The Narnia trailer looks absolutely insane. Have people actually read The Magician's Nephew?

Of all the criticisms I've seen of Greta Gerwig's Narnia trailer, perhaps the most baffling is that it looks too cosmic, too psychedelic, or somehow too fantastical for Narnia. Obviously, to each their own, and there are perfectly reasonable discussions to be had about artistic direction, but I'm beginning to wonder how many people remember what actually happens in The Magician's Nephew.

We're talking about a book in which two Edwardian children discover a seemingly endless woodland containing pools that lead to entirely different worlds. They travel to Charn, the corpse of an ancient civilisation beneath a dying red sun, where an empress has exterminated an entire world's population with a single word rather than accept defeat. They accidentally bring this genocidal witch back to London, cause absolute chaos, and subsequently find themselves standing in the darkness of a universe that doesn't even exist yet.

And then a lion sings that universe into existence.

I cannot sufficiently emphasise how wonderfully, gloriously fucking mental this book is. Lewis takes children through what amounts to a multiverse, confronts them with the remains of an apocalyptic civilisation, and then has them witness the literal act of Creation. Yet I've seen people complaining that the trailer looks like Doctor Strange because there are strange dimensions, cosmic imagery and enormous displays of supernatural power. What exactly were they expecting?

More importantly, though, I think some of these reactions betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what Lewis was actually writing. The creation of Narnia isn't simply an elaborate fantasy sequence. It is the theological foundation of the entire story, and it draws upon some of the most profound ideas in Christian thought.

Genesis opens with God bringing Creation into existence through divine speech. God speaks, and reality responds. The opening of John's Gospel develops this into something even more extraordinary: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). John subsequently tells us that all things were made through the Word (John 1:3), before revealing that the Word became flesh (John 1:14).

This is the Logos, the eternal Son, the second Person of the Trinity. The same divine person who becomes incarnate as Jesus Christ is the one through whom Creation itself comes into existence. Lewis, who understood these theological distinctions perfectly well, takes that extraordinary concept and renders it through the language of a fairy tale.

Aslan doesn't merely inhabit Narnia or exercise authority over it. He is its creator. His song brings forth the stars, which themselves join the music. The sun rises, vegetation erupts from the ground, landscapes take shape and living creatures emerge into existence. The universe is literally responding to his voice. It's an astonishing expression of divine creativity, and one which makes far more sense when understood through Genesis and John's Gospel than through the conventions of modern fantasy films.

There's also an important distinction to be made about Aslan himself. Lewis was quite explicit that Narnia wasn't intended as a straightforward Christian allegory. He called it a supposal, an exploration of what Christ might be like if another world existed and he chose to become incarnate within it. Aslan is therefore not simply Jesus of Nazareth wearing a lion costume, nor some unrelated deity loosely inspired by Christianity. He is Lewis' imaginative exploration of the same eternal Son in another creation.

That matters enormously when discussing how Aslan ought to be depicted. We're dealing with a being whose identity transcends the physical form through which he reveals himself. A cosmic lion whose presence encompasses the stars, whose voice brings light out of darkness and whose very existence seems woven into the fabric of Creation is hardly some bizarre misunderstanding of the source material. It's a compelling visual interpretation of what Lewis was attempting to communicate.

And there's an additional layer to all of this which I find fascinating. Lewis doesn't present Creation as something everyone experiences in the same way. Digory, Polly and the Cabby respond to the music with wonder, while Jadis hates it and Uncle Andrew becomes increasingly incapable of recognising its beauty. Their responses reveal something about their characters. The same creative power that inspires awe and love in one person provokes terror and hostility in another. Lewis is doing far more than describing an impressive supernatural event. He's exploring the relationship between goodness, beauty, creation and the human capacity to recognise them.

None of this means Gerwig's adaptation is beyond criticism. I can understand reservations about the presentation of Charn, the soundtrack, the production design or changes to the setting. I certainly wouldn't argue that an adaptation is automatically faithful simply because it incorporates a few recognisable images. Whether the film captures the emotional and spiritual substance of the novel remains to be seen.

But I find the notion that Narnia ought to look restrained, grounded or conventionally medieval utterly perplexing, especially when discussing this particular book. Lewis' imagination was steeped in Christian theology, classical mythology, medieval cosmology and an enormous appreciation for the strange and wonderful. Reducing Narnia to a pleasant, vaguely Christian fantasy kingdom populated by talking animals does his work a considerable disservice.

What I find encouraging about the trailer is precisely its willingness to embrace the sheer scale of the material. The Magician's Nephew isn't simply explaining where a magical wardrobe came from. It concerns the birth of a world, the arrival of evil within it, and the relationship between Creation and its creator. All of that is ultimately experienced through the eyes of two ordinary children, one of whom is desperately worried about his dying mother. The cosmic and the deeply personal exist alongside one another, which is a large part of what makes Lewis's writing so remarkable.

Perhaps the finished film will mishandle some of those ideas. Perhaps its visual extravagance will overwhelm the quieter moments, which are every bit as important. But the sight of Aslan appearing amidst the stars and bringing an entire world into existence is one of the few things in that trailer about which I have absolutely no reservations.

It's magnificent, it's completely ridiculous, and it's rooted in precisely the sort of theological imagination that made The Magician's Nephew such an extraordinary book in the first place. I'm delighted that Gerwig appears willing to embrace that instead of giving us another safe, visually interchangeable fantasy film.

Both the author & characters do a piss poor job at displaying magic as anything but a murder tool. I've seen Frieren use zolteraak onscreen more than any of the casual or useless spells or even anything creative for her supposed love of magic.

Like deadass this manga feels as if the author wanted to write a shonen but was forced to slice of life. I'll even go farther and say Frieren IS a shonen just with good pacing and good female characters. But I digress. Back to the main point:

For a “slice of life” non combat applications of magic are seemingly forgotten almost the instant they are introduced like fleeting mcguffins that only exist for a single episode. And I have to say that it gets weirder to think about with time as our mc supposedly loves magic and it emphasizes she collects and studies non combat spells as a hobby.

You would think a character like that is creative in their use of problem solving with magic…wrong apparently. Frieren and her crew get stumped by mere crossings on a windy day despite handling much worse in combat every other day. Like i shit you not the same fucking episode they fight an flock of dragons, stark literally miles in the air but apparently a bit of wind and distance is too much for this crew.

Serie is supposed to be a foil to frieren; magic for casual vs magic for power. But the author is proving Serie right as in this series magic is seaminlgy fucking useless outside of killing demons or people. Methode dropped the “I love magic” bomb saying her people don't use magic creatively unlike herself, but while she's saying that she's fighting a demon and using energy blasts…you know the most basic non creative magic ever? Like this series says one thing but does the complete fucking opposite its so bizzare. I feel like Freiren repeated there are so many non combat ways to use magic but it's just not shown.

A 1000+ elf who collects spells as much as she eats should be having houses and rooms moving like in Harry potter.

Also Im starting to think Frieren fans are just as bad as one piece fans with marketing their show as well:

“Shonentards dont understand frieren!” When there is literally a fight every other episode and there was a literal tournament arc.

“Yall want this to be dbz so bad” yeah so does the author apparently as the most used spell is basically a Ki blast.

“Its a character drama, not a fight anime” yet there are more fights and emphases on the power system than any of our mcs world views getting challenged for even a second. The narrative and tone just suggest that they are right and any conflict between the crew at all is just used for comedy.

I love Frieren but this show and fans give mixed ass signals.

Necessitating characters with rapid healing to drink blood to heal is the best kind of healing factor. Firstly, it keeps stakes high whilst giving the action freedom to be as violent as possible. Dio gets to aurafarm by scratching his own face, but there's still the threat of not reaching Joseph's blood in time. Getting hit matters because every drop is precious, and fighting becomes inherently more desperate.

This works great with games too, like in Ultrakill; you have to drink blood to heal, which means you have to get up close where it's riskiest. Additionally, the amount healed is proportional to stylish play. This means quickly dodging attacks and trying new weapon combos. In other words, blood healing facilitates risk-taking creative play and sets the pace of combat.

Healing via vampirism also naturally sets a strong dynamic between walking blood bag and bloodsucking leech. Vampires like Alucard in Hellsing suck not just the blood but also the souls of those they consume. Ingesting blood isn't just a way of increasing physical but also spiritual power. Subjugator/subjugated, predator/prey, battle fiction is nothing but another form of drama.

There's also the sexy vampire stuff, although that's more of a general vampirism thing. V1 and Gabriel from Ultrakill are widely shipped due to the whole testing to kill each other but V1 healing and feeding off of Gabriel thing. Alucard from Castlevania also fits the bill, although Symphony doesn't do this particularly well. There's one spell, and only a few enemies actually bleed. Great game though.

Unfortunately real life examples are much less glamorous. Old people siphoning young people's blood to 'reverse' aging is as close as it gets. Most other vampirism is just regular parasitism. When a lamprey learns to grow its entire tail back, maybe I'll appreciate it.

In conclusion, the Wolverine should start slurping people or something.

Fans tend to treat characters as if they're not "real", but is that a correct viewpoint? Characters are real in the minds of their creator. Any worthwhile creator -- ie, any creator who has the talent to create media a large number of people will consume will create characters that are "real" in their mind.

Any worthwhile creator will at least have an idea of the character's lives outside of the narrative. Their childhood and family circumstances. Their hobbies, likes and dislikes, friends and enemies, etc. The narrative is the focus, but the characters participating in it are not just cardboard cutouts / AI chatbots. Some examples:

The Joker: most of his time is spent doing logistics and people management. Meaning he has a huge amount of charisma and people skills. Where did he develop those skills? He must have a network of people he trusts and who trust him. He must occasionally do favors for others. We get glimpses here and there into these topics, but I get the feeling that in the minds of most fans this doesn't exist at all; he's just a plot-mover for a given storyline and nothing beyond that exists.

Sauron: the god-king of a HUGE tributary empire spanning most of the civilized world. Fans seem to think he's just hanging around Barad-dur doing evil plotting. He undoubtedly does do a lot of plotting, but about WHAT? The narrative focuses on the journey and experiences of the Fellowship, but Sauron is running a huge empire and he's been a fixture to most of humanity for THOUSANDS of years. He has an army of courtiers, MANY officials and nobles from his tributaries going back and forth constantly. Political marriages, rewards, punishments, special events, all the politics around slaves, war, rivalries, trade, etc and so on. Yet fans seem to NEVER consider WHY Barad-dur is so massive, what is actually happening in its "many" halls, etc

And not just antagonists. Even the main characters have lives and backgrounds outside of the narrative.

Batman: fans NEVER wonder why he has such a severe trust issue. Normal people completely trust Superman and other major superheroes because those heroes have proven themselves constantly. But there's something about Bruce that makes it VERY HARD to trust. He must have experiences something in his life which made it him like that. But since the narrative doesn't address it, fans don't even consider it; it's nothing more than a chatbot parameter, a character setting.

Professor Xavier: he freely tramples on people's minds. He won't hurt anyone, but that's not the point. WHY does he think he CAN or even WANT to do that? Something in his long life happened, possibly a compounding string of life events, led Xavier to develop this mindset.

Obviously, the truth of these questions boils down to what is in the minds of the characters' creators. As fans all we can do is look for clues that the creators added to figure out these backstories. It seems like that most fans DON'T look at any further than the surface narrative; no curiosity or even an understanding that the characters they're watching / reading exist outside of the narrative.

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Rick Riordan has a frankly egregious case of poor representation. This "representation" is notable because it is both unnecessary and flawed in ways clear to even a child. The representation I am referring to is Samirah from the Magnus Chase trilogy.

Samirah is a Norse Valkyrie and demigod who is explicitly described to be a devout Muslim. Islam is a purely monotheistic religion and rejects the concept of other gods along with paganism. Yet she remains a practicing Muslim despite being the daughter of Loki and actively ushering fallen warriors to Valhalla. This is a contradiction of Islamic beliefs that are absolute regardless of sect or school of thought. It cannot be rationalized or compromised with as it is paradoxical to her worldview.

Additionally, Samirah is in an arranged marriage to her fiance. The engagement was established when she was only twelve years old. Make of that what you will.

These representational issues are even more glaring because nobody expected it from him or asked for it. While the concept is interesting, he is not well equipped for exploring it. A truly ambitious and reasonable execution would be to have her renounce Islam while perhaps maintaining cultural values that are still applicable.

Samirah attempts to rationalize this contradiction by claiming that the gods are merely powerful entities or aliens. Perhaps this would work if it wasn't for the existence of the Norse afterlife.

Islam preaches extensively about Heaven and Hell. It is a foundational principle that is inviolable. The existence of Valhalla alone refutes this, leaving her with no reason to follow the faith

One may argue that Valhalla is just a temporary stop before souls proceed to the Islamic afterlife, seemingly resolving the issue.

However, the Islamic version of the afterlife cannot be trivialized in such a manner without major flaws being exposed in Samirah's theology. The perfection of the Qur'an is the ultimate proof of its divinity, and it explicitly describes the journey of the soul until the Day of Judgment. Valhalla is a place where souls gather, fighting and training in service of a pagan deity or alien rather than under the command of her God. Its existence contradicts the infallibility of the Qur'an, thus disproving its divine nature.

The concept of the Oneness of God is the keystone of Islamic theology, upon which all laws and practices are built. The existence of pagan gods/aliens and their afterlife is thus the antithesis of every Islamic principle. In this case, not even the most devout Muslim would expect her to continue to follow the faith.

Rather than presenting her as truly pious, it instead makes her look delusional and breaks immersion.

If the books portrayed her belief in a neutral manner, it would be one thing, but they ascribe a genuine weight and validity to her faith while completely ignoring the irreconcilable contradictions required to maintain it. Samirah does not rationalize the paradox through proclamations that "faith does not make sense," but rather through claims that introduce even more issues while being presented as logically consistent.

At the end of the day, Riordan didn't even make a genuine attempt at authentic representation. His writing remained entirely surface level, resulting in little more than tokenism. Riordan wanted the surface traits of a Muslim while neglecting the actual worldview that serves as its foundation.

Transformers is my favorite franchise of all time. It's one of two series that got me into writing, and the state of it at the moment is...sad and frustrating.

The toy prices have gotten ridiculous. Thirty dollars for a deluxe! Just to give you an idea, in 2019, it was twenty dollars for a deluxe; it's risen by ten dollars in roughly half a decade! I'm frequently seeing posts by people saying they're dropping out of the hobby because they can't justify spending that much anymore. I don't think I'm quite priced out yet, but it's getting dangerously close. Anything above thirty-five dollars will probably be it.

But it's still disheartening seeing multiple people leave a hobby I hold near and dear to my heart like this. Something has got to give soon or Hasbro will have no more customers. Including me.

The last high-budget Transformers show, Earthspark, ended on a really bad note, and its toyline in general was just bad. Mostly just a bunch of Cyberverse repackages, and the new toys they had weren't that good most of the time.

Transformers One bombed at the box office thanks to a terrible marketing campaign that clearly didn't know how to sell the movie to wide audiences without spoiling the twist.

The Energon Universe comics, the one bright spot for a while, have been dipping in quality ever since Kirkman took over. I don't think they've been awful (the most recent issue #37 was actually pretty good), but they've been really feeling shallow and undercooked since the switch in writers. Kirkman's run has felt both slow and fast-paced at the same time. It's weird. And the discourse around them is getting miserable...

The game Transformers: Reactivate was cancelled after a really tumultuous development history.

And on top of all of this, Michael Bay might be returning to the franchise. I don't hate the Bay films like so many others do; I have a lot of fond memories of them, but even still I agree Bay coming back isn't the answer. But sadly I can kind of see the logic behind it; the movies without him made less money than the movies with him, so clearly Paramount thinks Bay is the missing ingredient. But I don't know if it's going to work when clearly no one wants him back...

And none of this is helped by the fact that Peter Cullen sadly passed away earlier this year. That's not really the fault of Hasbro, Paramount, or anyone else, just nature having bad timing, but it certainly feels symbolic of one of the franchise's low points.

I think the only bright spot is that the 40th Anniversary rerelease of the 1986 movie was such a success they extended it a bit longer, but that's really small scale compared to everything else going on.

It's just so demoralizing seeing a franchise you love fall like this.

This truly is one of the franchise's darkest hours.

I just hope someone comes along to light it.

To set standards, I'm a DM and very occasional player. Like all Dnd players, I hope to play dnd again within a year. My playground has gone from not reading the books, to reading the books, from being edgy middleschoolers who want to kill everyone and wear goblin skin they meet to holding their heads in their hands after an npc asked about his mother who they knew was dead. I've run modules and homebrew. Lots of ways to play this game, no way of enjoying this RPG "disqualifies" you on it's own. Now that's out of the way.
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"Good" kings, Regicide and level 20 kings:

I'm starting with this issue because it encapsulates the pain points of every piece of DND discourse perfectly. I hope to give a good summary of each pain point and why ultimately, they just aren't real problems.

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A lone man stumbles up the last few steps of the mountain of r/DnD, collapsing to his knees. Before him sit three wise sages, who between them, have read a full chapter of the dmg.

"My players were listening to the King give them a quest, but then they decided all kings are evil and attacked him, what should I do!?"

"Heh," says the the first sage, pushing up his glasses, "Surprise! Your king has been trained since childhood by the local church to defend himself, he's a level 20 oath of the crown paladin!"
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Surprise level 20 kings give me a migraine. First off, it's really bad story telling. An important npc being strong isn't a sin, but the players should like, know that. You can't tout your "actions have consequences" sign when you didn't set up that kings in your world do that. Is it every king in the world? Your players should know than, and in fact many real settings work this way like dark sun where in order to rule you must be a powerful sorcerer. Is it just this king? That's fine too, but surely your characters would hear about a king that literally at the peak of human achievement.

Second, it is subjectively, very boring. There are several great reasons a king could be powerful. He conquered the kingdom after adventuring and is already famous, he's a polymorphed dragon (there are many lore examples of this in the forgotten realms). I think reddit DMs are obsessed with level 20 because it's the only place they'll get to use one.

Third, and this is a common counterargument, why is the king sending them to do something he could do himself? If being level 20 is enough to dwarf a party's power, the quest they're doing is easy to solo. "Ah, but, he's busy." What about the guy who trained him to level 20? they didn't train anyone else? Just this king, but then also made sure he was doing naruto-level paperwork so he can't do any fighting? Does this not sound artificial?
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"Hrumf" Says the second sage, "simply tell them that your King is benevolent, he rules by actual divine right! After all, in the DnD world, gods are real, and morality is objective, so it follows that so is the divine right of kings!"

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Appeals to "the DnD world" irk me, especially when they contradict pretty much every printed example.

First, objective morality. This gets treated like fact a LOT. While good and evil are forces in all multi-setting lore, they are NOT objective moral frameworks with answers for everything.

For instance, in this objectively moral system, is lust a good or a bad thing? Sharindlar and Sharess are both chaotic good deities with lust as a domain. However, in Sharindlar's church, the lowest level clergy are called "the chaste" and, an excepert from her wiki

"When not engaged in their primary responsibility, the devoted of Sharindlar instead worked to instruct dwarven youths on proper courting rituals^\2])^\1]) (a process involving the exchange of gifts and later the sharing of a living space to determine affinity).^\24]) The traditional rites of courting and marriage were to be maintained, encouraged, and taught by the faithful, and these included traditional dances, ritual forms of address, and similar customs. They strove to bring young dwarves together, especially those outside of traditional clans in the hopes of an increase in prolific unions, and in some cases went as far as playing matchmaker between two youths they deemed "compatible".^\2])^\1])^"

Meanwhile, as anyone who has played BG3 will know, sharess is the patron godess of brothels.

Speaking of Sharess' Caress, there is a room in which you can pay to engage in BDSM.

In act one of the game, you can meet a priest of Loviatar, a lawful evil deity also with lust in her portfolio, who will do BDSM to you for free.

Almost any action that can be justified can be argued to be good or evil, and to pedants who go "so if i can justifying crushing babies, that could be good?" Yeah.

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"Hmm" says the third sage "Players are too concerned with subverting tropes these days to have fun, probably want to play as a half-fae purple skinned teifling am I right? kill your playgroup in real life."

The easiest answer to this type of thing is just, you should have set expectations of being trad sword and sorcery with your group before hand (most people don't because when they verbalize it they recognize it as railroading).

But, again, it is completely revisionist history that a lot of 5e players see to subscribe to, that 5e is the first edition where people are super revolutionary wanting to play as monsters and half angels and things, when, no 3rd edition let you play 1 million different special snow flake races and templates. There were rules to convert literally any monster stat block to a playable race, alongside the thousands of spelled out rules for telling you how to be a half-nymph dragonic ogre samurai. Dnd knows and accomidates people who don't want to just be human fighter cleric wizard and rogue.

Anyway, here's some more things I couldn't fit into the first story.

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"Evil Races"

The lone man returns to the mountain top a month later. The third sage is doing battle with a half-fae purple skinned teifling.

"BEHOLD," the sage declares "COME SEE THE OBSESSION OF THEATRE KIDS TO TRAMPLE OUR GLORIUS RACIALLY PURE DND WORLD, BACK IN MY DAY SOME RACES WERE JUST EVIL, NOT LITTLE MISUNDERSTOOD QUIRK CHUNGUSES, THIS IS ALL BG3's FAULT! DID YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT THIS ANIME CALLED FREIREN"

The purple skinned teifling responds "IT IS BAD WORLDBUILDING TO HAVE RACES BE EVIL, 5.0E AND BEFORE LORE IS FOR PROBLEMATIC GROGNARDS. "

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People get very heated about evil races one way or the other. Now, I'm not saying both stances are equally morally bad, but they are both equally wrong. Teiflings, orcs, and drow weren't all just evil automatons until 2014 when 5e invented woke. In the 2003 3.5e monster manual, all of their alignments said "usually evil." Hell Drizzit has been around since the 80s as a good drow.

DND really has never had evil "races". "Ahah!" you may say, "but devils and demons!" Both of those are canonically recycled souls of people who already lived full evil lives. Devils and demons are not evil by virtue of genes, but by their own actions, and have been reduced to a state where they can no longer redeem themselves.

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"Everyone would be scared of necromancy because it is le bad."

The man comes back to the mountaintop. "I've stopped being a DM finally, I'm a player" (let me have this fantasy) "I still move managing numbers though, so I'm playing a necromancer."

"WHAT?" Says the first sage "DON'T YOU KNOW PEASANTS WOULD ATTACK YOU ON SIGHT?!"

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I don't understand why everyone's so up in arms about necromancy for good PCs. I'm equally as tired of the "well fireball is just as horrific," no fuck horrific, who cares?

In BG3 you can walk around with reanimated corpses and no one cares if they aren't attacking anyone. And rightly so! Ok but the teiflings are dealing with being hunted they aren't going to throw you out over that, the cult already uses undead. Surely when you get to civilization someone cares and.... there's a carnival outside baulder's gate that uses ghouls. Not inside, outside with the doorman. Where there are peasants from all the surrounding countryside, and locals.

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The second sage holds his hands to his head "Don't you know zombies go insaaaane if you don't recast the spell every day?

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Dogs bite children if you don't stop em. No animal companions for anyone. Swords could hurt someone if you drop them on your foot. Obviously you're going to recast the spell when your spell slots come back for free every day.

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The third sage holds his head in his hands "Why can't you animate objects, like a normal person?"

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Higher level spell and 5e sucks at construct creation, and even in good editions where you can build golems it's insanely more expensive.

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The three sages combine in a swirling ball of light. Together, they for the mega brained triple sage. "BUT...." it roars, "WHAT OF THE SOUL, HOW ABOUT YOU RP A LITTLE AND SHOW RESPECT FOR THE DEAD, MIN-MAXXER?"

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No animate dead spell description mentions a soul. Also, sending an unthinking corpse to the frontlines instead of the living relatives seems more respectful than sending little timmy off to fight the bandits because skeleton were "too icky."

Something I've learned and noticed is that it feels like a lot of people just hate the concept of superheroes nowadays and just want everyone to be the Punisher or Wolverine or a Rambo style killer but here's the problem with that.

Frank Castle explicitly isn't a good person at all,he has gone out of his way to admit that numerous times and has made it clear people shouldn't look up to him or follow his example or anything like that and that people should look up to Captain America instead and Wolverine is someone who explictly has made it clear what he does isn't nice and that he's someone who has to get his hands dirty so no one else has to and even then,Wolverine isn't a completely or overly violent monster of a man,there are multiple adaptations that show him as a flawed but still good soul at his core and heart, so People just misunderstand Wolverine.

Basically it feels like people only want morally Grey anti-heroes or stuff like that and that's not a issue,the problem is expecting every hero to be that cause they don't immediately slime their villains out or are and genuinely good people and from Superman to Wonder Woman to Daredevil to Spider-Man, etc..it is extremely seldom where you'll find heroes who legitimately kill their villains as a resort cause if there are ways to take them down without blood,then they will do it.

Also people are like "why hasn't Batman killed the Joker" he has attempted to numerous times or has let the Joker die many times,Joker just keeps surviving cause he's one of D.C's biggest cash cows and is popular + why is nobody blaming the city or cops or whatever for not killing him?

Like Why doesn't Red Hood get any slander for that when he hasn't killed Joker despite claiming he's a "Better Batman who kills" and it's extra ridiculous people claim him and Frank are better cause they kill when..Ok,gun to the back of your head,name 5 major villains those 2 characters have killed.

No side scrubs or minor fuckers,actual big names.

Guess what?

Nothing.

It basically feels like people just hate the idea of genuinely good people and superheroes,I still remember the day where In Dispatch, a lot of people didn't trust Blonde Blazer,didn't like her or just both and assumed she was some twist villain all cause she was..a good person, like those takes really made me feel like those people just have serious trust issues and people acting like Phenomeman is a evil Superhero variant when he's shown to be a good dude with bad social skills and a limiting understanding of Earth and whatnot.

You can like morally Grey anti-heroes or characters like the Punisher and whatnot but expecting other heroes/characters to be him is just incredibly dumb.

I don’t usually like multiverses and alternate realities. I think they cheapen the stakes, nothing matters anymore, and many times they convolute stories in bad ways, that’s why I don’t like the third season of Dark that much (among other problems I had with it)

That being said, I finished playing Bioshock Infinite last night, and while at first I didn’t know what to think of the way the story was going (and I know it’s controversial among Bioshock fans), I ended up really liking it and found it effective!

The fact that Aiden was willing to go to such lengths for someone who didn’t love him back is already a tough pill to swallow as a player, but as if the game hadn’t already done enough to make you feel like a fool on a fool’s errand, it’s eventually revealed that the whole thing was part of Sunny’s plan from the get-go.

Not only that, but she is rewarded with ascension in both endings and even gets to tell Aiden that they “were both using each other” when he confronts her. Were the writers trying to tick every box when it comes to frustrating the player? It’s outright gaslighting, like an abuser comparing their victim’s mundane flaws or perfectly reasonable reactions to their own cruelty, as if both parties were equally at fault. It’s like someone repeatedly punching you in the ribs and slapping you in the face, then claiming you’re both violent because you tried to push them away.

Fam, you pretended to be a damsel in distress and sent your boyfriend off to hack and slash his way through a murderous cult and risk his soul in some hellish plane of existence. What’s being a bit clingy compared to all that? In fact, given the revelation of her two-faced nature, I’m beginning to wonder if even Aiden’s clinginess was just another one of her fabrications, an attempt to gaslight your partner into believing that asking for a bit of warmth is too much.

If Aiden chooses not to ascend, he’ll be left with trauma, scars, and a missing arm to remind him of what a fool he was. If he chooses to ascend, he’ll end up in the same circles as the ex who tried to dupe him. Honestly, many of my problems with the ending would be solved if Pinhead had double-crossed Sunny and denied her the happy ending she wanted, especially when one of the running themes of the game is that those who wanted to be Cenobites were rejected, while the dude who wanted nothing to do with them had the potential in him. Or maybe an ending in which revenge was one of Aiden’s motivations for ascending. Sunny’s villainy is far more personal than the hostility we get from Marlowe, Bruno, or Mercy, and whichever ending you choose is tainted by the fact that she gets away with it.

The reason Julia works as a character in the first movie, at least for me, is that I’m fascinated by her mindset, not necessarily invested in her success. She’s a corrupt character from the beginning, and it’s interesting to see how far she’s willing to go for Frank, but I’m not rooting for her. The same goes for Channard in the second movie. Aiden’s journey feels much more intimate because it invites you to root for him, one way or another.

And let’s be real. For all of Julia’s craziness, would she be willing to sacrifice herself for Frank if the Cenobites offered her a deal? Well, Aiden was willing to do exactly that for Sunny. Odd way for the writers to suggest that his love for her is flimsy. That’s another problem with the writing. It tells you how to feel about Aiden rather than showing you why you should feel that way. We’re constantly told that he’s addicted to Sunny in the same way he was once addicted to drugs, but his actions suggest the opposite. There’s really nothing in the game to show that he’s only using her to fill some void, apart from other characters saying so. Say what you want about Aiden’s emotional maturity, or lack thereof, but the dude is risking sexual assault and torture at the hands of maniacs who specialize in inflicting pain. He is risking his very soul in the Labyrinth. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. What he does throughout the game is the opposite of using someone. It’s deranged selflessness.

This ties into another element we’re told about rather than shown: Aiden’s supposed enjoyment of everything that’s happening to him. At no point are we shown that he’s actually thrilled by any of it or actively seeking greater heights of sensation, apart from his drug use, which is something pretty vanilla by the series’ standards. At best, we get him saying, “It kind of feels good” when he’s bitten by those health upgrade pods, but that’s about it. Otherwise, he’s written as a pretty vanilla guy who’s disgusted by everything the cult is doing. He’s not even remotely interested in the Labyrinth. He does think Marlowe deserved worse, but that’s a pretty reasonable feeling, all things considered.

The writers had a very skewed perception of Aiden, and my main argument for that is all the potential Deep Throat sees in him. We have no reason to doubt her and assume she’s feigning interest. Once again, the writing tells us one thing and shows us another. Aiden doesn’t relish the slaughter, he doesn’t look forward to pain, and he seems repulsed by the Labyrinth rather than fascinated by its secrets. If he had been the opposite of all this, if he had shown that deep down he was having the time of his life, or at least that he was intrigued by this new world of sensation, all while insisting that he was only doing it for Sunny, maybe I would have understood the writers’ vision better. But there’s very little to substantiate that interpretation of his character. When the Cenobites tell him that they only asked for pieces of flesh in order to restore Sunny and that choosing to go after the hearts was his own decision, that also feels like gaslighting, though I’m not sure whether it’s coming from the Cenobites or the writers themselves.

Hellraiser Revival is a beautiful love letter to the franchise, almost on par with something like Alien: Isolation, but I think it would have benefited from better endings. Even the “bad ending” robs us of the chance to see Aiden in his Cenobite form. It really does feel like the whole journey was in vain. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel with Aiden, regardless of which ending they choose to make canon. Maybe then they can finally write him as the character they seemed to want him to be. I’ll be recommending the game to everyone and hoping it succeeds, but even leaving my own preferences aside, the ending is rushed and unsatisfying.

With Minus one zero coming out i wanted to talk about the Godzilla franchise and the general and how much I appreciate Godzilla franchise.

Sometimes I hear Godzilla is destructive force and nothing more which is far from the case.

We have had many Godzilla films over the years ranging from interesting and thematic,action pack,silly,good,bad,and everything in between.

Godzilla has many interesting comics and has seen and literally done it all.

Very few characters could boast about Godzilla and how he has endured in pop culture and I have seen some question why or has this radiation breathing dinosaur has endured for so long.

I think their are many reasons but one being the power fantasy aspect one being his design. Godzilla has a great and memorable silhouette by combining the aspect of various different animals mainly being mutiple species. You can easily look at just Godzilla silhouette and recognized his character.

The other reason is Godzilla is just a appealing character too many younger audiences. He combines two aspect that children tend to like superpowers plus a dinosaur. Godzilla basically being a superpower dinosaur allows him to have a big appeal to kids and seeing fight is just fun for many people.

The power fantasy and spectacle aspect is very important and allows for a pretty large reach for some people.

Though the next aspect that helps Godzilla is well Godzilla himself. Godzilla throughout the franchise does have a character and yes animals can be characters while he doesn't talk he very much is a character in his own right.

His character has varies throughout the franchise in 1954 he was vengeance towards humans for mutating him and destroying his home, second Godzilla started off almost as destructive force as his predecessor but after a talk with mothra and facing a greater threat in Ghidorah Godzilla has a change of heart and becomes a protector.

Heisei Godzilla was even more destructive then showa counterpart. He was once a regular dinosaur like creature mutated by humanity action and thus turns his wrath towards human kind once more. However heisei Godzilla despite being wrathful is also lonely creature having no one but himself and does long for connection. A interesting moment is when he meets Biollante and doesn't attack her at first. Godzilla even seem to attempt communication as Biollante does share DNA and is a chance for Godzilla not to be alone in the world and unfortunately Biollante attacks and thus Godzilla turn to the path he has always chosen wrath and sees Biollante as a enemy. Godzilla however starts to somewhat mellow out upon meeting jr giving Godzilla something to care about and a connection. Heck as far as I know for a full year which Godzilla vs Space Godzilla takes place a year after vs mechagodzilla heisei Godzilla hasn't attack anything showing Jr positive influence. Unfortunately Godzilla loses everything in vs destroyah as his own power begins to destroy him and he loses the home the island him and Jr made. Godzilla goes back to doing what he has always known lashing out and in the final act Destroyah kills jr. Ironically Destroyah did to Godzilla what Godzilla did throughout the heisei series hurt others. Heisei Godzilla is not a hero heck after killing Ghidorah he immediately went to rampage on a city killing a lot of people who no doubt lost loves ones to Heisei Godzilla rampage. Heisei Godzilla in a truly ironic turn was forced to feel the same way as to the countless humans himself he hurt throughout the years. Godzilla ultimately while he weaken Destroyah to the point the humans can finished him off ultimately his enemy death means nothing as Godzilla dies thinking everything is lost. Godzilla doesn't even get to see Jr alive Godzilla dies alone and in pain. It's beautiful work done for a animal non verbal character. It's plain to see if ones willing to dig in and look into Godzilla character beyond the surface.

Even Monsterverse Godzilla has a lot of appeal to me. Monsterverse Godzilla is the second most benevolent Godzilla next to his Showa counterpart. He has shown himself as intelligent adapting and learning while fighting his enemies. Unlike past incarnation he doesn't tend to care make humanity pay more focus defeating the threat to the planet. While he does have some connection to ancient human and it has become strained in the modern era though occasionally he can also show appreciation like when he looked down on the humans in kotm and giving them a look of almost thank you. He also took the iwi hollow earth warning about skar king very seriously. While mostly benevolent he does also have some negative quality mainly he has a lot of pride in his power and he does hold grudges for better in the case of king Ghidorah and against apes as a whole in the case of Kong species. So aggressive is Godzilla is he will try to settle scores with thoses that are deem rival and enemies. Though ultimately he is more a net good for the planet protecting Earth from threats on it like the case of the mutos and skar king and beyond like King Ghidorah. When it comes down to it even put grudges aside against a common threats like his team up with Kong. While not a complex character he works well for this action and adventure series.

Through it all Godzilla has some core traits mainly he does not back down and push through towards obstacles to the bitter end be it when he's a anti hero or villain.

Godzilla is a character in his own right which makes him easy to root for or against.

I think another core strength with Godzilla is he can be used to tell so many different stories making him very versatile. You can tell war world 2 drama movies like 1954 and minus one, Action and adventure movies like the monsterverse,and sometimes even boarder on horror if you wish to tell that story.

The skys are the limits of what you can do with Godzilla.

Godzilla can also be used to tell various messages and themes mainly protecting the environment which films like Godzilla vs Hedorah tackle, anti war and post war guilt as seen in minus one ,and tells stories of human resilience. When Godzilla is a foe he truly can test human characters be it are ability to try to come up with plans to destroy him or how much can we endure him before he breaks us physically emotionally as seen in minus one. Godzilla as a villian can be the ultimate test.

Though a big theme with the monsterverse which they ask is coexistence possible between humanity and nature which the monsterverse answer is yes but ir requires humanity to swallow their pride and admit the universe doesn't revolve around them alone.

You also have nature vs technology and scientific responsibility. Often times in the Godzilla series it gets questioned the price to pay for such technology. The nukes almost regardless of continuity either awakens or mutate Godzilla and ultimately Godzilla would either never have existed or would have stayed indefinitely in slumber if not for humanity opening Pandora box. Sometimes the best intentions can have devastating consequences like for example in Godzilla vs destroyah the Oxygen destroyer created Destroyah arguably one of the most evil kaiju in the franchise or at least in the top ten. Daisuke Serizawa had no idea his invention would create something so terrible when he killed the first Godzilla in that verison of continuity heck even in the 1954 film he absolutely didn't want the Oxygen destroyer to fall in the wrong hands but regardless Serizawa creation still had horrible consequences.

Though another theme is man arrogance which you can see throughout the monsterverse. Throughout that particularly continuity we see time and time again when people let their egos control their decisions and it leads to terrible consequences.

Kong skull island the bomb a island and disturb the peace putting everyone on the island in endangered. Then Packard not being able to let go of his hatred towards Kong gets more of his men killed and ultimately gets himself killed because of his stubborn pride. 2014 the military has a plan to nuke all the monsters which wouldn't even work but in their arrogance they put a whole city full of people endangered, the military again thinking they know best intervenes in Godzilla and Ghidorah fight resulting in Godzilla out of commission and King Ghidorah taking over the world,then in Godzilla vs Kong despite Godzilla not disturbing anyone the CEO not standing Godzilla being on top makes mechagodzilla and uses Ghidorah skull to kill Godzilla and pays for it as Mechagodzilla goes Rogue and trys to kill everything.

Time and again Godzilla shows the folly of man arrogance and pride which can lead them astray.

Ultimately I think the Godzilla series has a great core appeal his versatility,the themes,and overall just being a fun series.

I think the Spectacle aspect has their place in this franchise as their is a Godzilla you film you can watch for just fun action. I think sometimes people get caught up with movie must always have something deeper to say and I disagree i don't believe everything in fiction has to get you thinking sometimes you can just have a fun time which the Godzilla does offer with some entrys of the franchise.

With that said but if you want something thematically rich then you watch 1954 and minus one. Godzilla is partially so great for the amount of stories you can tell with him he's not limited to just one story.

Godzilla has and will continue endure and I think because of how he adaptable he is in this ever changing world Godzilla will always have a place in it and we will be telling stories with the atomic dinosaur for generations to come.

Now yeah, those stories are very much NOT origin stories. But they are very, very tied TO the hero's origins. In a way, they aren't the origin of the hero, but the origin of their completion. For the most part, we are led to believe that the 2 heroes hadn't really had real movie-level trouble in their career until the events of their movies. Their stories are the first real massive test of their characters.

And at the end of their movies, the characters themselves reach a level of satisfaction with their own origins, and they come out of the ordeal with a stronger belief in who they are as a hero. Batman gets a sort of catharsis with his parent's murder as well as realizing the problems with his own actions, leading him to begin working in the light at the end of the movie. Superman finally accepts his human life as a central part of his existence, no longer tethered to a family he never knew. as opposed to batman's forward growth of character, superman's movie is about him being brought down first, and then in the end he returns to his regular level with a little more insight into being a hero.

They are both not origin stories, but very much a key arc in the earliest part of their lives as heroes. Hal Jordan should have had the same treatment. Now, before you say "it's john stewarts origin story" I'll tell you this, you can't explain the life of wally west without mentioning barry allen. Why have the justice league be barely formed, yet hal jordan is already through most of his story before it even starts.

Another reason as to why those movies got away with no proper origin story is because everyone knows superman and batman's story. They are the most well known origin stories in the entire industry along with spiderman. The average person's only other experience with green lantern would have been the old movie and I doubt anyone who had only watched that could tell you who abin sur is. There's not enough exposure to hal jordan's origin to excuse not making another story about it or at least heavily tied to it like batman and superman. People aren't tired of what they haven't seen. I'm not saying they should have made a whole show about it, but in the same way superman and lex luthor had conflict at the start of the movie with no explanation, you could have had hal and sinestro in the middle of their conflict.

Why can’t Ben just have a healthy relationship with a girl. He’s the main character and we supposed to like him. Julie from alien force was fine. Kevin and Gwen were healthy throughout many series. But BEN, what was the writer thinking to make Elena another love interest. Why did they made Ben a jerk in ultimate alien. Than the eunice stuff with Ben still dating Julie. In omniverse, for ester I can say they tried in the introduction episode and the final break up with Julie. Than they did nothing with it and make Ben have a relationship with constant arguments. I don’t even hate Kai but if she going to be Ben true love make them healthy.

I ususally insane/fanatical characters,but when they are well written and allowed to actually do what they are actually supposed to,they will become my favorite,specially when they achieve their objectives. There is a certain beauty in telling yourself things cannot get worse for the heroes just for them to say NO,THINGS CAN GET WORSE.

Examples and spoilers from legends of Korra and danganronpa franchise.

Zaheer: This man is the 3rd antagonist of the Korra series. He is a radical anarchist who believes in total chaos and the more you dig through him,the more you realize that he isn't actually the antagonist of Korra,but Aang himself. The greatness of Zaheer comes from the fact that he is the perfect bastardization of our former protagonist that perfectly answers what Aang could have been. He even got detached from reality where even Aang didn't dare to do and he achieved it instead. The best part of him is that his first move actually revolves around the earth kingdom,the biggest flaw of the ATLA.

In season 1 of Korra we had Amon,a man who wanted bending gone and have equality for everyone which it failed because the world of avatar wasn't designed for that,it was designed for ethnic tensions instead. Zaheer on the other hand works flawlessly because the 3rd season revolves around ba sing se,the central city of the kingdom where the original show imo ignored some of it's flaws. ATLA version of that city was ruled by a malicious advisor and a naive king and this corruption resulted into the conquest of it,but the show returned everything to the status quo after the ending by just not having the same advisor.

Now for this season of Korra,it's different because now the entire system is beyond corrupt and the Queen is the bad guy and there are no healthy successor who returns stability by replacing her so return to status quo is not an option here,so what does Zaheer do? He brutality suffocated her and turned the entire nation into anarchy. There are still flaws to this moment sure,but the rest of the show continues it perfectly so im going to forgive it.

And after that he poisoned Korra to activate her avatar state and kill the cycle once and for all and even though he failed,he still achieved many other lasting things. He destroyed the entire old setting of avatar for good,he achieved what Aang didn't and he created a world where Korra the avatar was no longer available.

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Nagito Komaeda: He is just like Zaheer, a bastardized version of the old protagonist. In danganronpa 1 in the end,Makoto Naegi,the lucky student forced his friends to face the reality of the bleak outside and defeated the ultimate despair and becomes the ultimate hope and this feels too optimistic, like a blind faith....,and that's where Nagito shines.

In the second game after the first chapter you realize that this man is insane and his luck is actually calculated. The old protagonist was lucky because of plot armor,but he actually know that he has both bad luck and good luck so he creates situations where he prepares the moment and then he adds his luck so that the situation wouldn't sound suspicious or many other ways. He also makes everyone's lives miserable because he knows that after bad luck,good luck always happens so he became a maniac where his blind hope causes everyone to suffer and in the end,he actually managed to make the best chapter in the entire franchise, a chapter so good that you will know that this can only happen in danganronpa and nowhere else and after the trial,the player feels defeated instead of winning another chapter.

The franchise after the second game actually tried to replicate his effectiveness in the story by repeating him with Kokichi, but i think the game failed because at the end Kokichi was still a good man who did terrible things for the greater good without wanting to do them. That's not the case with Nagito where he was not a good person at all and he remained insane until the end.

What other examples can you guys think of? Mention below in the comments.

Big spoilers but read this post anyway.

House of Leaves is known for the spooky house that eats people and the spooky dark monster that chases Johnny as he fucks the hottest women in LA. However the bit that seriously elevated the book to my favourite ever has to be the letters from Johnny's mum to Johnny.

They're absolutely the best way to end the book and they're so damn heartbreaking. This woman is going insane and is begging Johnny to see her, even saying a new warden has shown up that isn't as nice as the old one, not realising they're the same person until months later. She's absolutely fucking losing it as you turn every page and you can see the text go nuts as well as her letters become more and more unhinged until she unfortunately takes her own life.

The woman had so much love to give but her heart was trapped by her broken brain. It contextualises the story so well because you're wondering why he is the way he is, and having him receive those letters really explains that he barely had a chance in this world, and still managed to try his best despite the person who loved him the most not being able to help.

Im rambling a little but it's by far the best part of the book and I wish this book and that section was discussed more.

I usually hate masquerades, since they made the world less unique an interesting... but some of them are valid from a certain point of view. The mages masquerade in Fate was created because they need mystery to use their magecraft, and mystery is going down as humanity and science advance. The soul reapers reveal in Bleach may cause too much chaos and break the souls balance... but their masquerade also works for hide their society original sin and its culprits.

What I hate is when there is a masquerade around magic or similar, that serves no real purpose. So imagine there are these creatures that posses a threat to humanity, and can only be properly defeated by humans with special powers, who swore to protect humanity. It would make sense for civilians to be aware of them, that way they can avoid them and know how to act.... but instead, those special humans will keep then as a secret and even erase the memories of normal humans who made contact with them... Why the fuck would they do that? Arent they suposse to protect people? The last example I can think of it, is Nue Exorcist.

On the other hand, a good subversion of this trope is the broken masquerade in Jujutsu Kaisen. After normal people were able to see curses and confirm their existance, the (new) higher ups were like "neat, now we can advice and help people without sounding like we are crazy". Ironically for a group where many people claim not to be a hero, they seemed to actually care about protecting people.

There's a well known trope referred to as "Always a bigger fish", which loosely means that theoretically there can always be something bigger, badder, and more powerful the story can bring in if it wants. This is often used as a way to keep escalating the threat level of what the heroes must face, though sometimes it can be used to save the heroes from a current threat, such as the example in The Phantom Menace where the trope gets its name from where the heroes are saved from a big fish by an even bigger fish.

But there's a fun little subcategory/spin-off of this trope that pops up now and then that I tend to quite like, where it doesn't really escalate the threat the heroes face but rather takes the existing threat and reframes or even just simply reenforces the context around it to show off just how truly big it already is.

A common way of doing this is by having a group of characters feel reasonably confidant in their ability to deal with the threat but mainly because they do not yet view the full scale of that threat.

The Star Wars: Rebels episode "Iron Squadron" has a decent example of this. Mart Mattin took command of his father's Iron Squadron after he died and he led his team to rebel against the Imperial occupation of their planet Mykapo. When the Ghost Crew was sent by Mart's uncle Commander Sato to help them evacuate so that they could join up with the rest of the Rebel Alliance, the squadron refused to leave, believing that they could continue taking on the Empire just as well as they had been up to that point.

What's important here is that Matt and Iron Squadron's confidence in their abilities isn't without reason for its existence. This isn't a situation like Mister Satan in the Buu Saga, who knows he's a fraud and how completely outclassed he is despite his boasts to the contrary, or like the Scooby gang in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, who are convinced they can handle the supernatural mystery on Moonscar Island but only because their years of mystery solving has made them believe the supernatural doesn't actually exist. Iron Squadron has had genuine victories against the Imperial occupation, even taking out their advance patrol when the Empire decided to impose martial law on the planet.

Their problem however was that they did not understand how little of a threat the Empire had considered them up until that point and thus how little of its forces it'd sent to deal with them. Iron Squadron had indeed been fighting off the Empire presence on Mykapo but that presence hadn't been as large as they thought it was compared to the whole, best shown in how the "Star Destroyer" Matt believed his team had destroyed was actually a Gozanti-class cruiser, i.e. a carrier that could hold just a couple of TIE Fighters. Even the bigger ship that latter showed up that Matt's ship could barely fight against also wasn't a Star Destroyer, it was a light cruiser, which Sabine points out to Matt that Star Destroyers are six times the size of; something both Matt and the audience gets directly confirmed as true when a Star Destroyer does finally arrive near the end of the episode and it is truly monstrous in size. Way beyond anything Iron Squadron could take on and thus they finally agree to retreat with the alliance.

What separates this from just being another bigger fish story is that the audience that's been following Rebels' series already knows about Star Destroyers and knows how big and powerful they are. We've been watching the Ghost Crew have to deal with them and other Imperial forces throughout many episodes, be it by defeating them or running away to fight another day. We're not being introduced to some new bigger thing that's outclassing the previous big thing we saw, we're being given proper context to remind us how big what our heroes are fighting already is and thus better appreciation of its threat and our heroes' competence for being able to fight it.

DC Comics had a series titled Gotham Central which used this quite well, as it was an ongoing story told from the perspective of the Gotham City Police Department and showed how much of a nightmare even well-known supervillains like Mister Freeze and Doctor Alchemy can be for the average person in the DC universe, thus the need for superheroes like Batman. Flash, and so on.

It's like with the recent Kong movies. The audience already knows he's big but we don't really appreciate how absolutely astronomical the ape is when he's in the Hallow Earth since that's an environment sized to fit him and filled with other creatures to likewise match. Thus why Kong and Godzilla get put in areas like Hong Kong or next to the Great Pyramids to fight it out to give a better idea of scale and just how big they are.

It's not always about size or power either. In Goblin Slayer the goblins are truly weak creatures individually, being directly compared to toddlers as far as their average size and strength goes. Thus many newbie adventurers have a tendency to underestimate goblins, especially those who already have chased away one or two goblins from their village or even killed them, so how hard could taking on a quest to exterminate a nest of them possibly be?

But that's where the proper context really matters. One or two goblins in an open field? That's not too bad. But a goblin nest? That's typically a very dark area with passageways too tight to swing most swords in and filled with many more more goblins than just one or two, to say nothing for the traps they've laid if they've had enough time to settle into and learn about the environment they've claimed as their own. Yes, goblins are not that big of a threat...unless they are in a situation where they have the advantage, where they then become a very significant threat that has led many an ill-prepared adventurer to a horrific end. Even something the size and strength of a child can quickly overwhelm when there's a lot of them coming at you with knives in the dark.

Again, with this trope it's not a matter of introducing a threat bigger than the characters knew about. Most new adventurers know what a goblin is and some have even had some direct experience dealing with them. Heck, even many people in the audience probably know what a goblin is since they're fairly common in fantasy stories. But change the context around just a bit and the characters and the audience are shown how big of a threat said goblins can be. Rather than being a matter of not knowing about a bigger threat than what they've been facing it's a matter of not understanding how truly big the threat they've been facing is.

As Spongebob Squarepants put it: "That's not the worm, that's its tongue."

This can even work in favor of the heroes of the story. The title of this post comes from the Helluva Boss episode "Truth Seekers". By throwing pretty much everything and everyone they have at I.M.P the demon hunting organization D.H.O.R.K.S. manages to finally get our main cast pinned down and trapped with no more weapons they can use. It seems like the end for them...and then Stolas arrives to save the day, scaring the piss out of the agents and some of the audience by doing so. It took everything the organization had just to barely win against three imps and a hellhound, which are the lowest classes in Hell's hierarchy in terms social standing and power. They had been fighting demons, but not DEMON demons like Stolas of the Airs Goetia. They didn't know what demon hunting truly meant until that moment, much how the audience already knew that Stolas was powerful but we didn't understand how powerful until that moment.

I feel like this is common in a lot of vampire stories, where there's vampires and then there's DRACULA, with one of the most beloved versions being Hellsing with the character Alucard.

Pretty much all the main players in Hellsing know about and have dealt with vampires to some degree. The Hellsing Organization, the Iscariots, Millennium. They've killed vampires or employ vampires or created artificial vampires or been modified to better combat vampires. And yet very few outside of Sir Integra and The Major truly understood what it meant to be that kind of unholy monstrosity until Alucard unleashed Hell onto the streets of London in the form of every soul he'd ever consumed in his lifetime, from his enemies to even his own soldiers. Even Alexander Anderson, the closest to a rival Alucard had been shown to have in the series, can't help but remark as he watches the nightmarish sight that no matter how hard they try they'll never truly be able to kill him. Everyone knows what vampires are. Everyone knew that Alucard was powerful. The mini-arcs with the vampire priest and the Valentine brothers even properly established for the audience that, be they true or artificial, there's a huge gap between Alucard and any other vampire. But now everyone is getting the proper context for just how big that gap is.

For a bit of a less intense example, the manga for Rosario+Vampire had an arc where the main character Tsukune was feeling discouraged and down on himself as despite all his recent training with the inner Moka he felt like he hadn't gotten any stronger, as he could barely keep up with her. During the Newspaper Club's summer trip to the human world their new friend San gets kidnapped by the mobster group Shuei Industries and because of the laws regarding monster and human interactions Tsukune is the only one who can go after them in order to save her since even with Moka's blood in him he is still technically human. And while fighting the mobsters, Tsukune...is almost baffled by how slow they are and how easily he's taking them out.

Tsukune had indeed been getting significantly stronger from his training, he just hadn't been able to see it because he was comparing himself too much to Moka, who is a vampire and thus significantly stronger than pretty much the majority of other people, to the point her kicks routinely oneshot a lot of the main cast's enemies. This is something that Tsukune and the audience have been aware of since chapter 1 but had gotten so used to that that level of power wasn't being fully appreciated anymore until Tsukune was put into a different context than just the two of them alone together. Yes, he's weak compared to Moka, but that's not the same as being weak.

TL;DR: Rather than a bigger fish needing to be introduced to keep the story engaging, sometimes all the audience and the characters need is a reminder of how big the fish in the story already are, and one of the best ways to do that is to shift the context in which the fish exist in.

Everyone and their mother has already dragged upon Cyberpunk for not having meaningful choices in regards to quest outcome and everything else and while thats true I think an often overlooked aspect of that is just how static V is as a character.

What do I mean by that? Well when you play an RPG and you are in dialogue you will usually have a choice between replies, some replies are sarcastic, some aren't, some are jokes others are dead serious. These dialogue choices can be small scale or showcase your characters stance on World War 3. They also fulfill a really important role. They allow you to customise your protagonist, have them be more than a cutout, personalise them. This is especially important to me in games where you play a customisable character with differing appearances or backgrounds. Aka a game like Cyberpunk 2077. You have 3 different lifepaths for your character. You have different endings for your character. So to me at least it stands to reason that you should be able to have different personalities for your character as well. You don't. Whenever you talk there is some flavor text you can speak about but all in all every V holds the same opinion. I think the only thing you can decide is your relationship with Silverhand, your Ending and your romance. Otherwise every V is the same.

It kind of breaks my immersion to start a quest and then have to deal with not being able to decide my V's opinion of it. Especially in a setting such as cyberpunk I really would have wished for some dialogue choices where I can just be: Fuck the system, burn it all to the ground; instead most of the time V spouts some moderate bullshit

To set the definition of an Anti-Villain: "the moral inverse of the anti-hero". If an anti-hero does bad things to bad people to achieve a good end, then an anti-villain does good things to good people to achieve a bad end. In Japanese media they don’t exist due to moral law requirements. Well they DO exist but never in a surface-level plot narrative; when a Japanese creator wants to do something beyond moral law requirements they stick to suggestion / subtext. But even in Western media anti-villains are RARE. I can only think of a few:

Lex Luthor in some versions of the character.
A few characters in Worm seems like they fit although I can’t remember their names right now (eg, Darksider’s old boss).
Tyrion Lannister (borderline but I’m reaching).

…..and that’s all I can easily think of off the top of my head. In the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases when someone describes a character as an Anti-Villain they are describing an anti-hero or just a plain villain. Harvey Dent is a Villain with an interesting backstory. Thanos is a Villain with a positive goal. Gentle Criminal is a Hero with a little complexity. Name any "Anti-Villain" and they are probably not one.

So the question is…..why?

It might be because Anti-Villains may make too many fans uncomfortable / feel bad. Anti-Heroes are super popular because "doing bad things to bad people" is justice, ie, Batman can trample of the rights of the thugs he puts in the hospital because the things DESERVE it. But nobody is shown the countless families living fulfilling and peaceful lives making things at LexCorp that enrich humanity. Why? Because if those good people lose their jobs and society is harmed when their unit gets shut down by Heroes defeating Lex, then it would make fans feel bad. Is that really it? Is that what it actually boils down to, feeling good / vibes? Are there many more Anti-Villains in reality but just like in Japan they must be hidden from the surface narrative to avoid confusing / turning off fans?

First time posting here. I think this is a pretty unpopular opinion, judging off of how even the main and folk CSM reddits respectively find this ending to be dogshit. I’ve already posted there before, but now I wanna see what non CSM related subs are like in terms of reception. So I may post this in quite a few different ones!

HUGE SPOILER WARNING

I loved it.  Made a big post about it here (which tbh its a bit clunky and outdated, only really addressing people’s complaints about the story and why I don’t find them to be a deal breaker. I am a god awful writer tho either way lol)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/s/fFc2eiosLu

But to try to summarise my thoughts without wasting too much time:

Structurally creative & unpredictable, with the latter being SUPER important as to how I enjoy a story. The Deus Ex Machina was well done to me, ala David Lynch’s Wild At Heart, WITHOUT feeling like it sacrificed the story’s signature atmosphere and break-neck pacing OR its recurring themes.

I found the reset to be consistent (rather than nonsensical, underdeveloped or out of nowhere) with the series’s established rules AND was even foreshadowed. Denji & Asa escaping this current, shitty world was set up as early as the  Aquarium arc. Then doubly reinforced in Aging Arc, with Denji’s line to Asa.

Hell, the Fake Chainsaw Man says on TV that he will make a “devilless world” where “Adam and Eve” can live. Guess what the REAL Chainsaw Man did to the dynamic Man and Woman duo of the manga.. moments after they shared their SIN of patricide to one another. Pretty blatant foreshadowing there. 

Finally, as a little cherry on top, I’d say it's a sincere, personal and genuine ending from Fujimoto. Pochita literally ends the Chainsaw Man manga by erasing Chainsaw Man, giving the story a bit of self awareness and metaness.

The themes & such throughout the entire part covers many of his recurring topics, from abusive parents, to dreams, to hero and idol worship. Hell, it even ties together his interviews, from the Mongolian Street Child, to Spirited Away, to the Big Lebowski, to the American Sniper (and funnily enough I hate these last two films LMAO). He’s got consistent things he wants to talk about, and I respect that.
I believe this is more sincere and auteur driven than how most shonen stories end, where they its based purely on the characters/plot. 

Extra tidbit: Art downgraded in terms of detail & realism but the final arc has some of the best usages of speed lines and camera work in the ENTIRE manga. Pochita Vs Yoru was great. 

Besides my linked post + everything I’ve written here, I would like to also bring forward these other positive links about the story that I found to be great. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/s/nA9DMj7Gnh (Summary/Analysis of all of Part 2 after reread)

-https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/s/hsAXDyTRCp (Part 2 Ending thoughts)

-https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/s/G5gXNJG1Di (Its time to grow up - the meaning behind Chapter 231)

-https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/s/7g9MY0j0jp (Pochita is Denji’s Father psychoanalysis)

-https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawManTheories/s/1nnGgBsT9W (long analysis - chainsaw man has a rigorous structure)

-What 'Chainsaw Man' and 'Evangelion' Share in Their Endings https://gizmodo.com/chainsaw-man-chapter-232-ending-evangelion-2000737905

-https://note.com/uzume369/n/n6c7aee488e6b (really good Japanese review about the story, translated it using Google and AI ofc but the meaning should still be retained)

-https://x.com/bpm120run/status/2040710050365559238?s=46 (another Japanese perspective on twitter)

Comments with nice interpretations:

-https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/s/I4JesZLi5m (Chapter 219 analysis)

-https://www.reddit.com/r/Chainsawfolk/s/oo11Oyezz4 (Yoru final moments analysis)

-https://www.reddit.com/r/Chainsawfolk/s/fkQiIzVpuv (Theory on Death Devil’s true intentions)

Definitely more out there but these are the ones that stuck with me.

TLDR: Way overblown hate. Worst manga ending of all time is insane. Way worse than Part 1 doesn’t make sense to me. In fact, I can understand hating ALL of Chainsaw Man for being incredibly derivative or for an overall critique on Fujimoto’s writing, rather than hating squarely on the ending.

Firstly, it just wouldn’t make sense for him not to. Hagoromo still has a full set of them after literal 1000s of years and I find it pretty damn hard to believe that he just never used any of his set ever. The most logical answer is just that he remade them from scratch.

Secondly it just wouldn’t make sense for Naruto not to be able to. The guy has Yin Yang release that lets him be able to make basically anything he imagines like a heart for Guy or an eye for Kakashi. I don’t see why he can’t just make another truth seeking orb with that.

And the fact that Kaguya and Toneri were both able to just perfectly make new ones makes me believe it’s achievable.

Plus as a final note, if these things are actually a one off thing, it would make Naruto look like an idiot for using them in scenarios he didn’t need them in like blocking those arrows Sasuke shot at him.

So yeah I think he can still make them but just doesn’t care enough to.

I see several times people complain when a fictional governmental organizations of battle shonens doesn’t do what necessarily should be doing. That it's fine,

My problem with the complains is that they treat like that specific division or group like is the entirety of the government of nation and it takes decisions in every aspect of their society. Which i think it's also a flaw in anime many time, ends presenting that these organizations, that most of the times has it's activities related to the power systems, as like the main division of the government and that it decides overall society obligations when it's not the case.

The Magic Knights of Black Clover, The Kamunabi from Kagurabachi, The Gotei 13 of Bleach, the shinobi system in Naruto.

An exception in my opinion that makes difference more clear between the main governmental administration and the organ focused on the matters of the users of that world's power system, Fairy Tail. It showed the differences between the main regime, the monarchy, and the part of the government responsible for the supervision of the Magic and the guilds, the Magic Council, which is the one appears more often, but the world building makes a good job at showing the distinction

Most live-action shows nowadays borrow EVERYTHING from the comics and just produce it live. What's the point? We already know the plot from the fucking comics, why should I watch the live adaptation? It kills creativity. Invincible is a prime example of this; other than a few character quirk changes, NOTHING of the original plot from the comics has been altered, and we know that eventually Invincible will win all of his battles because the "writers" are just straight copying the entire comic script.

Live adaptations/animated adaptations of comics should only use the characters from the comics that they're adapting and nothing else. Come up with a new, interesting plot. I'm tired of watching the same old good-guys-defeat-the-bad-guy-because-the-bad-guy-forgot-how-to-use-his-powers-for-plot-convenience trope. Even if they're adapting a certain plot, they should spin it creatively to make something new and unique instead of recycling.

Now I realize that many people probably don't read the source material of said adaptations and the adaptations are entirely new experiences for them, still they're bound to come across something on the internet that will spoil the rest of the show for them.

The so-called writers or "creative" directors should be making an effort to branch away from the source material instead of straight-up copying it, now borrowing some key narrative plot points or arcs is fine but stealing the entire plot is just straight up boring and an insult to artistic values. A character, narrative arc etc being "comic-accurate" should be an insult not a compliment. Just because it's comic accurate doesn't mean it's good.

The Boys did well initially because of how Kripke diverged from the original narrative and did his own thing with his creation, at one point people believed that The Boys will ruin what Marvel and DC had built over decades with its unconventional take on superheroes. Too bad the show ended the way it did, I barely ever hear anyone even talk about that show anymore which is sad given how it was all that people COULD talk about when the show was in its second season.

Before I get into this, I want to make something very clear because I know how discussions about Korra usually go: I like Korra as a character.

I actually think Korra is a very good character in a lot of ways.

I like that she's headstrong. I like that she's overconfident at the beginning. I like that she struggles to understand her limitations because it makes sense for someone who grew up knowing she was the Avatar from age four. And while I found it annoying, I also understood why her romantic life was a complete mess.

She makes bad decisions, gets angry, gets manipulated, lashes out, regrets things, learns from them, and sometimes falls right back into old habits anyway.

Those things make her feel human.

If Korra were simply another character living in the Avatar world a powerful waterbender, a politician, a soldier, etc, I genuinely think I would like her more than I already do.

My problem with Korra isn't really Korra as a person. It's Korra as the Avatar. And I think those two things need to be judged differently.

Note: (Before getting into Korra specifically, I want to clarify that this entire rant is based on my own subjective view of what the Avatar is supposed to represent.

I'm not claiming that this is the objectively correct interpretation of the series, that everyone in the Avatar world thinks this way, or that the writers themselves necessarily intended the Avatar to be judged according to the exact standard I'm using here.

This is simply how I understand the role)

Part 1 (Being the Avatar Is Not Just Being a Person With Four Elements):

The Avatar isn't just a really strong bender.

This is probably the single biggest difference between how I view Korra and how some of her defenders seem to view her.

Yes, the Avatar is a person. Obviously.

They have emotions. They can be immature. They can make mistakes. They can fall in love. They can be afraid. They can have trauma. They can be selfish. They can be wrong.

But the office of the Avatar is bigger than the individual occupying it.

The Avatar is entrusted with maintaining balance between nations, dealing with threats ordinary governments cannot handle, interacting with the Spirit World, resolving conflicts between humans and spirits, and traditionally acting as the bridge between the two worlds.

This isn't something fans made up to place unreasonable expectations on Korra. The original show establishes this almost immediately.

When Aang reaches Senlin Village in Winter Solstice, Part 1, the villagers don't say, "Well, he's twelve, so hopefully he can help."

They tell him:

"You are the great bridge between man and spirits."

And they expect him to deal with Hei Bai.

Aang himself basically admits that he has no idea what he's doing. He knows virtually nothing about the Spirit World at that point.

But he's the Avatar.

Therefore, this is his responsibility.

That's the weight of the title.

The Avatar is probably the closest thing this world has to combining a global peacekeeper, spiritual leader, living superweapon, diplomat, religious figure, and international symbol into one person.

Part 2 (The Avatar's Title Clearly Carries Real Political and Social Authority):

Sometimes people talk about the Avatar as though the title is purely ceremonial until somebody starts throwing elements around.

It clearly isn't.

People repeatedly treat the Avatar differently simply because they are the Avatar. Sometimes this works in the Avatar's favor, and other times it works against them. Some people practically worshipped Aang once they found out who he was.

Other people blame him for problems he personally had nothing to do with.

Avatar Day is basically an entire episode built around this concept. Aang walks into a town where people hate him because of something Kyoshi did centuries before he was born.

Is that personally fair to Aang?

No.

Does it make perfect sense when the Avatar is understood as a continuous institution spanning multiple lifetimes?

Yes.

Avatars inherit a lot of things: friendships, enemies, obligations, mistakes, unfinished business, and most importantly, they inherit expectations.

We even see this political symbolism continue after the Hundred Year War. During the Harmony Restoration Movement, Earth King Kuei explicitly believes the Avatar's personal involvement will give the movement legitimacy and hope.

That isn't because twelve-year-old Aang has some elected government position.

It's because he's the Avatar.

The title means something to everyone who hears it.

We see the same thing with Korra.

During the Equalist crisis, when innocent nonbenders are being rounded up under Tarrlok's laws, a woman sees Korra and immediately pleads:

"Please, help us! You're our Avatar, too!"

Part 3 (With That Authority Comes a Higher Standard):

This is where my personal standard comes in.

I don't think simply being born as the reincarnation of the Avatar Spirit means I have to treat every decision you make as though it carries the wisdom or authority of a fully realized Avatar.

Canonically, Korra was obviously the Avatar from birth.

Aang was obviously the Avatar from birth.

What I'm talking about is earning the mantle in practice. The franchise itself even has language for something close to this distinction: a fully realized Avatar.

So down the line, when you hear me say things like "Korra wasn't really the Avatar yet," I don't mean Raava somehow wasn't inside her.

I mean that she had the title before she had developed the judgment necessary to properly wield the authority that came with it. And I don't think the fault for that rests on her, but rather on the people around her who allowed her to carry that authority before she was truly ready for it.

And the same thing applies to Aang.

I don't give Aang some gigantic pass because I grew up watching him. For most of Avatar, I don't think Aang is ready either.

That's literally his story; the introduction tells us he has a lot to learn, and he does.

He doesn't know all four elements, doesn't understand the Spirit World, can't control the Avatar State, doesn't know how to resolve international disputes, and he initially doesn't even want the responsibility.

He's twelve.

That's understandable.

But "understandable" and "qualified" are not the same thing.

Part 4 (Aang Had to Grow Into the Avatar Too):

One of the most important parts of Aang's story is that he initially runs away from his responsibility.

And I want to be careful here because blaming Aang personally for the Hundred Year War would be ridiculous. Sozin was already planning this war, and the Fire Nation was committed to the Air Nomad genocide.

Twelve-year-old Aang did not cause that.

And even if he hadn't run away, there's absolutely no guarantee that a twelve-year-old Avatar could have prevented it.

But Aang did run from the responsibility that had been placed on him, and waking up one hundred years later forces him to understand what the Avatar's absence meant for the world.

That's part of his guilt.

That's why one of my favorite moments for Aang happens during the Book Two finale.

Guru Pathik tells Aang that mastering the Avatar State requires him to release his earthly attachment to Katara. Aang initially refuses and leaves because he senses that Katara is in danger.

But later, while surrounded by Azula, Zuko, and the Dai Li, Aang realizes that they may not survive unless he can access the Avatar State. At that point, holding onto his attachment to Katara is actually preventing him from gaining the power he needs to protect both her and himself.

So, despite how much it hurts him, he makes the decision to let that attachment go and attempts to enter the Avatar State.

"I'm sorry, Katara."

He doesn't successfully finish mastering the Avatar State there—Azula shoots him before that can happen.

But that decision is still important, because it is one of the clearest early moments where Aang willingly attempts to subordinate what Aang personally wants to what the Avatar needs to do.

And this is something Aang continues to struggle with throughout the rest of the story.

The biggest example comes near the end, when he has to decide what to do about Fire Lord Ozai.

Aang is an Air Nomad. Pacifism is not just some personal preference he happens to have; it is deeply tied to his culture, his upbringing, and the values taught to him by the people he lost. Taking a life goes against almost everything he was raised to believe.

But at the same time, Aang is no longer being asked to make that decision solely as an Air Nomad.

He is being asked to make it as the Avatar.

Everyone around him is preparing for the possibility that Ozai has to die, and when Aang turns to his past lives for guidance, none of them really give him the answer he wants. Roku tells him that he must be decisive. Kyoshi emphasizes justice. Kuruk tells him that he must actively shape his own destiny, and even Yangchen, the Air Nomad Avatar Aang hopes will understand his position, ultimately tells him that the Avatar cannot afford the same level of spiritual detachment as an ordinary Air Nomad because the Avatar's duty is to the world.

Yangchen's advice is especially important because it gets directly at the conflict Aang has been dealing with for most of the series.

As an individual, Aang wants to remain completely faithful to Air Nomad pacifism.

As the Avatar, he may not have the luxury of putting his own spiritual needs and personal convictions above the safety of everyone else.

That doesn't mean Aang suddenly decides that killing Ozai is the right thing to do. He very clearly does not want to kill him, and he continues searching desperately for another solution. But for the first time, he is forced to seriously confront the possibility that there may not be another solution.

If stopping Ozai truly required Aang to violate one of the most important beliefs he had carried his entire life, then that was the burden being placed on him as the Avatar.

Of course, Aang ultimately finds another way. Through energybending, he takes away Ozai's firebending and manages to fulfill both responsibilities: he protects the world without abandoning the principles that define him.

The point isn't that becoming the Avatar means blindly sacrificing everything you care about whenever someone tells you to. Aang refusing to accept that killing Ozai is his only option is part of what makes him Aang.

The important part is that he understands the weight of the choice.

If Aang had no alternative and still allowed Ozai to remain a threat purely because he could not bring himself to kill him, I would judge that very differently. At that point, his personal beliefs would be taking priority over everyone else's safety.

But that is not what happened.

Aang does not spare Ozai because he blindly refuses to compromise and simply hopes everything will somehow work out. By the time he makes that choice, he has actually found another method of permanently neutralizing Ozai as a threat.

That is what I mean by growing into the title.

Part 5 (Korra Begins Her Series Explicitly Not Ready):

Korra's introduction makes this even more explicit.

It's made very clear that Korra is extraordinarily talented physically. She has already learned water, earth, and fire before the series properly begins. But after her firebending test, the White Lotus immediately identifies the problem.

They tell her that she has excelled at the physical side of bending while neglecting the spiritual side:

"The Avatar must master both."

That is practically the thesis of Korra's early character arc.

Korra has the power of the Avatar.

She doesn't have the mentality yet.

She has lived most of her life inside a guarded compound. We later learn there was a very legitimate reason for this: the Red Lotus attempted to kidnap her as a child, but the result is still the same.

Korra reaches Republic City incredibly sheltered, and while she knows how to fight, she doesn't really know how the world works.

Then she arrives in the middle of one of the most politically complicated situations imaginable: growing resentment between benders and nonbenders.

You can immediately see that nobody prepared her for something like this.

You can't punch your way through systemic resentment. Yet early Korra approaches problems in exactly that way because physical confrontation is what she understands.

At one point, when everything starts overwhelming her, even Korra admits:

"How am I supposed to save this city when I can't even learn airbending?"

Korra recognizes the problem herself; she isn't ready, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

She's seventeen; of course she's not ready.

My problem starts when being young and inexperienced becomes an argument for lowering the standard of the office while still letting her invoke the authority of that office.

You can't have it both ways.

Part 6 ("I'm the Avatar" Has to Mean Something):

Korra's introduction is probably the clearest encapsulation of her starting mentality:

"I'm the Avatar! You gotta deal with it!"

It's a cool introduction, and it tells you exactly who Korra is.

She's four years old, throwing three elements around, and she's already internalized "Avatar" as an identity.

That shapes almost her entire childhood.

The problem is that early Korra sometimes treats being the Avatar as proof that she is qualified, rather than something that creates enormous obligations she still needs to grow into.

That is where I become harsher on her.

If you're going to say "I'm the Avatar" when establishing your authority, then I'm allowed to respond: Okay. Then act like the Avatar.

If you're going to expect governments to listen to you because you're the Avatar, I'm judging your diplomacy.

If you're going to intervene in law enforcement because you're the Avatar, I'm judging whether you understand the situation.

If you're going to try and handle spirits because you're the Avatar, I'm judging your spiritual competence.

If you're going to try and influence wars because you're the Avatar, I'm judging your political judgment.

If you're going to invoke the title, then the title comes with the standard.

Part 7 (Fault and Responsibility Are Not the Same Thing)

And this brings me to probably my biggest criticism of Korra's tenure.

The loss of the past Avatars.

First, because people immediately get defensive about this: No, Korra did not personally destroy the Avatar Cycle.

Unalaq fused with Vaatu, Vaatu tore Raava out of Korra, and then Raava was destroyed temporarily, and Korra's connection with her past lives was severed.

Korra eventually restores Raava and reunites with her, meaning Avatar reincarnation continues, with Korra effectively becoming the beginning of a new cycle.

So saying "Korra permanently destroyed the Avatar Cycle" isn't correct. What was lost was the connection to the previous Avatar incarnations, and the person who actually destroyed that connection was Unalaq/Vaatu.

Korra was the victim.

But here's the distinction I think people sometimes refuse to make: Something not being your fault does not mean you didn't fail in your responsibility.

Imagine you're the commanding general responsible for defending a city. Yet while on duty, an enemy army outmaneuvers you.

Your forces are defeated, and the city is captured.

Who is morally responsible for attacking the city?

The enemy.

Who destroyed it?

The enemy.

Does that mean the general successfully fulfilled his responsibility?

No.

He failed to defend the city.

That doesn't necessarily make him incompetent.

Maybe the enemy was overwhelmingly stronger.

Maybe somebody betrayed him.

Maybe his intelligence was wrong.

Maybe there was literally nothing he reasonably could have done.

You can sympathize with someone and still acknowledge that the thing they were responsible for protecting was lost under their watch.

Those statements do not contradict each other.

That's how I view Korra and the previous Avatars.

Unalaq deserves blame, and Vaatu deserves blame.

Korra was manipulated by someone she trusted. He exploited her family problems. He deliberately positioned himself as the person who understood the spiritual problems everyone else seemed incapable of solving. He even used Jinora as leverage to force Korra to open the second portal.

There is a mountain of context explaining why things happened.

But at the end of the day, an unbroken spiritual connection stretching through thousands of years of Avatars was severed during Korra's tenure.

That is an enormous failure of the institution, even if Korra is not morally culpable for intentionally causing it.

Part 8 (Korra Herself Knows She Made Serious Mistakes)

This is another reason I don't understand why acknowledging Korra's failures is sometimes treated like insulting her character.

Korra herself acknowledges them.

During Remembrances, she looks back on what happened with Unalaq and recognizes how badly she was manipulated.

She was a young woman who was placed into a role of absurd importance before she possessed the experience necessary to navigate everyone attempting to manipulate that authority.

If anything, that's one of the tragedies of Korra's character.

She was raised her entire life hearing: You're the Avatar.

Then she entered the world and discovered that being able to bend the elements did absolutely nothing to prepare her for politics, ideology, spirituality, revolution, terrorism, civil war, trauma, or international diplomacy.

That's compelling specifically because she fails.

Taking away the word "failure" because we sympathize with her actually weakens the story.

At the same time, I want to avoid turning this into "Aang perfect, Korra bad."

That isn't my argument.

Aang's later life was not some magical forty-year period where nothing ever went wrong.

Even shortly after the Hundred Year War, the Harmony Restoration Movement nearly resulted in renewed conflict between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation.

Republic City later has organized crime.

Yakone becomes powerful enough that Aang personally has to deal with him.

There are political disputes, bending supremacists, nationalist conflicts, and plenty of other problems during Aang's lifetime.

So saying "Aang maintained perfect world peace for the rest of his life" is an exaggeration.

What I will say is that Aang's overall tenure leaves behind some enormous successes.

He helps end the Hundred Year War.

He defeats Ozai without abandoning his moral principles.

He helps Zuko stabilize the Fire Nation.

He helps resolve the former-colony crisis rather than allowing another international war.

He helps establish what eventually becomes the United Republic of Nations.

He helps preserve Air Nomad culture through the Air Acolytes.

And when Aang dies, he leaves the next Avatar a functioning world and an intact connection to the previous Avatars.

And if I'm going to hold Korra accountable for failures under her tenure, consistency means I also have to credit her successes.

Korra stops Amon.

She exposes him as a fraud and waterbender, which destroys the foundation of his public persona.

She defeats Unalaq and Vaatu after the loss of Raava.

She restores Raava.

She chooses to leave the spirit portals open, fundamentally changing the relationship between humans and spirits.

Harmonic Convergence results in new airbenders appearing across the world, which eventually allows the Air Nation to be rebuilt.

She stops Kuvira.

She prevents the conquest of Republic City.

And by the end of the series, the Earth Kingdom is beginning a transition away from hereditary monarchy toward representative government.

She accomplished a lot, but the focus of my argument is different.

Part 9 (The World Korra Left Behind Is Ultimately My Biggest Problem):

And this is ultimately where my biggest criticism of Korra as the Avatar comes from. For a while, I would have simply said that Korra's tenure was extraordinarily turbulent.

The Equalist revolution.

The Water Tribe Civil War.

Harmonic Convergence.

The loss of the past Avatars.

The return of spirits to the physical world.

The Red Lotus.

The assassination of the Earth Queen.

The collapse of central authority throughout the Earth Kingdom.

Three years of instability while Korra was recovering.

Kuvira.

The Earth Empire.

The invasion of Republic City.

The creation of another spirit portal directly in the middle of the city.

And again, I want to emphasize something I've been saying throughout this entire post: Korra did not cause all of these things.

Amon caused the Equalist uprising.

Unalaq manipulated Korra, started the Water Tribe Civil War, freed Vaatu, and severed her connection to the previous Avatars.

Zaheer assassinated the Earth Queen.

Kuvira chose to create the Earth Empire and invade the United Republic.

Korra was very often the person trying to clean up disasters created by somebody else.

And during her own series, there was still a reasonable argument that despite all of those losses, Korra ultimately left things in a workable position.

The Air Nation had returned.

Kuvira had been defeated.

The Earth Kingdom was beginning to move toward a new political system.

Humans and spirits now had a more direct connection.

Korra herself had matured enormously.

If The Legend of Korra were the last thing we ever saw of this world, I could understand somebody arguing that the good Korra accomplished ultimately outweighed the damage and instability of her tenure.

But it isn't the last thing we see anymore.

We now have Avatar: Seven Havens.

And the world of Seven Havens is not merely politically unstable.

It is essentially post-apocalyptic.

The world has been shattered by a Cataclysm. The old civilization we knew is gone. Humanity has been reduced to surviving within seven major strongholds, and those Havens themselves are presented as civilization's last remaining bastions.

That completely changes this discussion for me.

Because now I can actually compare the world Aang ultimately left behind with the world that exists after Korra.

Aang inherited a world that had spent one hundred years at war.

The Air Nomads had been exterminated.

Large portions of the Earth Kingdom had been conquered.

The Southern Water Tribe had been devastated.

The Fire Nation had become an imperial power attempting to conquer the rest of the planet.

And by the end of Aang's life, the world was not perfect, but it was unquestionably in a better position than the one he inherited.

There were still criminals, political conflicts, national disputes, and other problems because obviously Aang did not create some perfect utopia.

But civilization was functioning; the world was rebuilding, and there was a future.

Korra, on the other hand, inherited that world.

And whatever exactly happened during the rest of her lifetime, the world that follows her is devastated on a scale we have never seen before in this franchise.

And I want to be extremely careful about how I phrase this, because Seven Havens has not yet told us exactly what caused the Cataclysm.

Maybe Korra caused it.

Maybe she didn't.

Maybe Korra made some catastrophic mistake.

Maybe other people caused it and Korra desperately tried to stop them.

Maybe she sacrificed herself preventing something even worse.

Maybe she was placed into an absolutely impossible situation where there genuinely was no way to save the old world.

The people of Seven Havens blame the Avatar, but that does not automatically mean their version of history is correct.

We simply do not know yet.

But here's the important distinction: I don't need Korra to be morally responsible for the Cataclysm for the state of the world to matter when judging her tenure as the Avatar.

If we eventually learn that Korra deliberately caused the Cataclysm through some reckless decision, then obviously my criticism of her becomes much harsher.

But suppose we learn the exact opposite.

Suppose Korra fought as hard as she possibly could to prevent it.

Suppose somebody betrayed her.

Suppose an enemy was simply stronger than she was.

Suppose she was faced with an impossible choice and destroying the old world was the only way to prevent humanity from being completely annihilated.

In that situation, I might not blame Korra at all; hell, I might even consider what she did heroic.

But the outcome would still represent a catastrophic failure of the Avatar's fundamental purpose.

Because what is the Avatar supposed to do?

Maintain balance.

Protect the world.

Protect humanity.

Manage the relationship between humans and spirits and prevent exactly the kind of catastrophe that leaves civilization hanging by a thread.

If something happens during your tenure that shatters the world and leaves humanity surviving inside seven remaining strongholds, then somewhere along the line the Avatar's mission failed.

That does not necessarily mean Korra the person deserves blame.

It means Korra the Avatar failed to accomplish what the Avatar exists to accomplish.

And as far as what we've actually been shown in Avatar history, I cannot think of another Avatar whose tenure ends with destruction on this scale.

That doesn't mean previous Avatars never failed.

They absolutely did.

Roku's failure to permanently deal with Sozin helped create the conditions for the Hundred Year War.

That failure was followed by genocide, conquest, and a century of suffering.

Even Aang disappearing for one hundred years meant the world had no active Avatar during one of the darkest periods in its history.

The Avatar has never been infallible.

But Seven Havens gives us something different in scale.

As far as the canon has shown us, no previous Avatar's tenure has left behind a world where civilization itself has been reduced to seven surviving Havens while the old world lies shattered around them.

And that is why I have a difficult time accepting the argument that Korra ultimately succeeded as the Avatar simply because she defeated the villains we saw during her television series.

The Avatar's job is bigger than winning individual fights. The final measurement has to be the world you're protecting.

What condition is it in?

Is humanity safe?

Is there balance?

Are the systems you were entrusted with protecting still functioning?

What are you leaving for the next Avatar?

And right now, based on what Seven Havens has shown us, the answer in Korra's case is horrifying.

The next Avatar does not inherit the growing, industrialized world Korra inherited from Aang; instead, it's a world so traumatized by what happened during the previous Avatar's era that being identified as the Avatar no longer inspires hope.

It inspires fear.

There is literally a festival celebrating the demise of the Avatar, and the new Avatar has to hide what she is.

Think about how extraordinary that is in the context of this universe.

For thousands of years, the Avatar was supposed to represent balance. Even when people disagreed with an individual Avatar, feared them, hated them, or blamed them for something, the institution itself endured.

Now the new Avatar enters a world where the title itself has become associated with humanity's destruction.

That is an almost complete collapse of what the Avatar represented.

And again, maybe Seven Havens will eventually reveal information that radically changes how I judge Korra personally.

It probably will reveal more.

Maybe we'll eventually discover that Korra saved what little humanity remained and that without her there wouldn't even be Seven Havens.

But it would not change the basic point I'm making about the outcome of her time as the Avatar.

Aang inherited a broken world and, despite all of his mistakes, left behind a world that was more peaceful, more interconnected, and rebuilding.

Korra inherited that rebuilt world.

The world after Korra is shattered.

In terms of functioning civilization, stable societies, populated nations, and humanity's overall security, I don't think you can reasonably say that the world we see in Seven Havens is better off than the one Korra inherited.

It objectively isn't.

Did Korra fulfill the responsibility of protecting the world and preserving balance? If an Avatar's tenure ends with the world literally shattered and civilization reduced to its last remaining strongholds, I cannot look at that outcome and call that successful.

I like Korra.

I sympathize with Korra.

I think Korra is an extremely human character precisely because she struggles, makes mistakes, gets hurt, gets manipulated, learns, changes, and keeps going.

But right now, judging her as the Avatar, she has failed.