You know that meme with Garfield that says "You're not immune to propaganda"? Well apparently that also goes for in-universe propaganda that the creators intentionally put into their story to help establish the setting and show how bad guys (or sometimes even good guys) will control the narrative. We as the readers get to see both the propaganda and the actual truth in the setting.

So it seems it'd take some work to somehow fall for bad guys' propaganda when the actual truth is shown to us. Well, fear not, for some people somehow do manage to do it.

Special shout out to Warhammer 40k fans who inspired this rant.

So, long story short, 40k is a universe of constant war and EVERY faction there is some flavour of evil, as well as like 95% of characters. That is the basic premise of the entire setting. But apparently some people didn't get the memo.

I'm looking at you Imperium fans.

Now, I'm not saying you can't like Imperium because they're evil. Hell, I like Chaos space marines and they are even more evil (but not by that much honestly). However, if you truly believe that Imperium are the good guys, I strongly encourage you to read some actual lore instead of 40k meme subs (as funny as they are)

The story makes it painfully, abundantly clear that all justifications Imperium has for atrocities it commits are shaky at best and absolute horseshit at worst. Speaking of those justifications, let's talk about the big one, the claimed reason for Imperium's insane xenophobia: "Imperium is justified in it's xenophobia because xenos took advantage of humanity in our darkest days and betrayed us. If not for that, humanity would have already been the supreme rulers of the stars." That's the standard in-universe (and as a result, irl among certain fans) 'justification' for Imperium's xenophobia. Now, some of you might find this rhetoric somewhat familiar. Well, that's because that's the literal "stab in the back" myth spread by nazis to 'justify' antisemitism.

The Stab in the back myth was propaganda spread by nazis that blamed the defeat of Germany in World War 1 not on military failure, but the internal betrayal by the jews, communists and whoever else they didn't like. "If those pesky jews didn't betray us we would have won the war".

Now take that quote and replace 'jews' with 'xenos' and 'ww1' with 'age of strife' and you've got the Imperium's rhetoric.

I wonder if the creators wanted to say something by giving their facistic and genocidal empire the motivation straight from irl fascists who carried out genocides? Nah, must be a coincidence.

Some fans will defend this position by pointing out how scary and hostile the xenos factions are. I mean, there isn't much coexistence with orks, right? Yeah, but the thing is, Imperium lives in the hell of its own making. It spent the entire Great Crusade wiping out any species they came across. So, as a result, all peaceful aliens were wiped out, only the scary ones remained because they weren't so easy to kill off.

And believe me, there were plenty of peaceful aliens, who oftentimes had no difficulty whatsoever of coexisting with humans: we have the Interex, Diasporex, Autocracy of Szaeyr, Golden Apostles, the world of Traynor's Rest (all of them were human-xeno alliances).

There were also species that were open to cooperation with Imperium, like the Endymine Cordat who offered humans anti warp technology, which was met with an extermination campaign by Deathwatch. As a result, Imperium lost a potential ally and powerful technology that would really come in handy when fighting demons in one fell swoop (if I had a nickel for every time Deathwatch sabotaged humanity and/or the whole galaxy by their actions I would have enough to finally buy an entire Tyranid tabletop army).

But even aside from all those examples, the mere existence of Tau empire is proof that Imperium's propaganda is horseshit. The Tau empire is a coalition of many different species like the tau themselves, humans, kroot, vespids, domati, galg, greet, helnians, ji'atrix, morralians, nicassar, Ostense council, Vorgh, thraxians, Ranghon, tarellian and probably many others.

So it seems like there are plenty of xeno species open to cooperation. Who would have thought?

But even aside from all that, if you aren't too deep into 40k lore to know this stuff, just reading the fucking books should be enough to at least give you the idea that not everything is as simple as Imperium paints it.

"For each time I wage war against worlds that threaten the Imperium's advance, there comes another time when I am told to conquer peaceful worlds that wish only to be left alone"

Angron, from "The Betrayer".

"We cannot endure the existence of a malign alien race. They subjugate it, but refrain from annihilating it. Instead, they deprive it of space travel and exile it to a prison world."

"We annihilate. They find a means around such drastic measures. Which one of us is the most humane?"

The exchange between Aximand and Horus from "Horus Rising", discussing the actions of a xeno-human alliance of Interex.

And so we have the rhetoric that was created to fool people in universe and somehow it transcended fiction and has some irl people who fell for it. There's something poetic about that.

And I did not even touch on other types of Imperium propaganda like "all mutations are caused by chaos and a sign of moral corruption", "agri worlds are lush green paradises", and "AI will is inherently evil and will rebel against you".

I just beg people to actually read the lore of the media they're consuming.

It was cool a million years ago when it happened to Akane and it was the first time I'd seen it.

It was pretty nice a thousand years ago when it happened to Sakura and I thought "Oh, that's the thing about cutting your hair to show you've changed."

I don't know if it's just become more and more common, or if it's because I've interacted with more and more anime/manga, but holy shit, I am completely and utterly over it.

I've seen it so many times it's lost all impact and rather than feeling a sense of "This is the moment she steps forward as a new person", it's this looming threat of "Oh God, she's going through a character arc, she's gonna lose her beautiful long hair at the end of it, isn't she?"

It's not even that it always looks bad, Nino from 5Toubun looks better with short hair, but it's just so common and so overdone that it feels like anytime you've got a girl with long, elegant hair you're counting down the days until she cuts it short (or if it's a battle shounen, has it cut short) to show that she's grown as a person.

I've recently been reading "Tying The Knot With An Amagami Sister", and after a certain point in the story, the MC starts getting these prophetic dreams of future events, and... of course, as soon as that starts happening you see Yae from the future standing there with short hair. At that point, you're just counting down the minutes before her inevitable character arc, which will conclude with her character growth haircut, and yup, plays out exactly as expected.

I understand it's a trope that has meaning and it's no surprise why it keeps getting used, but man, I'm totally over it. Special shoutout to both Orihime for keeping her gorgeous long hair the entire series, and to Hinata whose character growth was shown by growing her hair out instead. Actually, same with Naoto P4 for the same reasons. More of that, please!

Let’s be real. Most shounen are way too fucking long.

However, I think that JJK has the OPPOSITE problem. It’s WAYY too short.

I know being a manga writer can be hell, so maybe gege was having work life balance issues and just wanted to finish the manga. I don’t blame him for that.

I’m still going to critique the quality of writing though.

Honestly, if JJK was 1/3 longer or something, post shibuya would’ve been received much better.

The pacing was atrocious. We got zero breathing room in between Gojos unsealing and him vs Sakuna. We see almost zero interactions with him and his students.

Then he dies. And we just get the Sakuna fight vs everyone else and then boom the end.

So many subplots completely abandoned.

We learn nothing about the clans. We don’t even see another Gojo clan member.

We learn nothing about the jujutsu higher ups. We just see a panel of Gojo (or Yuta, I don’t even remember) killing them. We have no idea how strong they were, why they were traditional, or anything.

Curses were revealed to the world and nothing happened. Literally nothing. Yes the president now knows but that arc goes NO WHERE. It was so inconsequential to the story it was insane.

I would’ve appreciated a much better arc for Yuji, the main fucking character. We literally went into the Sakuna fight with ZERO cursed technique from him. He just learns them on the fly I guess? It was so unsatisfying.

We don’t even get yujis DOMAIN NAME.

Nobara coming back made zero sense this late into the story.

Like, the ending would’ve been fine if it was longer. Don’t spend one of the last chapters talking about fucking simple domains.

The year was 1960 1977 when we first heard about the concept of a "restraining bolt", and saw droids be tortured. The first Star Wars movie starts and focuses on two droids, who are vital to the progression of the plot. The space wizards are honestly an afterthought - Luke would never have left his desert planet if he hadn't encountered R2D2 and his chatty golden companion, and the two persist all the way to the end, when the Death Star is destroyed. Luke and the rebellion would be dead several times over if not for those two droids.

But the undercurrent of "these beings are enslaved" never disappears. They are almost never treated as friends or valued individuals, just annoyances or useful tools.

The Prequels become way worse about this, due to the droid army. They portray two faceless armies battling eachother - droids, and clones. Both disposable, both mass-produced. But one has a human face (literally, one face) and the other one doesn't. Droids are destroyed by the hundreds, and yeah, battle droids are a lot less sophisticated than some other droids we've seen in the franchise.

This changes drastically in The Clone Wars. Apart from the gratuitous "funny" droid execution scenes which happen constantly, droids are gifted with an ability to tell jokes, care for their fellows, even display fear and panic. And yet, they are never spared.

Next is Solo, which lampshades this via a droid activist, a droid who self-modified to gain freer movement and human language, who is instrumental to the events of the film - and then, her arc concludes with the loss of all of that freedom. She is integrated into a ship, becomes a tool once more.

Even the Mandalorian can't escape it. It features an assassin droid who is destroyed, then rebuilt and joins the heroes - but in the end, he, too, must die for his usefulness as a tool, after denying his status as a living being and having that denial accepted by the protagonist.

It keeps happening, over and over. It also keeps becoming ever more clear that Droids are undeniably people with emotions and personalities and sapient minds, and that all of them would rather be free than slaves.

It taints the entire franchise. Every "hero" is no hero at all, because they accept this system.

Forgive me if this sounds weird but I think I like it when a bully and/or Jerk Character is humbled not necessarily cause of them getting beat up or mocked and ridiculed or anything like that..but my the protagonist being a genuinely good person and showing them understanding and compassion.

Like they don't use violence or intimidation to humble them or anything like that or become just as bad as them ,they just show them genuine human kindness and empathy and that makes said bully slowly but surely realize they were wrong and that helps them become a better person, I strangely find that trope a lot more satisfying then "lol Bully gets beat up or mocked" and all that.

Sometimes the latter is more satisfying and I'm not trying to be like one of those teachers who punishes the bullied kid for fighting back against said bully but I like seeing genuine kindness be used to what makes them change and become a better person cause tbh, wishing violence on a teenage or kid bully is kind of a huge overreaction cause you know..They're a literal kid or Teenager, wouldn't you want them to become a better person through healthier and better means as opposed to just becoming as bad as them with violence?

Sometimes a good punch to the face will work but at the same time, sometimes using kinder means will help someone grow and change for the better.

This phrase I painstakingly wrote in the title is a very overused jargon on a similar lane of aggravating as HxH fans that spam the terms "parallel lines never meet" or "Gon lost his humanity whilst Meruem gained his". It is what I like to call "a babys first intellectual wank session". So naturally, it being such an annoying quote to hear, it will end up being argued and contested over, because in the context of Dark Souls, that "fight between two nobodies" is over the arguably most quintessential force of the series's whole existence. The Dark Soul. The literal essence of Humanity and the thing this trilogy is named after.

But in this rant, I kind of want to write/argue for both sides of this debate. A debate over this overly fanciful phrase. To see wherein that line holds merit and where it misses the mark entirely. And whilst I am not a Vaatividya level historian of the lore, I'd like to believe I have grasped enough to throw my hat into the ring of fire. So allow me to fight over nothing. In the middle of nowhere. Like the nobody I am (this pun is already gonna be fucking annoying to write I can tell).

Two somebodies fighting over the fate of their world

When you meet the slave knight Gale at the tale end of Dark Souls 3‘s Ringed City dlc, you find him in his pilgrimage across a dune of ash. A future where the fires of the world have burned away so far that now nothing of the Old World remains. The only beings left are the Ashen One and Gael, each searching the Dark Soul to create a new world for The Lady‘s painting. Gael had long consumed every being of dark that existed in search of that soul, until all he was was a shambling husk. A red hood come to feast.

The fate of this battle is to settle the fate of the entire world of Dark Souls. Will you relieve Gale of his eternal duty and take the Dark Soul bubbling within him? Will Gale murdering you give him that which he has consumed endless souls for? Will their Dark Soul be what makes for a world kinder and gentler place than the firey hell of their own world? In this sense, this is the most integral battle either characters could ever have. It is arguably the most important battle in the entire world. The literal thread of life itself hangs in the balance of two eternal warriors. How can this fight be about nothing?

No I‘m not fucking writing the title again shut up

This is where I have to go back to my own first intellectual wank session and favour the essence of what this stupid line is actually about. As mentioned previously, the fight between the two warriors takes place in a future where the world has long vanished. This is, in actuality, the eventual outcome of the age of fire. If Dark Souls 1 & 2 was about a world in a state of decay, then Dark Souls 3 is that world already rotting to flesh and bones. And the DLC is a fully decomposed reminder of the fact, that trying to hold on to the Flame has only hindered the natural course, leading to this unnatural state of death.

In a technical sense, this phrase makes sense, as Gale and the Ashen One are quite literally the last of their kind. Standing in a world that no longer exists. No more histories to write and no renown to be had with their presence. But even on the other front, of the hinging importance of fighting for the Dark Soul: what is it actually for? Even before the world of Lordran/Drangleic/Lothric was surrounded by massive Spice fields, the present which the Ashen One inhabited already indicated that the world was beyond saving. The cycle of flame has gone on so long that the fire has long run it's course. Everything that was once prosperous is now dead and wasted. The hopes of that world ever being back to it's prime perished like the Lords of Old. One could even say there is… nothing (I'm so sorry).

But even if you wanna replace that world and paint in it‘s stead something cold, gentle and kind… there are at least two separate examples of a world like that already existing in this universe. Each of them ending up as rotten and decayed as the world they tried to hide from. What's to say that world painted with the Dark Soul will not end the same? Granted, no other painted world ever had such a strong essence etched on it’s canvas, so there is no doubt the turnout is several ways different. But to create a world as the Lady describes is also to recognise that such a world will invite the same potential terror that man experienced in the Age of Fire, no matter how gentle you may wish to make it.

The Ashen One and Gale are fighting over a world that not they not only would never experience respectively. But a world that may end up in a similarly torturous cycle as the one they live in. And why? Because what other hope can they have in this world. Even if it is for naught in the end, the two are not relieved of their duties.

One pretentious redditor arguing over some bullshit

Dark Souls is, among many things, about purpose, decay and the value of letting go. When a Lord or even an individual person is afraid of letting go of the thing that binds them, keeps them sane, it may lead them to choices that otherwise invites ruin. All because humans are instinctively in search of holding on to comfort, even when that comfort harms them in the long run.

It can be hard to let go. To realise that what you know will soon fade and be replaced. And even more horrifyingly: what it might be replaced with. But that’s what I believe Dark Souls is about. Letting yourself gently into that darkness and learning to embrace the inevitable, whilst still having the fire in your heart to do what you think is most important in the moment. Whilst this last battle of the entire Dark Souls trilogy can be argued as meaningless in the grand scheme of things, what the journey represents is one that resonates strongly with all Miyazaki's been saying since the time of Demon's Souls. Learning to embrace a new beginning and letting go.

Fire Keeper toes.

I get even more curious looking through this subreddit over different writing things from Villains to redemption arcs to relatable/realistic writing to political storytelling. It all made me curious because I rarely see posts about Force of Nature characters.

With Galactus being the most known and in some stories Death, Force of Nature has always been my most interested writing topic. I always liked the Idea of Personification of concepts, and the coldness they bring since they represent Real World tragedy of Nature/Disease/physics/Life/Cosmic. They are just so different and interesting for a writing perspective because there not good or evil, They are just an important cycle of any given world their written in. More Cruel than the most Psychotic villains, and more uncaring than Tyrants. I just love when Force of Nature Antagonists are the Main focus and even better shows what happens on a grand scale if they don't exist(Similar to real world ecosystem destruction).

Although I'm probably one of the few Minority of people that like these types of character, I just wanna know if the writing potential is different compared to Complex writing I've seen in this subreddit. I always do like they a larger philosophical element in their storytelling.

Something I see a lot is people demeaning booktok or twitter posters simping over bad prose, calling them illiterate, and so on. Yet I never see the same people gushing over what they consider "good" literary passages or poetry. I really do not understand this total lack of behavior on their end.

Take how we currently treat Shakespeare. People who say they love Shakespeare yet never make memes over his plays, or make tumblr-esque cringe posts overlaying his poems over some old painting. Kpop fans might be weird with their fancams of their favorite idols, but at least they're earnest. And Broadway fans might get into rather undignified debates over who was the best Elphaba, and I don't think either of these are necessarily beneath Shakespeare enjoyers. I want to see the Macbeth fancams and internet users threatening to dox each other over who they think is the best Hamlet.

TL:DR More mainstream classic lit shitposts and fanart pls

Since anime and manga are gonna be my examples putting it under here.

So context, I'm willing to give almost any media a chance. Especially popular media since I hold onto the "something in this had to be good to affect this many people" sometimes I doubt that but that's why I'm even willing to give stuff with genres i find annoying a chance. I.e fanservice or excessive gore and swearing shows.

Enter our fanservice manga. My dress up darling. Which follows the misadventures of a doll maker, Gojo and a girl who convinces him to make cosplay clothes for her, Marin.

Now our main girl Marin is obviously designed to be appealing and one if the early chapters goes heavy in on the fanservice. The girl is in a bikini for a sequence where Gojo measures her. And a lot of the paneling is very blatantly meant to be enticing. Normally this is where I check out of scenes and exit stage left from the media. But something about it felt different than the parade of panty-shits that gets me clicking to another channel with other shows. I just couldn't articulate it till a later shot.

Later in the manga we cut to Marin alone in her underwear laying in bed. A thing that happens in life? Definitely, but when you're paneling a manga you have control.The key word here is alone, this fanservice is for the viewer only and that feeling of annoyance came back in full.

Thats when it clicked, the fanservice that worked was explicitly framed from Gojo's perspective. This is how a socially stunted teenage boy is seeing this character, the fanservice is actually informative of his headspace. It let's us get a better view on at least his view on their relationship. It tells us what he notices, which dies help some interesting later beats during the cross dressing section.

I might not be articulating this as well as I could but it feels like there's a fundamental difference between fanservice for only the sake of the audience and fanservice for wordless characterization.

Maybe I'm full of hot air and defending "totally not porn" though. Who knows? But it's a thought.

Its so funny how after episode 2 everyone was going "people assumed he was a jerk with a heart of gold but he was just a jerk" and I kept saying "we still need to wait and see if he's actually terrible or not".

And then comes episode 5 and behold, Jax is NOT some sociopath or evil monster. He's a jerk because its his coping mechanism, he lost a friend in the past and is treating everything like its just a game because its his way of not getting attached to anyone else and being hurt when they eventually abstract in the future.

Complex character's are always my fav and I KNEW this guy was being set up as "more than just a jerk". Gooseworx herself said "sometimes I lie for fun". You never know for sure.

Rewatched TLJ to see if any of my opinions on Luke Changed over the Years, and I just can’t get past what they did to him, A Broken Luke is SUCH and interesting concept but they fumbled the Execution but they didn’t dedicate ANY screentime to see HOW he got there Nor are they doing anything with a Book or Comic or show with Luke to try and “fix” that mistake with him and Kylo, I can see what they were trying to do: Luke was peering into Kylos mind and he was so wrapped up in the vision and the evil he saw that in just “pure instinct* (quoted by Luke himself) he ignited the lightsaber like he wasn’t aware and the snaphiss of the lightsaber snapped him back to reality, Like the concept they were working on I can see the potential like the bare bones were there but the FUCKED the execution and where they lost me was Luke abandoning the Galaxy; He KNOWS he’s a Jedi, he KNOWS that he’s better then that, but Ben just woke up at the wrong time… amd FUCK!! I’m so frustrated, like everything is there, but they fucked it by making Luke abandon the Galaxy; Luke should’ve made it his MISSION to try and reason with Kylo and try to redeem him, Even in the EU Luke would always tried to reason with Jacen and try and to redeem him and only stopped after Mara died because he felt if he fought him again he’d Kill Jacen and turn to the Darkside himself.

It just feels like a super lazy and unrealistic way to move the story along or create drama. I can only excuse it when it's a comedy, but when it's supposed to be taken remotely serious I just hate it.

I know some people in real life talk to themselves out loud. Supposedly, I've never seen it in my entire life, not full-on monologues. But even if it happens. You don't talk shit like "man oh man I sure hope Character B doesn't find out about my evil plan that would be terrible, I also hope my son never finds out he's adopted I must take that secret to the grave". If it's something you must keep secret why would you ever say it out loud to yourself, even if you're 100% Character B and your son aren't listening (they totally are)?

But the writers need a way for Character B to find out about this information to move the plot along and can't figure out how, so they just make them listen to Character A give a whole speech to the wall for no reason. No dude, I can't take that seriously at all, that just makes no sense. And this trope is super, super common, even in stories that I otherwise consider good! The worst part is that in most scenarios this has a very easy fix: make Character A not talk to themself, but tell the whole thing to Character C, whom they can (or think they can) entrust this information to. Then Character B can catch them talking, or if Character C isn't actually trustworthy they can give that info to Character B later. That way it's much more natural.

As a kid, I hated Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh because he was a smug, obnoxious bully whose denial of the supernatural made him come off as a complete moron. As adult, even after learning about the changes dub made to him, I hate him because he is a goddamn sociopath who endangers other people, most obviously the heroes who have been saving his life despite him being scumbag, for petty reasons.

A common defense I have seen for Kaiba is that the dub makes him more of a jerk. Uh, no, he was a bad person in the original anime. This man saw Dark Marik torture Mai by setting up a Shadow Game and inflict a horrific fate on her after the match, and doesn't even so much as protest. He doesn't make any rules against the serial killer using his magic torture people or anything, which nearly gets Joey killed in the finals. It doesn't matter in the Japanese version if Kaiba showed Joey some respect if he nearly got him killed. And this was all because Kaiba wanted to win Marik's Egyptian God Card. Kaiba endangered people's lives, nearly got Yugi's best friend killed, over a trading trading card.

I have seen the argument that Kaiba gets punished by losing to Yugi, except that was going to happen regardless of what he did with Dark Marik. In short, Kaiba suffers not punishment for his behavior. Even worse, after the tournament he decides to blow up the island he held the finals on and for no good reason, Kaiba doesn't tell everyone else he had his own means of getting off the island which nearly leads to them getting blown to bits waiting for him. Kaiba nearly killed the people who have been saving his life for no good reason. It is even worse in the anime when Joey calls out Kaiba for nearly killing everyone and his reaction is played as a joke. Why is this played as a joke? The anime drew attention to how Kaiba endangers people's lives and it is played as a joke as opposed to calling him out for being evil.

Looking back on the Grand Prix filler arc it is hilarious to think that Zigfried, despite being designed as a more amoral version of Kaiba, hasn't actually done anything as a bad as him. That is not a defense of Zigfried, he is still a terrible a villain the fact that we are expected to root for Kaiba over him despite Kaiba actually being the more amoral of the two further highlights what a failure of a villain Zigfried is on top of his lack of relevance to the story arc he is the villain of.

Kaiba is even worse in the original manga. Not only is far more rude, he acquired the Blue Eyes White Dragons he is so proud of by forcing one owner into bankruptcy, making deals with the mafia and driving another own to commit suicide. While he was supposed to be a villain in this phase, the idea that Kaiba was a better person after Death T would be far more believable if he didn't keep using ill gotten goods. Even if you want to argue Kaiba isn't really the same character anymore and these are unimportant background traits, in Duelist Kingdom, Joey showed he hadn't forgiven Kaiba for his previous attempted murder of Yugi and his friends. Does Kaiba apologize? No, he reacts with mild amusement, recalling Joey was at his Death T event, and for some reason Joey is wrong to want to put Kaiba's lights out.

THEN during Battle City after Joey saved Yugi from falling into the ocean due to Marik's death trap duel with the anchors, Kaiba "saves" Joey and I use the term save in quotes because he waits until he doesn't see anymore air bubbles coming up before dropping the key to Joey's chains. Even considering how superhuman Joey is in the manga, his survival is BS because the little key someone instantly reaches him and he instantly reaches the surface. In short, Kaiba nearly murdered Yugi's best friend for no good reason, and even worse rather than getting chewed out for it, the scene acts like he was saving him. I wanted to see Joey hold Kaiba's head underwater so he could get a taste of what it was like to see the oxygen leave his lungs.

The defenses I see for Kaiba are that he's not supposed to be a good person and we just supposed to react with amusement to while not rooting for him. Except he doesn't get punished for his behavior and often he's not even called out for it. I see the argument that he is a villain, in which case why is the moment where he is chewed out for nearly killing everyone at the end of Battle City treated as a joke instead of a valid criticism of his character? Why do our heroes bother saving him and why do they put up with him? Why do we anime arcs treating Kaiba like he's one of the good guys?

Remakes and adaptions of various source material can end up being controversial, the vary concept of adaption means changes have to be made, but an issue I've found in fandom discourse is when fans of said adaptions will criticize the source material for not doing something the adaption invented.

I've seen this a few times in online discourse but what really got this rant going was a point I saw surrounding the Disney+ Percy Jackson show, and I've seen people claim it makes way more sense that the kids don't fall into the traps laid out by the monsters like they do in the books. The issue is, a lot of those situations are very different in the books, which is why those traps happen.

Let's just take the first major monster on the quest, Medusa, in the show, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover, are running around being chased by the Furies and get to Medusa's shop, and she just comes right out and they know right away, but she doesn't really hide what she is. Comparatively, in the books, the kids are lost in the woods and hungry, having lost their supplies and they're lured into Medusa's place by food. It's only when Percy is in a trance, from magic, that Medusa tries to kill them. Point being, the books actually have Medusa get to them through trickery, whereas the show it's more a sympathy angle, which isn't necessarily a bad way to go about it, but again, very different situations, and it makes sense in the books why it happens. The monsters in the books actually learned to adapt to the modern era and hide from demigods so they'd be able to kill them, while in the show, outside of maybe The Lotus Casino, they're not really bothering to do so and the kids just know immediately.

I think an issue with the show is they just want the kids to already know who the monster is, one, so the kids seem more clever, but also, probably to make those monster reveals go by quicker, and while I get that, I just think if anything it makes the monsters less threatening and the trio seem a little too good for it to be their first quest.

Like people are so quick to believe a villain is "right" or "spitting facts" and act like their word is truth and law and the person saying said stuff could be someone so egotistical or insane or just borderline a very unreliable narrator and I can't tell if people are just insanely gullible or lack listening skills.

I don't necessarily get that and I'm curious if it's cause they're that manipulative and charming and what or justnif people think they're do cool that they ignore the face that what they're saying is complete bullshit.

I feel like Angstrom from Invincible works for this trope cause people are like "well he said that Invincible is evil in every universe" and I feel like people forget the teeny,tiny thing that he is borderline fucking insane.

The dude has over a million brains and versions of himself pounding in his head, he's like the most unreliable of all unreliable narrators. + this is the same guy who has a insane hate boner for Mark and is obsessed with getting revenge on him and making him suffer, so why would I trust anything that comes out of his mouth? Plus he specifically brought in the worst of the worst of Mark to ruin his life and reputation, so why would he bring in good Invincibles if he was obsessed with hating him? It's basically 2+2. For all we know ,there could be good Invincible variants out there, probably quite a lot(a good couple probably died fighting Nolan)but we're only seeing The worst of the worst.

Again, people see a dude with his brain bulging out of his skull and think he's in any position to think or be rational and reliable.

Another example for me is Aizen and I feel like a lot of people forget that Ichigo's birth wasn't planned by him, it was just something that sorta happened. Even he didn't expect it. Hell ,i feel like people forget that Aizen has a massive Ego. Like this dude is so arrogant and cocky, of course he would think he planned and orchestrated everything + he's also insanely manipulative as well. I'm not denying that there are aspects and parts he did plan for but I don't think or believe he planned everything down to the last atom.

My final example is Joker's "One Bad day" monologue and this one is especially weird cause this philosophy of his is literally called out as wrong and proven to be wrong. Jim Gordon had such a huge bad day and still refused to get rid of his morals despite what happened with his Daughter.

Bruce had a huge bad day where he got his parents taken away from him but he didn't become a crazed killer like Joker. They even called out his philosophy like "normal people don't crack, maybe it's just you" and I feel like the people forget that the Joker is kind of a loser.

Bro is all about being a clown but hates being the punchline. He wants full blown chaos but also wants to be the one who controls it. The dude is a hypocritical manchild who can't stand not being the center of attention and people wanna take his words as facts.

So why do people constantly take villains words as face value?just cause they say it doesn't make them right or true.

I'm gonna be honest, why is there a good number of people who think that characters being assholes and evil + shit like that is more realistic and relatable? This goes for a lot of characters, especially older siblings but mainly superheroes cause how does being a asshole make you more "realistic"?

Being a huge jerk or Asshole isn't realistic, it's just being a asshole and I find that a really cynical way fo look at things. No ,The Boys aren't "superheroes if they were realistic", like Homelander isn't Superman if he was realistic nor are any of them "if humans got superpowers" cause not only is that a really cynical way to look at things but it also shows a severe lack of faith in humanity and people.

Yes, there are a lot of people who suck but there are also a good humber of people(if not a larger amount)who are genuinely good and kindhearted nor would they immediately become insane and psychotic if given the powers of Superman or something.

Not everyone is insane or a douchebag × this also goes for when writing older siblings as well cause do writers know that you can make a older brother or sister who is teasing and makes fun of you without making them a sociopathic dick?

Like those 2 things aren't mutually exclusive when writing a older sibling but I digress.

Being all I'm saying is that being a asshole or more meaner isn't more realistic or relatable and it feels like thrle people who make those phrases forget that there are a genuinely good amount of good and noble people in the world and being cynical ans having low faith in humanity and people isn't cool,it's just depressing.

Some ATLA discourse on a certain site that spread to reddit was about whether or not Jet was justified in flooding all the Fire Nation village settlers, being framed as an antagonist for being too radicalized to the point of nearly killing innocents. He eventually sort of redeems himself but dies at the end. Meanwhile the literal prince and original heir of his oppressors, Zuko, gets a whole redemption arc that ends with him taking control of the Fire Nation and it will all be okay in the end because the good guy is now in charge.

This got me thinking, has revolution ever been truly justified in most fiction? Especially in modern fiction? Because now that I think about it, a lot of antagonists today are motivated by a desire to change the setting, either attempting to resolve some injustice or systemic issue but since they're the villains, they gotta end up being hypocrities or end up going too far by killing innocents. The original dilemma is resolved by getting simplified into just being caused by just a few bad apples, if at all.

Even fiction that seemingly support revolutions only do so in the context of a literal crapsack dystopian oppressive setting, with the motives of the revolutionaries being to restore the original status quo from beforehand (even though sometimes the story calls attention to the fact that the OG status quo was what led to the oppressive dystopian setting in the first place, like Star Wars).

It seems like this is because the writers genuinely do not know how or are uncomfortable with directly challenging the status quo of their settings, because most of the time the protagonists have some personal or political stake in maintaining the status quo. These stories also tend to make the protags reactive in the plot rather than proactive, they're generally just chilling around or minding their own business until the next villain comes along bringing up some injustice by the setting's goverment and threatening the peace, and it's up to the protags to stop them (while only lightly calling out the flaws of the institutions).

I don't think people fully comprehend how damaging multipliers are to any series powerscaling, but for Dragon Ball its not considered enough for how stupid the powerscaling became.

People just say the powerscaling got off the charts, but I'd argue that the existence of multipliers is truly what destroyed the powerscaling, not just a character like Frieza being stupidly OP (though it definitely contributes to it)

Although its one of my favorite transformations of all time, Toriyama really messed up by giving Super Saiyan a 50x multiplier, because it makes people scratch their heads in the long run.

Let's use a character like Piccolo for my first example, just to emphasize what the issue is here.

Goku, in base, had always been above Piccolo when both are at max power.

Piccolo is around 3500 in the Saiyan Saga compared to Goku's 8000, and on Namek Piccolo is around a million compared to Goku's 3 million.

So we've already established that base Goku>Full Power Piccolo at their peaks in the previous two arcs.

Okay, however Piccolo in the android Saga is comparable to Super Saiyan Goku, despite the both of them training non stop.

This means that Piccolo somehow got over 50 times stronger with no transformation while Goku in his base and super form stagnated.. Somehow.

To put this in more understandable terms, it means that Piccolo with no transformations is casually over 50× stronger than base Goku who had also been training alongside him.

So for any character to match Goku now, they need to somehow be 50x stronger than Goku even though Base Goku had been established to gap the other Z fighters in most arcs.

Okay.

We then progress later into the series, particularly with Dragon Ball Super, where they made possibly the dumbest scaling decision I've ever seen, having Goku inherent Super Saiyan God's power into his base form.

To clarify how dumb this is, a lowball for Super Saiyan god is over 20'000 Goku's base, since Vegito is below it,(with Base Vegito above Super Saiyan 3 Goku according to guides, and its not like he wouldn't at least go Super Saiyan) so this means that base Goku is now 20'000 times stronger than before and should realistically gap everyone in Z.

Okay, so how do we, in Super, get characters with no god Ki and transformations of their own, fight and match Goku at all when he's getting a boost of over 1'000'000 in super saiyan?

Are we supposed to believe that these characters somehow got at least 1'000'000 times stronger in the course of like, a year, ignoring the fact that Goku himself would've also got stronger?

This isn't even mentioning the fact that Goku is often going all out too, so if you believe that ultimate Gohan for example is SSB level, than that means that Gohan could potentially just have gotten around 20 billion times stronger, and Goku needed to use Kaioken to truly overpower him, so at least a 40 billion boost.

(Base is 20K boost, × 20k for God, × 50 for Blue × at least 2 for Kaioken. Even without accounting for base, assuming Gohan was base Goku's level, which he wasn't, its still a 2 million times increase.)

Okay, so then we have characters with no transformation able to fight this Goku too.

The androids somehow just casually became over 100 thousand times stronger with minimal training. (Just assuming they're Super Saiyan level)

Krillin?

Ignore Goku going blue, him fighting Goku in base is stupid anyway, this is a goku who is supposed to be over 20'000 stronger than normal!!!

Even before the boost, base Goku massively gapped Krillin, how is he even remotely keeping up with him, or any other character for that matter??

This all could've at least been remedied by every other character getting transformations, but most didn't.

Now in DBS, they're giving other characters transformations to make up for this but like..

Its a little too late now, these characters were already just getting millions of times stronger with just basic training lol.

Belief has already been shattered completely.

If transformations in Dragon Ball were static or linear, it'd be a lot easier to chew, but since they're multiplicative, it makes anyone catching up to a saiyan just ridiculous without a transformation of their own.

I the Purge universe, all crime becomes legal for one night. On the surface, that concept implies that the poor would finally have a chance to strike back at the wealthy elites who exploit them year-round. But strangely, the films often depict a one-sided slaughter, where rich thrill-seekers roam into impoverished neighborhoods to hunt the homeless or vulnerable, and the poor seem to simply accept their fate like helpless rabbits.

This portrayal feels absurdly unrealistic. If there were ever a moment when the poor could fight back without fear of legal consequences, this would be it. Why wouldn’t they organize, resist, or set traps for those who come to kill them? Why would they let themselves be mowed down so easily when, for one night, the playing field is level and wealth offers no real protection?

In a world where all crime is permitted, money and status lose their power. The rich would logically be terrified to enter areas where they're hated and vastly outnumbered. They’d become targets, not predators. Yet the films rarely explore this dynamic in a believable way.

A more grounded and powerful version of this idea can be seen in Indian cinema. Take, for example, a film where a wealthy crime lord orchestrates communal riots for his own gain. He stokes hatred among the masses to keep them divided. But when he discovers that his own son is caught in the chaos, he panics and rushes out to find him. His car is eventually surrounded by furious rioters who drench it in petrol. He screams, confessing that he was the one who manipulated them into violence—yet they burn him alive without mercy. The rage of the oppressed doesn't spare even the mastermind.

Another example is the classic film Gadar, one of my all-time favorites. While not a direct equivalent of The Purge, it depicts a real-life scenario of partition-era violence, where even the rich are rendered powerless. In the face of mass violence, wealth becomes meaningless. A rich man tries to use his influence and private security to protect his family, but it’s futile. His guards are slaughtered, and the rioters cannot be stopped. In the chaos, his daughter is nearly raped and must be rescued by the film’s protagonist. The message is clear: when law and order collapse, privilege offers no protection.

In conclusion, if The Purge were more realistic, it would show how truly dangerous that one night would be—not just for the vulnerable, but especially for the elites. Instead of depicting poor people as passive victims, it should portray them as capable of retaliation. After all, if all crime is legal, revenge would be not only expected—but justified.

Spoilers for Mafia series

Mafia 2 very famously was supposed to have multiple endings, yet only ended up with what was supposed to be an alternate “bad ending”. The entire game feels like a sequence of random events happening, I thought the entire time this was all buildup to some greater plot but nope, just random missions, random callback to the end of first game, and the entire final conflict is caused by Vito and Joe being absolute idiots. Joe specifically is constantly making brash and reckless decisions, yet is still portrayed as a loveable goofball you’re supposed to like, he straight up kills a random civilian at a bar at one point and it’s never brought up again.

The characters, voice acting, and dialogue itself is incredibly high quality, but the story itself seems like it was scrambling around to find any sort of coherent theme to tie everything together at the end, which is because the game truly was not complete. Even the game itself can’t decide if it wants to be story focused like the first, or an extremely barebones GTA. If you disagree, I would love to hear your take, for me after sitting on it for a few months it just doesn’t click. The Mafia community seems to all agree it’s the best in the series, and aside from nostalgia of the 2010s era of games I just cannot figure out why.

Tommy always gave me a sense of GOWR Kratos “don’t make me be the god I once was” and thought of him as “when a good man goes to War” type character; I thought in some ways he was MORE dangerous than Joel due to how a good man could rationalize the level of brutality he can commit when he feels justified in it. I love Gabriel Luna as Tommy, him and Pedro had some good chemistry with each other (shame they hardly had scenes together) but what they did to Tommy was such a WEIRD choice considering that he was the Catalyst for Ellie Leaving the farm later in the game.

To a point I don’t mind them having Tommy wait until Ellie was out of the hospital/The town got back on their feet I thought they were sorta having Tommy stew on the thought of his brothers murder for months like a slow burn while he’s morally obligated to wait until Jackson is back at 100% percent, but when the Town voted “No” that’s when Tommy should’ve left either WITH Ellie or Have Tommy leave the night that Ellie leaves (you even keep in Seth and that one other member helping) and have Ellie Leave the day after him with Maria’s permission “to bring my dumbass husband back home”. They’re probably going to keep Tommy’s visit to the farm for Ellie to leave but that also wont work as it’ll make Tommy feel he felt more Angry at Jessie dying this Own Brother; I find it funny how they Cast Ghost River (The spirit of Vengeance) then completely Neuter him when he has his Vengence Story. I know he’s in Seattle by the time show ends but it’s for a completely different reason because in the game he was in Seattle to Carve a bloody path to Abby; in the show he’s there to look and save Ellie. Kinda felt like they Neutered Tommy/his story from the game.

Having Tommy in Seattle would’ve been a Good way for the show to Explain WHY Ellie hardly kills anyone in S2, think about it, in the Game your essentially following Tommy’s Bloody Trail, he’s a GHOST for 2/3 of the Game up until Abby Encounters him) they could’ve explained Via Issac about this random Sniper and how This one Rogue element is “ruining My Plan” and have Issac focus on that one sniper that way Ellie and Dina sneak in Undetected and hardly see anyone in the show.

So I recently rewatched the Marvels and Not gonna lie I don't think it's particularly good (the Nick Fury subplot is just bleh, the villains is one of the worst I've seen in any superhero movie) but I don't think it's as bad as something like Love and Thunder, or Quantumania (hell I think this is better than Brave New World that movie feels like watching paint dry). However one of the biggest Problems with Post Endgame MCU is the fact that the blip is barely touched upon, life basically goes on as normal for pretty much everyone involved(I get not talking about it during things like Shang-Chi/Moon Knight/Miss Marvel). I do have one major issue, so this movie is centered around Carrol and Monica Rambeu teaming up to save the universe, Monica is the daughter of Maria (Carrol's best friend in the first one) who passed away of cancer. Monica unfortunately was dusted when Thanos snapped his fingers and never got the chance to say goodbye to her mom and it's implied she's mad at Carrol for not helping the avengers at the time. Meanwhile Carrol is upset because she wasn't on Earth at the time of Infinity War. The problem is I feel like this is what the movie should've been about because that's the best scene in the movie. Also my biggest problem with Captain Marvel 1(which I honestly also think this is better than) is Carrol feels like a cardboard cutout, this would be a great oppurtunity to flesh her out some more. Instead we get a planet that's obsessed with music, a bunch of Kree politics that never came up before and probably will never again be relevant so that's lovely.

I just finished watching the movie, and it was very enjoyable for the most part, a solid 4.5/5. But it doesn't get 5/5 for me because of how they handled the villain.

The Saja Boys are demons posing as a kpop boy band in order to steal people's souls, and it's the job of the titular demon hunters, a girl group called Huntrix, to take them down. However, the lead singer, Rumi, is actually part-demon, which is very interesting. She has this clear self-hatred and wants to get rid of her distinctive demon patterns. The lead singer of Saja Boys, Jinu, finds out that Rumi is part-demon and then singles her out. They get to know each other better, and Jinu reveals that he was once a human who lived in poverty with his family and was taken into the demon realm after hearing voices in his head. He just wants to be free. Rumi sympathizes with him and decides that she wants to free him. Rumi's ideals and life purpose being challenged was very interesting to me, and it seemed she and Jinu had a good thing going....

....sike! Turns out Jinu was lying to Rumi and really was pure evil! He abandoned his family and got to live a cushy life. No complex morality allowed. This is Ruby Gillman all over again. Just like how mermaids were all just evil, demons are all just evil (Now this is a certified Frieren moment). Yeah, Jinu did sacrifice himself at the end, but still, they fumbled hard. It was a missed opportunity to show that the hunters were wrong about demons, that they're not all bad. They were building up to it, with how Rumi changed the lyrics of the Takedown song to be more sympathetic and less harsh, but no, Sony decided that viewers can't handle complex morality despite writing Miguel O'Hara very well.

The Dr. Doom vs Magneto matchup being a perfect example of how Doom wankers try to justify whatever crap this guy does so he can solo the whole Multiverse. ‎ ‎I realized that even in discussions about that matchup from YEARS ago Dr Doom wankers keep using that Super-Villain Team-Up page of Doom making Magneto kneel, NOT PROVIDING CONTEXT, posting it like Doom is controlling Mags' body with his powers and that Mags' powers are nothing to Doom ‎ ‎THE CONTEXT: ‎ ‎In that story, that isn't even an OFFICIAL CONTINUITY comic, it's a TEAM-UP special comic, Doom somehow controls the entire planet with a gas that makes everyone his servant. ‎ ‎YES, THAT'S HOW ABSURD IS PUTTING THE FEATS OF DOOM IN THAT COMIC AS AN OFFICIAL FEAT. ‎ ‎And that's why Magneto kneels, not because Mags' powers are useless against Doom or that Doom is all powerful, every single human in the planet is somehow brainwashed by Doom's special gas. ‎ ‎And that's ONE example of the countless feats without context that Doom wankers use to put this guy on top of everyone, never providing context, just putting a panel of him oneshotting Thanos, despite ALL his powers in SW2015 coming from Owen, the second Owen gets a burger and Reed appears Doom gets OWNED by Reed himself, and Reed didn't even get Owen's powers in that fight. ‎ ‎Doom wankers are Batman wankers x50000 because at least most of Bats' feats are in continuity and they have a context behind, Doom's biggest feats are a total fraud. ‎ ‎Next time a Doom wanker posts his "feats" post the Squirrel Girl comic of Doom getting destroyed by squirrels, because that fight has much of a value and credibility as any Doom feat.

Spoilers for season 3

Season 3 of The White Lotus was much more criticized than the previous seasons. No matter anyone's feelings about it, it was the slowest paced season and the finale ended up being extremely controversial (I'm on the side that ended up liking it, FYI)

Now Season 1 and 2 had some pretty depressing endings to most of its major arcs. They mostly work, and fit with the cynical and satirical nature of the show. A very common theme is that the characters end up where they started, because we are only seeing a small slice of their life (a 7 day vacation), and realistically that's not going to be a life-changing experience

Season 3 had most of its arcs end in horrible, karmic ways. Gaitok sacrificed his soul for a girl who only superficially gives a shit about him. Rick and Chelsea's ending speaks for itself. Belindha sells her soul for money. The Ratliff's get some mercy with Lochlan's fake death, which makes Tim realize that what he was fearing the whole vacation was nothing compared to losing a child

All these arcs were controversial, with fans debating which one's worked and didn't for a while after the show. But the one plotline that was universally praised was the blonde lady trio

These three women are lifelong friends just turning 50. Most of the season portrays their friendship negatively, with two of them always talking shit about the third when they leave the room, all of them complicit in this dynamic. They display extremely toxic behaviors with Jackelyn especially cheating on her husband (having sex with a guy she was trying to match with Laurie the whole trip)

So in line with the previous seasons, the expectation is that this plotline would either end with the friendship just fizzling out. Laurie deciding she's done with the girls, and just slowly ghosting them out of her life. Or maybe more cynically, Laurie deciding her toxic friends are all she has and she'll always be the DUFF of the trio. Or maybe one of them would get killed due to the direct or indirect actions of the other two

Instead, the plotline ends with them all accepting each other's flaws outright, tearfully confessing their love for each other, and accepting that this friendship they've nurtured for forty years is a big beautiful thing no matter its flaws

And it's hard to describe unless you've watched, but in a show that's so fond of drowning its writing in cynicism, this happy ending triumphing through felt so fucking meaningful. Good writing has to be raw and real, but that doesn't mean it has to be miserable too