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hange-zone · 3 years

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hey...i’ve sat with the ending for a bit and am still not entirely sure what to feel. i will say i’m bit sad that it’s over - i started this series with friends back in 2014, and was little and giddy and excited about it. i consumed a lot of jeanmarco fic (wisteria! LAD! render! strings! etc) and that one really good eremin (we were kings...which is probably half the reason why i’m writing it so feverishly now) + fanart (johannathemad! icarus theory! gimmes! many many more that i’m happy to share but don’t remember right now cos it’s 5am)

and then life went on and i forgot about it mostly because...life...and only got back into it a few months ago when the anime was back on netflix and i watched most of it in the span of a week. and i’m here, again.

i have to admit i don’t exactly read the manga and i stopped the anime for a bit because at the heart of it i’m also not sure how to feel about the time skip. i think that’s on me though - the basement was built up to be this black box and i think a large part of the fun was the not knowing, and the journey to the basement was used as a framing device. so once we found out that fell away and i don’t think any reveal would have been completely satisfactory. and i have issues with the timeskip but it’s probably me being picky (lol dm me if you’d like to know more, i am such a rambler)

though admittedly there are parts of the post timeskip i do enjoy - you can tell i’m obsessed with that one scene eren and armin stare at each other, i love the new designs, i especially love armin lol - and I appreciate parts of the perspective it’s trying to give too in the broadest sense (ie the anti-war themes...effect of propaganda... at least I THINK that’s what we were supposed to take away at the start of season 4 because I stopped watching the show then for a whole host of reasons)

was looking over (ok, glued to) reddit yesterday and it occured to me parts of the fandom (read: r/yeagerbomb) can be quite toxic (as with any large fandom I guess!) so I was hoping to avoid that but also like understand what’s going on...i think honestly i was a bit disappointed in the ending, at first i was actually upset but now i’m just...alright. mostly i think i’m sad it’s ended and that’s mixed up with how I feel in general. but I've thought about it and overall it’s an ending in the broadest sense, I mean it largely served its purpose and I think importantly for endings, tied up main threads of the plot. and i respect the decisions the author has made, even as we’re all entitled to our opinion and you can disagree. I do wish some other choices made or it were done slightly differently. mostly I wish it had more time to develop some themes and I think generally some parts of the series were a bit convoluted.

if you’d like my (uninformed) thoughts i am happy to share - they’re in more detail below! and i’d like to hear yours too:)

if it helps i didn’t buy the whole ‘chad eren’ thing at all - at heart he is still a nineteen year old boy and he’s probably still small and scared - something which i’ve explored! - and while i appreciate that eremika didn’t exactly come out of nowhere i’ve always read it as them wanting the domesticity with each other, wanting to live out full, normal lives, but not necessarily just about the exclusivity of a relationship, which is what some readings of the last chapter seemed to suggest (& hence i kinda get why people are so mad that that he comes off as an incel but idk, maybe it’s the translations? i personally am choosing to read it as the first part - that he wanted deep down to have the space to live out a long, natural life with the people he loves).

but wrt to eremika my main thing is that i’m a bit iffy on the parallels to ymir because personally i’m not a bit fan of that entire ymir/fritz thread...1) i get the slave...to love but it also feels a bit like it romanticises their relationship? maybe i’m reading too much into it. but more importantly to me 2) i feel it complicates things a bit because we can’t then pin down if it’s eren or her making the executive decisions which then becomes a bit more thematically murky and doesn’t help with characterisation...I mean if he’s a plot device then he is a plot device, if he’s a character with agency then he’s a character, if he blurs the line between both it becomes a bit of an issue as there aren’t real stakes and character development then becomes a bit of a question mark since there’s also this tendency to reduce him to a symbol...and yeah, as we see the whole headache-inducing nature of this is quite evident now... (and i want to feel for eren!)

also not a super fan of the eren sending dina. but i’m reminded of the discussions around mr robot and standing in the stream of time wrt white rose but eh, time travel plots are always a bit inscrutable and honestly always make things difficult. personally i rationalise it as more of he sent them away from Bert than to his mother. maybe he had the vague understanding of what it’d do but exactly why he did it was different, which idk, makes all the difference to me.

but i do appreciate what the ending was trying to show, even if I personally don't think it was the best, i do appreciate eren’s vulnerability, his last talk with armin broke me, and appreciate that jean is okay, levi is okay, and he got to see everyone else again. i’m also kinda appreciative of the bird symbolism though i don’t think it’s any more than that...also it makes me think that poor eren, he’s burdened with Glorious Purpose & like it’s not gonna stop until he’s dead, right :/ also was under no illusions that it was gonna be a happy ending and everyone would be satisfied somehow or another so eh. I do wish that some things were done differently, I would have done some things differently, but also I acknowledge the constraints of the medium and I think some nuances didn't come across/writing could be tighter. maybe we’ll see when the anime comes out, if some of us stick around that long.

also my monkey brain is choosing to fixate on little, abstract things like oh, armin looks so cute with his hair slicked back...so kudos for that and maybe there’s some hamfisted thing about telling the story...giving it meaning...like horatio? maybe? lol goodnight sweet prince eren...i AM overthinking it probably. anyway if you think about it, it’s the death of the author (ie Barthes) and meaning is created not just when it’s encoded in the text, but when we read and experience it -- which gives us some leeway as to how we interpret the whole series, if you’d really like. so this is my outlook:”)

ok this has turned out longer than i expected and is undercut by actually a lot of salt ahh and i actually have a whole sort of treatise on it! but i think i am a bit emotionally exhausted because i always care too much so i think i'll take a break before I get back to prompts, sorry...

anyway what i mean to say is if you made it this far thank you & that i’m interested to hear what people think! so come send in the ask or reply to this - and feel free to disagree etc but let’s be peaceable about it:)

#into the void #snk 139 #snk 139 spoilers #snk spoilers

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smartguyreviewed · 4 years

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1x5 - Don’t Do That Thing You Do

Original air date: April 16, 1997

Alright, Disney. We need to have a little talk.

I take a lot of shit from you in the name of nostalgia. You repay me by selling all of your DCOMs on iTunes but since they are DRM protected, you then make me have to buy third party software to remove said DRM just so I can watch these movies for my own personal viewing. If you’re worried about me selling and distributing copies of your movies to people who also wanna relive them good ‘ole days, stop. People will find a way to pirate your shit regardless and actually have more than what you release. Really, just stop.

You then removed all of the Smart Guy episodes from YouTube so that the only dregs of the show left are sped up, slowed down, or only take up a third of the video player due to copyright shit. You gave me considerable hope when I saw you’d be putting all the original shows and movies (minus In a Heartbeat. Minus The Jersey. Minus The Famous Jett Jackson. Minus Model Behavior. Minus My Date With the President’s Daughter.) on this shiny new channel of yours.

I know you have a problem with misordering episodes, making certain episodes season finales when they shouldn’t be and just not having any general sense of continuity. I am still baffled as to why this episode, episode number 5 is not included in the first season, which is already hella short at just 8 episodes. Disney, do you enjoy making me wonder why I even fuck with you? Once I get a .mp4 file of Johnny Tsunami and maaaaybe Can of Worms, I’m through with you forever.

This one is gonna be long because TJ really pissed me off in this episode. But if you actually read the above, I love you because I’m literally just whining.

In this episode, I will actually feel bad for Marcus. Yes, Marcus, teenage horndog, sexist Marcus will tug on my heartstrings and make me relate to him. I know I give him a lot of shit, but at the end of the day, he’s still a teenage boy. A dark-skinned teenage boy in a family full of gifted and/or capable light skinned people, at that. In this family, guess who is the odd one out, the black sheep? Marcus. Coincidence? I just couldn’t help but notice some things Yvette does (like pursue dance at one point) are encouraged while Marcus’s hobby (music, another art) is constantly shit on by Floyd who wants Marcus to be more book smart. Or how Yvette didn’t get into any trouble for not trying to stop TJ’s party just because Marcus, who is younger than her, was in charge? Just two examples, but you get the point.

We begin the episode with TJ bothering the big kids while they’re trying to rehearse for the upcoming Battle of the Bands gig. The gang needs cash to continue banding, especially since Mo’s strings are caca. Marcus is certain they will win and as soon as he manifests positivity about his future, something bad happens. Their guitarist breaks his finger.

Marcus is whining to pops about this little roadbloack when we see Yvette has invited Gabrielle Union back to her place to study in the kitchen. None of that learning crap will be happening right now though, because Floyd has made Gabs wet. She tells Yvette who delivers the most visceral reaction. But Yvette...your dad is hot. And it’s perfectly normal for friends to have crushes on your parents. And you also date older men! Yvette has her moments where I hate her and this is one of them. Instead of just dropping it and continuing to study, she actually throws her friend out! You would have thought Yvette was Floyd’s damn girlfriend, the way she was acting.

Because every show needs a montage here and there, we are now jettisoned to the garage, where Marcus is auditioning for a new piano player. Spoiler alert: they all reek, except for one guy who clearly must have been on some type of psychedelic drug to audition for a high school R&B band during a federal pursuit. The others were straight duds, including the most aggressive polka musician ever who thought his accordion counted as a keyboard.

Marcus is fucked. His goose is cooked. His dream is deferred. How the hell is he going to pull a new piano player out of his ass in time for BotB? He suddenly hears someone tickling the ivories and is beyond impressed...and then disappointed once he sees its TJ. Turns out the little guy knows all their songs and then proceeds to explain music in math terms and I pretty much feel the way Marcus does here.

I mean, really, it’s annoying to know that your freakishly intelligent brother is pretty much good at everything, including the thing that you love more than anything. You share a room with this person, you see this person every day at school and you now have to let him in your band because of circumstances. I do like that Marcus includes the rest of the group in his decision making, even though they really don’t seem to care about its direction as long as they can have sex with all the groupies.

So now its Mackadocious +TJ and Marcus is doling out the “kicks” to everyone except TJ. But TJ, homie, you just entered the band and your role is to just play the piano, since nobody else is around. This is not the time for you to be trying to get your Regina Spektor on. Play your part! TJ gets upset at this, but once Marcus threatens violence, he immediately goes back to his role.

B plot land is just Yvette pissed off that her friend finds her father attractive. They go to the BotB thing and she even cuts in front of them. Jeez Yvette, chill.

When her bestie leaves a voicemail directed more towards Floyd, although flattered, he has to let her down gently. Yadda yadda, Floyd is about to have that uncomfortable conversation but it’s fine because Gabby met some dude in a black trench coat and needs Yvette to style her hair like Halle Berry’s in the last month’s Essence. Yvette is happy that things are back to normal, at the expense of her lonely father who most likely reveled in that small amount of validation as quickly as it was snatched away from him. Poor Flody.

Anyways, back to the main arc of the episode. It’s time for the BotB and TJ is still vying for that piano solo but Marcus isn’t budging. This will end well. Once they get far enough into the song, Marcus is about to do his solo. He’s probably thinking that finally, the spotlight will be on him for a change and he can feel like he’s doing something worthy of praise. But this is TJ we’re talking about, and he is a petty little asshole, so he immediately hijacks the show and begins with his piano solo. Marcus looks straight dumb trying to hop back into his own set. So now instead of being a dick and doing the solo he wasn’t supposed to do, he has now embarassed Marcus. His feelings about the situation can best be summed up here.

The next day at school, we see that TJ is still hogging all of the band’s attention. Marcus’s insane level of togetherness right now is commendable, seeing as TJ clearly has no remorse for what he’s done and is now rubbing it in their faces. Just Marcus, though. TJ is a little babe magnet and is now basically getting girls for Mo and Goose to have sex with. Everyone is getting what they want right now. Except Marcus.

During a rehearsal, TJ moves on to insulting Marcus’s compositions and telling the band that they need something “else.” Marcus has had it and decides it’s time for TJ to go. TJ tries to save his ass by apologizing for something he’s clearly not sorry for after the fact, but the damage is done. Now we all know that TJ is totally one to accept defeat and move on so I’m sure nothing else will come of a rather amicable split.

Later, Kid from Kid n’ Play shows up and offers Mackadocious some moolah if they play again, but with TJ, seeing as Mackadocious has been unwillingly changed to The Band With the Cute Little Kid. Marcus, putting his dream over his desire to teach his little narcissist brother a lesson (just kidding, he wants the money) asks TJ back, but he’s strangely okay with staying out of it. Marcus then grabs TJ and threatens him, calling him a little twerp. This is still funny to me.

Floyd comes in and breaks up the fight and forces the siblings to hash out their differences in a healthy way. TJ says he wishes he could sing like Marcus. Marcus hates that TJ is good at everything. They both apologize to each other and Marcus even asks if TJ wants to rejoin the band and TJ is about to ruin this totally fine moment between them by revealing his evil plan.

After being kicked out of the band, TJ wanted to get even. Instead of just taking the L and moving on, he reached out to Kid and offered some tax code write offs in exchange for promising Mackadocious a lot of money to perform a bogus gig where nobody would show up. Yes, you read that right. TJ wanted to destroy Marcus’s life and possibly crush his spirit to the point where he’d never want to pursue music at all. All because he did something shitty and got punished accordingly. TJ is a petty little asshole. Floyd hears this and allows the beating to continue. Did I mention how much I love Floyd?

Stuff I noticed:

- TJ’s shirt. Where can I find this shirt? Seriously, it’s amazing.

- Oh hi, Christina Milian.

- When TJ is mentioning the name of the band’s fan site, he just says it’s ww.cutekid.com which makes no sense because that’s too general to refer to a band and also sounds like pedo bait.

#smart guy #tj henderson #marcus henderson #90s #nineties #tahj mowry #christina milian #christopher reid #kid n play #yvette henderson #essence atkins #jason weaver #john marshall jones #mo tibbs #omar gooding

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