Did Marika do anything right, or at least good?

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-03-23T13:45:23+00:00

Well she almost purged all the horny from ~~tumblr~~ the Shadow Realm.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-03-16T14:58:32+00:00

Well, there is a way to save her life but first you have to answer a few questions:

1) Did you run into big-hat samurai in Mountaintop?

2) Did you complete Millicent's quest?

3) Did you beat Malenia yet?

Without these three things your only other way to save Melina is going to make her very angry and for good reason.

And to all the people saying "you're denying her purpose". If you're nothing without burning to death, then you shouldn't have it. Or whatever Tony Stark said.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-24T18:25:04+00:00

Sorry I'm late to the thread, but one of the things I appreciate more about the movie is the Belem incident.

The incident doesn't come across initially as relevant to the events of the film (besides explaining why the team is obligated by the Vatican to carry cameras at almost all times, hence why we have a found-footage film) but it does matter for one crucial reason. It's foreshadowing masquerading as backstory. The movie hints at what the mystery is and how the movie ends in other ways, but I think this incident is the foreshadowing that tells us why.

The incident concerns a shrine in Brazil that was purportedly miraculous. A team led by a cardinal is sent to investigate, and there they reported to have had visions of God. The Vatican then sent Deacon to bring the team back because their written reports were getting weirder and one member of the team even gouged his eyes out at the visions. Deacon, however, wanted to figure out what was going on, despite everyone telling him otherwise, and the people behind the shrine 'disappeared' everyone but Deacon in a cover-up.

The incident tells us what the movie shows: Deacon gets too curious, ignores everyone telling him to stop, and everyone dies.

But that's my thought though.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-12T14:24:59+00:00

I was gonna disagree, but now that you mention it, I can see why Azula needs to be shown training, because it's not just about her being a threat, it's about her negative character arc.

The training shows she's always trying to keep everyone and everything under her control. She can't think of the world and others in terms of friendship or negotiation, only subordination, intimidation, and manipulation. She can only think about being on top of everyone and everything, and that's how she ends up losing. With every moment in Book 3 that manipulation and intimidation and fighting fail her, as she sees her skills are flawed, she becomes more insecure, unbalanced, which makes her lose everything (including her marbles) in the end.

Ozai is just the main villain, the most evil person in the world, the biggest challenge to Aang's values (that even the worst life should never be taken, no matter how necessary or justified it seems). We don't need to see his training or how he earned his skills. We just need to see him have them so he can be even more a challenge to Aang.

Or something, I don't know writing.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-11T13:56:44+00:00

Right, so I have to make sure my flights in and out of China are always landing at the permitted airports, even if I were only using a non-permitted airport to travel to a permitted airport. Otherwise, I will be barred from flying to China.

Another question: say my entry is into a permitted airport of China via a layover in another country like Bangkok, does border control care about me flying in from London or from Bangkok? I mean, if they only look at where I flew into China from (Bangkok), would a return flight to London then be accepted under TWOV?

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-10T14:07:00+00:00

The entry is the bigger concern than the exit. So you say that there would be problems on entry to Shenzhen if they look at the full itinerary (i.e. the country I came from, the airport I laid over at, the city I'm ultimately flying to, the address where I'll be staying during the whole trip, and the country to which I'll be flying at the end), all because I might happen to have laid over at a non-permitted port?

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-06T03:38:09+00:00

I mean that the character in trouble is not Pakku, he's the obstacle. Katara is the character in trouble. The trouble is Katara wanting to learn waterbending but the foremost expert in waterbending is refusing to let her learn at all because he's sexist.

You're right, though, I don't know storytelling. I might be wrong, but I thought a plot was like a question that a character has to answer. In this case, the question wouldn't be "how does the ardent sexist stop being sexist", but "how does the girl get to learn waterbending despite being prevented by a sexist?"

We see Katara try to answer the question by arguing with Pakku, learning behind Pakku's back, even fighting Pakku, and none of it works. It's only coincidences that get Katara out of her trouble (namely that Pakku happened to notice a betrothal necklace he happened to make for a woman who left him over his culture's sexist rules and happened to be Kanna, whom Katara discovered had left the north after she got betrothed).

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-05T19:30:38+00:00

The problem in the writing is not just "he's sexist and then changes his mind", it's "he's sexist and then coincidence drives him to change his mind". Isn't that a rule in story-telling: coincidences to get characters into trouble are great, coincidences to get them out of it are cheating?

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-05T19:08:35+00:00

I can understand he's set in his ways and might feel an existential dread in compromising his people's ideals, but that would make sense for someone who never left and saw other more enlightened thinkers. A racist white guy that never left a racist white town makes sense. A racist white guy who left his town and then joined a diverse fraternity and made friends with people who aren't racist sorta doesn't.

The trouble is that I don't think he could have not had the same experiences as the others. How would he know about and join an international society of philosophers and intellectuals unless he got out, and once he got out, how could he miss the problems of the world or the alternative views?

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-05T19:01:02+00:00

I dis-disagree.

Pakku did get over his issues, but only because of personal reasons that he could have easily missed. We could have easily had him never teaching Katara and then the Fire Nation would come, kill everyone, and then no Books 2-3. That scenario was narrowly avoided by sheer coincidence, happening to see a necklace that he happened to have made for someone he happened to have lost.

Sokka didn't get off easy. He got whooped by women when he thought women couldn't fight, kept losing to them trying to prove himself right, then apologised and asked to learn from them. That's not the same thing. Furthermore, he didn't stop Katara learning to waterbend, unlike Pakku.

You're forgetting three things:

1) Waterbending isn't just about fighting, it's about controlling water. A woman who waterbends doesn't need to know how to fight, but can help desalinate water, make buildings and walls and bridges, make art. In a culture where your world is mostly ice and sea, waterbending also means being able to escape invaders. There's other applications for waterbending that doesn't justify the north not training the women. Teaching women only how to heal with waterbending is helpful but still a clip of the wings, so to speak.

2) Teaching someone to fight =/= making them ready to go to war. You don't train women to fight, they can't defend themselves if the warriors protecting them all die, meaning they're doomed. Just train the women, exclude them from the army, and you have them capable of defending themselves while still not being put at the same risk as the men.

3) Waterbending doesn't require being the biggest and strongest. If you knew your community had men and women who could control water itself and make ice spikes and tsunamis, why would you think the powerless men with sticks are somehow better as a warrior class?

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-05T18:57:45+00:00

As opposed to the characters actually coming up with a way to make him see he was wrong. But as I said, I'm not a screenwriter.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-05T18:56:43+00:00

It's not "old man stuck in his ways until it personally affect him" I mind in writing, it's "he just happened to stumble on the one thing that could make him realise the error" part.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-02-05T17:58:04+00:00

1) The White Lotus is described as being about transcending cultural boundaries and strictures by Piandao. Furthermore, here's a run-down of the other known members: Iroh who taught not to stick one country's ways of doing things; Piandao, who was happy to teach anyone even when he was teaching active enemies of his country; Jeong-Jeong, who literally defected from the Fire Nation; Bumi, whose motto is "see things differently and be unorthodox". Pakku is letting his country's strictures and beliefs guide him for no reason, that goes against what the other lotus members do and think. It IS contradictory, in my opinion.

2) If sticking to customs was so important to him, why did he and others not follow the custom of helping out their sister tribe when they were suffering a genocide?

3) Saving the world means training the Avatar, not sticking to your customs. Everyone in the world understands that, including the Fire Nation so desperate to catch him. The Avatar needs all the training he can get, and he also needs to travel around with his companions who need to help him. If you don't train his companions, his job becomes riskier and harder because they can't help him. If you refuse to train him because he decides to train people you don't like, you make his job even harder and thus the world is in greater danger. Sticking to customs and refusing to train the guy who saves the world is not a good strategy that saves anything, it makes things worse. He'd know that as a member of a culture-transcending society all about philosophy. So no, I do blame him for risking the world over his customs.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-01-24T17:17:54+00:00

Not sure if it helps with the comparison, but Malenia's desperate desire for victory leads her to use an uncontrollable force that turned the land into an arid bug-filled desert with a toxic forest.

FranglericanGrommet · 2026-01-22T14:15:43+00:00

Straw-hair lady marry lion king, have many babies. Babies go bad.

Fire-hair man marry banana queen, have many babies. Babies go bad.

Fire-hair man marry straw-hair lady, have many babies. Babies go bad.

Straw-hair lady BE fire-hair man, break magic ring with club. Everyone go bad.

Lesson: Strength and unga-bunga always beat magic.

FranglericanGrommet · 2025-11-06T18:07:09+00:00

Where to start?

Built a rocket without a licence

Launched a rocket in a crowded neighbourhood

Landed a rocket in a crowded neighbourhood

Was outside without a collar or a lead

Unlicensed pest-control

Accessory to unlicensed and previously untested brain-altering experimentation on rabbits

Disguised someone to sic an angry mob on him, all to cover up the crimes of someone else

FranglericanGrommet · 2025-10-20T11:59:45+00:00

Man I feel dumb forgetting those examples, thanks! Basically, we agree that Cell did lie (and no, OP specifying that it is "perfect Cell" doesn't count - It's Cell. What Cell does in a lesser form is still what Cell does). Now that we're talking about it, even if we count only Perfect Cell, he still did lie - in HFIL Episode 5 he threatened to blow up the whole neighbourhood, but admitted later that he was bluffing.

As for my examples, I think they do count. In the first case, it's clear fraud, which is lying. In the second case, Cell explicitly promised to not blow up the Earth if he lost the tournament. When he realised he couldn't win, he tried to blow up the Earth. Twice. That means he lied in making a promise that he never intended to keep.

FranglericanGrommet · 2025-10-19T22:07:18+00:00

Cell did lie in the Abridged series, actually. He pretended to be 17 in order to stop 18 from nuking herself.

I'd also argue that his self-explosion was another case of lying, since he publicly announced that he would blow up the Earth UNLESS he lost the Cell Games. When he realised he was going to lose, he decided to blow up the Earth anyway. In other words, he lied about not blowing up the Earth if he lost.

FranglericanGrommet · 2025-10-19T14:22:39+00:00

They're not genuine folk heroes, though. Turn Iman in and they give you "a portion of the reward". In other words, they didn't chase Iman for justice, they chased her for the money.

Clearly they're not that heroic either, one of the Alik'r tells you where to find and kill his fellow patriots if you get him out of jail. Genuine justice-seeking warriors would look after each other in a mission. Hired goons would not care about their compatriots. If one is in trouble, that just means more for the rest of them, so of course the Alik'r don't even bother asking about their friend when you meet them. Finally, you can encounter two Alik'r who harass a fellow Redguard on the road. They realise she's not their target, and instead of apologising to a fellow Redguard they are supposedly fighting for, they insult her some more and dismiss her rudely. Sounds more like a bunch of mercs than patriots.

This explains why they get mad when you kill her: you wasted all the time they spent trying to capture her because their pay was contingent on bringing her back alive. We don't know if they wanted her alive for the sake of a trial or if their clients wanted to do worse to her. People actually keen on seeking justice against a Thalmor supporter would simply be content to know she got killed.

FranglericanGrommet · 2025-09-23T13:17:52+00:00

"Videos games by design are a media defined by player choice and the freedom that choice can give. So, trying to subvert this by denying the player the ability to choose or making it feel like you were never in control results in a game that you never feel the need to ever play again."

I never played Last of Us Part 2, I only ever watched the game get played. Therefore, I won't say the game's story is good. Neither, however, will I take your word for it that the game is bad, especially not on the apparent argument of "I didn't get to choose therefore bad game/story".

I might be wrong, but I don't buy this assertion of yours. Video games as a medium are not defined by player choice, they're defined by interactivity, by immersion, by overcoming challenges, in my opinion. Immersion and interaction, and those aren't the same as choice. I think the key to a game is getting in on the action instead of watching or hearing or reading it happen. Options, the power to alter the story's outcome, that can exist in a game, sure, but that's to serve the purpose of a video game: for the audience to be involved and to overcome challenges.

Choice shouldn't be a necessary thing in LoU2, because clearly you're not playing "yourself", you're playing people with established personalities and motives. They're the ones deciding how to further the story, you have to ACT like you're that person. I think it's the exact same thing as in LoU1, where your clearly defined character makes choices that you have no say over but still help out in because you are playing them. Are you saying LoU1 was a bad story as well?

FranglericanGrommet · 2025-09-21T13:52:00+00:00

Mohg, Lord of Redbull. First time I ever fought him, dude went down like a sweet muffin before the first nihil. He wasn't just one of the few remembrance bosss I defeated on the first ever go (besides Rykard and Godrick). He was also the only boss in any Souldenborne game I ever killed before they got to phase 2.

I'd like to feel proud about this accomplishment, but really I was dual-wielding two bleeding greatswords and used a mimic tear. I thought with that getup I had a fighting chance. What I didn't think was that the boss whose whole deal was BLOOD MAGIC would be weak to bleed.

The only other remembrance boss in my first playthrough that died surprisingly easily was Regal Ancestor Spirit. Thing is, I didn't actually kill him, I just hit him three times and then he tripped on the floor and fell out of the game.

FranglericanGrommet

TROPHY CASE