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rappaccini · 3 years

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alright motherland: fort salem thoughts

(spoilers)

motherland: fort salem is an awful title. make it one or the other, not both.

the opening title sequence is one of the best i've ever seen. beautiful, atmospheric and does a great job of setting up the worldbuilding.

the three mains really start to evolve from their generic ya protag starting points. rae, tally and abigail are really solid, if sometimes waylaid by writing that doesn't let them evolve much beyond their types (The Rebel, The Sweetheart, The Good Girl, respectively).

and their friendship dynamic is excellent. they did a great job with that evolution from unit to best friends.

(granted the acting is less-than-wonderful. i think someone else could've elevated the material, but they just kinda... deliver it adequately. everyone undersells very intense emotions and it's very... whelming.)

i don't care about rae and scylla or abigal/adil for inverted reasons: i like adil's effect on abigail, i just think he's made of cardboard; i dislike how immediately ride-or-die raylla are when they barely know each other (and when scylla is lying to rae the entire time they're together) but i think scylla is a much better character.

i swear the one time i want a slowburn rivals-to-lovers vibe (with abigail) over the juicy spy-falling-for-her-mark story, they don't do it. abigail x rae supremacy, not sorry about it.

but it was great for scylla to be on her own in s2. that saved her from amity blight syndrome.

eliot laurence is being added to my list of male showrunners who can be trusted with female and queer characters. proving to all of us that all that's required to get minority characters right is.... competence at your fucking job. it's not hard, you just have to try.

this show feels like it's a live-action american version of an anime, a comic adaptation, or a ya novel adaptation. it being 100% original just for tv is wild. i can't believe it was greenlit.

can't get over how an abc freeform show has a canon sex holiday for teen witches to have state-sanctioned orgies, or subplots about how our plucky teen protags have to have arranged polyamorous marriages to young men so they can be bred like racehorse mares or prized showdogs.

or that they have so many queer characters, queer romances, queer dynamics... (on top of rae/scylla, rae's gay friend being treated so evenly and not like a punchline and them bonding organically over being queer, rae's dad having such an accurate Straight Dad Trying To Be Chill Abt His Lesbian Daughter vibe, the gnc character being treated as totally ordinary... even abigail having three dads. her mom literally has a harem.) i can't believe this is a cable tv show made for teens on a network that's basically the disney cw.

the spree's fire-burning disguise? fucking badass. there are some incredible images in this show.

that being said i hate the orange-and-blue filter.

the dope ancient families? i'm obsessed with learning more about the bellweathers.

the magic system is the most unique thing about this show. witchcraft as siren song is a wildly unique concept, and i love how seriously they take it-- something that could otherwise be very goofy ends up very cool.

granted i think it's so big that it's hard to follow. it doesn't really mean much if abigail and rae are adding to witch canon if we barely know the limits of witch canon

for that matter the thing that makes this show stand out is undoubtedly the world. all the tiny details, the little cultural mentions like different states (and the cessions), the religious divergences (goddess instead of god, christo-pagan being a sect), the technology being outdated bc of magic's influence, the alternate wars, the mothertongue, biddies.... insane. absolutely insane

the shift towards matriarchy because of three hundred years of witches from matrilines being the backbone of the military. the religion. the magic system. it's ridiculous but the show takes itself completely seriously, so it works.

granted the balloons-are-a-symbol-of-malice shit is still... hilarious.

i would absolutely read an entire book just about this world and how the witches' involvement in us and world affairs changed history. i'm watching just to get a look at this world.

.... but a lot of the worldbuilding has holes.

(like, 'wow rae has a cession drawl' as she talks no differently from everyone else. someone needed to get this actress a voice coach.)

like 'chippewa cession is in the carolinas but the map clearly shows that the whole cession runs through the middle of the country and the chippewa are from the upper midwest/great lakes'

like, witches are the dominant force in us politics and military, yet for some reason anti-witch christianity is still in power.

like, 'hey, witches only pass their powers down their maternal lines of descent, and we need more witches to be bred. let's send all our female witches of childbearing age to war when we have male witches who are just as powerful and don't pass their powers on to their kids.' .............????? that's dumb.

or the bellweather line of witches being So Special and vital to preserve, and having enough power to get themselves cushy command positions out of danger, yet there's only one bellweather daughter left? abigail should have a dozen sisters and cousins.

or rae and tally being the last of their oh-so-precious lines (and rae in particular having Powerful Genes), yet being sent to war instead of made to have babies.

and the plots and theming take turns that i kind of hate. we spend a whole season watching the spree murder thousands, except, oops actually they're Just Misunderstood? too late.

or the Blood Purity thing about the witch matrilines.... look bro if you're critiquing it you're doing a shit job. and just because a character of color is Purest Of Blood doesn't make it less icky a concept.

and the rise-of-skywalkery 'your bloodline is what makes you special' shit. gross.

particularly with abigail's s2 plot literally being 'so who do you want to be bred to? remember you have no choice. you, a teenage girl, will be isolated from your friends and peers, impregnated and used as a brood mare to pump out more soldiers to fight and die in our forever wars. but hey, lets meet these hot boys!' i mean... dear god. run abigail run.

.... can't get over how abigail is STILL so gung ho about the status quo after she watches it murder innocents and try to turn her into a brood mare. she just does not consistently develop.

we end s1 with general alder pulling a coup and mind controlling the president to secure unlimited power. and then sending three teenage girls on a suicide mission to keep them from telling anyone... yet she's Secretly Justified? and then in s2 is Bad again after an entire season of proving herself trustworthy? i swear the show cannot make up its mind about her. pick one or commit to a shift from one to the other.

and how was she still in power if her superiors know she was power hungry. makes no sense

we spend an entire season questioning the institution of the witch conscription and how ethical it is to constantly keep up forever wars, and how sus the us's involvement in world conflict is... yet we end on a note of Join The Army, Girls!

s1 establishes that witches are revered and adored, but in s2 they're suddenly not anymore and they're an oppressed minority group being hunted by witch hunters..... no. you can't make that massive a public opinion shift in a matter of weeks when the group in question has been dominant for FOUR HUNDRED YEARS and is baked into national identity.

also given how much shit the witches do in s1, having the witch hunter bigots be to a certain extent right about wanting to be free from them by any means necessary is... Not Good.

s2 really does blow a lot of holes into everything. still entertaining, but not nearly as tight as 1.

(hot take: s1 ending on the girls concluding military school and being sent into the field was great. sending them BACK in s2 killed that momentum. we needed to be done with witch school after s1.)

(hot take: bc development is always the best when you shove a character into the toughest situation they could face, the end of s1/start of s2 should've been: type-a legacy kid kool-aid-drinker abigail deserting and running away with the dodgers after seeing what the army were doing to the tarim. sweet flower child who firmly believes the army just wants to help ppl and wants to protect people tally joining the spree after getting livid at all the war criming. rebel slacker rae becoming the most loyal to the army and joining alder's inner circle as she completes her coup attempt.)

feels like the plots they wanted to explore just don't fit the world they made. and that their characters are just vessels to tell us about the world. or that they don't understand how to competently write the themes they want to explore. they're too ambitious for their own skill level, but i'll take that any day over being too cowardly to go for it with your batshit world.

still the world and the concepts alone are cool enough to stick around for. i'm gonna stick with the show, esp since it's getting one more season. maybe they'll into-the-badlands this shit and really come through in the final act. maybe not, but at least it'll be enjoyable and not too much of a time commitment.

#motherland fort salem

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let-fans-be-fans · 3 years

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STAR WARS Episode 8 - The Last Jedi

Only read after watching The Mandalorian s2 e8

Imagine a Lucasfilm Story Group that has actually worked as a group since 2015. Chuck Wendig’s draft of the first Aftermath novel has been roundly mocked and pulped before ever being committed to print. This isn’t about that, though. This is the germination of the story seed that is planted in The Mandalorian, so join me as we explore one of the possibilities that could have happened within the Star Wars universe: What If Grogu (the Child/Baby Yoda) first appeared in TLJ?

Ahch-To, the steps. Luke Skywalker regards his guest Rey with a quizzical expression, telling her simply but firmly “I can’t take that, but there is a place for it somewhere...” and the two move inside Luke’s little hut. Passing by a large levitating pod, Rey (and the audience) experiences mental flashes of meeting Finn. Smash-cut to Finn himself waking up in the recovery suit in the med-bay. Finn/Rose/whatever sub-plot (this post isn’t about fixing THAT car-crash, let it marinate) ensues, does what it does. This timeline’s Rian Johnson, however, is co-existing with LFL’s Story Group and especially Dave Filoni. They’ve cooked up one hell of an A-plot, and it continues thusly:

Rey never sees what is in the pod, and begins to wonder if Luke is messing with her or starting to go a little peculiar from isolation, on account of how he talks to it. In fact, something is starting to make her feel slightly more at ease. Maybe even a little guilty when Luke’s mood turns sombre and he says, “I know. About Han, and Ben...” We maybe even get a little nostalgia-boost by Luke opting to use the training remote and blast-shield helmet to start training Rey. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

All through this time, Luke has not withdrawn himself from the Force out of shame. He has always kept himself open to it, learning from the spirits of his teachers. The night that Rey decides to leave and try to aid the Resistance (or to confront Kylo Ren for her own reasons) is the night that Luke receives a visitation from two very unexpected spirits.

That’s right, y’all. The first Force ghost appearance of a non-Force-sensitive character in the Saga. Padmé and Anakin show up to give Luke the news that some strange, dark figure has attempted to kill Leia by shooting at her private chamber on the Resistance flagship, only for Luke to not understand why they don’t know the attacker’s name. “You don’t need to hide it, to protect him. You know, as well as I do, that it was Ben!” Anakin shares a concerned look with the spirit of his wife, and the next thing he says would absolutely blow the cinema audience out of every single seat in the house. “Luke? Son, listen to me. Who is this Ben?”

That’s right. Anakin Skywalker, the former Sith Lord Darth Vader, has absolutely no idea that our sequel trilogy’s Vader-like antagonist (his own grandson) even exists. Even as the Force ghosts watching over Luke and Leia and their families for all this time, both Padmé and Anakin explain that from their perspective, something is bending the Force itself around Ben Solo, pulling him away from not only the Light side, but also from its Dark side. “The boy, Ben Solo, is living his entire life surrounded by a wound in the Force. This wound, it’s very subtly, slowly eating him!”

Luke is still in shock from hearing the ghosts of his parents telling him what is happening to Kylo Ren. Rey is trying to keep him out but the villain is urged by his twisted Master, the Supreme Leader of the First Order. Their telepathic communication is picked up on by Luke, who all at once sees what has truly become of his nephew. Ben Solo appears to his uncle, surrounded by tendrils that look like animated cracks in a pane of window glass. This is the wound in the Force, and its presence is felt most strongly by the eldest living Force-sensitive on the island of Ahch-To. A short cry splits the cracked and bleeding image of Kylo Ren and Rey wakes with a sudden start. Luke is frowning as he looks toward the floating cradle, then he makes his decision. We (and Rey) are about to meet the 100 % physical in-camera puppet. Cast and crew are made to sign an infinite supply of Non-Disclosure Agreements, Rian Johnson is talked into only letting Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley and the puppeteers onto the sets while everybody else is shooting their things.

The cradle pod swings back its protective lid slowly, and there he is making his debut before an audience that paid full movie theater (remember those?) ticket prices. Exuding full fucking “Gizmo in the box on the coffee table” energy, the Child glances sleepily between Rey and Luke. This is why the legendary Jedi Master left the civilized New Republic, he tells Rey. The massacre of his first generation of Jedi students, the betrayal by his nephew, all of it would have been for nothing if he couldn’t save one very important life. Rey is sworn to protect the Child, who is old enough now to speak his own name. “Grogu? Is that what he said?” “One of his protectors told me it’s his name, right before telling me how I looked just like my father. We had a pretty good laugh about that...”

Leia/Poe/Holdo subplot, and [THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH WILL ONLY INCITE SHOUTY BEARDO YOUTUBERS TO SCISSOR THE HEADS OFF ACTION FIGURES THEY BUY WITH THEIR OWN MONEY, THEREFORE IT IS CENSORED TO SHIELD THE AUTHOR FROM PROSECUTION]

Before the Holdo manoeuvre, the Hyperspace Karen or whatever you want to call it, Rey acts out the plan that she and Luke have concocted in secret so that Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon can safely evacuate both Luke and Grogu. Rey hasn’t been told about the wound in the Force that swirls around Kylo Ren, but for some reason she can now see the same churning mass of tiny cracks in reality, and they spread out behind the Supreme Leader Snoke in much the same manner that Palpatine’s throne sat before the spiderweb-looking window of his tower on the Death Star. This is it, we think. Snoke is the wound in the Force drawing Ben away from his true self. Even as the lightsabre that Rey brought with her ignites and strikes Snoke dead, the audience is thinking along with Rey that the wound is going to close up.

IT GETS BIGGER. AND IT FUCKING CONSUMES SNOKE’S BISECTED CORPSE LIKE A SHADOW VERSION OF THE THING FROM THE 1982 MOVIE

So no. Rey sees it happen, but Kylo remains completely oblivious as he takes up leadership of the First Order. Something about the way he accuses Rey of the murder makes us think he really believes it too. As Rey narrowly escapes, haunted by the sight of the living animalistic wrongness that ate Supreme Leader Snoke, General Hux is rather confused. “Forgive me, ah, Supreme Leader. But you are the first Supreme Leader of the First Order. There was never a previous holder of that position, my Lord.” I know! Right!?

The Resistance’s last ships have limped along the supply line to the long-abandoned old Rebel holdout on the silicate world of Crait. The wreckage of Snoke’s flagship the Supremacy, hangs in space, permanently suspended in the wake of the Holdo manoeuvre. From the epicentre, a single pinprick of darkness begins to expand hungrily to devour the light from the hyperspace explosion. The great wound left in the Force crawls across the destroyed vessel, the thinnest tendril of its immense darker-than-space form now separated from Kylo Ren. Or, so it would seem, anyway... Reunited with Rey, Luke gives her an understanding nod when she informs him of how the lightsabre of his father was literally ripped in half by the destruction of Snoke’s flagship. Some of the elder members of the Resistance don’t have the slightest clue what Rey’s mysterious words mean. As far as they know, Kylo Ren has been the brutal enforcer of the First Order, only recently declaring himself the first Supreme Leader of the faction. Finn and Rose both speak up in defense of Rey, both of them surprised to hear that Leia also knew of Snoke’s death and the destruction of the flagship by her erstwhile friend, Amilyn Holdo.

Nobody can agree what happened, because a large subset of Resistance personnel share vague, half-formed memories of things as Luke, Rey or Leia tells them. No droids, or Chewbacca, share their recollections, and uneasy looks pass between members of the post-war generation and the Skywalker twins. It’s a quirk of the Force! Every sentient born after the death of Emperor Palpatine, the unfortunately waylaid Maz Kanata informs them via hologram, possesses a significantly higher potential for Force abilities than the generation who grew up on the fringes of the rise of the Empire, the clamp-down on Jedi and suspected Jedi.

It would seem that this Force baby boom did not extend to First Order space (being mostly disaffected ex-Imperials, their families would be more careful to weed out any aberrations in the bloodline and try not to be of interest to the Emperor) as only Kylo Ren, their rightful Supreme Leader and master of the Knights of Ren demonstrates any ability to touch the Force. That voice that only he can hear in the presence of Darth Vader’s ruined helmet tells him, its tone and pitch and cadence shifting (starting as the booming bass rumble of Vader’s synthesized voice before being joined by the harsh rasp of Snoke. The low, menacing tone of Maul and the cackling, wheezing Palpatine.) Power is the only thing worth holding onto. Let the past die, kill it if you have to. Cut out the weakness that keeps you bound to things like family...

“This is not going to go the way you think.”

Driven on by the maddening chorus of voices, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has now managed to track his hated Resistance opposition to the deserted world of Crait. Ships entering the vicinity of the mysterious hyperspace blackout are slowly consumed, vanishing into the great wound and becoming officially non-existent. Alone against his crazed nephew, the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker steps out onto the crystalline plain before the bulkhead doors of the former Rebel base. He cannot be hit by the guns of the lumbering walkers that his errant nephew orders to fire on him. Kylo’s attempts to telekinetically barrage Luke with the salted earth of Crait simply do not phase the man. As he calmly reminds Kylo: “The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.” Kylo Ren’s dangerously unstable lightsabre blade harmlessly passes over Luke as he ducks out of its reach. Finally, the angry young man seizes his moment and lashes out at Luke’s midsection. Nothing?

The Jedi Master nods his head slowly, the camera pulling back to reveal him sat in a meditative posture atop a flat-headed rock just off the shore of his home island on Ahch-To. Focusing his will through the Force, Luke appears not only in front of Kylo Ren, but also between Leia and Rey inside the base. The two of them in turn are surrounded by a loose semi-circle of the younger, more Force-sensitive recruits of the Resistance including Finn and Rose Tico. All of them, opening their conscious selves to the Force, are helping to shoulder the burden that Luke has taken on. Proudly, Luke slowly rises from his seat and sends a mocking salute to Kylo. “See ya ‘round, kid...”

The last supplies are loaded onto what few Resistance carriers and short-range fighters they have left, as well as the famous Millennium Falcon. Rey and Grogu both agree that their first priority is to properly re-establish contact with Luke Skywalker. Furious, Kylo retreats to his ship-board meditation chamber, pounding his gloved fists into the ashes surrounding the remnants of Vader’s helmet. Cursing the scavenger girl seems to spark some interest in the bizarre otherworldly whispers, the flash-image of Rey in the dark young man’s thoughts prompting the inner voice to remark, “We shall be re-united soon enough. Yes, you will see what new powers I possess in time, sister...”

SMASH TO END CREDITS!

#megapost #Star Wars #Baby Yoda #The Last Jedi #Luke Skywalker #basic story structure

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