#my main problem of course being that so much of it happened offscreen | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

higheldertala · 2 years

Text

revolution of the daleks salt commentary

guess how many times they say the word dalek in this episode? (answer at the bottom)

funny how ch*bnall delegated the daleks as the holiday special villians and yet he still can’t get the ratings

this isn’t a specific ch*bnall problem, but i cannae stand the daleks sorry to be a fake fan :/ please can we put them away, seriously what more is there to say?

i hate how this episode was marketed as the doctor being out of the action and therefore the companions would be saving the day… but this is a ch*bnall episode so of course that didn’t happened. anyway on with the episode.

we don’t need to rip off star wars do we now? like why is this needed? nothing about this episode is based off or parodying star wars. you could just have a ‘previously’ or a ‘two years ago’ caption. thanks for reminding me how shit resolution was tho.

also to answer the question about whether i give a fuck about what happened to the reconnaissance dalek two years ago… no i don’t. tough shit for me i guess cause there’s 70 minutes of this :/

why is the text orange? choices were made here.

character work is when you have a side character say ‘i have a family’ then die.

also yeah this woman poisoning this guy is very contrived, like how would this woman know this guy would stop at this specific spot? also who does she work for? i assume robertson, but how does he know about the dalek and the transit? also when this guy goes missing when transporting an alien death machine wouldn’t that raise some alarm bells? god were only two minutes in and the plot is already falling apart, that must be a record.

you know how i complain about things happening off screen and the characters just saying the thing that happened offscreen, well for once i would actually prefer it they had done this this time instead of spending 10 whole minutes of this of characters i don’t give a shit about.

yay more social commentary being spelt out right in front of you(!)

also on my daleks are overused point, like it’s annoying how people just forget about the daleks in universe. not a ch*bnall specific problem but annoying nonetheless.

i’m sorry but it’s crazy that no one checked these dalek drones for secret guns they had.

i can’t believe how long the start of this goes on for without showing any of the main characters, but what’s pacing lol. a whole 8 minutes in til we see the doctor.

aside from the writing cliche of putting a character in prison when you don’t know what to do with them, this lasts all of a few minutes, god it’s pointless.

‘you can’t eat the cage. believe me, i’ve tried’ this is the funniest bit in the episode. even more funny the subtitles say ‘SIGHS’ from the pting.

these prison scenes are so dull. i presume that’s the point, but there’s so much more you could do with this concept.

on broadcast i thought the doctor was gonna recall a serial from classic who which would have been a much better decision. choices were made when ch*bnall decided to quote jk terfling.

first lense flare of the episode.

‘she was barely in here for a couple of minutes and yet she coded the entry lock to our dna’ and the point of this dialogue was….?

follow her? where? also she’s presumed dead. also going back to the timeless children, why the fuck would they let ko sharmus go out on his own and not one of them go out for the doctor. again no fucking loyalty but i digress.

also i wish at any point we were shown that yaz is the most desperate to travel and/or wants to be with the doctor.

‘what if she needs us?’ she doesn’t, you literally don’t do anything.

‘how many times has she saved us?’ i repeat myself from last episode, but like once lol.

how do they find robertson? is he conviently in sheffield? did they travel? i suppose it doesn’t matter and i don’t have the energy to care.

‘so we’re going to have to find another way’ so you mean sit around and wait for the doctor to come back. actually laughable that this is all the fam can achieve (nothing) without the doctor’s presence.

‘this is hard innit?’ YOU HAVE BEEN COMPANIONS FOR TWO SEASONS. literally the worst companions ever, please leave.

so with jack saving the doctor from prison, am i wrong in saying that the fam have never saved the doctor from any situation? lol. im pretty sure every companion has had at least one instance of saving the doctor during their tenure. or like at least 90%.

the prison scenes literally take up 5 minutes of screen time.

how does this tech guy know how to do successful alien cloning? like nah sorry im gonna need a bit more for this one.

lol another ‘i have a family then dies’ side character, does chibnall not know how to write any other way?

‘you don’t have a room, you’ve never had a room’ im sorry does she think jack slept on the fucking floor? i don’t believe this for a second, why does she say this???

i love how jack’s entire reaction to learning that the doctor went against his warning and gave ashad the cyberium is the single word: ‘what?’ and then this is never mentioned again during the entire episode.

‘i fixed it. eventually. just about. sort of’ no you didn’t, the cyber wars still happened and decimated the human population that ain’t fixing it :/

i guess it’s in character, but for the doctor to be really closed off even to an old friend like jack is so weird. like she doesn’t even mention running into the master or anything.

not my point, but ive seen someone make the point of that jack has also had memories taken from them from the time agency, essentially identical to the doctor’s situation and that this is literally never brought up in the episode.

honestly crazy that ch*bnall wrote for jack for two seasons and still he is reduced to background furniture. i swear he writes bad on purpose.

‘i was in prison for being me’ chr*s ch*bnall wrote this with his own two hands im crying.

more lense flares! also why is the camera at an angle. ive made a post about this, but the directing is so bad this episode and like most other episodes this era.

‘i was in space jail!’ she sure is Quirky™️ isn’t she?

yaz shoving the doctor is very funny. honestly where is that suppose to have come from.

i love the delivery of ‘10 months’ as super serious when so many other companions have waited years to see the doctor again, honestly it makes the fam come across as so wet.

chr*s ch*bnall literally wrote ‘oops’ (said by jack) as a response to that.

also the sad music as if someone’s died.

god this scene is awkward.

how did possessed leo get to osaka? did he just walk past customs with a squid on his back?

‘she’s good. yeah we all are’ …..um no comment.

‘yeah they killed me once, long time ago, no big deal…i can be killed but i come back to life pretty quick,’ why does he tell them this like that? it feels so unnatural.

‘partially her fault’ how is it partially the doctor’s fault? it’s a stretch to say that at the least.

‘partially a friend of hers on earth called rose but she’s trapped in a parallel universe now’ literally all of this is unprompted, why does he need to tell the fam any of this, especially since it would be a sensitive topic for the doctor surely? but hey it wouldn’t be a ch*bnall episode without our constant exposition dumps.

‘i saw the way you shoved her’ i hope ch*bnall never picks up a pen again.

i’m sorry i know this is Emotional Scene™️ and whatever but i don’t care about yaz as a character. none of this is earnt in any way, shape or form. i need the set up if you want me to satisfied with the payoff.

‘we lost each other’ either this is intentional from jack to soften it for yaz or chris ch*bnall doesn’t actually remember jack’s story. the doctor knowingly abandoned jack and jack knew this. yeah sure at the time jack didn’t know this and they moved past this but still weird choice.

also this is stupid because yaz does fuck all in two seasons so what the fuck is she missing. also rose’s speech in parting of the ways is 1000x better, here yaz is like ‘i miss it cant tell you why tho’ :/

‘the joy is worth the pain’ i guess this is a nice poetic line but this is my salt commentary so im gonna bitch about it :/ i think the conversion is a lot bigger then this and it’s a lot more complicated. like jack knows first hand what travelling with the doctor did to a.) himself and b.) to both rose and martha, was travelling ‘worth’ all the trauma they both suffered? idk saying ‘be happy even thought it might hurt’ is definitely one perspective i guess… idk where i was going with this. i think martha’s conversation with donna (and sarah jane’s to rose) is a lot more realistic. also yaz is like 21 here, i would of hoped jack would have had a more mature take on this situation, more than just ‘be lucky you’re going to be traumatised’.

‘are you feeling insecure? cos you seem to need a lot of praise’ literally no idea where ch*bnall pulled this line out of his ass from because im pretty sure insecurity has never been a key trait of jack’s. starting to think the chris ch*bnall who wrote torchwood was an entirely different person (aka i want to know how much of ch*bnall’s torchwood scripts were edited).

i hate the green lightning :/ why do they love doing this?

why the fuck are we letting robertson into the tardis??

‘this is about daleks. please stop using that word’ i second this motion. you know what im gonna count how many times they say dalek in this episode.

wait did they really put daleks on downing street cause that would be pretty funny. or aren’t tv shows allowed to film on downing street i don’t know.

‘you do love a beanie’ i know she’s suppose to be Socially Awkward™️ but god… the dialogue is always so awkward, i have never believed the doctor and fam as friends, let alone companions of two seasons.

‘four minutes til osaka’ it’s so funny ch*bnall takes time to signpost that we taking a four minute break from the plot to talk about feelings.

it’s quite funny tho because has the doctor and ryan ever had a one-to-one scene before?? honestly don’t think they have (correct me if im wrong). lol ch*bnall will never convince me these people are companions and not background furniture.

the awkwardness of this conversation makes it look like the doctor is in physical pain at having to make small talk to her so-called ‘friend’.

ch*bnall literally wrote ‘and how does that make you feel’ with his own two hands. i honestly don’t understand what people get out of defending this era.

‘if i’m not who i thought i was, then who am i?’ hey chibnall we did this last episode remember? you wrote it so you should.

‘you’re the doctor, same as before, same as always. right same doctor same ryan nothing’s changed’ weird how she’s perfectly okay with this advice from the fugitive doctor, but not with ryan.

nice advice/ consoling from ryan but again this is never earnt between the characters so ehh.

omg just thought ryan should had just said in response ‘i should say a reassuring thing now shouldn’t i? i’m still a bit socially awkward’.

‘thank you ryan for being my friend. thank you for being mine’ ….footage not found.

‘did you really have to bring him?’ again i second this motion.

this lighting has plot purpose but it’s still ugly as fuck.

‘you're feeding cloned dalek creatures liquidised humans’ this era never gets any less patronising to its viewers. also disappointing that doctor who veteran j*** b******** would accept such shit dialogue (or such basic characterisation for that matter).

‘there's something else that's bugging me’ umm… the quality of writing?

‘thanks yaz! missed you yaz!’ god this dialogue is so forced.

and now the dalek lights are red in case you didn’t know they’re now evil(!)

glad to see even jack now immediately backs down from conflict against the doctor. we hate it here.

this plan bad, as im sure you all know.

if they keep on saying the word dalek istg.

‘your bodies are too slow for daleks’ this is one of weirdest lines of dalek dialogue i’ve ever heard.

the extreme close up of the dalek, something something directing bad you know the drill.

‘yeah i can’t be spotted by the daleks!’ proceeds to park right in front of them.

‘maybe i can make a claim on insurance’, okay so that was a funny joke i admit.

bad guy of the episode goes to side with the bad guys, pretends to be shocked.

one of my favourite pieces of physical comedy is when the daleks rotate their heads to look at each other. i’m sure this probably isn’t even intentionally funny, i just find it hilarious and sassy of them.

‘you never forget your first death’ and jack is so hung up on this because…?

so is jack just carrying an abundance of bombs on his person or…?

‘no alien ship is safe from us two bad boys’ oh graham 😂

aw graham got left hanging, he didn’t deserve that 😔

if the daleks can locate the tardis now how come they didn’t before?

‘im captain jack harkness and im immortal’ imagine being happy with writing this dialogue, imagine being happy performing this dialogue. i have to ask. also why is ch*bnall obsessed with mentioning jack’s immortality when it bares no purpose to the plot. like yes ch*bnall i do remember jack is immortal you don’t need to keep telling me.

also like jack risks getting any one of them shot because he has to make Quippy Line™️???

ch*bnall loves solving the day by making the villian extremely dumb.

jack saying goodbye through ADR… hmm i want to know the tea.

i don’t know why the doctor frames ryan wanting to leave as ‘missed my time with you’ when ryan literally just gave his reasoning as it is because he has grown as a person and now know what he wants to do with life.

i mean ryan leaving does have its arc throughout the series so im not gonna say it’s not there but also im gonna not applaud a fish for swimming so.

‘she needs you’ there’s only so many times i can make the same joke… and im gonna keep making it, no she’s doesn’t lol (im sorry😅).

i will say that graham’s exit isn’t as good. not that that it’s unjustified, it’s perfectly fine but yeah less of an independent choice and more just following ryan.

nice leaving gift of psychic paper, just don’t tell them that others got a k9 😂

‘i could always use the tardis to go back arrive an hour after you guys, change the timeline. then we'd have more time together’ why is this doctor so bothered about companions leaving to this degree, she never even looked at them twice when they were on board. also the doctor has never reacted like this to any other companions and it’s not like the fam are that special lol.

also i noticed in the credits there’s a ch*bnall side character named after me lol. i think i’ll stick to my welsh biker girl thanks x

concluding thoughts: this episode definitely has some (2) nice emotional scenes in insolation, but 22 episodes in to start putting actual emotional development is just too little too late. jack ends up being almost a caricature of himself featuring all his Greatest Hits™️ of lines and quirks. nothing new is added to his character which is a shame. honestly the depth of emotion in torchwood s3 and s4 is so profound that seeing jack reduced to the gimmick of quirky sidekick is insulting to longtime viewers. aside from the start the doctor and jack barely interact which is also frustrating. the prison cliffhanger/ scenes are extremely pointless and add nothing to the plot or character as usual. the fam are the fam. not a big fan of dalek stories nowadays so i don’t really care much about it.

they say the word dalek(s) 91 times in this episode.

#series 12 salt rewatch #this is late because i didn’t want to do it ✌️#and we are done with s12 yayyyy!!! 🎉#dw commentary

1 note · View note

shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

The paradox of the relationship between Takeru and Hikari

The issue of the relationship between Takeru and Hikari has been a question of interest since the series first aired, and especially after 02, which prominently depicted them constantly hanging out together and clearly having some kind of relation to each other...and yet, strangely, very rarely having a real heart-to-heart or even talking to each other much at all. The constant juxtapositions of them standing next to each other all of the time in both the series and in external media, combined with the fact they’re so associated with each other in terms of being Adventure returnees and with Digimon partners with similar evolutions, makes one almost mentally geared to associate them with each other, and yet we never really get to hear what they think about each other in the entirety of Adventure or 02′s running.

Part of this is because Takeru and Hikari are the two most “difficult to read” characters in the 02 team -- Hikari because she compulsively suppresses any selfish or negative feeling she has, and Takeru because he covers up his problems with a smile and pretends everything is okay, until it’s not. And, as it turns out, that “gap in communication” exists between the two of them as well; in the web of 02′s relationships, it’s a strange mix between being “comfortable around” each other, and yet not truly knowing each other...

Disclaimer before we continue: With some exceptions related to unambiguous canon depictions, I try to write my meta about relationships between characters in such a way that both shipping readings and non-shipping readings are possible in most cases, and my main reason for this is that I very strongly believe that even if you do ship the pair in question, it’s rather reductive (and not very fun) to stop an analysis at “anyway it’s because they’re in love” or something and not go any further. If you don’t care for Takeru/Hikari as a ship, I hope you can take this analysis as-is, and if you do happen to ship it, I hope you can take my analysis of the gaps in their relationship as “things they would have to consider and overcome for such a relationship to be possible” (i.e. a possible fanfic prompt?) and not me trying to dismiss the ship as inherently possible or impossible.

A second disclaimer: A lot of the important key points below are heavily dependent on how they were presented in the Japanese version of 02, especially in regards to the key 02 episode 13. The American English dub took a very large number of liberties with a lot of the below aspects, so if you are reading this with only that version as a reference, please be aware that there may be significant differences for the sake of avoiding confusion.

Hikari didn’t get to spend much of the series with the rest of the Adventure group, having been a “latecomer”, but once she enters, it’s rather interesting how much Takeru doesn’t socialize much with her. Granted, part of this was because of the circumstances -- there was a lot to be done, and Hikari had a cold relapse not long after they’d entered the Digital World -- but you’d really think Takeru would be interested in at least socializing with someone who’s actually his age, and yet we don’t get any real depiction of doing so outside of discussing important matters. It’s not to say that they never had any kind of conversation offscreen, but by the time we get to the end of Adventure, we have zero scope of what they actually think of each other.

By the time we get to 02, it turns out that this is probably by design.

First of all, we very quickly learn that the two of them did not keep up between Adventure and 02 -- they’re meeting each other again for the first time in a long time, and the last time they did meet was when they were much younger (probably their last meeting being the one depicted in the flashback in 02 episode 27). This is understandable considering that, up until the beginning of 02, Takeru lived in Sangenjaya and not Odaiba, meaning that it wasn’t like they’d have opportunities to meet up much in real life either, but the point is that this is how little contact and how little involvement they’d had in each other’s lives up until this point.

So, once the plot of 02 kicks off and the two of them become active as Chosen Children again, the two of them end up hanging out a lot. So much that Daisuke starts accusing them of having something between them. And the two of them never say anything to really firmly deny him, which of course only makes him more confused and upset, until 02 episode 17, when the concrete connection between them is established to the rest of the 02 team, and it’s properly disclosed that they were part of a whole adventure back in 1999 together.

Takeru knew Hikari before, and she’s still the one he knows the best out of this team, and on Hikari’s part, Takeru understands the nature of “being a Chosen Child” in ways the others don’t, and both of them had that formative experience that the others don’t understand. But 02 is a series that’s not only about relationships, but also about the differing nature of relationships -- it’s true that, having known each other well beforehand and also being all-around decent people, the two of them would certainly have an extra level of investment in each other’s welfare, but...

In 02 episode 13, we learn that as much as Takeru knows Hikari, he doesn’t really know her, and on Hikari’s part, she’s still incapable of communicating the extent of her thoughts so that he can.

The conversation between Takeru and Hikari behind the school in this episode is the first time we get to really see an opportunity for the two of them to bare their actual emotions, but nothing that can be called a "conversation" is had between them. Hikari is still plagued by a compulsive desire to not be a burden to others, including the idea of “burdening” her brother, and, when Takeru finally prompts her on what’s going on, she says nothing that properly clarifies what she’s going through, nothing but a cryptic mention of the “sea”, a statement that she "might be going away”, and a reference to her brother having always protected her beforehand. Takeru takes it as a sign that Hikari’s become overly dependent on Taichi, and snaps at her angrily -- a persistent symptom of him being unable to regulate his emotions properly -- and, unable to handle it, runs off awkwardly, leaving her alone to eventually be taken away. Later in the episode, Takeru reflects that he’d basically just doomed Hikari by his own actions, and with his last words to her having been something awful.

Ultimately, some degree of progress is made in that Hikari realizes that Takeru reaching out to her earlier makes him someone she should be reaching out to for help -- in the end, nobody in the 02 group had yet been able to reach out to her emotionally because of how closed-in she was, and the only people she truly trusted with her feelings up until that point were Taichi and Tailmon. So in other words, Takeru is another person she can finally “trust” with her feelings and welfare. But while Takeru is finally able to connect to her in some sense with this, when the two finally close off the episode and return to the real world, everything ends in complete silence. They do not say a single word to each other. They’re getting by with a sense of “inherent trust”, and their disconnect was resolved with that alone this time, but this problem hasn’t been fully solved yet and will be rearing its ugly head again by the time we get around to the Jogress arcs.

And so the two of them return back to their “comfortable with each other” status quo -- but, again, 02 is a series that portrays relationships in a very multi-layered and multifaceted form, and being comfortable around someone still doesn’t necessarily merit emotional closeness (for instance, Ken was pretty clearly indicated as being “comfortable” and straightforward in terms of working with Miyako in 02 episodes 25 and 33, but there’s no doubt that Daisuke’s the one who was more properly addressing the things he emotionally needed most at the time, which could arguably be said to be exactly why Ken was having a hard time adjusting to him at first). We see them “go off together” to do...completely mundane and practical things, like discussing why they’re still able to come to the Digital World in 02 episode 22, or trying to have their Digimon partners evolve on their own in 02 episode 24 -- they’re not having any kind of emotional heart-to-heart, they’re just there.

When you look at the wider picture, you can see that Hikari and Takeru’s relative comfort around each other at this point is largely because they’re still not comfortable being alone with anyone else yet. So far, they kind of had a bonding (not really bonding) session back in 02 episode 13, and they hadn’t had anything of the sort with anyone else, and they’re still the only people who understand certain things relevant to the adventure in 1999 that the others don’t. They’re both still ridiculously closed-in and guarded, and not trusting anyone with their feelings -- they can’t even trust each other with their feelings -- so they’re getting by on hanging out with each other because it’s either that or go off to be completely alone. As the two most “emotionally isolated” people in this group, there’s a wall between them and the others, and that wall is only slightly thinner between each other -- and you can even imagine that they’re willing to hang out with each other because they won’t be bothering that wall and causing intimidation.

And by the time we roll around to 02 episode 31, we learn that, this whole time, nothing has improved. Takeru sees that something is going on with Hikari, but does and says nothing -- perhaps because he’s not sure what to say, perhaps because he’s afraid of lashing out at her again, whatever it is -- but he can’t and won’t speak to her nor address her feelings.

In the end, the person who does establish that ability to “communicate” with Hikari is not Takeru but Miyako -- an aggressive, in-your-face, overly honest person who gets straight to the point and refuses to hold back, whose messy personality causes Hikari to become assertive in handling her and allows Hikari to finally vocalize one of her truly sensitive feelings, and who’s able to use her immense emotional sensitivity to identify what Hikari needs and break through to her.

But just because Miyako ended up being the person Hikari needs to move on past this issue does not mean Takeru’s role wasn’t important, nor that Miyako coming into Hikari’s life means that all of her relationships are inferior or pointless -- rather, a recurring element of 02′s portrayal of relationships is that everything has a ripple effect, and that “opening up” one person’s heart allows them to open up to others as well (see how Daisuke reaching out to Ken eventually helped him reach out to the others in the group, how even in this very same episode Miyako expresses that this experience helped her understand Ken better as well, how Daisuke’s experiences end up giving him a healthier relationship with the rest of the group, how Iori and Takeru’s Jogress ordeal helps them both become better at reaching out to Ken...). Unlike how they’d both closed off 02 episode 13, Hikari and Takeru end this one by talking -- with Hikari’s newfound confidence from her dealings with Miyako allowing her to more openly speak what she’s thinking with Takeru.

One thing you might notice is that after 02 episode 31, Takeru and Hikari are never seen going off on their own together for the rest of the series -- because, again, their “latching” onto hanging out with each other at the exclusion of anyone else was because they were that isolated from everyone else, but not anymore! Hikari starts to hang out more with Miyako as the two of them become more comfortable hanging out after the events of said episode; after all, Miyako had come to understand the real reason why Hikari “keeps so much inside” and that she needs to actively reach out to her, and Hikari is able to properly trust Miyako with her feelings, meaning that now that Hikari is starting to open up, she doesn’t need to fall back on her “truce” with Takeru to get by. Which ends up leaving Takeru rather alone for the following set of episodes. Well, seemingly alone, but...

...he’s not truly alone, because this is also where Iori realizes that there’s a lot more going on with Takeru and that he needs to make a proactive effort to understand him, and it doesn’t take long for Takeru to realize what Iori’s doing (especially when Yamato tips him off that Iori asked about him in 02 episode 35). Once again, very much unlike Hikari, Iori is straightforward and to-the-point, and is much better at cutting through all of the complicated layers Takeru puts up in an attempt to cover up his emotions.

The rest of the series has them in significantly more emotionally tense situations than before, and while the fact they end up spending the rest of the series with their respective Jogress partners instead of each other is partially sheer pragmatics, it’s also how the two of them start taking a more active role in actually checking on the others’ emotions and communicating with them in regards to their feelings. This is a huge deal -- compare this to back in 02 episode 13 when they were practically the only people willing to have this kind of serious, emotional conversation with each other -- and said attempt at a serious conversation exploded in their faces. (The other time one of them had made an attempt at something vaguely resembling a heart-to-heart during that time was 02 episode 11, which also resulted in Takeru blowing up explosively.) But here they’re capable of communicating clearly and openly and making their positions known in a way that gets through to their respective Jogress partners’ issues, without being stifled by anything.

But, again: just because they don’t “go off together” anymore doesn’t mean they stopped being important people to each other or comfortable around each other -- it’s just that now they’ve stopped wandering off together for the sake of blocking themselves away from others, and no longer trapped in this strange, paradoxical relationship of knowing-but-not-truly-knowing each other they had all the way back in 02 episode 13. The relationship they had back then was something built off of coping mechanisms, and not something you could truly say was healthy, not when their communication was stilted and Takeru had snapped at her so badly -- but both of them learning to open up more and be more honest with their feelings means that they may well have an actual healthy dynamic going forward.

And for all it’s worth, we learn that they’re still on very good terms by the time of Kizuna, getting breakfast together in the opening -- but it’s left ambiguous if their reason for doing so like this was because they still have a penchant for particularly hanging out together, or whether it was just circumstance because they were free to get breakfast after the Digimon incident (they act independently for the rest of the movie). Moreover, their relationships with the others in the 02 group are still going strong, because as per the drama CD, Takeru’s happy to hang out with Daisuke like it’s nothing and actively join in to reach out to Iori (it’s said Daisuke was approaching Iori “first” despite Takeru being there, so both of them were hanging out independently and decided to pick up Iori together), and Hikari comes in with Miyako, expressing a very firm intent to hang out with her for their trip, and ultimately it’s established that them not being with the rest of the group at the time of the movie was sheer scheduling circumstance and not necessarily them going out of their way to operate away from them.

So in other words, whatever relation you can say they have at this point, or their ability to get along, is not based on them falling back on each other as an unhealthy coping mechanism of silence, but one carried out in a more genuine manner.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers #takaishi takeru #yagami hikari #takeru takaishi #hikari yagami #shihameta

161 notes · View notes

badlydrawndrawnings · 3 years

Text

Netflix “Sugar Bowl” Theory

Not so much about what’s in the sugar bowl as Netflix pretty much reveal the content for their continuity, but rather, ownership of the sugar bowl (with a bonus on trying to make sense of the Netflix show timeline).

I had to re-watch the opera night flashback in order to listen to the conversation between Esme and Beatrice. One line always stood out to me that I could be putting too much thought into it, but it’s a line I feel is overlook as well.

Esme: “Please, darling, you can trust me to keep it safe. I’m rich and beautiful.”

Even though Esme’s main motive regarding the sugar bowl is ultimately vain/selfish (“It completes my tea set.”) Esme also say Beatrice should trust her enough to keep it safe. Esme only says the line of it completing her set after Beatrice keeps on trying to persuade her to give it up. and to me, the way Esme says “It completes my tea set.”, it seems she wants Beatrice to stop talking about giving the sugar bowl in general, with ‘and another thing’ final note to finish the conversation for good.

It got me thinking ‘what if Esme has her tea set prior to the opera night, but the sugar bowl wasn’t part of her original set?’ Esme in fact, got a replacement sugar bowl in order to complete her set, and she was allowed to keep the sugar bowl as her own, on the condition from the previous original owner to keep it safe. Esme’s main motive is still selfish, but now there’s the fact Esme personally want the sugar bowl (at the time of the conversation and switching sides) because Esme arguably has the most dangerous assignment of all, and sees herself the only one worthy of the task to protect it.

But it still begs the question: Who is the original owner of the sugar bowl?

Beatrice: “Listen to me, Esme. there are traitors within VFD who do not want to put out fires at all. A certain man with a beard but no hair, a certain woman with hair but no beard. They think fire can solve any problem in the world. What if they get their hands on Gregor Anwhistle’s research? […] you want a family one day. I do too. Don’t you want to raise your children in a safer world? This sugar bowl is our only hope. It can save lives.”

It’s a stretch -a big stretch- but given Beatrice namedrops him in their conversation and is putting focus on his research, there’s a possibility Gregor Anwhistle was the previous sugar bowl owner, and he didn’t perfected the mycelium at this point on the timeline. I say this because going by the Widdershins happy family photo and Fiona’s apparent age of five or six, assuming it was taken a bit before Fernald started his apprenticeship at Anwhistle Aquatic (as Fernald was wearing his Queequeg uniform, and not dress up as a lab assistant as shown in his flashback of the fire) and Gregor went volatile because the Mycelium is perfected, the Anwhistle Aquatic Fire in the Netflix show happened five or six years after the schism started.

As this is very early on in the timeline, Gregor’s research is not only imperfect, but still in development. However, it’s at a critical stage Gregor fears if anyone gets its hand on it, it can lead to trouble, and he fears two associates in particular knowing they’re powerful high court judges who are starting to stray and cause trouble. Gregor as a precaution gave the sugar bowl to Esme. A rich and beautiful woman like Esme with a complete tea set would not stand out to anyone. Esme herself is the perfect ‘hiding spot’.

Eventually Gregor realize he had no choice but to go back on his word, and roped in Beatrice and Lemony and Bertrand (who’s role on watching the opera night flashback has me realize Kit’s book role was transfer to Bertrand, just offscreen, because it just occurred to me Netflix!Kit due to her character changes has no idea what is going on) to get it back from Esme. Beatrice didn’t want to steal the sugar bowl because she knew Esme was pick for a reason, which is why she went on a speech to persuade Esme. But after Esme refuse to listen to reason, believing she can keep it safe and keep her complete tea set, did the sugar bowl theft happened. Beatrice (and Lemony, since he was willingly to be the fall guy so I assumed if the opportunity rose, he would have to like...kill someone? again assuming ATWQ events happened? Damn Netflix!Lemony was going to kill twice) prepared to kill Esme with a poison dart snuck in by Bertrand as the ultimate back up plan if/when Beatrice and Lemony got caught. This of course, leads to (in)famous opera night and the schism.

With Olaf’s father dead and Lemony going on the lam, returning back, and then getting declare dead which may or may not be related to Olaf or other VFD reasons or not (this is Lemony after all), Beatrice and Bertrand fear Olaf will go after them. Beatrice knows Olaf knows she threw the dart since Olaf tried to kill her at VFD’s headquarters during the masked ball. However, Olaf is (was) under the impression Lemony gave the dart to her, not Bertrand (was because Olaf is realizing that night was much more different with a re-evaluation). Ishmael at this point is getting tired of the world being up in figurative and literal flames and smokes, allow Beatrice and Bertrand to live on the island with him, which was initially plan as a VFD location but abandon due to the schism.

Ishmael on the island decided he wanted out of VFD and have a new start as a cult leader, while Beatrice and Bertrand after creating the hybrid apples with the help of the sugar bowl (Gregor knows Esme suspects he has it and now gave ownership to the two) and realizing they have a child on the way, want to go back to the world and brave everything together.

They stay in VFD long enough to give Gregor back the sugar bowl, since Esme now believes Gregor never got the sugar bowl back after the opera night and no longer suspects him. Gregor continues to work on the mycelium (in secret) and eventually gets Fernald as his apprentice. Being an apprentice has Fernald going ‘oh gee I think Gregor is getting volatile even more than usual’ because the sugar bowl contents aren’t the same anymore due to Beatrice and Bertrand and now the mycelium project is one step closer to getting perfected.

When the mycelium is truly perfected, and the cure is going to get mass production at Lousy Lane, Gregor is ready to fight fire with fire. This leads to Gregor and Ike fighting, as Ike not only thinks what Gregor is doing dangerous, Ike is upset that the schism happened over a sugar bowl, and he fears this will make the schism worse. After the fight, and Fernald failing to reason with Gregor, Fernald decided to set Anwhistle Aquatic on fire. This of course result in Fernald losing his hands, the fire-fighting side of VFD kicking Fernald out, and Fernald and Widdershins’ big fight resulting with Fernald leaving.

The sugar bowl was moved before the fire (by Gregor, with few people knowing; Fernald isn’t in on the loop because Gregor doesn’t trust him anymore) to the factory at Lousy Lane, after which it was moved around until it accidentally found a home at Heimlich Hospital. Esme when hearing about the factory at Lousy Lane opening up started goes back searching for it, but once again gave up, as Fernald, who is now on their side and because he was out of the loop, tells her and everyone else the sugar bowl wasn’t at Anwhistle Aquatic when he burned it down. So everyone assumed the sugar bowl got ‘stolen’ pre-fire by another unknown player, with everyone giving up on it for years until the ASOUE period which gives new life to the search.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #netflix asoue #asoue netflix #esme squalor #beatrice baudelaire #count olaf #lemony snicket #sugar bowl theory #theory #this is a text post #you have no idea #how long it took to write this

65 notes · View notes

bronyinabottle · 3 years

Text

MY LITTLE PONY: A NEW GENERATION (G5 Movie) THOUGHTS

It’s finally here. The beginning of Generation 5. Though before I get into the movie in some detail I’m going to reiterate one more time what G5 means for my content and a non-spoilery summary of the movie.

Again, I will say that the movie nor will the G5 series coming later have much of an effect at all on any of my blogs. The revelation in Secrets of the Dragon’s Tear that life itself is also magic means that a world that implied to have no magic for years would mean the extinction of all life (Perhaps resulting in the wasteland we saw in the Season 5 finale). There may be something I’ll probably do at some point on a certain different blog. But even then, that may likely be a one-time thing and probably come around the time the series is starting to air.

That said, just because I’m continuing with mainly G4 content doesn’t mean I disapprove of G5. In fact, my non-spoilers thoughts on the movie is I think it is a good start for this new generation. There are questions I have that I’m not sure will be answered (Though many of those questions are the same ones I had in my Trailer/Preliminary thoughts) quickly enough. But the movie is structured well enough, in fact it’s probably a better movie as a whole compared to any of the movies G4 had (The 2017 movie, Rainbow Roadtrip, and all 4 Equestria Girls movies). As the 2017 movie was fun, but it jumped around a lot, sometimes scenes transitioning too fast. And while Rainbow Roadtrip may have been this on purpose, the entirely slice-of-life story taking up a long length… made it something of a less interesting plot to follow. It feels like some of that special could of been cut to at least a two-parter length and keep the same beats they hit. And while i have a soft spot for the 3rd and 4th Equestria Girls movies, I’ll always say a full-length pony adventure feels better suited for what I want to see out of MLP then spin-off movies with high school movie cliches and weird pony/human world shenanigans.

So movie-wise I’m not a G4 purist. It’ll take some time to see how Gen 5 compares to Friendship is Magic when we get to the series. As I feel it’d take a lot for it to surpass G4 in my mind. But I’m going to try to be as fair as possible and judge on it’s own merits. The implied connection to G4 by referring to G4 being ancient Equestria is going to naturally get the staff and hasbro pressured by fans to tell us what happened in-between the generations. Because that’s the trap they put the writers in when they made it so they want to try to say it’s in the same universe. That’s the double-edged sword Hasbro chose to have, trying to appease the G4 fanbase and keep at least some of them around. But at the cost of questions both nitpicky (Such as character design being inconsistent) or actual honest questions that need to be known (Why did magic disappear, and what happened to the Alicorns) for some of us to truly see this as the same Equestria.

After the break, I’ll have more spoilery thoughts

Even for a brief moment, it was nice seeing the Mane 6 and 2D animation. The former because of course those are the ponies many of us that saw all of G4 loved. And the latter, because while the animation wasn’t bad in this movie. I’m one of those who’d prefer to have 2D animation in an animated film. As in most cases aside from Pixar, it’s just a strong preference of mine. If this had the animation of the 2017 MLP movie but otherwise everything else was generally the same here, I feel that would of have been great.

I wish they didn’t have to have Sunny’s dad die off-screen, as he seems like he could of been a compelling character. And not to mention if perhaps he has any connection the “ancient” days in any fashion. But *sigh* I get it, it’s an old trope where part of the character’s offscreen growth is not having their parent(/s) around.

On a side note there’s quite a few times during the beginning of the movie that somewhat foreshadow what happens to Sunny later. 3 times where she had a fake horn and wings on her. Once in the flashback, then 2 separate times when she’s doing her protest where she has her own costumed wings and horn. As well as the helmet and mechanical wings.

Also, there’s no way around it. Some of the discussions this movie are going to get quite political. (Namely one part of Sunny’s song that could be seen as having a double meaning of a jab at Trumpsts regarding “Building your wall”) From the very premise in the early times, we know that the inspiration for the story was last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Which honestly, I do support the message they’re going for. Having an anti-racism message to tell kids from the very beginning and making a focus on it is important when in G4 it only got briefly touched upon in Bridle Gossip and the Heath’s Warming Eve play. Although it certainly rose up to some form of prominence with Season 8 and onward. Still, while you can argue if G4 executed the anti-racism message well. it does come with something of a problem that the series finale left Equestria in the least divided it’s ever been.

And personally, I feel it’s a terrible interpretation of time to say “Well, it’s a realistic take. Racism has existed for years in our world. Same should go for the ponies” and while yes, racism is still rampant in today’s world. That said, that ignores that if we went from The Last Problem to the start of G5. There’s a huge difference between our world and Equestria. There is no ancient civilization that we look at like “Yeah, those were the golden days of world peace” when normally the “Golden age” was reserved for the high classes of Ancient Greece or Rome. It was most decidedly not perfect, with slavery rampant and wars for the sake of expanding an empire. While if you look at The Last Problem’s Equestria, you not only have peace between the three main types of ponies. But you literally have non-pony citizens in Equestria. You can see a dragon handing off a flower to a pony which can imply cross-species romantic relations. With the Friendship school still going strong, and was the reason that the world was saved in The Ending of the End. While perhaps it may be too glowing to say that future is perfect for everyone even in-universe. It’s certainly a hell of a lot better outlook then comparing to how we view even the so called Golden age of ancient civilizations. The Last Problem’s Equestria implies it looks to ally with every country outside of Equestria, not conquer them.

So it should still be a valid question on just how this world collapses to the point it gets to where G5 is at the start. I at least assume that it’s not the fault at all of any of the Mane 6 nor Twilight. Or at least I hope it isn’t, as I’d rather the MLP fanbase not have to deal with a The Last Jedi Luke Skywalker situation. (Where after the joyful end of the original trilogy, things go wrong as Luke almost murders the son of one of his best friends and his sister despite trying to hard and succeeding at redeeming his father who at that point in the canon was a galaxy-wide known ruthless mass-murderer.) I assume we’re at a point where everyone of the Mane 6 sans maybe Twilight are presumed dead. And even in Twilight’s case, there’s a chance that G5 decides to say that G4 overestimated the whole Alicorn immortality thing. Though I wouldn’t put it past Hasbro to have some event where the Mane 5 of G5 meet the Mane 6 in some special event whether that’s a a Season finale or a sequel movie/special. Where either the Mane 6 return in a limbo situation similar to the Pillars at the end of Season 7 or Time travel gets involved. They may even string us along on answering just what in the heck happened until they involve a meet-up with the Mane 6 in that way. Though I hope they don’t, I’d really like the beginning of the series (Or I guess this supposed special coming up in Spring supposedly?) starts to answer some questions. G5 should get a chance to stand on it’s own, but I hope the writers are actually well aware there will be so many questions people have and address them in the show. A cynical part of me feels like they’re likely to string us along until at least the Season 1 finale.

Onto the characters for a bit. I think Izzy Moonbow was absolutely the most stand-out character in the whole movie. She was energetic, funny, and aside from “The pegasi are bad news” she along with Zipp and Sunny were the most averse to the way the world was. She was already the most popular due to the tennis ball memes. But now it feels like she legit stands on her own and most certainly deserves to be the most popular character of G5 thus far. Behind her in a bit of a surprise to me was Zipp, who I thought would be mainly a Rainbow Dash-expy. Though she really helps out Izzy and Sunny in Zephyr Heights. Despite having Twilight be my favorite pony from the very beginning of G4 all the way to the end, I didn’t feel as strongly about Sunny for some reason. So she’s in the middle of the pack, she could grow on me later. I just don’t know if I click with her as much as I did with Twilight. As for the last two, while I don’t hate either of them. Either one could be the lowest of the 5 for one reason or another. Pipp (Although I will say she's probably my favorite character design out of the 5) feels like she doesn’t do a whole lot in the movie and it takes until she’s forced to be an outlaw because the other choice was to get imprisoned like her mother was. So she may come off as quite pretentious, though it’s arguable Rarity was the same way early in G4. But she definitely grew later. Could be the same case for Pipp. And as for Hitch, he has shining moments in the film. But what might hurt him is the fact he was such a bad friend to Sunny up until the campfire scene. “I’m the last real friend you have. You really want to lose me too?” is not a healthy friendship. Hitch may have been Sunny’s friend the longest, but it definitely feels like Izzy connected immediately. I don’t know if this show will get into shipping any of the main characters between each other mid-show, but if they do. I hope it’s between Izzy and Sunny currently, cause Hitch and Sunny just gives bad vibes even with Hitch getting better later.

None of the songs I felt were particularly too special. Though I think the closest was Sprout’s “Danger, Danger” song that has similarities to Smells Like Teen Spirit in some parts of the song since I tend towards more rock/metal-esque music.

I touched upon it earlier, but there’s perhaps a stand-out reason for why the G5 movie outdid the 2017 MLP Movie. They have the typical “Our heroic group splits after a sad moment before coming together again for the climatic good end” in Sunny seeing that that the two crystals don’t instantly bring magic back, and when Twilight left the group after an argument that happened with Twilight trying to take a pearl. They perform the same purpose in the movie. But the crystals not working, crushing Sunny’s hope for a little while works better into the story. Where as Twilight’s part frustratingly brought the sea pony scene to an end too quickly and/or doesn’t feel right of Twilight to have done that. It felt forced in the 2017 movie, but works out in the G5 movie. Especially since a part of it is that it’s not the crystals themselves capable of bringing magic back. But it’s the journey going after the crystals that brings the ponies themselves their magic back.

Just a small note on dictator Sprout, he tries to cause a war. Though admittedly the film seems to treat him as a joke the entire time despite his seriously evil ambitions. With the only repercussions is he gets a wishy-washy answer on if he was a good sheriff from his mom. I don’t quite know how I feel about that yet, but I wonder what they’ll have in mind for Sprout given his actions. He and his mom are the only ones that feel like a true antagonist. Though they seem to be ok with things fast when the magic comes back.

But anyway on to the ending, we see that Sunny becomes an Alicorn. Which I guess with no other real Alicorns around, I guess it makes sense to alicornify her since she’s the real leader behind what united the leaders of each type of pony again. Though there is of course this weird thing where her horn and wings don’t seem like as much a part of her body compared to very obvious connected wings on Twilight when she got hers. Sunny keeps her horn and wings to the end of the movie, and has colored streaks in her hair. Though I do wonder if that;s truly permanent. If it is permanent, I suppose at least they got to have a headstart and have it established at the end of the introductory movie rather then have it shock people at the end of a shortened 3rd season. I still feel like Twilight had well earned her alicornhood considering that besides what she did in the series. She has a whole childhood and time as a teenager learning under Celestia. Which had to mean something, and I’m not sure Celestia just leaving her to live the rest of her days with her friends in ponyville was that. Sunny has no doubt been trying countless time to try to spread friendship throughout her life even after the tragedy of her father’s passing. So there’s no doubt she’s been through a lot, and may indeed be worthy of being an Alicorn at this point. Though in terms of screentime before Alicornhood it's definitely a lot less then Twilight had. And it is at least nice to see that it is possible for non-unicorns to become one. (The only case of that we sort of got was a children's book that may or may not be canon that implied Cadence was a pegasus before she ascended)

Though you have to wonder if the visual differences such as Sunny’s alicorn horn and wings, the cutie mark only on one side (Yes I know that’s how it was normally in the MLP generations before G4. But a distinct visual difference between shows is still noticeable even if the context of G4’s cutie marks on both sides of the flank was about it being easier on the puppets for Flash), and how animals can have wings or weird round shapes such as those bunnies when G4 has normal looking animals. There’s enough striking visual differences for any nitpicky G4 to say “This isn’t the same Equestria”. And if someone tries to say maybe some sort of evolution happened. That’s still trying to put a little too much real world logic on this fantasy world. And evolution tends to take millions of years to have such dramatic changes. Not 1000 years or so, there should still be normal looking animals at this point and time. And these small details are probably going to be the things most ignored but nonetheless can build a case that this isn’t the same Equestria. Even if they touch on the important questions like how magic disappeared and what happened to the Mane 6, there will be details they make different that will add to the case that this is it’s own universe if it doesn’t quite matchup with what was remembered about G4. There will be fans who will be that nitpicky to call G5 out of continuity for small details like that. That is again the trap they put themselves in when they decided to try to say it’s the same Equestria.

All-in-all though, I think that’s at least a good enough chunk about my thoughts on the movie to end off here. If there’s something I missed or something from the movie you’d like me to give a particular opinion about or elaborate on something feel free to ask me here. G5 is indeed off to a good start, just I will be along the many hoping some questions get answered sooner then later. And I’m not sure I’m confident in getting anywhere until a Season finale or a 2nd movie. And it’ll be a year before the series starts proper (Though again I guess there’s a 44 minute special coming in Spring to try to hold us over). But I could definitely see G5 finding it's own following, now there's just the inevitable clashes between some of the more vocal fans of each generation bickering at eachother. But hoping there will be enough that take the movie's lessons on divisiveness to heart and be able to enjoy both even if there may be preferences.

#mlp #my little pony #g5 #mlp g5 #netflix #my little pony the next generation #my little pony movie #generation 5

31 notes · View notes

curioussubjects · 4 years

Text

come be a season 12 truther with me; or what if dean and cas got together offscreen

Originally, I wrote this post to celebrate “Galaxy Brain” airing as Berens & Glynn gave us “The Future.” It’s been a while since that episode aired, and some things have changed about this meta. As such, there are multiple versions of this post floating around, so make sure to go back to the source for the most up to date version. For all intents and purposes, this post functions as a meta manifesto not unlike shipping manifestos from days of LJ past. In keeping with that tradition, this post is a close reading of Dabb Era Destiel in which I argue that by using narrative gaps, queer coding, and romance tropes, Dean and Cas are shown to be in an established relationship. Although beyond the scope of this post, it’s worth pointing out that keeping Destiel mostly off screen was a way for the creatives to bypass network censorship while still remaining true to the characters.

This post is divided into three sections. Section I focuses on giving an overview of why earlier seasons of Supernatural aren’t as compelling as season 12 as a turning point for Dean and Cas’s relationship. That said, special consideration is given to 09.06 “Heaven Can’t Wait” as a potential rest stop in our journey due to it’s significantly placed narrative gap as well as themes in the episode. However, this post isn’t going to examine season 9 trutherism in depth, though it does coexist with and allow for it. Section II analyses season 12 and proposes a timeline and justification for the shifting Destiel dynamic. Finally, Section III will offer an analysis of how Dean and Cas’s relationship has changed dramatically from previous seasons in a way that is most like the shift from a “will they or won’t they” pairing to an established one.

Before I move to Section I, I’d like to note something this post takes for granted: Dean and Cas are the main romantic subplot of Supernatural, and, in fact, their relationship is elevated to main plot for both characters in season 15. This post won’t argue about the canonicity of Dean and Cas’s feelings for each other, therefore, and so won’t spend time looking at many Destiel defining moments. I’d also like to make clear that this post also takes for granted that Destiel is being intentionally developed by the writers starting with Carver’s Era, and more so in Dabb’s.

I. Why Seasons 4 through 11 May Not be It

The tl;dr. here is that while there are many moments throughout these seasons that Dean and Cas could potentially get together, none of those moments are ideal for a bunch of reasons that can be summed up as really bad timing. I also think the narrative is actively pushing them towards a moment that works. We get plenty of stepping stones, especially once we hit seasons 8 through 11 (and 11 most of all).

Seasons 4 & 5:

I know there’s been a lot of get together fics over the years set in this time period, but I just don’t see it. Do I see them being intrigued and drawn to each other? Yes. Do I think either Cas or Dean would act on it? Nope. I’m not arguing anything re: Dean’s feelings, but with everything going at the time I find it hard to believe he’d pursue anything with his angel friend. Most importantly here, though, is that during this time Cas was still very alien and other. There was too much angel in him, and while he obviously came to care about Dean (and Sam) very much, I just can’t see him navigating the realm of human relationships. That said, seeing human!Cas in “The End” is the first we see of potential developments for how Cas could behave without his angelness interfering. Being human changes Cas a lot, beyond even his experience existing among humans, though that of course matters too. This development will be important later /wink.

Seasons 6 & 7:

Before anything else let me just recognize that if we could see some sexual tension in seasons 4 & 5, these two seasons come with our first taste of romantic tension. The pining! Also note the difference between season 4 Cas and season 6 Cas in terms of behaviour. He is much less the angel we saw in that barn in “Lazarus Rising.” In season 6, we have a Cas making misguided decisions guided entirely by his emotions – namely, not wanting to involve Dean with the war in heaven – which is peak human, honestly. Put a pin on how sad Dean is in both seasons with Cas’s absence. Finally, put a pin on this being our first moment of Cas doing things on his own to spare Dean and it not ending well (soulless!Sam, Cas “dying” after Leviathan) because this is *the* hurdle in their relationship (along with Dean’s lashing out and self-worth issues). With all this said, the marked distance between Dean and Cas in these seasons negates the possibility of them entering into any kind of relationship. Much like seasons 4 and 5, there’s too much going on.

Season 8:

Ah, yes, the summer of purgatory. If you thought we had pining before…! I think we’re all very clear on season 8 being a turning point for the show, not only because new showrunner, but we also get the bunker. TFW now has an HQ, which pretty soon becomes home. Yes, Baby will always be home, but the bunker becomes the *unmovable* safe haven that Baby couldn’t be. The bunker is a place to coalesce, and for all the amazing things Baby is, she is not that. The acquisition of the bunker marks a shift in the psychology of the show: with the stable home space we can start to imagine domesticity, a place to come home to, the stuff of ordinary living. Most of all, the bunker is emblematic of security, of safety –keep this in mind, as we go forward.

This season also continues to see Cas go down the path of independently solving his problems instead of asking for help from Sam and Dean (his family in a way heaven never was) – note that the better together issue is at play in different ways with Sam and Dean also, but I digress. I also want to point out disastrous instance #2 of Cas’s insistence on figuring it out on his own: he loses his grace, and the angels fall. As for Dean, season 8’s focus for him has much to do with Sam, and them coming face to face with their issues with codependency, which hit catastrophic levels with the gates of hell and Gadreel plots.

So despite all the deliciously angsty get together purgatory fics and spec, there’s too much distance between Dean and Cas on Cas’s part due to his guilt over betraying the Winchesters in s6 plus slaughtering angels plus unleashing Leviathan. We do see Dean being more emotionally open with Cas and continue to voicing his wish that Cas would just stay with him and Sam, and let them help. It’s clear as day how much Dean cares. The timing is still bad, though.

Before moving on to next season, let’s take a moment to appreciate that this is the season Dean admits being kinda done with one night stands because “always with the adios.” Remember the bunker as a sign of stability? Yeah. I wouldn’t say Dean is craving a relationship, exactly, but I think we can see that he does want something more (ahem also I’m nodding to Cas refusing to stay put just cause).

Seasons 9 & 10:

The most important thing to happen between this two seasons is Cas’s stint as a human for an extended period of time. There’s been plenty of spec and meta written over the years about the effects of being human on Cas’s grace (a proto-soul now maybe?). What we can say for sure, regardless, is that Cas is much more humanized once he becomes an angel again. The understanding he gets from being human doesn’t go away once he regains his angel powers. You’ll notice that while we still see some of season 4’s characterization, Cas is not the same as he was – he is alien to angels now and is more intelligible to humans. Additionally, in an interesting reversal from previous seasons, we now get to see the depth of Cas’s feelings for Dean (thanks, Metatron) as well as seeing him be more open emotionally, while Dean does most of the pushing away (first because of Gadreel, then because of the Mark of Cain). In short, the timing is still bad as Dean and Cas are largely kept apart both physically and emotionally.

9.06 Heaven Can’t Wait

This episode is my white whale, friends. While I’ve come to fully subscribe to the idea that something did happen between Dean and Cas during the fanfic gap, I don’t actually think it’s feasible that it marked the start of a relationship -- be it sexual or romantic. My reasoning here is quite simple: the timing is bad. Were it not for external events (Cas regaining his Grace and Dean taking on the MoC), the course would have likely differed. Furthermore, Dean’s guilt over making Cas leave the bunker as well as Cas’s own hurt and self-loathing pose a significant and as yet insurmountable obstacle, which is easily seen with how Dean and Cas’s character trajectories go separate ways.

YMMV on what exactly happened between them in that Motel, but something definitely did. Perhaps one day I’ll have a proper s9 trutherism post to link to here for more details (likely won’t be written by me, though).

10.16 Paint It Black

From the point Dean gets the MoC until the end of season 10, anything between him and Cas is quite impossible due to distancing, to say the least. Again, yes, the fic is really good, but alas. One of the reasons I’m bringing up this episode in particular is because of the confession scene. One, it’s a rare bit of explicit emotional honesty from Dean, and two, it tells me that while he and Cas may be well aware of the Thing™ between them, it’s still uncharted waters. It’s scary, and murky, and they’re unsure how to navigated it or if they should even try. Makes sense, too, there’s been A LOT going on since s6. Anyway, he’s the full confession:

You know, the life I live, the work I do…I pretty much just figured that that was all there was to me, you know? Tear around and jam the key in the ignition and haul ass until I ran out of gas. I guess I just thought sooner or later, I’d go out the same way that I live – pedal to the metal, and that would be it. […] Now, um… recent events, uh… make me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And…I don’t know. I mean, you know, there’s – there’s things, there’s…people, feelings that I-I-I want to experience differently than I have before, or maybe even for the first time. […] Yeah, I’m just starting to think that… maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.

Can I just say, first, that this confession keeps me up at night because we never actually see anything done with it explicitly? I mean, obviously, I think we do in fact see the effects of this confession in the show, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this behemoth, but still, like. Damn. Ok, so, remember when I brought up that thing in season 7 about Dean being kinda done with hook-ups? Here’s where that led us. We’re seeing a Dean here who wants more than what he has convinced himself he gets to have. He wants more than dying bloody. And when he talks about wanting to experience people and feelings differently, well, that says a lot not just on the queer coding front or the romantic front. I mean, jfc, Dean is accepting the idea that he can have more in life than just hunt until he drops, and he’s specifically talking about experiences at the interpersonal level.

Do you ever see a character having an epiphany and find yourself wanting to cry because this is it right here. Dean is just blatantly admitting he wants more and maybe he can make himself be open to that (!!!), which all culminates in season 11, so…

Season 11:

The pining is still here, but it’s worse now since it’s the whole plot? It’s been *checks calendar* 5 years of this. How are any of us still kicking I don’t know. Your slow burns could never. Cool worth noting points: Cas says yes to Lucifer (bad decision #2.5, lots of mitigating effects_I don’t actually hold it against him that much but Dean is another story & not entirely rational at this point); for the first time since the early days, Dean and Cas are on equal grounds: they’ve both fucked up a lot and have hurt each other. The issues this season are outside their dynamic. Amara and Lucifer here serve as externalizing forces for Dean and Cas’s problems: Cas checks out with Lucifer because he thinks it’s the only way he can help, Dean is caught up in the turmoil of Amara, the emblem of absence and avoidance of struggle. We do get something like an affirmation from the two of them to each other via Dean calling Cas his brother (and I want y’all to consider the historical queering of that statement, and Cas’s “I could go with you.” It feels like we’re headed to them being on the same page. By the end of the season, though, it feels like we’re getting a clean slate: Mary is back, nobody died, no end-of-the-world in sight, no interpersonal crisis. We’re also getting a new showrunner, so. No wonder. We’re gearing up for something, but I’m getting ahead of myself. What this season does that is super important is that it sets up the stage for the possibility of an actual relationship between Dean and Cas, something that has, up until this point, been pretty much impossible.

11.04 Baby

Y’all know what I’m about to quote here, right? That conversation between Dean and Sam about having something with someone who understands the life. Here we still have Dean reverting to the idea that it’s impossible, which is a direct contrast to the openness in 10.16. It’s understandable, though, considering there’s been little reason to think anything like that would be possible (see all the mess and poor timing from seasons past). The quote in question, though, marks a continuing development regarding the issues Dean is struggling with this season:

DEAN: Piper? That’s awesome. Heather. One-night wonders, man. Shoot, we’re lucky we still get that at all. SAM: Really? You don’t … Ever want something more? DEAN: I’m sorry, have you met us? We’re batting a whopping zero in domestic life, man. Goose eggs. SAM: You don’t ever think about something? Not marriage or whatever. But … Something? You know, with a hunter? Somebody who understands the life?

We wouldn’t be talking about this stuff all these years after Sam and Dean had a serious relationship if it wasn’t important, right? Also who else do we meet this season? That’s right! Eileen! And doesn’t that hit different with season 15 hindsight? And who does Dean have that understands the life? Whose stories have been intricately connected to his? Right now, this is all conjecture. A pipe dream Sam is revisiting, and Dean is skeptical about. Except, well. Look at what we get in “Into the Mystic” and “The Chitters.”

11.11 Into The Mystic

I’m bringing up this episode as a cross reference to “Paint It Black” as well as to complement the talk from “Baby,” and to show, again, that, for all the closeness between Dean and Cas, there’s still a marked distance they haven’t yet bridged. There’s still truths they haven’t told each other. Thanks Mildred for the delicious exposition:

Darlin’…If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years on the road, it’s when somebody’s pining for somebody else. […] Oh, don’t try and hide it now. Follow your heart. Remember?

11.19 The Chitters

And here we see some validation to Sam’s imagining of a possible future with someone else. We actually see hunters who not only are married, but they both make it out alive. Jesse and Cesar get their happy ending. They make the dream come true. And the reality of it important not just for Dean to see, but Sam too.

Dean: [with realization] Oh, so … [points back and forth to Jesse and Cesar] Cesar: Yeah. Dean: Okay, that’s… Cesar puts his beer bottle on the table and looks at Dean, while Jesse is being silent. Dean: What’s it like, settling down with a hunter? Cesar: Smelly, dirty. [turns to Jesse] Twice the worrying about getting ganked.

I’d like to point out, too, that the fear of getting ganked is thematic when it comes to the tension between Dean and Cas. More on this when we hit s13.

Alright, now, having said that, let’s take a look at season 12. Bear in mind, this is the official start of Dabb’s era, even if he kinda began taking over in season 11, and the change in vibes is obvious. In fact, 12 jumped out at me as a turning point, in hindsight, after getting smacked by the domesticity of seasons 13 and 14.

II. Why Season 12

[Out of date section. Update coming soon when spoons. After significant debate, I’ve altered the definitive start of Dean and Cas’s friend-with-benefits-with-mutual-pining relationship to between 12.02 and 12.03. I briefly explained why here, and yes it’s a shitpost--still true tho.]

Finally, the promise land, y’all. Getting right to it: what s11 was for Dean in terms of setting up the relationship stage, s12 was for Cas. In its initial beats, any way. That is, until the Kelly debacle, this was the longest Cas has been around the bunker and with the exception of seasons 13 and 14, it’s one of the first times we get to see how Cas might actually fit into the bunker-as-home. Things seem remarkably chill. Of course, we’ll notice that there’s still a lot of baggage hanging around because despite Dean and Cas being in a more stable place, they haven’t actually dealt with their interpersonal problems. I didn’t single out directly this episode, but do keep in mind Cas’s declaration in 12.09 First Blood as far as how much the Winchesters matter to Cas & how we also see Dean and Cas be particularly singled out with them seating together in the backseat of the Impala. What we also see this season is Cas trying to prove he is worthy of this family, his family. He’s not fighting for heaven or to right some grievous wrong (a la s8). No, this season he’s fighting to spare the Winchester, to bring them a win. To bring Dean a win. The major disconnect is that Dean (and Sam & Mary) already sees Cas that way, he doesn’t think Cas has anything to prove. And just maybe, Cas starts believing that too – or, at least, believing it enough.

12.10 Lily Sunders Has Some Regrets

This episode, oh my god, the goodness. In the wake of 12.09 we have Dean and Cas in a tiff because Cas mistake #3 (killing Billie and “cosmic consequences”), this is a pattern. Twice the worry of getting ganked, etc etc. But where this episode really shines is through the contrast between Ishim’s obsession with Lily and Cas & Dean’s mutual affection for each other. Ishim sees no difference here and, to him, Cas’s feelings for Dean are a human weakness. Returning to my point about human!Cas, this episode underscores that Cas’s increasing humanity is what puts him in the place where he can want what Dean wants instead of either being too alien to get it (see s4 & 5) or unable to experience it properly (Ishim).

12.12 Stuck in the Middle (With You)

Cas’s trajectory culminates here with the whole I love you (@ Dean), I love all of you (@ Winchesters). Let’s note too that Cas is dying here, in a way that is much more human than going up in light. This declaration of different types of love is entirely human. It’s also a definitive step wrt to Cas and Dean’s relationship because of what happens in 12.19. This. is. it. Oh, and, of course, let’s not forget to point to Dean’s face when Cas says that “I love you,” and how terrified he is that Cas is dying. Might make one rethink some things, hm?

12.19 The Future

This episode is simply hella suspicious, and all the kudos to Berens and Glynn for writing it. It’ll haunt me forever. Consider watching it again and just questioning everything. So. Weird things:

1. Dean’s reaction to Cas no getting in touch as opposed to Sam’s. Dean is pissed, which is Dean-speak for worried out of his mind. Sam is very worried, too, and puzzled, but he’s mostly expressing his relief that Cas is back. But Cas has gone awol before, but this time Dean is much more worked up about it; Sam takes note of this, too. Now, let’s imagine that maybe the events of 12.12 led to something happening between Dean and Cas. Then Cas decided to leave to find a lead on Kelly, but eventually Cas decides to work with Heaven and goes radio silent. For days. Having taken a chance, and something having happened between them, how would Dean react to Cas just going poof and not contacting him – despite Dean having called Cas multiple times.

2. Cas knows about the Colt. Ok, nothing off there. But when he goes to Dean’s room to talk, right after Dean leaves we see Cas looking around briefly. Like he know Dean would keep it in there. Maybe Cas had looked other places already. Who knows. What we do know is that eventually he does find the Colt not only in Dean’s room, but under Dean’s pillow. Sam didn’t even know the Colt wasn’t in the safe. So how did Cas know?

3.“He came into my room and he played me.” So, this quote right there, makes it seem like some seduction for personal gain, right? But can you see Cas actually doing that if they hadn’t gone there previously? For Dean not to suspect anything and go with it? There’s plenty of plausible deniability here, but the gaps in time in the narrative make me question what is there in those spaces. The scene where Cas tried to give Dean the mixtape back doesn’t read like “playing,” so it’s about a different interaction. Hm. Hmmm.

4. Dean and Cas’s brief conversation in Dean’s room is clearly Dean just wanting Cas to stay, so they can work (and be) together – because they’re better that way. Which, yeah, truth, but also ow.

5.And most importantly: When did Dean give Cas that mixtape??? How did that happen?

Sequence of events: Cas tells Dean he loves him – Dean is clearly shook by it – Dean gives Cas a mixtape (romantic gesture, often a declaration of feelings; in true Dean speak too lolsobs) – Cas goes awol - Dean acts like he got ghosted by his new bf -?????- Cas somehow knows the Colt is under Dean’s pillow – "He went into my room and he played me."

What am I supposed to do with that, hm? Like. Y’all realize they probably had some emotionally constipated getting together moment, right? Something that Dean clearly initially thought meant things were gonna change, now. Something that Cas couldn’t allow to happen until he could give Dean a win. Y’all are seeing this, yeah? I’m not saying they slept together and were full of feelings, except that’s kind of what I’m saying. But YMMV, there are other possibilities beyond sex. The full of feelings isn’t up for debate, though, even if the whole thing is informed by ridiculous amounts of miscommunication.

III. Seasons 13 through 15 As Established Relationship

Regardless of what happened in season 12, exactly, I can’t shake the feeling that something did happen, and something did change. My reasoning here is actually really simple: in comparison to previous seasons, Dean and Cas’s dynamic shifts significantly come season 13. I know some folks have been disappointed with some of season 13 and then season 14 for having dialed back on the destiel side of things. And, hey, maybe there’s truth to that in terms of backstage stuff, but I also want to point out that...well, the dialing back isn’t quite dialing back is it? Let’s look at 13 a little more closely:

Season 13:

So I said the deancas dynamic changed, right? I also think that change caught us unaware because the pivotal turning point that would cue us in never happened on screen as well as being subsumed by Cas’s death and Jack’s birth. But if I ask you about deancas in season 13 what would come to mind? Grief arc? Brokebacknatural? How domestic Dean and Cas are? There’s just something easy about their relationship after Cas returns from the Empty. The tension we’d grown so familiar with over the years is gone. Actually, it feels like we skipped the getting together bit of their relationship and went straight to established relationship and parenting. Some of the most peak married deancas moments we see circulating? Season 13, (and 12.10). It’s a lot, and it’s different, and it’s amazing.

13.01-13.05

Dean’s grief mini-arc. He was acting like a widower. Here’s me vaguely gesturing towards the mapping of Jonh, Mary, Dean, and Sam onto Dean, Cas, Sam, and Jack. And the reunion? I can’t help but be giddy at the song choice: “it’s never too late to start all over again.” To. Start. All. Over. Again. I’m just saying.

13.06 Tombstone & 13.16 Scoobynatural

I’m not going at length about these episodes, I just want to point out that they reveal that Dean and Cas have a whole thing going on off screen: they watch movies together, Cas knows about Dean being an angry sleeper, Cas seems to have been aware of the Dean-cave before Sam was. It’s little things like this that are examples of the narrative gaps surrounding Dean and Cas that have cropped up over the years. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder what else could be hiding there. And when did the movie nights alluded in “Tombstone” happen? Maybe in season 12 when Cas in hanging around the bunker? The same period when Dean and Cas seem to be coalescing into something safer and more stable? Something that we never see come to a head because plot happens and Cas dies? Something that is immediately taken back up once Cas is alive again?

Season 14:

Overall, this season is more of what we got during 13, but it had two high notes I wanted to single out before ending this already too long post.

14.15 Peace of Mind

Look me in the eye and tell me Dean and Cas talking in the kitchen about Jack doesn’t read like husbands talking about their child. Look me in the eye and tell me Cas just texting Dean to gossip about Sam isn’t couple-y as hell.

14.18-14.20

Ah, yes, the divorce arc. Awful. Terrible. The culmination of Dean’s problem in all this: he lashes out, he pushes Cas away, his anger is alienating. Cue all of us suffering. But while Dean is clearly in the wrong in how the deals with his feelings, let’s not pretend some of his anger doesn’t come from a long established, and unaddressed, rift between him and Cas, which had its last traumatic turn when Cas died in s12. Dean isn’t being rational here: he saw Cas doing something on his own, and he saw that his mother is dead. What else could happen? Why won’t Cas just trust they can work as a team? What if Cas died again? And why should Cas put up with Dean’s behavior without knowing the cause? How can any relationship work this way? But notice how caught in the middle Sam was during all this. Notice how Jack is running off and acting out. The whole family is falling apart. Divorce arc, indeed.

Season 15:

But what about what we’re building up in 15? That seems like it could be a getting together plot, too, right? Well, yeah. It could very well be. But I’d argue the tension we’re seeing isn’t a will-they-or-won’t-they because they already have. We’re are watching a getting back together plot! The tension is, instead, will-they-or -won’t-they use their words to talk about the baggage that has kept them from truly being confident about their relationship. That’s the crucial step in their togetherness that they’re still missing, which is also the bedrock of the divorce arc that spanned twelve fucking episodes -- y’all, that’s half a season.

And technically? We’re not even done with yet because Cas never let Dean finish his prayer/confession in purgatory. What’s more, Cas hasn’t grappled with his role in the breakdown of their relationship, either: that he keeps going off on his own and getting hurt (and getting other people hurt), and Dean has to deal with the fallout. The deep emotional understanding, the truly being on the same page is what we’re on the edge of our seats for. We’re waiting to see what else Dean had to say, and what will happen when Cas’s deal with the Empty comes to light.

Finally, could we still have this plot without Dean and Cas having gotten together off screen? Sure, but I think the stakes are higher if they already did have something between them. If they actually have an established romantic relationship going on. Something real and tangible and as of yet much too fragile.

"...you asked what about all this is real. We are."

#destiel #deancas #supernatural #spn #spn meta #this thing is gargantuan yikes #anyway enjoy? let's chat #my writing #this thing is half meta half my adhd unleashed

431 notes · View notes

dukeofonions · 3 years

Note

I already sent this ask to youtuberswithalex, but I wanted to see if you had something to say too. Also it just feels like you’d get it. It’s an onion. A painfully big, smelly one.

Seriously, I’m starting to wonder how much of the series is even truly planned out. Thomas says that it’s all-so-carefully meticulously planned throughout season 3, but he just keeps putting off solving the biggest non-surface-level issues and adding more drama each episode. Plot thread on top of plot thread keeps getting thrown onto the mix, and it doesn’t seem like there’ll be any time to properly resolve them all in only one season. It’s almost as if each new one is meant to distract you from the unresolved ones.

And then it comes out that the writers are literally getting huge plot threads and the story written for them by fans rich enough to have the Patreon?! Even though they said it wouldn’t happen that way?!

I just... don’t know how much I can trust them with their story anymore. I want the characters to have fully resolved, satisfying, complete arcs and become a better family, but all I’m seeing is more examples of Thomas and the team creating more drama and brushing unresolved issues under the rug.

Heck, does anyone remember that there seemed to be a plot thread building up where Logan and Roman seemed jealous of Patton in the earlier episodes? Where did that go? It’s like it was just forgotten about once more causes for drama were thrown on top of it.

And are we ever gonna know why Virgil was also mad at Patton during the first Asides episode? Or was it just another pointless piling of drama, and they’re hoping that some fan theory will write the story for them so they can brush it under the rug and move on with the Janus plot?

And what happened to Virgil becoming, honestly, kind of a bully to Roman after his acceptance vids? He was never confronted about his moments of unnecessary cruelty. But suddenly in FWSA none of it ever happened? Did... did Thomas even understand that the way Virgil was treating Roman, with the uncalled-for mocking and attacks in moments of vulnerability, was wrong? Or did he think Virgil was just being a cool emo character? Roman seemed to react with discomfort... but it seems like the team decided to pretend that it was somehow fixed offscreen for FWSA. Like they expect another fan theory to explain the drop in tension between the two. Which is just... lazy.

I just don’t know if I trust them with their story anymore... I want to believe it’ll be okay, because I love the characters, but I’m starting to feel like I need to look to some random Patreon fans to wrap up the story properly.

Alright lets peel this onion open...

I agree about questioning how much planning they’ve actually done for the series. With every live stream, I attended I always hear about how so many things were just added in at the last second. I’ve also heard that they know where they want the series to go, and while I do believe this it feels like they’re not entirely sure how to get to those points and that’s why everything is so confusing. Not only that but Asides has shown up and completely thrown a wrench into things because now they’re taking priority over the main series. Why do we have to have these Asides before the season finale? They said they had a plan but now they’re throwing in all these extra unnecessary plots when the main issues presented in season two haven’t been resolved yet. Slow down and pace yourselves people!

As for the writer’s room I’m still iffy about that. I’m in the tier that gets you the writing room and from what I’ve seen so far it really doesn’t seem like a good idea because yes, they are taking ideas for the episodes from the fans. Yet there’s no guarantee that anyone will be properly credited for the ideas they contributed. And of course they’re being paid to help write their scripts but I’m not gonna go into that right now.

I’m really worried about the characters too. I’m afraid Roman’s arc is just going to revolve around everyone else instead of just dealing with him personally. (I swear if Remus suddenly gets accepted I’m gonna scream) already Janus’ development is being rushed through and I’m worried the pay off just won’t be satisfying. Even Virgil revealing himself as a “dark side” just seems empty when you think about it and I’m starting to wonder why it needed to be a thing in the first place. Thomas is warming up to Janus pretty fast and even Remus isn’t as big of an issue, so why is Virgil suddenly admitting to be something that was actually pretty obvious be so shocking to Thomas? Like, there aren’t actually any dark sides! Roman made the name up! I’m gonna move on before I go into a rant but yeah the current character development is very wonky.

I don’t remember any plot thread of Logan and Roman being jealous of Patton. Probably because I wasn’t really invested in the earlier episodes but I think they weren’t being jealous as much as they were just dismissing Patton as the “goofy dad character” and had to learn that it wasn’t the case (as we see in Growing Up) I don’t think it was really them being jealous but hey I haven’t watched season one in awhile so what do I know?

As for Virgil being angry at Patton in Asides, I assume it’s just carried over from the whole “Virgil doesn’t like being babied by Patton” plot but that entire plotline is kind of a mess and Virgil is just coming across as unnecessarily mean to Patton but I’m going to get into that in a future post.

Yes I am waiting desperately for the series to finally call out Virgil’s behavior because literally he’s been insufferable lately. I wouldn’t have a problem with this if the series did literally anything to show him in a negative light but he is always having excuses made for him and he is never blamed for anything. And again this just brings up more issues with Asides because in FWSA it’s like they all just forgot the events of POF happened? Roman is suddenly chill with Thomas and I guess Virgil isn’t ashamed of his “dark past” anymore. I honestly don’t know if Thomas (real Thomas) recognizes Virgil’s behavior as bad seeing as Virgil is beloved by all. But I seriously hope he does and is planning to finally have Virgil be put in check later because my gosh I am sick of seeing this character act like a piece of shit and having it justified because “well he’s a good guy now” or “but we have to be nice or else he could do something worse to us” yeah definitely no red flags there.

I understand all of your concerns, but really all we can do is wait and see. Honestly, I don’t know how much influence the patreon writers (that sounds so weird) will actually have on the main story. All we can do is wait and see.

#dukeofasks #ts criticism #long post

37 notes · View notes

peony-pearl · 3 years

Text

As like one of the minimum of maybe 3 people who like Hollander (and that’s probably being generous), he was absolutely written and executed horribly.

His introduction and motive is brought up out of the blue by other characters in the midst of a LOT of stuff going on. When we see him in person for the first time, the only words out of his mouth are taunting, his only words being about how he alone can heal the degradation.

His first actual scene, being the flashback, only shows him talking to Angeal and Sephiroth about Genesis’ treatment. His only words? ‘The problem is the mako energy that seeped in through the wound - first he’ll need a transfusion - you aren’t viable’.

There is no hint or tone of his disdain for his job; we don’t see him at work or in his office or element. (there is no point in the game that he does any research or science). It really only serves to help the initial surrounding mystery of why things are happening and how the copies exist; but that’s it. The characters have background knowledge that Hollander has been unhappy in his job. Yet his initial cutscene offers only that he is being knowledgeable about the treatment Genesis needs. His body language and words are professional and to the point; almost with an air of concern.

But immediately after, Hollander’s actions in his scenes consist of ‘oh no I’m in danger/run/gloat’. He’s there, he says something, typically a few one liners to answer a situation that Zack is immediately going to interfere in, and then that’s it.

How many times does Hollander himself mention the word ‘Shinra’? None. He only offhandedly tells Angeal ‘it’s time to exact vengeance for our family’s suffering’, which is most likely shorthand of his view of how Shinra treated them.

He viewed Angeal as family and very obviously told him - offscreen, about his relationship with Gillian. We don’t even see Angeal’s initial reactions to Hollander telling him and Genesis about their origins. Angeal’s had very high esteem for his parents, but most of his inner conflict comes from his views of his sense of humanity when he reveals to Zack that he’s a product of Jenova cells and science. Not that his family dynamic has been ruptured. (Angeal is a whole other conversation). Hollander was so open and quick to call Angeal family; laughing off Angeal’s objections and his statement that his father is dead. What if Hollander’s laugh and his change of subject (to Gillian) was due to his years of feeling pushed to the side to begin with? If only we’d had any reason to believe that; that would have actually been emotional development.

In Junon, even after everything he put shinra through, Hollander is still kept safe as per the President’s orders. He’s performed some heavy transgressions and yet he’s merely jailed for it for the time being because of the knowledge he has about the Jenova Project. Wouldn’t that be just as infuriating to him as his time before his rebellion? Being held under Shinra’s thumb after another scathing failure?

We see him escaping; reacting to Zack’s interference with his usual smarm. That desperation we saw from the last scene he occupied in which he tried to keep Angeal whole or to get another piece of his hair for another sample has been completely erased and is never mentioned again. He looks at Zack with a harrumph - the puppy who has consistently been nipping at his heels; the boy who was forced to kill Hollander’s pride and joy - a hmph. A smarm, a grin, chasing mech after him. There is no true reaction. It’s hollow; it’s meant to serve as a chase sequence and it does.

It is no character growth, it is no revelation of those missions in which Zack is chasing Angeal and Genesis and the copies; that time as Zack finds his footing as a 1st class SOLDIER and performing Shinra’s work to find them; as Zack continuously forced them to relocate again and again. Hollander never mourns Angeal. His ‘family’; his perfect monster; at least we don’t see it. According to the FF7 timeline, he is held in Junon for a year and a half. A year and a half to stew, not only in his failed attempt to thwart Shinra, another failure to add onto his shameful collection, but to remember Zack, the boy who took his creations and turned him back over to Shinra.

IDK I feel like the most appropriate way would have been actually getting a peek into Hollander’s frayed psyche. We already know his morals are skewed. While he, like AVALANCHE, opposes Shinra, his motives aren’t for the better of the Planet or the people; it’s for his gain, and he spared no qualm about the Genesis Copies attacking civilians. He still spares no guilt over the Genesis copies attacking Junon. Hollander’s motives are for him - but we barely even know him. He’s just there to be the road block, but with important bits here and there; to prop up the more compelling bits that supposedly wouldn’t have existed or happened without his intervention. So why is he so empty?

Seeing Zack again, and again, and again, foiling his goals, taking everything away from him; you’d think he’d almost put Zack on the same pedestal as Hojo. The only man we’re told (TOLD) that Hollander hates so much.

Speaking of Hojo - Hollander mentions Hojo’s name ONCE. His supposed arch-rival and we only hear his name once from Hollander himself - in passing.

‘No one knows where the Jenova Cells are being kept! Not even Hojo knows! You’ll never find it!’

Cool.

So... Even Hojo recognizes Hollander has this chip on his shoulder as seen when Genesis threatens him (via Hollander’s command; a command we don’t see him give); but we never actually hear Hollander outwardly despise him. No annoyance, no loathing; nothing.

We get virtually NOTHING in terms of who this guy is save for some smarm and he runs from danger. He wears that Banora shirt just so folks can be like “HMM I WONDER WHAT THAT COULD MEAN. ANYWAY.”

Almost everything about his character is phoned in by everyone around him except himself. There are a couple of soldiers with lines pertaining to Hollander’s character - and it’s probably more development than he himself provides on screen in actual scenes. Which is a real shame considering Hojo could have gotten a really great foil; we could have discussed more about rebellions against Shinra; discussed more about what Hollander could have seen with Aerith and Ifalna and Gast; discussed more about Angeal and Genesis and Gillian THROUGH Hollander besides that one (1) cutscene that doesn’t actually explain anything (Except what Angeal’s abiliies can do); discussed the dichotomy of folks going against Shinra, such as motives vs actions. Hollander and Zack could have had some great conversations as Zack becomes more jaded and Hollander could have used that to his advantage; but then when Angeal is killed, even at Angeal’s own forcing of Zack’s hand, would Hollander have only wanted to see Zack suffer as he did? A hellish sentence of decades being either overworked or ignored?

“What is this? Are they putting me out to pasture?” - A line Zack says after being sidelined for a while. A line I can easily imagine Hollander saying after being declined the Director of Science, or when he’s held in that jail cell in Junon.

So many Connections - just not even explored. And that doesn’t even count the characterizations of folks like Genesis and Angeal. While we at least learn motives and personalities, we see them so rarely that they continuously jump from one extreme to the other. Just to keep the player in that loop of ??????? for you to keep going. Regardless, Zack is the emotional core, and he serves it so well and is a fantastic hero and main character.

But I can’t help but feel like there’s a missed thread; several really all things considered. Nothing that’s crucial; but something to help tie things into a neater little bow; just a little extra effort for these new characters would have made this already wonderful game something a bit more integral to the overall lore of FF7.

Of course, now that FF7R is here and is making something new of everything provided, this whole discussion is kind of moot lol. All I can do is wait (Very excitedly) to see how the Remake continues to expand on these amazing characters; and whether or not my dumb scientist returns or not. I have great faith in the future of the franchise (except the whole ‘Intergrade only being on PS5′ really sucks but boo hoo I guess); so regardless of what happens, I’m more than certain I’ll keep enjoying what happens.

#FF7 #Final Fantasy 7 #Crisis Core #FF7 meta #a dumb lady talks about her dumb favorite scientist nothing to see here

7 notes · View notes

lesbianrobin · 3 years

Note

have u done an analysis on endgame st ships? a penny for ur thoughts

i have not!! i would like two pennies please. my thoughts are not actually worth that much but i think i deserve them anyway. i’m gonna talk about some stuff that may seem unrelated or only loosely related to the question but i prommy it’s relevant <3 warning this ended up being like a thousand words somehow idk how that happened but i’m putting it under a cut bc i’m nice like that.

so! something that’s kinda unique/interesting to me about stranger things is how all of their ships are so clearly telegraphed and quickly developed. there’s a sense of... impatience, for lack of a better word. on the surface, it appears to be largely an effect of the cinematic style of the show; there’s very little room for questioning who someone’s gonna end up with or for slowly developing a relationship over time when you only get eight episodes every like. twoish years. AND you have about a dozen main characters AND evil government forces AND monsters from another dimension. it’s a lot to juggle!

stranger things has a lot to accomplish in a pretty short amount of time. the timeline of a single season usually spans no more than a week (excluding flashbacks/end-of-season timeskips), and well... nobody wants the important stuff to happen offscreen! i’ll use the stoncy love triangle as an example: jancy was originally intended to get together at the end of s1 after steve’s death, but since they decided to let steve redeem himself and survive, there was just no time to separate stancy and get jancy together without it seeming wayyy too abrupt. since jancy was always their plan, they didn’t want to leave nancy with steve, but they knew they couldn’t just have that boyfriend swap occur offscreen... which is why s2 Had to have a stancy breakup plot in order for the writers to accomplish their goal of getting jancy together.

the main characters in stranger things tend to maintain homeostasis between seasons, their circumstances and relationships rarely changing any more than the audience might have just assumed they would anyway (like lucas and max dancing together + sharing a kiss at the end of s2 and officially dating by the start of s3). steve and nancy are dating at the end of s1, so they must still be dating at the start of s2, and thus we must break them up DURING s2. joyce and hopper are friends with some deeply buried feelings in s2, so they’re friends with Less Buried feelings that must become apparent during s3. excluding the stancy situation (for reasons which i think are obvious but i will talk more about later), momentum is always forwards. mileven, lumax, and jancy argue, but they come back together, presumably more mature and stronger than before.

all of this is to say that stranger things has thus far been rather dedicated to their starting ships. there isn’t much misdirection; mike’s crush on el is obvious from the start, nancy and jonathan share charged moments even while she is with steve in the beginning, lucas shows interest in max immediately and shares more significant interactions with her than the other boys from early on in s2, and the deep loyalty and care between joyce and hop is always apparent. steve and robin (initially intended to be together romantically) hold hands quite early in s3 and dustin asks steve about whether he likes her.

the point? stranger things doesn’t dick around when it comes to love! they handle their ships with remarkable efficiency. in each season, it tends to be pretty obvious from the start who’s going to end up with who, and heading into the show’s fourth season, almost everybody is paired off: mike and el, max and lucas, joyce and hop, nancy and jonathan. which leaves us asking... are all of them going to last until the end?

we’ve only had one true breakup on the show so far, and as i’ve said before, the stancy breakup is an anomaly as it was essentially “righting a wrong,” allowing jonathan and nancy to get together as they were intended to do from the start. the only other romantic relationship to end on the show was between joyce and bob, and well... we all know why that ended, and it started/ended within the confines of a single season.

stranger things tends to treat each season as an extended film, right? they draw inspiration from classic 80′s films, and each subsequent season after s1 is treated as a sequel (they are Literally referred to as stranger things 2 and stranger things 3). when they introduce tension in a season, they’re inclined to resolve that tension by the season’s end so that people leave satisfied, while also providing a plot hook for the next “sequel” for audiences to theorize about. this hook is always part of the grander plot, not a will-they-won’t-they tease or something else of the sort. remember, they could have broken up steve and nancy in s2 and waited to get jancy together in s3, but they didn’t! they wanted to go ahead and resolve the tension!

while there are narrative and practical incentives that i’ve covered for this impatience/efficiency/[insert better word i can’t think of here], i also think it kinda reveals something about the writers of the show. to some degree, they genuinely care about and want their ships to be together! we’ve watched them introduce new characters just to kill them off a couple of times now, and i think it’s fair to say that the writers might be a bit too attached to the mains to consider killing any of them off (at least prior to the series finale). maybe... this reluctance to kill their darlings extends to ships.

romance isn’t the primary draw of the show, but an indulgence, something that there may not always be time for but that the writers continue to prioritize as much as they can because they enjoy it, or feel that it is important to the overall product. if we accept this idea, that the inclusion of and focus on so many romantic relationships in stranger things is (to some degree) indicative of the writers’ own desires, then it might inform our speculation regarding endgame ships.

i’m not here to like... really actually assert that i know what’ll be endgame, because i don’t really know jack shit. however, i do think that the writers are pretty invested in all of the current canon st ships (and yes, i am including jopper in that, as their romantic development was explicit in s3). i also think that the writers like catering to fans, leaning into popular jokes (steve “the hair” harrington) and devoting more and more time to the ships fans obsess over (particularly mileven).

with this all in mind... i really think that most if not all of the current canon ships will be endgame.

i think that barring any extreme circumstances (i.e. a character Actually dying instead of just fake dying) jopper will be endgame. they’re the only ones that the writers have had the restraint to actually do a slow burn with, and i really can’t see them devoting so much to developing their dynamic just to say it was all for nothing in the end.

i’m less confident on the others. there are some signs in canon that the remaining couples have some serious problems and may not last, but these issues are often dismissed, played for comedy or brushed over within the text itself, and many of the details within the text contradicting this dismissal are often so small that it’s unclear whether they’re intentional or not. while breaking up mileven might make perfect sense for a fan who reads into subtext and pays attention to unusual acting choices and subtle parallels, it would be a pretty risky move on the surface level. allowing these ships to remain canon for awhile and garner large fanbases only to break them up later would require both a willingness to actively contradict the desires of their audience as well as a certain degree of restraint in their romantic storytelling, which runs counter to the impression i personally have of the st writers (this is, of course, my own personal opinion).

there’s a good chance that at least one of the current canon ships will break up by the end, if only because i think that it would be a little boring if every relationship stayed the same for almost the entirety of the show’s run, and the stranger writers like to keep things new and exciting. perhaps long distance will kill jancy or mileven, or lucas and max will go off again and never come back on, but either way i wouldn’t be surprised if we got a breakup in s4. even with that, though, i think it’s somewhat likely that a current couple may break up in s4 and get back together for the series finale, just for the sake of a little suspense. overall, though, i feel like our current canon ships are going to be more or less the same at the end of the show.

that’s about it. i suppose i didn’t really... answer the question you asked skdndsdkjc i feel like you probably just wanted to know like if i’m a byler endgame truther (which i am not but i could happily be proven wrong). thank you for asking, though! i hope this made at least a little bit of sense.

#me answering an ask: yeah this is long as fuck and makes no sense drop it #asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things

26 notes · View notes

youtuberswithalex · 3 years

Note

I reblogged your post with my answer, but I don’t know if you actually got it, so here it is:

Well, it’s still worrying since the Asides were supposed to be separated from the main plot but now they aren’t, and already by the second one you have to watch it to know what’s going on. Plus, they’re apparently such a priority we’re getting two more before the season finale. But yeah, it could be worse.

As for the Patton-jealousy arc, that’s just a theory that one of the fans had for something that happened a lot in some of season 1 and early season 2– Logan, and Roman, would often be pretty hostile to Patton. Mostly Logan, and then Roman would follow as if to prove himself.

Like, they’d often be deliberately depicted to act upset and jealous whenever Patton got any acknowledgement from Thomas. Logan seemed sensitive to Patton being commended for being smart in any way and kept trying to leave him out, like in the Sherlock episode. In one episode when Thomas went along with Patton in saying that Logan and Roman worked well together, and Patton’s theme began to play, the two belittled him and told him he was acting immature. They kept brushing him off and wouldn’t take him seriously. They also slowed Patton down in Accepting Anxiety Part 1, when Patton tries to point out Virgil isn’t there by brushing him off and talking about other reasons. And in Logic vs. Passion, at the end of the video, a point is made in the end card of Virgil sitting with Patton and saying that it’s a shame Patton wasn’t there since he would’ve probably made some good points. It very much seemed like a deliberately built up plot point.

Then it was just forgotten about after Moving On. And honestly, it wasn’t resolved. Not completely. All that happened was that Thomas realized it was okay to feel sad and that Patton wasn’t always as happy as he acted for them. And they might’ve subconsciously realized that they should’ve listened to him in the beginning, though they didn’t even seem to consciously know they were talking over him.

But it wasn’t properly resolved. The sides never apologized and acknowledged they should listen to him more— heck, Logan wasn’t even there in person. And his “gift”?? Where it’s a “compromise” between Patton wearing something he likes that hurts no one and Logan... just wanting to control what he wears?? Thomas should understand that’s not an apology. Barely acknowledging that someone can be nonconformist while still forcing them to conform to your slightly more lenient standards isn’t a complete resolution, and it’s definitely not an acknowledgement of everything Logan especially did wrong to Patton. Thomas leaving it at that wasn’t a “subtle” finish, it was downright incomplete, and it wouldn’t be the end of the issue in a real relationship.

But it’s just vanished after that. Half-done, and then discarded. Like it just was there for drama. Like we’re supposed to assume that it was worked out offscreen, which, no. Building up a conflict for that long kind of requires you to resolve it fully on-screen, not set up a possibility of finishing it and then leave it. That’s just asking the audience to write the story for you. It just feels forgotten about.

Just like the unresolved issues at the end of LNTAO. Are we ever coming back to that one? It was established after the episode that the conversation wasn’t done, that Roman’s apology and wanting not to shy away from his pain didn’t solve anything yet.

Heck, the whole problem was mostly caused by Logan— Roman is having trouble creating because creativity isn’t a machine that endlessly churns out product. He needs some time for Thomas to self-reflect in order to be able to create more easily. But Logan is worried taking time will drive fans away, so he’s just demanding Roman produce. And when Roman can’t, Logan doesn’t have a solution, he just keeps demanding Roman create more, so of course Roman lashes out. And Logan’s the one who thinks Thomas should get a “real,” societally-approved job, like an accountant. And Roman ends up apologizing? For lashing out in response to Logan’s bullying? That doesn’t actually solve anything!

It was implied we were going to come back to it, but then immediately afterwards Deceit appears, and then we were just given new plot thread on top of new plot thread, as if the new ones are meant to bury the old ones. Roman’s issues were never returned to, and it seems like they’re eventually just going to explode. But from the way the other sides are acting, I don’t think it looks like they’re being set up to understand why Roman’s upset when it all becomes too much. It looks like they’ll just think he’s being difficult. Will the conflict actually be wrapped up and resolved properly, or will there just be a bunch of drama, and then a hastily rushed half-done conclusion?

Roman deserves better than that. But I don’t know how much I trust the writers anymore.

Sorry I got a bit off topic there. But I just really needed to get my worries out. I hope I answered your question, anyway.

I did get your reblog, I just got sick last night (nothing covid related, dw) and wasn’t feeling well enough to respond.

That makes sense on where the jealousy idea came from, but I’d honestly interpreted it as them being like “you’re an idiot and are throwing Thomas off track”, and then in Moving On they realized “oh shit that was all a front, you’re like... really hurting”

BUT, that being said, your interpretations/theories/etc are all completely valid, just because we saw it differently doesn’t mean one of us is wrong.

I’m sure they have... something planned? And maybe it’s all just setting up for a slow-burn type of thing? but... the execution of that is sure going to be... something, if we ever get to see it

#long post #ts criticism #sorry if this response is a little lacking #im not fully awake yet and am still trying to make sure im physically okay #shadeofadye

17 notes · View notes

magnetictapedatastorage · 3 years

Link

I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.

Full text of the (excellent) article is under the cut. (The Atlantic, March 8th, 2021)

I first became aware that I was losing my mind in late December. It was a Friday night, the start of my 40-somethingth pandemic weekend: Hours and hours with no work to distract me, and outside temperatures prohibitive of anything other than staying in. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to fill the time. “What did I used to … do on weekends?” I asked my boyfriend, like a soap-opera amnesiac. He couldn’t really remember either.

Since then, I can’t stop noticing all the things I’m forgetting. Sometimes I grasp at a word or a name. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and find myself bewildered as to why I am there. (At one point during the writing of this article, I absentmindedly cleaned my glasses with nail-polish remover.) Other times, the forgetting feels like someone is taking a chisel to the bedrock of my brain, prying everything loose. I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.

RECOMMENDED READING

There’s No Real Reason to Eat 3 Meals a DayAMANDA MULL

The Pandemic’s Future Hangs in SuspenseTHE COVID TRACKING PROJECT

A Quite Possibly Wonderful SummerJAMES HAMBLIN

Everywhere I turn, the fog of forgetting has crept in. A friend of mine recently confessed that the morning routine he’d comfortably maintained for a decade—wake up before 7, shower, dress, get on the subway—now feels unimaginable on a literal level: He cannot put himself back there. Another has forgotten how to tie a tie. A co-worker isn’t sure her toddler remembers what it’s like to go shopping in a store. The comedian Kylie Brakeman made a joke video of herself attempting to recall pre-pandemic life, the mania flashing across her face: “You know what I miss, is, like, those night restaurants that served alcohol. What were those called?” she asks. “And there were those, like, big men outside who would check your credit card to make sure you were 41?”

Read: Sedentary pandemic life is bad for our happiness

Jen George, a community-college teacher from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, told me she is losing her train of thought in the middle of a sentence more and more often. Meanwhile, her third grader, who is attending in-person school, keeps leaving his books, papers, and lunch at home. Inny Ekeolu, a 19-year-old student from Ireland, says she has found herself forgetting how to do things she used to do on a regular basis: swiping her bus pass, paying for groceries. Recently she came across a photo of a close friend she hadn’t seen since lockdown and found that she couldn’t recognize her. “It wasn’t like I had forgotten her existence,” she told me. “But if I had bypassed her on the street, I wouldn’t have said hi.” Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist in Ottawa, used to have a standing Friday-night dinner with her neighbors—and went completely blank when one of them recently mentioned it. “It was really shocking,” Kowert told me. “This was something I really loved, and had done for a long time, and I had totally forgotten.”

This is the fog of late pandemic, and it is brutal. In the spring, we joked about the Before Times, but they were still within reach, easily accessible in our shorter-term memories. In the summer and fall, with restrictions loosening and temperatures rising, we were able to replicate some of what life used to be like, at least in an adulterated form: outdoor drinks, a day at the beach. But now, in the cold, dark, featureless middle of our pandemic winter, we can neither remember what life was like before nor imagine what it’ll be like after.

To some degree, this is a natural adaptation. The sunniest optimist would point out that all this forgetting is evidence of the resilience of our species. Humans forget a great deal of what happens to us, and we tend to do it pretty quickly—after the first 24 hours or so. “Our brains are very good at learning different things and forgetting the things that are not a priority,” Tina Franklin, a neuroscientist at Georgia Tech, told me. As the pandemic has taught us new habits and made old ones obsolete, our brains have essentially put actions like taking the bus and going to restaurants in deep storage, and placed social distancing and coughing into our elbows near the front of the closet. When our habits change back, presumably so will our recall.

That’s the good news. The pandemic is still too young to have yielded rigorous, peer-reviewed studies about its effects on cognitive function. But the brain scientists I spoke with told me they can extrapolate based on earlier work about trauma, boredom, stress, and inactivity, all of which do a host of very bad things to a mammal’s brain.

“We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment,” said Mike Yassa, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine. “Based on everything we know about the brain, two of the things that are really good for it are physical activity and novelty. A thing that’s very bad for it is chronic and perpetual stress.” Living through a pandemic—even for those who are doing so in relative comfort—“is exposing people to microdoses of unpredictable stress all the time,” said Franklin, whose research has shown that stress changes the brain regions that control executive function, learning, and memory.

That stress doesn’t necessarily feel like a panic attack or a bender or a sleepless night, though of course it can. Sometimes it feels like nothing at all. “It’s like a heaviness, like you’re waking up to more of the same, and it’s never going to change,” George told me, when I asked what her pandemic anxiety felt like. “Like wading through something thicker than water. Maybe a tar pit.” She misses the sound of voices.

Prolonged boredom is, somewhat paradoxically, hugely stressful, Franklin said. Our brains hate it. “What’s very clear in the literature is that environmental enrichment—being outside of your home, bumping into people, commuting, all of these changes that we are collectively being deprived of—is very associated with synaptic plasticity,” the brain’s inherent ability to generate new connections and learn new things, she said. In the 1960s, the neuroscientist Marian Diamond conducted a series of experiments on rats in an attempt to understand how environment affects cognitive function. Time after time, the rats raised in “enriched” cages—ones with toys and playmates—performed better at mazes.

Ultimately, said Natasha Rajah, a psychology professor at McGill University, in Montreal, our winter of forgetting may be attributable to any number of overlapping factors. “There’s just so much going on: It could be the stress, it could be the grief, it could be the boredom, it could be depression,” she said. “It sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?”

The share of Americans reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, or both roughly quadrupled from June 2019 to December 2020, according to a Census Bureau study released late last year. What’s more, we simply don’t know the long-term effects of collective, sustained grief. Longitudinal studies of survivors of Chernobyl, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina show elevated rates of mental-health problems, in some cases lasting for more than a decade.

I have a job that allows me to work from home, an immune system and a set of neurotransmitters that tend to function pretty well, a support network, a savings account, decent Wi-Fi, plenty of hand sanitizer. I have experienced the pandemic from a position of obscene privilege, and on any given day I’d rank my mental health somewhere north of “fine.” And yet I feel like I have spent the past year being pushed through a pasta extruder. I wake up groggy and spend every day moving from the couch to the dining-room table to the bed and back. At some point night falls, and at some point after that I close work-related browser windows and open leisure-related ones. I miss my little rat friends, but I am usually too tired to call them.

Read: The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

Sometimes I imagine myself as a Sim, a diamond-shaped cursor hovering above my head as I go about my day. Tasks appear, and I do them. Mealtimes come, and I eat. Needs arise, and I meet them. I have a finite suite of moods, a limited number of possible activities, a set of strings being pulled from far offscreen. Everything is two-dimensional, fake, uncanny. My world is as big as my apartment, which is not very big at all.

“We’re trapped in our dollhouses,” said Kowert, the psychologist from Ottawa, who studies video games. “It’s just about surviving, not thriving. No one is working at their highest capacity.” She has played The Sims on and off for years, but she always gives up after a while—it’s too repetitive.

Earlier versions of The Sims had an autonomous memory function, according to Marina DelGreco, a staff writer for Game Rant. But in The Sims 3, the system was buggy; it bloated file sizes and caused players’ saved progress to delete. So The Sims 4, released in 2014, does not automatically create memories. PC users can manually enter them, and Sims can temporarily feel feelings: happy, tense, flirty. But for the most part, a Sim is a hollow vessel, more like a machine than a living thing.

The game itself doesn’t have a term for this, but the internet does: “smooth brain,” or sometimes “head empty,” which I first started noticing sometime last summer. Today, the TikTok user @smoothbrainb1tch has nearly 100,000 followers, and stoners on Twitter are marveling at the fact that their “silky smooth brain” was once capable of calculus.

This is, to be clear, meant to be an aspirational state. It’s the step after galaxy brain, because the only thing better than being a genius in a pandemic is being intellectually unencumbered by mass grief. People are celebrating “smooth brain Saturday” and chasing the ideal summer vibe: “smooth skin, smooth brain.” One frequently reposted meme shows a photograph of a glossy, raw chicken breast, with the caption “Cant think=no sad .” This is juxtaposed against a biology-textbook picture of a healthy brain, which is wrinkled, oddly translucent, and the color of canned tuna. The choice seems obvious.

Some Saturday not too long from now, I will go to a party or a bar or even a wedding. Maybe I’ll hold a baby, and maybe it will be heavy. Inevitably, I will kick my shoes off at some point. I won’t have to wonder about what I do on weekends, because I’ll be doing it. I’ll kiss my friends and try their drinks and marvel at how everyone is still the same, but a little different, after the year we all had. My brain won’t be smooth anymore, but being wrinkly won’t feel so bad. My synapses will be made plastic by the complicated, strange, utterly novel experience of being alive again, human again. I can’t wait.

ELLEN CUSHING

is the special-projects editor at The Atlantic.

#health

8 notes · View notes

deadcherpblog · 3 years

Text

A legitimate suggestion for solving the ‘mentions of’ issue, please feel free to chime in with criticism or improvements:

Split the warnings box into two boxes; a ‘main content’ box and a ‘mentions of’ box.

If something potentially triggering comes up in the prompt or is expected to come up in the roleplay, put it in the main warnings box as usual. If something is only mentioned, and will not come up in the roleplay other than being further mentioned, you put it in the mentions of warning box.

The mods have often said that if someone wants to not see any prompts with Trigger X, they don’t want to see any prompts that even just mention this. This premise is clearly untrue; there are people complaining about how they want to filter more granularly. However, the problem of increased granularity is it increases the number of tags in use, and thus those people who do want to avoid even seeing mention of a triggering subject have a harder time and worse experience finding those offending tags out to blacklist them.

This doesn’t totally solve this problem but it does address the seemingly most common desired granularity, without meaningfully increasing the burden for people wanting to blacklist mentions.

Want to blacklist something only if it’s a focus of the roleplay, or occurs on-screen, or is intended to (possibly) occur? Put the tag in the main warning blacklist section.

Want to blacklist something even if it’s so much as mentioned as having had happened offscreen? Put the exact same tag, but in the ‘mentions of’ warning blacklist section.

Upon implemention, set the ‘mentions of’ blacklist section to a duplicate of the main warnings blacklist section, for all users, inform them of the change, and let those who want to adjust take advantage of granularity. Going forward, people blacklist as desired.

I don’t know how feasible this would actually be to implement (and of course it would have to wait for an adjustment of the tagging system code, though as I understand it that’s intended to happen eventually?) but I think it might be a decent baseline for how to crack this problem.

It’s possible there’s a better way to split things than content/mentions of, but that seems the clear one to me (if in need of better wording than I gave it). It’s also possible I’m overestimating users and people would abuse or ignore this system, but I don’t think it would make anything worse? And might incentivise people to lie and omit tertiary warnings less, by having there be less (at least perceived) penalty of getting skipped over for the warnings before getting to context.

I also think the way the bigotry tags work, where “[Form of bigotry]” is a tag and “Sexualized [Form of bigotry]” is also a tag, and the former must be tagged alongside the latter, could possibly be expanded? Like, expecting people to know the generalized fetish term for something isn’t terribly user-unfriendly, but over enough subjects to kinkify it’s a little bit much. But if it’s as simple as “Character Death” and “Sexualized Character Death”, I think that could increase granularity with only negligible cost of people not knowing how to block what they want to block or properly tag what they have to tag. But this system wouldn’t be perfect, as uh... all the prompts tagged “Sexualized X” without “X” will tell you. (Unless that got solved when I wasn’t looking, which would be pretty cool, actually. It feels like something auto-including parent warnings can solve pretty easily, anyways.)

Edit: (And to be clear, in my idea, putting something in the mentions box blacklist hides any prompt that has it in the mentions or content warning boxes. I guess it could also work selectively, but that mainly helps people who want to search for tag X and only get prompts really about warning X; but under this system, they just use the content warning field in their search and be peachy. Though if that’s not feasible with the blacklist section as written, having to have a copy of your mentions blacklist in your main warnings blacklist isn’t very hard to do, if it can be communicated to users clearly enough that you do have to do it.)

#cherp

1 note · View note

theradioghost · 4 years

Note

hey, can i pester you for some podcast recs? something with a good dose of humour and not too many episodes to catch up on. a sprinkle of queer romance would be a nice bonus. my fave so far is tsco starship iris, and i also loved greater boston, wooden overcoats, the bright sessions and caravan. and thanks always for all your great recs! you’ve brought many hours of joy into my life :)

We Fix Space Junk -- Two intergalactic repairpeople -- a knowledgeable cyborg veteran and a former socialite on the run -- travel the universe meeting people and fixing things at the behest of the terrifying intergalactic corporation they’re trying to work off their debts to. Hilarious British sci-fi sitcom featuring Evil Space Capitalism, many many wonderful AI characters, and an absolutely delightful teenage space wasp-human-cow hybrid princess who is probably off accomplishing her grandiose special destiny somewhere offscreen while the main characters deal with things like their bosses possibly trying to kill them (again).

Death by Dying -- People have a tendency to die in odd ways in the small town of Crestfall, Idaho. Luckily the town also has an Obituary Writer, an eccentric and nameless but impeccably stylish fellow whose closest friend is the Angel of Death, and who has a knack for solving murders even though that’s definitely not his job description. Throw in walrus haikus, extremely rude ravens, Something Mysterious And Malevolent Lurking In The Dark Woods Outside Of Town, disappearing childhood homes, silent nuns, ghost bicycles, and three man-eating cats, and you get something like a delightful cross between Wooden Overcoats and Lemony Snicket. (Also, OW is peak Canonically Bisexual Dumbass.)

Less is Morgue -- Riley is a paranoid, reclusive teenager with a fondness for conspiracy theories who lives in their parents’ basement. They’re also a predatory ghoul who feeds on human flesh. Evelyn is a cheerful, outgoing young woman with questionable tastes in media. She’s also a ghost, ever since she was killed by a falling stage light at a Nickelback concert 16 years ago. And since Riley dug up and ate Evelyn’s corpse, they’re roommates! Will they ever manage to record a coherent episode of their podcast without something going ridiculously wrong and/or Riley eating one of the guests? Probably not!

Victoriocity -- The steampunk buddy-cop comedy-mystery thriller you never knew you needed but definitely do! Featuring Inspector Fleet, a grouchy, extremely driven policeman looking for the murderer of the Empire’s greatest inventor, and Clara Entwhistle, an even more driven and unfailingly upbeat rookie journalist who has just arrived in the island-spanning, bizarre cityscape of alt-history Even Greater London. Come for some of my favorite sarcastic British narration since Adams and Pratchett, stay for characters-are-begrudgingly-forced-to-work-together-until-they-come-to-genuinely-and-deeply-care-about-one-another-as-friends trope. (Also for Tom “Eric Chapman” Crowley as the aforementioned grumpy detective.)

Quid Pro Euro -- From one of the other leads of Wooden Overcoats, this doesn’t have a typical plot as such but has made me laugh so hard I pulled a muscle despite the fact that I know nothing about the EU. Which is what this near-surreal, Look Around You-style comedy is about: Felix Trench’s vision of a simultaneously hilarious and terrifying alternate European Union, seen from the perspective of a serious of educational tapes from the ‘90s predicting what the EU would look like in the 21st century. It’s hard to describe this show in any way that does it justice, but it’s incredibly funny.

Time:Bombs -- A miniseries by the exalted creators of Wolf 359, which (because they are madmen) was written, recorded, and produced in the space of one week. Also, a comedy about an NYC bomb retrieval squad on New Year’s Eve, most of whom are just trying to get through the night while their leader attempts to break a record for most bombs cleared before the calendar ticks over. Chaos and hilarity ensure.

Superstition -- Wisecracking, bi, Jewish, definitely-a-private-eye-just-don’t-check-her-qualifications Jacqueline St. James receives a message from her father, which is weird, because her parents disappeared years ago. Following the trail leads Jack to Superstition, Arizona, a town in the middle of the desert where everyone’s got secrets, assorted ghosts/monsters/cryptids harrass the locals, and the missing persons rate is the highest in the nation. As a protagonist Jack is Looking For Trouble And If She Cannot Find It She Will Create It, so while Superstition isn’t a comedy per se, it’s got a fair share of laughs and is also just so, so excellent in general.

Standard Docking Procedure -- A self-declared hopepunk scifi workplace comedy about the somewhat dysfunctional staff of Pseudopolis Station, effectively a high-tech interstellar truck stop. It’s funny and heartwarming, nothing truly bad happens, and Julia Schifini is there.

Solutions to Problems -- A morally-questionable human named Janet who has defintely never done any illegal time travel and an easygoing, physically indescribably alien who likes to go by Loaf host an intergalactic advice podcast. Are you tired of your species’ insistence on solving everything via ritual combat? Not sure how to talk to your partner about whether body-swapping has a place in your sex life? Dealing with being a superpowered teenager summoned into being by the collective will of an apocalyptic groupthink cult? Janet and Loaf have you covered! Provided that Janet’s on-and-off girlfriend, the AI who supplies the air they breathe, doesn’t kill them all first. Oddly heartfelt comedy in the form of a relationship advice radio show from the Space Future.

Middle:Below -- This show’s tagline is “Remember: bad things WILL happen,” and that is basically a lie. This is actually a short, incredibly heartwarming and frequently funny show about Taylor Quinn, the only human with the ability to pass between the land of the living (aka the Middle) and the land of ghosts (the Below). Meaning, of course, that the dead call on him to fix all their problems, with the help of a girl named Heather, a ghost named Gil, and a cat named Sans. (Also, some of the most comparatively wild live shows I’ve ever heard.)

Inn Between -- Ever wonder what fantasy characters get up to between adventures, during all that time they seem to spend at inns? This show skips all the adventuring, question, and action, instead focusing on the quiet moments between where what is Definitely Not A D&D Party meet and progress from bickering strangers brought together by circumstance to close-knit found family -- all at the inn, of course. (Lots of queer folks in here also, although there’s no romance at least in the first couple seasons.)

The Godshead Incidental -- A relatively new but very exciting and so far really enjoyable show!! Following a young woman who writes an advice column through her life in a familiar, and yet strange city where anyone might be a minor god -- your editor, your landlord, that weird guy on the street who was shouting about how he’s the God of Memory and you got into a fight with him and now you keep forgetting everything? Also, your apartment is full of pigeons now because you found out the aforementioned landlord is secretly the god of doorknobs and he’s panicking. Good luck! (Starring Ishani Kanetkar, aka Arkady from Starship Iris!)

Gal Pals Present: Overkill -- Madison, a middle schooler at a Girl Scout camp, agrees to play a game with a somewhat tastelessly bright-pink Ouija board. However, Madison doesn’t know that she’s a natural medium, and now sarcastic mid-2000s 19-year-old Aya Velasquez has joined the many ghosts who are for some reason haunting scenic Harding Park. Aya, however, will not rest until she can solve her own murder (and possibly get to know that other ghost girl a bit better, who says romance has to stop when you’re dead?). Absolutely hilarious writing of a narrator who is almost definitely wearing spectral Uggs during the entire show.

Dark Ages -- The Rivercliffe Museum of Mostly Natural History is one of the finest museums anywhere! Or it would be, if anyone ever actually visited it. Or maybe if the staff weren’t a disastrous and dysfunctional collection of criminals, weirdos, wannabe immortals, idiot bisexuals who can’t just admit they like each other, and one extremely uptight elf with no people skills. Also, it would probably help if the legendary and fearsome Dark Lord, finally returned from his millennia of dormancy to complete his prophesied conquest of the world, wasn’t hanging around watching the chaos unfold because they’ve got his crown on display. (Fantasy workplace comedy with a theme song that did not need to go that hard?)

Brimstone Valley Mall -- It’s mid-December 1999, and at one mall in South Central Pennsylvania, a group of demons are going about their evil work -- namely, working at various dinky kiosks and restaurants, hoping of achieving every demon’s dream of getting to work at Hot Topic, trying not to do too much evil because Earth is way more fun than Hell and no one wants to get promoted back home, and preparing for their band's triumphant opening performance at the upcoming Y2K party. Just one problem: their lead singer is missing. Another absolute masterwork from The Whisperforge.

Arden -- 10 years ago, Hollywood starlet Julie Capsom vanished into the woods of northern California, leaving behind a car containing a human torso that may or may not have belonged to one Ralph Montgomery. Now, private eye Brenda Bentley and reporter Bea Casely, both of whom were among the first at the scene and both of whom have their own very strong opinions on the case, are setting out to solve the mystery on their true crime podcast, Arden. Providing, of course, they can stop arguing with each other long enough to solve it. (Or, a not-really-parody-but-definitely-comedy “true crime” podcast where the crime is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet -- and even knowing that, it’s still a genuine mystery with twists and a surprise ending! -- and the hosts are wlw Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. In other words, it’s perfect. Season 2 is upcoming soon and is adapting Hamlet!!)

Alba Salix/The Axe and Crown -- Another high fantasy workplace sitcom, this one a medical comedy about the titular not-very-personable witch who runs the kingdom’s House of Healing and the various shenanigans she gets into, between her somewhat scatterbrained sister and brother-in-law the king and queen and her assistants, an overly-whimsical fairy and a wannabe monk forced to do community service. The same feed contains The Axe and Crown, a spinoff set in the same world that manages to simultaneously be a sitcom about the staff of a local pub trying to stave off foreclosure and come up with schemes to beat their business rivals, and a heartfelt story about gentrification and recovery starring a gay veteran with PTSD? Which is possibly one of my favorite podcasts? (Also contains one of the most unbelievable crossover cameos possible: Leon Stamatis.)

The Adventures of Sir Rodney the Root -- Also a high fantasy comedy! When a witch transforms heroic Sir Rodney into a small piece of wood, his closest companion Sir Gilbert must set out to cure him by collecting several highly powerful and dangerous relics, accompanied by a snarky dwarfen thief, an imperious princess, a slightly creepy human child raised by fairies, a picky elf sorcerer, a dead unicorn possessed by the ghost of a stoner, and a bard who breaks the fourth wall too much for his own good. So far as I can tell, nobody is straight.

The Amelia Project -- A dark comedy about a secret organization that helps people fake their deaths. Which is honestly a pretty full summary, barring the two important points that 1. this show contains possibly the most continuity-warping crossover event of all time (it’s the center point of this absolutely chaotic diagram), and 2. in one episode Felix Trench plays a character named Bartholomew Fuckface Chucklepants Knucklecracker.

#podcast recs #bobbie recommends things #yujacha #asks #my posts

72 notes · View notes

unproduciblesmackdown · 4 years

Text

ok-yikes replied to your post: diefordarkseid replied to your post: ...

ok but like thank u sm for the link i’ve been vaguely following your winston/billions content and ive been trying to find the context without having to watch the whole thing lmao so now i can fully understand ur analysis and art that i already enjoy!!

oh first of aw!!!! that’s such a compliment lol ty and yes s/o to @winstonthequant for posting that compilation for 5.5k+ people to partake in, it’s super useful

yeah we Jest that all anyone needs to know to understand the Spirit Of Wynnstanning is to have seen those scenes with winston and taylor from kompenso, ep 3x11 lol.....i mean it’s partially a joke but it’s also partially true, that’s pretty much the Cause of the group of us going “oh my god” and becoming Invested in all of this. winnie n tay baby.......their Dynamique...they are way too good Ugh

and yeah the Broadest Of Strokes of this series overall is that the Central Theme is "insufferable bastard hedge fund ceo damian lewis [aka axe] man Versus insufferable bastard attorney general paul giamatti man [aka chuck],” just these corrupt assholes having a back and forth slapfight power struggle every season. nobody cares what happens in season 1 but taylor is introduced at the start of season 2 as a just-out-of-undergrad intern at axe’s hedge fund. turns out they’re amazing at hedge funding (they have some goddamn sense and strategy and awareness, whereas axe is 100% beholden to the whims of his own Delicate Temper and Ego and is a continually self-sabotaging idiot, nbd) and by season 3, while axe is doing a bit of jail time over insider trading (see: previous parenthetical) taylor is left effectively in charge of axe’s hedge fund, which btw is called axe capital

Our Beloved Quant Winston enters the picture 3 eps into this situation, where taylor is attempting to start a quant team at axe cap, hence interviewing him, then only known as “quant kid 2″ in the credits. [not-that-informed explanation of What Is A Quant: where the Traditional Financial Analysts in a hedge fund try to make profitable stonk trades just via like, reacting to The News and other publically available info / whipping up Strategies / intuiting shit and making judgment calls or whatever the hell they do, a Quantitative Analyst (a more recent development in the high finance world) is taking a more mathematical approach to the whole legal gambling operation which is The Stock Market and might, as winston does, use An Algorithm to analyze finance info and make trades in response. is the vague idea here] Quant Kid 2 was not Originally meant to ever reappear, hence him just messing up the interview and getting sent off after like 30 seconds, but they wrote him in further when William Roland showed up and actually filmed the scene.

when “i’m a shitty bastard driven by my shitty ego and will self-sabotage if my Pride asks for it on a whim” axe shows back up, tl;dr, he spends the rest of s3 being terrible and unappreciative to taylor, who you might imagine is Threatening That Delicate Ego of his by capably taking care of his hedge fund while he was indisposed. for example, he needlessly wrecks taylor’s relationship with a guy they were having a nice time dating (and will, we’re pretty sure, talk to again in s5ep2!! hoorayy) and does basically the opposite of apologizing, sweeps taylor’s Quant Project into the trash, gets mad at them for failing to land a certain investor which he said they did on purpose which idk they May Have lol i think this was later in the season, and won’t give them the raise they want, and that’s just A Few of the bullet points in this topic. but oops, turns out that taylor has been secretly taking steps to put together their own entirely separate hedge fund! which is where winston comes back in, aka their meeting him in that empty classroom only to summon him to a random basement. that algorithm he ends up creating for them (which he’d Assumed was for axe cap purposes) was used by taylor to entice a Big Investor at axe cap to invest in their own hedge fund, taylor mason capital, which exists by the end of season 3, which obviously axe is not happy about and of course it’s a whole ~betrayal~ even though he did it to himself but no, he decides taylor is his Nemesis, b/c in so many ways he is a dumbass. god

season 4 has winston as taylor’s Main Quant (the one time we hear his name spoken aloud is taylor saying “winston and the quant team). taylor spends the season dealing with all the problems of having a Brand New Hedge Fund and having a Well Established Hedge Fund With An Asshole At The Helm constantly trying to sabotage their fund, which we also call tmc / mase cap for short, just for reference lmao, the latter being how they shorten it in the show’s actual dialogue. the Front Running mentioned in that one clip was an instance of such sabotage. and by the time winston shows up 5 eps later, that Fracking Subplot (lmao...this fucking show) was about taylor being reeeeal sick of axe cap’s sabotage b/c they kinda made it personal, and thus spending the whole episode Completely playing axe for a fool, which was kinda fun, b/c it’s not that hard and he has it coming. it gets a little involved with what’s going on in ep 4x11 with the bonuses lmfao but it's nbd, just know that winston was right, we went frantic about him being Bullied and are still indignant about it, and taylor talking to Everyone in that 4x12 clip does seem to address what winston had said, compare and contrast 4 yourselves, even if this apparently went totally over the heads of any Regular Billions Viewers lmao. and then in 4x12 A Lot Happens b/c it’s the finale but axe manages to self-sabotage himself in a way that does a lot of damage for mase cap though, and axe thinks that he’s successfully blackmailed taylor into returning to axe cap with mase cap as a Supposedly Temporary subsidiary of axe cap, which sucks, but taylor is not as blackmailed as he thinks, which is a secret, Drama and Twists and Shifting / Dubious Loyalties and Stonks are just constant themes here and who cares. we are here for the quant, who is there with taylor

We Have Many Ideas / wise concepts and headcanons, seeing as canon is a nightmare and there’s not That much material re: winston and precious few details about him / he spends sooo much time offscreen and unmentioned and it leaves us plenty of blanks to fill in. for example, maybe u noticed we think he should kiss taylor and also get railed by them, there are extensive ideas about that relationship wherein we happily ignore Finance. also, there is an unusually kind and reasonable analyst over at axe cap named ben kim who we also think should kiss winston, so yeah That idea is sure around as well lol, they have enough Parallels and complementary Similarities and Contrasts and also just like, a normal nice person is a rarity on this show, so ben does Not have a world of competition in our [list of people who’d be Okay to kiss winston, b/c someone should, b/c he deserves that cuz we love him]

yeah that’s my Quick Basic Context summary lmao we hate it here but also we have fun, and really at any time (extending this to anyone lol) feel free to Send An Ask about anything at all b/c i am Not annoyed by random / unprompted asks from anybody, i love interaction! who knows if i’ll answer promptly (for example: sorry @ the person who’s asked for deh/bmc hcs who i havent answered yet lol) but yeah. it’s totally nice that you were already interested even without any Context lmao like. i mean yeah basically the joke still stands that the only context u truly need is that one scene from Kompenso but. yeah #Stonks

#ok-yikes #i've 100% been appreciating all ur Likes btw ty ty #winston billions

8 notes · View notes

masterbeta29 · 4 years

Text

My review of Pokemon SwSh!!!! (or just Shield, cuz it was the version I play, LOL)

Finally, after finishing the game (including the Post game) and fully exploring the region, I think it’s time for me to say what I think of this 8 gen…

I know it’s obvious, but I mention it just in case: This is MY OPINION!!!, if someone disagrees with me its totally valid, I just ask for respect.

ALSO, English is not my first language so I might have certain lack/erros of spelling out there, or I repeat many words, hehe.

It is important to clarify that this review is based on SwSh base, everything that refers to DLC will NOT be included here, my opinion of the game is already done, the rest is extra content.

I wanted to give this review a more ‘’silly’’ tone, since giving negative opinions on the internet can be quite delicate and I wanted to relax the mood. Do not take this seriously, I still have my CONS with the game, but it is still genuinely enjoyable, which for me is the most important thing in a game. I will talk about everything in general, so I will try to summarize certain points.

LET’S GO!!!

NEW FEATURES

Poke Camp, Curry Dex, Boxes and more

It’s like a dream come true for me, visiting other camps, seeing my whole party next to each other in the screen playing, discussing, running, is something really magical helps, me connect with them and know their personalities better, although I admit that I miss petting them lol and the minigames like in Gen 6. I also really liked the concept of curry as an alternative way to cure your Pokémon maybe I just wish there was a simpler way to know how to create new recipes (ALSO TMs).

Access to boxes anywhere is wonderful especially when you are breeding, just like, changing the name of trade Pokémon and the move reminder.

Rotomphone

It is not used as much as a phone, more than in the post Game (I can be wrong tho) but it serves as Dex and that’s what’s important really, the new feature is that now it includes the bicycle, that can ride both on land and water and in my opinion it is a degradation of what the concept of “Poke Ride” was, but as I said before, it fulfill the function it should.

Trainer Cards

The concept of being able to share and customize them with other players is super entertaining, although it is a bit annoying that you always have to make a new code for each small modification. As for the cards of the main characters of the game, I will talk with a little more detail later.

Dynamax

At the beginning it was fun and exciting, but in the end it just became a gimmick that sometimes I had to use by obligation in raids. It is not as epic as the Megas and does not have the weight of the lore and cultural/regional connection like the Z-moves.

The Giga forms, although some are great, and I am happy that they gave Pokémon like Garbodor love, I also think that there were many missed opportunities, starting with the starters of the region or in giving forms to Pokémon that in previous generations already had like Gengar and Charizard.

Raids

They are incredibly fun, it is an activity that you can spend hours and hours enjoying, especially with friends but if we talk about NPCs… OOF, I understand that the purpose of Pokemon is that we all make friends and work as a team, but DAMN, if it is stressful when you lose a raid with 3 friends and an NPC, because the Pokémon only killed the NPC, it is almost impossible to defeat a 5 star raid with only NPCs, and as I said before I understand why they do them weaker, but there are some that are completely useless, I see you Martin Solrock lol.

Poke Jobs and Rotom Rally

I will be honest, I have not used these features enough to have a solid judgment on these lol.

CHARACTERS

Magnolia

OK, I need to get this off my chest: I am incredibly disappointed and sad with this character, especially since she is/was our first old female professor, to be simply pulled into forgettable land.

It started pretty well, but then it just disappeared until almost the end of the game to give the role of professor to Sonia … REALLY ?! I hate to say this, but she felt more like a device to give character development to Sonia, when she could have been used in scenes with Rose or repeatedly going into further detail about Dynamax for the MC (you know because she’s an expert about that topic…), before give the paper to Sonia. At least I am grateful that I had a little more screen time in the post game, although not even as a professor.

Sonia

Thank you Sonia, for allowing us to discover and know the story with you, honestly she was the one who saved mostly my interest in the story.

But speaking of the character, I like her, I like her dedication to get out of the shadow of Leon’s achievement and to show her grandmother that she is capable, which she finally manages to fulfill, she still has certain insecurities, but that makes her more human, she’s the real professor (I’m still salty for Magnolia tho)

Leon

Everyone knows from the posts on my PT on Twitter that I constantly bullying the character, but I really like him a lot, he is an excellent guide/brother through the game, charismatic, EXTRA, but very involved in his role as champion, in the sense that he is always aware of what is going on and helping in the process, in addition to being strong (one of the most difficult battles in the game). Definitely among my fav champions with Cynthia, Steven and Kukui (I count him as champion, SU!)

Gym Leaders

I love them, their designs, personalities, the animations, they are all incredibly memorable, my favorites are Opal, Kabu and Piers.

But even so, I wish I had more to go on besides the lore on the back of their cards and their battle animations, I would have liked to see them more integrated in the story, and I feel that it lack a little more interaction with some of them, especially Allister and Melony in my case, but at least the trainer cards were a good addition to know them a little more, outside of being a Gym Leader.

RIVALS

OK, I’m prepared for everyone to hate me, *sigh*:

I… I DONT LIKE BEDE AND MARNIE THAT MUCH?… I mean, I don’t hate them, and they are both far from being the worst rivals, but I did expect a little more from both…

Bede

I am one of the few of the fandom that does not like rivals flat jerks, because for me, that is not a character but rather a trait.

But I wanted to give it a try, and when I was just beginning to gain interest in him, they force his backstory in my face… And as I said, I like trainer cards…but more in characters, like G.leaders because these are characters that we don’t see much around the trip, but in the case of rivals, that appear several times and develop in the story, I personally like to get to know them little by little, discover their story and understand them in the course, here I felt it more as an excuse for me, to feel bad for him, especially at the moment he gives you his card.

His relationship with Rose is not explored enough imo.

And a complete turn-around that happens offscreen, like no joke, the MC literally didn’t see any of it, he just disappears after the Opal scene (but to give him credit, that scene is one of my favorites in the game).

But you know, I understood that he was just a lost boy, and I’m happy that he found a better place, and I admire his effort to want to change, so in the end I ended up liking him a little more.

Marnie

Marnie is interesting, because although I agree with many people that she would have benefited from having more screen time, I consider that a good character does not need all the screen time in the world, is about what but what they do with it, and the problem I have with her is that her time was not well spent.

I like her dream and I really like her relationship with her brother, however there was no moment when I really connected with her. I feel partly, that I don’t know her character, like her various personality facets.

Untapped opportunities: fight with her more times or with her…would have helped the character a lot imo.

Hop

Hop is the best rival of the three hands down, his trainer card contains the right and necessary information to make us have an interest in the character, but also the story lets us know him more: a competitive boy, but who has insecurities, fears of failure, that is reflected not only by the dialogue but also in his Pokemon team (no really, it broke my heart when I realized that he didn’t have his Wooloo in his team), that he is frustrated and suffers, but he gets up, discovers other tastes and with these finds a new path, ugh perfect, I adore him.

Forcing the player to defeat him is torture, it is like defeating Hau in USUM and Wally in ORAS breaks my heart.

Rose

In short: ok character, decent /meh antagonist, and a horrible villain.

Like the climax of the story, Rose is forced in the end to be the villain, when he worked best as an antagonist, his plan makes no sense, his battle is disappointing, although his battle theme is awesome, but it just does not fit the character, the plan, nor the situation at all.

But the character has a certain charisma, especially in his ‘’suit especially in his incognito suit.”

Oleana

Interesting character, with a potential backstory, with motives and characterization, who is underused in the story * sigh *… I LIKE HER THO

Overall, I would have liked to see much more of the relationship between Rose, Oleana and Bede, I think it would have benefited the 3 characters…

Team Yell

They are … ok, it is cool to have a team that is not villain, that bother the player from time to time even for good reasons, I admire his dedication and loyalty.

THE REGION

The region is aesthetically beautiful, the details, the structure, the contrast for example between Hammerlocke and Ballonlea, and despite not living in the UK or having had the opportunity to travel to the destination, according to my friends the region in which the games are based is very well related, which I think is excellent. However, despite the visual beauty, when it comes to routes and exploration it feels a bit limited, there are really some towns, where the most interesting thing to do is complete the Gym, there are almost no reasons to return to the previous town after having passed them…

But, what I missed the most was the lack of exploration, discovery, the charm of the NPCs…

Many have told me: what about the Wild Area? Because of the ability to explore in an open area, it is probably the best in the franchise! and yes, the Wild Area is a very attractive part of these games (I will talk a little bit about this, later), but as I said, everything that is considered part of the capacity of the new console, I will not take it into account, it is unfair, because a portable console can NOT stand a concept such as the Wild Area although the developers had the idea before, not at least at SwSh scale.

And as I said before and again, the T.Cards are an incredible idea, but for me NOTHING compares to getting to know the characters through the world, dialogue, interaction… I’m going to use pokemon Moon as an example to make me understand better: (because it was the last main pokemon game I played before SwSh and that’s why I have it more fresh lol) Where you can enter Olivia’s shop, buy jewelry and visit her room and discover that she is a desperate single woman, or enter Gladion’s room and talk to the receptionist and that she tells you part of his story, that kind of things…

Let’s see for example Melony, we know she has more children besides Gordie, but only for concept art, and yes, probably do unique models would take a while, but I honestly wouldn’t have be bothered if they use generic NPCS, they did it with Lana’s sisters, then the anime can dedicated to giving them unique designs.

Speaking of NPCs (mainly of those inside the houses), many lost the charm and authenticity they had… I mean, where is the lady who told us the story of her husband’s accident or the men of the coffee shop, who every time he prepares us a drink told us the story of where such a drink came from, ect… the NPCS on that side are boring…

EXCEPT BALL GUY, he / she is awesome!

I know this look like extra or unimportant things, but these little details really give life to the region, personality to characters that are secondary, it makes everything feel more united and also makes the main characters feel more inside the world, and honestly that is why on this hand, some cities felt empty for me…

But the other hand, I really liked what they did with the NPCs fans, see how the number increasing every time the MC wins a gym battle, makes the trip to become a champion feel more rewarding, It really helps you feel like a true champion when you got it.

Other examples like the girl NPC who is going to support you in the Gyms while their pokemon is evolving, or how the NPCS react and change their dialogue corresponding to what is happening… beautiful, for this part the worldbulding is 10/10.

The wild Area

Probably the closest we have for now of an open space area in a Pokemon game, I have to admit that I get lost at least 1 half an hour trying to find the next destination (I understand you Leon), it was hilarious lol, at the beginning of the game it turns out to be a fairly limited area, and you really can enjoy it in its entirety when you finish the main story, but I don’t see so much trouble with that, since it’s partly the point, for balance. In general, it is a fantastic idea although I feel that it is necessary to polish it in certain parts, and NO, I don’t mean THE TREE, but I don’t want to be so hard on GF at this moment, because is the first time they experiment with such concept…

Pokemon and Music

I put these two together because they both share a very curious characteristic: EXPERIMENTAL.

The pokedex is super solid, I love how these last generations, GF is doing its homework and is striving to make the pokemon belong to the region, as for animals, myths, culture…muah I LOVE IT, BRAVO.

For me a good OST movie or video game not only has to be for the piece n yes, but how it is composed to accompany the events that occur on the screen, how it adapts and fits a certain scene of the story or character, and although I admit that in general it is not my favorite compared to other gens, there are tracks that have become part of my favorites:

The crowd, the screams, the build up as you gradually approach the last pokemon, ugh. Dynamax is cool and everything, but THIS is the basis for me, of why these battles feel so energetic and exciting.

That mystical atmosphere that catches you, is beautiful but at the same time mysterious, and perhaps many disagree with me, but the addition of the howls of the legendaries… I love it.

STORY

I think the game started extremely well, the introduction to the characters, the exploration, the introduction to the starters, the mystery of the legendary, everything is on track to me to enjoy this adventure to the fullest, but later I felt like it began to fall.

I understand that this is Pokémon and sometimes Pokémon does not need a complex story to make it enjoyable, as long as it makes sense and is entertaining, the problem I have mainly with the story is how they constantly get you out of it. I understand the concept they wanted to do: to take a more realistic point of view, in which adults take responsibility or in this case the champion and that later when you become champion you now can do what the champion did, and I like this concept, but the phrase of “you focus on the gym, we take care of the problems ” they say and they repeat it several times in the game like, I understood the first time!!!

Indirectly I felt like they were trying to took me out, and in consequence I lost interest in the story of the game, if it hadn’t been because Sonia bothered to explain to me the lore and a little of what was happening.

It’s more like “tell us” and not “show us”

and that’s the risk of this concept: you play as a main character, because you want to be a main character or share the role.

The climax feels incredibly forced and confusing, I felt that there was no build out, almost no foreshadowing for what was happening at the moment, everything comes out of nowhere, and thats why, I started making Okami jokes with Eternatus, because I don’t felt that emotion of the ‘’Climax’’.

Definitely in the part where the game shine was in the gym Challenge, as I said before, the gyms, the leaders, the atmosphere within them, the scale, the music that changing every time, until reaching the final pokémon, the challenges that we have to do before, the fans, becoming the champion, all this really is the identity of the game.

Pokémon returned to its roots, where this story is the story of us again, and becoming the champion here is everything, it is one of the most exciting and most satisfying Gym challenge in all generations with gyms.

ADDITIONAL

Here I want to give opinions according to the experiences I had with certain things within the game, which I think are quite PERSONAL, because each person plays different Pokémon, by the team of Pokémon, because he decided to level up more or stay at a lower level or how you decided to follow the story of the game.

Difficulty

Decent, by the standards of Pokemon of course, I try not to leveling to much, and if I do, there are maximum 3 levels and only one pokemon… So, gyms were easy in general, perhaps a pair that were difficult (Allister and Melony), but I never did black screen as in other games, but definitely the most difficult battle in the game is Leon, which I think is appropriate.

Online

Its horrible lol, There were not only once but several times in which I lasted like 1 hour trying to connect with a person, it is ridiculous.The signal falling every so often. But in general the biggest problem I have is connecting with very specific people, not even with the infamous Festival Plaza had so many problems.

Gameplay / Pacing

It is normal the same as always which is fine, some drop of frames out there in certain scenes but nothing serious, some cuts and lack of scenarios / designs that if you should in when they took me a little at the time, but absolutely nothing compared as the haters make it look, the game is still incredibly enjoyable, and it can be played perfectly.

The pacing started pretty well/decently, but from the fourth gym onwards, everything became very very fast, and not to mention the climax and the Pokemon League, honestly all this last arc felt super stuck….

So my opinion in general is: I enjoy the game like any other Pokémon game, it has its entity, it has new and interesting things that I would like it to expand more in future generations and it has personality. Is it my favorite game or my favorite generation? No, I definitely enjoyed other generations more, there were many missed opportunities that they could take more advantage, and I feel bad for GF for making them release this game for this year and these dates, because unfortunately some cuts are very noticeable. But the generation just starting ,so we will have to wait and see what we have for the future. For now, Thanks Pokémon SwSh, for another adventure…

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #swsh spoilers #my op #my post #review #I probably forgot something and I also have a lot of types cuz im trash lol

32 notes · View notes

221brownstone · 5 years

Photo

TVLine: Elementary Boss Talks Series Finale's Moriarty Threat, Reveals the Ending He Nixed for Sherlock and Joan

"I confess I thought about one of them dying before all was said and done. I won’t tell you which one. It was something I felt we at least had to talk about and explore. ... And yet, I didn’t want to kill off another beloved character for the sake of ending a series."

TVLINE | We’ve talked about how you thought the Season 6 finale was going to be the series finale, and then you were renewed and had to come up with a new series finale. What did you like about this series finale that you weren’t able to do in the previous one? It was an opportunity to end everything on better terms for our core cast of characters. Things ended badly between Sherlock and Gregson, and having a seventh season and a second series finale was an opportunity to address that. The other opportunity it represented was jumping ahead in time to give everyone who’s watched the show so faithfully a glimpse at how people’s lives had turned out, how they progressed and changed and stayed the same. The Season 6 finale wasn’t really built to jump forward, so I was glad we got to do it in Season 7.

TVLINE | When it came to Bell, did you decide it was just more of a natural fit for him to be the new captain rather than going off into the Marshals like he originally planned? Yeah. We may have strained credibility just a bit in that he rose to captain relatively quickly. I think there are more hoops that one has to jump through to get that sort of promotion in the span of three years. But it was worth it. The 11th Precinct always felt, to us, like his home, and New York City was where he belonged. It’s frankly more fun to see him take the position that his mentor once held. Gregson has stepped aside, but everything is still in excellent hands because Marcus is there. As far as planning the finale, we wouldn’t have gotten as much out of a Marcus who works for the Marshals.

TVLINE | I was very happy to see that Joan was finally able to start the family that she’s always wanted. Was it important for you to find a way to balance those two parts of her life in the end? Yeah. That was another upside of a seventh season. I think it’s possible she would have become a parent in Season 6 if we had had a little more control of our schedule and number of episodes. It’s something that had to be put on a back-burner. If [Season] 6 had been the end, it just would have fallen away completely. So yes, we were glad to have a chance to tell a little bit more of that story and bring all of the work she did in Season 6 to become a parent to fruition. And yeah, balance is absolutely important, and it’s certainly true to who Joan is. I think if she ever thought that her work as a detective was negatively impacting her parenting of Arthur, she would make adjustments. She would find a way to put her son ahead of all of that. In that way, it’s also true to who Lucy [Liu] is as a parent. I’ve watched her so gracefully become a parent over the lifetime of the show. The show is a lot of work, but it’s also obviously a lot of work to be a parent, and she handled it so smoothly. I think what you see in Joan at the end of the series, it’s truer to who Lucy is.

TVLINE | Since we didn’t see what happens in that one year that Sherlock decides to stay and help Joan, can you talk about what kind of a role he plays in Arthur’s life? Are they a non-traditional family? I believe, first and foremost, he was her support system over the course of that year that we didn’t get to see. In a lot of respects, he was what Joan was to him in the first season of the show. Obviously, each would have been dealing with very different problems, but having lived with Joan for seven years and having become, essentially, a part of her family, our present-day Sherlock is equipped to be that for someone. So I’m sure it was a lot of tending to Arthur, as needed, while she underwent chemo and whenever she felt sick. I also imagine work probably fell away for a while for both of them, which for the Sherlock of seven years ago would have been impossible. He thought that’s what he needed, that was his oxygen. But Joan is his family, and has been for quite some time, and so that makes Arthur his family as well.

TVLINE | And it’s nice that they can be a couple without being romantic, which is something that you’ve stuck to throughout the series run. I wish I could say it was really hard, but when you know what you want to do, that makes it quite a bit easier. There was never any pressure from on high. Certainly, there was a section of the fanbase that looked for it. But it was always more interesting to me to keep things platonic, show a great friendship instead of a great romance.

TVLINE | Moriarty played a big role in the finale, even though we didn’t actually ever see her. Why did you decide to focus so heavily on her? Our last two episodes borrowed a lot of elements from stories in canon, and these were stories in which Moriarty played an important part. It felt canonically appropriate to, in some small way, make Moriarty a part of the end of our story about Holmes and Watson. Beyond that, logistically, we thought the stakes needed to be appropriately high for Joan to beckon Sherlock out of hiding. It’s hard to beat the stakes of a returned Moriarty. She really fit the bill, in that respect. For the most part, a lot of what we’re hearing about her in the finale is true �� she is out there, she’s a threat — but ultimately, it’s her name that’s being invoked. She’s not really behind anything that’s happening. And yet, I think it’s pretty clear that she’s someone that Sherlock and Joan will continue to come up against. We won’t be able to see those episodes, but I liked the idea of her being out there and continuing to be a foe to Sherlock and Joan.

TVLINE | So it’s definitely settled: She’s still alive? She has to be! Yes, I will say she’s absolutely still alive.

TVLINE | Were there any discussion or attempts made to bring her back in the flesh? Or did you prefer to have her be this looming offscreen presence? We talked about it very briefly, and to be honest, I was worried that too much spotlight would be stolen from the people who really matter. We spent seven years with Sherlock and Joan. We spent a handful of episodes with Moriarty. Natalie [Dormer] is so amazing, and she was an exceptional Moriarty. It can distract if you’re utilizing her and that character at the wrong time. I really wanted this to feel like the end of a story about Sherlock and Joan, and not the end of a story about Sherlock and Joan and Jamie Moriarty.

TVLINE | Did you ever think about having Sherlock or Joan possibly die? Or did you really want there to be a happy ending? I confess I thought about one of them dying before all was said and done. I won’t tell you which one. It was something I felt we at least had to talk about and explore. But I worked at a show called Medium for six years prior to creating Elementary, and I got to co-write the series finale for that show. We, ultimately, settled on a story in which the husband of the main character dies. It felt incredibly appropriate to a show about ghosts and the afterlife and marriage. But there have been times over the years where I felt guilty about the way we ended it. As appropriate as it was and as proud as I was of what we did, it was heartbreaking that one character had lost her partner. Ultimately, that was a big reason for us telling the kind of story that we did [on Elementary]. [I don’t] regret the Medium finale. It was a highlight of my career, being a part of it. And yet, I didn’t want to kill off another beloved character for the sake of ending a series.

TVLINE | One of the things that this finale and the Season 6 finale have in common is that they both end with Joan and Sherlock together, doing their thing. What was the final feeling that you wanted to leave viewers with? I guess it’s a taste and preferences thing. What I mean is, personally, I’ve seen series finales over the years where I think there was too much change. Things change violently because it’s a show trying to go out with a bang. It can be upsetting sometimes to think a universe and a cast of characters that you devoted yourself to over [several] seasons is ending. Someone’s killed off, or a marriage breaks up, things of that nature. I think sometimes it works, but sometimes, it’s left me cold. You can end up wondering, “Why did I spend seven, eight, nine years invested in this, only to have it all blow up in the end?” We wanted change, obviously. Sherlock and Joan’s circumstances have changed. But I also, ultimately, felt it was important to suggest to the people who stayed with us for so long that the adventure continues, the relationship endures. There’s more coming, and we can feel good about leaving Sherlock and Joan where they are.

#sherlock holmes #joan watson #jamie moriarty #marcus bell #tommy gregson #their last bow #spoilers #rob doherty #read more

77 notes · View notes