#some cannon fallout characters still exist | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stabletwooriginals · 4 years

Text

CHAPTER THREE: Guidance

LittlePip wakes up to a brand new day. Which she never experienced before and we get some fun observations from her about.

I knew this was coming but I’m so relieved LittlePip finds one of Rarities dresses in perfect condition inside a locked chest.

The comment, that the dress is the prettiest and most cheerful thing she has seen since leaving is striking to me. She has had one terrible string of bad luck so far, but there are amazing things still waiting to be found.

Which is undercut somewhat by her discovery of the dead cats hung over where she slept. Absolutely terrifying. That doesn’t seem just for shock value, as it preoccupies our (and LittlePips) mind as she accidentally activates a land mine. Oops.

Watcher making his first appearing here, giving LittlePip life saving advice.

Raiders attack again. And we get LittlePips naive interpretation of grenades through a childhood memory of someone bullying her. This explains to us why she focuses on throwing the granade back next… killing her first pony.

We don’t get a lot of rumination on that yet though, as we get a scene break and LittlePip has managed to sneak out of Ponyville. What are these segmenting parts called, actually? Is it “Dinkus”? That’s a fantastic name.

The retelling of escaping Ponyville sounds like a stealth sequence in any video game, which I find amusing.

After a brief first encounter with a Bloatsprite - the mutated version of the Parasprites from the show - we reunite with Watcher and LittlePip get’s to have her first friendly conversation so far. (You might wanna count Velvet at the very beginning, but that’s up to you.)

“A friend.” I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, a passing acquaintance. But one that doesn’t mean any harm.”

This back-paddling is interesting. Why isn’t the “Friend or Foe” distinction enough here? My interpretation is that FoE takes friendship quite seriously. Since it is adopting “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, in which friendship is the key to change the course of history, just the word “friend” has a lot of worth and meaning that can’t just be thrown around lightly. We don’t know it yet but the core mechanics of MLP, namely friendship and the Elements of Harmony, are still intact in this story.

Finding my apple, I levitated it up. “Thank you. And thank you for the warning about that… thing in the ground.” “Mine.” I blinked. “Y-you want my apple?”

I just want this on here.

We get some info on the Bloatsprite - mainly it’s name and that it is the result of something called Taint. Which, uh– and Watcher’s name. He is not a Spritebot himself, but located somewhere else and just hacks into them to interact with remote places of the world.

Finally he gives vital advice any newbie RPG player can use: Find better gear, learn about the world and make some friends! What? Yes, there it is again. Friendship.

For guidance LittlePip returns to Ponyville. Watcher told her a copy of the Wasteland Survival Guide should still be at the Ponyville Library. Twilight’s home! (Remember, we’re sticking strictly to the first season.)

I was convinced The Wasteland Survival Guide was a reference to an older piece of post-apocalyptic fiction, but nope, it seems to come from the famous quest line in Fallout 3. At least, that is what dominates the search results when I try to google it.

Quite some time is also spend on the horrific decoration, namely desecrated ponies. Mutilated and in pieces, stuck to the walls and hung from the ceiling. These displays of gore are reminiscent of how Super Mutants tend to gather in places with such bloody decorations in Fallout 3. That game reduced the Mutants personality from a faction, as they were in the previous titles, to little more than orcs. Which is a shame, as they mostly exist as canon fodder now. And help us get over killing them, it shows us with lootable sacks of gore that they deserve it.

The raiders here get painted in the same light and fulfill a similar role. As clear bad guys and somewhat as cannon fodder. Their psychology never gets explored much beyond “the Wasteland drove them mad”. They often even have ridiculous cutie marks, implying they have been born into being raiders and that being cruel is their special talent. Which, besides painting the saddest existence, is a shame, since they clearly form groups among themselves, can talk just fine and are/were, by all accounts, just ponies like anyone else. Except, they’re not. They have gone insane, mind you. They live in their own shit and sleep under fresh, dripping intestines. Because they’ve gone mad, you see!

My point with all that is, that the excessive gore in this scene takes away from my immersion, as it raises questions with no answers, and raiders holding slaves and killing ponies (without putting their corpses on display), again, would be fine enough to convince me of their evilness.

Watcher was playing LittlePip a little, as he knew it was also where a couple slaves are kept in cages. One of them is implied to have been sexually assaulted, which - while still despicable - at least makes more sense for raiders to do than the gore fest described earlier.

LittlePip glancing over the bottle caps the first freed slave offers her without a second thought is a fun touch.

Then a fight breaks loose!

I hadn’t just killed a pony–these raiders had given up any right to the title! These were not ponies, they were sick monsters that needed to be put down!

Which implies choice. Something I can’t imagine, choosing to be a raider like this, but fine. I’m sure plenty of FoE side stories go more into detail with raiders, FoE itself seems mostly comfortable portraying them as orcs most of the time. Until it doesn’t. But we will cross that bridge when we get there.

I didn’t realize until that moment, but I was mad! The pure evil of this place had shaken me to the core… and my core was furious!

Regardless of my feelings towards the raiders, Littlepip’s reaction to them has always been inspirational to me. I know, it leads to… problems later on. But joining in with unbridled rage of LittlePip is cathartic in ways I haven’t yet seen replicated somewhere else.

(what do you know, they do shoot with their tongues!)

Figuring out how horses shoot firearms is… it’s own entire discourse I am not very interested in. But it’s fun to see what ideas FoE brought to the table. And it’s even more fun to see high quality concept art of tongue-triggered pistols for the Fallout: Equestria fan game Ashes of Equestria.

The fight is fun, with brisk and clear descriptions and punctuation of humor (“Shouldn't you ponies be smarter than this? You live in a library!”).

LittlePip gets shot but finds the Fluttershy branded medical box. Love that decision. Also our introduction to healing potions – they work like Stimpaks from Fallout, but are actually more believable because magic actually exists!

I was even more pathetic with melee weapons than I was with guns.

Love that RPG progression being set up here.

It was a zombiepony!

Don’t be mean to ghoul Ditzy Doo. Don’t ever be mean to ghoul Ditzy Doo.

I can’t really place the note about why someone might need binoculars in a library. I assume it’s a MLP reference but I’m lost on that one.

After another short lived meeting with mines the fight is over and LittlePip decides to loot the bodies for armor. The bloody, tattered armor. To be fair, it is the best armor she has come across so far and we do stuff like this in RPGs all the time.

She finds bottle caps again and chooses to ignore them this time. Great tease. Love it.

She finds and identifies radigator meat. I’m not sure she should know their name at this point, but whatever. The narrative framing allows it.

Lastly, she confronts the sniper that has been on the balcony of the library the entire time. Here we get a better glimpse at AngeryPip, surprising herself with her audible confidence and malice. It feels like a different character, but since this is portrayed as a extreme situation this seems more adrenaline fueled to me, rather than pathological.

Leaving the library, LittlePip has a combat shotgun, an assault rifle, a revolver (which gets lost in the next scene), a knife and now a sniper rifle. Impressive for this early in the story.

An alert flashed on my PipBuck. Checking it, I discovered that it had labeled the gazebo in front of me: The Macintosh War Memorial.

First, harrowing. Love it. Secondly, I love the inclusion of the gazebo, which has to be the one we can see in the show. It’s cool to see how many elements of the show actually made it in here. Pretty unobtrusively too.

The Memorial specifically names Big Macintosh and his sacrifice. It’s obviously unclear how much of the story was prepared in advance, but the way the war started 200 years ago must have been among that. We get to learn later what Big Mac’s role in the war was.

And we end with LittlePip picking up “The Wasteland Survival Guide. By Ditzy Doo…”

Level Up! New Perk: Bookworm. Kinda nice how we went to the library this time, got a book out of it, the quote at the beginning was “Books! I’ve read several on the subject.”… So, this one feels more than earned.

#fallout equestria #reread #reading #fan fiction #kkat #ponyville

10 notes · View notes

retphienix · 3 years

Text

My dream back when Fo3 was new was for there to just be MORE.

Not even just more quests, more 'places'.

I was OBSESSED with Fo3 when it came out- I went from playing nonstop competitive shooters with my abundant teenage free time to playing nothing but Fo3 for an embarrassing amount of time that can easily be summed up as "years? Yeah. years."

And what I wanted was to enter every single building that existed in the game- all those functionless doors and burnt out wreckage with no interior sparked interest in me for MORE.

And sure enough, from practically day 1 of the PC release there were mods that expanded all those buildings to have interiors to explore.

And here's an arcade :) Lot of build up to just say "And I found an arcade with Fallout 1 + 2 machines (Neat!) as well as space invaders and pac man!"

Also plenty of collectibles tossed around in these mods. Magazines and books out the wazoo (mostly PG-13 50's esque adult mags? I... did not intentionally seek out adult mods, and they ARE PG-13 so I guess I didn't download adult mods, but it was amusing and made me give a double take so that's fun :P)

And since I don't like loose ends, I thought I'd put some effort into finishing Broken Steel just because?

1) I went to where I remembered the beta tesla cannon being and it... wasn't there? So either a mod moves it, the PC version updated it, or I'm not remembering where the table is.

No matter what the reason, that made me sad :( I loved getting every "unobtainable" item on the console version- this one, the anchorage grenades, the anchorage items in general through a LOT of reverse pickpocketing, the children outfits (reverse pickpocket), dad and autumn's stuff, and way more.

Pretty sure at some point I just abused a save editor for the 360 version just so I could attain the ACTUALLY unobtainable items that can't be cheesed into existing.

So the fact I couldn't relive that memory a bit with the cannon sucked :(

Ain't like the weapon actually matters lol, the beta cannon is weaker than the real one so it's mostly for collector's sake.

2) FINALLY hit all 100s. It's a LOT less impressive when a mod lets you level up beyond the limits lol, but still :P

Still haven't bothered hitting all 10s, but that's because I stopped caring about recreating a 'perfect character' when I downloaded a lot of perk mods and started exploring them.

Kinda boring following my old guide for a perfect character when I could instead use every level to try out a new perk that never existed in the base game :P

#RetPlays #Fallout #Fallout 3

1 note · View note

echo-inthevoid · 4 years

Text

Season 2 q&a and overall reaction

Jonny stealing everyone's names XD

Is martin going to be ok!? I also need to know!

He said no;-;

ok ya, no one's gonna be ok.

Ya, he must do sooo much research.

Ya, except for "fatigue" lol.

Eyyy the mechanisms!!

What's the red string brigade? Ok, I guess a group of fans theorizing about stuff.

Oh ok so someone else did martins poetry. Ooh, there's more martin poetry out there! *grabby hands*

Ok ya, Alex clarifying that Jon isn't stupid he just makes poor decisions. Probably if he'd paused and thought about it (like I did lol, I had to go do some stuff in the middle of that ep and thought about it a whole bunch lol) instead of immediately going out and buying an axe and further isolating himself and panicking immediately he probably would have figured it out. This is why it's bad to panic in a crisis guys.

Eyyy! Jonny's parents voiced Gertrude and Leitner! That's so cool.

XD Jonny grumbling about having to work with his parents.

Hmm, I hadn't really thought of Gertrude being like a mother figure in the story? She just seems very cut-throat I guess from what Leitner said. Idk so far I've been very suspicious of her. Especially since that one statement where her photo burned a whole bunch of people or something. She just seems very shady...

Alex chortling over Jonny's pain. XD

Side note, Every time there's a q&a I just can't stop noticing Jonny's voice going in and out of archivist range? Like most of the time I'm just listening along and then he'll say a sentence a bit grumblier and my brains immediately like "ARCHIVIST! That's THE ARCHIVIST!!"

Martin would be the last one alive in Friday the 13th! It's official!

(Is it bad that this gives me hope)

Jon likes Nonfiction, documentaries, and probably collects something just a little bit weird. *writes down for use in potential fics*

also while im at it I remember jon saying he dislikes coffee at one point, and so many people have him liking coffee in their fics! This has been your daily reminder of that fact because ever since then it keeps bugging me lol. (But also do whatever u want.)

Alex's spluttering sounds so much like Martin.

Yes!! I want to hear jon sing!! Yes! Musical Episode When!!?

Ah yes yes yes! All the characters are so unique!!? How does he do it!!

Ya, it being in audio format sometimes makes it hard to understand what's happening in the live-action bits. (Live-action is the wrong word but u know what I mean.)

Oh ok ya, how he mentioned he got a pipe was quite clever I didn't realize that that's why he mentioned it at all.

Ooh, there's a manga where there's something similar to Michael? I'll have to look that up later...

XD Alex and Jonny arguing about apples.

Ok, so all the statements we're hearing ARE for reals. I kinda assumed but good to have it confirmed.

They used to hang out together!!? Work function curry nights!! ;-;

Ya Ya! Who made the leitners!?

"You are assuming a book needs to be written" ...ok then. (but it has to have been created somehow??? Did they just spring fully formed from the powers? why? And why take the form of books?)

Alex's mischievous laugh about whether jon has friends *trembles in fear*

Yes!! Micheal is so good! I'm so happy they love him too! Yesyes! His laugh!

Ah Yes!! Mary kaey was so creepy!

XD yes yes yes fatigue was written on zero sleep, I knew it!

Akskdjdkd I love them so much. Also, I've looked up Michaels voice actor luke booys and he does some other horrory type sketches n stuff and I kiiinda want to do a little animatic with some of those but it's Michael like annoying some poor soul lost in his halls... I think that'd be fun. I wonder if anyone's done that yet? If so someone send me the links I neeeed iiitt :3

Season 2 summary:

Uuuuu ya so this season was really good. I kinda listened to it in bursts of about ten episodes every couple weeks and then have been saving up the reactions to post later so these are usually going up about a week or so after I actually listened to the episode just FYI.

I also do have a lot of spoilers cause I can't keep myself away from fanfic and people don't always tag for spoilers and I kiiinda wana know what's coming beforehand anyway? Idk it's hard man I get very stressed about what might happen and then also listening to too much at a time is too spooky for my poor little heart so I gotta read the less spooky fanfic to fulfill the hyperfixation you see. (If anyone has fanfic with spoilers only up to season 2 that'd be great btw)

Anyway, I try not to take spoiler type stuff into account unless I'm just so sure of it I can't really not acknowledge that I know about it.

Also, can I just talk about Michael for a minute?? Cause he's such a unique character? And I guess maybe there are other characters like him but I haven't ever seen one -tho to be fair tma is only like the third horror thing I've ever really got into (the other two are the SCP Foundation in its various forms and Little Nightmares. Hence why I keep making reference to SCP it's really the only thing I know similar to this.) But he's such a cool concept!!? Like someTHING that still has a personality? He's so not human? Like I get what he says but also I don't really? Idk im pretty sure he's an avatar right? Right?? Idk if that means he was a person at some point? But all this to say that he is probably the most inhuman character I've come across so far and I'm trying to figure out what it is about him that's so "other" to me? Like... I don't really know what Micheal's deal is? he seems to want to be sort of a neutral mischief-maker but also it seems like he keeps getting invested. But also I just love the way he talks about himself. Like he's a monster that has a personality and is fully intelligent but isn't just evil but isn't neutral either and certainly isn't benevolent. Like he's so complex and just,,,, the idea of a "thing" that's got a personality?? I love it? Kind of like dryads or spirits of things? Like the idea that after a long time things gain personality just by existing? Not that that's what Michael is necessarily? but that same sort of concept applies to him I think. Like the way he IS the maze and wants to help but wants to just watch but wants to kill them all. He's just so interestinggggggg. (And another vision of what jon could become?)

also "es Mentiras" is a beautiful name 💕

So are him and not-Sasha avatars? Not-Sasha also seems completely inhuman and I was under the impression that avatars were (or used to be) human? Or are they like personifications of their power? Do all the powers have personifications of themselves. not-Sasha seems even less human than Michael? Like she seems to just really genuinely enjoy causing fear? Tho I guess we didn't really get to hear a lot of her. She just seemed kinda gleefully angry most of the time we heard from her. Was she... Human once!???

Anyway. Also, can I just talk about leitners line about jon belonging to the eye!!? Just..*chefs kiss* hnnnngg I need more jon grappling with that. I just need more everyone dealing with the fallout post all of the finallies ok? I still need more of jon angsting over his worms scars and stuff and now I also need jon freaking out about belonging to a fear god power thing.

Also Martin! Is Martin ok? He sure did a lot of yelling which he doesn't usually? Look I love him and he actually thinks before he acts (unlike SOME people *looks at jon*) and he writes poetry and it is pretty good poetry ok!! And he cares about everyone and just wants a happy ending and aaaaa😭

Petition to get some statements from Martin's pov tho? I mean that's not gonna happen cause Jon's the archivist but I want more martin pov!! Maybe we can get some of his poem tapes??? Pls?????

I feel so bad for Tim. It sounds like he's kinda fallen into despair.

Also Elias!!? Is showing his spooky side!!? He can control cameras and beat a man to death with a pipe!!? This is his "place of powerr"!!? I am afeared!!? At least jon knows he shouldn't trust him now. Oh jeez, I wonder if jon will listen back to the tape and know what happened. Thhhatsss rough. Oh dear, I hope he doesn't feel guilty cause Leitner did keep trying to hurry him and now everyone thinks it was him. Even martin thinks he did it? Wich like I kinda want to hear more of his thoughts on that? How much does he believe that jon did it? Tim certainly seems pretty certain but he's a bit biased and cynical right now so.

And they were in the maze for DAYS?

Now I need martin recovering from being stuck with Tim in Michaels maze for days being angry and worried and hungry etc... Dksjdksa knowing jon could be dying RIGHT NOW and there's nothing he can do. Please someone give me the fic links if this exists!! I've already written like 5 drabbles based entirely on spoilers/other fics (which I'll probably post (w/ links to their inspirations) once I'm caught up and can make sure I'm not just completely demolishing cannon lol.

Leitner didn't even scream or yell or anything when he was murdered. Literally the chillest dude ever. F

Overall super great, Elias is terrifying, let's dive into the next season!!! I've got 2 seasons to finish in like, less than 2 or so weeks(?) if I wana be caught up by season 5 hhhh,,,

Better get started I guess.

#tma #tma lb #tma liveblog #liveblogging #tma season 2 #season 2 #season 2 q&a #season 2 finale #the magnus archives

18 notes · View notes

kcaruth · 4 years

Text

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

Before the dark times, before the mouse empire, LucasArts published several fun, memorable Star Wars video games, from Star Wars: Bounty Hunter to The Force Unleashed series. After Disney’s acquisition of LucasArts in 2012, the Mouse House stopped all internal developments at LucasArts and laid off most of its staff in 2013. Signaling its turn to the dark side, Disney awarded EA (voted worst company in America multiple times) a multi-year license to create Star Wars video games.

EA rebooted the Star Wars Battlefront series (2005′s Star Wars: Battlefront II has to be one of my most played video games) and released the new Star Wars Battlefront in November 2015. Critics acknowledged the game’s great graphics and visuals, but it quickly became apparent that the game lacked content. The hero and villain rosters were very limited, and the game only included content from the original trilogy, not the prequels.

Then came EA’s disastrous Star Wars Battlefront II, the repercussions of which shook the gaming world. Released in November 2017, Battlefront II had some promise. It was the first game since the Disney takeover to feature a single-player story mode that was canon to the film series. The game also contained content from the prequel, original, and sequel trilogies. Additionally, EA greatly expanded the hero and villain rosters. However, EA showed it true colors with the game’s loot boxes, which could award players significant gameplay advantages if they purchased them with real money. Essentially, the game turned into a pay to win system, thereby making players who did not purchase loot boxes feel so disadvantaged that Battlefront II virtually became pay to play.

Although Visceral Games, the studio behind the Dead Space series, was developing a single-player Star Wars game, even getting to the point in the development process where they could tease everyone with in-game footage, EA canceled the game and shut down the studio. Not counting the Lego Star Wars games and mobile games, EA’s Battlefront games were the only new Stars Wars video games on the market, an astonishing reality compared to the rate at which LucasArts used to produce games for the franchise.

Eventually, EA finally came to its senses and assigned a single-player action-adventure Star Wars game to Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind the Titanfall series. Former Santa Monica Studio employee Stig Asmussen served as game director, and heavy-hitting talent like writer Chris Avellone, perhaps best known for his work on Fallout: New Vegas, joined the project. Finally, Respawn released Jedi: Fallen Order in November 2019 to much critical acclaim.

Now, with that long-winded background introduction establishing the recent state of Star Wars video gaming out of the way, let’s get into the real reason why everyone is here. What did I think of Jedi: Fallen Order? I am usually well behind on newer video game releases, but our current state of affairs with the global pandemic has afforded me a bit more time to dust off my controller. Having just beaten Fallen Order earlier this week, I have plenty to say about the game. (I even made a pros and cons list! Can you tell I have also been spending my time watching the misadventures of Leslie Knope and company in Parks and Rec?)

At its core, Star Wars is about family, friendship, and good versus evil, so let’s start by talking about this game’s characters and plot. (Don’t worry; I won’t spoil anything from the story.) Fallen Order nails the spirit of Star Wars. Set five years after Revenge of the Sith, players control Cal Kestis, a Padawan forced to keep a low profile after the Jedi Purge. Cal lives on the planet Bracca, where he works as a scrapper salvaging ships from the Clone Wars. Kudos to the game here. I stopped a couple of times just to admire the visuals of Bracca. It was definitely a “wow moment” seeing TIE fighters shriek by overhead and watching a Separatist ship descend from the atmosphere. One day, Cal taps into the Force for the first time since Emperor Palpatine’s Order 66 to save a friend from certain death from a workplace accident. Unfortunately, an Imperial probe droid records the incident, alerting the Empire of a Jedi fugitive. Two Inquisitors quickly arrive on the scene to track down the Jedi. Introduced in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the menacing Inquisitors are an evil organization of Force-sensitive beings, some of them former Jedi, who have been tortured and turned to the dark side by Darth Vader and the Empire or otherwise willingly joined the organization out of hunger for power. They are tasked with hunting down surviving Jedi in hiding and others exhibiting Force potential. Somehow, Cal has survived this long even though he still carries around his lightsaber with him everywhere! When the Inquisitors corner him, he literally just pulls it out of his pocket! How has no one ever noticed it before? Did none of the Imperial probe droids floating around the planet ever take a snapshot of the weapon? Plot holes aside, two new characters, Greez and Cere, rescue Cal from certain doom at the hands of the Second and Ninth Sisters and ferry him off world.

Cere is a former Jedi who held the role of Seeker in the Order. A Seeker located infants with Force abilities who could be taken to Coruscant and trained in the Jedi arts (think the good version of the Inquisitors). Greez is a starship pilot with a bad gambling habit, a green thumb, and an insatiable appetite. Cal finds a small droid named BD-1, who reveals a message from Jedi Master Eno Cordova, detailing the existence of a hidden Jedi Holocron containing a list of Force-sensitive children across the galaxy. In the wrong hands, this list could lead to the children’s demise. Cal and Cere want to use the list to rebuild the Jedi Order. Thus begins the race between the Empire and our crew of ragtag misfits to secure the Holocron.

Overall, the story is good, great even for recent Star Wars standards. It fits the Star Wars cannon very well, and I loved the nods to the Clone Wars, mentions of obscure characters, and the foreshadowing of future events. Some moments elicit chuckles from the appropriate Star Wars humor, while others go to some truly dark places. The way the game tackles Order 66 earns it extremely high marks from me. The developers need to be applauded for bringing in new and relatively unknown planets that we have not really had the chance to explore before. There is no Hoth, Jakuu, or the like to be seen here, thankfully. Star Wars is a big galaxy; it is about time we saw different parts of it. We have spent more than enough time on Tatooine. The planets we do visit feel alive. Each one has a different color palette, climate, weather pattern (although the developers may have been a little heavy-handed on the fog in a few of the locations), and, of course, flora and fauna.

Cal fights everything from annoying rat creatures to ram-like slugs, from giant venus fly traps to trampoline spring-plants. Players can even collect plant specimens on different planets and plant them in Greez’s terrarium, which was a nice little way to take a piece of each planet with you on your journey. Oh, and the spiders. Cal has to kill tons and tons of spiders. Again, this is Star Wars! There is a whole galaxy at your disposal full of creatures that look like whatever your imagination can dream up, and the best we get is different species of spiders? That is probably nitpicking, but it felt like it was worth pointing out.

When it comes to the Empire, however, the variety is fantastic. Of course, the run-of-the-mill standard stormtroopers are here, but there are also variations like shock baton-wielding scout troopers, flame troopers, and the dangerous Purge troopers, essentially the special forces of the Inquisitors. The chatter between the troopers is great. Before they spot him, Cal can overhear them talking about their notorious accuracy, the planet’s hostile wildlife, or even mundane topics like food rations. Once Cal starts fighting them, they often taunt him, full of confidence in their abilities, but then they come to the realization that they are facing off against a Jedi. The confidence in their voices gradually turns to panicked fear as Cal slices through their numbers. By the time Cal gets to the last trooper standing, that trooper will regularly plead for his life or confess how scared he is. Every once in a while, the Empire will even throw AT-ST walkers at Cal, which are a fun enough challenge, though the strategy to defeat them becomes clear within a minute or two, and players are never forced to change up their tactics. I do love that after Cal destroys the walker, the trooper will crawl out of the wreckage and start shooting at him. Nice touch!

With all that said, the story is not perfect. In fact, once or twice it just feels dumb. For example, Cal goes on this grand mission seeking out an important leader in hiding, and when he finally encounters him, they exchange maybe one full sentence before the leader gifts Cal a rebreather so that he can swim underwater. You are telling me I conquered various obstacles and enemies, traversing across multiple planets all to get...a rebreather? This whole section could have been cut out and streamlined so that the storyline goes directly to the main setpiece of this planet I am talking about. Have one of Cal’s crewmates give him a rebreather and send him on his way instead. Regardless, at least the back and forth traversal gives players another chance to board the ship, ascend from the planet, and blast off into hyperspace. Seeing that never got old.

Respawn and its writers did a great job with these characters, including one of the Inquisitors (the other one is just kind of...meh). I enjoyed getting to know my crew, but I wish they had a little more to do in the game. In reality, they just stay on the ship 95 percent of the time while you are out running around on your mission (not that I entirely blame them...it is a cool ship). The conversations between these characters were usually good, but sometimes Cal would not mention huge, seemingly significant events or people he ran into to his crew! For a cinematic franchise like Star Wars, this game could have used a couple more cutscenes. The game often feeds the plot or a character’s mindset to players by making them idly stand near a crewmate and tapping R3 a handful of times to get them to cough up a couple of lines of dialogue.

As is to be expected from a Star Wars product, the game’s music is terrific. Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton composed the score and recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Bach Choir of London. Mongolian folk metal band The Hu also wrote and recorded a song that is featured during a couple of prominent portions of the game. The song lyrics were written in Mongolian and then translated into a fictional Star Wars alien language. The music compliments and elevates the game’s setpieces, with one standout part reminding me of Thor: Ragnarok. A couple of times, the game goes full John Williams to really make some moments hit home, and boy does it work! Hats off to Respawn for putting in this much effort in regards to the music for the game.

Getting into the gameplay, Fallen Order is an amalgamation of several other games. Dark Souls, Zelda, Uncharted, Metroid, Castlevania, Sekiro, heck even Sonic...they are all here in some form or fashion. Unfortunately for Fallen Order, it does not elevate the features it borrows from those games. The biggest reason? The bugs. Oh my goodness the bugs. How can a blockbuster release like this have so many bugs? Maybe it had something to do with EA or Disney wanting to push the final product out before the release of The Rise of Skywalker the next month, but the amount of bugs in this game are simply unacceptable. While none of them led to a complete game crash, I definitely caught myself grumbling, “I hate this game,” with my frustration levels constantly reaching the scorching temperature of Mustafarian lava, especially considering Fallen Order’s inexcusably long load times. Seriously, the load times after dying are so long that I had enough time to run to the bathroom, heat something up in the microwave, or make a cup of tea (to help relax me from this rage-inducing game) before the game finished loading. How can I lift off from a planet and travel through hyperspace faster than the game can respawn me after dying? It is not just dying, by the way. The game developers think they cleverly hid load times behind elevator rides, but that did not work either! At least throw in some elevator music or comm chatter if you are going to make me stand there for so long!

One time, I fell through the level to my death while walking on what was 100 percent solid ground. Speaking of solid ground, or should I say the lack thereof, enemies continued to fight me while clearly hovering in thin air when they should obviously be plummeting to their death. Woe is me if I tried to reach them, though, because my Jedi character must not have that ability, leading to, that is right, more death falls for me as the enemy looked on from his invisible sliver of ground above. If I was lucky enough to have an enemy remain in my relative vicinity and not stand off a ledge, that enemy had a chance of pinning and glitching Cal against a wall, leaving me trapped until I died from the beating. The enemy who kills Cal glows gold until players shave off a piece of that enemies health, which is great, but that means players cannot see that enemy flash red when he uses an unblockable attack. How could Respawn not notice this error when it is such an important component of the combat? For all the aggressive enemies with magical glitching powers, there were also those that would have a change of heart mid-combat and go pacifistic on me. I found this especially common in the later game and on one planet in particular with ranged enemies. They would fire at me, I would block their shot back at them and injure them, and then they would just stand there staring at me. It was really bizarre and made me uneasy turning my back on them to explore the area. I also experienced my health and Force bars completely disappearing from the screen. The first couple of times it happened, I thought it was intentional and meant that Cal could not die for that sequence of the game. Wrong! So much for thinking I was momentarily invincible with unlimited Force powers. This bug was especially crippling during big boss fights, as you can imagine. Respawn throws in some quick time events once in a while where players have to press the correct button in a very short amount of time. For the most part, I did not mind these, but one exception got my blood boiling. Cal is fighting a giant creature and ends up free falling. The game requires Cal to land in a very, very precise spot and pull of a quick time event. I cannot count the number of times I fell to my death during this part because of how finicky the game was being. Cal conveniently stumbles across every single icy or muddy slide in the galaxy during his travels, a way for the game developers to disguise a way to get players from point A to point B quickly, but these slides are also quite particular with when players jump and where they land. Another good portion of my deaths came from Cal not making a jump on one of these slides when he clearly had the distance or him seemingly landing and making the jump only for him to glitch and then fall backwards into a never-ending dark chasm. The game developers may have thought players would enjoy these slides, but I came to dread them.

The worst game bugs by far, however, dealt with frame rates and level textures. Not contained to one section or even one planet, unfortunately, garbage frame rates wreak more havoc across the galaxy than the treacherous Empire. I am telling you the frame rate is absolutely abysmal in this game. I can forgive a drop in frame rate if it happens a couple of times, but it is like it is a built-in gameplay feature of Fallen Order. It was maddening! How can Respawn expect me to properly block or dodge if the game cannot even keep up with my movements or camera adjustments? Texture pop ins and clipping were also recurring issues. One time, I noticed a soldier’s helmet load in late. Another time, a Wookie’s fur took a while to fill up the character model. (By the way, the Wookies in this game look horrendous.) Sometimes, it would get so bad that the game would just pause completely so that it could load in the content of the area. I honestly thought the game had crashed and was about to reboot the console before everything stuttered back into place and Cal got moving again.

I have done a lot of ranting about the game’s flaws the last few paragraphs, so let me get back to some things I did like. The combat works well. I cannot begin to tell you how satisfying and occasionally outright hilarious it is to Force push a trooper off a ledge, especially when he is standing there trying to intimidate you. I had so much fun simply blocking stormtroopers’ laser bolts right back at them. Best of all, I started taking every opportunity I had to pull enemies toward me, especially ones perched up on higher vantage points, and stab them straight through with my lightsaber. The lightsaber boss fights were a highlight of the game. Players feel the weight of every strike and every struggle when the blades cross.

In addition to Cal’s lightsaber, he also has his Force powers at his disposal. He starts out with Force slow and gradually adds other abilities, such as push and pull, as the game progresses. Players may question how Cal, a Jedi, can struggle with a squadron of stormtroopers or the local wildlife, or they may ask why he does not start with all of his Force abilities, but it all makes sense when you consider that Cal has to rebuild his connection to the Force. He has not used it since he was a child, after all. It makes sense that this amateur padawan who did not complete his training runs into a tough time in combat. When Cal does unlock new Force abilities, the game cleverly flashes back to show Cal’s master teaching him that ability during his training before Order 66.

Players can further bolster their Force, survival, and lightsaber abilities through a skill tree. Skill points accumulated from defeating enemies grant players access to increased health, stronger stim potency, increased lightsaber damage, and mass push, to name a few skills. Even later on in the game when most of your Force abilities have been unlocked and Cal has found a couple of fun new gadgets, the game still feels balanced. Cal never feels overpowered like Starkiller in The Force Unleashed games. Even when they are maxed out, his Force push and pull do not appear to have much of an effect on bosses. At most, they will briefly stagger them, whereas when they do it to Cal, he will comically tumble over like Palpatine when Yoda Force pushed him across his desk in Revenge of the Sith.

I will argue that a couple of Force abilities become outdated later in the game. At one point, I forgot I even had Force slow because I had not used it in a while. I only remembered it while I was trying to solve a small puzzle to escape from an area and had exhausted all other options. Can you blame me for always wanting to Force push enemies off a cliff instead of slowing them down?

I appreciate that the game developers allow players to adjust the difficulty at any time. I started out at a higher difficulty and found myself dying before I even left the first world, Bracca. However, I persisted. That is, until I faced off against Oggdo Bogdo and his trash hitboxes. Players can stumble upon Oggdo Bogdo very early in the game. Oggdo Bogdo, a carnivorous amphibian creature, is a boss variation of the more common lookalikes of him. There is a similar optional alpha creature boss encounter on most planets Cal visits. No matter how hard I tried or how many different strategies I employed, Oggdo Bogdo proved to be too tough for me, and after waiting through countless death loads and having to run back over to Oggdo Bogdo’s location time and time again, I decided to lower the game’s difficulty, allowing me to finally slay this ugly creature.

Like Sekiro’s sculptor’s idols or the bonfires in Dark Souls, Fallen Order relies on meditation circles as its save points. Cal can rest to full health and restore his Force meter as well as restock health stims. Meditation circles also allow players to access the skill tree and spend skill points. These meditation circles implement a good risk versus reward system. If players choose to rest at a meditation circles, all of the enemies he or she has defeated since the last rest will respawn. I regularly found myself weighing the pros and cons of my situation, questioning if I should heal and get more stims or push on so that I did not put more enemies in my path.

While I am on the subject of these meditation circle save points, I have to point out that Fallen Order does not have fast travel. Instead, it encourages players to backtrack and explore previously inaccessible areas that they can now open with their newly unlocked abilities. This was fine for a while, but I quickly grew tired of it when I noticed how much of the backtracking had me slowly climbing, traversing across narrow walkways that Cal has to carefully balance on, or shimmying over narrow cliff edges. This is padding by exploration. While the vine and rope swinging was fun, especially with Force pull, I stopped enjoying climbing up a conveniently placed arrangement of vines and the like by the halfway point of the game, if not earlier. I will admit that I believe Fallen Order contains just the right amount of playtime, but this stuff had it teetering on the too long side. This is compounded by one important world that players have to visit multiple times that feels too big. The developers’ creativity and excitement got a little out of hand here. Just pull up the map of that world to see how unwieldy it is. When I completed the story on a planet like this, I felt exhausted rather than triumphant. Why can’t I hail my crew to come pick me up in the ship where I am rather than having to run across the entire planet again to get back to the landing pad, fighting the same enemies I already cleared out a couple of hours ago? The game developers do provide a few shortcuts that players can open, but the amount of time they end up saving is negligible in some cases.

I was disappointed that there is no real endgame content. Sure, players can continue to explore or fight enemies for the heck of it, but the developers could have done so much more. After players unlock every ability in the skill tree, the skill points they collect after that become meaningless. I will confess that I chose to rush past enemies to get to my next destination rather than waste time or energy fighting them for the 50th time after I had filled out my skill tree. Why not unlock fast travel after players beat the story? How about adding in a fighting arena where players can test their maxed out skill set against waves of enemies? Heck, let the players unlock dark side Force abilites like Force lightning or Force choke after they complete the story so that whatever they do then is not canon. I would have continued to gather skill points for that!

Now I mentioned Cal’s droid companion BD-1 earlier, but BD-1 deserves a special shout-out. BD-1 is spunky and lovable. Not only does BD-1 shoot Cal stims to heal him, the droid also provides hints for puzzles, scans enemies to suggest tactics to take them down, plays recordings that push the story along, and helps Cal navigate the worlds by hacking locked doors or carrying him across zip lines. Additionally, BD-1 projects the holomap of each planet, which is vital to keeping track of where Cal is in relation to the ship or his destination. The holomap itself is decent. Color coding helps players see what is inaccessible and what is unlockable, but for the bigger worlds with multiple levels it can be quite a burden to scroll across. Not to knock BD-1, but I grew impatient waiting for the droid’s animation that it goes through every single time Cal finds a hidden chest. Cal opens up the chest, BD-1 jumps in and rumbles around, and then jumps back out with whatever was inside it, all while Cal repeats the same lines of dialogue, like “Woah, buddy!” or “Careful now.” or “What did you find in there?” There are 107 chests in the game. Let that sink in.

These chests are one of the rewards for exploration. They contain items that players can use to customize Cal, his lightsaber, BD-1, or the ship. While this is motivation enough at the beginning of the game, this customization serves no purpose beyond cosmetics. It comes down to which poncho or paint job players find more aesthetically pleasing. I love that the game developers let players change lightsaber colors, but I wish these different ponchos and lightsaber parts had some sort of effect on the gameplay, such as restoring more of Cal’s Force meter or refilling a small amount of health after defeating an enemy.

Force echoes serve as another reward for exploring. Cal uncovers lore from past events by reaching out through these Force echoes. They rounded out the worlds nicely and added to the feeling that they were lived in, real places in the galaxy. The final element of exploration is BD-1′s scans. While you are running around, BD-1 will occasionally crawl down off Cal’s back and scramble over to something the droid wants to scan. These unlock data entries on the planet, its flora and fauna, the Empire, or other characters. This is all fine and dandy, but the level of exploration the game developers expect players to do with all of the backtracking involved needs to reward me with more than just basic lore, especially when some of the entries feel like the writers did not even try when they wrote them. Is an entry on a storage crate telling me that the Empire stored materials in it really worth stopping to scan? I think not. Instead, the game developers could have really motivated me to explore more by throwing in a few interesting side quests or fun Easter eggs. Maybe players could stumble upon active Imperial transmissions and overhear characters like Tarkin or Thrawn. Maybe players could find an abandoned Imperial camp and watch Imperial or Rebel propaganda over a holofeed that was left on. They could have even hidden a squadron of battle droids that were forgotten from the Clone Wars. So many possibilities!

Jedi: Fallen Order is far from a perfect game and has so much unrealized potential, but I would not trade away my time with it. For every flaw, I can point to a positive, and vice versa. At the end of the day, I got to be a Jedi, and that is good enough for me.

#star wars #jedi fallen order #video games #blog #blog post #review

6 notes · View notes

pilferingapples · 5 years

Note

Hello! I was wondering if you might be able to give me your thoughts on Montparnasse? Its been 15+ years since i've read the brick, so I'm a bit spotty. I know fanon likes to turn him into a 'morally ambiguous but good underneath' type character, and I've read theories on him and Eponine's relationship in canon, but what do you think? Do you think he's canonically morally ambiguous (as opposed to straight-up Murderer), or even just is possibly redeemable?

Hi!:D

I’m going to put this under a cut for discussion of abuse, violence, and all those other cheery things that Les Mis has so much of!

(and standard Disclaimers that this is just My Take on Montparnasse in the original text, and not meant to be some sort of marching order for How To Fandom about him)

While I think probably everyone in Les Mis (except maybe Thenardier) has to be considered potentially redeemable as part of the novel’s whole central message, we’re given no indicator that Montparnasse is pointed in that direction–exactly the opposite. He has some good qualities–he’s genuinely loyal to the men (the men part of this should probably be emphasized) who he considers comrades, and he’s clever enough , with skills he could put to some use besides theft and murder.

But he is a murderer, with a long line of corpses already behind him. His ‘romance’ with Eponine is established via his association with her horrifyingly abusive father, and is marked by Montparnasse himself threatening her with violence and bragging about how willingly he’d kill her, when even other members of the Patron Minette don’t want to.

As they went, Montparnasse muttered:–“Never mind! if they had wanted, I’d have cut her throat.”Babet responded “I wouldn’t. I don’t hit a lady." 4.8.4

Gavroche sasses him with apparent confidence–but Gavroche banters with cannons and armies trying to kill him. We see in the attempted robbery of Valjean that Gavroche is certain that Montparnasse would never spare a life on his account, and would kill him if he interfered with the murders he doesn’t want to see:

Montparnasse on the hunt at such an hour, in such a place, betokened something threatening. Gavroche felt his gamin’s heart moved with compassion for the old man.

What was he to do? Interfere? One weakness coming to the aid of another! It would be merely a laughing matter for Montparnasse. Gavroche did not shut his eyes to the fact that the old man, in the first place, and the child in the second, would make but two mouthfuls for that redoubtable ruffian eighteen years of age. (4.4.2)

While Gavroche was deliberating, the attack took place, abruptly and hideously. The attack of the tiger on the wild ass, the attack of the spider on the fly. Montparnasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded upon the old man, seized him by the collar, grasped and clung to him, and Gavroche with difficulty restrained a scream. A moment later one of these men was underneath the other, groaning, struggling, with a knee of marble upon his breast. Only, it was not just what Gavroche had expected. The one who lay on the earth was Montparnasse; the one who was on top was the old man. All this took place a few paces distant from Gavroche.

Gavroche almost screams at the work Montparnasse does, and has to force himself to keep silent to keep safe. Gavroche deals with Montparnasse casually, because that’s part of his world, murder and abuse are just in his environment-but he hates it, and he doesn’t feel safe with Montparnasse. Again: Montparnasse is loyal to men he considers comrades; women and children, less so. And this isn’t a book that thinks particularly well of men who aren’t kind to women and children.

I think Montparnasse is a bit of a tragic character in that he represents a failing of society; he’s so young--it’s likely that most of his crimes were committed before he would be legally considered an adult by most modern standards-- and already his life is blighted by genuinely horrible crimes that have caused real human loss, and his course is pretty much set for the gallows. He’s done this in pursuit of a specific social ideal–to have the kind of lifestyle that marks an idle rich gentleman– and in that sense he is perhaps a comment on the warped roles that society glamorizes and holds up for emulation. There’s perhaps a sense of him being the inevitable end result of a society that’s glorifying exploitation and cruelty, of him being someone mutated by the fallout of the same energy that helps people like Tholomyes grow powerful.

But however Montparnasse got where he is, and whatever he reflects about society, in his present state he’s murderously awful and, importantly, content to be so. It’s as close to his dream job as he can get. Valjean’s attempt to Myrielize with him fails entirely. As prudencepaccard discusses, Hugo describes Montparnasse as almost supernaturally horrifying--like a vampire, like a zombie, a spiritless monster that exists only to prey on the living even while he technically is one of the living. Whatever good may still be in Montparnasse, whatever salvation is possible for him, it needs not just rescue but a resurrection.

So I guess that’s my thoughts on Montparnasse!

...oh also in case you’re wondering if you’ve forgotten something from the book: no, he and the Amis never interact or show any signs of knowing each other aside from Courfeyrac giving Marius a general warning about Patron Minette.

Some links and longer (sometimes much longer) discussions about Montparnasse and his context!

The Devil’s Dandy: some commentary on Montparnasse-as-Dandy by @prudencepaccard , who has definitely done the research on the topic, and a conversation with @edwarddespard:

One

Two

My own thoughts on Montparnasse and some of the other Men of Leisure in the novel

Montparnasse as a dark mirror for Marius, and how Hugo uses them both to discuss his concepts of Idleness-as-fatal-flaw

@perlumi-delirium‘s excellent post on how Montparnasse may have been inspired by the murderous Pop Phenom of the day, Lacenaire

a conversation with @needsmoreresearch about the role the PM plays as actual assassins and agents of government oppression; more about the rest of the Patron Minette, but still relevant for context

#Hey Nonny Nonny #answereds #Montparnasse talk #I guess this is going to be my #Montparnasse masterpost #since it's got all the links #this is a #long post #I have tried to put things under a cut #it SAYS it's got the cut #we'll see

71 notes · View notes

kcwcommentary · 5 years

Text

VLD4x05 – “Begin the Blitz”

4x05 – “Begin the Blitz”

The Paladins are back on Olkarion. I really don’t understand why the show this season has spent so much time sitting around on Olkarion. Even when the story goes to a different location, they keep coming back here. They aren’t doing anything that would require them to be on Olkarion though, so I don’t know why they’re here. Everyone is currently standing around having a conversation through transmission with Kolivan and Keith. Kolivan reports that Zarkon seems fixated on Lotor, and Shiro wants to use that as a distraction to attack. He identifies some “line of planets” in which only one planet remains under Galra control: Naxzela. It’s in instances like this where the show confuses me so much. The Galra are supposed to be a universe-wide dominating force. But for a line of planets to be even remotely relevant, we would have to, at most, be dealing with a single galaxy here. One galaxy is tiny compared to the universe.

“If we capture Naxzela and solidify that line, we can cut off all the Galra troops behind it from central command and use our position to defeat them,” Shiro says. It really bothers me when people write space-based stories and don’t understand the scale of space. Here, they’re talking about a line. Space is three-dimensional. It would not be difficult for the Galra to simply go above or below the line to get around it.

“Wow, we could take back a third of the Galra Empire in one, fell swoop,” Pidge says. Again, this show confuses me with its scale. What Pidge says here would require the Galra Empire be located in only one galaxy, not the universe-wide force the show has depicted it as before and will again. This is just more of VLD’s infamous inconsistency.

Their plan is to attack several locations at once: a communication hub and two zaiforge cannons. These cannons can apparently shoot things that are very distant. I didn’t get the impression that these three locations are all in the same solar system that Naxzela is, so that would mean these cannons can shoot across lightyears. That is absolutely absurd. The rebels will attack one of the zaiforge cannons, and the Blades of Marmora attack the second cannon. The goal is to seize the cannons and use them against the Galra. Voltron will be attacking the Galra on Naxzela, which thankfully looks like an actual planet.

Kolivan reaffirms what Pidge said earlier: this plan will put a third of Galra territory in Coalition control. Sigh. The entire time this scene is going on, Keith is standing beside Kolivan. Keith never speaks. Why did they not give Kolivan’s dialog in this scene to Keith? There’s nothing that Kolivan says that explicitly needed to come from him. Keith’s the main character, not Kolivan, yet Keith just stands there, motionless, silent, like an afterthought.

Lotor and his remaining generals are heading somewhere and he won’t tell them where, only giving them coordinates. Ezor wearing her helmet feels strange since the giant sock that hangs off her head would have to be wrapped up and stuffed inside the helmet. Ezor debates with Axca about Zarkon’s order against Lotor, but Axca says they have to trust him. Finally, we’re getting fallout from Lotor killing Narti: Ezor wrestles with the idea of trusting Lotor now. Given Axca’s facial expressions, Ezor’s comment does get to her, but she ultimately dismisses the idea that they can’t trust Lotor. This is the kind of scene that this show needed more of.

Team Voltron “gathers the coalition.” This montage makes the Coalition look smaller than it’s been described in previous episodes. Paladins go and directly talk to small groups of Coalition members, maybe a few dozen people per meeting. Shiro describes the Coalition as “friends and allies from across the universe.” Ugh, this show can’t even be consistent on the scale of the setting even within a single episode. Now, we’re back to everything being universe-wide. So that then brings me back to the fact that a line of planets in one galaxy is tiny. A line of planets in one galaxy would not portion off a third of the universe. (The idea of a line drawn with planets in different galaxies is nonsensical, so they have to be within the same galaxy.)

I guess the Paladins return to the Castle Ship on Olkarion after going and talking with a few dozen members of the Coalition at various locations because we get another shot of them standing around, Kolivan and Keith still on the display screen, but now there are also rebels standing around with the Paladins. I don’t know.

Lotor and the generals arrive at the location he’s directed them to. Zethrid says that her “scanners don’t detect anything.” Lotor says, “they’re not supposed to.” And then, after they move through a thick dust cloud, they come to Daibazaal.

Are you kidding me? Lotor’s generals are so unfamiliar with Daibazaal, the destroyed homeworld of the Galra, that they didn’t immediately recognize they were going to it when Lotor gave them the coordinates of their destination? Ezor doesn’t even recognize it when she sees it, asking Lotor what this place is. I do not whatsoever buy the idea that elite generals of the Galra Empire are so unfamiliar with the homeworld of the Galra that they don’t know this location. Also, it might be a significantly destroyed planet, but it’s still enough mass that made up a planet, so how did Zethrid’s scanners not detect it?

Lotor reveals that Alfor’s plan to destroy the rift by blowing up the planet failed. Lotor has had a team construct an “inter-reality gate on the rift.” His goal is to use his Sincline ship to enter the rift and “harvest the unlimited quintessence that exists in the layer between realities.” This somehow instantly reassures Axca, who reaffirms her faith in Lotor. I still don’t understand that if quintessence is life energy, then why is there so much of it in the rift. Lotor tries to fly into the rift but then seemingly just flies through his gate.

Rolo, Nyma, and Beezer have joined the rebels and have been working with Matt and coalition forces. This is a huge change in their characters that occurs offscreen. It sure would be nice to be allowed to see character growth when it happens.

Allura gives some big speech to the whole of the Coalition. She announces their “full scale attack on the Galra Empire.”

The Galra communication hub passes through some “dark zone” periodically, and that’s when Pidge and Hunk infiltrate it. It literally goes dark during this time, so this “dark zone” is just when a moon of a planet passes between the hub and the local sun? There really is not reason a communication hub would be placed in orbit between a planet and that planet’s moon. I would think a hub would be positioned in an unabstructed location. Orbiting a planet would always make communication blocked by the planet too.

Pidge and Hunk successfully take out the base commander, Pidge hacks the hub’s computers with only a couple button presses and puts in place some program that will make the Galra Empire think their communication hub is functioning normally for eight hours before they can figure it out. Okay. Hunk says, “Until then, no calls get in or out.” If none of the Galra Empire’s communications will get in or out from their communications hub, I think someone would notice long before eight hours have elapsed.

Matt and the rebels attack their assigned zaiforge cannon. The Rebels have what looks like a dozen ships, and they’re fighting a larger number of Galra fighters. The show has shown a single Lion having trouble with even fewer fighters, and the Lions are supposed to be the most advanced battleships ever. That makes it hard to believe these rebel ships could handle the Galra, although the scale of this battle feels more real to me.

The Galra fire the zaiforge cannon, and hit all of the rebel ships except for the one(s?) Matt, Rolo, Nyma, Beezer, Olia (aka the dog person who hasn’t been properly introduced despite apparently being the leader of this mission), and some woman in armor (or possibly an android?) with a facemask that completely covers her face (or is it her face if she’s an android?). How convenient that all the characters with speaking parts, except for the literal frog-man who ribbitted once, survive while the rest get blown up.

A Galra reports that “a third of the rebel forces have been decimated.” Oh, the unintended irony of that line. I know we now use the word “decimate” without any numerical definition attached to it, but the word does technically mean to kill one-tenth of a group of people. So, killing a third is a lot larger than a decimation. But again, our modern/colloquial usage of the word “decimate” has been separated from its historical meaning. I’m a word-nerd, so I can’t help but to notice these things.

We’re shown the cannon blasting nine ships, and before this we’ve only seen twelve ships at most, but here the dialog says only a third of them apparently were destroyed. I guess it’s just an inconsistency between the script and the animation?

The Blades of Marmora are on a planet trying to seize their assigned zaiforge cannon. Once again, this show has a non-planet planet, and this one looks like a tooth. Keith is finally given some dialog. Somehow, the Galra staffing this cannon on whatever planet this is can “detect a large mass entering planet Naxzela’s atmosphere,” but they lack communications to report it. Is this cannon supposed to be in the same solar system as Naxzela? I had the impression that these are supposed to be notably distant places. Again, the scale of where all these events are taking place is so undefined that I don’t know. The Blades seize control of the cannon.

Voltron attacks Naxzela.

Back with the rebels, there are nine ships hiding behind an asteroid. The android? suggests the Blades use their cannon to knock out the shields protecting this one. The zaiforge cannon is fired at the asteroid. It makes a long, sustained blast, but it’s taking a long time to break through the asteroid. Remind me how the zaiforge cannon is a threat across astronomical distances when it takes a lot of time to destroy a nearby asteroid?

Voltron easily destroys huge portions of the Galra forces and base on Naxzela. Something that none of them can “see” keeps blasting them. Apparently, there’s previously undetected, cloaked mines that only now start exploding. Pidge can detect them now though, even though all she did was touch a few buttons, so it doesn’t seem like they shouldn’t have been unable to detect them before. Pidge says that “there’s just too many to maneuver through them.” They got through them just fine to get to where they are now though, so I don’t know why they can’t move through them just as easily as they did before they started exploding. Allura uses Blue’s ice cannon to freeze the mines so they can maneuver through them before they explode. Ugh. That really seems nonsensical to me.

So, Voltron separates just long enough for Blue to freeze them, then they fly out of the mines (the distance between the mines look like they could have flown out, especially when separated into their respective Lions without freezing them) and then reform into Voltron. At this point in the show, I’m really tired of the Voltron forming animation.

Lotor stands on a chunk of rock, looking at his gate. Ezor, Zethrid, and Axca stand distant from him talking about their situation. Ezor comments that Lotor’s plans have failed. Zethrid says, “He’s going to turn on us as soon as it’s in his best interest.” She and Ezor keep going back and forth about how, for their own sake, they need to “take him down” first. Axca says nothing but walks over to Lotor. She draws her weapon, says, “For Narti,” and then shoots Lotor. Apparently, their weapons have a stun setting, so Lotor’s unconscious.

Keith has his cannon shoot across distant space at the other cannon. His blast easily takes out the other cannon’s shield. So, high tech forcefield defensive systems are easy to take out with a zaiforge cannon blast, but the rock of an asteroid takes a long time to get through? The rebels are shown as almost instantly capturing their assigned cannon. There’s a montage of Coalition forces attacking miscellaneous wherevers.

Lotor has been bound, and they’re all in their ships. He realizes they’re going to turn him over to the Galra, so he dislocates his shoulders so that he can access the ship’s controls, and he ejects Zethrid into space. He takes the one ship and jets off, while Zethrid is picked up by the other ship. Axca says, “There’s still one option left.”

The communication hub comes back online.

A Druid tells Haggar, who’s kneeling in the middle of an open room overtop some glowing glyphs on the floor that Voltron has reclaimed a big portion of the Empire. Haggar responds, “Good.”

Huh?

Haggar, who earlier this season was condemning Lotor for his having lost control of some minor outposts on the edge of the Galra Empire, is now okay with losing, according to what was said by multiple characters in this episode, one third of the Empire’s territory?

I’m so divided on this episode. It has beautiful animation. And it finally spends some time dealing with consequences of behavior in the interpersonal relationships between Lotor and his generals resulting from his having killed Narti. Of the story told in this episode, I think these scenes with Lotor are the most interesting. Despite the details of the Coalition’s attacks bothering me, I like the general idea of this plot. This season spent so much time having our heroes not really doing anything that it’s nice to finally have some movement.

But I’m baffled by the scale of the setting. Here, in one episode, in some scenes they talk as if they’re dealing on galactic scale, but then in other scenes (and in a lot of previous episodes) the scale is universal. The show just can’t be consistent on this because I don’t think the writers for this show understand the magnitudes of scale that are relevant in space.

And then this weird ending with Haggar acting like she’s fine with everything. I know she’s got her magic plan to counter next episode, but the way this episode has her react feels so inconsistent with how she was angry at Lotor. I think the fact that I enjoyed the scenes with Lotor this episode, and then to have this annoying ending with Haggar just reaffirms how boring Haggar is for me. I know the episode wants me to end going, Oh no!, Haggar the villain has some diabolical plan! But the effect her ending scene had on me was to remind me of how much I did not miss her during the rest of the episode.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 4 #vld 4x05 #commentary

18 notes · View notes

thradrantir · 5 years

Text

Armour and Weapon Mods

Unlike the previous post I made about The Essentials, this post will focus on weapon and armour mods that I really like.

Project Flintlock (Nexus Mods)

Yeah yeah, I hear the comments. “OMG! There’s no guns in TES!” There’s canons. The canons are... cannon. Which means there’s gun powder. And a musket, flintlock or blunderbus are not the same as modern day guns. You pretty much just need a heavy coat to stop a bullet from a flintlock.

The animations for this are great and it uses the archery skill tree. It’s basically a crossbow.

Treasure Hunter’s Garb - Light Armour Mashup SSE (Nexus Mods)

AWESOME ARMOUR MOD! So you wanna roleplay a treasure hunter. You wanna be a tomb raider. This armour is then for you. A nice light armour set that looks great on both men and women.

CL’s Rapier (Nexus Mods)

A weapon to match any noble who is about to take part in a duel. This rapier is finely crafted with an incredibly detailed hilt. While there is no rapier animations (that I’ve found) it is based on the sword animations. It’s still a great weapon if you happen to be role playing a swashbuckler.

Ryder’s Dragonfly Robes SSE (Nexus Mods)

For those archer and ranger role players, this is a great armour set. Complete with robes that come in fully sleeved or sleeveless, gloves, boots and a hood and a cloak. The hood comes in two style; with hair and without hair. The hair recolours itself based on what hair colour your character has. I even use the hood and cloak with other armours, so even if you just use those two pieces, it’s an armour set that’s still worth it.

Gigaduex's Armor Sets SE (Nexus Mods)

Three separate armours for those role playing Altmer. From a scout set to an archer set, these are very nice armours for those wishing to seek out Talos worshippers.

Katarina Armor - SSE CBBE BodySlide (Nexus Mods)

A League of Legends armour (I think, I don’t know, I don’t play LoL it just says it’s from LoL on the mod page so I’ll take their word for it) with five pieces. Boots, armour, gloves, shoulder plates and belts. A nice, light armour that’s easy to craft.

Aetherium Armor and Weapons Compilation by lautasantenni (Nexus Mods)

This is more than just one set of armour and weapons. It’s an add on to a complete quest, but giving you the option to craft some high powered Dwemer Power Armour. The Aetherium Forge is a legend in Skyrim, as many have tried to find it. You join the spirit of the explorer Katria as you cross Skyrim and search through ancient Dwemer ruins, uncovering pockets of aetherium ore and gathering the aetherium shards. Once you have them all, you head to the rumoured location of the Aetherium Forge.

A great armour and weapon set that helps to add to an already vanilla adventure in the Dawguard DLC. Once you’ve unlocked it, if you wish to craft more, then you have to return to the Aetherium Forge. Need more aetherium ore? Blackreach is rumoured to have pockets of it.

Ov Leather Armor - CBBE BodySlide (Physics) (Nexus Mods)

A really nice set of light armour that has seven pieces. A shawl, jacket, top, gloves, belt, pants and boots. It comes in a lovely brown and a black version.

Weapons Of The Shogunate 1_07b (Nexus Mods)

For those wishing to role play one of the Blades or even an Ashen from Akaviri, this weapon set is for you. It comes it different flavours of blades, includes katanas, daikatanas, tantos and more.

Insanitys Celtic Katana SSE (Nexus Mods)

For a different kind of Blades role player, especially if you’d like to play like Highlander. “There can be only one!” Not as many swords as in Weapons of the Shogunate, these are still very nicely modelled weapons.

Kozakowy's Steampunk Outfit - SSE CBBE BodySlide (Nexus Mods)

For the more elegant role player, a steampunk armour set for women that is both formal and extremely functional. Sadly, it doesn’t come with goggles, but...!

Dwemer Goggles and Scouter (Nexus Mods)

Add these goggles to your steampunk outfit! A small quest will lead you to Markarth where you’ll discover a dropped note from Calcelmo. Stealthy search for the key to get into his hidden stash to find the necessary plans to craft the goggles and scouter. These goggles look good and have a function, adding a light, night vision, detect life and so on. They do need dwemer oil in order to work.

Redguard Noble Armor SSE (Nexus Mods)

For those who role play the Reguards but don’t have as much armour choices available this is for you. Nicely crafted armour sets that come in light and heavy.

Hammerfell Armory SE (Nexus Mods)

To go with your armour, you need the weapons. This armory has you covered. “Curved swords. Curved... swords!” They have different varieties of curved swords for you to choose from.

Pampas Set - CBBE-TBD SE (Nexus Mods)

A different kind of armour, especially if you play Fallout. You role play as a dimensional traveller. You just existed Vault 76 and you find yourself in Skyrim. There’s questions about your Nuka-Cola jacket, but after a while through your deeds and your courage they stop asking. The aforementioned Nuka-Cola set of armour is just one of ten sets available.

Tera Rogue Armor - CBBE-TBD SE (Nexus Mods)

Another nice set of light armour for any sneaky types out there.

#Skyrim #TES #TESV:Skyrim #The Elder Scrolls #Mods #Nexus Mods #armour and weapons mods

6 notes · View notes

kalico-to-the-letter · 5 years

Text

REVIEW // RWBY | 6.12 | “SEEING RED”

AKA love.

Welcome in to my review of Volume 6, Chapter 12, entitled, “Seeing Red”.

In this episode: One fight becomes pointless. Another fight ends.

Deep breath, everybody.

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING.

As someone who was watched a lot of episodic stories, be it web series like RWBY, or an anime, or western television, I can say that one of my favourite experiences is seeing a long-term storyline come together and hit its climax.

I don’t write this to suggest that the culmination of Blake and Yang’s story is the best thing I’ve ever seen – who knows what that even is, after all these years? But it’s still really damn good, and the definite standout of a great episode.

You know, the story of Blake and Yang is one defined by demons, both internal and external – even going back to Volume 2, when an insomnia-riddled Blake spent ages jumping at shadows and snapping at her teammates until Yang was finally able to snap her out of it.

Of course, it undoubtedly took off at the end of Volume 3. One girl losing an arm and the other fleeing in the dead of night will do that for a storyline like theirs. Between then and now, Blake has spent two seasons embroiled in the Menagerie uprising and at times clearly has avoided reflecting on what happened with Yang. On the other hand, Yang was left alone to confront trauma and disability, and eventually had to deal with reuniting with Weiss, Ruby, and her estranged mother, with the thought of Blake very much on her agenda throughout. It’s an uneven divvying up of them time, to say the least. And while this season has teased great explorations of their relationship, those execution has been disappointingly limited to some flashes and the odd good scene here and there.

Not to mention that the primary spectre of the storyline, Adam, fulfilled the minimum requirements for a character of his kind without providing a whole lot of depth. At this point in the story – the penultimate episode of Volume 6, he solely existed to be vanquished and provide closure to this loop.

But even with those foibles, this is ultimately a story of the love between two people conquering the demons that threatened to rip them apart, and it manages all those requisite beats with aplomb.

The fight itself is shorter than expected, but constructed with enough efficiency that it doesn’t shortchange the viewer. Psychologically, it’s satisfying and consistent, calling back to some of Yang and Blake’s old moments of teamwork. I love the use of Blake’s broken sword as the thing that finally does Adam in. The fight dredges up the problems between Yang and Blake, correctly pointing out Blake’s abandonment and Yang’s past failure against Adam and everything that came as a result. And the story uses that thread to craft its conclusion; individually and as partners, Blake and Yang prove wrong Adam’s ideas of them, and beat him by affirming their bond. Lovely, that.

And this is just one half of a great episode.

It’s not that the conclusion to Gang vs Mecha Cordovin can match the other story for significance or action. This particular fight – and its fallout – is far more about establishing images to set up the finale rather than providing catharsis, but these images set up enough to have me very interested indeed in whatever is to come.

There’s Ruby diving into the barrel of the mecha suit’s cannon, all maturity and growth, disabling the weapon. And before that, standing up to the Atlesian zealot and speaking the real about the pointlessness of their fight, and shrugging off Qrow’s concern. It’s not as if she knows she’s absolutely going to win, either, but she knows there’s always another way to get where she and her friends need to go. There is Cordovin herself, someone who has let her grand proclamations and her desire for control obscure the true purpose of her presence in Argus. And while I feel that the sudden appearance of the Leviathan is a cheap way to create some higher stakes for a finale otherwise lacking in obvious crisis points (due to the mismanagement of the antagonists aside from Cordovin and Adam), the dynamic it creates with Cordovin’s delusion is one I really enjoy. And it looks pretty badass, stomping through the ocean like that. Reminds me a lot of Nier: Automata.

But now, we as the viewers know that Cordovin cannot be relied upon to deal with the new Grimm threat, right? Good thing a certain red-caped someone has been sufficiently built up to the point that she can just step into being the new Guardian of Argus in Cordovin’s place.

So, despite my issues with how the back end of this season has chosen to ignore much of the early setups, the season as a whole has been thorough and consistent with Ruby’s storyline, and it’s set to deliver right to the very end. And now the finale has a clear direction, something it’s been lacking up to this point. Take that, and add everything that Yang and Blake have just done? I would say there’s still plenty to feel good about with this season, and this penultimate episode did quite a bit to restore my positivity for what’s to come.

OBSERVATIONS

Ima discuss the particulars of that relationship here, because I don’t want to bog the review down. Some people may think it absolutely matters for the show to be more explicit in defining what now exists between Yang and Blake. And while I understand that argument on representation grounds, I do also subscribe to the idea that some bonds transcend explicit labels. Now, I will say that what these two now have is love, or something close enough that the difference is irrelevant, but personally, I feel that arguing over “romantic” or “platonic” in this case will just be pointless semantics, and ignore the clear and obvious beauty in how these two are depicted together.

I’ll discuss Ruby in greater depth with the finale. While there is plenty I could say about how this episode all but solidifies Ruby’s growth across this season, I have a feeling that another important chapter will be added to her story next week.

Goddamn, Adam got the sticks put in him. Huh?

That moment again: Yang catches another charged slash, and tosses Adam’s sword into the water. He goes after it, only to be hit with an out-of-nowhere uppercut from Blake. They both lunge for a piece of Blake’s broken sword; Blake gets there first, and Yang picks up the other piece. From there, it’s academic. This fight in its entirety has been very well-staged across the three episodes.

“What does she even see in you?” – Adam. I’ll just leave that line there.

For many years, I’ve been a Blake/Weiss shipper. If you’ve read my fan fiction, you know this. Since I stopped writing fan fiction, however, I haven’t really “shipped” any particular pairings. These days, I more or less just pay attention to what the show does with its relationships and do my best to explore them as they come. All of this is to preface my statement that I love how the show has built this relationship between Blake and Yang. In the early days of the series, I wasn’t a big fan of them together, just because Yang’s character was too thin for me to buy into the ship beyond a surface level. Of course, Yang has since gone on to become a fantastic character … it’s funny how these things evolve.

Cordovin paints an interesting picture of the “Atlas Superiority Complex”, doesn’t she?

I imagine that Yang and Blake won’t be asked to do too much fighting in the finale.

GRADE: A-

While reservations about squandered story potential remain and will likely persist beyond Volume 6’s conclusion, “Seeing Red” cleans up the trajectory of the season’s endgame and creates some interesting character-based action and drama for next week’s finale. It all but solidifies Ruby’s ascendancy as a heroine, and even though the reappearance of Grimm at this point smacks of lazy writing, it creates interesting stakes nonetheless. But of course, this episode’s strength is buoyed by the culmination of Yang and Blake’s long-running storyline. Emotionally satisfying as well as efficiently crafted, their final showdown with Adam is a beautiful affirmation of their bond and everything that has gone into it up to this point. – KALLIE

#rwby spoilers #rwby reviews #rwby6 #rwby volume 6 #rwby

8 notes · View notes

thecinephale · 5 years

Text

Best Movies of 2018

My favorite movies of the year were rough around the edges. Ambitious, personal works that were messy and real. There were a lot of big films this year that I personally didn't like that much (or at all), but I really love this list of films and I hope you check them out.

Still need to See: Bird Box, Border, Cold War, Custody, Dark River, I Am Not a Witch, On the Basis of Sex, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Summer '93, The Third Murder, Tyrel, Unsane, Where Hands Touch, Where is Kyra?

Films I didn't prioritize because someone involved has behaved in a way that makes me uninterested in their work: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, The Death of Stalin, The House That Jack Built, A Simple Favor

Really Liked: -Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland) -Blockers (dir. Kay Cannon) -Crazy Rich Asians (dir. Jon Chu) -Destroyer (dir. Karyn Kusama) -Let the Sunshine In (dir. Claire Denis) -Mary Poppins Returns (dir. Rob Marshall) -Mission: Impossible - Fallout (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) -The Rider (dir. Chloé Zhao) -Private Life (dir. Tamara Jenkins) -Skate Kitchen (dir. Crystal Moselle) -We the Animals (dir. Jeremiah Zagar) -You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsay)

Really Really Liked: -Eighth Grade (dir. Bo Burnham) -Happy as Lazzaro (dir. Alice Rohrwacher) -Leave No Trace (dir. Debra Granik) -Love, Simon (dir. Greg Berlanti) -Mary Queen of Scots (dir. Josie Rourke) -Nancy (dir. Christina Choe) -On Body and Soul (dir. Ildikó Enyedi) -Tully (dir. Jason Reitman)

Loved:

10. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Finally. Proof that Hollywood doesn’t have to choose between style, substance, and entertainment. Black Panther was the biggest film of the year and also one of the best. With stunning cinematography by Rachel Morrison, inspired costumes by Ruth E. Carter, and an album of the year worthy soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar, Ryan Coogler has broken through the Marvel machine to make something truly special. And like all the best superhero movies the supporting cast is incredible, Letitia Wright being the obvious standout, along with moral foils Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong'o. This is everything I want from big budget filmmaking and it's such an exciting relief to be reminded that it's possible.

9. The Tale (dir. Jennifer Fox)

The Hollywood Reporter recently published an article about the 16-year-old girl who inspired Woody Allen's Manhattan. The woman, reflecting on her time with the director and known child molester, is unsure how to frame their time together. She was underage and knowing what she knows now about Allen, their affair feels different. But at the time she was in love. Reading this article, I felt overwhelming gratitude for filmmaker Jennifer Fox and The Tale, a painful and important movie about her own teenage love affair, about her own rape. Fox's vulnerability and skill not only make this a great movie, but a truly life-changing experience. There is one moment in particular that uses cinema in a way I've never seen before. This is by no means an easy film to watch, but it's really worthwhile if you can handle it.

8. Dirty Computer (dir. Janelle Monáe & others)

This "emotion picture" available to watch on YouTube strikes such a moving balance between pure joy, harsh reality, and cautious hope. Its very existence is a sign that its optimism is not misplaced. Musicians have become some of our greatest auteurs with voices and stories Hollywood would otherwise ignore. Janelle Monáe along with Chuck Lightning, Emma Westenberg, Alan Ferguson, and Lacey Duke created a film that is at once a sci-fi epic, a visual album, a public coming out, a celebration of queerness/Blackness/femaleness, and an ode to everybody different. This year was bleak and nothing brought me more comfort than this movie, this album, and obsessing over Monáe and star Tessa Thompson's relationship.

7. Good Manners (dir. Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra)

Come for the lesbian werewolf musical fairy tale genre mashup, stay for the complicated explorations of race, class, and parenthood. This movie is overflowing with so many ideas, cinematically and thematically, it's thrilling to watch it all fit together. It's so rare to watch a movie and have literally no idea where it's going and I will cherish the experience of my first viewing (I literally SCREAMED at one moment in a crowded theatre, seriously) while also hungrily rewatching to unpack everything that's going on. I can't promise it will all work for you, but I can promise you won't be bored.

6. Shirkers (dir. Sandi Tan)

As a teenager Sandi Tan made a feature film with her friends and an enigmatic mentor. Imagined as the start of a Singapore New Wave, their dreams were crushed when the mentor vanished with the film reels. Now decades later, Tan's documentary recalls the experience… with the help of the recovered reels. Part memoir/part mystery/part lost cinema classic, Shirkers is about youthful creativity, exploitation, and so much more. Ultimately this is a portrait of an art form. Within its 95 minutes it encapsulates everything movies can do and everything movies take. It's currently streaming on Netflix and a must-watch for anyone who makes movies or cares about how they're made.

5. Widows (dir. Steve McQueen)

Like a Michael Mann movie if Michael Mann cared about things other than digital cameras, Steve McQueen's cold and stellar heist movie lacks subtlety in all the best ways. Led by Viola Davis this candidate for greatest movie cast ever of all time ever does not disappoint. Everybody is so, so good, and it's thrilling to watch this kind of 1970s American genre film through a point of view that doesn't belong to white men. There's a lot to unpack here, with character, plot, and theme, and I've only seen it once, but that was enough to know that this is a capital G Great movie.

4. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (dir. Desiree Akhavan)

Not every queer person has gone to conversion therapy, but I'd guess most of us have doubted our feelings and our identities. What could have easily been a more serious But I'm a Cheerleader instead finds its own purpose, its own humor, and ultimately exists as a still relevant portrayal of the gaslighting we continue to face for just being ourselves. Chloë Grace Moretz gives one of the best performances of the year as the equal parts cool and vulnerable Cameron and my love for writer/director Desiree Akhavan knows no bounds. NOTE: Sasha Lane plays a character who is disabled and Forrest Goodluck plays a character who is Two-Spirit despite not being so themselves. Considering how good the film is otherwise I dream of a version with a supporting cast who understand the experience of their characters.

3. If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins)

Like the masterpiece of a novel it's based on, Barry Jenkins third film is an overwhelming tribute to life in the face of despair. Instead of offering hope, instead of suggesting that being Black in America will someday be easier, Beale Street shows how love, romantic and familial, can provide temporary escape and a reason for being. The entire cast is incredible and gorgeous. Every frame is lush, the score is beautiful, and the moments of joy are as moving as the moments of pain. We are so lucky to be alive while Barry Jenkins is making movies.

2. Shoplifters (dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda)

I went into Kore-Eda's Palme d'Or winning tribute to chosen family ready to feel grateful for my own chosen family. The friends, mentors, beauticians(!), doctors(!!) who have loved and supported me and made me feel like I wasn't alone these past few years. That happened. But what surprised me was how much it made me appreciate my biological family as well. Like the houses in my favorite TV show of the year, Pose, the makeshift family of Shoplifters ends up being like any other. There are clashing personalities, there are frustrations, there are fights. But more than anything there is care, there is self-sacrifice, there is love. Community is not defined by perfection. Family is not defined by perfection. Kore-Eda has spent much of his career asking the question, "What is family?" and this film provides the least and most satisfying answers.

1. In Between (dir. Maysaloun Hamoud)

I loved my favorite movie of the year so deeply that a one paragraph pitch just won't do. Fortunately, the best site on the entire online, Autostraddle, had me write a gushy review. Read it here or if you're already convinced watch In Between free on Kanopy and then read it: https://www.autostraddle.com/in-between-review-the-super-gay-super-feminist-film-no-ones-talking-about-444114/

Television!

Extremely honorable mentions like how is there so much good TV these all deserve to be in the top ten: BoJack Horseman (S5), High Maintenance (S2), Insecure (S3), Jane the Virgin (S4), Random Acts of Flyness (S1), Sharp Objects, Supergirl (S4), Take My Wife (S2)

10. Killing Eve (S1) 9. Atlanta (S2) 8. The Good Place (S2/3) 7. The Americans (S6) 6. The Bisexual (S1) 5. ACS: The Assassination of Gianni Versace 4. Queen Sugar (S3) 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (S3/S4) 2. Vida (S1) 1. Pose (S1)

2 notes · View notes

ldhwriting · 7 years

Text

So I wanted to make a post about this, it was really a need to make a post, but I feel like I need to explain why I am into the idea of parallel worlds and time lines for stories. I need to give some context, when I was growing up I was pretty much raised by TV. My parents were abusive and mostly absent so I'll all kinds of messed up. To this day my parents are split on how they feel and act after I've confronted them. One is apologetic yet puts the blame on everything else while the other both claims I was never abused and that I deserved my abuse, also trying to push me to suicide almost monthly. I had all kinds of abuse too I was even chemically abused so I would be put in a mental hospital and no longer be their problem, one of my parents didn't agree with that and pulled me off the medications that were never meant to be given to children. One of the constant kinds of abuse I got though, I think because it was the easiest to deal out, was the destruction of dreams and hopes. Sure I was told I was smart, but not smart enough to be a astrophysicist. Sure I was artistic, but not artistic how my parents wanted. I didn't have a imaginary friend, I never had a hero, and I would be constantly told "you know that isn't real." On a daily basis I was taken out of my own escape by my parents telling me what I already knew, telling me what I am not allowed to escape. This of course made my grades suffer when it came to arts or anything requiring creativity, than it started to effect all of my grades. Now I don't like alternative universes because I like to think about a world where I wasn't abused, because I have no clue what that is like. But I was very limited when it came to creative outlets when I actually became a adult and was able to freely tell my parents to shut the fuck up. So when I started to get ideas for things I didn't know how to start a story I didn't know how to build a world or write characters, hell I still kinda don't. The first idea I think I had that I wanted to make a reality was a mod for Fallout 3 where Green Lanterns were vault tests and other vaults had different effects and different colors based on the radiation that the vaults were hit with. I had come up with unique properties that would make the rings work in the game, them mostly being weapons that had infinite ammo. From that idea came the idea of superheroes showing up in a world after the apocalypse had already begun. Than I started to make my own superheroes, and than I thought about the different kinds of apocalypse that could happen that would make the story more compelling. I got rid of the existing superheroes because they didn't fit anymore and down the line I came up with Crimson Phoenix, something I actually want to make a reality and something unique. This all came from the idea of a alternate version of the green lanterns were related to vault-tec. Granted it took me time but it's original with no touch of the original source material. I was once told that if you want to start drawing than you should start tracing art. I think the same can be said for writing. You should never post traced art as a final project but you trace it to get a idea on how you want your lines to look until it becomes muscle memory, which than leads to that muscle memory becoming a art style on it's own. It's okay to write fanfictions and head cannons. It will start the creativity flowing neither the less. Alternate universes and time lines are a easy setting off point until you realize you've made enough changes to where it's easier to call it original rather than explain how it's different from the source material. Now I'm not saying I'm a good writing and that you should listen to me, in fact I'm saying I'm a bad writer. I am saying don't let others put you down for using existing material to jump off from.

#writing #creative #creativity #talk of abuse #fanfiction

1 note · View note

mastermistressofdesire · 7 years

Note

What drew you to Griffith as a character? What do you see in him that you don't see in others? who's your fave character from Guts' new party? ummmm wanna do a mutual reading of that manga with the cute lady??

Okay so First of all it took me so much time to reply because I’ve been thinking about the First Question.

What drew me to Griffith as a character?

What Indeed.

I think I should begin by saying that my order of consuming Berserk was

1. First Two Movies

2. 1997 Anime

3. Manga

So My impressions during the Movie was first off- Asshole. To put it simply.

Very pretty, very fascinating, possibly mentally unstable, asshole-but going around telling people they belong to you and they should be prepared to die for you seemed a bit much to me. Not the most endearing first impression. And honestly I thought this was a trope I’d seen before. Problematic and abusive characters who sparked controversy within fandoms because they happened to be attractive and may have had some nominal ‘tragic backstory’ which was used to justify it. It’s not something I necessarily hate in narrative,sometimes it is pretty interesting,( and I’ve always sort of been in love with the villains) specially in horror sub-genres, but it wasn’t new to me. So my reaction was interested but not invested.

Then post time skip, things changed. Suddenly it wasn’t the cold allure, it was clumsy affection and I really really liked it. This was also the point where I was pretty sure that This was going to be a cannon gay series and that the whole recommending berserk as a testosterone- fantasy- gore- fest was a huge practical joke to get people to watch the romantic drama.

So , I thought it had taken a love conquers all route as Griffith was now dishing out ‘ Do I need a reason to put myself in harms way for your sake’ s instead of ‘I will decide where you will die for me’ s . I thought it was cute honestly and it seemed like character development so I hung on mostly for the dynamic not Griffith specifically. Then that creepy ass smile happened after he heard news of Both julius’ and adonis’ death. And the movies suddenly threw the Gennon angle at us at which point I was like---woah woah hold on this doesn’t quite add up. So You’re telling me this now insecure, madly in love, philosophical, seemingly idealistic dude is also simultaneously okay with murdering children and exploitative sex of some sort? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP. THIS IS FASCINATING AS HELL.

And I dropped the second movie midway to go see the anime. And I made a terrible mistake. Hell I think I can pinpoint the exact point It started and the exact moment I realised it. It started the moment Griffith placed the broken knight-doll on the child’s corpse and I realised it when he turned around to place his hand on Casca’s shoulder, Smiled and said ‘It’s fine, I’m Okay’ in the river, with his arms still gushing down blood. I fell in love with this character.

There were so many stabs to the heart within these two points. Maybe I’ll write a separate post about that.

But this brings me to the second question,What does he have that others don’t?

While not necessarily something no other character has, a unique feature which drew me to Griffith as he was now depicted in the anime was his awareness. Something which often bugs me about protagonists in general in many series is how unaware they are of the cost that is associated with what they’ve set out to achieve. The collateral damage in their ‘righteous war’.

The fact that Griffith knew the cost, knew that others were paying the price for his dream, was aware of the sacrifices people had made for him, wanted to subconsciously compensate for that, give back a little for what was taken. That he holds no illusions about the fact that what can be beautiful to him can be horrifically ugly to others . He doesn’t claim to be in the right nor does he try to protect his pride or dignity to that end.

I enjoy his perception, his ability to see things through more than one perspective.

His ability to completely abandon the moral high-horse, despite having a sense and understanding of morality and valuing it.

Since this post is dealing with the things with drew me towards him as a character, I wont go into the fallout . this post is monster-length as it is.

So after the anime, I reached the Manga and I got a third set of reasons- Something I really really wasn’t expecting to find- Relatability.

This was literally in the tiniest of things. And were more personal to me than an objective reading of the material. And I can’t seem to remember all of it in one go but-

Reading a lot, Reading everything you could get your hands on, contemplating life, thinking about your existence, thinking about morality, being a prankster, being afraid to fall in love, being oblivious to falling in love, hiding your smiles, hiding your pain with smiles, never having someone who’d actually understand what you were trying to say, creating a fake persona, wanting to take it off but not wanting to see the disappointment and disgust when its torn away, pride, being afraid you were driving someone away by saying too much, being afraid of being abandoned, Being afraid a lot.

ANYWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYs

Favorite in Gut’s new Party- Farnese and Serpico. I like them both equally.

Mutual reading- YES YES YES!

11 notes · View notes

camorrsthorn · 7 years

Note

Hi, I'm kinda new here, and so I mostly have just seen the art of your OCs? (Which is awesome, btw.) But I was wondering if you could give, like, a basic outline of who they are and maybe their universe? (Bc worldbuilding is ALWAYS cool.) Thanks! (And again, love your art

aaa thank you!! i have. a lot bear with me lmao but. i’m gonna put this under a cut because Oh Dang That’s Too Many

video game ocs: holy moley that’s a lot

tarris, relic, kharza gra-durza, serindil, riandil, vhesryn, saaji and zhakka are all from elder scrolls!!

tarris is a bosmer thief/assassin who’s actually real bad at fighting and is probably half magpie, don’t wear jewelery near her she will Have It

relic is a bosmer vampire who is an asshole. he’s awful. he knows magic but mostly likes to Stab. he exists in the same world-state as tarris and kharza and probably a few others

kharza is an orc warrior who’s like the only lawful good character i have, whoops. she sometimes turns into a werewolf and mauls people but that’s a minor character flaw. she’s a big gay

serindil is an altmer mage!! very very much a glass cannon. they were with the thalmor embassy in skyrim until they... sort of defected?? they’re still an ass tho

riandil is a bosmer scout!! he’s from eso so i’m not sure exactly how he fits into the world state, but he’s a big ball of sunshine. he likes very very bad puns and responding to altmer supremacy by acting real stupid until THEY look stupid. he’s great

vhesryn is a dunmer assassin but he’s also a big ol’ dick. he’s a vampire too but mostly a dick. his hobbies include being an asshole and stabbing people, also dancing

saaji is a khajiit thief and very pure good person. she;s good. she’ll steal your things but she’s good she’ll prolly give em back. really just wants a warm spot in the sun, very very tired of almer

zhakka is a redguard warrior and former pirate!! i love her. she scowls a lot and looks grumpy but she’s grinning inside just all the time. you know those people who say the most ridiculous funny shit with a totally stoic face?? that’s zhakka

spring and bishop are from fallout

spring washington is Soft. she’s a soft soft person. she likes plants and photography, but also she was her school’s boxing champion pre-war and won trophies for shooting, and likes to keep a switchblade on her at all times. met her husband when he had to drag her off some creep. she just wants to make the world a bit brighter!!

bishop is. bishop. he’s my courier and he’s??? the worst. he’s obnoxiously lucky and knows it, and very charming despite the amount of times he puts his foot directly in his mouth. he’s good at heart but also does what seems good/fun/cool at the time??? “hey bishop when is the last time you washed” “i dunno when did it last rain” “i don’t want to travel with you any more”

i have a whole lot of dragon age ocs bear with me

rasha tabris is Angry. i once described her as a wildfire in a very pretentious thing i didn’t post but it’s apt!! she stayed with the wardens because duncan was the reason she could kill vaughn, and the reason she wasn’t killed for it. she died fighting the archdemon because there was no way she was trusting some human, and died spitting and cursing

katia brosca’s main personality trait is Spite. people told her she could only be this this and this because casteless, so she did absolutely everything she could to prove them wrong. a lot of her loudness and bravado is a front to protect herself, but not all of it

hildr aeuducan’s middle name is duty. she does the job she’s got to do, and does it well. she doesn’t really Do sentiment?? and she’s never once but her own opinions over what’s best. she left behlen on the throne despite. everything

cian mahariel is Ridiculous. they spend half their time in trees despite having broken at least one bone on every part of their body falling out of them, and are Always Smiling

niketas surana lives on his nerves. his skills include flinching, stammering, going beet red if anybody looks at him for too long, and falling a little bit in love with anybody who’s nice to him. he’ll very very gladly swallow all his fear to protect people though, and repeatedly put himself between templars and scared younger mages while still in the tower. would die for jowan, frankly

vinnora lavellan is a sweetheart!! she just wants to be nice to everyone, and frankly deserves better than she got. she never wanted to be inquisitor, but figured she could at least use the position to help people who needed it, and tried to

noah shepard is my only real mass effect character worth talking about!! she’s a Delight and i love her. she’s paragon to her core, and goes out of her way to help people or offer a shoulder, but she’s absolutely not afraid to speak her mind or tell assholes to get fucked. she’s very very tired and full of guilt and regret. please let her sleep

d&d ocs!! are they ocs technically. i’m counting them i love them

dáithí lathlaeril is a half elven wild magic sorcerer and the only one i have actually played!! they’re half of a set of twins born to a high elven noblewoman and her human husband. they accidentally burned down their family library after overhearing their mother agree to essentially disinherit them, and have been an adventurer ever since. they have Lots of emotions always, and swing between “i’m inherently superior to all of you and also have cool magic” and “oh god i’m the worst i’m pathetic is my magic even good” and it’s terrible. please give them a hug. their name is pronounced DAH-hee

dáimhín lathlaeril is the other twin!! she left home to go be a bard but attracted an archfey with her singing, and wound up a warlock. still pretends to be a bard tho. she’s obnoxiously charming and knows it, and is WAY more relaxed and happy go lucky than their twin. she’s still pretty prissy tho. her name is pronounced like DAH-veen. also she’s not a girl, she’s nb!! like her twin. “finch that wouldn’t happen” haha what i can’t hear you

zeerith is a drow rogue!! he had just the worst life but is So Good at pretending he didn’t. what do you mean he’s almost certainly traumatised and emotionally messed up, he’s smiling, see?? trust him. he really really hates killing and would much rather talk his way out of trouble, but isn’t at all above hurting people to defend people?? also he’s very handsome and charming, focus on that. no don’t ask him if he’s ok. very very prone to talking someone to death if given half a chance

most of my actually original characters are from the same world!! it’s tag is “untitled a” because i don’t have a name for it yet lmao. there’s also a bunch of gods to go with these guys but i don’t even have names for them yet so lmao

fionn is prolly currently my most developed character from it. he’s an elf, which is fairly rare, and a magic user, which is rarer. he doesn’t care tho. he’s an ex-soldier who deserted after some very bad stuff happened, and he’s just trying to keep his head down. the god of luck and fate took a shine to him tho, so that’s not going too well. he uses his magic to make people think he’s much better at playing music than he is, but he could do Very cool things. he won’t tho

sabre is also an elf, but she’s a thief and very happy about it. she’s tiny and literally always ready to fight. she’ll fight anyone. she’ll Win against anyone. don’t fight sabre she jut doesn’t stop. she’s got a pretty strict Code tho, and won’t steal from anyone who can’t afford it, or fight anyone who can’t fight back. technically steals to give to the poor but also keeps a lot. she worked for that ill gotten gold!! she’s one of the two people who got “chosen” by the twin gods of the hunt, which she’s pretty stoked about. she’s got a tattoo honoring one of the twins

zarifa is the captain of an as-yet unnamed ship, and a totally legitimate merchant sailor. no pirates here absolutely not haha what’s that officer nope no illegitimate goods either, trust her. she’s got a good heart but also she’s pretty practical, and ensuring her own survival and the survival of her crew trumps morals every time. she’s the “chosen” of the god of the sea, which is an incredibly mixed bag

sylvie pike is zarifa’s first mate, but not nearly as professional. she likes to have fun, and insists on dragging zarifa with her. she’s got a much thicker accent than any other member of the crew, and makes it impenetrably thicker when she wants to be difficult. she’s not as good at overcoming her conscience as zarifa is

billie shaw is possibly my oldest current oc, holy shit. they’re kind of the odd job person aboard the ship, and also sing shanties and (badly) play the accordion. has a big big soft spot for kids. also hates shoes. what the fuck billie. put some boots on you ridiculous human being

sara tillman is possibly the only ordinary person on board the ship. she’s the ship’s doctor, despite being easily the youngest person aboard, and despite having only ever operated on her family’s farm prior to being hired. she’s got like ten siblings and loves all of them very very much

there’s also a handful of others from this universe who aren’t nearly as fleshed out yet, other than the gods, but they aren’t fleshed out!! “finch neither are any of the people you’ve talked about” [sweats]

#I AM ALMOST DEFINITELY MISSING SOMEBODY #MULTIPLE SOMEBODIES!!#oc tag #oc masterpost #heck yeah #Anonymous #ask tag

1 note · View note

42inchtv · 5 years

Text

Some Thoughts On The Best Movies Of 2018

Honorable Mentions: “Aquaman” (dir. James Wan), “Avengers: Infinity War” (dirs. Anthony and Joe Russo), “BlacKkKlansman” (dir. Spike Lee), “Blockers” (dir. Kay Cannon), “Eighth Grade” (dir. Bo Burnham), “First Reformed” (dir. Paul Schrader), “Isle of Dogs” (dir. Wes Anderson), “Mary Poppins Returns” (dir. Rob Marshall), “mid90s” (dir. Jonah Hill), “Ocean’s Eight” (dir. Gary Ross), “On the Basis of Sex” (dir. Mimi Leder), “A Quiet Place” (dir. John Krasinski), “Roma” (dir. Alfonso Cuarón), “A Simple Favor” (dir. Paul Feig), “Venom” (dir. Ruben Fleischer)

10. “Vice” (dir. Adam McKay) A thing about “Vice” is Shea Whigham (49) plays Amy Adams’ (44) dad and Christian Bale’s (44) father-in-law — and the movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that they all look the same. It's a weird and imperfect film, but I'm oddly drawn to it -- despite the fact that many of the negative things people have said about this movie are very true. Perhaps that's why I keep coming back to Boots Riley's tweet-review: "Adam McKay makes movies that get me mad because he does several things that I wish I did first. In 'Vice,' he doesn't just break the 4th wall -- he breaks it and comes and sits in the seat next to you with popcorn and hot sauce. I don't think he makes film, he makes theater." There is something transfixing about "Vice." It's a trainwreck, a complete blank-check movie, the work of an auteur who was not told "no" once during the process. So this thing rattles off the rails early and often and features performances and tones so wildly divergent that it feels like something entirely different than regular movies. But put it this way: I'd rather watch a movie like “Vice” than “good” movies like “First Man.” McKay goes for it here in a way that seems reckless and irresponsible -- as if he'll never get the chance to make another movie so why not throw every idea he's ever had at the screen. There's something laudable to that kind of ego and arrogance. “Vice” condemns everyone, including the audience. After what we’ve done, it’s the movie we deserve.

9. “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” (dir. Susan Johnson) Did everyone who bought high on “Set It Up” watch “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and feel slightly awkward? A winning coming-of-age romcom that should stand proudly next to “10 Things I Hate About You” on the list of awesome teen movies that people watch forever.

8. “If Beale Street Could Talk” (dir. Barry Jenkins) If there was a better scene this year than Brian Tyree Henry’s section of Barry Jenkins’ lush, wondrous, absolutely stunning “Moonlight” follow-up, "If Beale Street Could Talk,” I didn’t get around to seeing it.

7. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (dirs. Ethan and Joel Coen) The James Franco section feels incomplete and hurried — why wasn’t it axed completely after Franco’s sexual misconduct allegations? — and the Liam Neeson section is dark and slow. But the other four parts? Instant, rewatchable classics, some of the best things the Coen brothers have ever done. My fave at the moment is the Tom Waits one, but the Zoe Kazan segment is also not without its pleasures. For a movie exclusively about death and dying and the relative fleeting nature of life, “Buster Scruggs” is a delight. It’s an exception to the premise of the film: how could life be meaningless when this exists?

6. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (dirs. Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., Rodney Rothman) As we've gotten further away from 2018, it feels like few movies from that calendar year will stand the cultural test of time. In five years, will people still talk about even the year's best gems, "The Favourite" and "Widows"? Maybe? At this rate, "A Star Is Born" will live in infamy, an Oscar front-runner that was basically shut out in the final calculus; even a film like "Roma," a wonderful movie that deserves its many awards, feels somewhat diffuse. Alfonso Cuarón's intimate epic has barely made a dent now, at a time when even the worst Netflix movie becomes meme fodder for weeks on end. All of which is to say, if one movie from last year winds up being *the* movie from last year, allow me to submit for consideration "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." Its message is more powerful than the pablum of "Green Book" and it just seems so damn modern? Transformative? There's a reason "Spider-Verse" caught the attention of the zeitgeist. It's a now movie -- a dazzling, scattered, boisterous affair that's super funny and legitimately sweet. I slept on a lot of this the first time I saw "Spider-Verse" (literally, being a parent is tough sometimes!), but with clear eyes and full hearts, I watched it again and fell super in love. Time to re-do the 2018 top-10 list.

5. “Widows” (dir. Steve McQueen) How would “Heat” look if it were all about systemic white supremacy? A lot like “Widows,” apparently. What a blast of pulp fiction, with a stacked cast just knocking the crackling dialogue out of the park at every turn. Viola Davis was the headline story here, putting in a complex turn that feels comparable to Robert De Niro in “Ronin.” But the real star is Daniel Kaluuya, who delivers the best villain performance since Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. Build a statue for him in lieu of his guaranteed Oscar snub.

4. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler) Marvel's own version of “The Dark Knight,” “Black Panther” is the best MCU movie yet, a legitimate epic in league Christopher Nolan’s superhero classic but with a central conflict that feels like an extension of “Do the Right Thing.” Months later, Michael B. Jordan’s towering performance still rules: he’s every bit as impressive as Heath Ledger was as the Joker.

3. “A Star Is Born” (dir. Bradley Cooper) The closest thing to "Hamilton" released this year, Bradley Cooper's meme factory focuses on who lives, who dies, who tells their story. There’s a lot of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical in “A Star Is Born" and the film is structured as such, up to a literal heart-clutch final moment that makes me cry just thinking about it (and rivals Eliza’s last gasp in “Hamilton”). Enough has been written about "A Star Is Born" that more isn't necessary, but let's just pause here to praise Cooper, the Actor, for a performance so great that it's easy to take him for granted.

2. “Mission: Impossible - Fallout” (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) What if “The Dark Knight” but Tom Cruise? What if “Skyfall” but “Mission Impossible”? That’s “Fallout,” the best action movie since “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the best blockbuster in a great year for blockbusters. To use overdone online parlance, this movie fucks. From the jump too, with a prologue that combines elements of the first “Mission: Impossible” with a hilarious cameo and the Wikipedia entry to “Rogue Nation” to set the tone for what’s to come. “Fallout” is a masterpiece of action cinema – to wit: the second act is basically one giant action sequence segmented into separate movements – and a tightly wound spy game that does just enough with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team (Rebecca Ferguson remains a highlight) to make the characters worth caring about. A relentless, special movie – the best Cruise has done since “Edge of Tomorrow” – “Fallout” feels like the end of this beloved franchise. And why not? How do you top perfection? Why would you even bother to try?

1. “The Favourite” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) The funniest movie of the year, “Mean Girls” in corsets with Rachel Weisz absolutely effing owning in the Regina George role, “The Favourite” is maybe the only perfect movie of 2018. Weisz, Emma Stone, and Olivia Colman are all incredible, a trio of co-leads in the tradition of “Goodfellas,” “Zodiac,” or “The Social Network.” Yorgos Lanthimos’ film belongs in the same zip code as those classics from a quality standpoint as well, with a sharp-edged script that powers the proceedings to its downbeat, darkly comic conclusion. And while this is a movie all about those aforementioned women, don’t sleep on at least one man: Nicholas Hoult, who hams it up with an abandon reserved for Ryan Phillippe in “Cruel Intentions.” A true classic.

#some thoughts

0 notes