A lot of fictional depictions of games feel divorced from reality when the author makes statements like “no one has ever been able to beat this boss/clear this level” or “no one has discovered this easter egg/ mystery yet”. Especially when the game in question is supposedly ultra popular and has been out for years.

I don’t think writers actually understand the psychotic levels of dedication and obsession a popular game can inspire in its playerbase. If you give a group of people with an excess of free time and no other hobbies a problem to solve, they’ll probably crack it in a fraction of the time you actually think it’ll take. Most games are designed to be solvable and no matter the difficulty, at least one insane individual will smash their head against the wall until they beat it.

In the Ready Player One film, the entire world is dedicated to discovering a secret Easter egg inside a virtual reality game called the Oasis that will supposedly transfer complete ownership of the game and the entire fortune of the creator to the first person who discovers it. Yet for almost a decade, no one has been able to find even the first hint about the Easter egg. This is such a laughable scenario. Gamers will dedicate thousands of hours to doing things in games with zero monetary incentive, just for the love of the game. If you tell that you can gain access to life changing wealth and status, the Easter egg hunt would have been cracked in like hour 1 after its reveal. Especially in the movie, the Easter egg keys are so poorly hidden that there’s no way it took this long for someone to stumble onto the method. The first key is discovered by driving backwards on a race track level of the game. This is the kind of Easter egg that could be accidentally discovered by anyone screwing around with the game. The fact that this isn’t like the second or third thing people thought to try and that no one could figure it out until the protagonist came along is a farce.

Shangri La Frontier is the only fictional depiction of a game that feels realistic in how the devs and players interact. Shangri La Frontier is a live service virtual reality game, just like the Oasis game in RPO. It has a bunch of hidden secrets, and a roster of bosses that are considered unbeatable. We actually get scenes early on with the devs saying they predict no one will be able to beat the first boss until at least a year of the game being out. Then within 6 months of the game being out, one of the secret bosses gets beaten by a group of random players and the devs lament that all their roadmaps just got upended because the players killed the boss in the wrong order. Shangri La features plenty of scenes where the players abuse game mechanics, discover niche exploits, and just bash their head against a challenge until they manage to clear it.

It’s the only fictional video game that acknowledges that a game is just as likely to be broken and played in unintended ways by curious players instead of the exact intended way the devs wanted and acknowledges the ludicrous lengths certain gamers will go to to do things in the game they’re no feasibly supposed to be able to do.

Yeah yeah I know , Makima!!!? The most glazed sexy Fujimoto character!!? The one with the most Porn work and rule 34 pages and most Onlyfans cosplayers and and!!!

Yes , that Makima , mrs Fan service herself is shockingly one of the least sexualized fan serviced character Done by Tatsuki Fujimoto , and that despite her being his own Dream Goal and the MC of CSM Denji ultimate goal to bang

You'd think she might have the most Based on literally everything outside of the manga from the Fandom to fan arts to promotions to products and acts but surprisingly

Let's look at the manga and see what we got , there was that scene were she made Denji touch her chest and that scene where she bite his finger oh and the 1 off panel where Denji fantasy about her alongside other girls in a wedding lingerie

And.... that's it? No really that's pretty much it

You'd think it's much but let's look at other CSM girls

Power was running around naked for 2 chapters in 2 different times , Denji fantasy about her in a lingerie as well alongside the Bikini scene from the anime opening and sharing a nurse fetish cover with Makima, and if That's wasn't enough the last chapter of CSM had her running around naked with an upgrade Ass as well

Quanxi have 2 lesbian sex with 4 women on screen and then she spend half of the international assassin arc running around naked

Reze has a whole strip scene , the naked pool scene , a cover that shows her naked , another bonus chapter with her in a bikini then she spends majority of the arc either running around naked or just wearing panties

Himeno was basically like Makima in her seduce but 5x more , she's very touchy and talk with sweet tongue and horny , She had the apartment scene with Denji where she makes out with him , undress herself and try to have sex with him and later a bonus with her just in underwear

That's just part 1 , Part 2 crack this up

Asa and Yoru have multiple detailed page about them taking their highschool clothes off and just be in bra and panties for 2 chapters , there's even a close up on their breast and ass and hips by Denji , falling Devil before wearing her clothes have 2 page of her naked body , Asa and Yoru have multiple fan service bonus chapters like one with Playboy Bunny suit

Fumiko jerk Denji dick through his pants , almost always want to fuck him , have multiple pages of fan service and the nude picture and overly revealed to be the equivalent of Babylon whore , Yoru jerk Denji off , give him a butt play , acts like a brothel stripper towards him and have a magical girls transformation scene where she's totally naked while being high on power then try to fuck him multiple times alongside making out with him

Death have nearly a chapter worth of panty Flash with multiple angles of it and close up focusing on her ass and couchy , mind you this was the second time after a break week

Even Fami didn't escape the fan service wave as a bonus chapter shows her dressed up in a hooker cheerleader and a micro Bikini , the kinds that used in Japanese pornographic media

So in comparison to alot of CSM women , yeah Makima get one of the least , even in energy compared to some of them

The superhero registration is a great concept but I feel it hasn't been properly explored atleast on most Media I have consumed (correct me if I'm wrong)

Superheroes naturally exist above the law batman exists above it Spider-Man exists above it they occasionally beat people, trespass, sometimes even use surveillance and break in without proable cause and some heroes like daredevil (especially in Netflix daredevil) use excessive force , daredevil even injured and fbi agent seriously enough that the agent had to be admitted into hospital

J Jonah Jameson is one of characters that questions Spider-Man and he has good points the mask avoids accountability there is no way to hold Spider-Man accountabile if he makes mistakes or does public endangerment or causes unnecessary collateral damage

But in most of Spider-man media Jameson is made into cartoonish hater of Spider-Man which makes it hard it take his side in the argument

Civil war in comics explores the superhero registration but it just escalates into heroes trying to fuck each other with extreme and extreme methods

In mcu civil war both sides take extreme ends of arguments , captain America says 'safest hands are our own' and refused any kind of accountability (he was proven wrong eventually cause Ronin went on rampage and received zero consequences, then wanda went on two rampages and received zero consequences as well)structure while the Accords themselves are violation of human rights

Again like spidy/Jameson where Jameson is made cartoonish hater ,mcu civil war just doesn't dwell deep into the Accords at all instead both sides are made extreme ends so the heroes or protagonists (spidy and cap) have an easy way out and get to be the right guys because the guys questioning them are far too extreme

And in most fiction the government is evil they are bad guys(in reality as well) so there isn't much argument against superheroes existing outside of law superheroes not answering to anyone

Returning back to the topic of mcu civil war steve refused external oversight and says safest hands are our own is extremely arrogant especially considering Tony stark's failed Ultron project nearly destroyed the planet (a feat that the corrupt governments haven't accomplished)which means it doesn't matter what or how pure steve's intentions are mistakes can happen which makes oversight important but the movie gets sidetracked with Bucky and revenge plot and the conflict of Bucky (where steve was in right) and iron man breaking the Accords himself is used to show that steve was right and ultimately the movie says steve was right  and the Sokovia accords are functionally irrelevant for future movies.

Speaking of marvel there are multiple mutants who can read mind and use telepathy which is a fundamentally violating superpower and professor x having cerebro which is a privacy violation and cerebro is extremely dangerous especially on live action xmen movies where xavier was almost forced to commit genocide first against mutants then Magento trying to reverse it to genocide humans instead

But xmen stories usually (atleast those I have read) don't focus on registration and usually focus on mutant rights and the government is usually evil in xmen stories so most of times there aren't stories about whether there should be registration around powers of mutants like firearm registration because stories are most about xmen fighting bigot government

Is there any media where this topic is deep dived with more nuance? Where one side isn't extremely evil(but somewhat right)

I find this super interesting concept but it's never really delved in to much. I'd love to see more stories where superheroes actually get involved in politics without just being pure evil about it.

I was rewatching some clips from the Hashirama and Madara flashbacks in the war arc and I’ll just say these 2 feel so much like actual friends it’s astounding. They share inside jokes liked stone skipping, talk about their dreams together everyday and go out of their way to eat and train together. They feel like actual brothers and friends to an amazing degree and this isn’t even talking about their adult years.

Naruto and Sasuke’s friendship feels… weird to me. Naruto spends all day being pissed off at the guy and jealous of how much cooler he is than him, constantly picking stupid competitions and fights. And Sasuke in part 1 didn’t even seem to like Naruto much at all, just tolerating him because they were on the same squad. I know they shared sweet moments like them training together in the forest or sasuke’s sacrifice for Naruto, they are friends don’t get me wrong but their actual day to day dynamic doesn’t feel like a friendship at all.

It’s weird because these 4 are all the same people in different life times yet H/M feel so much closer than N/S. Like if you told kid Naruto that he had to hang out with Sasuke everyday like Hashirama did with Madara, he’d be miserable.

Idk just gimme ur thoughts.

I really wish whenever people say shit like that is when they're referring to personal preference instead of acting like all media needs to just be miserable or have a tragic and sad ending and likable characters always die and whatnot and I'm not saying the entire media(like a movie or show or video game or whatever)has to be all sunshine and rainbows 24/7 but acting like it has to just be a big ball of depression and sadness and death is just ridiculous.

And I can't stretch this Enough..if you like the kind of media that's more dark and gorey and miserable and whatnot,then that is goddamn fine,do not let me stop you from enjoying it or anything like that but I think the main issue is a lot of people just looking down on others for not liking how overly miserable and sad things are or have to be and claiming that it's more "realistic" but the issue is realism doesn't automatically mean good storytelling or make for good writing or mean something is good.

Like I'm not even saying every media has to be all happy and whatever but acting like it suddenly being the latter and being all dark and gorey and overly tragic and whatever doesn't mean good writing ,like for character deaths..if all of them are cut short or are eventful or if the entire story or game or anything else is cut short ,uneventful, then that just leaves things being unsatisfactory in the worst way possible and this also goes for characters as well.

Something that bothers me about a lot of Batman Media is people acting like he's just supposed to be a over serious loner who works alone and is this overly brutal badass 24/7 when..No,Batman is as far from a loner as he could be.

The guy has multiple adopted kids,a biological kid,many friends and a good team but the issue is that the live action refuses to adapt any of his Robins..I dunno if it's cause they're scared or whatever but this has lead to people acting like Batman himself is meant to be this overly serious Dick when he's one of the most compassionate and unintentionally social dudes out there, he's just kinda grumpy and serious.

Just like how Superman stories aren't lighthearted 24/7,Batman isn't a loner 24/7.

That logic also applies to Spider-Man and tbh,that's more so the comics fault but still,he's not meant to be a character that's meant to be 24/7 miserable in the dumps.

I also feel like the current Resident Evil movie discussion showcases this cause there are people who will look down on you and look at you funny if you don't like the ending and how miserable it was and always pull the "oh it was realistic" "symbolic" and whatnot and that doesn't automatically make it good and that's fair if people didn't like it for those reasons and felt let down by it and it's also weird cause the Resident Evil games are gorey and dark but they aren't straight up miserable and hopeless and have ended with the world being saved and the bad guys being stopped and not saying that they can't do something differently but acting like the franchise is just torture porn ain't it.

Something being miserable or anticlimactic or unsatisfactory or whatnot doesn't make a story good at all and that goes for the people who claim that cause a media is more dark or has a darker ending or has more character deaths or tragic endings or whatever suddenly makes them more mature or serious or know better stuff and act like they're better when that's straight up not true.

The Johto games gym leaders suck. It's a known fact, even people who love gen 2 and specially the amazing remakes from gen 4 recognise that the gym leaders are an issue with the core DNA of these games. They are supposed to be boss fights and stick on your mind as the most memorable fights in this RPG with many many fights. However due to a lot of new Johto Pokémon not being very good or sometimes for reasons I can't exactly comprehend a lot of Johto gym leaders if not most of them have either their ace being a Pokémon from Kanto or their entire team being composed of Kanto Pokémon

Trying to fix gym leaders and elite 4 members online, specifically regarding the first two generations, is a common topic of discussion in the fandom online

Although a lot of times, people choose to get rid of all Kanto Pokémon if they can. Sometimes this is good but other times I don't agree since gen 2 is very different from all other following generations. It tries to be as much of a direct sequel to the previous generation as it can, and part of it is done by being a region in the same continent as Kanto, and sharing a lot of the same Pokémon. It's more an expansion of Kanto than anything

Then comes your first proper boss fight outside of your rival, the first gym leader, based on flying type Pokémon. There are a lot to pick from but his team consists of a pidgey and a Pidgeotto. This is deservingly shat on. There are so many new flying type Pokémon, why have 2 from Kanto and from the same evolutionary line?

His ace could have been a noctowl or a murkrow or something. But most people change the pidgey to something else too. And I think that's missing the point

The pidgey feels to me like the only member of his team with an actual purpose. It's a pokemon your recognise from a previous generation, that if you didn't have on your team (which you most likely had), your rival did. You can even find pidgey with relative ease in the early stage of Johto. It's a way of the game telling you "don't worry this is connected to the first game, there's stuff you'll find familiar with" and it feels like the most appropriate first fight from the first gym leader

The issue is not having the second Pokémon be a new creature to introduce you to some of the new friends similar to pidgey you can use in its place.

It should have been one Kanto Pokémon followed by a Johto Pokémon.

Yes. That's right. I'm writing an essay about the themes of Street Fighter: The Movie (2026).

I saw it over the weekend with friends and, as a massive Street Fighter fan, I absolutely loved it. While I don't necessarily disagree with the internets consensus that the film is messy, clunky, overstuffed and weirdly fetishy in some of its characterization (and i concede i found that last bit especially weird), I thought the film more than made up for it with its punchy 90s style, unapologetic silliness, great action choreography, great depictions of the characters and its overall dedication to being as authentically Street Fighter as it can be. I could go on and on about its amazing animated sequences, it's stunt choreography and its use of real sets and practical effects (which . . . seriously, that's nothing to take for granted in today's film making climate of green screen and CG overuse when a less ambitious director would have never thought to do those things for the street fighter movie of all films) I instead decided to delve into the themes of the films narrative, because believe it or not it DOES try to tell a cohesive story here.

The film's central theme is the quest for glory: the cost of it, and the impact it has on your soul. An apt theme to take on for a film about the greatest fighters in the world entering a tournament to be the best.

Our protagonists are Ryu and Ken: adopted brothers who were trained and raised together by the martial arts master Gouken. Once having a bond thicker than blood, their relationship fell apart shortly after the events of the first world warrior tournament when Ryu tapped into a dark energy so he could defeat the king of Muay Thai, Sagat. This demonic energy culminated in the return of Gouken's evil brother, Akuma, who tapped into the Dark Hado long ago so that he could be the strongest warrior in the world. Akuma returns to kill Gouken in an attempt to seduce Ryu into tapping into the dark hado to save him, but Ryu follows his master's wishes and refuses, allowing Akuma to kill his brother and flee. Ryu has been struggling to contain the darkness inside, while his brother Ken has resented him for allowing their master to die.

Ryu:

In a sense, Akuma is the physical manifestation of Ryu's dark desire to win by any means necessary. The twist the film unveils is that Ryu does *not* like to lose, because his whole identity is fighting, and so he will resort to great lengths to ensure his own success . . . Including destroying Ken's invitation to the first world warrior tournament, knowing that Ken has a very real chance of defeating him. Ryu eventually gives into the Dark Hado to defeat Akuma, but this comes at too high a cost: hurting his friends and creating the circumstances in which M. Bison has the opportunity to become more powerful than ever before.

Ken:

In contrast to Ryu, while Ken has never been without ambition, he always put his relationship with his brother before his need to win. While Ken *could* be jealous of Ryu's prowess, such as his ability to throw a Hadouken before he ever could, he was ultimately in full support of Ryu as he was fighting in the first world warrior tournament. Ken's ambition to win is highest when he and Ryu are enemies, and even then, his desire to win is not for the implicit sake of winning, but for the sake of making Gouken proud. Ken loses his way when he has his family forcibly taken from him. He loses sight of what is most important, and, as Dhalsim points out in their battle, must forego his need to be better than Ryu if he is ever to find his path to salvation again.

M. Bison:

Every theme needs a villain that ties in by being the antithesis of the lesson the heroes need to learn, and M. Bison is the perfect example of this. M. Bison is obsessed with being stronger, to a psychotic and fetishy extent. This explains his deep fascination with the physique of his enemies and even the evolutionary advantages of minor things like snails. He sees weakness as something that must be completely and absolutely obliterated, and will go to any evil length to ensure he can have all the power for himself. He is a man who cannot see the value of living without power; how fitting then that it would be he who hosts a tournament of the strongest people on earth. . . Even if the tournament is just a farce to draw Ryu in.

The supporting cast:

All the heroes and villains of the cast are made distinct by their priorities: doing the right thing, bringing evil to justice, searching for family . . . . Or simply wanting to be the best by any means necessary.

Chun-Li, Guile and Dhalsim are essentially the heroes already at the end of the journey that Ken and Ryu both must take, which is realizing that the real goal is bringing M. Bison to justice. Dhalsim in particular embodies this altruism because it could be argued he lets Ken defeat him in the tournament to make a point about how winning is not the most important thing.

In contrast, we have M. Bison's henchmen: Balrog, Vega, Cammy and Juli, all people who are driven by a need to be better than the people around them. Balrog is a boxer who openly fights dirty to win: headbutting and footstomping and other maneuvers that a referee would call out in a real boxing match. Vega is vanity incarnate: thinking himself so beautiful that no one is worthy of seeing his face. Cammy and Juli are both in constant competition with Chun Li to prove who is Lord Bison's greatest asset, even though Chun Li is just doing whatever she has to to bring them down.

Ken and Ryu are both obsessed with victory for their own reasons, yet they are surrounded by villains who actively destroy lives because they share the same ambition. They themselves begin making moral compromises for their ambition, whether it be ignoring the needs of their brother or flat out sabotaging their brothers chances in secret. It is only when they forego these needs and reembrace each other that they are ready to join the heroes and bring the fight to M. Bison: the embodiment of ambition gone mad.

I think this theme is especially poignant for fighting games. As a fighting game player myself, I can't tell you how many times the obsession with winning has sullied my experience. . . And playing for fun has made it all the better. At the end of the day, fighting games aren't just about proving who is the best . . . They're about bringing people together. This movie embodies that beautifully i think.

Now, just as a warning, I’ve only read the first comic run. Apparently it gets good when they go to Scotland or something.

But, when I kept hearing that Crossed was the “corrupted version of the Walking Dead”, not necessarily in the same way The Boys is a corrupted version of Superheroes but like how people say Iron Lung is like a corrupted version of Hail Project Mary.

So I read it and….yeah, let’s get this off the bat, the Crossed are not your average zombies. Yes, I’m very aware Romero’s Zombies don’t soak bullets in their semen, I’m well fucking aware. But I’m not taking about the crossed, I’m taking about the survivors.

Why? Because the survivors might as well be one of the random survivor groups in one of the Walking Dead stories. It is literally the most generic group of zombie story archetypes; The stoic leader, the strong woman, the leader’s best friend, the leader’s best friend’s love interest, the old man, the black guy who lost his family, the asshole, the cute little kid, blah, blah, fucking blah.

Look, I’m not saying I do not want any single piece of medias to be completely different from another, S7ven was an extremely by-the-books Neo-Noir story and it’s fantastic. But if you’re gonna promote this comic run as “The Corrupted Version of the Walking Dead”, do something crazier. Like Garth Ennis, every character in the Boys is just “[SUPERHERO] but he’s [SOMETHING TABOO]” then can’t you do that with some Zombie Survivor characters? Like look, this is literally me spinning two wheels here;

Claire Redfield but she’s a Plagiarist. That’s what the wheel gave me. Try making your own Garth Ennis character at home too!

Like, the only time I actually felt like they were doing something interesting was when they revealed the old man used to be a serial killer but even then, they didn’t do much with that. If I remember correctly, he was gone as soon as he revealed it.

And I hate how the series has to go “WOW! AIN’T WE SHOCKING!” whenever they kill a kid, like aren’t two of the most popular scenes in the Walking Dead kid kills? Like stfu dude.

I just finished watching Edgerunners season 2, and while it was still very good, it didn’t hit me as hard as the first season. I’ve rolled it around in my head and I think the main reason for that is because season 2 lacks a tight narrative focus. Unlike season 1, which focus solely on a single protagonist David Martinez and follows this one story from start to finish, season 2 splits its time between three-four separate protagonists and three individual storylines that converge into each other more and more as the season goes on.

There’s one storyline following D, a nomad on a revenge quest against the people who wiped out his clan by using the power of the rogue AI construct called Capri that he happens to acquire. There’s one storyline following Weak Kingsley, a former merc who at the height of his career had a brush with cyberpsychosis. Instead of dying spectacularly like most mercs, he actually makes it out alive but is forced to de-chrome and retire, losing everything he’s worked for (very reminiscent of the Tower ending from the game). When he’s contemplating ending it all, he’s brought in by an old lover of his to talk some sense into her daughter Talia, a chrome junkie who’s basically on the same path he was and is heading towards full on cyber psychosis. The third storyline follows a kid named Roman as he films the entire events of the story and aspires to make an old school movie that feels meaningful. Roman’s storyline acts as the connective tissue between the two other stories and Capri, the AI from D’s storyline, acts as the central chuffing that drives all the external conflict in the story and forces these storylines to converge towards the end.

While it’s an interesting approach, I unfortunately feel Trigger really bit off more than they could chew here. They tried to pull all this off in a single 10 episode season of 23 minute episodes each. Any one of these storylines (D’s revenge story, King and Talia’s human drama, Roman’s documentary style storyline about filing the best movie in Night City) could have made for an amazing season on its own, if they got the full focus and screentime. Trigger’s choice to do all three simultaneously as well as tossing in a B-plot about the rogue AI Capri, means all three storylines kind of get shafted. The story keeps jumping between the three and nobody gets enough screen time to develop like David Martinez got to during season 1. None of the characters feel as fleshed out and well-realized as even the supporting cast members from season 1 like Lucy or Rebecca. Another issue with this approach is that the main cast don’t actually get to interact that much with each other. Only Roman interacts with each storyline as a node character but each of the other three protagonists (four if you count Capri and her B-plot) mainly have their own set of supporting characters they interact with. This also ends up bloating the cast because it’s essentially triple the amount of supporting characters present in the story.

Don’t get me wrong. I still loved season 2. But this is an example of a studio trying to do too much all at once without enough episodes to do it in. This season needed at least double the amount of episodes if it wanted to pull off this triple-storyline structure.

I've noticed how often people confuse good presentation with good writing, especially in anime discussions.

Take Demon Slayer. The animation is phenomenal, but is the writing really on the same level? Would people praise it as much if the animation were average? Compare it with Monster or Legend of the Galactic Heroes, where the appeal comes from character psychology, political ideas and long-term storytelling. Spectacle isn't bad, but it can make fairly ordinary writing look exceptional.

This happens in games and films too. The Lord of the Rings combines spectacular filmmaking with meaningful themes and believable character development. Disco Elysium trusts players to engage with complicated ideas. Meanwhile, plenty of modern blockbusters rely on familiar formulas and emotional manipulation. They're entertaining, but being entertaining and being exceptionally well written aren't the same thing.

What concerns me more is our growing intolerance for media that demands something from its audience. Stories requiring historical context get criticized for not explaining enough. Morally unpleasant protagonists are judged by whether they're likable. Ambiguous endings are called bad writing because they don't provide closure. Everything has to be immediately understandable and emotionally satisfying.

Consider Neon Genesis Evangelion. Its characters are deeply flawed and its themes aren't always straightforward. You're expected to interpret what you're watching rather than have everything explained to you. Not every confusing story is brilliant, obviously, but there's a difference between bad writing and writing that expects you to think.

Meanwhile, reading performance is declining. OECD data showed that the average reading score among 15-year-olds across member countries fell by 10 points between 2018 and 2022. This doesn't prove that short-form content is responsible, but it's worth considering what happens when younger generations grow up consuming increasingly fragmented media.

My concern is what happens when these audiences become the next generation of writers and directors. They might become incredibly good at making things look profound without having anything profound to say. They'll know how to create emotional scenes, spectacular fights and shocking twists, but will they understand what makes those moments meaningful?

The industry has little reason to care if audiences keep rewarding presentation over substance. Why take risks on original stories when familiar formulas wrapped in impressive animation or CGI can generate just as much hype? AI could make this worse by flooding the market with technically impressive but ultimately forgettable content.

In other words I fear we're cooked.

Ok, clickbait title aside, what do I mean when I say re-evaluate?

Mainly that I think this scene is mostly looked at through a specific lens by the community (aka the lens of Denji's morality in the situation), while ignoring what this scene can mean for Yoru and Asa as characters.

So let's start by removing Denji from the equation. Because regardless of which side of the argument you wanna support here, Denji is in the wrong for taking Yoru at her word.

Whether Asa does actually give her consent or not, Denji is already in the wrong for not checking.

Next, as for what is actually happening, I do genuinely believe that Asa gave her consent or that Yoru is at least acting upon Asa's desires as she's done before. And I think the thematic reading of Chainsawman (yes, we're back to Themes and Such) supports this.

One general constant throughout Chainsawman I've stumbled upon while spending way too much time thinking about this manga is that it has a rather ambivalent view on dreams and goals. This is, in a way, consistent with other works of Fujimoto like Fire Punch or Look Back, where he takes a soundbite or a commonly shared sentiment that is understood to be positive ("You have to live", "Follow your passion", "Make your dreams come true") and then goes "Ok, but what does this advice really entail for the people living it out to the fullest? And can this advice be applied universally?"

Ironically, he usually seems to land on an ambiguous, but ultimately positive note regarding whether this advice is good or bad.

Going back to Chainsawman, a recurring theme of the manga (more explicitly in Part 2, but present throughout) is "Chasing your dreams/goals, no matter what" and how this mentality is self-destructive to you and those around you and blinds you to the reality of your situation, if you don't balance it out with some pragmatism.

Countless characters experience ruin or miss their chance at success or happiness because they're too focused on their dream/fantasy/goal to consider how their actions are gonna impact their actual situation.

We see this with Reze (who gets killed/captured by Makima because she gives in and tries to live out her unrealistic fantasy of running away with Denji), Aki (who refuses to accept the fact that he just does not have the skill or ability to kill the gun devil and ignores the "easy revenge" until it's too late and he has lost too much of himself) and even Makima (who loses sight of her ultimate goal of being understood by others in favor of her grand plan, so much so that she can't see that Denji loves her enough to understand something about her even she didn't consider. Nayuta proves further that the control devil isn't incapable of love and affection, Makima just refused to think she could find it in humans). I'm half-tempted to add Pochita to this list (who desperately wanted a friend and a hug, which he can do as the finale implies, despite him claiming he couldn't because of his form), but that could be a bit of a stretch.

And of course, our dual protagonists in Part 2, both Denji and Asa routinely make their situation worse by chasing their dreams or their fantasy without facing reality. Denji, who refuses to admit that being Chainsawman is in direct opposition to the normal life he claims to want and is trying to use hedonistic/immediate pleasure to fill the emotional void he feels and that the events of Part 1 have made even more gnawing.

And Asa, who also clings to the superhero fantasy (and actively drives Denji deeper in it at one point) as a way to cope with the fact that she is a corpse piloted by the War devil and to continue to wear her mask to avoid having to be honest with her feelings. To live out that fantasy she is willing to put up with the Chainsawman Church and others with little to no question. To avoid being vulnerable and confronting her own fear and emotion and keep the fantasy going, she avoids reading/acknowledging Yoru's thoughts and her plan until she has handed basically all control over to the War devil (at least, I think it would make sense for her character to have been able to do it before but just... not doing it, but I'm willing to concede that this is more speculation on my part)

Having said ALL OF THIS (and I'm sorry this got so long), let's go back to the moment itself. It's the moment immediately after Yoru shows her emotional connection and care for Asa, where things finally seem like they could calm down. And it's, in my opinion, the moment the story wants to drive home how the events and trauma of Part 2 have driven both Denji and Asa to such a level of delusion that they, faced with a seemingly harmless choice compared to what has come before, fail one last time to such a degree that they betray their own principles. If we want to keep the parallel between the two protagonists going (which I think is apt), I do think it's important that this moment represents not only Denji's lowest point (and I'll go over why that is in a sec), but also Asa's. I don't think there's anything gained narratively by having Asa just be trapped within Yoru and being the victim here. It doesn't change the fact that Denji is in the wrong for not considering her. On the other hand, her wanting to engage with Denji, but delegating to Yoru does actually add something to her story, shows her lowest point to compare to Denji.

Denji is easy to explain here. It's his disregard for Asa's wishes, the person he's supposed to save, in favor of his carnal desires. And notice how stupid of a mistake that is on Denji's part, it would cost him nothing to ask Yoru to have Asa confirm her position and he does not do it. This is especially relevant because Denji, for all he enjoys violence and carnal pleasure, is never the one that initiates, unless he knows the desire for violence/contact is mutual. I don't think there's a single instance in the manga where Denji's violence is pre-emptive and I don't have to highlight the multiple scenes where he resists his base urges and refuses to touch someone without consent. Hell, even in this scene, he does ask, he just doesn't ask the right person.

If we assume that Yoru is not lying here, then I think Asa's consent communicated through Yoru highlights a few things. First of all, Asa once again delegating Yoru as the "executive" personality when it comes to matters of love and especially sex. It's something she has done throughout the story, letting Yoru engage sexually with Denji (even in very questionable/forceful ways) and then immediately after taking control back and lambasting the War Devil. Yoru does often defend herself saying that she's acting on Asa's feelings and while that defense is stupid and a way for Yoru to shirk responsibility (and highlight again the moral disconnect between humans and devils), I think it's telling that Asa never intervenes until after these encounters are over. I don't think the reading of Asa using Yoru as an outlet for her more selfish and unrefined desires and impulses is particularly novel too, so I won't hark on this. But basically Asa is once again refusing to face the "ugly" parts of her emotions, letting the big, bad devil handle it for her so she can eventually pretende to moralize it afterwards.

Another thing that Asa "hiding" behind Yoru (consciously or unconsciously) would mean is that she is once again trusting Yoru and hoping for some sort of communication with her. Which honestly isn't even too farfetched considering Yoru literally lost the fight just to not hurt Asa further.

More than anything however, I think that Asa retreating to the Jekyll-Hyde situation she's got going on with Yoru in regards to Denji is her failure as a way to shirk responsibility away from the promise she made with Denji. And that is her ultimate failure. She refuses emotional honesty and physical availability to the guy with whom she literally managed to have a fucking soul-dialogue with at some point about how both her and Denji are awful people.

So Denji's failure is betraying his established principles in favor of immediate carnal satisfaction. And Asa's failure is betraying the bond of honesty she had formed with Denji to protect her own pride and not show any vulnerability.

Now, I'm not really "judging" both of these characters in the literal sense of the word, despite what my word salad may make you think. They're both traumatized to hell and back (literally) and their retreat into the comfort of a fantasy to avoid the uncomfortable situation they're in is understandable. I think moreso that this scene cements how impossible their dreams were, at least in the way and totality with which they were chasing them. They were chasing an impossible dream and an impossible standard and they were crushed and changed under the weight of that chase clashing with reality.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

In the 2005 series, she used to be the annoying relative that didn't even want to go to with her grandfather for a trip throughout America alongside Ben but was forced to because her mother suggested it and how she already had plans for the summer vacation. However, instead of moping about it, she actually went along with it and decided to make the best out of it and ever since Ben got the Omnitrix, she would always help him whenever he fights some villain whether that be Animo, Rojo and etc. Once she acquired Charmcaster's spell book, she no longer became the annoying cousin and instead became the helping hand for her cousin through sorcery.

Unfortunately, things changed in AF. The writers behind the show made her head over heels for Kevin which doesn't make any sense since they barely interacted in the OG series. An example of this is from S1 Ep 5, All That Glitters, where Ben, Gwen and Kevin were recruiting some Plumber kids but all of a sudden Gwen is mad at Kevin for not asking her out way sooner but he replied this by saying that the guy has to ask her out on a date while ordering her to be patient or something related. Like 5 episodes in the first season, we get this instead of making Kevin explore the reason why he joined Team Tennyson in the first place such as following his father's footsteps while facing his own past mistakes.

It gets worse in the OV flashback episodes where it is shown that Gwen has a crush on Kevin at the age of 11 which is insane because that takes place a year after the OG series and they just talk to each other as if they met several times before which never even happened in the first place.

Also moving on from the personality changes, what I hate about this is that the animators made her powers pink instead of remaining it as blue from the OG series because I'm tired of this trend/trope where 'Women with projection based abilities have pink as the colour of their powers' such as Atom Eve from Invincible and Jean Grey from Marvel's Wolverine. It's annoying asf.

I feel like how murder drones depicts NULLs (black holes) often isn’t really spoken about enough & is constantly dumbed down as like the ones in Ultrakill (orbs just do damage) when it’s not like that at all.

For anyone unaware of how the series interprets black holes- it does so from solver hosts creating black holes from thin air with a giant “NULL“ text in the center (NULL meaning nothingness). As shown in episode 6, these NULLs are created using the solver’s power with the command COMPRSR EXE (compress) to compress gravity & space. The solver can use this to create NULLs of any size from anywhere, but solver hosts can also create very small ones nearby their hands which can be launched & quickly explode (which can happen with super small black holes). The solver is a eldritch entity.

The NULLs are also constantly shown to bend space (of air & objects), display event horizons, distort things, move & pull in matter orbitally, pull in light, display gravitational lensing, mess with gravity, NULLs can attract & orbit eachother, & NULLs instantly consume any matter (on a subatomic level) it comes into contact with. Even with massive NULLs like the one that destroyed earth, the series points out that gravitational waves came from it. Liam has also pointed out that he put deep thought & research into the solver while directing how he wanted it’s effects to be depicted (& that contrary to fandom opinions, most of it wasn’t “just for rule of cool so he likely didn’t think about it”).

If we use more information from the series, then from the background of episode 5 we can see Cyn / the solver‘s notes where it studied schwarzschild radius, newtonian gravitational force, Delta Feynman's notation, Planck's constant, Wave Positions, Einstein’s Space-Time & Special Reality, Anti-de sitter Space-Time, Enstein’s equations, etc. In episode 2, Uzi says that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. In the recently released murder drones script book, it’s confirmed that the NULL have some kind of dark energy or matter within them, & the script contains a deleted scene (presumably due to time constraints & the issues it would be to animate) of N’s arm getting spaghettified from the gravity of the solver’s singularity form.

Murder Drones also has the perfect explanation for NULLs even if someone tries to disprove it:

“How can the solver create black holes?” Because it’s a eldritch entity that is “the absolute fabric, the void, the exponential end, a living singularity” that can reality warp- which allows it to manipulate matter, all atoms, quantum mechanics, mass, force, gravitational fields, gravity, density, space, time, energy, etc. So the solver creating black holes isn’t exactly far fetched, nor “unrealistic scientifically & therefore a plot hole”.

”How do we know the NULLs was intended by Liam to be black holes & not just black orbs with black hole properties?” The series (dialogue from the characters calling them black holes or singularities, the backgrounds of the series & novels, the animators, creator (Liam Vickers) & the official script all states they were intended to be black holes.

”Even a real life black hole the size of a hand would instantly destroy earth so NULL either isn‘t a black hole, or Liam is a horrible writer” the series showcases that solver hosts can freely manipulate & suppress a black hole’s properties & destructiveness.

The only non-black-hole-like thing that they do is transform into mini NULL saws (which only happens once- right when Cyn uses TRANSLATE & EDIT on the main NULL), the 3 times that the NULLs explode into eldritch flesh (the 1st & 2nd time happens while the solver is malfunctioning upon creating a NULL, & the 3rd times in a very specific scenario where the solver eldritch horror accidentally consumes itself using NULL), & 2 times where Uzi & Cyn are able to crush the black holes (which can easily be explained by them being solver hosts).

So, in short, I think people should appreciate NULLs more instead of denying the narrative & power consistency of the series. You may not like the thought of powerscalers saying the verse is large star - brown dwarf but narratively & power consistency wise, NULLs are objectively intended to be black holes.

…But it’s also obvious it’s sometimes underestimated by some writers just how difficult it is to both justify doing it (if you still intend to do a “popular” story) and to say anything “new” with it…

So sometimes, the cheaper, “fan service” ending is genuinely the better artistic choice, not just the monetary one.

Yes, it may be “cheap” to have Nolan’s Batman retire with Catwoman, but for an ending, it’d be more difficult to sell that Batman dying in action as particularly noteworthy.

Sometimes, of course, it’s obvious and maybe even more a case of redundancy - very few Robin Hood fans are going to turn up for a worse version of Robin and Marian with The Death Of Robin Hood, on top of how that mythos has already gotten too dour this century.

Other times, it’s more debatable - clearly, The Last Jedi’s version of Luke spoke deeply to some fans, including many who had never really connected with the character before (even possibly “professional fans” like Pablo Hidalgo), although the general assessment as time has gone on is that it wasn’t worth it to the majority of audience members and seems to be stifling creators with the character.

But occasionally, like with Indiana Jones, it may just be that the nature of the character is made repellent by certain types of bittersweet endings, simply because the audience has too much invested in a character in a certain way, so some types of bitterness just aren’t worth it (like killing the controversial but still useful character of Mutt.)

You've probably seen people in anime or manga spaces complaining about power scalers, and how they value feats to wank their favourite character, over appreciating the story. To a certain extent this is legitimate criticism, there's more to a story than how strong a character is, but it's not something that can just be disregarded - especially in a shonen.

Even a normal viewer has an idea built into their minds on who can beat what character, it's just common sense. As an example, it would be weird for a character that's done nothing noteworthy the whole show to suddenly be able to beat a powerful antagonist; they haven't done anything to show they can hang at that level, and it would break immersion if stronger characters were unable to beat them.

I bring this up mostly due to the latest episode of bleach having absolutely atrocious scaling, which is simply an example of poor writing. I have no doubt in my mind that Kubo couldn't give two shits about coherent scaling, but it has the unintended effect of making his main villain look stupid and the power hierarchy look nonsensical.

Picture this: Yhwach managed to beat the strongest captain of the gotei 13, then the captain of a stronger squad than even that, and beat the MC multiple times, before and after absorbing literal God himself. Now in the latest episode, he's shown having his God level attacks being slashed away by characters that were inconsequential for someone like Aizen (another powerful character) multiple arcs ago, yet now for no reason these same characters can survive against this godly character, while stronger characters couldn't.

A casual viewer might not pick up on this nor care, but that doesn't change the fact that there being little consistency behind power scaling makes the show seem like it doesn't take anything seriously; in the end the good guys will win.

Okay, hear me out.

The first Disney film is built on one question: who is the real monster? Quasimodo is judged for his face his whole life, but Esmeralda sees Quasimodo for who he is, and that’s the heart of the movie.

Then the sequel gives him Madellaine, and the whole theme falls apart.

What the sequel gets wrong

• Madellaine is conventionally attractive. Nobody in the story ever treats her the way they treat Quasimodo, so the “acceptance” arc ends with him getting the girl who was never rejected for how she looks. That’s a reward, not a message.
• The theme shrinks from “look past appearances” to a generic “be yourself.”

My fix

I would give Madellaine a visible difference that covers her whole body, so she hides under sackcloth from head to toe, hands wrapped. The sackcloth is a nod to Victor Hugo’s novel, where the recluse Sachette lives in sackcloth in the “Rat Hole.”

My pick is hypertrichosis, which means her whole body is covered in hair. In the 1400s, people with it were put on display as “wild” or “beast” people. So Sarousch found her as a child and exhibited her, then convinced her that being stared at is all she’s worth and no one else will ever accept her. That makes him a real villain with a real link to the theme, because he profits from her difference.

I considered leprosy at first, since it’s historically plausible, but it comes with baggage: it’s contagious (which changes what touch between them means) and it’s a stigmatized disease label even today. Hypertrichosis keeps the story about how people treat difference instead of about illness, and it fits the era’s real history of freak shows and “wild man” exhibitions.

I’m not saying this would have been a perfect film. I’m saying it would have actually followed through on what the first one stated with Quasimodo having a similar arc of loving someone who is considered freakish and weird

TL;DR: Give Madellaine hypertrichosis, make Sarousch the man who exhibited her as a “beast girl,” let Quasimodo be the first person who doesn’t look away, and don’t “fix” her at the end.

What do you think?

The Purge was an interesting series. For 12 hours, all crime is legal, so what happens? In the first 2 movies, we see people trying to survive it. And then in Election Year, we see a politician running on an anti Purge party, trying to survive assassination attempts from her rivals and general Purge assholes. The movie ends with her winning the election, and the Purge finally being put to an end.

Then The First Purge came out. A prequel movie, showing, well… the first Purge. I liked it, and figured it'd be the last film in the series, since you can't make any sequels to Election Year because the Purge is done for.

Then came Forever Purge. Apparently the party behind the Purge, the New Founding Fathers of America, henceforth NFFA, just got voted back in and started it up again. It was 8 years between the two films. We had 2 purgeless administrations, and then got right back into it. This just feels so damn lazy, and makes Election Year seem pointless. Yeah, she got elected and finally stopped the Purge… for less than a decade before everything went back into swing. Could've skipped that movie and lost nothing.

I'm sure someone will make a comparison to the current American administration being voted back in, which like… doesn't make the concept of the movie The Forever Purge any less lazy, silly, or disappointing. When it makes the previous movie entirely useless in hindsight.

​

The Problem With Defending Korra

There’s been a lot of discussion over Korra from the nickelodeon show Avatar The Legend of Korra a lot of discourse has been happening over the criticism surrounding Korra as a character. I want to break this down and see if I can’t find a balance between the two opinions, starting with Aang and his show,

That being said, the issue with pointing out flaws in the original Avatar the Last Airbender, is that it is damn-near flawless, when the creators originally made the show, they essentially captured lightning in a bottle, managing to balance all the themes and character arcs with top class performance, but I found some critiques after rewatching the show,

Sokka as a character felt slightly thinner than other characters in certain instances, such as regarding the death of his mother, a big plot point for Katara, but something he also would have had to deal with, he also felt kind of useless in certain scenes, mostly whenever the team had to fight a bender that he could not do much against.

Toph has by far the weakest conclusion of her character arc out of the core team in the show, as they push most of her plotlines surrounding her parents to the background until resolving them in the comics

Aang’s conflict towards the end of the show regarding his pacifism and dedication to sticking to Airbender principles while thematically fantastic, rely on several points of convenience in order to push that idea over the finish line, this has the unintended consequence of robbing Aang of his agency regarding his character choices

Katara’s arc was completely resolved during the Southern Raiders episode, leaving her to feel like they didn’t really know what to do with her character following that, when she beats Azula, there’s no real thematic weight.

Now for Korra and her show, the writers unfortunately planned originally for 12 episodes and were then greenlit for more seasons following the success of the first, It’s also important to keep in mind that TLOK was a scheduling nightmare, it was planned in batches, S1, then S2 and S3, and finally S4, this is mostly the result of a series of cancellations, and then renewals that the show had to suffer through, this lead to the writers having to write each season with the ability to close itself out in case they didn’t get a follow up season, as opposed to Avatar, where they were able to plan for the entire story from the beginning and they didn’t have to worry about their narrative getting cut short, This way of production leads to extreme highs and lows throughout the series, the first season had what is widely considered one of the better villains in the Avatar universe, as well as one of the best villains in TLOK (Amon), but a weaker series than ATLA overall. Some issues that I have:

CHARACTER GROWTH

A big issue with Korra can be summed up by Aang's dialogue at the end of season 1. "When you reach your lowest point, you are open to the greatest change" (or something like that.)

The writers seemed to think that in order for Korra to grow as a character, she had to be brought down to her lowest point. This is not true but could have been alright had TLOK just been one season. The problem is, as stated previously, Korra was four seasons, planned in essentially three batches (S1, then S2, then S3 and 4 together). Therefore, they didn't bring her to her lowest point once. They did it three times. Each time, worse than the last. This gave audiences the impression of Korra being a major screw up. And then for the cherry on top, they seemingly came back a decade later to do it \\\*again.\\\*

ROMANCE (SHORT BLURB)

Her Love Life was written to be a mess because they wanted to get more attention by having artificial drama added into the show, creating a toxic mess of her friend group that does little to advance the plot in any meaningful way.

LIKABILITY

Just because a character becomes likeable later doesn't mean folks would like them at the start. Korra is super brash and arrogant in a way that isn't charming like Toph. Despite having years of training, it feels as if she fails for the stupidest of reasons when fighting at times- other times it makes sense given the story.

VILLAINS

The villains in Korra also seem to lack substance, with them either being hypocrites or caricatures of whatever social issue the writers want to tackle in the season.

CONTRAST WITH AANG

Korra is purposely made the opposite of Aang to the point where she even starts with 3 elements when she was 4. It leaves a sour taste in folks mouth when you have such an abrasive character that comes off that way. She was overly sheltered when the point was for the Avatar to travel to learn each element; hurting the character even more. It doesnt feel like she genuienly grows until super later. There are a lot of things that just don't cut it for a lot of people.

Focusing in on the Seasons themselves,

SEASON 2 ISSUES

Season two wants to seemingly discuss varied themes such as environmentalism vs modernity, propaganda, corporate warmongering and the role of the Avatar in a constantly evolving world, this sets S2 up as one of the most thematically complex seasons in both ATLA and TLOK, however, it also happens to abandon these ideas halfway through in order to focus on end of the world level stakes, this is a direct insult to the point of Avatar up till this point, as it has always been more of a grounded story, where the worst thing up till then was the threat of colonization and mass culture erasure, the rest of the season is a collection of amazing yet shallow duels that serve no thematic purpose. This was pointed out by users on the Avatar the Last Airbender subreddit.

BROAD SPECTRUM

For the rest of the seasons, while they do want to tackle varied social issues such as S1 trying to tackle sociopolitical movements like Communism, and Fascism in S4, the problem is that the writing makes it painfully obvious that the writers have a surface level understanding of the topic at best.

SEASON 1 ISSUES

S1 coasts on the Villain Amon, where his menacing presence is truly a high point in character engineering for the series, this coasting covers the fact that the revolution he wants to lead is built on a foundation of vaguely implied social problems, none of witch seem to be actual systemic issues like they imply, treating magical powers as an efficient allegory for wealth inequality and they resolve this issue by inventing democracy at the end of the season.

Now I want to focus more on Korra, because that’s where a lot of the criticism goes to

I don’t Believe that Korra is a bad character, she is simply just a victim of bad writing, Korra as a character is a very good idea, A female Avatar that was dropped into a world that has been living in effectively perfect harmony, and she now has to figure out where her place is in this new world that doesn’t need an Avatar like it did before is a very strong premise, and as a Character she has a lot of good qualities such as her Stubborness and inability to overlook mistreatment of others, as well as her general brashness lead to her feeling like a very independent female character in certain instances.

S3 and S4 of her show also are not bad for what they are, as they are a lot better at being self contained stories telling dramatic tales of adventure set in their world, and while the villains do once again try to make allusions to deeper philosophical concepts, the show doesn’t dwell on it long enough for the writers to make a mess of it.

But focusing in on the problems that I see with criticism directed towards her,

People like to compare her too much to Aang, which isn’t fair as they are two distinct characters, and should be treated as such to some extent.

When criticizing TLOK, people seem to just want it to be ATLA part 2, with the same themes and story beats, this is a bad stance to have, because then you never get anything new.

There’s also a subsection of the criticism rooted in sexism, it’s honestly pretty gross, especially when people like to try to hide this fact behind female characters in ATLA like Toph, Katara, and Azula, this is a very disingenuous opinion and proves that they don’t actually like the characters in ATLA, and they also don’t want to engage in real discussion about Korra or the show.

That Being said, I want to cover some issues that I have with the Defense people use for Korra

My main issue is with the common claim that anyone who doesn’t like Korra, or that criticizes her are misogynistic and/ or sexist. This is an inherently weak take, and one that I have a specific problem with, mostly because saying it's misogynistic is a little bit of a stretch and ignores the very real problems with her character, you can be a fan and still criticize her but when you deny the chance for that dialogue suddenly you lose a lot of appreciation for your own character.

it's extremely unfair to say I'm misogynistic just because I don't like Korra, I'm not taking away from the hard work she puts into trying to improve, I'm saying that it's not her fault, it's due to bad writing, and I think that if you don't want to acknowledge that fact then you aren't truly enough of a fan to allow your love for a character be challenged.

I like Aang, but I also like Korra, just not her writing, it's not misogynistic, at least for me, it seems really unfair that someone can't be critical of the character without being called misogynistic

it's unfair to lump people together without hearing out their arguments or opinions, the easiest way to change someone's mind is to look at a situation from their point of view, because otherwise if people think you aren't hearing them and just throwing away their opinions, then they'll just dig their toes into the sand even harder

My Personal opinion That I just don't like how Korra was done dirty by the writers of the show, and people can't be mad about TLOK getting compared to ATLA when TLOK is a sequel, so it's of course going to be compared to it's predecessor, a show widely considered to be one of the greatest animated cartoons of all time, denying that fact just seems silly to me. I don’t see it as misogynistic that I want Korra to receive the same level of writing that Aang received, That being said I have no basis for "how a female character should be written" because everyone writes women differently, but when a female character like Korra gets treated like she was by the writers it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. If someone is a real fan of the show they would be able to recognize the flaws in Korra's character and writing, because they would want these things to be IMPROVED. So I could argue that it’s more misogynistic to say that just because she's a woman that any criticism is misogynistic, because it shows me that they don't believe in the potential of a female character enough for them to point out what could be fixed for future shows. Yes, Korra as a character is a great idea, that did a lot of good for things like LGBTQ representation in media, but also yes, the writing of the show seemed to bring all of her flaws to the forefront and beat you over the head with it, it treats her like nothing but a shallow copy of Aang, or as someone to compare him to when she's her own character separate from the Avatar, and Yes, Aang was a better written character because the writers had more freedom to write him properly, the studio didn't do the same thing for Korra, it's a fact. I understand that people think some hatred from fake fans is rooted in misogyny, but not all of it. And to say that isn't the case and that everyone has bad intentions behind their criticism is extremely unfair.

I just don’t like seeing people being unable to have actual discussions about characters from two great shows.

In conclusion, both shows have strong points in both their writing and characters, but they also miss the mark on certain aspects, it’s important to be able to look at both shows and Compare them when necessary, and be able to Judge them as their own Shows when it matters, I also want to stress that while I do think that a lot of the claims of misogyny is misplaced, I do recognize that there are a lot of people that have very disgusting intentions when criticizing TLOK, if someone dislikes Korra simply because she is a female Avatar, then they aren’t actually fans of either show, and didn’t understand any of the messaging in ATLA.

Any further Suggestions, Critiques comments or Concerns are very much appreciated, I plan on releasing the video on Saturday/Sunday!

I'll try to respond to every comment as I appreciate all feedback!!

By default, being the Alpha Female of Daytime carries immense weight over the other women.

If challenged, she can always spew her ratings, her #1 ranking, and behind the safety of her microphone, all while sitting relaxed in her couch chair and rub it in right to her challenger, who she boldly invited to her own show as a guest.

If the guest complains or starts an argument, she firmly reminds them, they are just boosting her ratings, and that she is even more of a Queen of Daytime because of it.

Take Supergirl, for instance.

She is literally powered up by the sun, but on Oprah’s stage, they are on the set of an indoor studio.

It may have even been filmed in the morning, rather than anytime close to when it airs in the afternoon.

Then, there is the after show, where audience members get to ask questions to the guest and Oprah herself, that don’t make it to air.

By that time, Supergirl is reminded whose stage she is sitting on, whose studio is running the show, and who ultimately has the reins over the daytime hours.

Supergirl can fly home as fast as she can, but as soon as she sits down to watch the entire episode, she is reminded, by the edit, who is in charge.

Anytime Supergirl would have tried to make a counter argument, halfway through her point, it cuts to commercial break.

Any time Oprah is interrupted, the audience boo sign is lit up for the audience to boo Supergirl.

Whenever Oprah makes a valid point, even if over semantics, like a technicality, the audience applause sign is lit up, and the audience claps for her.

Somehow, within just a single hour, Supergirl watches the episode completely dismantle any showings of how special she feels. By now, if anything, she feels super ordinary…

But Oprah? No, she feels very powerful.

After all, sometimes the biggest super power isn’t flying, speed, or strength… it’s influence, and it all starts with having the final authority over what people know, and what they are encouraged to believe.

Oprah is the Queen of Daytime, and not even Supergirl can say otherwise. After all, this is not Krypton, this is Earth. Get with the program.

Oprah only has 1 weakness: Barbara Streisand, who changed the color of the mic herself.

But that’s another story.

Yes, I know it's popular and a lot of people apparently loved it, good for them.

But when people go on about how it is great writing, drama and social commentary, I feel like we watched completely different shows.

Now, I don't have complaints about the lack of constructs and powers - they did say it would be grounded and gritty, focused on a small town mystery. Fine.

But my issue is with the 'grounded' plot, realism and social issues - specifically, how they were tackled, the plot holes and some seriously weird implications.

The mystery itself is lacklustre.

I watch a lot of detective shows, and this one does not work as 'mystery'. The only clues given are obvious, and the characters don't so much investigate as have explanations fall into their laps. There's no real investigation for either mystery.

The core themes as advertised are systemic bigotry, abuse of authority, accountability and illegal immigration

We have the opening stressing systemic bigotry against black people. Fine. Then next we are seeing John who has somehow gotten promoted to 'sergeant major' while not yet thirty, as a marine sniper.

Then, after the Rushville incident, both John and Kerry get away with no consequences at all.

It's 2016, and the political situation is supposed to be the same as it was in real life US. Picture a Black man with a felony conviction (dishonorable discharge is one, and carries almost all the restrictions that come with it) being involved in a mass casualty incident that leveled a town.

He has been seen by several people, is likely on multiple cameras, and is associated with both the person who screwed up the response and the actual murderer. He killed the murderer with a firearm he is not legally allowed to own (dishonorable discharge).

Yeah, Hal took the fall legally, but realistically, is there any way a grounded story can have a discriminated minority figure walk away from that clean?

So clean that ten years later he is running a million dollar business and is completely detached from anything to do with the disaster till called in?

And Kerry.

Seriously, Kerry. Yeah, the town hates Hal for screwing up the response, fine. But Hal isn't the one who actually killed anyone. That was Zoe, whom Kerry was working for.

And Kerry is still sheriff. Despite having done enough to be convicted for a federal offense. Despite the townspeople having good reason to despise her as an accomplice.

Just how Jonah Jameson oriented does the town have to be, to 'realistically' despise only the guy who tried to stop the mass murderer and let her assistant be the sheriff?

And then there is the illegal immigration themes. Great, relevant for the times, including the 'cop' who is pursuing the case with unhealthy methods.

Except.

One illegal immigrant is a genocidal war criminal hiding from justice. She murdered the 'cop' who sympathized and gave her a chance. She destroyed the town that gave her shelter and was willing to fight for her.

(Noah is not an immigrant, in this situation - he just has the 'programming'/genetics, but he is born and raised as native)

The rest of them are literal suicide bombers who are fine with mass murder if it gets them their target.

That is the plotline this 'systemic bigotry', 'social commentary' show decided to go with, when tackling the topic of illegal immigration? About how an entire town is destroyed because some people were sympathetic to illegal (alien) immigrants and helped hide them from the law?

Then the 'lanterns are cops, John is a hero' theme the showrunners went with?

You do a show about abuse of police authority...and your ending is to have the actual police officer get away with murdering an innocent man because she was afraid?

Couldn't they at the very least have her step down as the sheriff, given someone who acts the way she did in the scene is clearly too unstable to be trusted with a gun at all?

There is a lot made about how Hal screwed up by being too reckless with his power...and the ending is to have John declare himself the sole protector of Earth, using a power source he knows next to nothing about - except that it was created by a known war criminal and infused with a weapon that destroyed an entire planet?! He is basing it all on info gained through torture using a psychoactive substance?!

Seriously, what is this 'good writing'?

The actors are great, that I agree, and I think that is what carried the show.

I don't need CGI or explosions - I am fine with a grounded show. But if you are doing a grounded show of a very fantasy oriented property, you need to have good writing to cover the lack of action and CGI.

When it comes to modern Dragon Ball, it's hard to say what even is the "true canon" anymore because with so many continuities, the term has basically lost its meaning. The fact the fandom can't even seem to agree on what is "canon" anymore tells you all you need to know.

The answer? Daima and Super are their own separate continuities. They do not exist within each others continuities. They are separate continuities the same way the original Z-movies from the 90s are separate continuities from the actual DBZ anime. The same way GT and Super are separate continuities and so on and so forth.
Daima is in its own continuity. Super already has 3 continuities of itself, being the movies, the anime, and the manga.

Prior to 2013, it was clear that the true "canon" to Dragon Ball was the 42 original manga volumes. The Z films, the Z-anime filler, GT, etc, were all simply considered "non-canon". One cannot use the same thought process for modern DB because it is far more complex.

Yes, Toriyama wrote the story of Daima. Yes, Toriyama also wrote the story of Super. Yes, Daima and Super absolutely contradict each other and cannot be in the same continuity. Guess what? That is fine. Daima is its own little story that takes place after the events of the Buu arc and that's it. Daima's story ends right there as far as we know.

Marvel/DC comics have characters such as Spider-Man, Batman, etc, with loads and loads of different continuities, stories, retellings of origins, and more. Dragon Ball is a massive IP, and fortunately or unfortunately, however way you want to see it, connective/continuity tissue in Dragon Ball isn't what it once was back in the 90s.

Admittedly I'm a pretty casual OPM fan. I've watched the anime and watched YouTube breakdowns of different characters on my second monitor. You can say this makes me a tourist but I was in the power scaling discussions back when the anime was first airing and I gotta say Saitama Glazers have been eating good as of late.

That is to say that I remember how Saitama was viewed when season 1 released and people started putting him up on r/whowouldwin. OPM had very few feats to go off of for anyone and punching a meteor was considered Saitama's best feat.

A steady chorus accompanied every matchup. "What about struggling against the mosquito?" "Pretty Strong but [Insert property] is just way crazier than that." Of course, the ever present "No Limits Fallacy!" People made it sound like he was MCU ironman fodder.

(To be clear nlf is valid and you shouldn't die on a hill that's based on vibes. My quarrel is with invoking nlf and then scaling based on available feats as if you didn't just admit you have no idea where the top end is.)

Well guess what? Saitama has gotten some absurd feats. To me, punching a hole in the stars delivered on how strong Saitama "felt" at the beginning of the series before there was any concrete proof.

The graph even solves the mosquito problem for the most part. A mosquito isn't a threat. It doesn't evoke the hero work that he finds fulfilling and so his incalculable strength isn't either. It also basically confirms that he has no physical limits.

Does it prove he beats Goku? I don't really know tbh. The fact that people are even discussing it is such a massive glow up that I can probably just wait for the caped baldy to get more hax lore.

TLDR: You got every "no limits fallacy" argument confirmed by the graph and you still hate it because it doesn't say "Saitama beats Goku" on it.

i just finished Lanterns, thought it was fine, Not that bad.

But the problem is the show barely has any constructs or cool action scenes despite being a Green Lantern show

And when people point that out, The Lanterns fans try defending it saying stuff like "oh you want the show to become what its not" like god forbid someone want Green Lantern stuff from a Green Lantern show

Like the show isn't terrible, i think it's okay. But whats wrong if people want Green Lantern stuff from this show?

The fans saying its a grounded detective show forget that its a Green Lantern show as well

DC has ton of grounded characters they could have chosen from if they wanted to make a grounded detective show and they chose Green Lantern? it's an IP that just doesn't fit this category sorry

So stop saying stuff like the show never promised this stuff or the show isn't what you want because its a freaking Green Lantern show not a batman or any grounded character show

Like if you enjoy the show, thats fine, i also think its decent but the crictism regarding it is fair and "the show isn't this" argument is dumb

<SPOILERS FOR LEGEND OF KORRA>

Sorry for sum critiques being repeated, it was an accumulation of narrative frustrations that drove me to this sloppy rant

My main issue with season 2 isn’t exactly that it was just a “bad” season, it had its pros, but a lot of flaws. I’ll start with my pros, Varrick and Zhu Li were great characters in my opinion, Varrick stole the spotlight everytime he came on screen and his eccentric behavior were really endearing to watch. Zhu Li was a fun opposite to him and really grounded his character, the twist villain role he had was actually pretty well done and somewhat caught me by surprise. The twins, Eska and Desna, were really interesting characters despite the whole stereotypical creepy twin. They felt like people and i found Eska’s relationship with Bolin really interesting. I have a few problems with how they went about the relationship but I’ll get into that later. But, atlas, that was the last of my pros and now onto the flaws.

Pacing was really annoying, I disliked how they kept switching storylines the moment tension peaked in another scene. The constant cliffhangers got really repetitive really quick and got annoying. The constant tonal whiplash made every discovery, emotional beat, and punch feel mundane. Like how Raava getting DESTRYEDd and how the writers barely sat with that for even a second before switching to another plot line. It was infuriating to watch and it didn’t increase the tension, it just made me sheath with anger as I watched Tenzin battle his inner demons. If anything, it ruined one of the most character development moments in this season and ended up flattening it.

Another issue I have with the finale, was the constant escalation that kept dampening tension. If everything is at 110% for around 4 episodes, it becomes redundant and borderline boring. This ties in with another problem I had with the finale, they kept nerfing Korra to make Unalaq more threatening but instead made Korra look incapable and furthermore somehow weakened the antagonist. Despite how much Unalaq changed, his character felt stagnant. I’m unsure if I missed something, but his motives felt fuzzy and like he was jus a villain for the sake of villainy. Yet, they showed so much of him that he felt less imposing and more annoying. Compared to Amon he was like a nagging dad. A lot of the finale felt like convenience after convenience. Truly, they made Korra look pathetic with how she needed a child to help her defeat the dark avatar, including with how plot convient Jinora’s connection to the spiritual world felt. Barely any development or exploration was put into how jinora was able to help Korra. Is anyone able to just enter the spiritual world after season 2 and help the avatar defeat sum random boss fight?

But seriously, it was just so infuriating to watch Korra get beaten up for what felt like 4 episodes straight. It didn’t make her later win feel compelling, in all honesty it felt unearned. Speaking of unearned, every time Korra entered the avatar state it felt unearned. Compare it to Aang, him entering the avatar state was a rare occurrence that happened due to emotional stakes or when the situation called for it. Somehow Korra always manages to enter the avatar sate and control herself despite her never going on the journey to control the avatar state on screen. She never had to embark on the journey of facing her fears or challenging herself, it was just always conveniently handed to her. What made the avatar state so threatening was the sheer amount of power and lack of control Aang had in ATLA that made it genuinely intimidating. It made her less compelling and her entering the avatar state felt like her dusting her knees off after tripping instead of a last resort used in desperate situations to demonstrate how serious the moment is.

A few of the characters and plot lines felt unnecessary, a lot of the Jinora plot line felt pointless—or at least underdeveloped, beside Tenzin confronting his doubts. Most of it could be cut and it wouldn’t change much besides the run time. This goes for characters as well, Bumi genuinely served a purpose but Bolin and Molin felt like they were there for the sake of replicating the Gaang from ATLA. They don’t feel like actual people with compelling motives outside other people. Mako’s main motive is protecting his brother while Bolin’s motives aren’t truly clear to me. Asami really only feels like a character somewhat but a Bolin and Mako were kinda just there. It felt like they were trying to replicate the iconic group from ATLA without any compelling characters or and arcs. Biolin and Mako barely did anything in the finale besides crutch Korra and get beat up. It could’ve been more compelling if they actually changed smth in the stories plot. But they don’t even affect anything, the twins continue the same without actually showing any struggle with their father’s transformation but conveniently saw him as less the second he transformed.

The Bolin and Eska’s subplot felt underdeveloped and once again, convenient. Nothing beyond Bolin literally running away from Eska to him confessing that he secretly loves he was established. The entire time between those two scenes was spent of him being afraid of Eska. To be fair, I was willing to let it slide with the development of Eska and Bolin becoming a thing and how that dynamic and unquie character would change and challenge the characters. OH WAITt, it was a spur of the moment realization! Whoopsie daises! As well as creating unnecessary and pointless relationship drama, I understand that they’re teenagers in relationships but I’m 15, and quite a few people my age, who could handle this better than the characters did. I wouldn’t have an issue with it, it could’ve been really god, but they’re not developing the characters with it. They’re just adding relationship drama for the sake of drama.

Honestly, I think Korra’s connection to the past avatars being severed was a really interesting narrative choice that took a humongous risk that could’ve been so much more compelling if developed further. It would’ve been so much more engaging if she spent the later seasons trying to rekindle that connection. It falls into that same ending in season one where she enters her avatar state and suddenly all the consequences from that finale jus disappear instead of actually exploring the lasting effects of losing one’s bending and trying to regain them (since she’s so stubborn, narratively she doesn’t have to rekindle her connection) whilst going against an antagonist. It would’ve been so much more interesting and I feel like it’s another reason this finale fell flat, there’s truly never any lasting consequences.

oh my jolly jus got past season 2 all suddenly all those tiny things I missed as a child are getting to me during this rewatch AURGRHhrhr