streamofthesky posted... And then they made Alvis a villain? But not Pythra? The anti-XC1 bias w/ XC3 is getting downright noxious at this point...
That's... a reach, to say the least.
For one thing, Alvis appeared for all of 10 seconds and said nothing, so getting "he's a villain" from that is absolutely jumping to conclusions. For another, Alvis has always been aggressively neutral, siding with Zanza when it was appropriate to do so to fulfill his role in fate's machinations, and siding with Shulk when that was the appropriate choice. Pneuma, on the other hand, was unambiguously good (with a few harmful mistakes along the way), in contrast to Malos being unambiguously bad (with some questions about his culpability in that). On top of that, Pyra and Mythra remained as active characters after the ending of 2, clearly allying themselves (in the biblical sense WINKYFACE) with Rex and the others, whereas Alvis completely vanished and nobody knew where he was or why. There's absolutely zero reason to expect to end up fighting Pneuma unless Shulk ends up fighting Rex (not implausible), but plenty of plausible scenarios where we end up fighting Alvis. To end up fighting Alvis and not Pneuma is not "anti-XC1 bias," it just makes sense within the established facts of the series' story. I also really don't know what you're talking about when you accuse XC3 of being riddled with "anti-XC1 bias," and I say this as someone who considered XC1 to be his favourite game ever before 3 managed the monumental feat of dethroning it (i.e. not exactly a fanboy of 2).
streamofthesky posted... Extra uninterested in learning about Bayonetta's past now for the same reason I didn't give a s*** about Black Widow by the time that movie came out (spoilers b/c of the shared reason. that being: they're already killed off).
That's not a particularly sensible reason to be disinterested.
Every single character in everything will eventually die, whether on- or off-screen. If you blow off anything that explores characters just because they'll eventually end up dead (or otherwise stop having stories written about them), you'll never end up enjoying any stories at all. If you aren't interest, just don't be interested. You don't have to justify it by making up some nonsense reason.