#instead of 3 days of 'why the fuck did he exposition the entire fucking plot at me after i wasted an hour' 😠

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

i haven't been able to let go of glass onion (in a bad way) bc there's just something so frustrating about it and earlier today, i was trying to explain it to my brother and i said something about it feeling like "baby(aka rian) just saw get out and wants to write an equally clever script but for some reason it's also a murder mystery" and like. i think i got there. i think my main problem is how heavy handed everything is. but it's acting like it's so subtle and cool and smarT. saying "millionaire is bad bc he's dumb, actually!" is so lazy. saying "haha influencer thinks sweatshops make sWEATpants" is lazy. whatever the fuck he was saying about duke, the "haha alt-right man lives in mama's basement and is bullied by her hahaha" is lazy ?!?!?!?

get out(as my example of an actual clever movie) was smart because when you watch a second time you're like "oh shit that's why he said he couldn't bare to let them go after his parents died. he MEANT HIS PARENTS ANd NOT THE HELP" but in glass onion, a second viewing would just be you sitting there like "that's not actually andi, that's helen." that's not clever ?!?!?!?!?

#i'm convinced i would have enjoyed glass onion if they had shown us that andi was dead from the start #and cut between helen & blanc and the dickheads throughout #like. the “terminally online in 2020” references would have still annoyed me a lOT #but i would have watched it and been like 'sure whatever' #instead of 3 days of 'why the fuck did he exposition the entire fucking plot at me after i wasted an hour' 😠 #i hate when a writer of a movie makes the audience feel stupid for watching their movie and buying what they showed us #it's not CLEVER that this woman was actually her secret sister all along! #that's lazy writing #i get so riled up abt this bc you know how much hype this is all buying rian sdfghfdsfg johnson? #every time this white mediocrity gets swallowed up by people en masse #i feel so sad for the good stories we won't get to see from miniorities #like. one rich white straight man writes some 'quirky leftist oneliners' and it's like we're back in the height of the mcu fandom #but now everyone thinks it's progressive bc it's making fun of unwoke people or 'elon musk' #i also hate how much rian's writing makes it seem like all these horrific rich people are bad bc they're dumb #i'm gonna go watch get out a 50th time and maybe some day glass onion will not be on my dash and then #i won't have to have a stroke abt it #i feel like janis ian with you people #the 'did you hang with AWESOME people and drink AWEOMSE shoooters?????' but it's about glass onion #i don't care if people enjoy it #i care that people genuinely think it's smart or good #i love bad movies #i love practically every early 2000s romcom #maid in manhattan is not a masterpiece just bc i love and enjoy it #i'm gonna go watch maid in manhattan and cry sdfvvds

[riathedreamer]

You asked for it: live thoughts from Ria and @creatrixanimi​ watching RvB Zero.

So, after having a movie night the day before (third movie night in a week, actually, we are very productive) watching Neil Breen movies and “Cool Cat”, it was now time to touch upon Zero. Sadly, Zero does not belong in the “so bad it’s good” category, but alas, Ria had to spoil Haley’s innocence.

This is not a proper edited review, but just snippets of our live reaction while watching the thing together. We are not drunk, but this continued way past midnight for Ria, so maybe her brain isn’t fully functioning. Also, Ria is a potty mouth because cursing is easy when it’s not your native language. Enjoy.

Episode 1:

Ria: I can’t figure out if they were trying to do a Grif and Simmons parallel with those two random guards talking outside, the ones with the Wash retconning.

Haley: Their armor doesn’t cover their noses. 

Ria: That’s gotta be cold. Frostbitten noses.

...

Haley: There is no exposition. Like, it feels like the writers had their idea and know what is going on, but we don’t so it just feels weird and random. It feels like a Marvel movie.

Ria: Is that a compliment? I haven’t watched Marvel.

Haley: Not a good one.

 ...

Ria: This episode isn’t that bad in itself. But it’s just there to establish that the OG characters can’t beat this new villain, but the new guys can, and, urgh.

 ...

Episode 2:

[The shot focuses on One’s behind.]

Ria’s dirty mind: Ass.

 ...

Ria: STOP CALLING HIM DAVID.

...

Ria: I like this character, but I don’t remember his name.

Haley: Raymond.

Ria: This is why we need a name system like with the Freelancers and states. Should’ve just been numbers all the way through. Except Eleven, you fucking whore.

 ...

Haley at the sight of Raymond’s phone: It’s so big.

Ria: It’s the future. I can believe it.

 ...

Ria: Here’s the thing driving me crazy. Axel is a normal name in Denmark. But like, only old people use it. I know two Axels and they are both older than eighty. So that’s when I think of when I see Axel.

 ...

[After the whole training montage where we are introduced to the characters, we are still confused.]

Ria: I can’t remember their names.

Haley: Well, they didn’t show all of them. They didn’t show One.

Ria: They did!

Haley: They did?

Ria: Wow. So we got all that tell and no show, and we are still confused.

 ...

Haley: When it comes to genre, it’s actually not that bad with the narrated tell and don’t show. If it wanted to be a cheesy/bad action movie, that’s a trope that’s used relatively frequently in the genre. It’s a bad action movie. But it’s not RvB. It’s kinda like a particularly bad Marvel movie.

Ria: You’re really not selling me on the Marvel movies tonight.

 ...

Ria: I know I’m just a sucker for Joe, but I keep thinking of s15. Like, here they just use the files as a cheap way to introduce the characters. But like, in s15, Dylan just read out loud Grif’s file, and it was not to introduce him, but like, to show the complexity of the characters and go against the files? I don’t know, it just seems way cooler now.

 ...

[After the whole “what’s East’s deal” scene, we were so confused. Literally paused for five minutes trying to figure who was whose dad and why and what. How many daughters did Axel have? And where are they? We were just lost. Future Haley: Him waxing poetic about his daughters while watching the two girls in his team train confused me like I thought he was talking about East and One and couldn’t count sdfghjk. Future Ria: I’d even watched the show before and I was still confused.]

Ria: I can’t figure out if they’re too fast or if we’re just stupid.

Haley: It’s like I’m trying to remember the details but it all slips through my fingers.

Ria: The whole Zero experience is to feel too old for this shit.

 ...

Ria: STOP FUCKING CALLING HIM DAVID

 ...

One: This is how it’s done, grandma.

Ria: Fuck you.

 ...

Episode 3:

Haley: People would like it if they love dumb action shows. It works as a mindless action show.

 ...

Haley: So this is a temple?

Ria: I hate the worldbuilding. Is this the same planet as before? Like, Chorus had temples, but it also had lore about it. Is this the same sort of temples?

Haley: So shouldn’t this temple have its own key? Why do they need to include Tucker? It makes no sense for the temple to require a totally different sword from a different planet.

Ria: So they could beat him up ‘cause OG characters are weak now.

 ...

Haley: I don’t like the training scenes. They are so long and boring.

Ria: This is like the third episode where they are training. Holy shit.

 ...

Haley: It’s not that bad. But if you like Red vs. Blue, it’s not something for you. They aren’t really comparable.

Ria: I just don’t understand what they wanted to continue for Red vs. Blue. Like, it’s not the worldbuilding or the plot or the characters. I just don’t get it.

 ...

Haley: Raymond is the best character.

Ria: I like Raymond.

Haley: He’s RvB. He should be the main character.

 ...

Ria: Did East just use the “I’m not like the other (girls)” line?

Haley: I don’t like her. She’s a brat. Why did Carolina have to apologize? They were just training, this is something she’s gonna have to deal with on a daily basis lmao.

Ria: Didn’t Carolina have a cast on her arm? It’s gone now. I can’t keep up with the timeline. So, she’s healed, but how long was Wash gone? They are so vague about everything. Worldbuilding, timeline, motivations.

 ...

Ria: …Did Carolina just say she’d suit up? While wearing a full armor suit?

 ...

[And this is where the cursed part takes place. To talk, we’d often pause the thing. Here, I randomly paused during the introduction for Starlight Laboratories. There’s a desk in the shot. With a fucking marker on it.]

Haley: That’s a Crayola marker. That’s a Crayola marker on the table.

Ria: Glad we can appreciate the details by pausing.

[Haley then missed the entire Axel flashback scene because she was too busy looking up pictures of Crayola markers. When this is revealed, Ria lost it for like, three minutes]

Haley: I had that marker as a kid. 

Ria: So 4/5 stars for the marker?

Haley: They were supposed to smell like blueberries or something but they just smelled like chemicals.

Ria: This is the most excited we’ve been about Zero so far.

[Future Haley: I was literally laugh-crying you dont understand. This was the best part of the show.]

...

Episode 4:

Ria: They all have super powers. It’s so weird.

Haley: I keep thinking they are gonna explain stuff. But they don’t. So I’m just confused.

 ...

[Haley has now brought forth all the markers in her room to find a Crayola one. She drops them all on the floor. Ria loses it again.] [Future Haley update: I found a yellow one it smells like lemons :)]

 ...

Ria: They are all glowing and have super powers. It’s weird. Like, I know we had super powered armor before but that was all connected to AIs. I don’t get how all of this works. They don’t have AIs.

 ...

[We both agree that we enjoy Raymond and Tiny. Bless them.]

 ...

Ria: It’s weird. The dialogue is so oblivious, it comments on its own mistakes. Like, Carolina just acknowledged Wash has had a computer in his head before. But they don’t acknowledge the whole canonical lore about his trauma regarding computers in his head and why he’d hate this. Same with the name David. They just noticed that it’s his first name and that’s how they’d show how close Carolina is with him, but they didn’t acknowledge the canon lore that Wash dislikes people using his first name.

 ...

Episode 5:

Haley: Why didn’t they use Locus’ sword instead. It’d make more sense. He’s the one travelling around planets and wanting to help people?? 

Ria: What’s the worldbuilding here? Is Tucker on the same planet? Is this Earth? Chorus?

 ...

Haley: Gotta love it when they make Tucker hit on teenagers.

Ria: Oh god why did they make East 18.

 ...

Haley: They should have done something with the Warthog song, even if that’s a Red Team thing.

Ria: I miss Red Team.

 ...

Ria: Wait, so if these three swords are connected, why can the two first ones move by themselves and they have like super powers connected to them? When Tucker’s sword is just boring? They didn’t even make a joke about how the two new swords are longer than Tucker’s.

 ...

Tucker: I’m fine, I have my sword.

Ria: That line is so tragic in hindsight.

 ...

One: It’s Tucker. He is dead.

Carolina: Oh my god.

Haley: *laughs her ass off*

 ...

Haley: I don’t understand why anyone is doing anything.

Ria: Your brain is still thinking about that fucking marker.

 ...

Episode 6:

Ria: The dialogue did it again! Wash just said “amazing medical tech”. Like, he points out a plot hole. Because that amazing tech can heal brain injuries and bring people back from death, but East had to be tortured for years to heal her vague illness? Like, why couldn’t their amazing tech fix that.

 ...

[While watching the design of the temple.]

Ria: It looks like those are just plates glued to the wall. Dinner is served.

 ...

Haley: There is no logical reason why they brought in Tucker. His sword isn’t even from this planet.

Ria: To lure in fans.

 ...

Haley in a very sad voice: The speech wasn’t good.

 ...

Episode 7:

Ria: Is all of this happening on the same planet? They keep driving. The worldbuilding is so weird. At least earlier RvB made a joke about how they could just drive everywhere. This is like a big desert, a training base, laboratory, city and temples and Tucker’s workplace, and I don’t know if it’s even on the same planet.

 ...

Ria: Diesel is just standing there waiting while they outfit Carolina.

Haley: It’s like a video game.

 ...

Ria: The temple’s walls are filled with runes.

Haley: It feels like a free/bought asset. It doesn’t even look like the temples on Chorus. It looks like something in WoW or something like that.

Ria: It’s driving me mad. I can read runes! Imagine a big boss fight and the freaking alphabet is plastered on the walls. That’s what I’m looking at.

 ...

Haley: Zero is such a boring villain. It’s not interesting when we don’t know what this “power” actually is or what he wants to do with it.

 ...

Ria: That’s the helmet Spencer wore.

Haley: Oh god I forgot about him.

Ria: So did the writers.

Haley: Spencer should have been the real villain.

 ...

Haley: *sees the random model of the temple guardian alien* I miss Santa.

 ...

Episode 8:

Ria: The aliens are just dancing in the background while Carolina is fighting Diesel.

Haley laughing: Oh my god, they are. They are just jumping up and down.

 ...

Ria: So, the villain just turned overpowered, and the solution is that Raymond just flicks a switch we haven’t heard about and now the heroes are overpowered too?

Haley: It just makes them shiny. And like... they don’t even use the “power”, they don’t fight him with their powers which only some of them have, they just shoot their ordinary guns at him while doing unnecessary flips.

Ria: I just remembered Church’s dick switch. That had more dramatic buildup.

 ...

Axel: You’re too cocky for that.

Ria’s dirty brain: Cock.

 ...

Post Zero thoughts:

[Ria returns from bathroom break and Haley is proudly showing off her marker over video cam.]

Haley: There was too much going on so I just focused on the marker.

Ria: So how many stars would you give it?

Haley: It’s really bad.

Ria: How many stars for marker representation?

Haley: Three out of five. It was only there for a second.

 ...

Haley: In the beginning, it wasn’t that bad. It was dumb, but also fun and sorta cool. But then it just went on for too long and they didn’t explain anything properly and it stopped being fun really fast. But I can see why some people might enjoy it. Like, you’d love it for its action but only that. Not for plot and/or the character writing.

Ria: I think my biggest problem is the worldbuilding. They kept everything so vague because they didn’t want to connect, not really. Like, where is this happening? When? Why are Carolina and Wash there? Like, the motivations for all the characters were so vague as well.

 ...

Haley: Raymond was great. He had personality and some good lines. And he felt like RvB. Like, he used his brain and actually got shit done, but he also wasn’t over-powered. He followed a similar character arc to what the Reds and Blues had. He sucks at fighting but he’s efficient and smart in a practical way with his rocket launcher. He does the most and he doesn’t stop being a goofball! Even Zero was focused on stopping him the most at the end. And he didn’t need to do any stupid flips.

 ...

Haley: The borrowed assets annoyed me. It ended up looking stupid, like, the temple felt more like fantasy than science fiction. And nothing like Chorus. And normally, RvB doesn’t have to worry about being cohesive because all of the designs are from Halo so it all makes sense and it’s connected. But this is just so random it feels distracting, I feel like this is a big reason people felt that Zero was so jarring… but on a subconscious level. It just felt off and there was no cohesive design. Also everything looked like it was made for video games and not modified at all for the show.

 ...

Haley: Honestly I was optimistic at first but then I got confused really fast and it kept getting worse because it was so fast. They didn’t explain stuff properly or at all. Like, they made it too big. Should have been smaller. I thought going with the “Starlight Labs is evil and needs to go down” plot would have been A LOT better and would have tied together multiple aspects of the story that the temple plot didn’t.

Ria: If I had the power which I don’t, I dunno, but I if the main point was to introduce new characters, I’d keep them tied to lore and worldbuilding we already know. So we don’t get so confused and it doesn’t feel so disconnected. Like, I’m still in love with the idea that it should have been Carolina on Chorus dealing with these soldiers who have been fighting all their lives and now don’t have to do that anymore. But maybe Chorus still needing an army, and that’s why she is training it. I don’t know, but like, familiar, build on what we know. And then they wouldn’t be superpowered, but like, just competent-ish but normal soldiers and we’d get to know them better, but I just think Zero just wanted them to be these super cool soldiers even better than Carolina so they could pull off all the fight scenes. ‘Cause it’s all Zero has going for it. The fight scenes. It’s its strength and weakness ‘cause they sacrificed everything else to look cool. And it does. But it’s boring and there is nothing else going on.

 ...

Ria: I’m still so annoyed about the temples. Why are they there? Like, on Chorus it was a big thing, also plotwise, but it had lore connected to it and the worldbuilding explained it. So, where are these temples? A different planet, right? Is it the same aliens? Are people just cool with the temples? Why haven’t they been explored before. Chorus made sure to explain all of that.

 ...

Haley: The West and East scene-

Ria: Feast.

Haley: Confused me. ‘cause West didn’t really regret anything. He just said why he did it. And then all of the sudden East forgave him and rejoined the team. It was so weird. He doubled down on the thing she hated him for so much I was like “Wow he’s kinda an asshole” and then all of a sudden she was on his side? What?

 ...

Haley: Zero does its job if you want action and nothing else. And it’s not RvB. Don’t watch it if you like RvB. And I just want to acknowledge that we are nitpicking. Quite a bit. I’ll admit that. But, I wouldn’t nitpick the other RvB seasons the same way because the old RvB never took itself seriously the way Zero did.

Ria: I agree. We are nitpicking. But like, that’s why we have the movie nights.

Haley: But we are also allowed to criticize it. You can do that with any season. And with the other seasons, you could nitpick it and you can find stuff you don’t like, but there are always stuff you do like or that other people like. I just can’t find anything about Zero that I like. Besides Raymond.

Ria: Yeah. Like, I really love 15. And it had so many flaws people pointed out. And when it comes to criticism and Zero, I just don’t see many points about why people like it. They are allowed to do that though. But, like, we could have a movie night where we watch the Chorus seasons and we’d nitpick so much because we both have issues with it, but there is still so much stuff we’d still like.

Haley: I like Raymond though. He’s like Grimmons lovechild.

Ria: No. Fuck you. Don’t put that in my brain.

 ...

Haley: Raymond being in this… I want to say it feels like the Freelancers seasons but if Grif was part of the team or something. But that’s just “Hit and Run”. *laughs*

Ria: NO! That’s cursed. Shut up. Also, the Freelancers were way better written.

Haley: And those seasons made better sense.

Ria: And like, the Freelancer seasons did the thing with change of tone and have these new and super cool characters and fight scenes. But they kept half of the seasons to be around the Reds and Blues so we still had the humor and the dumbasses, and Zero just, it didn’t connect.

 ...

Haley: So, I have some thoughts on Zero.

Ria: I know, you fuck, I had to write them all down by hand.

Haley: I like bad movies, actually, but Zero didn’t stay fun, so no, I didn’t enjoy it.

 ...

Ria: Do you forgive me for making you watch Zero?

Haley: Yeah.

Ria: What should we watch next?

...

Also, Haley dressed up her dog for the event and you all deserve to see her:

#we asked you answered we delivered #like most of these are just stupid observation #but we do have some proper reflections on the good and the bad and the ugly #and markers! #rvb zero critical

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Godzilla vs. Kong

From the first rumble in the seats in the Dolby theater, I was so glad I chose to see this movie on the big screen. At times it felt like I was on one of those “4-D” roller coasters where the seats rumble and they spray water on your or pipe smells into the audience. That’s how close I was to the action! As at least a casual fan of the previous entries in the Monsterverse, I was looking forward to Godzilla vs Kong and my goodness, those medium expectations sure were met. How medium was it? Well...

I would like the science in this movie to win Best Comedy or Musical in next year’s Golden Globes. This is probably the hardest I’ve laughed in a theater in over a year (obviously there are other reasons for that, but the sentiment still stands). This movie was nonsensical, loud, shiny, dumb fun and I had a great fucking time watching it. Oh, you probably want a plot summary - I’m just gonna refer you to the title of the film. That about covers all you need to know.

Some thoughts:

“Somewhere on Skull Island” - whaaaaat is with this title card? It’s a tiny island. How many possible locations could there possibly be for a giant fuck-off ape to be taking his nap?

I know we’re not here for any semblance of plot but boy, they really sprained something trying to lift these clunky paragraphs of exposition into anything resembling what actual humans would say.

These opening credits are one of the funniest sequences I’ve seen in ages.

My main man Brian Tyree Henry! I had no idea he was in this (frankly I knew virtually nothing about this movie because what do you even need to know about a movie with the title Godzilla vs. Kong). He’s playing a completely different vibe than I’ve ever seen him play - the comedic relief and a mile-a-minute vaguely conspiracy theorist podcast host who is obsessed with Sir Zilla and the other Titans. I really enjoyed seeing this other side of him!

Absolutely terrible waste of Kyle Chandler, who was probably paid more than my yearly salary for 60 seconds of Protective and Frazzled Dad perfection.

One of the highlights of the film is the performance of young actress Kaylee Hottle as Jia. Jia is Deaf, and so is Kaylee in real life, and I’m always here for more Deaf representation onscreen! And her friendship with Kong is one of the few things in the movie that elicits any genuine emotion of any kind. When he booped her I literally said “Aw!” out loud.

The visuals of the hollow Earth are very cool and remind me of those space age desktop backgrounds that most of the guys I know who built their own PCs and spent a lot of time on Tor.com would have had.

Even the most ridiculous films like this one will sometimes include little bits of worldbuilding that are thoughtful and have fascinating implications. For example, the “Titan Shelters” in Hong Kong - who pays for those? The government? Do rich people have reinforced private Titan Shelters while poor folks have to rely on the public ones, which are likely overcrowded and possibly don’t have enough resources? (I think we all know the answer to that).

I am very much enjoying all the neon in the Hong Kong fight, and how much more visually interesting it makes two giant blobs slamming their blob bodies against each other while causing a staggering amount of property damage.

Finally a realistic “I can crack the password!” scene!

Did I Cry? Ok, a teeny tiny bit, about Kong and Jia’s friendship.

Times I laughed LOUDLY in the theater: when Mr. Zilla, who can literally shoot lightning out of his damn mouth just straight up punches Kong in the face. When Kong gets attacked by all those lizard things in the hollow Earth and just uses one motherfucker to slap another motherfucker. When they use an anti-gravity machine (whatever that actually means) as a defibrillator for an ape that is sometimes as big as a skyscraper and other times as big as a mountain.

And now a series of questions:

Why is this high school class just watching the news in the middle of the day? The G-Z has attacked cities at least 3 other times in this universe that we know of. Like, this isn’t their 9/11, this is a thing that just regularly happens.

You decided it was a good idea to transport Kong over the ocean...where Big Daddy G hangs out all the time? Like...that’s where he lives, you guys. You’re basically trying to sneak Kong over the roof of Godzilla’s house and hoping he doesn’t notice.

OH and you had a Kong-sized net and a team of Kong transport helicopters ready the WHOLE TIME? But you still chose “sneaking over Godzilla’s house” as your first plan of action????

How long can Kong hold his breath? He goes underwater for some long ass periods.

In fact, what are the details of Kong’s physiology in general? How tall is he? Because at one point in his fight with The GZA, he’s standing on the floor of the Tasman Sea, no big deal - except the Tasman Sea has a depth of roughly 18,000 feet. And Kong’s just chilling out in the water at waist level? But he’s also shorter than the skyscrapers in Hong Kong? I choose to believe he can grow and shrink at will because that makes more sense than the sloppy joe approach to his biology the screenwriters are using.

I like Millie Bobby Brown as much as the next guy, but does it bother anyone else that she always sounds congested? Is that a consequence of her doing her American accent? It’s incredibly distracting.

Oh, this entire scene is set in Antarctica but no one is wearing hats or gloves? Sure sure sure.

And no one is having any problems breathing the air in the middle of the fucking earth? No one thought to check that the atmosphere was breathable before everyone takes off their helmets? No noxious fumes to worry about in the center of a planet that produces magma and shit?

You’re taking your child to the literal center of the earth? Is this not the ONE TIME you think you might need a babysitter?

The ship that can *checks notes* withstand the forces present during an entire reversal of gravity is crushed by Kong’s fist like it’s a tube of toothpaste?

Even though the Earth is hollow, I’m assuming the distance to reach the core is still about the same, so Godzilla’s lighting can 1) act as a drill to - I cannot reiterate this strongly enough - the CENTER OF THE FUCKING EARTH and 2) Godzilla and Kong can yell at each other for 3,958 miles (give or take) and still hear each other? Do they have superhearing? Is this something we’re studying or are we content to just have them Hulk smash all of that incredibly important evolutionary biology to bits while everyone stands around?

Because this is a “vs” movie, of course there is no clear-cut “winner” at the end. Instead the two parties leave each other with a grudging respect formed, an uneasy truce in place. But I’m obsessed with the way this final scene plays out, as though Godzilla is a bitter ex walking away from Kong after their doomed relationship has run its course. The lighting, the soft music, the absolute melodrama of this giant lizard slinking slowly back into the sea. Godzilla is giving the gays everything they want in 2k21 and I am here for it. Here’s hoping the next entry in the franchise has Kong hooking up with Rodan to make G jealous and they all have a messy public fight over brunch, Real Housewives style.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#121in2021 #godzilla vs kong #godzilla vs kong review #millie bobby brown #brian tyree henry #kyle chandler #rebecca hall #Alexander Skarsgard #kaylee hottle #godzilla #king kong #movie reviews #film reviews

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Stuff: Star Vs: Friendenemies

Happy pride all. I’m getting ahead of this one for a number of reasons:  1) It’s pride month and this episode is one of the most shiptastic things i’ve seen with two male characters since Robochris from bravest warriors. I mean it dosen’t quite reach “Creating a skull robot of your best friend because he won’t touch you a lot to make him jealous enough to do that” levels of romantic tension but it tries. 

2) My good friend @jess-the-vampire​ is a tomco shipper, and with things being rough for her I figure she could use this sooner rather than later. 3) Shows are actually coming back with Amphibia emerging from it’s year long odinsleep the same week Close Enough finally escapes from it’s dumpster after 10,000 years to conquer earth before it gets put back in there then escapes again and marries lord zedd.. I lost the metaphor the point is I want to keep Tom train, and other star arcs I have planned, moving at a steady clip. 

So with all of that yeah, i’m ready to go. No real exposition to dump again, come on let’s go after the cut!

We open with Marco at his laptop nervous about something and Star coming into his room tangled in christmas lights... so normal day at Casa Diaz.  Anyways Marco can’t help star out of her latest self made prison because he’s preording tickets to a Mackie Hand Film Festival. Mackie Hand is Marco’s faviorite martial artist and movie star, who died performing a stunt on himself.. accidentally.. did he give himself a death punch? Is this the same universe as regular show.. please say yes.  Anyway as is natural for Marco in the first two seasons as god apparently hates him, the tickets sell out instantly and he dosen’t get them, banging his head against his laptop as Star TRIES to comfort him , saying he might still be able to get them. Marco also says “Good things don’t happen to me”

I mean just look at Season 3. Anyways tom comes in licking a rainbow snowcone for no explained reason other than they wanted to make it obvious this was the Tomco episode. Tom asks to hang out and after Star, understandably at this point given you know, the horrible date where he tried to murder her best friend and the gaslighting a few weeks back, tells him a million times no, Tom explains he’s not here for her.. he’s here for Marco. Marco, given tom’s threatned to kill him twice now and tried to at least once, isn’t biting. Tom naturally has tickets to the festival as a trump card, and assumes that time he kidnapped marco and played him in ping pong for his freedom counts as a friend hang out, and geuinely apologizes for his behavior promising not to get angry. Really while as you probalby know we DO get the reveal later he was partly doing this whole thing to finish his anger managment... I do get the sense this apology, and a lot of this is GENUINE. We’ll get more into the why in a bit, but he does seem to genuinely want to bury the hatchet.  Marco pulls star aside and, given the last two times he saw Tom, the boy had some horrible scheme up his ripped sleeves, he understandably, and as it turns out correctly, thinks Tom is once again up to some sort of scheme, star is fully on board. I have. mixed feelings about this. On the one hand STar did forgive tom for the previous episodes mess and Ponyhead for much worse and it does set up the tiny plot curnel of corn that would grow into an entire corn field of her still having some friendly feelings toward tom. But it just feels weird, even with how cahotic star can be to have her flip flop from “Stop calling me” To “You should totlaly go on a date with the guy who harassed me and tried to kill you twice now. “. Especially since next time she has an episode with Tom, She’s fully resentful of him and a bit snarky and spends and episode, in part thanks to aformentioned magical severed ponyhead, suspicious of him playing games with her head again. We’ll get there soon obviously, i’m just saying it feels mildly off. 

So Marco decides, much like bart simpson that getting where he’s going’s worth it even if he has to ride with the devil himself and reluctantly agrees. We see the inside of Tom’s carriage for the first time, and see my good personal friend dead horse again on the outside, and it’s really nice.. lit by torches because mood lighting, but similar to his room it’s plushly decorated and even has two serious speakers and according to Tom 6 flatscreens. Damn I wish I had one of those.. that and I wouldn’t have to drive since I can’t due to my anxiety. Plus who wouldn’t want a firey horse skelton sidekick? Anyways Tom offers Marco cold cereal and Marco is frank with tom, pointing out he’s suddenly being nice to Marco after never being nice to him before and understandably isn’t sure he’s even a mackie hand fan but a bit of banter and trivia shows Marco that no, Tom really seems to be telling the truth.  Tom then confides in marco that he gets why Marco didn’t belivie him: Most people dont’ get past their preconcived perceptions of him. And here the series does flesh tom out a bit: Tom admits to not having many friends.. which frames the previous two episodes in a diffrent light. Sure his actions to Star are still very much not okay... but you at least see WHY he was so obessive about her: She was probably the first real friend he had that wasn’t a casual aquantince, his own family member, or a pet. Most Mewman kids his age probably weren’t too keen to hang out with what to them was a monster, rich or not, little raicst shits. And in the underworld most people probably just did whatever he asked because they were afraid of his temper or his parents fury, even if his parents are the nicest people in the underworld. So when he lost her, Tom didn’t know how to properly react and while his first attempt to win star back was genuine, it was marred by his refusal to adress his anger or control issues that likely lead to Star dumping him in the first place. While Star’s forgivness HERE is a bit werid, her willingness to give him another shot wasn’t: Tom was SEEMINGLY genuinely trying. He was in therapy, he’d been anger free for several days and most glowingly, when a stranger karate chopped his hand off in a misguided attempt to protect star.. he got upset but instnatlly went into his coping mechanisms.  The problem was as I covered in that review.. Tom didn’t WANT to change. That’s the thing about changing: you need to both know there is a problem and WANT to fix it. And even then, as we’ll see sometimes i’ts hard. I know, i’ve had my own personal issues i’ve had to change up as years went on. It’s a slippery slope you have to constnatly climb up. And BMB era tom.. just didn’t WANT to change he just wanted to do what he thought star wanted that would get her to take him back, and couldn’t understnad why she wouldn’t just listen to him and obey, two things not in star’s vocabulary for anyone much less her ex. 

So , much like I did, rather than blame himself for screwing things up, he just saw it as Marco being in the way and tried to fix that. And so he sunk to rock bottom.. but it didn’t fix their relationship and it took Marco having an honest conversation, as someone who was also very close to her and knew her well, to get him to see that Star wasn’t going to take him back unless she wanted it.. what he was doing was selfish and self destructive.. and Tom probably realized in that moment he had to stop. He let her go, and thus as I put al ot of emphasis on last time, made his first step to being better.  And to me that’s why this makes sense as his next step: While it’s partly to fufill a checklist... you get the sense he really DOES like marco on some level. They hung out, which I do feel tom did genuinely feel was like friends hanging out instead of you know the second highest stakes game of ping pong i’ve ever seen. 

The first if your curious. So while part of this is Tom just wanting to get through anger managment for likely his parent’s sake, part of it is also him genuinely wanting to be somebody’s buddy, anybody but a bumbling butler. It’s just being Tom, he dosen’t know HOW to make friends or get them to see past who he is surface wise; a spoiled angry boy and see the inside, a nice kid who just has no idea how to talk to people beyond a surface level or understand them and we’ll see that more both in this episode and as we go. Speaking of going back in the episode proper, two bros drive up and insult Tom’s carriage also wondering if he’s going to his grandpa’s funeral. Fuck you both.. both on general principal and becaause his grandpapapapapapaaaaaaaaaaaa is alive and magnificent. 

Satan bless you Relicor. Anyways, Tom is naturally pissed at this and Marco challenges them to a race.. but eases tom off actually following them as, since this isn’t a fast and the furious movie, the police immidelty arest them and we get the blessed image above. Let’s see that again.

NOGODWHY

Not right but it’ll have to do I fear what may happen if I try again.  ONE BALLON DICK GIRAFFE LATER, our boys are on a high, as Tom finds there are things more fun than obletarating people. #tomhaskilledmultiplepeopleandisstillthebestboy. Marco is reminded of a song from his faviorite band Love Sentence, and Tom, suprisingy given his My Chemical Romance with a splash of metal astetic, is not only a huge fan but has a giant Helga Patiaki esque shrine to them complete with a cd player with shuffle. Fancy. 

We then get a wonderful, shiptastic montage of the two just hanging out, hanging out with a white tiger. Having themselves a party. And given the song itself, sung by 98 Degrees and horrible realtiy show Newleywed’s alumnus Nick Lachey, even says “we used to be enimies but now we have chemistry” yeah I think this is intentional and they are a good ship. Are they my prefered ships for the characters? No tha’ts kelly and flame princess... the last one was recent and I love a good crossover ship sue me. But I do headcanon both as still Bi and still find the ship great, it’s just not my main one. 

However the good times can’t last as it is film time... but Tom refuses to let marco leave befor eblowing his top off... dude that’s not how you build a suppportive relationship, you know this by now. Turns out the white tiger I haven’t mentioned to now is actually Brian, vocied my boy Stephen Root who apparently just.. lives at DIsney’s animation studios now as he has a tendency to show up in every other animated disney show. You may know him from Gravity Falls as Bud Gleeful, THe Mayor from Amphibia, or , in non disney voice work, Bill Dautrive. Turns out as I haven’t even tried to hide, Tom was in the final stage of his anger managment class and to get out of it had had to spend 3 hours with the person he hated most. As I said I do think part of it was GENUINE on tom’s part, that he was trying to be what he thought friends were... it’s just he didn’t get that Marco, if grumblinignly, probably STILL would’ve agreed if he were honest.  However.. it’s still a step up. While i’ts still a scheme, and his LAST on the show.. it’s more benign after the last two; Instead of being harmful his scheme this time is just “Bribe my worst enemy into hanging out with me and get out of anger managment” it’s still not quite right, but compared to the things he’s done with star, it’s an improvment and a sign he is changing despite himself. He could’ve just kidnapped marco again and forced him to spend the three hours.. granted this might’ve just been Brian saying, obviously no tha tdosen’t count, but still, instead he tried being nice and giving an apology. Even if it was for personal gain on some level, Marco’s words clearly got to him and he’s now trying genuinely unselfish tactics. It’s also notable since he spent the three hours with marco, and at least half an hour of awkarndess before it got all fun, WITHOUT getting angry or falling back on old stratgies and only beefing it at the end because, as i’ve established, he dosen’t get people.  So naturally tom gets mad.. while it is a sign he’s getting better he dosen’t do his trademark horrifying demonic EXPLOSION of rage... he’s still being petulant and sore over his failure is mad at marco for pritoritzing the tickets nad destroys them. Marco naturally calls him out, angry over him manipulating him to get some badge , as he puts it, calls him a jerk and a liar, accurate and the worst part to marco? “I WAS DUMB ENOUGH TO FALL FOR IT”

Credit where it’s due while I may not LIKE adam mcarthur as a person...as a voice actor he is excellent and his delivery here is perfect as you do get the pain in Marco’s voice as he genuinely ahd grown to care for tom. Wethere it was friendship or wanting to make out... probably wanting to make out, you get the pain in his voice. Tom admits the love sentence hting wasn’t a lie.. but too little too late.. whcih is marco’s second faviorite love sentence song and leads to another moment of shippy goodness. Seriously I see why this ship exploded in popularity after this. Also I will say both Adam and Rider have damn pretty voices.  So Tom does what any romantic lead faced with a third act breakup would do.. say a demonic chant and bring Mackie Hand back from the dead. This is also the first time we see just how fucking powerful tom is. Before we’ve seen him summon his carriage and immolate some stuff and easily reattach a hand.. but this is the first time that we see he’s every pit as powerful as star, who probably could raise the dead she just dosen’t want to. Granted I don’t know why this sort of undead stuff hasn’t been used on say, Moons assitnated mother, but presumibly anti-monster stigma combined with the fact that we don’t know HOW she died or how much was left, and are probably better off that way solve that. It goes a long way to explain why Tom’s family are allies instead of the conquered like most monsters: They have equal , if far diffrent and spookier, magic power and are the only kingdom with this trump card besides the butterfly kingdom. 

So as we close Marco tries to use Mackie to get in, the usher dosen’t buy it and a fight insues, but Marco and Tom patch things up, Tom becoming a fan of Mackie now he’s seen what the guy can do and Marco forgiving tom since, evne if his actions were still a bit greasy, he immidetly did his best to try and fix what he broke. The two are friends again despite them both saying they hate each other... but they clearly mean it playfully. The End.  Final Thoughts: After the Slog that was last episode this one is a fan faviorite for a reason... well okay 2 reasons. One...

And two.. it’s excellent. I feel bad it took me years to see this one, but it’s one of season 2′s finest. It’s funny, has great character stuff for both boys, introduces a new ship that’s fantastic and a great new dynamic between Tom and Marco that would carry for the rest of the show. It also beliviebly advances Tom’s character arc: He’s TRYING a bit but he’s still got a bit of the scheming and selfishness that defined his earlier outings, but it’s telling that after this episode, and hurting marco, he stops. This episode REALLY gets him to change that and for the better.  Sadly Tom would only make one more apperance this season in Naysaya, an episode I will cover when I cover Jackie and Marco at some point, but has him show up for a cameo when it turns out the episodes antagonist, a curse that takes the form of a sentient head that spills the target’s worst secrets and insecurities when they try to ask someone they like out, is Tom’s fault from back when he was a baddie, and Tom genuinely apologizes and tells him how to vanquish it, if ribs marco a bit since he cast that curse presumibly sometime between BMB and MCC and is delighed and suprised that Marco seriously hadn’t asked anyone out in that time. But it’s a nice bit that shows their not only still friends but Tom is genuinely sorry for some of his earlier behavior. We’ll see more of that as we go and more of tom trying to be better.. he’s made up with Marco, next time we come back to tomtrospective, we’ll see how it goes with Star. 

Coming up besides the obvious, as Pride Winds down I’ll have my first steven unvierse coverage, one of the first openly gay couples in western animation, and some asexula pride as we take our first look at Bojack Horseman..’s loveable rommate todd. Until we meet again, stay safe, black lives matter and later days. 

#star vs the forces of evil #tomco #marco diaz #tom lucitor #tomtrospective #freindenmies #brian #star butterfly #98 degrees #newlyweeds #love sentence #mackie hand #martial arts #pride month #lbgtq+

[dragonwarriorgal]

Fate: Winx Saga episode 1: To The Waters And The Wild

I can't see shit.

Oh my god! NOT EVEN ONE MINUTE IN AND ALREADY THIS GRUMBLED SHEPARD, A MINOR CHARACTER SAYS "Feckin sheep!" *grumblebrumble*

did he just walk through a magical barrier like it was a normal thing?

and yet another "shit”

Though I gotta say, it is cool that the light from the flashlight is red because of all the blood (which is on a whole other level of funny)

Oh man, am I glad that I decided to watch the first episode of Winx Club before this

Wow really, Winx Club got this amazing banger of a song called Under the Sign of the Winx and this live action has Enya

There we go, there's that fantasy teen tv mandatory pop song(1), I am curious just how many there are

W.O.W. They are just throwing us into the school. Granted, the original series was also just throwing stuff at you. But they at least introduced the school to you! Here it is just "school is starting, get your diet Hogwarts College here!" (god please don't make this be Hogwarts)

OH MY GOD, I am assuming this hunk of a blond English "gentleman" is Sky. BUT GOD THE INTRODUCTION!!

OH MY GOD, THEY ARE JUST BARFING EXPOSITION AREN'T THEY! OH MY GOD!

"Three months ago, I didn't know the Otherworld existed" THEN FUCKING SHOW US THAT!!!!!!!!

Ah, yes, from the first episode that I saw from the original cartoon that I just saw, I remember that Stella was so unfriendly and jealous and being a really pompeus ass like Sky

AH, BRIGHT CORRIDOR!

"well we had wings in the past, but most of our budget went into making this cool ass globe with moving ocean"

"Exposition barfing is also higly contagious around this school so you will have it in this whole season"

Almost EIGHT MINUTES in and we finally hear her name!!!

"It's literally hour one of day one, Mom" And, sorry if I am drawing comparison here" in the cartoon she already had 5 friends!

"You can learn a lot about people on their first day" Like, how they did in the cartoon!?!?!?!?

WOW, are they seriously having a discussion about Bloom's social life in front of everybody????

Also, it is weird that I can hear the sound FROM HER PHONE so well.

"Are you the one person in the universe who's never read Harry Potter?" First of all, no I have not and will NEVER do that. And second: DON'T BE SO OBVIOUS ABOUT YOU POP CULTURE REFERENCE YOU ARE RIPPING OFF!!!!

Oh, god. The entire introduction of her roommates

Show: Introductions can be so boring after all that Mean Girls talk, let's give you some action introduction!

There's the drug reference... Also my face during this entire sequence

Okay, what the hell is this scene with the ominous exposition warning, wasn't Sky JUST fighting this other dude who got high? Why the hell is he going outside "the Barrier" and getting high? I mean I know WHY, for the plot, but HE WAS JUST FIGHTING SKY NOT ONE MINUTE AGO!!!!

Honestly, I thought the High Guy (I don't know this douche's name, thanks show) would be the one to die. I completely forgot about "feckin sheep" guy. Wanna know why? BECAUSE OF ALL THE EXPOSITION!!!!!!!

WHY THE HELL IS THE CSI GUY FROM THE BODY, WHO COLLECTED A SAMPLE FROM THE BODY, GOING THROUGH THE FRIGGIN PARTY FULL OF GOSSIPING MEAN GIRLS WITH THE SAMPLE HE COLLECTED FROM THE BODY IN HIS HANDS WHERE EVERYONE IN THIS PARTY CAN SEE!!!??!?!?!??!!?!?!?

That was a weird scene. Well I guess hello cussing villain of the series.

Oh, this is this type of show, I would have preferred to get the flashback of "3 months ago" in the beginning... you know, instead of this exposition barfing, but oh well...

This show is so mean!

Pop song number 2!

"i just met you, person I STILL don't know the name of and HAVEN'T given you my name either, so maybe I will trust you one day"

Oh great, a love triangle....

You know what, I would rather see the lives of those background characters who were told by the director to mingle and be friendly torward one another, instead of this Mean Girls act!

Who the hell took those photos of her? ON HER OWN PHONE?!

Honestly, if we didn't already see her parents expositioning her character in front of everyone earlier, I would have thought that she killed them "3 months ago"

God, could you imagine if the fire conjured in her right hand instead of the left, thus burning her phone?

Headmistress: We will teach you how to use your powers safely and slowly, starting tomorrow Bloom: *goes during the opening party on the first day outside the Barrier to practice her powers on her own* Fire!

Dead god, now I am hoping that she killed her mother, WOW, THIS SHOW IS SO MEAN!

You know this reminds me when I was about 9 I have been practicing swimming for about 1 or 2 years, but when I was 9 I started to hate it, but my family wouldn't hear it so they forced me to go. Long story short, after I was dropped off, I skipped practice and- OH MY GOD, I HAVE EXPOSITION BARFING NOW!!

Winx club: Bloom is upset because she didn't get a scooter from her parents. Fate Winx Saga: Bloom is upset because her parents took away her door forcing her "to be more open" and she burns down the house.

Please tell me the High guy and the New guy end up together, I just know they are going to force some LBGQT+ representation somewhere!

"Stop bullying me because I'm fat! I can take care of myself you twat!" *goes ahead and uses her earth magic to strangle him*

"Sorry, I'm Terra" AH, LEGIT INTRODUCTIONS!!!

Again, I CAN'T SEE SHIT!

Why are they having dinner in the dark?

Wow, the sound editing is TERRIBLE!

"Hey, we are your parent's bloom. If we don't know you, nobody does." The most hypocritical statement so far.

Wow, she hasn't even STARTED classes on how to control her powers, and already she has given up and goes to her warehouse home!

There's that jumpscare, it always got to me in the cartoon.

oh no bloom is in danger, we have learned so much about you from those expositions

Who the hell is Silva, not that I was distracted by your glistening abs or anything. Is he going to be like Archie from Riverdale?

Pop song number 3!

4 lamps are on in this room AND I CAN'T SEE SHIT!!

"I can't sleep where they all hate me!" WELL IT'S NOT LIKE YOU WERE GIVING THEM A GOOD REASON TO LOVE YOU GEORGINA! #notmystella

"Can I sleep with you, you don't hate me" YOU FUCKING BROKE UP WITH HIM YOU BITCH!!

GAH! A FRIENDLY PERSONALITY!!

Oh, it's a Zombie story... that's....hm..

There's that forced LBQT+ rep

Let me guess, the hooded figure going through the barrier is the Braid girl?

And it ends with pop song numer 4!

In conclusion watching this episode

#fate winx saga #live reaction series #wow #just wow

[xoruffitup]

TROS Reckoning (Spoilers)

I came out of the midnight TROS screening shell-shocked and 3-day sleep deprived after camping out for the European premiere. I just came out of the second viewing (already had the tickets to see it with my Dad) and now with two days to think about everything I am RAGING. 

Ben’s entire character trajectory was sacrificed to the fucking Rey Palpatine storyline. Almost all of his lines to Rey during the Force bond scenes are about Palpatine, her lineage, or the dark side powers he thinks she has because of her heritage. This movie and his role in it was both infuriating and nonsensical from the very first scene. He meets the Emperor, who creepily calls him “my boy” and references Ben’s “training”/abuse at Snoke’s hands - and this immediately triggers the reminders and framing for the fact that he has been suffering beneath the control of abusers the entire time we’ve known the character. It reminds us that Kylo Ren is a dark side coping mechanism for Ben Solo’s feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and abandonment. The deeper he falls to the dark side is a product of his deeper desperation to escape pain. 

That’s what I thought upon first viewing. But upon second viewing - this scene was actually an entirely new and entirely different set-up frame for the character. (Any continuity at all from TLJ is apparently too much to expect.) This first scene isn’t at all about Ben suffering under Palpatine’s corrupting influence; it’s about Ben’s status as a mere instrument in this film - it diminishes him to a mere vehicle for other storylines and a tool for Palpatine. In another version of this film, we would love for Rey to immediately be referenced to him the first time he appears. But knowing how it’s all about to go... I feel entirely the opposite.

The force bond scenes are a pitiable follow-up to the artistry and delicate emotional intimacy of TLJ. First of all, they talk to each other in a manner they never would after all that passed between them in TLJ. Turning Rey to the dark side is determinedly not what Kylo wants from her, and Rey would never be so antagonistic with him after sharing “You’re not alone / Neither are you.” And what about their shared visions of each other turning and themselves together, huh?? We heard about her vision of herself on the Sith throne with Kylo, but what about the previous mystery visions? Apparently we’ll never know :’)

In TLJ, the force bond scenes were the key moments when Kylo Ren’s facade was chipped away to reveal the beating, vulnerable heart of Ben Solo. They served the purpose of building (or rather, breaking down his character). In TROS, they were a narrative device to deliver Rey’s parentage revelation. Literally an entire force bond scene was wasted with clunky exposition about retconning Rey’s parentage. And we were given no answer as to whether these two have been in contact the whole time since TLJ or not? Even later in the film, the force bond helps them pull off the awesome pass-the-lightsaber move, but it serves no purpose for Rey or Ben’s character development - or for their mutual understanding and union.

Ben’s inner conflict and eventual return to the light side should have been the key stake in this film. This is what screen time, other characters’ emotional energy, and the future of the force were all painted to be riding on in TFA and TLJ. The question of whether Ben will return home and whether he can still be reached has been posed by both his parents and his soulmate/girlfriend. Leia implored Han to “bring him home”; Rey shipped herself straight to the First Order for the chance to try redeeming him. It seemed obvious that this focus would continue, given that the legacies of his famous parents/grandparents hovered around him.

They actually got Harrison Ford to appear in this film and then criminally under-utilized him (as they did Adam in the entire fucking movie but that’s ANOTHER ENTIRE POST). Ben once again coming face to face with the father he loved, killed, and regretted should NOT have been this brief, phoned-in scene thrown into the middle of the film with recycled dialogue from TFA. (”Your son is dead.” / “I know what I have to do..”) I certainly did feel pretty distraught when Ben called him “Dad” (!!!!) and Han responded with “I know” (fuck up my heart) - but the tone and the timing seemed all wrong and not at all measured up to the impact and importance that scene should have held. There was no build-up at all to Han’s appearance - he was just suddenly there. There was nothing personal or new or particularly moving even about what should have been Ben’s heartrending moment of reckoning with his greatest “sin”. I certainly did feel it when Han touched Ben’s face, but UGH the scene should have been so much more. Ben should have made a tearful apology or plea for forgiveness - Han should have stoically called him “kid” and assured him there was nothing to forgive. The moment Ben lost Han was the defining beginning of Ben’s return to the light side. It was the moment the first definitive cracks appeared in the facade of Kylo Ren. Ugh there should have been so much more than just recycled dialogue here. And given that this reunion with one of his parents is of course one of the central moments of Ben’s redemption, it should have been given the narrative space and emotional staging befitting its importance. Instead, it provided nothing more than an unsatisfying, lazy, and simplified instant-conversion scene; this for a character whose complicated and painful relationship with his family should have been a key focus in the film named after his family!!!

And then (fuck me) that laughably abbreviated and inadequate “redemption” scene ends with Ben throwing away his red lightsaber and apparently this is such a satisfying and complete conclusion to Ben’s life-long struggle that HE DOESN’T FUCKING SAY A SINGLE THING FOR THE ENTIRE REST OF THE FUCKING MOVIE. THE MAJOR FIGHT AT REY’S SIDE AGAINST THE BIGGEST OF THE BAD AND BEN DOESN’T EVEN TALK?! WHAT THE FLYING FUCK I CAN’T EVEN ALSDKFJADSLFJDSJDALS. What happened to Daisy’s comments like “Will actions speak louder than words? Will an ‘I’m sorry’ ever be enough?” He and Rey never talk about anything after Palpatine is defeated!!! He never even speaks to Palpatine about turning against him! No flirty banter with Rey, no “Get away from her!!” to Palpatine, no tortured/pleading “Stay with me” when he holds her body. Absolutely nothing!!!! It’s like he stopped being a character with any interiority after his laughably abbreviated and disappointingly unmoving conversion to the light side.

And he’s not even present in the last scene to fight at Rey’s side! THEY NEVER EVEN ACTUALLY FOUGHT PALPATINE TOGETHER! Because he got unceremoniously dumped into a hole right before Rey fights the Emperor! Rey’s apparent need to fight Palpatine on her own deprived us of the epic Reylo fight scene we were sure was coming! He literally wasn’t even there to fight at her side and save the galaxy with her.... Rather than fighting as the dark-light balanced duo we all expected and that THE STORY DEMANDED, he was literally tossed aside for the main fight and then crawled out of the hole to serve the sole purpose of healing Rey. But again - with no agency, introspection, or spoken words to his force-bonded soulmate as he holds her dead body. Because that’s totally normal in what should have been the closest relationship in the story. T___T

What makes me ANGRIEST of all: His death was treated as a fucking afterthought. 

Okay first, he should NEVER have died. There is absolutely no justification even if the plot had been better for why the character who’s the BLOOD SCION of the main Skywalker line should have anything but a HAPPY AND HOPEFUL ENDING OF LIFE. His dying means that both Han and Leia effectively died for nothing as they attempted to save their son. Han’s sacrifice and forgiveness did nothing to save Ben. 

Beyond that - his body disappearing makes no sense?! NOTHING about his death makes any sense?? Why tf did he just disappear like that?? Why, when Rey force-healed twice in the film already and wasn’t visibly harmed by it all, why the FUCK did Ben have to just sacrifice himself and without a word of dialogue to Rey after he has literally given his life for her?? (Which is so cliche and the opposite of everything he deserved and all he ever wanted.) 

Now, maybe there could have been a death scene heroic and narratively-important enough that I’m not completely enraged by it. There could have been a scene where he leaps in front of her or embraces her to shield her, and takes an attack that otherwise would have killed her in a selfless act of sacrifice. Then, his moment of sacrifice for Rey would at least be treated with the epic, tragic tone it fucking deserved?!

Nope. Nope - that’s not what happened. Instead, we get him leaning back and disappearing in the single most underwhelming, undeserved, and upsetting death scenes I’ll ever have the misfortune to watch and lose all semblance of my emotional health over. It’s totally fucking fine. Disney just had the one character whose happiness and survival we were all invested in, and just decided to tack on his turning to dust without any explanation or apparent narrative need for it at all, considering the battle was over and he was uninjured, and Rey had already used Force healing twice in the film without it harming her life at all. His death seems just completely unnecessary. It wasn’t a hero’s death at all and it’s making me fucking sick to keep thinking about.... He literally crawled out of the hole just to live all of 5 seconds of joy, to power-up Rey, and then to fucking disappear. I couldn’t even tell you if I’m more pissed off or heartbroken.

Now, let’s talk about Rey. Specifically, let’s talk about how the shoe-horned Rey Palpatine storyline cheated both her and the viewers of what made her such a unique and meaningful character to us. What spoke to viewers about Rey is the fact that she is no one, and yet she��s the one to have the Force and carry on the story. She was a self-made, self-discovering female character with absolutely no limits to who she might become. But after TROS, all of what might have been Rey’s chance to fight for the life she wanted for herself; to find what was important to her as an individual making her own choices - all her opportunity to make her own story was stripped from her. Instead, Rey had to spend the majority of the movie in a completely lackluster, predictable, and formulaic struggle against an imposed identity that’s just about the farthest thing from original.

Instead of Rey forging and claiming her own identity, we were punched with what we all worst feared - The cop-out end to her story that actually, she wasn’t strong in her own right, it was just because she was related to a strong male Force user. We shouldn’t care about her because she’s independent and forges her own path; we should care because she’s related to a man we already care about, whose presence predefines everything about Rey’s identity and ending. 

It’s a fucking disgrace for a female character who could have literally been anything.

What else is a fucking disgrace is the fact that in a film called The Rise of Skywalker we had to watch the final Skywalker be recognized and called that only once before he gets thrown into a fucking pit rather than fighting for his own destiny and survival at Rey’s side. We had to watch the most interesting, complex, and beloved character in the sequel trilogy (played by one of the most talented and powerful actors of today) be reduced to a cheap supporting device in what should have been his joyous, loving triumph in finally finding respite in Rey’s arms and strength in his identity as Ben Solo.

I will ugly cry if I think too much about the fact that he never got to respond to Rey calling him “Ben” or her touching his face. I’ll cry if I remember that Rey kissed him and he SMILED - and the kiss was fucking beautiful and powerful and everything I imagined a Reylo kiss would be - but for the fact that their kiss was a mourning goodbye, rather than the beginning of a new future. Ben tasted joy and love for just that one moment before it was taken away from him, when he deserved to live that joy every single fucking day.

In effect, this movie killed Ben Solo three different times. First, it killed his narrative, his introspection, and his development in the film with a convoluted Rey Palpatine plot it took a disgraceful amount of Kylo’s screentime to retcon in. Second, it actually killed him for no narrative necessity and in a one-second, unexplained moment that will never stop being infuriating and the complete opposite of what he deserved. And third, it killed and robbed him of his legacy. No one else in the film knows of his sacrifice and what he did for the light side to triumph. He wasn’t even honored as a Skywalker posthumously. Nope - fucking “Rey Skywalker”, the most cringe-worthy final words in possibly any film ever, even killed what could have been the enduring identity and legacy of Ben Solo. There’s literally not a scrap of him left by the end of the film.

Meanwhile, this movie had the fucking audacity to indulge in hero-worship moments for Luke and Lando which make my stomach turn when i think of how Ben was written out from all glory and celebration. Luke’s force ghost moment of raising the X-Wing for Rey to fly literally feels like self-aware fanboy masturbation and it makes me fucking sick when I think how anti fanboys are the last fan group who deserve to be catered to - especially in ways that destroy the integrity of the story and rob it of any and all emotional core of character.

Perhaps we just made the mistake of expecting this movie to be more intelligent than it ever would be. We read into the importance of Vader’s mask; we analyzed all of the indicators and hints that Ben would be redeemed and live in order to bring the Force into balance. But none of these elements seemed to even exist at all. It’s like this movie catered to the absolute lowest common denominator of fanboy, while superficially checking boxes for every other fangroup in a *shrug* ‘guess that’ll please them’ kind of way.

Thinking back to how promising the promo seemed - all the marketing and discussion around Ben Solo and hope - it’s crushing that this is how it all crashed and burned. It’s crushing that Ben Solo never got to hear the voices of his Jedi ancestors, especially the grandfather he tried so hard to reach. (Meanwhile Rey got to hear voices she wouldn’t even recognize.) It’s crushing that he won’t get to live the life of belonging and acceptance both he and Rey have yearned for their whole lives. It’s crushing that Adam was so under-used, and his character was so thoroughly discarded in the narrative. I’m crushed when I imagine how Adam must feel about such a dissatisfying ending for the most human, compelling character in the entire SW saga.

........I’m sure I’ll have more to say. But it’s 4 AM and now I’m plenty depressed/frustrated enough. I really wish it were positive, thoughtful meta I’m writing about this film right now - all about how intelligent and original the story was. But that’s definitively not the case, and I’ll almost certainly be back with more to rage about.

Reylos - I hope we can all get through this. <33 Let’s all remember the Reylo kiss and the great moment of redeemed!Ben Solo drawing the blue saber. Let’s all survive this day by day. I believe in you all and we will be strong through this, somehow. This horrific ending doesn’t nearly have the power to banish us.

#Star Wars #Star Wars spoilers #TROS #TROS spoilers #Save Ben Solo #Kylo Ren #The Rise of Skywalker spoilers #The Rise of Skywalker #Star Wars TROS

[thetypedwriter]

The Name of All Things Book Review

The Name of All Things Book Review by Jenn lyons 

I swear to God that I feel like I have been reading this book for my entire life. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t reading Jenn Lyons’ next installment in the A Chorus of Dragons Series. 

And while I found the first installment, The Ruin of Kings, filled with jargon, confusing for a large portion, and sometimes over inundated with the many god-kings, characters, and places, I also found it action-packed, whimsical, and truly original with her use of POV and world building. 

This unfortunately all goes to shit in the sequel. 

I was excited enough about The Ruin of Kings to immediately pick up the sequel and read it with starry eyes and enthusiastic gusto. However, it was quickly established that this novel was not like the others for one dominant reason: the main character. 

Now, I won’t get into the nitty gritty about why I enjoyed Khirin D’Mon as a main character in the last book, as you could simply read my review about it here, but to summarize, I found him witty, charming, engaging, and driven. Perhaps naively, although I truly feel like I was duped, Khirin is hardly in the second installment at all (even if the jacket cover makes you believe otherwise). 

Instead, the main character of book two is a girl named Janel Danorak who has suffered at the hands of the demon Xaltorath (just like Khirin) and has manifested superhuman-strength as a result. It chronicles her life up to the current present where she is currently sitting in a tavern with Khirin three days after the conclusion of last book and is essentially telling Khirin every single fucking thing that has happened to her in her lifetime to bring her to the current moment. 

It is beyond maddening. 

If Lyons thought she was creatively manipulating the narrative by doing a paltry back-and-forth maneuver in which Janel and Brother Qown are re-telling their own stories to “bring Khirin up to speed” it failed. I didn’t find it clever, charming, or engaging. Instead I was irritated, bored, and indifferent. 

Instead of getting more action, progressing the plot, establishing more of the world, building relationships that have already been established, and you know, advancing Khirin’s character and motives, a character we have entirely seen the world through up to his point, we instead get what comes across to me as the longest, most boring “filler” in the history of books I have ever read. 

This whole almost-600-page book felt like a, “Oops. I wanted to include all this information earlier cause it’s important. Yeah. Important. I’ll just spend a whole book talking about shit that doesn’t matter and that already happened so that I can tell everyone how important Janel is. Perfect.”

I don’t remember the last time I was so frustrated finishing a book. This book did nothing, and I mean nothing, to progress anything that happened in book one except for maybe the last forty pages, and that’s being generous. Instead, it was essentially Lyons’ way of word vomiting exposition onto her audience without actually telling an engaging story or continuing book one in any fashion. Make no mistake, ladies and gentleman, this is the Janel Danorak show and nothing else. 

Maybe I wouldn’t have hated it so much if I actually found Janel to be an engaging character like Khirin, or even like Thurvishar, Tyentso, or Teraeth, but nope. Hell, I would have taken Senera or Brother Qown over Janel any day, as they were much more interesting side characters than Janel could ever hope to be. 

To me, Janel came across as the most generic crybaby who whined like a little bitch and pretended to be strong for the entire book when she was really just unintelligent, uninspired, and lacking in every way. Lyons tries very, very hard to tell you that Janel is amazing. She’s so cool, so strong, so authoritative, so different, omg. But no. 

Unlike book one, where we learn Khirin’s characteristics through trial and error and are able to deduce them for ourselves, Lyons switches methods completely in this book and just tells us over and over again that Janel is super awesome hoping that it will stick. 

It doesn’t. 

And on top of that, why do Khirin and her get together at the end? Why does Khirin give one inch of a damn about her?? He has no reason to. He’s known her for three goddamn days as that is the duration of THIS WHOLE BOOK. It’s completely out-of-character for Khirin and frustratingly nonsensical. It simply serves as another example of how Lyons is spoon-feeding us how cool Janel is when all it really does is make me never want to pick up the book again.

I can’t even really say anything about the plot. Which, it being 600 pages is pretty pathetic. Bottom line: Janel needs to kill a dragon. She needs a special spear to do it. She spends a vastly inordinate amount of time getting this spear and dicking around and then goes to kill the dragon. Oh, and Senera and Relos Var are killing people like normal and Relos Var betrays everyone again. 

That’s about it. That’s the whole book. 

Hopefully now you can see why I’m so vexed. There was no reason Lyons needed to take this much time and this length to tell Janel’s story. Quite honestly, a chapter or two would have sufficed for her background and then her and Khirin could have set off for their adventure. That’s it. That’s what should have happened. 

But it didn’t. It didn’t at all. And this poorly paced, poorly written, horribly executed sequel was the epitome of a disappointment. 

Recommendation: I don’t even know. Read The Ruin of Kings and pretend it’s a stand-alone novel. When the third book comes out, check Google Pages to make sure the whole thing isn’t a flashback of Janel Danorak and I might be interested. Huge emphasis on the might. This is why I stick to YA, people. 

Score: 3/10

#thenameofallthings #jenn lyons #the ruin of kings #book blog #books #book review #Book Recommendations #book rec #fiction #popular fiction #the name of all things

[hellyeahheroes]

Ghost Spider problems

Disclaimer: the comic is not bad. Take this as constructive criticism

1. Start from the beginning

This is all you get when it comes to Gwen’s origin.

And before you say that this is mirroring Peter, no. Amazing Fantasy #15 was a fully fleshed out origin story. Amazing Spider-man #1 takes place immediately after Uncle Ben’s murder. Gwen’s origin encompasses years of her being Spider-woman with actual events that go beyond just a sparse origin. When Spider-Gwen starts, we are like coming in at the equivalent of Amazing Spider-man #300.

So Jason Latour tries to use flashbacks and detailed full page word dump expositions at the end of each issue to further fill in the gap between the shit the audience doesn’t know. The latter is quite frankly the laziest thing I’ve ever seen in writing. Rather than creating stories to establish characters and create a catalogue to their history, lets fucking just explain everything that happened in essay form.

This, til this day, pisses me off.

Anyways, when Latour did introduce a characters like a Harry Osborn, he relied on flashbacks to detail what happened. The issue however that he was simultaneously advancing a story while retroactively setting foundation of a character. One example of a past event being constructed entirely out of flashbacks: the death of Peter Parker.

In these flashbacks that are construed across multiple issues and not in chronological order of either the issue nor the flashback, Latour basically shows the audience for the first time Peter’s personality, how Gwen was after her dad indirectly told her about his feeling about Spider-Woman, and a little about their high school life.

The problem with this is that Latour relied on the interpretation of 616 Spider-man characters when he didn’t elaborate on their character for characters like George Stacy, J. Jonah Jameson, and Aunt May while simultaneously hiding behind the excuse of it’s an alternate universe to explain why characters are different. This comes with accusations of character shilling since he portrayed Em Jay as a selfish self-centered person, Peter as an arrogant misanthrope, but Gwen completely escapes her negative 616 characterization and comes off looking better.

So Spider-Gwen really doesn’t have an origin story. And no one actually bothered to make one even 4 years later.

2. Alternate Dimensions convolutes stories

Traveling to another dimension to just fucking go to school is cop out. Granted, the explanation as to why it was done was simply because Gwen doesn’t have a secret identity anymore, but okay, far be it for me from wanting a good time. It would have been more interesting if she persisted in trying to go to school in her universe while being known as Spider-woman, anxiety attacks be damned. “Man fuck consequences of a plot point, let’s just create a specific scenario to avoid them” is what McGuire decided to do. Didn’t even bother to retcon. Just fucking noped it.

MJ says what I’m thinking.

Barring this, it is a stretches my suspension of disbelief that ESU would enroll a girl who not only is named after a deceased student who you named a library after in memoriam but also looks like the girl who died and is around the same age. Oh and also, you hired the guy who looks exactly like her mentor who went on to practice unethical experiments and tried to conquer the world with them at one point but he has a different name so...

Granted, Latour twice left Spider-Gwen in a hole. He wasted Gwen revealing her identity to her father for the introduction of the character and Gwen then revealing her identity to the world to defeat Matt Murderdock kind of screwed the pooch. First, there has to be a way for Gwen to defeat him without sacrificing her identity like exonerating herself from being blamed for Peter’s death because clearly she’s innocent(self-defense and saving kids from some incel white boy turned monster is not an jailable offense).

Regardless, McGuire was dealt a shitty hand that nuked any possibility of continuing any story developments in E-65 without Gwen being under constant danger. I, for one, would welcome it and had Gwen continue to try, it would have made shit interesting.

But this is also taking away Gwen from her own supporting cast that she has had since the beginning and also from her setting. The more she is in 616, the less I am going to see of the Mary Janes. The less I see of Harry although I don’t mind that. The less I see of any character that was established in her series. And honestly, those new characters could have been introduced in her own setting. Hell, E-65 Jackal could have been a college professor at E-65 ESU without Gwen knowing if she attended there.

Why are we choosing to avoid superhero drama in a superhero comic book?

3. Don’t rely on 616 Gwen Stacy while simultaneously declaring this Gwen as a different character

For all intents and purposes, the Death of Gwen Stacy has nothing to do with Spider-Gwen. This book and her fans will deflect any criticism about the lack of parallels between Gwen Stacy’s death and Peter’s death by saying Spider-Gwen is not the same as Gwen. You sit there and complain that all Gwen Stacy is known for is dying yet you commentate using a completely amended character while simultaneously avoiding the literal hundred of issues of character that 616 Gwen previously had before her death.

If you read the Night Gwen Stacy Died as a stand-alone, what you did was the equivalent of watching the Red Wedding without the three seasons leading to the event.

Spider-Gwen can’t go five issues without harping on about every miserable or unhappy or dead Gwen in some other universe. It comes to a culmination that writers want to tie Spider-Gwen to 616 Gwen Stacy so much that she is actively going to school in 616. The same school that Gwen attended and has a library named after her in memoriam, and apparently her creepy stalker teacher still teaches at albeit with a different identity because no one apparently recognizes faces anymore.

This doesn’t redeem Gwen. In fact, you proved Gerry Conway’s point. 616 Gwen is so unlikeable that you’d have to completely change her character to make her not worth throwing off the bridge.

Point is that Spider-Gwen treading the stories of Gwen Stacy defeats the purpose of separating the two in personality. What happens if Kindred is revealed to be the ressurrected Gwen Stacy while Gwen basically caught treading her stories instead of continuing her own?

4. The Jackal? Fucking really?

Personal, but point still stands. I fucking hate the Jackal. Jackal is like the catalyst of feeling like you need to take a shower afterwards. Along with the Inherentors, this is one of the villains that go to far in being made for a specific purpose in that they really don’t have a motivation as to just why do they do the things they do other than to be a bad guy.

Warren Miles is a creepy professor with an almost paedophillic obsession with his barely legal and also dead mentee, 616 Gwen Stacy. And it’s only almost because Gwen was 19 and almost certainly would have engaged in a sexual relationship with her. I don’t buy that he saw her as his child because it’s not like Gwen was just this remarkable science prodigy that would warrant any special attention from a professor. No, she was a remarkable and hot co-Ed scientist that was in her sophomore year. He was trying to fuck her and hated that she was dating guys her age. I wouldn’t put it past him to quid quo pro her into some sick shit for grades.

And the thing about it is that this story has been done before with Mary Jane and it was more appropriate to her occupation as she was a model at the time and married to Peter Parker. She is going to get the attention of richer and skeezy men that would have the power to force her into questionable shit. Hollywood is pretty much a glorified sex trafficking ring, don’t @ me. Far be it for me to say male professors don’t abuse their station on women and sure, I’d like a Spider-Man story to explore that, but Jackal takes it to a whole other that defiles the memory of a dead girl. It is basically a type of necrophilia and ew ew ew ew.

His obsession with Gwen and clones doesn’t foil Peter in anyway. It literally carries this creepy and unsettling implication that if Gwen lived, he would have raped her. There has never been a good Jackal storyline. It is literally the CJ meme every time he appears. He is not an engaging or fun.

Guess who is the first villain Gwen faces in 616.

Why people insist on putting him in anything over more thematically appropriate and fun characters is beyond me. I don’t even mind 65 Jackal. He doesn’t seem to interested in teenaged girls. He just wants to kill her like a proper super villain from what I gather. But of course, we had to not be spared from the comic equivalent of taint that is Miles Warren.

@ubernegro

#marvel #ghost spider #spider-gwen #gwen stacy #long post

[spaceorphan18]

Finding Kurt Hummel: The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

Masterpost

6x10: The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester

And here we are at the infamous Sue episode panned by fans everywhere.  Is it really that bad?  Well I did have it as my least favorite episode of the series, (though after careful inspection, that title truly goes to the hot mess that is I Kissed a Girl).  However, believe it or not, I don’t think this is the /worst/ Glee ever put out. I do, though, think the context is what makes it so frustrating.  

Child Star and Other Missed Opportunities

Here’s the thing - when you write out season 6 on paper, I think the structure of what the writers were going for makes a lot more sense.  The main story that they were telling was getting the Glee club back in order, to be, in a way, an echo of what season 1 was.  And for the most part, I do think that structure works.  You have Rachel in the ‘Will’ spot as teacher, trying to get her life together while trying to inspire these young kids to be awesome, and like the end of the Front 13 - the ending there is Sectionals.  

All the other plot lines are secondary, including Rachel’s triumphant return to New York, which is the b-story of the entire season.  Kurt (and Blaine)’s reunion arc might be, eh, a distant 3rd? Maybe 4th after Will’s.  But that’s what makes these final three episodes (before the final two that make up, essentially, the series finale) so jarring.   We’ve been used to strong focus on Kurt and Blaine as secondary characters, and the kids have been the main focus since season 3.  Shifting everything back so that Will and Sue are the main characters, with Rachel as a secondary lead feels... off.  

The thing is -- I see what they were trying to do here.  After wrapping up the Klaine (and Brittana) arc - the last arcs that the ‘kid’ characters get (besides Rachel) we essentially have three extra episodes left.  One will be the competition episode.  One was the episode about the New Newbies which I don’t think was a bad thing - even if I think introducing a new character five episodes before the end was a dumb move.  But like the original kids, I think these new kids rightfully deserved an episode of their own.  And thus leaves one episode where they needed to do, well, something.  

And hence - we get Sue.  

Yeah - It would have been nice if they had spent an episode exploring Kurt and Blaine’s now married life, or what the hell are Mercedes, Artie, Tina, Brittany, Santana, Mike, etc, etc, etc, etc, doing with their lives.  But - in the minds of the glee writers... they already did that in various capacities over the previous episodes.  

But even more than that - for reasons I’ll never fully understand, unless it’s about how much they love Jane Lynch, they decided to focus an episode on Sue.  And while the episode isn’t the utter worst thing Glee ever did (honestly, go back and watch IKAG again...), trying to make emotional sense of a character you’ve reduced to a cartoon character, who breaks the fourth wall just... doesn’t work.  And on top of that, they don’t resolve anything, nor is it that interesting to watch.  Sue remains, well, Sue and nothing remotely happens.  

So yeah, this ‘filler’ episode was a way to stall time before the obligatory ending Sectionals episode - and they filled it up with a lot of what no one wanted, especially the precious few who were still watching.  And thus, we have the most frustrating and least satisfying episode of the entire series.  Thankfully, Kurt is barely in it. 

Burn the House Down

So, we open with the New New New Directions in typical Glee fashion, doing the hot single of the moment - idk even know the name of the song, though - Rather Be? Idk.  Anyway, Kurt and Blaine come sombering in, cause, plot dictates they be there for exposition. 

And we find out that Dalton has burned to the ground.  

So.  

Here’s the thing - there could have been an interesting story here for Blaine -- matching Rachel’s story about having to grow up and move on.  I mean, it’s kind of subtly and subtextually there. It is (another) reason Blaine is forced to move on and grow up.  

But.  Do you know why they burned Dalton to the ground (other than doing it probably out of spite)? Not for some kind of deeper level of symbolism.  Nope.  They did it so New Directions can meet their quota of having 12 members.  That stupid, fucking rule.  I realize that it’s now become a joke (as mentioned earlier in the Hurt Locker episodes).  But c’mon Glee.  It’s like you’re not even trying now.  

But also, like after most big Klaine events - do Kurt and Blaine get a moment to reflect on their newly marriage life? Nope.  Other than talking about a piano exploding in the next episode, Kurt and Blaine won’t share dialogue again until the series finale.  On top of that -- instead of getting to be happy newlyweds, they have Blaine upset because his surrogate home has burned down.  Thanks writers.  Thanks. 

However - there are two things I do like about this little moment.  A) the fact that Kurt is being a very comforting husband.  B) the fact that they are wearing their proposal colors.  Nice touch costume dept.  You get the gold star.  

In the next scene - we get the indoctrination of the Warblers into the New Directions.  And Kurt just nods his head along in all the appropriate places.  Not a whole lot to talk about -- other than now that we’ve got Will back in charge, Rachel and Kurt have faded into the background.  Is Kurt even teaching anything any more? No, not really - despite all the ‘conversations’ Kurt, Rachel, Will, and Blaine have off screen.  

Anyway - you know another reason Dalton was burned to ground? To service the Sue plot.  Yup.  God.  Luckily, though, I don’t really have to go into it. 

The Way Too Long Geraldo Segment

So, long story short, Sue’s hurt locker was found out and then she’s exposed on Geraldo, which does go on way, way to long.  Look, there are some funny moments and callbacks, like the finding of Sue’s Penthouse magazine and the quick return of Joe.  But it just becomes stale as it continues after the commercial break.  Also, though, Sue’s not going to actually face ramifications. I mean, she should really be in jail just on the hurt locker alone.  But this is Glee, where Will, Sue, and Rachel never have to really deal with the actions they make.  

So - Kurt’s bit is about the elevator.  Which is... fine.  It kind of feels hollow since they’re going to thank her in the finale, and she just sent them on a week long honeymoon.  But yeah - don’t kidnap people, guys.  Bad.  The best part of this is the look on Blaine’s face.  

  Unity

This scene was almost impossible to get a good still.  Oh well.  Anyway, a good twenty minutes of the episode later...

So, I should mention in the previous scene, the gang is all trying to help Rachel through her issues and trying to get her back to New York (or whatever).   It’s a little weird that Kurt is not here since he’s spent so much of his screen time playing emotional prop to Rachel Berry. but I guess I’m not complaining even if I think it’s weird? But we do get Sam calling NYADA a scam school, and info that Blaine was kicked out by Carmen herself - to which I say, why does anyone care about this school??  Whatever.  It is a funny little scene though. 

Anyway, back to this scene -- where the Warblers and the New Directions are arguing over costumes.  And the only real thing I get out of it (Kurt-wise) is that Kurt really hated wearing that uniform when he went there, lol.  (He did, though, it’s in season 2.)  

And I know there was some grumbling of this scene - why is Kurt taking New Directions’s side? Why is he not supporting Blaine and the Warblers - to which I say... the writers didn’t give a shit about that.  Seriously.  This scene is a) about comedy and b) presenting this argument that will be compromised in about ten minutes anyway.  It’s not at all any kind of reflection on Kurt or Blaine or their relationship.  And actually, I’m of half mind that the writers completely forgot that Kurt even went to Dalton himself.  

In the large scheme of Kurt related things - this scene barely registers, tbh.  **shrugs**

Hey, but costumes wins again - Kurt and Blaine are wearing each other’s colors!

Final Countdown

So, Sue and Will duke it out through music - like it’s always done, and we get confirmation -- all those fantasy performances? Were just that -- fantasies.  I kinda do like when the kids come in and are like - wtf??!?  Kurt tells Rachel that he hopes that the’ll never become that.  Oh y’all won’t, promise ;) Anyway - I love that the show comments that Will and Sue have lost it - like we haven’t known that since the end of season 1.  

So, uh, the next day? Will apologizes for being an idiot.  Okay, fine.  And then Rachel says that now -- if the glee club doesn’t win, all fine arts will be cut.  Because that makes a load of sense, c’mon writers, c’mon....  

Anyway - the one redeeming thing for this otherwise ridiculous little scene, is that Kurt’s a ball of optimism -- he inwardly reflects on all the crap that’s happened in his life and he turns it around saying that they’ll never give up on anything (to which Blaine looks at him adoringly).  And, I mean, it’s a subtle thing -- but I kinda love this.  Because here’s a kid who has been through hell and back and a lot of shitty things (even recently) and you know what? He’s fine.  He’s in a good place, he’s happy, he’s loved, he’s got a great support system, and a good attitude about life.  And, he’s got a great motto to go along with it -- It’s Got Bette Midler.  (lol)  

But I mean, let’s take a second and think about the fact that Kurt started his journey being that kid who gets thrown in dumpsters for being weird and gay and now, you know what? He’s fine.  He’s really, really, really fine.  :) 

Rise

So - here at the end, we see Blaine solving the absolute crisis of the episode and somehow he’s managed to make, like, twenty unity blazers overnight, combining the Dalton tradition with the McKinley colors.  And did it without Kurt knowing what he was up to because Kurt was totally surprised.  But it’s in a good way, Kurt’s incredibly proud that Blaine managed to solve this epic dilemma.  (I joke, but really, it’s sweet that Kurt’s, again, proud of his new husband).  

Meanwhile, we get the song Rise, written by Darren Criss -- and I’m kind of impressed with this song -- it manages to reference birds, Dalton burning down, the kids rising to the top, and the fall of Sue Sylvester all in one go.  Color me impressed, too.   (Btw, this is such a Darren-esque song, I can hear this in his voice even if I’ve never heard him actually sing it.) 

I’ll leave you with the some lyrics, which I’m sure you can work out their meaning on your own ;) 

Have you ever felt like you woke up (On the wrong side of your heart) Has it ever felt like it's broken (Like the world tore it apart) Have you felt so weak, You could hardly stand Like if you ever fell You could never tell If you'd ever get back up again I know it's hard to do, But I think you can make it, Cause I know we can take it Baby we will... Rise We are young we are the dreamers we will fly When the world will not believe us, We will rise above the ashes Before this whole life passes us by You and I, we will rise

#finding kh #kurt hummel

[elizabethrobertajones]

Comparing Season 6 and Season 10 - which one do you think makes more sense as a whole, which one better pulls of seeming like what happened/was revealed at the end of the season is what was supposed to happen/was planned all along?

I may be biased, but for me, season 6 by miles. And almost all of that is Edlund desperately cramming everything that had happened so far into something that either made sense or handwaved why it didn’t make sense in an effectively emotional enough episode that by the end of TMWWBK you sort of feel like you’ve actually got your answers and Cas has been completely honest and open with YOU at least, making it that much easier to handle what was going on. 

I think for me season 10 was poorly handled in ways that weren’t particularly well addressed and the only offered explanation ever was “oh it was Amara after all” which in the context of season 11 gives us some more characterisation to begin to pull things together, though without addressing everything. Still if we’re dealing with things as a whole, season 10 doesn’t have an episode that scrapes everything together in the post-Edlund era and what we get only within the confines of season 10 is extremely unsatisfactory, even if later canon eases it a little bit, along with just… not being actively in SPN season 10 as it airs :P 

Going off my memories of being in the fandom at the time, we had a lot of issues with things like 

Dean’s incomplete demon reversal (so far as in 10x02, written by Dabb who invented the cure repeating the correct steps, then in 10x03 Buckleming not following through with them)

“the river ends at the source” “never mind I was screwing with you”

Did Cain still have the Mark after 9x11? lasting drama until 10x14, and still debated afterwards especially by people who had thought he didn’t have the Mark and had passed it entirely to Dean now being very confused  

What the fuck was this about Lucifer having the Mark and how did that last minute addition affect everything? 

the Colette parallel being wildly mis-applied by fandom but also issues with the show’s fear to explore it leading to “we are all the colette” episodes with lasting drama until 10x22, where Charlie, Sam and Cas all variously and persistently seemed to be suggested to be capable of being a team effort to pull Dean out of the darkness. 10x22 also wasn’t enough to stop Dean, and the final confrontation was with Sam, I think a general consensus was - especially again with season 11′s help - that the memory of Mary drew him back/unleashed Amara metaphorically who unleashed Mary literally - it wasn’t a great note to end on without season 11 context (as a whole, so, like, a whole YEAR later) that Sam had “won” the battle to bring Dean back from himself where Cas had failed, and the subtext and show and fandom most of all had made SUCH a huge deal out of Colette, after 9x11 over-told her story instead of retelling Cain & Abel, that it was set up with the expectation that saving Dean was a romantic quest, not a brotherly one. 10x14 sort of helped set things to rights with the list, but the fighting about what it all meant at the time was AWFUL, and though I think I was right and the show bore that out and these days I type it all with confidence, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of buried wank about it that could be dragged out if we want >.>

the fact there wasn’t really an overarcing Mark of Cain plot except “Dean is suffering” with the only 3 actual plot points they could do with it being demon!Dean, kill Cain, and remove Mark. Because of that, everything else is literally set-dressing to fill the time and add drama in between, but these were played with poorly and there wasn’t any subterfuge we weren’t in on (i.e. sam stealing the book) vs Cas betraying both the Winchesters and US. The only retcon offered in the end was Death’s exposition about the Darkness.

people literally forgetting which order episodes came out in and being very confused about why Amara wasn’t released when Dean was 14 in 10x12 even though he didn’t kill Cain for 2 more episodes (like, within weeks of 10x14 airing, I swear)

the understandable disappearance of Cole but bizarre application of that hunter called Rudy who popped up in his place and featured in 10x23 along with Cas for Dean’s guilt trip. Even if Cole and TAW sucked ass, it’s much easier to understand the emotional impact of what happened to Rudy if you assume he has the exact same backstory as Cole and the same nonsense happened to Dean twice in the same year :P 

Pre-season hype about Rowena made a huge deal out of the Grand Coven, and for a brief moment it seemed like there might be a witch plotline, including new lore dumps about different types of witches in 10x07, characters like Olivette the Hamster, etc, but they squandered her first season and 10x19 was as close as we got to any pay off to her actual storyline

Then Oskaar happened and that was like ??? Okay just introduce him in the second to last episode and throw us into that emotional situation 

the entire cure coming out of nowhere as a random last minute macguffin instead of having been anything they put together over the season - even though the book of the damned thing showed up in 10x11 it changed substantially from the clue Charlie left with (a less than 100 year old book with a library reference number found on an antique rare book website, based on a real book, which we all picked over and were left wondering if the plot was to be about some sort of occultism thing as a result) to a much different lore. Then there were a few episodes dealing with it and the codex, the actual spell had no real struggle, and Crowley delivered all the pieces while Cas stood around scowling and Rowena stood around in chains eye-rolling. Compare season 13′s pacing with Sam and Dean cobbling together what they needed from halfway through the season, and being on the mission to get to the AU from episode 9, with relatively little of the endless sitting around googling and being frustrated of past seasons but ESPECIALLY season 10 where Sam was futilely trawling the results of googling “mark of cain” from mid-late season 9 through to like, 10x18 when an actual brief plot appeared around it directly. 

I think all of it points to a problem of working forwards from where they were instead of backwards to tidy up what was left. In season 6 Edlund took as many loose plot threads, from how Sam lost his soul, what was up with Crowley and Cas, the angel war, explanations for Sam and Samuel working together, why eve happened, everything, and put it all together to explain the elements of the season so far in a new light. Despite how disastrous that season was, PRETENDING you knew like you meant to do it all along glosses over inconsistencies in Samuel’s story or Cas and Crowley’s 6x10 interactions, and makes them relatively inconsequential when most of the details add up. 

The same thing works with the Lucifer as Sam’s vessel storyline, in the sense that while Azazel’s plan is fucking ridiculous in its over-complex bizarre attempt to find a worthy true vessel that Heaven had fated, comparing season 1-2 to season 5 head on is bad, each season explains itself from the last in enough of a way and with enough knowledge of what already happened that really despite vast inconsistencies in the lore, by 5x22 we are pretty much all on board to accept the way it all played out because they use what was previously written to build up Sam’s arc, and little details thrown in towards the end like Brady and then Lucifer revealing ALL of Sam’s closer rando peeps had been demons, tidy up more and more loose ends and there’s left with plausible deniability about a lot of the issues.

In season 10 they kept on introducing elements instead of working with what they had already established, and also discarded what seemed like major plot hooks for Rowena and Cole, one annoyingly, one completely metatextually understandably and fuck TAW, I’m glad the show never brought Cole back as soon as rumours of him groping fans appeared, and it makes me genuinely trust that the SPN set is a safe place. But yeah. 

Things they set up and could have worked with, were the Cas’s grace arc, which was resolved to a small personal satisfaction to Cas without any major plot impact except we could stop worrying about when Cas would get sick and die from bad grace, or steal more. 

The demon!Dean issue was bad writing from Buckleming re: was he still a demon or not, but given Dean was supposed to be struggling with succumbing to darkness the season actually kept him almost completely level without any significant relapses, even after killing Cain. The sense of needing a functional Dean Winchester to keep hunting monsters and prop up the show as both the carrier of the mytharc, the emotional core, and the go-between between Sam and Cas even when the show was trying to figure out if Sam and Cas could function without Dean, it was all still so much about Dean that in 10x21 when they’re doing the cringeworthy “for Dean” thing and Rowena rolls her eyes like “I barely know the man”, I was actually applauding Buckleming snark thinking they maybe briefly had a handle on how ridiculous Dean’s position in the narrative was. (Listen, this was the last 10 minutes of my innocence about how awful Buckleming could be, leave past!me alone. She’s sweet and precious and not bitter :P) In any case, a more effective season would have utilised him more to slip and slide between light and dark and explore it in much deeper detail, but balancing that with a procedural formula doesn’t work as well and they were lacking enough philosophers on staff. I think the Dabb era writing team could handle it, because Yockey, Perez, and Glynn especially, who seems to have a psychology background based on her writing, all have a sharp attention to the exact things in emotional arcs that would have made it work better, even just as it was. Since this was a weaker writing team where Robbie, Bobo and Dabb episodes were little islands of excellence and the motw were fun but more shallow even with strong foreshadowing themes, it just didn’t pay off. 

I think the biggest waste of time was “the river ends at the source” which was either Buckleming trying to introduce a concept and hoping someone else dealt with it, or an agreed plot hook which never materialised, or Metatron literally spoke the truth, that the line had only ever been written to mess with us. However 10x23 could have actually included more of a “river ends at the source” sort of slant and had Death confirm it in so many words because Amara really did sort of seem to be the answer to the question. In 10x10 it seemed like they knew where the season was going, but by 10x17 it was obvious they DIDN’T, and it was during 10x18 that the plot actually got hashed out and Robbie was handed heavy revisions to make to change the Stynes to end of season villains and the Book of the Damned was going to be used how it was. I think this is really weak plotting, as someone who always puts in fun lines and then attempts like crazy to pay off on them. My first novel has the line “you can’t talk to me yet” and I play through that the whole book until they CAN talk and make it a major motif, goal and in the end try to explain it as best I can about how it’s all plot relevant and why using that for tension to put off the explanations and such was a valid thing to throw at my main character, and then the springboard to more adventure when she was ready for it. I literally do not understand putting a portentous line into your story, and not becoming desperately eager to answer it or twist something into revealing how it all fits at the end, if not basing your entire story off of it. Sam and Dean seemed wildly uncurious about how to apply that or what it means. 

In season 6 one of the more frustrating things is the “it’s all about the souls” line because Dean fails to investigate until someone or other rolls their eyes and makes it all clear to him. But we get a few more reminders in Cas’s presence, until we find out his plan, and Crowley repeats that line in 6x20 when making his sales pitch to Cas, if I’m remembering rightly (I hope so :/) and so despite Dean’s infuriating lack of investigation (not that he had a great deal of leads, but still - you could build a plot around it by GIVING him a lead, he’s the fictional character and you’re the writer :P) at the very least they repeat the motif in at least 6x17 and 6x20 to my memory, before the souls thing becomes a lot more obvious about Cas taking the purgatory souls and we’re allowed to actually discuss what he’s up to instead of the vague hints Atropos and Rachel give that they know his plans. 6x07 also hints early on that Purgatory is full of monster souls if you add it all up - the writers knew they were doing SOMETHING with this even if it took to the end of the season for it to all come together. (And that’s something that’s clearly and overarcing plot that Gamble oversaw because she wrote 6x11 and the line then appears in multiple episodes around the place, so that’s not just something Edlund tidied up but an actual effort to write the season well.)

Throwing aside the “river ends at the source” line is wildly frustrating because it wouldn’t have been too hard to apply it thematically and even keep Metatron being a douche while giving the viewer a pay off anyway for our own satisfaction, by showing it had been a theme all along anyway. You CAN squint at season 10 and analyse it through that lens but it’s exhausting when the show doesn’t give us the themes on a platter. It also shows that the plotting is careless and they’re experimenting, and rather than working with what they have, this is in a path of episodes where they’re discarding some plotlines, and we’re beginning to have end of season plotlines hastily pasted onto the end of the season, but they make very little of any of the work already done to build up the season as we’d seen it so far.

Add onto that Charlie being murdered for manpain to motivate some things into action and all the random elements being used, and the sense that Crowley, Cas and Rowena all abruptly ran out of a plotline that had been intended to utilise them and put on a side character duty away from Sam and Dean, the season is extremely messily and carelessly written, and without any real attention to detail to its own themes and characters and plotlines. Even if they’d gone into the season not particularly expecting where to go, they brought a lot to the table early on but then quickly wiped a lot of it off, and brought a lot more stuff to the table instead, which makes season 10 a really wonky, unfinished feeling product as a thing on its own, and the overall story is scrappy and carelessly plotted.

And that is speaking just about the easy plot stuff without getting into the absolute mess of speculation from the Destiel side of fandom wondering wtf was going on with the seeming build up to crypt scenes, colette, the grace cure, etc, that made up the bulk of the speculation but makes actually analysing expectations vs presented product completely impossible to evaluate on that side of things because as always Destiel speculation really overshoots what is expected and was really running wild at that point. I mean, not being judgemental because that was the year I was right in the thick of it. 3 years clear of it now, some of it seems really silly, but those 3 things all seemed clearly built up to our eyes, and we got the reverse crypt scene we’d been expecting since before the season started, and we got the Colette reference which slotted Cas firmly into place as a reminder of how Cain’s peeps lined up against Dean’s, as well as Cas asking Dean to stop, which satisfied the terms and conditions of Dean resisting walking in Cain’s footsteps with the overall set up of the scene. With the way Cas got his grace back and then some other rando cure popped up where Rowena of all people made the sacrifice, I really can’t help feeling like the conspiracy theorist who knows they were right but with the way it all shook out, only people who knew the conspiracy would understand how it didn’t happen and it’s very hard for me to look at that and say that some non-Cas-related cure was coming all along, given the conspicuous dropping of one plotline sort of day of picking up the next >.> But I’ll cede that from my position I might be a bit compromised on that one. 

Anyways. To me season 10 is a disaster that only season 11 really justifies, while season 6 has some truly low points but in the end the actual writing skill hauls it through so that it creates the illusion that there was consistency, if you ignore everything outside of the text suggesting it may have been as poorly planned as season 10. Planning isn’t everything - it’s what you do when confronted with the unplanned wire tangle in front of you that really marks how well they were written, and just shoving it under the table and putting a new wire tangle down vs actually unpicking it and making them as neat as possible? Gamble slam dunks Carver :P

#Asks #season 10 #we don't talk about season 6

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman Annual #2

Previously in FUCKITY FUCK FUCK I FORGOT THERE WAS AN ANNUAL AS WELL: Diana prepared to face down her most terrifying foes yet: the Dark Gods.

Who or what are the Dark Gods? Dunno.

What do they want? No clue.

What is this awesome and terrible power that they wield? So far, mostly just the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes and incite people to deliver badly-written villainous monologues.

Why are we supposed to be so pants-pissingly afraid of them? Because James Robinson told us so.

Last issue ended with the Dark Gods manifesting over Washington DC, at which point it was revealed that they are… giant floating statues, I guess? But, like, scary floating statues. With lasers. So scary.

And then moments later, a couple of Star Sapphires arrived to whisk Diana away so she could appear in this shitty annual.

Diana is teleported to the Star Sapphires’ home planet of Zamaron, which is heavily battle-damaged.

The two Sapphires who brought her here are called Miss Bloss and Miri Riam, who are apparently pre-established minor Green Lantern characters — something I had to figure out on my own, because Robinson just assumes we all known them, and that Diana does too (I’m reasonably sure they’ve never met). The one time his overexplaining might have actually been useful, and he couldn’t be arsed taking a panel or two to make introductions.

Diana yells at them that she’s too busy to help with whatever their deal is, and launches into a recap of last issue. But, you know, that was all of two weeks ago, so by all means, spend a page getting us up to speed.

She’s also still throwing around ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’ like they’re going out of style. 

“…and although I’m not certain — the woman who told me was insane at the time--“

How about ‘possessed’, ‘out of control’, ‘somewhat incoherent’ or ‘compromised’? Any of these would be more accurate in this context, as well as not equating mental illness with dangerous and violent behaviour.

But anyway, essentially Diana says ‘my world is being attacked by the Dark Gods and it’s my fault’, and Miss Bloss is like, ‘well, if that was your fault, then our thing must be your fault, too’, and points up at the giant floating Dark God statue thing that Diana has somehow failed to notice until this exact moment.

Oh, goody.

Diana starts questioning them about what happened.  Honestly, that’s really all she does these days.  If she’s not delivering plot recaps herself, she’s setting up allies for flashback-exposition or allowing villains to monologue at her. Oh, sure, occasionally she fights somebody, but mostly she’s just a vessel for tedious exposition.

Miss Bloss describes the Dark God’s attack:

“Even to recall it now, it feels like a dream or vision from another world. Almost like we were looking at ourselves from outside of it all.”

The first time I read this, I took it to be a figure of speech. I interpreted it as an expression of Miss Bloss’s deep level of shock at the devastation she’d experienced, that it still felt unreal, as though it had happened to somebody else.

I was giving Robinson too much credit: he meant it literally.

As we’ll learn in a few pages’ time, one of the Dark Gods has some kind of power over people’s perceptions, enabling him to induce in others a sense of unreality and dreamlike detachment. We’ll learn that the Dark Gods have deliberately used this ability in order to confuse enemies and limit their ability to respond to or even comprehend attacks.

Frazer Irving — who illustrates the flashback, along with a couple of other scenes in this issue — plays into this well.  His stylised art and colour work lends a somewhat eerie dreamlike quality to his pages, creating a sense of altered reality.

Unfortunately, Robinson can’t write dreamlike.

So what in theory should be an eerie, confusing, unreal flashback instead just turns into Miss Bloss telling us that her memories of the attack are eerie and unreal and hazy… aaaaand then proceeding to describe the attack, the enemy, his name, the concept he embodies, his powers and the precise reason why he was able to kill so many Star Sapphires, all in exacting detail. 

The Dark God who attacked the Sapphires is called Karnell and he calls himself the god of love, but the love he embodies is dark and gritty and edgy and corrupted. He can sense any ‘impurities’ or ‘flaws’ in a person’s love and rub it in their faces. When he does this to Star Sapphires, something something their rings freak out and they spontaneously combust.

Diana asks, ‘yeah okay, but you didn’t know that this was my fault when you dragged me here, so what gives?’, and Bloss and Miri are like, ‘welp, our leaders are all dead, Carol Ferris is busy in another comic, we all frankly suck, and you were a Star Sapphire once in that Blackest Night crossover event.’

At which point I went, ‘wait huh what??? but that was before the New 52 reboot!’, before remembering that Geoff Johns’ entire preboot GL run survived the reboot for no other reason than because Geoff Johns gets whatever he wants.

Diana agrees to lead the Sapphires against Krakoom (I’m sorry, I’m not going to bother to learn his name, he’s not worth that kind of time), and the Sapphires respond by giving her the Nazi salute due to an unfortunate artistic miscalculation.

Diana: And if I am going to stand among you — fight alongside you — let me look the part. Sapphires: As you wish it, so do we, Wonder Woman… be a Star Sapphire once more.

And with that, they give Diana a makeover.

It’s not a bad costume, especially when you compare it to her Blackest Night design. That one tried to ape Carol Ferris’ hideous then-costume, which featured hip cut-outs and a plummeting neckline that ended around the crotch area, by giving Diana a bathing suit with hip-holes and a bared midriff. This design retains many familiar Star Sapphire costume elements — the stiff pointed white collar, the combination tiara/mask, the starburst symbol, the long gloves and high boots — without going into creepy male-gazey territory.

buuuuut it also looks like Diana is wearing a pink apron over her usual costume, and that is something I cannot get past. It also varies wildly across the issue, depending on which of the four credited artists is drawing it.

By the way, I say ‘makeover’ because despite violet blaze on her right ring finger, it took me several times flicking back and forth before I was certain that Diana had been deputised into the Corps as opposed to just being given a new costume in order to “look the part”, as she put it. I know this sounds like it should have been self-evident, but Robinson gives absolutely no indication of any deeper change in her. Not even lip service to the fact that Diana is connected, through the power ring, to the emotional spectrum and the violet energies of love.

Contrast this with Diana in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3:

“Extraordinary. All of them, in their way, have tried to explain it to me before. Hal, John, Kyle… even Guy, may Ares watch and aid him. But it defies all attempts. There is no way to describe it. What it is to wear a power ring, and feel emotion made manifest. To wear fear on anger or will or hope on one’s hand… To wear love. Too beautiful for words…”

There’s a lot about Wondy’s Blackest Night tie-in that’s flawed and frustrating and flat-out bad, but this page gets it right. If you’re going to make Diana a Star Sapphire — going to give one of the most loving hearts of the DCU the power to channel her love into tangible power — then you need to acknowledge the weight of that.

In this comic, it’s as insubstantial as a costume change.

Flying up to confront Kratakoa, Diana wonders if she could really have summoned the Dark Gods. Supergirl said she brought them into this plane with a careless wish, and… oh, come to think of it, she did inadvertently make a wish during the recent Dark Nights: Metal crossover, while coincidentally handling some magical wishing metal. But nah, that couldn’t possibly have done it!

She reaches the big floaty statue and a bloke with spiky wings emerges from it. It’s Klangalang, and he’s got his monologue cued up and ready to go!

He opens with a fairly standard ‘ahaha, I’ve been expecting you, hero!’, and the implications fly straight over Diana’s head.

Kibble: You came, Amazon! Sooner than I expected, too! Good… I’m going to love this! Diana: You’re some kind of seer, too? You expected me?

Let’s review: The villains Diana supposedly summoned, the villains who have been trying to kill or neutralise Diana before she can interfere in their plans, have attacked the Star Sapphires in advance of their invasion of Earth. Despite not knowing about Diana’s connection to their attacker, the Sapphires reached out to her for help, teleporting her away at almost the exact moment that the villains launched their opening assault. Now the one villain who hasn’t joined the invading force is cackling that he’s been expecting Diana.

Even a half-competent hero should be able to join the dots and realise they’ve been deliberately lured away. Not so Robinson’s Diana, who gazes at him wide-eyed and demands, ‘omg, u expected me? are u psychic or sumthin???’

After a couple more rounds of obscenely dense questions from Diana (along with another out-of-character ’crazy’ slur), Klunk ends up having to straight-up spell it out for her. He also explains how she summoned the Dark Gods.

Krunch: You wished for the gods’ return. Well, here we are. Here I am! Diana: Like a dream, but yes, of course. But I meant the Greek pantheon, not— Krump: Gods! That’s all you said.

Small nitpick: Diana would not think of her gods the “Greek pantheon”. She’d be more likely to call them “the Patrons”, “my gods”, “the gods of my people”, “the gods of Themyscira”, “the gods of Olympus”, “the Olympians” — she knew them as all of these things long before she knew Greece, or any world outside her island home, existed. The only reason she might refer to them as “Greek” is for the benefit of people in Man’s World, as a point of reference.

More importantly, are you friggin kidding me, the friggin layers of incompetence here from our supposed hero

accidentally makes a wish while wielding a weapon of magical wishing metal

manages to make the vaguest wish possible, opening a loophole for THE WORST GODS to infiltrate reality

immediately forgets she ever wished it

why would she even wish for that?! her gods haven’t gone anywhere!

To be somewhat fair, the reason she doesn’t really remember it is that “the God With No Name” (YES REALLY) made it all feel like a dream so that she wouldn’t realise she’d made an irresponsible wish and needed to immediately rally everybody together to resist the Dark Gods.

Except… that in itself doesn’t make any sense.

There are two possibilities here: the Horse With No Name could have clouded Diana’s memory of making the wish after the Dark Gods were pulled into this reality — in which case, why? How would she even land on the conclusion that she’d accidentally summoned some evil gods that she’d never heard of, when her intent was to call on her own gods and she’d had no indication that it had even worked?

Alternatively, he clouded her mind in the moment of the wish, to render her thoughts vague and imprecise and open the door for the Dark Gods’ invasion. Which doesn’t work either, because it turns out that the Dark Gods are pretty pissed off at being pulled out of their awesome reality.

King Koopa: War was declared the moment you dragged us from our home… our beautiful world — which you regard as the ‘Dark Multiverse’ — we see as a paradise… where we were more than even gods to our worshippers… we were everything!”

So basically their plan is to turn Earth into a desolate hellscape just like their home.

Diana, who has already been told that Kraig is a god of corrupted love, conveniently forgets this fact just so that Robinson can tell it to us again.

Diana: You call yourself a god of love. What kind of love wants to be feared? Love is unconditional. KHAAAAAN: Spoken like the addled naive romantic I expected. Love always comes with conditions. Sometimes, I confess, I question… am I god of that love, of those conditions behind it? But then I realise… I don’t care.

Cool story. Glad we can agree on one thing, at least.

He monologues for a couple of pages about how he’s going to open her eyes to the truth of how horrible and selfish and corrupt love is, then draws Diana into his mind so that he can monologue some more.

We learn that the world of the Dark Gods was forged by a group of divinities called Titans, “much like the reality of your own Greek pantheon” (incorrect, you’re thinking of the Protogenoi; the Titans were the second generation of gods). But because these Titans were hardcore, they did it by smashing five other realities together. And into this terrifyingly dark edgy metalscape came… +~teh D4rK g0dz~+

Robinson then undermines the super-extra-double-dark feel he’s going for with another embarrassing name and an accidental rhyme.

“We Dark Gods followed, as gods do. King Best and then the rest.”

KING. BEST.

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to Kalamazoo’s dark edgy totally original backstory!

In fact, this is so dark and edgy and original that I’ll throw in a quick content warning here for descriptions of domestic violence and shittiness towards sex workers.

“You’ll meet a boy — his mother broken by a wanton father who forced her to cheapen herself further with wraiths and under-beings. The mother died — beaten to death. When he saw her blood still dripping from the fists of his father, the boy ran, fearing the same fate. The boy loved his mother, but hated his father and the world. Both emotions — love and hate — burned so brightly that even from within the darkness of our world, their glow caught the eye of mighty King Best.”

Domestic violence! Sexism! Slut shaming! Fridging! It’s like a game of grimdark bingo!

After three goddamn pages of this, Diana suddenly twigs what we all figured out eleven pages ago, ‘oh now waaaaaait a minute, you didn’t lure me here so that your buddies could invade Earth while I’m distracted, did you?’

Klinger responds by almost murdering Diana, and is only stopped by the intervention of the Star Sapphires.  They all retreat, and Diana proposes a new plan: all the Sapphires will channel their energy into her, something something, true love wins the day.

So Diana flies up to Kimberley, sword held aloft and blazing with violet energy, and announces, ‘boy did you make a mistake when you told me that you used to be a sad boy child! now I have only love in my heart for you!’

Karma Khameleon is like, ‘oh no, love! my one true weakness!’, and I’m like, “d… didn’t we just have this story?”

Then Diana straight-up stabs him with her love sword, and Korgo fades away with an ‘I’ll beat you next time, Captain Planet! Next tiiiiiime…’

Diana farewells the Star Sapphires, and Robinson shoehorns in this bit of virtue signalling:

Miri: Please… Diana, think of us as your sisters, too, for all time. Diana: Or “brother,” I notice. Miss Bloss: Love is love, no matter who bears the heart.

This is a welcome and needed change to the Star Sapphires. The fact that they have been portrayed up until this point as an all-women corps (with the exception of a few briefly deputised blokes) is bound up in ugly gendered ideas, exemplified by Geoff Johns’ comment in 2009 that “anyone can join, but most men are not worthy”.

But there’s something gratingly self-congratulatory in the execution of this course correction.  Robinson’s doing the absolute bare minimum here — including one or two male background characters in a handful of panels — and flagging it as progress with a phrase associated with the LGBTI community.  We haven’t even seen a single named male Sapphire, let alone one with a speaking part; I think it’s a little premature to be looking for kudos. And either Miri or Miss Bloss could very easily have been replaced in this story by a new male character.

The Sapphires teleport Diana back to Earth, where she finds DC a smoking ruin. And as the air clears, she sees—

—wait for it—

—this is truly shocking and terrifying—

THE DARK GODS MADE A MEGAZORD

THEY MADE A FUCKING MEGAZORD WITH THEIR DUMBASS FLYING STATUES

A GODDAMN MEGAZORD WHO WHAT HOW WHY.

Diana’s face does this:

#the james robinson shitshow #comics talk

[tomupside]

The Review You Deserve: The Avengers: Infinity War

Infinity War? More like Infinity Bore!

 [searches for high-fives]

 [finds none]

 Okay, that’s harder than Infinity War deserves. It wasn’t boring. That’s a positive that I can give it. But let’s face it, I saw it once, and that’s all I needed. In short: Infinity War was . . . better at doing particular aspects, but, overall, was on the same level as the lowest-common-denominator Marvel film out there.

 Spoilers ahead . . .

 Infinity War isn’t a single film, but three or four separate films stitched together by a single theme: how all these heroes tried to stop Thanos, and failed. Or, really. it’s a film antholgy trimmed down to a single Abridged movie.

The plot for Infinity War is simple: Thanos wants the infinity gems (or “stones,” as they’re called in the movie-verse) because there are too many people in the universe, and there needs to be a culling. This is the motivations of an insane person driven as such by past tragedies, but because this is Disney, we get all of this in exposition and are informed that he is a “tragic villain” through monologues over sad violins.

(Tangent: Loki was a great villain because the writers and director of Thor understood Shakespeare! You, Disney, do not! Fucking stop it!)

The heroes need to stop Thanos because they’re told that he wants the Infinity Stones for “Bad Things.” Well, that’s the surface-level reason. For the most part though, the heroes all find a reason to want to stop Thanos for personal reasons: Tony, because Thanos caused his PSD; Gamora, because he adopted her after slaughtering half her planet.

We start the story with Generic Uber-Bad’s Generals and Thanos, having just killed all of the surviving Asgardians, trying to get Infinity Stones from Thor and Loki . . . and in the most clumsy of sequences, they do. But they didn’t get them all, and with his final breath, Heimdall sends Hulk back to Earth (leaving Thor, Loki, and the Tesseract – the one thing Thanos was killing your people for – behind, because that totally makes sense as a dying gesture.)

Thanos then kills Loki after getting the Tesseract, and blows up the Asgardian ship and, supposedly, Thor with them. (Though don’t worry, he manages to survive the vacuum of space for just long enough – that being at least a few hours, if not days – to be saved by the Guardians of the Galaxy.)

 Hulk lands, conveniently, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, where he warns Doctor Strange of what’s going on. That’s when Thanos’ minions show up to get the Time Gem –

– which happens to be when Tony Stark is giving his heart-felt Two Weeks to Retirement speech. Spidey happened to be friendly in the neighborhood too, and the three of them wind up on the Minion Ship when Strange is kidnapped.

Later, the remaining minions try to get to Vision when and his mind gem while he’s with Scarlet Witch (because Bulma Briefs invented frikin’ Infinity Stone Scouters for them, apparently?) but get thwarted by Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow (the *most powerful* Avengers out there.) They convene at Avenger Compound, where Bruce Banner is waiting with Rhodes (because that makes sense?)

Meanwhile, Thor tells the Guardians “Thanks, but fuck off” and, with Groot and Rocket Raccoon to forge a new hammer, while the rest go off elsewhere.

Then we start following the segments: Section 1: Peter Quill and the remaining Guardians try to stop Thanos themselves before he can get the stone from The Collector.

Section 2: Thor, Rocket, and Groot try to forge Mjolnir 2.0.

Section 3: Earth tries to protect the Infinity Stones that they have.

Section 4: Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange try to take the fight to Thanos.

Spoilers: They all fail. In some cases, for the most spectacularly dumb reasons imaginable.

Double-Spoilers: This is the first part in a two-parter, so guess who doesn’t beat the bad-guy in his goal to destroy half the life in the universe.

The film had potential. That Disney still refuses to get any real red blood on its hands is a small reason why it failed. The real reason it failed is because so many decisions were made not because they were logical to the characters or to the moment, but because they had to happen so the story could reach the next plot point. SO much of the story could’ve been solved if someone had just pulled the trigger when they had the chance! And you can’t use the whole “Well, they’re super heroes, so they have rules against killing . . . “ NO! Every one of these cretins has killed, whether blatantly or indirectly. But they had to be frikin’ idiots, because otherwise Thanos would’ve been stopped not even forty-five minutes into the movie!

And I don’t get it! I don’t get why, in a two-and-a-half hour film, you can’t dedicate at least ten minutes to show what could have been so bad in Thanos’ past that he would think wiping out half the life in the universe is a good thing, rather than have him tell us in almost five separate fucking monologues? Fucking five?! It creates a greater emotional connection for the audience when we get to feel that moment once and at the same time as the character. They obviously knew this, because they fucking showed that tender  moment when Thanos  kidnapped Gamora as a kid so she wouldn’t be slaughtered by his own kill-squad! Otherwise, we might not have cared as much when he threw her off a  cliff so he could get the Soul Stone! See! THAT made us feel for Thanos! That worked! We got why Thanos was crying, and why he kept being choked up through the film about her death, because we were there when he found her as a kid! Wouldn’t it have been nice to have that same goddamn moment instead of him  saying why he thought killing half the universe would be something good for everyone?

And of course – of course – Disney can’t let a somber moment be somber! “Oh, hi Thor! You just saw your brother be strangled in front of your eyes and your entire people slaughtered? Well, let’s have a goof-off with Peter Quill and you constantly call Rocket Raccoon a rabbit! Isn’t that great!” Or how about half the Earth population being dusted like in Buffy in the worst tragedy ever, but have Samuel L. Jackson almost get off a trademark Muthafukka? Wakka wakka fart joke!

It’s called “timing!” you repugnant rodent! Learn it!

We, the fan boys, got a bit of what we wanted. We got to see Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy. We got to see man-child Peter Quill geek a bit with child-man Peter Parker. We had a snark-off between Stark and Strange. We got to see Robert Downey Junior phone-in impotence jokes at the expense of Bruce Banner-nee’-Hulk in a moment that shouldn’t have had jokes because Jesus Christ movie just let us have a serious moment here! But so much of the film’s progression necessitated everyone either taking a free-action to explain everything to us or to act completely out of character! Spoiler Alert: Nice job fucking things up, Andy Dwyer! Your plan to save the Universe was perfect except the part that involved you!

The directing was passable, but barely. The action scenes were cluttered at times, but for the most part, not as messy as they could’ve been. But overall, that’s all the directing was: passable. No scene passed along any sort of emotional weight, nor hinted at anything deeper than they were expressing. Even the harder moments, up until the end, didn’t hit. For example: When Gamora died . . . I felt nothing. There was no emotional impact. Thanos threw her off, we saw how sad it made Thanos . . . and then the corpse. Mufasa had a better fall-death! Hell, Inspector Javert had a better fall-death!

Also, the ending . . . which was just that: an ending. Which, I get it, it's how the comic book The Infinity Gauntlet ended. Good job, writers, you read a trade paperback! It gave no indication that there was going to be anything coming, like with Empire Strikes Back. It was just . . . and end. A "Fuck You." (And no, post-credits don't count! They never count! Stingers are post-sex cuddling!)

Now, there were a LOT of clever misdirects that kept things interesting: the reveal of Gamora’s Swiss Army Knife, which everyone in the audience was made to believe was going to be used to kill Thanos, but wound up ultimately being used as a set-up to failure, being one of the better ones. There were nice touches! And some of the parts that set up Person A being on the Infinity Kill List, but only to show that it was Person B or Person C instead, were nicely done.

But I don’t care. Because I know that these deaths are all going to be undone in the second part. In a universe where everyone can and has come back to life (coughcoughGrootcoughcoughColsoncoughcough) all of these dustings have as much impact as any comic book death or pro wrestler retirement. Plus, they didn’t kill any of the A-listers. All of the original Avengers made it to the end. Only the Second Wavers bit it.

People will say that Disney took a risk with this one. This won’t be true. Every person who died will be brought back. All the consequences will be reverted. Timey-wimey will save the day. And thanks to the Magic Space Beeper which Nick Fury apparently had the whole fucking time, we will now have our new Captain Mary Sue to come and save our day soon. (Which honestly pissed me off most: if you had a magic space beeper that could summon a space Captain Marvel to come save anyone at any time, why didn’t you use that in the first Avengers film, Fury?! And even if she did show up, what the Hell could she do now? Spin the Earth in reverse faster than the speed of light, and turn back time twenty-four hours?! Thanos won! You’re dusted! Game over, man!) I’d say the only parts of this film worth watching are the fights, but even then, that’s only on occasion. Again, so much of the action depended on contrivance (“Oh no, his space weapon somehow prevents me from phasing, especially in this scene where I’m not being attacked! Thank god Black Widow is strong enough to block it with her not-super strength, which I have, and with her weapons made of regular material, and not from Vibranium, which is the unbreakable material that I’m made from!”) that I kept expecting Thanos to reveal that he had fabricated the events from Reality Stone out of bored curiosity the whole time.

And what the Hell, Disney? You own Industrial Lights and Magic, one of only two special effects studios in Hollywood! So why do you keep phoning in the CG? Seriously, the fight between Thanos and Hulk looked like something out of a first-generation World of Warcraft cinematic! And I can’t be the only one who noticed how obviously rotoscoped Bruce Banner was in the Hulkbuster armor at the end! Vaporwave videos had less shifting! And don’t tell me “Look at how awesome they made Thanos in all the close-ups!” because that’s just proof of what they can do when they decide to do it, the lazy assholes!

Infinity War is typical Disney, which is now synonymous with glitter-rolled bullshit! There are parts which are worth paying attention to, but is, on whole, worth ignoring. The motivations were superficial; the drama was lip-service; the characters had almost no consistency; and nobody in the audience seemed to care, because that’s what we’ve come to expect from the studio that brought us Dog with a Blog.

Final Score

Rating: 5.5/10

Xowie: 2

Half-Life: 15 months

Nelson Ranking: Laundry Film

Tom Upside

- Up until the end, Thanos, himself, only kills two people. And one of those people he kills is technically a villain. Now somebody go back and confirm this, because this film is too bullshit for me to care.

#infinity war #marvel #movie review #moviereview #toupside #thereviewyoudeserve

[popculturebuffet]

Reviewcaps: Star Vs: Club Snubbed

Dance week kicks off!  I finally advance in the tomtrospective as Star makes the critical mistake of listening to ponyhead and causes a dad fight that threatens to spill into an international incident unless she and Tom can get along. Tom dosen’t know how to be nice under the cut. 

And we’re back! As I put in my latest amphibia review a combination of a busy few weeks and other things to cover has kept me from doing more reviews, and as such I left this on the backburner. But I decided that just ain’t right so this week, i’m not only bringing back the tomtrospective, but i’m doing a whole bundle of dance themed episodes because as i’ve made clear in the past, and making clear for you I love em. I never went to my own school dances and the one dance I went to for Demolay was fun enough, so that mixed with the shipping, hilariaty and usual good quality brought to these affairs made me want to do a theme week after Owl House last week, but ennui made me reconsider. So now i’m re-reconsidering. Lucky you! With that we can move on.  Unlike the last few tom reviews, this one.. takes place after about 80 pounds of plot have happened, so it’s time for a fuck ton of exposition to refresh your memories:  PREVIOUSLY ON STAR VS:

OH GOD WHY OKAY i GET IT THE GAG’S OVER... MOVING ON TO THE ACTUAL EXPOSITION. YEESH But yeah since we could largely sidestep the main story since tom came in literally before it in season 1 and it was irrelvant to him in season 2, I have a lot to cover.  Over the last two seasons, Toffee, a septarian warrior who assinated moon’s mom despite her almost brokering peace between monsters and mewman when Moon was just a teenager, plotted and schemed to destroy all magic, having star nuke the wand to spilit it in half, manupliating ludo from the inside of his half and then using his new existance as pure magic to slowly destroy it from the inside while using ludo as a puppet when necessary. Meanwhile , Star started to catch feelings for Marco just as Marco was getting somewhere with his crush Jackie Lynn Thomas, who star was being his wing man with unaware of her own feelings. This came to a head when a dance, yes another one, happened where Jackie asked Marco out on their first proper date, Star was jealous but couldn’t figure out why and this distracted her enough to let Ludo sneak in with his army of rats and then take the book.  Stars parents, in a suprising move for her mom more than her dad, accepted what happened and trusted her, though Moon started covertly working to get the book back under the nose of her allies in the magical high comission. Meanwhile Toffee revealed himself, while Star finally did realize her feelings for marco and proceded to supress them.  This all came to a head in the last two episodes of season 2: First Star had her song day, which meant having a song wirtten about her which was honest.. a bit too honest as it revealed her parents hiding the book, leading to the people being upset with our king and queen and the commission understadanbly being pissed Moon didn’t tell them sooner. Oh and the song also, without star’s consent, revealed she’s intrested in marco... right in front of Marco. And this part is actually really important to today’s episode but we’ll get to that.  Star continued to deny having feelings for Marco instead of working through them as the school year ended, while Moon and the comisson lead a raid on the monster castle, which will also be important later, TOffe was headquartered in. Things quickly went pear shaped, with Toffee easily murdering most of the comission, including moon by sucking out their life force to increase his own power, since their all made of magic, and only lekmet, the comisson’s wise sorta leader and team healer, surivived, using the last of his own life force to save moon before ending up as a pile of dust and a horn with Moon quickly escaping with the rest of her allies.. and Toffee omniously saying he was coming for Star and his finger.  Moon naturally panicked and told star they were leaving, possibly forever, for her own saftey, and Star confessed how she felt to Marco.. in front of Jackie> Which is never dealt with even when Jackie comes back. 

Also this confession isn’t dealt with until near the tail fucking end of season 3. God dammit star vs , just god damn. Anyways Moon tried to both hide star and ressurect her commrades, while a miserable Marco headed back to mewnit o find her only to get captured with river when Ludo, under toffe’s advisment, took hte castle.. and not under his advisment destroyed the book and it’s keeper and local asshat glossaryck.  Star eventually said “Fuck that” to “Hide and hope he never finds us” moon learned some lessons about racial tolerance she promptly unlearned next season, and Star dove into her wand with Ludo’s help, as Ludo had started to catch on to the frequent blackouts. Turns out that was toffe’s plan as he apparently kills star, and finished off magic and now restored, just casually walks off after easily taking out star’s allies.. including a greiving moon and marco. Also marco punches a whole in his chest. 

But STar manages to restore magic, unlock her butterfly form and reduce Toffee to a puddle of goo which Ludo finished off.. which also means moon’s attempt to dicker Eclipsa out of freedom just got undone. Yayyyy! I mean oh no.. no no I mean yay. She’s the best part of season 3.  So ALLL of that was to get to the status quo at this point: Marco goes home after a few weeks where again, the confession thing? Never brought up, while Star vows to stay to be a better princess. And yeah this does bring up one of Season 3′s biggest issues as despite Marco having dimensional scissors, the show constnatly acts like he can’t you know visit or vice versa. They just use the other dimension thing as a lazy excuse to write the earth side cast out even though....

I went with a Picard  one because why not. I get it being HARD for either ot make time for the other.. but make that a PLOT POINT instead of saying “oh you have to pick one”. Because it makes no fucking sense. Especially since star can still CALL THEM, so there’s no sense in them being absent from each other’s lives. Just schedule. Jesus. And it only gets WORSE from there.  Yeah see Season 3 is where the quality starts to get... 50/50. And unlike Amphibia where the last few weeks before marcy have been more one mediocre episode and one great episode the qulaity here is more “some great episodes, some utter abominations of episodes that destroy character or any semblance of plot” and some just okay ones too. Thankfully the first few from the season we have to cover for Tom, for the boy, are really good.. but we’ll get into the shit soon enough.. and somebody’s gotta shovel it. And so it might as well be me. But for now instead of shoveling horse crap we’re shoveling giant piles of sugar so pitter patter, let’s get at er, this is club snubbed.  It’s 2017, a winter’s ball and the butterfly family.. is actually not doing great, as most of the other kingdoms seem to view them as week for the whole rat invasion thing.. or at least the spider bites do. Yup this is where we meet the king, queen and daughter penelope. Aka two assholes who are dumb and I hate them and their precious daughter who I hope overthrows them. To thorw back to my loud house reviews, I hate them more than rusty. And look at him. LOOK AT HIM. 

The one in the center. Look at him. LOOK AT HIM.  Okay my irational hatred of the little prick, which isn’t entirely irrational aside the spider bites are rude, condescending, and really need to be overthrown so Penelope can take their throne. I just hate htem.. but unlike Rusty they don’t show up as much and that’s literally all I can say nice about htem. Penelope seems nice and I wish she got more screentime and she has an intresting romance we’ll get into in a few episodes, but  they are just.. their the kind of people you don’t want to be trapped in a room with alone for a prolonged amount of time. The kind of married couple other married couples, I conjecture i’m single and very lonely mind, are awkwardly roped into spending time with and then have to get drunk to ignore them sniping at each other or that ends in a who’s afraid of virginia wolfe situation. Thankfully their barely in this episode I just felt like getting my hate out at them since i’m probably not covering surviving the spider-bites for a while.  Anyways while they snipe at River who fires back “They were really big rats’ and I mean.. who does that.. who comes to someone elses house and tells htem they suck under their breath.. I mean rich assholes obviously, I answered my own question there but at least do it at your own house or on the carraige ride home sheesh. Your lucky river didn’t elbow drop both of you. It’s what you deserved.  Okay enough bitching about this stuff, the asshole kingdom, and penelope, along with all the other kingdoms of mewni are here for the silver bell ball, an annual tradition to reinvgorate the ties between kingdoms. It’s also how star and tom met, and that’s the topic of discussion with Star and her best friend, Pony Head... of the pony heads. Why yes a major chacter on this show is a talking horses head who acts like a mean teenage girl. And why no I have no idea where her species food goes or how she digests it, I frankly don’t want to know. Some things are better left unknown.  Anywho yeah this is my first review with ponyhead in it and she’s a divisive character to say the least. Some hate her , some love her, some REALLY hate her.. me.. I find her 50/50. Sometimes she can be really funny and entertaining and a good counterpoint to star, other time she’s obnoxious and a waste of hte wonderful Jenny Slate’s talents. This time she’s more obnoxious as this entire plot is partly her fault, btu we’ll get to that. We do get her and star scoping out the other royals, though Star’s unintresteds since she knows all of them, and Pony is only intersted because Larry kelpbotom got hot.. just like archie. And he’s got abs, just like archie. Two sentences I never would’ve said for years and years but that’s what Riverdale does to you. Back on topic the two talk Tom’s transparent absence and them having met and ponyhead having predicted drama. the two then horse around a bit before moon dickishly shushes them. Star only goes along with it because she’s trying to be a better princess, hence her staying on mewni at all now the danger’s passed, but yeah... even with moon’s backstory this moment just.. isn’t every plesant. Because while her backstory explains al ot, it dosen’t forgive how she treats star at times, as all star was doing here was being a normal teenage girl and not kicking her door down or anything. Star greets the other princes and princesses, including penelope, all of who I wish had more screentime. “Sigh” It’s then we get TOM. Horay!. And his family! Double horay, Queen Wrathmelor Lucitor and King Dave Lucitor. And yes I love how , just like the prince of the underworld is named Tom, the king, even if by marraige presumibly, is named dave. King Dave. I love it. Dave is a normal sized guy while his wife is giant.. and I can conjecture how they had tom but this isn’t hte place for that. The point is their perfectly lovely people, and I like that they zigged from where they were likelky orignally going with tom having abusive parents. INstead as far as I can figure they merley spoiled him and that combined with growing up in the unusual enviroment of the underworld and their own unresolved anger issues meaning they never thought to teach him how to deal with them properly. More on this later.  Anyways tom is here and in shades, because his parents are good people and River warmly greets the lucitors. IT’s time for the ball to get underway. 

Glad you asked. Basically each prince or princess asks each other prine or princess to dance, until everyone's dance with everyone. Simple. However suprisingly for him, Tom picks princess Jags to dance first. It’s then Pony ruins everything because she’s Ponyhead, and i’ts her special life skill. She tells Star tom’s “Club Snubbing” her... basically showing intrest in other girls to specifically act like he isn’t intrested.. which to be fair....

DOES sound like something Tom would do.. and what Pony’s doing to Larry because she’s a terrible person. It isn’t what he’s doing, we’ll get to the why at the right time, but it’s not unfair of star to suspect that. 

So Star decides to get even, pettily, by dancing with rich and talking him up and each keeps picking the other royals.. which worries dave and river because of course it does. And yeah star is being petty here... but I get it and sympahtise with it. Tom’s pulled some really manipulative shit the last few times he’s been around and she’s likely sick of it. She probably even got second hand sick of hearing what he did to marco. 

So she’s probably just fed up with his bullshit.. and she still DOES think he’s cute, as was made clear by his first proper apperance, she’s just tired of him being a jackass about perusing her when she’s no longer intrested. Which is fair. Tom is trying to be better.. but i’ts understandable why Star thinks he’s just still doing the same old shit just on a diffrent day.  So it comes down to both of htem with Moon hoping star dances with tom.. and naturally, still pissy she dances with Manfried , the butterflies butler, who’se delighted.. a bit too happy.. someone call the police.  Anyways Dave and River start to argue over whose club snubbing who.. as I said Tom has his dad, and his moms but again future episodes, anger. Dave is more controlled because he’s had more life experince but it’s clear enough stress can cause him to snap, as we see here.. he just dosen’t have his son’s demonic powers thank god.. he is clearly built under those robes though.. or at least you know skinny but a bit muscular. I mean otherwise Wrath would be a widow after tom’s conception. 

But tom just.. walks out sadly instead of reacting which further pisses star off and she follows. But this time as i’ve been making clear.. Tom has genuinely changed. He’s NOT doing some creepy scheme to manipulate her into taking him back, he learned from last time.. and from song day. See I told you it was important. He figured she was with Marco now, and isn’t mad as he puts it.. he saw it as a wake up call. She’s not into him and probably won’t be.. granted I thought he’d already learned that lesson, but i’ll let it pass. The point is he decided to give her space by not asking her and would’ve if she asked him. He was genuinely trying to be nice and respectful to her. And here’s where I can finally stop shit talking tom for the most part which thank god. I love the guy, I wouldn’t be retrospectiving him if I didn’t love this character and see him as my own surrogate fictoinal son. But I had to be honest and who Tom is at first, isn’t a good person.. but this episode and others give more weight as to the why, as well as show him genuinely TRYING. He wants to be better he just dosen’t know how... as is highlighed with star not wanting to be ignored, and Tom flipping out in a demonic rage  “I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE NICE, AT LEAST GIVE ME CREDIT FOR TRYING”.  Which is what I put a pen in earlier with his parents; His parents are genuinely nice good people.. but the underworld is a diffrent, dangerous place with diffrent standards. So they likely didn’t realize their son had a troubling anger problem because of that, because a lot of the underworld is wild and vicious, until he started harassing star and doing something that raised a real red flag passed normal underworld standards. The two then quack quack bicker bicker in the sky, with an extra sized extra angry cloudy. CLOUDY YAY.. until a chair passes throught he window.  Our heroes run in to see the dad fight as esccalated to a wrestling match, and is about to esclate to an international incident. Star, seeing this can’t possibly end well, finally asks tom to dance which he agrees to not wanting to see a large bearded man beat up his dad. Probably how Domink Mysterio felt a few weeks ago honestly. And his entire life.  And then we get the dance.. and it’s fucking gorgeous. It’s slow and methodical, with the two at first doing this reluctnatly.. but as it goes on their walls break and the two genuinely have fun and it turns from two exes stiffly doing a dance to keep their dads from killing each other,... to somethin genuinely romantic and visually gorgeous as butterflies and flames errupt from their repsective feet before carrying them into the air and creating a beautiful tornado together. Disney really knows how to do a good dance sequence... maybe not gay representation until last week, and even then they had to be dragged into it more on that another time, but .. damn if they can’t animate pretty. It’s a genuinely beautiful sequence and easily tops the one from Blood Moon Ball.. not an easy feat mind as I say this with no bisas. I may not LIKE starco, at least not without some heavy continuity revisions.. but that dance was objectively good and so’s this one. The two land, moon rings the fucking bell to end things because again sh’es kind of a dick, and Wrathmelor causes earthquakes with her claps and reign of lava mom tearfs. Aww what a sweetheart. 

So Tom asks star for a corn shake, which she accepts, aww and Ponyhead is carried out by an entorauge. Eugh. The two laugh adorably together at her shenanigans, for some reason, to close out the episode.  Final Thoughts: Excellent even better than I remembered.. though it still has one or two problems, like what tom’s really doing being kinda obvious based on his body laungauge and middle part being mildly repeititive. But it’s all overridden by great character work, goregous animation and some neat world building as we meet the rest of mewni , most for the first time. I do genuinely wished they’d done more with them. And honestly.. tom and star are more adorable than I remembered. I think a combinaton of star’s later actions and the fact i wanted my starco dammit and figured tom wouldn’t last, I was mostly wrong as it took almost two full seasons for them to break up and we’ll get to that, so I had no real investment. I was annoyed he was seemingly just being throwni n the way as an obstacle to the main ship hwen they clearly changed their minds and he became more.. and then exactly that later because I can’t have nice things. We’ll get to that. But yeah a solid, enchanting episode and a good start to dance week. If you have a star vs episode you want me to review, just hit me up in akss or subits or comission it directly using those same options, or any other cartoon for that matter and follow me for more reviews as I cover Amphibia every week and will return to regular ducktales coverage at the end of september. Tom will return shortly. Until then stay safe, wear a mask, and later days. 

#star vs the forces of evil #tomstar #Club Snubbed #tom lucitor #star butterfly #moon butterfly #river butterfly #penelope spiderbite #larry kelpbottom #dave lucitor #wrathmelor lucitor #reviews #animation

[tellcardtowrite]

stages of writing

1. Beginner

everything is scary

what is character?

development how?

exposition is scary 

i’ve read every writing advice thing i can find

how is this story only 2 thousand words?  i worked on it for five days.  it feels like a novel!  

honestly what else can you put into a story?  I’VE DONE EVERYTHING I CAN. 

please help, please tell me if anything is right

ok, if its wrong, that’s ok. we all need constructive criticism to grow.  i’ll just be crying over here, over my keyboard, but it’s ok.  thank you for your honesty.  it’s fine

2. GOD MODE

i created it and i’m going to make it fucking suffer

“moderation” for fucking losers

i made this name up by taking the first letter of every ingredient listed on the cereal i was eating when i created the character.  meet: Csobpsrynzyytrboft.  For short we call her Bunny.

why are all my characters fucking beautiful?  because i like to start with a perfect canvas before i fuck them up

Bunny is the single most powerful thing ever created ever.  she can literally control time and move mountains and heal and--

everyone is fucking everyone else

and nobody is happy

fuck you, the human condition is agony

its not real writing if you leave it feeling good about yourself

comedy is the lowest form of art

I JUST WANT TO MAKE EVERYONE CRY

i took away Bunny’s powers to teach her a fucking lesson.

meet Mott, that’s a brand name of the applesauce I was buying when I thought him up.

Mott is here to fuck you up.  Mott is older than time.  Mott is all powerful.  Mott is so powerful he makes Bunny look like a toddler.  Mott is no hero, he’s uncontrollable chaos

but Mott has a soft side too, he’s really just a gentle, misunderstood abusive ex-boyfriend who only wants everyone in the world to do exactly what he wants

oh and Mott is hilarous

setting?  fuck it

dialogue: NON STOP WIT.  ONE LINERS.  EVERYONE IS TALKING, NOBODY IS SAYING ANYTHING

“Write what you know” bitch I think not.  

“all the stories in the world have already been written” motherfucker, you’ve never read mine!

Grammar?  that’s for bitches that care.  Watch me split a fucking infinitive into splinters.  I’m here to burn this industry down.

oh ho ho you thought Mott was badass, well meet T’pmg.  It’s named after some mail on my desk and it makes Mott look like a elderly man doing a puzzle.  T’Pmg is going to literally kill everyone.  Or marry Bunny

L O V E T R I A N G L E S 

and you can take your unhelpful, jealous constructive criticism and shove it right up your ass because I’m 704% better than any published author in the history of authors.

also how about you learn how to read, reviewers?  how about you take a look again and realize that LITERALLY NOTHING has ever been this level of perfection.  lol readers are all stupid.  you have to like, literally tell them how to think.  lol.

3. Experimental

rational thought begins to return; but is immediately dismissed again

exposition really is the bane of all writers so how about instead of me telling you anything about what’s happening I’ll just go ahead and drop you literally in the middle of a war zone and you’ll just have to figure it out.  never mind even people in the middle of high stress environments think about why they are there and how to get out, this character thinks non-stop about flowers and his Mom.  good luck figuring out what the fuck this story is about

i wrote six of these scenes five years ago and the other 12 last night.  sure they don’t match in tone or story or make sense together but this is ART.

i wrote this entire novel in rhyming couplets

everyone is special, unique and useful

i have rediscovered that sometimes there is sunshine, and also that physical comedy is hard to translate into writing so instead i just decided to give my main character a pet that is actually an Octopus that ate 3/4ths of a vacuum before it got stuck.  the octopus is alive and the vacuum functions despite how this is Impossible(tm) so fuck you

Meet my protagonist his name is Pork and he is Quirky, not for any particular reason, but because I wanted him to be.  Basically he’s well-liked, rich, skilled, handsome, and destined to save mankind if he can just manage to walk in a straight line without falling over some plot hole or another.

spoiler alert: he can’t~

it was two hours after midnight i wrote this by candlelight its called stream of consciousness and flowers are beautiful i never got any flowers when i was dating but you know i really did like sending them and thats whats wrong with the world today punctuation would have been good right here but fuck periods and question marks because really punctuation is actually hold back all authors imagine what we could do if we were allowed to simply write and write and write and you know what i never did learn a single damn thing from a writing advice book because they are all aimed at getting everyone to fall into the status quo and i am FINALLY FREE

if you were ever going to write tentacle porn, this is that time.  go ahead, write your weird, physically improbable porn and enjoy it.

I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED TO KNOW THAT YOU WERE THIS HOT FOR TENTACLES, RANDOM READER, BUT LETS TALK ABOUT YOUR KINK FOR LIKE 30 MINUTES A DAY BECAUSE WE CAN.

4. the rut

what is the point?

this is stupid

i don’t need this in my life

i’ll just day dream about my favorite characters and that’s all i need

words on paper?  that’s so bleh

blech

yuck

and exposition?  still sucks.  so i’ll be over here building an overly complicated, but beautiful detailed world in which to place my precious characters and they’ll be safe there.

nobody leaves reviews on my stuff so why do i bother

5. The Professional

actually, Timothy, if you don’t follow the 9,872,203,293 rules of writing outlined in this comprehensive About Writing Advice Manual that I found in the back of the library than you can’t consider yourself an Author.

that’s what I am, an Author.

a writer is what you call someone how is just doing it for fun.  I’m not doing this for fun, Timothy, I’m here to get Published.  I’m here to get on the New York Times bestseller list.  i’m here to polarize the writing industry with my hard-hitting, insightful novel about the perils of life in these modern times

so, TIM-BO, if you don’t want to follow the rules, if you don’t want to appreciate the work that goes into being an A U T H O R, if you aren’t willing to literally sell your soul to the DEVIL then you shouldn’t be in this writing group.

this writing group is for AUTHORS, TIMBO

and fanfiction?  not writing

children’s books?  not writing

YA Novels?  not writing?

i would literally wipe my ass with all of those.  because they’re shit.

lol, why can’t readers understand anything?  lol.  LEAVE ME NOTES.  

6.  Parent of Six 

yeah I had a story I think

look under the couch?  no not that couch, the other one.  

i mean you can’t escape exposition.  imagine the first day of school, now imagine it without all the teachers passing out a syllabus and telling you about themselves and how you have to turn your homework in on time.  you can’t.  imagine getting hired to a job but nobody tells you where to clock in or what to do so you’re just wearing the smock and wandering the aisles trying to look like you should get paid maybe.

the trick to writing is waiting as long as possible to get started.  that’s the secret.  there’s no other secret.  I tried everything, just put it off until you can’t put it off another minute

yeah this is Bunny.  she used to be a super powerful magical girl but now she’s just trying to figure out how to make potions and doing her best.

i used to write tentacle porn, you know?  i used to be wild.

now i’m up at 2 am googling what time period used cauldrons and wore pointed hats because my alternate-earth story needs to make sense 

i was going to give Bunny a love interest but now I think i’m going to give her a love adversary, as in this asshole won’t leave her alone while she’s trying to get shit done.

seriously Mott.  Bunny doesn’t love you.  she’s in a semi-committed relationship with her best girl friend Tippy.

I should probably make these names make more sense.  honestly fuck it

i wrote six thousand words yesterday but i had taken cold medicine so about four thousand of those words aren’t any recognizable language

thank you for reading.  i’d happily explain my every exact thought on writing if you asked.  seriously.

#on writing

[breeeliss]

Oh no, why was the season so bad in your opinion?

i mean, there were a lot of reasons, but if you want the short version a lot of this season felt very all over the place. and by that i mean a lot of what was set up in season 3 in terms of character development, character motivation, and allusions to future important plot points were pretty much abandoned during this latter half of the season in favor of focusing on the coalition and this big blow to the galra empire they dealt in the last two episodes (which, after the finale of season 2, this didn’t even compare). 

i’m probably gonna go episode by episode for this because there’s just so much that bothered me so if you want to read the rest of it just peek under the cut

tl;dr: this was by far the weakest season 

episode 1so admittedly the blade of marmora stuff was just aesthetically cool. i got really excited when it was keith on one of those missions. the get up looks great on him and he just does so well with their fighting style. seeing the brief fighting moments with him and how BOM functions in general was really cool and i liked that bit. 

the only problem is that it came out of nowhere

at no point in the entirety of season 3 did keith indicate that he was thinking of going to train with the blade. we learned that because shiro told us that. and like….keith training with them isn’t a bad thing. but it certainly becomes a huge thing when he’s pulling away from the team so much that shiro had to hop into the black lion and take control of the team again. and then once shiro is finally back in the black lion, keith straight up decides to leave team voltron because he wasn’t meant to be the leader anyway. 

there’s so much about this that’s weird and it has a lot to do with the character development keith was set up with in season 3. he was a reluctant leader. this wasn’t the job he wanted but it’s the job he has to do because there’s no other choice. he’s learning to listen to his teammates. he’s becoming more comfortable leading. he’s taking shiro’s direction and using the advice of a more seasoned leader to try and improve his own leadership. he actually did a really good fucking job of it and i was excited to see that improve. …..and then it all gets shot to hell because, oh well, keith can’t lead, shiro’s back in the lion, guess it’s time for me to peace out. 

there was not enough of a look into keith’s motivations so it all felt very sudden. and it’s also at this point that the lion switching that happened before feels even more useless than before. 

why bring shiro back and have him not be able to pilot his lion if you were going to give it back to him anyway once keith left the team? why give keith a character arc to develop his leadership if you were just going to have him leave the team? why make lance go through an emotional arc where he has to put aside his ego and trust in his skills in order to pilot the red lion and become a better supportive teammate for keith if literally none of that is going to be referenced in the new season? at this point, it feels like the only reason this lion switching happened was to give allura a lion and develop allura. 

anyway, the group hug at the end was cute i guess. 

episode 2perfect. so perfect. and not just because i love pidge. the flashbacks to her brother, her search for him, that fucking heart breaking moment with her at the rebel cemetery, their reunion, them fighting together, all of it was perfect. best episode in the season. no complaints. 

episode 3so, positives out the way first. the kaltenecker scene is still genius. pidge showing matt around the castle was precious. not super warmed up to matt yet but i like the relationship that he has with pidge and i love how much happier pidge is now that he’s here. that’s wonderful. 

zarkon is darth vader now i guess. also his return was the single most anti-climactic part of this season. i literally almost forgot he came back as i was typing this. he seems to be obsessed with finding lotor while his wife fucking does everything as usual. 

this episode was pretty tame although it starts to show why i’m annoyed with lotor this season. beforehand having his motivations and intentions kept secret was cool. he seemed to be going against his father’s methods while also trying to act in the interest of the empire – like a “i’m going to do this my way” kinda guy. that’s starting to fall apart this season in a way that’s not mysterious or appealing but in a way that’s just flat out confusing. 

he has so many different plans doing on. the trans reality comet to make those ships. trying to go through the rift. and later on in the season, actually trying to help the voltron coalition for reasons we’re not totally clued in on yet (but more on that later). i don’t know what lotor wants. i don’t know what’s driving him. i don’t know what he’s after. i don’t know why he hates his father so much. i don’t know……literally anything about him. and it’s been a whole season. i know what he’s doing, but i don’t know why and it’s making him a very confusing character. 

also….his generals ditched him very quickly. killing narti i actually kind of liked (even though, fuck, i liked her) since it seems he values his personal goals more than his generals. and based on how much his generals practically worshipped him before (especially acxa) i would’ve though they’d take that as a warning. except, the minute lotor became a fugitive they totally abandoned ship bc they wanted to save their own skins. that’s a…..huge 360. and of course lotor escapes anyway so their fates are in limbo and for now they’re not in the story anymore. that whole thing just seemed rushed and like it should’ve taken more episodes to accomplish. 

episode 4hated it. i can’t believe i sat through it. ignoring the fact that hunk got demoted down to fart jokes (except let’s not ignore that fact because what the fuck) it was a useless episode. the coalition stuff in general was an interesting detail to place in the first episode but after that it seemed heavy handed. to devote an entire comic relief episode to a heavy handed process of putting on performances to gain coalition support seemed really useless. it also didn’t help that….we didn’t see….anyone really join. we’re told they are. but there was no emotional speech. no shots of people signing up. like it was stripped of all emotionality and therefore became annoying. it was campy and childish and honestly really fucking annoying. 

episode 5 +6just gonna add these together since it’s essentially a two parter. 

matt’s role sort of really delved into the background in a way that i didn’t like. he’s kinda just there now – could’ve been easily replaced with literally any random rebel officer. i expected him to be a captain and i expected him to run shit. instead he spent days of his life just listening to radio frequencies and he answers to this mysterious captain of the resistance (olia? who are you? what’s your deal? we’re not told? okay cool?) and that’s p much it. sorta expected him to play a bigger role in things but whatever. 

it was a cool couple of episodes but so much of it was fighting. what made the end of season 2 so amazing was the emotional aspects of it brought in. the BOM agent sacrificing himself. the fight with zarkon where the stakes were incredibly high. voltron almost dying. shiro talking everyone up. everyone literally willing to die to take zarkon down. it was done really really well. 

this time for some reason the big “oh my god we might die” moment didn’t feel as dire. and i think it’s because everyone was so fucking calm with the reality that they were going to freaking die. there was no emotional impact in this part of the episode at all and it’s what makes these sorts of fights cool. when things get bad, that’s the time when we need to see people’s emotions and honestly the end of this season felt so effing stale. about the only really great part was the allura and lance bit at the end of the episode. and even though it kinda came totally out of left field, it somewhat saved what was an otherwise bland final battle. i mean come on they were on a fucking bomb that was going to blow up five solar systems you’re telling me they were just cool as a cucumber about that? bullshit. 

keith gave me a heart attack for half a second i’ll admit, although the power of his almost-sacrifice was lost because he was fucking gone this whole time. now had he done that as the black paladin/leader of voltron, hell yeah i would’ve started crying. instead i was anticipating his death and planning to be fucking livid about it later. but hey! no problem! because lotor came and saved the day. and…..is trying to cozy up to the coalition. 

which is the single most random thing that happened this entire season. it makes no sense. why is this happening? i know we’re not meant to know and i know he probably has his own plans as to why he’s doing this, but again. because his motivations are completely shrouded, lotor helping keith isn’t interesting. it’s just confusing. he’s a black sheep that just runs on his own agenda and we don’t know why and we don’t know what that agenda is. so that episode ended and i was just really really perplexed. 

final thoughts: all the interesting character arc set up from season 3 was scrapped, any further character development was also sidelines this season, idk what the fuck lotor is doing and it’s annoying now, why is zarkon back he’s literally so useless now, fuck the coalition i don’t care about it give me exposition instead, and i want keith back on team voltron….

AND WHAT THE FUCK IS PROJECT KURON? DID WE FORGET ABOUT THAT? WHAT IS SHIRO’S DEAL? WE TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT!

i’m……..going to rewatch season 3 and pretend none of this ever happened. 

#voltron #voltron spoilers #vld spoilers #voltron season 4 #Anonymous #ask

[rerwby]

RWBY Volume 4 Commentary Play-by-Play

Chapter 1:

Kerry talks about how each episode had a ‘fuck you’ shot, which is a particular shot that was difficult to create across all departments.

I’d say the whole volume was a fuck-you shot to the fans but

In a little conversation about how much they’ve planned in the show, Kerry talks about how they’ve actually been hanging on to team WTCH (Watts, Tyrian, Cinder and Hazel) since the beginning.

I’m leaning towards believing this since Salem was one of the first things conceived for the show, so her team would follow. Makes you wonder if Miles was always gonna have his “crazy” Tyrian though or if that came later.

I doubt it because I don’t believe Monty would make characters as boring as Hazel and Watts right from the start.

Regarding Oscar and his story this volume, Miles and Kerry had more rewrites with him than with anything else in RWBY, trying to figure out the right way to present it. At one point, Oscar’s first major scene was going to be in chapter 7, instead of 4.

Yeah it’s not breaking news to say that they did the opposite of what would be a good idea.

Mentioned in the commentary, but in more detail in the special features, is the fact that CRWBY had a rough start to the volume due to the new production pipeline, which continued for several episodes.

According to Miles, the Petra Gigas was originally supposed to appear in the Emerald Forest during Volume 1. It was supposed to be a part of the giant nevermore/deathstalker fight, as was a giant Bourbatusk.

Wondering how they would have fit 4 whole monsters in that fight, but I guess that’s why they ended up splitting two bad guys between teams instead.

On that note, they talk about how incredibly different the original 4 episodes of Volume 1 were compared to what we got, and that Fennec and Corsac were originally Volume 1 villains.

Just saying that I believe this. They said that Roman originally played a smaller part in Volume 1? How was this possible? Insert more villains.

On the origin of the Geist, Kerry talks about how, at the time Monty was working on the White trailer, he and Miles were thinking of ways for it to make sense, and came up with the idea of a poltergeist Grimm. They say that particular Geist is called an Armor Gigas.

So Weiss fought a Grimm in her trailer it turns out. Idk how to feel about that. In a way it makes sense because, as we’ve seen with Winter’s summons, the Schnee summons are light versions of Grimm. It makes little sense though when you consider that the Geist inhabits inanimate things and therefore the armor isn’t a natural feature of the Grimm.

The crown on Jaune’s shield was first inserted by layout artist Rachel Doda when creating the storyboards. Kerry thought it was a perfect touch and decided to include it in the official design.

Iunno what fatal flaw to focus on here. Is it how this makes it sound like Jaune’s god damn weapon model design was THAT important that Kerry noticed? That it implies melting Pyrrha’s armor down was a last-minute thought? That the plot hole of Pyrrha fucking disintegrating and therefore leaving no armor or cape for Jaune was made entirely because Kerry liked how a shield looked?

Chapter 2:

In regards to the infamous map, Kerry mentions that in one version of the script, RNJR was going to lose the map in a fight of some sort. A similar was also supposed to happen in Chapter 6 involving Tyrian, but decided against it because of how busy CRWBY already was.

So instead of losing it for a reason they just lose it for the sake of it. Cool.

According to Miles, Jaques is loosely based on Jack Frost, something they try to hint at in the way he keeps his study.

The name kind of gave it away without any other hints.

Kerry says that writing the final scene of chapter 2 was the first time he cried while writing. Likewise, Miles said he lost his shit while performing mocap for the scene. Apparently everyone who worked on it had a pretty strong emotional reaction to this scene.

 Wow. The people working on this show were seriously so disillusioned that they thought Pyrrha’s relationship with Jaune earned that kind of reaction. Not even gonna mention how the existence of the recording makes no sense, especially since Pyrrha signs off on it. Why would she do that on a generic fighting guide. I can’t believe how attached these people were to the Alpha Hets.

Chapter 3:

On the topic of writing RWBY with multiple different storylines all taking place at the same time, Miles called it a ‘scary experiment’ but is happy overall with how it turned out.

I can’t say anything more than what’s been said on this.

I also have nothing to say on the technical stuff. I’m really not versed enough in it.

Miles talks about how they tried to have Salem feel a bit motherly, and not overly cruel, because she’s “better than that” and that she has a certain way of talking to each of her lieutenants.

She seemed pretty cruel to me lol. They need to have Salem do more before they announce these kinds of intentions, because now they’ve just given us a preconceived notion and they won’t have to write it that way.

Chapter 4:

Apparently Yang’s eye color was decided because of Taiyang’s and Raven’s eye colors. Red and Blue making purple.

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.

Burnie is apparently very invested in voicing Taiyang, and takes it very seriously. He would go over the script with Miles and Kerry before recording sessions and they talk about how Burnie will listen to Yang’s lines and efforts, and try and make Taiyang’s similar, as a way of representing how Yang was influenced by her Father. It’s also mentioned that Joel is similar when it comes to portraying Oobleck.

Wow! Joel and Burnie, two voice acting veterans who formed RT, are invested in their roles? Don’t get too shocked by actors who actually try, guys!

When it came to naming all the villages in Anima, they wanted to keep the theme of Mistral being heavily inspired by Eastern influences, so they named villages after the Japanese names for certain flowers.

Blah blah magical mystical Asia land

Originally, the inn and the pub were the same building, but were separated when they couldn’t figure out how to fit Raven into the scene.

Can you imagine if we had to see RNJR somehow not notice Qrow like twenty feet away from them? Thank god he sat in that pub across the street.

Chapter 5:

Miles says he cried while writing Blake’s reunion with her parents, and that the Belladonna’s are some of his favorite characters.

I mean iunno that scene didn’t scream emotional to me but I also have daddy issues so

Fennec and Corsac, as mentioned earlier, were characters originally conceived pre Volume 1, being the 2nd and 3rd Faunus thought about after Blake.

Makes you wonder if by the time of their conception, Faunus were a thing or if Monty was just making up furry OC’s.

Chapter 6:

In the charity scene, Koen says that there are around 100 different, unique people in the room, each with differing clothing.

Jfc guys went kinda overboard there. Didn’t look like 100+ when I watched it.

When describing Henry Marigold to concept artist Erin Winn, Kerry told her to draw a ‘posery, imposter Neptune’.

That’s about what I guessed yep. Now is there a reason for it to be Neptune? To show that Weiss grew past her affection towards him? Or because it was the first person who came to mind? Who knows.

Tyrian’s jacket, despite being one of Kerry’s favorite design aspects, was a real hassle for the animators and the rigging team, so much so that he was animated without his jacket on, and then would add it afterwards.

I remember when capes were in Kingdom Hearts. Then they realized they were too much work so they removed them to avoid continuity errors and such. It was a smart and humble move, because the capes looked cool. I guess Tyrian’s jacket was just really that awesome though.

Chapter 7:

The original plan with Ozpin was to not reveal him as having anything to do with Oscar until the very end of the Volume.

Just gonna keep reminding us of that huh guys?

This episode was the first time proper reflections were used in a mirror in any Rooster Teeth production. Before they would simply fake it.

well that is a legitimately very interesting fact

When it came to Tyrian swearing, some thought went into whether they could get around it, originally having him say witch instead. Ultimately, Miles and Kerry decided it was the right time for things to get a bit more mature.

Best decision they ever made, thank god.

I love the idea of Miles being all modest and going “ah yes time to be mature.”

Chapter 8:

Miles says the whole campfire scene was probably the most difficult thing in the Volume to write, simply due to how much they needed to cover. Also, Kerry says more people worked on this scene than any other in the Volume.

The RWBY writers struggling with exposition?

The two brothers was Miles’ idea, and his first major contribution to the series, obviously one of the first parts of the show that was conceived.

And it was made known that Miles conceived one of the worst parts of the entire story. And he just copied it from a Grimm Tale.

Miles was the one who wrote the majority of Blake scenes in Volume 4. When she’s slapping Sun, Miles only intended it to be soft slaps on the shoulder, so he was quite surprised by the end result.

 Isn’t this why you, like, direct your scenes? To avoid miscommunication like that?

Chapter 9:

Apparently there were several colour combinations the were tried with Ilia that “did not work”.

Apparently the animation crew’s passion is graphic design.

All the patches of mud on the ground were originally water puddles, but Kerry forgot that while the scene was being animated.

Again, directing.

Chapter 10:

In the scene with Nora being bullied, Miles jokes about that if you feel bad about it, those other kids likely died the next day. To follow that up, Kerry then mentions that they actually considered to have one of those kids lying face down on the ground in the background during the attack. Damn.

Idk how to feel about this but it is kind of disturbing that Miles would be so quick to make that joke.

According to Miles, they actually described Ren’s father in the script as “A handsome Hanzo looking motherfucker”.

guessed everyone who knows of overwatch’s existence

One of the ideas they had that didn’t make it into the episode involved Ren’s father going to see the mayor. Since he’s a hunter, and he had just returned from a hunt, Li was going to talk to the mayor about how they didn’t find any animals and it was almost as if they had been spooked away, and that they should get a Huntsman to come and investigate.

That probably would have made some sense.

According to Kerry, Jaune and Ruby’s moment was originally going to end with them hugging, but was cut due to time and Kerry not wanting people to “worry”.

So Lancaster gets shot down completely, cool. Cool thing of a creator to do. How dare we imply Ruby and Jaune are close after all they’ve been through.

Chapter 11:

Recording Tyrian’s efforts in this episode was a ton of fun according to Miles.

Yeah I bet Miles loved Tyrian.

Kerry’s “proudest accomplishment of this Volume” was having the photo of Whitely on Jacques’ desk be face down after Ironwood slams down on it.

Cool?

Kerry talks about Sun’s abs (as you do) and actually reveals that, contrary to popular belief, they didn’t remove them, but instead Sun’s model was made to be more muscular and they would be picked up by lighting and shadows instead.

Pretty sure Sun’s torso is a tube with the new models.

Chapter 12:

When talking about the fight, it’s mentioned there were several different versions of it. They don’t go into detail, but Kerry does mention that Qrow was originally supposed to do something, but Miles reminds him it’s something they can’t talk about.

God, what is left for Qrow to reveal? We got his weapon’s forms, his Semblance, his transforming thing, what else? Tbh my bet’s on Ozpin’s cane. They planned for him to use the cane but decided against it because of their artifact bullshit.

#rwde