since ‘we took down their computers’ is a patently idiotic way to ‘win’ (it’s laughable to pretend that any of the characters could be fooled into thinking that blowing up the Tucson facility would be anything more than an inconvenience to a global medical research corporation with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in resources and a trillion opportunities to store information on non-networked computers or on paper or in any of their numerous potential ‘legit’ published scientific proofs, etc, to say nothing of the fact that the physical tech and the people who built and used it are all still there, and yep, so are all those other Rossum higher-ups and probably even the founder himself, waiting on a harddrive to be put back into play). It all makes for an incredibly weak finisher to the ‘main’ plot, and that’s before we pointlessly bounce into the future again to show that, oh yeah, it WAS all meaningless and our characters are fucking morons who made no difference to anything with that explosion-y mainframe bullshit! The potentially-clever game-changer idea of including the flash-forward to the Thoughtpocalypse at the end of season one becomes a mistake now, when it calls for the waste of the finale on concluding a whole wild story development that the show never got a chance to actually develop at all. Eek. This is not how you storytelling, y’all. 
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Heavy sigh. Honestly, I really, really thought this show would give me more to talk about, because at first glance it looks complex and stocked with conversation starters and potentially polarising content. Upon analysis, however, the complexity is a sham, the show itself starts no conversations, and the content lacks the nuance necessary to create oppositional interpretations. Ironically, it turns out as empty as the dolls are, simplistic, lacking the self-awareness to reflect on itself and the basic comprehension to fathom morality. It has no personality, no drive, and though at times it shows glimmers of understanding that there could be more to its existence than catering to shallow pleasures, ultimately it never focuses well enough to follow that anywhere. Even its transgressions are bland and predictable, worth calling out - as aggressive misogyny and rape fetishisation always is - but not worth picking apart in detail (because - shock horror - it’s not morally complicated and full of shades of grey, it’s just bad and wrong: it’s very simple and easy to follow, Whedon. Get therapy). If the Dollhouse is all about giving people what they need, well, I think I know what Joss Whedon needs: to shut up, and leave the show-creating to someone who hates women less, and knows how to string an idea into an actual story, more.
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entamewitchlulu · 6 years
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Arc V Anniversary Discussion Prompt Day 8: Favorite Arc
Damn, this is actually a really, really hard question!!!!!!!!!  I love each arc of the show and I feel like every single one of them is absolutely important and necessary for the story as a whole, there isn’t one you can skip and still understand the overall themes and message.  No filler arcs here in the slightest (and, I would argue, little to no filler episodes, either).
To be absolutely honest with you, I don’t think I can pick, so I’m gonna talk briefly about each arc and what I like about them!
Arc 1: Standard
The opening!! The beautiful, exciting introductory arc!! This arc was so instrumental in getting me invested; where other yugiohs sometimes took me a couple of episodes to get invested, I was hooked from episode one with Arc V.  What’s happening??  What mysterious things are going on?? What’s going on with Yuya and why is he so fucking adorable?  This was where the mystery started to be so expertly woven among the usual fluffy start of a Yu-Gi-Oh.  We got both of the things I always want out of this season: an easy-going start that allows us to introduce and get to know the characters and just have a bit of good old Yu-Gi-Oh fun, but also an underlying layer of something is absolutely happening here, just enough to tickle your interest and make you sit up a little straighter every time something out of the ordinary happens.  It’s incredible how much in advance was set up for back here, and kudos to the writers and creators for making such a beautiful set up!
Arc 2: Synchro
This was where the character introductions melted into character development, and that underlying current of something is wrong really started to raise its head.  This was where Yuya’s character development was finally, head-on addressed, and his unhealthy coping mechanisms were heavily challenged.  His growth in this arc was astounding.  Not only that, but a good protagonist is often only as good as their antagonist, and this arc introduced one of the most fascinating antagonists in the show.  Jean-Michel Roger was exactly the kind of antagonist that made this arc so intense; he was more in control than anyone there, even Reiji who was initially set up as the ‘puppetmaster’ was forced to play by his rules.  The Friendship Cup was not only an intense and looming prospect for the characters to handle, but it was also our first look into how the whole story began.  Seeing the Synchro arc and Yuya’s reaction to the crowds is eerie when you know what happens in the future, setting the whole arc in a new light.  The interdimensional war current starts to rear other ugly and nerve-wracking questions that make you realize that maybe this war wasn’t the only thing we were noticing peeking through the cracks in the first season, maybe there’s something more than just a crazed world domination plot, maybe something else is wrong too.  It all plows along towards its ending, giving us some GREAT character moments (for Reira and Sora particularly), and whetting interest for the payoff of the threads getting tangled up now.
Arc 3: XYZ
I love this season SO MUCH!  Where Synchro was a place to challenge Yuya and the others in their viewpoints, coping mechanisms, and their idea of what exactly is going on, this arc is the emotional payoff.  This is where, after Yuya has forged his convictions in fire last arc, he has them put to the test once again in a powerful way that makes him come face to face with what started him on this journey in the first place.  Where Standard began with Yuya remembering and clinging to his father’s words, where Synchro forced him to challenge what he clung to and come up with his own, personal reaction to it, XYZ forces Yuya up against the echo of his father once again in the form of Edo, and causes him to bring his own heart to the table and test the convictions he’s formed.  Not only for Yuya, though, XYZ is the first time we get to see the devastating consequences of Fusion Dimension’s desires.  We’ve seen carding, we’ve seen cruelty, but we have not yet seen such permeating destruction.  This is where we see exactly what Fusion is capable of, and exactly what lies at stake.  And not just that, but this is where Yuzu also comes into contact with Yusho and Fusion, and the real, emotional impact of Fusion’s childhood-stealing ways becomes apparent.  It’s been an emotional journey so far, but now we’re face to face with exactly what the enemy is capable of, and exactly what has to be done.
Arc 4: Fusion
And here we arrive, finally at the villain’s stronghold, ready to put into practice everything that we’ve all learned, all of our teamwork, all of our convictions, into taking down his ambitions and his devious plan.  Only what exactly does that mean, and are we prepared for the consequences?
This arc is where so many threads finally pay off.  This is where, in the space of a single episode, Leo suddenly transformed into a fucking incredible antagonist.  He’s not trying to take over the world.  He’s not your average ambitious megalomaniac, sitting silently and watching from his throne and doing nothing himself, never getting his hands dirty.  He is a wrecked, broken father, who can’t see this new world as real, and he is going to rip it to pieces in order to return to his daughter and his world that was lost.  And not only that, but after everything Yuya has learned, after everything he’s been through, he’s confronted with the fractured, angry spirit of his former incarnation, determined to finish what was started by destroying everything.  In just a handful of episodes, everything you know about the series is shattered, reformed, and in hindsight, holy shit it all makes sense. The signs were all there.  Suddenly the entire show is cast in an entirely new light, it’s like a sheet whipped off of your head.  
And it culminates into Yuya’s friends, desperately reaching out to the person they love, and Yuya desperately reaching back, while Reira reaches one of the most powerful character culmination moments I’ve seen, and Everything Changes.
Arc 5 (ha!!): Reira’s Smile
And this arc, after everything we’ve been through, is where it all culminates into the final healing and recovery of Yuya, and through him, Zarc.  With what we’ve learned and experienced throughout the whole story, this is where Yuya’s convictions are tested one last time, where we see his journey as the same one that Zarc once went on, only Zarc didn’t have the tools to survive it.  Yuya, with the combined experiences of the other boys, with the power of the comrades he made and the connections he formed, with everyone praying and hoping for him, and with his own challenged desires finally reaching a powerful endpoint, finds the part of him that is Zarc and guides it, and himself, to healing.  And with that, the show ends.  Nothing can ever be the same; that’s not possible.  But it’s all right, too.  We’ve kept moving forward as best we can throughout the series, learning more about ourselves and more about how we can be better, and these lessons are sure to continue beyond the series.  Everything is different, and yet, in the most important ways, it is the same.  And the future beckons bright, and open, and everything will be all right.
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