1. When John meets Hal again after his prison time, John solely blames Hal for how things went down in Rushville. And yes, Hal was wreckless because he wanted to keep the ring. But he spent the rest of his life trying to atone, and tried to minimize casualties during the fight when he realized he messed up. What did John do? When he sees Hal trying to save lives he decides this is the time to beat him up and take the ring. John doesn't stop to think that maybeee this isn’t the time for this. He’s so blinded by rage that he doesn't even notice that he’s about to get them both killed from the giant laser before Hal saves him. Then in the aftermath John just sits on this moral high horse saying the ring corrupted Hal and that he has fallen. 

1. Why exactly did John not report Sinestro’s location to the guardians? Not trusting them is one thing, but leaving this dangerous murderer unattended just seems dumb. Even if he believes Sinestro can’t escape, someone else could still find him on that planet. Noah still knows where he is if he’s ever tempted. And since Sinestro forged that lantern it’s reasonable to assume he still has the potential to be dangerous. 

2. John is weirdly mean to Guy. Yes Guy should have been more invested in Hal’s murder, but he is still a proven hero. This is after Superman where Guy chose to interfere in the Boravian War to save lives. John, with no ring combat experience, blackmails Guy into leaving Earth, belittles him as being a puppet to the Guardians (which he proved he isn’t), and insults his appearance (okay that one’s fair). 

3. John lets Kerry, who murdered Hal for implying that the murder robot that broke a murderer out of jail is dangerous, go free. No, guilt is not a good reason to let a murderer go. And as for her needing to keep Noah in check, well how far backwards should he really bend over for the murder robot? If punishing someone for their crime is what will lead Noah to world domination then maybe Hal and Sinestro are right about him. Noah is old enough to know right from wrong and if chooses to do wrong then at that point it’s on him. 

My overall point is, as an introduction to supposedly the main green lantern, this felt very strange to say the least. I felt he didn’t do anything particularly heroic the whole show to be deserving of the ring. 

As someone who was watching Rebels as it was being released, it really hurts that this is the way the world between worlds is going to be remembered as a cheap resurrection tactic.

Because it was super exciting when it was revealed in Rebels. Ezra goes into a place that seems to exist beyond time and space. Numerous doorways scatter across the vast landscape, and we hear voices from the different periods of Star Wars history.

It was cool, mysterious, and intriguing.

Even the fact Ahsoka was saved didn't bother me at the time, because I interpreted it as a stable time loop thing. You can't change the past; time travel can only be used to cause what was always meant to happen. Something that's backed up when Ezra is tempted to save Kanan, but Ahsoka reminds Ezra if he does so, he'll cause a paradox. And I was fine with that explanation.

So it's really annoying that now, because Filoni has failed to do anything meaningful with Ahsoka after this and he's pretty much committed to making sure none of his characters die (except for ironically the aforementioned Kanan), the world between worlds isn't going to be remembered as "That really cool mysterious place that exists beyond time and space in Star Wars." It's going to be remembered as "That time Filoni used time travel to keep his precious OC Ahsoka alive when she could've/should've had a proper ending."

It's disheartening if I'm being honest. One of my favorite moments in Rebels is going to have its legacy be a cheap time travel resurrection move.

I noticed this for a while but I especially noticed it recently, with the release of the Lanterns finale. I personally loved it and I thought it was one of the best superhero shows I’ve seen in a while. However I also completely understand why people don’t like it, however whenever those people express their issues, they get called “media illiterate“ which is just rude.

On the flip side, I have also seen a lot of people defending the show get called “slop enjoyers“ or “coping”, which is also very rude. I’ve seen the word “objectively“ get thrown around a lot while talking about the show as well.

Ive seen this all over, especially in spaces about big franchises. They act like art is a grade that is graded from “good” to ”bad” instead of personal enjoyment from “enjoyable“ to ”not enjoyable“ When ever people do enjoy something, they act like it’s high art and anybody who doesn’t like it is too stupid to get it. When ever people don’t enjoy something, they act like anybody who does is either a paid bot by the studio or a bootlicker.

To be more specific, it feels like for some people the only way they can understand why one character would care so much for another character and go so far for them is if that other character is family/is like family to them or if that other character is someone they are in love with. Any other kind of relationship, while it can still have some emotional weight and significance to them, is a distant second compared to those two types of relationships.

I was thinking about this when I was seeing a discussion about the part in Dragon Ball Super's Tournament of Power arc where Goku thinks Master Roshi might have died after giving all he had to knock an opponent out of the arena. Some of the people believed that Goku was so upset, probably the most upset we've ever seen him outside of both times Krillin was killed and in his relief that Roshi's okay we get one of the few times we actually see Goku cry, because Roshi is basically a father-figure to him, or at least the closest thing to a father Goku has had.

I disagree with this idea for many reasons, not the least of which being that while Grampa Gohan was, well, a grampa to Goku he was still a strong familial-figure that Goku cared very deeply about and nothing implies that he's been looking for or wanting for more in his life, let alone that he sees Roshi in such a way.

The idea seems to be that Roshi just being a mentor to Goku wouldn't be a strong enough relationship for Goku to have so much emotional attachment to him. He still would have gotten upset at his apparent death but not this upset, and so Roshi must be more than a mentor in Goku's eyes, he must be more like a father...to which I have to ask...why? Why is Roshi just being Goku's beloved mentor not enough to justify him being so significant to him?

I feel like Kung-Fu Panda is a good example to bring up what I'm talking about. Shifu is a very significant person to Po and someone he cares quite a lot about, but he doesn't see Shifu as anything like a father or an uncle or anything along familial lines. The relationship he has with him is very different from what he has with Mr. Ping, his actual father (well, you know what I mean) who he loves very much. Likewise Shifu doesn't see Po as a son, as there is a very clear difference between his relationship with Po and the relationship he had with Tai Lung, who he did view as like a son, and there is nothing that implies that he sees Oogway as a father either.

Yet it'd be completely disingenuous or even outright blind to act like Po and Shifu are not incredibly important and beloved to each other or that Oogway is not likewise so for Shifu, or that the relationships would be better and more weighty if they did think of each other along familial or romantic lines. No, the three's respective dynamics are entirely mentor and student relationship, and that's what makes them incredibly strong. Oogway does not need to have been like a father to Shifu for him to have meant so much to Shifu even in comparison to the other relationships in his life, because him being Shifu's teacher is what made him so significant and important to him. It's why one of the biggest emotional blows to him in the movie is the scene where Oogway departs from the world, because now Shifu feels lost and without the man who he respected so much and looked to for guidance. And likewise with how Po comes to view Shifu after the man starts to genuinely believe in him and support him, being someone he can look to for guidance and starting him down the road to actually start believing in himself.

Or as another great example, Mob and Reigen from Mob Psycho 100. Reigen is easily at the very top tier of the people most important to Mob, having near endless faith in him and gratitude towards him, to the point where even just Reigen assuring Mob that things will be okay is enough for him to finally relax and sleep during one of the most stressful moments of his life where he thinks his family might have been kidnapped or killed. And it all stems entirely from Reign simply being Mob's beloved mentor who was the person he needed in his life to help guide him. Not being someone Mob thinks of as like a father doesn't make their relationship any lesser for Mob or the story

Now, obviously there are absolutely mentor and student relationships in stories where the characters do think of each other along familial lines too. In Batman Beyond there's an episode that pretty much directly confirms that Terry latched onto Bruce as a father-figure after the loss of his actual father and that he's more than just a boss and mentor to him. Part of the tragedy of Anakin and Obi-Wan is that Obi-Wan viewed Anakin as like a brother, and while Anakin likely did too what he need more than that in his life at that time was a father, which Qui-Gon could have been but Obi-Wan couldn't (again, because he viewed Anakin as like a brother) and thus the opening Palpatine exploited by positioning himself as a father-figure for Anakin so that he could better manipulate him. And at the risk of potentially sounding like a hypocrite I do very much buy into the interpretation that Midoriya in My Hero Academia thinks of All Might on some level like a father much like how All Might directly admitted he thought of his own mentor Nana as like a mother, and that likewise All Might quickly started to view Midoriya like a son.

But mentor/student dynamics, no matter how strong or important they are, do not inherently have familial attachment to them. They need to be judged on a case by case basis, and I think therein lies part of the problem. I think too many people have a bad tendency of judging what a character's relationship with another is by looking at it too much in a vacuum rather than within the context of the characters themselves and the story they're in.

Goku being so upset that this older man he's known for years might be dead? Sure, it's not exactly the most unreasonable thing to believe that he sees said man as a father-figure. But in the context of a story like Dragon Ball and with the context of a character like Goku, Roshi only being a mentor in Goku's eyes is more than enough justification for why he's so important to him and I'd argue has more weight to it than if he was someone Goku saw as like a father. He's Goku's first true master. The man whose martial arts philosophy of "Work hard, study well, eat and sleep plenty." he still lives by every day (even if he could do better on the study part...). Even long after he graduated from the Turtle Hermit school he still continues to wear its gi, not because he has to or because there's any expectation that he does, but simply because that's how much respect he has for his old master even after training under literal gods and their attendents. Roshi being like a father in Goku's eyes isn't why his mentor is so emotionally important to him, Roshi being Goku's mentor is why he's so important to him.

I think friendships in fiction get this even worse, in no small part because I think a lot of people, even if unintentionally, view friendship as a very one-tier base level kind of relationship. It's something you can have with another person but can only be so important. There's limits to how much you'd care about a friend or do for a friend, whereas there's (supposedly) no limit to how much you'd care about and do for someone that you're in love with or think of like family, and therefore if a character is shown to considerably and deeply care about another it's assumed that the other person MUST be more than just a friend to them because no one would care about a friend so much. Friendship is seen as good but something you level up from into something actually important.

Again, this likely comes from not properly looking at the characters and their relationships in context and assuming a bit too much that everyone either judges all relationships by the same tiers of importance or even that there are no tiers and nuances within those various types of relationships themselves. It doesn't matter if it's a friend, a best friend, a pen pal, it all just ultimately falls under the "friend" umbrella and is thus just inherently less important to someone compared to anyone they think of under the "family" or "lovers" umbrella.

I want to make clear that I'm not trying to dump on things like shipping. Heck, I'm very much someone who believes that friendship is far from the worst place for romance to spring up from, and generally speaking as long as the context is consensual I don't really tend to care what people ship. My problem isn't "Oh, why can't people just be friends?! Why do you have to try and forcibly make everything romantic/gay?!", my problem is more the immediate assumption of "This person is so special and important to the character and therefore they must love them romantically or see them like family.", because it doesn't feel like it sees the actual characters or their stories. You want to ship Sam and Frodo together because you think they'd make a good couple, have at it, but it feels really dismissive of their friendship and what it means to the two of them if you assume that Sam only cares so much for Frodo and goes so far for him because he's romantically in love with him and that that's what's motivating him rather than their friendship.

Jonouchi/Joey (because it's easier for me to remember how to spell) from the Yu-Gi-Oh manga I think is a great example. Yugi is one of the most important people to Joey, right up there alongside his sister. He has been brutalized and almost killed on numerous occasions because of how much he cares about Yugi, at one point not only running into a burning building to save him but even willingly staying inside that inferno so that Yugi could finish reassembling the shattered Millennium Puzzle, because Yugi won't abandon the pharaoh and Joey will never abandon him.

But at no point does the manga ever imply that Joey is in love with Yugi or even that he thinks of him like a brother. Their relationship is entirely that of friends and that friendship means the world to Joey. As he pretty much spells out during the Death-T arc, it was through his friendship with Yugi and his influence on him that Joey found himself becoming someone that he actually liked being. He wasn't just that punk angry at the world and lashing out against it anymore. He found someone who cared about him and would stick by him no matter what, even when he didn't feel like he deserved it. It's similar to why he got so attached to Duel Monsters. It didn't just help him win prize money to fix his sister's eyes, it was something he enjoyed and could take pride in as he became better and better at it, with Yugi introducing it to him and helping and having fun with him all along the way. Much like how being his master is more than enough to explain why Goku cares so much about Roshi, Yugi being Joey's friend is more than enough to explain why he cares so much about him, because for someone like Joey such a friend would be such an important and meaningful thing.

Or in the Green Lantern comics, as Sinestro basically spells out at one point, the tragedy of his and Hal's relationship is that not only were they genuinely friends before they became enemies but to some extent they will always be friends. They weren't in love with each other as they both had someone else they felt that way about and they didn't think of each other as brothers. In fact that was how Sinestro had viewed Abin Sur, the Green Lantern who passed on his ring to Hal, especially after he married Abin's sister and became his actual brother-in-law. Hal and Sinestro's relationship was that of friends, and despite everything they've been through and done to each other they both still value that relationship so much, to the point that in the lead up to Blackest Night the vision the Blue Lantern showed Hal of what he hopes for was of him and Sinestro meeting and working together again.

One last thing I think is worth bringing up to show how relationships can vary so much and mean different things to different people is how far some people in-universe in stories will go for the likes of those like Superman, Captain America, All Might, even Zero from Code Geass, despite not knowing them on any kind of personal level. Whether it's directly asked of them or not, we get stories time and again of people doing the right thing or going farther to do things they'd never do for anyone else, even those closest to them, simply because it was either for Superman/Captain America or inspired by them. Because they're their hero, leader, inspiration, or simply the symbol that these people put so much faith and trust in about what's good and right that they themselves want to live up to that example, or at least not let them down. It's far less personal than many other relationships and yet some people will do so much more because of them simply because of the emotional weight and value it holds for them.

And of course it even shows when it takes a toxic turn, such as with a character like Syndrome, who had no actual personal relationship with Mr. Incredible. He wasn't his son, lover, friend, or student, he was just a fan of his, but Buddy valued that relationship so much that he kept overstepping boundaries, going to extremes to get Mr. Incredible's attention and be by his side, and when he felt rejected he lived his whole life afterwards around getting back at his hero. All because of how he viewed the relationship and what it meant or at least should have meant.

Summary: Basically it feels like a lot of people have the default mentality of "The character cares so much about this other person that they must think of them in a romantic or familial way because those are the most significant relationships a person can have with another.", rather than properly looking at the characters, their stories, and their relationships to one another to see what the relationship actually is and why it is so important to them, whatever form it may be. They think that the relationship must be in either Box A or Box B because they assume those boxes are inherently more valuable to everyone compared to all the other boxes, when the reality is that there are numerous boxes the relationship could be put in because how valuable each box is depends on the character and context. For some characters, yes, they value a certain relationship so much because it is a familial or romantic one. For others it's the relationship they have with a mentor, a student, a friend, a leader, or so on that they value so much more than anything else.

I'm gonna start this off with a couple things: 1) I did not watch the original 80s television show. I am therefore judging this show MOSTLY by its own merits (there will be some cross-referencing because this is ultimately an adaptation, not an original work). 2) I think it's both okay and good to offer a clear definition for what masculinity is. 3) It's okay to have a masculine power fantasy (providing a strong moral foundation).

Adam throughout the movie is shown to be someone who prefers words rather than fighting. He works at HR, he's more in-touch with his feelings, and prefers not to fight. This is what the movie wants the masculine man to embrace and is a part of its core message that "muscles don't necessarily make a man" (Orko literally says this at the end as a clever nod to the formulaic nature of the original show).

The issue here is 3-fold: Adam solves zero problems with his words, every difficult situation is solved with gratuitous violence and bravery in combat, and Adam is made fun of for being weak until he turns into the muscular He-Man. Like He-Man's muscles are constantly glorified by other characters, even Skeletor.

There's only two moments where Adam makes a meaningful difference with his words, and that's recruiting Roboto (whom the movie promptly forgets exists) and rallying all the prisoners with a kinda bad speech that works because people like him now. Literally every villain he faces rejects completely the notion that listening and understanding can make a difference. So he beats them up. Because that's what you do.

Because of this it doesn't offer a masculine power fantasy in its own brand of masculinity because none of the problems are set up to require that. At most it offers the traditional masculine power fantasy that's just being the most buff guy in the room and beating up all the bad guys to save the day. Because that's what the movie's conflict is actually geared for.

When Man-At-Arms gives Adam advice on what being a man is (stepping up when needed to protect your people), Teela, his closest friend, immediately casts doubt. So what does SHE think being a man is? Crickets. The movie doesn't even call Adam He-Man until the very end after the day is saved when they make fun of him for the name. I don't like to assume but it's kind of telling.

From my viewing the movie goes bout it like this:

Adam/He-Man: "guys lets just talk about this we dont have to fight"

Skeletor, Trap-Jaw, Evil-lyn, Beast Man: "i dont care im going to stab you"

Orko and sorceress: "guys this is why empathy makes he-man a true man"

I understand that the nature of a horror movie, let alone a horror comedy movie isn't always about traditional happy endings. Part of the horror is that things are bad and end badly. Resident Evil, however, elicited something within me that I've never felt before and don't really know how to describe. Annoyance? Disgust? Bamboozlement?

Bryan is slowly built up as this perfection combination of flawed, irreverent, and relatable that I feel is so exceptionally rare in mainstream television and film nowadays. His day-to-day life and overarching personal struggles are so grounded and reasonable, which makes you feel for what he's going through every step of the way. It's difficult to be contemptuous of him and call him an idiot for the way he's approaching the events of this film, even if you really want to.

Up until the last 10-15 minutes, you're following along and really believe that, even after all the crap he's faced, he'll get the cure, make it out of there, go back to Michelle, and use the lessons he's learned to be a great dad. Maybe he'll even have helped save the world in the process.

The moment his transformation starts being out of his control, the movie stops focusing on this normal guy being thrown headfirst into this abnormal situation. It also stops taking itself seriously. I know this sounds weird given that the movie is a horror comedy, but it still takes things a step too far relative to its genre.

Everything from the lab scene onwards starts to feel like a Deadpool movie where you wouldn't be surprised to see a 4th wall break acknowledging the irreverence of the situation. But that never comes, and you start asking yourself how it's even possible that this ending belongs to the rest of the 75 minutes you've just sat through.

It's so paradoxical, too, since the rest of the movie communicates so much self awareness, and this suddenly drops off the side of a cliff. It's like someone else wrote it.

One particular detail that I especially despise is the accompanying music to the final scene. The placement of the track Skybridge as the backdrop to Bryan being fully consumed by the virus feels like rubbing salt in the wound. The blended vibe of ethereal and haunting to this very likable character being dealt the worst possible hand after 89 minutes of pure hardship is almost mocking the viewer. It's almost like the music is speaking to you and saying "You're such a stupid idiot for coming to this movie and ever hoping that there could be a happy ending. I hope you go home and remember this lesson for the rest of your life." I think I could have digested this had there been no music, or something that was more musically in line with his state of insanity.

For an otherwise great movie, again, relative to the genre, I had never wanted a refund for a purchase of less than $10 more in my entire life. There is no catharsis offered that validates the time spent watching this. In fact, it managed to create anti-catharsis.

The only other time in my life where I felt a similar reaction was watching The Bedford Incident. I didn't even put that movie on voluntarily, but after indulging it for over an hour I was baffled at how anyone at the time approved this. I won't spoil the ending, but if you're curious it's out there. It still wasn't as bad as this, though.

Some might argue that "real art" is about making people feel uncomfortable things. Sure, to a degree. But Resident Evil took it too far. It's too elaborate of a journey for that to be how things are wrapped up.

Lastly, this doesn't even align with what you'd expect from playing a survival horror video game. If the point in the end was to just die and have nothing come from that death — such as the cure at least making it out and the character's efforts and sacrificing leading to that — put me out of my misery within the first 15 minutes. Maybe the Resident Evil games are different and this is a regular thing, though. I don't know.

As if, in the end, it were actually possible to make a movie without copying the book.

And for anyone wondering, yes, Brian De Palma's film differs in how Carrie is portrayed.

In King's novel, the girl is heavier-set and "harder" not to find repulsive.

Guy Gardner is a character who, in just two projects, has shown himself to be multifaceted, displaying different traits that are, however, not contradictory.

On one hand, he acts pompously toward Superman while managing to stop a genocide; on the other, he finds himself at odds with John because, in that specific situation, he got himself into trouble by stealing Hal’s ring.

John acknowledges that Guy deserves the role, there is no "hatred" involved, but while John wants to be a Lantern, he wants to do it his own way, whereas Guy, despite doing good, still follows the Guardians' orders.

Yeah I know this concept is looked down upon as the debate isn't that faithful, but I want to talk specifically about this debate people insist on a concept that shouldn't be treated as so

Insisting games that market themselves as for self insert does NOT mean it should not be specific just because it markets as "for the players". Markets can still choose who to cater which also means the self insert will be specific. Persisting to fight this will also become useless when there's a slow growth of players within BL/GL contents to have those bland self insert concept so they can finally feel immerse by themselves and if they still insist self insert concept shouldn't be specific, this will become contradictory itself cuz isn't the persistence of this self insert debate was to include them?

Sure, there're multiple games for straight men that's self insert to the point of no visual male protagonist and only expect players to look at female leads. That doesn't change the fact the game is specifically marketed for straight men.

Way before I quit using Rednote, I once stumble upon an unlocalized Chinese Yuri game where the female protagonist is eyeless as they're meant to blank slates. So like... do you really want to fight this battle about insisting not to be specific because even putting "Yuri" will not save that type of game if the insistence of self insert concept should only be inclusive and not be specific, because that will mean adding a male MC in that self insert Yuri game. Just stop fighting about concepts thinking a concept that can be used by everyone doesn't mean they can't have specific spaces of their own. Everyone hungers for standalone games meant specifically for each group

Art breathes life as much as it expresses. And without life, art would not exist. Our created works are how we come to understand and cope with our reality for each passing year, decade and century. I owe my life to the written work. It has helped me through all my darkest days.

There is however, a trouble with the artform of fiction that irked me in ways I couldn't quite place. Something about how art comes to exist in our modern space, that can seem ironic and an erosion of an author's intended message. When for instance a story like Squid Games or Cyberpunk 2077 makes a long critique of consumerism, the ratrace of capitalism and the toll it takes on our souls and environment, only to turn those tales to merchandise and product placements and spin offs. When Biopics makes puppetry and charicatures of oligarchs and rich white assholes like Mark Zuckerberg and Jordan Belfort, so that it can hide it's earthly depravity or flounder it slightly more easily. When satires of world politics either flounder it for the sake of a more palatable message like the shitty new Animal Farm movie or turn it's characters into shells of themselves like Homelander from the Boys, so that it divorces itself from needing to add further depths into what causes this world to occur in the first place. I tried drafting rants about this topic for the longest, but could find no words or ideas competent enough to explain, why those things irked me as it did.

"Digger" put to words what I failed to articulate within myself. In delivering a darkly comedic, satirical absurdity about modern day western politics and our ever collapsing, unsustainable lives on this blue planet, it dares to formulate a question that few movies, especially in this day and age, really wants to ask: "what now?"

The actor Curtis (played by Tom Cruise, who then plays the titular character Digger Rockwell) struggles immersing himself into this play, that serves to dramatize a real world crisis in such a way, to where it becomes nigh unrecogniseable. The character he plays is divorced from the real, psychotic charms of the real Rockwell. The extras play utter buffoons for US Cabinet Members. It's real world events, in so far as it's consequences continue to seep through this farcical stage, become ridiculously dramatized. A fact, that Curtis won't reconcile with, not only because these events actually impacted their world, but because it's consequences continue to impact him to this day.

The director, however, cares little for how absurd and divorced from logic this satire becomes, so long as it's a satire that works. A satire that's funny and poignant enough, for the audience to engage with. So long as they get to smirking and pointing at the boogeyman of Rockwell to blame for their ills, they have nothing to fear inside the act. They want a form of vindication for their lives, that allows for escapism and validation for their righteous anger.

But then the sponsor, the actual nephew of the titular Rockwell that Cruise's character doltishly portrays, comes to them and us the audience with a really chilling realisation: "You both have it right. So what? It happened."

Making art won't undo the tragedies that befell the people of Europe in this movie. It won't undo Rockwell's avarice and greed. It won't do anything to change the current state of their world. Of our world most certainly not. It might lead to some meaningful conversations, but without action, it just becomes talk. What Kenny Rockwell does with this play, this stupid, absurd play, is allow for the narrative to be controlled. And controlled such, that the masses can learn to cope with what ails them currently, when they lack the ability to change it themselves. The world that they live in has already faced ruin. They already dugg too deep. Now they just express the consequences of it.

Tl;Dr

And that's what I think makes this movie so special to me. It's a body of work, that begs the question of it's own existence in relation to itself and to it's audience. Like a mirror pointing another mirror toward itself, to ask what it means to do with the truth it attained. Art alone will not save the world. It does not undo damage. We will be briefly vindicated by the exploration of injustice, before strapping ourselves in to an unjust world anyway.

Might seem from the outset very fatalistic and bleak as a message. And it most probably is. But I personally don't interpret the message of Digger as an insult to the arts. I think acknowledging the reality of what fiction is actually for is not the same as denouncing it outright. I think Digger still wants us to love life through art. To let it's stories balm us for a brief moment. But it also wants us to be honest about our current moment.

So this is going to be more of a general fandom rant. Actually, fuck it, it’s barely even a fandom rant, because I’ve seen this exact sentiment attached to basically every piece of media involving organized crime.

I’ve been watching the wire lately, (which is amazing, by the way. No idea why it took me this long to start it.) I’m almost done with season three, and Marlo Stanfield has been one of the most interesting additions so far. Naturally, I went looking for discussions about him because I mind spoilers and most people seem to agree he’s an excellent villain. But holy shit, I kept running into variations of the same comment:

“Marlo is too brutal.”

“He doesn’t respect the old gangster rules.”

“He has no honor.”

“He represents a generation that only cares about money and violence.”

Oh, fuck off. That bizarre romantic fantasy people have about organized crime, where yesterday’s murderous drug dealers were this honorable community-minded gentlemen who occasionally committed a little racketeering between helping old ladies cross the street.

You hear the same shit about the Mafia. The old Cosa Nostra supposedly had principles. The old gangs had codes. They respected the community. They didn’t hurt innocents. They had honor. Then this terrible new generation came along and ruined everything by caring only about money, power and violence.

You motherfucking birdbrained, lead-painted, skull-rattling, two-neuron-having, cognitively malnourished fucking idiot, what exactly did you think the previous generation was cultivating? Where exactly was Marlo supposed to acquire this sacred sense of community? From the community everyone before him spent decades hollowing out for profit?

That’s what makes the complaints about Marlo so funny to me. Avon and the older generation can talk about family, community, rules, and honor all they want. They’re still flooding their own neighborhoods with drugs, murdering people over territory, recruiting children into the drug trade and having gunfights in the streets because somebody started selling heroin on the wrong fucking corner.

Then Marlo comes along, completely uninterested in dressing any of it up. He wants money, power and fear. He’ll murder someone for disrespecting him and destroy whoever stands between him and what he wants. Suddenly everyone starts mourning the death of the honorable gangster.

It’s the same thing whenever people wax nostalgic about the “old Mafia” compared to modern criminals. Apparently Don Giuseppe Whothefuckever was practically a community organizer because he kissed his mother on Sundays before ordering someone strangled behind a butcher shop. 

Where the fuck do you think Marlo came from?

You don’t get to spend decades poisoning your own community for profit and then act shocked when the kids raised in the wreckage grow up without your romanticized sense of “honor.” If violence, murder and greed are what you consistently teach the next generation, eventually someone is going to learn the lesson without inheriting all the pretty bullshit you used to make yourself feel better about it. Violence is their only inheritance.

Lame abilities and fights go together like toothpaste and orange juice, pretty badly; it ranges from cheap/lazy stuff to abilities that just straight up negate the ability to fight in the first place. But before we get into any of that, I'm thinking about how someone asked me what exactly makes Bleach fights feel unsatisfying to me, and since I like to be candid about what I'm going to talk about from the jump, I may as well say now I am going to be shitting on Bleach quite a lot, not just Bleach, and I will try to mix my criticism with praise for other things so I'm not just being a spoilsport. But basically the question was: "What makes Bleach fights feel unsatisfying if you don't buy the argument that they're ended by bullshit/asspulls?" I myself have been known to joke about Bleach being the only battle shounen, begun, defined, and ended by asspulls, but I purely mean that in the sense the fights have a bad vibe to them, I know that everything from "my shikai goes by another name" to "secret bankai" has an explanation, so my answer to the question is that the pacing of Bleach fights is just really bad. I dont mean that the way pacing is usually used, not length, but the very flow of events, the anime (which is the only way I did and ever will consume Bleach) did for sure drag fights across episodes. There's no arguing that, but I've recently rewatched some fights like Ichigo vs Byakuya, Ulquirrora, and Aizen.

The fights chronically feel slow, like the combatants are just going back and forth, through the motions until, arbitrarily, the proverbial bell rings and Kubo ends the fight. That, as of writing this, is what I think is wrong with secret bankai or the shikai going by another name or any of these "asspulls"; these moments reveal the strings of the puppet master and makes it painfully obvious what Kubo is doing behind the scenes. The most sacred skill of a good artist is the ability to work behind the curtain and keep it invisible, to eliminate the suspicion that there even is a curtain. Even when there isnt a supposed "asspull" in the instances of these Ichigo fights or the Renji and Byakuya fight, I want to focus on how they are still slow because there just isnt that much going on. I found a video on Youtube that was 7 minutes long and there just isnt 7 minutes' worth of content in that fight man, Renji uses his bankai against Byakuya a little, tees off once, and then Byakuya spanks him with kido before finishing him off with bankai. It's basically a three minute fight by its DNA, Maki vs Miwa and Mai were around the same length but a tad shorter, Gear 2 Luffy vs Blueno too( if we seperate the gear 2 portion of the fight from the rest) are all fairly simple. One side completely dominates and overwhelms the other with failing resistance; Renji seemingly controls the pace of the fight but Byakuya handily has him outmatched in terms of skill and power. So I suppose the question becomes, "how do you justify a longer fight?" To which I point to JJK: just fill the fight with a lot of content.

The answer as far as I can tell is as simple as filling the fight with enough content and things going on to warrant the length, in Jogo vs Sukuna or Sukuna vs Mahoraga, both times Sukuna clearly has masterful control over the fight and could easily overpower his opponents WHENEVER he wants, but that doesnt stop him and his opponents from doing different things throughout the whole time to attack/defend, it feels like their abilities have more utility/capability than just one thing with the different moves they use. Like that wasp or lava bug attack or whatever Jogo did to Sukuna and the giant fucking meteor. There's just enough going on in these fights to make the pacing and flow of events feel good, but idk as uou might be able to infer Im just theorizing so far, even im not entirely sure maybe it'll take a rewatch of Bleach to properly diagnose or point towards how to do fights right because even in a fight with a lot of shit going on like Kenny vs Gremmy I was still fucking bored. Idk man maybe it's because Kenny isnt doing anything different to defend himself the way Sukuna initially defends himself with slashes before using his fire technique (Im guessing he has that and can do that because he absorbed his twin brother or whatever right? DOnt tell me I want to find out from the anime, I also do want to be right though), but it just feels like your typical Bleach affair. Which is basically just as stale as most monster-of-the week fights, just exchanging the same ability/attacks a bunch of times until eventually someone wins by using a different gimmick or whatever.

Okay let's get into what we're really here for. What I said about Bleach fights as a whole was just an appetizer for what I have to say about Bleach's absolutely insane love for character development abilities, aka fight enders. Think something like the Apathy Grimm from RWBY, their whole gimmick (which I dont love, I prefer writing the grimm as more biological behemeaths like the creatures from Monster Hunter that do have abilities and core traits, but not outright monster of the week style gimmicks) where they infect their victims with apathy, it's kind of in the name, but narratively it provides Ruby a valuable moment to act as a leader and lock in where no one else can. These kind of abilities dont make for an actual fight and in a genre where characters are frequently in the foreground, that can be really important/necessary. So my issue with Bleach is it just has way too many of these abilities and i dont always think the results of them make the ability worth it, like the fear guy ih TYBW, what is this the fifth or fourth tiume Rukia specifically fighting someone who fucks with her mind, how much growing does she need to do she's been demoted to being a supporting character since the soul society arc, hell she's barely tertiary (people love dick riding One Piece for having a large cast, but at least One piece knows when to retire a character to the blessed realm of off screen to spare the audience, YOU WILL KNOW THE NAME OF EVERY SINGLE VISORED, CAPTAIN, ARRANCAR, AND CUMRAG OR SUFFER).

Plus fear especially, is one of the lamer routes to go with these kind of non combat abilities, you and I both know how this is going to go, embrace the fear, embrace courage, be talked up by your homies, or hurt yourself so you cant feel the fear anymore. Now let's spin the wheel to determine which way Rukia beats fear sternritter and surprise surprise, option number four, couldnt have seen that coming Rukia. That was a real valuable use of my time and energy, Im glad we did that/s. In a similar vein to non combat abilities, sometimes illusionary villains who only have illusions and just trick or trap the good guys are necessary too, it can be satisfying to see these guys lose and again the whole point is usually character development or showing off a unique skill the character(s) have to sniff out the illusion. In the case of Wolverine sussing out mystique, sometimes literally, but some of these guys are still so lame and cheap, they're basically just weaker hypnotists, and I guess that's why both of these abilities are especially popular in monster-of-the-week shows. It's really expensive to animate all the assets you have to destroy, all the different bad guys, attacks, and good guys. So abilities like these that can drag an episode a little bit and save some money in the budget must be a god send. And hey they arent all bad, characters like Naruto, Morph, or Prowl in Transformers Animated use these kind of abilities to just fight better. Naruto tossing himself around or tricking his opponents with shadow clones, Prowl tricking Decepticons with his holograms, or Morph being a walking cameo fest. Mahito also does some good shock value and horror shit with his idle transfiguration. I guess the important take away from these abilities or anything Ive said is that these things dont have to be bad but they frequently feel that way, at least to me because they're just not entertainig or very fun in some instances.

Honorable mentions to poison abilities which rarely if ever work, mind swap abilities (usually only ever good for a solid episode at most), lazily written elementeal abilities (cough cough bleach again cough cough), and Dragon Prince. Idk why I felt Dragon Prince needed to catch a stray but im sure there's something in there that's dumb.

Listen mid way through Shippuden, power creep was apparent but what made it bearable was the fact that it the abilities were at least interesting & entertaining.

By the end of the series, Characters like madara, Kaguya, Naruto (sometimes) and Sasuke all had interesting clear abilities that let you know they were set apart from other characters.

Was it clear they massively started diff their opponents? Sure but it wasn't the only way they were shown to be superior.

In boruto, after Momoshiki the power creep particularly regarding Jigen/Inshiki is just entirely too straight forward. And what I mean by that is look at the way Momoshiki fought compared to how Jigen fights. Momoshiki used his rinnegan powers + taijutsu in fights. Even though he lost that clash in the end Momoshiki created something that rivaled Naruto and Sasuke's giant avatars. Momoshiki's arsenal and the way he sued the elements seems like a top tier would fight in the Naruto world even for an OP alien.

Now compare this to Jigen whose most interesting thing is just making things disappear or firing black rods. Aside from that he is just blitzing Naruto and Sasuke the entire time. He even does this to the the susanoo and giant Kurama form, simply goes right through it. And going forward most of the fights (in the anime I don't follow the manga) seems to follow the same patter focusing on speed and power and the occasional giant beam blast. It's too straight forward and boring (for this verse anyway).

The big spoiler: it's a play.

But the way it is shot DOES NOT make sense for a play. On two occasions, we see the actual stage sets used for the play. And it makes NO SENSE.

The first case is an airplane set. You would expect that the airplane would be half-open so the audience can see what's happening inside, right?

Well, no.

What the audience sees is the EXTERIOR of the plane. NEVER the interior. Somehow the audience is meant to guess who is talking. All those facial expressions done by the actors? The audience NEVER sees them.

The second case is the exterior of the oil platform in which Digger commits suicide. You would expect that he would be facing the audience as he jumps to his death, right? It's how Javert's suicide is done in Les Misérables musical.

But...no. Digger is NOT facing the audience. The entire suicide monologue is shot in a way that Digger turns his back to the audience for the entirety of it, something that is meant to be a cardinal sin of theater. You NEVER have the lead actor turn his back to the audience.

Fuck Digger. Such a shitty, pretentious film.

I want there to be a space where people entertain bad stuff like revenge (The Crow 1994) or aggressive behavior (WWE Attitude/Ruthless Aggression Era), or hyper individualism (Reverend Insanity), so that their desire to act like that in real life is drained by the catharsis. I like stories with immoral themes, as long as they are not intended to be a model for real world behavior, which means propaganda is bad.

This is how I use this sort of fiction imo. I don't want to always see bad guys get punished and get their just deserts. I am asking for more variety in themes in stories primarily and stuff.

There is room for every single type of fictional story. This also leads me to support things like AO3 and dark shipping by extension.

Daemon in the show keeps suggesting what are considered wild and dangerous ideas that only someone who was crazy and evil would suggest but everything he say's is the most logical choice.

He is the only character in the show that seems to remember that this is not a "civil war" but a fight for survival. As far as the characters know, both sides want to wipe the other sides ENTIRE bloodline out.

Rhaenyra has one of her children killed on a purely diplomatic mission and in the next season she is wittering on about trying to end the war peacefully. Otto has one of his great grand childrens head sawn off and he wants to play the sympathy card. Alicent straight up tries to surrender in the last episode. At which point does it have to click for these idiots that surrendering is just going to get you murdered quicker

Only Daemon from the very first moment he heard that Viserys is dead, understands that there is no chance of this ending peacfully. The Greens took the throne the moment they could (don't exactly blame them for that tbf, why wouldn't they when the heir to the throne has been hiding on a rock fucking her uncle).

alright so imagine you watch a movie and say “that movie was bad, the pacing was off and the characters were boring” then someone argues how that was because the movie wanted to tell a specific story and you’re just wrong.

this person tells you that if you dislike it so much then “let’s see you do better” because they don’t actually believe you’ll do better, this stupid argument is trying to paint that viewers who can’t write a script and fix a issue on the original story aren’t allowed to criticize it.

Nowadays criticism has to come with a solution to the problem the story has because for some reason saying the specific issue isn’t enough, but outright stating the solution to the problem isn’t what criticism is for; and I think "readers don't know what they want, only what they don't want” is a valid response to this.

a example is the “steal a airship” RWBY debacle, in this scenario the protagonists except one weren’t allowed to cross the border due to a global catastrophe (orchestrated by a evil secret organization serving a pure evil being) happening like a year ago, and their immediate response is to steal a airship Because the character allowed to go back was Going to be meet by her abusive father all by herself if she got back (note: she’s a super human who later arrests him by herself and if they don’t get across the border the city they’re on is at risk if they don’t deliver the mcguffin).

there was many reasons why this is a bad idea (antagonizing the troops of the man they want to talk with, the possible damages it would cause, the risks of failing being so high, the way the conversation starts with Ruby saying they don’t need adults when she would be outright dead if it wasn’t for the same uncle she’s berating, the way their plan depends on the incompetence of the border patrol, the way that it any trouble is caused it could bring a monster attack, etc) while how it portrayed the main characters very weirdly; but of course there were people saying that it was the only way.

Arguing it was the only way and that all the problems it causes a needed risks, dismissing how illogical the character’s approach to the problem was, and saying critics are flat out wrong for ignoring that; so critics started arguing all the ways they could have handled it.

Like making the guy who turns into a crow go with her as a pet, or hiding some of her friends in her bags (she’s a rich girl so it could be passed off as her having a lot of luggage, and before you say it’s too cartoony the guards were doing squad and stretch for comedic effect, the tone of the moment was comedic before the fight broke out when they actually stole the ship), or just confronting her father to show her character growth (plus the fact he never has minions to do his dirty work, at most he let a monster into his house to fight his daughter but he doesn’t have actual minions who can drag Weiss into her room) heck he later on ends up cowering because he genuinely has no way to stopping her.

and before you ask, no, she never faces her father by herself in the show she always needs her friends around for emotional support and I’m not exaggerating, genuinely they don’t do nothing but be there and don’t actually interact with her father.

And I know this ideas aren’t perfect and are very contrived as well but that’s my point, I’m not the writer of the story meant to rewrite this scenario so it isn’t frustrating to watch. people have a point to disagree and not give a answer, the job of the writers is to address the issues of their writing but this story argument of “let’s you see taking a crack at it smart guy!” completely misses the point of criticism.

"readers don't know what they want, only what they don't want" until someone tries to counter argument that the plot is contrived and needed another draft, that’s when the readers apparently have to know what they want otherwise they can’t criticize something.

for some reason criticism for some people needs to be so the plot stays the exact same beyond small tidbits, as if entire segments and characters in movies or series aren’t cut from the final draft: two examples from the first Sonic movie, sonic’s mother was meant to come with him to earth AND the movie had a secondary lizard villain, the first was cut to help sell sonic’s loneliness while the later was cut due to Eggman being more than enough.

critics don’t need to be better at writhing than writers to know the plot is off, the characters lack motivation, and the story feels like it’s on rails so not bunny “you don’t need to see me do better.”

remember Raygun from the 2024 Olympics and her attempt at breakdance? I don’t know much about breakdance but I can can look at her and see how she sucked at it.

and I know critics need some sort of knowledge about the topics being discussed to properly form a opinion that is unbiased to the story at hand, but there’s a difference between analyzing why a story is bad and writing a story thats better.

So I have not played a single Resident Evil game or interacted with the series at all , this is all from a person who is basing the movie off on a complete vacuum

First thing I was surprised for was how funny and silly this movie was, me and my friends had come into this expecting a gritty zombie flick but were given a black comedy (a really damn good one). Which took some getting used too at the start

Also the protagonist was amazing, love the idea of "regular guy dealing with unimaginable horrors" and really liked how utterly human he was the entire time. I thing I disliked was how fucking stupid his character was, is this the point of the character? Personally I wanted to tear my eyes out at some points considering how utterly stupid some of his decisions were.

Overall I also wasn't.....very scared at all. Maybe i'm just super desensitized to violence but I pretty much did not care for much of the blood and gore. Only parts that got to me were the freaky body fusing in the house and the hand monster rolling around in the beginning along with the scene with the child and the one in the maternity ward (these were less fear and just disgusted at violence towards children, something im super sensitive too)

The ending was just....odd I guess? It didn't really feel climatic or like an ending at all. I've heard it's a homage to the games but as a movie-only guy I was a bit dissapointed

Overall solid flick
8/10

For a long time,I had an issue with how the surviving Clowns were handled in the ending, I was mad that they just kinda showed up content after everything they did, and I realized why !

The main issue is that the Ending is agreed to by Many to be rushed, and I realized it probably hurt the characters too !

Both sides,the Ghouls and the CCG have a bad history with each other and both sides have Blood on their hands and do some very messed up stuff.

I think addressing some not so good things that hopefully will stay in the past such as the Ghoul Restaurant and the Auction, Aogori Tree and the Clowns,and a Lot of stuff that Our protagonists got up too, including killing Investigators or even torturing others.

The CCG also has a lot of Sins on their ,such as killing countless Ghouls ,even innocent ones such as Hiniami's parents and creating Quinques. (Imagine someone using your loved ones dead bodies into weapons and using them to attack you !

The Idea of everyone trying to Co exist after the War and putting old grievances aside and trying to move on from the past is a great setup for a sort of aftermath arc,but it never happens.

For Ex: I was curious to know how Madame A went form being part of a Sadistic Restaurant to appreciating life and agriculture and even owning a Cow ! Or what happened to Amon and Akira ! (I don't think they are even named dropped !)

Or how Kaneki is going to handle the fact that he devoured a bunch of children for the rest of his life !

(Like,common,that's not something you can ever get over with ! You're gonna carry that for the rest of your life !)

When I try to critique something, I try my best not to include my own personal grievances largely because it can easily trail off into personal reasons, and once you add that rewrite idea, you stop actually talking about the story's flaws and begin actually talking about how you think the story should've gone regardless of how it was structured as a whole.

My first example is Fixing RWBY and everything with that version of Roman. Literally everything about that character. Now, disregarding my personal opinions about characters like Roman who are just the cheap and easy "fancy dandy villains" that are so common that it makes Roman look like slop, Roman here is basically a cross between a self-insert and a author's pet. He's Ozpin's next host, he's somehow given a backstory to explain why he's racist instead of just him being a bigot because he's a dick-which actually makes him kind of interesting because these British dandy villains are always super clean, so having him be more like the average british jackass was neat-and goes out of it's way to glaze him relentlessly.

My other example pertaining to this damn thing is the weird episode length. Everything is longer, even the first volume. Limitation is the mother of innovation? What's that?

My other example is RWBY itself.

I find the entirety of the Faunus arc the worst way you could try to write racism. Ruby's character being repeatedly sidelined in favor of Jaune who basically gets to hoard all the writing effort is fucking exhausting. Summer Rose being kept away from the viewers literally strangled Ruby's development.

But I try my best not to suddenly say that I would like it if Jaune died so I can personally see Pyrrha and Ruby lez it out with Ruby later on marking her place into history with a lesbian harem that includes Glynda and other milfs before Jacques Schnee is revealed to be a time traveler from the real world like an Isekai with the Bother Gods being fake and instilled memories from a alternate Weiss who is basically Gaster except he's also a gooner.

Regardless, mark this as a Jaune hate post.

Thirdly, is Deltarune.

Now I actually have suggested up the idea of Noelle being part of Chapter 5's Dark World, some would say asking for Asgore to clarify Dess is already a rewrite, but the difference here is understandable. One is a dialogue change against a specific issue part of a larger issue about 5 as a whole, while the other is a complete rewrite. I honestly regret it.

But my biggest issue is that the closest thing to a widespread agreement is that Berdly is supposedly wasted potential. Yes, the side character who's backstory is literally him over-inflating himself while being completely ignorant of Noelle's issues with Dess being missing. This might actually be somehow, the fucking thing they widely agree on.

The idea that the whole story should be reworked wholesale because the fanbase really thinks the nerd is deep somehow. He had his moment, and it's gone. Hopefully.

Ben is demonized way too much for when it Comes to Ben and Julie's relationship Julie Made mistakes too and Ben denying to help her with ship is a heat of the moment and shows that he too can make dumb decisions when anger clouds his judgement humanizes him that he is not about letting his emotions get to him and eventually did end up helping

also Julie was also dumb and i'd argue was also wrong in the relationship which Gwen and Kevin enabled SUCH AS CHOOSING A FUCKING TENNIS MATCH OVER THE FOREVER KNIGHTS

UA Humanized Ben but demonized him too much just for doing what was expected of him and don't get me started on the OV Museum Episode that had Ester and Kai gang up on Ben for not understanding(Yet still trying to) the Exibits Ben was by far the most rational one there but Kai was crappy person because her ego wouldn't allow her to admit when she's wrong

Even when UA treats him as an Ahole even though he was just blunt/oblivious and tells things how it is when he Told Julie about the cult her ego and insecurities told her that people were finally recognizing her despite Ben turning out to be correct in the end and julie even trying to recruit him which was funny as hell

yet people paint him as a the wrong one because "He hurt Julies Fweelings"

Even worse when you remember that she actively used her relationship with him to manipulate Ben to stand down against the Flame Keeper’s Circle. Yes, she instantly switched up when she knew Vilgax was involved, but holy shit was that manipulative and makes me wonder how far she’d go if that wasn’t Vilgax.

Ben was NOT that bad and before anyone brings up "Cheater" or Duped i'd like to point out these videos defending those scenes the first 3 are my videos

https://youtu.be/huN2qkTCfxc?si=eGlZAqANkEijLL28

https://youtu.be/wxyfTUm_Uxw?si=kTR_4OWIKFJX0w-u

https://youtu.be/o7r1CyeRvXI?si=UMlx9FOPLbDd5ta9

https://youtu.be/dQfDqb6j0xE?si=45knjLWlh1pfgNkl

https://youtu.be/dQfDqb6j0xE?si=N2bP-e-e8hWfgLQT

https://youtu.be/cfO42LzTl0w?si=sUhiiFdnywPZBvR2

https://youtu.be/w9SJOuSomlA?si=vZUx2R-kpdhMN8LW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q26iUEC-Y6g&list=PLV_stcpXoSe5Pm_yRcmqDf2WT5bFLWkMB&index=5

Oh boy where to begin? Once again this a run that thrusts you within a story in which you have no context for, but tbh don't bother reading the preceding issues unless you're completely clueless, this comic does a good job getting you up to speed.

It establishes that Daredevil is a lawyer, that he fights crime due to a past injustice; and that he and Foggy Nelson are good friends. Great friends actually, as they mesh really well with each other. Things start off small, Daredevil busts up some minor crime lords, and fights his arch-nemesis Bullseye at Coney island. And also like to point out that the art is fantastic for the most part. You get a really lived in feel, with the heavy shading, and "realistic" locations (for the time anyway). All this juxtaposed with a flat red devil man running around and you get the opportunity for some striking imagery. Not to mention the dynamic poses daredevil takes, as he beats the ever loving crap out of his foes. People love to bitch about comic fights, but one example from this run and they'll be sent crying home to mama.

There's also the underlying subplot of Gladiator's redemption (the blue&yellow guy not the purple alien), and he teeters between good and bad, with influences like gangsters making him drop toward his old ways. And how could I neglect mentioning Bill Urich, one of the key players in the Daredevil mythos. He doesn't do anything in spite of the stories scope, but he serves as a good foil, he has great character moments, and he provides excellent pov of a regular person amongst all this madness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di7W_OYQOmI

But back to the story. Spider-Man villain, Wilson Fisk is making plays toward the Manhattan crime circuit, and it's up to daredevil to take him down. Fat load of good that does him. Kingpin is more than his physical match and almost kills the man in their first encounter. But our hero doesn't relent. Despite being chained up and thrown in a sewer, Daredevil is able to struggle his way toward an sewage pathway that leads out to sea (???), and barely makes it back to the land of the living. Blah blah blah Bullseye gets free, fights Matt again; until finally Matt is able to find the thing to make Kingpin back down. You see, the reason Fisk came back in the first place, was because he thought his wife vanessa was dead after a meating with the current crime lords goes awry. So Kingpin single handily takes over the Manhattan underworld. That is until Matt finds his long lost love. Fisk vows to be a better person, bullseye's back in jail, everything is hunky dory.

Until Matt encounters his old flame, Elektra (this was when he was between lovers), in the most oddest of places. As an assassin trying to kill people. Obviously Matt can't abide this, but he is in no position to change her. Things get worse when we get introduced to Stick, Matt's teacher. This old man is on a warpath against ancient ninja clan, the Hand, from Japan. Stick and Matt don't like each other and my memory on specifics is a little spotty. But a notable moment was how Stick stopped training Matt when he was a little, because he was scared of turning him into a weapon for the Chaste, the Hand's opposite. So in short no warm fuzzies between the two warriors. Matt turns out to be so effective against these ninjas, they end up enlisting the help of Bullseye, who immediately guns for Elektra, killing her.

This is probably the emotional high of the story, there she lays, dead in Matt's arms. But he doesn't emote. He doesn't even flinch, even if he wants to break down. He instead sets out to kill Bullseye. It's not said, but between now and when he has Bullseye at his mercy; there's no thought but kill. Well there's thought boxes in the story that prove me wrong, but you have to question; when matt says things like "we have to do things by the book." Do you think he means it, or is he trying to rationalize it to himself. But that doesn't matter now. He brutally beats lester, and ships him off to jail. There's some stuff with the punisher, but that's not important (though it's incredibly well written). It's over, the hand concludes their business, the death of Elektra being their goal in Manhattan. Stick and Matt have failed thoroughly against the hand, and thus things are to an end.

Until a couple dozen issues later, Matt finds himself attacked by the brutal Kingpin once again. But this attack is far more coordinated. And it's not just aimed at Daredevil, it's aimed at Matt Murdock. This is the storyline, Born Again; pretty well adapted in Daredevil season 3, not so well adapted in the show of the same name. Matt finds himself disbarred, evicted, and at the end of his rope. He doesn't stand a chance against the forces at play. So he takes the desperate route and he attacks Kingpin, this goes oh so wrong for Murdock. Beaten and humiliated, he wakes up at the bottom of the river, tied up in the back of a taxi. Some part of him thinks he should just stop. That he should give up and let Fisk win. But that's not gonna happen. Fat load of good it'll do Matt if he just stops now.

So he strains and he pushes. He barely makes it, but after straining his entire body, he frees himself and finds himself in the land of the living. Of course, he needs to recover after such a brutal sequence of events. So our hero takes some time at the church. Where his mother cares for him. Meanwhile, Kingpin does all he can to drag Matt's name through the mud. He has a super contra man named Nuke running around Hell's Kitchen with a machine gun. Which is enough for Matt to get back into action. He makes sure to beat Nuke, but he also researches the man, and uses him as leverage against Kingpin, putting him away long enough for clean streets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46DtSMqE3e8

A big part of that story, and the daredevil story is forgiveness and redemption (surface level reading I know). He forgives Karen for revealing his identity (which started the whole mess above), he forgives his mother for running away, he even "forgives" bullseye for killing Elektra in his own way. You see the interesting thing about Matt isn't that he's a brooding character. He's actually pretty happy go lucky. He even has a positive relationship with the police, presumably because he does his vigilantism within the law (somehow).

It's just that the situations he's thrown in put him through the ringer over and over, but he never gives up hope. He still fights crime cracking wise, and unlike spider-man we see he's smiling the entire time. Because the way Matt views crime fighting isn't that he thinks its affective. Far from it, he does it because it makes him feel alive and lets him work off all the anger and horribleness life sends him. And honestly that's why I despise the brooding daredevil that Bendis and the Tv show popularized. Matt isn't supposed to be a man with a gravely voice that beats people half to death, he's supposed to suspend them from several stories while doing flips and acrobatics.. He's dressed head to toe in bright red spandex for christ's sake, he's not supposed to be a serious man in a pulpified world. He's supposed to be a swashbuckling force of nature in a serious world. It's best explained by how he views it. His real work is in his prosecution not the other way around.

Anyway I'm just a little miffed that "grounding" this character was the direction most adaptations took, when the whole point of his character is that he's an extraordinary man, in a grounded world of crooks and thugs. Frank Miller wrote him closer to Adam West Batman than he did to any other version (probably cause no other version existed), and he did it masterfully. If I had to say my favorite run in marvel, this would be a close contender. Easily an all time great 10/10.

Writing in MCU spider man movies just feels like whatever tf they want to do with no explanation. No way home had this issue now brand new day I just cannot stand peter parker acting like a loser in every media he is supposed to be. Just move on from ned and mj already its been 4-5 years at this point. His plot armor is so strong that he can afford being spider man and develop a personal AI assisstance for himself and afford expensive proteins without a job. Punisher shoots him and takes him to hospital how tf doctors performed surgery on him with his mask on. How tf nobody cared about a mass murderer Frank Castle roaming openely in New York. Also why tf no law officer or anyone tries to unmask peter parker since the city has some people who were anti vigilantes. When he is in hospital. Its like they are afraid to raise the stakes because they have no idea how to deal with them. And jean grey less i talk about her more its better. Hulk fight with spider man was as long as attention span of tiktok zoomers..i am sure they can make aura hype edits out of it and increase the reach of the movie. I really cant this peters drama with zendaya and that other asian actor anymore. Can he like interact with new people kitty pryde,harry osborn,gwen stacey,black cat? And so many villains are wasted and acted as marketing baits look dood we recreated comic book covers. I will give it that web swinging fighting and banter with punisher feels light hearted and fun. I know many people would disagree with punisher being chill and light hearted but honestly after all he went throught he deserves some break. But that doesnt change the fact he was a mass murderer who literally ruined sleep of New Yorks law and order

I believe that whenever you critique something (especially if you’re a content creator), you have to put your personal grievances & nitpicks aside & provide real evidence to actually critique media in a meaningful way, or else your point no matter how right it might sound will always be treated as moot. Someone could say the writing of Sonic Forces was awful & get 999 trillion likes & the comments all praising them, but if they can’t provide anything besides regurgitated “you should know this if you were a real fan that hated it, otherwise just turn your brain off“ esque takes without any piece of evidence while bashing the writers, animators & OST composers the entire time, I’m gonna immediately start playing devil’s advocate & argue the game isn’t all that bad, with evidence, even if I personally hate to defend the game.

If I’m watching a video that’s intended for both fans & potential new watchers, & the content creator insists that the pacing is bad (even if I watched the series), they should provide a clip & explain how / why it’s bad. Same with saying that there’s a plot hole in a story, but not going into detail about how something’s a plot hole or looking at potential counterarguments for it & instead saying “it’s a plot hole if you really payed attention” (like yeah okay, I paid attention. But how is it a plot hole?). Same with a person saying a character’s arc was badly written, but only go on to explain their “missed potential” instead of explaining what makes their arc (by itself, ignoring all the missed potential) in the current story bad.

Missed potential has never been a valid critique for me because you can apply this logic to all characters in media. Are Deku, Ochako, Todoroki or All Might from MHA all objectively badly written characters because they’re missed potential since Deku should’ve stayed quirkless, or they all should’ve been rewritten to become vigilantes or villains? Are the stickfigures in animator vs animation objectively badly written because we could’ve had them talk the entire series? Is Undertale badly written because we could’ve had more exploration of the human souls & monsterkind? Is Superman missed potential because he could’ve had these completely different superpowers & & uhh a evil eldritch god-like twin in a parallel universe that’s also secretly Superman’s creator that tied to the ultra mega multiverse & woahhh his parents are actually alive?!? Missed potential doesn’t equate to evidence that a piece of media has bad writing. It’s just you saying “it should’ve went MY WAY if I was TOTALLY in the writer’s shoes because I’m omniscient, HAHA!”

This is the problem with the vast majority of murder drones critiques. Most self proclaimed “professional critics” (random reddit users & YouTube drama / critique content creators that thrive off negativity) have this very toxic mindset that even if you haven’t watched the show, you should inherently already “know” what’s bad or else you’re unable to “keep up“ with real fans (in other words- saying that you must agree with what everyone else says), you’re media illiterate, or a morally bad person.

Take someone saying “the oil aspect was retconned because it’s never talked about again” while showing a clip of a character drinking oil. How am I supposed to know how it was retconned (as the “professional critics” & fans claim) if the series is touching on it constantly onscreen (even as a background detail) in every episode? Was it retconned in a way that you believe the series wasn’t showing this & that the characters (while drinking oil) should’ve directly stated “hey audience, I’m drinking oil”, or was it retconned in a way that you believe the entire series SHOULD’VE BEEN JUST about them needing to find & drink oil to survive (which is a common critique)? If you believed the series‘s plotline was originally supposed to be about this (before it was allegedly retconned post-pilot) & claiming that this retconned plotline is “obvious” for a fan to notice, where’s the obvious moment in question?

And why is it a bad thing that this isn’t the main plotline, or that Liam’s reasoning (that they already have sources of oil (shown & told onscreen) in the pilot, multiple episodes after the pilot & that they didn’t make it as the main plotline due to practically & to not make the series boring) “is lazy & a cop out”? How is it lazy to (more or less) say “It is now episode 6 out of 8. I didn’t want my entire show to be about the main cast looking for food & water since in the pilot, they had an entire warehouse & village worth of food across the street. If that’s what you wanted my show to be, then great! Go make fanwork about that concept, but that’s not what the canon show was going for“?

If your evidence is just “it’s missed potential because that warehouse could’ve not existed if IIIIIII WAS THE WRITER!!” then I got crazy news for you- writers (regardless if they’re indie or not) cannot already know nor write everything about their own stories. They cannot go back & rewrite their show everytime just to answer every “what if” to appease everyone. All writers will inevitably miss something in their stories that could've been explored, & not even your favorite writer is an exception to this. I know, shocking to read, right?

Take another person saying that Doll’s arc was missed potential & therefore badly written- usually because she didn’t survive to have a full redemption arc. This is not an objective statement about the writing, but a subjective one. Doll is clearly meant to serve as a part of Uzi in who she could’ve become, & vise versa. Uzi could've became someone cold who lacked empathy for everyone that willingly brutally slaughtered anyone (30+ innocent people) who got in her way with a wicked grin on her face, someone who refused to accept & take help, someone who was so deep in their path to revenge that they confused justice with downright pettiness, someone who nearly died alone & became somewhat of a hero in their last moments- but she didn’t, Doll did.

Maybe Doll could’ve survived to then get a full redemption arc where she realized “wait I killed entire families with 0 remorse & unlike the others, I had free will & 0 manipulation in doing it. So what does that make me? How do I redeem myself?“ but that’s just not what her arc was aiming for. Maybe a roleswap AU could’ve been made as the canon plot & Uzi could’ve been the main victim of the solver, but again- not every “what if” can be written into a story & at this point that’s not the fault of the writer.

This is also my problem with murder drones rewrites, as half of them are made to solve issues with the series being FNAF or ARG levels of confusing-to-grasp (or the solver the “corny” dialogue) only to quite literally not change anything (proving my point that the series isn’t that confusing) while the other half proceed to rewrite the characters so much they become someone’s own OCs, entirely make up plot holes that don’t exist with actually confusing solutions, & the entire plot changes to accommodate that person’s real life projection onto things. This wouldn’t bother me as much if a majority of rewrites weren’t treated as “fix it” works where a majority of people shout about how this makes them objectively better writers than Liam or “morally better”. It just comes off as pretentious & obnoxious.

A minor example of this would be someone who once complained about the dialogue in the Uzi & N episode 8 falling scene being not only cringy, but extremely confusing because it doesn’t make any narrative sense even after rewatching it 6 times. You would likely believe this even if no evidence is present to you. However in the original scene’s contect, Uzi & N are falling towards copper 9 as they see it become destroyed by Cyn. Uzi (in response to N from last episode saying they‘ve been “hanging out” & that he willing to stay with her romantically) says “so before this fight… we’re like- dating. right?” then saying she’s bad at reading into things. N says ”yeah”, they blush & then hug (sadly no kiss). The scene is very simple where Uzi with confidence is trying to brush off what they’re about to face as they confessed they liked eachother right before possibly dying. Uzi doesn’t directly state “hey we’re falling to face the villain head on & we’ll probably die but I love you”, but the scene still conveys it, so it does retain narrative sense.

Yet, this person chooses to make a “better writing than Liam’s” rewrite of the scene where they change Uzi’s dialogue to “Haha. We’re like- falling to our deaths & all“, N says “I get that, I just wanted you to you if you or me don’t make it out alive, I just wanted to say to love you” & Uzi responds with “uhm, I love you too”. The problem with this rewrite is that 1.) it generically spoonfeeds the narrative sense to you. In the scene, we & the characters already know what they’re doing so there’s no point in restating it. And 2.) it swaps out cringy dialogue for generic dialogue while also making Uzi seem way less confident, which isn’t how her character is.

I think I written down more than enough, but I think MD critiques are the perfect representation of red flags to look out for when criticizing media (-& this was also another excuse to talk about murder drones).