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stormsbourne · 6 years

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uhhhh with spoilers tho why was infinity war bad?

spoils + long post under cut

so I think the single scene that caps off how bad infinity war is is that thanos has captured gamora and forced her to tell him where the last infinity stone is. thanos, if you’ve forgotten, took gamora from her home – there’s an earlier scene that shows him grooming her as he kills half her planet – and spent her entire life pitting her and nebula against each other for his amusement and to “make them strong” in pretty much textbook abusive ways. but for some goddamn reason, the movie then shows thanos being a fucking whiny baby about gamora’s hatred of him.

gamora: [referring to thanos’ throne] I always hated this chairthanos: yes, I’ve heard that beforegamora: and I hated this roomthanos: you have said as muchgamora: and I hated youthanos: *sad baby face* :’(

anyway thanos and gamora are going after this stone. it’s about halfway through the movie at this point

double hitler red skull shows up as the guardian of the stone and also a weird dementor and tells thanos that in order to get the stone he has to sacrifice something that he loves more than anything. gamora starts laughing. she tells him that this is his just deserts, that the universe has put up a wall here to thwart him because he is incapable of loving anyone or anything so the stone will never be his. he turns around to face her and he’s crying. “tears, really?” she demands. “they’re not for him” doublenazi red skull says

there’s a very long sequence of thanos grabbing gamora by the wrist in a deliberate parallel to the earlier scene where he took baby gamora by the hand. he yanks her over to this cliff edge and throws her off, crying the whole time. poor sad abuse man. has to kill his victim. it must be hard. we see her fall. then we get a loving fucking 30 second money shot of her dead body at the bottom of this chasm just to really drive home how tragic it is.

(baby gamora is later used at the end of the movie once thanos wins to reassure him it was worth it)

I knew this movie was gonna be a problem before then but this was The Scene where I knew it was the second worst movie marvel had made.

in addition to all of this here are some other points

Thanos’ “sympathetic motivation” is stupid. if you haven’t been spoiled on this yet his motivation is that he wants everything to be “in balance” and he’s motivated by overpopulation, which is a racist + classist myth perpetuated by those in power to promote xenophobia. thanos’ goal is to eliminate half of every sentient species in the universe to ensure nobody is ever poor or suffering again, somehow, and also to ensure that the universe doesn’t run out of resources

oh but it’s ok! the genocide is random! no racial or class overtones here we just flip a coin for everybody! random genocides are the best genocides!

I don’t want to sound like one of those people who soapboxes about how narratives have to tell us the badguy is bad but I honestly don’t think the movie does enough to communicate that thanos is wrong and also fucking crazy. there’s a few people like “oh thanos how can you be sure” and “thanos we make these choices and that’s what matters” but almost no one ever hears his plan and tells him “you are crazy and that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever fucking heard, you delusional fucking weirdo”

he wins btw which wouldn’t be bad taken on its own but like, why does he not use his magical glove macguffin to make resources infinite and the universe an actual utopia instead of killing half of everybody

two significant, named characters die in the first 10 minutes before the opening screen even shows up, without any sort of buildup

the soul gem plot even without all the ooh sad abuser shit is such a fucking nothing burger, you have all these weird and intricate things that involved entire plots of movies and weird shit that’s only barely a gem at all like the aether from thor 2 and then you have Fantasy Trope 101 oh you gotta kill somebody to get the rock! you gotta do it! but it’s sad and this strange dementor not-hitler is here to make sure it’s sad!

the black panther cast is in it for approximately 20 minutes total out of the like, 3 hour runtime. (aside: I actually saw BP and IF on the same day and holy balls was that a high to low sliding scale)

the movie ends with roughly 2/3 of the main cast being turned to dust by thanos winning but because we know none of it is going to stick because they have sequel movies and this is comics-based, it just feels pointless. it feels like a waste of time. it feels like they dragged out into 2.5 hours what could have been done in 20 minutes

speaking of thanos winning it is exhausting to watch. it feels like the movie is kicking you over and over and every time it starts to let you get up a bigger dude comes in and kicks you instead. nobody likes to watch a movie where the villain wins over and over and over without so much as a setback. thanos starts OUT too powerful for anybody to stop so the entire movie just becomes him stomping all over everybody over and over and over again. we start out the movie with him doing it. we end the movie with him literally undoing an emotional climax moment in order to make sure he wins. oh you destroyed the mind gem? no big deal I’ll just rewind time zoooooop ok we good! I win! *little kid voice* you can’t kill me I rewound time and actually I won 10 minutes ago!

ok this one is kind of petty but someone pointed out valkyrie isn’t even in this movie and now it’s consuming me, you give ant-man and hawkeye one-off lines about why they’re not here but you can’t even be like “oh yeah valkyrie took some of our people and escaped” (we’re gonna come back to this in like 2 seconds keep it iin mind)

random annoyance: peter quill peacocking over gamora because thor is hot and he feels threatened, I hate peter quill

other random annoyance: thor your ship got fucking blown up, how did thanos only kill half your people, are the other half on his ship now?

I honestly just like, cannot fucking stress how bad the thanos and gamora shit is, how fucking horrifying it is, how we’re expected to feel sympathy for this man who literally fucking disassembled nebula to torture her to get gamora to do what he wants. oh it’s ok though. he loves gamora in his way you see. it’s fine. it’s fine! it’s fine. it’s fine. i t s f i n e : )

does the rest of the world just not realize how horrifying that is?!?!?!?!?!?!?

the vision/scarlet witch ship is like an emotional crux of the whole movie and it just. it just doesn’t work. it just doesn’t.

the plot thread with the hulk is probably going to be resolved in avengers 2019 since iirc bruce survived but as it is it feels unfinished and dangling

speaking of survivors we gotta have that man angst, we’ll turn a 17 year old boy to dust but tony’s gotta look sad about it

like fam I love tony angst but he has had ENOUGH jesus CHRIST rdj only barely wants to be involved with this franchise anymore anyway let him be free. maybe he’ll actually die in avengers 2019

it feels like it undoes a bunch of things from the previous movies which on one hand who cares! it’s all gonna be rewound anyway! but on the other hand FUCK you. the asgardian refugees are all fucking dead now. black panther’s cast exists for like 20 minutes and its setting is there pretty much just so the aliens can fuck up someplace that isn’t new york for once. rocket’s epiphany at the end of gotg2? who cares we’ve got snark to dispense! can’t have him act like he learned anything, that’d take away from his ability to be a dick to peter!

uh I think I’m out of steam for now but that’s my list of why I hated the movie. it had some good moments and a lot of the character interactions were great, especially literally every scene involving spiderman, but you could have fucking jewels and if you bury them in shit they are still going to stink

#Anonymous #infinity war spoilers /#asks

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alainas-adventures · 7 years

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Guilin/Yangshuo!

For months, I had been looking at images of the picturesque towns of Guilin and Yangshuo, China. It was a goal of mine to visit these places by the end of the summer, and we made it! Homer and I spent a 3-day weekend enjoying nature, spectacle, and culture in a more provincial region of China.

Note: I found it pretty difficult to gain specific information about traveling in Guilin and Yangshuo online, so hopefully this is helpful for those who are planning trips there!

Thursday, September 7

There are two main ways to get to Guilin from Hong Kong: by plane or by train. We found that there was only one flight a day going to Guilin that was very expensive (Cathay is the only airline that does direct flights from HK to Guilin). Also, since we only had two nights there, we didn't want to arrive at 4 or 5pm, by which time all the outdoor experiences would be closed. So we opted to take a train. From Tsuen Wan, we took a public bus to Sha Tin, then a train to Shenzhen, and then another train from Shenzhen to Guilin. We booked our tickets from Shenzhen to Guilin online ahead of time. In total, it took us about 7 hours to get there; but if you take the earliest train, you can arrive by 1 or 2 in the afternoon and still have most of the day to explore.

We took a cab from the station in Guilin and arrived at our hotel around 3:00 PM. (Side note: cabs and communication in general is a lot easier if you’re able to speak Chinese – even just a little bit goes a long way. Of course Homer did most of the legwork in this department, but even I was able to converse with the locals from time to time.)

By 3:30, we were bummed to find that the bamboo rafts and other attractions were already about to close. However, our hotel was able to help us book a nighttime boat cruise which toured the architecture of Guilin. In the meantime, we chose to shop and dine in the area to kill time.

In this area, there were a lot of touristy shops, tea (especially mango tea) places, a few restaurants, and stands serving local delicacies (fried bugs and crocodile meat). I’m not even sure what this plaza is called, but it was just a few steps away from the Sheraton Guilin.

By nightfall, it was just about time to board the Two Rivers/Four Lakes boat tour. This is definitely worth doing, especially at night. All the buildings and mountains are lit up colorfully and you get a really good view of the famous Sun and Moon towers. There are two versions of this tour: one has English and Chinese narration and is an hour long, and one just has Chinese and is about 80 minutes long. The former stops halfway through to watch a piece of performance art from the boat; the latter basically skips it and turns back. There are some great photo ops along the way, as you’ll see...

The Sun and Moon Towers

As this picture was being taken, I heard “aww”ing next to me and looked over to see two parents, bemused at the fact that their kid was decidedly enamored with me. I began to “aww” myself but then noticed that the kid had on no bottoms. No pants. No undies. Just livin’ free. I wish I could say this was the first time this has happened on my travels, but alas.

This bridge reminded me of the floating lanterns in Tangled. What else?

Friday, September 8

This was our only full day of the trip, and was therefore our big touring day. We booked a tour to Yangshuo through our hotel, the first leg of which was a 90-minute bus ride to the coast of the Li River. There, we disembarked and (after waiting for the rain to settle) boarded bamboo speed boats in groups of four. I was actually expecting those stand-up rafts that you paddle with a giant stick, but this was a good experience too. (It turns out those kinds of rafts are mostly found in Yangshuo proper, and they’re really just for leisure, not for transportation purposes.)

These speedboats took us on an hourlong cruise down the river, past the beautiful knobby mountains – including the famous “Mural Hill Nine Horses” mountain. Personally, I don’t know if this was totally worthwhile. It was really interesting at first, but after 60 or 70 minutes, we were pretty bored. Unfortunately, the main attraction (Nine Horses Mountain) was the last thing of the tour, so I suppose it’s worth it if you really want a great view of that.

Can you spot nine horses? I could make a case for maybe three.

The boat dropped us off near a taxi stand, where transportation had been pre-arranged by the tour group. We piled into 10-person tuk-tuk-style taxis and took a quick ride to the nearby town of Xingping. We only had a few minutes here to poke around the souvenir shops before catching the tour bus to Yangshuo.

The tour group offered an extended tour of the sights of “Shangri La” for whoever was interested. But since we only had one day in the area, we decided to do our own thing for the rest of the day. After grabbing a quick lunch at a place called “Demon” (????) (I know) (the food was good tho), our first order of business was finding a place to rent scooters. We found one without too much trouble – 100 RMB per person bought us each a scooter for the day. For another 100 RMB, we hired a guide to take us around the countryside of Yangshuo. This was undoubtedly the most priceless experience of our trip, as well as one of my favorite things I’ve done since living in Asia.

This was literally advertised to us as “the place where they took the photo for the default background on Windows XP.” It exceeded expectations. Also, my Lizzie McGuire dreams came true with this mint green vespa. I mean are you kidding?!

Our guide – a sprightly older lady – helped us find a half dozen hidden gems that we never would have seen on TripAdvisor or Instagram. She took us to a place with an old mill spinning in the water, a cavernous mountain area where you could sing and your voice would echo off the mountains (and we did), a mountain with a piece missing from it where the light shone through, and an area where 20 RMB would buy you a bucket of arrows to shoot at makeshift targets beneath the mountains. To top it all off, we got to see the sunset as we rode back into town. It was truly unforgettable.

After returning our scooters, we headed back into what seemed to be “downtown Yangshuo” (I’m not actually sure what this area is called), and grabbed some snacks. Homer got a hot dog covered in hash browns, and I got a ramune/vanilla flavored ice cream.

Still having dreams about that ice cream, from a place called Youngsun.

That night, we had tickets to see “Impressions of Sanjie Liu,” a music, light, and water show performed nightly by an ensemble of hundreds of Yangshuo locals. There's not much of a storyline, but the inspiration is a character from a Chinese legend named Sanjie Liu, a girl with a beautiful singing voice who won the heart of her lover by singing to him from one mountain to another. Going in, our frame of reference was Macau’s House of Dancing Water and Disney’s Fantasmic. It wasn’t on the same scale of course, but this is still definitely worth seeing – if only for the moments when 200 people in costume light up the lake in front of you. Scenes of local choirs singing native folk songs, and performers walking their cattle along the river give you a feeling of what traditional life is/was like in these villages of China. And there are also more spectacular moments, featuring dance, large floating set pieces, and even lighting up the entirety of the mountains in front of you. We also enjoyed being far enough away from light pollution to be able to look up and see the stars. Tickets range from 200-500 RMB as I recall, and we got them through our hotel.

Saturday, September 9

On our last morning in Guilin, we decided to pay a visit to the Ludi Yan reed flute caves. This is a place to see the natural cave formations that have been "enhanced" by tourism companies; the formations are all colorfully lit, and it's a really interesting way to experience nature. You can buy tickets at the door. The tour was just over an hour long and the narration was all in Chinese. We really enjoyed this. (Except for the part where a kid dropped trow in the middle of the caves while his mom held a Ziploc bag for him to pee into. She then sealed the bag and dropped it into a trash can. I can’t make this stuff up.)

After stopping by the souvenir vendors outside the reed caves exhibition (and using my limited Mandarin to bargain with them), it was just about time to head back to Hong Kong. Guilin and Yangshuo were a wonderful retreat. If we could have stayed longer, I would have loved to try the stand-up bamboo rafting and maybe a hot air balloon. These towns are truly diamonds in the rough, and I recommend them to anyone traveling in Asia. Especially if you have a China visa that’s good for the next ten years!

#guilin #yangshuo #china #september 2017 #photos

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