#personally I also think it reflects poorly on Our Heroes when all they fight is cardboard

[thepapergirlandthespiegelman]

Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

#review #thoughts #television #animation #adult animation #video game adaptation #fantasy #Netflix #Netflix Original #Castlevania #storytelling #writing #characters #plot #character development #vampires #Isaac (Castlevania)

[linkspooky]

Repress Your Feelings, Girl.

Toga and Uraraka can’t understand each other: because Toga can’t explain herself properly, and Uraraka doesn’t really want to understand. However, there’s also a narrative reason behind why these two characters are fighting each other. It has nothing to do with morality, good or bad, hero or villain, but rather the writing of the characters themselves. Toga Himiko and Uraraka are foils, two sides of the same coin meant to reflect each other. They are essentially (in narrative terms at least) the same person, just both of them expressing different sides of themselves. Uraraka Ochako represses, and Himiko Toga expresses herself, more on their foiling underneath the cut. 

Before I start out I just wanted to point out a few of the deliberate paralels the narrative draws between the two characters. First, the girls come from completely opposite circumstances. 

Uraraka comes from a poor family, whereas Toga comes from what seems to be a wealthy household, considering there’a a gate in front of their door. 

Typically Himiko would be the privileged one, but the narrative inverts this. Uraraka grows up in a household where her identity is affirmed by her parents no matter what. Himiko grows up in a household where she is constantly told she is wrong by her parents. 

Ochako is continually accepted for who she is, and Toga is told not to be herself, not only suffering parental abuse, but also psychiatric abuse on top of that. 

One more way in which they are opposites, Ochako is someone who tends to be sheltered (her parents did her best to hide the fact they were suffering from her because she didn’t want her to feel guitly about it, however it produced the opposite effect, Uraraka got better at reading the faces of people and noticing their suffering.)

Himiko on the other hand has grown up very unsheltered, she’s been on her own since middle school. There’s several hints she’s been exposed to the ugliest side of people already and spends her life running away from them and keeping herself safe from them. 

Himiko and Uraraka are both incredibly good at reading other people, but they developed this ability for opposite reasons. Uraraka who was sheltered noticed the pain her parents tried to hide from her and developed it compassionately, and Himiko who has been on the run for most of her life developed it as a method of survival. However, that doesn’t mean that Himiko is lacking compassion, or Uraraka always empathizes with everyone she meets, because both of them are complex individuals. 

Himiko is capable of empathizing with other people, not only that but she’s grown significantly out of her shell and learned that other people besides her have needs, feelings she needs to take care of, to the point where she’s stopped prioritizing herself first in all circumstances. On the other hand, Uraraka is just as capable of shutting her feelings down and ignoring the viewpoints of other people she finds disagreeable with her own. 

Uraraka and Toga are also both extremely social people, however all of Uraraka’s friends accept her for who she is. Deku knows Uraraka so well that he can tell when Toga, pretending to be Camie, is the one replacing her. Toga is someone who like Uraraka was always at the center of a group of friends tying her together. However, Toga could only present her fake self in front of them. 

1. The Repressed

Jung divides the self into three, the shadow, the persona, and then the ego (self) which is made of a combination of the former too. 

Persona

The persona is how we present ourselves to the world. The word "persona" is derived from a Latin word that literally means "mask." It is not a literal mask, however.

The persona represents all of the different social masks that we wear among various groups and situations. It acts to shield the ego from negative images. According to Jung, the persona may appear in dreams and take different forms. [source]

Shadow

The shadow is an archetype that consists of the sex and life instincts. The shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.

The shadow forms out of our attempts to adapt to cultural norms and expectations. It is this archetype that contains all of the things that are unacceptable not only to society, but also to one's own personal morals and values. [source]

My Hero Academia uses Jungian Symbolism, especially in regards to Himiko and Uraraka’s characters, this isn’t something I made up it’s directly in the text. Toga’s act of repression is literally called: wearing a mask. 

Toga and Uraraka are written to contrast each other on which part of themselves they present to the world. Uraraka is extremely conscious of other people’s expectations of her, so she plays up her persona. Uraraka is someone who is always putting up a show for others because she knows how they perceive her. 

Her own perceptiveness works against her, because while she loves seeing people happy the most she also can’t stand to see them in pain, or even be the reason why they’re in pain. Uraraka’s solution to this is a rather immature one, she believes if she’s good all the time, if she’s always this pleasant and happy person and never shares her problems then she won’t drag the mood down. 

Uraraka is conflict avoidant in other words. There are times she directly addresses the conflict like the times with Tsuyu, but even then it’s in a “We should all get along as friends” sort of way. Uraraka always pushes her feelings down and tries her hardest never to cause trouble for others. However there’s a line between trying not to hurt others, and simply pretending the conflict does not exist. 

The shadow is the part of ourselves we repress in order to play for other’s expectations. The persona is a performance, it’s the personality you perform every day. You would swear with a group of friends, but you wouldn’t swear in front of your grandparents. People hide parts of themselves depending on who they’re interacting with, personality is in part a performance to the expectations of others around you, that’s natural. Everyone will have a side of themselves they show to others, and a side of themselves they keep repressed. That’s natural. What is not natural is to be all one way or all the other. 

‘Man is not truly one, but truly two’ “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” 

The point of the shadow and the persona, is that both are true at the same time. You are both who you pretend to be, and what you hide of yourself. The persona is not fake just because it’s a performance, and the shadow isn’t the true self or all there is to you just because it’s hidden. However, the opposite is true at the same time, the persona is not all of who you are, and you can’t make your shadow go away just by repressing it. 

Psychological repression is not a healthy strategy for dealing with emotions. It doesn’t resolve emotions, it just makes them go away for a short time. One response to the presence of a shadow is to simply ignore it, but ignoring it will just make you ignorant. 

Uraraka views herself to be a good person, and views heroes to be good, but that belief hasn’t come from confronting the bad of society and deciding that heroes are still good anyway. Which is my point, not that Uraraka is wrong, but that she’s ignorant. She’s sheltered, naive, and her lived experience is so narrow she can’t realy make a judgement call on Toga that’s accurate. Like, just for exmaple heroes do in fact kill people. They even get excited about completely destroying villains. 

There are heroes who become heroes just to beat the shit out of villains, there are heroes who will try to kill villains, Tokoyami gets confronted with the fact that Hawks killed a villain and his first response is: You did nothing wrong, Hawks. Uraraka sees heroes as the ideal only ever saving people. Yes heroes save people. There are other heroes who are violent. It’s not one or the other, the truth requires acknowledging both at once. Uraraka’s point that she would never feel happy about violence is a false one, because she doesn’t know that for one, and two heroes are just as capable of violence as villains. 

The key point to repression is that it doesn’t work. 

Himiko already tried reperssing herself and it just drove her insane. The feelings don’t go away simply by pretending that they are not there. Even in a narrative sense, Uraraka’s shadow that she has repressed has escaped her in the form of Himiko and is running around constantly trying to challenge her and confront her to get her to acknowledge those feelings. The feelings will not go away, and Uraraka’s solution is to just keep putting a lid on them and pretending they are not there. It’s because she has such a tight lid on herself it makes her impossible to see things from Himiko’s point of view. 

Why is Uraraka supposed to understand things from Himiko’s point of view? Because Himiko is Uraraka, she’s all of her repressed flaws come to roost. Uraraka cannot change or improve as a person until she accepts both the best and worst of herself instead of just trying to always be good all the time. Understanding Himiko leads to a more gray and nuanced understanding of reality rather than the black and white: heroes good, villains bad. Himiko is a foil, a narrative device used to show the flaws of another character. 

Uraraka did nothing wrong / Uraraka is right. 

Well okay then, but Uraraka would be a pretty boring character otherwise. She’d just be a good girl who did good things all the time and always tried her hardest. I’m not trying to insinuate Uraraka is a bad person, I’m arguing in favor of her complexity. I think there is more to her character than just her trying to be a better hero, and getting stronger and learning to use her powers better. There’s an emotional complexity to Uraraka that she represses. 

Emotionally, Uraraka is similiar to Himiko because they both cope poorly in the same way. Emotional repression is unhealthy. Himiko has only two modes, repress everything or don’t repress anything and both of those extremes are bad. Uraraka is on the path to becoming Himiko, because the only way she knows how to deal with things is to shut her feelings off and as Himiko said that doesn’t work: it just drove Himiko insane. 

2. The Expressed

Himiko Toga is who she is in reaction to her trauma. Uraraka pushes herself down and tries to play to the expectations of others, and Toga asserts herself and tries to defy other people’s expectations. 

I’m actually going to blow everybody’s minds here though: Toga doesn’t actually want to murder people and suck their blood dry. It’s what she thinks she wants, but once again, she is who she is, in reaction to trauma. Toga was violently abused, Toga became violent, but it’s not who she is inherently. It’s who she thinks she is. 

Toga has internalize every bad thing every person has ever said about her. Toga not only foils Uraraka, she also foils Shigaraki. Toga has been convinced, that what she wants naturally, is to suck people’s blood, and kill them. The same way that Shigaraki has been convinced by AFO that he was naturally born with the urge to destroy others. 

These aren’t things that they have a natural inclination or desire to do, it was things they were told about themselves repeatedly. Shigaraki by AFO, and Toga by everyone around her. Even Toga’s initial incident of violence has a lot more in common with a psychotic break, then with you know, a pre-meditated murder that she did for pleasure. 

It’s not something Toga naturally did on her own, it was something she was pushed to do. Remember, Toga suffered twofold abuse. Abuse from her parents, but also psychiatric abuse. The people who were supposed to help her reconcile her quirk, and her unnatural tendencies didn’t try to heal her like they were supposed to. She was demonized by everyone around her, told what a bad girl she was constantly, not for anything she did wrong but because she was born naturally with a quirk. She tried to be good and smile for the sake of others, untils he reached a breaking point: then and only then did she lash out. 

Toga’s initial instant of violent wasn’t a pleasure killing. It was a lashing out due to a psychotic break, and it was because both of the systems in her life that were supposed to help teach her to learn to deal with emotions, quirk counselling this world’s version of child therapists, and her own parents, chose to demonize her and tell her to repress herself. 

However, children who are abused tend to internalize the words their abusers tell them. Children who are abused often believe they “deserve” their abuse because of their bad behavior. 

Now, I’m not trying to justify. I don’t think Toga Himiko is allowed to run around killing whoever she wants just because she was abused. My intent is to explain how her brain works. 

Toga Himiko doesn’t get to lash out as she pleased, but I think it’s important to understand that Toga’s lashing out is what makes her human. She’s not an inhuman monster, she’s a human reacting to circumstances. Most people exposed to ugly situations, react in ugly ways, and the few that don’t are the exception that proves the rule. 

My point being that Toga is not an insane monster that lusts for blood, she just believes herself to be one. The same way that Uraraka is wrong, Toga is also wrong at the same time.

Because as I said the above is right. Toga can’t live her life just lashing out. While it’s understandable, someone who has endured violence can’t keep lashing out violently forever. Toga’s choice to always lash out is just as unhealthy as Uraraka’s choice to always repress herself. 

Because Toga relies again and again on violence to vent her feelings, violence has become an inescapable part of her life. It’s also contrary to what she really wants. Toga thinks she wants violence, but the violence is just a reaction to the violent abuse.

Yes, Toga says all she wants is to drain people dry of their blood but characters are liars sometimes. 

Sometimes you can’t take a character at their word. Sometimes instead of reading something directly as stated line for line in the story you have to read between the lines. Toga says she wants to just kill people, but her internal thoughts contradict her.

What Toga needs is to be accepted, loved, and trusted like Uraraka is. That’s her deep internal desire that she states to herself when pushed to her absolute edge by Curious. What Toga thinks she wants is to drain the people she wants dry of their blood, so she can become them and live vicariously through them. What she thinks she wants is a life where she can do whatever she wants, and do as she pleases, in response to a life where she wasn’t allowed to do anything that she wanted. But, that again is a child’s idea of rebellion. It’s a response to her abuse, it’s not who she is. However, Toga’s personal development was forwarded not by killing people and draining them, but by the empathy and acceptance she showed towards Jin. 

There’s what she needs, what helps her develop into a more stable person, the empathy and care she shows to Jin. The acceptance Jin showed her in return. 

There’s what she thinks she wants, which is to just rebel against everything and always do what she wants in every single situation and accept no limitations on her personal desires. 

Toga is in fact just a normal girl, who wants to be accepted by the society at large, or at least find people who accept her. However, Toga doesn’t see herself as one, because she’s internalzied the idea that she’s the blood thirsty monster that everyone thinks she is. Which is why Toga contradicts herself. 

Toga in the same breath will say “I’m also a normal girl” and then “I’m a weird kid, I’m a weirdo, no one can understand me.” 

Toga cannot explain herself, because she’s wrong about herself. She’s making herself out to be a violent monster because that’s how she copes, the really really bad way she copes. It’s easier to be a violent monster, she’s more protected that way, then to be a runaway girl who’s just scared and alone. However, because Himiko can’t admit this, she also can’t explain herself to other people. She presents the monstrous version of herself and that’s all Uraraka can see. 

Neither Uraraka nor Himiko’s way of coping is sustainable. Uraraka cannot keep repressing herself forever, the same way Himiko cannot violently lash out forever. 

While what Uraraka says is very black and white, it’s not wrong. If HImiko is goign to live her life “Kill or Be Killed”, then she’s just as likely to end up being killed then she is to be the killer. There’s no happy ending to that kind of life.

However, there is no happy ending to Uraraka’s way of living either. Her perfectionist tendencies and her desire to only ever be good just aren’t going to work, because one a lot of bad things are going on already Uraraka just doesn’t see them, and two it’s not sustainable, Himiko was someone who held everything in too and look where that got her. 

Uraraka and Himiko’s talk failed because neither of them are capable of communicating right now. Uraraka can’t understand because she doesn’t try, and Himiko can’t explain herself because she also doesn’t try. 

Uraraka only sees what’s good about the world, about heroes. Himiko only sees what’s bad about the world, about heroes.  Uraraka sees the beautiful parts, Himiko embodies the ugliness. 

However they are both wrong because they are both short sighted. People are not just their shadows, and they’re not just their personas. They are both at the same time. 

A junagian shadow confrontation doesn’t end in a fight between good or evil. The shadow is not evil, the persona is not good. They are just two halves of the same person. Defeating a shadow does not make it go away. The shadow is something you have to learn to live with, the same way everybody on earth is flawed, and just tries to live every day working on their flaws the best they can.

The shadow is something that has to be reconciled.  Uraraka and Toga don’t have to defeat each other, they have to reconcile with one another. 

The narrative is pushing their reconciliaton because Toga and Uraraka both have what the other needs to grow. Uraraka is ignorant because she’s lacking experience. She hasn’t lived Toga’s experiences so she doesn’t understand her perspective. She doesn’t know, and she won’t know until someone explains it to her. However, saving as many people as possible means that Uraraka should also be open to trying to save people who react to abuse in ugly ways as well, because a person can be a victim and a villain at the same time. Uraraka will be a better hero if she’s able to see the flaws in her own society, because she’s a part of the next generation to reform society.

And Toga can’t become someone who is trusted by others if she’s violently lashing out all the time. The same way that Uraraka needs to see what’s bad about the world, Toga needs to learn to see what’s good about the world. The same way Uraraka needs to see both sides of the world, that of a villain girl and that of a normal girl. Toga needs to come to terms with herself, that she’s not a violent monster, but a normal girl. The only way she can stop lashing out and start actually taking responsibility for what she’s done and start on the path to self improvement is if she starts seeing herself as a person capable of improving. 

Toga wasn’t born this way she was made this way. She’s just a people, and people change. Toga can either try to change, or keep lashing out forever but at the moment she doesn’t even know that changing is an option for her. She thinks she’s going to be stuck as a monster forever because she was just born one. That’s why, Toga also needs Uraraka as much as Uraraka needs her. 

#togachako #uraraka ochako #ochako uraraka #himiko toga #toga himiko #lov meta #mha meta #league of villains meta #my hero academia meta #league of villains #toga himiko is a terrible person #yeah but she's fascinating #besides it's not like she killed YOUR MOM #she hasn't hurt anybody in reality #she's a character in a narrative and we can analyze her without the need to moralize her #because obviously killing is bad #but like beyond that it's constructive to look at her and try to understand her as a person

[popculturebuffet]

The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Shangri-La-Di-Da and Sheldgoose Squaredance Reviews: The Last Ride (Comissoned by WeirdKev27)

SALUDOS AMGIOS.. THIS IS IT! The finale review of my retrospective on the Three Caballeros THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. It’s the final ride. While there will be, as i’ve said the last few time, a little epilogue to celebrate finishing this, as clocking in at 15 reviews, one best of list coming next week and covering a film, two sizeable comic book stories, and 18 episodes of television, this has been one of my largest projects and one of my proudest. But there will be time to look back next week. For now i’m amped up, excited about this series and excited to finish. So after the cut join me for one last full ride as our heroes face their final hour! 

Shangri-La-De-Da: Our penultimate adventure begins with the Cabs returning home after training with King Arthur, where they apparently got a years worth of training in a day.. because apparently Camelot is one giant hyperbolic time chamber. But the training’s paid off as our heroes are now at their most skilled and most powerful: As a result Jose skifully and perfectly cuts an orange in seconds, Panchito ropes an apple from a nearbye stand (and the owner’s really cool about it since Panchito gives him the money for it “Thanks magic rope!”) and Donald.. breaks everything but in a really impressive ways. Our heroes are at their best and ready to take on Feldrake when the time comes, while Ari and the Bear.. are hiding what happened last episode with the girls investigating. Hey can’t win em all. Meanwhile Sheldrake is leading Sheldgoose into the Manor.. after a few goofs on him running into the barrier because he’s a petty asshole. They decsend into the depths bellow leaving Leopold to guard. 

Back at the Cabana Donald just wants one more thing... Daisy. 

I’ve.. gone on about why he shouldn’t do this last time. He deserves better. Xandra is right there and while she’s treated him shabbily from time to time. it’s more human error versus... everything with Daisy just everything. This plot point has been nothing but pain and suffering for me and it’s not changing that track record in these last two episodes, though thankfully it’s barely in the finale, so my own track record of screaming about daisy in text form every time she shows up will also remain in tact. He does this because Xandra offered them a vacation so he won’t be distracted.. again why isn’t she the love intrest? I dunno maybe sh’es more into Jose.  And Daisy sucks on arrival, phrasing, as her response to Donald’s call wasn’t to just.. tell him no but to go to his place to clearly tell him no to his place saying “Let’s recap, you abandoned me in a bad part of town, spent our date in the bathroom all night in a hula skirt, then brainwashed my nieces into helping you trick me with a dummy”. Okay Daisy, you want to recap, you insufferable, pompus, selfish, self absorbed, overly demanding, overly haughty, golddigging rose colored shrew?

Let’s fucking recap: He left you in a bad part of town because he got FIRED from his job and found out his house burned down, something you REFUSED to let him explain. You found out about this and then proceded to berate him over dinner, saying he couldn’t possibly help people. While he did spend a while in the bathroom with a hula skirt nad never explained it the ONE point you have.. he LEFT to go help his friends, with you once again leaving instead of letting him come back and explain later or leaving but going to his place to hash this out or just dump him. THEN, something you CAREFULLY omitted, you moved on which is fine.. as a way to make him jealous, bringing the guy to his door to rub his beak in your new relationship with not a hint of shame,a nd ran off whie he was fighting for his life clearly. Now seeing things were more complicated, you asked NO follow up questions, imposed a date on him and while he did lie your nieces WERE NOT FUCKING BRAINWASHED. This was of their own free will you unbleivible she demon. You are so up your own ass you can’t even see the obvious. And then you came here JUST to say all this and be mean to Donald one more time. While Donald shoudln’t of called you up it’s not because of all that it’s because your a heartlress, selfish, shrivled husk of a person. You care about NO ONE but yourself, and that includes Donald. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. 

So Xandra just zaps them away and says she’s perfect for Donald. 

Donald and Daisy end up in the himlayas.. cue the music. 

Why isn’t this game on Switch? Questions for later. Point is our heroes find a cave to duck in and a yeti.. who after clearing their throat reveals Xandra left them at the entrance for Shangri-La, and the inside is intorduced.. with a very lackluster musical number. A weak note for the songs to go out on but not bad, though Donald is pissed off because that’s his schtick here.. though credit where it’s do: Since I didn’t know everything and hadn’t finished it turns out his anger was delebrate.. but we’ll get to that and why it dosen’t work in a moment.  Back at the Cabana the boys fence with bread before Panchito gets a flash as Sheldgoose puts the first amulet into..some kind of melting pool... and the girls confirm what happened seconds later. Feldrake has the amulets, which were used to seal him last time as revealed in last episode, and is melting them into his own power. The final battle is nigh! So Xandra goes to fetch Donald.. and comes back as she CAN’T. Donald and Daisy signed a contract and they can’t leave till ALL their problems are solved. And given Donald is carried off after his anger issues not only are evident when, given a pillow representing his frustratoins he destroys it, but he DENIES having anger issues, he’s dragged off to some extreme thereapy.. i.e. a Self Reflecting reflecting pool that manifests his anger as a giant, sausgey, pissed off version of himself and he reacts as you’d expect and gets flattned.  Back at the Cabana, Xandra breaks the bad news.. and whie Jose TRIES to reassure them, his amulet is next to go so he gets a flash of it being destroyed and our heroes now have to scramble to take on Sheldgoose.. WITHOUT Donald.  Back at donald’s inner hulk.. man I love this fucking job, Donald is pounding away until his own flash breaks things for a moment.. and sends him into his own head. We’re then treated to an acid sequece, an homage to Donald’s surreal reverire from the original movie that while not as wild, is still gloriously bizzare. Donald rencounters the teapot ghost thing that’s apparently part of his psyche from the first episode that gets him to consider why his life is like this and he goes through a lot of moments of the first episodes.. conviently eddting out daisy’s questionable behavior and the fact some things had actual catalysits.  See the idea of Donald FACING his anger issues and growing from them is fine. But this has two faults. One, it assuems you can just.. cure anger issues. You can’t. Anger is a normal emotion and as someone with them I hope to generally work thorugh mine with a therapist.. but I know they just don’t magically go away and therapy is a process and your mental issues are lifelong things you have to grapple away. It’s not the MOST insulting treatment of emtoinal issues i’ve seen, as Total Drama you know had someone with MPD cured with a fucking button press, but it’s not great.  And the second is this was poorly set up. Donald was an angry asshole all series yes and it was an issue.. but it wasn’t really FRAMED as a character arc. Just Donald being donald. So while having that be the source of his issues is a good idea for a character arc for im it comes off sloppy and forced because it’s been treated more like a joke or a character trait and less like a SERIOUS issue or the problem with him and Daisy. Hell they put the whole Dapper duck thing in there when he was fine that episode and is rightfully angry about that if at the wrong person. This whole thing just feels rushed, forced and unsatsifying and is a hsame for such a good idea

The payoff is good though, as when Donald awakens and let’s his anger wash away.. he just stands as the anger donald tries to beat the crap out of him.. but can’t do anything to him since he’s calm. He’s fine, and he’s released.. and his shock collar is disabled. Good quick gag.  Meanwhile our heroes aren’t sure what to do despite having tons of magical items.. until they think what would donald do.. and he’d just at least try and thus corm a GIANT FUCKING MAGIC CANON OUT OF THEM. Very nice. They blow the doors off.. and through the back.. and into the money bin where we get a scrooge cameo. 

And he’s voiced by Eric Bauza.. which is sadly not great because it’s far from his best work and dosen’t even really attempt a scottish accent. 

But our heroes storm the gate.. after Xandra easily disposes of the dog guards.. who Sheldgosoe apparently raised to do this... still not entirely over that. They find the staircase and the triplets op to go back while the rest charge in and prepare to fight leopold. 

Back at the Cabana, Donald and Daisy return via tub and Donald, seeing the swirling vortex of darkness outside sheldgoose manor, tells daisy he has to go his friends need him it’s his destiny, gives her one hell of a kiss she dosen’t deserve.. oh and earlier he told her “Thanks for being patient with me” and she tells him it was worth the wait. Ha ha... I hope you get hit by a rusty tractor you unfathomable blight on duck kind. 

So part one ends with Donald heading for the treasure chamber to armor up. 

Sheldgoose Square Dance:  Part two begins with Sheldgoose putting the staff in place, and an egg emerging. Weird.. and as a result of that Leopold sense his ‘Daddy’ and leaves, and before the cabs can charge in donald shows up, now confident, at full strength and after tripping as you’d epxct, with the other cabs armor and in his. The guys suit up, and we get to see both jose’s.. amazing.. toned.. stomach. 

And Panchito’s big belly.. which I have one of those so we’re twinsies. And Xandra of course watches Jose change slyly. Eh i’ts a bit creepy but I can’t blame her for sneaking a peak as long as she didn’t linger. 

So our heroes are suited up, look awesome and have their trademark weapons Let’s fucking go!

Back at the ranch, the Nieces talk to daisy and having grabbed a weird document last time, are trying to piece it together. Daisy.. is suddenly really good with puzzles and helps them with it. They reform it and.. don’t really do much until after the danger has passed and I avoid another cornary yelling innterally at this unpleasant pile of hippo excrement. 

So while the Cabs dash to stop feldrake feldrake awakens.. as a demon baby. And Sheldgoose has about a minute of mockery before feldrake smacks him around with telekensis and agrees while his mind’s affected by his current state, he’s still fully aware and can talk and seeing the cabs are coming gives him a bit of power, i’d say about as much or a little more than what feldrake had as a staff, and sends him after the cabs. 

So we get one of the most awesome moments if not THE most awesome moment in the entire series as something from EVERY episode makes a come back as shelgoose, after trying some zaps, back in full robe and cloak, MAKES HIS OWN ZOOM POINT. Thus it becomes an utterly awesome back and forth as sheldgoose summons one thing from the past and xandra summons another to counter. And it avoids reptititon as the sheer sight of characters from each episode battling it out, and never knowing which ones next, keeps it intresting. 

In order: Sheldgoose summons the moon bots, Xandra summons the roman gods to hack them to pieces, after the boys get some shots in too. Sheldgoose blocks the way with lava lizards, the cabs respond with a goblin army who block the lava river and use a cat launcher against them, courtsey of king vomit. Sheldgosoe unleashes the tengu, the cabs unleash king arthur.. and we get the immortal line from donald “Thanks king arthur!”. Sheldgoose summons his ancestors, the cabs summon the ghost presidents! And in a call back that had me clapping Sheld summons the termintes.. and xandra summons THE MINOTAUR! And Sheldgoose thirsts over him. .huh.. so shledgosoe is bi good for him. And for a final distraction sheldgoose summons.. the dragon.. that was from the adventure they just had he had no way of knowing about. 

So with that out fo the way our heroes and villians both reach feldrake.. whose awakened and is.. this

Really.. weird , if still threanting, deisgn aside, Feldrake now at full power turns new quackmore into the psycadelic starry battlefield we saw in the intro to the series and thus the final battle begins. We see the fight from the start.. but it’s now even MORE beautiful and glorious with context. Before we saw three strangers, if ones we knew from other works fighting some evil we never met. Now we’ve seen our heroes grow, both as people, and as heroes, learning from every encounter, getting stronger with every fight and slowly getting noticably more compitent: going from falling all over themselves just to work a ship, to defeating dragons, tengu, and other horrors as a team. And we’ve seen jus thow petty and cruel feldrake is.. and how serious the stakes are and what our heroes tand to loose should they fail. It’s not perfect.. we could stand to loose daisy and new quackmore dosen’t mean much, though Sheldgoose gets to zap regina into a worm, but it’s still AWESOME and feels like a tremendous payoff and Donald’s predator bro fist thing with Panchito has more weight. Our heroes have risen to their peak and now they face one last obstacle to becoming legends.  The fight is fluid, awesome and gorgeously animated and utterly epic in every sense of the word and we catch up to their seeming defeat.. only for something we DIDN’T know about last time to help.. Xandra who gets htem out of the way. It’s a long and fantastic fight, with our heroes eventaully getting knocked over to a pool while Xandra tries her best to hold feldrake off, but is clearly wearing down despite doing her best. 

Yeah while itw as established Feldrake was melting down the amulets and we saw a pool of resdiual magic, so teh magical pool of stuff the cabs find them at WAS set up.. but what happens next remotely wasn’t. The cabs fall in and commuincate with blazebeak the creator of the amulets who embues them with their power. Where he came from, why he’s just showing up n ow.. I dunno, it comes off as a really badly setup deus ex machina.. but it still dosen’t hurt the finale that bad. A little yes, as everything else is so well paced and feels like so much payoff.. but the awesomeness of our heroes glowing with their signture colors, rushing in to save xandra and then ari, who swiped the rest of the magic goop, giving it to xandra to reivvie her.. overrides it. Sometiems somethings too stupid to be awesome.. and sometimes it’s so awesome it overides common sense. So yeah poorly set up yes.. still fucking awesome also yes. 

Our heroes tear feldrake apart and realize once they see the now empty staff floating in the void they can simply reseal him. Sheldgoose interupts it.. but the nieces arrive riding on humphrey and knock him inot a golden toilet... again I fucking love this job. Our heroes then try ghost bustering him back into the staff and SHeldgoose tries saving him by breaking it.  And it seemingly fails.. new quackmore is restored, Sheldrake’s gone and the town remembered EVERYTHING, cheering at their new heroes and saviors. Sheldgoose finds the staff gone and bemoans his lost master.. and soon looses his presidency as regina strips him of it. With his own powers gone Sheldgoose flees on Leopold, and while Regina tries to take the presdiency for herself.. the girls reveal the document explains if a sheldgoose is absent.. a coot takes his place. And since Donald is the only remaning coot apart from Della and she’s busy actually raising her kids in this continuity apparently, Donald is the new president. While Regina vows to beat him in an election.. our heroes are now happy, with the lawyer from the first episode backing Donald’s claim up. So Donald now has a new job, a new purpose in life, his girlfriend back, which is negiably a good thing, and a new family he dearly loves and tells them as much. Awww. Also he gets the mansion, which our heroes promptly plan to move into. Donald and Daisy fight, of fucking course, our heroes claim roms and Xandra and Jose share a moment. The series gets a truly satsifyign and happy ending.. and a sequel hook as it turns out feldrake is now in sheldgooses body and the tow are going ot have to share it as Sheldgoose has leopold take them to a house with legs.. so the baba yaga then. Sadly we’ll probably never see with this leads.. and this is the end. 

Final Thoughts on the finale two parter: While the first half is a bit weak in the yeti stuff, the rest of it is incredibly strong and Sheldgoose Square Danc,e while having the worst name of the series.. is easily it’s best episode, tying everythign together greatly and being one, tense and epic finale the whole way through. A true masterpiece and a clear sign the series would be even BETTER going forward had it actually been allowed to live and a true shame.. but even with the sequel hooks aside.. it’s still an utterly sastifying, joyous note to go out on and i’m GLAD I saved this one for last, as it provided a great capper for both the series and this retrospective. 

Final thoughts on Legend of the Three Cablleros:

This series.. was excellent. While at first I wasn’t sure it’s rep was warranted, as the first three episodes were good but had flaws and four and five were not great.. everything after that is sublime. The series has it’s flaws, the character devlopment is uneven, the characters can be made into caractures of themselves once in a while and the writing on Daisy is horrid and i’ve said enough on that to last me a lifetime and is easily the worst part of an otherwise fantastic show. But yeah.. as I said OTHERWISE fantastic, as while the daisy stuff is very bad, it’s for the most part in the background of a VERY good show with great voice acting, fun pacing, and beautiful animation.  It’s a loveletter to clasic disney animation, holding tons of mythology gags and refrences and having humphrey as a main character, but with unquie touches like letting the nieces have a starring roll and everything about xandra and sheldgoose. It’s a unique, wonderful and awesome addition to the disney animated canon and deserves a second season or some other sort of revivial. This was a wonderful note to go out on and I’m throughly glad I finally watched it.  So with this the Ride of the Three Cablleros is almost over.. but come back, let’s say next week, for one last party as we count down the top 12 cabs moments and celebrate these happy chappies in matching serapes one last time. Until then.. it’s been a pleasure.. and Kevin.. thank you. 

#the legend of the three caballeros #the three caballeros #donald duck #panchito romero miguel junipero francisco quintero gonzalez #panchito pistoles #jose carioca #daisy duck #april duck #may duck #june duck #xandra the goddes of adventure #baron von sheldgoose #lord feldrake #leopold #regina #ari #the arcuan bird #humphrey the bear #new uackmore #ride of the three cablleros #comissions #reviews #disney plus

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“Go. Just take him.” The cycle of Revenge in The Last of Us Part II

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US PART 2

Spoilers + screenshots under the readmore!

Some thoughts on The Last of Us Part II

The Last of Us Part II threw me for a loop in subtle, nuanced, deep, and impactful ways. It was a story of loss and hate, resentment and grief, and the major theme: The Cycle of Revenge.

These themes all come together in the last fight between Abby and Ellie– which, before I delve into some kind of analysis, made me cry. It was honest in its delivery, resonant in its pain. It seemed Ellie wasn’t just fighting Abby, but herself in a sense. And because we had played a big part of the game as Abby, I felt a hesitance to fight Abby to the death. It doesn’t feel victorious-- plainly put, it felt “bad” to fight Abby, and in another sense, it felt futile. 

I have a soft spot for storytelling, and there’s always been something about The Last of Us which touched me, probably because it focuses on the complicated nature of what’s morally right or wrong. At the game’s beginning, I wasn’t completely sold on Abby’s storyline. I could tell that Naughty Dog was trying to show a neutral grey area, that there’s no black and white, no true heroes and villains. I think alot of stories are going with this direction now, some poorly (i.e. a villain gets an underserved or forced redemption arc), but The Last of Us Part II treated its characters less like heroes and villains and more like human beings who are capable of good and evil, capable of bravery, selflessness, indoctrination, and antagonism.

The list could go on. The world of The Last of Us strives to mirror our own world to the best of its ability. It asks “what could go wrong in a post-apocalyptic world”, then in the same breath, “but what is beautiful and meaningful in such a world too?”

As the story progressed, I saw parallels between Ellie, Abby, and Joel. I saw the message as ‘destruction in revenge’; but also, by having two protagonists, one of which I should have been led to despise, I came to see each person as a “main character” of their own story, as we are main characters of our own lives, or stories, due to the limits of our perception. Abby’s world is different from Ellie’s, but there’s overlap, enough to see them as a reflection of each other. And as I’ll delve into, their story arcs follow similar paths, as they’ve both experienced loss which left them incapacitated, except... Abby’s story is about redemption, while Ellie’s is about hate and revenge.

This final fight, the scene near the end of the game, struck me for a number of reasons.

The location of the fight has significance, as the ocean represents our subconscious, and the fog represents disillusionment and confusion. Ellie had buried memories of Joel, both good and bad, into her subconscious. That was her way of dealing with the pain. She buried the pain “underwater” so to speak, into an underwater oceanic subconscious.

In that scene, she is surrounded by an “ocean of grief.”

It resurfaces to Ellie in dreams throughout the game. PTSD flashes of memory too. 

Ellie went after Abby a second time, and engaged in a fight with her. Abby, starving and weak, could hardly fight back. At the last moment with Abby’s head underwater, as she was drowning, Ellie sees an image of Joel– happy, safe, alive. 

And she falters, she releases Abby.

Ellie continued to seek vengeance, an outward action, rather than experience grief, which is an inward action. Revenge as the distraction. Grief as the unbelievably long, lonely process. Revenge may have been satisfying, but if Abby had been killed, what would happen next? Ellie would be sitting in the ocean, still wrought with grief, still unable to essentially face Joel’s memory (whether it’s the terrible memory of his death, or the good memories, or the memories where she pushed him away because of resentment).

When Ellie says to Abby, “Go. Just take him,” she’s talking about Abby taking Lev and making their getaway, but to me… it was the overarching summation, the metaphorical line that delved into the point of the entire story.

When Ellie says, “Go. Just take him”, she’s also talking about Joel.

The vast ocean in front of her represents the subconscious, the unknown, and death. Ellie is sitting in the water, facing the unknown, and inwardly, the grief she feels over losing Joel. When she releases Abby, she is releasing her desire for vengeance. It is a singular point in the story. Revenge is a goal, a mission– it’s what drove the story, especially from Ellie’s point of view. But… revenge is not really a process, it’s a cycle. Because as the story showed, one act of vengeance turns into another act, and then another. It is the serpent biting its own tail.

Abby’s cycle of revenge halted because of Lev.

Abby’s responsibility was altered by the presence of Lev. Lev tells Abby to stop just before Abby is about to kill Dina. 

The music at this part slows from an adrenaline-fueled heartbeat. The hate and the rage lessen. Quiet takes over. The presence of Lev is what stopped her. This new-found purpose halts the cycle of revenge on Abby’s part. She is done.

Abby found new purpose and direction in her life because of Lev. Abby’s relationship with Lev is very similar to Joel’s relationship with Ellie in the first game. Joel found new purpose and meaning in his life with the arrival of Ellie. They even look similar to Joel and Ellie, I believe, in how Abby is clearly Lev’s protector, as Joel was Ellie’s protector in the first game:

(Even the colors of their clothes resemble Ellie and Joel in the first game).

By the game’s end, Abby has found new purpose in her life just as Joel found new purpose in his through Ellie. As Joel said in the first game,

“I struggled for a long time with surviving. And you– No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.”

Earlier, Abby and Owen are speaking outside the surgery room. Abby says that Yara and Lev are just kids, then she asks:

Abby found the light in Lev, a Seraphite, or “Scar”– she found the light in someone who would otherwise be her enemy.

Abby has a recurring dream, in which she’s walking down the hospital corridor towards the surgery room where her father was killed. It is her place of fear, her nightmare, and over and over it haunts her, replaying her pain and trauma.

After saving Yara and Lev, the dream changes. Her father is alive and smiling, almost as if this is his way of saying goodbye to her.

That is what’s crucial here– After Abby kills Joel and satiates her need for revenge, she still has the nightmare of her father’s death. Revenge did not reconcile her pain, it did not stop the nightmare– in fact, it only created guilt.

In the boat scene, Owen explains why he killed Danny. He describes how there was a Scar at a camp, and he was going to kill him. He describes how he hit the man on the head, hard, but he just laid there. He didn’t go for his weapon. He was an old man who was tired and ready.

And something about that weakness, that human vulnerability, breaks Owen, and he can’t kill this old man. The cycle of revenge exhausts itself.

This story directly parallels Joel’s– he was an old man who was tired and ready.

In this same scene, Owen shames Abby for going after Joel. Mel does the same in a later scene, telling Abby that she’s a bad person. Abby’s group struggled with the action they took on Joel. Abby does too. Her reaction to Owen and Mel shaming her shows she feels guilt over what she did.

That guilt is reconciled with the arrival of Yara and Lev; particularly Lev, who becomes Abby’s responsibility later in the story.

By the same token, Ellie had that option with Dina and the baby. She could have shifted her direction in life towards her new family, but she chose not to– instead, she went after Abby a second time. It could be because she was overwhelmed by grief, or because her trauma felt unbearable. Maybe she was obsessed with the idea that revenge would alleviate the pain. Or maybe, she felt responsible for Joel’s death.

Ellie continued to move her life in the direction of vengeance, when really she needed to confront her own grief of losing him. And that takes time. That takes confrontation. The stagnation of “doing nothing” is not in Ellie’s character (for instance, Dina loses Jesse because Abby killed Jesse, but she does not seek revenge. She refocuses her life on her baby). 

To contrast, Dina’s responsibility in life is to her child; Ellie’s responsibility in life is not necessarily to get revenge but to atone for her resentment towards Joel.

Ellie attempts to drown Abby as though it will bury the memories of Joel even more, but they surface regardless, one small droplet memory of Joel sitting on the porch with a guitar, and she can’t do it. She can’t continue the cycle of revenge.

After the final fight, Ellie looks out into the ocean, but there is no horizon. The fog covers it. There is no point, no “point on the horizon.” There is no point in continuing the cycle of revenge. As the poet John Ford wrote, “Revenge proves its own executioner.” Ellie was destroying herself as much as she was destroying her enemies.

I think... the reason Ellie had such difficulties dealing with her grief was because she felt responsible for Joel’s death in a roundabout way-- if she had died on the operating table, Joel would have never been a target, if she had never been immune, she would have turned when she was bitten-- and because she felt guilt, because she couldn’t accept their last conversation.

Which was so beautiful in its simplicity. Neither Ellie or Joel knew this would be their last conversation, and so there’s a sense of mundanity about it. It’s crucial but at the same time, not (because we as the players know this is their last conversation). 

Ellie says she will consider forgiving him. The animosity Ellie felt towards Joel was not entirely resolved. And besides that, she had been giving him the silent treatment for over a year before that. She lost time with him because she held a grudge; the grudge is another reason she feels guilty. (Not saying Ellie’s grudge isn’t warranted. That’s what makes the situation so complicated and nuanced. She had a right to be mad because she wanted the vaccine, she was willing to sacrifice her life for it. So we see the difficulty she has in accepting Joel’s decision). Which spurred her on in her quest for revenge, while pushing aside the grief she felt.

There is not point in continuing the cycle of revenge. Grief… it doesn’t necessarily have a “point” either, I don’t think. Like the ocean, it comes in waves. It soaks the body. It ebbs and flows, but it will lessen with time. As with Abby, who found a purpose in life by protecting Lev, Ellie has the option of finding a purpose in her life too– not the one she initially wanted, in which she sacrificed herself for a cure, but maybe one built with the same kind of love Joel felt for her.

But the process of grief means Ellie has to essentially, at one point, say to Death or the Unknown, Okay. You can take him. When she releases Joel, she is releasing so, so much more than what she would have gained from killing Abby.

At the game’s beginning, when Joel was dying, he looked at Ellie, and he smiled. There was something in his eyes that said he was glad, for everything, the pain, the struggle, the heartbreak, because in the end he’s looking at Ellie, and in the last crucial moment it’s as if he thinks, ‘It was worth it, for you’. 

He knew the consequences of his actions when he stopped the Fireflies, when he stopped the cure from ever being made, and when he took Ellie from that hospital. He knew there was a risk involved, but at the game’s ending, during the flashback scene, he says, “If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment… I would do it all over again.”

(*Brief note: Interestingly enough, Abby is not explicitly seeking revenge on Joel because he prevented the cure from being made... she’s seeking revenge because he killed her father. It shows that in the grand scheme of things, what matters is the close relationships we form with others... that if Ellie had been the cure she would have been remembered as an almost “deified” concept, but Joel would have returned to the hopelessness of his own life.  Abby didn’t enact revenge for humanity’s sake, she did it for her father. This ties in nicely with the ongoing war between the WLF and the Seraphites, and how each faction is a faceless mob until individuals like Yara and Lev meet Abby, or Owen has his emotional experience with the old man who was too tired to fight. Owen says he’s tired of fighting for land he doesn’t give a fuck about. It begs the question of what’s important in life... like the memories of Joel and Ellie exploring museums or Tommy and Ellie sharpshooting. It was the small, seemingly insignificant moments which mattered most, the moments Ellie remembered).

Joel died without regret. He died knowing that Ellie would be willing to forgive him. And even though their time of peace was brief, he died happy for the small moments they got to spend together, that for all the pain and suffering, in the end, it was worth it.

Ellie is angry at him because she believes her life would have mattered if she sacrificed herself for a vaccine. That there was a point to all the loss, for her best friend Riley’s death, for the numerous other deaths she witnessed in The Last of Us. When Joel took her from the hospital, it was selfish, but that’s because her life does matter, to him. Beyond being a cure, beyond being a martyr, Ellie as a human being matters to him. Yes, she would have been remembered as “the cure”, but only Joel would have remembered her as an actual human being: a person with habits, quirks, unique traits, vices and virtues.

He would do it again knowing how much she would resent him for it. I don’t know how else to describe that. I think it goes along the notion that, you don’t truly understand what it means to love someone more than anything, more than yourself, until you’ve had a child. With loss comes grief, then hope. Joel lost his daughter Sarah and suffered for years, but Ellie gave him hope. Abby lost her father, but found hope in Lev.

Ellie lost Joel, but what kind of hope returned to her at the story’s end?

When she returns to her home, Dina and the baby are gone. The house is empty, and all of Ellie’s belongings have been put into a single room. She goes there, and picks up the guitar Joel gave her.

Ellie lost two of her fingers, and now she’s unable to throughly play the guitar. The notes are disjointed, the melody is cracked. That is how Ellie is now. I’m not saying she’s a miserable broken wreck now– I’m saying she’s rough around the edges, she has a noticeable aura of fragmentation about her. Even if the grief lessens with time, she will be hardened by this pain. What she’s experienced has changed her and it’s a weight she’ll have to carry for the rest of her life. As the title suggest, she is the “last of us” regarding our journey throughout the game-- every emotion, every violent action, every loss and heartache-- Ellie is the bearer of it.

She places the guitar against the windowsill and leaves.

And you see that shot through the open window, Ellie leaving the house in the background, the guitar leaning against the windowsill in the foreground. I see that and I know, in one year the vines and weeds will start to take over the house like they do in all the abandoned houses. In two years the strings will rust and snap. In ten the guitar will become part of nature. Nature will come in through the window, and it will wrap itself around the guitar. The wood will crack and eventually it will disintegrate from the rain and wind.

The reason I think there’s an emblem of a moth on the guitar is because moths have very short lifespans (in their adult stage, they typically only live about one week). Because of the brevity of their life, and because they are night creatures, they are considered messengers of the unknown, or the “beyond.” Something not quite of this world, symbols of magic. But I think the more important part of the moth on the guitar is to show how brief Joel and Ellie’s time together was; how the lives of the characters in The Last of Us are often cut short, often without warning. In an even broader sense, life is brief, and time’s a thief, as the saying goes. The guitar in the last frame of the story was played for only a few years, and then, it has been left to the hands of time.

It’s here that we don’t really know what happens to Ellie: does she go in search of Dina? Does she go back to Jackson? Does she begin somewhere else, or will she live on her own for the rest of her days?

The uncertainty of her life from this point on leaves a bittersweet touch to the story. People move on, people leave. What is an old guitar weathered by the seasons, lost to time, was once a beautiful song shared between two people.

Joel, in saving her life, essentially gave her a chance at life. The rest is up to her.

#the last of us #the last of us part 2 #the last of us part II #the last of us 2 #tlou 2 #joel miller #ellie williams #my posts

[vgckwb]

ML: Isolation Chapter 14: Closing the Distance

The next day, Adrien checked Noir Notes. Sure enough, his exploits at the after school care building have been chronicled. “Boy, Alya is really dedicated.” He looked it over to see if there was anything from after he left. “From the looks of things, they seemed to have at least settled down. I think I should talk to Nino about this though.”

At school, Adrien entered the classroom and  saw Nino sitting down with his head in his hands. “Hey Nino” Adrien said.

Nino looked up. “Oh. Hey dude” he said less than enthusiastically.

Adrien was sure Nino was like this because of what happened. He had to be careful, but he needed to be direct. “So, I saw what happened.” Nino juttered. “Listen, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Nino said. “You have nothing to apologize for.” He sighed.

Adrien sheepishly grinned. He sat down. “Listen, I know that this can’t be easy, but if you need to talk about it, I’m here.”

Nino smiled. He looked down. “It’s just… Chris has never been easy to deal with. I’m afraid that with all of this, he’ll have even more trouble making friends. And,” he sighed, “I know this is going to sound selfish, but I’m also afraid that this is going to reflect poorly on me and my mom. Like we did a bad job.” He sighed. “I wonder if he’d be better off with some other family after all.”

Adrien was concerned for his friend, as well as his little brother. Still, there wasn’t a lot he could pull from, having just broken free into the outside world. However, there was something that Adrien could relate with. “Well, try imagining how Chris feels.”

Nino seemed confused. “How he feels?”

“Yeah,” Adrien said. “I can’t speak for having a brother, but I know a thing or two about representing a name. I am the face of my father’s fashion company after all. My father always tells me to be careful, and what to do and not to do.”

“That sounds kind of lame” Nino said.

Adrien giggled. “It kind of is,” he said. “But I do it because I don’t want people thinking he’s bad because I acted out.”

Nino had a look of realization on his face. “Huh. I hadn’t thought about that before.” He got lost in thought. “I guess none of this has been easy on him either.”

“Well, according to Alya’s post, he did say he wanted to be a hero.” Adrien said.

“That’s true,” Nino replied. “Ugh!”

“What’s wrong?” Adrien asked.

Nino sighed. “We kind of got into last night. While this has been helpful, I doubt he’d be willing to listen to me right now.” His face landed on his desk. “I don’t know what to do.”

Adrien looked at his friend. “Well, maybe there’s something you can do to entice him. You know, butter him up beforehand.”

Nino looked up. “Yeah, but what could I d-” He then had a flash of inspiration. He then got out his phone and started feverishly typing away.

Adrien was curious. “Uh, what are you doing?”

“Well, I know this is a longshot,” Nino said, “but maybe if I can get Cat Noir to talk to him with me, he might open up more.”

Adrien was shocked. “Uh, what makes you say that?”

Nino got embarrassed. “Well...uh...when we got into our screaming match last night...he kind of wished Cat Noir was his brother instead of me.”

“Oh” Adrien said. “It sounds like things got heated.”

Nino chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it.” He sent the request on Noir Notes. “And done!”

Adrien said “I’d come up with a plan B just in case.”

Nino smiled. “I already thought that out. I think it'll be alright either way.”

“Well, here’s hoping,” Adrien said. I should check out the post as soon as I can.

As people came into class, Nino received a lot of looks. Not bad looks, per say, just concerned. Nino just had to sit there and endure it. Then Lila came in. She looked hesitantly at Nino and then approached him. “Hey Nino. I’m sorry about what happened” she said.

Nino sighed. “Don’t worry. It’s not your fault.”

“But I still feel bad,” she replied. “Chris just came to me for advice, and I just spoke from the heart. I didn’t mean for it to go like this.”

Adrien turned his head. He couldn’t hide the utter disgust he had for Lila during all of this.  He knew Lila wasn’t as nice as she seemed, but this was a low even he couldn’t comprehend. In his turn he saw Chloe pretending to gag as she looked at Lila’s “apology.” Adrien shifted his eyes up to Lila. She was finishing up with Nino and then she glanced at Chloe, who quickly pretended she wasn’t gagging and instead reading.

Lila smirked. She turned her attention back to Nino. “Well, I hope things go well with you and Chris.”

Nino smiled. “Thanks Lila.” Lila waved and took her seat. Adrien noticed that for a split second, Lila’s face was filled with utter contempt. Soon after, class began.

During lunch, Chloe got up from her seat with Sabrina. As she was about to leave, Adrien appeared in front of her. “Hey Chloe.”

“Adrien?! What are you doing here?”

“I was kind of hoping we could talk for a minute,” he said. “You know, as friends.”

Chloe was shocked. She seemed like she didn’t know what to do. Sabrina just smiled and said “It’s OK Chloe. I’ll just go sit with Lila today.” She walked off.

Chloe was completely aghast. “Um, are you alright Chloe?” Adrien asked.

“Huh? Uh yeah. I'm fine” she said, non-convincingly. “An-anyway, what did you want to talk about? Ugh. Whatever it is, can you make it quick?”

Adrien looked around. “Not here. Follow me.” Adrien walked off. Chloe seemed confused. She rushed to meet him.

“Where are we going?” she asked. Adrien remained cautious.“Why is this taking so long? What do you need to talk about?”

Once Adrien found a secluded enough place he stopped. “OK. We’re good.”

“Good for what?” Chloe asked. “Honestly Adrien, what’s this all abou-”

“Chloe. Do you not like Lila?” Adrien asked. Chloe froze. She began sputtering random nonsense and fidgeting with her hair. “Chloe. We’re friends. We should be able to trust each other with anything.”

“Well, um…” Chloe said. “E-easy for you to say! You’re Mr. Perfect. I know all of your secrets, and none of them would ruin you completely.”

Adrien grinned. “You don’t know all of my secrets.”

Chloe was taken aback. “What?!”

“It’s true,” Adrien said. “I have a new secret.”

“TELL ME!” Chloe demanded.

“I will,” Adrien said. “Once you tell me how you feel about Lila.” Chloe pouted. “Isn’t that how we’ve always done things?”

Chloe glared at him. “Well, if we want to do this how we’ve ALWAYS done it, we need to go to one of our places.”

“Ah yes, the secrets exchange,” Adrien said. “Well, I think I’ll have time after fencing tomorrow if you want to come over.”

Chloe was curious. “OK then Agreste!” She reached her hand out. Adrien shook it. “You’re on!” Chloe left.

Adrien just smiled and laughed. “It’s amusing in the ways she doesn’t change.” He took out his phone. “Now let’s see what Nino has to say.”

Adrien looked at the request. “Hey Cat Noir. I’m the brother of the kid you stopped recently. After that, things got intense. I want to make it up to him, but I feel like I need yourself with that. Meet in in the Place des Vosges sometime after school over the next three days.” Adrien smiled.

After school, Nino was sitting on a park bench, nervously wondering what was going to happen. “Hello” said a distorted voice.

Nino looked. “Cat Noir?”

“Hey” Adrien said.

Nino snickered. “What’s up with that voice?”

“Well, I’ve gotta make sure no one recognizes me” Adrien said. He casually sat down.

“Pfft. Like I’d know who you are” Nino said.

Well, it seems to be working. “So, you need help with your brother.”

NIno looked at the ground. “Yeah. And I feel like he’d be more willing to listen to you.”

“How come?” Adrien asked.

“Well, he listened to you before,” Nino said. “Beides, we kind of had a shouting match last night.” He sighed. “I want to make it up to him, but I don’t know how.”

Adrien was concerned. Even though Lila failed to punish Manon for believing in Marinette, she still succeeded in dividing Nino and his brother. He wasn’t even sure if that was a goal of hers. It was probably just some unintended aftermath that she didn’t care about as long as she got what she wanted. He put his hand on Nino’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll help.”

Nino looked up and smiled. “Thanks Cat Noir. Come on. We have to get one more thing.” Adrien nodded and the two walked off.

The door swung open to the Dupain-Cheng bakery. “Oh, hello,” Sabine said. She was shocked. “Nino?”

“Uh, hi” he said, nervously. He stepped further in, Adrien behind him.

“Cat Noir?” Sabine said. “What’s going on?”

“He’s, uh, kind of helping me,” Nino said.

Tom approached the duo. “What do you want?” he asked, intimidatingly.

“Well, um, well sir, uh” Nino muttered. Adrien put his hand on his shoulder. Nino looked at him and nodded. “Could...Could I please get a couple of scones.” The couple looked confused. “See, um I kind of got into a fight with my brother yesterday, and his scones-your scones have always been his favorite.” The owners continued to look at the nervous Nino. “I’d, uh, I’d understand if you didn’t want to take business from me, but I, uh”

Sabine smiled. “Of course son.” Nino was confused.

“We’ll gladly help you out,” Tom said. He went back and started to work on the scones.

Nino was further confused. “Um, I thought you guys didn’t like me. Because of, well, you know…”

Sabine looked concerned. “Well, it’s true that we don’t like what happened between you and Marinette. But right now you’re looking to patch things up with your brother. And that tells me you have a good heart. So of course we’ll help out.”

“Huh...thanks,” said Nino.

“Besides, you brought our favorite customer with you,” Tom said. “We can’t say no to the person that saved our store..

“Heh heh, yeah” Nino said. He looked at Adrien. “Make it three scones.” Sabine nodded.

Soon, the scones were finished. “Here you go,” Sabine said.

Nino paid them. “Thank you” he said, grabbing the bag and tipping his hat. The boys walked out of the bakery. “Alright, let’s go!”

The two continued to Nino’s place. They walked in. Chris was there playing with some toys. “Ahem,” Nino said. Chris looked up to see his brother with some scones. Christ turned his back.

“Chris,” Adrien said.

Chris turned around. “Cat Noir? What are you doing here?”

“Well, your brother reached out to me because he needed help,” Adrien said. “He wants to make things up with you.”

Chris huffed. “Well, tell him I don’t want to!”

“Chris…” Nino said. He took out a scone and approached his brother “I got you your favorite.”

Chris looked curiously. “Wait… That IS my favorite” he said. “But I thought we weren’t supposed to go there anymore.”

Nino blushed. “Well, I mean, Cat Noir goes there,” he said. “I figured if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for us.”

Chris grabbed the scone and bit into it. “MMMMMMMMM. It’s better than I remembered.”

Nino chuckled. He sighed. “Listen Chris. I’m sorry about last night.” Chris looked up. “I should have been more considerate of how you were feeling. I know you were concerned about Lila and Manon supporting Marinette, but I was so focused on my own stuff that I didn’t hear you out. To be honest, I’m a little more mad at myself.”

Chris was confused. Nino continued. “I was called into work early after promising to spend time with you. I can’t count the number of times something like that has happened. I’m just afraid of being a bad big brother. I worry that I’m not there for you enough.” He began crying. “When you said that Cat Noir would make a better big brother, I was worried that you were right.”

Chris looked concerned at his crying brother. “Um, I’m sorry too,” he said. Nino looked up. “I...I’m always scared that I’m dragging everyone down. You only have that job because of me. Same with mom working all the time. I figured if I did something I could be useful, you know. That way I’m not just a burden.”

Nino was shocked. He hugged Chris. “You’re not a burden,” he said. “You are, and will always be my little bro.”

Chris began crying. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK,” Nino replied. “It’ll always be OK.”

Adien saw this moment of brotherly affection and decided that it was time for him to leave. He walked out of the building and started making his way home. “CAT NOIR!” NIno called out. Adrien turned around. Nino ran up to him, with Chris not too far behind. “You forgot your scone.”

Adrien was surprised, but took his scone. “Thank you.”

“You can come and join us, you know” Chris said.

Adrien smiled. “Thanks, but I’d rather leave you two be. It seems like you need some time to yourselves.”

They smiled. “Thanks Cat Noir.” Adrien smiled and walked off, eating his scone.

After his Chinese lesson later that day, he logged on to see a message from Marinette. “So, I heard you stopped at the bakery today.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Nino and Chris got into a fight. Nino asked me to help patch things up, and Nino stopped by to pick up some scones.”

“He he. Those were always his favorite. How did things go?”

“They went well. Of course, most of it was Nino and Chris themselves, but I happily helped start the conversation.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Listen, I’m going to tell Chloe and possibly Kagami tomorrow at my place. Would you be interested in speaking with them as well?”

“Hmmm. I’ll think about it.”

“Great. Talk to you later.”

“Later.”

Adrien got up and went to bed. Before he fell asleep, he thought about Nino and Chris. Despite everything that happened, I’m glad everything turned out alright. It’s a good thing those two are so close. I kind of wish I had something like that. Well, I guess I do talk with Marinette every day. But that seems different. I’m not sure how though. Oh well. He drifted off to sleep.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fanfic #adrien #nino #lila #Chloé #sabrina #chris #sabine #Tom #Marinette #no kwami #NICE GABRIEL

[esthete-god]

Alain Delon's farewell letter to Romy Schneider

Farewell My Puppelé  

“I watch you sleep. I’m with you, by your bedside. You’re wearing a long black tunic and red embroidery on the bodice. These are flowers, I think, but I do not look at them. I will say goodbye, the longest farewell, my Puppelé. That’s how I called you. It meant “little doll” in German. I do not watch the flowers, but your face and I think you’re beautiful, and never, perhaps you have been so beautiful. I also think this is the first time in my life – and yours – I see you calm and soothed. You’re so quiet, you are so fine , how beautiful you are. Looks like a hand, gently wiped your face all the tensions, all anxieties of misfortune. 

I watch you sleep. They tell me that you’re dead. I think of you, of me, of us. What am I guilty of? We ask ourselves this question before a being that is loved and still love that one. This feeling fills you, and then flows back and then we say that one is not guilty, no, but responsible … I am. Because of me, what is your heart in Paris the other night, stopped beating. Because of me because it was there twenty-five years and I had been chosen to be your partner in “Christine”. You came to Vienna and I waited, in Paris, with a bouquet of flowers in his arms I did not know how to hold. But the film’s producers told me: “When it come down from the bridge, you will advance to her and offer these flowers.” I waited with my flowers, like a fool, mixed with a horde of photographers. You’re down. I stepped forward. You said to your mother, “Who is this boy?”. She answered you: “It must be Alain Delon, your partner … “. And then nothing, no thunderbolt, no. And then I went to Vienna where we were shooting the film. And then I fell madly in love with you. And you fell in love with me. Often, we asked ourselves one to another issue of love, “Who fell in love the first, you or me?”. We counted ‘One, two, three! “And we answered:” Neither you nor I! Together “. My God, we were young, and as we were happy. At the end of the film, I said, “Come live with me in France” and already you told me: “I want to live near you, in France.” Do you remember when? Your family, your parents, furious. And throughout Austria, Germany, who all treated me … usurper, the kidnapper, who accused me of removing the “Empress”! Me, a French, who did not speak a word of German. And you, Puppelé, who did not speak a word of French. 

We loved without words, in the beginning. We looked and we had some laughs. Puppelé … And I was “Grandpa”. After a few months, I did not speak German yet but you spoke French so well and we played at the theater in France. Visconti was the staging. He told us that we resembled and we had, between the eyebrows, the same V that wrinkled, anger, fear of life and anxiety. He called it the “V of Rembrandt” because, he said, that this painter had “V” on his self portraits. I watch you sleep. “The V of Rembrandt” is deleted … You have no fear. You are no longer frightened. You’re more alert. You are no longer hunted. The hunt is over and you rest. 

I look at you again and again. I know you so well and so strong. I know who you are and why you died. Your character, as they say. I reply, ‘other’, the character of Romy was her character. That’s it. Leave me alone. You were violent because you were right. A child who soon became a star, too soon. So, on one side, whims, tantrums and moods of a child, always justified, of course, but with unpredictable reactions, on the other hand, the professional authority. Yes, but there are children who do not really know how it plays with. With that. And why. In this contradiction, through this breach, rush anxiety and unhappiness. When one is Romy Schneider, and we have the sensitivity and temperament in flower of life, on edge, which was yours. How to explain who you were and who we are, “actors”. How to tell them to keep playing, “Interpreter” to be what we are not really crazy and we become lost. To stand, roughly, how they say it is so difficult, that there should such a strong character, such a balance … But this balance, how to find it in this world of ours, our jugglers, clowns, trapeze artists of the circus whose projectors we bask in glory? You said: “I can not do anything in life, but all the movies …”. No, the “others” can not understand that. That the more we become a great actor and it is awkward to live. Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth … And you. And I cried, while you rest and I weep beside you, no, no, no, this business is not a terrible business woman. I know because the man I’m the one who is best known thee, who brought you the better understood. Because he is an actor, too. We were of the same race, my Puppelé, we spoke the same language. But I am a man. They can not understand us, “other”. The actors, yes. The “other” are not. It’s inexplicable. And when you’re a woman, like you, they may not realize that they can die of “it.” They say you were a myth. Of course … But yes … But the “myth”, he knows he is just that. A facade. A reflection. Appearance. he is king, prince, hero, Sissi, Mrs. Haneau, the seagull … But he goes home, the myth, at night. So it is that Romy, just a woman with a life misunderstood, poorly received, poorly written in newspapers, assailed and hunted. So he wears, the myth, in his solitude. This anxiety. And the more he understands, and he falls, to more or less repeated doses, in the beatitudes of alcohol and tranquilizers. It becomes habit, then sets, then necessity. Then it is irreplaceable and the heart, worn out, stops because he is too tired to fight. It was too battered and shaken, his heart was only that of a woman in the evening, sitting over a glass … 

They say that desperation that you caused the death of David you killed her. No, they are mistaken. Did he not kill her. There you have completed. True that you said to Lawrence, and your last wonderful companion: “I feel like I get to the end of the tunnel.” True that you wanted to live, you would have liked to live. Nevertheless true that you came out of the woods on Saturday at dawn. You were only to know when your heart is broken, that this was the true end of the tunnel. 

I write at random. Without notice. My Puppelé, if aggressive, if scratched. You never could accept and understand the game of women’s work that you had chosen public and you loved. You did not understand that you were a public figure and it was so important. You refused the game, any game that exposes profession. You felt attacked, breakthrough, broken into your privacy. You were always on your guard, like a hunted animal, “forced” as they say a deer. And you knew that fate, with one hand, t’ôtait what gave you the other. 

We lived more than five years, one near each other. You with me. Me with you. Together. Then life … Our life, which nobody’s business, has separated us. But we were called. Often. Yes, that’s exactly right: we embarked on “appeals”. Then, in 1968, it was “The Pool”. We found ourselves, to work. I went looking for you in Germany. I met David, your son. 

After our movie, you’re my sister, I am your brother. Everything is clean and clear of us. More passion. Better than that: our friendship blood, likeness and words. And then your life and your ways, unhappiness and anxiety, the anxiety … They will say, “other”, “What an actress! What actress! “. They do not know that you are the actress, cinema, because you are in your life that you and pays dearly. They do not understand the drama of your life reflect upon the screen later in your roles. They can not guess that you are “good” and “brilliant”, the movies, because you live the tragedy at hand, and you are upsetting because you light up the reflection of your personal dramas. And you do not radiated because they burn you. Oh! Puppelé this work my pain! Do I have lived with you or next to you? 

Until the death of David, yet there is “the trade” that you held your head above water. Then David left … And the business was no longer sufficient. So I was not surprised when I learned that you also worry was gone. What was I surprised? Your non-suicide. But your heart is cracked, no. I said: “That was the end of the tunnel.” 

I watch you sleep. Wolfie, your brother, and Lawrence enter the room. I speak with Wolfie. We remember this house I had in the countryside. Of Dobermans that made you so afraid. We remember again … That was twenty-five years ago, in Bavaria, in a small village. Wolfie was fourteen, my twenty-three and twenty thou. We laughed when we announced the visit of the President of Fan Club Romy Schneider in France. We have seen it happen a great girl, with glasses, shy, and named Bernadette. When we returned to Paris, we have called him. She became our secretary for six years. It is always mine, for twenty-two years now. I watch you sleep. Yesterday you were still alive. It was night. You said to Lawrence, as you return home: “Go to bed. I’ll join him earlier. I rest a bit with David, listening to music. ” You said that every night … You wanted to be alone with the memory of your dead child before bed. You sat. You took the paper and a pencil and you started to make drawings. For Sarah. You were drawing for your little girl, when your heart has hurt so much, suddenly … So beautiful. Beautiful, rich, famous, that you ought to be more? Peace, a little happiness. 

I watch you sleep. I’m alone again. I say you loved me. I loved you. I have made you a French, a French star. Of that, yes, I feel responsible. And this country that you loved, for my sake, became yours. France. So, Wolfie decided – Lawrence and told him that you wanted it – you’d stay here and that you should rest forever in the land of France. A Boissy. Where, in a few days, your son, David, will join you. In a small village where you had just received the keys of a house. There, you wanted to live near Lawrence, near Sarah, thy daughter. There, you will sleep forever. In France. Closer to home, close to me. 

I took care of you left Boissy, to relieve Laurent and your family. But I do not go to church or the cemetery. Wolfie and Laurent understand me. You, I ask you to forgive me. You know I would not be able to protect yourself from this crowd, this storm, so eager to “show” and made you so afraid, that you tremble. Forgive me. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we are alone. 

My Puppelé, I look at you again and again. I want to devour all of my eyes, and tell you again and again that you’ve never been so beautiful and calm. Rest. I’m here. I learned a little German, with you. Ich liebe dich. I love you. I love you my Puppelé. ” 

Alain Delon

#alain delon #romy schneider #love #love story #falling in love #i love her #love letters #farewell #sad thoughts #sad #sadlife #sadness #sad aesthetic

[draken049]

Godzilla King of The Monsters Review

So...the other day I went and finally seen Godzilla King of The Monsters and holy balls was it amazing. I have not been filled with so many different emotions from any Godzilla film before this one. Shin came close but King of The Monster?

...It was beautiful. The whole movie is beautiful. The story is simple, the message is clear and standard for the franchise, the characters both human and monster were amazing. The score was heart wrenching and it makes any fan feel like they are watching a pride and true Godzilla film from the homeland of Japan.

I was sitting in a theater room with only six other people, three couples, all of which had an affection for the franchise and the character of Godzilla. By the time the credits rolled, all of us were clapping and even some, myself included, were crying. IT’S ABSOLUTELY CRIMINAL THAT THIS MOVIE IS DOING POORLY...though...it’s not the movies fault...no. In fact, this is really on the hands of Hollywood and the blatant pacing issue it has. This movie is by definition a definitive summer blockbuster but thanks to Avengers Endgame...-grumble grumble grumble- another awesome movie...-grumble grumble grumble- being THE box office monster that it’s been, there just wasn’t any spare change for the film that is undoubtedly the better film for summer. Then of course there was also Detective Pikachu and John Wick Chapter 3 and Aladdin...just too many large named movies coming out within such a short span. There’s no room to breathe, at all and I believe that among these large movies, they all could have benefit if they were not released on the heels of Avengers Endgame.

Now with my two cents being said, I would absolutely love to point out that this is NOT, I repeat, IS NOT your typical Hollywood movie. It just isn’t and you’d be lying to yourself if you said otherwise. What I saw was a movie made by a devout fan of Godzilla, made for the people who LOVE and CHERISH each film in the franchise. This is a movie that was fun filming, fun creating and it made itself known that this IS a Godzilla movie. If you say that the characters are trash, the plot is trash, or the monsterverse is trash...then I’m sorry, you should just stop watching these movies all together or go back and watch the older movies. Yea, you can have your opinions but they’re wrong, they straight up just are. 

Non-Spoiler Territory Ahead

There’s so much this film does right and none that I can see that would make it deserve ill-wanted words. The tone of the movie is excellent. It provides us as viewers with an ever escalating landscape. There’s much more to lose here than there was in Godzilla (2014), that if something isn’t done, we’re going to be in for a world of hurt. The world is affected by the actions of Jonah and his eco-terrorism group to the point that even they would be affected if the source of the problem wasn’t dealt with. 

The character dynamics between Emma, Madison and Mark are simplified but nonetheless strong. It’s your typical family member lost, dad becomes a spiraling drunk, mom isolates herself and arguably loses her sanity and the daughter is left with the fallout from both but is forced to be by moms side. There’s much talk and allusion to redemption which is strongly paid off by two parties, even though I think one was less deserving than the other. Jonah has a motive that is much larger than just some action film bad guy and it needs to be known that he only partially succeeds but never fully gets what he wants. This gives him every reason to be the dark human element of Godzilla vs. Kong. Even by the time the credits rolled, you could tell exactly that he was planning something far more dangerous than what we were given. Dr. Serizawa is a penultimate character that is the yin to Godzilla’s yang. We see that he is still a devout believer that Godzilla is the key to balance among the Titans. His interaction and care for the large deity is something to really behold and it absolutely tugs your heart when it comes to giving the big lovable guy a good kick in the nuclear tank. 

The monsters themselves are all unique despite only seeing like what? Four new titans? The behemoth(????), the octo-spiderboi, a second female muto, and the large mountainboi. They are each dynamic in a way that they almost encapsulate a piece of cinematic history in the areas if which they appeared which I really wouldn’t put past Michael Dougherty because he is a horror anthology guru. However, the four that really shine above the rest are Rodan, Ghidorah, Godzilla and Mothra. 

Rodan; The Fire Demon...such a badass moniker. His initial appearance really draws on his Showa portrayals, being associated with the volcanos that both take and giveth his life. His design is MUAH, perfection. The mix of traditional reptile skin and possible fire feathers really give Rodan a naturalistic but also a unique look for the world of the Monsterverse. I really think he is the most animalistic of the four titular Titans, his actions reflective to that of an eagle or hawk but also as an aggressive bird when Ghidorah finally enters Rodans airspace. 

Godzilla; King of the Monsters...a much deserving title for the apex super predator. I was well and truly shocked when it’s revealed that Godzilla is or was worshiped by ancient peoples of an advanced civilization. His mannerisms, animalistic display intelligence and cunning flesh him out to be this thinking creature. His reservations about humanity is just but he develops an inherent trust of humanity thanks to Dr. Serizawa. It’s this trust that makes Godzilla feel like this unsung and much needed hero of the world. His leadership and stature among the worlds Titans seems akin to Aaragorns position when he finally takes up the mantle of king in Lord of the Rings. They both now have lives to look over and keep in line, to be the order and balance that the title of king implies. I want to point out that with the revelation that Godzilla has an actual home and was worshiped, that this is inspired from the Heisei Gamera films where an advanced civilization create Gamera in order to defend them from the Gyoas. All Alpha models of Gamera were sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor, creating this vast landscape of ancient bodies. The feeling there feels identical to the feeling you get when entering Godzilla’s domain. 

Ghidorah...The One Who Is Many...Sweet baby Zilla...All I can say is that this Ghidorah, this false king, is by far the most intricate, the most developed and the most critically thinking version of Ghidorah in the history of the franchise. He is not one creature but three and feels like three creatures with one body. Each head thinks and acts independently, the right is the follower but hyper aggressive, more so than the middle head. The right will do what is needed by the middle while the middle head is actively the leader. This one is unique because it looks like he is the one pulling the strings, the one actively strategizing and the one getting things done. The left head, I think is adorable...is liiiike just there it feels like. He’s a crucial part to Ghidorah sure but he seems like that one dog who’s hell bent on barking at you but gets distracted when he sees a squirrel and then all of his attention is on that one squirrel. I love it. I really do because it just solidifies that this Ghidorah has independent thought for each head, allowing it different personalities. His roar is genuinely terrifying but also sounds pretty damn close to the his Toho counterpart in the same way Rodan and Godzilla sound similar to their Toho counter parts. 

Mothra...my mothra...GOD WHY IS SHE SO FREAKING PERFECT!?!?!?!?!?! Mothra; The Queen of the Monsters...She is so beautiful, so majestic and hands down THE best monster of the movie for me. What makes her stand out from her Toho incarnations is that this gorgeous lady is actively searching for Godzilla. She doesn’t wish to fight him and as the film suggests, the two have a symbiotic relationship. To me, I believe that the Mosura and Gojira species actively fight together or at the very least come to the aid of one another. Her hovering over the location of Godzilla’s home seems to be odd at best if she were just looking to fight. Now that doesn’t mean I think the two go for booty calls with one another like Barnes thinks. Though, I do feel like this Mothra is highly sentient if not overly tied to the notion of her species naturally fighting alongside Godzilla’s species. She is also a reaallllll scrapper, even though most of her time was spent fighting Rodan. I would have loved loved LOVED to see her fight against Ghidorah at full strength. Her song also plays which is a newly created version of her 1961 musical composition. Any time that she’s on screen and that music plays, I will cry cry cry CRY!!! It’s beautiful in every sense of the word. Her devotion to Godzilla is admirable and her assistance is amazing. 

The climactic battle is a sensation of fighting, roars, destruction’s galore, and a visual spectacle. By the end and Godzilla standing tall, your heart will be filled bliss. However, stand tall until the after credits scene!

LITTLE RANT

So I’m not gonna say what’s at the end for the after credits scene, or at least not until I make a Spoiler Ridden Review but I see so many people claim that mechas or a Mecha-Godzilla type weapon will come to fruition. Yea, okay it’d be cool but where the bloody hell are you going to get that much finite resources let alone a power source strong enough to run the damn thing? Just because the military has a flying super carrier doesn’t mean that a Super X weapons system or a Mecha-Godzilla is going to come to the monsterverse any time soon. When this franchise began (the Monsterverse), it was clear that these movies are grounded in a reality where our resources are not unlimited. You have to stop and think about just how much it’d be to cost for these kinds of weapons let alone if it’s going to work. The amount of metals and other resources you need, it’s just unruly. Maybe if we found a way to harvest resources from stars or planets then sure but in the reality of the Monsterverse, that’s just not going to happen.

FINAL VERDICT: 10000000/10 MUST SEEE!!!!

#Godzilla #godzilla king of the monsters #Mothra #Rodan #Ghidorah #Monsterverse #michael dougherty #Toho #legendary pictures

[theusurpersdog]

The Battle of Winterfell

Okay, I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t particularly care for this episode. I came into it so hyped, because Miguel Sapochnik was in charge of the most important episode of the series to date and he has yet to disappoint, but in hindsight I realized this episode was never going to work. Not that I disliked the whole thing, because there were some moments which I absolutely love, but overall this episode was poorly conceptualized and executed even worse. Below the cut I’ll explain why I disliked it, and how I think the show could have done better. . . 

First, I think this episode was poorly executed in the writing room, not by the actors, directors, and behind-the-scenes crew. Watching the Game Revealed for this episode shows just how incredible the crew behind this show is, and its a shame that all that excellent work was largely wasted by D&D. 

Visually speaking though, this episode was stunning. The shots of Drogon and Rhaegal against the sky, lighting wights on fire, is legitimately breathtaking. Arya’s parkour is also stunning. Miguel Sapochnik and everyone else involved really did not disappoint, as far as they could carry the episode.

To me, this episode failed on two fronts: its approach to characters, and its approach to the battle. 

Characters

The biggest problem this episode had, is that it approached its characters through the lens of the action, and not the action through the lens of its characters. While D&D promised many character moments, there was only one - the Hound deciding to toughen up because Arya was in danger. Otherwise, all of the “character beats” were slow motion shots of people reacting to the battle. Those moments, its important to note, do not come from scripting - those scenes were Miguel Sapochnik desperately trying to ground his action within the emotions of his characters. But these scenes fail to carry the emotional burden the episode needed, because they are entirely generic; that’s what I mean when I say D&D did not consider the action through their characters. None of the scenes in these episodes were written from the perspective of “How would Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion, Sansa, et al, react and how does that change our episode?”, they were all written from the perspective of “These are the exact events we are going to have, what room does that leave for character expression?” - and of course, the answer was very little. Arya’s plotline this episode comes the closest to personalized, and even that falls very short. Listening to the Inside the Episode, the idea behind Arya’s story was “what if we took away her characteristics, what is she left with?” which leads to more near death fake outs, but prevents any real character moments. They intentionally took her back to season one Arya, instead of incorporating 7 years of growth into her scenes. 

Compare that approach to a previous episode, Blackwater, written by George Martin. Every single scene in that episode (except the dude bro scene with Bronn that GRRM was forced to write) is designed to show you something about Stannis, Davos, Cersei, Tyrion, or Sansa. It was a battle written specifically to highlight its characters. The perfect scene to highlight this difference is Sansa in the Sept during Blackwater, vs Sansa in the crypts during The Long Night. Sansa was not written to be useless this episode; her line “I will not abandon my people” combined with the unaired scenes of her killing wights, is quite enough evidence that the intent of D&D was to feature her. Yet, in the finished product, its very clear that D&D really didn’t understand how to feature her; the scenes in the crypts are entirely superfluous, because they exist solely to include Tyrion and Sansa. Whereas in Blackwater, GRRM wrote the scenes to highlight Sansa’s leadership, kindness, bravery, loyalty, and compassion. She is not even included in the “battle” portion of the episode, but many of her very best lines are from that episode and its corresponding book chapters - because GRRM worked the battle around his characters, instead of D&D who worked their characters around the battle. D&D genuinely didn’t know how to include scenes in this episode that weren’t action, and The Long Night suffered greatly for it. The best way to fix this problem would have been to re-examine each scene from a character’s perspective based on their specific story arc over 7 1/2 seasons. D&D were too focused on the base concept of fear, on how everyone is just terrified of death personified, that they forgot each character has their own story. Like I previously said, only the Hound has a scene like this, where we understand his specific reaction based on his specific story arc. 

This episode also failed to incorporate its characters even when the action called for it. While my above complaint is that D&D couldn’t look outside the action to make room for characters, this one is similar but slightly different - even when the action would have been greatly improved by individualized character beats, D&D chose to ignore that in favor of straight battle sequences. The obvious example of this is Daenerys, and her complete ambivalence in the face of Viserion. The only time her character was allowed to influence her scenes this episode, is when she as a Khaleesi decided she could not watch her Khalasar slaughtered; and the only reason that was included, was an excuse to get the battle rolling as D&D envisioned it. But wouldn’t dragon vs dragon content in this episode have greatly benefited from an emotionally bereft Daenerys? I am far from her biggest stan, but it is truly a slap in the face to pretend as if one of her dragons dying, and then being brought back to try and kill her, would not almost kill Daenerys. The dragons are her children; she looks at them and sees herself reflected back, both the good and the bad. Her self worth and importance is tied to them. To not only lose one, but to see it turned against her, is a scene literally begging to be about Daenerys’ loss. And yet, her emotional connection to Viserion is completely irrelevant to her battle with the Night King.

The previous complaints I’ve had with this episode were all things I think would have been relatively easy to fix within the episode itself, but the next problem I have has been building since season one, and was probably unfixable by season 6. And that problem is of Bran, Jon, and the Night King. Obviously I don’t know what GRRM’s plans for the Others are, but I am very sure Bran is at the heart of it. Don’t get me wrong, it was amazing to see a Stark defeat the Night King; but, if we are being honest with ourselves, it was the wrong Stark. Since the start of the series, when we see the Night’s Watch deserter executed through Bran’s eyes, he has been the narrator of the Others. Yet for some reason, D&D made the decision in s1 that they weren’t going to include Northern Mysticism, or Bran’s more supernatural elements. They pretty much eliminated Warging from the show completely (which is entirely unthinkable in the books). By cutting Bran off from his plot with the Others, they filled his role with Jon. Now, Jon is very connected to the North and weirwoods and that sort of high fantasy element, but he is not connected to the White Walkers directly. Jon Snow has never even faced a White Walker in the books, compared to his show counterpart who has had run-ins with the Night King since s5. By making Jon a much more stereotypical Action Hero, they’ve already gutted what the White Walkers are in the books. Once they left Bran out of s5, there really was no going back. To me, its obvious that at some point midway through the show, D&D realized from GRRM just how important Bran was to the fight against the AotD, but it was too late to do anything about it. So Bran being in the Godswood, after an extremely vague explanation of why the Night King wants to kill him, was their desperate attempt to pick up the pieces. That left D&D with only one other option for taking out the Night King - shock value. They literally say as much in the Inside the Episode. All of the above doesn’t even mention how big a problem the Night King existing at all is, but it is a huge problem. The Night’s King, from the books, is not some all powerful figure; he is a man, who made a very stupid choice out of love. The Night’s King story is a deeply personal tale, which most likely revolves around a Stark, which ties the story back to our main characters (specifically Bran). By changing the Night’s King story into one centralized White Walker villain, they took away all the personality of the White Walkers while simultaneously pinning the entire narrative onto one character (which can only lead to an unsatisfactory ending). 

The Battle

Now that I’ve explained why I dislike the character element of The Long Night, lets break down why the battle itself falls short. . . 

They played this way too straightforward. If they weren’t going to ground this episode within emotional stakes and payoffs, they had to be way more creative within the battle itself. I know Dan Weiss gave his “reasons” for not including Ice Spiders, but they were stupid (for anyone who hasn’t seen the article, he said they didn’t think they could animate giant spiders well); Lord of the Rings came out more than 15 years ago and Shelob was very well done, and you’re telling me that Game of Thrones couldn’t pull them off?

Ice Spiders isn’t the only thing they could have done though. GRRM’s story is some Cthulu level horror and heavy metal stuff, and D&D should have embraced those elements. The shots of the dragons fighting worked so well because it was a visually new experience, but D&D scripted way too much melee fighting to be the backbone of the episode. Sapochnik did the best he could to make it stimulating throughout, but as an audience this can only be entertaining for so long. And D&D were obviously very attached to making this episode feature length, regardless - what I’m saying is, an editor needed to be more involved in the final cut. 

#game of thrones #A Song of Ice and Fire #jonsa

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of DC: Week of March 11th, 2020

Best of the Week: Batman and the Outsiders #11 - Bryan E. Hill, Dexter Soy, Veronica Gandini and Clayton Cowles

It’s the Outsiders vs The Assassins in a knock-down, drag out fight for their lives!

After Lady Shiva meets up with Jefferson Pierce, aka. Black Lightning, in order to convince him to join her scheme to kill Ra’s al Ghul, she and the electricity powered hero are ambushed by Ra’s al Ghul’s trusted warriors in Ishmael, the turncoat Kaliber and Karma, a villain from Hill’s run on Detective Comics. Luckily for Jefferson and Shiva, Katana arrives in the nick of time with Duke Thomas, The Signal, and Cassandra Cain, Orphan (even though her mother, Shiva, is next to her).

Dexter Soy and Veronica Gandini begin the book with an epic single splash title page, showcasing the two sides as the Outsiders pick their respective opponents. It’s an absolutely beautiful scene with the moon shining in the sky with a bright white while clouds crest over it. The moon reflects on the surface of the water that both sides are standing in, giving the epic stand off a more dynamic feel as the water crashes around them. There’s an unintentionally funny bit where Shiva is standing tall with the Outsiders, but in the background without anyone to look at because the three combatants are closer to the foreground.

Wonky page aside, Hill does a good job of catching readers up with a few of our characters' reasons for wanting to fight each other while Soy gives us several nice, up close shots of each character in eight panels. Lightning seeks revenge against Ishmael for killing one of the teacher at his school, Duke and Cass want a rematch against Karma for targeting them and injuring Duke back in Detective Comics and Katana faces off against Kaliber for betraying the Outsiders.

Each of their respective fights take place over the course of single pages for most of the issue and while there’s not much in the way of a deep story, the fights do help to expand on who some characters are, give others some catharsis and allows for one to just showcase how cool they are.

Lightning and Shiva’s fight with Ishmael is absolutely one of ideology. Blak Lightning has always been a hero, someone who was willing to save lives and give his own if he thought the cause was worth it. Lady Shiva is one of the deadliest assassins in the DC Universe and only seeks to weed the world of the weak. She sought Jefferson out because she knows that among Batman’s team, Lightning is absolutely one of the most powerful and susceptible to her way of thinking, if the right pressure were to be applied. At the same time, she sees how Ra’s al Ghul’s plot to destroy the planet would be counter to her goals.

Soy portrays Lightning with probably the most intense anger that we’ve seen from him in this story so far. His brow is furrowed and Soy inks a close up shot of Jefferson’s face to accentuate the bright blue and white that Gandini uses for his eyes. His lightning is intense, even as Shiva tells him that she knows he’s holding back, he doesn’t care as he’s acting as the distraction. We then get another page of Shiva enacting his plan. 

Soy showcases Shiva’s speed and agility through various panels as she attacks Ishmael. Soy uses speed lines and blurring to convey how quick she can move as Ishmael’s defense is whittled away before she gives him one good kick across the face. Clayton Cowles utilizes excellent lettering with an intense “KRAK” as the foot connects and a powerful “ZZZATTT” as Lightning hits him with a blast of energy. Cowles also has fantastic bubble placement as Shiva counts down on every panel before unleashing Jefferson.

As that fight ends, we get a calm scene between the two as Ishmael lies unconscious in the water, his face just so that he doesn’t drown. Shiva tells Jefferson just how easy it would be to let him drown, but Jefferson points out that that would be murder. Because... of course it would be. Jefferson is a hero and is unwilling to take a life, not because he’s on a team with Batman, but because it’s his decision.

Karma was a Markovian soldier who had something of a past with Batman. This saw him don a mask that allowed him to read the thoughts and actions of his enemies as he targets those who he felt made Batman weak - Duke and Cass. He put them through hell over the course of many issues and this is what initially caused Batman to seek out Jefferson to help train them. This series would have spun out of that arc, but for whatever reason, delays kept it off until very recently.

The fight starts off pretty poorly as Karma reads Cassandra's thoughts, making fun of her Orphan codename, much like I did earlier, and kicks her away. Karma is a quite capable fighter, but he hasn’t faced Duke in quite some time and doesn’t know about the hero’s new found power. Duke had initially had some PTSD when thinking about Karma, likely because of a bomb that the villain had strapped to a Batfan and exploded when Duke arrived to save him.

Duke’s powers over the light had been corrupted by Ishmael earlier in the series and this left him with a new ability to enshroud himself and others in a black shadow. He and Cass use this to their advantage to distract Karma, allowing Soy and Gandini pay off all of their months of pain and anger. Cassandra swings across Karmas face with both of her feet, knocking him back as the glowing red star of his mask leaves a small trail. The fight is honestly pretty one sided from there as Cass just beats the man.

The final fight between Katana and Kaliber is pretty much just an excuse for Soy, Gandini and Cowles to draw cool stuff. Kaliber fires a shot from one of his energy guns with a bombastic, transparent BOOM to accentuate its power and bright orange and yellow colors. Katana gets into an excellent pose and uses her Soul Sword to deflect and spread the blast with a “SHNNNNG” lettering that curves around part of the shot and her sword. Katana has no time to play any games with him, at all.

She also makes short work of him while revealing that she had never liked him. Cowles utilizes similar minimal panels to convey Hill’s script as she tears down his lack of discipline and honor before making fun of his hair while still being threatening. Soy makes Katana look like an absolute badass as she takes Kaliber’s gun arm in one fell swoop before kicking him in the gut. Kaliber may be something of a good eye and a trigger, but Katana, like Shiva, is one of the most dangerous women in the DC Universe with a sword and not someone that should be faced in a one-on-one close quarters fight.

With all of their enemies defeated, Katana holds her sword to Kaliber’s throat as he tries to convince the Outsiders that Ra’s only wants to “save the world.” In some respects, that could be true. He sees humanity as a disease and would rather the planet Earth and his chosen few thrive without the chaff. He’s built a cult of personality around himself and that’s how he’s maintained a following for centuries. Not that it was difficult to convert someone like Kaliber, a stock mercenary. But the merc soon reveals that this fight was meant to serve as a distraction as explosions ring out across a Cambodian town.

It’s another beautiful scene with the calm blues of the moons afterglow and the night sky itself is contrasted by the bright and fiery oranges of the explosions. My only criticism is that while the scene does feel weighty, there’s still a lot of empty space where more explosions and destruction could be. They sort of feel minor by comparison to the rest of the shot and maybe pulling in closer would help, but either way, it’s a nice scene.

Ra’s goons escape and Katana rallies the Outsiders to go and help the people. Despite not approving of Cassandra choosing to join Batman’s crusade, Shiva affirms her pride and love of her daughter and joins her in heroism, even if it’s only for a short time. Meanwhile, in the background of this story, Sofia, the metahuman who Ra’s initially tried to recruit away from Batman affirms that she wants to do good in the world and Batman leads her to choose her own identity.

Bryan Hill’s excellent Outsiders series continues to be one of the more underrated DC titles out right now as this issue was absolutely action packed thanks to Dexter Soy, Veronica Gandini and Clayton Cowles. It definitely built on these excellent characters that deserve more acclaim and a book separated from having Batman in the title because he is still barely present.

That’s also another point I will keep harping on, Batman is still a non-entity in this book and I think that’s something that this story does well. It allows for Black Lightning and Katana to grow as characters to take on the teacher role like Batman did in the original Outsiders comic. Duke and Cassandra have so much to learn, but so few Batman writers want to put a focus on them while Bryan Hill is giving them center stage alongside two big heroes. They absolutely deserve it and I want to see them in so many more things going forward.

I want this series to go well past fifty issues because it has, consistently, been one of the best paced, best drawn and best told series that DC has had going for it in a long while. This gets another high recommend from me.

Also, support me on Patreon:

patreon.com/TyTalksComics

#batman and the outsiders #the outsiders #black lightning #katana #duke thomas #cassandra cain #lady shiva #bryan hill #dexter soy #veronica gandini #clayton cowles #dc comics #comic review

[imagitory]

D-Views: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Bonjour, mes amies! Welcome, bienvenue, to another installment of D-Views, my written review series for films produced or inspired by the Walt Disney company! For more reviews for films like Enchanted, Star Wars Episode III, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, feel free to consult my “Disney reviews” tag, and please, if you enjoy this review or any of the others, please consider liking and reblogging! I look forward to writing more of these in the future for films like Wreck-It Ralph and Halloweentown, as well as Non-Disney films like Charlotte’s Web.

I recently put out a poll suggesting three Disney Renaissance films for possible review subjects, and although The Little Mermaid won that poll, this film ended up not far behind. (Thank you, @schifty-al and @mygeekcorner for your votes!) It’s one of my personal favorite Disney films of all time...The Hunchback of Notre Dame!

Victor Hugo’s classic novel Notre Dame du Paris, called The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English, seems like a very odd inspiration for a Disney animated family film, and that’s because...yeah, it is! When the Disney animators first brought Hunchback to the table, they were less inspired by the original Hugo novel glamorizing the architecture of Notre Dame cathedral, and more inspired by a graphic novel adaptation of the story, which was likewise much more influenced by the 1939 Hollywood film adaptation. Because of the historical context that 1939 adaptation was made in (premiering at Cannes during the rise of the Third Reich), themes of social justice were added to a story that originally was about how the “edifice” can outlast the flaws and sins of mankind. The “social justice” element is something that Hugo interestingly put more in his follow-up to Notre Dame du Paris, the epic brick book Les Miserables, but has since been similarly tied in the public consciousness to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, despite not existing in the original book.

The project was already an odd choice for Disney to take on thanks to the darkness of the book, but the political themes also were unique for a Disney picture as well. It clearly was a more “adult” endeavor, even though thanks to the success of previous projects like Aladdin and The Lion King, there were studio mandates demanding more comic relief, and even the marketing team was reluctant to advertise Hunchback as anything other than a family film. Rather than showing the artistry and darker scenes, the marketing almost entirely focused on the Feast of Fools and the gargoyles, highlighting the “Ugly Duckling” aspect added to the story and downplaying the more adult themes. In the end, it’s likely thanks to those poor marketing choices and the inconsistent tone of the picture that this movie failed to find its audience on first run. It only earned $21 million worldwide, compared to Pocahontas’s $29 million and The Little Mermaid’s $84 million, with mixed critical and audience reaction. Although it was nominated for an Academy Award for its music and won several others, it was noticeably less successful than other installments in the Disney Renaissance, and even now, Disney often doesn’t give Hunchback that much attention. Like Quasimodo, the film has been sort of locked up in its own tower...but now, today, I aim to bring The Hunchback of Notre Dame out of the shadows and give it the appreciation it deserves.

Our film begins in complete darkness, accompanied by resounding church bells and the amazing vocalizations of the English Opera Company, and from the very beginning, I’m just enveloped by the embrace of Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz’s unbelievable score. Choral music in general has always been something special in my family. My mum and dad were in choirs a lot of their lives: they even first met when they joined the San Diego Master Chorale in the 80′s. Choral music remains one of my mother’s greatest loves and passions, and when I saw Hunchback, it made the choral music my parents loved so much, which focused around a faith I hadn’t been raised with and didn’t believe in, that bit more accessible to me as a child. Mum, who studied Latin in college, went on to teach me about all of the chants and phrases Menken and Schwartz added to each song so that I could more appropriately sing along. It remains one of those Disney soundtracks that cemented our close bond, and I’ll always treasure being able to see the La Jolla Playhouse production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with my mum and getting to hear the amazing choir and instruments live.

The Bells of Notre Dame, as an opening number, cannot be matched in how it introduces us all to the story, characters, themes, and tone of the piece. In just a few minutes, the music and lyrics perfectly showcases our setting, the theme of what makes a man, the atmosphere of fear and injustice, our villain, and our hero. Menken and Schwartz previously worked together on Pocahontas, but Hunchback in my opinion easily outstrips their previous collaboration. The use of church bells of all sizes to convey the solemnity, mystery, and grandeur of the cathedral at the center of the proceedings, and the clever use of Latin phrases -- it’s just unbelievable! As one example, in the sequence where Frollo (a judge in this version, as opposed to the Archdeacon) chases Quasimodo’s mother up to the stairs of Notre Dame and she pounds on the door, crying for help, the choir sings “Quantus tremor est futurus quando Judex est venturus,” which means, “What trembling is to be when the Judge comes.” And sure enough, the line comes to a horrible, horrified halt when Judge Frollo snatches the woman’s child away and throws her to the ground.

After one of the most epic musical introductions in a Disney film, we meet our sweet, gentle hero, Quasimodo, voiced by Tom Hulce, who is just such a ray of sunshine. Although I loved hearing Michael Arden as Quasimodo on stage, Tom Hulce will always be my Quasimodo. When I was a teenager, I went through a horrible “hating the world” phase where I only ever saw pain and suffering and felt not only powerless to make anything better, but worthless as well. During that time, I turned my back on a lot of the things that had brought me joy, feeling almost unable to enjoy them anymore. One of the very few exceptions, however, was this movie and especially the character of Quasimodo. When I was at my darkest points, Quasimodo never failed to bring me some light, not because he was particularly funny, but because for all of the misery in his circumstances, he never faltered in being gentle, creative, and kind. Looking back on how I’d been, I wish I’d had just a shred of Quasimodo’s grace back then. I wish I hadn’t allowed myself to fall into despair and resentment. Since I can’t go back, however, I keep Quasimodo in my mind sometimes whenever I’m going through something difficult. He’s kind of become a guardian angel of sorts to me, reminding me that my life is a precious gift and I shouldn’t take anything for granted. And really, I couldn’t do that if not for Tom Hulce and Quasimodo’s supervising animator, James Baxter. I truly am grateful to both of them for giving me a character that even now can be a symbol of everything I wish I could be.

Unfortunately along with Quasimodo, we also meet the gargoyles, Hugo, Victor, and Laverne. As a kid, I actually liked the gargoyles all right, but as an adult...yeah, they really break the mood. Badly. The worst offender is easily Hugo, which is a shame because I like Jason Alexander as a performer, but he just goes way too over-the-top-obnoxious. It would admittedly not be as bad if it were clear that the gargoyles were all in Quasimodo’s head, but Djali sees Hugo come to life at one point and they later help Quasimodo fight off the guards. I greatly prefer the way the gargoyles are handled in the stage production, where all of the saintly statues have their own voices that nonetheless reflect what Quasimodo is thinking and when Quasimodo hits his lowest point before Esmeralda’s execution, he forcefully banishes them out of his head.

Even though the comic relief is handled poorly, I certainly cannot say the same for the villain. Judge Claude Frollo is easily one of the most evil villains in Disney history. Tony Jay’s vocal performance is just chillingly resonant, commanding your attention and making you subconsciously shrink in on yourself whenever he speaks. It makes for a despicable, cold, cruel man -- the antithesis of a father, the true embodiment of a monster. Frollo is often compared to Mother Gothel from Tangled in how they both lie to, control, and emotionally abuse their charges (Quasimodo and Rapunzel, respectively), but I personally find Frollo so much worse than Gothel, because he not only cuts Quasimodo off from everyone, but he indoctrinates a gentle, kind soul like Quasimodo in his racism and intolerance against those different from him -- including Quasimodo’s own people, the Romani. Mother Gothel hoards Rapunzel away like a dragon hoarding treasure -- Frollo treats Quasimodo like a burden, beating into him that no one else would want him and that Frollo was such a “good man” to take him in. It’s just vile.

And now we come to my single favorite Disney song of all time -- Quasimodo’s aria, Out There. From the time I was little, this song spoke to me like few others did. Growing up, I was an only child with a huge imagination surrounded almost entirely by adults and who had a lot of difficulty relating to kids my age. I often liked being on my own, but it didn’t change how I often felt different and detached from the people around me, and as I got older, that feeling only increased. I moved a lot in my childhood, making it difficult for me to plant roots, and I rarely followed trends or popular norms, so I constantly stayed in the fringes of the crowd, enviously looking on at those who could fit in more easily than I could. I always tried to hide my insecurities, but they were still there, and when those insecurities took hold, I would often imagine the world being a place where I could be myself, just like Quasi does. Quasimodo’s longing to be “part of them” and lamentation of people being “heedless of the gift it is to be them” has always resonated with me, and even though it’s hard for me to sing Out There without shifting octaves, my heart swells every time I hear it.

The Captain of the Guard, Phoebus, is easily the biggest liberty that Hunchback adaptations have made with the original novel. The book version of Phoebus was more like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast than how he’s portrayed here, but I frankly have no complaints. Kevin Kline is wonderfully dry and witty in the role -- he’s more than a match for Esmeralda, being brave, noble, and sarcastic with seemingly no prejudice for those different from him. And then yeah, as for Esmeralda herself...as Phoebus says later, “what a woman!” Esmeralda was one of my very favorite Disney heroines as a kid, and she still is. The character of Esmeralda is often rather saint-like in her incarnations, but here we see both the “angelic” and “demonic” sides of her -- she’s fiery, but kind; rebellious, yet noble; anti-authority, but patient; distrustful, yet loyal. In the musical adaptation, when Esmeralda is first revealed, we hear Frollo, Phoebus, and Quasimodo sing this about her --

Frollo: She dances like the Devil!

Phoebus: She dances like an angel --

Quasimodo: An angel!

Phoebus: -- but with such fire!

Frollo: Such fire!

All Three: Who is she?

This is Esmeralda’s characterization and her relationship to the three male main characters in a nutshell. Quasimodo only sees the best of Esmeralda; Frollo only sees the worst of her; and Phoebus sees her for everything she is...as a person. And this is why she ultimately chooses Phoebus, unlike in the book where she solely chooses Phoebus because of his looks.

When we reach the Palace of Justice, I’m reminded that I have yet to accent how absolutely stunning every single background is in this movie. Yes, the animation overall is wonderful, whether in the character animation or otherwise, but there are few Disney films that have more atmospheric and beautiful backgrounds than this. It serves to give the movie such a wonderful depth and makes the setting feel that much richer and deeper. Admittedly one weaker aspect of the animation is the now-slightly-outdated CG background characters. They were made by taking a handful of templates and then mixing up their clothes and colors, so as to multiply them ad infinitum and make the crowds of Paris look bigger and more colorful. Even with that, though, you do sort of have to look carefully at the background crowds to notice, as there are lots of hand-drawn characters sprinkled in in front of those CG models that help obscure their repetition and awkwardness. Those CG crowds also make the city of Paris look appropriately overcrowded and huge, so I’m glad that they used the technology even if it was still so in-progress at the time.

Even though Topsy Turvy starts off so fun and festive, however, it soon devolves into a terrible riot where Quasimodo is bound and tormented by the crowd. I admit, the transition is a little abrupt, but it still works for me, as people can be so easily swept away by mob mentality and those in power -- namely, Frollo’s guards -- sometimes flaunt their authority by putting down others. Fortunately Esmeralda is there to save Quasimodo and give Frollo a much-deserved verbal smackdown. The following scene, though, is another example of the mismatched tone, stretching out Esmeralda’s escape with a lot of comic “hijinks” that don’t really add anything to the film and kind of serve as a big time waster, especially after it abruptly cuts off and turns much more solemn and sad as Frollo silently confronts Quasimodo and Quasi returns to Notre Dame in shame.

Hunchback’s focus on religion is, in my opinion, one of the things that made producing an adaptation of Hugo’s novel such a bold decision. I’m not a religious person at all (Agnostic and proud), but it was still really meaningful to me to see both the good and bad associated with religion, represented by the Archdeacon and Frollo respectively. Frollo, along with Pharaoh Seti from The Prince of Egypt, taught me as a kid that evil is not always self-aware and, more importantly, how much more dangerous evil is when it garbs itself in godliness and righteousness. That’s a valuable lesson, regardless of your religious faith. God Help the Outcasts may invoke God’s name, but it could just as easily be a prayer to the world, or even just to you as an individual. The Christian faith preaches that we are made in God’s image...so when Esmeralda asks God to help her people, maybe she’s in truth asking you to try to be the loving God they need.

Something unique about Hunchback is the wonderful friendship that develops between Esmeralda and Quasimodo. From the time I was very little, I made friends with both boys and girls, so it was so wonderfully refreshing to see a story where a girl and a boy became such close friends and supported each other so much. Yes, admittedly, Quasimodo is romantically interested in Esmeralda, but when he sees how much she loves Phoebus, he both accepts their relationship and treasures Esmeralda’s friendship all the same. He doesn’t wallow in bitterness upon Esmeralda not choosing him; he loves her all the same as the first real friend he’s ever had. Esmeralda truly loves Quasimodo and treasures their friendship too -- her choosing Phoebus romantically is never framed as her teasing Quasimodo or leading him on; she simply loves Phoebus and Quasimodo in different ways. And that I find so unbelievably cool. I also like that in Esmeralda’s and Quasimodo’s conversation on the roof, there are some strains of the deleted song Someday in the instrumental accompanying the scene -- you can hear a R&B variation of Someday in the film’s credits, but originally it was meant to replace the more religious God Help the Outcasts, only for God Help the Outcasts to be chosen over it. I agree with the filmmakers’ decision, but I still like Someday too. Quasimodo’s helping Esmeralda and Djali escape Notre Dame by climbing down the towers also beautifully foreshadows Quasimodo’s dexterity in climbing down to save Esmeralda at the end of the film.

Quasimodo and Frollo are both enthralled with Esmeralda, but as mentioned previously, they each only see the angelic and demonic sides of her, which is best encapsulated by the dual numbers Heaven’s Light and Hellfire. Heaven’s Light is appropriately sweet and pure, but I can’t beat around the bush here: Hellfire steals the show, not just from Heaven’s Light but from all other villain songs in Disney history. The song starts with a choral chant praying for forgiveness, which then segways into Frollo’s demented, mad raving about his lust, fear, and hatred for Esmeralda. The words are almost terrifying in their level of conviction and paranoia, which then devolves into vindictive, destructive mania, framed by the mournful echoes for “mercy” from the choir.

Right after Hellfire, we get one of my favorite instrumentals on the soundtrack called Paris Burning. The choir’s bustling, dramatic cries trimmed by the tense strings and horns of the orchestra just evokes fear and horror as Frollo terrorizes Paris. Then Phoebus finally takes a stand, refusing to set fire to the miller’s house and then, after Frollo does it himself, leaping in to save the family from the flames. In the musical, this whole sequence is accompanied by the amazing musical number Esmeralda (which honestly, every fan of this movie should listen to, it’s really worth it), but the film handles it unbelievably well with only a short scene and an instrumental that sears the final “Kyrie Eleison” into the audience’s ears like a fire brand.

Sadly, after this amazing, epic sequence, we once again are subjected to tonal whiplash when we return to the bell tower and the gargoyles decide to sing Quasimodo a song to cheer him up. Although I maintain Hunchback has one of the best soundtracks ever recorded, what stops it from being flawless is this song. A Guy Like You is not an inherently bad song on its own, but when combined with the rest of the soundtrack, its melody, tone, and out-of-place pop cultural references are just ridiculously jarring. It’s like we’ve been transported into a completely different movie, one less inspired by a classic French novel and a critically acclaimed film about social justice and one more inspired by Disney hits of the day like Aladdin and later projects like Hercules. As sad as it is, it’s kind of a relief when it’s over and we’re brought back down to earth by Esmeralda carrying a close-to-death Phoebus into Quasimodo’s tower.

Frollo’s arrival after Quasimodo agrees to hide Phoebus is excellent in its suspense. We can sense Frollo’s suspicion, and all the while, we’re so worried for Phoebus hiding under the very table he and Quasimodo are sitting at. Then Frollo, who we’ve only ever seen as cold, conniving, and controlled, bursts into a rage the kind of which we’ve never seen before, and for a second, he’s a demon himself. After his rage is spent, he sets his cruelest, most terrible trap yet: using Quasimodo’s feelings for Esmeralda so that he can capture her and the rest of the Romani. And at first, Quasimodo almost doesn’t take the bait, thanks to a short-lived pang of self-pity. At first he’s bitter about his heart being broken and considers not helping Esmeralda, as there’d seemingly be no “reward” in him doing so...but the feeling is quelled in seconds by the memory of Esmeralda and how much her friendship means to him. Quasimodo’s selflessness and goodness wins out in its struggle with his more selfish instincts...and this, in the end, is what makes Quasimodo a hero in my eyes.

All right, I guess with our entrance into the Court of Miracles, I should address the elephant in the room. I’ve called Esmeralda’s people “the Romani” in this review, but throughout the entire film, the term is substituted for the admittedly-period-appropriate slur “Gypsy.” I knew nothing about the Romani culture when I first saw this film and I profess no intimate knowledge of it now, but even with that, I have to acknowledge that this movie doesn’t always showcase the Romani in the best light. Although Quasimodo’s parents, Esmeralda, and (to a degree) Clopin are given relative sympathy, the sequence in the Court of Miracles doesn’t do much to endear them to the audience. These victims of persecution are not really given the focus they deserve: we never learn much about their culture or about why they’re persecuted, and we don’t really get to see how they live their lives as ordinary people. To someone who doesn’t know anything about the Romani, I don’t think this film would be the best introduction to their culture and heritage.

Our climax is accompanied by the best instrumental track in the film, Sanctuary! Whenever I hear this piece, I have to stay completely silent, drinking in every single line and note, so as to properly absorb its brilliance. The track has accompanied a lot of my writing in the past: it’s always helped me when I was writing a powerful, emotional climax, whether through the emotion it wrought from me or just from wanting to write a new scene to the music. This entire sequence, from a musical, writing, animation, and character point of view, is I think what made Disney decide to make this film in the first place. The pacing -- the character animation of Quasimodo tearing down the pillars -- the drawn backgrounds of Notre Dame -- the camera whirling over the never-ending crowd’s heads and up onto the cathedral as Quasimodo hoists Esmeralda over his head -- this is the heart of why the movie was made and what the entire film was building up to. This resistance against injustice and the protection of our sacred, historical institutions from hatred and cruelty is what Hunchback is and should be all about. Occasionally this battle scene is inter-spliced with comic bits that once again aren’t really necessary and kind of stick out (Laverne’s Wizard of Oz reference and Hugo’s impression of a fighter plane in particular are out of place), but it doesn’t ruin anything for me. Fortunately as the climax grows darker with the arrival of Frollo and the transition from Sanctuary! into And He Shall Smite the Wicked, the gargoyles take a backseat, and we get focus where we should’ve always had it: on Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Frollo. Thanks to his love for his friend Esmeralda and the realization of his own self-worth, Quasimodo finally stands up to Frollo and breaks free of his poisonous influence once and for all. This line of Quasi’s has always stuck with me --

“All my life you’ve taught me the world is a dark, cruel place...but now I see the only thing dark and cruel about it is people like you!”

Even now this line is just so powerful. There was a point where all I saw of the world was its cruelties and injustices...but like Quasimodo, I’ve come to see that those cruelties are not inherent to the world or even to mankind as a whole. Humans are capable of both great evil and great good, but as long as the evil people of the world are allowed to seize control and exert their toxic influence over everyone else, the world and mankind overall will never become better. Like Quasimodo, we must stand against those who’ve embraced cruelty and hatred over acceptance and love. We must protect the brighter parts of the world that evil so wishes to snuff out. It’s a moral I think has only become more relevant and important over time.

Unlike in the book and musical, Esmeralda survives, and as much as I’ve heard people try to argue Esmeralda living is not true to the spirit of the original novel, I think it really suits the story being told and really feels just for both characters. Quasimodo deserved happiness; Esmeralda deserved happiness; and most importantly, this all the more highlights how different Quasimodo is from Frollo. Frollo says to Esmeralda, “Choose me or the fire” -- basically, if he can’t have her, he doesn’t want anyone else to...but Quasimodo doesn’t think that way. He cherishes Esmeralda and her friendship without any caveats or conditions: therefore him losing Esmeralda, whether to Phoebus or to death, doesn’t prompt him to commit suicide like he did in the novel. It’s not only a more uplifting ending, but I think a lesson in the selflessness of love, even if it’s just platonic love. And because Esmeralda loves Quasimodo just as much as a friend, she leads him out into the sun, where he finds even more of the love he deserves from the city he wished so much to belong in. Quasimodo doesn’t get the girl, but that was never what he wanted in the first place: it was merely to be accepted as he was.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was one of the most formative films of my childhood, right up there with Beauty and the Beast, The Prince of Egypt, and Anastasia, and it remains my second favorite Disney animated film of all time. With time, I’ve seen more and more of its flaws, but those flaws don’t ruin what in the end is one of the most daring, revolutionary projects Disney Animation has ever tackled. Its artistry, from the backgrounds to the character animation, is exceptional; all of its major human characters are multi-faceted, complex, and real; its themes are eternally relevant and powerful; and its score and nearly all of its songs are just through the stratosphere in their quality. Hunchback, along with Beauty and the Beast, made me fall in love with France from afar as a child, a love affair that has only become more and more intense through the years, and Quasimodo and Esmeralda even now are so close to my heart. I wish so much to be as kind and gentle as Quasimodo and as brave and noble as Esmeralda, and I can only hope that at some point, if I ever visit Disneyland Paris, I might finally meet them. The Hunchback of Notre Dame may not have gotten the appreciation it deserved when it first came to theaters, but I’ll always be happy to hear Disney fans remembering it as fondly as I do. Who knows? Maybe someday, the world will be wiser and will give this film its time in the sun at long last.

#d-views #disney reviews #the hunchback of notre dame #disney #opinion #analysis #reviews #oh boy here i go

[rwbyconversations]

Why I think some fans don’t like Ruby

A good protagonist can make or break a story. You can have an incredibly detailed world and setting, fill it with the most fascinating lore and and have an encyclopedia’s worth of information on every street, but if the person you’re following in that world is uninteresting or just dull, the audience will never let that slide. Watch Dogs is a competent game but Aiden Pearce is such a dull scumbag that it taints the entire setting. Echo from Dollhouse was perhaps the dullest character in the main roster, making the show more interesting when she wasn’t around as it gave the much more varied supporting cast a chance to shine.

This is unfortunately a problem that people have with RWBY’s Ruby Rose as well. Ruby is a do-gooder with aspirations to become a Huntress and help people and that’s basically it in terms of explicit character growth. For a variety of reasons over the past two years since Volume 4, Ruby has become a far more divisive character than was ever intended. With Volume 6 now on the horizon, I’ve decided to look into our inarguable main protagonist and to answer the question of why I think some people don’t like Ruby. 

(also before anyone jumps down my throat I don’t hate Ruby, I think she’s a weak character but I don’t want her removed from the show. Also, yes, she is the protagonist, we’re not having this conversation)

1) Ruby’s development in Volumes 4 and 5 is lackluster at best and actively shunted at worst

To be quite blunt, Ruby’s not interesting in her current form and she hasn’t truthfully been since Volume 3′s conclusion. Ruby started out as a fine character, with some good early development from Ozpin about what it means to be a leader, development which had a payoff when Ruby then shared this lesson with Jaune during the Jaundice episodes. “We have to put our teammates first and ourselves second.” Back then Ruby also had several more facets to her personality- she was a naive child brought to Beacon two years early and a lot of her dynamics, especially with Weiss in particular, reflect this in the early volumes. Volume 1 also gives Ruby her overly romanticized view of Huntsmen and Huntresses, further emphasizing her naivety regarding the wider world which is challenged multiple times in the first three volumes- most notably with Roman’s “The real world is cold!” speech in Heroes and Monsters. 

Volume 3 set out to tear those perceptions down, as Ruby bears witness to some horrifying actions in the back half of the Volume- Penny’s dismemberment, Grimm swarming Vale, Roman being eaten alive and Pyrrha being shot and incinerated right in front of her. Ruby breaks from this, Volume 4 was touted as a recovery volume. And yet Ruby’s development is a phantom for Volumes 4 and 5. She puts on a bright smile and other than a few nightmares which exist for very little reason- especially since RTX 2017 confirmed that Ruby was having dreams about Pyrrha because she overheard Jaune’s night-training and not because of other circumstances- Ruby doesn’t ever confront the trauma she faced like Yang and Blake did over their arcs in Volume 4. The one time she tries taking responsibility in the back half of the volume... Jaune shuts her down, literally cutting her off so he can tell her she’s inspiring, which she agrees with blindly, her inner conflict having been forgotten and blown away like leaves falling off a tree in October. 

You know I mentioned this in my Jaune post but it bears repeating that the one time Ruby really tries to get development this season, Jaune literally steals the spotlight and tells the audience, rather than shows us, how far Ruby’s come

Most of the other RWBY girls get scenes on their own during Volume 4- in fact, the other three members all have moments of solitude in their first episodes. It shows how the Fall of Beacon has separated them and scattered them across the world. Ruby gets no such moment of isolation. Ruby not having this doesn’t give her character any moments where she has to confront the events at Beacon, and that lack of isolation or ability to reflect harms her. The one time her facade breaks away in Volume 4, Jaune swoops in to prevent her from having a realization and the problem is smoothed away like it never happened.This also has an adverse effect on our ability to sympathize with Ruby- her not blaming herself despite Jaune’s act of kindness makes it difficult to identify with her struggles and any growth she might have experienced.

I think that half of Ruby’s dialogue in all of Volume 4 comes from her reading her letter to Yang in the finale is a fairly harrowing example of where Ruby’s focus is not going. 

Volume 5 did take a step towards addressing this by having Oscar ask Ruby how she remains so cheerful- a scene I firmly believe should have happened a year earlier with Jaune instead of handing it off to the farmboy who never before or after this scene addresses the stresses of the shadow war with Salem. The scene is fairly obviously damage control for Ruby’s lack of reaction to Volume 3 but this scene has no payoff. Ruby just admits she’s sad, we get a traditional hero speech about moving forward and then the status quo resets for Ruby’s next adventure in sitting around a house.

To cut this rant short, Volumes 4 and 5 do very little with Ruby and the opportunity for development that the Fall of Beacon presented. Rather than having a hopeful naive child face reality, something Roman was trying to do with his dying words, Ruby just backtracks and almost flanderizes into this upbeat chipmunk who spews out inspirational speeches. Ruby’s never allowed to grow in 4 or 5 and her character stagnates as a consequence. A pivotal moment for Ruby should have been her confrontation with Cinder at Haven (something I’ve written about before) and seeing Weiss get stabbed, but Cinder refuses to acknowledge her for the entire battle and she’s unconscious when Weiss drops. Two moments that should have defined her character... and Ruby sidesteps both of them and the challenges therein. 

If I may repeat myself, half of Ruby’s dialogue in V4 comes from her letter to Yang in the finale. Half of her dialogue is in the finale of the season. If that doesn’t speak about bad agency and character handling I’m afraid I don’t know what does. 

And all of this leads us into...

2) Ask about the eyes! (or: Ruby’s lack of agency)

I’m sure if you’ve been a part of the fandom you’ve heard this a thousand times, so I’ll keep this quick:

Ruby’s eyes are supposedly the key to stopping the Grimm and the only reason Cinder was defeated at the end of Volume 3, and will almost certainly play a role in fighting Salem. Despite knowing about them thanks to Qrow and spending a significant amount of time with Qrow and Ozpin, people who knew her mother (a fellow Silver Eyed Warrior) intimately well, Ruby never asks about the eyes during the month she spends with Ozpin and Qrow in the Mistral House. There’s no logical reason in or out of the narrative for her to not immediately ask about this when she reached the house and when the eyes manifest again in the Battle of Haven, no fuss is made about them and they don’t get acknowledged for the rest of the volume.

... OK that was relatively quick. But put bluntly, Ruby not asking about her eyes or Summer has crippled her development. Summer’s death would be an almost childishly simple way to give Ruby a personal stake in the fight against Salem, since it’s all but been confirmed (”We’ve dealt with their kind before”) that Summer was slain by a member of Salem’s cabal. It speaks poorly about Ruby’s priority levels and the agency of herself, Ozcar and Qrow that Ruby never stops to ask either of them about the eyes and instead decides to ask Ozpin if his cane is the Beacon Relic. 

There is however a meta out of universe reason, in that Miles and Kerry aren’t ready to ask about the eyes yet. In my post about why the birds twist failed to land, I mentioned this as an aside that Miles and Kerry have a particular fondness for cliffhangers and plot twists, and while this works sometimes, it means that it can take a fair while for them to answer questions that would otherwise spoil their little tricks and twists in advance. Ruby asking about the eyes would ruin whatever twist is tied to them- be it that they steal life energy or have the risk of blinding her- so she... doesn’t. And there isn’t even a throwaway line about her referencing the existence of her Silver Eyes. 

If V4 or 5 had just had a scene of Ruby about to fight a Grimm like say, the Geist and trying to manifest them or just having a scene where she explains she’s trying to activate the powers, it would at least show initiative on her part- she would be at least trying to activate her powers since she knows they pose a threat to the Grimm and Cinder. But she doesn’t. In fact, Ruby herself never even says the word “silver” after Volume 3. At this point any explanation of the Silver Eyes is going to feel... almost too little too late. It wouldn’t feel natural anymore, since the information was held back because it would make for a better twist or some nonsense. 

3) The Squeak

I mean no offense to Lindsay Jones, she’s a capable actress and by all accounts an all-around good person. I love Kimball from Red vs Blue and Lindsays’ other appearances for Rooster Teeth have proven she has great comedic timing and dramatic chops. But that said... Ruby’s voice was awful in Volume 5.

Lindsay has always been on the record as disliking how Ruby sounded in Volume 1- too much like herself, far too old sounding for a 15 year old girl, to the point where she’d like to go back and re-dub Volume 1. I get that, especially hating how your voice sounds since I work in radio and I know that pain, and I think how Lindsay evolved the voice over Volumes 2 and 3 was a great place to keep Ruby’s voice until she grew up and went back to the Volume 1 voice. The problem is that in the above video, Lindsay evidently never stopped upping the pitch. Ruby now sounds almost like a caricature of herself and one that steadily worsens each passing volume- I’ve made my dislike of “This is my fight too!” plain as day on various occasions on Discord. I don’t want to harp too much on this, like I said I deeply respect Lindsay’s other work, but this is a list of why the fandom is cold on Ruby and unfortunately for Miss Jones... her voice is one of those reasons, however petty it may seem. If you do ever read this Lindsay:

(still gotta support Lindsay for being the only person in RT at the moment who seems to want Ruby to have a breaking point because moooooooooooooood)

4) Decreasing skill levels

More than any other character, Ruby was the one most hit on a fighting-level by Monty’s passing. In hindsight having a weapon such as a scythe was going to spell trouble for Ruby’s fight scenes- scythes are hilariously impractical weapons in real life and aren’t made for fighting. There’s a reason most farmers didn’t bring their scythes with them when they went to war and were taught the spear.

With Monty, Ruby was still given flashy choreography and her scythe’s recoil was used to make it slightly more practical in a straight fight. In the opening to Ruby vs Neo and the Red Trailer she looks lethal with the thing. 

The problem lies in how Ruby’s skills have waned since then, thanks to not only the general nerf everyone took across the board, but Ruby’s scythe took in particular. Ruby’s only seriously used her scythe once, in the V4 Character Short. Otherwise, she hasn’t gotten to cut loose in the show since then, meaning Ruby’s been reduced to running around and sniping or doing... this...

You thought I was done bitching about the weapon spinning but joke’s on you, I’m never done bitching about the weapon spinning

This has been Ruby’s fights for the past two years. In a show that prides itself on fights, Ruby’s last good fight being more than two volumes ago paints a poor picture in the eyes of many, especially in light of the Death Battle team admitting that they can’t have Ruby fight Maka from Soul Eater until Ruby gets a few more feats to be judged by (which still reads to me like “we need Ruby to do some more bullshit feats so we can BS a win for her” after the whole Yang/Tifa debacle). This also ties in with Ruby’s lack of activity in the Battle of Haven- it’s Raven, a low-rent villain, who gets the standout fight in the volume, while Ruby’s left headbutting Mercury. The protagonist of the show is left with little of the agency.

And speaking of Mercury...

5) The hand to hand “plot”

Like the Silver Eyes part I’ll keep this quick- Ruby’s hand to hand weakness, while set up in Volumes 1 and 2, still comes out of nowhere as a random flaw for her to overcome this volume and feels like a poor attempt to give her something to do during Volume 5. Her headbutting Mercury required Merc to take a massive dive in intelligence and skill, and ultimately was her only significant moment in the Haven Battle outside of getting smacked over the head. The worst part of this “arc” to me is how no one else gets anything from it- you could genuinely make an arc of each member of RNJR teaching Oscar something (Ren with Aura and CQC, Nora with strength training, Ruby with weapon repairs, etc). Why not tie in the conversation about Semblances by having Ruby train to use her speed semblance in close quarters? With her speed, Ruby would be nearly impossible to dodge in a fist-fight, or she could engage in lighting fast strikes while withdrawing before the opponent and counter.

Also while I’m offering suggestions, let me point one thing out. Ruby has a lot of leg strength. Like, a lot. Why not skip teaching her to use her hands and train Ruby in kickboxing or another leg-based martial art? Yang already has the punchy-punch category fairly locked down, so giving Ruby a kick-based style would make for more dramatic fights in future.

It would certainly have been more dynamic than this abomination that I am loathe to call “the conclusion of an arc.” 

In conclusion, Ruby as a protagonist is... flawed. She’s a character I want to like more than I do, the simple soul who knows the world is cold and dark but aspires to change it herself. But various conflicts hold her character back, most primarily the writing team’s own refusal to let her have agency by making her refuse to acknowledge her special powers or her dead mother. Add in lackluster performances fighting wise and an absolute slog of a “training arc,” and Ruby fails to stand out. Volume 5 reached the point where Ruby was an absolute blank slate of a character, content to make bland speeches about companionship at the pitch of a chipmunk addicted to helium while the mystery of her dead mother and special heritage practically slapped her in the face.

I am very much aware that over the Volume 5 hiatus, much has been said about Ruby and her lack of growth/dive in popularity. Hell I’m even linking to some at the bottom of the post as recommendations for further elaboration on my points and alternate perspectives. I know I’m at a well that has been well and truly dried of content. But with Volume 6 on the horizon I think it’s worth keeping Ruby’s agency/lack thereof in mind with the premiere looming. Ruby is a problem that the show does need to fix, especially after Volume 5 and the numerous story opportunities that were presented and never followed up on for Ruby- Weiss’s stabbing, Cinder’s return, Summer, etc. Her big character moment in the back half of Volume 5? Saying “I’m angry.” They really did pick the perfect character moment for Ruby.

Ruby has been said to take a more direct role in Volume 6, and Lindsay has implied that Ruby will finally have her breaking point this volume. If this turns out to be the case, I genuinely look forward to see Ruby regaining the charm that made her likable in the original volumes. But if all the talk about Ruby getting more focus turns out to just be hot air or fails to fix any of the cracks in her character that have been present for two volumes in a row now? I’ll be tragically disappointed, partly at the show and mostly for myself in jumping the gun in writing this. I want Ruby to be more than a glorified cheerleader in her own damn show. She’s what got people hyped back with the Red trailer. Let her be that heroine again Rooster Teeth. Ruby inspires people in the show, now let’s see her inspire hope in the fans.

Thank you for reading. 

Additional recommended sources:

#rwby #rwde #ruby rose #rwby analysis #silver eyes #crtq #jaune arc #cinder fall #character analysis #ozpin #roman torchwick #roman was such a good foil for ruby in hindsight

[thefantheorist]

Hook isn’t the Villain?

Hello all my fellow Fan Theorists! Okay, so... I know this is a Peter Pan theory. I also know it isn’t a super popular movie anymore or anything, but just bear with me here. So we all know the Disney classic Peter Pan, most remembered for its infamous scene with the Native Americans because...

How on Earth could you forget this scene? Anywho, despite the movie’s pratfalls, it was entertaining enough to be a comprehensible, well told story, where the characters are likable and none of them are too annoying, except for maybe the lost boys at times. Also, the fact that this movie decided to make a major character be completely silent (and by silent I mean speaks no words) is actually pretty commendable. But this isn’t a review, this is a theory, and on that note: what if I were to tell you that the actual villain of this story, is Peter?

So keep in mind, the roles of “antagonist” and “protagonist” do not necessarily mean bad and good, respectively. The protagonist is just another word for the main character, while the antagonist is just the person who opposes the protagonist, neither of them have to be good or bad, they just need to contradict each other. That said, let’s take another look at this story. This story is told from Wendy’s perspective, meaning that all the information that Wendy has on Hook, and all the other characters save for her brothers for that matter, has been told to her by Peter. Ergo, the stories about Hook are being told the way Peter wants them to be told. He tells these tales of swashbuckling adventures, battling the evil captain hook and saving fair maidens, and people seem to believe him. The mermaids, for one, find Peter and his past deeds so intriguing that they are literally willing to drown Wendy to keep Peter to themselves. Tiger Lily (pictured above) is actually willing to die in order to keep Peter’s location secret. What? Why would she do that? Especially since Peter and the lost boys seem to have no prior relationship with the Native Americans, actually, Peter even tells the Lost Boys to go pick a fight with them. Why would you do that to the peoples of the girl that you are romantically interested in? Unless, Tiger Lily has heard of Peter and his deeds and wants to protect the “hero” despite not knowing him personally.

Want more proof? The beginning of the movie starts with Wendy telling stories about Peter Pan, probably ones that she heard from her mother or ones that she just made up. And I imagine that there is a slight air of truth to those stories, if her mother did in fact visit Neverland when she was a child. But she barely even remembers her adventures, so it’s safe to say that those stories aren’t all that accurate. But later on in that beginning scene we meet Peter, who we learn likes to go to Wendy’s window and listen to her tell those stories, many of which Wendy seems to have told pretty often. And why does Peter want Wendy to go back to Neverland to be the Lost Boys’ mother? Oh that’s right, to tell her stories. If those stories about Peter were in fact true, then why wouldn’t Peter just tell the Lost Boys those stories himself?

After Peter, Wendy, and the brothers make it to Neverland, Tinkerbell tries to shoot Wendy out of the sky, which is not a good thing, but you notice how quick Peter is to condemn Tink and not take any responsibility for himself? Maybe he should’ve been like, “Sorry that I abandoned you and left you to take care of yourself in a world you know nothing about where you aren’t a very capable flyer, just so that I could go taunt my arch nemesis?” Instead, Peter literally forgets all about it mere minutes after it happened.

Oh and speaking of a nemesis, let’s talk about Hook for a second. Hook is clearly not a good guy. He threatens to kill multiple children, is mean and cruel to his crew and his partner Smee, and he straight up murders someone within the first 20 minutes of the movie. However, he has clearly suffered a traumatic incident, one that left him in constant fear for his life, one that could be triggered by the sound of a ticking clock, one that left him an anxiety ridden mess. The incident, getting his hand fed to a crocodile by Peter Pan, was the whole reason that Hook was out to get him. This is treated as a serious condition in the movie. And yet, our charming protagonist Peter uses that memory to taunt and mock Hook, only fueling the fire.

Peter Pan is expressly a child, the boy who never grew up. He behaves like one too, acting petty and making rash decisions without understanding consequence, but he also doesn’t know when he has taken things too far, just like any child. He cut off Hook’s hand because he thought that it was part of a game, and like any child, he gets upset when anyone interrupts his fantasies, like when Tink tried to kill Wendy. The story of Peter Pan isn’t one about embracing your childish wonder and taking it into adulthood, it is a cautionary tale about how not having the guidance of a parent or other to help you grow into a healthy adult is incredibly dangerous, a detail that Wendy echoes.

Peter Pan tells the story of a boy who never properly let go of his childhood and didn’t develop into a healthy adult, which is why he acts so poorly in the movie. While Hook is by no means a Saint, he’s not even a good person, Peter is the story’s villain.

Hello all and happy Monday! I’m eager to hear what you guys think about this post, even though this isn’t one of the more popular Disney movies and it certainly isn’t gonna get a lot of notes. So next week, I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is gonna be epic, so check back next Monday at noon to see what’s in store for you Thank you all so much for reading and I hope you have a wonderful week.

If you want to check out some of my other Disney theories, here ya go:

Cinderella Theory: The Prince Isn’t Blind! Why the Prince from Cinderella (1950) didn’t recognize the love of his life.

Frozen Theory: Who is Hans? The symbolism of reflections in Frozen.

#disney theory #disney theories #peter pan #tinkerbell #wendy darling #john darling #michael darling #captain hook #disney's peter pan #disney classics #fairytales #pixie dust #mr. smee

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 9: The 100 2x01, The 48

Okay, settling down to rewatch 2x01, the start of my favorite season...

I love this Clarke so much. Badass Clarke, sneaky Clarke, a Clarke who will fearlessly do what she has to in order to escape and to get to her friends. A Clarke with convictions and guts.

How DO they know everyone’s names lol? Is that ever explained? (ETA: Monty was obviously the informant.)

Mount Weather is one of my favorite parts of this show, honestly. I love that their mission is in part to preserve the beautiful things humanity created, like art; they gave their prisoner Starry Night. The ORIGINAL Starry Night. I just find that very moving. All of these non-essential parts of being human... the show has abandoned them and that’s part of why it’s so hollow for me now, I think.

Level 5: where it all begins and it all ends.

The Clarke/Maya relationship could have been so much more, tbh. Like they had their good moments, like threatening to kill each other etc., but they could have gone deeper.

Surprise! Underground executive branch family dinner! This is the sort of twist I can get behind.

Haha remember when actual delinquents still existed? I joke but truly the later canon has ruined parts of this show for me.

I forgot Tristan survived into 2x01. Not for long. Such Grounder hypocrisy: “That’s one. I lost 300.” He makes it sound as if Finn marched into a village and killed 300 people--they were fucking soldiers on the attack you dum-dum.

“Only our warriors speaking English.” Well that sounds like bullshit based on literally everything we see after this point.

The statue of Lincoln is “the place we go to settle disputes.” First, please don’t say they settle disputes to the death or some nonsense, and second, that’s his namesake... Significant? I mean, objectively, no, but can I make something out of it somehow?

I disliked Luna but she COULD have been so interesting and she and Lincoln COULD have had quite a dynamic. I headcanon them as exes. I want to know their whole backstory tbh. When they met. How. If he wanted to go with her to the sea. If he did perhaps and then came back.

Drink every time someone cauterizes a wound.

You know what else they should have done? Story line about the meeting of Grounder and Sky People medicine. Oh wait that would have taken away from the repetitive war story lines never mind.

That dropship is so fucking impressive. WHERE ARE THE AWARDS FOR THE SET PEOPLE?

And the costume people for those awesome masks.

Am I supposed to feel bad for this Grounder and his charred friend? I do not. Next time, don’t attack the children for no reason and you won’t get burned to a crisp. Easy.

The thing is I can never get behind the Raven + Murphy friendship 100% even though their S5 dynamic looked interesting because he literally fucking shot her and that’s just not a bygones are bygones thing. But they do have personalities that mesh well together so in that way it’s sort of a shame. Also he 10000000000000% had a crush on her don’t even try to argue.

She fired that gun at him. I forgot that. She fired but was out of bullets, that’s the only reason he didn’t die right there. “Yeah I would have shot me too.”

I’m p. sure that’s the real Mount Weather?

I know the Mount Weather people have no leg to stand on when it comes to the Grounders and that they’re...pretty obviously racist, but in their defense--the Grounders were written to be pretty savage, so “savages,” while unforgivably racially tinged, is a fair descriptor of them.

I know I’ve harped on this before but Mount Weather has a judicial system of some sort and it’s possible to press charges there. Somehow. The world building on this show sucks balls.

“They also said you were their leader” is like some retconning, okay. Because you will not convince me that for most of S1 BELLAMY wasn’t the leader in the eyes of the delinquents.

“Kiddo.”

Fucking love Dante. Where are my Dante + Clarke mentor/mentee or ex-mentor/mentee or different-gen-rivals fics?

“We prioritize safety over sentimentality.” As Maya takes blood she absolutely doesn’t need but is having just in case and that she knows comes from someone else’s tortured body because she’s accepted this as something they do, because she’s not sentimental. But she already feels guilty.

Clarke is already using the word “capture.” I had a discussion with someone once about Clarke’s vision of Mount Weather versus, say, Jasper’s, and why it was different and I said some poorly phrased stuff that didn’t really reflect my thoughts and opinions and it still haunts me but I feel like this is...relevant to that. How she immediately feels ‘captured,’ trapped.

Clarke’s devotion to her friends and her people was still so pure and right here.

Dante really does believe he “saved” them. I wonder what his thought process was... I really hate the “savages” so I must save these children? These children look interesting, let’s meet some new friends? She’s right of course that if they were really guests, they could leave.

Multiple crash sites over 100 square miles = I should go on google maps to confirm my Pennsylvania/Farm Station theory but I’m too lazy.

GOD THOSE CLOTHES. I love that Clarke picks the pants and the high heel shiv.

There’s no way there’s actually time for natural selection to work that fast in 97 years and also I’m pretty sure the Sky People are genetically modified because their original pool was way too small for the process Dante is describing but whatever this show is all la-di-da science.

Also: this is how you run an underground Bunker OCTAVIA.

Dante was the only rival/antagonist/whatever Clarke has ever had that rivals her instincts and intelligence yeah I said it; fight me. I know she needed to be on the outside for this season to work but he should have been her mentor. He basically set her up to be mentored and then she ran off and into L who basically destroyed her and she’s never recovered.

THAT REUNION. Heartwarming. Though hard to watch too because this show did both Jasper and Monty so dirty. (Yeah I said that too WHAT OF IT.)

“Dying. Same as you.” Murphy gets all the good lines. That’s why people like him, forget this “redemption arc.”

The Grounder Raven killed was Murphy’s guard and honestly--hilarious. He abandons his post, realizes all his friends are skeletons, pickpockets one, then is shot by what he must initially assume is a dead body. Better character than almost anyone introduced from S3 on.

This cake scene is the most iconic. Jonty were scene stealers stfu. They’re children--basically. They get to act their age. They get to be happy and silly and they loved each other so much.

“Pretend like you’re happy to see me.” / “We are happy to see you.” See? Adorable. I know he’s no cinnamon roll but gosh, adorable.

And then Clarke comes in like secret espionage time and they just look so Tired TM.

I feel like Monty knew, or suspected on some level, that Jasper wasn’t just ‘bummed out’ by Clarke’s suspicions, he was panicking a little.

I can’t believe Jasper and Maya have known each other for like 10 seconds and she’s already seen his O face.

“Clarke’s the only reason we survived.” Um ex-CUSE me but I know you didn’t forget Bellamy’s existence, Jasper.

Clarke’s so smart!

Maya brings out the big guns, literally.

“I’m the one who fired the rockets. Should I not have done that?” is so heartbreaking. Mostly because of the delivery. I love this entire scene. There are like 8 different scenes I love in this episode, like whole-heartedly and truly love.

Clarke’s suspicions really do look like paranoia. Like I see what she’s picking up on, saw it even the first time I watched this ep, but there’s a sense in which she does appear irrational.

There’s actually something kinda funny about Bellamy running out with a spear in one scene, looking around blankly, and then getting chained up as a prisoner in the next scene. At least he inspired his little protege Monroe. Scenes like this are the reason she joined Pike in S3.

Tristan’s like “Who are these fucking children running at me and screaming?” Then he gets shot in the head. Goodbye Tristan you won’t be missed.

“We’re here now. Everything’s going to be okay.” This sounds like Kane playing out a hero fantasy he’s had since he was a child. Except he’s talking to two mud-stained kids who are looking at him skeptically instead of, like, a captured heroine or something.

I feel like they set up this conflict where the adults/Sky People elite come in and, like Kane says explicitly, assume they’re in charge and everyone will fall in line, but then the delinquents don’t see it that way or want that: they have their own priorities (their friends) and their own relationships (Finn and Bell don’t even LIKE each other but they’re still communicating by look) and their own knowledge (the pipes that allow them to move through the dropship camp quickly and without permission). But then... it sort of plays into the rest of the season...but not that much?? Not as much as I would like.

“You are not animals. There are rules. Laws. You are not in control here anymore.”

This show sacrificed a lot of complex relationships to just either make people buddy-buddy who had no reason to be or just arbitrarily assign relationships to scenes or episodes without regard for continuity at all.

Raven took Jasper’s goggles.... never over this.

How was bringing Octavia to TonDC faster than collecting some beetles for her to eat?

“Loss, pain, regret. Time eases these things.” I’d say this is the sort of line the show should be repeating but God when it gets a line in its teeth it never lets the fuck go so I guess it’s better this one remains pristine.

I find Dante very sympathetic but also so creepy.

They weren’t really patrolling for other people, were they? Because like...surely they would have found them. They’re at the dropship and close by. He was just bullshitting here. But why don’t they want to make even more new friends?

Dante’s stationery is presidential themed lol. Glad we stocked up the bunkers properly with the important stuff.

The crashed Alpha Station is beautiful. I believe this was the first time it was shown on the show? Ugh, this whole sequence with the music, it’s perfect and so touching.

Jaha is the most tragic and heartbreaking figure on this show. He also doesn’t get the appreciation he deserves. Just...the image of a man alone in space, talking to his loved ones, hoping they can hear them, not knowing if they can... I almost can’t handle it. I used to be very unsure if I liked where his story line went after this (seeing it in its entirety, I defend it) but surely he could not have died this way.

....I really gotta sleep now.

#the year 2018 #2018: fandom thoughts #2018: the 100 s2

[casuistor]

Did you listen to the NY demo songs of the musical that were put online recently? Some of the songs that weren't officially released are now available. Was wondering if you have any thoughts about them... Adrienne Warren's Misa in I'm Ready sounds v different compared to Fūka Yuzuki!

I am so happy the NY Demo got leaked tbh, I’ve been listening to it nonstop for the last couple of days and lemme just say – even though I don’t fully agree with all the characterization choices, the demo is gorgeous ;~; THANK YOU for the excuse to ramble about this, haha. 

I’ll outline my thoughts on the songs that weren’t released previously under the read more, but just keep in mind that these are just some quick opinions on the songs rather than my thoughts on the demo vs the final versions of the songs b/c then this would be writing for weeks and nobody wants that textwall, haha. 

…I say this is going to be abbreviated and then it turned out long-ish anyway.

Where is the Justice?

Yes I know this was released previously, but the version that was officially released cut a minute out from the song, so I’m commenting, fight me.

While I think the song is overall too focused around the issues with the criminal justice in America for a story that is supposedly set in Japan, I think the verse that was removed was more reflective of the sorts of things Light in canon might think. 

That said I don’t fully agree that Light would argue that “draining the color from within until we’re back to seeing black and white and wrong and right again” is actually a good thing, especially considering canon Light does evaluate mitigating circumstances in his evaluation of who is guilty.

Overall, I think the song does a good job of establishing Light’s character as a kid who, despite having some deeply flawed views about justice, does genuinely care about fairness and has his heart in the right place.

To this day though, I’m not convinced that manga! Light is the kind of kid who would spark this debate in his classroom. He very much seems to be the kind of person who keeps his cynicism about the world to himself.  If you ask me, his “ic” response would be more along the lines of “sure, the justice system isn’t perfect, but it’s our job as the next generation to keep improving it, isn’t it?”  But that doesn’t make a cool song, lmao. 

Hurricane

Yes, this one was also leaked before, but you’re not stopping me from talking about Weather Metaphors The Song™ now that it’s out in HQ. 

Why. WHY.

I think the problem I have with this song is that there’s really not much character development during this song. Light is just immediately sucked into a power fantasy and this is really… not reflective of Light’s character in the series. 

I’m Ready

LOVE. FUCKING LOVE ADRIENNE WARREN’S VOICE. 

But i really don’t agree that Adrienne is a good casting choice with Misa. I LOVE her voice and her singing, but she’s… too much of a power house and Misa is just not that at all. Misa needed to be bubbly and radiate cuteness rather than maturity. 

Hearing this rendition of Misa really made me understand why the Korean production went the direction they did with Jung Sun Ah’s Misa though, and it comes as much less of a headscratcher now. 

I think these lyrics are also not PG enough for Misa’s idol image which sounds ridiculous b/c it’s overall a pretty tame song, lmao

Specifically it’s lines like “let me kiss you and then let me kiss you again” that are maybe not… squeaky clean enough for the image that idols in Japan have to project. 

We All Need A Hero

Perfection. Absolute perfection.  I love that they threw in that dumb light pun lmao. 

Honestly this almost made me cry and I wish I knew who sings this song as they were the perfect Sayu singing voice. Young, sweet, optimistic, sincere sounding? Nailed it. (Edit: I am told that the singer is Laura Osnes)

I am VERY much intrigued by the fact that this song was written as a solo in the NY Demo as opposed to the odd duet that it became in the final version. This makes much more sense to me and avoids weird/creepy parallels between Sayu and Misa that the final version forced by making it a duet. 

The Game Begins

I am so distracted by the line “for even the perfect crime has the perfect flaws” because this is just not logically coherent.

ON LESS GRIPEY TERRITORY – having the whole demo did put into perspective for me why the Weather Metaphors had to be, and I think it’s because they may have been going for a nature vs machine type of theme… and while I can appreciate it poetically (?) I just don’t agree that it fit thematically with the character of L and Light. 

Like why… does L keep making tech metaphors? Is this supposed to be a quirk of his the same way that the posture/diet is? I think in a way this was poorly executed and characterization was ultimately sacrificed in favor of poetic analogies. 

The literal first line “empty your mind of any feelings” is very unlike L to do. L is a detective who works heavily based on his intuition and his gut instincts. He did not tackle the Kira case like a super computer interested in objectivity and eliminating bias. That’s just not what happened in canon. 

I stand very much corrected on these lyrics as they are “empty your mind of any theories.” My bad, I don’t have the best ear for lyrics. But that said, doesn’t this contradict the fact that he already took an action based on a theory with the LLT plan? 

Overall I think this song took too many poetic liberties with L, and tried too hard to make him sound intelligent by throwing in “smart sounding words” like ~calculus~ and ~evolution~ even though those words didn’t actually make that much sense in the context he was applying them in? 

“A stronger mind and evolution determines who wins the game” – for example. Evolution and adaptation aren’t synonyms, but he uses them as such anyway and this kind of clumsiness, though very lyrically pretty, is a bit… idk, not quite what I associate with L myself.

In terms of the overall performance – lovely. My issues are 100% the lyrics on this one. Jarrod Specter performs fantastically. 

There Are Lines

Fight me this song is best song and I honestly did not like this song much in the final version of it.  

J’ADORE how salty Soichiro is about L’s method of offering up Lind L Tailor as a decoy. His anger seems so genuine and believable in this, and I love how it’s so obvious that he has no idea that this is applicable to Light too, since they don’t force that dumb “KAMI NI NARU!!!!” line to ram the subtext down your throat.  (… I say as I claim that I wasn’t going to talk about comparisons to the final Japanese songs, ahem). 

That said, was Soichiro actually that salty about L’s tactics there with LLT in the manga? No. At least not to the extreme that he lost a lot of respect for L for it. In fact, manga!Soichiro seemed impressed by the results L achieved and didn’t really seem to dwell on the moral implications of L’s actions. 

tl;dr not the most ic or canonically based interpretation of Soichiro, but I am standing by this man. 

Personally, I think this is an improvement on the character AND LET ME JUST SAY THIS SONG MADE ME REALLY WISH THEY’D ADAPTED THE YOTSUBA ARC IN THIS MUSICAL??? Can you imagine this song as a reprise as Soichiro shoots Light while they’re in the car? 

You’re welcome

Secrets and Lies

I cannot emphasize how much I love when Soichiro calls out L for his awful morals in addition to calling out Kira’s. This is so nice -w-

I am also deeply enamored with the fact that L also outright says “I don’t care who gets hurt now, as long as I get one more shot” because fucking yes – L is so brazen about this in the manga, and most adaptations try to sweeten his attitude. 

I enjoy that it is constantly reinforced that neither Light nor L are in the right because there are constant parallels between the two and the two are criticized by the narrative. 

Mortals and Fools

“What I see in your eyes is a counterfeit emotion” – the truest thing ever said about the manga!Misa’s feelings about love. 

Admittedly, Demo!Rem annoys me as a character though. It’s not a problem with casting – Carrie’s singing is lovely and I think they made a good choice there. This is a bit of an aside I guess, but I just don’t understand how it is believable that Rem actually romantically fell in love with Misa as the song “When Love Comes” implies after all this love is for mortals and fools lark and Misa… doesn’t really seem to do anything to win Rem’s love in a romantic sense of it. Platonic love I can squint and buy certainly, but not romantic based on the contents of “Mortals and Fools”, “Borrowed Time,” and “When Love Comes.” Maybe something in the actual script/dialogue justifies it? But with the material available so far, I’m not seeing it.

I think also Demo!Rem’s fixation on the notion of love is something that’s… overexaggerated from her more subtle curiosity over the issue in the manga. I just don’t think I’d agree that the melancholy tone demo!Rem has when she says she tries and fails to really understand love as an emotion is true to the manga. Manga!Rem seems to have a more “god Misa, I get this is important to you but could you maybe slow down” kind of vibe to her. Melancholy doesn’t really seem to be it, exactly.

For the sake of clarity – the issue I have is not that Rem’s character was changed from the manga to make her develop romantic interests in Misa. That is perfectly a-okay and it’s actually pretty cool that they went this route with demo!Rem. 

My issue is that from a narrative perspective, Rem’s character development in the demo seems underdeveloped and not optimally executed given that she is a) literally not human and b) as she herself points out is a shinigami who fundamentally does not understand why humans idealize romantic love. 

Shinigami themselves in the context of this musical are not shown to idealize love within their own culture. Ryuk and Rem both seem to find it funny or baffling/futile indicating that this is not a culture that parallels human culture in its zealous overvaluation of romantic love as a be all end all goal of life. Shinigami, according to the musical’s own internal logic, are not amatonormative.. 

My pet peeve exists specifically because it is somewhat frustrating to me, an aroace person, when even non-humans who were very firm on not relating to romantic love (and yes, “Mortals and Fools” makes Rem come down more strongly on that side compared to “Zankoku na Yume”) and have no reason to inherently want to experience or idealize romantic love the same way human society normalizes it for humans, starts extolling the virtues of romantic love as the pinnacle of interpersonal relationships.

I can fully respect that this is not a pet peeve that most other people will have, or even be inclined to view from this perspective and that to many, none of these things matter and that’s fine! Just keep in mind that I would find this just as pet peeve-y if Rem were a male shinigami and would have no problems whatsoever with any of this had Rem been a human girl or if shinigami culture as a whole been portrayed differently in the musical itself. Also please note, I am only speaking for myself. I’m sure other aroace folk will have different opinions as well.   Ironically enough, Rem in the final live version, I can more readily see as developing romantic feelings for Misa precisely because “Inochi no Kachi” was written the way it was and it is a damn shame that that is not the direction that was eventually taken with the character in the live productions as they seem to view Rem as having more maternal instincts. (…which, I’d again disagree is an inference of the manga, as I do think Rem’s feelings about Misa were very platonic in a ‘friends’-ish way rather than a parental way.)

tl;dr All I’m saying is that I think demo!Rem should have gotten more charater development, and it is a shame that she did not. 

On a performative note – it is really odd that Rem’s voice is higher than Misa’s. I don’t think I’d make this call. 

Borrowed Time

Adrienne delivers yet another killer performance!!

I know I said I wasn’t gonna make comparisons but I have to say that between “Borrowed Time” and “Inochi no Kachi” Borrowed Time is just so much more IC for manga!Misa. 

I’m glad they based this song around something Misa actually said in the manga since that line “Just kill me. I was supposed to die that day anyway” is actually something that stuck with me for a very long time since it says so much about where Misa was in her life.

In the end, I guess I find it more convincing that Misa would be singing a song more centered around herself than singing a less me me me focused song about the virtues of sacrificial love as she ultimately is a person (in the manga) who is pretty selfish and focuses mostly on her own perspective. 

Which is not to say that demo!Misa is really reflective of manga!MIsa because I don’t think that’s the case at all. 

The Way It Ends

Blurgh more machine/tech metaphors and analogies from L…..I still don’t like this, sorry. He does not view himself as a robot in the manga, so it just comes out of left field for me.

I think the part of this song that lets me down is Jeremy’s delivery. He’s not !!!!!!! enough for what is supposed to be a victorious moment for Light. He has so much less energy and power than he did when he was singing Weather Metaphors, and it really shouldn’t be that way in my opinion. 

On that last “a minute more.” Jeremy sounds weirdly remorseful, though I guess it’s hard to interpret the exact emotion behind that without an accompanying facial expression. 

But speaking of delivery holy shit, Jarrod’s delivery as L is spot on. I’m kinda stunned by the range of emotion in his voice for this one: confusion, defiance, anger and that hint of regret that his life is coming to an end as he goes into “like a closing door.” It’s so… good?????? 

Overall I think the NY Demo is lovely and it has made me really happy to be able to listen to it after years of wondering what on earth it was like, lmao. 

I know it sounds like I have a ton of gripes, but just keep in mind that a) even I consider these gripes pretty minor and they didn’t really hurt my enjoyment of the demo as a whole, and b) I think that adaptations have every right to make changes and take creative liberties with their source material. It’s important to do that in order to keep material fresh and bring in new thoughts and perspectives to the original. 

#Anonymous #asks #death note musical #anonymous

[ladyloveandjustice]

Summer 2017 Anime Overview: Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul and The Reflection

My classic anime overview posts are making a comeback! I watched 7 different anime in the Summer 2017, so we’ve got a lot to talk about- so much so that I’ll do a couple anime each post rather than just doing one giant post.

I fully believe in saving the best for last, so we’ll rank and review these anime in order from worst to best. Which means we’ll be starting with the anime I found the weakest out of what I watched this season. Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul and The Reflection. Are both of them bad anime? Or are they just not quite as a good as the other fare? Let’s dive in and find out!

Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul

Yep, this was easily the worst anime I watched this season. Not animation-wise, the art was very nice (though not quite as good as its prequel). But story-wise? WOW. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an anime- or a story period- end that badly.

And unlike a lot of people, I didn’t really come into this anime expecting much. Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, the first season, was a beautifully animated but incredibly shallow adventure romp with a messy ending that managed to be both cliche and nonsensical in how it fridged the main female character. It was fun for the most part, but also eyerollingly trope-y and sloppy storytelling wise, with fairly 2D characters. I came into this season expecting much the same. And for the first half-ish of the anime that was what I got. It certainly wasn’t well written, it was sexist, it was cliched, but it worked okay for what it was, which was a silly swords and sorcery story where you could just turn your brain off and enjoy the eye candy. 

There wasn’t much to the characters, but they were pleasant and likable enough. Nina, the lead of the story, was just kinda dragged along by the plot and didn’t have much going on (her main conflict is that when she gets turned on by a dude she turns into a dragon yes i’m serious), but her gung-ho attitude made her fun to watch. There was also an wacky all-lady prison break midway through the show that was kinda awesome.

 (I should note though, one of the characters is a very fantastical take on Jeanne D’Arc. And she’s portrayed  as someone who sucks at fighting if she doesn’t have the gods on her side because women are weak or whatever I guess! She finds some fulfillment only when a god pulls a Virgin Mary on her and forcibly impregnates her with an angel son. After this, her whole character revolves around her son. I had a lot of problems with that for obvious reasons).

But then. OH BUT THEN. I thought the first season’s denouement and end was messy, but I HADN’T SEEN NOTHIN’. Not only was this ending horrendous, it managed to damage all the characters involved (except for the zombie girl, Rita, who is too cool to be ruined by anything) and even basically damage the first season. If I cared enough to go back and watch that season, this ending would make it a sour experience, basically, just from how thoroughly the plot and characters from that season were mangled by this follow-up. Nothing redeemable was left in its wake.

Basically the whole story was overtaken by one of the most poorly conceived love interests I’ve ever seen. Nina’s beloved, Charioce, was a super sexy dude who had a few tiny flaws, like how he’d, y’know, massacred an entire race and also slaughtered, enslaved and tortured yet ANOTHER race (even putting them in gladiator style death matches for entertainment) and unjustly imprisoned a literal saint of a woman and told her he was only keeping her alive so he could murder her small child in front of her. 

But you see guys, he danced with Nina a couple times and is super hot and his mom’s dead which is sad so it’s okay that he did a little genocide, tried to kill all Nina’s friends (one of whom was ten) and threw her in jail. I’m serious. That was the shows logic. Turns out the reason for all this was it was some plan to unseal the dragon a character had been sacrificed to seal for the next hundred years in Genesis. (So he effectively rendered her death totally meaningless). He unsealed it just so he could kill it for good . The only explanation we get for his double dose of genocide was that ONE of the races has a superweapon he needed to kill a dragon. Yep, no explanation given as to why he needed to do kill all those beings or enslave them or put them in death matches or personally torment a woman who did nothing to him, but the show sure treated it like it explained everything and meant we were totally supposed to forgive AND feel sorry for this sexy, sexy tyrant.

(In the end, the genocide and slavery ends up being a footnote: everyone loves Charioce because he killed a dragon, the demons are being payed low wages instead of being enslaved so everything’s fine now, no justice for those who were slaughtered, no consequences for the oppressors, no reparations made, no word on whether the death camps and many other atrocities even stopped happening, nothing.)

Nina being in love with him damaged her irreparably as a character too, even though she was perfectly okay before that- it was just so infuriating that she could set aside all the people he killed and the fact he’d tormented her friends because he was a smexy dancer. I get what they were going for-a kind of starcrossed Disney ~love isn’t rational~ type thing. And “love isn’t rational” is just the laziest writing copout ever, I’m so sick of it. 

You can sell a romance where one party has done horrible things and the other one loves them anyway if you have the writing skill. But in order to sell that romance as understandable, you need to make the audience like that character too. The character needs to be actually endearing and interesting in some way.That way when so-and-so is tormented about how she loves him despite the things he’s done, the audience is tormented for the same reason. But there was no reason for Nina to be hopelessly in love with Charioce. Dude had the personality of a wet paper towel- I don’t think he emoted once the entire anime, even when he was on the verge of death. He didn’t offer her any invaluable support or guidance to Nina either. Yet she at one point said she’d choose the ENTIRE WORLD over him if it came down to it. A guy she danced with like twice! 

The worst thing about the Nina/Charioce romance is how a bunch of characters were literally sacrificed for it. One of the main characters of the show got himself killed shielding Charioce from those he had wronged, despite the fact Charioce had done absolutely nothing to warrant such devotion and said character didn’t even have a meaningful relationship with him. It was a comically anticlimatic death too, it was out of nowhere, the other characters barely emoted about it with even his supposed best friend basically shrugging it off. 

The other person sacrificed solely to add drama to Nina and Charioce’s lurve was Nina’s ten year old friend, who was unceremoniously shanked from behind  after being a major character for most of the season. It was so cruel and pointless, I felt sure a magic resurrection was coming for the kid, but nope- he was killed off solely to cause some drama between the good guys and Charioce because the genocide apparently wasn’t enough to make our heroes mad at him. Nina does finally get mad at him, but only for ten minutes, then she and almost everyone else instantly forgave him upon learning he didn’t TECHNICALLY directly kill this one kid.

 Even though he HAD been trying to kill the kid ALL SEASON and the bounty he put on this kids head was still pretty much the direct cause of his death. But nah,he didn’t like, specifically tell the killer “hey go murder this small child” , he just heavily implied anyone who did it would get a reward from him, so it’s all fine. Even the kid’s grieving mother and father figure eventually forgave Charioce about this for no apparent reason. 

Speaking of pointlessness, the cherry on top of the shit sundae was that the dragon all these characters were sacrificed to kill? The one whose death was supposedly the payoff worth all this genocide and melodrama? It was revealed in the last minute of the story that Charioce DIDN’T EVEN MANAGE TO KILL IT. Rendering the entire mess of a narrative COMPLETELY MOOT.

Seriously, if you want to see how overfocusing on badly written heterosexual romances can destroy an entire narrative, this series is a prime example. If you want to see an example or writers thinking a male character can be forgiven for any atrocity and win the female lead’s heart as long as he’s stoic and sexy and manly about it, this series will show you. This show demonstrates the worst pitfalls of romance narratives- writers seem to think as long as it’s an attractive man and woman getting together, they don’t have to bother with characterization or logic to sell their connection.

it’s a real shame- poor Nina could have been a compelling lead. There was stuff there that could have been developed into something cool had the writers cared at all- she could turn into a dragon, it was mentioned she was looked down on for not being fully dragon, she came from a rural village and was fairly innocent and didn’t know much about the world, her father died tragically- but rather than explore any of that, it was decided because she was a woman, her entire arc should be about her swooning and crying over Bishie McKillsaLot, never mind anything else.

Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul could have been a shallow but entertaining show like its predecessor. In the end though, the only thing entertaining about it by the end was how hard it crashed and burned. 

The Reflection

The Reflection isn’t quite as bad as it’s reputation in the anime community right now suggests. Which is not to say it’s a good show. It’s not good. But it’s definitely far from the worst anime I’ve see and has a few interesting aspects.

This show is a collaboration between an anime studio and Stan Lee, (who I guess really likes being involved in anime- he’s done this before with Heroman) and it follows a group of superheroes. The basic premise is that three years ago, a strange light and smoke hit people around the world. Some were killed, some gained superpowers. Those who gained powers were called ‘The Reflected”. The world hates and fears them, in true Marvel style. Now a villain named Wraith is kidnapping people for mysterious reasons. 

The Reflection is a messy show, which is apparent just from the animation. The colors are very flat and the lines are very thick, which seems to be an attempt to capture the classic comic book feel. But the thing is, old comics chose to have a bright color palette, or at least a highly contrasting one, for good reason. if you do that kind of style with a dark color palette, it ends up looking very muddy. Unfortunately, that’s what The Reflection chose to do. This was especially egregious in the last episode, where having the darkly colored characters against a dark sky made it very hard to tell what was happening.  On top of that, the animation was very limited in general.

There’s also a lot a standard superhero stories here that are not given a fresh spin- we have the angsty product of a lab experiment, the shallow, show-offhero who learns superheroing is SRS BUSINESS after his loved ones are killed due to his negligence and most disappointingly, a main villain whose only motivation is that he wants to plunge the world into a vague, generic sort of darkness.

Some stuff is just straight up not explained, which made the finale confusing- we see a flashback that is supposed to make us forgive a character for his actions, but it’s so incoherent and quick it reveals nothing. Nor is the villain really explored in a way that makes sense (save for an extremely on the nose message about “darkness”, which was repeated so often in the episode I got sick of hearing it), his actions are unclear and the whole thing is just generally clunky. It seems like they chose not to explain a lot of stuff (and end on a cliffhanger) in hopes of getting a sequel, but you can leave mysteries and openings for a possible season 2 without being opaque and hard to follow. In fact, a final episode like The Reflection’s is way more likely to turn fans off than leave them wanting more.

However, The Reflection does have a few interesting ideas and good moments. One of the main heroes, Lisa, has a wheelchair that transforms into a giant robot, which is rad as hell and should be included in every superhero narrative from now on. Her personality is also endearing- she’s a determined, fiery, geeky girl who loves comics. Her whole storyline where her father is all protective of her due to her disability and she tells him doesn’t consider her condition tragic and proves she’s actually the one who can protect him is fairly heavy handed , but it’s a very positive narrative, and I’m especially glad to see it in an anime after being burned HARD by the ableism in Yuki Yuna is a Hero. She’s sadly sidelined after her introductory episode (it’s especially strange that her comic book fandom never comes up again), but still remains a good character.

There’s also a character who was blind, except he can see the silhouettes of people who have superpowers and thus pick out when when people are superpowered that way- that’s another good concept and I liked that his wife was the physically strong and imposing one of their partnership, though she didn’t get as much characterization as I’d like (in fact, she pretty much had none outside her relationship with her husband). The episodes revolving around Lisa and this pair were definitely the strongest of the series.

The lead of the story, Eleanor, also had a lot of potential. She had the heart of a hero, but she was desperate for validation and because of that desperation she ended up having an identity crisis where she developed an alternate personality. If her psychology had been explored more, that could have been a really interesting concept- but it wasn’t really explored at all beyond generic “this personality is the darkness within me” so it ended up being more on-the-nose and boring than anything. Still, I appreciated Eleanor’s scrappiness and in the hands of a more competent show, she could have been really great. 

The other characters were duds though, unfortunately- the villains were generic and kinda just there. The hero X-On drove a lot of the plot, yet we learned pretty much nothing about him and he had no personality other than being kind of a dick. The magical girl squad was a fun touch and I loved seeing them kick ass and save the day, but they didn’t have distinct personalities from each other or much thematic significance to the story.

Basically, there’s nothing offensive or repellent about The Reflection. I have to give it points for trying something different stylistically from the usual anime fare. It’s a show that could have been good if it had been executed a little better and given more room to breathe. However, it wasn’t, so it ended up being a very clunky, forgettable anime.

#anime overview #summer 2017 anime #shingeki no bahamut: virgin soul for ts #the reflection #rage of bahamut: virgin soul for ts #rage of bahamut

[ncfan-1]

So, I was initially dreading ‘In the Name of the Rebellion,’ because the last time Saw showed up on Rebels I was, uh, less than impressed with the way he was handled. I didn’t think the sheer amounts of opprobrium Saw was treated with was quite appropriate for the stuff he was doing in those S3 episodes; it felt somewhat disproportionate. I also thought there were some opportunities for exploring the moral dilemmas inherent in fighting against a totalitarian force that the writing crew dropped the ball on.

As you can imagine, I liked ‘In the Name of the Rebellion’ a lot better than those S3 episodes. I had my minor issues with ‘Heroes of Mandalore’, but these two episodes were pitch perfect. The story was great. The character beats were great. Those little moments of humor in an otherwise very dark story were amazing.

For Saw in particular, the handling was so much better. First, the things he’s stated to have done is much more proportionate to the treatment he gets. The animosity with which Mon Mothma and Hera treat him is much more understandable when it’s firmly established that Saw has been committing war crimes off-screen (What Kallus related to Zeb in ‘The Honorable Ones’, while it still reflects poorly on Saw, was more ambiguous, since it’s stated only that the Lasat mercenary was picking off wounded soldiers, and not that Saw himself was). And I know there have been complaints about us not seeing the unethical things Saw’s been doing explored up-close and personal, but that doesn’t bother me as much as it does others. SWR has managed to get away with a lot over the years, but at the end of the day, the writers still have to produce content the network considers acceptable for seven-year-olds to watch. The writing crew has gotten away with a lot, but I don’t think even they could get away with showing us on-screen war crimes. This is a point where less ‘show’ and more ‘tell’ is, regrettably, necessary.

The moral dilemma, the horrible situations that both Mon Mothma and Saw Gerrera find themselves in, are explored this episode, and was done in what I think was a very balanced, even-handed way.

Mon Mothma’s position is that while there is still even a sliver of a chance that things can be resolved without unnecessary bloodshed, they should still try to reach a peaceful solution. In the meantime, if the rebels must fight, they should fight by the rules of engagement. They should avoid endangering civilians if at all possible, because to do otherwise risks alienating the very people they’re trying to protect. They shouldn’t be out there committing war crimes, both because this also risks alienating the people they’re trying to protect, and because they shouldn’t sink to their enemy’s level.

Saw Gerrera’s position is that, in his own words, “if [they] continue to fight on the Empire’s terms, [they] are going to lose.” If they’re always fighting defensively instead of offensively, they’re not going to win; they’re going to lose, and lose everything. They have to hit the Empire and hit it hard, and that means getting your hands dirty. Maintaining morals and your ideals isn’t really tenable for someone who is fighting against a totalitarian regime that will stoop to any low to secure victory, that doesn’t care about things morals or the rules of engagement.

Both sides are right, and both sides are wrong. Mon Mothma is doing the best she can with the information she has; she doesn’t have the benefit of knowing what happens in Rogue One and the OT like we do. Mon Mothma is right in that in that the rebels shouldn’t sink to the Empire’s level, but at the same time, the Empire is never going to come to terms with the rebels, and if they want to have any hope of surviving, let alone winning, they are going to have to be more proactive. Saw’s right that they have to be more proactive, they have to go on the offensive in order to win this war, and he’s right that the Empire is building some sort of superweapon (the foreshadowing of the Death Star was also top-notch these episodes). But he’s risking alienating the galaxy at large through his actions, and what’s worse, his reckless behavior runs the risk of the Empire deciding to respond in overwhelming force to put him down, and neither Saw nor any of the other rebel cells have the resources to deal with what the Empire considers overwhelming force. Both sides are right, and both sides are wrong. They’re dealing with a horrible situation which has no good solution; that is the essence of a dilemma.

And like I said, the dilemma was handled in a very balanced, even-handed way. At no point do we get a “Saw is right and Mon is wrong” or a “Mon is right and Saw is wrong” moment bashed over our heads. They’re simply allowed to play off of each other when they interact, they’re allowed to be what they are when they’re not, and we the audience are allowed to draw our own conclusions. Ezra, who’s working through his own feelings about Mon and Saw’s methods, seems to have come to much the same conclusion as I did. He was already dissatisfied with Mon’s methods at the beginning of the story, but by the end, he’s not terribly enamored of the way Saw does things, either. He sees them as two people who mean well, but who both prioritize the big picture to the point that they’ve lost sight of the little picture: the people on the ground who are suffering at the Empire’s hands. Right now, Ezra seems to be seeking a third path, something that allows him to go toe to toe with the Empire while being more decisive than Mon Mothma without sinking to the depths Saw Gerrera is willing to sink to, and still prioritize helping people out.

Lastly, there was a character beat for Saw right near the end that I liked. When he’s talking about how he lost Onderon, it seemed to spell out that his primary motivation in all of this is desperation. Oh, sure, he’s got a lot of anger and a lot of hate, and anger and hate are definitely informing some of his actions, but he is mostly just a desperate man, both in the sense of being panicked and despairing. He lost Onderon, he lost his home, and he’s trying to track down this phantom superweapon and destroy it before the Empire finishes building it, because if he doesn’t, they’re all going to lose everything. It does a good job of showing how desperation can drive someone to extremes just as much as anger and hate can, and it adds context to Saw refusing to run when the Death Star came to Jedha—he’d poured all of himself into stopping the Death Star before it was completed, and when he realized that he’d failed, he lost all hope.

#Star Wars: Rebels #SWR In the Name of the Rebellion #Meta #Saw Gerrera #Mon Mothma