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prodigious-ladybug · 3 years

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wishmaker thoughts

in terms of it being a single installment in the larger narrative of miraculous ladybug, i don’t have a lot of thoughts on wishmaker other than ‘haha cool someone knows both of their identities at the same time wonder where this will go’ bc like. i am unable to separate myself from the idea that i absolutely cannot judge something (in this case, season- and series-long arcs) until i see it in its Entirety, in its Proper Complete State (which i know doesn’t exactly mesh with television as a serialised art form but jhdfghj wtvr thats a whole other discussion) so i don’t, and won’t, really have an opinion on luka knowing their identities until i see what the show does with it

on the other hand, in terms of its own merits as an episode (as in, the parts of the episode that are self-contained and are supposed to have their own story arc within the 20min) wishmaker was probably one of the weaker episodes of the show? alec’s akumatisation practically came out of nowhere - the show usually does a pretty good job of setting up the through lines that lead to a character’s akumatisation right from the start of the ep (you know, like with actual foreshadowing and good writing and shit) but wishmaker felt more concerned with the interactions between luka & adrien & marinette than having the villain feel natural within the story. which is all well and good, like this episode is about those three and should be focused on luka’s relationship with adrien & marinette if it wanted to have the proper impact of luka finding out their identities, but it just seemed like the episode couldn’t balance being both a run of the mill, monster of the week episode and an Event episode at the same time (that being said, i doubt this episode would’ve been enough to hold its own across a two parter so i get how the unbalance arose). instead of throwing alec’s characterisation out of whack they couldve used his early screen time to lead up to his akumatisation more naturally - surely something about being a tv presenter and having to be fake all the time for a living and not staying true to what his younger self wanted or SOMETHING would like. be putting him down in the dumps or smth. idk. that’s just off the top of my head surely the writers could come up with something more substantial. and yeah this might take away some attention from the emotional core of luka, adrien & marinette but it’d at least 1. tie in with the theme of the episode and 2. set some precedent for his negative feelings instead of him getting akumatised in like. ten seconds hgfdfghjk

the only other thing that kinda rubbed me the wrong way was how wishmaker’s power seemed especially contrived, even for this show? like i Know half of the akumatised powers are to either get ladybug and chat noir to kiss (contrived for the sake of romance which is. generally fine in a romance show and also approved by my shipper brain) or reveal their identities (which actually ties into the plot and the villain’s motivations and therefore makes it...not really contrived) so wishmaker being used to reveal their identities is fine. but um. the leap hawkmoth made in how his powers would do that is. wild. it’s like:

reveal people’s childhood wishes

???

reveal lb & cn’s identities

profit

and again, i know hawkmoth has given an endless list of powers to people that make you think ‘what the fuck was he hoping to accomplish with that?? what did he THINK would happen?’ and i’m all for hawkmoth having dumb plans, being soundly beaten and then having to figure out smarter ways to beat lb & cn, but i guess my problem here is that in this episode he was actually proven RIGHT. like he had no guarantee that lb & cn wouldn’t have childhood wishes a la dino man and mr banana, but he really put out this fairly weak akuma with the immediate assumption that it would reveal their identities and like?? if viperion wasn’t there he’d have achieved it! (well, idk abt ladybug, he’d at least probably hit chat noir, which is. an interesting au to think about). the link between revealing childhood wishes and revealing lb & cn’s identities seemed like a massive leap in logic to me (more than this show usually makes), and idk if anyone else felt that when watching the episode but like kjhdfghjk hawkmoth buddy can you explain your thinking for just a second like i’ll accept what you’re doing i just need to know why the fuck you’re doing it and how you got there

but other than that! i really really liked this episode and i was hyped up the entire fucking time!! i had to keep pausing it bc i was getting overwhelmed LMAO. i guess one thing i will say so that this doesn’t seem like a wall of negativity (which i swear i didn’t mean for it to be, there were only two (2) things i didn’t like about the episode that i felt weakened it, it just takes me a billion words to get to my point) is that however they handle luka knowing their identities in future episodes, i fucking loved the way they handled it in this episode. for some background, i’ve honestly never cared much either way abt luka, i have zero negative feelings about him, it’s just that he has the unfortunate case of not being a character type i particularly care abt, and the writing hasn’t done anything much to endear him to me. he’s fine, and i certainly like him more than other characters, but i’m pretty much as neutral on him as you could get. UNTIL THIS EPISODE! okay not really, something abt him agreeing to be friends with marinette in crocoduel made me go ‘:) what a nice boy :)’ BUT! THIS EPISODE! i’m proud to announce i’m officially a luka stan. LYING BALD-FACED TO LADYBUG? KING. LYING TO LADYBUG AFTER THE SEASON OPENER OF HIM GETTING AKUMATISED OVER MARINETTE LYING??? i am SO here for internal character conflicts YES! this is what i WANT! set up a character who has a strict line in the sand and put them in a situation where they’re forced to cross it anyway, and see what happens next!!!! i really would not mind a whole character study on luka after this. like....the fucking intrigue.......why did he lie, and how does he feel about it? does he regret it? does he consider it a necessary evil? i’m sure all of this will be answered in like. a single line from him five episodes down the road bc that’s how this show handles shit like this but. those last few minutes were really just straight bangers i’m still not recovered

well this was. longer than i thought it’d be. and again, i liked this episode a lot, idk what compelled me to write all this out. i usually don’t have a lot of formulated thoughts like this after an episode of ml; i think that it was just bc there were a couple things i could actually critique in the ep that it made it easier to pick apart my feelings. but anyways!

TL;DR wishmaker, in its self contained elements, felt a bit weak as an episode bc 1. alec’s akumatisation was mad rushed and 2. the way his powers were used to further the plot felt contrived to me (yes, even for miraculous). but, in the episode’s over-arching elements within the season/show, i immensely enjoyed it, primarily because of the amount of intrigue it set up in 1. luka’s characterisation and 2. the possibilities emerging from luka knowing lb & cn’s identities

#miraculous ladybug #ml spoilers #wishmaker #wishmaker spoilers #i really cannot. say anything concisely #anyways this was fun i'd like to write my thoughts out after more episodes but like i said i generally Don't Have Any #like if an episode is good all my thoughts will be 'wow that was good :)'#ml air more duds so i can ramble on forever challenge

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crusherthedoctor · 3 years

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If you had full creative freedom for a brand new Sonic cartoon, what would you do with it?

This is by no means a complete list of what I'd do, but it gives you a general idea all the same.

- Since Sonic X was long ago by this point, I think it'd be nice to have another attempt at an anime, particularly if it looked something like the OVA or the animated intro for Riders. The actual art direction would basically take the Modern designs, but place them in a world that combines the best visual elements of SA1 and the Classics/Advances/Mania.

- I don't care if the writers are Japanese or American. Treating one as better simply because they're Japanese/American is a tad too elitist and extremist IMO, especially since neither of them have perfect marks when it comes to writing for this franchise. Whoever the writers are, all that matters is that the writing is good.

- It would have a lot more in common with the game universe. Since there have been so many adaptations that practically make a point about doing their own wacky thing (even the ones that claim to be linked to the games...), I think a more genuinely faithful adaptation would be welcome. There would be minor differences of course, and I'm open to taking notes from the better aspects of certain adaptations, but the overall spirit and characterizations would be reasonably consistent with the games.

- Stories would be brand new. Callbacks and references to existing plots is fine, and I wouldn't necessarily mind a show to the side that tackles adaptations ala Pokemon Origins, but overall, I'd rather have new refreshing adventures rather than adapt SA1/SA2 for the millionth time.

- The tone would pretty much be like SA1. Funny and tense in equal measures, never goes too far in either direction. Whether it's a funny moment or a serious moment, it would be sincere. Self-aware enough to be able to acknowledge the weirdness and be willing to poke fun at itself, but not to the point of being overly self-deprecating and pandering to the franchise’s detractors.

- The lore would connect certain plotlines to each other on SOME occasions, and only if the logic was reasonable and kept to a minimum. It would not be all tied together in an overly contrived manner that ends up leaving no interesting questions. In other words, the S3&K/SA1 connection through Angel Island's lore would be fine, but there'd be no “Did you know the Black Arms worshipped Solaris, went to war with Chaos, were the offspring of Dark Gaia, and wrote the Arabian Nights???” bollocks.

- Sonic, Tails, Amy and Cream would make up the main quartet, with their personalities and bonds bouncing off each other. Other characters would appear and be of importance, but only when their involvement is justified. Said characters including - but not limited to - Knuckles, Team Dark, the Chaotix, Blaze, Big, G-Merl, and even Tikal and Chaos.

- Likewise, Eggman and his Badnik army would naturally be the main villains. Other villains who aren't affiliated with him are free to exist and get their own time in the spotlight (as long as they're not shit and don't need to upstage the doctor to look credible), but Eggman is a plague to the world in spite of his eccentric qualities, and is treated accordingly. He does what he wants, and unless you’re Sonic and/or his friends, there’s not a thing you can do about it.

- Since they appeared in Sonic Forces Mobile, I would MAYBE be willing to include Tangle and Whisper if they were allowed. Starline too, but only if he keeps his simp privilege this time, if ya know what I’m saying. The Hard-Boiled Heavies would definitely be there, because they're too good to be only used once.

Regarding certain characters in particular:

- Sonic is not dumb. Nor is he an asshole. He can be rough around the edges, he can make hasty decisions depending on whether he feels it’s the right thing to do, but at the end of the day, he’s still as good a guy as any good guy could be, and as long as you’re not a villain or a Penders-tier asshole, he’ll be friendly with you. You’d still have to deal with quips of course, but that’s just how he is, right?

- Tails maintains his independent streak from SA1, but he still thinks the world of Sonic and would drop everything in an instant if the hedgehog ever needed his help. Though his more cautious approach occasionally clashes with Sonic being a little more gung-ho (albeit not to the point of flanderization), he always has full faith in his big bro.

- The handling of Amy's crush would be perfectly balanced. Not too overwhelming to the point of acting irrational and chasing Sonic like a loony, but not too downplayed to the point where it might as well not be there at all. That said, more focus would be placed on her other traits and interests, such as her tarot cards and her bond with Cream.

- Knuckles would still be prone to gullible and less-than-flattering moments, because it's Knuckles, but more focus would be given to his admirable attributes, like his expertise in translating ancient texts, and occasionally making good points when in an clash of ideas with Sonic.

- Shadow's backstory would remain the same at its core (though maybe without the aliens), but it'd be altered to be less edgy. For example, rather than getting capped, Maria would succumb to her illness, and Gerald's anger would instead be the result of feeling betrayed by G.U.N. for denying him the means/funds to be able to cure her.

- Metal Sonic is fiercely loyal to Eggman, but his identity crisis would also be on full blast, and eventually he'd realise the oxymoron of believing himself to be Sonic while working for Eggman. Rather than turn traitor and wear elf shoes however, Metal would try to rationalize this to himself... with insane results. Eggman knows about this, and would humor it as long as it benefits him. He'd probably also bring out the other Mecha Sonics now and then for no other reason than to confuse Metal even more. Because he's a dick.

- The Sol Dimension now includes Soleanna, which would be the main kingdom. (It's already got Sol in the name anyway.) Since Blaze would be the ruler because of this, his sadly means that Elise would probably have to get cut, but ah well. Due to the change in context, Solaris would be built up as the Sol Dimension's equivalent to Chaos, with more focus on their contrasts (Chaos is water while Solaris is light, Chaos looks aquatic/reptilian while Solaris looks like a bird, Chaos' turn to evil was caused by an ancient event while Solaris' turn to evil was caused by scientists, etc).

- If Silver were in this show, he'd be no more of a casual acquaintance to Blaze than he would be to Sonic. Instead, her tagalong would be Marine. Though Blaze would still get annoyed by Marine's antics at first, she would come around to gaining more respect for her whenever the situation justified it.

- Trudy would-

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog

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hopevalley · 3 years

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Season 8, Episode 9: Pre-Wedding Jitters

Y’all know what’s wild? The season is coming to a close! I feel like we just got started with Season 8, and it’s already nearly over. I’m not ready for things to end...except the love triangle. Lol.

One important thing I want to talk about, before we move on to my regularly scheduled episode write-up, of course, is the quality of the writing and filming this season. I really feel like the team took a step back and thought very carefully about how to improve the show, and then they went through the effort of actively trying to improve things.

Are there still badly-written areas of the show? Absolutely. Are there things I loathe seeing? Yes. Are there plotlines that are extremely contrived even by Hallmark standards? Unfortunately there are.

But I don’t think anyone can deny that the writing this season is, overall, an improvement over Seasons 5, 6, and 7. The only thing that I feel about S8 that is worse than 5/6/7 is the love triangle, but it had to come to a head eventually so it was always going to be a point of contention among the fans.

I’ve seen a ton of negativity going around the Internet, and you are all entitled to your opinions, but let’s hold back from being too angry until we see how things will work out. After all, there is a chance, however small, that Hallmark will end up surprising us.

So here’s to hoping that the writing quality uptick will continue as we move into Season 9.

And now, our plotlines from this episode:

The Dilapidated Love Triangle

The Wedding Planning/Party

The New & Improved Henry Gowen

Miscellaneous (Car Investigation, pastor position/Jesse and Clara + Cafe, Carson and Faith, Mike and Fiona)

This was another episode that felt pretty smooth in its storytelling; it had some smaller plots going on, but two primarily large plots, a smaller one that revolved around Henry, and then a few small (connected) plots from previous episodes/that overarched the whole season!

Sorry for the muddle by the way, it took me hours to type this and I’m too tired to read it over thoroughly before posting. If you see any glaring issues please let me know so I can fix them, though!

The Dilapidated Love Triangle

Let’s just get the pig slop out of the way, shall we? I think we are all in some sort of agreement by now that we’re tired of the triangle and just want to see it resolved as soon as possible so that we can get on with our lives and invest our interests in the right place(s).

I also believe most of us are also in some kind of agreement, however we feel about the characters, the triangle, and who Elizabeth’s choice should be, that this thing has been very poorly paced. This sentiment seems to be echoed across the Internet right now. The pacing is AWFUL. After two years of almost nothing happening, now we’re going to bullrush to the end of the triangle? That’s a yikes from me, Chief. (Wait, didn’t I say that last week, too?)

I was never a fan of the narrated beginnings of episodes. I think they’re really tacky and boring. That said, there’s no other way to get into Elizaeth’s head easily because...I don’t know. Either Erin isn’t that skilled or the director doesn’t know how to direct her, or the script sucks. They struggle SO MUCH with show-don’t-tell that they have to resort to telling...which is fine, sometimes. This is an instance where telling is just mega redundant since she says the same exact thing probably 10 more times in the episode. I wish they’d have just kept the first part of the reflection or focused more on that—how Nathan talking about it...makes it feel fresh and raw again in a way she didn’t expect.

Anyway, Elizabeth writing that she’s been “left to reflect, once more, on the senseless accident that took [Jack’s] life” is ridiculous. Senseless? He was in charge of the training mission, but unless I’m losing every last marble I’ve ever had, wasn’t it Jack’s choice to go after the younger recruits who had been separated? Wasn’t it thanks to Jack’s quick thinking and intervention that only one person lost his life that day (Jack himself)?

This is where the whole “Jack died heroically” thing kind of matters, actually. Especially when you butt it up against Nathan being the original person intended to go. Would he have risked his life like that? We’ll never know, but I’m sure Nathan thinks about it a lot, and it’s not something that should be left out of this story.

It’s valid for Elizabeth to wonder why Nathan kept the Secret hidden from her for almost three years, but what is really troublesome is the weird shift she seems to have between Casual Curiosity and Stricken Grief about it.

I grew tired of mopey Elizabeth in S4 and 5, so I’m not happy to see her back. Fewer eye drops, please. -_-

Anyway, it almost felt like a breakthrough when Elizabeth asked Rosemary why she thought Nathan took so long to tell her about Fort Clay, but Rosemary’s response was so bad. “He didn’t think it was important enough.” WHAT? WHO WOULD SAY THAT? Rosemary can be a bit thick-headed but that was almost too contrived for me to willingly follow. Anyone with a brain would realize it was IMPORTANT and THAT WAS WHY IT WAS A SECRET.

And when Elizabeth’s like, “Not important enough?” BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY IT IS IMPORTANT... Rosemary just tells her that Jack’s death wasn’t Nathan’s fault.

Which. She’s right. But that doesn’t make the secret unimportant. It’s still kind of a big deal. He’s confessed to being in love with Elizabeth multiple times now. Even Rosemary can’t be so dumb that she doesn’t realize that the connection between Jack’s death and Nathan is...meaningful, especially to Elizabeth. And that Nathan knew this and couldn’t bring himself to tell her because he knew it would hurt her.

Anyway, I’m doing my best to give Elizabeth a bit of grace here, because she’s just so self-centered I almost can’t stand it. To be clear, Elizabeth has ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS. It’s just that usually the issues at hand aren’t about her, they’re about someone else.

Rosemary’s right but what she said was straight-up stupid. I don’t know, I don’t think the characters are out of character so much as the dialogue just didn’t flow very naturally and I felt like the characters were making assumption jumps to force certain responses. If Elizabeth can’t agree with Rosemary that Jack’s death isn’t Nathan’s fault, then she should have expressed that a bit more directly so that Rosemary could draw the conclusion that Elizabeth does feel it’s Nathan’s fault. It came across like Rosemary was speaking to the audience more than to Elizabeth, and I didn’t like it.

The most delightful scene in the entire episode has to go to Allie and Lucas. That was so cute and wholesome and good. Her asking if she could sit at the bar, him offering her a treat, her trying to return the gift ‘cause she felt caught in the middle and like it wasn’t fair to accept it... SO GOOD. They remembered the gift multiple episodes later AND incorporated it into this episode flawlessly. LOVED IT.

Also, she asked an important question. LUCAS...where DO YOU LIVE?!

His story was a bit silly but I actually enjoyed it. It gives him a more playful vibe and also I think was almost entirely to ensure that Allie felt more comfortable and less anxious about what was happening around her. It was also his way of reassuring her that him courting Elizabeth wasn’t going to take Elizabeth out of Allie’s life...and that things will be okay.

I enjoyed it.

Things were a bit awkward with Elizabeth and Allie but they felt...better than before, so I felt like the conversation helped.

Lucas calling Allie “Allie Grant” was nice now that her adoption is official! I appreciate that.

Elizabeth and Lucas talk about how Lucas told Allie he’ll “work things out” with Nathan and Elizabeth definitely doesn’t appreciate it, and with somewhat good reason: she doesn’t like being caught in the middle of things any more than Allie does.

The thing is...she has had the power...all this time...to tell Nathan straight-up to leave her alone/that she isn’t interested. I stand by what I said before, that she shouldn’t have to tell him no for him to respect the boundaries she’s set, but if he’s not respecting those boundaries she needs to be firm about it.

I like how Lucas comes off in this scene. He wants to understand, he listens, he’s patient, he doesn’t push. I’m here for it.

She tells him what Nathan told her and he seems a bit overwhelmed by it, too. It’s pretty clear that he realizes she must be feeling all kinds of things after finding that out, especially after all this time.

Again, for the second time, Elizabeth doesn’t seem all that grief-stricken about the secret being kept from her for so long: she tells Lucas she just doesn’t understand how he could keep it from her.

He asks permission to suss out an answer and Elizabeth politely declines and says she’ll ask herself, but to please forgive her, she needs some time to...think.

She watches Lucas go and then...touches her wedding band.

Nathan meets Rosemary in the library and goes on a long boring monologue about how he’s read like, three whole books that women wrote, but still doesn’t understand women. No shit, sherlock. That was terrible writing...just straight up bad writing.

But I’m not exactly surprised because the very next thing that happens is that Rosemary tells Nathan...she’s been in his eXACT position before!

No...you have not. Yes, you were the unwanted third wheel, but that’s where the similarities ended, and you should have clarified. This just didn’t hit well for me, I don’t know. I don’t want to say it’s out of character, but...I don’t think Rosemary is this soft gentle personality anyway. I feel like she was always a bit more in your face with the things she said, not “try to encourage a manner of action in a very roundabout way” like she is in this episode. But again, without a logic jump from Rosemary, this scene doesn’t quite work.

I think I might have preferred Rosemary to play dumb and ask what specifically he didn’t understand about women. Make him freakin’ say it. And then she could react better.

We get Love Confession #3 or whatever we’re on with Nathan, now. Let’s go over the entire scene.

Elizabeth walks into Nathan’s office and instantly asks him why it took him so long to tell her what happened.

He says he felt guilty and when she tells him she doesn’t understand, he goes on to say that after the accident he requested a transfer to Hope Valley. He never met Jack but he knew he’d left behind a wife and child, and felt it was his responsibility to look after them and protect them.

She asks why he would assume that, and he explains that he felt it was his duty. And that when he found himself falling in love with her, he felt like he was betraying Jack and his memory. That’s why he didn’t tell her.

He then takes it ONE STEP TOO FAR and says, “I fell in love with you, and I think that love is always worth fighting for.”

Elizabeth says “Excuse me,” and leaves. Nathan’s face afterward is maybe a decent mix of “I probably shouldn’t have said that” and regret, but...woof.

Anyway, I was fine with this up to the point where Nathan said, completely unprompted, that love is always worth fighting for. How does he know? What are his experiences with love? Books he read, written by men??? PLEASE.

READ PRIDE & PREJUDICE U SWINE... ELIZABETH FALLS IN LOVE WITH MR. DARCY BECAUSE HE DECIDES HE WANTS TO CHANGE AND BE A BETTER MAN AND THEN DOES SOOOOOOOOO oh wait this is turning into an Elizabeth/Henry argument...OOPS?

Anyway, yeah. Not a fan of that line. It almost feels like there’s something missing. She’s standing in front of him about to cry because she feels hurt that he didn’t tell her this, you know, crucial information, and he’s just like “Yeah I didn’t tell u cause I love you and felt like i was betraying jack’s memory and also lol love is worth fighting for babe!” What kind of confusing mess of babble is this?

Honestly, it just left a bad taste in my mouth. :( I have so many really obnoxious opinions about Nathan and what they’ve done with him this season, but I feel like I should save them for a season summary podcast or something, just in case Hallmark ends up surprising me. Right now I just feel like they really just wanted to give him what the fans hated about him (he wasn’t passionate enough, not manly enough, not forward enough with his emotions, at least from what I read on Reddit and Instagram last year), but in like THE WORST POSSIBLE WAYS and for the wORST POSSIBLE REASONS in the VERY WORST SCENARIO.

I feared that would be Nathan’s reason for coming to town from the moment the character was announced and...I wanted to be wrong.

Anyway, I really liked his self-awareness up to that point. He never met Jack, which keeps some of the weirdness at bay. Also, he felt like he needed to make sure Jack’s family was okay, and that’s fine. I wouldn’t call it noble (as Rosemary later does), but it’s not exactly bad, either. Then we got the line of him admitting that it felt kind of bad to fall in love with her. I wish he’d gone on to say that wasn’t supposed to happen, or even given her a reason he loves her (so that it doesn’t feel like we’re just being told everything), because his line about love being worth fighting for right after he says he felt like he was betraying Jack’s memory by loving her...was...really strange??? Maybe a few sentences were edited out?

Elizabeth tries to refuse to play Fiona’s blindfold game and LITERALLY NO ONE SAVES HER (though I think Rosemary considered trying). I hate the idea of this game solely based on the fact that several people participating shouldn’t even be there (Nathan, Bill, Mike, Fiona, Molly), but Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to accidentally choose Nathan if he wasn’t there, so... -_-

I think I might have actually liked this (her “no” with Carson was super cute actually, probably the cutest laugh she’s ever had on this show) if she’d had the chance to reject a few more guys on the way down the line. If she was closer to the end of the line she’d feel her options were running out and might second-guess herself. Having Nathan be the second person she touches and having her choose is...eh.

Nitpicks aside (their hands wouldn’t feel the same and she held Lucas’s hand quite recently actually), it could have been worse. At least she stated who she was searching for...

BUT UGH THE EMBARRASSMENT.

The thing that gets me about the whole scene is 100% that everyone in town would know about the Triangle drama, so it feels...weird to see everyone so gung-ho to watch this happen... I don’t know... I like having fun too, but NOBODY even TRIED to step in???

At least Lucas found some humor in it right away (he smiles).

I think I wish someone had said something. Maybe Nathan could have said, “Nope, sorry” to lighten the mood a bit? Or Lucas could have said, “Almost!” since he was standing right next to Nathan?

Anyway, we’re spared having to wait because the very next scene is Lucas checking on Elizabeth and laughing about her choice.

One line I wish they’d added in is that someone else got it wrong. Imagine if Lucas said, “At least you didn’t pick Bill like Clara did!” Or even just made a joke about it in general like: “Of course I’m not upset. But if you would have picked Bill I might be a little hurt. My hands aren’t that old yet.”

Elizabeth tells him that she spoke to Nathan about the whole...thing and it was awkward. She chooses to not tell Lucas the rest of the reason Nathan gave, but instead only admits that he told her he loves her again. When Lucas asks what she said in response she said she didn’t say anything.

Lucas seems...a trifle upset at this, and understandably so. I think he can sense she’s...not really a sure thing and is worried about it. :( I feel so bad for him right now.

Rosemary stops by to see Elizabeth after Lucas leaves, and tells her she ran into Nathan at the library yesterday. Elizabeth tells her what Nathan said in his office and Rosemary says it was noble and selfless of him.

(I mean...it wasn’t selfless. Like at all.)

Elizabeth says she never asked him to be noble. She didn’t ask him to fall in love with her, either.

She asks Rosemary if she encouraged Nathan’s feelings for her at the library. Rosemary says no, but Elizabeth asks again and she interrupts her to ask Elizabeth if she’d rather hear what she actually said or just assume.

Rosemary goes on to say that she just wants what’s best for Elizabeth.

And we get Elizabeth asking how anyone would know what was best for her.

I mean, that’s like 90% on you for not communicating with your friends, but also, it’s 100% on you for just assuming you knew what Rosemary said to Nathan. I think she’s just looking for a reason why Nathan is being so persistent and in her mind encouragement from someone else is the only thing that makes sense, ‘cause she sure as heck hasn’t been encouraging him herself!

This hurts Rosemary’s feelings, probably because she was about to say that she wants what’s best for Elizabeth so she asked Nathan to stop getting in the way lol, and says maybe she should leave (since Elizabeth is in a bad mood). Elizabeth agrees she should go.

End episode. On this note. Woof.

Overall it wasn’t too bad I guess? But I’m not a fan of how some of this was written. It really felt like they cut lines out to make the episode shorter, when...they could have cut out one of the boring side plots. You know. The entire thing with Jesse and Clara, for example.

The Wedding Planning/Party

I admit that I got a little enjoyment out of Florence saying no to all the dresses. Highly relatable.

Then, at the barbershop, Fiona says the exact wORST possible thing about Florence wanting a hairstyle that’ll “knock Ned dead” FLHDSFAJDSA.

Florence goes on to say she wants anything but “ordinary Florence” and Molly steps in.

Honestly, I wish they’d just let Molly stick to being Florence’s BFF because that’s the role she plays best. Also, I’m almost sad Florence and Ned got together because it means #teamflomo is no mo’. :(

Paul shows up...

I don’t know what I expected but this boy would have been a literal BABY in season one, which makes the whole thing with Florence almost sadder AND it gives Florence more in common with Elizabeth (widow with a young child) BUT I HAVE OPINIONS.

I know what you’re thinking. “Manna, you always have opinions!” Yes, you’d be right.

They based this off of ONE (1) line of dialogue that Florence had in S1 when something was stolen from her house. She says, “while my child slept nearby” or something like that.

They brought a child in...for that? On one hand...I’m impressed.

On the other hand, I kind of had just assumed they’d retconned that and that Florence had no children (which is why she was always goofing off gossiping with Molly) so I don’t really know how to feel about the whole thing.

Rosaleen starred in an episode and never showed up again after S1, so I think I’d have preferred to see her return instead of a child we literally never laid eyes on. But he’s a cutie. And he’s named after his father just like little Jack so...I’ll take it!

The party begins and we have to do “the men are stupid and don’t know how to plan” again which is really annoying. The highlight of this entire thing was Ned saying (about his hairline) that he’s been driving with the top down since his 30s. I respect you AND ONLY YOU, Ned.

The party continues on and they play charades. Rosemary chose weird awful options that don’t make any sense and are hard to act out. Ned’s could have been funny but the one Bill got is just...so weird.

The funniest part about it is looking at everyone staring at Molly as she guesses it.

I think it was supposed to be...cute? Or something? It was just really weird for me.

“Cuddle up a little Closer, Lovey Mine” (yes, it’s “lovey” not “lovely”) was written and recorded in 1908. You can listen to it here. Lyrics here.

They then play the Most Awkward Game Ever, one that would have had me sweating bullets if I’d had to play it. Florence has to find her man by only holding the hands of the other men.

As Fiona says, it’s a bit...risqué, but Florence rejects Jesse quickly and finds out the second man is Bill by squeezing his hands too hard.

Bill explains that his arthritis is flaring up and of course Sara and I jumped on that almost at the same moment:

We like Bill. :P

And then Florence correctly guesses that the next man is Ned. It’s very wholesome and sweet.

But then it’s Elizabeth’s turn because I guess she’s not been traumatized enough this episode. I covered that in the triangle part of the plot, though.

The New & Improved Henry Gowen

We start off with a BANG here with Henry and Christopher. Christopher misses Rachel because he’s a twitterpated little FOOL and he tells Henry all about it...while Henry sees Bill tearing apart the stolen car in the distance.

He asks Christopher how he got to Hope Valley from Hamilton and Christopher just straight up comes clean about it: he drove a stolen car that his buddy stole.

Henry scolds him a bit, tells him he can’t borrow a stolen car, and explains that he doesn’t want Christopher to end up like him. Christopher seems kind of surprised by this and says, “You turned out good.”

To which Henry replies, “The jury’s still out on that.”

Christopher says he’s done with that kind of thing, and Henry tells him he believes him.

Honestly, Henry’s “I believe you” got to me. It sounded SO genuine. And also, can I say YET AGAIN that this kid was an impeccable choice to play Henry’s son? WOW. I can’t get over how much alike they are even in mannerisms and looks.

But THEN when Henry tries to say Rachel has something to do with Christopher being done with that old lifestyle, Christopher tells him “And you” AND I ALMOST LOST IT. SOOOOO GOOD. Henry goes on to explain that “long after” he divorced Christopher’s mom, he met Abigail, who saw the potential for goodness in him. And that he can’t help Christopher be a better man because he’s still figuring that out for himself, but if he thinks Rachel can help him, he should do what he can to not lose her.

Later, Henry invites Christopher to Ned’s party and Christopher declines but asks what happened to the woman Henry mentioned earlier—Abigail, of course. Henry says she left town to help her mother.

Is this a...hint of things to come? I’m...not sure.

Henry sits down for two seconds before Lucas asks to speak with him outside. Once there, Lucas admits that he contacted Christopher. This is one of the most contrived plotlines we’ve had in a bit, if only because I just can’t figure out how Lucas would have known who Christopher was, let alone whether or not he would be useful? He doesn’t even have the same last name... I mean, what, did Henry write in sparkly gel pens or something?

But for some reason he contacted Christopher to come work for Henry to keep an eye on him. He’s not proud of having done it, which makes sense. I guess I wouldn’t be either.

Henry’s upset about it. Lucas tells Henry that he took advantage of him and that he had to make sure Henry could be trusted.

Christopher doesn’t know that Lucas told him, though, and Henry asks that Lucas keep it that way.

It makes Christopher’s behavior with Lucas make more sense (when he kept trying to push him around earlier this season), but the timing is just...awful? Maybe talking to Elizabeth about Nathan’s secret made him feel guilty about his own? I’d buy into it more if I felt like there was a really compelling reason for Lucas to feel that Christopher would do any good...but it’s just too contrived for me.

Christopher randomly decides to go to Bellingham to see Rachel. Henry tells him not to make trouble if her parents ask him to leave. Henry makes to leave, and Christopher stops him.

I CANNOT SING THE PRAISES OF THIS SCENE ENOUGH. Christopher tries to tell Henry about the thing with Lucas and Henry’s like...you’re different now, you’re starting over it doesn’t matter anymore!!!! Everyone deserves a second chance!

AND THEY HUG AND CHRISTOPHER TELLS HENRY HE LOVES HIM.

They almost got me to cry. ALMOST. I refuse to cry at this show because I refuse to give Brian Bird the satisfaction, but boy oh boy was this close.

Henry responds with a “me too” and makes Christopher promise to write. Then the stage leaves and that is that.

The rest of the storyline for Henry is under the car investigation. They’re related but...only intertwine at the very end so I separated them. ;)

Miscellaneous (Car Investigation, Pastor Position/Jesse and Clara, Carson and Faith, Mike and Fiona)

Car investigation: Nathan starts this episode off on the wrong foot. I think that was...a mistake. THAT SAID...I’m relieved Bill isn’t being written as a complaining whiny pile of trash for once, so I just want to say that...they had to realize after last episode the fan opinion of Nathan would be...not great, so mayyybe they shouldn’t have started this episode off with him literally complaining about doing his job...while he’s in uniform no less. Also he has NO PASSION at all for his job, or for investigating, which I hope means he’ll end up quitting the Mounties. (It could be a hint of things to come...I hope.)

I mean, does he think Bill got his position for...no reason? Also, thank God Nathan turned down the promotion to Inspector if that was how he was gonna treat actually doing the work?? I’m pretty sure this is their idea of “humor” but boy did it fall flat after the love triangle mess that’s been going on.

The owner talks to Nathan on the phone later and is coming from Hamilton to get his car. Nathan seems to be telling Bill this to discourage him from wasting his time investigating, but Bill doesn’t want to stop lol.

Ned’s comment from the party about his hairline being him “driving with the top down” gives Bill an Idea in the middle of the bachelor party and leaves. Ned looks shook that he produced An Idea.

And follows. Ned is absolutely adorable as he assists Bill. They should interact more?? Long story short, Bill figures out that the top was probably up when it was being transported to Hope Valley (as you wouldn’t want people getting a good look at your face if they’re looking for a stolen car), and finds a footprint in the removable top.

The next day, Bill approaches Henry up at the oil derricks and comments on the fact that Lucas told him that Christopher checked out of his room at the saloon. Henry is up front and honest about where Christopher went, and says he went to Bellingham to see Rachel Thom.

He says, “You know how it is. You love someone, you’d do anything for them.”

The one interesting thing about this comment is that...no, Bill does NOT know. He’s never admitted to being in love in his life. He married Nora, but that was out of obligation (something he makes clear several times). Like, he obviously cared about Nora, but he wasn’t in love with her.

Obviously he’s loved someone enough to do anything for them (his son), but considering he’s dead, and possibly died in a really traumatizing way considering how it’s portrayed, that seems a bit...insensitive. :P

Bill counters it with, “Almost anything, maybe.”

He then goes on to tell Henry he found a footprint in the stolen car.

And he just. Kind of. Gives Henry. A look. Because he knows exactly who stole the car, he just has to prove it.

Henry stops Bill and says: “A while back I remarked about how you had never solved the mine disaster. Perhaps if you and I get together, I might be able to help.”

Bill doesn’t say a THING...he just leaves. But he looks kind of...put off by the whole thing.

Like he knows what Henry is doing.

Do you know what Henry is doing?

Anything.

For someone he loves.

(Pst. That someone is Christopher.)

As soon as Bill is gone, he picks up a pair of shoes and throws them into the fire.

I think it’s pretty clear that Henry is using this mine disaster thing to protect Christopher, and he’s doing it for this reason WAY MORE than he’s doing it to come clean and be a better man. That’s just my theory, though. I think if Bill hadn’t found anything out about the car, then Henry wouldn’t have brought it up.

But I guess he knows something. The question is...what? And also, when did he mention Bill never having solved the mine disaster? I’m really struggling to remember Henry ever saying that to him, at least not recently. Does anyone recall offhand?

Anyway, I’m wondering if they’ll tie up that whole thing about Noah and Peter that was never addressed on the show to the fullest. You know, the whole thing with them going into the mine knowing it wasn’t safe and not warning anyone. I think a lot of people who watch this show have never been in poverty or lived paycheck to paycheck, but sometimes a person just has to put their head down and keep working even when it’s not safe, because they have to keep living. Or because they had more time to put a stop to things before anything bad happened.

I think blaming Noah and Peter as much as Henry is pretty stupid, but they still shoulder some blame. They were working to fix that problem. Henry wasn’t. He did what he was told and shut up. But maybe there’s a bit more to that story. Could be interesting.

Could also be the worst reveal ever, so...who knows? I’m curious to find out.

BUT ALSO what do they mean Bill didn’t solve that case? The widows sued and won. Sure, he got beat up in S1 carrying evidence out of the mine, but it’s not as if there wasn’t a lot more of it inside the mine, too. Everyone knows the fault of the collapse was due to working conditions being unsafe. What’s left to solve? Is Henry going to give Bill the names of the people who told Henry to keep his mouth shut?

Or...are they talking NOT ABOUT THE HOPE VALLEY MINE DISASTER, but the original one that sent Henry to Coal Valley (and Nora into a marriage with Bill)? Because that one was not solved. The company just made Henry a scapegoat in that case.

THE WAIT TO FIND OUT MORE IS GOING TO BE TORTURE.

Pastor Position/Jesse and Clara + Cafe: I enjoyed Minnie in this episode and seeing her step in and help Clara and become part of the town was great. Jesse giving more credit to Joseph than Lee was pretty funny, and a nice set-up for Lee realizing that Joseph is a pastor. Lee is apparently head of the search committee to find a new pastor...which...sure...okay. Also apparently the newspaper died?? Uh.

I’m kind of hoping Rosemary’s new passion will be the newspaper since she’s supposedly going to dig her nose into things next episode and she used to write a column for the old paper (so she has some experience). Thoughts on that?

Anyway, Joseph agrees to pastor the church instantly the second Lee asks...so it feels weird that his original goal/plans/whatever just...don’t matter anymore? Okay.

They buy a bell.................WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY BIGGEST PETTY COMPLAINT OF THE EPISODE. BRO THAT BELL STRAIGHT UP LOOKS 3D PRINTED FJLKDSAHFLDSAHFLDSAHFKLDSA

Anyway I’m teasing. The Liberty Bell weighs a little over one ton, and two horses could easily pull that.

No complaints. My husband complained last week that there wasn’t a bell and now there is. It’s like he knew.

Joseph talks about what a “calling” feels like (I think this will come back again with Rosemary which has me VERY HAPPY): a tug on his heart.

Joseph also tells Lee that the men in his yard earlier were surveyors and that he won’t move, at least not far, because he has a congregation to lead, now. Makes me wonder if he’ll actually sell!

Anyway, Jesse and Mike are cute pals and decide to have a snack in the cafe while the gals are socializing with Rosemary (who has just returned from the library).

Rosemary’s books are on land acquisitions, surveying, and territorial law.

Minnie and Rosemary decide to talk about this while Clara leaves. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe just ‘cause it was boring lol.

She gets back as Mike and Jesse are talking about, uh, her, actually, and Mike asks if all is quiet on the homefront.

Yes, it is. Unlike the trenches of WWI.

But seriously I thought it could be a joke reference to “All Quiet on the Western Front”...a WWI novel. Since...you know...WWI is going on and hasn’t been acknowledged at all even though it’s almost over now.

Joke’s on me, though...that’s too advanced for Hallmark.

Anyway it’s only quiet for like two seconds, because Clara busts in, thinks they’re eating the food she’s been busting her ass over for the party, and yells at Jesse. It makes everything awkward. Jesse simpers about like a sad little clown instead of trying to be understanding. Yawn. Awful. Bye.

I don’t know what would fix that scene, but I think part of the problem is...I’m just not invested in Clara and Jesse anymore. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect them to need more time to get over the problems in their relationship but I don’t care about them enough to care about the journey...if that makes sense. I’d rather watch Bill dust for prints on the car some more.

They do have a chat, and work things out, so that’s good I guess.

Carson and Faith: Carson has officially stolen the dock from Abigail and Frank, and so my hatred for them doubled instantly.

Me, a territorial loon: THAT SPOT IS NOT YOURS!!!!! FIND YOUR OWN!!!

Anyway Carson makes things awkward and then busts out that he accepted the fellowship without talking to Faith.

She’s kind of hurt by this?? UNDERSTANDABLY?? But then he asks if it would have made a difference. I mean, common courtesy would be at least sitting down like this and telling her, “I’ve decided to accept it.” But no. He just. Accepted it without telling her he was going to. Bro...

They aren’t on the same page for even two seconds. He tells her he was committed to the relationship and put all his plans aside so that she could be happy.

Honestly, as much hate as Nathan’s getting right now, if people gave a damn about Faith I think Carson would be getting his fair share of hate, too. What a jerk???

He goes on to say it wasn’t a waste of his time (when she asks), but never bothers to tell her more or to prove he didn’t feel that way (BECAUSE HE SURE ACTS LIKE IT WAS A WASTE OF HIS TIME). He just says he hopes she changes her mind and comes with him to Baltimore.

At the party Carson and Faith go outside to talk where Carson admits that he should have told her he was accepting the fellowship before he wrote. She tells him that the year she was gone was almost too much time apart for her, and Carson promises to write her and tells her she can visit him, too, but she brings the conversation back to reality. They’ll both be super busy.

He suggests they get married, and then immediately says he’s not asking (it’s not how he’d propose), but that they could look forward to getting married. (Good thing they laughed ‘cause I sure wasn’t. It was super awkward...) He suggests seeing how they feel in about a year. (Oh...perfect timing for...next season...hm.)

Faith tells him she loves him and wants what’s best for both of them, even if that thing isn’t them being together. They agree to just enjoy the night and worry about the rest later.

Anyway, I feel like these two just have NO chemistry (they’re worse than Bill and Molly in my books). I really appreciate the attempt to give them meaningful material, and I like that Carson has a passion again, but boy oh boy are these two hard to watch. The plotline is really good, but the characters just...aren’t great. I figured if anything they’d give a plot like this to AJ and Bill to tie that up (some kind of conflicting reason she can’t stay in Hope Valley to be written off the show for good) so I was surprised to see it going to Carson and Faith instead, but like...in a good way because it’s actually compelling for their situation! I've been in a similar situation and it feels REALLY BAD to like someone a lot but not be ready or willing to commit to an extreme for whatever reason. Faith doesn’t want to go to Baltimore because she loves Hope Valley and she undoubtedly doesn’t want to see it go without a doctor at all. Carson likes Hope Valley but his passion is in surgery and he can make a huge difference in a big hospital. He could still make a difference in Hope Valley, too (undoubted he’s the only surgeon for many miles around these smaller towns) but he also likes hospitals and their equipment and maybe misses what he had a long time ago.

So it’s a great plot. It’s compelling. It’s even a bit tragic when you think about it!

But my God do these characters just...not come off as convincing. :(

Mike and Fiona: The scene with Ned was SUPER cute. Genuinely funny. Mike asking Fiona out. Everyone teasing Mike about how much he likes her. It’s very cute and wholesome. So far I enjoy it a lot. There’s not a lot to talk about here but I like that it’s...simple.

I MEAN...she’s so cute.

END THOUGHTS:

I want the next three episodes right now immediately, but I’m also going to be pretty sad when this season ends...I think.

The biggest speculation from this episode, by the way, is that they’re opening things up to write Abigail back onto the show. How do we feel about that?

Any other thoughts? Favorite scenes? Share!

#when calls the heart #long post #analysis and meta discussion #character studies and information

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noddytheornithopod · 3 years

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Okay, now that I’ve gotten all the Bad Batch controversies out of the way... I can finally talk about the actual damn episode properly.

Like I said on my whitewashing post, overall I liked it, but I am kinda hesitant for reasons I explained there. I now want to focus on the actual story itself on its terms, and see how I feel about that. Apologies if I jump all over the place.

Probably my biggest issue narrative wise was that I felt some of the stuff around Crosshair was a bit contrived. Like, I was fine with him going full GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS and all that, my issue is that I feel like the others took a while to realise he was following Order 66. Like, Tech even says he can’t be certain their mutations entirely screwed up their programming, with the camera even cutting to Crosshair. And like, before that Crosshair is berating Hunter for letting Caleb escape. When Tech said what he did, I feel like Hunter should’ve probably said something like “that must be why Crosshair tried to kill the Jedi”. Granted, it probably would’ve then led to questions like why Crosshair’s genetics let his chip work and not the others (something that isn’t answered, but it’s not something I felt that needed to, different genetics affect things in different ways we can’t always predict), but like, when they’re on Onderon and Crosshair’s like “yeah let’s shoot literal child refugees”, I feel like they shouldn’t have just conflicted with him, they should’ve outright wondered if he was falling for his programming. It doesn’t break the episode for me and I guess they probably just assumed Crosshair was being his usual dickish self, but I guess that also is a reminder that this is the second time we’ve seen him, so we don’t know if he’d normally be up for killing innocents if a mission requires it (since TBB are still given missions, their thing is they just do them the wrong way). It’s just like, you’d think at least Tech would make some comment about it. As Saw said, he’s supposed to be the smart one lol.

On the topic of inhibitor chips, I was surprised that Crosshair’s was only partly working. I guess it’s because he still had a level of personality to him? The more you know, I guess.

I do think the Bad Batch work better here as many have said, I guess probably because they’re the focus of the story so they have more room to show who they are and nuances to that. My favourite is probably Tech, I tend to gravitate to the nerd characters in things. Shame he has to look so fucking white for being a clone of a brown man though. :/ Kinda like Wrecker too, even with the issues HE has too. Great, even in my main comments my issues with them are popping up. :v

On that note... I do appreciate the idea behind the Bad Batch, being clones who turned out different and it’s about accepting and embracing your differences. It’s just in execution, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Like, it could be a commentary on things like ableism, but thing is, these characters are basically superpowered (if people weren’t fixated on bashing women they don’t like and were equal in their vitriol, you could EASILY call the Bad Batch a bunch of Gary Stus). It’s one of those things where a sci-fi/fantasy allegory is well intentioned but because of things that don’t apply to our reality, the allegory kinda falls apart. Like yes, “be nice to people different to you” is one thing, but it does lowkey feel a bit like “they’re judged because they’re better than everyone else, those stinkin regs are just jealous”. Well no jealousy is shown in the episode, in fact a normal clone calls them defects... which is weird because even if yes TECHNICALLY they are, they’re basically presented as turning out different, but those differences are things that are beneficial to them, and not impairments. I guess I feel like the message would be stronger if they actually had major weaknesses, aka why they’re “defective”, but their strengths are something they excel at so much they’re allowed to serve (which I GUESS was the idea, but we don’t know what made them defective originally and what got their mutations enhanced). And yes, you can infer things like Wrecker being “dumb” (which has its own issues, and even then he’s still competent enough on a battlefield, honestly he might even be more just impatient and impulsive and thus can’t sit still to learn more complex things), but yeah. It’s kind of a mixed message here, I appreciate what they’re going for, but like many fictional allegories, it kinda falls apart and it’s also presented in a very individualistic way.

Okay let me say something positive: AZI-3 IS BACK! I assume he got memory wiped so he wouldn’t have any memory of Fives, but I really liked him in the Order 66 arc of The Clone Wars so I was happy to see him again. Well, until he was hit with that stun blast. I hope he’s okay and able to be repaired!

Echo’s attack with his probe arm thing is pretty cool. It was also cool seeing how he was integrating into the Bad Batch. I also theorised he was most likely to be immune to the inhibitor chip out of the group, because while I felt the Kaminoans wouldn’t overlook inhibitor chips in even mutated clones (they do explain that they kept them around because they were always successful at what they do despite their unorthodox tactics), I had a feeling that the Techno Union putting all those cybernetics in his head maybe screwed with or even removed the chips. Get the poor guy some skin colour though.

I have also seen some people bring up the potential issue of ableism with Echo given he’s an amputee with prosthetics, but I don’t have much to comment on in that regard. But yeah, using disabled bodies for shock value and it being seen as a measure of humanity like in The Bad Batch arc of TCW is a trope I could really do without.

I’m liking Omega so far. She’s definitely got a different vibe to other kid characters we’ve gotten in these shows, probably because she was raised on Kamino. Also appreciate that her voice actor is New Zealander too (she’s not Maori which would’ve been the ideal, but was born to Indonesian Chinese parents). Her curiosity makes a lot of sense, she’s not just mischievous because kid. Was nice to see Hunter open up to her too.

I’m intrigued to see where they take Crosshair. IDK why his genetics allowed his chip to still work, but it’s nice to see at least one of the Bad Batch follow Order 66. I guess they decided against it for more (as much as I’d liked to have seen it) because Order 66 doesn’t just make clones decide to kill Jedi, it basically removes any level of humanity and personality they may have developed and makes them basically stormtroopers. That, and well they want our heroes of the show to be the Bad Batch, and that can’t work if they’re now the goody two shoes batch.

On the topic of Crosshair, my favourite scene in the episode was actually when Omega talks to him. She tries to empathise with him, and whether she’s just naturally intuitive or is Force sensitive in some way, she can tell that Crosshair despite everything seems to be struggling, and it’s ultimately beyond his control that he’s like this now. And then he’s off to get his chip working at full capacity and is now a full on Imperial, RIP.

Also yeah, I’m on team “Omega is Force sensitive”. It’s possible she just has some heightened abilities because she’s an enhanced clone, but the way they framed her firing the blaster especially just screamed Force sensitivity to me.

On the topic of inhibitor chips, Crosshair proves that it’s possible to make them stronger, so it does potentially mean that if members of the Bad Batch are captured, their chips could be dialed up to make them loyal Imperials. I guess one could also wonder if they could be slow for the effects to come into play for some of them, so some maybe slowly turn later on? I doubt they will go that route because they probably want to keep all our heroes around, but it’s something, especially if they eventually conclude they have to remove their chips to be safe.

Seeing Saw in the first episode was surprising but also pretty cool, especially with how the model is transitioning from his Clone Wars appearance into Forrest Whittaker. Love how he sees right through Palpatine’s bullshit, especially when he makes that jab at Tech that seems to be a bit of a blow to his ego, lol. Some have wondered why he’s so chill here, but you have to remember this is early days Saw. He’s still cautious, but he’s not paranoid and overly violent. The way some of those refugees reacted to the clones does make it seem like there’s already Imperial forces occupying Onderon (well, they’re literally out in the forest at a camp). Mainly bring that up because I have to wonder how much time has passed, and how quickly Imperial forces showed up to Onderon.

Seeing Tarkin be a dick is always glorious. He just goes everywhere and KNOWS he’s in charge, lol. It was also interesting how even if he’s feeling like he’s ready to abandon clone forces, he sees potential with Clone Force 99 if they can follow Imperial doctrine.

The Kaminoans also seem distrustful of the Empire, not because they’re against it but because they want to keep their current deal. Maybe if Tarkin heard them out the Empire would have a better army, lol. Taun We from AOTC even cameoes. I do wonder what’s eventually going to happen though, given the clones are obviously abandoned in the end, I wonder how the Kaminoans are going to take it.

Also, Nala Se is back. Yeah, THAT Nala Se. Wonder what she’s doing with Omega as her medical assistant, lol. Oh yeah, she also stopped the doors and let the Bad Batch escape. I have no idea what she’s planning, but I feel like she’s being shady, given not only the Fives stuff but also because despite having a fondness for Omega she does seem like she’s very controlling of her (after all, she’s just property to her), hence why Omega wants to get out and be with the Bad Batch.

Okay, I think that’s everything I wanted to say? But yeah, have a lot of reservations, but still curious to see where this goes despite that.

#tbb spoilers #sw spoilers #the bad batch #star wars

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nellie-elizabeth · 4 years

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Supernatural: Despair (15x18)

I'm having an out of body experience, I cannot believe this. Last night was legitimately one of the weirdest nights of my life, and not just because of *gestures broadly* but also because of *gestures broadly* and myriad other small but still totally bizarre personal things coming at me from all angles... strap in, y'all, I've got some shit to say.

Cons:

We're gonna talk about it. Ohhhh, we're gonna talk about it. But let's start with some other shit before we get there.

So... are we ignoring "Dean was willing to let Jack sacrifice himself" or something? Like there was that moment with Sam and Dean where they talked about it, and Dean apologizes for pulling a gun on Sam, and Sam is like "oh it's okay Dean, no worries." But at the beginning of this episode, Dean seems to be just as worried for Jack, and as protective of him, as the others, with absolutely no acknowledgment of what happened in the last episode. This... should have mattered. There should have been some regrouping and some serious talks about this. Seriously.

The Thanos snap thing... guys, when Infinity War did it in 2018, it was kind of fun and shocking and cool, and we knew the deaths wouldn't be permanent but it was still wild to watch our heroes react to such an immense loss and then leave us all in limbo for a year. This... is not that. The sheer tone-deafness of having this episode contain a moment of domesticity for AU!Charlie and her cool egg-making girlfriend Stevie, only to have Stevie vanish... and then to end the episode with the biggest queer-bait/bury your gays moment imaginable... like...

Okay, sorry, no, saving the Destiel thing until I've sorted out the rest of this nonsense. The point is, seems pretty clear that the deaths in this episode (other than Cas') are temporary, and Supernatural already has the biggest power creep problem of any show I've ever seen... they really couldn't think of another way to up the stakes for the ending, other than doing the thing where everyone gets killed? Didn't... Crowley... already do this to them several seasons back? Am I hallucinating? There's nothing new under the sun with this show.

Why does this show introduce things and resolve them in a single episode? Like, big, huge things? We just figured out Death was trying to double-cross them, and now by the end she's dead? This show either limps along and does nothing, or speeds through plot stuff at lightning-speed. These last two episodes were big and dramatic and full of Plot but in a way where it all feels kind of unreal. Pacing issues like whoa.

And speaking of. Ahem. Okay. Let's... let's do this. I have some things about the Destiel scene that I'm going to put in the "pros" section below, and hopefully as you read on you'll understand why it's really hard for me to be black and white about it. If I had to, if I had to determine whether I am "happy" or "sad" or "grateful" or "angry" I'd say... sad and angry, 97%? Like? Let's dive in, here.

Setting aside the larger context, a couple of smaller notes:

Acting-wise, what the fuck was Jensen doing in this scene? Misha was acting his whole heart out and Jensen gave him nothing to play off of. I don't understand how Jensen accidentally played Dean so obviously in love with Cas all this time, and then in this moment, no-homo'd it so fucking hard. Even the stage directions in the script page that was floating around said that Dean didn't reciprocate. That's dumb, like, in a shipping sense it's disappointing, but also... Dean, what was your face doing while Cas gave his whole monologue about how amazing you are? What a great and loving man you are? Even if he hadn't ended the whole thing by saying "I love you" and then dying right in front of your eyes, surely you would have been feeling some kind of way about the whole situation?

Also, the scene was shot so awkwardly, there was too much space between them, and then Cas pushes Dean out of the way and he just sits there on the floor with Pikachu-face while The Empty opens up and takes Death and Cas away, making these weird shocked noises... Supernatural often has awkward pacing when dramatic things are happening in action scenes, where certain people have to stand still like it's not their turn on the initiative order in a D&D fight or something, and this was one of the more embarrassing and awkward examples of that.

Cas' deal with The Empty has not been brought up practically since it happened. Cas has been sidelined as a character a lot this season, the past couple seasons, really, but we had this hanging over our heads, right? When Cas says "I've figured it out, true happiness isn't in having, it's just in saying it", the moment doesn't really work on a character level, because we didn't get to see Cas do any of that figuring out. We didn't know he was curious about his true happiness, we didn't know it was an internal struggle/debate for him, wondering what it could be. A lot of Destiel people wanted it to be Dean confessing his love to Cas, and that being the true happiness... but of course that would never happen in a million years. Others thought it would be "yay we defeated the big evil, we can all be a happy family together," oh snap, I'm too happy, goodbye. Which would have been... weirdly anticlimactic, but at least would have made some level of narrative sense. This idea that telling Dean how he feels would bring Cas peace is... well, it's okay, it's fine in isolation, but there's no buildup to it, no tension to his moment of "realization."

And now to fry some bigger fish...

Let's forget about the fact that we never thought this would happen to begin with. Is it actually... worse that it did? Seriously, queer angel man confesses his love to stoic human man who stands there without making a single expression, and the act of confessing said love, knowing it's not reciprocated, knowing he won't get to be with Dean or even be near him ever again, is enough to make Castiel so truly happy that he's willing to die peacefully and forever, all in the act of saving Dean's life? Is that not... like... textbook homophobia? People toss around "bury your gays" a lot and I think what they're missing is that the trope doesn't automatically apply just because a queer character dies. It means a queer character dies because of their queerness, or they are revealed to be queer but can't get any measure of happiness and then they die immediately. This is textbook that. The act of confessing his GAY LOVE is what KILLED CAS. It's a one-to-one sequence of events. It's not a coincidence that Cas died right after saying this. Saying this is what made him die. That's... appalling. Truly, in a very real sense, it's appalling.

Another thing I haven't seen people talk about much is the manufactured nature of this sacrifice. We just found out Billie was going to turn on them at the end of the last episode. If Cas was going to die in a sacrifice-y way, did it have to happen now when Billie was basically just knocking on the door trying to get at Dean for a last-minute revenge thing, even though Billie was already at death's door? This was so contrived, like, can Cas not whoosh them away to somewhere else? Keep them running until Billie succumbs? I get that it wouldn't have been easy, and maybe Billie could have caught up to them anyway, but my point is, they manufactured this moment to be "the only way" that Dean could survive, making Cas' sacrifice so noble and necessary or whatever... but I was sitting there thinking there's got to be another way. If they'd wanted to write in another way, there could have been. The inevitability felt so very contrived. And, as mentioned, the impact of dying on this show has lost all meaning, so even Billie trying to kill Dean, squeezing his heart in his chest, did absolutely nothing for me. I knew he'd be fine, because there are two more episodes left. And if Cas hadn't been there to do what he did, Dean would still have been fine because he's Dean. Am I making any sense?

We have two more episodes left. I am... fairly confident Misha won't be in those episodes. All context, both within the show and without, points to that. I truly think that after all this time, he gets the only ending in the whole show that's unambiguously unsalvageable and tragic. We have a world where the afterlife exists and people can hang out there, but The Empty is a different beast, and this means Cas is... gone. Permanently. Like, his consciousness no longer exists, he's caput. They could bring him back from The Empty, in fact, they've already done it once... but if they decide not to, that's just... where we leave things, and that's brutal and unnecessarily grim. The other characters, even if we get an end-of-show TPK (which would be STUPID, more on that later), could at least have canon or implied-canon reunions in the afterlife. If we don't see Eileen again, we can get the implied ending of her coming back to life, or Sam dying and joining her in Heaven. Same with Charlie, with Charlie's new girlfriend, with Bobby, with Donna, with every other character that's died along the way, including Mary Winchester and OG Charlie, OG Bobby, whatever you want. The fact that Cas gets this, after everything, is truly the part I'm the most sad about, setting aside love confessions entirely.

So as I said, two more episodes. I'm worried that Cas dying is gonna get swallowed up with everyone dying and not get its due, thus making the confession completely isolated. Like, here you go, gays, have this one scene, which, in isolation is quite heartfelt from Cas' perspective, but can be carefully boxed up and not touched for the last two hours of the show. If they don't want to touch on how this would affect Dean specifically, they don't have to. He can be generally angsty and sad about Cas, but they could get away with never bringing it up again, and that is some grade-A level bullshit right there, my friends. At minimum, Dean needs to tell Sam about this. He probably won't, but he should, if the show has any sense of integrity left in its bones.

Ahem. Like I said, I have... lots of thoughts. More on Destiel later, but let's turn to the "Pros" section and talk about some other aspects of this incredibly crowded episode.

Pros:

Despite my issues with everything that didn't get resolved re: Dean letting Jack die, I did kind of like the "to somehow" scene, because it was a nice little breather for the brothers, it solidified them as being on the same side to the bitter end, that despite all the crazy shit they've been through, that they've put each other through, they'll have this as a bedrock at the end of the day. I'm not a brothers-only sort of fan, at all, in fact, I think a brothers-only ending betrays most of what's beautiful about this show in its good moments. But they are the stars, they are the protagonists, they should be the center of their own story, and I like it when we get check-ins like this, that shows how unshakable they are underneath all the other crap.

Charlie and Stevie... okay, cute that their names are like that, cute that Charlie said: "I liked the way she handled herself" and that's how they got together... eggs are cute, whatever... and if these deaths are impermanent, which... come on... they have to be, I do like that Charlie gets to have a girlfriend and be happy as a hunter and as someone's partner.

I liked the tense car ride with Sam texting Eileen, with Dean, Jack, and Cas all silent in the car with him... that was a nice moment of solidarity, all of them entirely on the same page about being there for Sam and helping Eileen however they could... even knowing the futility. What were they going to do when they got there? That was a great tension-building moment, in isolation, even though the deaths are likely temporary.

Cas and Jack's talk was good, I'll admit I've definitely been won over by Cas and Sam as Jack's dads... Dean too, once upon a time, but dude needs to do some groveling before he gets to be Dad again, seriously. It's nice that in the midst of all the chaos, there was a check-in moment. Jack is the embodiment of a lot of our end-game themes, here. He had a noble destiny to sacrifice himself, and then it fizzled out and didn't work, and now he's just left in the aftermath, not sure what to do with himself. It was important that Cas tell him that Jack is worthy of love and family, even if he's not "useful" in the way he thought he could be. Definitely nice to have that nailed in.

If we're following the Infinity War/Endgame line, the last two episodes will be majority Sam, Dean, and Jack, but at the last moment there will be a way to reverse it, and everyone else will come back in a moment of triumph. But probably not so much Castiel, which... well... see above complaints. The point is, seeing Charlie, Bobby, Donna, Eileen, etc. all burst forth for one final moment of glory could be really cool, if they manage to stick the landing with it. It'll be an incredibly manufactured sense of triumph and nostalgia, but it will probably work on me because it's been... guys, I don't know if you know this, but it's been kind of an emotional year. :)

I will say, working under the assumption that the dead characters will come back, I'm actually oddly... not mad about Donna dying. It was actually a legitimately shocking twist. A rule was set up: if a person had died before and been resurrected, or if a person was from another universe, they could be Thanos snapped by Billie. Makes sense. Sam and Dean are in danger because of all their deaths, Jack and Cas aren't safe for the same reason. Charlie, Bobby, Eileen... sure. But Donna should have been safe, given the parameters we started with.

And then Dean and Cas are confronting Billie, she says she's not killing anyone, we realize it must be Chuck... and then Donna, who isn't from another world, who has never died... GONE. I gasped.

And the hits kept coming... Billie is dying because Dean killed her with that small wound, and didn't even know it. That's another excellent twist. The past two episodes, back to back, have kept me on my toes about who to ultimately be afraid of. Chuck? Billie? The Empty? It's so much better than this slow march to Chuck vs. Sam and Dean that we've been getting all season, even if we do loop around to Chuck again as the final Big Bad.

The Empty is actually quite a complex, interesting idea for a villain, this entity that doesn't get involved in petty squabbles, doesn't have personal vendettas, but actually just wants to sleep and be left alone. Having Meg be the Empty's face here at the end is also a nice touch. I wish we could have had more of this, truthfully, and I'm curious how The Empty will play a role in how things shake out, if at all.

So... I want to go back to something I've been saying these past couple episodes, about how if this show has a grimdark ending, it will be a betrayal of everything they've set up. It will be so stupid that my anger will manifest in yet another round of hysterical giggles. What I suspect is that we'll get something peaceful, something where trauma will linger but people will get to start anew. Maybe Jack creates a new world outside of Chuck's power. Maybe Sam and Dean take over as God and the Darkness, as some people suggested, and Jack is the new Death. Maybe maybe maybe. Bottom line, I could be satisfied with the majority of this ending, and I can even (obliquely, reluctantly) understand that they wanted one final perma-death to really make the stakes feel higher. If they aren't killing off the Winchesters, that leaves Castiel. So what I'm saying in this paragraph is basically that I'm not guaranteed to despise the ending of this show yet. They could still get it right.

God, that sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it?

Before I end this, I want to talk about, as promised, the few Destiel-related points that I'd classify as "pros", albeit with a big asterisk.

First off, Misha clearly found the moment very cathartic, and he pulled out all the stops, and, in isolation, the confession was hella romantic and quite poignant. Without context, just reading these lines? "The one thing I want, it's something I know I can't have" and "because you cared, I cared. I cared about you, I cared about Sam, I cared about Jack, I cared about the whole world because of you..." like, that's some premium content, I won't lie. I also kind of enjoy the idea that Cas finds happiness in saying the words out loud, in being true to who he is. I hate a lot about what happened to Cas here, but if Cas' arc, in its totality, is about embracing humanity, and Dean is the anchor to that, this really does come full circle. He pulled Dean out of Hell, he saved him, he loved him, he'll die for him, and in accepting that love, that human love, he is finally at peace with who he is. Now, mind my comments above, I'm still not happy, but I can see how in one sense, this is narratively poignant. And if others are satisfied with it, I'm happy for them.

(Added bonus, while Jensen's acting was WACK for the majority of that scene, I did like the ending shot, the silence, him not answering Sam's call, crying silently into his hands. That was very nicely shot and acted, I thought.)

Secondly, and this isn't actually praise for the show, it's more a... meta experience? I have to say, the idea that Destiel became sort of canon, but in the most homophobic way possible, in the year 2020, while we're all still waiting for election results to come in is... one of the wildest, most hilarious things to ever have happened to me. I mean it, last night sitting alone in my house I kept cackling loudly to myself, in complete and utter disbelief. I saw Tumblr explode in a way that hasn't happened in years. I was transported back in time nearly a full decade, to the person I was when I started writing these reviews, or even before that, when I was new to Supernatural, new to the whole concept of being truly involved in a fandom.

Here's the thing... I never. Ever. EVER. Thought we would get any sort of textual confirmation. I thought at most, if they went for a happy ending for everyone, we'd get Dean and Cas as hunting partners, and we could all fill in the post-canon gaps. I once told my sister that I'd be happy with a one-sided love confession from Cas to Dean, because that part was practically canon before last night, and in a way, I am happy. I'm happy that this crazy thing actually happened, and if nothing else, all of those clowns can put away their makeup. I was never with them. I never believed, and there's this sliver of me that's happy to have been wrong. It's completely bogus how it happened, but the fact that we live in a reality where it happened is still kind of tripping me out in a major way. So I'm happy, I'm... flabbergasted, but I'm experiencing a very unique, unprecedented soup of emotions this morning and I never would have felt like this if Cas had died with a no homo parting.

And that's the thing, they let it be unambiguously about Dean, not just in that one moment, but all along, and that's really satisfying in a meta narrative sense that when everyone was reading it as "Castiel is in love with Dean," they were... correct. It doesn't really matter when they decided this, in last night's episode they made it crystal-clear that it wasn't a whim, wasn't a recent development, in-universe. This has been Cas' truth from very, very early on, his entire experience since meeting Dean has been shaped by him, he's loved him all this time. That... I don't know, it's absolutely bonkers that this is all we're going to get, but it does mean something, if you want to let it.

Welcome back to 2012, Tumblr. Last night was a wild ride, I won't deny.

I'm giving the episode a bad score, but I just want to say the Destiel scene gets a simultaneous infinity-out-of-ten and also zero-out-of-ten, imploding the multiverse instantly. That's where I'm at, folks. Insert gif of Chidi dropping Peeps into a big pot of chili. I'm gonna go take a nap.

6/10

#review #supernatural #supernatural review #spn #spn 15x18 #destiel #i'm experiencing actual shock #i keep laughing #but like #you know how sometimes people laugh or smile inappropriately at funerals?#it feels like that

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duhragonball · 4 years

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Out of This World

I forgot the third thing I wanted to bring up in the Potpourri post, but it finally came back to me, so I want to talk about it here: the forgettable late 80′s sitcom “Out of This World”.

There were a lot of dumbass sitcoms in the 80′s. It still seems surreal to me that society seems to have moved past this, but in the 1980s there seemed to be absolutely no reason not to do a comedy about a family or group of co-workers dealing with some high-concept absurdity. “ALF” is the one everyone remembers, which I guess is a testament to the ALF character, but there were plenty of other, goofier ideas floating around out there. For example, “Small Wonder” was about a family where the dad built an android child and they just sort of rolled with it, I guess. I think part of the trouble was that the sitcom formula had already gotten stale by the mid-80′s, to the point where your pitch almost had to have a gimmick to get a second look.

And, you know, Mr. Ed was from the early 60′s, so it’s not like high concept was anything new, but I’m pretty sure there weren’t fifty other “talking animal” sitcoms running through the same decade. In the 80′s, it was like the TV industry considered “My Favorite Martian” a genre in and of itself, and the trick was to find some new twist on it.

For “Out of This World”, the hook was that the dad, Troy, is an alien, but he’s never actually around because he got drafted to fight some war in outer space. The show is actually about his half-human daughter, Evie, who develops some of her father’s super powers once she turns 13. I only remember seeing a handful of episodes, but mostly it was about the girl getting into wacky sitcom hijinks, usually causing a problem with her powers and then using her powers to fix it. In every episode she’d talk to her dad on the space radio and everyone would learn an important lesson about, I don’t know, let’s say friendship. .

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I’m watching the pilot as I write this, because I want to make sure I get this right, and man is it awful. Evie’s uncle is in this, and he knows the secret, but his main purpose on this show is to be the butt of every fat joke the writers had on file. Evie’s mom is anxious about Evie developing powers, and the uncle is worried that she’ll accidentally transform herself into a lizard. Instead, she accidentally stops time for everyone else, which forces mom to tell the truth. This is downright painful to watch, because Evie’s the only kid in 1987 who doesn’t seem to know or care about space aliens, because that’s the only way to drag out the reveal. Once it finally sinks in, she gets upset and shouts “Then that means I’m... half-creature!”

Oh my gosh, they actually make an ALF reference in this show! Evie’s mom has to convince Evie that dad looked like a regular-ass person, or else they wouldn’t have married and conceived her. “Look, kiddo, do you really think I’d bump uglies with just any alien? Your dad was a snack.” This is really awkward and dumb. I gotta give credit to the other actors in this, because they spend most of this episode frozen in place while they work out this timestop thing.

The problem in the pilot is that Evie can stop time and unfreeze people by touching them, but she can’t touch all of her party guests one by one without exposing her secret, so they don’t know what to do. Her Uncle Beano (ugh) suggests using the Vulcan hand gesture, which... I’ll get to that in a second. Her mom finally remembers that dad left a special present for Evie for her 13th birthday, and it contains this glowy crystal that functions as the space radio I mentioned earlier. Troy is voice-acted by Burt Renyolds, which is extremely goofy once you know that, and he doesn’t actually tell them what to do. Then Evie just gets a sudden urge to do the exact thing that fixes it, and I guess the moral is that all of this power stuff will come naturally?

The real appeal to all of this, at least for me, is this idea that Evie can finally connect to a father she’s never known, and bond with him over something they have in common. Anything that makes her seem strange or alone can be written up to her being half-Anterean, and her dad can instantly relate. It seems kind of cruel that they made her wait 13 years to use the space radio, but there’s some sort of genetic link thing that makes it work, and I get the impression that the technology requires her to reach that age before it’ll work properly. The whole thing feels really contrived, but there’s this really touching concept at its core, if you’re willing to wade through sitcom cliches and insipid one-liners to find it.

What always bugged me about this show, though, was that I only liked it for the alien lore and the drama that went with it. I wanted to know more about Troy and the war he was fighting, and this Antarean culture that he only ever hinted at. I liked the idea of the Evie character, caught between two worlds and not entirely comfortable in either. But the show was never serious about exploring any of that, and the alien stuff was always window dressing for weak comedy “laffs”. Or it was used as a metaphor for puberty, which always irritates me when shows do that. I also hate the micro-aggressions that keep coming up in this show. Some character will make a pop culture reference to aliens and that just bugs me. Look, Beano, Mr. Spock is a fictional character, what your niece is going through is really happening so at least try not to be a dick about it.

The episode that I remember the most is the one where Evie decides to break the “no-telling” rule and reveals her secret heritage to her friend, who immediately blabs it to everyone, and before you know it, the government tries to capture her for dissection. At one point, Troy even says that he might have to come back to Earth just to intervene, but then Evie’s mom betrays them... and it turns out it was all a dream. Another dumb one, but I liked the idea of more people knowing the truth about Evie. It made the premise feel more real.

The thing that never made any sense to me was that Evie seemed to have immense powers over time and matter, and the implication was that Troy and everyone else on his world had even greater powers, so what was going on up in space that could threaten the Antereans for over thirteen years? I doubt that ever came up much, since it would probably be a downer. Everyone treated Troy’s off-world duties as an inconvenience, but if his side lost the war than Earth would probably be doomed somehow, right? Really, the whole concept feels more like some sort of Greek mythology, with Troy as a benevolent god who impregnates a mortal. There’s a running theme that Evie has to use her powers wisely in order to earn new ones, like the whole show is some sort of trial she has to pass. Apparently the show ended on a cliffhanger, but I’d like to believe that the true ending would involve Evie saving the day and earning the mark of an Antarean adult: a Burt Renyolds mustache.

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whythehellnaut · 5 years

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Why’s Joker review

So, Joker was... unique, to say the least. It left me with a very unsettling feeling afterward, for reasons I wouldn't have expected, both good and bad. I will say that this is a creative, one-of-a-kind character study of this classic villain, though it tends to be somewhat pretentious in its portrayal, partly due to its ironic humorlessness, which works both for and against it. I expect this to be remembered for a long time, maybe get a few Oscar noms and bring about some controversy, because there's a lot to analyze in this, and I admittedly have more to say than usual.

The film starts out rather generic. Joaquin Phoenix depicts a mentally ill man, who is down on his luck, gets bullied, cares for his sick mother, struggles to stay employed, and engages in a bland romantic subplot with a neighbor. All story elements we've seen before in countless films. As time goes on, however, these story elements all are given a lot more depth, and I dare not provide spoilers, but even the romance winds up providing some surprising insight into this character which caused me to take back my negative opinion on including such a contrived plotline. When the story gets going in the second act, whatever boredom experienced in the first part dissipates as we see more and more of Phoenix's seemingly stellar acting and twists that systematically emerge, making the plot much less predictable than it is at its start.

Phoenix's character, Arthur's descent into madness as the Joker is shown to be gradual and coherent. At no point did I think the writing was dumb or that the story was taking easy shortcuts into "crazy" territory in the way that, say, Star Wars does when Anakin Skywalker becomes the evil Darth Vader after a sudden, spur of the moment action that doesn't reflect his overall personality (I know I'm harsh on Star Wars, but this was the first example that came to mind). Arthur's change to the Joker is well paced. He is introduced as noticeably mentally ill, but not particularly angry, and slightly sympathetic. As time passes, and as he loses his medication and therapy, we see him slowly, over several scenes, lose his sanity bit by bit until the climax where he completely changes his identity to become the character we all know.The acting is top-notch and the directing, while strong, often seems like it's being artsy for the sake of being artsy. Arthur will often slow dance in place for twenty to thirty seconds at a time, for no apparent reason other than there's nothing else to film. It's intended to show his encroaching madness, as if we've forgotten what the movie is about, but seems awkwardly shoehorned in to match the orchestral score, which I admittedly must compliment because of the way it adds to the mood. It sounds much like the original Batman soundtrack from earlier movies, but more intense to signify Arthur's mood, which fluctuates unpredictably, as it reasonably would for a brain damaged man like him. I found my heart racing when I heard the music fade in at apparently mundane moments, the increasing tempo making me wonder what he's going to do or what he's thinking. Ordinarily this would make a film predictable by signifying ahead of time that something major is about to go down, but Arthur as a character is so unpredictable that it negates that effect.

Still, its focus on its artistic value hurts it, because it takes itself much more seriously than it should. I mentioned before that the film is humorless. This creates a large part of the unsettling mood for the story, clearly pointing out the irony of a movie called "Joker," containing no jokes. But in its attempt to be thoughtful and provocative, it saps out the fun. The Joker as we know him in comics and other films, in addition to his morbid nature of seeing human death as a joke, also happens to be genuinely funny at least at some point in all of his portrayals. This version of him displays him as a man who wants to be a comedian despite having no comprehension of humor, resulting in him being ironically unfunny. I acknowledge that Todd Phillips has the right to create his own portrayal of the character, and I won't bash his use of artistic freedom, but even the most serious dramas include some form of humor to entertain the audience. This film didn't get me to crack a smile until the final shot before the credits. This is where showing off your artistic filmmaking through use of irony crosses the border into outright bad filmmaking. You can't use the excuse, "you just don't get how brilliant the irony is," because I do get it, it's just not entertaining.

I'm sure there's plenty more to talk about, but I want to end by discussing the final message of the movie, because it comes off as ambiguous, and that's where the most problematic aspect of the film emerges. At best, the moral of the story is to support funding of mental healthcare and to treat the mentally ill with respect. Questionably, the theme also could be that the rich are morally bankrupt and must be stopped, which could have had some merit if handled properly, but is rather overkill in its portrayal, especially during a certain climactic scene. At worst, the moral is that mass murderers like school shooters are just sympathetic lost souls deep down, who are just victims of the American system. This theory has been circulating since before the film's release, and I deem it a valid concern. Arthur is typically portrayed as a character you want to feel sorry for, and often does kind or helpful things before his eventual turn (one of his kills is arguably justifiable). It's worrying that he is portrayed less as an evil villain character than as a revolutionary by the end. This should not be how we should see the Joker. He is a mindless serial killer idolized only by similar minded people. He should be a source of entertainment, not sympathy. Hopefully this movie doesn't inspire the wrong people as a result.

Overall, I think this is a solid movie with a riveting story. Phoenix and Phillips may be up for Oscars, but something else odd I noticed is that Arthur's movie-spanning relationship with Robert DeNiro's late night talk show host character is strangely similar to the real Joaquin Phoenix's relationship with David Letterman, spurring from a quarrelsome interview in 2009. I'm hoping this wasn't intended to be a threatening message to Letterman, and that Phoenix was playing a fictional character, rather than playing himself as a former drug addict. That may also take away from the movie if it's true, but maybe I'm overthinking.

#movie review #Joker #Joker (2019)

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ibroughtanarsenal · 4 years

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FLASHBACK: FIRST MEETING

WHEN: November 2019

WHERE: Life Recovery Center

WHY: Jason goes to see Roy for the first time in three years.

WHO: @thatsjasonfkntodd @ibroughtanarsenal

Jason: Jason had kept himself busy since practically the second he’d broken things off with Roy, whether it was the day after, a week later, or two years. He’d given neither of them so much as a moment to second guess it. Roy hadn’t had a chance to stop him and, as always, Jason did not allow himself to stop it or take it back. So when it was done it was done.

He’d heard through the grapevine of things that Roy had gone to Gotham, which Jason had avoided like the plague for a whole host of reasons. Roy being there had just been one more to add to the list. By the time he had gone back, Dick and Roy were already in Star City, so then he’d avoided that for awhile, too. A gun to his head wouldn’t have made him admit the reason in so many words. He would’ve said he went where the work was, and that was even partially true. His family and Roy in the same place had been more than enough to keep him away, though.

A few months ticked by. Whether it was purposeful or not, Dick dropped the info that Roy was a counselor in a rehab center. Even Jason struggled to tell when his rambling was only rambling and when he meant for someone to get something from it. It was an incredibly irritating technique. Either way, he still sat on the knowledge for a few months. Bruce dropping the bottom out of everything by revealing his identity had been a distraction, but that had partially worn off by the holidays.

Whether it was coincidence or his mind trailing back to it subconsciously, Jason found himself standing in front of the little rehab center late one night. He’d gone half his usual route as Red Hood and come up empty handed enough to get bored. He couldn’t turned over some stones or spent the night fucking with NOVA, but...he walked in the front door of the center instead. He’d dumped his gear and his mask already, so it was just Jason, a pair of jeans, and a hoodie pulled up around his face. Roy: Roy wasn’t the type to dwell. He never thought he was, anyway, even though the past had a nasty habit of catching up to him when he least expected it. That was what repression was all about, right? All those god damn buzzwords were always in his brain. Sometimes he hated adopting the vernacular that sounded rehearsed coming from the wrong people. That was part of what attracted him to this job. He could relate to the kids and wayward adults who saw through the bullshit. Most of them were just over it.

The news that Jason was in Star City hit him hard. He didn’t let it show, not with Dick staring at him like he was waiting to fetch some smelling salts, and he made an offhand, sarcastic comment he couldn’t even remember now. They hadn’t talked about it since. He pushed the conversation from his mind and tried to forget about it completely. He didn’t know why Dick had to tell him in the first place, or what good it would do, and the memory came to him inconveniently throughout the day or - sometimes - in the middle of the night. He didn’t know exactly how he felt about it, but whatever the feeling was left him sitting on his fire escape nursing vodka hidden in a Dasani bottle just in case Dick or Bruce were lurking on a nearby rooftop.

At least he had his job. He liked it, for the most part, even though he was always the first one out the door when it was time to leave. Not that he had anywhere to be, but by the time his day was over he was sick of hearing people talk. He wanted silence. He wanted his quiet apartment with its peeling paint and the bolted door. There were demons there, but they were safe ones. He could handle them.

Today was different. He got wrapped up in a session - and afterward, he couldn’t get the kid out of his head. Once he started researching his background, he ended up in a veritable rabbit hole. There was too much information to wade through and he was fascinated by all of it. When he finally stopped to look at the clock, he was shocked to see that it was almost seven.

Sighing, he reluctantly turned off his computer and picked up his jacket, fishing his keys out of the pocket as he made his way to the front of the building. It was quiet; he had a vague recollection of Nancy (Norma?) telling him he would have to lock up.

He didn’t even see Jason at first, preoccupied with figuring out which key locked the door (because fuck, who chose to work late when they didn’t have to?) and by the time Roy looked up and saw him, he started so violently that the keys practically flew from his hand and slid across the floor. “Jesus Christ! …Jay? What the fuck? I thought I was about to get mugged.”

Jason: He hadn’t checked the hours of the place. There had been a light on and he hadn’t had to break in to get inside, so if it was out of the norm for Roy (or anyone) to be there, he didn’t notice. The reaction he got did make him smirk, though, and as soon as the keys hit the floor he caught the corner of one with his boot and flipped the set up into the air to catch them.

With his free hand, he reached up to pull his hood down. The shock of white hair right in the front of all the black was still there. “When’d you get so jumpy? If I was mugging you, did you think squealing would stop me?” Roy: “You’re an ass.” Roy snatched the keys from Jason’s hand and gestured at the hood, as if that were enough to explain his reaction. “But I'm afraid we don’t offer rehabilitation for that.” He was kidding, sort of. It was easier than letting the reality of the situation sink in. Even though Jason had been on his mind frequently, he didn’t expect to see him standing there, right in front of him, and it shook him up more than he cared to admit. He hated how obvious it was.

Exhaling softly, he leaned past him to bolt the door so they were locked in. The center closed an hour ago. Norma (it wasn’t Nancy, he was pretty sure of it now) would be pissed if she knew he didn’t close on time. “Didn’t expect to see you any time soon.”

Jason: “First step to recovery is admitting you’ve got a problem, and I don’t recall confessing to any of that.” It would’ve been easy enough to just stage some kind of stupid run in on the street, probably in broad daylight. Roy was far from stupid, but he didn’t tail people like Jason (or anyone who’d ever worked with Batman) did. He could’ve followed him and made it look natural. That had seemed more dumb and contrived than just giving in and walking into the rehab center.

Jason shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans like he was creating some invisible bubble of space around himself that he both wouldn’t leave and wouldn’t invite anyone else into. “Any time soon? Did I get hit in the head again or has it not been almost three years?” He got the feeling that Roy didn’t need reminding of that anymore than he did.

Roy: Roy chuckled dryly and leaned against the door, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, here’s your chance and I’m your priest. That’s why people come to places like this.” Not that the steps ever worked for him. He had to figure out his own combination of therapy and medication. Even that was still a work in progress. On the outside he was a hell of a lot better than he’d ever been, but he wasn’t cured.

Three years. Had it been that long? Frowning, he shook his head slightly, but then stopped himself as he thought about the series of events that followed their separation. Time passed differently before he got back into rehab. He lost months of his life. There was a whole summer he couldn’t remember, other blank spots in his memory, and the alarming thing was that it wasn’t alarming. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Funny. Doesn’t seem like that long to me.”

Jason: “Father Harper. That creeps me out even as a joke. Black never was a good look for you anyway.” Now that he was there in front of him, he wasn’t sure why. If Roy asked him, did he have an explanation? If it was only to know that he was alright, he could’ve asked Dick. Hell, he could’ve just followed him long enough to see.

Jason moved to lean his back against the cool wall. The place smelled like some kind of cheap cleaner someone had used on the floors. “Yeah...me either,” he admitted. Probably because he hadn’t stopped for the entirety of it.

Roy: “Don’t… don’t ever say that again.” The banter made it easy for Roy to put off the inevitable question, even though he did want to know why Jason was there. He assumed it was to check in on him, some sort of misplaced guilt or obligation, maybe to make sure the result of his tough love hadn’t crippled him or something. Not that he would expect Jason to admit he was there because he was worried about him or anything.

And maybe in the past he would have given him that space, avoided putting him on the spot or making him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to stand here and guess what Jason’s motivations were. He would probably be wrong anyway. “Why are you here? Why now? Dick told me months ago you were in town."

Jason: “Of course he did. Dick can’t keep his mouth shut about anything ever.” Except pretending to be dead. He’d been real hush hush about that. Either way, Dick was of course the reason he’d known that Roy was there, too, and exactly how to find him. He was more sure by the second that was on purpose.

Jason turned his head and looked back out the glass part of the door. The street in front of it was dead and didn’t offer one single distraction. “I was in the neighborhood.”

Roy: “You were not.” Roy wasn’t an idiot. He knew Jason knew he wasn’t an idiot. He also knew Jason better than to think his nonchalant attitude was 100% genuine 100% of the time. It didn’t mean he was going to get a straight answer, though, and he kicked his heel against the doorframe, gripping his keys in the palm of his hand.

It wasn’t right that Jason could waltz in like this and here he was, like some lost puppy dog, hanging on his every word. “Why do you gotta be so…” He trailed, gritting his teeth.

Jason: “Charming? Talented? Disarmingly handsome?” An asshole. Roy was trying to ask him why he had to be such an asshole, he was sure. If Jason had an answer for that buried somewhere in his head, he didn’t reach for it. Instead, he pulled his hands out of the pockets of his jeans and lifted them both briefly into the air before letting them drop. “It’s been three years, man. You can tell me to get out if you want to. I just wanted to see you.” He wouldn’t have even taken it that far for many people. Hell, even his family wouldn’t have got that straight of an answer most of the time. Jason didn’t want to be told to leave.

Roy: The words were disarmingly close to the actual words in his head that Roy had to laugh. “Exactly. So first off, fuck you for that. I didn’t even brush my hair this morning. I probably look like a muppet.” He wasn’t going to tell him to leave. There was a reason he was leaning against the door, subconscious as it was, and the fact that Jason had given him an answer at all was enough for him to relax and release some of the tension he didn’t even know he was holding onto. It was simple, but it was enough. “I’m not going to kick you out, dude. I missed you. I wanted to see you, I just didn’t know what to say. You made a choice and I was trying to respect it, you know? That’s something they taught me about. Respecting boundaries and all that.” Jason: “You’ve got that Elmo look going on.” Despite Jason’s continued insistence that he needed no one, not family, not friends, not partners, he always seemed to find them. Or they found him. Either way, Jason Todd, loner extraordinaire, was rarely anymore alone than Bruce was. A lot of that had been on Roy, who had adamantly refused to let him be. He’d been fucking annoying about it, even, until Jason had relented. For awhile he’d been better for it, but he hadn’t been selfish enough to put that first.

“I didn’t set the boundaries for me.” And, frankly, he hadn’t wanted Roy to come find him and talk to him first, because it would’ve meant that it hadn’t worked. Roy: It took every ounce of self control for Roy not to reach up to fix his hair. He could already imagine what it looked like. He threw on his clothes that morning in under ten minutes. If he knew this would be a day much different from all the other days that just bled together, he would have gone about it differently. It didn’t help that he slept through his lunch break to catch up on a restless night, either. Shitty break. Jason’s timing was never on point.

“Maybe not. But it wasn’t good for you either, being around me while I was like that, so…” Roy spread his hands, then realized he was still holding the keys and he slipped them into his pocket with a sigh. “It was the right thing.” Jason: Jason hadn’t needed the validation, necessarily. He’d remained sure that breaking things off with Roy in both a personal and ‘professional’ sense had been the right call. It had sent him running to Dick, apparently, and Dick was...better suited for it. Taking care of people. His path, Bruce’s path, wasn’t the one for Jason. It never would be. But just because he’d made that decision didn’t mean he’d intended to drag Roy down even further than he’d already been naturally inclined to go. Drugs and drinking were one thing, but killing? Jason’s brand of justice? That was a different ballgame.

“It did something. You’re here,” Jason nodded down the empty hall. “Helping people. I assume.” Roy: Even though Roy wondered about what Jason was doing from time to time, it wasn’t as if either of them led conventional lives. They couldn’t exactly stalk each other on Facebook or get information through mutual friends. Dick was the closest thing to that and Roy knew his relationship with Jason was complicated.

But he also didn’t want to know. Moving out to Star City was an effort to start fresh, a new life, and carve out a path of his own. For now he wasn’t bound to the Justice League even though Dick had already approached the subject once or twice. Roy missed working with a team, but he also didn’t trust himself not to get someone killed. The stakes seemed too high this time.

“Yeah. I try, anyway. Every city needs a place like this.” Whether or not he was successful was another story. “What about you? You’re here, too.” Jason: “Looks like I am. I hadn’t planned on sticking around this long, but I wasn’t planning on Bruce blowing the cover he kept for fucking ever, either.” And for Joker. Of course that’s how it had happened. It made it that much worse.

He swept a hand back through his hair and stood up straight in a restless kind of way. Now that he was there and talking to him, he had no idea what he wanted out of Roy. They couldn’t just slip back into something. He’d wanted to know that he was alright, that he was...what? Moved on? That didn’t seem like it, exactly. “So this is what you’re doing now? Talk therapy?” Roy: Bruce’s identity becoming public was definitely a surprise. It changed the dynamics of the Justice League. Dick’s identity was pretty much public knowledge, along with the rest of the Robins (Jason's included), and it was something to take into account going forward. He had no idea what Bruce had planned and he didn’t think to ask. Ollie hadn’t made an appearance in Star City; Roy had no idea what Ollie was doing or where he was, actually, and he had no real need to reach out. He knew better than to rely on anyone as a support system. Even Dick, supportive as he’d been, couldn’t shoulder that burden for him. He had to rely on himself. It was something he was still learning how to do. Maybe that was part of the whole solo thing.

“Yep. What can I say? I need a day job.” He did his own thing at night. Sometimes he crossed paths with the others, but he mainly kept to himself. It was easier that way. When he didn’t feel like going out he had no obligations to fulfill and no one to disappoint. “Pretty dull, compared to what you’ve got going on. Work. Home. Bed. Patrol, when I feel like it. Does that put you at ease?” Jason: The last part of the answer surprised him. He’d assumed, maybe naively, that Roy had hung up Arsenal with the ban. Jason didn’t know if the Titans were still active, but if they were Dick hadn’t been running with them and he figured Roy hadn’t either. But he also hadn’t asked. “You’re going on patrol?” He didn’t answer Roy’s question. Roy: Roy shrugged. “Here and there.” It felt wrong to do nothing. To watch and to nothing. It was one thing to help at the rehabilitation center, but it was only one side of a much larger problem. “Solo,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. “I’m not with the Titans or the Justice League. I know they’re reforming.” He hadn’t decided how much he wanted to be involved yet, if he wanted this to be his life again, or if it would be better for him to walk away. It was hard to imagine doing the latter now that he was face to face with Jason - knowing that Jason wouldn’t be leaving Star City despite his association (or lack thereof) with his family. Jason: “I guess we’ve not been covering the same ground.” Jason didn’t deal with the same kinds of things he figured Roy did, though. Red Hood was still Red Hood. He had some nights of making life hell for NOVA, but mostly he focused on other things. A trafficking ring had been what brought him to the city, after all. “You must be keeping your hands pretty clean.” Roy: “Guess not. I’ve been discreet.” That is, Roy had been careful. Before they separated, he was heading down a dark path. He didn’t want to think about where it was leading him or what could have happened had he stayed on that trajectory. Going back on patrol with a clear head and with a new set of priorities made him much more levelheaded and logical about how he handled situations. He wasn’t violent unless there there was no other option. He grinned, but there was a humorless quality to it. “You probably won’t even notice I’m there.” He took the keys from his pocket and finally unlocked the door, kicking it open with the side of his sneaker, but he didn’t move out of the way. Jason: Jason wasn’t sure whether he was meant to take that as a time to go or what Roy intended for him to do. But he’d got what he came for, right? He’d seen him. He knew what he was up to, kind of. Roy, in kind, knew he was there in a more tangible way than just hearing Dick say so. He turned his back on the empty hall and walked over toward the door. “I dunno about that.” Roy: “Please. Everyone knows when Red Hood’s in the neighborhood. Can’t go into a bar and not hear about it. You got ‘em all hiding out like you’re their personal executioner.” Roy’s foot was in the door, holding it open a few inches, but he was still standing against it. He smirked faintly and shifted his stance as Jason approached the door, as if he realized he was blocking his way out, but the move allowed only the barest minimum of space possible for him to inch past. “Your head’s gonna get too big for your helmet, Jaybird.” Jason: “Depending on the situation, maybe I am.” Jason didn’t hand out death certificates every single time. Every job he took didn’t end in a pile of bodies. But if somebody deserved to die, if the world would be better off if they weren’t in it anymore, he took care of it. If anyone was stupid enough to really try to stop him, he sent his target off with some company.

Jason started to move past Roy and out the door, but he stopped himself when he was right in front of him. There was an intensity that he always had that, while different, almost matched Bruce’s but sat somewhere else on the spectrum. He had it as he looked at Roy right then. “If I wanted to find you again, is this the place to do it?” Roy: The no killing rule was an unspoken understanding between the Titans and on the Justice League. It never had to be communicated. They were the good guys and good guys didn’t kill. Roy always considered Jason a good guy, even when he broke the rules - but at this point in his life he knew that not even the strongest held beliefs could hold fast in certain circumstances. He didn’t regret what he did despite what followed and the trouble it brought him. It was justice. Maybe that was what kept him from jumping at the chance to be on a team. He wasn’t sure if he could adhere to the strong principles that held them together. There was always the possibility there, at least. He knew what he was capable of.

“Here?” Roy raised his eyebrows, his fingers curling over the doorknob as he forced himself to stay put even when Jason fixed him with that stare of his. It almost made him mad that so much time could pass (supposedly - he’d have to take his word for it), but he could still be transfixed by something so simple, something that everyone in that family seemed to possess in some broody form. “In an open doorway? I doubt it. But hey, maybe you’ll get lucky.” Jason: Roy didn’t owe him a straight answer. Roy didn’t owe him fuck all, actually, and if he’d been the kind of person that Jason was (which he never had been) he would’ve told him to get out as soon as he saw him that night. “You wanna tell me a specific doorway?” Roy: Even though Roy had always been a straight shooter, he had his own reasons for being guarded. Jason already walked away from him once. He didn’t hold it against him and things were different now, but that didn’t mean Jason wanted things to go back to what they were before. “Mine. I’m off Eighth and Park, at the Cascades. Apartment 708. Believe it or not, I don’t like to hang out at work.” Jason: “Still like Thai food?” Whether it was a product of all that time with Bruce or just that his mind had refused to dump the information, Jason still remembered what Roy used to order. Roy: “Yeah.” The mention jarred a memory and Roy frowned, but it wasn’t actually a bad one. There was something comforting about it. Familiar. Not much about his life felt like that when he looked back. “Yeah. That sounds good.” Jason: Jason slipped past him the rest out the door and stood in the fresh air for a second. He seemed to be considering whether or not to say something else, but after a beat he just settled on, “See you around.” Roy: Roy finally let the door close once Jason was outside. He locked it, nodding. “Yeah. See you.” He still had to lock the side door, so he gave a casual over-the-shoulder wave, as if the certainty of their next meeting weren’t even in question.

#c: thatsjasonfkntodd #jason todd #roy harper

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amazildoessomethingstupid · 5 years

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Chapter 96: Unspoken Rule

Man I thought it would be a lot longer before I did another of these, but as it turns out I fucking hate in between pages. Y’know, those pages between the actual good and interesting shit? Y’know the parts that are in between the fun parts, but you have to have them to actually move characters to the good parts? The parts that are boring and filler? Yeah as an artist/writer I hate those too and it took me most of the week to come up with a page to make it not boring as sin. Sadly this means, ANOTHER RANT! And this time we are taking a look at Unspoken Rule. But before we do, I’d like to share with you the bit of panic that set in and what kind of pressure I had on me when trying to force an update. For a second I thought that this rant was going to be about…

And I was very, very, scared.

Thankfully a friend notified me that I don’t know how to count, so we’re talking about this chapter instead! Boy what a relief that was, I thought. But it seemed a bit disappointing. I hadn’t heard anything of this page, seems like it’ll be a short rant. That won’t do. So I figured, “hey if there’s not much to say. Fuck it, we’ll do a double feature with the carnival…”

Sadly, I have something to say.

And we start with a good lighthearted joke. Although, that expression in the first panel throws it off a bit. The dialogue on the initial read says snark and sassy, but the face says honest concern, but then we show it is snarky. So the face is just, confusing. Not worth kicking up a fuss about, but definitely a headscratcher.

Anyway, on to what’s actually happening. Which is Mike is being nervous and back and forth about wanting to talk to Lucy and apologize. And it’s so weird to me. This is such a serious plot point, and major conflict in the story, yet this is played for laughs. And not even good laughs, just hollow jokes it feels almost tasteless. But not as tasteless as this:

BIG OOF

Alright guys, see this?

I am absolved of this being uncharacteristically brash and open. If Taeshi can do that kind of rudeness, so can I. Lucy is just so cold now, it feels bad. Not out of character, not unrealistic, just…bad.

But moving from that, we get into these two. And…

Awww…th-this is actually pretty sad. And engaging.

HEY! I SEE YOU REACHING FOR MY HEARTSTRINGS! YOU STAY THE FUCK AWAY!

But seriously, this a very nice scene. It’s kind of touching, and it’s a moment I wish we had more of.

It’s…actually very nice. The characters are finally airing their grievances, and we’re getting somewhere. I…I actually like th-

OH YOU BACKSTABBING, HACK WRITING, BITCH! ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! WHY ARE YOU STICKING YOUR DICK IN A GAS STATION MILKSHAKE?! BITCH,

ARE YOU FUCKING F’REAL SHAKES RIGHT NOW?! WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU FEEL THE NEED TO ADD THAT?! THIS JUST DESTROYS ALL IMMERSION, I ALMOST FELT SOMETHING THERE FOR A SECOND! BUT THEN YOU HAD TO DO SOMETHING SO DUMB! THIS ISN’T EVEN ON THE CHARACTER, THIS IS A STRAIGHT UP WRITING ISSUE! EVEN I WOULDN’T DO SOMETHING THIS DUMB! IT’S SO OUT OF PLACE! IT GIVES ME MENTAL WHIPLASH CAUSE I HAVE TO DO A DOUBLE TAKE TO MAKE SURE I’M NOT JUST FUCKING SEEING SHIT! AND YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE WORST PART ABOUT THIS FUCKING PANEL?!

IT’S IN THE PRINTED BOOK! Taeshi saw this, drew it, posted it, and got whatever feedback from it. Then later came back, saw it, and edited a bunch of things for the book, and decided, “No that’s fine. We’ll leave it there, that’s perfectly okay.” And just left it there! WHY?! You had a good scene, an actual honest to god, good scene. And you had to just make a dumb joke, and ruin the whole mood. This is the sort of bad run and gun cheap gag sort of shtick that you’d expect to see from Volume 1! Except, even Volume 1 knew when to take itself seriously, and maintain that serious tone! I mean imagine if this happened in something like Zach’s talk with Lucy.

Any good graces this scene had, in setting up these two working out their problems and moving in a nice direction is thrown out the window now, and for what?! What’s the purpose? Why would yo-

Oh…Oh no…

Please, have mercy! You already stabbed my back, please don’t stab me in the heart! Please, not like this!

Aaaugh, no! Not like this! Poor Rachel! It’s not fair I can’-

Wait….

I-is…Is that it?

Are you kidding me?

That’s it? Two pages? Really? That’s how you’re breaking it off? This is how you’re going to stab me? Look, there’s like 3 more inches left in the knife, come on. Push it deeper. Twist it, I know you want to. WHY ARE YOU HOLDING BACK? FUCKING WORK THIS SCENE AND MAKE ME CRY!

NO FUCK YOU, WE’RE NOT MOVING PAST THIS!

YOU WROTE RACHEL’S BREAK UP. IN

TWO

FUCKING

PAGES!?

YOU WROTE OUT ONE OF THE MOST GROUNDED, HEALTHY, PRODUCTIVE RELATIONSHIPS IN YOUR COMIC IN TWO PAGES LIKE IT WAS NOTHING! WITH A HORRIBLE ONE-SIDED DIALOGUE, WHERE RACHEL IS TALKING TO PAULO WHO HAS SUDDENLY INHERITED THE EMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING OF A BRICK WALL! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT AFTER EVERYTHING YOU DID IN BUILDING THIS CHARACTER’S ENTIRE ARC AND DEVELOPMENT!? AFTER TRANSFORMING A CHARACTER WHO WAS PORTRAYED AS UNLIKABLE, BITCHY, ANNOYING, SLUTTY, AND DUMB.

To fleshing her out, to be deep, thoughtful, caring, and supportive. Rachel is my favorite character, and it’s not because she’s a slut it’s because she represented something in this comic that had been absent.

Natural character development. That wasn’t brought on by some big event shaking their entire core, and changing them. In fact, one of the best things about Rachel is that despite how differently her character’s reception is from Volume 6 compared to Volume 1, her personality, her attitude, and her core is mostly unchanged.

She’s still slutty, she’s overweight, she’s silly. But a big part of why I love her as a character, and why I think many others do as well, is because never does it seem to be a negative to her. We don’t see her get upset, or self-conscious about her weight, or her sexual behavior, because she’s confident in herself and accepts herself. Not only that, but she’s shown to take charge, stand up and not be afraid to call out what she sees is wrong. And outside of her character…

She was a role model for Paulo. Unlike Jasmine whose relationship was more Paulo bending himself to fit her lifestyle, Rachel was a character who accepted and supported Paulo’s lifestyle, but at the same time helped steer him to do the right thing. And in a comic where almost every fucking character is so intent on dancing around their issues and waiting until it blows up in their face, Rachel served as an example of someone who had it together. A proactive person, who didn’t want to see these characters get worse.

I have ranted and gone off on a lot of decisions and actions that these characters have done, but not once did I ever scratch my head or think twice about something that Rachel did. Her character didn’t need a bunch of insight, and excuses about hormones or “they’re teenagers, lol!” to understand her. She simply was who she was, and I respect that.

In short…

Despite everything that my history with this comic gave me, the feelings I developed from all the bullshit that has happened in this story, despite all of that. It was this one character, what she brought to the table, and what she did for the comic and its characters, that gave me something I thought I’d long lost, and never thought I’d ever regain.

She gave me hope in this comic. That it would finally have its characters be proactive, regain its humor, and bring itself out of the slump it made for itself. With this character, and the writing behind her, I believed Taeshi was finally on the right track, and was setting up something great that would grow the characters and build upon them naturally.

But that’s not what we got. And the real bitch of it is, this could’ve been a real emotional moment. A well executed front-stab. We knew it was coming, we saw the writing on the wall, but we still needed to face the music. It was set up to be a wonderful tragedy, where both parties are well aware of the futility of their relationship. They understand each other, and why it won’t work, but also don’t want to let go. And I was going to make a comparison to Two Kinds, because they had a similar scenario with Trace’s wife and the whole idea of moving on is a recurring theme… But looking back I realized something. I don’t need to bring a comparison to Two Kinds or someone else’s comic, and no I’m not even going to draw a comparison of what I would’ve done in this situation by drawing a comparison to False Idol’s future scene (although I was thinking about that). No, we don’t need to look too far because you know what the real sad part about this is?

We’ve had this conversation before.

And just look at it. Look how heartbreaking this is. This is how it should’ve been. You see that Paulo understands what she’s saying, he knows what she means and how bittersweet their relationship is. It is one of the best moments from the newer volumes, and their inevitable breakup should’ve been a turning point. It should’ve marked a big life-changing moment for Paulo. Where he is sad about how he’s making Rachel feel, but he’s unsure about his own feelings. Maybe Rachel makes the decision for him and breaks it off, and Paulo realizes how hurtful his behavior is, and that he can’t play games with people anymore, that it’s not fair. It could be the moment Paulo turns a new leaf and becomes more mature, and in seeing that; Rachel can let go taking some solace in knowing that he is a better person now.

But instead we got this…

We’re not even halfway through this god damn chapter. Well where is it taking us now?

Huh…and it seems that the writing is not going to change pace either, I wonder where this is going.

Oh boy, everyone’s getting into teams! And oh man, Lucy’s going up against Mike! And boy is this contrived. And what’s even worse, is that despite how much Taeshi has shunned Volume 1 and its stupid sense of humor, and how shoddy it was. Volume 1 wasn’t THIS contrived, and when it was, it was pretty tongue in cheek about it. In fact!

This sounds like something Volume 1 would MAKE FUN OF. But let’s give the benefit of the doubt maybe it’s not that bad. It might have something going on, an-

(It’s interesting, I think I have like 3 reaction pics of Sam trying to shoot herself, but this one just can not be matched. And it’s not even meant for the rants.)

You know what? I’m not even gonna bother going over this part. No one will be seated during the harrowing “Will they won’t they” inconsequential dodgeball fight. Although I will say,

Not gonna lie, that actually got a laugh out of me. Good job. Anyway, Lucy catches the ball and wins the game who cares. But then…

First of all

Look at those arms. Damn Lucy what happened? You’re looking like two toothpicks in a marshmallow. But more than that. Did I read that right?

Yeah! It’s not like you stopped practicing Martial Arts! Why would you? It’s not like you had some serious physical trauma happen to stop you-

OH WAIT!

RECOVERY PERIOD? PHYSICAL THERAPY? PFFFT WHO THE FUCK NEEDS THAT? YEAH SURE, YOU’RE TOTALLY FINE AND CAPABLE BEING A FUCKING BLACK BELT IN TAE KWON DO. SURE! NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE STITCHES AM I RIGHT?

But I’m just combing cotton here, this all just fluff. There’s really only one thing left to talk about here.

And I’ll be honest.

This.

Is…

Pretty good.

This is honestly really well done. There’s nothing I can say about this. It’s a very serious moment, I can feel Taeshi reaching for my heartstrings but I…I’m okay with it. This was the moment I wanted to see. Finally these characters air out some of their grievances. We get insight to how they feel, we are finally getting somewhere. It’s not nice, but it’s progress an-

…

THAT’S THE TH-….

*sigh*

Fuck you too, Taeshi.

Three times.

Three fucking times in one chapter, that you set up something good. Had a good thing going, and then decided to fuck it up at the end. That’s a new record. Even when I expected nothing out of this chapter, you manage to let me down. You astound me with how much you disappoint me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were doing it to intentionally troll me. But I’m not that vain. Fuck you Taeshi, I’ve said this before but always with the tone of hyperbole, and a bit of optimistic cynicism. But this time I really mean it. I have no more faith in you as a writer. Whatever you come up with, however this ride ends. I don’t think you will pull it off anymore. I don’t think you have the competence to tie this up in a proper way. At one point you could’ve. At one point, I think you had it in you with the mindset, the creativity, and the emotional drive to tell a well-crafted story. But not anymore, and I despise what you’ve become. Let’s get this stupid chapter over with.

What’s next? What are we doing huh? What are we getting at?

Oh…

I see. This is where we’re going huh? That’s what all this was for?

ALRIGHT! Y’KNOW WHAT? FINE! I GUESS THIS IS WHAT WE’RE DOING BOYS! THIS IS THE NEW DIRECTION FOR BCB! LOOK! SHE CALLED PAULO CUTE! OMG THE SHIP IS SAILING, DON’T YOU GET IT? IT’S JUST SHIPPING! THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS! THAT’S HOW WE’RE DRIVING THE PLOT!

FUCK ALL THAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, THIS IS WHY RACHEL GOT DROPPED! IT WASN’T CAUSE OF CHARACTERS NATURALLY CONCLUDING RELATIONSHIPS, IT’S ALL BECAUSE LUCY’S HERE AND WE CAN’T HAVE PAULO’S RELATIONSHIP WITH RACHEL CLASH WITH THAT! SHE’S OUTLIVED HER USEFULNESS! NOW IT’S ALL ABOUT PAULO X LUCY, OR PAULO X DAISY WHICH IS IT? THIS IS THE REAL DRAMA YOU ALL ARE LOOKING FOR! THIS IS HOW WE REALLY MOVE THE PLOT AND CHARACTERS! CHOO CHOO BOYS! ALL ABOARD THE SHIP! LET’S JUST GO ALONG FOR THE RIDE WHERE WE GOING TAESHI? I’M READY! I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING LEFT TO FUCKING LOOK FORWARD TO OR LIVE FOR! SO COME ON, WHERE ARE YOU SAILING US?

I give it a 2/10. Until next time, guys.

#Bittersweet Candy Bowl #rant

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Star Trek: Discovery - ‘Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2′ Review

"Let's see what the future holds."

By nature I love brevity: Star Trek: Discovery delivers on the promises of the season in its dramatic finale that warps off into Season Three ready to try something new. My predictions were mostly correct, with a few surprises. Some of those surprises were substantially more welcome than others.

Last week's episode made us a whole lot of promises and set up a lot of things to happen here. All the emotional stakes of that episode hinged on the fulfillment of those promises and set-ups, though, so no matter what, if they didn't follow through we were going to feel cheated. I went into this finale with a small bit of trepidation that they might fake us out and not deliver, but those fears were happily quashed. If nothing else, I want to applaud the show for delivering on its promises, and for doing so in a way that provided entertainment and diversion for an hour and left me feeling mostly satisfied.

But, of course, I do have to talk about what went wrong. Most of this episode's problems, and indeed the whole season's problems, are the result of logical inconsistencies. For example, if they had a map of the red bursts the whole time, why couldn't they figure out where each burst was going to appear? Even if they didn't know which burst corresponded to which one on the map, after the first three they should have known the location of all seven. That was the main thing about the season as a whole that bothered me.

The biggest and most egregious problem in 'Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2' is the entire situation involving Cornwell and the torpedo. How contrived can you get, really? This seems to me to be the most stupid and pointless sacrifice since Captain America: The First Avenger, and it's certainly the dumbest thing this show has ever done. I can't even begin to fathom why anyone would think that little tiny door could do anything at all when we were told it would take out four decks/half the ship. If the door is so powerful, why isn't the whole ship made out of the same material? How is the window still intact after the blast? For that matter, why the actual heck did they put a window in a blast door? Even the reason Cornwell decided to stick around in that room with the torpedo was hopelessly contrived. Pike made some very good points about time travel and his future, and she dismissed them for no reason at all. Very disappointing and completely unnecessary. Jayne Brook and Admiral Cornwell deserve way better.

The second major issue involves Controlland and his death. First and foremost, if the Control AI was destroyed when Georgiou killed it, why do they even still need to go to the future? If destroying Control was as easy as magnetizing a whatever for a few minutes, why not focus your efforts on that rather than the time travel stuff? They even had a golden opportunity to solve all these problems and bring back some nice continuity at the same time. Why not just have Georgiou use the spores to send Controlland somewhere else, like Lorca did with Burnham way back in 'Context is for Kings'? Plus, the magnetizing the whatever solution is really dumb and sounds contrived.

All this makes it sound like I hated 'Sorrow II.' I didn't. It was largely entertaining, and despite those two major things that grated on me and a few other minor gripes, the finale did its job well. It managed partly to earn the melodrama of 'Sorrow I' and to wrap up the season's arcs in a neat and tidy manner. Let me dive further into the things I liked.

Firstly, Olatunde Osunsamni's direction was on point this week. His stylistic, swooping camera and weird, dynamic directorial choices are actually really well-suited to big action setpieces like this one. While I may not like his apparent vow to never allow the camera to be still at any moment, even in dialogue or other low-energy sequences, Osunsamni gets to infuse his energy here into a show that warrants it. On that same note, all the action was quite good and interesting to watch. The production values on this show continue to be absolutely through the roof, and it works really, really well.

I also loved, though it can very easily be dismissed as fan service, the ending with Pike, Spock, and the Enterprise. The show is certainly leaning into fan hopes for a show centered around them, for no clear reason. Clearly, they could very well do something like that, and it would be highly anticipated and probably very well received. It's ultimately up to the producers, but I really think that if they do intend to do it, it will have to be really far down the pipeline. If it were coming in the near future, we'd have heard something of it by now.

The portion of the end that deals with Discovery's supposed breaches of canon was a long time in coming. I think I'd made my peace that time travel would fix it all about a month ago, so bringing my feelings about it back is a bit difficult. If the writers had all this planned from the beginning, then kudos to them. If not, then at least they found a decent way to fix everything they'd broken. One of the things that's in the grand tradition of Star Trek is taking mistakes and discrepancies and using them for the benefit of later stories, so I'm quite pleased that this occurred here. Did they have to force it because it was necessary for the show? Yes. But let's not lose sight of the fact that it was necessary for the show.

A few surprises lurked in this episode, even though the resolution went more or less as anticipated. The first of these was that Georgiou was on the Disco as it went off into the wild blue yonder. I had expected, since Michelle Yeoh's Section 31 series is coming, that Georgiou would be left behind in the past in light of that. Not so here. This raises many questions about that Section 31 show, what Yeoh's role in it will be, and how she will play into DIS Season 3, so many that I won't go into them all here. Suffice it to say, I was surprised, and I will be interested to see where it goes from here.

Secondly, I was surprised at the arrival of everything the rest of the season had done, now coming back to help the Disco accomplish its mission. Although I suppose everything did have to be a part of a grand design like Pike and Spock have been saying all along, I was not expecting Siranna and the Kelpiens in particular. A nice touch, certainly, as was the timely arrival of L'Rell and her Klingon armada. Speaking Klingon under heavy makeup does tend to work much better when it's being yelled angrily at one's enemies in the heat of battle than it does when discussing Imperial politics while sitting at home. Plus, Mary Chieffo got to say 'Today is a good day to die' before the show left her behind.

So overall, I think I liked it. It did what it needed to do, and not a whole ton more. What more it did was mixed material, but so is this show in general. I left it feeling satisfied, and even excited for the road ahead. Take her out, folks. Let's see what she can do.

Pensees:

-Holy crap, that's a lot of shuttles. Voyager's jealous.

-I half expected Reno to die, and Po to go to the future. I'm not sad that those things didn't happen, though.

-Keep on being sassy as heck, Dr. Pollard.

-I thought Burnham and Spock's goodbye was just fine the first time, in the shuttlebay. At the end of the episode it was terribly overdone, although Ethan Peck did his darnedest to help it along.

-Is Anthony Rapp's return to the show for Season Three in doubt? They left his life still in danger at the end of the episode. I hope not; I like Stamets. His resolution with Culber felt a little out of place amid the chaos of the episode, though.

-Lots of visual cues to Star Trek: The Motion Picture in this episode, from Burnham's travel through time to the same streaky-light wormhole effect when the ship does the same.

-That really is a dang useful blast door. Voyager's jealous.

-Number One STILL doesn't have a canonical name. Why couldn't she just have given it in the debriefing scene. It's not hard!

-So Tyler has been made the head of Section 31 for now. I guess that means he'll definitely be in Yeoh's series, right?

-Clean-shaven Spock in uniform was great to see, and the shot that panned out from the bridge to the ship in space was a definite nod to 'The Cage.'

-Props to Jeff Russo for his awesome mix of the classic TOS theme and the DIS theme. I really like the music of this show in general.

Quotes:

Po: "First, I invoke diplomatic immunity for stealing this shuttle."

Reno: "I'm going, I'm going! Get off my ass! Sir! Get off my ass, sir!"

Saru: "Promise me you'll be safe." Everything: *continues exploding*

Burnham: "So you're asking me to take a leap of faith." Spock: "One that is only logical."

Controlland: "Where's my data?" Nhan, searching for the most useless response possible: "Hell!"

Controlland: "This doesn't have to be this hard!" Georgiou: "Not hard is boring, and I hate boring."

Number One: "Plans A and B didn't work. This is the Hail Mary part of the operation."

Burnham: "Find that person who seems farthest from you, and reach for them. Reach for them."

4.5 out of 6 really useful blast doors.

CoramDeo is a reviewer, not a bricklayer.

#Star Trek #Star Trek Discovery #Michael Burnham #Spock #Christopher Pike #Saru #Ash Tyler #Disco #Star Trek Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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fireeaglespirit · 5 years

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beyond-far-horizons

This is awesome and because *hangs head in shame* I dont play the games (i'm a noob with no money and my parents never let me have video games so I just like the story okay?) I have never seen this bit.

I ADORE multiverse/underworld stuff as you know or perhaps you don't as I don't know how far I got explaining Aeq and Midnight Palace but it is FULL of that stuff. I love the symbolism and it is very Jungian (I am the Priest of Jung okay, welcome to the New Testament of Jess!) But I need to sleep rn so we can get to it later.

Thank you for showing me because then I can reference it if I have time but I have so many other things going on right now and dunno I love fanfic and these stories but then I get down because I get virtually no response and I need that interaction to continue. It is my luck to always like dead fandoms with minor prequel characters I guess...still I do feel the fanfic has improved my writing and vice versa

I was thinking alot about hell and demons and what 'heaven' would be as I had a very detailed review on FF.net asking me all this questions, like why Sparda would long for the light if he is a demon and dunno, it always comes back to my pet theories of light and dark and the union of opposites. Sparda is so interesting because I feel he came to 'justice' on his own but probably also cemented by this mysterious priestess who he had to sacrifice. At least that is the way

the way I would go if I was developing the lore or a prequel game. It seems the most juicy option. Anyways this 'light' ties into my feelings about the transcendent, this higher power/reality urging all to grow and develop. I guess I would see demons as base and vicious aspects of reality and sources of wild and violent energy - very much as both Jung and early cultures saw them or primal gods or 'titans'.

It's also why I have a headcanon Sparda a)is fascinated by humans - they have the same struggles as him and b)he has a huge library on religions of the world, history, philosophy and science because he is still trying to discover the nature of reality just like Eva and this is what really brings them together. I wrote this line last night when Eva looks at all the books 'So you devour our souls metaphorically instead of physically now?'

I debated on making Sparda saintly, like he has already has his struggle and is now secure in himself but that isn't interesting to me plus you know our shared love of fighting with the feral nature to ultimately make the person better. Plus I kinda like the romantic angst that way like with MadaMito hehe

Okay I need to go to bed now.

Ok, prepare for huge contrived reply incoming...

First of all. What??

I hate when parents do this. I’m so sorry, I never knew about it... I really hate this.

Video games are just another media, I never understood why people would pick on that and forbid their child from having some fun. FFS.

If you want to play something some day I’ll always be there to help you installing, finding them, etc.. whatever you might need. Or even just finding anything related to games, etc.. I don’t play much these days as you know the multiple reasons but it was such an important part of my life I can barely imagine being cut out from this, even thought we always had old consoles this was very important.

About Sparda and the fic. I need to be sincere and say I’m taking so long to reply for two reasons. First because I LOVE the way you wrote Sparda but I was afraid of being too simplistic with my reply so I delved a lot on things...

But... tah-dah : I lost the huge reply I had wrote before. My note has 0 battery so its glued to the wall and it just turns off sometimes suddenly and I’m dumb and don’t save things so yeah. I kinda lost myself and got angry about that.

Anyway, I understand what you said here, especially your feelings about the fic, in many ways I can see how my fandom views reflect in the original world I’m making, and the inverse is contrary. There are many parallels. It really helps and fandom work is as worthy as original, imo, I’ve been thinking about this. Our obsession with prequels and obscure characters has a reason and that is exactly because we want to explore what is hidden behind the veil... exploring the possibilities.

Sometimes it comes to shipping speculation, and this too has a reason.

Thinking about your views on Sparda and Eva, I thought a lot on what it truly means to write or develop an obscure ship and why we are so interested in that (think about that, many of our common favorite characters from prequels, etc..)

I came to the conclusion that in Eva/Sparda just like in many of our other ships, has the common theme of the heroin facing her ‘dark reflection’, her ‘animus’ as Jung would say (OH BOY I’m entering that with you), and she, at first rejects it like she reflects her own darker aspects, her unconscious… its abhorrent for her so she seeks to destroy it as rapidly as possible as seen by Eva’s renewed determination after learning Sparda’s true nature in chapter 1. The animus represents her doubts and unconscious... However what we see in your story is much more interesting.

Most stories of this kind focus solely in the female aspect changing from her interactions with the male, who is already developed, but here we have Eva being able to re-awaken some viciousness in Sparda when it seems he has been quite restrained from quite some time (centuries) but also, something that is much more interesting.. it calls to his own determination and his own personal story and sacrifice, for some reason his ‘lust’ and brush with the dark side makes it all more important and more powerful than if he simply had been saintly at that point, like you said. It makes he revisit it all and ponder.

I love how you added lines of ‘temptation’ from Mundus, part of Sparda seeks to surrender to his ‘nature’ as its just so easy, like slip in a pair of old shoes... while the priestess memory, albeit silently, fights it and reminds him of his struggle and his ideals and ultimately her sacrifice which was also his own sacrifice (of his old ways). I think his darker side has been neglected and I think you will use this to develop Sparda into greater heights. Its great we get to see this in the actual story and he is not perfect, but he certainly is incredible.

Also, just as a side-note I loved how you described his hunger as mostly non-carnal as he glimpses her spirit and its light... when we see Sparda’s POV we get reminded every time of his non-human nature and his non-human perception of things which is clearly different. A demon’s prey is not flesh but spirit and this makes a lot of sense and a lot of potential.

To sum it up, you snatched the best of both worlds and is about to develop both characters under a relationship, as they have a lot to learn and gain from each other. I think this is the way your narrative is going, more or less.

These developments are unique aspects which I find extremely interesting and you are doing this in such a genial way and I can see already by the end of the latest chapter the strings of the themes I mentioned are pulled and ready to be followed.

So yeah, they’re in for a journey of development together. Neither of them starts the story as a ‘perfect’ entity either way... This was shown in a very nice way as you pointed out misconceptions regarding both sides involving the duo of protagonists.

“I was thinking alot about hell and demons and what 'heaven' would be as I had a very detailed review on FF.net asking me all this questions, like why Sparda would long for the light if he is a demon and dunno, it always comes back to my pet theories of light and dark and the union of opposites. Sparda is so interesting because I feel he came to 'justice' on his own but probably also cemented by this mysterious priestess who he had to sacrifice. At least that is the way I would go if I was developing the lore or a prequel game. It seems the most juicy option. Anyways this 'light' ties into my feelings about the transcendent, this higher power/reality urging all to grow and develop. I guess I would see demons as base and vicious aspects of reality and sources of wild and violent energy - very much as both Jung and early cultures saw them or primal gods or 'titans'.”

I abstained a bit from the conversation earlier as I feared my careless/godless (lmao) perception was too disturbing for you or anyone but I also pondered on concepts such as heaven and hell, salvation, damnation, etc.. when considering Sparda’s tale. I know DMC isn't Christianity but its imagery is somewhat based on Abrahamic religion/mythos so I’m bound to take in consideration some of my ideas regarding biblical mythology, as in...

When I started reading the bible so long ago it always puzzled me to imagine what exactly were angels/demons. I mean, are they even able to think in the same way as us?? Or are them more like ‘robots’, AI following orders (especially angels sometimes strikes me as that) and perhaps demons are those ‘robots’ that rebelled against their determined function, idk.

Something I wondered more than a decade ago was if demons in the bible are truly lost in every way so I started thinking within the dmc setting. I’m interested in that all and those things I mentioned. The interesting part is that I once asked that to my catechist if demons could be redeemed (lmao I was crazy, I know, but bored above all). She was at first very mad with me (she was always) but she reluctantly told me that demons had known god up close and felt his power so their sin in not following him is much bigger than a human’s, something of the sorts. So it sounded like they are also able to choose their way and I sort of apply this to dmc, lol. I’m weird, I know...

Are they capable or ‘worthy’ of forgiveness, because demons in dmc clearly have free will and thought like us, or at least similar to us. Some of them, like Sparda have clearly a lot of intellect, but like you said... others are very ‘primal’. Perhaps this is the key. The ‘evolved’ demon develops intellect and power... perhaps you are in the right track and it goes hand in hand? Does this make any sense?? The more powerful and developed they are, the more they develop ‘higher brain functions’ and star resembling a human more, idk because the lower demons in dmc are clearly more animal-like and primal while Sparda has a human-like shape and intellect.

I think I know where we are going and this looks like both angels and demons are actually a ‘reflection’ of human psyche. So, demons are the primal ancient aspects of the brain are somehow walking around hell just like that, while heaven and its inhabitants are mysterious. I really like the way you described hell and its inhabitants, it makes a lot of sense to imagine it as a part of human psyche embodied, in a way. I imagine Heaven as the exact inverse of Hell so it has its own creatures and they’re born from ‘order’ instead of chaos as stated above.

We have Bayonetta as a source of inspiration and I think its very valid to use that in order to understand Sparda. Heaven isn’t exactly good there, is it? In fact it appears like a very controlling environment.

Hell: Primal, violent, survival of the fittest anyone? Hell inhabitants embodied the most basic aspects of the brain, as you said.

Heaven: It might stem from higher planes of thinking and represent the more ‘sublime’ or ‘newer’ aspects of the evolving mammal brain.

It might make an easy choice for heaven but also such tight atmosphere is bound to become stagnant, it is no longer permitting flaws and strong emotions (thus angels look apathetic af in Bayonetta).

It might seem at first glance that heaven is good, hell is bad, however I think, if you delve into heaven you might realize the beings born there might be too ‘disembodied’ as they represent exactly those parts of human psyche which are the most sublime. Let me explain, I always felt like too much spirituality tends to make people leave behind the reality of things, it might make them lack empathy for living beings who have to commit difficult decisions on a living basis, basic survival, starvation, the struggle for life, etc..

Think about enlightenment and Bodhisattva, also the rituals of mortification which are legit scary and reminds me of this concept as only those who leave behind all that is ‘mortal’ and are detached to an extreme, can reach Nirvana. I know this has not much to do with Christianity but even in this religion we find analogous associations regarding detachment as divine and saintly. Its also harmful in a way, or am I reaching? While too much focus on the primal/carnal leads to obvious horrible things: vice and chaos; too much detachment leads to apathy.

I do think some level of detachment is necessary to reach happiness but too much of it makes people forget the reality of life and makes them not able to relate anymore to the ones around them, as the focus becomes solely spiritual it kind of deafens them to the ‘real world’ and ignore it.

This is all about reaching a balance as its is our favorite theme, too much light is bad, too much darkness is bad, etc.. or else the story would fall into itself as the reality of the three settings (heaven, hell, earth) would be rigid.

So here we have a darker aspect of heaven, imo, to balance things out.

Heaven is clearly ‘order’ and hell is ‘chaos’ so we might as well find a balance... our favorite theme as always. The fact that one being like Sparda, born amidst ultimate chaos would gaze upward in delight and desire something else doesn't surprise me. The fact is he could be bitter about it, you even gave away the line on your fic where Sparda mentions he has been denied ‘light’. I wonder what exactly that means and this is one of my favorite aspects of your Sparda is that he is aware of his condition and even thought he worked against it its still lingering to him.. like his own flickering appearance.

But he hasn’t made his way up to heaven, huh?

So its not a far reach to believe in it (that he desired ‘light’, whatever it is) but my personal belief is that too much ‘light’ is not good either and Sparda realized the beauty in flawed humanity, which sits right in the middle of light and darkness, order and chaos... that’s why he became enamored by the concept of humanity and all the struggle our own condition imposes upon us.

For me this is an archetypal theme.

Just food for thought.

The matter is... how? What exactly awakened him to justice?

This makes stuff much more interesting. This was a huge ramble, I know but I needed to develop this and see if it works,

So yeah, about a) I’m totally with you and I can see why Sparda would empathize with humans, as I talked earlier and I think my explanation on why Sparda would be fascinated by humans instead of ‘angels’ is made up above and I hope this doesn't sound too weird, just my line of thought.

As a demon, he’s born from a very ‘imperfect’ reality. He knows how shitty things can be... Now I really wonder how his life was before he ‘awakened to justice’ he must have witnessed some remarkably horrible things in his life..

Under the setting I mentioned, it would be I think its kinda easier for a demon to do this since angels would be too stuck up in their haven, idk so this is how Sparda, the unlikely hero is the first of these beings to take arms and defend humanity. Sparda is so special as he was the one to side with humans by his own decision and free will. What a guy!

I’m glad you didn't! This is probably a gradual process even thought they say he ‘awakened to justice’ which makes it seem like he suddenly just did so I believe he had brewing feelings from his life as a demon in hell...

He must have been such an unique individual to perceive truths his peers where not ready to learn and truly, an act of rebellion against the system itself coming from someone who is ‘supposed’ to do only harm is really something we want to see on screen and I’m so glad you didn't simplify it as being a single event in his life.

I’m really in love with this theme because it shows these beings are able to change their own destinies, even someone with such dark origins.

#beyond-far-horizons #dmc #sparda #eva

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seacafes · 5 years

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disney channel is going downhill: a rant.

Growing up in the early 2000s, I feel as though as a child, I witnessed the peak of Disney Channel entertainment. Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and That’s So Raven were just a few of the wonderfully relatable and entertaining shows I watched as a kid. The shows that Disney channel used to play tackled feminism, racism, body positivity, and had very diverse casts. The Disney Channel of the early 2000s sent some very positive messages to its young viewers long before we were old enough to understand how much we needed them. While a few newer kids shows may have some positive lessons or anecdotes in their episodes, the older shows seemed to more actively seek out opportunities to enlighten young audiences about what it means to be strong, well-rounded, and confident, no matter what their situation may be.

Back then, we had “That’s So Raven”, that not only featured a black female lead who was as bold as she was hilarious, was also unafraid to tackle issues like body shaming and racism in ways that felt natural. Raven taught us that people come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and that we’re all beautiful. This shows in Season 2 Episode 8 of the show, released in April 2004, where Raven is excited over a vision of herself modeling her own clothes for a fashion show, until the magazine that sponsors it photoshops someone else's body over hers. Her body has been altered, and she appears much thinner than she really is. She is upset that her own body was not used, and also that the head of the agency only believes that there is only one look for all models. The fashion show director didn’t want Raven to model because she thought she was “plus size.”, and that apparently wasn’t good enough. In the end Raven stands up for herself and proves that it’s what’s on the inside that really counts, not the outside.

The channel also had a similar episode on Season 2 Episode 34 of the show the Suite Life of Zack and Cody, released in March 2007, where London and Maddie get insulted by Francesca (one of London's rich friends) while trying on clothes for a fashion show that they would both be participating in and then, after taking what she said and looking at themselves in a mirror that distorts their images (which can be seen as a reference to body dysmorphic disorder), both London and Maddie decide that they need to handle their weight issues before participating in a fashion show. London vows to lose weight and Maddie decides she must eat more to avoid being underweight. After London starves herself to the point of dizziness, while doing continuous laps around the hotel lobby, and Maddie has eaten several fast food burgers in a single day, the two prepare for the show, though as a result of their extreme methods, they both mess up their chance on stage. Afterwards, they discover that even London’s “perfect friend” Francesca has been stuffing her bra. This causes the two girls to agree that they are perfect the way they are, because nobody's perfect, saying, ‘What were we thinking? We were starving and stuffing ourselves, and we didn’t even need to do it. We should just be happy with the way we look. Next time one of your snarky friends makes a comment, let’s remind ourselves that we are perfect just the way we are.”

Along with tackling physical issues, Disney Channel had shows and movies with strong leading roles played by women like Kim Possible and Wendy Woo from "Wendy Woo Homecoming Warrior" that taught us that girls can be tough and powerful too. Lizzie McGuire was so feminist that "subtle" isn't even an appropriate adjective. The show regularly dealt with the pressures of gender stereotypes, while exploring exactly what it meant to be a young woman exploring her identity.. It had Alex Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place, a character full of confidence, smarts, and wit, who constantly surpassed the low expectations that society had set for her in the show. Her deep exploration of her identity could get pretty inspiring. Kim Possible taught some important feminist life lessons by teaching young women that it's totally cool to be a sassy overachiever, and you don’t have to be a man to be a hero.

All of these shows show that even though things might not be so good right now, everything will be okay in the end. They taught us how to react in certain situations, and how to handle the really hard ones. I still think back to episodes from my childhood when I find myself in a situation similar to one that I saw in one of my beloved shows, and because of them, I know what to do to make everything okay, or at least easier.

In the early 2000s, it felt as though disney were ahead of their time. Many people like to claim, and I agree, that 2010 was when everything began to go downhill. In Season 1 Episode 7 of the show Shake it Up released in December 2010, the two main character’s Rocky and CeCe attend a party, where they are serving food to the supermodel guests. While serving, a supermodel approaches them and says, “You are adorable! I could just eat you guys up. You know- if I ate.” And goes on to laugh with her entourage. Former Disney Star Demi Lovato, who had left her own show “Sonny With A Chance” to deal with her own struggles with an eating disorder, tweeted about the joke, “I find it really funny how a company can lose one of their actresses from the pressures of an eating disorder and yet still make joke about that very disease,” Demi noted at the time, referencing her own very public battle with the disease. She also asked, “What are we promoting here? #notfunnyATALL.” This episode was a sad thing to see, seeing as in the past, we had Raven Baxter, London Tipton, and Maddie Fitzpatrick teaching us that jokes like that were not okay. That same year, in Season 1 Episode 9 of So Random!, more eating disorder jokes were said. In one of the sketches, a girl has her boyfriend meeting her family for the first time. She tells them, “Angus only eats one full meal a week ask him why” to which Angus replies, “My agents always on me about looking my best. She says to me “Ang-y, if you eat too many carbs, you won’t get the jobs. And I said “I knooow”.” But that’s not all! In an episode of Dog with a Blog (which, yes, is about a talking dog who runs a blog), the mother says, “I've been bitten, scratched, mauled, and puked on. And only one of those was self inflicted." implying that she made herself throw up, making light of the eating disorder, bulimia. If you didn’t think it could get worse- you’re in for a surprise! In an episode of the show Jessie, a character in a Zebra costume can be seen running away from a zebra. The zebra ends up catching him, and one of the kids witnessing the attack calmly states, “dressed like that, you were asking for it.” Why was that comment needed on a children’s show, Disney? What message are you trying to portray there? That if you dress a certain way, you’re “asking for it”? I don’t think so.

Nowadays, the shows are filled with fake jokes and contrived situations that no one can believe or relate to. The kids in the shows wear tons of makeup and layers upon layers of fancy clothes. Miley Stewart only wore lots of makeup when she was performing as Hannah Montana. Even Sharpay Evans of East High had all the glitz and glam, but she wasn't over the top with makeup and her clothes.Why are the kids in shows like "Liv and Maddie" and "Jessie" dressing like adults and acting like they have real world adult problems; it seems like they've just skipped over their innocent childhood years.

Along with continuously being problematic and lacking real lessons for the audience to learn, current Disney Channel shows also lack substance. Every show is the same! Looking at the shows now, the actors & actresses look more materialistic and over the top. The channel now has unrealistic storylines, where as the shows in the 2000’s had real-life storylines that were more relatable to us. Even the character’s themselves now lack substance, and with most show’s you can easily point out the stereotypical “smart kid”, “dumb kid”, “popular kid”, etc.

Luckily, Disney has attempted to redeem themselves with show’s such as Girl Meets World, a remake of the infamous Boy Meets World, which tackles similar issues to the ones seen in older Disney shows that we all know and love. That show got cancelled after only a few seasons though, unfortunately, but Disney then released the show Andi Mack, which is about a girl named Andi who on her 13th birthday discovers that her sister is actually her mother who had her when she was young. One of the main characters also recently came out as gay, and I hope that this trend will continue on with more Disney Channel shows in the future. But, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Like the great Hannah Montana once said, Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days, everybody knows what I’m talking about, everybody gets that way. Nobody’s perfect, and I wish Disney Channel would remember that, instead of shoving show’s about a dog who runs a blog down children’s throats. Not to mention how they let a horribly problematic YouTuber influencing the youth of today with his wildly inappropriate content on to one of their shows, but that’s a whole other rant for another day.

#my works #disney #disney channel #rant

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hopevalley · 4 years

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What are your favorite and least stories from each Season and why?

Oh man, this is a really thought-provoking question! I’ll try to come up with good answers (even though sometimes the seasons blur together a little bit):

I’ll give some basic thoughts on each season and what worked/didn’t work for me.

Season 1

While I appreciate that they made the effort to have Elizabeth stick out (vs. blending in with all the Poors), she was downright unbearable at times in the early seasons. Her wanting to help and coming up with ideas is pretty decent in terms of story structure and even characterization/character motivation, but holy cow was it intrusive and nosy/patronizing of her sometimes! I think the point might have been to give Elizabeth flaws, which is great, but people just seemed to accept it, and her, too quickly, at least for my liking. A shame because I felt like her struggling to fit in would 1) be good for her character/force her to understand that to be accepted here she has to concede to giving up her former lifestyle, and 2) be a great, GREAT way for her and Abigail to bond and become friends, since this is something Abigail also struggled with!

So basically, the ‘story’ of Elizabeth coming to fit in in Coal Valley? Vaguely rubbish.

So much DID work, though, and could have been expanded upon for even better storytelling!!! This is especially true of the widows/related stories.

Loss of faith/faltering faith

Loss of personal identity

Moving on/past grief

Processing guilt

Protecting the memory of a deceased loved one

We also had some great smaller personal stories.

Genius child has to work in the mine because there’s no one else ot take care of his family

Young man can’t read and has to work in the mine (and even after he does start learning how to read, probably doesn’t get to leave). Elizabeth still taking the time to try and help him still means something!

Season 2

I will never forgive the series for its convoluted attempt at a love triangle, here. Charles wasn’t unlikable, but he was OBVIOUSLY interested in Elizabeth romantically, and I don’t feel she’d be so stupid as to be blind to that, old chum or not.

Basically, it was one of the worst plots to ever exist on the show, because it just wasn’t believable in any capacity and felt like drama that existed to be a roadblock more than anything.

Also, not to whine, but Bill’s whole ‘counterfeit money’ plotline wasn’t very well-written.

The plot itself makes sense, but the way it bounced around seems to have just confused enough people that no one even remembers this was a thing.

That said, I think it was a good plot for the character... It was just not executed as well as it needed to have been to make a difference/really shine.

There are a lot of small things from S2 that were pretty nice, though.

Abigail’s fight to help Clara was meaningful, but I’m not sure how I feel about the addition of Clara from a writing standpoint. I feel like Abigail should have felt something was off about Peter’s trips from the start... The issue is that Hamilton is VERY far away and it’s VERY doubtful Peter would have ever gone there. Union City makes more sense if we’re talking about picking up shipments.

Tom and Julie were entertaining if nothing else.

I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in Hope Valley in S2, but I’m sure there were Events.

Season 3

Honestly I don’t think S3 had anything horrible in it. It just wasn’t very inspiring at times? It was like they had all these really good ideas but didn’t want to fully commit to any of them.

Henry Gowen was a star.

Frank was excellent in this season.

The biggest issue I have with this plot is simply that they didn’t take it all the way. Either he’s a dangerous man to allow to stay in town or he’s not. Saying he is doesn’t make it so. A rock through a window? Okay, sure...that’s threatening I guess. But it didn’t feel like enough to turn the whole town.

And again, having him barely doing anything even though he’d definitely be worried for Abigail and Cody’s safety is just inane.

Still, overall the whole thing was pretty good/well-done. Especially that unexpected turn at the end where Henry helped turn the tide. (I still wish that had gone somewhere and wonder even now if they had an idea they wanted to use and didn’t get the chance to.)

Abigail adopting children was nice. I wish Becky hadn’t been a part of it at all though. Like the IDEA is nice, but I can’t imagine she’d believe in it all as fast/readily as she does? This plotline just seemed great for Cody and meaningless to Becky, IMO.

But hey, the thing with Cody is meaningful enough. My issue is just that he’s like, 8 or 9 and remembers his parents very clearly, so I don’t think he’d be that willing to replace them. I guess it could just be his personality, but it might make more sense for him to be like 5-6 years old instead (less attached with fuzzier memories by this point if they’ve been on the run awhile).

Despite my qualms I think this was a pretty good story for Abigail. Just wish they hadn’t dropped her role as a mom as quickly as it felt they did.

Hattie was a good character and I enjoyed her introduction story. It was sad, but it felt good/satisfying.

Bill buying Henry’s share in the café was a great little thing. Maybe too convenient and itching for a story of its own (instead of it just happening), but overall a good idea.

Jack’s mom coming to town was entertaining. She had some really good lines. Lard in coffee. I mean...this was gold.

Season 4

The peddler was a cute addition but I didn’t much care for the overt magical element.

If it felt a little more real/grounded/down to earth I think I might have been more intrigued.

Frank getting his original Bible back was a GREAT story but when they tried tying it into his vaguely stalker-like behavior? It just ruined the entire thing.

For what it’s worth, Frank’s character goes downhill pretty sharply in this season.

There were a lot of cute kid storylines in this one. But they weren’t all...great...

Robert telling the lie about the bear? Nice.

The kid with the knee brace? Ugh.

The storyline itself wasn’t bad!

But after Becky miraculously recovered the previous season it just felt like a slap in the face. I live with chronic pain and it’s just one of those things where I’d like a little representation somewhere.

I still think Becky should have stayed wheelchairbound.

I can’t get over how insulting it was that she just MIND OVER MATTER FIXED HERSELF. The writer who put that in there should be slapped, and the writer who wrote the saME GODFORSAKEN STORY AGAIN with this child should also be slapped.

I really feel that if they were gonna let Becky recover like that, this kid should be living with a permanent disability and this episode could deal with kids helping him play/doing activities he could participate and enjoy.

Maybe it’s too on-the-nose but the hardest part about a chronic illness/disability of any kind is the part where you lose things you loved to do that you considered a part of your identity. That’s an awfully deep storyline for WCtH, but they should have gone for it here.

Phillip was in between.

Phillip and his father were great, but Elizabeth was just SO incredibly awful. This is where she and Abigail started always being right about everything and I felt her involvement was unbearable.

They should have just let Faith take over Elizabeth’s role in that plot and it would have been way better. They could have had the eyesight issue earlier and done something great with it.

Frank and Abigail’s relationship at the beginning of this season was pretty interesting. Even though the whole “danger” thing was a little goofy, it was nice to see them communicating and adjusting.

It felt like a natural issue people would actually have. And it wasn’t smoothly worked out, which is fine.

Also, Rosemary’s interference was hilarious.

RIP to the following:

Frank’s character after his earlier scene, because he doesn’t get anything else that’s actually in character.

Good writing because Carson is now the town hero he’s gonna save Cody from appendicitis because other doctors are just completely stupid!

Also Carson is a surgeon so TAKE THAT, regular doctors!

Doug. You were a real bro, my guy.

I DID like Doug’s role in the story, though. His death made some sense, but it was ill-timed. (How convenient that we only even hear of him moments before his death lol.)

AJ Foster is a highlight of S4 for me. I love her, and for the most part I love her introduction.

She’s such a pain in the neck, but she also talks a lot of sense.

The writing isn’t great for her, or for Bill in these scenes, but at least there was An Attempt™.

I appreciate that they introduced the idea of her much earlier in the season and built up to her actual appearance, which I couldn’t have guessed would be relevant early on.

Considering how the officers at my company hate our IRS auditor, I find the fact that AJ has enemies beyond believable.

Railroad shenanigans were pretty entertaining in this season, too.

Season 5

The last episode at least tried to be kind to the characters, so I appreciate it.

Elizabeth’s conversation with her father before her wedding was a highlight of the entire season.

AJ’s return plot was abysmal.

I’d be terribly embarrassed to have been the one to write this, especially considering how completely whack it feels next to the other plots.

I’ve ranted about this so many times I should have run out of steam but BOY is it cringey. This is the height of Bill-is-a-grumpy-old-man as a Thing in this series and this is probably when it is its worst.

The rattlesnake plotline was contrived as heck, but the only thing to make it worse was how weird everyone acted.

Rhonda was a good character and the plotline, if it wasn’t so rushed, would have actually been really great. I still liked it overall, though.

Frank’s send-off was dumb, but at least he got one on-screen.

I still can’t believe they killed their main romantic male lead off-screen.

What the heck...

Abigail was really, really annoying in this season, and so was Elizabeth. Unbearable.

Also, I still hate the pregnancy oooops~~ ♥♥ plot at the end of the grieving episode. Really? COME ON. I know they wanted to give the fans hope but it was jarring.

Season 6

I still HATE the nativity == baby Jack’s birth parallels.

Why did they feel the need to do that. Why couldn’t we have just gotten pregnant Elizabeth shenanigans?

They put Jack’s DEATH ON THE TOMBSTONE like how is she popping out a baby less than two months later when she didn’t even know she wa---?F?DJSAFLJDSAFHLDSAL?

Abigail?

DELETED.

Thank goodness.

Bill?

Assassinated. Or at least, his character was.

This is bad. :(

On the plus side he gets promoted to the position of JUDGE...and barely does anything worthwhile with it...yet.

GODFATHER BILL. The best thing in this season.

Fiona?

A goddess. I love her.

Lucas?

Slimy.

But handsome.

The 4th Property Brother. He even tries his hand at renovating.

Nathan?

Honest and good.

Pretty cute.

Works together with Bill once in one of Bill’s only good scenes.

The oil plotline is actually pretty good/fun. Jesse and Clara get more scenes finally.

Elizabeth isn’t the focus of everything.

Lee and Rosemary got like, no mention in any of these posts but mostly because it felt like they were never really doing anything before, but I did feel like they were given a little more meaningful lines/places in this season.

How’s this for an attempt? :P I’m probably missing A LOT but I can’t recall everything too easily!

#long post #anonymously asked #answered mail

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