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thejudgingtrash · 4 years

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Annabeth is a good person,but not a nice or pleasant one,IMO.

YES.

That’s it. That’s the post. Pack it up everybody, we just cracked the case and cleared up one of the most compelling fights in the PJO fandom since forever. Good job everybody, clap it out and there’s the door! Don’t forget ordering the drinks at Starbucks, Mitch! They’re on me!

Okay, but on a more serious note: YES. YES EXACTLY.

And before some of you roll your eyes or grab your pitchforks – put your biases aside and hear me out for once. I like Annabeth. She’s my in my top three characters only second to Percy himself. I love Percabeth. It’s my favorite ship in the entire series and to be frank, the only ship that I care about PJO wise. Hell, I spend my time creating my own headcanons or writing my own fanfics with Percabeth being the star in them.

But that is not to say that I’m unable to see how certain things have developed over the years or where they stand now in regard to Annabeth. I’m not here to ignore things that have been said and/or done due to or in the name of Annabeth and I’m not here to vilify anyone that doesn’t like her. And I’m here to admit that I’m guilty of some of the things that may be addressed in this meta essay that you will read in just a second. However, I try my best to assure you, that I’m for once able to recognize my own bias.

Warning: a monster essay lies right upon you.

This should count as a paper of its own.

Back to the statement on top: I would go out even further to reframe your claim, anon:

Annabeth Chase is a good character but not a nice or pleasant person.

Annabeth is a wonderful character but she isn’t a nice one. Or at least not nice to everyone. She is (construction wise if I dare say) the best character out of the series. She has her positive traits (she’s caring, she’s emotional, she’s encouraged and volunteers, she fights for what she believes in, she forgives (even if doing so begrudgingly)) but she also has her negative traits (she’s stubborn, she’s brash, changing her mind takes forever, she is prejudiced, she baits others). That balances things out. She is branded as the intelligent kid but does irrational things (like I’ve just said a) she’s a kid and b) she’s not a robot). She should probably know better, but we all make mistakes and hopefully grow and learn from them. The clouds in the sky do blur and cover our visions sometimes.

Annabeth had clashes with other characters or was about to have fights due to her stubbornness or jealousy (Rachel, Reyna, etc.) and has of course her problems with the mortal world and her family but she also found new friends, some things cleared up throughout the narration and she was/is quite popular in Camp Half-Blood.

The thing is: she doesn’t have to be nice or pleasant (as a character). Or at least not all the time. Her character is humanized. That is what or who she is. Human. She does stand out as a character, not just because she’s the (future) love interest. She feels like someone you could meet in real life and either adore from the top to the bottom or declare as your biggest enemy. And that’s totally okay if you lean either way – liking or disliking her. Or even feeling indifferent about her. Also great!

To say that she has been the best character that Riordan has crafted is easy to say, because she has been sculpted after Riordan’s wife. He had a model he could rub some of real-life events or traits on. That’s not the problem. The problem truly doesn’t lie on Riordan’s side for the most part for once.

The problem is inherently on the fandom’s side. What the fandom does, how it acts and how it treats Annabeth as a character is the problem. The problems vary but it’s mostly the mischaracterization of Annabeth, starting fights and fan/ship wars, internalized misogyny (in some cases) and how some of the Annabeth stans lash out (ha, got firsthand experience in that field among many of my friends and mutuals!). There is a reason why many people are wary of people that have Annabeth or Percabeth related URLs.

The fact that we see Annabeth mostly through Percy’s lens and (until the Heroes of Olympus saga hits) we never really see her in chill everyday situations is essentially Riordan leaving the back door of the house open, ready for all of you asshats to rob his mansion in Boston. Because a frame on a character means that we don’t get to see the character in its entirety (unlike we do with Percy in PJO for the most part). That means a bunch of stuff is left open for interpretation which is the reason why Annabeth gets so many polarized headcanon and opinions tossed around. I think that is one of the true appeals of Annabeth. You can add on stuff and it necessarily doesn’t have to contradict itself.

We have people calling her abusive due to a (n admittedly stupid and unnecessary) judo flip and we have people that act like she’s never done anything wrong. People sorta use this excuse to form and shape Annabeth however they want and distort her characterization.

People in the fandom act like Annabeth is some weird prized possession. We perceive Annabeth mostly through the eyes of others (Percy, Apollo, etc.) and when we had some sort of insight in her ways (MOA, HOH) it felt… weird? Somewhat? Like Riordan left two bullet points of her characterization and told the ghostwriter: aight, fuck it up, gringo, see you on Tuesday and greet Fred the next time you see him for me.

There have been many posts lately (by Tharini, Simi, Sawasawako, Jewishpercy and Annie I believe?) that HOO Percabeth felt weird. That they felt weirdly constructed, that there was no conflict, no growth. It felt stagnating, like we’re turning back. We had five books prior where we had Annabeth and Percy slowly shifting from disliking to liking and crushing each other. True development. And when we finally got the cake it felt… dissatisfying. Like the cheap box stuff and not the delicious exquisite taste that we were promised.

I said it previously in my Percabeth ship roast, but let me repeat myself: many Percabeth related things are straight up fanon. Some of it is very old fanon so that’s been unable to distinguish unless you’ve read the books recently and subtract nearly 99,9% of things you see on Tumblr (and occasionally the other shitty parts of the fandom like Reddit, IG, Twitter. Although they mostly steal and recycle tumblr stuff oh well. But back to the topic).

The way people treat Annabeth is so strange. She’s either an innocent fluffy smush baby that’s never harmed a fly and all that she wants for Christmas is being Percy’s lapdog or she’s the devil incarnate, broke into your house, killed your parents Batman style, kicked your puppy and didn’t flush the toilet on the way out. I think this is what mostly makes people hate her or the ship Percabeth. And both extremes are wrong and right at the same time? She is multifaceted so both stereotypes are true and untrue and sorta cancel each other out in the same way.

The true reason why people dislike Annabeth is because the stans are doing the most. (The haters as well, don’t get me wrong, but oh boy. Piss of a stan and you’ll know what I mean). That isn’t inherently new. Are you guys old enough to remember the ship wars that have happened cross platform? Perachel vs. Percabeth? Oh boy, oh boy. I saw some kids on tumblr a few months ago trying to infiltrate both tags and start shit (and also fail). The fact that Rachel still gets used as the bitchy (ex) girlfriend in fanfics? It’s 2020 guys. I know this apocalyptic year is far from perfect and over but I think we can let this trope die, right? Right? I thought we’ve established that Rachel is a pretty chill charcter by now… right?

If you posted your stuff on FFN back in 2010-2013 and it wasn’t the typical cutesy Percabeth story (Goode High, the gods read TLT, punk/prep Percabeth, college AU, etc.) people would’ve come for your fucking throat. Not because the story or the narration was shit. But because the pairing wasn’t Annabeth and Percy (in the sense that Annabeth had to be paired with Percy. I mean Percy gets shipped with everyone and their mother but for Annabeth it was strictly Percy. As annoying as this whole Connabeth thing is – the people behind it actually had a point. She never had a different love interest unless it’s a Percy centered story and he goes off dating Athena, Artemis and Zoe at the same time for some odd reason. Yeah, FFN Percy ships are something). Or it wasn’t the action filled canon compliant story or it wasn’t an AU that was popular.

People were really stubborn, snobbish and wanted their stuff in the four five boxes that were the most popular ones and that’s it. People have been bullied off the site in many fandoms, so it’s not a PJO-only thing but it’s still sad that it happened. (Off-note: most of these FFN tropes are still alive and well and thriving on AO3. Don’t be so snobbish and pretend that every piece you’d find there is a holy grail. There’s a lot of trash you have to waddle through. Same with Wattpad, Tumblr or anywhere else where fanfics get posted. Also had this discussion with Annabeth stans. Sigh).

And Tumblr back then? Forget it, wasn’t much better.

That view has sorta changed (at least for people that have been in the fandom for several years or have managed to find a way to navigate through it) but some of the negative sentiment from back in the day has survived. Be it by new fans coming in or from old fans that never let their stance die. The aggression feels differently and somewhat not. (I don’t know if the anon function had been abused that much back in the day. I was an observer not a participant in the fandom).

Crack a joke at Annabeth’s expense (Kal’s famous “Annabeth is a Republican” post or Dee Dee’s and many others “Annabeth has the education of a second grader, chill with the college plans, girlie” stance) and you have people insulting you, making callout posts, unfollowing and blocking you (based on only that? Okay, honey), making aggressive counter-posts, etc. in a minute. If you respond with “It’s a joke, it’s not real” you have a 50/50 chance of either getting blown off or embarrassing them so that they apologize for once.

This isn’t just about jokes. You can make a headcanon that’s not the cozy cute convenient mainstream saga and people would react the same way. Or art piece (no, not including the whole Tannabeth Blackchase shtick done by Viria and others) or fanfics.

People project so much onto the unfinished canvas that is Annabeth Chase that any form of negative sentiment as little as someone not liking her to straight up criticism, regardless of how tiny it may be, seems like an affront. Like an invitation to a fight. Like an insult to them, their character, everything they believe in. Let me state something:

You are NOT Annabeth Chase. Annabeth Chase IS NOT you. Annabeth Chase is NOT real. Her feeling cannot be hurt. Someone criticizing, disliking, joking about her or even insulting her will not bother her. Someone making a statement about her is not an insult to YOU.

Let me repeat that:

Annabeth Chase isn’t real. Annabeth Chase isn’t you.

So think a little before you act? I get it when you’re a kid and new to fandoms or haven’t been up with fan cultures in the past and are back in the scene. But if you’re in your late teens or even older as an adult and you’re unable to understand that you aren’t what you like – you aren’t the extension of a fictional character – I feel incredibly sorry for you. Because that’s just incredibly sad. Someone disliking something you like isn’t an attack of your character. It shows you that you are you and the other person is a human just like you. That they just have different taste. Disliking something you like isn’t a crime, you know? But me feeling sorry for the way some of y’all act won’t mean that that’s even remotely okay. Especially if you’re no longer in the intended audience for PJO age wise and should know better.

This isn’t a “white stans” only thing. I’ve seen and witnessed firsthand how people of color, mainly women of color, act the same or not even worse when it comes to her character. People have projected their problems and real-life occurring events into her character (I’m sure that she isn’t the only character nor that this is the only fandom where this is happening) and in some cases like I’ve said cannot separate their own personality from the fictional world. Fights with woc happened because of Annabeth fucking Chase. So many things have happened in the fandom the past few months, mostly due to people being forced staying at home because of the quarantine but I’d say it’s 10% on quarantine and 90% on people for acting up like this.

So here’s a little story: There was the act of Riordan blowing the fandom up because of his own stupidity and being unable to apologize for his mischaracterization and lack of research (the whole Piper fiasco) back in June (?) and admits the upset fandom, people on Twitter, Tumblr and Discord legit thought that none of that mattered and that the outcry was destroying Annabeth Chase’s birthday. That’s right. People thought that Annabeth Chase’s non-existing birthday because she’s a fictional character had a higher priority than the rupture and prevalent racism in the fandom. Okay. This isn’t a great look, Annabeth stans. And this of course pissed a lot of people off. I made a post about it and someone not only berated three other people on said post but no, we had a mighty argument which had disrupted many friendships in our circle which haven’t recovered until this very day. We both had our parts in it and no one is innocent. But the cause of this still remains Annabeth Chase or how people prioritize her non-existing well-being. Anyway. I’m getting agitated just thinking about it.

Let’s go back to the characterization thing with Annabeth. Let me remind you:

Annabeth Chase is an asshole. There I’ve said it in a post ages ago (too lazy to look it up, sorry) and I’ll say it again. And that’s not me insulting her. That’s me actually loving that about her. Annabeth is one of the very few unapologetic female characters that really showed all young readers across the world that you can be a girl, a badass, smart, strong, standing up for yourself and what you believe in. You don’t have to be nice. You don’t have to hide your feelings. You don’t need a man in all cases but it’s also okay to accept help and defeat.

A large reason why I think she’s an incredibly important character in children’s literature/YA because many other novels (mostly (sadly)) have the “Oh, I’m a white skinny dark-haired girl that likes unconventional things like READING. I’m not like the other girls, that take care of themselves and pamper themselves by enjoying shopping and wearing make-up. No, I’d rather be one of the boys but a sweet cute little boy and not the jock fuck that drank vodka shots out of a filthy shoe once. Despite me calling myself hideous every man in a 10-kilometer radius falls in love with me and tells me I’m oh so sexy and by the way I’m only 16 years old” shit going on for no goddamn reason.

Yes, I do blame Twilight for this mostly in recent years, but this trope isn’t by any means knew. Pretty sure that you could even use classics as Pride and Prejudice and dissect them in the same manner (Bold statement: Lizzy Bennet is the OG Bella Swan. There. Go fight somewhere in the corner, people). The new wave of YA focuses on girls belittling themselves and only starting to believe in themselves because someone else (mostly the male love interest) tells them they’re worth it. And these books hit the mainstream because they’re incredibly bland and picture perfect white.

With Annabeth it’s different. She shows up for the job and is done with it. (Brie Larson would probably be the perfect in real life version of her. You either like or dislike her. Or you really don’t care). That is what is so refreshing about her. Her unapologetic nature. Can it be off-putting? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes! Hell, every time I read The Lightning Thief, I want to rip her goddamn head off. And it’s just so well written. Her shift from mistrusting Percy but secretly still believing in him to her opening up. Wow, Riordan did something right there.

Annabeth Chase isn’t a young character. She has existed along with PJO for 15 years. She’s on her way to the second decade. I’m pretty sure that with the success of Percy Jackson (and Harry Potter) many lives have been warped and shaped.

But when I say the problem lies mostly in the fandom, it doesn’t mean that Riordan’s completely innocent. The only problem that I have with Annabeth lies not truly with her but the fact that Riordan is only able to produce three variations of female characters:

The sweetheart (Hazel, Silena, Calypso, Hestia)

The strong feminist (Annabeth, Piper, Thalia, Reyna, Artemis)

The bitch (Drew, nearly every female goddess in the goddamn Riordanverse next to every female monster)

And these female characters only know three endings:

End up married with a mortgage, three kids, two dogs and a cat somewhere in Connecticut by the age of twelve

Get dumped into the hunt

Chill on Mount Olympus and only come down to be a nuisance and/or give a cryptic message before going back and doing a godly rave party or something

We know Annabeth as the badass strong female first (or the bitchy character we’re supposed to actually like. Choose your approach), the blueprint so to speak, so some of the other characters feel almost pale in comparison and almost not needed? Doesn’t mean that other characters can’t behave similarly, but it feels kind of redundant especially if their character arcs end in a rather anticlimactic way (Thalia, Reyna). The new additions are the much needed woc as the main story with PJO was inherently white (anyway stan black!Percy and Grover, folks). So it’s not to bash on the new characters, it’s more Riordan’s fault more than anything.

Since Riordan only knows three female character arcs it feels like he tried to copy the formula several ways with different nuances. Some more or less successful. This is where fandom actually comes in handy and helps create more distinguished and fleshed out characters in form of headcanons or fanfiction.

But even in these cases people still make it about Annabeth when it’s time for characters of colors to shine. Remember that whole spiel and discussion that broke out when people (Kal, diver-up, Caitlyn, Bee, reynaisalesbian, etc.) joked about or criticized that Annabeth thinks that she’s having it harder because she’s a blonde? In front of Hazel and Piper? If she would’ve been a real person that’s an invitation for getting decked. And then all hell broke loose because Annabeth stans couldn’t accept the fact that in the real world and/or in fictional worlds the woc/coc have it harder? That the white woman wasn’t the victim that needed the coddling? Yeah, that was mad pathetic.

I hope you people get my point?

Well fuck. I wrote so many things and have the feeling I’ve said nothing. Anyway, I hope I made sense. This is way too long.

TLDR: Chill about Annabeth please. She’s an important character but that doesn’t mean that everyone has to like her, regardless of being a character in the books or a reader/fan of PJO in real life. She isn’t nice or a sweetheart all the time. She also isn’t the monstrous asshole that some try to make out of her.

Peace out.

#Mel answers #pjo #percy jackson #Annabeth chase #percy jackson and the olympians #Percabeth #pjo Meta #Heroes of olympus #hoo #trials of apollo #toa #hazel levesque #piper mclean #reyna avila ramirez arellano #rachel elizabeth dare #pjo fandom #coc #rick riordan #riordanverse

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bestworstcase · 3 years

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farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 16-17

back at it.

re: romance novel: “I saw a patch of red flowers, and I thought they would be striking against Cass’s dark hair. She wasn’t exactly a flower wearer, but maybe she’d let me pin one on her dress? The color would set off her fair skin so perfectly. And she could at least keep some in a vase by her bed. I refused to believe there was a person alive who didn’t feel better with freshly cut flowers in her room.” that’s gay rapunzel

i do admittedly have some ambivalent feelings about this passage. on the one hand it’s - yes, very gay. but also it feels to me like such a clear illustration of the difficulty rapunzel has with empathy and listening to other people when their experiences or expectations or needs diverge from hers; she acknowledges that cass isn’t into flowers, but follows it up with “but maybe i can get her to wear some anyway,” and of course there’s the whole refusing to believe anyone could feel differently about having flowers in their room than she does. and it also has this weird undercurrent of - god, i don’t know how to phrase it in a succinct way.

this specific passage was on my mind when i wrote this bit in moonless air chapter 4:

Still. She plucks at the stitches of her jack-of-plate, self-conscious.

It’s the nicest thing she owns. Soft green velvet sewn over sturdy layers of canvas and steel. Armor. She’d saved up for more than a year to buy it for herself on the anniversary of her adoption two years ago, and at the time it had been nothing but a frivolous luxury. Stupid, really. She’d never had real reason to wear it in Herzingen, not for anything besides teaching herself how to move with its weight and entertaining ridiculous fantasies—but last night, Moira had intimated that their destination in Vardaros is fancy as well as dangerous. So the jack seemed… appropriate.

Sharp. She twitches.

Clothing—fashion isn’t– Cassandra’s always hated dresses. It’s a trait that demands a certain amount of indifference to what other people think of her appearance.

And she can do indifference. Cassandra has indifference in spades. But nobody’s ever paid her a compliment quite like that before: baldly appreciative. Straightforward. Not like all the times Rapunzel coaxed her into tolerating crowns of late-summer flowers because the colors look so nice with your complexion! and not like the Commander’s gruff praise for how grown-up she looked in the hideous pastel gowns that had come with the lady-in-waiting gig.

because – like, cass is butch, and “not a flower wearer,” and here in lost lagoon we have this passage where rapunzel expresses this pretty straightforward attraction to cassandra but in the context of imagining cassandra presenting in a much more feminine way than she is comfortable with - in a dress with flowers in her hair etc - and it just... rubs me the wrong way a little bit. and this is not to say like cass can’t be butch and put a flower in her hair but when it’s paired with rapunzel specifically acknowledging that cass doesn’t WANT to wear flowers then it - yeah i feel weird about this passage.

and that translated into cass having a whole little crisis over being complimented for her appearance without implicit pressure to be more feminine for the first time ever

anyways

i still can’t get over the name monsieur lefleur

rapunzel summarizes hervanian culture as “brash but can be funny; distrustful but not mean-spirited” so, basically, they are americans

she is feeling very Prepared to meet with them, in contrast to every other time she’s met with foreign dignitaries or nobility before this. eugene tries to warn her that cass is PISSED with her and she just brushes him off, as one does, by saying that cass is “not all bubbles and moonbeams” but that she is “a softy” inside.

of course this leads up to cass blowing up and going off while rapunzel tries to calm her down and just - groan this line.

“People don’t change! You told a criminal a detail that puts my entire future at risk!”

how many times have i said “cass doesn’t act this way in tts” i feel like it’s a constant drumbeat. but i have to say, again, that cass doesn’t act this way in tts. i don’t think it’s unrealistic for her to think like this, given that her father is essentially corona’s chief of police and she idolizes him, but i feel the need to reiterate that there is zero sign of cass having this mindset in tts proper. and it does sort of bother me when people read this into cass’s character because it undermines and delegitimizes her dislike of eugene in early s1.

which like. tts itself sort of frames their mutual dislike as a mutual problem, but it’s... really not? and imo the best illustration of this is in this exchange from cassandra vs eugene:

CASSANDRA: Unbelievable. Did you eat all the cookies?

EUGENE: I’m not a pig, Cassandra. I ate all of your cookies; I’m saving mine for later.

CASSANDRA: Ugh– you are nothing but a self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant freeloader!

EUGENE: [scoffing] You know, I can rattle off insulting adjectives describing your personality, too, but to do so would imply that you actually have a personality, and I just wouldn’t feel right about doing that!

this is the dynamic every time they squabble in early s1.

1 - eugene does something selfish or thoughtless - in this case taking all the cookies and milk for himself.

2 - cassandra calls him out for it, and he doubles down, often taking a potshot at her in the process.

3 - cassandra gets mad and calls his behavior what it is (self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant)

4 - eugene gets defensive and insults her as a person, typically with variations on calling her icy / unfeeling / humorless / joyless.

which is to say, their fights are initiated by eugene’s poor behavior, and cassandra attacks his behavior but eugene attacks cassandra herself. like, eugene is the dude who insults you and then goes “pfft why can’t you take a joke” when you get upset with him. that’s what this is.

moreover, when eugene’s, for lack of a better term, residual flynn rider-ness starts to taper off, cassandra’s criticism of his behavior also tapers off, AND she gets much gentler about how she phrases this criticism once he starts to actually take it on board. but there’s no accompanying shift in the way eugene speaks to and about her - the jibes about her being humorless or cranky or soulless literally never stop and at no point does he ever seem to consider that cass might not appreciate them as much as he thinks she does.

(to be clear, i don’t think they bother cass very much if at all - but they do create and reinforce a perception on eugene’s end that cass Doesn’t Have Feelings and the background radiation of that contributes to the toxicity that develops in season 2.)

like again, pulling from cassandra vs eugene here, eugene is extremely insulting towards cassandra even when he’s ostensibly coming to her defense:

RANDOM THUG: Look at that, Fancy-Boots has got something to say!

EUGENE: Name-calling? Come on, we’re better than that, aren’t we? Sure, we could sit here and make fun of each other—tease Cassandra for her chronic joylessness, or me for my uncommonly good looks, or you for your poor dental hygiene, tragic fashion sense, robust body odor, and what are clearly woefully misguided decision making skills, but do you really want to go down that road?

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY - besides demonstrating an obvious willingness to give eugene another chance once he starts doing the bare minimum to not be a dick to her, cassandra doesn’t like eugene because eugene is an asshole to her and takes the enormous privileges he is given completely for granted.

saying “well she doesn’t like him because he was a criminal and she doesn’t believe criminals ever change” erases that completely and reframes the conflict as cassandra treats eugene unfairly because of bigotry that she needs to unlearn. lost lagoon takes this even one step further in that lost lagoon eugene is genuinely trying to be responsible, he is taking his new lot in life seriously. he doesn’t need cass to tell him off for acting like an ass because he doesn’t act like an ass. he shows actual interest in getting to know cass and makes an effort to break through her hostility in order to get along. unlike his tts counterpart, lagoon eugene really doesn’t do anything wrong, and that makes cassandra’s intense hatred of him on the grounds that he was a thief look completely irrational and, like i said, bigoted.

it’s just very frustrating to me.

anyways

rapunzel tries very hard to persuade cass that it’s actually totally fine that she told eugene the secret because she just can’t keep secrets from eugene (except the lagoon which she has arbitrarily decided is totes fine to keep secret and i am pretty sure this contradiction never gets pointed out) - and cass is having none of it, and of course arianna interrupts before anything can get resolved.

they rush out and monsieur lefleur interrupts them, asking questions about the lost lagoon. he reveals that he heard an ~elegant cloaked person~ inquiring about it in the library. he asks for the book. they say no. the red herring smells to high heavens, and the chapter ends with rapunzel subtly telling cass to hide the book ~for the safety of the kingdom~ and oh my god i just can’t handle the low stakes.

seventeen picks up from there with cassandra’s point of view; she’s suspicious of lefleur and angsts a lot about how she has no time to train and she needs to get out of corona yada yada. her plan is literally to just walk until she finds someone to hire her on as a guard which. lol. this kid.

i feel like this is the strongest passage in the whole book:

She said there couldn’t be any secrets between Eugene and her. But why—especially when it meant sacrificing my future and everything I held dear? I’d read about romantic love in poems, and it seemed to me like a spell. Sounded great for the lovebirds, but what about the other people.

Did I just not matter in the face of this love, even though I had been the one to risk everything to show Rapunzel the world? Was I just supposed to fall on my sword because Eugene was uncomfortable that he didn’t have every last piece of information about Rapunzel?

she has a brief argument with owl, who is a pretty obvious stand-in for her own doubts / feeling that she truly belongs in corona and doesn’t actually want to leave. but she has no choice! but it’s stormy, so she can’t leave! oh no!

(i think if tts really strongly felt she had no choice but to free corona, a measly thunderstorm would not be enough to stop her.)

#lost lagoon reread #cassunzel

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 years

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So: what ARE all the various things Quentin Coldwater visibly has not processed or unpacked or come to terms with by the end of season 4? Have you made a list?

sure, let’s give this a whirl, shall we?

1. quentin’s death itself - kind of cheating since technically quentin does not come back to life in the show, but the obvious starting point in any post-s4 fic about him. i feel like dying and coming back to life on its own has gotta be messed up in even the best circumstances, possibly unless you do it like penny where you never really have a moment of feeling like you have died. in the softest interpretation of quentin’s death, it was still a violent sudden untimely death, which feels like it adds to that. which is not getting into —

2. the fact that quentin’s death was self-inflicted - i think there’s definite room for ambiguity in considering, like, how suicidal his suicide was, so to speak, all the way from “he walked into the mirror realm planning or at least hoping to die” to, sure, “he sacrificed himself for the greater good and was sorry to die.” that is a reading that fits with the text. my own headcanon-ish take on it, or the reading that makes most sense to me in terms of quentin’s characterization across the show (which to be clear is NOT what the show wants us to think about it), setting aside whatever angle i might find most dramatically useful or interesting explore in a particular story, is somewhere between these two. i think if everett hadn’t shown up, quentin would have walked out of there alive, and when he decided to cast, some part of him felt a real deep sense of relief. i actually read the moment as emotionally pretty analogous to alice niffin-ing out — when niffin!alice says she did it on purpose, i think that’s true, but does that mean she wanted to, exactly, in all the parts of her that didn’t make it to niffinhood? i don’t know, and i don’t think alice really knows, then or ever, which is how i feel about some future quentin looking back and trying to answer for himself the question he asks penny: yes, no, both, kind of, not really, yes but just for a second, no but not strongly enough... and that kind of uncertainty about your own desires and beliefs and motivations at such a crucial juncture is itself something to process. like i said, that’s my own take on it, and the reality of it (despite the show’s protests to the contrary) is ambiguous; what’s not ambiguous is that, uh, quentin made a choice he knew would kill him, and everything we know about quentin suggests that having this information about himself would really fuck him up (and also that some dumb hot chocolate feelings chat in the underworld would not actually be enough to ease his mind on the issue). which leads me to —

3. quentin’s mental health shit, part the first - so, there’s the fact of quentin’s depression which predates the show by ages and which he has now spent four years basically ignoring while getting traumatized repeatedly, and he needs....... something regarding that. meds/therapy convo is for a lot of people the obvious Something, it’s a good Something. i don’t like to be prescriptivist about what Something is, i think a lot about leonard cohen in his 70s being like “yes it turned out that the thing i needed to finally address my lifelong depression was to go through the process of getting ordained as a buddhist monk.” maybe what quentin needs is to get ordained as a buddhist monk. i could buy that. but Something regarding his like everyday ability to be a person in the world, especially considering that he died at what could charitably be described as a low point re: that, he needs. and, also —

4. quentin’s mental health shit, part the second - he needs to process and deal with his own feelings about his fucked up brain and the things that he’s done as a result of it, because there’s the brain stuff, but then there’s also the shame and self-concept and identity issues that have developed around and with the brain stuff, you know? i mean, there is a reason i have written now two stories spanning well over a hundred thousand words in which therapy is suggested to quentin and his response is “hmm. no thanks,” and it’s because the first time we ever meet him, he is in the process of refusing further treatment against a psychiatric professional’s advice! he goes off his meds like 18 hours later and never once in the show shows any inclination of being like, “hm maybe that was a bad idea,” including when magic gets turned off and he picks up smoking as a fun summer hobby instead. we know from the mind palace that quentin’s deepest fears involve his own brain, and there’s a lot of different ways you can read the fact that the cherry on top of the nightmare sunday is the dream-revelation that his illness led him to attack his dad but IMO one of the more obvious ones is that he already thinks of his illness as something that has hurt his dad. he has some real dark feelings about his own mind.

5. quentin’s dad - quentin barely deals at all with his dad’s death before he himself dies, and like — similarly to his death, losing his father in his mid-twenties is something that would be difficult for a long long time in the least-bad situation. for quentin, i think there’s a ton of unresolved shit in the distance between them as two people who loved each other deeply, and knew the other loved him deeply, but didn’t always know how to communicate; i think there’s a lot of internalized shame around making his father’s life difficult by having the mental health problems he did that he hasn’t unpacked; i think that ahead of him there’s like, a lot of unexpressed anger about what his father couldn’t give him & a lot of guilt about that because his father did do his best and is now dead & a lot of grief about the fact that his father will never be around for quentin to heal his side of their relationship. also there’s the fact that, uh, quentin’s dad died because he chose to turn magic back on, and we know from his conversation with julia that he feels conflicted about having made that choice.

6. quentin’s experiences with the monster - almost everything that happens to quentin on the magicians is some degree of traumatizing, but being constantly tormented by an evil demigod wearing the body of your ex-boyfriend who keeps murdering people partly (after 4x05 at least) because you decided you wanted to take on the absolute inevitability of further carnage for the extremely slim chance of somehow saving your rex-boyfriend - that really takes it to the next level, and we can see that this is true in his affect, in the way quentin in season 4 just totally shuts down, in his reckless behavior and even lower instinct for self-preservation.

7. quentin’s experiences on the quest - i’ve said this before, but if you watch season 3 from the mosaic episode on with a focus on tracking quentin’s inner state, the show becomes a grim story of a guy who came face to face with his depression and never really recovered. that’s... a lot, on its own. it’s more when you consider the fact that as far as he knows, he only survived his initial encounter with the depression monster by, uh, fulfilling its darkest ideas about himself, i.e. passing on his pain to someone else (benedict) who died because quentin wasn’t strong enough to handle his shit on his own. that’s not my read of that episode, but i honestly feel like if quentin ever has 5 seconds to think about it that’s gotta be how he feels about it, right? and you can see briefly in season 3 how his anxiety starts ratcheting up about his sense of responsibility towards others on the quest once penny and benedict are both dead. and there’s also the whole thing about how the quest wants him to be cold, which as i have said 9 million times is a very sad thing for him to believe that he never gets to unlearn! all culminating in his decision to stay at blackspire, which —

8. quentin’s hero thing - of all the really baffling choices the show makes, one that i keep coming back to is how they told quite beautifully the story of quentin letting go of his desire to be a hero, culminating in handing alice the leo blade (or... whatever i’m not gonna fact check that. you know what the fuck i mean), and then they uhhhh. i don’t even know what to call it. walked it back? decided he hadn’t actually learned that in a generally applicable way? the season 2 finale is interesting because he does A Hero Thing (stabs a god with a sword), but it happens very unglamorously and feels very much like a decision born out of necessity, but then it leads to magic ending, so... i don’t know what to do with that. but his decision to stay at blackspire is... clearly quentin wanting to be a hero! like, he’s managed to step away from the idea of heroic glory, but veered over instead to heroic martyrdom, which is not really... better. and which eliot saves him from (See Below), only for him to... double down on it a season later by sacrificing his life for real. all of which is A Lot, not even getting into the fact that, like, at some point he’s gotta come up with some justification for being alive other than this, and the show strongly suggests he... hasn’t, yet.

9. yeah, like, eliot? - HOO boy. listen. the act of turning quentin down in and of itself is not morally wrong. if eliot sincerely hadn’t wanted a relationship with quentin after the mosaic, that would be his right, and his rejection doesn’t become a crime just because we know that it actually came from his own issues. i also honestly think eliot thought in the moment that he was shutting this down for the good of both of them and as kindly as he could. he was very wrong about this, but that’s my take. HOWEVER. there are a lot of reasons you can read that conversation in 4x05 as being unintentionally crafted to be particularly hurtful to quentin specifically, the biggest and most obvious one being, uh, “fifty years that were real for you were not real for me” (hurtful in any case but particularly for someone like quentin who has such a sense that one of his problems is he Cares Too Much), and my personal favorite being that the logical implication of “that’s not you,” for quentin, is “the version of yourself that learned to be content with your life as it happened to unfold is not real.” excruciating to hear those things, while also trying to figure out how to emotionally process the memories of a dead wife you never married and a son that was never born! extra excruciating to then have the person who told you “you didn’t matter enough to me to take a chance on” shoot a god because apparently you do matter enough for him to override your life choices, and then get possessed. one of my favorite moments in 4x05 is when quentin tells alice “i loved you, and you couldn’t trust that,” because it’s clearly in there to draw a parallel to the throne room scene for Writing Points, but it’s so wildly inapplicable to any of their 900 break-ups (right before blackspire SHE was the one saying “i know i don’t always seem like it but you’re the one i love”!), that the only plausible in-universe reading of it is that quentin has been stewing miserably on the eliot thing this entire time, only now he can’t even be properly mad at eliot because eliot is possessed by a demigod, so he’s just projecting onto the nearest available screen. i’m obsessed with that. it’s horrible and very sexy and Needs To Be Unpacked

10. see, like all the way down here at the bottom we get to quentin’s mom - idk, his mom is a very critical person (i don’t love using the word “critical” because it often gets used misogynistically but it is the only personality trait we really have for her) who never seems to contact or wonder about her adult son with a longterm history of mental illness, who certainly doesn’t seem to have the same skepticism his father has about the brakebills cover story that he’s studying finance, and who unlike his father is not mentioned when quentin recounts his first hospitalization. like, that can’t be great for him, right? that can’t have nothing to do with him being the way he is. for most people that would rank as a pretty major thing to process. but compared to everything else on the list? idk, man!

that’s... i mean this is not so much my thinking for fic-related reasons, this is just me lying down and trying to get out all my screaming about quentin coldwater, which i honestly feel like is still missing some things. like i kinda think he has not gotten over being an unpopular nerd for what is chronologically still most of his life??? i feel like he has some weird stuff around sex which explains why his reaction to poppy macking on him is basically “i guess this is happening now” which is not, like, an ideal relationship or lack thereof to have with your own body? he doesn’t have a single close friend who does not play a major role in his psychosexual development, and he has no male friends he’s never slept with. i couldn’t even go down the road of residual guilt over being the guy who got magic turned off and therefore in his brain probably responsible for everything that happened after that. the dude’s a mess!!!!!!!!!! i love him more than anything on this stupid earth but his mind is a fucking horrorshow!!!!!!!!!!!!

#the magicians #askbox #i slept poorly the past several nights and my brain decided it's all coming down Today #so this seemed like the right time for this lmao

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makeste · 4 years

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There's been a lot of talk about Mina's optimistic line about how they'll all be fine and back to class is a death flag, but if anything I think it's a desth flag for U.A. They'll be fine, but they won't be back to class as normal, because there won't BE a class to attend(RIP Shinsou)

seems like everyone in the fandom is talking about death flags and kids dying and society falling to pieces these days lol. fwiw, as I’m sure most people have seen by now, Viz’s translation showed that Mina was actually talking about Midnight, so if this really is a “famous last words” situation, it would apply to her rather than the kids.

but it seems like the speculation hasn’t really died down despite that! so since the whole “kids dying” thing keeps coming up, I’m gonna go ahead and weigh in on it again here and say that I don’t think it’s going to happen. so far I’ve mostly been trying to keep my reasoning short and sweet and leaving it at “it would be too dark”, but in truth, the real reason why I don’t see it happening is because I don’t think it would serve any purpose.

here’s the thing about character deaths: assuming that the writing is any good (which I would argue that it is, in BnHA’s case, although you are free to disagree!), they should always serve a purpose. and in most cases, that’s going to mean one of four things:

it serves as a way to write the character out of the story for whatever reason (for instance if the character is getting in the way of letting a plot be resolved, or if the actor is leaving, which of course doesn’t apply to BnHA but is a huge factor in a lot of other media). an example here would be Twice, who was written out of the story because his quirk would have prevented the heroes from having any chance at all of winning.

it sets the stakes and takes away the audience’s sense of security by establishing that No One Is Safe, and that People Can And Will Die. this is important in that it builds suspense and makes the audience more invested than they might otherwise be, because they can’t be 100% certain that their fave is going to make it out alive. a good example of this would be the recent massacre at Jakku, which showed in no uncertain terms how powerful Tomura has become, and also demonstrated that Horikoshi has no qualms whatsoever about killing off any number of pro hero characters in this arc.

it completes that character’s arc and serves as a fitting (if depressing) end to their story. this is probably the most controversial as far as “reasons for killing someone off” go, because it’s so easy to fuck up, and because someone will almost always argue that there were other, better ways for a character’s story to end. most “redemption” deaths fall under this category, as do the “character makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect their loved one” deaths. if Endeavor ends up dying there’s a good chance it will fall under this category. so far though, BnHA has been pretty light on these types of deaths, which tbh suits me just fine. ideally this sort of death is supposed to provide some sort of closure, but in practice it doesn’t always work out that way.

lastly, the death furthers the story in some way. it galvanizes another character into action, or serves as a motivation for them. or maybe the death shifts the political landscape of the story and sets new plots into motion. most tragic backstory deaths fall under this category; for example, pretty much the entire Shimura family (r.i.p.). this is another potentially controversial area though on account of there being many other ways to move the plot forward without resorting to killing someone off. not to mention that “fridging” deaths also fall under this category -- deaths where one character is used as a plot device to move another character’s development forward. Nana, unfortunately, is an example of this, but that’s another rant for another day.

anyway, so these are the four biggest reasons to kill off a character in a story. there are others as well, including simply adding some more tragedy and emotion to the story, but IMO that doesn’t really apply to this particular genre. BnHA isn’t a tragedy, nor is it the kind of bleak, grimdark narrative where killing off characters more frequently would make sense. this isn’t the kind of series where gratuitous character deaths are necessary to add shock value or realism. making the shift into that kind of writing this late in the game wouldn’t make much sense, and IMO would do a lot more harm than good.

so as far as I’m concerned, this means that if Horikoshi is going to kill someone off in this arc, that death needs to come under one of these four categories. oh, and something I forgot to mention before -- it should be necessary, as well. in other words, it accomplishes one of these four things, and is the only way that said thing can be accomplished. those are basically my criteria for a “good” character death.

and as far as I can see, none of the kids’ deaths would currently fall into that “necessary” category, or meet any of those other four criteria. none of the kids are so powerful that they need to be written out of the story (and even if they were, there are other ways to do that with AFO and the quirk-be-gone bullets now in play). they don’t need to be killed off in order to raise the stakes; clearly, fandom is already very convinced on that front already, or people wouldn’t constantly be freaking out over death flags and such in the first place. and none of the kids is anywhere near the completion of their respective story arcs. maybe if one or more of them had been featured more often recently, and there was some actual buildup, like we saw with Mirio right before he lost his quirk, or with Nighteye before he was killed. but we haven’t seen anything like that recently for any of the kids, with the possible exception of Bakugou (hence why I’m still pretty certain that he’s currently heading towards what Aizawa would call a “death”, with quotation marks, i.e. the loss of his quirk).

so that just leaves us with “their death would further the narrative in some way”, which is probably the most open to interpretation of the four. but for the life of me I just can’t think of any way that the death of a kid would advance the plot in a way that couldn’t be achieved by other means. want society to freak out about children being involved in a war? just injure a bunch of them, or have one of them lose their quirk on live TV with the world watching. want to traumatize the other child soldier characters for some reason? kill off one of the teachers, then. or, again, take away one of their friends’ quirks, and have them feel some misplaced guilt over not being able to stop it. this was the winning formula for the Basement arc, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work here as well.

tbh a lot of this does depend on what exactly Horikoshi’s goals for this arc are, which still aren’t 100% clear even this late in the game. I’m not sure right now what he’s planning for the aftermath of this thing. will it be like Kamino and Fukuoka, where society is shaken up but still rallying behind the heroes and giving them their support? or are we instead building up towards a scenario where society’s faith in heroes finally crumbles and people are left totally demoralized in the wake of yet another brutal attack, and the total decimation of the Billboard Top 10? the latter outcome is seeming more and more likely to me, but an awful lot of it depends on how the next few chapters play out.

my best guess is that we end up with a scenario where the heroes succeed in staving off total disaster, but at a heavy cost. a lot of the pros are either dead or out of commission, Tomura and the League are still at large, and everyone is basically just sitting around trying to process what just happened and figure out what to do next while they wait for the other shoe to drop. word gets out that the kids were pretty much the only reason the battle didn’t end in even greater disaster, and as a result they get swept up in the ensuing political drama. the HPSC tries to parade them around as the next big thing; humanity’s hope for the future. but meanwhile a growing faction of the general public is furious at the government getting children involved in a war, and start arguing that the hero program should be shut down and U.A. should close its doors. and in the midst of all this, the kids try to lick their wounds and deal with the aftermath, and enter their second year very much unsure of what the future will hold.

anyway, so this all got very long-winded and out of hand as usual, but to sum up, I don’t think any of the kids is going to die here, and I think there will still be a year two of U.A., but that it’s going to feel very different from the U.A. we’ve known up to this point. if the threat of Tomura is still looming over everyone’s heads I very much doubt the kids will be able to focus much on their studies. but it may also be a case of them trying to cling to what little semblance of normalcy they have left. the teachers might decide to press on simply because it’s the only thing they can do. basically I’m anticipating something very similar to the aftermath of Kamino, but with the tension ramped up to 11, and with the adults fighting a losing battle to keep the kids from getting caught up in the middle of it all.

in other words, I don't think it’s an actual death-death we need to worry about here. rather, it’s going to be a much slower and much more subtle death by a thousand cuts. but it’ll be the kind of angst the characters can still work under; the kind that, rather than suffocating them, instead makes them grit their teeth and find a way to push forward. so yeah! anyways though, now that I’ve said all this, watch as Horikoshi goes and fucking decapitates Aoyama next week or some shit. lol maybe I should knock on wood just in case.

#bnha 279 #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha meta #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks #long post

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minaminokyoko · 4 years

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Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker--A Spoilertastic Review

Boy, oh, boy.

Well, it’s over.

And I don’t know how I feel about it.

Let me start as I always do by saying I have no attachment to Star Wars. It’s always just be something to watch for me, nothing more, nothing less. I am ambiguous and apathetic. I admit that the first time I ever perked up was with The Force Awakens, which I still think is on par with the first two original films in terms of being engrossing. I actually liked it more because Rey and Finn connected with me more than I did with Luke as a kid. Then Last Jedi happened and it derailed the places that I had hoped we were going to go. I didn’t dislike Last Jedi, but I certainly didn’t like it either. I appreciate the risks it took, but I felt it didn’t pull them off and that’s why I had zero expectations for this film. It left a lot of people unsure of the future.

And unfortunately, J. J. Abrams pussed out.

There is no other way to say it. He basically listened to the people who complained about The Last Jedi and catered the characters’ development in order to try to please them. Which is shitty as hell.

That being said, this is an enjoyable movie, imo. It’s a satisfying end to the overall Skywalker saga, I think, but not to its original characters. I’ll explain below.

Overall Grade: C+

Spoilers ahead, as always.

Pros:

-The action is great. Just great. Really engrossing, really fun sequences. Everyone pulls their weight, too, unlike the subplots in Last Jedi. It’s also visually stunning. It’s a polished film, much like what we’ve been enjoying about the Mandolorian, how it integrates real sets with effects instead of just that sterile bluescreen nonsense Disney has been doing recently.

-Reuniting Finn, Rey, and Poe was a fucking Godsend. They are so likable together. It was the whole reason I liked The Force Awakens so much. They’re a good group and you really root for them the entire time. I’m glad they let them be in the story together. It’s the way it should be. They have a ton of chemistry and I would like it very much if they are kicking off an original franchise now that they have ended the Skywalker saga. We’ll see.

-Poe in particular is a lot of fun in this film, which is much needed since he was such a headstrong pain in the Last Jedi. Here he’s back to being just charming and salty and likable as hell. I really enjoyed Isaac finding a path for Poe, because at first he was kind of filling the snarky badass role that Han Solo did but he found his own way and I like him a lot for that same reason. He’s convicted but he’s softened up from how he was in Last Jedi and I think it works great.

-Rey being at the center of the story—and don’t worry, we’ll talk about this below, ugh—even though I highly disagree with the direction they took her in, is still great. I like that they still didn’t listen to the whiny gits who hate a woman being a Jedi. I like that Rey is fighting every second to hold onto her own truth and be her own person. Good for you, girlie. I do hope she gets more stories. She’s a good bean.

-The tribute to Carrie Fisher was nothing short of beautiful. I got choked up. Thank you for honoring her. I miss her so much. I only wish she could have seen it herself. She’s such an inspiration.

-Good pacing. Nothing stagnates and there aren’t any subplots that feel extraneous like in Last Jedi. The film is focused on all the right areas.

-Kylo Ren fucking dies like he deserves. See ya later, Darth Fuckboi. But we’ll also discuss that below.

-The Han Solo cameo caught me waaaaaaaaaaay off-guard. Harrison Ford has made no bones about hating Han Solo, which annoys me because I still think Han is his best performance, and yet he still agreed to cameo, so that was pretty neat. Unexpected for sure. But I’m sure Disney waved a very pretty paycheck and he only had about 10 lines, so why not?

-I did like Rey’s adoption of the Skywalker name. Thank you for giving meaning to that strange title choice. It’s very heartwarming to end on that image of Luke and Leia, together again, smiling fondly at this little girl they adopted. She ended a war and now she can be herself. I loved her creating a gold lightsaber too. It’s very fitting and it’s such a great thing to see. As a female fangirl, it makes my heart sing to know that millions of little girls get to grow up with a female Jedi as the lead in the new franchise.

-It was nice to see Lando again! Good for Billy D.

Cons:

I have three big fucking problems with this movie. They don’t break the entire movie, but they damage it so much that now I get why the movie is getting so many mixed reviews. The things this movie does well, it does well, but the things it fucks up? My God, does it fuck them up. Let’s dig in.

-First huge problem: *gets out loud speaker* KYLO FUCKING REN DID NOT DESERVE A FUCKING REDEMPTION ARC. FUCK. THIS. FUCKING. FUCKBOI. HE DOES NOT DESERVE A REDEMPTION ARC BECAUSE HE IS A GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SPACE NAZI AND HIS ACTIONS DO NOT AT ALL WARRANT A KISS FROM REY NOR FORGIVENESS FROM ANYONE. FUCK DARTH FUCKBOI. FUCK ANYONE WHO THINKS HE COULD BE REDEEMED AFTER KILLING HIS FATHER IN COLD BLOOD AND TRYING TO KILL HIS MOTHER AND OH YEAH REMEMBER THE BILLIONS OF DEAD INNOCENT PEOPLE HE KILLED AS A PART OF THE FIRST FUCKING ORDER OH MY GOD THIS IS THE WORST WRITING HOW FUCKING DARE YOU.

Ahem.

This arc did not work in the Last Jedi either and yet here we fucking are. We are in a world that is asking us to forgive a goddamn Space Nazi. It’s so unacceptable. But I shouldn’t be surprised, since this is the same fucking year Hollywood is trying to ask me to feel bad for the goddamn fucking Joker.

Kylo Ren does not and never will deserve a fucking redemption arc. He willfully slaughtered billions of people. Billions. Fuck you for asking me to care about him. Fuck you for that disgusting kiss. He is an abuser and Rey has not shown any romantic interest in him whatsoever up until this point. I can’t fucking believe they pandered to the fucking gross ass Reylo fans. And yes, fight me, I don’t care, Reylo is fucking problematic as hell and that was the most forced bullshit I’ve ever seen in my life. Go to hell.

-Second huge problem: retconning Rey’s backstory made me fucking furious. It was the one fucking thing I didn’t want J. J. to mess with and not only did he mess with it, he went with the most illogical fucking method to make Rey’s lineage “important.” Say what you want about the Last Jedi but the thing that worked best was Rey’s parents being fucking nobodies who sold her off. That was a great story element. It reinforces the very important idea that you are who you choose to be, to quote the immortal words of The Iron Giant. Where you came from does not fucking matter. Your blood does not matter. You are the person that you want to be and that’s how you should live your life, with choices that are important to who you are, not where you came from. They backtracked just to pay lip service to the originals for no reason and because they got too scared to color outside of the lines.

-Third huge problem: Palpatine’s retconned inclusion in the story. There is no way you can convince me that old ass Palpatine crawled on top of a woman and made a baby. It does not fit at all. It’s just stupid, stupid crap and I hate it with my entire soul. I want to slap whoever the hell wrote it. Not only does the Palpatine bullshit make no narrative sense, it’s a straight up retconned bullshit plothole. I defer to the experts, but from what I remember, there was no indication he was still alive in the previous films. It overshadows what was a promising story and it derails so much for her fucking character to have this useless lineage garbage that doesn’t work on any level. There was no reason to crawl back to Palpatine when Last Jedi felt as if it was leading towards Kylo fulling stepping into the Big Bad role and Rey rejecting his stalker, abusive shit to be the Jedi she wanted and needed to be.

-Continuing the “maybe Rey is secretly evil” bullshit from the last movie. I hated this in Last Jedi too. Rey shows absolutely no signs of being evil. Ever. At most, she loses her temper, but that’s it. Normal good people can lose their temper. The movie constantly keeps saying maybe she’s bad but her actions are universally good, kind, brave, and helpful, so why the hell did they pursue this nonsense at all? It’s clear that Rey is virtuous. The First Order has done nothing but oppress her and kill innocent people, so why the hell would she ever entertain the thought of joining them? It’s so pointless. The only time it even made a little sense was when Palpatine said she could save her friends by commanding the Final Order and even then it was a fucking stretch. Christ, I hate it when the writing is forcing something that does not match the character’s actions. Good job with the Force vision, by the way. Every single non-stupid person knew it was going to be a Force vision when we saw it in the trailer, you cliché bastards. They were wasting everyone’s time with this and they should be ashamed of themselves.

-Not going anywhere with Finn telling Rey how he felt. Finn in general was still sort of not as important overall as I want him to be, but we’ll see if that changes if their stories continue past the Skywalker saga. Either way, the attention has constantly been shifted away from Finn and Rey and it’s very frustrating because their friendship is so endearing. Whether you ship it or not, it’s an important relationship and I wish they had spent more time on it instead of having him fret after her constantly. Sigh.

I probably need to keep marinating on this film. There’s a lot to drink in. As I said, I’m not sure how I feel, since the good is really good, but the bad is really bad. It feels like it’s not good enough for a B grade, but it’s better than a C grade, like I need a letter between these two. It could’ve been done so much better, but it also could have been done much worse. I definitely like it better than Last Jedi, but it’s not exactly good either. It’s a trouble film. It’s a fun film. It’s just…a lot of things. I would say that the scale makes it satisfying as a closing statement to the saga, but not for the individual characters. Rey’s derailment due to Darth Fuckboi is a huge disservice, so while I think people are overreacting, I get why they’re angry at the film, especially for the three things I noted. It truly seems to be a film split right down the center in terms of good/bad. That’s all I can say for now.

#rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker #star wars #movie review #film review #spoilers #spoiler alert

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jolteonjordansh · 6 years

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Thoughts on Digimon Adventure tri.: “Our Future”

So… I really needed some time to ready myself for writing this last post. This is going to be a tough one, folks. Probably one of the tougher “Final Thoughts” posts that I’ll be writing. But I wrote one for the last five movies. It’d be a crime for me to skip out on the finale just because there’s a lot of tough things to deal with here. This is all my opinion, as all of my final thoughts posts are. So take it as that and nothing more.

I’ll also be more or less putting together my overall thoughts on Digimon Adventure tri in this post too, as well as its potential future. But that’ll be towards the end. For now, let’s get to talking about the last of the Digimon Adventure tri movies, from the beginning…

So if you’ve been around me long enough since I’ve started re-watching Digimon as a whole (and really getting a better introduction to it than I ever did in the past), you probably have a vague idea of the things I do and don’t like. One of these things I have not liked has been Kari Kamiya, the 8th DigiDestined in Digimon Adventure and also in Digimon Adventure 02. Her character always felt extremely artificial and barebones to me. She often was merely used as a plot device in the series and a Purity Sue. And somehow, she was even worse in Adventure 02. Despite having a whole series, she pretty much has no actual development as a character to me, and don’t even get me started on the Dagomon episode that decided to introduce that wretched Dark Ocean nonsense that never seems to die.

But if there was anything I felt Digimon Adventure tri did generally right, they actually made Kari a genuine character. An actual believable character with actual personality. Sure, she remained soft-spoken at times, but she had actually started to become more social and talk to her friends and keep legitimate conversation with them, she often set them straight many times throughout the series, such as with Tai and especially Joe, and she stood up to fucking Homeostasis. Yeah, that Digital World god-like entity that has possessed her several times now? She finally had something to say in protest. If that’s not one of the greatest moments we’ve had from her ever, I don’t know what is. And by the end of “Coexistence”, we got to see her crack. She was silent, but traumatized and filled with despair. Basically, she got to express actual human emotions besides her usual generic nonsense. I addressed all of this in my final thoughts on “Coexistence” (which I’m just putting down here for the sake of review), and I’m still bitter that said movie really didn’t give her an actual focus and it all turned into the Meiko show again, but I’ll get to some of that later.

We do get some make-up for that. While it’s still not as much as I wanted, Kari deals with a lot of despair throughout this movie with Tai’s “death” and feeling at fault for it. And Dark Gennai rubs it in her face later on, really hammering it in for her. To see this character I just could not care for actually be given a human personality was just incredibly rewarding to me. I know some people have complained that a lot of it is just her going “Oni-chaaaaaaan~!”, but you have to keep in mind that her brother is basically her world. We’ve seen very little of her social life (the only things I can recall are the birthday party in Our War Game and some moments in Adventure 02), but it’s always been clear that Tai has been a very important part of her life. It’s not even just the fact that she potentially lost her brother that’s upsetting her either. It’s the fact that she truly believes that it’s her fault. And that’s probably the hardest part about it to her, as Dark Gennai rubs in. So even if Kari didn’t really get as much as I wanted, she got enough of that development for it to be satisfying. And I really began to feel that her relationship with Gatomon was more than just the whole destiny schmuck they forced down our throats in the Myotismon arc of Digimon Adventure.

After Kari breaking from the start though, it almost feels like there’s some serious nonsense filler throughout the movie despite that a lot needs to be addressed in this final movie. Ordinemon is shown to be stupidly OP by taking out six Mega level Digimon in one hit and reduce them back to In-Training forms, there’s more Meiko crying, a lot of exchanges of “We should do something!” and “Should we do something?” and the military trying to fight Ordinemon. Because, you know, it’s worked so well in every other past Digimon series. It’s a shame the Adventure universe doesn’t have their own Hypnos to even stand a chance.

There is, however, a really good scene with Matt and Gabumon. Matt is clearly dealing with the loss of his boyfriend best friend Tai and how to be a leader for the rest of the DigiDestined, and Gabumon comes in to give an extremely supportive talk with him, as well as a wonderful bond moment with him. This kind of harkens back to Matt’s darker moments towards the end of the Dark Masters arc and even sort of rhymes with the scene of Patamon and T.K. in “Confession”. I found it extremely effective and honestly a necessary moment for Matt. I feel like if there had been more moments like this, T.K. and Patamon’s coping scene, Joe and Gomamon’s argument, and Tai and Agumon’s own coping scene for all of the DigiDestined throughout these movies, there would have been a stronger impact from them overall. But I guess they all can’t be as strong as one another.

Now, I’ve said both Matt and Kari are both dealing with the loss of Tai in this movie, as well as a bunch of the other DigiDestined (Sora has a moment, and it leads to a hilarious scene of Piyomon thinking Matt made her cry and basically I just love protective Piyomon in general what a good birb), but… You all know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. And we all knew it before this movie was even announced and the moment Tai “died”. Tai never died, and he was never going to die. One of the biggest problems was how much they played up Tai’s death (or return if you’re Agumon), when you know damn well he’s fine between things like trailers and even elements as simple as the movie poster. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if this whole thing didn’t last for nearly the entire movie. It takes well over 30+ minutes for us to see that Tai is alive and well, and the Adventure crew doesn’t even see that Tai is, in fact, alive until the last 20 or so minutes of the movie. It makes the whole thing so dragged out and forcing unnecessary tension. It’s wasting time because we already know what the outcome is going to be like, and all of that wasted time could be used for making tri a better story, which spoiler alert: it isn’t.

When we do get finally see Tai though, we get two things: 1. Nishijima’s inevitable death, because he was one of the good characters in tri imo and of course they have to kill him off to explain why he wasn’t in the Adventure 02 epilogue (for some reason I guess), and speaking of Adventure 02… 2. The fate of the 02 kids. Even to people who hated Digimon Adventure 02, almost completely ignoring their existence throughout the series was absolutely maddening for just about everyone watching this series. And what’s their excuse for their absence? It’s about as disappointing as you would expect. The scene from the beginning of tri where it looks like they’re being killed? That was Alphamon defeating them as the 02 kids apparently found out what Yggdrasil was up to, so they were “silenced” and then put into some pods in a sort of cryogenic sleep to keep them from getting in the way.

The whole execution of this is just… so lazy, put-together and insulting on so many levels. Even when we find these damn kids, we don’t get to see them do anything, let alone actually get to see them! They’re silhouetted still for whatever reason, are sent to the hospital immediately after being brought back to the real world, and for some reason aren’t even around in the flash-forward towards the end of the movie with the rest of the DigiDestined three months later. Maybe whatever they went through warranted them being in the hospital for three months, but I really find that to be a flimsy excuse at best. We don’t even know where their Digimon are or what happened to them! They’re probably fine, but it’s called explaining Toei! It’d be nice if your writers could try it in this series rather than just constantly piling up more mysteries than this plot ever needed! And just so I can say my piece for all of the needless speculation going on in the fandom: No, that 5th silhouette is not Ryo. It’s clearly the actual Gennai since he has the ponytail. But then again, I can’t entirely blame the fandom because the writers of tri literally explain next to nothing and it leads to all of this freaking speculation when they could just easily answer it! God, and I thought we were done with The Problem with Ryo…

I get the whole 02 kids debacle has been talked about and discussed to death, and what I’m going to say really isn’t going to add to anything that someone else has probably already said, but I just don’t understand why we couldn’t have the 02 kids involved. I mean, I have a good idea of why, and I’ll get to that at the end, but was it really so hard to have an Adventure series where both the original Adventure and Adventure 02 kids got to go on, dare I say, an adventure together? Not with the original cast in the background like in Adventure 02, not like in tri where the 02 cast was pretty much nonexistent, I mean actually having them work together like a freaking team for a change? Or how about using any Adventure 02 elements in general? Even T.K. and Kari utilizing their Armor Digivolutions like Pegasusmon and Nerfertimon would have been neat! What the hell was stopping them? It’s not like the Armor Digivolutions are completely useless. As someone who enjoyed Adventure a lot and can accept Adventure 02 as a passable follow-up, I just don’t understand why we can’t have the whole Adventure universe. It either has to be the original Adventure, or Adventure 02. It can’t be both. It’s just really disappointing that both have to feel so segmented when tri would have been the perfect chance to make those series feel cohesive for once. But I guess Revenge of Diablomon was our only chance at anything like that.

Alright, so the 02 kids were handled poorly, blah blah blah, this has been talked about to death by everyone watching tri ever… How about along with the fact that Nishijima was killed off, Himekawa was nowhere to be seen in this movie? Her fate is left open after what happened in “Coexistence”. It’s possible she is still alive and it was left open on purpose, but at this point I’m going to personally maintain the belief that she died in the Dark Ocean because none of these writers can leave that stupid plot element alone for five seconds. But color me disappointed when we didn’t get to see anymore of insane Himekawa. What a tease. And you know who else doesn’t appear in tri? Alphamon, who seems to have just fucked right off after “Coexistence”. At this point, his only purpose in tri was just a plot obstacle for the main cast, which is just a really lame way to utilize him. He didn’t even get to talk for crying out loud!

Yggdrasil gets no real physical form in the Adventure universe, which honestly just left me empty. I get that Yggdrasil is a digital being, but it’s really hard to fear Yggdrasil as an antagonist when he basically ends up being all talk and no real action in this series. Dark Gennai, Alphamon and by extension Meicoomon did everything for him. Why should we be scared of a guy who we see no real action from? At least in Digimon X-Evolution and Digimon Savers, we get to see how much he has a true grasp of control over the Royal Knights and eventually that amazing climactic battle in Savers. In tri? Everyone just talks about him and what he wants to do. We see no action from him. Sure, Homeostasis is never seen either, but it has always been established as a sort of mysterious being with a lack of physical form—more like a force that keeps the stability of the Digital World. Yggdrasil is just an antagonistic force that we know pretty much next to nothing about. It’s all just extremely disappointing how much is built up and how little payoff we get in return for it all. If Yggdrasil is meant to be a sort of exact opposite force to Homeostasis, then establish that! But they don’t do that either. Really, it feels like both Yggdrasil and Homeostasis are similar beings and it’s almost hard to distinguish them in this series when it really shouldn’t be.

On the note of Homeostasis, Ordinemon’s destruction starts to get so terrible that Homeostasis wants to do another reboot. But now it requires a reboot of the actual real world. At first, I thought there would be an actual more complex way of describing this; hell, maybe it was even timeline/worldline jumping to a more stable version of the universe. Nope, they literally want to reboot the real world in more or less the same way (and try to explain it with science, but we all know when Digimon tries to use actual science, it comes across as incredibly stupid). This would basically mean all manmade technology would be rebooted from the start and cause a huge catastrophe for mankind with them being so reliant on technology. This basically comes down to Hackmon responding with “Tough shit,” and Izzy naturally being upset and wanting to find a more proper solution.

Okay, to be fair, Hackmon is actually a little more complex about this than I describe. While he is carrying the will of Homeostasis as a sort of agent, he has his own agenda in mind, actually believing the bond between humans and Digimon to be extremely important and the key to survival for both worlds, more or less. He describes this in a conversation with Meiko, and honestly… it actually makes him one of the more interesting characters, especially for a lone Digimon with no human partner on hand. But much like Alphamon, after he actually convinces Homeostasis to stop the second reboot and lays a devastating blow on Ordinemon as Jesmon, he also fucks right off immediately afterward. But hey, at least he actually did something.

There are also two “returning” characters I’d like to bring up since they’re serious elephants in the room for a lot of people. Let’s get our favorite dead buddy out of the way—No, not Leomon. I’m talking about our good friend Wizardmon who appears in this movie for a maximum ten seconds tops. Now, to be fair, literally the only thing we had to go off of was his hat being sneakily hidden in the last movie poster in a corner. However, my counterargument: You cannot bring back such a cult favorite character only to not only be so brief but also be so utterly pointless. Kari needed Wizardmon to bring her attention to Gatomon? Why not have her hear Gatomon’s voice calling out to her to bring in that attention? It’s not a reach for a character like Kari at all, who seems to have serious intuition and is sensitive to supernatural events in general. This is the kind of bringing back of a character that falls into the lowest levels of pandering. Even if it hadn’t been teased on the poster and fans had not hyped this up, I still think this as a “surprise” would have been just as disappointing. Having Wizardmon show up for something so brief and so little to do with him means nothing in the end, and comes out as a cute nod at absolute best, but also an outright disappointing inclusion at worst. Remember Wizardmon’s appearance in Digimon Adventure 02? It actually meant something because he guided the characters towards a destination in the plot. Here? He just appears and fulfills a purpose that could have easily been done in any other way. And when Adventure 02 has shown technical better writing skills considering the mess it can be, you have really, really screwed up.

Now the other “returning” character? Devimon. But of course, it’s not the same Devimon we know from the original Digimon Adventure, which is exactly what I expected. It was an easy but also cheap attempt at bringing in viewers and nostalgia pandering through trailers. It’s an easy way to garner up hype culture, which many people know I tend to dislike as it is. But honestly? This Devimon being a different Devimon isn’t really my problem. What is my problem is how it affected everyone else involved. T.K. has the briefest among briefest reactions to Devimon—the same kid who was absolutely traumatized over losing Patamon to him during Adventure 02. I get that T.K. has already had his character arc in tri and he has probably grown more or less out of his fear of Devimon especially, but I would have expected a bigger reaction than what we got. And on top of this, Devimon—a Champion level Digimon—beats MagnaAngemon—an Ultimate level Digimon—down to an absolute pulp. I have mentioned how I like that Digimon levels do not always necessarily matter in battles with the right amount of training, but this was just inexcusable and insulting. Look back at Adventure, where Angemon was able to beat a Devimon fairly early into the series (even if it was at the expense of dying), and Angemon could even stand up to Ultimate level Digimon himself at times, while MagnaAngemon was able to finish of Piedmon. Adventure 02 was very inconsistent about how powerful Patamon was in general, but whatever. Here? This was honestly absolutely pathetic to watch. I would have been fine with an actual decent one-on-one battle where both actually put up a good fight, and maybe MagnaAngemon does end up losing, but MagnaAngemon gets kicked around like nothing more than a freaking soccer ball. I feel like, if anything, that should have definitely gotten a huge reaction out of T.K., but it was nothing out of the usual. The whole moment was just so poorly executed and felt like cheap and horribly done fanservice, much like Wizardmon.

Speaking of characters being overly hyped due to trailers, a lot of fans were ridiculously excited over Magnadramon as Gatomon’s official Mega (the 02 movie is still not canon). And while I’m personally a fan of Ophanimon because I think it just fits the line better, I personally didn’t mind Magndramon being there. However, the moment they revealed Omegamon form #34—Omegamon Merciful Mode—I immediately knew that Magndramon would easily get overshadowed and have her thunder stolen away by Omegamon. And surprise! That’s exactly what happens. Magndramon gets her Digivolution animation and a total attack scene count of one before Omegamon uses the powers of the other Megas (And Meiko I guess) to achieve Merciful Mode.

And really… I’m not too keen on it. Don’t get me wrong, Omegamon is a cool Digimon, but not only do I just think there are cooler Mega level and even Ultra level Digimon out there, Omegamon is just kind of overrated to me in the same vein Mewtwo can be in Pokémon. Not to mention, it just feels like Adventure’s version of Gallantmon Crimson Mode, which just makes Omegamon needlessly more powerful and once again, continues to ignore Adventure 02 where they had Imperialdramon Paladin Mode. It also just shows how unbalanced the fights were in this movie when Ordinemon was so overpowered that Omegamon needed a new mode to actually defeat it.

But I guess before I get to some of my biggest gripes with the movie itself and what it did rather than some of what it didn’t do, I should cover the technical aspects. I don’t have much to say on the music—it was all fine and good. A lot of it was reused from earlier movies, but there was that really awesome guitar cover of Butterfly when Gatomon Digivolved and finally achieved her Mega form. And of course, there is the Butterfly cover done by all of the DigiDestined and their Digimon as the final ending theme. And I think I did like it, but at the same time it didn’t really break me to tears like I was hoping it would in a similar way the use of Butterfly did at the very end of the original Digimon Adventure. I think a lot of that has to do with me being sort of bitter towards tri and how it ended overall, but I don’t want to get into the rest of those details until the end.

When I watched “Coexistence”, I expected all of the series’ best animation to be saved for “Our Future”, but ironically… it almost seemed like the opposite. Now, “Our Future” did not have the worst animation of the movies—there were actually some really good moments, such as pretty much every moment with Magnadramon and a few of the fights and some of the shots with the Digimon. But at the same time, “Our Future” really began to show just how flawed some of the animation in Digimon Adventure tri is. I certainly don’t think it’s the lowest tier of animation in all of anime, as there are definitely so many worse examples out there. But there are moments where the cheap budget of it can stick out. Still shots, choppy animation, off-model characters, or just weird scaling were all present throughout the movie. There was also the reuse of animation, specifically for Digivolution scenes, but those don’t really bother me. I mean, if every other Digimon series does it, what’s wrong with tri doing it? I only wish MetalGarurumon got his Digivolution shot in fullscreen—he sadly never did. Though I can agree by a certain point, having Warp Digivolution scenes for the Digimon would have certainly sped things up and given time for other moments, though at least they learned to box the animations together. Otherwise, I feel tri’s animation is average enough, but I do wish it had really excelled in this last movie rather than just being more average. Oh yeah, did I mention that “Our Future” is filled with ass shots of Ordinemon throughout the whole movie? And I mean filled with ass shots of Ordinemon (What, were you guys expecting me to actually deliberately search and hotlink examples? Hell no).

Now, getting to the worst parts of the movie unfortunately involves me talking about my favorite characters in this whole series. Who’s ready for me to talk even more about Meiko and Meicoomon? No one? Too bad! This whole damn series revolves around them! I specifically avoided talking about them because I know plenty of people complain about Meiko and Meicoomon (moreso Meiko), and a fraction of people do like them, so if you want to get out of me talking about everything wrong with them in this movie and how much they hurt this series as a whole, you best step out now. Otherwise, I have a lot to say, so buckle up.

So remember how the Digimon lost their memories after the reboot in “Confession”? Some of you might have forgotten, because by “Coexistence”, it almost feels like the reboot had no other effect on them. They don’t really focus on how much the memory loss affects their relationships, or at least how much it hurts. They kind of just blankly mention “Oh, you don’t remember this,” but that’s about it. But regardless, when the memories were lost, I was worried about multiple things: A. The Digimon never getting their memories back or B. The Digimon getting their memories back, but in a really convenient way. When moments like this happen in storytelling, I’m the kind of cheap person who wants my happy ending. But at the same time, I want that happy ending to be warranted. I don’t want it to be cheaply earned—it has to be worked for. So, what did I say in my final thoughts of “Confession”, in quotes?”

Whether the Digimon actually retrieve their memories or not, I think that either way, the writers are going to have to handle things very carefully from here on out. They can’t just pretend that everything is the same once the DigiDestined form new bonds with their Digimon, and they can’t just give the Digimon their memories back without some good explanation.

Meiko only continues to feel further shoved into this entire world, and Meicoomon somehow retaining memories unlike the other Digimon partners definitely gives the “special snowflake” feel, unless they have a damn good explanation for it.

Well, Past JJ, I have great news for you! Not only is Meicoomon still an absolute special snowflake, there is no actual good explanation for the Digimon retrieving their memories or how Meicoomon kept hers! It’s about as forced, contrived and convenient as you can imagine! In fact, maybe even worse than you ever imagined! You wanna know why? Because it all relies upon those gosh darn wonderful special snowflakes of Meiko and Meicoomon!

Turns out, the memories were never erased at all! In the reboot, the memories of literally every Digimon were somehow stored within Meicoomon (except Hackmon and Alphamon I guess, because fuck, let’s make them special snowflakes too) and are locked inside Meiko’s Digivice! And if they can figure out a password Meicoomon would have for these memories, they can restore every Digimon’s memories! And of course, what else would that password be but “DanDan”/“Ta much” which was that first thing Meicoomon said in the first movie? Meanwhile, Izzy is a kid genius who can crack codes, develop his own servers and technology such as ways to actually preserve the Digimon’s memories himself, but could not brute-force a ten character password? But who cares about logic? Once that password is in, everyone’s memories are back! Man, I sure feel like that loss in “Confession” was worth all of this strife only for the memories having been right in front of their faces to easily just put back all along! Everything about this was so rightfully earned back! /s

Yeah, let’s put that overly optimistic sarcasm aside for five minutes. Because I hate, and I mean absolutely hate that such an important loss from the third movie—one that was made absolutely touching, heartbreaking and built up to such a degree could be easily put back into place with just a simple phrase, like all they needed to say was freaking Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo. I get that Digimon has always had its own fair share of plot contrivances, but after going through three movies of this and executing this tragedy in such a way that takes the viewer on such an emotional ride, I just feel cheated. Like what I felt basically was for nothing and I cried and worried over nothing. You know how when you have seemingly devastating situations in real life, like you lose an important item or document that could mean a life-changing moment for you, like earning a job? So you panic and cry over losing it and potentially ruining your own life, but then it turns out, whatever you lost was in the backseat of your car the whole time, so your crying was for nothing and you feel like a big idiot for panicking over something that had a very simple solution? That’s more or less what this whole situation feels like, except there is really nothing to laugh off because I feel like I was cheated out of a good story just for a throwaway character to have her spotlight.

“But Meicoomon’s not a throwaway character if they spent all six movies focusing on her and Meiko!” maybe you might think. Except she absolutely is a throwaway character by the end of the movie. You know how Meicoomon was basically the cause of all of this grief for all of her going berserk? And how everyone knew that they could kill her to stop all of this, and back in “Coexistence” Meiko even begged for the DigiDestined to do it, but they couldn’t because “she’s our fwiend!!!!”. Guess what they do by the end of the movie? They kill off Meicoomon with Omegamon Merciful Mode, literally the whole reason they made up that new form.

Now, part of me is trying to do my absolute best to understand what the writers were trying to express with this. The whole message seems to be that “sometimes you have to make hard decisions”, and honestly? That’s not a bad message. But I have two major problems with this being in Digimon Adventure tri, as there are a number of moments this whole message is contradicted. When the kids lost their Digimon’s original memories to the reboot, they thought they had to make the hard decision of moving on with their lives and letting go of an important part of their childhood. But in the end, they didn’t, because they realized they could still hold onto that childhood if they wanted to, but they had to hold onto it. They couldn’t give up on it.

My second problem is that this whole conflict of “not killing our fwiends!!!!!” with the DigiDestined just feels wasted and pointless if they were going to end up killing her anyway. Yes, people do have to make decisions like that, but to have to develop that for five full-length movies for over two years? The execution is just awful. And this is so much worse when, again, the DigiDestined have only known Meiko and Meicoomon for only a few months at best, giving them all of the care and catering in the world, meanwhile they couldn’t care less about the 02 cast whom they experienced whole adventures with and have known for three years at this point. Once again, the logic and execution here flies straight out the window. This all hurts this decision even more when the scene does come up, it feels extremely out of character. Sure, Tai has his new resolve, yet Kari immediately goes into the spiel of “You can’t kill Meicoomon or I’ll never forgive you!” but then ultimately decides she’s going to help in killing Meicoomon. I get the logic behind it, that she’s essentially bearing the sin of doing this with the rest of the DigiDestined, but going from “not killing our fwiends!!!!” for five movies to ultimately making this dark decision makes it feel out of character for not even Kari, but just about everyone. No one else really disagrees with it in the end. They just accept it so easily despite having fought over it for the course of several movies. It feels like all the struggle the DigiDestined went through of not killing friends, especially when the infection was rampant in “Confession”, was wasted.

So Meicoomon is killed off, they make a farewell scene for her and Meiko, yada yada, and I find myself trying so hard to care about this in the moment. I was genuinely trying to feel bad for Meiko, despite how much I have come to hate her character as well as Meicoomon’s. But by the time it came to all of this, I was just outright empty. I couldn’t feel anything for them. I simply didn’t care. If there was anything I thought? It was simply “Good. Fucking. Riddance.” And while I realize me hating Meiko is simply my opinion, watching “Our Future” made me seriously realize something about Meiko. Not just that she’s a poorly written character, I easily came to that conclusion by the time I watched “Confession”, but she’s honestly a terrible person. No, not just a terrible character. I mean, a really, really terrible person when you consider so much of her behavior.

There’s the saying that a bad person can make a great character, but the problem here is that the writers are trying to convince you that Meiko is a good person. Yet she is anything but a good person based on all of her behavior. She has her social awkwardness, sure, but that’s just her Mary Sue flaw (which is only so much of a flaw with these kinds of characters). She is honestly an extremely selfish, pitiful person with hardly any ability to feel empathy for anyone but herself. She has a legitimately messed up mentality. Don’t believe me? Let’s go over some of her actions.

So after Meicoomon Digivolves into Meicrackmon Vicious Mode, she’s obviously in despair. Fair enough. I think anyone with a Digimon partner would feel that way, even to the unhealthy degree that Meiko does. But let’s flash-forward to the point where T.K. confesses that Patamon is infected. He trusted her with that information because she would understand it better than anyone. She should be supportive to him for such a tough situation, right? She is… for a couple of seconds. Immediately after, she quickly starts to throw her own pity party how about it’s her fault that it happened, which naturally makes T.K., being the nice guy he is, start tending to her instead of himself when he is in a damn tough position. She forces him out of his own grief to tend to the sudden mood swing of her own, and leaves him to feel sorry about it when she runs off. In the same film, when T.K. tries to convince her to go to the Digital World to meet Meicoomon, she has a hissy fit about not wanting to see Meicoomon and actually being glad the reboot happened so she doesn’t have to worry about Meicoomon and the Digimon anymore. I mean, fuck how the rest of the DigiDestined not just among the original eight, but the rest of the world feel, right? I addressed this in my final thoughts on “Confession” and I think to be fair they kind of point out her behavior is wrong by dragging her to the Digital World in “Loss” with an unexplained distortion, but this still is a display of her extremely unhealthy character.

This doesn’t even stop there. While “Loss” might have been the best display of her character where she actually tries to do things on her own and even stands up to a stupidly bratty Meicoomon, she’s coddled by the other DigiDestined and she immediately regresses back in “Coexistence”. The whole movie ends up being her own pity party over Meicoomon (again, fuck how everyone else is feeling), and in “Our Future”, she has yet another instance of directing grief away from someone else and towards herself. When Kari starts blaming herself for Tai’s death, it doesn’t take long at all for Meiko to immediately start pushing the blame on herself and for the other DigiDestined to feel pity for her over it. Also, compare their reactions to both of them. Kari, who has every right to feel as upset as she is about losing her brother, the most important individual in her life is taking on the blame of the situation, and everyone quietly feels sorry for her, as if knowing coddling will not help the situation. Cut to Meiko doing the exact same thing, except having honestly much less reason to be feeling the kind of position Kari is in, and everyone coddles Meiko and tries to reassure her that it isn’t her fault. When you break it down, Meiko is an extremely unhealthy individual who is always desperate for attention when she feels bad over something. Sure, you might argue that she sometimes locks herself away so not to get this attention and the writers probably didn’t do this intentionally, but there are some legitimately bad implications going on here. It’s like the writers didn’t even read their second or even first drafts.

On top of all of this, Meiko never truly develops as a character. If anything, Meicoomon’s death is the only thing that actually changes her because she finally stops crying over her every five seconds. But she never gets to advocate for herself because the other DigiDestined are constantly diving in to save her (again, “Loss” was pretty much the highest point she ever had and it wasn’t even anything incredible), she never gets over Meicoomon or stops thinking about her until finally making peace at the end of this movie, and her general behavior never really changes otherwise. No one even calls her out on her behavior because she’s perfect and can do no wrong in everyone else’s eyes. Honestly, when you really think about it, everyone should be mad at Meiko in some form. Maybe not hate her, but not once does anyone deal with any frustration with her. It’s almost like because Kari was made an actual character in tri, in exchange they had to make an awful clone of her. There is truly nothing to compare Meiko to other than a horribly written Mary Sue self-insert fanfiction, all perfectly topped with the writers trying to pull off ship teases with her and Tai. Awwww, I think I’m gonna be sick.

And… I don’t know what else to say about “Our Future”. Honestly, as many complaints as I have about this movie, it has its good moments. It’s not even the worst of the Digimon Adventure tri movies. It just that it has its good moments, but also so many bad moments that it honestly makes it hard to enjoy. And really, I think that sums up tri for me in general. I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever. I don’t even think it’s the worst Digimon series ever. I would still consider others I’ve watched like Digimon Frontier were written worse overall. I want to enjoy Digimon Adventure tri, but the team working on it makes it extremely difficult to enjoy tri. It certainly has its good moments. And when it has its good moments, they’re really good moments, but the opposite is also true. When its bad moments are bad, they are really bad. They can be downright awful even, and it’s really a shame that the second half of tri really dropped off after it hit such a high with “Confession”. Do I regret watching it? No, not really. But… it was definitely hard to sit through at times. I can say I will definitely look back at it for the good it brought to the table, but the bad will certainly stink like rotten food in the fridge for a long time to come.

Now, comes the inevitable question and topic… the sequel hook of Digimon Adventure tri. By the end, Dark Gennai disappears into the Digital World and babbles on about bringing in Daemon or maybe Diablomon, and we hear the Digivice beep at the end of the film, much like the end of the original Digimon Adventure. And on top of this, the tri Twitter account posted an announcement of a new project, as well as the English Toei Animation Twitter. The wording of it implies something related to the Digimon Adventure universe.

From my perspective, based on all of the open ended plot points like Dark Gennai still running around, Alphamon, Himekawa’s missing status, the Four Sovereigns being ignored after the reboot since they’re a pretty important part of the Digital World, the whole “Digimon who died in the real world are brought back to life after the reboot” nonsense that was just dropped in out of nowhere (Was that a mistranslation? Because at this point its lack of mention or being addressed makes me wonder if that was ever a plot point that existed and if I just accidentally made it up), and the 02 kids just being ignored in general… makes me believe we’ll be getting a sequel focused more on the elements of Adventure 02. And with all that’s happened… I’m really torn on it.

On one hand, I really want these plot points to actually be resolved. I want the 02 kids to get a true chance to actually develop as characters. I want to see their Digimon again. And honestly? I would love for each 02 kid to have a full Digivolution line for their own Digimon, all the way to Mega form. But at the same time… Digimon Adventure tri has really tired me out. If we were to get a sequel, I want the writers to actually be competent. I want them to write an actual series that can stand on its own without relying on future sequels. Hell, maybe even a new team of competent writers if necessary, because at times it really feels like the writers for tri just didn’t have a proper grasp of Digimon Adventure and its canon. And part of me wants Digimon to just move to a Digimon Tamers sequel after the recent drama CD and Chiaki Konaka’s interest in writing a sequel series. And knowing the depth of Tamers, I know it could be pulled off extremely well with the right treatment. So I’m truly, legitimately torn. I guess for now, I’ll just wait and see where Digimon moves from here, and enjoy what we have of the franchise. After all, I really need to get to the Digimon video games.

So ultimately, if I had to grade the Digimon Adventure tri movies in order:

Confession > Determination > Reunion > Loss > Our Future > Coexistence

And with that, this finally closes the doors on Digimon Adventure tri… I mean, I wish I could say that with true satisfaction, but its open-ended nature and reliance on a sequel really leaves a bitter taste in my mouth… Maybe, we can at least get a better sequel in the end. If you guys want to bring up something I didn’t mention or have a discussion, feel free to send an ask I guess? Because I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed something about tri, good or bad. And hey, at least Digimon Adventure tri gave me this adorable shot of the Digimon as a parting gift.

#Shut Up JJ #Final Thoughts #Digimon #Digimon Adventure tri #Our Future

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crystalnet · 7 years

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The Awkward 7th Gen of JRPGs and Mistwalker Games

Ah the seventh generation. The era in which, partly because of the actual state of gaming and partly because of unrelated circumstances, I fell out of love with games. It wasn't until the dust had cleared on the gen that I got back into this past-time and was able to appreciate and re-evaluate the generation by doing a bit of an autopsy on it once this long, strange gen had finally come to a close. The 7th gen seems troubled and problematic from the outset for a variety of reasons, but being a JRPG-centric blog, I'm going to specifically discuss the state of the JRPG during this gen.

To very briefly summarize in a likely unacceptably reductive sense the prior generations in order to contextualize the seventh gen, the prior gen, (gen 6: dreamcast, ps2, gamecube, og xbox in that order) was what I would refer to as the bronze age of JRPGs if we are going to go by a condensed version of the generations of American comic books as a model. JRPGS had fully made the jump to full 3D graphics, began integrating voice-acting and had even feauted some titles that made the first major moves away from traditional turn-based or active-time-battle-esque combat systems, whether that meant leaning closer to the action-RPG genre or using MMO-esque semi-automated combat devoid of random encounters.

That was a slightly awkward, growing-pains-ridden period that had, despite the odds, having some pretty strong titles. Still riding the hype and massive popularity/sales of games like FFVII, this specific genre was still a big deal at that point and hadn't quite begun its quick fade into obscurity which happened later in the first decade of the 21st century. The best JRPGs of this gen built on the success of their prior gen and examples include the solid to great FFX and universally hailed Persona 3 and 4, as well as Dragon Quest 8, just to name a few of the most well known of several strong candidates. These games were about as strong as the best of the previous gen, while enjoying the advantage of much stronger graphical presentation, and potentially deeper systems. The PS1/Saturn generation had some really strong titles in this genre and for some this is easily the peak of the genre, but even if you’re partial to this one the most (which includes the run of FF7-9), you have to admit the graphical limitations led to these games being visually trapped between the more detailed graphics of the next gen and the clean-cut if limited pixel art of the SNES/genesis games (which are the golden age to PS1's silver). Indeed, the Cthonic era of JRPGS (NES/Master Drive and earlier) culminated in an explosion of inventiveness and refinement in games like Final Fantasy 4-6, Phantasy Star 4 and Chronos Trigger, all games that would become the actual gold standard of the genre.

And so without derailing much further, we thus have three straight generations of impressive and semi-consistent JRPGs and development of the genre. This would peter out significantly though, even before the 7th generation began, and the muted reaction to Final Fantasy XII, towards the end of the PS2's life-cycle may have marked a bit of a sea-change. As big, mainstream games like Halo and Call of Duty gained more and more momentum, I think more specialized and more-- for lack of a better term-- Japanese genres and institutions took a bit of a hit around this time. Developers wanted to cater the American and Global market and so big shooters and neu-platform open-worlds like Assassin's Creed had a lot more cache at the beginning of the 7th Gen. I also think that part of the problem was the question of what to do about turn-based combat. As technical possibilities opened up in gaming, the back-and-fourth of true turn-based combat that was previously expected from the genre began to feel more and more archaic. This was partly due to titles like Ocarina of Time or the several strong Action-JRPGs around the time making real-time combat seem like a viable option for deeper role-playing experiences. Alas, there was still a feeling, and for some there still is, that turn-based combat will always be the central tenet of the genre, and that real-time games just don't count.

In fact, JRPG's themselves reflected the feeling that turn-based systems were passe by openly experimenting with it in the 6th gen. Games like FFXII and the Tales game, as well as Level 5's string of Action-RPGs all feature the depth of systems that RPGs of olden always offerered, while also featuring real-time combat or something close to it (Indeed FFXII featured the pseudo real-time of MMO-style combat, which would be the way forward for other franchises going forward. And so in a way the genre could be seen as undoing what it once was in order to adapt.

But where did that leave it by the time the 7th gen was underway? Well, it practically left it in absentia. This was about a decade after the massive and fortuitous success and sales figures of FFVII (which, considering, it was always strange to me that it sold so well in US. Was that evocative cover with the buster sword, and Cloud looking toward Midgar amidst a clean-white backdrop the sole marketing for that game?). Alas the landscape had thoroughly chanced, and this was before Skyrim would drop. There were over 3 years of 7th gen games before that mini game-changer was unleashed on the world, helping to shift any attention on the RPG that existed at that point in a westward direction. But certain sign-of-the-times moments were abound before this even, like the release of FFXIII to initially positive critic reception which quickly faded to very very scathing reception more generally, almost instantly after initial buzz wore off. What used to be the paragon of the genre had reduced said genre to a largely automated, overly-slick walking-and-fighting simulator, sending the reception of the genre down one long, linear hallway of death and despair. Now this specific gamer actually appreciated a lot of what that game did despite the hate, but I can't deny that the game sucked out a lot of the life of the genre in the way exploration, free-will and customization was either limited or entirely absent. The games a giant anime movie with tons and tons of successive fights. If you like the combat system, which imo was a valiant if slightly superficial riff on the active-turn-based systems of old, this might have been okay, but if you didn't-- and many don't-- then the game was nothing but endless cut-scenes and confusing lore. But hey it was gorgeous, and that's what this generation was all about right? Right...

The very Western focus on graphical prowess and polish was something Square Enix seemed to believe was an essential part of Final Fantasy, and so put more focus on that than, oh I don't know, having anything in the way of a single town or basically any exploration in that game. And this focus on graphics was kind of the story of the gen, save for Nintendo who defiantly snubbed their nose to processing power and went the way of innovation instead (innovation that largely did not include all that many JRPGs...). Speaking of Final Fantasy though, the once titan of the genre took another hit around the time this gen was about to begin when Sakaguchi, the OG creator, left Square to form Mistwalker Studios. This would be a hit for Square as far as many fans were concerned, and even a nail-in-the-coffin for some, but it also meant good things for the genre as a whole. Sakaguchi ostensibly left Square Enix in part due to the increased pressure that management was putting on the creatives there during the fall-out from Spirits Within’s financial failure-- their dalliance in Feautre Film- headed by Sakaguchi himself and the project which caused the company to briefly experience financial free-fall as they hemorrhaged money right up until FFX and Kingdom Hearts turned things around for them in a major way. But the damage was done, and projects at the company would be handled differently going forward. It is a bit ironic then, that Sakaguchi would go on to struggle with management at Nintendo while working on Last Story after returning to the company he previously had left along with Square when they refused to adopt CD-technology a decade prior. Last Story-- the game he made for the Wii-- would still come out as a brilliant answer to the dearth of the genre at the time, featuring inventive real-time combat that put a focus on positioning-based strategy.

Indeed some of the more promising games of this genre during the gen were developed by Mistwalker. Not all are perfect, but their third big effort in Last Story is quite good, and is still a unique and novel example of what combat could be in JRPG's going forward. Their first two games, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, both had tried-and-true turn-based style combat, and felt a bit uninspired, if not unwelcome in a very dry stretch of time for the genre, the former's Toriyama-led art-style giving it the feeling of Dragon Quest 8 and Chrono Trigger. It didn't quite live up to those games, but Lost Odyssey is an interesting entry considering it gives us a glimpse into what FFXIII could have been in some alternate universe where Square stayed Square-Soft forever maybe.

And so, weirdly, Sony takes a huge hit from Mistwalker's sheer existence, since all three of these games were released on 360 and Wii--consoles that basically had no JRPGs otherwise-- and to top it off, another one-time Sony loyalist Tetsuya Takahashi, who also having left Square earlier in the decade, went on to work on Xenoblade for the Wii, after previously doing the terrific Xenosaga trilogy on PS2. Alas, Sakaguchi and Takahashi may have singe-handedly kept the genre alive with their games, keeping the promise and magic of the golden age of JRPGs alive, if just barely (indeed, both of these men cut their teeth on classics like Final Fantasy 4 and Chrono Trigger). Meanwhile, Sony holds things down with only a couple big JRPGs, among which is Ni No Kuni, an excellent offering from Level-5 and Ghibli which is super solid and yet skews a bit young (as any Ghibli-related project reasonably should), alongside Nier, from the whacky Yoko Taro who had previously released uneven if cult-status-y JRPGs on previous Sony consoles in the form of the Drakengard games. And while Nier, Ni No Kuni, the Mistwalker games and Xenoblade are all solid to great JRPGs, they’re pretty much the extent of the genre this gen-- five measly games, all of which are spread across the three systems unevenly. Indeed, no single console this gen could stand on its own this gen when it came to this genre, with Sony being the old stand-by failing to deliver on that unless you just happened to really love the entire FFXIII trilogy.

Things we could formerly rely on like Persona, SMT or Dragon Quest were either just straight up no-shows this gen, or were relegated to handhelds. There was Last Remnant on PS3 as well, and I haven't played it, but reception is mixed to negative. All of the other aforementioned games though offer solid experiences, with some sticking to their guns by way of old-school turn-based combat and a few others pushing ahead with new iterations of Active/Semi-Real Time systems (Last Story, Ni No Kuni, Xenoblade), and yet, they are simply too few and far between in number compared to the previous gen. This problem really dogged the entire gen, and was merely symptomatic of the darker turn gaming took around the time, and I'm glad to see things feel like they're headed in a better direction as of late. JRPGs are always the deepest games I play out of the various genres that I fuck with, so my estimation of a console's library is directly related to how many solid JRPGs there are. And while I love the Wii and PS3 overall for what the do offer, they come close to not having enough to offer based solely off their relatively skimpy JRPG offerings. Wii comes out on top for me based only on Xenoblade and Last Story, and sort of Muramasa and Zelda insofar as Vanilla Ware and Zelda games count, but even the freakin 360 might have a stronger offering than PS3, which is a serious problem.

Luckily, I really do think things are on the up-and-up lately though, with smaller, retro-style JRPGs coming into vogue among other things, giving smaller developers wiggle room in terms of acceptable budget, and big franchises like Persona are finally thawing out of deep-freeze after being a no-count dring the previous gen (save for Catherine), while Final Fantasy and Square in general are enjoying a bit of a comeback (Nier Automata, Nioh and I Am Setsuna all in one year). Alas, Persona 5 showed up finally and just in time to universal acclaim, and the fact that it's a successful and truly turn-based JRPG with a decent budget and progressive, forward-thinking mechanics is very impressive in itself. I think Dark Souls was a bit of a beacon of light last gen, in the way that it showed how a Japanese dev could make a deep RPG in a style that was markedly different from more traditional action-JRPG style, while also drawing on western games like Skyrim in its approach. It seemed to bridge the gap between western and eastern-style RPGs and gave people a reason to hype Japanese RPG developers once again at a time when there were less reasons than ever before. I'm not a big Souls guy, but I really appreciate that it brought attention back to a dying genre at a crucial time. So despite this awkward generation's slightly lacking and inconclusive answer to the question: "what should JRPG's this gen be like?", things may finally be settling back into what just might be described as progress for a genre that some may have thought was down for the count. Perhaps it was a necessary awkward period that has allowed developers working in the genre some time to re-calibrate and reassess the landscape,

Now if only devs could figure out how to resuscitate the 3D platformer--Indeed, If JRPGs experienced a drought during last gen, then the 3D platformer went into a near permanent coma and was basically pronounced dead save for the big, mainline console Mario games that come out every 5-10 years. But that's a story for another day, for now, I still need to beat Persona 5 before Xenoblade 2 drops...

#7th generation #gaming #jrpg #last story #mist walker #blue dragon #ps3 #wii #360 #sakaguchi

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