#i had a lot of trouble sympathizing with her in s3

[marablake]

A few random S3 thoughts

spoilers under the cut

Okay, I was wrong. I am pleased to admit I still don’t feel for Kreese at all, even after the obvious attempts to make that happen. These writers are obviously trying to pull a Once Upon a Time and make us sympathize with all the villains, but sorry, when it comes to Kreese that’s not happening. Probably not going to happen with Silver either.

I will say I liked how they handled Daniel’s Okinawa trip. They gave a sensible plot-driven reason for him to be in Japan, his side-trip to Okinawa didn’t seem to take more than a day and a half, and I really enjoyed seeing Kumiko and Chozen again. The scene of Kumiko sharing Mr. Miyagi’s letters was very emotional and well handles. (Though tbh I’m still mad at Mr. Miyagi for never marrying Yukie.) Although Chozen had little time onscreen, his growth did seem believable. (Frankly we didn’t need three minutes of flashbacks to remind up who he was and that time could have been better used.) I saw the “honk” moment coming, but it was still hilarious. And I loved the touch of that little girl Daniel saved being the one who saved his business. It was something a fanfic trope but tbh all the better for it.

The writers are still trying to push how Tory is really poor, but they are crap at writing poor people problems. She’s working two jobs and totally overwhelmed, but as soon as Kreese threatens her landlord and lets her train for free, suddenly she’s got loads of free time to act unhinged and cause trouble? Like kiddo, don’t you still have bills to pay? Don’t you still need to buy food?!

I wasn’t thrilled with how all of Amanda’s solutions were failures. I could see the police one not working but the whole “nuclear option” bit was just bad.

Aside from Robby getting screwed over by everyone again - which I hate - Daniel’s handling of it seemed very OOC. Calling the cops before he even talks to Robby? How tf was that NOT going to blow up in his face? Daniel has moments of impetuousness but it’s usually driven by anger. He’s not stupid, but his handling of that was stupid. Why not get the kid back to the dojo, let him sleep and eat and feel safe for like five minutes, and then talk him into turning himself in? The way Daniel did it just traumatized the poor kid even further and reinforced that he can’t trust anyone. I hated that so much. No wonder the poor kid ran to Kreese. I like Johnny and Daniel both but I swear the way they and others keep screwing Robby over is like a supervillain backstory in the making.

Yeah it’s nice that Eli/Hawk finally wised up and switched sides, but I am not impressed because it was way past time he did, to the point that when he finally did it made no sense anymore. Breaking Demetri’s arm didn’t push him past the breaking point? Having Miguel turn against him didn’t do it? Suddenly being allied with the psycho who used to bully him didn’t do it? (And what the actual fuck was with him beating the shit out of Kyler’s sidekick but like five minutes later he’s totally cool and buds with Kyler? Wtf?) Being reminded how much he owed Johnny didn’t do it? If none of that was too much for him to finally shake Kreese’s influence, what the hell in that final fight did it? I know it was supposed to be a lot of things building up, but it just didn’t work. They sacrificed coherent character development for dramatic timing.

I might rewatch the series later and be able to assemble a more coherent opinion of the season as a whole, but those are the main things that stuck out in my mind after watching.

#Cobra Kai #Daniel LaRusso #Kreese #Kumiko #Chozen #Amanda LaRusso #Robby Keene #anti- Eli Moskowitz #anti- Hawk #spoilers

[thegeminisage]

5 headcanons for Arthur, Merlin, Morgana, and Gwen

ANON I LOVE YOU thank u

im doing these in reverse order bc i wanna save the best 4 last

GWEN:

i think she genuinely enjoys taking care of people. it’s a role she’s forced into a lot - she takes care of her dad, elyan, morgana, uther, even merlin and arthur once in awhile, even HUNITH - but i think she’s the kind of person who finds genuine fulfillment in doing that kind of thing (she picked FLOWERS for morgana just because), and if she hadn’t been the blacksmith’s daughter she would have made a fine apprentice to gaius herself

she’s a better rider than you. and arthur. and elyan. and morgana. and everybody

we never hear word one about gwen’s mom but i like to imagine she died just before gwen and morgana met (which i’m assuming happened shortly after morgana came to camelot) - and gwen, who had just lost a mother, could easily sympathize with morgana, who had just lost a father and was somewhere new and unfamiliar - and that’s why they became such fast friends

gwen is probably a few years older than morgana - i like to think she was morgana’s maidservant from the start, but i don’t think they would have let her be a maidservant to the king’s ward at age 10, so maybe she’s 3ish years older - not so much older she strays into big sister territory, but old enough to do the job required of her

nobody among the knights/guards really knew what to make of gwen or arthur’s feelings for gwen because she’s ??? just a serving girl ??? like they didn’t dislike her exactly and they respected arthur’s choice for the most part but they also didn’t know anything about her and couldn’t see why the fuck arthur would make such a stir over her when it would be so much easier not to. this changes 100% after gwen’s shenanigans with smuggling leon out of camelot; leon comes back singing her praises like ok ok i GET HER now y’all ain’t gonna believe how she got me outta that cell and on leon’s word (and because she’s elyan’s brother and he’s a knight now too) everybody else warms up to her too

MORGANA:

this is practically canon but she’s a lesbian, obviously. gwen was the first girl she had a crush on

this isn’t a headcanon exactly but i wish bbc merlin had had a better budget because you know who deserved a black cat familiar? morgana. like, aithusa made a wonderful foil to merlin’s relationship w/ kilgarrah and i would not wish aithusa’s fate on any creature let alone some poor innocent cat, but also, the IMAGERY...it could have been so good

this is also sort of canon but i think she dresses expressively, hence the goth look after she goes evil. @dellesayah​ & i joke about her “evil girl eyeliner” in season 3 but honestly look the way the girl wears 100% black in s4 and s5 i think the eyeliner was her own private expression of her inner angry goth post-poisoning when she still had to be wearing those colorful dresses to fool everybody into thinking she was the same good girl morgana in s3

same age as arthur. idk why most fics have her being older - tho i admit her being older but still not being able to inherit the crown is a VALID source of her rage - but if she was born w/ magic is makes the most sense for her to have been born after the purge started, aka after arthur. i guess it depends on when you think uther cheated on his wife lol. but i never really thought of morgana and arthur as having like an older/younger sibling thing - to me they were more like twins, so definitely within a year of his age, whether it’s slightly older or younger depends on how you feel that day i guess

wintertime birthday. i think arthur has a summertime birthday (more on that below) so it makes her a nice balance to him in that way

MERLIN:

the Most doting son ever. i imagine he had a few difficult teenage years (being a warlock and all) and that he still gets himself into trouble out of sheer stupidity sometimes but aside from that he was probably really well-behaved for the most part just because he didn’t wanna make his mama sad

autumn birthday, since we went there with morgana (to complete the quad in Balance, gwen’s would definitely have to be in the spring)

ok i know colin morgan had to like put on a nice “proper” english accent for the show because katie mcgrath didn’t have one but in my heart merlin sounds like a HICK (whatever the ye olde englishe/modern british version of hick sounds like, he’s it) and his accent only gets worse for all the time they’re at ealdor. like arthur THOUGHT it was bad he probably picked on merlin about it all the time but he had NO IDEA how bad it gets! none! and EVERYBODY in ealdor sounds like that except somehow EVEN WORSE! gwen and morgana think it’s UTTERLY charming but arthur is SO GLAD to get back to camelot and away from all that nonsense! and so then ok when they meet balinor in s2 (who speaks like a normal human being) he listens to merlin talk for 5 minutes and IMMEDIATELY knows exactly where the fuck he’s from. #hicksrepresent

merlin SAYS and BELIEVES he understands magic should only be used for great deeds blah blah blah but when he gets overworked and short on time, yeah, that armor’s gonna be polishing itself while he works on 4 other things at once - he just gets better at not being caught. it’s a great deed to keep arthur’s armor in peak condition, right? arthur says he’s a terrible servant but actually being magically aided he winds up being like...really good at his job, once he gets into the swing of it. he’s just fucking insubordinate always 24/7

*** ****** no i will not be taking constructive criticism

ARTHUR:

he knew they lied to him in 2.08. he always knew. canon evidence supports this in 4.03 he says “i lost both my parents to magic” listen to me he ALWAYS KNEW!!!

canon also semi-supports a summertime birthday - i read somewhere once that they made it a point to only show camelot in spring thru early fall so they didn’t have to explain why there wasn’t snow on the ground. arthur’s coming of age ceremony (which i assumed either followed or preceeded his birthday) was in the middle of season 1, which would have been mid or late summer, hence: arthur is a summer baby.

i really like the gay!arthur headcanon but i also think he and gwen have incredible chemistry and i really like their relationship so like...maybe gay with one genuine exception. also that boy EMBODIES internalized homophobia :( poor lad

fond of DOGS and sometimes HORSES but refuses to show it because that’s not very manly of him. he’s too into hunting to truly be an Animal Person but since you don’t hunt dogs or horses generally he has a very very secret soft spot

the writers didnt do this on purpose but in my heart i believe the reason he was willing to risk SO much to save mordred in 1.08 was because of what he did to that druid camp from 4.10......like at first yeah he tries to be hard-hearted about it & just do his fuckin job but i think once his conscience was tripped he couldn’t stand to see a druid kid die again under his watch for no good reason. he’d’ve never agreed otherwise, not even for a kid. he wouldn’t have ratted morgana out but he wouldn’t have helped her either

(send me a character & i’ll give you 5 headcanons)

#personal #liz answers asks #ask memes #merlin blogging #bbc merlin #long post

[asoue-sideblog]

Thoughts on the grim grotto?

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

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

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

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

Fiona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weakening the themes of the book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[rorykillmore]

also get helene the fuck outta here

#killing eve #killing eve spoilers #i actually dont have that big a problem w her as long as we all admit her behavior w villanelle wasnt sexy #but i have a feeling shes there because they need a Villain and i want them so badly to just let carolyn be that. #i had a lot of trouble sympathizing with her in s3

[jcmorrigan]

So I'm guessing from your teaser of TBTC, you've seen Wakfu Season 3. Thoughts?

Terrible. Absolutely terrible. 

If you enjoyed Wakfu S3 and you don’t want to see me just TEAR INTO IT, turn away now! Because this is a RANT INCOMING!

So first and foremost, the big problem is Oropo. They overshot when trying to conceptualize the new biggest threat that could hit the World of Twelve. A guy trying to slay and replace the gods because they left him behind? Good! Solid concept! But he’s also a dark clone of the hero who was accidentally created during the climax of the last arc but we never knew it? Ummm…that’s a bit of a stretch. Also, he’s been around since the beginning of time and influencing history for millennia AAAAAND IT JUST GOT STUPID.

Really, they would’ve been fine if Oropo were just some dude who we’d never met before who was mad at the gods. That’s sympathetic. This whole Eliotrope thing (IT’S THE SAME NAME AS ELIATROPE BUT WITH ONE VOWEL SWITCHED?) is too complicated and just too unbelievable. Also, yeah, let’s not foreshadow this at all and pack all the exposition about why Eliotropes exist into a five-minute flashback.

Not to mention that his messing with history means that most of the threats we’ve dealt with up until now are his fault. We will never not live in a timeline where Nox became Nox BECAUSE OROPO ARRANGED THAT. Which cheapens Nox’s original motivation of “a formerly good man who caused his own destruction, but then, due to the combination of that and an accident, was motivated to change time to undo his mistakes.” 

Same case with Ogrest. The OVAs set up a nice background for him about being sad because Otomaï abandoned him, and that was simple enough to understand and tugged at heartstrings. The extended lore of course has the incident about Dathura leaving him, which is again an understandable motivation. And all of this is Ogrest’s own story. It’s his own agency. This is a thing that happens to people. His father abandoned him, his lover betrayed him, and he became so sad, he flooded the world because he can’t control his tears. Oh, but what’s this now? Turns out Dathura didn’t leave him. Oropo just stole her away. Meaning Ogrest’s tragedy is now just a big pile of “Oropo did it again!” and honestly, at this point, we’re just trying to tack the mythos’ biggest tragedies onto the résumé of a subpar villain to make him seem scarier. 

Not to mention this is my personal preference, but the whole subplot about Oropo pretending to love Echo when he wanted Amalia all along was really not to my taste. You had the chance to do one of two of my favorite villain tropes: 1) Oropo/Echo as partners in crime who are evil but also in true love, or 2) Oropo as Amalia’s creepy stalker for a whole season, adding the yandere dimension to his villainy and upping his threat level on a personal standard. They did NEITHER. 

Also, the fact that Oropo tried to taunt Yugo with visions of Nox and Qilby telling him off for leaving them to terrible fates is 50% wrong. Would Qilby guilt Yugo over stranding him in the White Dimension, and would Yugo feel that guilt? ABSOLUTELY YES. But Nox? Nox left the battlefield to die quietly. He realized the weight of his sins. Nox would NOT guilt Yugo. And Yugo knows he did right by Nox. Oropo doesn’t understand Nox at all, despite being the guy WHO CREATED HIM.

Now, on to some complaints with the new gods in the tower.

We didn’t see the reasons for a lot of them actually WANTING to overthrow the gods. This is supposed to be a group that felt like life left them behind and so wants to take charge of it. The Osamodas girl who wanted to take care of her animals? YES. GOOD. GREAT. THAT’S WHAT THE REST OF THEM SHOULD’VE BEEN LIKE. But we never saw the motivations for most of them. We can assume Ush was just in it for a power grab, Dark Vlad was literally brainwashed, and…why did Black Bump, Toxine, the Sacrier, and Arpagone even want in on this plan? I love action shows that have good battle sequences, but I feel like in a LOT of these cases, the battles against the various new gods usurped us actually getting to KNOW them and SYMPATHIZE with their reasoning for doing this scheme.

I was afraid from day one that they were going to make extended canon stuff that wasn’t easily accessible part of the main series and expect us to just know about it, and Dark Vlad proved me right on that front. I KNOW Dark Vlad was explained in all the comics and spinoffs. But I still don’t have a clear idea of what he is because he wasn’t explained anywhere I saw.

Why even have a Sacrier if we weren’t going to meet her at all?

Black Bump is just a horrid waste of a character. Because we needed a villain with a panty fetish. Oh, wait, no, I guess it’s not a fetish. He just collects panties for completely non-sexual reasons. …WHAT?

Arpagone had ten million years of buildup and ten seconds of payoff. What EXACTLY was the resolution between her and Ruel? (Also, why is Ruel being depicted as a bad guy for avoiding a relationship that would’ve ruined his and Arpagone’s life financially and wound both of them up homeless? I know love is more important than money, but I’ve seen stuff in the real world, and I know you have to be able to balance your standard of living with your relationships. I have a good friend who got into a relationship for love and ended up financially TRASHED and stressed out for three years.) 

Then there’s…Amalia and Yugo’s relationship. Hoo boy. So I always thought it would end up with Yugo confessing his love to Amalia and her turning him down because he doesn’t age and is therefore too young for her. But…it’s the other way around? Why is 20-year-old Amalia still interested in eternally-14-year-old Yugo? I love Amalia and I REALLY don’t like the implications surrounding this. I’m just calling it a writing fumble and going on believing that Amalia isn’t a creep. But then it comes out that the real reason Yugo doesn’t want to be in a relationship is because he still thinks Amalia is self-absorbed, which…yes, is her fatal flaw, but isn’t something he ever picked on before that exact moment. She overhears this because of course she does…AND THEY NEVER GET THE CHANCE TO DISCUSS THAT PROBLEM. Which is frustrating as all get-out. I don’t know if they’re saving it for the next season or if they just intend to drop the issue. But, like, why have a communication problem between them if they were never going to solve it? Why leave that thread dangling?

Finally, NO. REMINGTON. SMISSE. We went to all the trouble of canonizing that he survived EVERY near-death experience he suffered in S2 and beyond and then that he is able to travel dimensions without explanation in the OVAs. And…he’s just…gone now? He doesn’t show up? THE AUDIENCE LOVES HIM. HE GOT HIS OWN SPINOFF COMIC BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH PEOPLE LOVE HIM. WHY WOULDN’T YOU. The last time we saw him was with Ush, and they brought USH back and that would have been the PERFECT way to bring Rémy in. But I dunno, maybe they killed him off permanently in his spinoff comic and they just expect us to know that because they refuse to recap the extended canon’s important points in the actual show. 

Anyway, S3 basically tried to pack too much into 13 episodes and failed to flesh out any of the concepts it brought up…many of which were garbage to begin with. I’m not sure whether or not I’m on board for S4. I am MORBIDLY curious to see what Ingloriam looks like and meet the gods of the twelve races. But we will NEVER NOT LIVE IN A TIMELINE WHERE OROPO CREATED NOX. 

#wakfu critical #wakfu spoilers