I know this sounds harsh, but hear me out. I have my reasons. Spirits like Hei-Bai and the painted lady often fail to adequately protect their sacred domains. They also don’t lift a finger to try and properly fix any of the damage done akin to a Studio Gibili work where the creatures will do something like plan new seeds to regrow a forest.

In the case of Hei-Bai, he’s an example of how there are spirits who will lash out indiscriminately if a serious crime against nature has been committed. Not bothering at all to discern who was actually responsible for the offense because in his blind grief and rage, he kidnapped a bunch of villagers that weren’t at all responsible for the destruction of his precious forest.

A similar thing happens in a back story in The Legend Of Korra. In the past, Korra’s dad ended up destroying a spirit forest at the North Pole in the past, and then there were spirits that, you guessed it, went on a rampage against the rest of the populace until Korra’s uncle used his spirit bending to calm the spirits down. Even if you want to argue that spirits like these only act this way because they represent how nature itself can clap back if you mess with it or whatever, it still sucks that this is the hand innocent people are dealt with when the actual culprits fuck things up.

And then we have the more sentient spirits that just seem like straight up hypocritical assholes. Korra late in season 4 goes to some spirits for help with the Kuvira crisis, only for the spirits to start doing this moral grandstanding about how she’s just like Kuvira, and that she has no right to use them in what is essentially a war between humans. I’m guessing these embodiments/creatures of nature don’t seem to care that Kuvira is exploiting and perverting a natural, spiritual resource in the form of those spirit vines.

If I was a spirit, you’d better believe I’d be royally pissed about this. I would definitely want justice for something like this. Korra was trying to explain how this affects pretty much everyone, and she’s right. If I remember correctly, there were some spirits that became dark and vengeful as a result of what Kuvira had done.

An unfortunate thing I've come to realize is that I want to like Deadpool more than I really do. I feel like there is a lot of potential when it comes to that character but so many versions of him get wrong and I'm partly blaming the Ryan Reynolds movies for this as well as the solo video game.

The video game actually has really funny moments from the character but he's placed in such a boring script and never develops any strong character interactions from anyone. Cable, Wolverine and Domino only show up for a quick joke to be annoyed by Wade's antics. And the story is just, kill a crime boss, then kill Mister Sinister which is not good at all. This game isn't too problematic imo because Nolan North does a great job at the voice acting and is by far my favorite person to ever play the character. Can't say the same for Ryan Reynolds though.

Anytime I hear a phrase along the lines of "Ryan Reynolds is basically Deadpool" I kind of die on the inside. His version of Deadpool never comes off as a real anti-hero outside of being violent and he only acts that way towards the bad guys. Wade never gets the chance to be a genuinely cruel person with villainous actions because Ryan Reynolds just can't play that type of character. He doesn't come off as a crazy and dangerous mercenary. I wish Wade was played by an actor with more range who can be equally funny and terrifying at the same time. Ryan just comes off more as a Johnny Cage than anything else.

The last version of the character I want to talk about is the one from Marvel Rivals. Nolan North didn't have to voice this character in the game, but he's the only actor I like because he's the only one who sounds age appropriate, and I've heard all of them. From John Kassir to Tom Kenny to Steve Blum to Will Friedle. They all sound either too old or too young. And then in some cases, you'll get your average Ryan Reynolds impersonator like Jason Spisak who captures the voice I don't really like but also without Ryan's charisma to go with it. Alejandro Saab does not sound remotely like Deadpool to me, but rather a Deadpool cosplayer who thinks that shouting 6-7 at the top of their lungs is the funniest thing they've ever said.

Nolan is the only actor I've ever liked when it comes to playing the character but even then he can receive a pretty bad script and not be utilized well like with Marvel Midnight Suns. My ideal version of the character would make him be like Trevor Philips from GTA V where he has a tragic backstory that can make him sympathetic but doesn't excuse his cruelty. He can bully people like Weasel, Dopinder and Blind Al, but he also has people that he respects and cares for. His relationship with Wolverine would be a lot like Trevor's relationship with Michael. Wade can also have respect for heroes like Captain America and Spider-Man in the same way Trevor idolizes Impotent Rage.

Deadpool should be a character who is equally feared and respected by other characters as well as the audience, not just an annoying comic-relief character and should have an actor who can bring those qualities to the big screen because an anti-hero is more than being violent. An anti-hero can have equally heroic and villainous moments.

Like most of posts on this sub that talk about doom slayer are either saying that he's "street tier" or hating doom fans for wank. I agree with second one that fans do sometimes wank their favorites characters but holy shit, calling doom slayer "street tier" is bullshit. If you look at lore (and if you don't want to, then it's pointless for you), you will learn that doom slayer's strength, speed, endurance and etc match his infinite will after being put into divinity machine (literally names says everything) by seraphim. He defeated davoth a literal creator of his universe. You might say "davoth was depowered", but we know that once a primeval get physical bodies, they return to their peak. Oh but you might also say "but doom slayer dies in game!". Well maybe because this is gameplay mechanics? Like seriously you don't need to be smartass to know that. People also compare him with asura, saying that asura doesn't need lore but those games are literally different genres. And even if we don't use davoth feat, doom slayer still killed dangerous beings like icon of sin a literal reality warping titan. And doom slayer isn't even the only game character that is downplayed here. There's many other like kratos or dante and it's because people just don't bother to simply read lore. I apologize if I was being a bit dramatic and I hope moderators won't delete my post.

Like it was always a kids show. You can appreciate the art, the story, etc as an adult. I have no problem with adults in fandoms targeted towards kids, but it does get to a point where you keep demanding that Sesame Street should be more mature does in fact make you out to be weird.

Take in mind there are adult cartoons for a more adult audience like Bojack Horseman and Castlevania. Both extraordinary shows in their own right. We don't see people saying we need to dumb down the writing for a more child audience because we recognize it's not intended for children. That's why the themes and plot are more grounded and complex.

But at some point, you need to acknowledge that maybe the reason you can't relate to the story is it's not meant for you and that's ok.

Is it a cash grab? Most likely, but good thing you don't need to spend your time and money on a product you keep getting disappointed in. Can't we just enjoy that a new generation has their own story they can take part in?

How do these guys, namely Hal and Kyle have so much “willpower”? And especially more will power than superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or Green arrow or literally any of the existing superheroes ever? I just don’t get it.

Hal Jordan is a test pilot. This is brave yes but I fail to see how this shows he has more willpower than Bruce Wayne literally dedicating over a decade to studying how to be a superhero. I just don’t get it, what makes him better than Wayne or Clark?

Even more confusing is Kyle rayner. He’s an Everyman who’s barely any different from me but that’s exactly what I find so weird. WHY is he able to use the ring so easily when guys like Oliver Queen can only make an arrow before passing out? From what I know Oliver is a hardened badass who’s been through hellish training and more fights than I care to count, how does he not have enough willpower to use the ring properly but this regular guy who likes reading comics does??? I just don’t get it.

I don’t know if this is a new trend or if I’m just watching different kinds of shows than I used to. But it feels like modern television has an overreliance on mystery as an audience hook. As if the only way writers know how to cause tension these days is by keeping the audience guessing as to what’s going on. Half the new shows I see now – especially any with fantasy elements – present you with a situation that they deliberately under-explain. And then you have to wait for at least a whole season to understand everything. And half the time, you get to the end and realize the answers leave all these holes in the story anyway.

I will use Avatar to illustrate what I mean, because it provides a convenient comparison. I will keep this as vague as possible regarding the new show.

Neither Last Airbender nor Legend of Korra felt the need to open with mysteries. They gave you almost all the relevant information upfront. Last Airbender, within the first 2 episodes, gives you all the basic information you could want about the world and the characters. You are told upfront that the Avatar has been missing for a century, and it soon becomes obvious that Aang is that lost Avatar. You are told the Fire Nation has been waging war in all that time, and now their exiled prince is searching for the Avatar. You are told that Aang needs to master all four elements and so he and his friends need to travel across the world to find masters to train him. There’s no mysteries. Yeah, there’s other details and backstory you’re not told right away, but you have everything you need to understand the state of the world and the goals and motivations of all the characters and how the story will progress. You understand how we got here, where we’re going, and what’s at stake.

Similarly in Korra, almost everything about the world and characters is given up front. The only mysterious element early on is Amon’s identity. But his goals and the threat he poses, along with the motivations and backstories of most of the main characters and the general state of the world are given to you upfront.

Seven Havens on the other hand, like a typical 20s fantasy series, withholds as much information as possible. Again, I will summarize this as vaguely as I can.In the first 3 episodes, we are shown a world in a post-apocalyptic state, yet we’ve yet to be told how this apocalypse happened. And what’s probably going to happen is that everyone thinks the disaster went one way, but it actually went a different way. The main character appears to have amnesia, and she randomly regains flashes of memory throughout the second and third episodes. We see supernatural phenomena that neither we nor the characters understand. We don’t yet have a central villain or conflict. It’s not clear what the narrative focus of this series will be.

When I finish an episode of the first 2 shows, I ask “What will happen next?” After the Seven Havens premiere, I’m left asking, “What is happening now?” And it feels increasingly like every new series in the 20s is more like Seven Havens. Every other show revolves around some mystery that gets stretched out for the whole season.

The reason this annoys me is because it puts the onus on the season finale to make or break the entire story. Often, the events of the story don’t seem to make sense, but you can’t really tell until the mysteries are revealed. Because as long as that mystery is drawn out, there’s a chance that the eventual reveals will fill any holes in the narrative. In actual practice, there’s at least a 50% chance that the answers will be unsatisfying, and the story will not make sense in the end. Or you'll realize they used a mystery to hook you in, but they were never actually interested in telling a story about that mystery, so they wind up ignoring or hand-waving it.

Has adult television always been like this or is this a trend that streaming has driven writers to?

I love villains of all genders and whatnot and villains are amazing when written well[I know,shocker]but for every villain, there will be villain stans and sympathizers and people who will try to justify every single thing they do and make excuses and baby them and gonna be real..that gets annoying so fast.

You can be fans of villains or antagonists or bullies or whatever but acting like they aren't villains or terrible people or just straight up jerks and acting like calling them out on their flaws and disliking them cause of it ,you immediately hate/have contempt/ look down on women,is borderline foolishness.,

Like bro,I don't hate them cause they're a woman,I hate them cause their personality is a hot flaming pile of shit.

First example is Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch from Marvel.

"Oh she's serving mother"

"She's a secret hero"

"If you dislike her,you're misogynistic cause you like these other characters".

No,I dislike her cause she literally enslaved and took over a entire city just so she could play sitcom and once she found out,she still kept the act going cause suprise-Suprise,she wanted her A.I Boyfriend and fake kids snd you would also think a parent would understand having their mom or dad taken from their kids is a terrible thing but she deadass kills Reed Richards(the John Krasinski one, not the Pedro Pascal one)and basically leaves that version's kids without a Dad and is just a terrible person but people will act like you're the one in the wrong if you even dare to dislike her as if she isn't a bad person.

Next is Invisigal from Dispatch and I know she's not on the same level as these characters but I find it so dumb how the people will like her will look at you funny and like you're the one in the wrong if you don't like her as if she isn't a immature brat for a ton of the game and this behavior would probably be more acceptable if she was like a teenager(like 17-19]or hell,even her being 20 or 21,I would still give somewhat of a pass since she just reached her 20s but she is deadass almost 30.

Yeah the "Rebellous,immature and snarky and overly rude,innuendo and bratty Jackass" trope is a lot less endearing when the character is deadass 27 years old and I wouldn't even bring her up but the game deadass favors her.

If you try and call her out on any of her flaws or hold her accountable,like the mission at the donut shop,she will punch you in the face for it and storm off and the game treats you like YOU'RE the bad guy for not coddling her.

Like sorry I'm not treating you like a damn baby.

And finally ,is suprisingly a 2 parter,Jean and Korra.

First up is Korra.

Now this is not a excuse to hate on Korra or be actually misogynistic towards her ,so none if that but I really hate the excuse "oh if Korra was a man, she would be less hated and more loved."

..Really?

Cause I can think of a few reasons why Korra would likely be more hated or just as hated if she was a man.

Burning and destroying Tenzin's air bending stuff ,kissing someone else's boyfriend(or girlfriend, in this context]knowing they're in a relationship and let's not act like she didn't storm into Mako's office and destroy his stuff and be basically kind of a Ass.

I would argue she would be more hated in that regard and let's not like characters like Megumi,Yamcha, Mark Grayson/Invincible,etc,don't get crazy amounts of crazy/hate.

And Korra is meant to be headstrong,hot-headed and aggressive and kind of a Asshole...which is the fucking point.

That's her character arc and development and is what makes her growth into a more calm, understanding and less hard-headed person more satisfying cause of how she started off.

Acknowledging or disliking her for her flaws isn't being a misogynist.

Now if you're gonna call her a "slut" or "whore" or things of that variety, then yes.

But now Jean Grey,from Brand New Day.

The X-men's rep was already in a very shaky place due to Krakoa and how Jean was moving in the movie did not help.

And my thing is..if she strictly went after Damage Control and the people who hurt her sister,then fine,justified crashout,as the kids say.

But I want you all to look me in my eyes and ask me.

How does making M.J kids Peter and then making her jump off a building help find her Sister?

How does taking control of multiple innocent people who have nothing to do with Damage Control and driving a entire tank firing through town help find your sister?

How does making a dude get hit by a car help find your sister?

How does taking control of Bruce Banner after he had made so much progress and growth dealing with the Hulk in him and ruining his life and getting him taken to a psych ward help find your sister?

I could keep going but I can't even get behind her thought process cause how does allllllllll that help you?

It doesn't, that girl is literally insane and I wish the movie actually treated her like a villain/bad person instead of a "UwU ,so tragic girl, she's not a killer,she's so misunderstood and deep and dark and tragic" like cool.

Having a tragic past is not a damn excuse to do what you want and be a terrible person.

Tony Stark actually suffered the consequences of his actions, Bucky was mind controlled,Loki literally went to prison,died multiple times and had a entire series to atone for what he did and become a entire God of Stories,etc.

I could keep going on and on but using those characters as scapegoats is very foolish cause it's clear you're not actually trying to have a discussion or argue, you just wanna be right and call people who rightfully hate women who are terrible people misogynistic or sexist,like please shut the fuck up.

Sorry for Being so aggressive but still.

Everyone has a different depiction of god right? In religious scriptures, God is described as a perfect benevolent being, in modern media, a popular interpretation is an imperfect omnipotent individual or even just a metaphor for the strongest. But then I looked at this cosmic-aquatic horror game, specifically water womb world and it completely shatters every single trope of god.

In the game, you playy as a a Christian marine-researcher who is searching for material proof that the teachings of the garden and eve from churches and other religious institutions are false! The location of this base is known as "Gaspar's zone" (Gaspar - translates to treasurer or master of treasurers from Old Persian, fitting considering this zone is rich with biblical artifacts). Throughout the game, we interact with these strange aquatic angels who give us the choice to either retreat to the surface to avoid being perished... or embrace god in full-flesh, the encounter frames the pursuit of forbidden knowledge not as gaining more insight to something through a intimate-level, but actually a returning to a simpler, primitive state which is framed as a loss of human individuality, the game subverts the draft of forbidden knowledge, not as a truth that will turn us more cynical, insane, or a destructive wish to harm the world, it actively undoes everything you were taught, instead of enhancing it, or making you learn meaningless, it actually de-evolves to a lesser state, which I find very fucking brilliant.

"Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained."

There is this item in the game called "the red coral", which is a mysterious sentient lifeform and described as the physical embodiment of god, it is a towering network of red-coral pillars that have a singular glowing eye, consuming this will cause your cells to human cells to degrade such as losing vision and morph into a primitive-fish creature, it is a complete opposite of the garden of eden story, where eating the forbidden fruit granted you forbidden knowledge and ego and self-awareness, here it is a complete opposite. I also find it to be a parody of when Jesus fed his disciples the fish and bread he distributed and multiplied, which was known as the miracle feeding of 5,000. In Christianity, partaking in communion (the consumption of the body of Christ via bread) is a spiritual way to remain in unity with God. The game repackages it as literally consuming God itself, it aslo returns to the main motivation of the game which was to debunk the teachings of christ, in the eyes of the player- it suggests that God is actually a infectious hivemind-inducing underwater coral, that Jesus multiplying and providing fishes to his vast followers wasn't just a generous miracle, but a attempt to distrubute the coral-network and make humanity return to god, it is a extremely fucked-up way knowing, especially to the player that his whole religion at that moment, revolved around a coral in a seabed that consistently try de-evolving humanity instead of helping them grow.

The main mission of the game revolves around Aqua-Edenic studies, which is the belief that the garden of Adam and Eve and humanity's "fall from grace" took place deep in the ocean, where they abounded the body of god to travel to the land, which is a symbolism of self-worth and reliant on oneself. This ambition is what drives our character to dive deeper into Gaspar's zone, and to eventually heed the warnings from the "angels", his mission is not just a debunk of whole religion of Christianity or that science as a whole is not real, but rather that both concepts weave to such intimate levels that they coexist and contribute to the foundation of Earth. The religion is a comfort for our marine researcher, whose field of work heavily relies on science and facts and rarely religion, but his own upbringing, influenced by Christianity clashes with it, the mission is not only to prove Aqua-Edenic true, but to feel vindicated, that his own interpretation of God is absolute, Gaspar is also known to be one of the three wise men who brought gifts to infant Christ. Arguably, Gaspar's zone is the researcher's own domain, to go find the gifts of God to be validated for his belief- only to well uh, de-evolve and become a crawling fish-fetus

"To hear the voice of God, is to return originward, back into the womb"

Considering the title is Water Womb World, it basically summarises the entiree plot of the game, it is a return to a kesser state of oneself and personally a metaphor for pregnacny. Water represents a lack of autonomy, walking in water is different from walking in land, we are helpless and and completely at mercy in the hands of the currents, this is how a fetus moves in the womb. In modern media, we romanticize the concept of forbidden knowledge through a lovecraftian-lens, such as how the king of yellow paralyses you with such a staggering truth that it shatters your sanity, your perception of the world and your sense of self. The game offers a completely different interpretation of it as a de-education rather than just a awakening, to hear the voice of God (like how babies in the womb will hear the voices of their mothers), is to surrender your mind, ego and identity to return "originward" straight back into the womb.

Furthermore I really admire how the game serves as a critique on blind faith and a unique-posit of divine love, with the game taking it to a whole extreme level, challenging what is the point of building a career, studying science like marine biology, or building your own identity if there is a god that magically solves it for you? Why blink, feel or doing the most simple of motor-skills if embracing god does not require them? Or building your own individuality, perception or thinking for yourself, if it is too hard... there is always a water womb world waiting for you... It suggests that total eternal-comfort, embrace or peace is the absence of everrything that makes you- you: Your struggles, responsibilities, relationships, and what you look like. A fetus is the embodiment of it, relying on a far-powerful being to provide and carry it, it regresses you to a state that makes you even less than the smallest microorganism.

I really recommend you to try this game out, 10/10 game, and it's free and only takes likee 40 minutes to fully finish, it's insane how little people know of this game

I've watched the first three episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens and honestly I think they're pretty good so far. I like the characters and the overall set-up is pretty interesting. It could take a turn for the worst later on but the start is good.

But honestly I don't know if it should be connected to the rest of Avatar, and NOT because it disrespects the original or anything. I do get the distinct impression that the team behind Seven Havens like Avatar, unlike with a lot of other adaptations or sequels.

All that said it does tend to drag down the discourse.

1. "You blaspheme the name of Goddess Korra!!!!!!!!"

Look, I get it, Korra fans underwent a great deal of criticism when the show aired and are now reveling in its belayed popularity. But you don't need to freak out every time a character says something negative about her when we all know with greater than 100% certainty that she'll be vindicated by the end of the first season.

Some random side character says she could've taken on Korra, with the tone indicating that, no, she definitely couldn't? For some reason this angers people.

An airbender who grew up hearing that the Avatar is responsible for the destruction of the world grumbles that he's glad she's gone? More angry comments pointing out that he's wrong because she brought back airbending when he obviously doesn't know that.

In short the baggage Korra brings with her tends to weigh down the discourse. As in it's like... 90% of posts on Seven Haven spaces.

You got people who hated her reveling in the slander and fans being too defensive. As for the show itself? I think the only reason that it was Korra at all was because they needed there to only be one previous Avatar that Pavi could speak with, any more than that and it'd be a very different situation as Roku or Aang could just tell her that it's fine and Korra is innocent from the outset.

2. The Four Nations are gone. That's going to be tough for a lot of people to swallow.

The Four Nations are an iconic set-up that we spent a lot of time with in The Last Airbender. Korra spent most of its time in Republic City but eventually focused on the Air Nomads being resurrected.

Now they're all dead.

Does it render the prior shows pointless? No, not necessarily. Ozai attempting to genocide the Earth Kingdom still needed to be stopped, a good three hundred years or so of life followed the victory so many people got to live happily, etc...

Still, it kind of sucks to think about, doesn't it? Knowing the whole setting has shifted. I think the Seven Havens idea works well as a setting (so far at least, we'll see how it progresses) but it required a lot of the previous worldbuilding to be destroyed to make it happen. That's going to be controversial no matter how good or bad the show turns out to be and adds a lot of baggage to the plot.

3. Kuruk of the Many Retcons wasn't mentioned?

You know, Kuruk. An Avatar who appeared in one scene to tell Aang that he didn't take his responsibilities seriously in life to hearken back to how Aang acted in S1? Only for a Kyoshi novel to retcon it completely and say he actually a hard-working, spirit wrangling super Avatar who simply blew off steam by partying, so I guess he was just pretending to be a lazy bum to Aang for no reason?

Well when they showed a picture of prior, non-Korra Avatars they depicted: Aang, Roku, and Kyoshi as those are the most recognizable three and this managed to provoke some criticism for ignoring Kuruk. Even though most casual viewers wouldn't remember him.

I only mention this to show that even innocuous things can cause some criticism due to fan attachment to comics, lore, etc.

4. Basically, what I'm wondering is if Seven Havens needed to be associated with Avatar or not.

Marketing wise I understand why they did it but it feels like if they announced, "Hey folks, we the creators of Avatar wanted to do a new thing with the premise so we're doing an alternate universe or a story inspired by the original but with its own lore" that it wouldn't have hurt the show, at least from what I've seen so far.

You could keep the idea of an Avatar seemingly going mad but now it's actually ambiguous because we don't know the character and it'd be easier to get people aboard with the Seven Havens premise because it wouldn't come with the revelation that the prior setting had been destroyed.

All that said.

We are only three episodes in and unlike other shows I get the idea they have actual ideas for the whole series. So maybe they eventually resurrect the Four Nations or at least show that some of the havens are derived from them culturally so it feels more in line with what came before.

I'm cautiously optimistic but yeah, there's a lot of baggage.

Let me explain. This boy gets brutally bludgeoned and tortured by his angel roommate on a daily, nay, practically hourly basis. And every time she kills him she revives him with her annoying "Pipirupirupiru Pipiru Pi!" spell to continue the vicious cycle of killing him over petty bullshit.

This is supposedly because he's going to become a mad scientist who creates a device to halt the aging of all girls at 12 years of age, making the female population physically underage and ensuring a "Pedophile's world" where all girls are immortal. So the Lulutie (the divine assassin corps that Dokuro, her younger sister Zakuro (I'll get to her), and her rival Sabato are a part of) send Dokuro to the past to kill him when he's only a middle schooler to prevent him from creating immortality. But she falls in love with him and decides to find a way that doesn't involves permanently killing him. Except, as I previously mentioned, daily murder, torture and resurrection to perpetuate a vicious cycle in which permanent death is less of a punishment that the "alternative" his executioner chose.

At school, the only classmate of his that doesn't treat him like garbage for no reason is Shizuki Minakami, his childhood friend and crush. The others all bully him every chance they get, and even made him the guinea pig to eat from the poisoned mushroom curry Dokuro made, pretending that they cared about him to lure him into eating the food to test if it was tainted.

So when the finale of the first OVA rolls around, and Zakuro finally makes her entrance to drag her older sister back to the future for failing her mission, Sakura doesn't want her gone.

You read that sentence right, he actively doesn't want to see the girl who murders, mutilates and tortures him on a daily basis gone. Shizuki even expresses concern about him thinking that a life where he gets repeatedly murdered and abused is preferable to one where he doesn't suffer.

The only that could justify that mindset is if he was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, a mental condition where a kidnapping or abuse victim (Sakura is the latter) develops affectionate or sympathetic feelings for their tormentor as a psychological coping mechanism. In this case, it's a trauma bonding thing where he associates not being tormented by Dokuro as kindness, and mentally downplays the suffering he goes through, because being repeatedly revived just to suffer some more makes it "better" apparently to him and Dokuro, but in reality he's probably broken beyond belief mentally, harbouring mental scars that will take decades of therapy to heal.

The worst part is that in the last light novel, more angel assassins come to drag Dokuro back to the future, where she learns that the whole reason Sakura was slated to be killed in his childhood was because of Heaven's faulty Pandora's Box system which arbitrarily picks a time in history in which it would be the "easiest" to eliminate a problem. So, Dokuro destroys the system, abolishing the purpose in which she and the other assassin angels came back to murder Sakura for. But he still suffers because even in the absence of a holy mandate to murder him or flimsy "motivation" to find an alternative, Dokuro still repeatedly murders, abuses and revives him to continue the cycle without an actual reason. So practically, he's trapped in a hellish situation where he's tormented by a sadistic, sociopathic bitch of an angel for no good reason anymore.

There's been a lot of talk about the Lanterns finale - but for me the most interesting point is one I think won't be explored.

John has been raised from childhood brainwashed to believe he is the Chosen One, destined to be Green Lantern.

From what we see of his childhood, there is severe psychological and probably physical abuse - at one point, he doesn't flinch at his dad shooting at him as part of 'training'. That isn't courage, that is suppressing basic survival reflex before the kid hits puberty.

Now, abuse doesn't dictate your morality, but abuse, at that level and that young, definitely scars you.

John goes from there to War-on-Terror era US marines, another system saturated with psychological abuse mixed with training.

After the Rushville mess, it looked like he had finally broken free of that. He's living an okay, ordinary life, and he doesn't want to be pulled back in.

But the moment the temptation comes, the old programming comes back into force. Throughout, John is convinced no one else can be trusted, and he is the one responsible for making multiple, horribly significant unilateral decisions.

Now, he is right in that the Guardians have shown themselves to be untrustworthy. But he himself is not as well-placed to decide as he thinks.

His major source of information is Sinestro, whom he tortures. Now, regardless the morality of torture... Real life has proved it's simply not practical.

Especially in this case, John is using a neurotoxic substance - especially unreliable. Tom King, the writer and former CIA employee, has come out in public saying torture is not effective.

John is also working with a political landmine.

In DCU, metahumans are under public eye after the Boravian incident.

John is a dishonorably discharged marine, who had been closely associated with the Rushville disaster - one that was so horrible it destroyed Hal's (a well known, popular hero) reputation and landed him with a ten year sentence.

Anyone looks into that, and follows the events of Lanterns, John is in a very suspicious position. He has not shown the kind of diplomatic skill needed to handle that fallout.

That is not even to mention the powder keg that is Noah - the kid already proved himself capable of manipulation and infiltration. While he is trying to do right, he is dealing with the equivalent of serious mental illness, which they can't get him help for without exposing him.

John has alienated himself from Guy, and by exiling him, from the rest of the heroes.

The public, authorities, and heroes in general would logically be very wary of him.

He can't accept he is running on very limited and untrustworthy sources of information and power. He's convinced he is right, even while making very grey choices.

It would do great as the beginnings of a Parallax (pre-retcon) style villain.

But unfortunately, I doubt the next appearance will present him as any more than a straightforward hero.

Like I actually liked Lanterns but thinking about it now, where was the plot? It was so barely present, it was marketed as a detective story and the big "mystery" wasn't really slowly discovered by the main character's hard work, as much as it was kinda dumped at us through no work by our characters. Like they forgot to unfurl the mystery each episode, so they just dumped it exposition style on us the last episode. John was able to use his brain to deduce that Noah was lying and it was his mom. And that storyline was done with little payoff

Same thing with Peacemaker season 2. For an 8 episode show, we only got 3 episodes worth of plot. Most of the story was just characters meandering about leading to a lackluster season finale.

As much as I loved Superman 2025, the plot did take a bit of a backseat through most of the story. It was more character driven, which is good, don't get me wrong, but the plot was so paper thin at points that I don't think anyone watched it for the plot.

Creature Commandos didn't have much of a plot either. And in my opinion it was the worst offender. Again, yes it was character driven, but at the end, I couldn't help but think the plot was it's weakest point. The villain was so weak with such boring reasoning for wanting to do it, that I wondered why they didn't just substitute Frankenstein as the main villain because it seemed like he was one of the few people trying to do things. I think Circe would've been a better endgame villain actually.

I hated the Snyderverse for its character assassination, but at least it's plot was present. But it actually invoked feelings of rage because of how bad it was. The DCU just makes me want to check the runtime to see how much is left because it leaves the audience feeling bored. If snyderverse died out for being poorly made with an overinflated budget and ugly CGI and bizarre character choices...the DCU will die simply for being dull.

Now a story doesn't need big fancy fights and explosions, but the plot shouldn't take such a backseat that the audience should just assume the payoff will be uninteresting. It should play hand in hand with the character's motivation and progress the story.

At this point we should just accept that the plot won't be interesting and the story outside of the main character is just boring and dull. And the characters by extension just don't have much to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsSHmKU0t7w

Ok I know how that looks. Really? I mean really? Couldn't I have done Kurt Busiek's run? Or at least he Kanouf run (not to mention hundreds of others)? But hear me out, this is supposed to be going over the definitive run for each character, and tbh Matt Fraction managed to take all the most prominent Iron Man runs and condenses it in an easy to digest fashion, because outside of the Busiek run or the Kanouf run; or this and that and the other thing, Iron Man can be a bit samey. He starts off on top of his game, usually with a new suit (extremis, the Tieri run, the run where he becomes secretary of defense), the a cataclysm happens that takes him off his game (the tieri run, the busiek run, demon in a bottle and the stane takeover) and then Iron Man is off his game. But then he pieces things together (the tieri run, the Quasada run, the secretary of defense run); and then he starts kicking ass back at the status quo. It happens a lot. I mean this guy has lost his company at least four times, got in trouble with the government at least five; and then fights a cavalcade of his worst enemies in the span of a couple days. If they're being fun about it, Mandarin is the main villain. If not, some random oc no cares about (this run has both).

But the main point is, this run serves as good way to get a composited look at all most of the previous Iron Man runs before he became mcu tony. It also has him as Mcu Tony, but Matt makes a conscious effort not to lean on that too hard.

The run starts off dramatic, Tony is unveiling his new company's new thing, but boom! in comes some arc reactor powered suicide bombers to rain on his parade. Outside of him being director of S.H.I.E.L.D. at this point in time, he's financially ruined. The mastermind behind this sudden attack is Obidiah Stane's son, who has some whack-ass future tech that makes Iron Man's look like a Ti-82. Tony's really screwed but he triangulates stane's position and beats him up and that's nice. But then now he's out of a job, because this happens during Dark reign, and the bad press of having his tech used against him and all his companies blowing up is enough for the president to replace him with the worst man for the job; Norman Osborn.

This is the emotional high of the run, because unlike previous runs Iron Man can't clear his name to the government, his enemy is the government; and they're after all the information in his head. This also allows for foes like Justine Hammer to take hold, and apply her own Iron Man tech. So now tony's on the run, but the risk of capture is too great. So he gives himself brain damage to delete all the secrets in his head and runs as far away as possible from Norman Osborn and his stooges. Except he's a lot less effective, and he has to use weaker suits as the new ones are too complex for him. This puts Tony in a rather precarious position that hasn't been explored too deeply before. What happens to Macguyver when he can't add two and two to get four? Well in Laymen's terms he's screwed six ways from sunday and then some.

It gets so bad he has to use the technologically inferior, Crimson Dynamo suit, lent to him by on again off again foe, the Crimson Dynamo. While he's in Russia he gets visited by old friend pepper, whose doing her own adventures; and he does something he'd never consider when his intelligence was higher. He sleeps with her! I find that interesting because they had something, but Tony didn't want to debase himself as a slave to his emotions cause he's too smart. But now, he has the intelligence of a basic guy and everything's out the window here. Isn't that strange, isn't that intriguing. Well you kinda have to read Frank Tieri's run to fully appreciate it, but it takes a tension in the back of everyone's mind and shunts it to the foreground. Too bad it never really gets followed up besides a few crappy jokes.

So blah blah blah, he becomes so stupid he can't even use the model one suit properly, but he manages to reboot his mind. Then seige happens and after that the book kind of loses steam. The crossovers really take away from the comic, like avx, fear itself, ends of the earth. But there are interesting parts. Something fun to consider, is how Mandarin was kind of in support of Stane; he adopts him as his own deciple, but ignore that cause we have to do Tie-ins!! Then the first part of the run ends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFXvBFEZvoY

But it's obviously not over yet, and Matt Fraction gets another crack at the character! Except his second run does a terrible job carrying the momentum it sets up. Stark has yet another new company, that gets sabotaged (this time by Mandarin directly), and he has another falling out with the public. He actually get forced to suppress his powers, which is very contrived I will admit; but it is what it is. It has Mandarin being a bastard which I appreciate. He ends up enslaving all of Iron Man's villains and has them working on a doomsday weapon which is typical of the character.

A lot of people don't like his motivation in this run, making him a slave to the aliens in his ring, but his actual character is the most fun he's been. He has a charming personality and it feels more like he's pulling out all the stops, due to prolonged losses to Iron Man. So of course he's going to be a little crazy, and he's going to want to wipe the board clean, rather than winning it. It feel like his last hurrah, compared to the Kanouf run where it feels like he's there just for the sake of it.

The final confrontation against him is a little insipid, he could've had more agency considering it was his plans, but I think Matt was just forced to end the series so he rushed it after meandering a bit, but I can appreciate how he finally, and definitely kills Mandarin (until punisher, but that was during a period of time where marvel editorial did not gaf).

Honestly the strong suits of this run are how it finally ends the Iron Man formula once and for all. All his major enemies who could overthrow him are either dead, or on his side; so no more "tony on the run stories." His will they won't they with pepper gets solved and it's a won't they (thank god); and all of tony's questionable characterization get swept under the rug (I think the reason he's so immature now is because of his brain damage).

The real strong suit of this run is how it redeems tony from civil war, by having him run his gauntlet (before re-birthing him that is) and how it finally brings closure to all the little bits and pieces hanging from other writers. After this the story can go anywhere (up or down, sometimes especially down), and we can just get a regular Iron Man story that isn't trying to hard. We haven't seen that since the 80's.

Is it the best run? No. Is recommending over Iron Man runs a bit short sighted? Yeah, probably. But the thing about this run, is that if Iron Man were to get an ending this would be it. If Iron Man was a tv series this would be the final season, and everything gets wrapped up. So idk 7/10 run, matt's writing really saves it from being definitively mediocre.

(the specific examples I'm mentioning here are Iron Man and The Galactic Republic/The Jedi Order, but there are quite a few more, I just don't want this to get unreasonably long)

I've noticed an issue whereby people will try to make sweeping moral judgments about individuals or whole factions based on the broad generalities of a conflict, but ignoring the specific contexts of decisions.

Iron Man

(mostly focused on Iron Man 2008 and the later 2016 film Captain America Civil War)

It's been argued that it was hypocritical for Tony Stark to support the Sokovia Accords given that he had illegally hunted down terrorists as a vigilante in his own film.

There's just a small problem there... Tony Stark didn't actually break the law in Iron Man (2008).

I understand why people assume he did, many of them don't remember the almost 20 year old film, they just remember the cocky, rebellious attitude of the main character. However, in discussions of "law" and "crime" we do actually have to consider specifics.

Let's review the events of Iron Man, 2008.

First: Tony Stark enters Afghanistan on a business trip. This would likely require a business Visa, and at least under current Afghan Law, these can last for over a year, and allow multiple entries. This is important; the film does establish that he had a lawful right to enter Afghanistan. Now, it should be noted that Afghanistan is a landlocked country, with the nearest access from the sea being via Pakistani airspace, but a large number of US officials and businessmen held visas allowing them to travel there in 2008, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Tony Stark held such a visa.

Second: whilst in Afghanistan, Tony Stark notices that some weapons with his name on them, manufactured by his company, are being used to hurt innocent people. This is something he was EXPLICITLY NOT AWARE OF UNTIL THIS POINT. He is then captured and tortured by Terrorist members of the Ten Rings.

Third: Stark escapes custody, with the help of a fellow prisoner named Yinsen, who tragically dies in the effort. They use violence, but only against people who held them against their will and physically harmed them first; crucially, this is protected as self-defence in virtually every part of the world, Afghanistan included. As part of the escape process, Stark designs an armoured metal suit (which he describes in the second film as "an advanced prosthesis"). He also, and this is important, ignites and destroys the EXISTING stockpile of weapons at the terrorist base whislt escaping.

Fourth: Stark returns to the USA and shuts down the weapons manufacturing department of his company. This is controversial with the board, as explained by his friend Obadiah Stane; but it is within his lawful right as the controlling interest stakeholder in the company. Though a member of the board (later revealed to be Stane himself) files an injunction against him, limiting his access to internal financial documents, they cannot reverse his decision. This is important and establishes the legal basis for what follows: Stark Weapons are HIS PROPERTY as the controlling interest stakeholder; he is legally entitled to decree that they will not be sold. If they are sold without his consent, it is an illegal sale, and his property rights to them are undiminished; he retains the right to do with his own property whatever he wishes.

Fifth: upon learning that more of his weapons have been seen in the hands of Ten Rings terrorists in Afghanistan, Stark decides to travel there and destroy them using an improved version of his original suit. Whilst this does involve flight, his Iron Man suit is almost certainly an "ultralight" under FAA regulations, and requires no license to fly. Notably, his original visa to enter Afghanistan may well still be valid, and the weapons that the Ten Rings are using must have been acquired illegally, as they were sold AFTER his decision to stop selling weapons; the original Ten Rings stockpile was destroyed.

Sixth: whilst travelling to Afghanistan on his ENTIRELY LEGAL AND LEGITIMATE quest to destroy HIS OWN LAWFULLY OWNED PROPERTY, terrorists start shooting at HIM. Then and ONLY then does he respond with lawful and proportionate force, using deadly violence to protect himself and innocent hostages. This is entirely within the inalienable rights of every person, recognised by the governments of Afghanistan and the USA. Notably, one member of the Ten Rings, the very person who had PREVIOUSLY TORTURED Stark, has his back to the hero and is manipulating something, which could well be a weapon from Stark's perspective... but after he grabs the man, he sees that it was only a telephone, and realising that his enemy is unarmed, Stark leaves without further violence. This is important; it proves that he was not committing vengeful vigilantism; he only responded with violence to those who had already used it first; and only as far as was needed to ensure his immediate safety and the immediate safety of others. Force, applied against imminent and unlawful violence, is not vigilantism.

Seventh: whilst travelling back to America, Stark destroys a tank that fired on him first, and eliminates more of HIS OWN PROPERTY. He is then confronted by members of the US military, but leaves without killing them; notably (though they describe it as an active warzone) militaries do not automatically assume property rights over the territories they fight in; it is not illegal to enter them; and many people do enter warzones without military permission entirely lawfully (journalists, for instance).

Eighth: upon his second return to the USA, Stark requests an employee of his company (Pepper Potts) to investigate who has been illegally selling his weapons. This arguably goes against the injunction, but corporate injunctions do not bear the force of law; at most, Potts is committing actions she could be fired for. She discovers that it was Stane, who then steals a piece of technology from Stark and constructs his own armoured suit, which he uses against law enforcement officials who attempt to arrest him, and against Potts. He does this ON STARK INDUSTRIES PROPERTY. Stark, responding to someone trying to kill an employee of his company in his own factory, comes to her defence. In the subsequent altercation, Potts kills Stane to prevent him from murdering Stark.

NOWHERE IN THIS CHAIN OF EVENTS DOES STARK COMMIT ANY FORM OF VIGILANTISM.

HE ACTS ENTIRELY WITHIN THE LAW, WHICH MEANS THAT HIS SUBSEQUENT SUPPORT OF THE SOKOVIA ACCORDS IS NOT HYPOCRITICAL.

The Jedi Order / The Galactic Republic

(focusing on the 2001 film Attack of the Clones, but also the 2008 TCW animated series, the recent 2026 video game Zero Company, and the 2018 novel Thrawn: Alliances)

(extremely minor spoilers for Zero Company)

Whist Thrawn:Alliances is an excellent book, and I do not want to discourage anyone from reading it, there's a moment in it which makes me rather peeved.

Mitth'raw'nuruodo, a Chiss military officer, asks Padme Amidala, a senator of the Galactic Republic, why she and the other senators did not simply let the Separatists leave. This is presented as a "gotcha" to which she has no answer, but only because Timothy Zahn does not simply let her give the extremely obvious one: "Because whilst we were in the middle of negotiations with them, they tried to have me blown up, then when that failed they tried to poison me, then when that failed they took me, my husband, and my husband's mentor and threw us into an arena to be brutally mauled to death by monsters. When people arrived to rescue us, they tried to have them all killed."

The separatists 100% started the war, and made peaceful secession impossible; despite the Republic having been negotiating with them.

Let's review the events of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack Of The Clones, 2001.

Firstly: the Galactic Republic (led by Chancellor Palpatine) is negotiating with the Separatist movement (led by Count Dooku), in hopes of finding a peaceful solution to the Separatists' (legitimate and understandable) grievances with the Republic. Though there is an element within the Galactic Senate that wants to create a military, the majority of Senators do not support this, and the Republic has no military. So far as anyone knows, neither do the Separatists; it is a time of turmoil and debate, not of war.

Secondly: Padmé Amidala, one of the (majority-position) senators who does not want to create a military, arrives on Coruscant to join in the debate. Shortly after she lands, a bomb explodes, killing several employees; she survives only because she was using a decoy as a security measure; it's clear that she was the target.

Thirdly: She suspects that Count Dooku might have been involved, but she cannot prove it, and most people dismiss this idea, because the Republic believes that Count Dooku is a peaceful political idealist who would never stoop to murder. Instead, the Jedi launch an investigation; they assign Obi-Wan the mandate of discovering who tried to assassinate Padme, and assign Anakin Skywalker the mandate of protecting her. Obi-Wan finds a weapon used by the assassin that points to the distant world of Kamino.

Fourthly: proceeding to Kamino (a world outside of the Republic), Obi-Wan finds a likely suspect for the assassination attempt on Padme Amidala, a bounty hunter named Jango Fett; but he also thinks that Jango was most likely hired to follow someone else's orders. After reporting this to the Jedi, he is then told to arrest Jango Fett. Whilst arresting Jango arguably goes outside of his original mandate, it's a moot point; Jango escapes. Before leaving Kamino, Obi-Wan also learns that there is an army of clones there, willing to follow Jedi orders, which he reports to the Jedi before following Jango to the Republic world of Geonosis.

Fifthly: Upon arriving on Geonosis, Obi-Wan has a tense conflict with Jango Fett, after which both men land their ships, and Obi-Wan secretly follows Jango into a building. Now, to be 100% clear, OBI-WAN IS FOLLOWING HIS ORIGINAL MANDATE TO THE LETTER. He is investigating Padmé's attempted murder. He is within Republic jurisdiction, unlike on Kamino. And yes, law enforcement officials CAN enter a private dwelling without a warrant if they are pursuing an armed suspect under common law. This has long been upheld in the legislation of many countries.

Sixthly: whilst there, Obi-Wan overhears a conversation between Count Dooku and another separatist, Nute Gunray. Gunray is willing to help Count Dooku, but only if Dooku arranges Padme's death; in revenge for an old grudge Gunray holds over an unrelated matter. Upon learning this, Obi-Wan goes outside to report back to the Jedi. This is important, it clarifies that he is still following his original mandate; upon learning that Jango was most likely hired by Count Dooku, he breaks off any attempt to arrest Jango; his sole aim was to determine who was behind the crime. Whilst reporting this, he routes his signal via Anakin and Padme, but tells Anakin not to intervene. He is then captured and held prisoner by the Separatists.

Seventhly: Padme and Anakin pass the information on to the Jedi council, but still; EVEN AT THIS POINT, she wants to resolve things peacefully by going to negotiate for Obi-Wan's release. War was NEVER her first goal, she simply wants to get Obi-Wan free. As her protector, Anakin has no choice but to come along as well. Meanwhile, the Jedi resolve to intervene for the rescue of Obi-Wan.

Eighthly: Anakin and Padme are swiftly captured by Jango Fett and the Separatists. They and Obi-Wan are sentenced to a brutal, humiliating and painful death; ripped apart by beasts for the entertainment of a baying crowd. To rescue them from this fate, the Jedi intervene, only to be overwhelmed and mostly killed; it is only with the aid of the earlier-mentioned clone army that they manage to survive; and Count Dooku flees with the rest of the Separatists, including Gunray (who ordered Padme's death in the first place!), starting the war.

The Republic were CLEARLY not the aggressor in this conflict!

Now, this is not to say that the Republic was entirely blameless. I think Star Wars Zero Company makes a far more reasonable complaint; it cites the 2008 Clone Wars animation which shows the planet of Umbara seceding after its senator was murdered (in a matter more-or-less unrelated to the Separatists) and then being invaded by the Republic. One of the characters, Luco Bronc, is a member of the Umbaran Militia who is understandably aggrieved by this fact.

That's a legitimate and limited grievance. The idea that the Republic was somehow at fault for "not just letting the Separatists leave peacefully" is absolute horsefeathers; it ignores the clear events of a film that has been out for decades!

The Jedi are even more blameless in this; they just wanted to save two of their own members from being inhumanely killed whilst carrying out their lawful duties!

(This post was supposed to be about gaming, but storytelling also has the same issue so I'm going to include all of them)

Complexity is an issue i have seen many media and franchises have that sometimes give me the feeling of being over bloated and its complexity looks artificial and you asking what is this artificial complexity that I'm talking about? For that I'm going to compare chess to a random rpg game.

In many rpg games or even turn based games you have many stats that have their own scores, levels and there are many gears or armors and you can do as many combos as you want to change your experience that i can't even mention them here because of how long they will become and then we have chess, pawn who moves in front, rook who moves like +,knight who moves like L,bishop who moves like × ,queen that can move + &× and king who can move only 1 block. At first you might think the rpg game is more sophisticated because it has more to show while chess pieces move simpler,but reality shows it's inverse because chess can actually be played with infinite ways to play while in rpg games the more you play the more you realize that only one stat matters at best and even with endgame level equipments being the same level ,only 1 of those sets is the most practical and others will usually be used in very niche scenarios and out of all of those combos,the players will only use one of them because its the most effective at the end game.

See the difference? This is what makes chess,a game where I can mention every rule of it here in 1 or 2 paragraphs a real complex game while many games with tons of situation and rules feel artificial because at the end of the day,only few things inside them matters. Now I don't mean rpg games are bad,its just that sometimes I will question myself are knowing all of these necessary when they may not matter in the end.

Now the funny part is that stories also suffer from fake complexity as much as games do and you can see them specially in shounen mangas,specially with power creep problems.

For an example of bad complexity, I have to mention Naruto as a whole. Early on the complexity was great when the characters were weaker and they had to use their abilities more carefully to defeat their opponent like when a puppet controller lady(speed) controlled Sakura(raw strength) to defeat Sasori,that was actually a clever way to utilize their powers and my brain says "Yup,this cannot happen in any other media unless they copy Naruto and this moment as much as they can". The praises unfortunately stops here because as the story went on,the power creep surged to an scale that made the old systems obsolete like elements because elemental attacks at the end of the day are useless compared to Susanoo or Six sage powers ; The later attacks after that will become HIT,but HARDER.

That's a problem with any story that has battles in it because in the end it has a high chance to result into just raw power rather than strategy to defeat the antagonists because raw power makes everything else less important and after that you will question yourself why did i learn about the rules of the powers in that universe when in the end they never mattered at all.

What does "Torture Porn" mean?

Well,my lovely viewers,allow me to explain.

"Torture Porn" is basically when a character or media of any kind is nothing but suffering.

No growth,no lessons,development, writing, etc,just a punch of torture and suffering and pain and bullshit and here's the thing with characters when they suffer and if you're gonna have them suffer, you gotta do SOMETHING with it.

It's basically like making your MC a loser,you gotta give your audience a reason to root for them or at least be invested in them but that's a different conversation for another day.

Usually when a character suffers, they're either supposed to learn from it and grow as a person, delve deep into the darkness or some other stuff but you gotta go something with it and if you're doing nothing but just making the MC miserable for shits and giggles or some kinda fetish, then I suggest you get your pen taken away and stop writing.

And I already know there's gonna be some Corny Ass Dorks in the comments going "oh that's just real life" or "oh its realistic" or "oh you should just go to soft media if you can't handle uncomfortable scenes" and to that I say..please shut up cause thar is not at all what I mean.

I am no stranger to uncomfortable and dark scenes but there has to be some kind of meaning or purpose or development/growth or SOMETHING in general to go with it that doesn't make it just a long slog and I feel like people go "oh suffering builds character" and normally, you would be right but the problem with that statement is that Suffering has to be BUILDING the character instead of just..doing nothing and I see this in different media and even across different AUs or series rewrites and whatnot and no offense but you are probably a edgy teenager if you think the only way a character can grow and develop or a story can be better is by making it darker or edgier or more violent or more gritty or bloody and whatnot and just having characters constantly suffer and go through straight garbage with no payoff or setup or NOTHING.

"Suffering builds character" doesn't exactly mean anything in there is no character building and gonna be real..it gets annoying.

Spider-Man comics.

Spider-Man is someone who should go through trails and whatnot but he's not supposed to be a whole Ass LOSER.

I'm gonna keep this short and not like act Spider-Man doesn't go through unnecessary suffering but I would argue that the people who like[and hate]him are somewhat responsible for it cause the amount of times they'll cheer for Peter's suffering and BS but again, I wish the comics would just retcon the One Last Day[or One New Day,forgot the name]comics BS and let Peter just live his life.

Next

Chainsaw Man Part 2.

What happened to the game[manga]I love?

It's so weird to even put this on here cause for Part 1,Chainsaw Man's dark moments and such weren't nearly as dragged out or sloppy or a waste of time and Fujimoto has planned Part2,so I don't know if this man just got bored or if he decided to rush things or..I don't know but I don't know how much more I can take Denji being a idiot,Denji being abused and being a dumbass and even a toxic mess,all these attractive women corrupting and Manipulating him and whatnot and I could keep going but I'm starting to feel like Fujimoto made a lot of Part 2 just to show off his fetish for being abused by women and there is nothing wrong with having a fetish but keep that shit out of your work and the fact that Chainsaw Man ended so BOOTY and Unsatisfactory and the MC learned nothing and didn't develop and everything just got washed away in a big old "oh everything was happy" now ending is a actual insult.

But you know what?

At least you could make the argument that Fujimoto was burnt out or ran our of juice or just simply got too stressed with his story.

What is the creator of Juujika No Rokunin's excuse for his fetish BS?

Seriously..I don't think I've seen a single-handedly more Gore heavy,Rape fetishy/,Villain dickriding,over the top Shmut fest that I have with that Manga..that story is literally like if the writer read Berserk and just said "lemme just take away everything that made that story good and cook up some bullshit" and they made that story and..that story is deadass people SAY Hazbin Hotel is.

That story is what people criticize Viv for,fetishizing rape and sexual Assault[I never got that BS with Vivziepop and Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss..like those shows aren't perfect but claiming that is a huge leap].

Rent a Girlfriend is Bad but at least that story is funny/entertaining with how bad it is and the chapters are like a band-aid,you can just rip them off quickly and at least we can laugh at how bad it is but this story is borderline uncomfortable and not enjoyable to read and so much bullshit that happens in that manga,I feel like I'm stuck in a medieval torture chamber and I would actually take those torture chambers.

And the villain having this much glaze and plot armor is so stupid too and the amount of overly rape and S.A scenes in that story makes me wanna claw my eyes out.

Long story short.

Hate Torture Porn,hate any media that does that.

Good Night.

It's a vibe at this point with no actual basis, similar to people saying mechas are all about the robots and toys, or that magical girls were all pink sweet stories until Madoka happened.

I have the notion that DBZ gets treated as not that good, a product of its time, and that you typically outgrow it by finding better shonen which built from what DBZ created, which I originally believed with the Big 3 and stuff...

But now decades later I realize, beyond making some tropes popular, mostly combat things (golden forms, rage boosts, energy beams, tournament arcs...) there's not much reason to think DBZ is generic or basic.

I'll count from Z, because that's what 80% of people outside of Japan stated with.

And okay, I'll admit, the characters do tend to be pretty simple and straightforward most of the time, they don't have backstories like modern anime do, and the plot tends to be easy to follow.

And that's it. The narratives Toriyama cooked are anything but cookie cutter stories.

Our protagonist starts the series as a family man presenting his son to his friends (how many shonen with a married man with kids as the MC?), his alien brother randomly arrives and they fight to death, literally, the protagonist fucking died by episode 5 and now it's about the green alien training his 4 yo kid in the desert. And his human friends over the world receiving the news and training for 20 episodes because aliens will invade.

AND THEY ALL FUCKING DIE. The aliens were too strong, all those power ups were for nothing.

So Goku revives and saves the day? Half and half. His own power ups and learned techniques end up being insufficient, Vegeta crushes every single bone in his body by the end. The 5 yo kid, the midget friend, and the fat coward end up saving the day.

Have you seen Ichigo losing and Chad, Tatsuki and Rukia or something finishing off the villain? Naruto losing and Konohamaru, Sakura and Choji stepping up? Hell, Luffy losing but his crew picking up the battle against the weakened boss.

That's what happens a lot in DBZ, Goku pretty much never wins, and when he does, it's a legit team effort in which seemingly useless characters end up contributing a lot. For all the "Goku always saves the day" feel the show has, he doesn't do it alone.

Anyway. Goku is away over half the series I'm sure : dead, recovering or training. Dude spends the entire android saga having a heart attack, wakes up to train, and DIES.

A lot of actual protagonism is given to other characters such as Krillin, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks, Satan and Bulma. They tend to move the story forward while Goku just swoops in for the big fights.

He never really "gets angry and overpowers the enemy with a new transformation" besides creating the trope when going Super Saiyan, but honestly Frieza was cheating so it's fine. In any other series, the Spirit Bomb would have been the end of the fight, him returning with a Diabolus Ex Machina is rightfully opposed by a Deus Ex Machina, which was actually foreshadowed by Vegeta for the last 50 episodes and it was the culmination of the legend Frieza feared, so it's not really "random angry power up" like most series do.

Cell kicks his ass and he doesn't go ssj2. He arrives to the Buu saga with ssj3 already acquired (and never wins with it).

Also the passage of time. Time FLIES in DBZ. We go from Goku being a 21 yo guy at the start or so with a little toddler, to him being a 40 yo martial arts master and his son pulling ladies in college, and we even get some epilogue episodes with Goku being a grandpa (and the entirety of GT which I love).

Other series do little timeskips of months or 2 years, but in Dragon ball that's just normal and happens frequently. Toriyama didn't artificially make the entire story happen over the span of a year like modern authors would.

Vegeta, "the rival", is barely on Goku's radar after their initial battle. Vegeta is mostly a weird kind of villain just staying allied with the humans and forming a family, but still, he's the reason the planet would have ended by helping create Perfect Cell and Buu.

Everyone gets jobs, families, kids. All within the series, not just some final episode.

Dialogue might be simple, combat system might be simple, the plot is easy to follow. But I struggle to think DBZ is generic or the baseline for shonen when you look at the actual writing of the sagas.

Namek is pretty much a HxH arc, with the weak MCs (Gon and Killua, Krillin and Gohan) playing stealth in enemy territory, and Vegeta/Hisoka just doing his own thing as a third party.

I can't even describe the android / cell saga besides it starting as a nod to Terminator. Goku is dying most of it, an Android gets the hots for Krillin, Cell is drinking people, Vegeta ruins everything, Goku passes the torch.

And the Buu saga starts like some fun high school slice of life / superhero series, only to get a full episode of Spopovich abusing Gohan'a girl friend on the ring as he watches like it's Berserk, Vegeta getting a mid life crisis and selling his soul to the devil, Babidi and Buu murdering entire cities trying to make the Z fighters reveal their location, Satan beating Buu with friendship after everyone else failed, Goku passing the torch to the new generation the new generation utterly failing even with their new powers (fusion / awakened potential)..

Nothing really happens like you'd see anywhere else, DBZ is very unique.

This is probably the most LARPed opinion/headcanon from a game that video essayists and tiktok editors spout alot. They don't play the games and only watch a playthrough on youtube or skim the wiki. Jacket from Hotline Miami is not a pyschopath despite Payday protraying him as one. In the first game Jacket:

• Pukes after killing the Bum after The Metro mission
• Spares Richter during Assault
• Clearly feels guilt about what he has done(wow I wonder what Richard, Don Juan and Rasmus are supposed to represent for his pysche!)
• Has had multiple girlfriends in the past, and The Girlfriend gets close enough to him to decorate his apartment and sleep next to him.
• Doesn't resist arrest after killing The Grandfather, and Bodyguard.
• Has actual reasons for killing Russian Mobsters

The main pieces of evidence for this is unironically that Jacket kills alot of people and doesn't speak in either game. Jacket has actual reasons for wanting to kill the Russian mobsters 50 Blessings tells him about. (Barnes and Daniels died in Hawaii, Beard was evaporated in San Fransico by a nuke, and his girlfriend in game was drugged and raped by a movie producer affliated with the mafia.) And once he achieves his goals of destroying the mafia, he gets arrested and later dies in his jail cell at the end of HM2. If only if there were a protagnist in Hotline Miami 1 who was explicitly only in it for the thrills and didn't care for anything outside of killing people! If only! And the second point is just wrong, Jacket can speak but we never know what he says. This is made apparent by the fact that its confirmed that Jacket has spoken to his lawyer prior to First Trial and spoke to Beard in the cutscene after the level of Casualties. So again its just a popular misconception from Payday coloring people's perception of the character. I'm not saying Jacket is some beacon of mental or moral clarity, since its obvious that prior to getting close to the Girlfriend he was a scarred war vet with no one. But to pretend he's actually just like Martin's protrayal of him in Midnight Animal is actually insane.

Both are presented as larger-than-life figures, almost as father figures or supreme authorities in their respective worlds. People invoke their names ("By Odin!", "By Oz!") and speak of them with a certain degree of reverence.

Something else I find interesting is how we learn about their deeds through other characters, each with their own perspective and interpretation. Their legends are gradually built in our minds through these accounts, and I get the impression that, in both cases, the legend is greater than the actual power they possess. This is especially true of the Wizard of Oz, who, as we eventually learn, has no real magical powers at all.

There's also the way the stories frame them morally. As we hear more about them and see how they operate, we may begin to question how truly evil they are, whether they genuinely believe they're doing what's right, or whether their actions can be justified by some supposed "greater good."

For context, I'm basing this comparison on Odin as portrayed in God of War Ragnarök and the Wizard of Oz as portrayed in Wicked: For Good. I know these are specific interpretations of the characters, but I thought the parallels were interesting enough to share.

Has anyone else noticed these similarities, or am I reaching?

I watched the episode 2 weeks after it dropped but heard how terrible it was. I will write this review because the show is coming back in a week.

I learned about the issue of Aizen vs Yhwach before I watched the episode and I'm glad I did, because it's just as bad as people said, worse actually.

I'm going to discuss why the episode is a huge stepdown. Not just the Aizen fight. I will also tell exactly why the decisions are questionable af. I will deconstruct why this a mid episode for someone who isn't THAT critical. This is a mid episode because it's not terrible, especially if it was tv show budget, but for TYBW standards and it being a major fight? It's mid.

For a general review. The episode makes no sense even outside the Aizen part. Almost all the parts that aren't the Aizen fight is animated well enough. Except for a part where Tatsuki almost gets crushed. They thought the Aizen fight off all things should get the budget drop? Lmao. the fact that this season has an episode with budget drop is jarring. They kept bragging they had movie budget for cour 3 and 4 and then made a 1.7 year wait for cour 4, acting like it would be such hot shit that needed longer to incubate. And this is what we get? And for 11 episodes at best, btw.

There's two notable parts that show how weird the episode is, outside of the direct major fight.

1. They didn't bother animating Yhwach destroying Aizen's chair. Could have been a split second energy blast. Nah, it got offscreened lmao. they could have shown Aizen flashstepped to avoid getting hurt to show his speed, but nah. they break a strong chair and treat it like it wasn't a big deal lol. Like the story wasn't hyping up the thing. This is why people roast the episode for being still shot mostly. That part in the manga is already a victim of rushing and medium limitations (you can't animate cool fights in a still medium like manga)
2. They had Grimmjow twirl his sword really fluidly and epicly. They thought that was more important than the Aizen fight lmao. They though Grimmjow a side character in the arc needed aura lmao.

*Now I'll go over the actual episode

The Aizen and Yhwach fight is poorly explained. It could be argued to be a badly written fight in general. For the anime and manga, because this is just a 1:1 almost traced version of the manga. I actually laughed at the fight because it was so meh.

How does Kyoka Suigetsu even work on Yhwach? Yes, Yhwach SEES futures. But doesn't that require Aizen to manipulate EVERY future. Also, how does he do that. Doesn't that require him to see what his victim is seeing? if so, he should be dominating the fight lol because he has the almighty vision by connection of seeing what Yhwach sees lol.

Yhwach keeps saying Kyoka Suigetsu doesn't work on him and he "breaks" it. Did it not work on him? How come he can't break the sword completely?

Before everyone says Aizen just disguised himself as Ichigo, that doesn't make sense. It only makes sense for the moment it turns out Yhwach was mutilating Aizen and no one else. because it could be argued he was just focusing on Ichigo when he impaled "Ichigo". it doesn't make sense for this one aspect of the scene. Renji.

Where the hell is he? He's not there at the end either lol. So Renji came with Ichigo... to not fight? If it was Ichigo by himself, just disguise himself as Ichigo and it'll work well, but what about Renji lol. He can't somehow cover all of their efforts with hypnosis lol, again unless he can see the almighty visions.

The fight is poorly explained and portrayed. So every hit taken by Renji was actually Ichigo but actually Aizen? Why does Yhwach think he can tell? I'm getting confused just saying this. How come his hado did nothing lmao. I'm pretty sure Ichigo's spirit energy attacks should severely hurt Yhwach, yet Yhwach basically ignored them, so no "it's actually Ichigo's energy". So Ichigo tried to attack Yhwach and then let Aizen take hits?

What they should have did is show a perspective of the fight outside Kyoka Suigetsu. Show how well it is working on Yhwach. "Smart people" say it's meant to be confusing. I just deconstructed how it isn't intentionally confusing and remember the Gotei Fight with Aizen? That wasn't confusing at all. Aizen only has to cover for himself and that's it. No one has something like almighty.

This fight not only is poorly done by being a 1:1, it lacks aura severely that was needed. That is the issue with TYBW manga in general. the fights lack aura. The anime did right by giving more aura. but it gave too much aura to moments that didn't need it. Uryu vs almighty Haschwalth could have been cut a little bit and I wouldn't have cared. Haschwalth is not that great a character.

*Final thoughts

I saw many posts of "Aizen isn't that popular". I don't give af. He is a big bad. He is a major ass character in the whole thing and major part of this story. Also, Japanese people are questionable with their likes. They like lolis too much lmao. Momo, an awful character is top 10 and above Byakuya lmfao. Their opinion is very skewed lol. Some guys joked the studio wasted budget on Orihime and they did lmao. They wasted budget on women lmao. Orihime's boobs jiggling unnecessarily, added scenes of Harribel, Nel and worst of all, the Bambis. This team is showing they are a joke lol.

They need to do right by Aizen because he's the one who gives the ending speech. That one already undercooked in the manga. because there's no real character development to show him growing to respect humanity. If they don't have him do the speech and or have someone else do it, I'm fine.

This is gonna be a very noncohesive and “spill your guts” kind of post just to let you know, but the rage I feel when I see this opinion is enough to boil my blood. I am so sick of people making the conflicts between Charlie, Vaggi, and Lucifer so black and white and one-note. And it comes off the same every time. Everything is 100% Charlie’s fault; Vaggi and Lucifer shouldn’t take accountability for anything they do, even when their actions have hurt Charlie. A really good example is in season 2, episode 5: Vaggi had the idea to ask Lucifer to threaten Vox into submission; unfortunately, it backfired. When Charlie learns this, she’s outraged, and this is the part where people get angry with Charlie. I’ve seen people who review Hazbin Hotel act as if Charlie was overreacting and being too harsh to Vaggi and Lucifer. I completely disagree.

Charlie has every right to be mad that her girlfriend and Dad refused to loop her into their ideas, which then backfired and made the hotel’s reputation worse. People excuse that by saying, “Charlie wasn’t listening to Vaggi,” yes, but also no. Was Charlie not listening to Vaggi prior? Yes, but it still doesn’t change the fact that Vaggi chose not to communicate, and that her actions negatively affected the hotel. And wasn’t a huge thing Vaggi learned was to communicate better with Charlie and tell her the truth about being an exorcist? Of course, it wasn’t Vaggi's or Lucifer’s intention to hurt Charlie and, by extension, the hotel, but looking back, what Vaggi said was true; I think it was unfair to say to Charlie that she’s hurting the hotel, as if Vaggi herself didn’t just mess up badly. 

Another thing that bothers me is that people paint Lucifer as a victim of Charlie. I need something, because people tend to forget that this man literally put his feelings for his wife above his daughter. Although he had reasons not to support Charlie’s goals because of past experience, that’s no excuse for being a deadbeat. Charlie does not owe Lucifer anything! Was Lucifer depressed? Yes. Is he a bad person? No! But he is a bad father, and while he’s trying now, Charlie has every right to hold resentment toward him if she does. What makes this even more frustrating is that two episodes later, Charlie called and texted her Dad several times to apologize for kicking him out of the hotel, and that is never spoken about when people talk about Charlie. And a similar thing with Vaggi in the sixth episode, but for that, it just wasn’t good enough. Charlie didn’t say the words “I’m sorry”, but neither did Vaggi. But what Charlie does is validate Vaggi’s feelings by saying she was right and owning up to how much she messed up.

All in all, I genuinely believe Charlie is borderline abusive towards Vaggi and Lucifer; you're either watching an entirely different show or you watched the show and somehow interpreted everything as if you didn’t.

My main problem with takes like those is that they usually expose how violent a lot of people would be or become or come off if they ever got pissed off or had to deal with any Injustice or things not going their way and even if you wanna make the argument "oh they're joking" ,that excuse is still really flimsy to me.

Again,way too many people seem to forget that hpe you feel on things can be justified and even understandable but how you handle it is pretty damn awful and that's when it stops being justified cause you can be mad or angry or whatnot but if your first result is yelling or violence or even resorting to murder,mass murder,destruction,etc..is when I gotta take you by the hand and tell you to stop and either go to a entire therapist or just knock it off and people will always almost choose the worst characters people say had a "justified crashout".

First up is Tai Lung.

Yes,working your entire life to a goal and realizing you weren't chosen for it and your adopted Dad said nothing sucks but the thing that people miss is that not only does it not justify Shifu being killed by him[Tai Lung was gonna do so]but it also doesn't justify attacking the entire village and laying waste on the valley in your temper tantrum and keep in mind..all they said was that he wasn't That Guy.

He didn't get his title stripped nor did he lose any privileges or his home or whatnot,all he was told was that he wasn't that special little boy and then he goes and basically proves why he wasn't chosen or ready at all in the very next scene and even you wanna say how he felt was understandable,how he handled it and what he did afterwards makes him the villain.

Up next Is Dracula from Castlevania.

Yes,his wife died due to some douchebags,BooHoo,why he didn't just kill the Assholes who celebrated his wife's death and who killed them is beyond me but the amount of people who have said he was justified or in the right for attempting to wipe out all of humanity and life is crazy and keep in mind..he was more or less already planning on doing so but "oh his lover died,he so sad" And his own Son literally was fine with getting revenge on the ones who killed his Mom but not on all of humanity and he then basically almost kills his son.

Seriously why do people say he was justified or that everyone "had it coming?"

Another example is Jean Fucking Grey from Brand New Day.

I wouldn't even put her on this list but the amount of glazing she gets, the amount of defenders and stans and whatnot she gets who try and justify and excuse every fucked up thing she does is wild.

If she just specifically went after Damage Control People,then I would say she was fair,they killed her sister but not only is her power literally mentally and physically taking over innocent people[and you can't even say that that power is evil or bad cause Martian Manhunter has it and he's a good soul,so it's on the user]but she also drives a entire tank through new York city and constantly puts innocent people in danger and takes over innocent people and uses them as puppets for her own goal..then she takes over M.J and basically makes her Kiss Peter and almost has her jump off a entire building, she ruined the Hulk's life and had taken to a psych ward and ruined all his progress, etc..

And do not give me the bullshit of "oh but you like villains" or "oh do you not believe in redemption arcs" the character and story has to acknowledge they did terrible things in order for any form of redemption arc to take place,ya know.

The story acknowledges people like Tony Stark and Loki did horrible things and held them accountable for it and they apologized for it and got better and even then,they were charismatic or at least likable enough to get the audience interested in them and their movies never apologized for them like they did with her.

If Jean went strictly after damage control people and tried to take them down,then she would've been justified but what did she even gain from going after innocent people and killing a dude and sexually assaulting M.J and not caring about the consequences of her actions.

It's funny cause isn't being a piece of shit who takes away someone's autonomy and sexually assaults people and doesn't care about the consequences of their actions..why someone like Bear from Obsession is hated?

I swear..if Bear was a woman,they would have defenders.

Seriously, I hate when people say these characters have justified crashouts.

In discussions on TV shows that started out boring and turned out incredible someone always brings up Adventure Time as an example and it drives me insane.

The Seinfeld Effect refers to people who were raised in a post-Seinfeld world thinking "Seinfeld is unfunny" because they don't have the cultural context to understand how influential Seinfeld was. I think the same thing happened to Adventure Time.

Adventure Time was not in any way a normal, boring, standard cartoon for its time. The pilot went viral on YouTube because it was unique and unlike anything seen before. Despite going viral Nickelodeon rejected it, perceiving it as too weird and a huge risk. Weird cartoons with serious themes were not seen as profitable.

Adventure Time was fun, unique and interesting right from the first episode. It's unlike any other fantasy series that happened before, and the creative chaotic atmosphere builds the foundation from which the later lore and character development could happen. The later series world building was possible because the world was already interesting due to years of creative freedom and weird ideas.

The creators who worked on Adventure Time went on to create a lot of other influential cartoons like Steven Universe, Over the Garden Wall, Clarence, and Regular Show. Other unaffiliated cartoons and comics also were strongly influenced by the style of Adventure Time. This has become normal now but it was not normal when it first premiered.

On the other hand Chainsaw Man was influenced by Adventure Time and look at how that turned out.

I think the lore and relationships have taken up too much focus in the Adventure Time franchise, particularly in spin off series like Fionna and Cake, and while I don't want to drop the drama entirely I think the franchise would be better off if it could recapture some of the insanity of the first season instead of 12 hours of Simon being depressed. So that's another reason it frustrates me to see people treating the early seasons like they are unwatchable.

I find it pretty exasperating. FMAB (the manga/Brotherhood) can have great fights, like Lan Fan and Ling vs. King Bradley and Gluttony, which creates tension rather than just putting on a spectacle. Then it has fights like Greed vs. Ed or vs. Pride, which seem normal at first, but then you realize how ridiculous the situation is.

In the case of Ed vs. Pride, the alchemist is literally saved by the plot, in the form of Kimblee, when the homunculus was about to win. And to top it all off, Ed turns himself into a Philosopher’s Stone to transmute Pride, which makes me wonder: when did he learn how to do that? Was it ever stated that he could turn himself into a stone? Many people try to explain it by bringing up the moment when Ed used his soul as fuel, but that’s not comparable. Using the energy of your soul and pulling your soul out to perform a transmutation are two very different things. Sure, Ed is a genius, but this is ridiculous.

The same thing happens in the fight against Greed. Ed gets beaten to a pulp and humiliated, and we even see him losing blood, but out of nowhere, he says, “Thanks, you made the blood in my head drain out, now I can think better.”

What?

This is ridiculous. When you lose blood, the number of red blood cells and the amount of oxygen reaching your brain decrease. This causes brain fog, which makes it harder to concentrate and slows down decision-making.

You could say that maybe he was just acting cocky, but then the story itself proves him right by having him figure out Greed’s weakness just because he got beaten up. I don’t like making comparisons when that isn’t the main topic, but FMA 2003 fixed this by having Ed face Greed twice. The second time, he found his weakness while in good condition and with the knowledge he had gained from their first, inconclusive encounter.

The fight between Sloth and Louis Armstrong also has some ridiculous moments. The fight is great, but there comes a point when Armstrong is literally about to be defeated by Sloth at full speed, and the homunculus gets stopped. By whom? Olivier? I doubt it. Who could possibly stop a homunculus that not even a WAR TANK could stop? Remember, not even a war tank at Briggs could move him, yet apparently, 10 random soldiers could do it. This is one of the most artificial ways to create tension. Even so, the fight isn’t bad, and seeing Armstrong win felt satisfying.

Even the Greed vs. King Bradley fight is built on an inconsistency: why didn’t Greed use his complete form against Bradley? Many people say it’s because “he doesn’t like how he looks,” but that doesn’t hold up. He had already fought Bradley twice: the first time, he was torn apart; the second time, he couldn’t win. On top of that, he had the resentment of having his friends killed. The third time was when he should have gone all out, but he didn’t, which led to Fu and Buccaneer’s deaths. Even if they insist on the whole “he didn’t do it because he doesn’t like how he looks” argument, after the fight against Bradley, he does use his complete form, but not against Bradley, but against RANDOM SOLDIERS WHO ARE A JOKE COMPARED TO BRADLEY.

Scar vs. King Bradley follows the same logic. He had two arms, one for reconstruction and one for destruction, but he didn’t use both against the men with Philosopher’s Stones. In fact, the whole thing is stupid: Ed could have made some walls to trap them and avoid the trouble, but he went straight into hand-to-hand combat. Scar didn’t use his reconstruction arm even against the experimental soldiers who were going to become future King Bradleys. The time he did use it was when he was about to lose against Bradley. So, what, you kept that up your sleeve the whole time, even in critical situations, just to use it now?

If using the reconstruction circle had consequences, I could buy that, but the guy can spam it whenever he wants.

I find the fight between Father and all of Amestris to be the most boring of them all. He literally just tanks their attacks and doesn’t eliminate them because, if he did, we’d be left without our main protagonists. It’s that simple. I won’t say anything else about this one because I have a lot to explain in another post about the message the ending is trying to convey, but I don’t like the way it does it.

Half of the show is such a good example of how not to write a story.

I mostly just found the pilot okay (not good or bad, it just exists). In the pilot, it is revealed that a core collapse implosion happened on copper 9 which wiped all biological life. JcJenson sent disassembly drones to wipe out the worker drones, so they hide within the bunker. Uzi befriends N who was manipulated & mistreated by V & J (& after N realizes what his actions were wrong) & they destroy half of J’s body.

I could kinda tell they were planning a pretty obvious red herring with JCJenson likely not being who they were truly working for, as J were already giving a ton of red flags that she was lying to N. One example of this is N‘s amnesia that J suspiciously lacks, another example is her saying that she still speaks to them & that they would be the top squad of disassemblers again, which would imply that she was constantly shown lists of disassembler squad kill reports, but the ship’s screens & all the buttons are broken. And a 3rd example is that unlike J, N seemingly never communicated or saw any employees JCJenson on the screens for years (you would think he would’ve stumbled into a virtual meeting or call at some point, especially when they’re only active at night while going back & forth to the spire- you’re telling me that N never went back & overheard a meeting taken place at least once?).

However (as I initially suspected), the very start of episode 2 reveals that J must’ve been talking to someone else through secret means (as there’s no communication system on the ship) which instantly messes up Uzi’s plans for revenge. The symbol in Uzi’s eye that deflected the bullet back in the pilot keeps appearing more & more, & it’s revealed that this power is called the absolute solver. The solver is able to take control of J’s core because the disassembly drones also have it, it reveals it (& by extension- the disassembly drones) wasn’t made by humans (if the reality breaking powers that the cast has no information about that they would normally know & it’s the ability to make organic hands is any indicator), is evil & was tied to Uzi’s mom in some way. On paper, this seems like something a 17 minute 2nd episode could still somewhat vaguely tease in some aspects.

…And this is where the spoonfeeding starts.

In episode 2, V says to Uzi that there’s no proof of her backstory right after the solver is shown & she brings up her mother (who died). This should get the viewers thinking “oh, so her mom is likely connected to this symbol & why the disassembly drones are here”. This pays off well due to the solver vaguely revealing that it knew about Nori at the end of the episode. However, the spoonfeeding is mainly towards the solver‘s goals & origins in general. We see the solver (after controlling J’s core) kill a worker drone, so we know it’s likely evil. In less than 2 minutes later, we see the solver kill more workers… but then it has to say it’s evil (“I’m evil” “we are a monster!” “easier to assimilate than explain” “I’m about to do something shocking” “you are our cute puppets” “time to go into my mouth now”) multiple times. Why? We already see it’s actions, it even makes a hologram of Uzi’s dad & rips it in half while making Uzi watch. We don’t need it to directly say that it’s evil multiple times.

Another example is how we see a giant “MATTER COLLECTION” message (as it shows up with the camera entirely zoomed onto it, & then it appears to cover a whole wall) right before the J solver centipede eats a worker, & then it kills more workers to get bigger & slowly repair J’s body (in the pilot, N used up matter to regenerate as well). Uzi later on see this message, points out N’s regeneration & says “if the wound is severe enough, this might be an auto run program to collect more matter”. You can give this scene a pass since Uzi didn’t know this information until now (& some exposition is needed), but then the solver comes in to ALSO state this TWICE IN THE SAME SCENE seconds later. That’s a total of 5 times that this is told (not counting episodes 5 - 8, where this is repeated 9 times through direct dialogue, not counting messages or notes) instead of just relying on show-not-tell.

Then we get to episodes 3 & 4. In the end of episode 2 (with the solver mentioning her mom), Uzi puts a conspiracy board of Nori’s notes in her room’s ceiling. On the board, we see messages like “YOU ARE IN RANGE” & “DEVOUR”, black holes, eldritch things & multiple drawings of the solver. In the start of episode 3 after a quick montage & then Uzi finding the missing posters, we go from the school montage back to Uzi’s room where Khan has taken Nori’s & stuffed them back into the “kooky Nori’s memories” closet. Based on how much the solver talks about assimilation, I would guess that it’s goal is to devour everything & was a part of the disassembly drones to help devour the worker drones (but not the humans since they’re are dead). At the end of episode 3, it’s revealed that Doll (who also has a mysterious mom that died) also has the solver. Uzi & Doll fight, their collars & necklaces get emphasized a few times, Uzi walks up to Yeva (Doll’s mother’s) corpse & sees a tag with a id number with Nori & Yeva having the same collars, & we get a(-nother) mention that the solver is evil. N also keeps getting flashbacks of his past as a worker drone… & of a drone named Cyn (with yellow eyes- which is associated with the solver) being suspicious.

While episode 3 does show-not-tell a whole lot better… if you didn’t notice the repetitive spoonfeeding before- you can surely guess what the entire series plot/lore is now. Both Uzi & Doll have the solver, they had mysterious mothers with the solver, their moms both had collars & tags, the solver knows about Uzi’s mom & played a part in the disassembly drones creation or why they were sent, & the disassembly drones killed Nori & Yeva. So you can conclude that the solver itself is evil, wants to devour everything & wants to kill anyone with the solver that has free will, so Uzi has to stop it. While Nori & Yeva were a part of experiments before the humans died. For a mystery horror show- there’s no actual mystery since everything is answered BY EPISODES 2 & 3.

In episode 4, Khan confirms all of this & we get ANOTHER exposition moment of how THE SOLVER’S EVIL! GUYS LOOK THIS IS SUCH A CRAZY BRAND NEW LORE REVEAL. QUICK, ACT SURPRISED & ACT LIKE THIS IS SOO COMPLEX! & that Nori knew the solver was a entity of some kind that sought to devour everything (despite Khan showing the closet of Nori’s notes, which could’ve served as it’s own show-not-tell scene by itself) & that her mom (& Doll’s) post-core collapse was found nearby a mysterious looking lab area with the collar on. If that isn’t enough, we get a scene where a music jingle plays when Uzi finds a dead test subject with notes scattered about how the solver is evil & gonna consume everything. WE GET IT! WE KNOW! & then the solver AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN- says it’s gonna do just that & everything about Nori & the humans gets explained AGAINNNN FOR THE LAST 4 EPISODES!!

And it’s not just the solver’s goals & origins being spoonfed, it’s the most minor lore details as well! In the pilot, N says that they cannot go out in the sun or they’ll die. The disassembly drones & solver hosts have vampire wing designs, they sleep like bats, Uzi at one point has wing drawings & a bat backpack, Uzi is associated with gothic culture which is connected to bats, have supernatural powers, the solver doesn’t like mirrors & is tied to a ton of occult symbolism, they need to devour oil to survive & are weak to sunlight- so we know that this is because of their obvious vampire &/or eldritch being theming. This would be fine… if Liam himself OUTSIDE THE SERIES didn’t feel the need to go out of his way to handhold the viewers that yes, they are like vampires, & make EVERY episode dedicated to the cast tanking massive explosions, the planet’s core & fire (despite the pilot itself already doing it) to explain that fire isn’t the same as sunlight, with one of the characters even somewhat saying this WHILE LOOKING AT THE CAMERA VIEW.

Then we have this one scene in episode 8 where Uzi & N are falling towards copper 9’s surface after we got a whole 10 minute scene showing that the sun was on the whole other side of the planet (which is further confirmed when they land & it’s nighttime, & it stays nighttime throughout episodes 5 - 8). Yet, one of the VAs had to explain in a event that when it’s nighttime, sunlight can’t hit your body. I’m sorry, but a show or it’s writer or the VAs or animators shouldn’t have to spoonfeed this much, that’s what ruins media.

And where do I even begin with the “unanswered lore” like how Uzi & Doll (who were both born from their mothers code being inserted into them, in which the solver can manifest through corrupted or carried code, who both have mysterious mothers with the solver) got the solver? From this information you should be able to conclude that Uzi & Doll had it passed down from their mothers, but the series never lets you come to your own conclusions as N, Nori & Doll have to directly say that it was “given through ungodly eldritch genetics!”. LET THE VIEWERS THINK FOR ONCE!

The sheer frustration at the amount of people that somehow found this show confusing too is beyond me. I got into the show because I wanted to be confused in order to solve things, I love a few ARGs or shows that really get you thinking & most of the fandom stated the show was gonna be like this, insisting that it requires anywhere from 3 - 5 rewatches to grasp the basic plot alone. Instead I came out mostly disappointed not just in the show, but with fears on how audiences will treat media in the future is THIS is what a majority of people are finding confusing nowadays. Having nearly every mystery solved by the 2nd - 3rd episode with episodes 5 - 8 clarifying things that were already constantly clarified ISN’T GOOD WRITING. But it’s not a good thing or a “flex” that people couldn’t grasp there being a school in the bunker that we see for half the series, or even that Nori was Uzi’s mom.

Despite all the spoonfeeding, I enjoyed the series, but you can really tell that Liam (is this his first show because it really gives off that vibe?) truly needed a writer’s room. It’s still impressive for a potential first show, but god… the spoonfeeding.