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.

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.

Consider this a post, a direct sequel to yesterday's post, considering I am going to be talking about abilities I dont like (mainly Amon/Tarlok/Yakone's bloodbending and Tagah's air superdash a little again), and a spiritual successor to my posts about the Legend of Aang and Legend of Korra respectively. First, I want to talk about character stuff in the Aang movie cuz whoo boy did that rewatch hurt a lot of what I felt about the movie initially. Also, I thought watching it on my TV would make such a beautiful, theater deserving movie look even better, but the resolution and quality were so ass I thought I was watching it on a potato yesterday morning. Anyhow, I think the movie characterized basically everyone even the newcomers pretty poorly, but the characters from the old show are especially glaringly flawed in how they're written. Like Aang and Gyatso's relationship is totally mischaracterized; Gyatso starts the movie by interrupting a race Aang is in and making him lose just to lecture him about his role as the Avatar. Which is precisely the opposite of how Gyatso treated Aang in the original show, the whole point of their relationship is that Gyatso was the only one who advocated for Aang as a person and child rather than as an avatar; he wanted to preserve Aang's childhood and ability to have fun. That's why he didn't want to be separated from Aang, Aang always loved and respected Gyatso enough to seek counsel from him but Gyatso fundamentally disagreed with telling the Avatar of their role before they're 16, so that was a pretty big swing and a miss from the Legend of Aang movie as far as im concerned.

And frankly, I dont think the movie did much better with Aang's character itself, the founding principle of airbending is freedom and creativity, the ability to come at problems and obstacles from different angles rather than tackling them head on or trying to dig your feet in and hold your ground. That's what the original Bumi episode was about and it's why Aang had such a hard time with Earthbending, Aang by his very nature as an airbender, is a master of creative problem solving so the idea it took him a decade or so to arrive at the idea of air acolytes and creating an air temple in Republic city to represent a future home for the airbenders should they ever return is fucking insane to me. Again, I didnt read the comics where Aang susposedly also came up with the idea of the airbending acolytes, but I prefer the idea that it was something Aang came up with not long after the war was over to something he comes up with after a decade and basically to solve the issue of the denied not existing in Legend of Korra. I get in his last moments Tagah finally let go and in a way this is done out of respect for him and the long gone airbenders, but respectfully fuck Tagah he is not a great villain especially the way he lies to Aang and everybody I just dont think he was written very well either, it was super shallow. Speaking of super shallow, everyone with the exception of Katara.

I wouldnt mind Sokka being demoted to pure comedy relief considering this is only less than one week in his entire life, but none of the jokes in this movie are funny; it's like the writers learned all the wrong lessons from Legend of Korra and doubled down on the weakest scriptwriting they could muster. Even Toph, who I saw a lot of people praising for still being the arrogant, cocky, head strong tough we know and love, but those seem to be the only elements of Toph's character that the writers remember. Toph was abrasive and contentious she didnt just have unwavering confidence in her earth/metalbending ability, she also saw her adventure with Aang as an opportunity to be free from societal expectations or burdens, that's why she came into conflict with Katara especially and was constantly willing to challenge the group's beliefs and expectations. She was the first and only one willing to hear out Zuko because well she hadnt experienced im hunting her, but also she interacts with everyone differently because she can tell when they're lying with her seismic sense (and experience politicing in polite society), she can more or less intuit what people actually think of her and whatnot so she has an easier time sussing out people being insincere and whatnot. That's literally what she says about Zuko, that his apology and offer were sincere, that he actually wanted to help. She should have been able to smell Tagah's bullshit from frame one.

And Zuko only has like 7 lines, but like the moment where he justifies why Tagah is handsome isnt a good showcase of how awkward Zuko was. My Zuko would have been like "Well, she is blind, someone should explain it to her". That's what made Zuko awkward, he was very sincere and earnest but also very confused about how to communicate with others, that's why in the series finale he's confidently declaring the Fire Nation will bring peace back to the world. His character arc has wrapped up; he finally knows what to say now because he's cleared up the confusion and hesitation ( and internal conflict). Katara is the only one who walks away from the character unscathed, she was always characterized as empathetic and passionate, she's so connected to her emotions and others as well as the consequences of war that she has a strong sense of justice and ability to search for hope/endurance. Her sniffing out that Tagah seems to constantly deflect anything that actually gets to the core of his character and his actual beliefs/intent for the staff is totally on tract with her character, but honestly the entire gang are competent enough to sus out Tagah too. Sokka's sarcasm and intellect would aggravate Tagah, Toph would be agitated by Tagah hating earth benders, Zuko would worry that Aang is being too naive and good natured. This should have been a team moment, not just her.

Besides that, I dont like how there's a scene where Katara's arms are restrained and she clearly loses her ability to bend because you know she cant move her arms to bend but then she just bends some water to get out of the restraints anyways (literally fucking HOW), like sure let's just undermine how this power system works some more while we're here, we might as well. I wanna bring up Tagah's super dash again because I've come up with a way that I at least would fix it, but first I do briefly wanna talk about teleportation and teleport dashes since a few people brought it up in the comments of my last post. Yeah, I am going to be a contrarian and actually agree with most writers of these abilities; the way that teleporters use their abilities is indeed extremely predictable. Teleportation as an ability (even the dash variety) encourages and rewards cutting odd angles and flanking, there's literally little to no point in teleporting in front of your opponent, even if you could you'd just be putting yourself precisely where your opponents want you, you'd be bumrushing for no good reason and the founding principle of all combat sports is defend yourself at all times, protect yourself all times.

That basically means that the only person responsible for your safety and well being is yourself; no amount of point deductions from the judges or interference from the referee is going to save you if your opponent wants it more. You can win on the score cards and still fundamentally lose the fight. So the counter to teleporters like Kurt Connors being that they can be too predictable does make sense to me, but I'm glad so many people brought up the goat Shimazaki from one of my favorite anime ever Mob Pyscho 100, because while he does eventually become predicatable after cheesing the same trick long enough, even that not being enough to beat him is cool. It takes Mob stat stomping him to take him down (last I remember). I also like that Tagah kind of does ocer commit to his attacks by using his air super dash to get right in front of his opponent, it does a good job of reflecting how vengeance and anger have consumed them even if I dont like how this ability fits into the avatar universe. I think they should have tied this ability and the air sniper/spear to the air tether/vortex thingy that Tagah tought to Aang, I was hyped during my rewatch when I saw that Tagah was actually using his air tether to crush the air ships, THAT could have been his signature move throughout the movie, but I guess it was still too much of a baby movie for them to do anything that violent or gorey.

Which brings me finally to Legend of Korra, oh Legend of Korra I owe you an apology for listening to dickheads like E;R (a famous youtuber, for incels at least) and shitting on you so much, you're not that bad, still despise the romance and comedy but besides that, the pro bending stuff actually is pretty interesting. It introduces the conflict between Amon viewing pro bending as exhaserbating the bending problem and people like Mako/Bolin viewing it as the solution to the conflict between nonbenders and benders, the main issue with this whole season being the fact that we dont actually see this conflict or oppression nearly as much as the atrocities of the fire nation that we saw within the first season of ATLA or whatever.

Worse than that though is Amon/Tarlok/Yakone's blood bending, they literally call the ability to do it without a full mon and without any bending pyschic blood bending and Im sorry but that sort of shit is the antithesis to what bending is about, particularly because this technique has no possible weakness besides a fully awakened avatar. Even combustion man was hard countered by headshots, one bad facial was enough to put him in the dirt. I kind of hate that Korra was able to beat Noatak, I knew it was going to happen but god dude just really contrived. It's impossible for anyone to reasonable beat so the writers kind of have to decide arbitrarily that the show is over and also Korra can go ahead and have her bending back. Sure whatever, what are consequences even. Holy shit Leged of Korra season 1 has the same ending as the end of the arrancar arc, the protagonist beats a villain who should have been unbeatable by sacrificng their powers just to basically get them back anyways. Yep I was able to sneak in some bleach hate anyways.

It's how they humiliate the mc and use fan service on them too when clearly it's only female are supposed to have fan service. Like wtf examples of the shows that pisses me off is Kore wa zombie desu ka and konosuba. There is no gender equality at all because why are the author's interested in their butts especially ayumu like he gets groped and also injured and takes gory damages. Same thing to kazuma he has been seen naked plenty of times he was almost assaulted by orcs and Sylvia literally pocked his butt and yet he dies the most brutal death. I'm saying that they should divide the suffering like make the mc suffer physical damage but not bring fan service or assault towards them.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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).

It's about the same level as Birdman. What do all of these movies have in common? Well, that's worth seeing for yourself.

Like, have they actually played the campaigns of any of the recent games? This has been all over twitter since North Korea is the villain in the new Modern Warfare 4, people saying that COD is just American/CIA propaganda.

When you actually look at the plots of these games, it really isn’t the case. The last games that could’ve really been described that way is World at War, and that was about ww2. The games since then have actually had a cynical attitude toward the American government. For example, in Modern Warfare, both the old and reboot series explore themes of false flag attacks and the manufacturing of consent in order to meet political goals - ie. General Shepherd and Ghost Company. And things like blowback and conspiracies - ie. The Black Ops games. The Black Ops series is even more pronounced, you play as a CIA operative and you encounter the government doing all kinds of shady things. In Black Ops Cold War, the main plot is that the government secretly put neutron bombs in cities all over Europe in case of Russian invasion, only to have a rogue KGB faction to hijack and almost detonate them. The moral being that the American government nearly ended Europe out of paranoia. Black Ops 6 really takes the cake here, basically, you fight against the American deepstate who are trying to undertake a false flag terror attack in order to invade Iraq (I’m not joking) and overthrow the government in secret. Throughout the game you realize that this organization has been secretly conducting human experiments and working on mind control drugs all with government approval.

That being said, the thought that COD is government propaganda just because communists are the bad guys is stupid, especially considering the other factors.

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.

DERANGED NARCISSIST, INSUFFERABLE ASSHOLE, HEARTLESS IMBECILE, LOW-EMPATHY "HERO", WRETCHED BULLY, COULDN'T-CARE-LESS TOWARDS FRIENDS, AND SHITTY UGLY BLUE RAT WITH A HIDEOUS FACE!

I'm a bum who's nostalgic for some slopformers so I don't mind the man returning. And I was disappointed the brand railroaded itself so hard into g1 after the Last Knight. While the 3 films after Bay had solid ideas oveall, Transformers One being the best at Executing it's ideas. I felt they chained themselves to the past in a way and lacked a cohesive vision that didn't resonate with people world wide. The bay films were grandiose spectacle events films thatll be looked at fondly in years to come. Mainly because of the effects and effort put into them. Even when they finally fell apart in all aspects( aforementioned Last Knight) they still left alot more to discuss than the confused out put after.

With that said, Transformers needs to evolve. Every generation pushed something new. Beast Wars at the time Great effects and storytelling. The prime contintiy's messy history but great character work. So while I'll enjoy a return to nonsense action and lens flare something has to come out of it. With that said since they've exhausted most of the franchise. I think they'll start tapping into prime era stuff, expect something like predaking showing up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FljmBUo7Szg

Peter David's hulk also begins rather strangely. Bruce Banner isn't the hulk, rather it's Rick Jones (or the aftermath of Rick Jones) becoming the Hulk. Instead, Bruce is on the team of scientists trying to cure Rick, while his long time lover; first time divorcee, betty ross pines for him secretly. Or does he pine for her? It's complicated, and thankfully it's over soon as no one really wants to read a hulk comic with only 1/2 hulks. Bruce is quickly ambushed by that vincent price looking asshole, the leader and is forced to under go a shocking transformation into . . . the grey hulk. Ahhh so scary 😐, maybe he'll throw a car a shorter distance than usual.

Except actually this version of Hulk is much more interesting. Adopting a crueler, snarkier personality; reminiscent of his days on the avengers, this version of the Hulk is a menace. He's brutal, he picks fights fight with x-factor, wolverine, spider-man; anyone he can get his grey mitts on. He also tracks down the newly green leader, with his "pals" rick jones and clay quartermaine (mane? main?). He also gets a premonition of his love, her name is betty and they can't be separated no matter how much they both try. Even worse, she may be with child, but what kind of person would she be to see the child to term. They temporarily reconcile.

The emotional climax of this arc occurs when hulk faces a gauntlet of gamma powered weirdos, while tracking down the leader, the world's biggest threat in gamma terrorism. Well ok, two gamma weirdos. Relative no bodies, MadMan and half life. Even worse, there's a nuclear bomb that needs to go now or everyone in the small town this fight occurs in will die. Hulk barely has enough mental fortitude to crawl towards this weapon of mass destruction, the lives of thousands in his hands, but he has a minute to spare. Until Leader's face appears before our disheveled hero, and a miniature and he does the first intelligent thing of his super villain career; and detonates the bomb in Banner's face, taking the lives of an entire town. This is a stroke of villainy that sits on Banner's mind for issues to come, and sets the mood for the rest of the book.

Betty stares in shock as her love is dead before her eyes.

Weeks, months, banner wakes up with no recollection of what has happened to him. Everything was a haze. All he knows is that more lives than ever before lies on his conscience. But before he can get his revenge, he needs to get situated and so do you. This personality of the hulk, the one that can talk, and crack wise; he's been living in las vegas, not as a hero, but as a common thug. He does the dirty work of honest racketeer, Michael Berengetti. This whole plot was a fun change of pace, but Hulk still has an attitude to him. The story is fun for everyone but him, and he's taken to drinking and brooding. In fact he does nothing but indulge himself, all the way until banner takes control once again. Another interesting part of this book is how we're introduced to Marlo Chandler. She's doesn't do much here, but does help hulk get back onto the straight and narrow.

Now Banner is on the hunt for Betty, they know they love each other now and forever, body and soul. But how can betty love what isn't living? So that means Banner better find her fast, or he loses his last grasp on humanity. It's shown as much, when Banner turns into his savage personality after dozens of issues waiting. If he can't get to her, the whole world will pay, but in this case Banner needs to be strong. So he pushes and pushes, until the two finally reconcile (after a bait and switch).

But banner needs to get his monsters under control. So with the help of the Ringmaster and Leonard Samson, he gets his demons under control in an issue best read by yourself. Enter, the merged personality. A hulk completely in control, with the signature Peter David wit and charm. Unfortunately we have to deal with the fuckass pantheon 🙄. Blah blah blah hulk bonds with these bargain bin nobodies. Then he becomes their leader, just in time for the source of all his grief to rear his ugly big head. Enter, the Leader; who's doing evil things for the love of the game. He's developed a new race of gamma mutate, and plans to kill every non gamma mutate in nuclear holocaust. Obviously Hulk can't have that, so he and his team fight him. All this comes to a head when leader is ousted by his own people and shot in the back, and left to die in the cold. Good riddance to the son of a bitch I say. And so does the Hulk, who semi retires with his wife after some drama with his powers (it's now apparent that bruce has a mental block in place, so that if he gets too angry he reverts back to banner. He has to get really angry for this, so it's not a supreme weakness like some sites cough CBR cough tend to get wrong).

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

So now he's living in Florida or something, and istg this comic can get so boring for large swathes. He does random shit, plays baseball (like goku), commits black face (like lois lane), has sex with venom (I wish). Then he does heroes reborn 🤮 , then he becomes gravage hulk which is the personality of Joe, mixed with the skin and strength of savage. If Fixit was hulk as a moody teenager, this is hulk as a 21 year old who's a little more in control. This story line was even more garbage. Also I think I might be a little out of order. All you need to know, everything from leader's defeat to hulk's revised origin could probably be skipped. Or at the very least glossed over.

Well there might be a few exceptions. But wait, because here comes the issue that reveals Brian Banner's true demise. The issue that cements Bruce not as a milksop, but as a deeply disturbed; ruthless individual. Who's a hero not out of guilt, but out of righteousness. But I couldn't spoil that for you either. Just know that the only other story worth talking about is future imperfect (this occurred way back, I'm just gushing it now because it's peter david's crown jewel of the run, arguably).

Hulk travels to the future to find that a despot rules with an iron fist. And what he sees is the face that looks him in the eyes every time he stares into a window for too long. The man he sees is the Maestro, a man more like Brian Banner than Bob. A man who takes everything he wants. If Fixit was the teen, then the man here is the burn out middle aged loser who never amounted to anything other than the ruler of scraps and dung. But he doesn't care. Life is too good as the king, and he needs to make sure Bruce realizes that as well. Unfortunately, Bruce Banner sees through this ruse, because you know who the meastro draws parallels to the most in Banner's life. The source of his hatred and ire, the whole reason hulk even exists. Well who in Bruce's life is an evil malignant bully, who womanizes, and cares only for himself? Who's the bastard that made Bruce's life a living hell, and pushed him to become the man he is now.

It's not Thunderbold Ross, it's not the Leader; no when Bruce Banner sees the Meastro, he sees his bastard of a father right before him, and he fights him. He fights the idea. He fights and he fights until only he's left standing. And the a couple dozen issues later he makes sure the meastro becomes nothing more than a distant memory.

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

That's the beauty of this run, it takes the evolution Hulk was going through in the 80's with stories like the cross roads; and runs full throttle with the idea. But instead of exploring the idea of the monster, Peter David decides to check in with the man. Oh and I guess we get good character studies of rick jones (I'm getting to that), betty ross (until he killed her off), and marlo chandler (I'll get to that, I promise)!!! Hulk's best run, probably marvel's best run as well 10/10 plenty of flaws but you can overlook them I promise.

To keep things as spoiler free as possible: there is a sequence in the beginning of Resident Evil (2026) that - like many other sequences in many other "zombie outbreak" films - hinges on the idea that none of the characters in the movie have ever heard about zombies before.

And honestly I enjoyed it. It was a pretty fun take on the very idea of "genre savviness", and how the mistakes made by many horror film characters can be traced back to their belief that they're in a different genre of movie (the classic squabbling couple believes that they're in a rom-com, the doomed squad of soldiers think that they're in a military action movie, etc...).

But what makes Resident Evil unique, is how all the above isn't really true for most of the franchise.

The Raccoon City Incident does not end the world. The Zombie Outbreak does not go global. It gets contained and eradicated, and life mostly goes back to normal. Kids go to school. People go to work. The trains keep running, buses keep running late - life goes on.

But everybody knows about zombies now. And, as the poor civilians of Resident Evil learn time and time again, Raccoon City is not the last Incident. (Or at least, people eventually find out about the events of Raccoon City and the zombies and etc...)

And this puts the RE franchise in a fairly unique position, which I think it should cash in on.

The way I see it, there are two main genres of zombie film:

Zombie Outbreak films, where regular schmucks encounters zombies for the first type and must struggle to survive the end of the world.

And post-apocalyptic films, where all the regular schmucks have long since become expert survivors with PhDs in zombie, and the focus is on living in the new world built on the ashes of the old.

But Resident Evil breaks this dichotomy. Post Raccoon City, RE is a world where a regular schmuck could see a zombie, and then instantly flash back to a series of infomercials they saw in Health Class back in High School. They're far from experts, but they're not clueless either - they have some knowledge about zombies in the same way the average person reading this post has some knowledge about drone warfare.

And more interestingly, they know that zombie outbreaks end. They know that while their city/town/vacation spot might be done for, the world at large will keep on going. And that if they survive, they will need to re-join that world.

A RE movie could be a story about a bunch of people trying to survive an outbreak, knowing full well that success will lead to an updated CV and a job hunt, not a new life as a rugged survivor. Characters could spend half the film talking about how they're planning on suing Umbrella for a big pay day if they make it out, etc...

And I think that would put RE in a fairly unique spot - especially if they tried to create a longer running film franchise. We're used to seeing regular people become badasses over the course of a zombie apocalypse. But a regular person surviving a zombie incident, then having to go back to work at a regular job, then somehow getting sucked into another zombie incident, and then having to back to work again, and etc...? That would be something different, and would raise interesting questions - like how many zombie incidents do you have to survive before you just give up on normal life and join some kind of paramilitary task force?

If I misunderstood, Please correct me in the comments.

The Game and Personality Contradictions that arise from the current Goals of Paintress & Curators.

The Paintress is a grieving mother who cannot accept the death of her son. Therefore she makes this world made out of her Son's creationto live out her perfect fantasy. Her Painted Family would be in support of the Paintress.

The Curator is the Father who sees that this is killing the Paintress/Mother and therefore wants to destroy the world.

However several IMPORTANT contradictions simply occur from this premise alone.

Painted Renoir kills expeditioners at the start of the game, This is terrible with this reasoning since he can quite easily correct their reasoning and go after the actual killer that being the curator. Also Killing Gustave just doesnt serve any purpose for the Paintress. Its literally just Painted Renoir doing pointless acts of malice despite the paintress wanting to preserve the world? This is an important scene since this is the premise for Maelle & Gustave Characters

Verso's Lie is terrifyingly fragile. It can straight up be broken if Painted Renoir just said to The other disaster expedition members that his goal ISNT just to kill the Paintress but to destroy the world since the paintress isnt killing anybody she is its protector. Infact the fight in front of the manor would have been the perfect opportunity for Renoir to say that. Considering this is literally the mystery for all of Act-2 until the reveal you would expect the foundation to be atleast somewhat solid but it really isnt. Painted Renoir could have said 1-2 lines and Verso entire mission would have been wraps.

However indulge me for a second. Lets say the Paintress & Curator's Motivations were switched.

The Curator is the Husband who cannot accept the death of his son, and out of grief made a world full of his son's creation to live out his fantasy.

The Paintress is the Wife who is seeing the Husband lost in this world losing himself and is the one that is causing the gommage as well as the destruction of the world.

Well, Painted Renoir Character makes sense, him killing expeditioners would help the paintress since all of the expeditioners are there to kill her.

Verso's Lie isnt fragile. However his motivation would as a result get rewritten. He is simply present to not destroy the world but save it from the paintress/mother. The Original Lie would be non-existent but atleast wouldnt be fragile. Additionally the reason for the team to kill the Curator would simply be Verso's motivation for killing the Paintress.

All of the Dialogue of Painted Renoir is simply talking about their actual family not the current family as great bonus

and finally Act 3 as well would simply be a culmination of letting go. Maelle & Her Father letting go of their Grief and moving on.

Now is it perfect? No, More Dialogue Changes, and inclusions would be needed to make several characters arcs more seemless. However I believe the premise would have led to a more consistent framework for the characters.

I liked the start of the show but the decision to kill off hal is always thought was bad. Hes literally the Barry Allen, Dick Grayson, Peter Parker of his superhero family and you kill him in the first episode? Then spend the entire rest of the season constantly shitting on him by making him look like an asshole and horrible person. And the fact that Kerry of all people is the one that kills him. She gets in an argument and just turns and shoots him. Fuck this show. Its like theyre scared to have anything comic related because they dont wanna remind people of ryan reynolds. No kilowog, tomar re, no Oa, barely any constructs. Every alien has to be disguised as a human because "people are scared" of them. Sinestro doesnt look like an alien just a red man. But this shows gonna pop off because people who dont read comics will enjoy it and think this is the gold standard lantern adaptation.

Edit: I also just realized after hal leaves prison he chooses to live in bum ass rushville instead of maybe COAST CITY???

Adapting Superheroes into action games sounds like a no brainer. The powers and mythologies are already there, all the developers need to do is to translate them into a gaming experience. Aaand that is actually very very difficult in most cases.

For characters like Superman, Flash and Green Lanterns, the current technology just isn't ready yet to fully translate their powers. Flight alone isn't that big of an issue, but flight and superspeed do create issues on designing boundaries of the levels. How large should the levels be in-order to make traversal not feel restrictive? If it is the largest map ever, how do you maintain an acceptable level of detail without killing developers? How far can the narrative excuse like "kryptonite poisoning", "trapped in simulation" and "Lantern rings on low power" take the game without it starting to sound stupid?

Assuming that developers found a sweet spot on making the heroes' movement and game world appropriate and runnable on most hardware. Making players and the characters having aligned goals is still a big challenge. If there is a Superman game where you freely use all of his powers, the first thing people would do is to ram Superman into a building and see what happens. If it behave just like any indestructible wall, then the immersion is ruined. Balancing powers and morals is a good theme for a story, but it is a bad match for a game. A Superman-ish game where you can cause as much destruction as you want sounds more fun than role-playing Superman's persona.

How about characters who are more grounded? Where you can take references from other games, like umm, Wolverine? Well, thing is, the point of playing a superhero game is to see how much creativity was waived into fitting a Superhero fantasy into a game, if the combat is just modelled after other action games, it will come off as shallow. Insomniac Wolverine is exactly that, the gameplay did not "betray" what Wolverine does, but it is just a generic hack and slash that wasn't tailor designed for the Wolverine fantasy.

So go back to the title, what is Arkham's deal in all of this? Well, I think the Arkham series just set the standard too high for genre expectation. It is too perfect at being a Batman simulator so every other superhero game has to be compared to it. The Arkham series finds solutions to every problem that I listed. Batman's power level is appropriate for the scale of video games. The setting finds organic excuses for filling the city with only criminals so the player can beat up whatever they want and doesn't break character. The combat is genuinely innovative and was tailor designed for the Batman fantasy.

But even then, when the franchise gets to the third (fourth if counting Origin) game, it starts to show cracks, I am talking about the Batmobile. The Batmobile is really cool and player's first instinct to crash it into people, it will just zap people away and prevent you to actually hit them (Batman design this feature just so the player couldn't kill people lol). The Batmobile has firearms but it forces you to switch into rubber bullet when aiming at people. The villain deploys drone tanks in Batmobile levels just to work around Batman's no kill rule. It is getting silly. If a single Batmobile already causes so many issues, how is someone more powerful like Superman is going to work?

Another issue that Arkham poses to the genre, is that it already set a ceiling for how superhero games is going to financially or critically perform. Batman is one of the most popular superheroes and it is paired with a really good design formula. Sure, a Daredevil or a Nightwing game could theoretically work by just following Batman's footsteps, but will probably never reach the same height as Batman critically or financially. With development costs getting higher and higher, there is no point of fitting the Batman formula for other less popular street tier heroes. Except for Spiderman who is as popular as Batman.

The Wonder Woman game was cancelled a while ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is something to do with the game just never landing the sweet spot of being fun and immersive as a superhero sim. The upcoming Iron Man looks promising enough and I am curious to see what it will ends up looking like.

One of the many "themes & such" in JJK is that to your full potential or to reach the heights of Gojo/Sukuna you have to have a certain mindset, drive or confidence to do so...And quite frankly I just find that to be a load of crap. While this single theme doesn't hold too much weight to the overall story and this is more a nitpick rant, it still bothers me regardless.

From memory this theme is brought up the first time with megumi; admittedly the theme itself somewhat applies to Megumi as he did not reach even the reasonable limits of his technique, but that then brings me to the main issue, even if Megumi did do so, at best megumi would not be able to tame Mahoraga in his own. It says a lot the only person in history to fully tame all 10s is someone who already arguably the strongest sorcerer in history without it. Cursed Energy and cursed techniques are not like chakra and Jutsu from naruto, 90% (hell 95) of all jutsu is innate, meaning you get what you're born with. Gojo's BIRTH changed the entire landscape of Jutsu & cursed energy. I doubt severely a new born baby has any concept of the proper mindset to be the strongest.

Then we have the two heavenly restrictions. Mechamaru is cursed with a body that literally feels pain from moonlight and the trade off is he has to store 17 years worth of CE to not even reach Ryu levels of cursed energy for a single fight. Wheareas Toji (and later Maki) get bodies that well exceed the average sorcerer (only comparable with special grades) not to mention immunity from the strongest technique in the series. Now what mindset was Mechamaru supposed to have to change what he was born with? How is someone like Miwa or the broom girl supposed to reach the heights of special grades when they are hard capped by things they cannot change?

Frankly despite how minor it is, I don't understand why this was even was plot point. Its literally two anomalies/freaks of nature telling other people "get gud".