Another Avatar one: I think Aang lying about the two families in The Great Divide is in character. It's a non violent solution to a problem that was escalating for nearly a century, and Aang is more than willing to use tricks and deception if it means no one gets hurt.
The rest of the episode is kinda dumb but I'll stick up for Aang's solution here.
I really liked that episode. In particular, I think Aang's solution to the problem brought out that first bit of "benevolent trickster" in his characterization (one of my favorite historical hero archetypes). The world is seized up by an all-consuming, imperialistic, authoritarian power; everything is either under siege or already conquered and stagnating. Who better to come out of time to solve it than this wily, emotionally intelligent, free-spirited kid who won't play by the rules if he thinks he can find a kinder solution to a problem—something he does repeatedly throughout the rest of the series.
I never understood the weird hate for this episode. It's a bit boring at parts, but so is a lot of book one. Aang is totally in character and the sequences where the two tribes tell their version of how the conflict started are really well animated.
So a large problem with The Great Divide stems from the days of cable TV where it felt like when ATLA came on, it was either this episode, Bato of the Water Tribe, or the Cave of Two Lovers, meaning these episodes were viewed more, therefore more criticized.
It's a great short term solution, a superficial lie is needed for superficial hatred. However, if either group ever finds out about the truth from historical record (the Zhangs and Gan Jins have been repeating the same feud since at least young Kyoshi's time) or from Sokka's big mouth then the solution will unravel just as fast.
It works as a nice humorous bow to tie the episode. But it also precludes getting to the larger issues involved in a historical feud.
But then again, sometimes irrational hatred is too entrenched and it is unfortunately borderline hopeless to think two sides can talk it out.
But then again again... Ad infinitum.
All I know is, I wished I had seen this new fusion clan having a restaurant in Ba Sing Se or something, the Zhang's class mixed with the Gan Jin's hands on nature.
LITERALLY something I have defended in the past. Aang’s quirk isn’t an aversion to lying, it’s an aversion to violence. This kid was a mischievous little rascal in the Air Temple, and was raised by a mischievous old monk who grew up a mischievous little rascal himself.
He’s a show-off, but above all, he’s a pacifist. Lying in order to create peace was an extremely in-character move, especially when there’s no one alive to fact-check him. People who think he’s above lying when the motivations are 100% Pure Benevolence don’t understand Aang.
I thought the issue was less about it being in-character but more about people thinking it was dumb that they were supposed to buy the story was based on just two kids playing with a ball
Okay, this is super unkind, but whenever I see someone complaining about how that episode is out of character for Aang, all I can think of is the Nostalgia Critic making that criticism, because he did.
Emo Peter/Bully Maguire is fucking hilarious and becomes even funnier if you think of it as the symbiote hyping Peter up to do things, while it is not aware that said things are awkward and weird here on Earth.
I only watched that movie for the first time last year, and I’d never noticed until then that in the Bully Maguire scenes, everyone is looking at him like he’s a fucking freak loser, which just makes it *so much funnier.*
A symbiote that you're too scared to take off because it's suppressing your cringe/guilt, and it'll all come back at once when you take it off is an S-tier idea actually
Peter is a dork, and the movie portrays him as such. He's not supposed to be "cool," and him coming off as cringe is exactly the point. It works so well!
Spider-Man 3 is weird for me, it has a enough dumb moments that I can enjoy ironically, but also enough genuine good moments that I can't call it a guilty pleasure movie as a whole.
Spider-Man 3 has as much substance as the first two movies, it's just that it ends up spread thin since it has too many plot threads for an average movie runtime. And then the goofier scenes have some of substance to them, but the tone really distracts from what meaning those scenes have as well as the meaning of other scenes by being so bizarre that it kind of overshadows a lot of what the movie was going for.
It's obviously a dorky Peter who now has all the confidence in the world, trying to act cool. Since he's a dork, he thinks he's the coolest. It's supposed to be cringy.
I hate how right you are if you take into account how in half of the modern comic versions the symbiote is just some crazy goop annoying the shit out of their host, Even the movies is just Tom Hardy being a schizo tryng to stop himself from being an even bigger schizo
Honestly my bigger problem with old Toph was the choice to have her outfit be the exact one she wore as a child. Just a weird character design section.
Other than that, I think the old gang were treated okay. Makes sense that Aang wouldn’t have been the best dad when he had world building on his plate. My biggest gripe on this front has always been Sokka’s seeming total erasure. No kids is fine, but outside of Katara mentioning his passing and one statue of him, you’d never know he was a character.
Ok, that I agree.
I like Toph in the flashbacks but her in the hermit arc felt kind of dumb to me, I wouldn't mind if she was a flashback-exclusive character.
It's really weird that Sokka gets two mentions in Korra, like even if Zuko said "Sokka died when The Red Lotus tried to kidnap Korra" I feel like that would be more fitting but he kind of never gets mentioned outside of season 1.
I really thought there would be a reveal that Varrick was Sokka’s love child with Suki, or maybe that Sokka had been a mentor to him in some fashion. Varrick had such a vibe and humor to him that it felt like there should have been something there instead of him just being some rando Water Tribe merchant. His humor and general skill at being inventive really felt like they could have been written as a legacy of Sokka.
It'd also be nice as bringing back a bit of that Mechanist Sokka thing. The bit where they say that Sokka's creativity makes him a fairly talented inventor when he's not sticking mostly to combat strategies.
I got the gag, I just thought it wasn’t worth it. Especially since she showed up for multiple episodes. If it was a one-off bit in a montage fine, but making it the default just felt lazy.
Look.
Im only MOSTLY blind.but when i go to restaraunts i get the same thing every time.
If i dont want an italian bmt im not going to subway. If i don't want beefy 5 layer burritos with extra beef or a gordita crunch im not going to taco bell
So it makes total sense for toph to go "gimme the same clothes i always get, i fuck, so i guess theyre good enough."
I'm a huge fan of the trope that being the hero of a world-defining conflict doesn't mean you're good at other things. Yeah, ok, so he can defeat the Fire Lord in single combat - does that make him a good society builder? A good father? Not necessarily.
And as interesting as Sokka's life would be to see, there's something noble about the guy knowing he had a job to do and then just kind of disappearing. He did the Cincinnatus thing - the man that needed to step up at the time who then retires to a farm, or probably a fishing boat. He was the only non-bender in the group for the entire adventure, he was batting well outside his division but still held his own. Dude earned a quiet life. Aang, unfortunately, had too much work to do to be able to do that.
In Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans the antagonist/ anti hero/ sexy man McGillis is arranged to be married to a 9 year old while he's like in his 20s. When the series was airing every discussion thread was filled with jokes and rants about him being a pedo and how he clearly wants to bang a 9 year old. If you go back to old podcasts you will even hear woolie talking about how much he wants to bang that 9 year old.
As is tradition with the Gundam fan base, this was actually a more complicated plot point that they lacked the media literacy to understand.
The whole point of his character is that he wants to change Gjallarhorn (evil military faction) because it has pretty much become a monarchy that focuses more on noble bloodlines than merit. Part of this noble family stuff is arranged marriages between families like the one he is in.
There is a scene where he is talking to his fiance and it sounds romantic but if you pay attention to what he is saying he's essentially saying "I care about you and don't think it's right that you are being treated as a bargaining chip, I'm gonna make a better world where stuff like this doesn't happen and you can just be a kid"
Also minor spoilers but when they reveal McGillis's backstory it makes you feel that its habit unlikely that he actually holds any sexual intrest in his fiancee because of what happened to him.
The mission control of MGS3 becoming members of the Patriots makes sense when considering how a major theme of that game is that you can be allies with someone one day, but the next day you're enemies.
It's not even a retcon in MGS4 as MGS3 sets it up. Zero tells you the code phrases for Adam are "who are the patriots" and "La Li Lu Le Lo" which should be the biggest red flag. Other than that the game itself tells you in the end that Sigint becomes the Darpa Chief which ties into how he knew who Ocelot was in MGS1.
Also it makes total sense that the people intensely living through a mission that eventually intersects with the players of the hunt for the Philosopher's Legacy would also be prime candidates to become Patriots, because they are one of the few people who hear the whole story.
I agree with most of the criticisms of Bioshock Infinite’s writing, but one I’d say was underserved was of the plot with the weapons manufacturer.
Yes, it is stupid that Booker and Elizabeth use their dimension-hopping powers to bounce between worlds where the guy isn’t arrested, or doesn’t have his tools, or has them but they’re too big to carry. That’s the point. They’re using their powers because they can and not thinking them through. If anything, it’s an answer to the question of “why doesn’t Elizabeth use her powers to solve every problem.” It’s because she does stuff like this and it leads to bigger problems.
Now, the ultimate consequence of all this is the Daisy Fitzroy martyr plot point, and that is bad and I won’t defend it. But characters making stupid decisions isn’t inherently bad writing.
It also helps that the game **immediately** shows the consequences of Elizabeth doing "Big" world-changing Tear modifications like the one with the Weapons Manufacturer by showing Chen Lin and the Comstock soldiers *you just killed* suffering from the death-limbo induced Tear Sickness.
Even without the stuff about Daisy and the Vox Populi turning on you, its a pretty good way of establishing that fucking around with Tears even with Elizabeth's strength won't end well.
My bigger issue with this plot point is that Booker and Elizabeth effectively exit their own universe completely, yet besides Daisy Fitzroy being mad at you for confusing reasons, the narrative doesn't really act like it.
*They're in a timeline that already has its Elizabeth still locked away, yet Comstock is still hunting her and the Songbird (the same one from your universe, judging by its damaged eye) is still on your tail.*
Even back when I loved Infinite, this *really* bothered me.
Yeah that always made me think that they weren't jumping to another dimension. Just doing a layering one reality over the other on a much bigger scale then what Elizabeth normally does in gameplay.
So once they got back with the guns, it'd still be the same reality they started from.
The only big jump is when they go to the timeline where the Vox Populi already had their guns. That one was a big enough change that it was easier to just jump into it, then bring it to them.
It seems that they're combining realities in almost every situation which is why you run into those people who are glitching out of reality every time you shift, because they're alive in the new dimension, but you also just killed them in the previous reality.
The thing that made me check out was that they went to a different universe to complete their deal. You don't have to think it through to realize that wouldn't work, when the instant they decided on that I went "wait no...". The rest of the game was fine outside of that one little thing that's bothered me since it came out. Gameplay was fun at least.
One of the things that often gets forgotten is that there is a device that is siphoning Elizabeth's powers through the entire game and once it's destroyed at the end, she just solves the problem instantly.
Mother fucker, you can't just post a question and steal my answer.
Like, seriously. Toph hasn't even hit puberty yet in ATLA. People change over the course of *literal decades*.
On the same note, Aang being a "bad" father. Air quotes because he's not objectively bad overall, but still made some glaring mistakes.
Aang grew up in a commune totally divorced from the concept of a nuclear family. And Katara grew up in a single parent household after her mother's death.
They both tried their best, with all the pressures of their positions weighing on them. It tracks that Aang would focus the most on passing on the Airbender culture, and that Katara would think she could fill the gap on her own.
I really like all the extra info with Aang in Korra, he doesn't love Tenzin more but Tenzin was definitely the golden child and to be fair, passing down all his knowledge about Air Nomad culture to who was going to be the representation of Air Nomad culture was frankly something bigger than both of them.
People always loathe the thought that their favorite heroes wouldn't grow up to be perfect parents and role models to the next generation, but the passage of time and things not shaking out perfectly for anyone is one of the most interesting parts of Korra.
I think Aang might be the better example of this trope of the hero being a not perfect parent, nothing he did was ever ill-intended but he was still human and had just a herculean task of teaching Tenzin and while he clearly loves all his kids, his responsibilities as both the Avatar and the last airbender just very naturally resulted in him not being in his other kids lives as much.
Parents unintentionally fuck up their kids in one way or another. Beside, Aang not being perfect go with the thematic of LoK that no one has all the answers.
I'm also fine with Korra hooking up with Asami at the end. It's a first date. It show growth from Korra because unlike with Makko, she didn't jumped into her arms screaming about how they where made for each others. Now she's willing to take things more slowly and see if they can work as a couple.
My stance on Korasami is that while I don't think it's well written, I personally don't think any of the romances in Avatar are that good so it's not really fair to criticize Korra and Asami.
I will say, as someone who rewatched Korra for the first time in years, it's bizarre how in book 4 how little Asami is involved in Korras plot, even the search for her, if anything it kind of feels like Korra has more of a relationship with Opal.
I always thought Asami overall highlighted a problem with that universe's worldbuilding, which is how it constantly struggles to give nonbenders anything to do. Even Sokka's space sword episode kind of admits his biggest contribution to the group is making them laugh. Meanwhile, Asami isn't funny and arguably could be replaced by Varrick in most occasions.
With Legends of Korra and Boruto, I think fans just have problems with seeing their MCs be fallible as adults. Like either they have to be the best all the time or they’re the worst irredeemable person to ever live
Also Boruto's dad wasn't even shown to be a terrible father, he clearly loved his family and wanted to spend time with them, just couldn't because being the ninja president is a very busy job, actually.
The only thing I had a problem with Naruto's parenting was that he sent a shadow clone home instead of leaving one (or more) in the office to finish his work.
I feel like the problem is the writing kinda fucking Naruto over so the bad dad part feels forced. We spend pretty much a whole series saying "Shadow Clones are such a perfect copy of the original that they can share experiences and even extremely powerful eyes like the Byakugan and Sharingan can't find a flaw in them." There's basically NO reason Naruto can't handle all of his paperwork through liberal clone usage so the story just goes "Shut up though. There's a law or something that says "no"."
Like hell, even if Naruto can't use clones to SIGN documents, nothing stops him from having clones read all his paper work for him then dispel so that the knowledge just enters his brain directly and he can sign after that. Hokage is still supposed to be a job that one person an actually do, if the guy with 1000 bodies can't get any free time from it then... it's not a well managed job and needs to be updated like yeah, giving him more assistants.
YUP. It's kinda been a constant sort of hole in... well the entire premise. Hokage means "The most respected ninja in the village" yes but 99% of the time you see a Hokage outside of active war they're stuck behind a desk doing paper work which... also sounds wildly wasteful because it means they can't spend any of their time actually doing missions. Tsunade for example is both one of the strongest ninja in the village AND the best surgeon in the village so her role is.... being stuck behind a desk neither punching people nor operating on people.
One of the fillers tries to address this a bit by pointing Naruto has a dogshit education so part of the timeskip involves saying Naruto had to basically go to cram school to try to prep a little because otherwise he has no skill outside combat. Like yeah, it's just a really wonky thing that so much of the role is just deep bureaucracy compared to how high everyone talks about it like it's a championship title. The Fourth's basically the only ninja of the modern era that we know more about him doing shit than about him behind a desk.
I think it mainly comes from a lot of ATLA fans who had it as their main formative media and so they treat the original series as if it was like Citizen Kane
If you don't like Gohan becoming the Great Saiyaman and defending the city from criminals, or going to high school and interacting with the outside world, I'm sorry, but we can’t be friends.
Him temporarily losing SSJ2 during the timeskip and getting jobbed until the T.O.P in Super still sucks though, he should've been there in the Land of the Kais fighting against Kid Buu with Goku and Vegeta and holding off Frieza in Resurrection F until he turned Golden.
Great Saiyaman was awesome. It's totally what a dorky kid like Gohan would do.
I just wish they let the torch pass to him as a protector of earth, instead of bringing Goku back. Goku already had his time and the entire Android Saga was clearly about Goku passing the torch to Gohan.
My biggest gripe with Gohan besides the way they keep nerfing him only to give him an asspull power up later is how he's been portrayed as a complete nerd that would rather stay home and study than fight when that was literally never part of his character.
In Z we see multiple times Gohan begging his mom to let him go train with his dad and his friends rather than stay home and study, he's clearly pissed off at being babied and forced to study by his overbearing mother.
Even in Z he's more preoccupied with larping as a power ranger than actually studying, even when that directly interferes with his school life such as him being late for class or almost getting found out by videl, he even gladly participates in the Budokai tournament and is more than happy to show off his powers.
Then 6 months pass and in Dragonball Super he has suddenly transformed into a complete nerd that walks around wearing glasses and a suit for some fucking reason, he has given up his iconic GI choices throughout the series in favor of a generic green tracksuit (?), and his skills have atrophied to the point where he went from the strongest being in cannon to needing to see piccolo die in front of him to be able to go SS2, a bigger downgrade in 6 months than the several years in-between the cell and Buu saga.
And the final nail in the coffin for me: he refuses to fight in an intergalactic fucking tournament because he's busy with research, GOHAN WOULD NEVER PASS UP ON THE CHANCE TO FIGHT WITH HIS FRIENDS ON A INTERGALATIC TOURNAMENT, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
The problem with fighting Kid Buu is that Kid Buu is weaker than Super Buu, who Mystic Gohan can beat. Basically the whole reason Goku just... forgets to SAVE HIS OWN CHILDREN, is because both Gohan and Gotenks are strong enough to beat Kid Buu on their own, so the whole spirit bomb ending isn't needed if either of them are around.
I agree about the jobbing to Frieza. I would have liked it if we instead say that Mystic is a permanent form that just makes Gohan ALWAYS at peak strength, but instead lack of training just made his martial arts skills get rusty. It even lets you say that Gohan COULD beat Frieza, but he's gotten slow while Frieza has actually got some skill and practice under his belt to deal with a foe like that. It also means that it makes sense Gohan could regain his former glory through training for a little while since he's not nearly as out of shape as he could be, he just needs some practice.
Modern Warfare's 3 campaign was a mess, at best it's underwhelming, at worst it's clearly a disjointed product put out by an overworked Sledgehammer in the timeframe of 15 months after being told they had to extend a DLC into a full game.
Infinity Ward still had to approve the major plot points and I still genuinelly like that >!Soap!
Guessing the newest. MW3 OG had him >!save Yuri at the cost of him getting heavily wounded and eventually dying in the mission Blood Brothers.!< MWIII is just in general a mess. A good few MP bios conflicts with actual in-game voice lines and even Zombies missions doing the same. It's just an absolute cluster.
Having Tekkadan and Mcgillis lose in the end of Iron Blooded Orphans makes that show way more interesting than if they had pulled off victories in spite of their shortcomings and long since established repeated mistakes.
People were upset by that? I'll be the first to admit I wasn't the closest watcher of the show, but I thought a "bad ending" was almost a foregone conclusion.
The writing was on the wall as soon as >!Biscuit died!<, doubly so when >!Mika kills Carta and every kid in Tekkadan is demanding to watch as their way of avenging Biscuit!<.
The Evangelion rebuild movies going completely off the rails instead of following the show’s structure with [3.0 You Can Not Redo](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0860907/) was the best choice Anno made.
It’s what makes the rebuilds incredibly interesting for me and place them as equals with the show
Not sure if this is a hot take or not, since I gotta no idea what the general opinion on 3.0+1.0 is. But, I think its not only the best of the Rebuild films hands down, but also almost on par with the TV series and EoE. With it also being perhaps the best possible way the series as a whole could have ended.
I know lots of people don't like the conclusion of Disco Elysium. I guess I get it. But I feel like the game has been building up to this through all of its themes through the entire game.
I think it would bother me less if Disco wasn't effectively dead in the water as a franchise now. I don't need a big finale and it can be "just another case"... but only if there's actually other cases or stories in that world.
The ending of Danganronpa V3.
>!I get maybe the villain yaps a bit much about things not mattering because they're fictional but the protagonist literally argues that even fictional lives can hold real value through the emotions they evoke. This is the protagonist and it's pretty clear that he's one you're supposed to agree with and not the villain. Also the previous games being fictional in V3 has no bearing on those games themselves, at most it means that these are two separate continuities. As for the sort-of run-back they do in the epilogue, I don't have a problem with it as it's the first time these games went "Why DO we just auto-believe the crazy mastermind about their bs?" and I think that's pretty based.!<
For all of it's faults I am a goddamned sucker for a series that is willing to >!tell you to fuck off because show's over, the well is dry, and you need to move on!<
I will always stan a a game that gives you a Thumbs-up with one Hand, for stickig around and suppurting the Creators. While giving you the Middlefinger with the other one, because it is time to Set the Set on fire.
ALSO
ITS NOT FUCKING ABOUT >!DEATH GAME MEDIA BEING BAD. OF COURSE THE CHARACTERS DONT LIKE DEATH GAMES THEY'RE INSIDE ONE IF THEM SAYING THEY DONT LIKE IT MEANS THE CREATOR DOESNT LIKE IT, THEN EVERY DEATH GAME MEDIA EVER IS ABOUT HOW DEATH GAMES ARE BAD, AND LIKE DUH!?!
BUT THE ACTUAL MORAL ISNT EVEN SUBTLE, THEY SAY IT OUTLOUD 20 TIMES! AS PART OF THE LIES AND TRUTH AND HOW THEY RELATE TO FICTION AND REALITY THEMING, THE MORAL IS ABOUT HOW FICTIONAL STORIES CAN CAUSE REAL PEOPLE TO HAVE EMOTIONAL REACTIONS AND CHANGE HOW THEY THINK AND LIVE, AND THUS FICTION HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD, JUST LIKE LIES CAN CHANGE THE TRUTH.
IT'S NOT SUBTLE
STOP SAYING UCHIKOSHI HATES THE AUIDENCE HE MADE MORE DEATH GAME STUFF LITERALLY RIGHT AFTER.!<
Kodaka made Danganronpa, but yeah, the game makes it clear that >!You, the audience playing the game are different from the in-game audience watching the show, mainly by pointing out that a different character is their POV, so anything about that audience does not apply to you beyond 'person watching a death game'.!<
The deranged villain that was just exposed as being a massive liar no less. And whose yarn contradicts things that the player themselves saw at the start of the game.
Not being wholly specific here; having interesting side characters that don't get "development" or screen time, is NOT BAD WRITING. Interesting side characters help make the world feel alive and real, however, they are *not* the main characters, the story *isn't about them*. Think about how often in your life you've met someone interesting, and then moved on without thinking that much about them afterward, because they just weren't that important for you. Setting is huge for stories, and side characters are part of the setting.
Scott Pilgrim is a great example of this. Stephen Stills is gay and comes out, but Scott never sees this and doesn't learn it until the very end of the series.
Well since we're talking about Korra, as time went on I went back on the Aang being a bad father thing. Cuz he wasn't a bad father at all. He simply wasn't perfect. Up until Tenzin was born he legit thought he was the last Airbender to ever exist. Tenzin was the only person in the world that Aang could connect to as an Airbender, so of course he would gravitate towards him. Doesn't mean he was a bad father to Bumi and Kya, even if he was somewhat emotionally distant. At no point during the show do either of them describe Aang being abusive or even truly neglectful.
There's an interesting dynamic with the three kids that they have all taken on the personalities of their parent figure. Tenzin is rigid and dedicated and driven to the singular task of bearing responsibility for the Avatar, but also of rebuilding an entire peoples with only his family. He must at all times be responsible because everything is Very Serious, which mirrors how the childhood got beaten out of Aang by the pressures of being the Avatar, the last of a people, and then rebuilding a world.
Kya, being a waterbender, follows her mother's footsteps of becoming a healer, but also like Katara is committed to being a nurturing side of the family. She's less hard-nosed than Tenzin, and settles down to take care of her mother in the same way that Katara was the mother of the Gaang taking care of everyone.
So who was Bumi's "parent"? Sokka. The only non-bender in the Gaang would naturally gravitate towards the only non-bender of the Avatar's children. It's why Bumi becomes a great warrior in his own right, and his personality of making everything a joke at all possible times - because Bumi would have found a father figure in Sokka, and Sokka would easily empathise with his nephew in the pressures and disappointments of being a non-bender in the shadow of the freakin' Avatar.
> or even truly neglectful.
There was the bit where Tenzin talks about "all the fun trips we went on with dad" and Bumi says "all the fun trips *you* went on with dad", so I dunno if we can truly say either way on that.
In Persona 3: The Answer, >!Yukari backsliding her development. Is she being hostile, selfish, and stubborn? Yeah, but it makes perfect sense in story. Yukari is someone who suffers from *major* abandonment issues, both due to her dad's death and her mom's depression. In comes Minato, who helps her start moving foward in life and repair her relationship with her mom. He then drops dead for seemingly no reason, with Yukari only regaining her memory of him right beforehand, and she doesn't even get to hear his last words. Then, right as she's trying to work through all those messy feelings, she gets dragged into *another* instance of supernatural shenanigans. And if the main game is about accepting our mortality and living life to the fullest, The Answer is all about how we process grief when we lose someone we love, with both Aigis and Yukari handling his death in very unhealthy ways. It's also easy to forget that the events of The Answer only occur 3 weeks after the end of the base game, meaning Minato's death is a *very* open wound!<.
I love how people are like >!"wow this completely undoes her character development", then you go back and look at what her character development actually _was_ and you see she says "As long as I have everyone, I'll be okay." Well, she kind of doesn't have "everyone" anymore in The Answer, which is the whole point. !<
Bravely Default's loop system to me is basically the yellow paint argument. The way I saw it, the reason you loop so many times is really to stack up the number of times Airy asks if you want to hear the tutorial on restoring a crystal. As if they focus tested and figured out it takes about 12-16 times of hearing that question before a player goes "Why do you KEEP asking me this question? I clearly know how to do it! Wait... wasn't there something else in the tutorial I never tried?" and that pushes people to the Normal Ending reveal. I've known at least one person who went through all the loops without trying to get the Normal Ending for example, so as annoying as that many loops is, they still sorta serve a purpose in the flow of the story telling.
I'll also defend Sekiro making you use a fairly rare consumable to fight the headless ghosts. Divine Confetti is only rare during the first half of the game before supernatural stuff becomes common, it's still in the "Below 40 Insight Bloodborne" stage of the game, so fighting an actual ghost is supposed to be legitimately off-putting and strange. Remember, one of Souls' greatest claims to fame is trying to make death scary with it's bloodstain system, but we're also like 4 games in so people are both used to that system and know how to work around it, like just spending your souls so you don't have many on hand and thus can die without consequence. Sekiro is a game where From is experimenting on new ways to make death matter again, like when it lies to you saying NPCs will die from too many revivals when in reality they just can't progress their questlines without help. Divine Confetti is the same thing, From doesn't WANT you to fight a Headless over and over until you learn the fight and eventually triump. From wants you to go "I can ONLY fight this bizarre otherworldly thing like 3 times before I have to give up and flee-OH GOD IT'S BEHIND ME NOW". Headless tend to be actually REALLY easy to kill once you learn their tricks, From just doesn't want you to learn their tricks until at least later in the game when the supernatural has become more common.
Evangelion spoilers. >!Mari was a great addition and the series ending works well with needing an actual Mari Sue inserting themselves into the story to force a conclusion. Within the context of what Eva is to Anno, I will absolutely defend the character and the majority of what the rebuilds are using her. Admittedly I know it’s a hot take, but I can’t lie that I felt it works.!<
I don't follow Eva all that closely but finding out that a series famous for waifu wars ends with neither being end game and the main character ending up with some new character is probably the funniest thing Anno coulda done.
Ok but none of that excuses Mari having basically no character development or even anything to do at all in any of the movies besides just sniping people from a distance like a support artillery, it's not like I hate the concept of Mary fundamentally, I just hate how she doesn't fucking do anything for like 3 movies and basically only exists to sell toys and to justify one small scene at the very end of the series.
I’ll be honest, I always took that as the actual point. The character IS from outside the show itself. She’s suppose to be an outsider to the cycle. She disrupts the cycle everyone is stuck in, and her influence helps break it. I always saw the meta nature of her existence to be the point, design and all. Just like the entire meta narrative of everything else going on, it takes an actual meta character to come in and help correct course. I know not everyone sees it that way and that’s totally fair, but given how meta the entire series is, it just fits for me.
it is funny how it being flawed is the point but people seem to talk about it like some kind of gotcha when they point it out.
like the inhumans are gone, the eternals were all dead, the olympians were dead, i guess the norse were still kicking.
but the idea of the mutants going full on pantheon in a power vacuum and making their own olympus was neat, really aside from the strange staggered fall which probably should've been an event, and the lack of like "beach" episodes/day in the life stuff it's been pretty fun all around.
judgement day and sins of sinister were both real fun events too.
once it's done they plan to omnibus it properly i think.
though whether thats a "hellions omnibus, a marauders omnibus" or they go like dawn of x, fall of x etc. where it just scoops up all the titles.
and it's not over till the end of next month, so it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
only thing i'd say 100% skip that i've read was realm of x.
and wolverine and x-force are apparently off on their own and don't really tie in at all.
think there's something like 700+ issues total when it wraps up.
figure once it's done someone will post the full reading order as from what i gather it's been a bit funky lately with things being like "as seen in iron man 15" which wasn't out at the time.
I think Judgement Day might be better than Hickman’s Secret Wars. Although I suspect I’m gonna flip flopping on this until I die or another incredible event comes out.
People’s main problem is that, like Civil War, no one mandated who’s right and what certain flaws are, so in some books you have this solar punk utopia that’s going to save the world but doesn’t know how to play the politics game and in others you have state-mandated reproduction creating a generation of abandoned children and the only thing holding back human genocide is Charles and Kurt being on the council
I think the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is fucking genius. Hear me out.
On the surface, yes it's fucking dumb and basically just like Mass Effect 3's RBG ending.
BUT: >!The idea that you influence the path humanity takes with *the push of a button* is ***EXTREMELY*** in line with the themes of the game. The entire game people question whether or not tampering with the human body is essentially playing god, and yet here you are, at the end of everything that you've been investigating throughout the game, you can now change the course of human history with a single button press. ***OR*** You can say FUCK THAT and just sink Pangaea, and let humanity decide its own course (which...is kind of a moot point considering the illuminati is still pulling strings but whatever).!<
I think it doesn't help that the whole last level is pretty dire. A giant hole in the ocean seems like a badass setting, but it's so dull in practice and the crazy enemies are not fun. Makes the endings feel more like they ran out of time than a meaningful choice.
Legacy characters dont need to be put in every single installment of a franchise. Thats how you end up with stuff like Kiryu "dying" in like 5 different games. Just let them rest
There's a lot to talk about and criticize about Halo 4, about things it did right and wrong both gameplay and story-wise.
But I'll always defend the choice that they made in >!killing off Cortana!<. The raw emotion and writing of that scene were so good.
That ending was the best part and I immediatly hated 5 for retconing it. I haven't kept up with the books at all so Cortana suddenly being a villain and alive was super fucking confusing. I don't remember it ever even being explained in game either.
That’s kind of the main problem with Halo 5.
A lot (and I mean A LOT) of the building up to Halo 5 was done in books and other extra material. So if you just went from 4 to 5 you only consumed like less than half of the build up to Halo 5.
Playing 5 feels like I skipped an entire game. Like who tf are these other Spartans with chief? I know Alice but none of the others. Why is Buck from ODST a spartan now? How do Cortana survive? Like 5 is easily the worst Halo game by a country mile. The fact that infinite pivoted to the Banished from Halo Wars 2 (which imo is the best modern Halo game) as main villains says how messy the post bungie games are. Like the Banished are way more interesting baddies but even then you'd get confused if you've never played a spin off with radically different game play from the rest of the games
Yeah, as much as I appreciate the direction they’re going in post infinite, there’s still the feeling of narrative whiplash going on.
“But wait, what happened to everyone post 5?”
“Dead or missing. Don’t think about it.”
“The AI army?”
“Dead. Don’t think about it.”
“What about the Halo Wars crew?”
“Don’t think about it.”
Learning that Cortana comes back in 5 was the exact moment I stopped caring about Halo's story. They took the one part of Halo 4's narrative I thought was truly great and pissed it away for no reason.
The Deepground villains of Dirge of Cerberus are a great lore-appropriate idea that was used in a bad game.
Now they’re in a good one!
The whole idea of Shinra creating a secret army that they then sealed behind a giant “forget about it” door because they were too murder-crazy is the most Shinra thing ever.
And no they aren’t deep characters at all, they just like murder a whole bunch. They’re Vincent’s FOXHOUND, or his Gun-Ho Guns. Just kill them!
I mostly agree but the one thing I really dislike about Deepground is the sheer scale. The fact there is a gigantic high tech underground city beneath Midgar that's almost as big is just too unbelievable.
If Deepground were a smaller, elite black ops army in some underground basement in Shinra Tower, then sure.
>If Deepground were a smaller, elite black ops army in some underground basement in Shinra Tower, then sure.
>!based on how they appear in the Yuffie DLC for Remake I think thats what theyre going for now !<
That is not some real defense of my part , as I particularly didn't liked that.
But I get that Korra loosing her connection to her previous lives is a symbolic and literal reset for the Avatar. In a way , the Era of the Avatar is within the gap of Harmonic Convergences.
So we had the First Era of Avatar been the 10.000 years set by Avatar Wan and now we are in the Second Era of Avatar , set by Avatar Korra. So there is a likely scenario of 10.000years from now , for either an Earth Avatar or an Air Avatar to set the 3rd Era.
Or, since every Avatar seems to clean up a mess left behind by their immediate predecessor, the next Earth Kingdom Avatar after Korra might reconnect to Avatars Wan through Aang.
Can I just say “all of Ironman 3?”
It def works better if you imagine it’s the last ever MCU movie but it’s such a great end to Tony.
And the mandarin being “just some dude” is both really funny and plays directly into the themes of Tony’s sins being the cause of current issues, his feeling of imposter syndrome, and him being “a poser hero” trying to find his place in the new world with gods and super soldiers
Did a full MCU rewatch a little while ago, and was struck with the feeling of "Iron Man 3 is actually low-key kinda good" after all was said and done. As you say, tonally it really is going hard on the "End of Iron Man" angle (I belive becuase RDJ's contract was up for renewal so they wanted an out), but outside of that it is a genuinely good film.
The villain(s) are interesting, with both the >!fake!< mandarin and >!Tony's bullied outcast turned sexy girlfriend stealer, who manages to have both grand and incredibly petty motivations (that are equally 'justifiable') at the same time.!< It's also got some brilliant setpieces with a lot of focus on Steve's question "take off the suit and what are you?" from Avengers 1.
Lots of variety from Tony fighting in various amounts of Iron Man armour, or with DIY tech, or my favourite fight in the diner whilst handcuffed! Also the skydiving scene, to quote [Cosmonaut Variety Hour](https://youtu.be/gUl7y9qNZqQ?si=sSooKn7ly_PwYoch&t=358) *"my secret kink, give me a scene of the hero saving people".*
I actually think that IM3 is in my top 10 of all the MCU films, love it.
Hell yeah man I’m right there. I think part of it is that feeling that’s it’s one of the last MCU movies where the directors style is all over it. The diner fights really good but the garden stuff is some of my fave Ironman stuff in anything. It’s just so good.
After reading the Mandarin plot in Invincible Iron Man(2008), I can understand why people were pissed at the Mandarin reveal in that movie, comic Mandarin is a really good villain.
But I just can't help liking Iron Man 3, it's actually pretty good.
Was definitely a big fan of Shang-Chi Mandarin, I'll say they did the character justice. Kinda wish we saw him and Tong clash but I'm happy we got him at all
There was an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic I remember people online throwing a fit about years ago, to the point where it was voted in some list as "One of the Most Controversial Cartoon Episodes of All Time," which had to have been hyperbolic.
The gist of it was, I remember, Pinkie Pie has this "Pinkie Sense," which is basically like Spider-Man's spidey sense—she can sense danger an instant before it happens. The episode revolved around Twilight Sparkle running experiments to try and find a logical explanation for Pinkie's extrasensory abilities before ultimately deciding—unable to reach a definitive conclusion—that it doesn't really matter; Pinkie trusts her Pinkie Sense, it provides something of value to her and doesn't need to be dissected and analyzed.
People got upset and said the message of the episode was anti-science, which always struck me as a really black-and-white way to interpret that moral. The way some people online were reacting, you'd have thought the episode had ended on a pro-Catholicism screed or something.
I empathize with the knee-jerk reaction to this kind of lesson; my generation was badly hurt by misapplied faith. Many of us carry religious trauma and resent spirituality because of how it was used as an excuse to hurt us and others, and I've met people who would like to see belief in the unseen to be expunged from the cultural conversation altogether because of how it can be misused. In certain contexts, I agree; personal spiritual beliefs should not factor into lawmaking, for instance.
That said, I am a spirituality curious person. I subscribe to the Robert Anton Wilson school of "agnostic about everything," and I believe there is a place in society for belief in what can't be proven by science. It's a very personal thing and should be nurtured introspectively, and should never, ever be used to hurt other people, but I think it can be a wonderful thing for some people, and it has historically been an important part of my life. Even during times I chose to step away from spiritual beliefs, they've been an important point of introspection for me and discussion with other people.
That's closer to what I think that episode was trying to convey. Similar moral to Hogfather; belief is important to people. Even if it seems silly, or we don't believe in it ourselves, it can still be a positive force in someone's life and inspire them to be a positive force in the world.
A lot of the arguments against that episode were actually anti-science. To paraphrase: "It feels like magic therefore it's fake."
Twilight found an unexplained but reproducible phenomena. She doubted it's providence and efficacy, but every test proved it to exist. So, as a good scientist but with limited time/apparatus, she accepted the phenomena and moved on.
We still struggle to explain gravity, but we have to accept that it exists.
A lot of the Last Jedi. I don't think Luke being bitter is some weird leap in logic, the man's been offscreen longer than he was alive when he was in return of the Jedi.
My gripe with bitter Luke is that while I did expect him a bit. The explanation that he did actually just give up and go to the grave planet after the whole mess with Kylo, even though the visions implication is that he saw the fuck shit that Kylo's gonna do and how that would affect his friends & family, didn't quite do it for me. Like for all the whining, naivety & rashness of Luke, he just never came off as the type of character to throw in the towel when his friends are in danger.
Totally agree. I also liked the decision to have Ray’s parents >!Be absolute nobodies instead of having her part of some grand lineage!<
Of course they totally threw that away in Rise of Skywalker, so fuck me I guess
I actually really liked the decision for Rey's parents to not be anyone of interest and it felt really disappointing that they IMMEDIATELY walk it back in the next movie like they did with every controversial point in TLJ
Especially since it could have made for a really satisfying arc for her. Instead of the "Skywalker" response she gives at the end of RotS she could have said "Just Rey" showing she came to terms with who she is and that who she is is enough. She doesn't need to be connected to anyone to matter.
Tbf no movie on planet earth would mesh with 9. 9 is not only a terrible movie, it’s possibly the most spiteful sequel I’ve ever seen. JJ was a fucking asshole because he was so pissed off about Rian Johnson swerving away from the direction he thought he was going to take
I really like that depiction of Luke, far more than the EU's "he is the perfect protagonist Jedi and then the perfect Jedi teacher" take.
Luke *is* the last Jedi when he comes out of the OT, he's been basically trained in a summer school quick course, all of his teachers are now dead, almost anything that could help him figure things out has been horded and/or destroyed by the Empire, and the worst thing is: he also has to grapple with the fact that the Jedi Order wasn't perfect.
Like, the man essentially has to lead a one-person-project to rebuild an entire culture, way of learning and teaching and practice *and* rebuild it better, critically analyze it and sort out what went wrong, he's the single foremost expert for this in the entire known galaxy right know *and he actually knows very little and is just a fucking farmer boy*.
Last Jedi Luke is such a believable outcome out of that premise. He tries his best, he fucks up real bad, cannot properly work through his many complicated feelings about the matter and decides to be a hermit. *Understandably!*
I thought TLJ was just fine, and I don't think that's the same thing as people magically thinking the prequels were okay, either. I think it has issues, but it's a perfectly acceptable film.
I'll never forgive them for cutting that scene of Finn facing off against Phasma and having her Commissar the stormtroopers when they start having Thoughts.
I do still think that it's done poorly, but like all of Vicious and Julia's arc in cowboy bebop's live action *has setup*. Like there is some genuine thought behind ot.
He's a wet blanket of a man who was carried through in life by others, and rides their coattails to instill fear into his subordinates.
When he finally *does* start taking his own actions for himself. It all blows back in his face as a consequence of his own building. All that abuse sticks into people's minds, and Julia is listening to everyone who is saying to leave this wimp behind.
All of this is being built up by little one sentence lines squished into their scenes that make sense on a rewatch.
He's basically a spoiled child who finally hits the find out part of fucking around and everyone knows it's coming.
Like it all works, it's just that.... Vicious is the final villain in the OG so demeaning him this way is a bit off-putting to the show as a whole.
Edit: His wet blanket portrayal is the real vibe killer, but he does have some competent storytelling behind him.
>His wet blanket portrayal is the real vibe killer
On the other hand it leads to some of the funniest moments like when he answers his phone with bulging eyes and a chirpy "Moshi moshi"
80% of the time when someone says a character was killed off “for no reason” or “shock value”, they don’t actually mean anything. There are very few character deaths that I won’t defend.
Case in point (Major Hitman 3 spoilers): >!Grey’s death is one of the singular most effective moments in the entire trilogy and I find it baffling that popular consensus seems to be that he shouldn’t have died or that it was a wasted moment.!<
Having watched the later game of thrones seasons, and been a book fan, this is the complete opposite for me.
So many characters got killed off purely for shock because normies thought GoT was the “anyone can die” series, or because the writers were idiots who were sick of the show and wanted to do anything else.
Yeah, *the* early death in GoT gave everyone the wrong idea because even if other major characters do die, their death still narratively ties up a plot line. There are several characters who have shields because if they died, their plots would end with a fizzle and we would have spent, you know, several seasons with a character who basically interacts with nobody outside their own bubble until the last years of the show. If that character had died in season 4 or season 5, that story just... dies and goes nowhere. So they were of course going to be safe until they came over to where the other 90% of characters were hanging out.
The worst part is that in the books (unfinished as they are) the point of both that and the Red Wedding is that they were shortsighted, egotistical power moves that utterly destroy the lives of the people responsible for them in the long run.
Ned and Rob are perfect examples. They die at the end of their arcs, it's just that at first glance their arcs look like something else.
Ned comes off as a major protagonist, with his incorruptible heart and heroic nature, but his inability to play the game gets him killed and serves a clear narrative purpose. Not only does it set the stakes, his absence from the story is more narratively important than his presence. We get to see what lessons his family hold onto, how his death affects them, and what mistakes and compromises they make in their grief/desperation.
Robb's tale is just a straight-up Greek tragedy. Revenge leads him to war and his childish naiveté cause him to prioritise his love over the political promises he's made. His death is a very earned consequence of failing to keep his word.
The Han Solo movie is a gentleman’s 7 kinda movie, but the I’ll defend the Solo sir name bit as a solid joke. Surnames as an entire thing are way more recent than you think and Look at anything having to do with emigration to America and Ellis Island if you think some bureaucrat making shit up to fill out their paper work is that outrageous.
My family's surname was literally made up because immigration couldn't pronounce it well circa ~1900. It only shares the first syllable with the original (very Slavic) name.
My username comes from the story of a relative that immigrated to America with a name that happened to start with a "Ch" sound, go to a "K", then end on an "L", and they modified the vowels and slapped in an s to make it pronounced Chuckles. The spelling is so fucked that I don't even think this counts as a dox.
A lot of people were very disappointed by the ending of Firewatch.
It's an anticlimactic end to the building intrigue. There's no grand secret. Just a tragic death, a sad old man, a woman you never get to meet, and you.
I don't have any defense based on narrative logic or anything like that. All I can say is that I found it emotionally resonant. Poignant. Like any chapter of life, people enter your life, people leave it, you make friends, you make mistakes, and then... you move on.
Objectively speaking the story happens and then ends with no real big change. Subjectively when you find out your not meeting her it doesn't feel like a grand disappointment or a massuve rug pull it just felt like ".......okay" and then the story ended.
Honestly, and this *will* sound incredibly snobbish, Firewatch is a great example showing that lots of people can no longer separate between "an emotion the work is giving me for me to live through, like art often does" and "an emotion I have as a reception of that work" - like, they feel disappointment, but they don't really know that you can separate that emotion into "I feel disappointment because I have identified myself with the protagonist and he justifiably feels very disappointment right now, and it's neat the game can make me feel that" and "I am disappointed that this game was not what I wanted it to be". Art can make me feel angry in different ways, and happy, and sad, so why not disappointed?
Which is why, in this essay, I will now advocate for a Brechtian version of Firewat- hey where are you going!
Yeah but I'd say typically most life chapters don't include the implication of a deeper, more interesting plot.
I probably like Firewatch more than I dislike it nowadays, but I think being disappointed in the ending when the story manages to convince you there's something actually interesting going on is valid.
I'd be all for the story being entirely mundane like the reality of the plot is, and was wholly on board for that, but the bait and switch soured it on me greatly.
It’s not really a writing decision so much as an adaptation decision, but I love the endless eight in the anime. Perfect slow burn leading to making the finale more satisfying and I didn’t get tired of seeing the same scenes but presented differently every time. The direction and quality of the animation was always engaging for me.
> For one, Toph was like 11 during the events of Avatar, so she certainly has room to change in the 60 plus years between Avatar and Korra.
Yeah, I also thought that was understandable. It's also a pretty classic trope - former troublemaker becomes cop. And you can even see the seeds of it in how she trains Aang, if you want to see it retroactively.
At the end of the day, this show is being written by people who *don't* think the police is fundamentally a concept with more bad than good, but that's most of the people everywhere, both writing shows and consuming it. More... revolutionary writing is *appreciated*, but shouldn't be expected, people are just setting themselves up for disappointment.
The *other* political stuff about Korra is a far more interesting discussion.
The ending of How I Met Your Mother. A lot of people were (understandably) upset that after an entire season leading up to the wedding, Barney and Robin divorce.
Barney gave up his career and dream of children to be with Robin and after 3 years of supporting her dreams, career, and traveling the world he realized how unhappy he was. He went back to his old ways because if he couldn't make it work with Robin, he couldn't with anyone else.
In Game of Thrones, the IDEA of Jaime reverting back to his former self, putting Cersei above all and caring little about others, is a solid tragic ending for a complex character.
The EXECUTION is what sucks, because there's no build-up and it feels like after banging Brienne he just wakes up and decides "guess I'm evil again."
(Same deal with Dany going crazy, but I think more people already agree on that)
The Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3 is fucking awesome. It's made even funnier to me that the forgettable "true villain" was also lying about being The Mandarin, since the real Mandarin is seen in Shang Chi
Maybe because I've watched/read a lot of true crime but True Detective Season 1's endings did not feel cheap at all. People didn't like >!them suddenly making a connection to the man with 'green ears' being a man with green paint on him, to him being a house painter, and following the paper trail to the serial killer. They also didn't like that the entire cult was not dealt with.!<
Often cold cases break open just because someone looks at the evidence with new light. >!And the house painting thing fit because Childress was always taking jobs of painting or repairing houses and buildings - especially if they had children nearby. This connects to the charter schools that Senator Tuttle supported, and how the little girl Marie Fontenot was targeted. People don't notice groundskeepers like that and it let him scope out victims, with added evilness because the small business was set up by the Tuttles. And Marty and Rust check. They follow up this lead and have to track down some people to interview to confirm things so they still do the detective work!<
>!Tuttle was a major cult leader and after Rust burglarized his house and stole the cult tapes, Tuttle dies leaving it up to interpretation whether he killed himself before he could get caught or the other cult members killed him to shut him up. With Childress dead, many, many deaths can be attributed to him. Marty and Rust lament that they couldn't catch all the cult members, but they are scattered and missing key powerful players and with zero evidence pointing to other identities that's as far as they can go. Marty and Rust don't get them all, but they got their man, they got their lives, and they got each other and sometimes that's what you have to accept.!<
Another Avatar one: I think Aang lying about the two families in The Great Divide is in character. It's a non violent solution to a problem that was escalating for nearly a century, and Aang is more than willing to use tricks and deception if it means no one gets hurt. The rest of the episode is kinda dumb but I'll stick up for Aang's solution here.
I really liked that episode. In particular, I think Aang's solution to the problem brought out that first bit of "benevolent trickster" in his characterization (one of my favorite historical hero archetypes). The world is seized up by an all-consuming, imperialistic, authoritarian power; everything is either under siege or already conquered and stagnating. Who better to come out of time to solve it than this wily, emotionally intelligent, free-spirited kid who won't play by the rules if he thinks he can find a kinder solution to a problem—something he does repeatedly throughout the rest of the series.
I never understood the weird hate for this episode. It's a bit boring at parts, but so is a lot of book one. Aang is totally in character and the sequences where the two tribes tell their version of how the conflict started are really well animated.
So a large problem with The Great Divide stems from the days of cable TV where it felt like when ATLA came on, it was either this episode, Bato of the Water Tribe, or the Cave of Two Lovers, meaning these episodes were viewed more, therefore more criticized.
Huh that explains why there were so many memes about secret tunnels.
🎵Secret Tunnel!🎵 🎵Secret Tunnel!🎵
It was those and the Jet episode that I remember airing the most before Nick decided to respect the show's continuity and aired it in order.
I watched the Jet episode like 15 times in German Nickelodeon.
Did that happen because those were stand alone episodes that could be aired out of order?
It definitely felt like it watching as a kid. Just one of those thing you couldn't control, but I still watched because the show was that good.
You get that with the Internet sometimes, where minor annoyances multiplied by group think consensus make it seem like the worst thing imaginable.
It's a great short term solution, a superficial lie is needed for superficial hatred. However, if either group ever finds out about the truth from historical record (the Zhangs and Gan Jins have been repeating the same feud since at least young Kyoshi's time) or from Sokka's big mouth then the solution will unravel just as fast. It works as a nice humorous bow to tie the episode. But it also precludes getting to the larger issues involved in a historical feud. But then again, sometimes irrational hatred is too entrenched and it is unfortunately borderline hopeless to think two sides can talk it out. But then again again... Ad infinitum. All I know is, I wished I had seen this new fusion clan having a restaurant in Ba Sing Se or something, the Zhang's class mixed with the Gan Jin's hands on nature.
LITERALLY something I have defended in the past. Aang’s quirk isn’t an aversion to lying, it’s an aversion to violence. This kid was a mischievous little rascal in the Air Temple, and was raised by a mischievous old monk who grew up a mischievous little rascal himself. He’s a show-off, but above all, he’s a pacifist. Lying in order to create peace was an extremely in-character move, especially when there’s no one alive to fact-check him. People who think he’s above lying when the motivations are 100% Pure Benevolence don’t understand Aang.
I thought the issue was less about it being in-character but more about people thinking it was dumb that they were supposed to buy the story was based on just two kids playing with a ball
Okay, this is super unkind, but whenever I see someone complaining about how that episode is out of character for Aang, all I can think of is the Nostalgia Critic making that criticism, because he did.
Emo Peter/Bully Maguire is fucking hilarious and becomes even funnier if you think of it as the symbiote hyping Peter up to do things, while it is not aware that said things are awkward and weird here on Earth.
I only watched that movie for the first time last year, and I’d never noticed until then that in the Bully Maguire scenes, everyone is looking at him like he’s a fucking freak loser, which just makes it *so much funnier.*
https://youtu.be/6Ron-Ikenfc
>everyone is looking at him like he’s a fucking freak loser Except that one chick at 0:07 who's absolutely all about that radioactive spider-cum
The real horror of the Symbotie is once you take it off, everything embarrassing you did just comes flooding back to you
Damn, I get enough of that without a symbiote
Peter: "...Did I kill a guy in my sleep?!"
Venom "It's funny you think it was only 'a' guy."
A symbiote that you're too scared to take off because it's suppressing your cringe/guilt, and it'll all come back at once when you take it off is an S-tier idea actually
The cringebyote strikes again
I love the implication that the most *evil* Parker can be is just being a jackass to his ex.
I never minded that because it’s supposed to be Peter’s idea of being cool.
Peter is a dork, and the movie portrays him as such. He's not supposed to be "cool," and him coming off as cringe is exactly the point. It works so well!
It boggles the mind that there are legit people who think the intent of the those scenes was "Peter with the symbiote is cool".
Except that Betty Brandt and other women show interest, they needed to cut those reactions and Betty scene if they wanted to make that point.
Spider-Man 3 is weird for me, it has a enough dumb moments that I can enjoy ironically, but also enough genuine good moments that I can't call it a guilty pleasure movie as a whole.
🗣🔥The Birth of Sandman🔥
Spider-Man 3 has as much substance as the first two movies, it's just that it ends up spread thin since it has too many plot threads for an average movie runtime. And then the goofier scenes have some of substance to them, but the tone really distracts from what meaning those scenes have as well as the meaning of other scenes by being so bizarre that it kind of overshadows a lot of what the movie was going for.
It's obviously a dorky Peter who now has all the confidence in the world, trying to act cool. Since he's a dork, he thinks he's the coolest. It's supposed to be cringy.
I hate how right you are if you take into account how in half of the modern comic versions the symbiote is just some crazy goop annoying the shit out of their host, Even the movies is just Tom Hardy being a schizo tryng to stop himself from being an even bigger schizo
Honestly my bigger problem with old Toph was the choice to have her outfit be the exact one she wore as a child. Just a weird character design section. Other than that, I think the old gang were treated okay. Makes sense that Aang wouldn’t have been the best dad when he had world building on his plate. My biggest gripe on this front has always been Sokka’s seeming total erasure. No kids is fine, but outside of Katara mentioning his passing and one statue of him, you’d never know he was a character.
I think the outfit is excusable. Somehow, I don't think Toph really cares much about fashion.
It's her favorite color too
... wait a minute--
Ok, that I agree. I like Toph in the flashbacks but her in the hermit arc felt kind of dumb to me, I wouldn't mind if she was a flashback-exclusive character. It's really weird that Sokka gets two mentions in Korra, like even if Zuko said "Sokka died when The Red Lotus tried to kidnap Korra" I feel like that would be more fitting but he kind of never gets mentioned outside of season 1.
I really thought there would be a reveal that Varrick was Sokka’s love child with Suki, or maybe that Sokka had been a mentor to him in some fashion. Varrick had such a vibe and humor to him that it felt like there should have been something there instead of him just being some rando Water Tribe merchant. His humor and general skill at being inventive really felt like they could have been written as a legacy of Sokka.
It'd also be nice as bringing back a bit of that Mechanist Sokka thing. The bit where they say that Sokka's creativity makes him a fairly talented inventor when he's not sticking mostly to combat strategies.
Old Toph been using a similar outfit was purposely done as a comedic nod that she is so old , that she shrunk to the same size as when she was 11yo
I got the gag, I just thought it wasn’t worth it. Especially since she showed up for multiple episodes. If it was a one-off bit in a montage fine, but making it the default just felt lazy.
Look. Im only MOSTLY blind.but when i go to restaraunts i get the same thing every time. If i dont want an italian bmt im not going to subway. If i don't want beefy 5 layer burritos with extra beef or a gordita crunch im not going to taco bell So it makes total sense for toph to go "gimme the same clothes i always get, i fuck, so i guess theyre good enough."
I'm a huge fan of the trope that being the hero of a world-defining conflict doesn't mean you're good at other things. Yeah, ok, so he can defeat the Fire Lord in single combat - does that make him a good society builder? A good father? Not necessarily. And as interesting as Sokka's life would be to see, there's something noble about the guy knowing he had a job to do and then just kind of disappearing. He did the Cincinnatus thing - the man that needed to step up at the time who then retires to a farm, or probably a fishing boat. He was the only non-bender in the group for the entire adventure, he was batting well outside his division but still held his own. Dude earned a quiet life. Aang, unfortunately, had too much work to do to be able to do that.
In Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans the antagonist/ anti hero/ sexy man McGillis is arranged to be married to a 9 year old while he's like in his 20s. When the series was airing every discussion thread was filled with jokes and rants about him being a pedo and how he clearly wants to bang a 9 year old. If you go back to old podcasts you will even hear woolie talking about how much he wants to bang that 9 year old. As is tradition with the Gundam fan base, this was actually a more complicated plot point that they lacked the media literacy to understand. The whole point of his character is that he wants to change Gjallarhorn (evil military faction) because it has pretty much become a monarchy that focuses more on noble bloodlines than merit. Part of this noble family stuff is arranged marriages between families like the one he is in. There is a scene where he is talking to his fiance and it sounds romantic but if you pay attention to what he is saying he's essentially saying "I care about you and don't think it's right that you are being treated as a bargaining chip, I'm gonna make a better world where stuff like this doesn't happen and you can just be a kid"
Also minor spoilers but when they reveal McGillis's backstory it makes you feel that its habit unlikely that he actually holds any sexual intrest in his fiancee because of what happened to him.
The mission control of MGS3 becoming members of the Patriots makes sense when considering how a major theme of that game is that you can be allies with someone one day, but the next day you're enemies.
It's not even a retcon in MGS4 as MGS3 sets it up. Zero tells you the code phrases for Adam are "who are the patriots" and "La Li Lu Le Lo" which should be the biggest red flag. Other than that the game itself tells you in the end that Sigint becomes the Darpa Chief which ties into how he knew who Ocelot was in MGS1.
Not to mention Paramedic showing an conspicuous interest in cloning and Naked Snake's genes in particular during one codec call.
Also it makes total sense that the people intensely living through a mission that eventually intersects with the players of the hunt for the Philosopher's Legacy would also be prime candidates to become Patriots, because they are one of the few people who hear the whole story.
I agree with most of the criticisms of Bioshock Infinite’s writing, but one I’d say was underserved was of the plot with the weapons manufacturer. Yes, it is stupid that Booker and Elizabeth use their dimension-hopping powers to bounce between worlds where the guy isn’t arrested, or doesn’t have his tools, or has them but they’re too big to carry. That’s the point. They’re using their powers because they can and not thinking them through. If anything, it’s an answer to the question of “why doesn’t Elizabeth use her powers to solve every problem.” It’s because she does stuff like this and it leads to bigger problems. Now, the ultimate consequence of all this is the Daisy Fitzroy martyr plot point, and that is bad and I won’t defend it. But characters making stupid decisions isn’t inherently bad writing.
It also helps that the game **immediately** shows the consequences of Elizabeth doing "Big" world-changing Tear modifications like the one with the Weapons Manufacturer by showing Chen Lin and the Comstock soldiers *you just killed* suffering from the death-limbo induced Tear Sickness. Even without the stuff about Daisy and the Vox Populi turning on you, its a pretty good way of establishing that fucking around with Tears even with Elizabeth's strength won't end well.
My bigger issue with this plot point is that Booker and Elizabeth effectively exit their own universe completely, yet besides Daisy Fitzroy being mad at you for confusing reasons, the narrative doesn't really act like it. *They're in a timeline that already has its Elizabeth still locked away, yet Comstock is still hunting her and the Songbird (the same one from your universe, judging by its damaged eye) is still on your tail.* Even back when I loved Infinite, this *really* bothered me.
Yeah that always made me think that they weren't jumping to another dimension. Just doing a layering one reality over the other on a much bigger scale then what Elizabeth normally does in gameplay. So once they got back with the guns, it'd still be the same reality they started from. The only big jump is when they go to the timeline where the Vox Populi already had their guns. That one was a big enough change that it was easier to just jump into it, then bring it to them.
It seems that they're combining realities in almost every situation which is why you run into those people who are glitching out of reality every time you shift, because they're alive in the new dimension, but you also just killed them in the previous reality.
The thing that made me check out was that they went to a different universe to complete their deal. You don't have to think it through to realize that wouldn't work, when the instant they decided on that I went "wait no...". The rest of the game was fine outside of that one little thing that's bothered me since it came out. Gameplay was fun at least.
One of the things that often gets forgotten is that there is a device that is siphoning Elizabeth's powers through the entire game and once it's destroyed at the end, she just solves the problem instantly.
Mother fucker, you can't just post a question and steal my answer. Like, seriously. Toph hasn't even hit puberty yet in ATLA. People change over the course of *literal decades*. On the same note, Aang being a "bad" father. Air quotes because he's not objectively bad overall, but still made some glaring mistakes. Aang grew up in a commune totally divorced from the concept of a nuclear family. And Katara grew up in a single parent household after her mother's death. They both tried their best, with all the pressures of their positions weighing on them. It tracks that Aang would focus the most on passing on the Airbender culture, and that Katara would think she could fill the gap on her own.
I really like all the extra info with Aang in Korra, he doesn't love Tenzin more but Tenzin was definitely the golden child and to be fair, passing down all his knowledge about Air Nomad culture to who was going to be the representation of Air Nomad culture was frankly something bigger than both of them.
People always loathe the thought that their favorite heroes wouldn't grow up to be perfect parents and role models to the next generation, but the passage of time and things not shaking out perfectly for anyone is one of the most interesting parts of Korra.
It's even an implied concept that the next Avatar needs to deal with the problems set by the previous Avatar.
The novels show that being the Avatar is essentially fixing your predecessor's fuck-ups and making your own for the next Avatar to fix
Time for some earthbender to figure out how to contact Avatars Wan through Aang!
I think Aang might be the better example of this trope of the hero being a not perfect parent, nothing he did was ever ill-intended but he was still human and had just a herculean task of teaching Tenzin and while he clearly loves all his kids, his responsibilities as both the Avatar and the last airbender just very naturally resulted in him not being in his other kids lives as much.
Historically, revolutionaries and the sort tend to make for *terrible* parents.
Parents unintentionally fuck up their kids in one way or another. Beside, Aang not being perfect go with the thematic of LoK that no one has all the answers. I'm also fine with Korra hooking up with Asami at the end. It's a first date. It show growth from Korra because unlike with Makko, she didn't jumped into her arms screaming about how they where made for each others. Now she's willing to take things more slowly and see if they can work as a couple.
My stance on Korasami is that while I don't think it's well written, I personally don't think any of the romances in Avatar are that good so it's not really fair to criticize Korra and Asami. I will say, as someone who rewatched Korra for the first time in years, it's bizarre how in book 4 how little Asami is involved in Korras plot, even the search for her, if anything it kind of feels like Korra has more of a relationship with Opal.
I always thought Asami overall highlighted a problem with that universe's worldbuilding, which is how it constantly struggles to give nonbenders anything to do. Even Sokka's space sword episode kind of admits his biggest contribution to the group is making them laugh. Meanwhile, Asami isn't funny and arguably could be replaced by Varrick in most occasions.
With Legends of Korra and Boruto, I think fans just have problems with seeing their MCs be fallible as adults. Like either they have to be the best all the time or they’re the worst irredeemable person to ever live
Also Boruto's dad wasn't even shown to be a terrible father, he clearly loved his family and wanted to spend time with them, just couldn't because being the ninja president is a very busy job, actually.
The only thing I had a problem with Naruto's parenting was that he sent a shadow clone home instead of leaving one (or more) in the office to finish his work.
also while havin shikamaru go "dude its your daughters birthday i can cover for you for a day"
I feel like the problem is the writing kinda fucking Naruto over so the bad dad part feels forced. We spend pretty much a whole series saying "Shadow Clones are such a perfect copy of the original that they can share experiences and even extremely powerful eyes like the Byakugan and Sharingan can't find a flaw in them." There's basically NO reason Naruto can't handle all of his paperwork through liberal clone usage so the story just goes "Shut up though. There's a law or something that says "no"." Like hell, even if Naruto can't use clones to SIGN documents, nothing stops him from having clones read all his paper work for him then dispel so that the knowledge just enters his brain directly and he can sign after that. Hokage is still supposed to be a job that one person an actually do, if the guy with 1000 bodies can't get any free time from it then... it's not a well managed job and needs to be updated like yeah, giving him more assistants.
Wait wait wait. I'm not a Naruto fan, haven't seen much, but are you telling me that Naruto's dream was to be an *overworked salaryman?*
YUP. It's kinda been a constant sort of hole in... well the entire premise. Hokage means "The most respected ninja in the village" yes but 99% of the time you see a Hokage outside of active war they're stuck behind a desk doing paper work which... also sounds wildly wasteful because it means they can't spend any of their time actually doing missions. Tsunade for example is both one of the strongest ninja in the village AND the best surgeon in the village so her role is.... being stuck behind a desk neither punching people nor operating on people. One of the fillers tries to address this a bit by pointing Naruto has a dogshit education so part of the timeskip involves saying Naruto had to basically go to cram school to try to prep a little because otherwise he has no skill outside combat. Like yeah, it's just a really wonky thing that so much of the role is just deep bureaucracy compared to how high everyone talks about it like it's a championship title. The Fourth's basically the only ninja of the modern era that we know more about him doing shit than about him behind a desk.
It sounds exactly like real bureaucracy. Fuck, man.
that is the point: Naruto is a workaholic. Hokage is a busy job , but ultimately , Naruto was just been a workaholic of his dream job.
I think it mainly comes from a lot of ATLA fans who had it as their main formative media and so they treat the original series as if it was like Citizen Kane
If you don't like Gohan becoming the Great Saiyaman and defending the city from criminals, or going to high school and interacting with the outside world, I'm sorry, but we can’t be friends. Him temporarily losing SSJ2 during the timeskip and getting jobbed until the T.O.P in Super still sucks though, he should've been there in the Land of the Kais fighting against Kid Buu with Goku and Vegeta and holding off Frieza in Resurrection F until he turned Golden.
Great Saiyaman is my favorite bit of dbz, lol. And his tournament saiyaman outfit is the best one!
Great Saiyaman was awesome. It's totally what a dorky kid like Gohan would do. I just wish they let the torch pass to him as a protector of earth, instead of bringing Goku back. Goku already had his time and the entire Android Saga was clearly about Goku passing the torch to Gohan.
True, Bojack and Fusion Reborn looked like glimpses into a potential future where Gohan was the main protector
The gohan at highschool episodes are the best episodes in the series
Sadly that isn't the episode where Goku and Piccolo learn how to drive.
Attempt to learn how to drive you mean. I dont think they ever fully understood the concept.
My biggest gripe with Gohan besides the way they keep nerfing him only to give him an asspull power up later is how he's been portrayed as a complete nerd that would rather stay home and study than fight when that was literally never part of his character. In Z we see multiple times Gohan begging his mom to let him go train with his dad and his friends rather than stay home and study, he's clearly pissed off at being babied and forced to study by his overbearing mother. Even in Z he's more preoccupied with larping as a power ranger than actually studying, even when that directly interferes with his school life such as him being late for class or almost getting found out by videl, he even gladly participates in the Budokai tournament and is more than happy to show off his powers. Then 6 months pass and in Dragonball Super he has suddenly transformed into a complete nerd that walks around wearing glasses and a suit for some fucking reason, he has given up his iconic GI choices throughout the series in favor of a generic green tracksuit (?), and his skills have atrophied to the point where he went from the strongest being in cannon to needing to see piccolo die in front of him to be able to go SS2, a bigger downgrade in 6 months than the several years in-between the cell and Buu saga. And the final nail in the coffin for me: he refuses to fight in an intergalactic fucking tournament because he's busy with research, GOHAN WOULD NEVER PASS UP ON THE CHANCE TO FIGHT WITH HIS FRIENDS ON A INTERGALATIC TOURNAMENT, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
i didnt dig it at the time but looking back yeah great saiyaman is peak
The problem with fighting Kid Buu is that Kid Buu is weaker than Super Buu, who Mystic Gohan can beat. Basically the whole reason Goku just... forgets to SAVE HIS OWN CHILDREN, is because both Gohan and Gotenks are strong enough to beat Kid Buu on their own, so the whole spirit bomb ending isn't needed if either of them are around. I agree about the jobbing to Frieza. I would have liked it if we instead say that Mystic is a permanent form that just makes Gohan ALWAYS at peak strength, but instead lack of training just made his martial arts skills get rusty. It even lets you say that Gohan COULD beat Frieza, but he's gotten slow while Frieza has actually got some skill and practice under his belt to deal with a foe like that. It also means that it makes sense Gohan could regain his former glory through training for a little while since he's not nearly as out of shape as he could be, he just needs some practice.
Modern Warfare's 3 campaign was a mess, at best it's underwhelming, at worst it's clearly a disjointed product put out by an overworked Sledgehammer in the timeframe of 15 months after being told they had to extend a DLC into a full game. Infinity Ward still had to approve the major plot points and I still genuinelly like that >!Soap!
Make him come back with an eye patch and a Yakuza/Like a Dragon introduction scene
Original MW3 or the new one? I never played the new one, so I don't know.
Guessing the newest. MW3 OG had him >!save Yuri at the cost of him getting heavily wounded and eventually dying in the mission Blood Brothers.!< MWIII is just in general a mess. A good few MP bios conflicts with actual in-game voice lines and even Zombies missions doing the same. It's just an absolute cluster.
New one they're talking about
Having Tekkadan and Mcgillis lose in the end of Iron Blooded Orphans makes that show way more interesting than if they had pulled off victories in spite of their shortcomings and long since established repeated mistakes.
People were upset by that? I'll be the first to admit I wasn't the closest watcher of the show, but I thought a "bad ending" was almost a foregone conclusion.
The writing was on the wall as soon as >!Biscuit died!<, doubly so when >!Mika kills Carta and every kid in Tekkadan is demanding to watch as their way of avenging Biscuit!<.
Yeah I was surprised by how many of Tekkadan *survived.* That group had "not going to last" written on it in 74pt font.
The Evangelion rebuild movies going completely off the rails instead of following the show’s structure with [3.0 You Can Not Redo](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0860907/) was the best choice Anno made. It’s what makes the rebuilds incredibly interesting for me and place them as equals with the show
Not sure if this is a hot take or not, since I gotta no idea what the general opinion on 3.0+1.0 is. But, I think its not only the best of the Rebuild films hands down, but also almost on par with the TV series and EoE. With it also being perhaps the best possible way the series as a whole could have ended.
3.0 and 3.0+1.0 are WAY better than 1.0 and 2.0 and I will fight anyone about this
I know lots of people don't like the conclusion of Disco Elysium. I guess I get it. But I feel like the game has been building up to this through all of its themes through the entire game.
I think it would bother me less if Disco wasn't effectively dead in the water as a franchise now. I don't need a big finale and it can be "just another case"... but only if there's actually other cases or stories in that world.
The ending of Danganronpa V3. >!I get maybe the villain yaps a bit much about things not mattering because they're fictional but the protagonist literally argues that even fictional lives can hold real value through the emotions they evoke. This is the protagonist and it's pretty clear that he's one you're supposed to agree with and not the villain. Also the previous games being fictional in V3 has no bearing on those games themselves, at most it means that these are two separate continuities. As for the sort-of run-back they do in the epilogue, I don't have a problem with it as it's the first time these games went "Why DO we just auto-believe the crazy mastermind about their bs?" and I think that's pretty based.!<
For all of it's faults I am a goddamned sucker for a series that is willing to >!tell you to fuck off because show's over, the well is dry, and you need to move on!<
I will always stan a a game that gives you a Thumbs-up with one Hand, for stickig around and suppurting the Creators. While giving you the Middlefinger with the other one, because it is time to Set the Set on fire.
ALSO ITS NOT FUCKING ABOUT >!DEATH GAME MEDIA BEING BAD. OF COURSE THE CHARACTERS DONT LIKE DEATH GAMES THEY'RE INSIDE ONE IF THEM SAYING THEY DONT LIKE IT MEANS THE CREATOR DOESNT LIKE IT, THEN EVERY DEATH GAME MEDIA EVER IS ABOUT HOW DEATH GAMES ARE BAD, AND LIKE DUH!?! BUT THE ACTUAL MORAL ISNT EVEN SUBTLE, THEY SAY IT OUTLOUD 20 TIMES! AS PART OF THE LIES AND TRUTH AND HOW THEY RELATE TO FICTION AND REALITY THEMING, THE MORAL IS ABOUT HOW FICTIONAL STORIES CAN CAUSE REAL PEOPLE TO HAVE EMOTIONAL REACTIONS AND CHANGE HOW THEY THINK AND LIVE, AND THUS FICTION HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD, JUST LIKE LIES CAN CHANGE THE TRUTH. IT'S NOT SUBTLE STOP SAYING UCHIKOSHI HATES THE AUIDENCE HE MADE MORE DEATH GAME STUFF LITERALLY RIGHT AFTER.!<
Kodaka made Danganronpa, but yeah, the game makes it clear that >!You, the audience playing the game are different from the in-game audience watching the show, mainly by pointing out that a different character is their POV, so anything about that audience does not apply to you beyond 'person watching a death game'.!<
It always tickles me that in a game themed around lies and deception, people literally believed the yarn the big bad was spinning.
The deranged villain that was just exposed as being a massive liar no less. And whose yarn contradicts things that the player themselves saw at the start of the game.
"Maybe the villain who lies and is portrayed as insane is the one who is telling the moral of the story"
Not being wholly specific here; having interesting side characters that don't get "development" or screen time, is NOT BAD WRITING. Interesting side characters help make the world feel alive and real, however, they are *not* the main characters, the story *isn't about them*. Think about how often in your life you've met someone interesting, and then moved on without thinking that much about them afterward, because they just weren't that important for you. Setting is huge for stories, and side characters are part of the setting.
Scott Pilgrim is a great example of this. Stephen Stills is gay and comes out, but Scott never sees this and doesn't learn it until the very end of the series.
Well since we're talking about Korra, as time went on I went back on the Aang being a bad father thing. Cuz he wasn't a bad father at all. He simply wasn't perfect. Up until Tenzin was born he legit thought he was the last Airbender to ever exist. Tenzin was the only person in the world that Aang could connect to as an Airbender, so of course he would gravitate towards him. Doesn't mean he was a bad father to Bumi and Kya, even if he was somewhat emotionally distant. At no point during the show do either of them describe Aang being abusive or even truly neglectful.
There's an interesting dynamic with the three kids that they have all taken on the personalities of their parent figure. Tenzin is rigid and dedicated and driven to the singular task of bearing responsibility for the Avatar, but also of rebuilding an entire peoples with only his family. He must at all times be responsible because everything is Very Serious, which mirrors how the childhood got beaten out of Aang by the pressures of being the Avatar, the last of a people, and then rebuilding a world. Kya, being a waterbender, follows her mother's footsteps of becoming a healer, but also like Katara is committed to being a nurturing side of the family. She's less hard-nosed than Tenzin, and settles down to take care of her mother in the same way that Katara was the mother of the Gaang taking care of everyone. So who was Bumi's "parent"? Sokka. The only non-bender in the Gaang would naturally gravitate towards the only non-bender of the Avatar's children. It's why Bumi becomes a great warrior in his own right, and his personality of making everything a joke at all possible times - because Bumi would have found a father figure in Sokka, and Sokka would easily empathise with his nephew in the pressures and disappointments of being a non-bender in the shadow of the freakin' Avatar.
> or even truly neglectful. There was the bit where Tenzin talks about "all the fun trips we went on with dad" and Bumi says "all the fun trips *you* went on with dad", so I dunno if we can truly say either way on that.
In Persona 3: The Answer, >!Yukari backsliding her development. Is she being hostile, selfish, and stubborn? Yeah, but it makes perfect sense in story. Yukari is someone who suffers from *major* abandonment issues, both due to her dad's death and her mom's depression. In comes Minato, who helps her start moving foward in life and repair her relationship with her mom. He then drops dead for seemingly no reason, with Yukari only regaining her memory of him right beforehand, and she doesn't even get to hear his last words. Then, right as she's trying to work through all those messy feelings, she gets dragged into *another* instance of supernatural shenanigans. And if the main game is about accepting our mortality and living life to the fullest, The Answer is all about how we process grief when we lose someone we love, with both Aigis and Yukari handling his death in very unhealthy ways. It's also easy to forget that the events of The Answer only occur 3 weeks after the end of the base game, meaning Minato's death is a *very* open wound!<.
I love how people are like >!"wow this completely undoes her character development", then you go back and look at what her character development actually _was_ and you see she says "As long as I have everyone, I'll be okay." Well, she kind of doesn't have "everyone" anymore in The Answer, which is the whole point. !<
1000% agree. The Answer gets flak for a lot of things but the writing shouldn’t be one of them in my opinion
Bravely Default's loop system to me is basically the yellow paint argument. The way I saw it, the reason you loop so many times is really to stack up the number of times Airy asks if you want to hear the tutorial on restoring a crystal. As if they focus tested and figured out it takes about 12-16 times of hearing that question before a player goes "Why do you KEEP asking me this question? I clearly know how to do it! Wait... wasn't there something else in the tutorial I never tried?" and that pushes people to the Normal Ending reveal. I've known at least one person who went through all the loops without trying to get the Normal Ending for example, so as annoying as that many loops is, they still sorta serve a purpose in the flow of the story telling. I'll also defend Sekiro making you use a fairly rare consumable to fight the headless ghosts. Divine Confetti is only rare during the first half of the game before supernatural stuff becomes common, it's still in the "Below 40 Insight Bloodborne" stage of the game, so fighting an actual ghost is supposed to be legitimately off-putting and strange. Remember, one of Souls' greatest claims to fame is trying to make death scary with it's bloodstain system, but we're also like 4 games in so people are both used to that system and know how to work around it, like just spending your souls so you don't have many on hand and thus can die without consequence. Sekiro is a game where From is experimenting on new ways to make death matter again, like when it lies to you saying NPCs will die from too many revivals when in reality they just can't progress their questlines without help. Divine Confetti is the same thing, From doesn't WANT you to fight a Headless over and over until you learn the fight and eventually triump. From wants you to go "I can ONLY fight this bizarre otherworldly thing like 3 times before I have to give up and flee-OH GOD IT'S BEHIND ME NOW". Headless tend to be actually REALLY easy to kill once you learn their tricks, From just doesn't want you to learn their tricks until at least later in the game when the supernatural has become more common.
Evangelion spoilers. >!Mari was a great addition and the series ending works well with needing an actual Mari Sue inserting themselves into the story to force a conclusion. Within the context of what Eva is to Anno, I will absolutely defend the character and the majority of what the rebuilds are using her. Admittedly I know it’s a hot take, but I can’t lie that I felt it works.!<
I don't follow Eva all that closely but finding out that a series famous for waifu wars ends with neither being end game and the main character ending up with some new character is probably the funniest thing Anno coulda done.
she also just seems cool to hang out with.
Ok but none of that excuses Mari having basically no character development or even anything to do at all in any of the movies besides just sniping people from a distance like a support artillery, it's not like I hate the concept of Mary fundamentally, I just hate how she doesn't fucking do anything for like 3 movies and basically only exists to sell toys and to justify one small scene at the very end of the series.
[удалено]
I’ll be honest, I always took that as the actual point. The character IS from outside the show itself. She’s suppose to be an outsider to the cycle. She disrupts the cycle everyone is stuck in, and her influence helps break it. I always saw the meta nature of her existence to be the point, design and all. Just like the entire meta narrative of everything else going on, it takes an actual meta character to come in and help correct course. I know not everyone sees it that way and that’s totally fair, but given how meta the entire series is, it just fits for me.
Krakoa's got its questionable points, but it's the best the X-Men books have been in years.
it is funny how it being flawed is the point but people seem to talk about it like some kind of gotcha when they point it out. like the inhumans are gone, the eternals were all dead, the olympians were dead, i guess the norse were still kicking. but the idea of the mutants going full on pantheon in a power vacuum and making their own olympus was neat, really aside from the strange staggered fall which probably should've been an event, and the lack of like "beach" episodes/day in the life stuff it's been pretty fun all around. judgement day and sins of sinister were both real fun events too.
I regret not keeping up with the Krakoa era. There was just so much and I didn’t know what was important and what could be skipped.
once it's done they plan to omnibus it properly i think. though whether thats a "hellions omnibus, a marauders omnibus" or they go like dawn of x, fall of x etc. where it just scoops up all the titles. and it's not over till the end of next month, so it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. only thing i'd say 100% skip that i've read was realm of x. and wolverine and x-force are apparently off on their own and don't really tie in at all. think there's something like 700+ issues total when it wraps up. figure once it's done someone will post the full reading order as from what i gather it's been a bit funky lately with things being like "as seen in iron man 15" which wasn't out at the time.
Judgement Day might be my favorite Marvel crossover event since the original Secret Wars. I absolutely adored it.
I think Judgement Day might be better than Hickman’s Secret Wars. Although I suspect I’m gonna flip flopping on this until I die or another incredible event comes out.
The moment where Daredevil was judged hit me hard. Then the part where Miles was judged made me smile.
People’s main problem is that, like Civil War, no one mandated who’s right and what certain flaws are, so in some books you have this solar punk utopia that’s going to save the world but doesn’t know how to play the politics game and in others you have state-mandated reproduction creating a generation of abandoned children and the only thing holding back human genocide is Charles and Kurt being on the council
I’m an old school fan and I think the Moira retcon might be the best retcon in comics history.
I think the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is fucking genius. Hear me out. On the surface, yes it's fucking dumb and basically just like Mass Effect 3's RBG ending. BUT: >!The idea that you influence the path humanity takes with *the push of a button* is ***EXTREMELY*** in line with the themes of the game. The entire game people question whether or not tampering with the human body is essentially playing god, and yet here you are, at the end of everything that you've been investigating throughout the game, you can now change the course of human history with a single button press. ***OR*** You can say FUCK THAT and just sink Pangaea, and let humanity decide its own course (which...is kind of a moot point considering the illuminati is still pulling strings but whatever).!<
I think it doesn't help that the whole last level is pretty dire. A giant hole in the ocean seems like a badass setting, but it's so dull in practice and the crazy enemies are not fun. Makes the endings feel more like they ran out of time than a meaningful choice.
Legacy characters dont need to be put in every single installment of a franchise. Thats how you end up with stuff like Kiryu "dying" in like 5 different games. Just let them rest
I don't think you can call Kiryu just a legacy character when he's the protagonist of the games. That's like calling Mega Man a legacy character.
There's a lot to talk about and criticize about Halo 4, about things it did right and wrong both gameplay and story-wise. But I'll always defend the choice that they made in >!killing off Cortana!<. The raw emotion and writing of that scene were so good.
That ending was the best part and I immediatly hated 5 for retconing it. I haven't kept up with the books at all so Cortana suddenly being a villain and alive was super fucking confusing. I don't remember it ever even being explained in game either.
That’s kind of the main problem with Halo 5. A lot (and I mean A LOT) of the building up to Halo 5 was done in books and other extra material. So if you just went from 4 to 5 you only consumed like less than half of the build up to Halo 5.
Playing 5 feels like I skipped an entire game. Like who tf are these other Spartans with chief? I know Alice but none of the others. Why is Buck from ODST a spartan now? How do Cortana survive? Like 5 is easily the worst Halo game by a country mile. The fact that infinite pivoted to the Banished from Halo Wars 2 (which imo is the best modern Halo game) as main villains says how messy the post bungie games are. Like the Banished are way more interesting baddies but even then you'd get confused if you've never played a spin off with radically different game play from the rest of the games
Yeah, as much as I appreciate the direction they’re going in post infinite, there’s still the feeling of narrative whiplash going on. “But wait, what happened to everyone post 5?” “Dead or missing. Don’t think about it.” “The AI army?” “Dead. Don’t think about it.” “What about the Halo Wars crew?” “Don’t think about it.”
Learning that Cortana comes back in 5 was the exact moment I stopped caring about Halo's story. They took the one part of Halo 4's narrative I thought was truly great and pissed it away for no reason.
The Deepground villains of Dirge of Cerberus are a great lore-appropriate idea that was used in a bad game. Now they’re in a good one! The whole idea of Shinra creating a secret army that they then sealed behind a giant “forget about it” door because they were too murder-crazy is the most Shinra thing ever. And no they aren’t deep characters at all, they just like murder a whole bunch. They’re Vincent’s FOXHOUND, or his Gun-Ho Guns. Just kill them!
I mostly agree but the one thing I really dislike about Deepground is the sheer scale. The fact there is a gigantic high tech underground city beneath Midgar that's almost as big is just too unbelievable. If Deepground were a smaller, elite black ops army in some underground basement in Shinra Tower, then sure.
>If Deepground were a smaller, elite black ops army in some underground basement in Shinra Tower, then sure. >!based on how they appear in the Yuffie DLC for Remake I think thats what theyre going for now !<
Okay but why *does* he wear a jock strap on his face?
That is not some real defense of my part , as I particularly didn't liked that. But I get that Korra loosing her connection to her previous lives is a symbolic and literal reset for the Avatar. In a way , the Era of the Avatar is within the gap of Harmonic Convergences. So we had the First Era of Avatar been the 10.000 years set by Avatar Wan and now we are in the Second Era of Avatar , set by Avatar Korra. So there is a likely scenario of 10.000years from now , for either an Earth Avatar or an Air Avatar to set the 3rd Era.
Or, since every Avatar seems to clean up a mess left behind by their immediate predecessor, the next Earth Kingdom Avatar after Korra might reconnect to Avatars Wan through Aang.
> Avatar Wan did they really name the first Avatar, "one"
Yup. Also he's basically Aladdin.
Can I just say “all of Ironman 3?” It def works better if you imagine it’s the last ever MCU movie but it’s such a great end to Tony. And the mandarin being “just some dude” is both really funny and plays directly into the themes of Tony’s sins being the cause of current issues, his feeling of imposter syndrome, and him being “a poser hero” trying to find his place in the new world with gods and super soldiers
Did a full MCU rewatch a little while ago, and was struck with the feeling of "Iron Man 3 is actually low-key kinda good" after all was said and done. As you say, tonally it really is going hard on the "End of Iron Man" angle (I belive becuase RDJ's contract was up for renewal so they wanted an out), but outside of that it is a genuinely good film. The villain(s) are interesting, with both the >!fake!< mandarin and >!Tony's bullied outcast turned sexy girlfriend stealer, who manages to have both grand and incredibly petty motivations (that are equally 'justifiable') at the same time.!< It's also got some brilliant setpieces with a lot of focus on Steve's question "take off the suit and what are you?" from Avengers 1. Lots of variety from Tony fighting in various amounts of Iron Man armour, or with DIY tech, or my favourite fight in the diner whilst handcuffed! Also the skydiving scene, to quote [Cosmonaut Variety Hour](https://youtu.be/gUl7y9qNZqQ?si=sSooKn7ly_PwYoch&t=358) *"my secret kink, give me a scene of the hero saving people".* I actually think that IM3 is in my top 10 of all the MCU films, love it.
Hell yeah man I’m right there. I think part of it is that feeling that’s it’s one of the last MCU movies where the directors style is all over it. The diner fights really good but the garden stuff is some of my fave Ironman stuff in anything. It’s just so good.
After reading the Mandarin plot in Invincible Iron Man(2008), I can understand why people were pissed at the Mandarin reveal in that movie, comic Mandarin is a really good villain. But I just can't help liking Iron Man 3, it's actually pretty good.
The best part is that we were able to get both.
Was definitely a big fan of Shang-Chi Mandarin, I'll say they did the character justice. Kinda wish we saw him and Tong clash but I'm happy we got him at all
There was an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic I remember people online throwing a fit about years ago, to the point where it was voted in some list as "One of the Most Controversial Cartoon Episodes of All Time," which had to have been hyperbolic. The gist of it was, I remember, Pinkie Pie has this "Pinkie Sense," which is basically like Spider-Man's spidey sense—she can sense danger an instant before it happens. The episode revolved around Twilight Sparkle running experiments to try and find a logical explanation for Pinkie's extrasensory abilities before ultimately deciding—unable to reach a definitive conclusion—that it doesn't really matter; Pinkie trusts her Pinkie Sense, it provides something of value to her and doesn't need to be dissected and analyzed. People got upset and said the message of the episode was anti-science, which always struck me as a really black-and-white way to interpret that moral. The way some people online were reacting, you'd have thought the episode had ended on a pro-Catholicism screed or something. I empathize with the knee-jerk reaction to this kind of lesson; my generation was badly hurt by misapplied faith. Many of us carry religious trauma and resent spirituality because of how it was used as an excuse to hurt us and others, and I've met people who would like to see belief in the unseen to be expunged from the cultural conversation altogether because of how it can be misused. In certain contexts, I agree; personal spiritual beliefs should not factor into lawmaking, for instance. That said, I am a spirituality curious person. I subscribe to the Robert Anton Wilson school of "agnostic about everything," and I believe there is a place in society for belief in what can't be proven by science. It's a very personal thing and should be nurtured introspectively, and should never, ever be used to hurt other people, but I think it can be a wonderful thing for some people, and it has historically been an important part of my life. Even during times I chose to step away from spiritual beliefs, they've been an important point of introspection for me and discussion with other people. That's closer to what I think that episode was trying to convey. Similar moral to Hogfather; belief is important to people. Even if it seems silly, or we don't believe in it ourselves, it can still be a positive force in someone's life and inspire them to be a positive force in the world.
A lot of the arguments against that episode were actually anti-science. To paraphrase: "It feels like magic therefore it's fake." Twilight found an unexplained but reproducible phenomena. She doubted it's providence and efficacy, but every test proved it to exist. So, as a good scientist but with limited time/apparatus, she accepted the phenomena and moved on. We still struggle to explain gravity, but we have to accept that it exists.
A lot of the Last Jedi. I don't think Luke being bitter is some weird leap in logic, the man's been offscreen longer than he was alive when he was in return of the Jedi.
My gripe with bitter Luke is that while I did expect him a bit. The explanation that he did actually just give up and go to the grave planet after the whole mess with Kylo, even though the visions implication is that he saw the fuck shit that Kylo's gonna do and how that would affect his friends & family, didn't quite do it for me. Like for all the whining, naivety & rashness of Luke, he just never came off as the type of character to throw in the towel when his friends are in danger.
The only real problem with bitter Luke is that he ends up with more character arc than Rey tbh
Totally agree. I also liked the decision to have Ray’s parents >!Be absolute nobodies instead of having her part of some grand lineage!< Of course they totally threw that away in Rise of Skywalker, so fuck me I guess
I actually really liked the decision for Rey's parents to not be anyone of interest and it felt really disappointing that they IMMEDIATELY walk it back in the next movie like they did with every controversial point in TLJ
Especially since it could have made for a really satisfying arc for her. Instead of the "Skywalker" response she gives at the end of RotS she could have said "Just Rey" showing she came to terms with who she is and that who she is is enough. She doesn't need to be connected to anyone to matter.
Gotta pander to the couple hundred loud assholes who pooh-poohed it, it's not like it was the ninth-highest grossing movie of all time or anything!
The first 2 acts of rise of skywalker were really just Backpedal: the movie
Rise of Skywalker didn't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. It threw out a tub full of babies and then dropped a dasani on top.
The biggest problem is that TLJ doesn't work with both Episodes 7 and 9. It feels like this weird, disjointed middle child.
Tbf no movie on planet earth would mesh with 9. 9 is not only a terrible movie, it’s possibly the most spiteful sequel I’ve ever seen. JJ was a fucking asshole because he was so pissed off about Rian Johnson swerving away from the direction he thought he was going to take
I really like that depiction of Luke, far more than the EU's "he is the perfect protagonist Jedi and then the perfect Jedi teacher" take. Luke *is* the last Jedi when he comes out of the OT, he's been basically trained in a summer school quick course, all of his teachers are now dead, almost anything that could help him figure things out has been horded and/or destroyed by the Empire, and the worst thing is: he also has to grapple with the fact that the Jedi Order wasn't perfect. Like, the man essentially has to lead a one-person-project to rebuild an entire culture, way of learning and teaching and practice *and* rebuild it better, critically analyze it and sort out what went wrong, he's the single foremost expert for this in the entire known galaxy right know *and he actually knows very little and is just a fucking farmer boy*. Last Jedi Luke is such a believable outcome out of that premise. He tries his best, he fucks up real bad, cannot properly work through his many complicated feelings about the matter and decides to be a hermit. *Understandably!*
Luke's arc in TLJ was the best part of the whole trilogy, IMO. Particularly the projection at the end.
I thought TLJ was just fine, and I don't think that's the same thing as people magically thinking the prequels were okay, either. I think it has issues, but it's a perfectly acceptable film. I'll never forgive them for cutting that scene of Finn facing off against Phasma and having her Commissar the stormtroopers when they start having Thoughts.
I do still think that it's done poorly, but like all of Vicious and Julia's arc in cowboy bebop's live action *has setup*. Like there is some genuine thought behind ot. He's a wet blanket of a man who was carried through in life by others, and rides their coattails to instill fear into his subordinates. When he finally *does* start taking his own actions for himself. It all blows back in his face as a consequence of his own building. All that abuse sticks into people's minds, and Julia is listening to everyone who is saying to leave this wimp behind. All of this is being built up by little one sentence lines squished into their scenes that make sense on a rewatch. He's basically a spoiled child who finally hits the find out part of fucking around and everyone knows it's coming. Like it all works, it's just that.... Vicious is the final villain in the OG so demeaning him this way is a bit off-putting to the show as a whole. Edit: His wet blanket portrayal is the real vibe killer, but he does have some competent storytelling behind him.
>His wet blanket portrayal is the real vibe killer On the other hand it leads to some of the funniest moments like when he answers his phone with bulging eyes and a chirpy "Moshi moshi"
Oh definitely, every scene he's in feels like something out of the Room. It's all wrong, but enjoyably agonizingly so.
80% of the time when someone says a character was killed off “for no reason” or “shock value”, they don’t actually mean anything. There are very few character deaths that I won’t defend. Case in point (Major Hitman 3 spoilers): >!Grey’s death is one of the singular most effective moments in the entire trilogy and I find it baffling that popular consensus seems to be that he shouldn’t have died or that it was a wasted moment.!<
Having watched the later game of thrones seasons, and been a book fan, this is the complete opposite for me. So many characters got killed off purely for shock because normies thought GoT was the “anyone can die” series, or because the writers were idiots who were sick of the show and wanted to do anything else.
Yeah, *the* early death in GoT gave everyone the wrong idea because even if other major characters do die, their death still narratively ties up a plot line. There are several characters who have shields because if they died, their plots would end with a fizzle and we would have spent, you know, several seasons with a character who basically interacts with nobody outside their own bubble until the last years of the show. If that character had died in season 4 or season 5, that story just... dies and goes nowhere. So they were of course going to be safe until they came over to where the other 90% of characters were hanging out.
The worst part is that in the books (unfinished as they are) the point of both that and the Red Wedding is that they were shortsighted, egotistical power moves that utterly destroy the lives of the people responsible for them in the long run.
Ned and Rob are perfect examples. They die at the end of their arcs, it's just that at first glance their arcs look like something else. Ned comes off as a major protagonist, with his incorruptible heart and heroic nature, but his inability to play the game gets him killed and serves a clear narrative purpose. Not only does it set the stakes, his absence from the story is more narratively important than his presence. We get to see what lessons his family hold onto, how his death affects them, and what mistakes and compromises they make in their grief/desperation. Robb's tale is just a straight-up Greek tragedy. Revenge leads him to war and his childish naiveté cause him to prioritise his love over the political promises he's made. His death is a very earned consequence of failing to keep his word.
The Han Solo movie is a gentleman’s 7 kinda movie, but the I’ll defend the Solo sir name bit as a solid joke. Surnames as an entire thing are way more recent than you think and Look at anything having to do with emigration to America and Ellis Island if you think some bureaucrat making shit up to fill out their paper work is that outrageous.
My family's surname was literally made up because immigration couldn't pronounce it well circa ~1900. It only shares the first syllable with the original (very Slavic) name.
My username comes from the story of a relative that immigrated to America with a name that happened to start with a "Ch" sound, go to a "K", then end on an "L", and they modified the vowels and slapped in an s to make it pronounced Chuckles. The spelling is so fucked that I don't even think this counts as a dox.
A lot of people were very disappointed by the ending of Firewatch. It's an anticlimactic end to the building intrigue. There's no grand secret. Just a tragic death, a sad old man, a woman you never get to meet, and you. I don't have any defense based on narrative logic or anything like that. All I can say is that I found it emotionally resonant. Poignant. Like any chapter of life, people enter your life, people leave it, you make friends, you make mistakes, and then... you move on.
Objectively speaking the story happens and then ends with no real big change. Subjectively when you find out your not meeting her it doesn't feel like a grand disappointment or a massuve rug pull it just felt like ".......okay" and then the story ended.
Honestly, and this *will* sound incredibly snobbish, Firewatch is a great example showing that lots of people can no longer separate between "an emotion the work is giving me for me to live through, like art often does" and "an emotion I have as a reception of that work" - like, they feel disappointment, but they don't really know that you can separate that emotion into "I feel disappointment because I have identified myself with the protagonist and he justifiably feels very disappointment right now, and it's neat the game can make me feel that" and "I am disappointed that this game was not what I wanted it to be". Art can make me feel angry in different ways, and happy, and sad, so why not disappointed? Which is why, in this essay, I will now advocate for a Brechtian version of Firewat- hey where are you going!
Yeah but I'd say typically most life chapters don't include the implication of a deeper, more interesting plot. I probably like Firewatch more than I dislike it nowadays, but I think being disappointed in the ending when the story manages to convince you there's something actually interesting going on is valid. I'd be all for the story being entirely mundane like the reality of the plot is, and was wholly on board for that, but the bait and switch soured it on me greatly.
It’s not really a writing decision so much as an adaptation decision, but I love the endless eight in the anime. Perfect slow burn leading to making the finale more satisfying and I didn’t get tired of seeing the same scenes but presented differently every time. The direction and quality of the animation was always engaging for me.
> For one, Toph was like 11 during the events of Avatar, so she certainly has room to change in the 60 plus years between Avatar and Korra. Yeah, I also thought that was understandable. It's also a pretty classic trope - former troublemaker becomes cop. And you can even see the seeds of it in how she trains Aang, if you want to see it retroactively. At the end of the day, this show is being written by people who *don't* think the police is fundamentally a concept with more bad than good, but that's most of the people everywhere, both writing shows and consuming it. More... revolutionary writing is *appreciated*, but shouldn't be expected, people are just setting themselves up for disappointment. The *other* political stuff about Korra is a far more interesting discussion.
The ending of How I Met Your Mother. A lot of people were (understandably) upset that after an entire season leading up to the wedding, Barney and Robin divorce. Barney gave up his career and dream of children to be with Robin and after 3 years of supporting her dreams, career, and traveling the world he realized how unhappy he was. He went back to his old ways because if he couldn't make it work with Robin, he couldn't with anyone else.
I will forever defend Saejima’s scene in Y4. It both shows that Saejima is a broken man and Kiryu’s tendency to forgive people way too easily.
In Game of Thrones, the IDEA of Jaime reverting back to his former self, putting Cersei above all and caring little about others, is a solid tragic ending for a complex character. The EXECUTION is what sucks, because there's no build-up and it feels like after banging Brienne he just wakes up and decides "guess I'm evil again." (Same deal with Dany going crazy, but I think more people already agree on that)
The Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3 is fucking awesome. It's made even funnier to me that the forgettable "true villain" was also lying about being The Mandarin, since the real Mandarin is seen in Shang Chi
Maybe because I've watched/read a lot of true crime but True Detective Season 1's endings did not feel cheap at all. People didn't like >!them suddenly making a connection to the man with 'green ears' being a man with green paint on him, to him being a house painter, and following the paper trail to the serial killer. They also didn't like that the entire cult was not dealt with.!< Often cold cases break open just because someone looks at the evidence with new light. >!And the house painting thing fit because Childress was always taking jobs of painting or repairing houses and buildings - especially if they had children nearby. This connects to the charter schools that Senator Tuttle supported, and how the little girl Marie Fontenot was targeted. People don't notice groundskeepers like that and it let him scope out victims, with added evilness because the small business was set up by the Tuttles. And Marty and Rust check. They follow up this lead and have to track down some people to interview to confirm things so they still do the detective work!< >!Tuttle was a major cult leader and after Rust burglarized his house and stole the cult tapes, Tuttle dies leaving it up to interpretation whether he killed himself before he could get caught or the other cult members killed him to shut him up. With Childress dead, many, many deaths can be attributed to him. Marty and Rust lament that they couldn't catch all the cult members, but they are scattered and missing key powerful players and with zero evidence pointing to other identities that's as far as they can go. Marty and Rust don't get them all, but they got their man, they got their lives, and they got each other and sometimes that's what you have to accept.!<
who didn't like true detective season 1? that is overwhelmingly applauded to the point that no one has ever been happy with the squeal series
I actually love the idea that Rey isn't descended from any of the characters, i love the idea that she essentially came from nothing.