#also the scenes where they’re together feel so fake imo. like did none of the writers ever have a grandpa | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lizacstuff · 3 years

Note

(1/2) At this point, I feel like talking about the last seven episodes of SCK is a bit moot, considering that the amnesia plot is done and the team of writers responsible for most of it is gone, but I am curious to get your opinion on whether you feel Serkan actually fell in love AGAIN with Eda. I personally don't feel that Eda and Serkan had enough meaningful interaction to suggest that he re-fell in love. There was definitely more "telling" than "showing" and the heart "remembering..."

(2/2) ...what the head didn't. I know I'm probably splitting hairs, and at this point, everyone is happy he regained his memory, so who cares? But I'm just feeling very unsatisfied with the storytelling. Meh.

Oh, I disagree. Well somewhat. See, I think they 100% showed us that Serkan fell back in love. However, I do agree that it was very unsatisfactory storytelling, and that they’ve exhausted me to the point that I’m also beyond really caring. I think we’re all beyond caring, because the truth is these writers dropped the ball so hard during this arc that I’m embarrassed for them. They were handed a slam dunk romantic story and they fell flat on their faces.

That being said I think they gave us plenty to suggest that Sekan fell in love. IMO it was obvious in episode after episode. You say they did more telling than showing, and I think its the opposite. They did plenty of showing. What they didn’t do is tell us straight out. Think about it this way, if Serkan had verbally admitted in this episode that he loved her prior to getting his memory back, say when asked by either Aydan or Engin, would we be having this conversation?

The problem is they didn’t do that and instead relied on what they showed us. And I think they showed us, in individual scenes, Serkan falling in love with Eda pretty much in every episode. The problem is that every episode, and sometimes in the very next scene in the same episode, they seemed to start him over back at square one so it was very disjointed for the viewer. We’d have a romantic, emotional scene and then he would suddenly be a giant dick in the next scene without exploring on screen what was going on in his head. I think the writers themselves thought he was reacting to his trauma and guilt and manipulation and reacting against his blossoming feelings for Eda (ala ep 3) but they were lazy and clumsy and didn’t spend time and give us that insight so it just felt like whiplash. The execution of this story was appalling, I can’t believe how badly it was done (those writers suck) but the bones of it was all there.

Think back as far as episode 30. At breakfast he’s fixated on Deniz, very jealous, but is not remotely threatened or bothered by his own fiancé’s ex-fiancé who is right there. Then there is the bridal style carrying her, it was like a primal need he had in that moment to help her, and then that fireplace scene! Oh the fireplace scene. Now, I’m not arguing that he fell in love with her during that scene, but that was a very intense, very emotional, very romantic scene that showed that he was open to her, drawn to her, intrigued by her and experiencing feelings he didn’t understand. It pretty much opened the door for everything that came after and paved the way for how quickly he was going to fall for her again.

By 31, I’d argue that he was over 2/3rd of the way to being in love with her. He overhears Eda making plans with Deniz for that evening, so he invents a reason to go to his cafe, lies to his fiancé, stays all day until he can drive Eda home ensuring she doesn’t spend the evening with Deniz and then they have an adult, emotional conversation. Then they do the same on the boat, engaging in intense, emotional conversations, and when it’s over, he sends his fiancé, who has been missing, on her way so that he can sit there and think about Eda. Do you do that over someone you don’t love? Seriously? At the end of the episode when Eda’s wedding day was announced, he looked like he’d been run over by a truck. Again the only explanation for that reaction is deep, deep romantic feelings.

By 32, I’d argue that he was all the way there, but did not have the tools to recognize the emotions or deal with them. For the LOVE OF GOD he was sleeping in his office clutching her wedding invitation. What other explanation is there for that, other than that he was in love with her? Would you do that when your business associate announces a wedding date? I’m guessing no. Then he spent the whole episode fixated on Eda and in turmoil. The coffee shop. Finding out she was in trouble and going back to the office to help. Being pleased that she fell asleep on his shoulder. Playing in the snow. He never would have thrown that party for Selin if Deniz hadn’t manipulated him into it by guilting him and telling him that Eda was only really happy now because he’d ALMOST DIED in a plane crash. However, the second she was in trouble he ghosted the fiancé on her birthday and went to rescue Eda and proceeded to be vulnerable with her.

In 33, they reset him again via Selin’s guilt, however he still was fixated on Eda, questioning her about her feelings for Deniz, going to find her at the flower shop and doing something entirely out of character for old Serkan by sitting down to make terrariums with her. Telling Engin that her scent was driving him crazy. Having Melo set up the dinner. And then kissing her. Again, this was very poorly rendered by the writers because none of the connectors between scenes really flow or make sense, but what they were trying to go for was that no matter how much guilt and emotional manipulation Selin laid on him after finding him sleep snuggling with Eda in the cabin, and no matter how upset he was that Eda remembered their great love, but could still discard him so easily, he couldn’t forget her and was constantly thinking about her and wanting to spend time with her. Even after seemingly having Selin’s version of Eda verified by Ceren. Would he do any of that if he wasn’t in love with her? Again, I don’t think he could identify that feeling and admit to it, but that doesn’t make the feelings he was experiencing less real.

And in 34 it was pretty much full on. He doesn’t stop thinking of her for a minute in that episode. He’s fixated on wanting her to admit her relationship with Deniz is fake. Now he might tell himself that it’s because he wants to win their little battle of sexual tension, but really it’s that he so badly wants it to be true. He so badly wants for her to not have moved on from him. Eda screws up in this episode and lies to him about loving Deniz during a very sincere conversation, if she’d come clean, maybe he could have admitted his own feelings.

By 35, he’s full gone. He’s frantic when she fell off the yacht, way more so than Deniz who says he loves her. He was ready to leap into the sea, in the middle of winter, when they were probably no longer anywhere near where she went in, and then he leaps off that thing before it was fully docked in order to get to her and make sure she was okay. Wanting to jump in the water is the irrational reaction of a frantic man worried for the woman he loves.

After that, the wedding prep drives him crazy. She drives him crazy. After seeing her in a wedding dress, he’s close to a full on panic attack and his heart practically fails on him. Even when they’re high on cake and tea, and being very close, he can’t let go of the fact she’s getting married the next day. He spends the whole episode clutching her necklace and brooding over it. It’s eating him up, but he won’t admit to Engin or Aydan that he’s in love with her, because he thinks she’s happy with another man. However, that doesn’t make those feelings any less real.

Would you walk on the docks at night starring longingly at a necklace of someone you didn’t love? Come on. He was fully back in love with her by at least 32, they showed it very obviously, they just didn’t tell us. The writers were able to give us plenty of great individual scenes that very clearly illustrated his feelings, they just weren’t able to put together a coherent narrative that told that story in a satisfying way. They suck, and turned what could have been a very romantic and lovely story into a disjointed mess but they didn’t ruin the characters. What Serkan was doing in every single scene, against all odds and attempts at abusive manipulation, was falling in love with her.

#Sen Çal Kapımı #Sen Cal kapimi #edser #serkan bolat #sckask #sck episode discussion #edser discussion #sck 1x35 #asklizac #anonymous

37 notes · View notes

aurorawest · 4 years

Note

Do you have any thoughts about the scene in the Avengers where Thor and Loki are conversing on that mountain top? I don't know, to me, Loki seems almost young and vulnerable there.

This scene is my favorite in Avengers, actually! Thank you for asking! And it turns out I have a lot of thoughts, so let me place them under a read more.

I agree, Loki is terribly vulnerable in this scene. That moment where Thor lands on the back of the quinjet and appears, and Loki sees him for the first time—man, there are a lot of emotions on Loki’s face in that split second reaction shot. He’s afraid, he’s overjoyed, he doesn’t want to be either one of those things. There’s some disbelief there too; I think maybe part of him thought he’d never see his brother again, despite the fact that I also think part of him had to feel like, well, if I attack Earth, that will get his attention.

The conversation they have on the mountaintop is a masterclass in them talking past each other. When I’m trying to really capture them doing that in my writing, I keep this scene in mind (the other is the escape from Sakaar sequence in Ragnarok, including the elevator). But where the scene in Ragnarok is almost like a dam about to break—both of them are struggling but trying, I think—in the Avengers mountaintop scene, neither of them has a clue. Neither of them seems to even realize how badly they talk past each other and how much dysfunction each of them contributes to the relationship. All they can see is that the other is spouting absolute bullshit, and why can’t he just understaaaaand???

They’re both guilty of this, by the way. I have to break this scene down line by line because like, it’s classic.

Thor: Where is the Tesseract?

Loki: [laughs] I missed you too.

The conversation gets off to a bad start. In Thor 1, Loki lets go of Gungnir because of what he perceives to be Odin’s rejection. I don’t know what Loki went through in the year between Thor 1 and Avengers 1, but I have extensive head canons, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t experience anything good. In any case, it culminated with Thanos, who you know, we all think tortured Loki, so. I wonder how many times Loki longed for his family to find him, to save him?

And now here’s his brother, and the first thing he says to Loki, the very first thing, is “Where is the Tesseract?” There’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that Loki’s “I missed you too” is actually sincere, but it’s wrapped in layers of sarcasm and poison because as far as he can tell, Thor didn’t miss him at all. Thor’s first act upon their reunion is another rejection.

Now, to be fair to Thor here, he thought Loki was dead. To his mind, Loki either survived but didn’t tell anyone or, even worse, faked his death from the start. Either one would be a huge violation of trust and Thor clearly feels rejected too. I think he’s also afraid that Loki not being his biological brother will lead to the fracturing of their relationship. We can see that Thor’s hurt in these next lines:

Thor: Do I look to be in a gaming mood?

Loki: You should thank me. With the Bifrost gone, how much dark energy did the Allfather have to muster to conjure you here? Your precious Earth.

Thor: I thought you dead.

Loki: Did you mourn?

Thor’s anger falls away here. I think he kinds of gets it, a little. The venom in Loki’s voice when he says ‘your precious Earth’—I think Thor realizes how he’s just come across. But he thought Loki was dead. And then Loki shows up on Earth, and he’s on a rampage; and why didn’t he tell anyone he was alive? Didn’t he want to come home? Why wouldn’t he want to come home?

Thor: We all did. Our father—

Loki: Your father. He did tell you my true parentage, did he not?

Womp womp. Thor doesn’t know how to deal with Loki like this. Loki is so angry. All the anger that Loki never gave free rein to, it’s finally on display in all its glory. Loki is sarcastic and cruel, he’s biting in a way we only see twice in Thor 1: once with Laufey, and of course the final fight with Thor. Thor sounds so lost when he says “We all did.” Like, Loki, of course I did, of course we did. He simply cannot process the fact that Loki thinks anything else would have happened.

Thor: We were raised together. We played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?

So Thor starts to get angry again. Loki is his brother. Of course he mourned, and to suggest otherwise is insulting. Remember how Thor 1 ends—it’s a huge downer. There’s no triumph; it’s just this family’s grief. Yes, Thor has learned his lesson about his arrogance, but then he says to Odin that he’ll never be as great a king as Odin is, and you know what, the way Anthony Hopkins plays that moment is brilliant. All you can see on his face is grief and doubt and the knowledge that he failed.

This is what Thor knows happened: he lost his brother and he grieved. Yes, he found out that Loki was adopted...but he doesn’t care. At no point does Thor give any indication that it matters that Loki isn’t related to him by blood, let alone that Loki is Jotun. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but Thor never once brings up the fact that Loki is a Frost Giant. It’s immaterial to him.

And yet, Loki is questioning that. Loki thinks Thor didn’t mourn; he thinks that Thor would care that they aren’t related by blood. Does Loki care that they aren’t related by blood? Loki has already shouted at Thor once that he isn’t Thor’s brother and never was. That can’t have been a nice thing to hear (I think I’ve talked before about how Loki doesn’t say ‘you’re not my brother,’ he says ‘I’m not your brother,’ which is an important distinction, IMO). And here, again, Loki is insisting that they aren’t real family. As Loki fans, it’s easy to sympathize with Loki here—but this all has to be hurtful to Thor, too. He loves Loki, and Loki is throwing it back in his face.

Oh, but just wait, Thor!

Loki: I remember a shadow—living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss; I, who was, and should be king.

Loki. Looooki omg. Okay so, I think Loki is absurd in this scene. I think he’s magnificent, but like...yikes, Loki. It’s pretty clear that he’s not in his right mind. He thinks this happened. He honestly thinks Thor threw him away, instead of hanging onto him and begging him not to let go. What Loki says here is such a warped version of reality. This has no basis in fact.

And again, Thor doesn’t know what Loki’s been through. Thor doesn’t know that Loki is under the influence of the Mind Stone, that he’s been to the darkest corners of the universe, that he’s been tortured. All he knows is that the brother who he thought was dead for the past year has suddenly reappeared, not bothering to tell his family that he was still alive, and is now saying this stuff—that Thor essentially tried to kill him, that their relationship wasn’t real, that Loki never mattered to Thor.

So Thor gets angry again. Because that’s how Thor deals with stuff...by getting angry.

Thor: So you take the world I love in recompense for your imagined slights?

Imagined slights. Loki looks like he’s been punched in the chest when Thor says this. It’s another rejection and Loki slips further into a state of unreality. Thor doesn’t care what Loki’s been through, he doesn’t care about Loki’s pain, he doesn’t care how Loki felt...ever.

And I don’t know...if Thor had not been so angry at first, would he have gotten through to Loki later when he says ‘you come home?’ I’m not sure. Loki is pretty far gone here. But I think you can see in his eyes in that moment that he wants to. I think there’s a little flash of sanity there, of being able to see past all the dysfunctional bullshit. But of course, then it’s gone. :( Loki needles Thor again and Thor gets angry.

#Anonymous #loki #thor #loki meta #thor meta #brodinsons #avengers 1

229 notes · View notes

thedreadvampy · 5 years

Text

So Love, Death and Robots...

Ok, like the first 4 were all, in different ways, really pretty good, and there are a couple of other good offerings in the mix, although a lot of the otherwise good ones fumbled the landing a little and left me feeling slightly unsatisfied.

Sonnie’s Edge was a solid opener, not my favourite in the world (and the accents felt really fake if I’m honest - if you say they’re from Newcastle give your characters Geordie accents, you cowards, none of this ‘generic working class Brit’ bollocks), but the twists were good, the characters had some life to them, and while I am a biiit eeehhhhhh about the Rape As Backstory element, it wasn’t egregious and the story was well put together and rattled along at a fair pace. I would have liked a bit more information about where her anger came from, since she shrugs off the idea that it’s from her Traumatic Backstory, but that’s really my only criticism. Animation-wise I’m not the biggest fan of photorealistic scifi animation, and the monster designs are fine but not mindblowing, but it’s doing what it does solidly (although I don’t know why that one character has her tits all the way out in her regular costume, it’s a bit Teenage Boy Scifi but it’s still a cool costume and I like the blacklight effects). The theme for me here is competent - nothing in the story or the animation was stand-out exciting for me but it was all done well, paced well, animated and designed very well, but it all sort of hit a “good but not great” note for me if I’m honest. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀

Three Robots was fun and engaging, if a bit superficial - it’s more of a series of stitched-together vignettes than a story, and other than the central characters, the world, and the cat very little connects the scenes, but that’s fine, it’s a worldbuilding exercise and it does what it’s doing pretty well. I really dig the character designs, especially the big blocky triangle robot - I’m a sucker for highly variable robots existing in the same world and I always appreciate effective non-humanoid character design. Also I did really enjoy the closing twist, that gave me a giggle. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀

The Witness was also really good but missing something. I loved the animation and character design, the comic book sound effects were occasionally a little clunky and distracting but the Comicsness of it was really working for me. I liked the story - it telegraphed part of the ending very deliberately but kept you guessing about the details and then pulled a pretty effective twist at the end anyway - and the characters managed to convey a lot of personality without a lot of explanation. There was a pleasing sense of inevitability to it, and while I kind of wanted a bit of explanation I think it was probably the right decision to leave it ambiguous. I did leave it feeling a little unsatisfied in an indefinable way, but looking back I think it would not have been made better by being any more explicit about what it was trying to convey. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀 Suits, the one with the redneck mecha pilots, was far and away the tightest and most satisfyingly put together in the whole show for me - I liked the animation style a lot for it, it was funny and emotionally engaging, and while it wasn’t breaking much new ground it was beautifully paced, kept you invested and made you care about the characters, and was probably the only one which I had absolutely no complaints or lingering disappointments at all with. 5/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖 .........aaaaaand then it all went wrong a bit for me because the episodes I genuinely solidly enjoyed got much fewer and further between as the bulk of stories got increasingly adolescent and superficial (I know, I know, it’s called Love, Death and Robots, it was always going to be a bit Teenage Boy, but the first 4 were all solid enough that I was feeling positive about it) Sucker of Souls was...fine. Characterful animation, uptempo pace, good character design (although GOD those ACCENTS, please stop and hire Actually British and Actually Irish voice actors if you’re planning on having British and Irish characters). It just felt completely hollow, though. Like, why do I care about this happening? Most of the characters are reasonably likeable if pretty stock, but the actual protagonist has nothing to him except Gruffly Macho Mercenary #4518B, and the plot is paper-thin and utterly unsatisfying. Monster exists, hubris of man raises monster, monster does something gratuitiously gory (if well-animated), people run away from monster, kill monster with guns and explosions, oh no what a twist we’re still in trouble, cut to black. And there was just nothing added to that, nothing clever or imaginative or unexpected, and the only twist they managed was that their Big Triumphal Moment was totally pointless. I thought they were going somewhere interesting with the cats thing and then it just got dropped and we went back to guns and explosions. I get doing something like this as a character piece but a) the characters just aren’t interesting enough to prop it up and b) the stakes aren’t balanced right for it to work (heh, stakes). It feels like this was just ‘I have a cool character design for Dracula and a couple of setpiece ideas’ and the whole short was just a vehicle for that, but while those things were cool they weren’t cool enough to make half an hour of TV feel worth it. It’s nice to see 2d animation but the animation style is only really ‘fine’ to me. This episode feels like someone really liked Hellboy but is not nearly as good a writer as Mike Mignola. 2/5 robots 🤖🤖💀💀💀 When The Yoghurt Took Over was fun enough. It didn’t have much more to it than ‘it would be funny if yoghurt took over the world’ but sometimes that’s enough. The animation’s cute and the idea is original enough to be funny and indepth enough to keep you engaged - I like a lot of the visual gags, even if they were a bit on the nose, and I enjoyed the vibe of it. It felt like a really odd fit with the rest of the show, though, and I’m not sure what tone the ending was trying to strike. Overall, 3.5/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖💀💀 (imagine I can emoji half a robot) Beyond the Aquila Rift, like Sonnie, is wholly competent and also pretty rote. The twist was telegraphed from a mile off, and imo the episode only manages to fill a full 15 minutes because like 3 of those minutes are just sex scenes without much substance. Again, photorealistic animation isn’t my bag, but even that considered the faces were carefully-textured enough that mid-tier animation made it all feel a bit Bioware and got in the way of me empathising with the characters. The story is an absolute off-the-rack sci-fi classic, and there’s no real twist on it - if I’d never seen this story played out before it might have worked, but I have seen approximately 20000000 versions of it and this just wasn’t bringing anything new. I liked the navigator character, when she was in it, and the design was competent, but it just did nothing for me because it all felt deeply generic and so the episode just dragged on with nothing new or exciting. 2.5/5 robots 🤖🤖💀💀💀 Good Hunting is another one where I liked bits of it but felt like it didn’t really go anywhere with its premise. I like the idea of contrasting traditional fantasy tropes with scifi, and I do like to see steampunk that legitimately grapples with the colonial baggage, but it just felt like it didn’t have much room to grow. The mechanical animation was really pretty - I especially liked the scene with the automatic hare - and the story was solidly paced, plus I do like when stories have a go at recontextualising traditional Seductress Monsters, buuuut to be honest it felt like a bit of a letdown. Where it hit, it hit solidly - I liked the throughline about how she felt like she’d become what he had thought her mother was, and the parallels between his experience of working for the British and her experience of sex work for them - but I think the issue for me is that, while I liked Liang and felt like he was well fleshed out, this felt like it should have been Yan’s story and it just wasn’t, really. Also I’m not very clear on what the point of the robotics work was - symbolically it works on some levels but I don’t know if it actually helps along the core theme, although the more time I spend with the idea the more it’s working for me. Still, I think we could have done with cutting the wuxia-ey scene at the beginning in half to make room for a little more meat at the end. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀 Ugly Dave. It’s fine. Nothing to write home about. The gag is pretty clear from the off, and doesn’t really build up into anything other than the obvious, but the animation is nice, the character design is strong and the jokes are adolescent but well-delivered. 3/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖💀💀 Shape-Shifters. I don’t know how this one was because it bored and annoyed me so much that I skipped to the next episode after 5 minutes. Ugh. Yeah. They’re werewolves and their squad is mean to them even though they’re real good at war. I assume that the only reason this isn’t called Dog Soldiers is because there’s already a film called Dog Soldiers about werewolf squaddies which the target audience of this short film, edgy teenage boys with a hardon for modern military propaganda, already like (side note: I didn’t get to the bit where presumably they eventually transform. but I flicked through a few frames on the tracker bar and they looked like incredibly generic wolves). My guess is that probably at the end they a) save their squad despite being discriminated against or b) the more annoying one gets killed by his own side. probably both. idk, I noped out because it was just wanking off the concept of the modern military and our two protagonists were two obnoxiously macho army men talking about how unfair it was that nobody appreciated how GOOD THEY WERE AT KILLING FOR ‘MURICA mission accomplished etc. Oh, and the animation style was another incredibly uninteresting photo-realistic but video-game animated pile of boring. 0/5 robots, too bored to actually watch it 💀💀💀💀💀

However, luckily just as I was getting Very Bored of Shooty Shooty Bang Bang adolescence, there were a succession of really nice character pieces

Helping Hand was a great small-scope short story. A lot of the episodes are really bombastic but Helping Hand is small and contained and character-driven and I liked it quite a bit. The animation is once again photorealistic, but to be honest that works well for me here because the movements are really believable, there’s a good reason to use animation instead of live actors (because it’s a situation where you’d either need a really expensive shooting setup or to mostly animate it anyway), and I think that the personal struggle would have had a lot less impact if the animation was more stylised. It’s a bit gross but beautfiully paced and tense (and the character’s Irish accent isn’t ear-burningly awful this time!) I will also say that of all of them, this character design feels the least male-gazy and the most like an actual person. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀 Fish Night was unexpectedly gorgeous! I really don’t rate the animation style of pseudo-cel 3d with heavy lineart, and I was all set to find this episode ugly, but it’s honestly stunning. It feels like some of the best Nobrow comics, I can almost smell litho ink and feel heavy paper. It’s just got such a beautiful artistic sensibility. Storywise it’s a little weak - the characters are solid and the wonder is real but it just doesn’t really go anywhere, and it just sort of ends, it could really have done with a few seconds of closing scene because it felt like it just cut itself off - and I’m not sure it’s anything meatier than a beautiful piece of visual work, but it’s allowed to be that and it does it stunningly! 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀 Lucky 13 isn’t really up my alley (although Samira Wiley puts in a great performance and I love her) and it’s another one where I sort of think, you know, why is this an animated piece if you’re just going to mocap everyone and set most of the action in cockpits and in a hangar, but it rattles along well and does what it wants to do, which is to be a solid Hero Pilot And Ship story. I just don’t actually want to be watching military dramas, but at least it’s much, MUCH better executed than Shape-Shifters both in terms of animation and storytelling, the characters are likeable, and the pacing is good. 3/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖💀💀 Zima Blue. LOVE LOVE LOVE this story, brought down only by the fact that I, uh, kind of hate the art style? A lot? It’s a matter of personal taste but that angular, geometric, leggy thing does nothing for me, although the environments are really nice. But the actual story is clever, original and a little bit silly in all the ways I like my scifi to be, plus it explores some interesting themes of consciousness and happiness. And the twist in the tail is really nice and fairly unexpected. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀 Blindspot is dull, dull, dull, desperately dull and generic. We’re back on the adolescent Shooty Boom Boom bullshit, with poorly established stakes that never really get resolved, uninteresting and unpleasant characters, and a completely textbook story. The female character is apparently only there to make brain-itchingly bad Sassy Oneliners and have one scene where she shoots some guys, all of the characters have taken their personalities from the 15 Year Old Boy’s Guide To Being A Cool Rude Badass, the character designs are cluttered and not amazing, and there’s nothing original or exciting happening, it’s just a series of different shaped guns. The ending at least has a strong idea of what it’s doing, and almost works, but it’s dragged down by the fact that it relies on me being sad that these characters have got stomped, and I’m afraid that’s a lot to ask with characters as annoying and unpleasant as these. 1/5 robots 🤖💀💀💀💀 Ice Age. It’s a fun little concept. I’m not sure it really goes anywhere much but it’s quirky and very nicely put together, and it gave me a chuckle. 3/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖💀💀 Alternate Histories feels like something I’d see on Newgrounds in 2004, but slightly polished up and expanded on. Ha ha ha Hitler gets killed in various ways, which was definitely hilarious when I was 12. It’s much more interested in coming up with funny ways Hitler might die than it is in exploring any alternate histories that might result, despite the framing device (and also weirdly seems to imply that Nazi victory would be a good thing in one scenario?). I’ve used the word adolescent a lot here but this one isn’t even really adolescent in its sensibilities, it feels aimed at 10-13 year olds. 2/5 robots 🤖 🤖💀💀💀 The Secret War closes out the series in a way that feels consistent with the overall sense I got from Love, Death and Robots, in that it’s solidly made and not particularly original. But I did like it - the animation is stunning (although I stand by imitation not being the point of animation, it is aiming for realism and it does that almost flawlessly) and it’s surprisingly emotionally engaging. It keeps its focus on the experiences of the soldiers as people rather than on the concept, which is for the best as the concept is pretty generic, and it produces something with a bit of genuine emotional weight and stakes. It’s basically the exact same base story as Suits, even down to a lot of elements of the monster design, but set in a very different place with very different core characters, and as both Suits and Secret War are really character pieces, they make two very different but very strong stories out of it. This one is really hammering the GRITTY button as hard as it can, but it pulls it off, and while it still felt very pointed at teenage boy sensibilities it was a genuinely engaging and immersive story. If Soul Sucker desperately wanted to be the Hellboy comics, Secret War solidly evokes the Hellboy films but certainly isn’t just trying to be something other than what it is. 4/5 robots 🤖🤖🤖🤖💀 Overall thoughts - like all anthology shows tend to be, Love, Death and Robots is very hit and miss. A lot of episodes are really, REALLY rooted in a teenage nerd boy idea of coolness, and it doesn’t have much interest in criticising or examining what that means, but when it manages to get away from that a lot of these short films are fantastic. I will say that like a lot else, it’s dominated by both white male writers and white male protagonists and/or Strong Female Characters, and again, the best episodes tended to be ones that broke that pattern. From the title and trailer, I was worried about it being a lot more sexualised and gratuitous than it ended up being (although it definitely had its ehhhhhh moments), and I was honestly pleasantly surprised that of 18 episodes, only 2 featured rape-revenge plotlines, and none (maybe one?) were about Evil Seductresses, because given the title I had Concerns. However, it is still overwhelmingly white character-wise, which is a shame - I counted 2 episodes with Asian protagonists and 2 more with Black protagonists, which is relatively good, but there were probably only about 10 named/centred characters of colour all told. I dunno. I’d recommend taking a punt on it but I have Criticisms of the show overall. The good episodes are REALLY good though and I will definitely be rewatching 2 or 3 of them.

#apparently I wrote a full review of this #oops #love death and robots #netflix #scifi #review

6 notes · View notes

hopestolen · 7 years

Note

whats different about rise of the isle of the lost!uma compared to descendants 2! uma? /never read the books

screaming ! i could rant about this for days ! rise of the isle of the lost is what gave me muse for her in the first place , despite the trailer & first sneak peak already being released when rise came out , because it’s SO different . so the main premise of rise of the isle of the lost is essentially triton’s trident washes onto the isle of the lost due to unimportant explained reasons & uma goes looking for it ofc , with harry & gil . ( also , sidenote , if anyone rps one of the three i would say it’s a SUPER important read , because it explains the trio’s backstory of being friends a bit , mal & uma’s original rivalry as kids , uma’s lack of skill at actually being a pirate djfklsfjd , uma & ursula’s relationship , & uma also lowkey murders a catcaller so i mean Legends Only what other reason do you need to read — & by murder i mean threatens because it’s targeted towards kids , but all of us adults know he’s dead . this is also the reason i don’t think uma & mal actually ever dated outside of MAYBE a crush , considering the rivalry started at ten years old but . BUT I DIGRESS . )

you can immediately tell in the novel uma’s not evil , i highkey don’t even think she identifies as such ?? she’d probably call herself neutral if you asked . i believe uma has maybe TWO lines at most of saying “ revenge on auradon ” ect . both of which are in PUBLIC , meaning again , it’s all an act when her real plan is to just get off the isle for a better life . upon hearing the rumors the trident somehow washed up on the isle her IMMEDIATE reaction is ❝ a thing like that could change her life . if uma could get her hands on it , it would mean she wouldn’t have to stay here at the fish shop , slinging the house bilge & pouring drafts of slime . ❞ so you can tell she’s not evil like right off the bat . chapter six or whatever . & that’s also when i fell in love with her . oops .

you also get to see the three interacting when they’re alone . & UMA’S NOT QUEEN OF THE ISLE YET , there’s no act she really has to keep up until she’s rallying harry’s pirate crew ( uma becomes captain in this book due to a damn boat race , the crew was originally harry’s ofc ) . they consider each other actual friends DESPITE how taboo that is on the isle . you get to see that harry’s dramatic - ness is all an act too as he has a super vulnerable scene where he’s calling out for help from his friends during a panic attack & he’s just overall less dramatic when he’s alone with his friends , how soft gil really is despite trying to appear strongest on the isle [ SPOILER ] as he is able to put together ursula’s shattered necklace , how uma just wants a better life . none of those three are scared to show each other that . uma’s not ANGRY yet . she harbors a grudge & resentment against mal of course , because of the emotional abuse implied in the book . [ SPOILER ] like mal throwing birthday parties on uma’s birthday just so no one will go to hers , how mal labelled her a weakling of an isle ( which is why my uma blames mal irrationally for the trauma you can read about in my headcanons page , but don’t really want to trigger anyone rn if possible . ) my uma actually tried to move on until mal made it her mission to destroy uma , like uma was TEN , mal was TEN . you also see it’s implied uma wasn’t always a pirate , how i write her it’s actually more recent compared to the other pirates . she is shown she knows NOTHING about ships or sailing . she’s legit just good for the plan & bossing people around imo . she was always an octopus - sea witch first & foremost .

my uma has sworn off hope since her traumatic event . four years of being complacent & hopeless . rise of the isle of the lost is literally referring to uma’s hope rising . her plan is GOOD compared to the plan in descendants two . throughout the whole book her hope is growing & growing , she’s almost happy for once tbh . [ SPOILER ] she literally gets her hands on the trident for a few moments before mal uses a time reverse spell so the four + ben retrieve it before uma . THIS COMPLETELY BREAKS HER . she feels stupid for hoping & trusting again . any shred of sanity she had left is GONE . which makes her SO DESPERATE in descendants two . again , uma isn’t shown to be queen yet in rise of the isle , meaning she takes over AFTER the book , thus she does this because this is her one way to make the best of the situation she’s forced to live . this way she won’t be taken advantage of ever again . ( never mind the whole isle still thinks she’s weak , so imagine how hard that was to make an entire island bow down to you without the fear of your mother backed behind you aka how many people did she murder ?? ) .

uma delves into this desperate darkness after . she’s still not evil , but she’s willing to do more hostile , darker things to get what she wants . like , uma … taking a hostage when she’s been a helpless hostage herself ?? sounds Fake before the trident incident . you can tell she’s also starting to push her friends away , ❝ no one’s looking out for me . it’s just me . ❞ — says uma looking directly where harry’s standing . harry has ALWAYS been there for her . why would she say this if she wasn’t trying to distance herself ?? she doesn’t want her friends to turn out like her , & how does she do that ? cutting them out .

another change we see is uma’s reaction to ben’s offer . my uma only asks for the wand because her goal is still to get off the isle , she’s still not going to rain evil down on auradon . ben literally offers her exactly what she wants , but she still turns him down because she will never trust another person in the world at this point . of course , she already wouldn’t trust him to an extent because he’s the king of auradon & she’s a vk , but like … if this happened before she lost the trident , she would’ve eventually gave him the benefit of the doubt — but not anymore . again , all hope & trust has left her body . she’s physically incapable of it at this point . she has to do this on her OWN , because she can’t trust anyone else to help her .

also , a Cool sidenote . this is all a contributing factor to why she still declined ben to come to auradon despite giving his ring back . she hates what she’s become & doesn’t think she deserves the chance right now . after a while though , i believe she’d figure out who she is again , miss her friends , & head back to auradon .

ANYWAYS , this is why i’ll always prefer rise ! uma to d2 ! uma . descendants two uma isn’t who she really is & she knows it . honestly if i never read the novel i wouldn’t have muse for uma .

#will i ever shut up? no #THANK YOU FOR SENDING THIS HOLY FUCK #kendall psychoanalyzing their muses again whats new #if anyone wants a down/load link to rise message me !#❝ ᴛᴇʟʟ 'ᴇᴍ ᴡʜᴏ's ɪɴ ᴄʜᴀʀɢᴇ sᴏ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ꜰᴏʀɢᴇᴛ ☆ headcanons .#❝ ᴏɴᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ᴛᴏ ᴀsᴋ ☆ answered ask .#anonymous #( meta . )

39 notes · View notes

piperhalliwellskitchen · 7 years

Note

Your fun but painfully hard Charmed asks, as promised :) How would you rank all eight seasons of Charmed from your favorite to least favorite? How would you rank all four sisters from your personal favorite to least favorite - and why? Which were your favorite and least favorite romances of the series? Which sister relationships do you love most and least (e.g. Prue/Piper, Piper/Phoebe, Prue/Phoebe Piper/Paige, Phoebe/Paige...?) And what would you most want to change about the series?!

oooooooooooo these are great!!! ranking of all the seasons favorite to least favorite for me is: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4, 7, 8the first three are my favorite because i feel like the first three seasons were the most interesting and i reeeaaallly loved shannen doherty’s acting. due in part to her excellent acting and the writing of the first three seasons there was something vaguely more real about the first three seasons, vs. the rest where it kind of turns into supernatural soap opera (which i still love) and becomes a little more like fluff. still enjoyable but missing a certain grit. sister ranking: piper is my favorite because i love her and want to be like her the most, prue is my second favorite because i’m probably actually a lot more like her than i think (and we have the neurotic oldest sister thing in common!), and paige/phoebe are on equal footing with me because i relate to both of them in the same way - free-spirited, a little edgy (i relate to seasons 1-3 phoebe more than “grown up” phoebe in the later seasons) but even though i relate to them they’re not necessarily my favorite… but i still love them….prue & piper is my favorite sister relationship, hands down! shannen + holly are great friends in real life which really shows in their acting in the first three seasons.. honestly i felt like after shannen left, piper was never really able to recreate that same relationship and she just sort of became everyone’s mom which is part of why i don’t like the later seasons as much…. i love phoebe/paige because paige brings out the mentor in phoebe and phoebe/prue was always fun - they had a little animosity but i think they really bonded by the third season (though phoebe got over prue’s death way too easily in the fourth season, tbh..) piper & phoebe always had a good relationship that was fun to watch - in the first 3 seasons, she was the buffer from phoebe to prue and after prue left, piper and phoebe bonded as like sister-moms to paige, introducing her to the craft and that was fun to watch… piper/paige is probably my least favorite sister interaction because i feel like when paige came along, piper really became more of a curmudgeon and i LOVE piper as a mom, don’t get me wrong, but she acted like too much of a mom with paige, when the reality is that paige is an adult.. and it took a while for piper to kind of adapt to that. in some episodes/seasons/scenes she recognizes it, but in others, it sort of seems like a bit of lazy acting on holly’s part maybe? to treat paige like a baby…things i would most want to change about the series… oo… for one, make the setting true to san francisco LOL. you can’t just have a few shots of the golden gate bridge, some cable cars and ghirardelli and call it a day - that’s not all that SF is! i’ve lived here for a few years now and there’s only a few eps/scenes that really made me believe it was SF. the slum lord in season 5, and some of the buckland scenes could be in the financial district. the show doesn’t ever mention the east bay (oakland, berkeley, etc) or if it does, it’s an afterthought. but their house? the fact that they have a front yard and a sunroom???? unheard of in SF, especially wherever they are supposed to be located.. they made a reference to where that was supposed to be in the first season which was WAY off (somewhere near eddy/o’farrell… which is deep tenderloin and has ZERO manors… not a nice neighborhood like theirs) - and they kind of avoid mentioning any of the neighborhoods at all which is like a HUGE thing in SF. they never talk about the mission, nob hill, financial district, pacific heights, bayview district… etc… the show would have been a LOT more believable if they actually did some research and made the setting more realistic. also relating to setting… these are 4 total sisters (WICCAN sisters no less!!!!) in the bay area and not even ONE of them was at least a little bi???? the fuck?????? that was pretty ridiculous to me. also i got really sapphic vibes from phoebe, always. i understand the appeal of cole, but i think it would have been amazing if she had either a temporary or serious relationship with a woman after… a woman would have made phoebe feel way more appreciated and i think phoebe would have been really receptive to a relationship with that kind of love + mutual understanding.. but for real, the fact that not only did none of the sisters have any romantic relationships with women at any time, they also only had maybe a total of 3 lesbians featured on the show (and only ONE was a couple that it was explicitly mentioned they were together - oh and one of them dies.. shocking…) - that was really upsetting. this is san francisco, for fuck’s sake. there should have been a way more diverse character base - not just more lgbt characters, but more black, latino, lgbt and all those intersections.…speaking of diversity. there was a lot of racism in the show that watching it over and over again makes me pretty annoyed. a lot of the demons are always black, and really obnoxious tropes. like the witch doctor. the “tribal” demons. the demons that always die. and even the innocents that die first/quickest are always the non-white ones.. the bay area is a REALLY rich + racially diverse area, they really should have had more than (1) recurring black character (darryl.. and of course he was a cop.. smh) and they absolutely should have had recurring latino + asian characters. chinatown + japantown are HUGE parts of san francisco, and many parts of the bay area are almost exclusively asian or latino…. it’s pretty much unforgivable that they didn’t even really seem to try to incorporate non-white characters in the show in like a real, meaningful way. another thing they could have done better is ended the series at the 7th season, after they faked their deaths. the 8th season was pretty bad imo. lol. their fake alteregos were kinda fun but it was just so pointless… also as much as i love paige + rose mcgowan, i do wonder what the show would have been like if someone else was cast as paige… there was a confession on @charmedxconfessions once that i saw wondering what it would have been like if eliza dushku was cast as paige, and i admit that is an interesting thought. i’m not sure who i would pick, but it does make me wonder. rose is pretty and everything, but she’s really not the greatest actor, let’s be honest with ourselves here. lol. the first few eps in season 4 i think are the best example of this… she starts to get into it better in season 5, for sure, but… i wonder what it would have been like if they hired someone with more seasoned acting chops…. also with regards to paige.. her giving up her job made me sad, tbh. she did a lot of good work as a social worker and again with setting, it’s super unrealistic that any of them would go any amount of time without any kind of job. and if she had a good one like that, i think it was unrealistic that she would leave it? idk. i think it would have been interesting if she continued to keep her job and they could have delved into some of the problems of the city through that, too. (thus adding to the realism of the setting…) could have also been a good way to incorporate more interesting (and not white) recurring characters, too.the last season with paige’s relationship with henry… can we say.. SNOOZE. god that was such a boring, forced love plot. i actually like henry, but i really felt like that relationship was shoehorned in to give them all perfect husbands. same with coop. so boring. i’m not just saying this cus i think they should have dated women at some point, but like those relationships were literally so forced + boring. not only was the writing in the 8th season pretty weak, it seemed like those two romantic plots were a way to keep viewers interested. cheap tactics, imo. lastly!!!! (i’m almost done i swear) i REALLY wish they left things on good terms with shannen doherty, because the fact that they really never mentioned prue at all past the first few eps of the 4th season was really a shame. she was a HUGE part of their lives, obviously, as their oldest sister, and she was the most powerful witch for the first three seasons… the fact that they pretty much forgot about her entirely past the 4th season showed that they let their petty beefs control the show instead of caring about its integrity or fans.. like i’m sure i wouldn’t have liked shannen doherty in person much either (she’s a republican and from what i heard, it was her and alyssa milano’s political/personal differences that drove that wedge in the show) - but at some point you really need to just be professional. if you’re not doing it for the fans, who are you doing it for? it would have been good for them to either feature her in the last episode, or pan to a photo of her when piper/leo were walking up the stairs.. everytime i watch that i get so upset. it’s disrespectful to prue’s memory, and she deserved better.. ok… i think that’s it…. though i could seriously go on forever LOL. i love this show to death but i’m very acutely aware of all the issues this show has especially since i watch it literally every day lol… still love it… but yeah if they ever do a remake i have SUGGESTIONS…!!! hehEDIT: oh i just realized you asked about romances too! i kind of addressed it in my things i would change about the series answer... but yeah uh piper+leo are my favorite and i do love phoebe/cole sometimes.. in season 2, 3, and parts of 5/6. but yeah cole is pretty bad and abusive and ughhhhhh.. he’s just so.. tasty.. lollllll............ pretty much all of paige’s love interests are super boring. i loved prue/andy :( and again, paige or phoebe should have dated a lady at some point. lol.

#still charmed #long post #sleeplessbutdreaming

4 notes · View notes

womanaction · 7 years

Note

btvs/ats/community (hope i'm not doing too much lol) for the fandom meme

are you kidding me anon i live for this!!! thank you!

buffy

the character i least understand: like...anya probably? from a storytelling standpoint i don’t think the writers really agreed on what to do with her and from a relating standpoint she’s 1000+ years old and a former-then-again demon. they just didn’t really go into her character enough for me to say i understand her, and i think it’s easy to write her on a shallow level.

interactions i enjoyed the most: the easy thing to say is probably my ships right, and it is true that spike/buffy is my otp maybe mostly because i’m endlessly fascinated by their dynamics, but i also really love the og scoobies hanging out and especially the willow/xander friendship. beyond that i also loved tara&dawn and spike&dawn. and buffy&cordy, which i do ship but i brotp it more than otp most days. either way is good though.

the character who scares me the most: willow bc of below answer

the character who is mostly like me: willow. definitely willow. i’ve thought about making a photoset w characters i id w the most and she’d be dead center. i sometimes can’t even enjoy her character, especially at cringey moments, because of that, and i recognize that her worst qualities are some of mine too. i don’t think i’d try to destroy the world but thankfully i shouldn’t ever have the opportunity.

hottest looks character: faith? i totally change my answer every time bc i’m a cheating bisexual (this is the one scenario where that stereotype is correct)

one thing i dislike about my fave character: i’m going to use buffy as my fave here bc i’ll talk about cordy below. (i like to think about myself as having 3 types of faves in each fandom: the fave to watch, the one i id with, and the one i’d die for. buffy’s the latter.) writing-wise i dislike how we lose a lot of access to buffy’s inner mind. person-wise i guess her black-and-white thinking? it’s pretty necessary to her work and it’s obviously not as bad as like...riley’s but i think it’s detrimental to her in that she doesn’t seek out the help she needs. she wants to be all-slayer or all-buffy, she wants things to be all bad or all good.

one thing i like about my hated character: i guess my hated character is riley bc using a villain seems cheatish (i thought saying warren, and he makes star wars references). i actually have a lot in common with riley, which i’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but i really like how he tried to be involved with buffy’s family? like obviously later in s5 that turned into him acting weird and entitled about it but at the beginning when he’s trying to befriend dawn and such is sweet and good.

a quote or scene that haunts me: ummm all of them tbh. but to pick a random one i think a lot about the scene of buffy just staring at the water coming out of the faucet. also another water-related one, when i watch the body i’m always struck by the weird water purifier/cooler thing you see in their kitchen bc we had that exact same one in the house i lived in before my father passed away. getting personal i guess but the first time i watched it that floored me.

a death that left me indifferent: all of them affected me a lot i feel but jonathan’s definitely had less impact than i feel like it should given he’d been on the show for like 5 seasons by that point. and i like him as a character! i guess it got really subsumed into andrew’s character arc which kinda sucked, and it was played up more as a villain moment.

a character i wish died but didn’t: none of them i love my kids

my ship that never sailed: faith/buffy!!!! why...

angel

the character i least understand: maybe lorne? again like with the anya thing this is a character with a potentially fascinating backstory and a very unique perspective and we get just a little taste of it. love him though

interactions i enjoyed the most: i really loved the whole gang’s interactions tbh but wesley&gunn’s friendship deserves a special shout out. also doyle and angel did so much with that bond in so few episodes. and i also really liked lindsay’s interactions with angel for some reason, idk. maybe because he brings out angel’s petty side.

the character who scares me the most: probably angel, right? not angelus but when angel himself teeters into Badness territory. i’m both scared of him and scared for him.

the character who is mostly like me: either fred or angel. i get compared to fred a lot irl and online from people who’ve seen it mostly bc i have the same vague face concept as amy acker and also a southern accent, and i am in stem and whatever but i never felt like there was a lot there for me to latch onto. imo fred was a major missed opportunity too, they didn’t flesh her out nearly as much as they could have. anyway they’re both kinda awkward and introverted and same.

hottest looks character: uhhh it’s cheating to say faith here again i guess but i’m doing it anyway.

one thing i dislike about my fave character: so i love cordy to death (obviously) i loved her almost immediately on buffy and only managed to love her even more but obviously she is very self-centered and could be a better friend sometimes...i guess...and i’m not gonna mention the travesty of her writing in s4.

one thing i like about my hated character: i guess that’s gonna be wesley? who i don’t hate at all i just felt like everything started getting drawn into the Orbit of his Manpain in the later seasons BUT i love dorky!wes to death. like “rogue demon hunter” wes. that’s the wes for me.

a quote or scene that haunts me: like not to be obvious but the “nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do” MURDERS me every time like i honestly find so much meaning in that. but i also think about cordy accepting the demon at the end of “birthday” and almost cry every time she’s just so brave and strong and willing to be better and i’m upset.

a death that left me indifferent: wes again? i’m sorry y’all are gonna murder me. it’s not that it left me indifferent but after cordy and fred died...and not long after lilah either and lorne is over here shooting lindsay...i didn’t have many emotions left sorry

a character i wish died but didn’t: uhmmm none of them honestly except if s4 was a character

my ship that never sailed: WELL honestly angel and cordy never got to be together at all...but they did admit they loved each other...but my only other real ship here was wesley/lilah so idk, they were both tragic and barely happened so take ur pick, joss whedon hates my happiness :/ oh wait snap! i was actually a little invested in angel and kate before that arc got thrown out the window. so them i guess.

community

the character i least understand: excluding like...todd...of the main cast probably shirley. not that i don’t understand her exactly but it’s yet another case of writers not really knowing what to do with a character and her writing sometimes being very uneven. obviously it’s a comedy so i’m not expecting in depth explorations of every detail but i did feel like there were lots of blanks about her past/motivations/etc that just got ignored. still love her though.

interactions i enjoyed the most: well obviously i love annie/abed platonically or romantically...and i also ship britta/jeff so them too. there wasn’t nearly enough britta/annie which i also ship both ways. i also loved the weird dynamic with annie being pierce’s favorite...and shirley&jeff!! underutilized but always good.

the character who scares me the most: hmm i was really worried about jeff for a while there.

the character who is mostly like me: annie tbh her perfectionism and drive and anxieties are just.....right there in my brain....always.

hottest looks character: annie, alison brie is a flawless goddess of sexiness and humor. that said thanks to aforementioned identification i can’t crush on annie per se? but divorced from personality she wins for sure.

one thing i dislike about my fave character: so my favorite to watch is britta and i had a really hard time with some of her cringier psych-major material bc i’ve known so many irritating psych majors like that. mmmmmmmmnnnnnnnuuuugh. hard to sit through. good stuff but cringey

one thing i like about my hated character: i really don’t hate any of the characters? i guess picking pierce out of the mains i liked his moments of kindness and especially whenever he tried to bond w jeff. good stuff

a quote or scene that haunts me: the whole ending of “virtual systems analysis” honestly...some Strong Identification w both annie and abed happening there.

a death that left me indifferent: i mean i guess if hickey really died in s6 as implied in that one screenshotted email or whatever that, since they didn’t go into it, but otherwise i guess when star burns [fake] died

a character i wish died but didn’t: uhhhhh none i love my kids

my ship that never sailed: annie/abed, i can’t shut up about it (that said i’m glad it didn’t sail tbh bc i don’t think i would have liked what the writers would have done with it probably but still)

#i just love everything too much lmao #btvs #ats #community #anons #conversations with living people

4 notes · View notes

kinetic-elaboration · 7 years

Text

March 18: Thoughts on 4x06 We Will Rise

FINALLY watched 4x06 wow I am lame at keeping up with my own fandom lol.

It was..kind of a disappointment personally. I’m sorry. I feel bad saying that. I don’t say that to bring anyone who might come across this post down. I’m not trying to be a killjoy. I’m just...left feeling very dissatisfied.

Basically my feeling is that this season has a very weird structure that seems to be based on a one step forward two steps back model. Each attempt to move forward is made allegedly dramatic through some sort of supposedly tense scenario, literally none of which has actually felt tense to me, but rather, wholly predictable from the very start. I knew that the Farm Station trip would end with destroying the generator, that the trip to the fallout shelter would not be successful, that Riley wouldn’t shoot, and that not all of the magic fuel would get to Raven from the very beginning of each respective episode, so there’s nothing really to keep me on the edge of my seat. And though at first I could sort of forgive these things--mostly because I felt like delaying obvious solutions in the early episodes would give more tension and urgency to later episodes--at this point...we’re at the later episodes, and still almost nothing has actually been accomplished. Almost nothing has actually /happened/.

I’m not saying it can’t all come together. Obviously some things are slowly crawling along, and of course there’s the possibility that old dead ends will resurrect--I noticed Jaha staring at that little medallion in this ep, for example. But...not to bring up how terrible S3 was again but with this show, at this point, I need to see it to believe it because the entire time S3 was airing, I was holding out hope that it would all come together and it never did. Once creators squander my faith in their storytelling ability like that, they need to produce at least an entire coherent season to bring it back, so it’s still too soon for me to say ‘I’m sure they’ll pull it all together eventually.’ If S4 pulls it all together and then next year S5 has some bumpy points I’ll be more forgiving. Maybe.

Also, the concept of going back to space, either in the long term like the spoiler-based speculation suggests, or even just in the short term like the current canon is suggesting, just...I cannot take it seriously. I’m sorry, but I just...every time I hear ‘Raven and my mom are going into space’ or ‘you could land your space ship in the ocean’ or anything in that vein I just...it’s like they’re saying “our plan is to ride a pegicorn across the rainbow to New Jersey to get the magic potion from Raul.” Like that’s how ridiculous it sounds. It takes me totally out of the story and literally all I can think is “this is some dumb shit.” Maybe it’s unfair that I’m willing to suspend disbelief when it comes to the various ways the Sky People came down from space, or the way the Mountain cured radiation with blood and bone marrow all willy-nilly, or even with the general idea of a VR even if the execution was bad, but I’m not willing to go along with this. I can’t explain why this is the line but for me, it is.

In terms of the individual story lines...

I have a lot of super duper unpopular opinions about the Arkadia/Ilian stuff, which I’m nervous to put out here even in this little deserted corner of tumblr. Basically...I agree that Kane can’t let mob rule go unchecked in Arkadia, like that would pose a general danger way worse than the danger to any one individual’s life. And I also get that, even though I don’t personally care about Octavia (I just find her irritating when she’s on screen and forgettable when she’s not), she had to have some sort of moment like the almost-execution one here to help her get past her rage. But generally speaking I was rather on the side of the mob. Not in their capacity as a mob but in the sense that I think Arkadia as an independent community would be totally in the right to execute Ilian if it wanted to. He came in and destroyed their home, and while he might not have done it with the full understanding of the consequences of his actions...he still did it and he did it on purpose. He could easily have killed people and it’s just dumb luck he didn’t. And even if this wasn’t an end of the world scenario he still took out their electricity, their water, and half their living space so like that’s some for-serious damage. Papa Miller was right: they’ve killed for less on the Ark and you know who else kills for less? Um, the Grounders. Literally everyone kills for less so why does the mob get so little sympathy in this narrative? Don’t get me wrong IRL I’m deeply anti-capital punishment but playing by the rules of this fictional world yeah, kill him, that’s what you get when you commit crimes on that scale. (Also ILY Monty but the Murphy comparison was only half-right because while it was a good example of a Mob being Dangerous...Murphy was innocent and must I point out yet again that Ilian was not??)

Oh also how fucking dumb are the Arkadians? Kane screams black rain and they all run inside AND IT’S NOT EVEN RAINING I mean what fucking dumbasses.

The Bellarke and Roan mission was in general pretty boring because as I said, I knew they weren’t going to get all of the magic fuel to Raven because duh that’s the exact same formula ever single episode this season has followed I mean you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to have seen that one coming based on, like, the trailer from two weeks ago. BORING.

But I will say: the scene where Clarke stops the cargo truck within like an inch of the Rover was cool (the rest was a little overdone imo I mean Roan slow-mo jumping onto the cargo bed wtf was that necessary?). And I loved their almost-love confession. Because we all know that’s what that was.

I will say though... it’s a little frustrating to me that the relationships on this show broadly speaking get like 5 minutes total in every episode and the other 37 minutes are spent on these scenes that are allegedly plot based but actually, as I said above, do literally nothing to advance the plot. I mean... I get it I’m not watching a soap opera but my point is...maybe it would be better if I were? I feel like we get a little scene here and a little scene there to explore how people feel about each other in the broad sense and those scenes are nice but like...imo they are by far the strongest scenes and they’re no more than scraps. I want more of Kane hugging Clarke and Monty being concerned about Jasper and Jaha interacting with anyone and Luna and Murphy talking morality and guilt and ALL OF THAT. And less fucking fight scenes and death scenes and car chases and arrow throwing and gun fighting like when you’ve seen one of those scenes you’ve seen literally a million. It’s the relationships between people that are complex and interesting and multi-faceted and that are always changing and evolving. I said this in early S3 and I’m going to say it again now: The 100 is afraid of talking about feelings. They like Big Plot, they like war scenes and rescue missions and the end of the world shit because that allows them to push off feelings for another day. If the warrior doesn’t mourn until the war is done, and the war is never done, the warrior never really needs to mourn. Because feelings are so much harder to unwrap than fight scenes are to choreograph.

I liked the Raven/Murphy/Luna scenes the best but I can’t even be fully upbeat about this because (as my mom said but I 100% agree) that clean shiny white lab set is pretty and all but it just doesn’t work with the aesthetic of the rest of the show, it just feels WEIRD; and because, as I said above, the space/pegicorn story line is grade A nonsense; and because I still find it off putting how we know there are 6 people in the lab but we only ever see like 3 at a time, it’s so fake. That being said I still love Raven, she can do no wrong, and I also like Murphy interacting with people who aren’t his clone Emori.

#the year 2017 #2017: fandom thoughts #2017: the 100 s4 #s4 negativity #not entirely negative but a little bit

3 notes · View notes