u/NicholasStarfall

For the last, like, 10 years MK's been pushing this narrative that the mean old Lin Kuei and Quan Chi attacked the poor Shirai Ryu who never bothered anyone. This is forgetting the fact that they're an assassin clan, just like the Lin Kuei. The only difference between Hanzo and Bi-han is that we didn't see Hanzo take a contract to kill someone's family.

Which he would do.

Sometimes a man just wants to sit down and read a nice fanfiction, but to do that he has to sift through pages and pages of the same shit told with the words changed.

Where are my AUs? My what ifs? My ending fixes?

I don't have a big speech or anything, I think we're all of the same mind. But this just sucks. We've known all this time what the premise of Seven Havens is but actually seeing it in action bothers me immensely. It feels like season 2 where the writers were going out of their way to make Korra look incompetent and throw the detractors a bone.

Like it's not even a question of "What did Korra do?" because the obvious answer is that this is all a big misunderstanding, but the perception is already set in stone: The dumb mary sue avatar really was the worst ever (not actual thoughts of this user).

Let me preface by saying that I am enjoying the show, but I finally get why it's been so divisive all these years. I'm watching YJ for the first time right now...but well I did watch season 2 back in the day because it looked cool but I didn't understand the context of the series at all, so I think this counts as looking at it with fresh eyes. Anyway let's get to it.

1. The offscreening. Season 1 was good, but it had this reoccurring problem where major events and developments took place offscreen. Like the Team getting help from the very specific people who could help them counter Starotech in the finale, or the moment when Black Canary was freed. This is taken to it's logical conclusion by opening on a 5-year time skip where a comical amount has changed between seasons. I don't inherently dislike time skips but I can't shake the feeling that this one was primarily done for mystery box purposes. Why did Superboy and M'gann break up? Where did Beast Boy come from? Where are KF, Artemis, and Aqualad? Oh shit, why is Aqualad evil? All these things are answered, sure, but it's done in a really awkward way where everyone already knows these thing in-universe so they're only explaining them for our benefit.
2. The 16 hours and The Light's plan. You're telling me it took 5 years for direct consequences to become clear? You're telling me that in 5 years John never went to Oa or heard from one of the other GLs that the League went Apeshit on the space New York? I mean, kudos to the writers for not dragging this plot point out but fuck me that's just silly. The Light continues to be nigh-omnipotent with their plans and capabilities. Although I do like how they're at serious risk of being overtaken by The Reach this time around. It's a definite improvement that Vandal doesn't just win all the time...although the endless contingencies are getting old.
3. Relationship drama. Superboy broke up with Megan, who is now with Lagoon Boy. But Superboy still loves Megan, and Lagoon Boy will inevitably be cucked because the writing is on the walls that they're getting back together. Bumblebee and Malcolm are growing apart because Mal is a buff little normie and Bee's got cool superpower things to do...also Mal and Bee joined the team at some point. Young Justice? More like Young Nepotism since they were just friends in High School last season.

This is just juvenile, even by kids show standards. Either break up or don't you little bastards.

One more for the road but Character Bloat is another gripe. This may be YMMV but I think there are entirely too many characters on the cast right now. The team just tripled in size and that means at any given time there are a dozen heroes to keep track of and 3 or 4 concurrent storylines. Feels like they had more than enough going on with just five on the team.

Anyway, I'm really excited to watch the rest.

So we just had season 4 of Invincible and that comes with the apparently obligatory Titan/Machine Head episode. Frankly I'm growing tired of these.

At first it was cool to see Titan get some follow-up because he's one of my favorite characters in the show but I can't shake this feeling that the writers don't know what to do with him anymore. The sequence of events has been Titan takes over from Machine Head -> Titan is pressured to join the Order -> Titan joins the order, then leaves -> Titan joins again after getting more pressure. So what do we do next? They have another falling out and Mark gets fleeced into helping him for the 4th time?

This extends to the entire Order, which is full of colorful characters who look to be very interesting but just kinda...sit there. No voice actors clearly, because they're just set dressing. It's especially bad with War Woman 2 because I feel like she has the most potential to be a good villain. How many evil Wonder Women do we get anyway? It's a true novelty if nothing else. Now in the comics, the Order is mostly fought by the Guardians of the Globe. Full disclosure: I kinda skimmed through those but I know that Mark wasn't in that series so he most likely won't fight them here. I'd love to be wrong but so far this show doesn't have a good track record with original content

coughhrrmcough

Plus I think it's safe to say that the GOTG can't carry their own expensive Amazon TV show.

When the Wrong Jedi came out and that whole arc with Ahsoka being framed went on, I enjoyed it mostly. Ending with the reveal that Barriss had this total 180 flip from loyal Jedi to Sith Adjacent terrorist was mind boggling. Barriss' thing has always been that she's the genuine article, a deeply compassionate and noble Jedi Knight. The idea that she would not only throw that away but commit a bombing that harmed civilians is bordering on the absurd.

But hey, I like villains so I guess we can get some value out of that. What happens to Barriss next? Will she come back to menace Ahsoka, her friend turned enemy? Will she hunt down Anakin, who is the poster boy for the rot of the Jedi Order? For 10 years, fans like me waited to see what she'd do. We even assumed random Mirialans were her like the 7th Sister. Desperate I admit, but we needed that followup

Fast forward to "Tales of the Empire", we finally get a followup. She was released from prison, joined the inquistors, and then quit after a few missions to become a healer...wait what?

You can't do that, you can't play her as the "Oh I don't know about this" redemption story after having her jump headlong into terrorism and then openly declaring herself a Darksider. You opened a door that can't be closed, and then you slammed it shut.

While I was doing research for this rant, I saw that popular opinion is that this was a great conclusion for her and you know, I'm okay being the outlier here. You assassinated Offee's character, shelved her, and then hit us with a feel good redemption story instead of actually doing anything with her. Killing her off is especially insulting because now all this really was for nothing, we're not even going to see her again. Filoni picks and chooses which characters will keep coming back forever, the ones that need more time simply don't get it.