#the fact we were robbed of such a good way to explore the lore of overwatch makes me mad

[sheriff-caitlyn]

I started this blog in 2014, as the first Caitlyn on tumblr, and obviously I’ve been through a lot of retcons and changes myself, not only adapting to Riot’s own public retcons (from the minor, like her aesthetics, to the major, like the removal of the Institute of War as an integral part of their lore) but also to my own. That’s the thing about playing a character as complex as this, is that you learn more as you go. In your interactions with others and the creation of backstory, history, and other bits of worldbuilding to better understand the world you’re in, a character goes from a handful of images and some in-game voicelines to a fully-fledged person with a complex narrative. Sometimes things change, and that’s fine. But there are some changes which... aren’t. 

For all the fingerprints I’ve put on her, she is still not my character. But I care. Sunk-cost fallacy, maybe, but I care about this character I have been involved in and I care about the direction she has been taken. So, without further ado, I’d like to delve into:

The Recent Caitlyn Update In Piltover’s New Context or, We Gotta Fetishise Police Violence, I Mean, Look At Her, She’s So Hot

Back in August 2015, I went, ‘Oh No, they’re going to try to turn Piltover into Gotham City, aren’t they?’, and lo and behold, suddenly we have Poison Ivy now. But I will get back to that, later. In this particular thread, I noted that many of the characters in Piltover seemed destined for a revamp that would rob them of what originally drew us to them in the first place, and that Piltover seemed destined for a rework that would wash out much of their character. Piltover and Zaun were always meant to be polar opposites, but suddenly we were seeing glimpses of Piltover being ‘not as good as everyone thinks’, which hinted that Piltover and Zaun were destined not to be polar opposites in the future, but indistinguishable from each other. It worried me that the only thing telling these two fascinating cities apart would be the sunlight.

So, when we have so much potential for a clash between Zaun and Piltover, between ‘Science No Matter The Cost’ and ‘We Must Advance The World With Care’, why change Piltover to some murky middleground, turning peace and security into wartime capitalism? A world where the people are shitty, where weapons and profit come first, and the only ones making a stand are the ones who are so embittered they have nothing better to do?

Because it has to be ‘interesting’. We’re going to lose bits that we like, that we’re familiar with. And that’s why I’m concerned.

This was before Piltover and Zaun were squished together in an ugly - and utterly ham-fisted - method of showing How Complex The Future Is. There’s layers, guys! Literal layers to this one single city! That means it’s deep! But when I say ‘bits that we like, that we’re familiar with’, I’m not clinging to a fanon interpretation. I’m saying the things that drew us to the world and to the characters to begin with. I could adapt from Caitlyn turning from brown-haired and brown-eyed to black-haired and blue-eyed, because even through I had been doing art, at that point, the change gave me an opportunity to express and discover more about her character (her eye colour being influenced by her mother’s magic, for one). But some of the more stark changes - to family, to job, to personality, to the city of Piltover itself - these result in a character changing completely. I was worried that the cool detective who literally made the world a better place would be chopped and changed into something unrecognisable. I even expounded on my concerns in November 2016, where I could see some of the ways the writers at Rito might make adjustments in the direction of their lore updates.

All this to say, I’ve been working on her for a while, and I was bracing for some bad news. This? This is kind of the worst.

Caitlyn has always been the Sheriff of Piltover, an authority figure, a representative of the law and order that Piltover is famous for. Piltover’s peace and financial prosperity has been directly linked to Caitlyn’s concerted effort to eradicate crime (not criminals, crime! Which, as I have mentioned particularly in this post from 2014, means she upended and reformed the justice system, from the legal process to the prisons to how people are treated as citizens). The city is safe, people have greater access to personal wealth and development, classism is erased, society is flourishing. Zaun, as Piltover’s polar opposite, is a corporate nightmare, with ‘do as thou wilt’, private bodyguards for the rich and powerful while the poor scramble to survive in a system that barely treats them as human. Vi, as a Zaunite, brings a lot of her ‘violence as a problem-solver’ methodology to Piltover’s law-enforcement, though she seems to have no intention of returning to Zaun and seems to have bonded with Caitlyn (‘teamwork!’) to Get Shit Done. And, apparently, there is still shit that needs to be done, though nowhere near as much as there had been in the Bad Old Days.

Vi was, at the time, the awkward-grit-teeth-grin-ha-ha-um-yeah representation of police violence. ‘Resist arrest’, she cries gleefully, as she beats people and breaks down buildings, and we are supposed to go ‘ha, isn’t that funny’ with varying degrees of sincerity. Of course Piltover is going to have problems: anywhere that has wealth and stability is going to be targeted by the envious and the needy. Peace needs to be protected. The problem lies in how that protection is enacted.

So now we have the recent Legends of Runeterra update to Caitlyn, an update which looked at the context of Piltover needing protection, as well as the modern context of Riot’s California location in the Years of Our Lord 2020-2021, and then decided ‘you know what we need? Police violence, everyone loves police violence’.

MAN I thought the stripper-cop skins were bad but here we go!

Her Yordle Snap-Traps (which I envisioned as from the Yordle Military, rather than a racially-profiling weapon as, y’know, they work on human-and-larger-sized people as well) have now been replaced by electroshock grenades, the intent gone from incapacitation and observation to outright paralysis and destruction. Her net-short is now apparently electro-conductive (admittedly, I have had one (1) single RP where that happened, but it came at both a cost to Caitlyn and to her weapon’s efficiency as a result, a last-resort against a dangerous opponent). Caitlyn’s cards in LoR take her from being a detective coordinating ideas and people and putting together a case to a SWAT team leader. This might be the biggest problem in working for a non-combat-oriented character in a MOBA, or in any fighting game: the game needs to find rationalisations for all of their characters being there, being combatants, being able to kill (even if, as Riot says, the lore is separate from the game). We have monsters and soldiers and ancient powers who of course they know how to spill blood and relish in doing so. But pacifists, like Karma or Bard? Explorers like Ezreal? And a sheriff, a peacekeeper, a law-keeper, someone mindful of responsibility and the importance of saving every life possible, like Caitlyn? They’re stripped of that depth and complexity in-game, but there was always the lore that backed them up. But they’ve done away with that completely. Caitlyn was never special operations. She was never military. But now she is, because she had to be changed to fit better into a fighting game. They had to make her violent, and as a result, they have undermined not only everything about the character that made her interesting to begin with - turning her now into a representative of police brutality, but with long hair, pouty lips, and a thigh gap - but they’re also re-writing the context of Piltover. It was bad enough to squish Piltover and Zaun together. But now, Caitlyn’s update is proof that Piltover has gone from a steampunk utopia to a violent, oppressive and cynical post-industrial world. The depiction of Caitlyn as a SWAT team leader (complete with special-forces beret, because hat! Caitlyn wears a hat! Nevermind the fact that she’s no longer wearing a distinctive tophat but instead a symbol of extreme state-sponsored force!) shows us that Piltover’s ‘army’ is not designed as a defence against outsiders, but as an offensive force against their own people. Caitlyn is supposed to be the representation of how peace and order is maintained in one of the largest factions in League of Legends, and if her method of maintaining order is straight-up police violence against their own citizens, then it’s not really peace and order. It’s authoritarianism at best, and facism at worst.

Piltover was different from every other nation in Runeterra because it didn’t have a military. It had defenders, and it had a powerful economy, and it had a democratic political system. But the Piltover update retconned Caitlyn’s hard work. The gangs were back - though now they’re big powerful families like Clan Ferros - and Caitlyn has been de-aged so that she’s still new to the force, that she hasn’t even had her chance to change anything. Her importance to Piltover is minimised... and why is Vi even there? (Oh boy I guess you’re going to have to watch Arcane to find out! Coming to a Netflix near you soon!) With a younger Caitlyn in a violent society, she has no choice but to be violent herself... even if that undermines everything previously established about Piltover and about Caitlyn. This update has made Piltover just as ugly and oppressive as Demacia, Noxus, and Zaun. It’s just another army equipped to do violence, but now that violence is turned inwards. This isn’t protection, it’s control. It’s fear. It’s oppression. Caitlyn is no longer a peacekeeper. She’s a monster. Chopped and changed, as I feared, into something completely unrecognisable from how she began in a world that no longer looks like what it had been... or should be.

It’s hard to tell what came first, the change to Piltover or the change to Caitlyn. Either way, the changes are inextricably linked. Caitlyn was integral to Piltover’s modern state, and Piltover is integral to Caitlyn as a character. Her (original) drive was to make the city and all its people better; Piltover was a utopia because of the effort of Caitlyn, and of people like her, people who wanted a better world. This new iteration of Piltover - full of fear and violence and hypocricy, layered over Zaun in such a way that makes ham-fisted commentary about the wealth/class divide - undermines the value of the individual. It removes agency. It removes hope, which had been integral to Piltover. Piltover is no longer the CIty of Progress... it’s the City of ‘you better be rich and pretty if you want to progress’. And Caitlyn is no longer a force for good or a representative of responsibility, because those things don’t exist in Piltover anymore. Legends of Runeterra has turned Caitlyn into a bitch, someone to hate. She has a marked lack of respect for people, as demonstrated in her new character traits of ‘casually-racist’ (her lines to Veigar), ‘condescending’ (her lines to Viktor), with some added pride in her violence (’here’s my calling card *shoots gun*’ and ‘I aim to win and my aim is excellent’). She is a representative of her city, and she is a terrible person now. Piltover is terrible. Piltover is ugly. 

But Caitlyn avoids that last part. And she’ll get away with it, because she’s a hot twenty-something.

In 2015, I drew Caitlyn-as-Swain, as an AU for what might have been. The overwhelming response at the time was ‘aaa she’s so hot I’d follow that leader of Noxus’, prompting a good friend Swain RPer to comment that Swain - who was, at the time, the withered man in green and gold who needed a cane - was just as smart as Caitlyn if not more so, a proven capable leader, but when it comes down to it, sex-appeal will always trump characterisation and storytelling, and that’s disheartening for someone who puts so much work into stories, to context, to something deeper than ‘Just another MOBA’. And here I am, in 2021, looking at how Caitlyn has been stripped of her fascinating and complex characterisation while maintaining her long legs, long hair, and corsetted figure. Now, I do appreciate the fact they’ve given her a better costume than miniskirt and boobtube. She deserves so much better. I even commissioned back in 2015 for a Better Look for Caitlyn; Tom aka FaerieFountain went on to make her new look canon. But she’s supposed to be a detective. She’s supposed to be careful and methodical and mindful of her status and power. Instead, she’s been made gleefully violent, leaving a lot of depth behind in order to become just Hot Cop With Gun. (As an aside, was anyone else uncomfortable with Caitlyn’s high-school skin? Especially when the writer actually tweeted ‘step on me’? Hello? Ma’am? That is a high school student, that is a CHILD you are talking about? But Caitlyn is hot so it’s fine! Sexualise a child! it’s fine, she’s hot, it’s fine!) Almost everyone who has contacted me about Caitlyn’s LoR cards has been excited to see her. Good! She’s a great character! Or, she was. But the enthusiasm about her is tied to how she’s so violent, how she uses her power to abuse those who don’t conform. But she looks great, smoking hot, you know? And when she’s smoking hot, her dangerous and abusive behaviour and attitude are completely excused. An update to a character needs to take into account characterisation as well as the visuals. Her update, sadly, has focused on the all-too-prevalent problem of the viciousness of state-sponsored violence, rather than the complexity of detective work, of puzzle solving and intellectualism, but because she looks hot and speaks in that British accent, no-one’s going to care. Hot ladies can get away with so much, because legs and pouty lips, but I guess she’s also a cop or whatever.

And, as a momentary aside, why is an eco-terrorist suddenly Caitlyn’s longtime foe? It makes zero sense for Piltover and for Caitlyn that someone who plant-based powers is her biggest rival and the city’s biggest threat. Zero sense, until you take into account that Piltover has been stripped of its character and made into something more aligned with modern authoritarianism than the hopeful vibes of steampunk. Environmentalism? Not on my watch! Deploy the police (the good guys!) to silence the protesters (who are obviously the bad guys becase they’re protesting)! Because Piltover and Zaun are one city now, and therefore indistinguishable, we have a fucking Poison Ivy character causing enough trouble in Piltover to warrant entire fucking SWAT teams opening fire within the city limits and around peoples’ homes! Not Zaun, which is the environmental nightmare, but Piltover! With its fresh air and open skies! Yes, that’s a great place for an eco-terrorist to blame and/or try to fix! The whole thing is honestly so backwards! Like they’ve decided to make a cool character in the form of Corina and just shove her into the story, rather than finding a place in the narrative that suits her. The idea that Corina is C makes no sense. Caitlyn vs C is supposed to be Sherlock versus Moriarty, Ganimard versus Lupin, ACME versus Carmen Sandiego, world’s greatest detective against the world’s greatest thief. It focused on the intellectual battle, the need for self-improvement, and - most importantly! - that this was a fight that didn’t result in gunfire or people being put in bodybags. But we can’t have that in our fighting game! We can’t have people thinking, because that’s not the kind of game we have, it’s left-click-shoot out here on the Rift or in the cards. So now we have a woman with plant powers bombing Piltover, and a policewoman kicking down doors and opening fire. And she’s right there, in Caitlyn’s new splash art, within reaching distance of the sheriff!

She’s right there! In hot pink with a flower in her fucking hair! And Caitlyn doesn’t even notice? Looks like one of my major gripes about Caitlyn being updated - Incompetence - is rearing its ugly head. She cannot even see someone not five feet from her. Oooh, look out, Piltover, no-one can figure out why this single eco-terrorist is causing problems for years, but Caitlyn will figure it out! With her gun! Because she’s a cop with a gun, and cops with guns never cause more problems than they solve, right?

Look... I know. I know she’s not my character. I know that everything I’ve done is fan-interpretation. But I’ve worked for so long and hard and done so much research, and things I’ve done have even been seen by - and used by! - the company itself (not just in the ‘oh what a coincidence’ sense, either, I know my link on Hextech as a form of magic made it to several of the writers, some of whom later contacted me). I might be too jaded by all the disappointment to take it personally anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen. We know Riot Games could be and should be better. So many people in this community - and people who have since moved on - put so much love and effort into the characters and the world, building up from scraps and guesswork and extrapolation. It wasn’t our world, but we enjoyed playing in it. We enjoyed struggling in it, because it pushed us to be thoughtful, creative, to be engaged and interested. Critical Theory doesn’t have to be negative... but this recent update to Caitlyn’s character and to Piltover as a whole is... it’s a step backwards. They’ve gone for the ‘ooh isn’t this gritty and dark’ approach, and swept away so much of what made the original so interesting, creative, engaging to begin with. They’d rather have controversy than people genuinely enjoying the thing that they’re opening their wallet for. 

Caitlyn was a detective who focused on responsibility, intellectualism, and care. What she is now is not the same Caitlyn they started with, and expresses a set of values that I do not support. This blog will continue to be focusing on the old lore, on what Piltover has been and what it should be: a hopeful utopia, a place for people to grow and be responsible and thoughtful and mindful of their place on the world stage. It’s not going to be perfect, but there’s hope, and there’s people here who want the world, and everyone in it, to be better than it is. I hope you join me, no matter who you are.

#oops I essayed again #Not Your Piltover #caitlyn #riot please #character development #piltover

[annethepancake]

Sherlock rant

I recently rewatched BBC Sherlock for Rupert Graves, and aside from the lack of Lestrade appreciation I have a lot of problems with this series. Here are my thoughts:

1. It was all a blur

My second first impression of the show: I don't remember anything but the characters. And some characters I just blatantly forgot, like Mary. And I loved Mary on my second watch! I really forgot that at one point John actually got married and I don't even remember when I watched the show for the first time. I can still recall most of HIMYM's events and I hated that series.

2. It’s overall not a detective/crime show

Watching Sherlock for the second time, I mostly turned off my brain and just let it play in the background because (1) there's hardly anything for me to solve with the characters, most clues are taken by Sherlock off-screen anyway (especially after season 2), (2) they focus way too much on the quirks of the characters that make it almost like a sitcom that got dragged on for way too long. A crime/detective show shouldn't allow me to turn off my brain.

3. The characters just kinda fall flat

Exploring the depth of human emotions is not a bad approach to a modernized version of anything, I’m not trying to pretend I’m better than someone who gets sentimental over fictional character (if you know my blog at all, you know I am not), but at least write good characters. Sherlock is hardly a multi-faceted person; in fact, he’s kinda like the Wattpad teen fic main character sometimes. He physically fights off some terrorists with a machete to save the damsel in distress? He gets high off his tits but still got everything right all the time? John is just kinda there for most of the cases. Jim is a poorly written antagonist. Irene is a lesbian but gets the hot for our main character, surprise surprise. The only interesting characters to me are the ones who act like normal people: Molly, Greg and Mary. They are the multi-faceted characters, ones who I can actually relate to without feeling inferior to them in any way. Write characters like them, stop trying to be smart about it and stop writing Wattpad fanfictions for Sir Conan Doyle’s original works.

I get that they try to make Sherlock more like a human with emotions, making him quirky and arrogant, then make him quirky and more likable. It’s hardly a convincing character development though. He’s given over-powered deduction skills, so edgy, so high and mighty all the time. When he is finally written as vulnerable, turns out he has plans for that too. I would love to see him get it wrong once and maybe get humbled by that mistake, but getting Mary shot and killed is hardly even his fault, he is only doing his job. And killing off Mary is overall a bad idea anyway.

4. They treated the fandom like shit

I was absolutely disgusted at the start of season 3 when the showrunners just straight up shat on their fans. I wasn't there with the fandom during the wait between season 2 and 3, but I believe it was a pretty long wait (2 years, I could barely wait 2 years for my comfort series, and they have like 10 episodes per season), and they were presented with the first actual mystery of the series: How did Sherlock survive the fall? After years of waiting and having fun theorizing, they were met with a mockumentary about them, starring the most hated character of the protagonist and the fans. Those are the people who actually cared about the show for god's sake. The fact that the showrunners treated fans like crap and there's still an active fandom for the show appalled me.

Now not only The Empty Hearse bugs me, but the entire show does as well.

Allow me to digress.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a great example of audience engagement done right (Sorry for using this example I’m not actually that invested in the other franchises). After the success of the first game, the story provoked so many fans into solving the mysteries of the characters, some of them went really, really far. And that’s because of the actual mysteries that the development team took effort to plant into the plot. There is actual pay-off for painstakingly following the clues; as far as I know, only two (2!) people in the world have come close to solving the mystery of the first game (or they actually did). The game developers value their fans and their intelligence enough to have planted those clues where they did, and it’s a genuine exchange between the fans and the creators. Now even though you haven’t actually played the game, when you hear of the name and you’re only kinda familiar with gaming (like me), you’ll probably know what it is. What started as a mere open-source game by an indie developer became a sensation which left millions of fans begging for more.

Looking back at Sherlock, there are tons of logical flaws for a self-proclaimed crime series, virtually no clues for the audience to solve crimes along with their favorite detective, and when there was actually a mystery (Sherlock jumped off the building), they plainly showed him alive and well minutes later. Do we really need to see things spelled on screen to know what’s going on? Are we supposed to accept that Sherlock Holmes is an all-knowing future-predicting genius now too? Not a great sign of respecting the audience there.

So far, the only thing left that’s interesting about this series is the characters’ dynamic. Which brings me to the next criticism I have for the show.

5. The plague that infested mainstream media

Why is there still an active fandom? Queerbaiting and targeted marketing.

Community marketing is proven to be one of the best marketing methods there is, if not the best, to lengthen the lifespan of a product or service. The way they do that for shows and films and video games is usually by planting seeds of possible lores and history inside the content. Look at Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, they are franchises that ran for multiple years with a ton of history and world building that provokes fans’ imagination.

Sherlock - well, Sherlock has sexually ambiguous men.

Sherlock has a formula for success. It was an adaptation of the most iconic detective novel in the world, funded by one of the biggest TV networks in the UK and possibly the world (don’t quote me on this). Making this series means you can appeal to such a wide group of audience even before airing. Adding in the quirky smart men who live together, you’ve basically guaranteed a prime-time show with millions of loyal fans all over the world.

Fans are not stupid, and queer people don't just find queerness everywhere they go. They know a gay subtext when they see one. Sherlock came back from the literal death for John, pretty gay if you ask me.

This show is very much not just about some guys being dudes solving crimes, they have relationship that’s deeper than friendship, and definitely not platonic. They deliberately wrote a sexually ambiguous Sherlock Holmes from the get-go - literally from the very first episode, then capitalized off of the targeted demographic, never a pay-off for their anticipation. Martin Freeman said in interviews that he could recognize Sherlock fans, them being generally women from 16 - 25. No shit Sherlock, this show targets them and capitalizes off of them, being quirky and gay as hell, of course the fanbase is generally 16 - 25 and female.

Sherlock queerbaited the fandom for years for the sake of marketing and there’s never a pay-off, nor was there any recognition to the community, and to add to all that bigotry, queercoding pretty much all of the villains? Why was a show aired in the 2010′s allowed to do this? Why did Mark Gatiss, an openly gay man, a writer of the show, allow this to happen? Why are millions of fans all over the world allowing all this to go on?!

6. Conclusion

Now I haven’t read the books yet, so I’m not at all qualified to criticize the adaptation quality of the TV series; I’m just talking about the TV series on its own. Despite my criticism, I think the first two seasons did quite okay. There are quite a few nice cases there, I like The Blind Banker and The Hound of Baskerville. They did those well because the focus was on the cases themselves, and the connection between John and Sherlock was only in the background. I, like many other fans, like to figure things out on my own, to read between the lines, and to not have things spelled out for me. With the next seasons bombarded with Sherlock and John bonding it seriously felt like mere fan service for me and even though I wasn’t there when the show was on, I still felt like I was robbed and my interest in the show was abused.

Sherlock is undoubtedly super influential in pop culture even now. It has to have done something right to be in that spot (capitalizing off loyal fans?). I’m not writing this rant to change someone’s mind about the series, by all means, I’m still gonna love the hell out of Gavin Lestrade, and absolutely lose my mind over Mary Watson. So do take my words with a grain of salt, I’m just disappointed that one of the most influential shows there is is just short of my expectations.

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #rant #criticism

[meg-noel-art]

I just had a thought regarding she ras ending and now I'm mad. Sorry fam need to rant for a sec. Also if ive sent you a similar ask before I'm very sorry I have bad memory.

So (and I could be remembering this wrong idk I refuse to watch s5 again) when Micah finally comes back from beast island and hes too late to see glimmer before she's beamed up by Horde Prime - is we get this weird like arc (sorta) with him and frosta trying to connect and I get it - Micah is trying to grapple with the fact that his daughter is now grown up / his wife is dead? (Or in an inescapable alternate dimension?) And frosta doesn't have an adult / parent figure in her life. And I get thematically what their trying to do and why but imagine how much more touching it would be if we actually got to see some interaction between glimmer and Micah before he was chipped.

Like their first interaction after x amount of years is when Micah is brainwashed (what a copout for drama + tension).

On Top Of THAT at the ending scene of the series we have like a 20 second "Hi I'm your dad!" Moment and then glimmer goes to hang out with the BFS and be all like "we're going to bring magic back to the universe!"

Meanwhile I'm sitting over here like "you just got your dad back??? You dont want to, oh I dont know, Spend Time With Him??? Before going off world?? Maybe you want to work out that grief over losing Angella?

We were robbed of that good father / daughter content is all I'm saying.

Yeah, I agree. I mean I'd say Micah, and the relationship between Micah and Glimmer, got about as mistreated as every other character and relationship in S5.

Was Angella even mentioned once in S5? If she was I can't remember, and that probably says enough about that.

Micah getting chipped, along with Scorpia and Mermista was really lazy as a writing choice because they were all characters that:

A.) Had personal conflict to work out with Catra

B.) Unresolved plot lines (Micah)

I don't think he and Glimmer should have been cool right off the bat (that's why I don't like their reunion scene either) -- they absolutely should have gotten the weird arc they gave Micah and Frosta, to Micah and Glimmer.

For what little we know of the show's own lore (which is a whole other issue but whatever) Micah "died" when Glimmer was very young. She could have hardly known him, and even if they were close -- she's obviously not the same person she was as a child.

Beyond that, I would have been very excited to see a conflicted relationship between them. Glimmer has been afflicted her whole life by the loss of her father. It influenced her disdain for the Horde, her will to fight in the war, and her tension with Angella.

It would have been fascinating seeing her struggle with the concept of having a long lost parent back, but maybe resenting him for 'leaving' in the first place, or the struggle of WANTING to be close to him, but not even KNOWING who he is.

Micah was also implied to have been 'losing it' a little on Beast Island, not knowing how to behave correctly around Adora and Bow -- extending that to how he behaved around Glimmer -- just... NOT knowing how to BE would have been great to see.

Really, there was no chance of this though.

S5 had very little breathing room for ANY characters. SPOP s5 suffered from a bunch of the same issues TRoS did. Which is, mainly, that the plot just happens because the writers need it to. Not because any of the character motivations lead it there. Or lead it there believably. A character may make a bit of plot happen even if it makes no sense for them to influence it that way. That's still a writer bending the story to make the plot what they want. A to Z and skip all the other letters, as it were.

Which is bad writing, plain and simple.

Glimmer and Micah were never going to get a nuanced character study like this, although I wish sincerely that they had.

Father/daughter relationships arent often explored with the nuance I think they should be in media. Especially considering many young kids HAVE a lot of struggles with fucked up father figures (and I speak from my own experience.)

Idk, ultimately spops issue was using the backdrop and drama and trauma of a war to tell a story with ultimately no relation TO that issue and it shows when a lot of these complex ideas and potential dynamics get dropped or get a band aid solution or just aren't approached at all.

This is definitely a frustrating aspect of the show.

Ultimately, I think, the worst thing a series can do is make you feel dumb for ever being excited for it. And I often do feel like a fool for expecting a lot of things that I saw as a natural resolution....or just, how WRITING works. 🤷‍♀️

#yeah #long winded response for 'i agree' #it's just another victim of spops tone issue #salt #spop salt #asks #micah #glimmer #s5 #spop critical #strawberrypincushion #i hate that i liked this show man

[justjensenanddean]

Jensen Ackles on Directing His Final ‘Supernatural’ Episode, Bringing His Music into the Show

“Supernatural” leading man Jensen Ackles made his directorial debut on the show in the sixth season and then went on to direct a handful more. But after Season 11’s “The Bad Seed,” it seemed like he was taking a break from pulling double duty on the demon-hunting CW drama. His work in front of the camera kept him busy, as did the twins who turned his family of three into a family of five. But when the show was renewed for a 15th and final season, he knew he had to sit back in the director’s seat one more time. 

“It was a little bit like the first time I did it just — just a little hesitant on a few things — but really, once I started rolling it was like riding a bike,” Ackles tells Variety. “We’ve got such a solid crew up here, from all the department heads all the way down. And this is not a crew that wants people to fail, and they certainly don’t want me to fail — or at least they put on that hat. So to be honest, you just have to do the work: You’ve got to put in the hours and make a lot of decisions, answer a lot of questions and then just hope that you’ve created a detailed enough roadmap than when you get on set you can navigate everything really easily. That’s what we did.”

The result is “Atomic Monsters,” the sixth episode Ackles has directed overall and the fourth episode of the final season. In it, Ackles’ Dean and Jared Padalecki’s Sam investigate the mysterious death of a teenage cheerleader and the disappearance of another from the same school.“We see the brothers back together as they normally are, doing what they’re great at, and that’s saving people and hunting things,” Ackles says.

As has been tradition for Ackles when directing episodes of “Supernatural,” “Atomic Monsters” was the first episode shot of the season. This allowed Ackles to properly devote time to location scouting and prep work without having to worry about juggling these elements of his directorial duties with his usual actor responsibilities. It also allowed him to have enough time to sit with the script after breaking it down that he realized it was missing an element he really wanted: a big action sequence. So he created one.

“I took a concept in the beginning and really stretched it out to make it a bigger sequence,” he says, noting that showrunner Andrew Dabb always says, “The more action, the better,” which gave Ackles the greenlight. It’s “quite different than anything we’ve seen recently. It’s definitely more of a theatrical style, the way it was shot, the way it was designed. I had a lot of help in doing it.”

In it, Ackles directed himself in hand-to-hand combat and stunts, as well as a couple of key emotional moments, including bringing back “a character who’s one of my favorite characters of all time,” Ackles says. “It wasn’t even on the page. I said, ‘Can we make this character this person?’ And they were like, ‘If you can get this person — I believe they’re working right now.’ I made the call. He was literally working one day, had the next day off, so he flew in, did one scene, flew out and was working on his other project the next day.”

While Ackles and Padalecki always carry the bulk of the “Supernatural” episodes, “Atomic Monsters” does give Ackles a bit of a reprieve on-screen, thanks to the ongoing Big Bad storyline of Chuck aka God (Rob Benedict). Last the show checked in on him, he was trying to appeal to his sister Amara (Emily Swallow) because he wasn’t operating at full capacity and that impotence was rendering him useless and scared.

“For some reason on the page it read like a well-written B-storyline, but when we got it on its feet and started filming it, it very quickly became my favorite part of the episode,” Ackles says about the material with Chuck, “because of the contrast of emotion that Chuck brings. He’s kind of his funny, Chuck self, and then all of a sudden it gets really, really dark. And I think being able to have that balance in a page-and-a-half scene is a testament to how great the character’s written but also a testament to how great of an actor Rob is. He’s just so great at what he does, and I found myself forgetting to yell, ‘Cut’ because I was like an audience member behind the monitors.”

However, Ackles did also add a new level to himself as a performer in “Atomic Monsters”: by singing. Although Ackles’ vocals have been featured on albums dating as far back as the “Soap Sessions: Beatles Classics” compilation during his “Days of our Lives” days, he has yet to bring his musical talents into his television show — until now. The single “Sounds of Someday” off “Radio Company Vol. 1,” his debut album with long-time friend and musical collaborator Steve Carlson, plays over the climax of Dean and Sam’s run-in with the monster of the week that they are hunting.

“To be honest our editor inquired about it; he said, ‘I know you did some music over the break, do you think we could take anything and plug it in?’ I wasn’t angling for that, I wasn’t pushing that, and in fact we didn’t even tell Bob or Andrew or anybody; we just floated it in there and waited to see if anybody said, ‘I don’t really care for that song, I don’t know who that is,'” Ackles says. “And nobody said that.”

In addition to “Sounds of Someday” Ackles says he had a few other music cues in his director’s cut, including a big one at the end. “Two of the three got taken out; mine was the last one standing,” he says of his new single. “That was a small victory. That was a nice vote of confidence, especially from a show that prides itself on music so much.”

Part of the reason Ackles has enjoyed being a part of “Supernatural” for 15 years is because the show allows him to try new things, both in front of and behind the camera. And before the series signs off in May, Ackles still has one more new box he might like to check: creating the story for an episode.

“We have an idea for an episode to explore,” Ackles says of himself and Padalecki. “When the show explores its wacky side I think we get a lot of really, really good stuff. And he and I and Richard Speight have been kind of kicking an idea for an episode around for a year and a half, two years now.”

Citing previous one-off humorous episodes including “Changing Channels” and “The French Mistake,” Ackles says this idea is not of the lore, which means it might not end up making it in the final season after all. 

“It is a lofty idea, and to be honest we’re shooting such a concentrated season because we’re trying to pack so much into the last episodes,” he says. “I’m not going to count on it because obviously we’re not the writers of the show — that’s not our job — and I would never force our ideas on the writers, but that would be a really fun box to check.”

And, he reiterates, if there’s not room to do it now, “maybe we’ll save it for the reboot.”

“Supernatural” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on the CW. 

[variety.com/2019/tv/features/supernatural-season-15-jensen-ackles-directing-interview-atomic-monsters-1203394220/]

#Jensen Ackles #Director!Jensen #Dean Winchester #15x04 #Atomic Monsters #Sounds of Someday #* #i love how the crew is always so supportive of Jensen

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

We need to talk about Project AHO

Project AHO is a DLC sized quest mod for Skyrim. It has 6500+ endorsement, and almost 118K unique downloads, and promises to add a hidden Telvanni settlement, 40+ new locations, 20+ fully voiced NPCs, new perks, new weapons, a new house, all dwemer or telvanni themed, and a non linear main quest with more than 12 side quests added in.

It's also, to use a particularly abused word as of late, fucking problematic.

The Mod Page doesn't mention many details about the mod, but it sure loves to point out how complex and varied the NPCs AI is, almost like real people with real moralities and real routines.

Anyway, Due to probably a bug (Mod is not supposed to not start till level 15) and the fact the abandoned prison is close to the place where you can trigger the mod, I barelly started a new Skyrim game and gotten Kaidan as we got out of prison together, before I was REMINDED FORCIBLY just why I couldn't stand this mod in the first place back in 2018.

So, small nitpick first: the game (should) suggest you at level 15 to free your followers before going to Mixwater Mill since they may cause bugs if they are mixed in the mod. This is bad for roleplaying reason since why would you logically decide to go there alone (want to buy some wood for your new house and you want to surprise them, so they wait you home?), but I would get beyond it if the rest of the Mod hadn't been... about that.

That being said, here's the meat of the issue:

If you reach the Mill after level 15, possibly with no follower, a Orc will approach you. Exiting his dialogue will only trigger the end of the scene early, he's essential, and whatever you do, whatever happens, whatever you say to him about his quest, what happens next is unavoidable.

He starts to hype you up with Trinimac and Daggerfall lore, which got me pretty excited at first when I played the mod for the first time, since, again, they only mentioned this being about a Hidden Telvanni settlement built over a Dwemer Ruin in the rift, so I thought the mod was going to be about the Boethia - Triminac Vore and Scat party that gave us the Dunmer and the Orcs, at least tangentially, so I go for the excited, eager to help dialogue route with him as he talks about epic quests and shit, except after we reach the last line, he goes something like "actually, this was all a diversion for having my mates sneak behind you and knock you out."

You are knocked out. No one can help you, you can do nothing to stop it, you can't even fight or talk or teleport your way out of it. It's scripted and it's unavoidable.

Next thing you know, you wake up in a cramped cell in prisoners rags, a mind control amulet at your neck, and 4 other prisoners.

Which is when the slave auction starts.

Project AHO is a mod about slavery. Is a mod about the Last Dragonborn, away from their loved ones, is tricked, ambushed and captured by a secret settlement of Telvanni wizards, before getting sold at a fucking slave auction.

And then, after all is said and done, after you’ve literally getting enslaved by Neloth 2.0, forced to fulfill tasks for him as the game, very pointedly, tries to make you empathize with this FUCKING SLAVERS via side quests (Oh, the daughter of the local hunter wants to travel the world and have adventures, and you can have a nice and friendly pint of beer with the fucking SLAVE CATCHER that captured you, and you meet another slave who didn’t get his tongue cut out, unlike most of the other ones in the bloody place, how nice, how fucking human of them), the game has the fucking AUDACITY to have the fucking leader of the settlement free you (not out of anything, but because your master is doing shady shit on the side and has kicked you out of his mansion after the last task), and then go, after you understandably ask why the FUCK shouldn’t you burn the place to the ground: “Oh, but slavery is such an important and integral part of our culture and economy, we dunmer will never change and will always have slaves so why should you bother, you are free now!”

This mod. In a escapist fucking game such as Skyrim. Is bad. Is REALLY bad.

Even putting aside the obvious lore reasons (Morrowind abolished slavery 200+ years ago under House Hlaalu, and even if they lynched them for it they are STILL not having slavery today), or the whole “Ah, the empire and the thalmor and the stormcloak know about this and they support us behind the scenes, in fact some of them partecipated at the auction you were on, there is a prosperous slave trade all over Tamriel!” bullshit, the whole thing is:

1) IN POOR FUCKING TASTE.

2) SERIOUSLY, WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO PLAY THIS? SLAVE SIMULATOR FOR HALF THE QUEST MOD, GO DO MINDLESS FETCH QUESTS FOR YOU MASTER, YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING BY YOURSELF, YOU HAVE TO CLEAN THE CELL OF ANOTHER SLAVE THAT COULDN’T SURVIVE HIS EXPERIMENTS, THIS IS FUCKING BAD.

3) THE FUCKING... MIND CONTROL AMULET ROBBING YOU OF ANY AGENCY? YOU CANNOT KILL NOR ATTACK NOR DO ANYTHING TILL YOU REMOVE IT AND YOU CAN’T REMOVE IT TILL HALF THE GAME SO WHAT WAS PRESENTED AS A “NON LINEAR MAIN QUEST” IS ACTUALLY A RAILROADED BULLSHIT TOWARD A MAJOR CHOICE BETWEEN RAZING THE SETTLEMENT TO THE GROUND WITH A SPACESHIP OR LETTING THE SETTLEMENT BE (YOU KNOW, CLASSIC BETHESDA MORAL DILEMMA, EXCEPT THE SETTLEMENT IS FILLED WITH SLAVERS AND SLAVES)

Which is sad because the aesthetic and some of the shit added to this are pretty cool overall, there is a “Dwemer Chess Board” thing that is missing some pieces that you can collect through the settlement and after you get them all and place them on the board you get a perk on team fighting, which would be a nice thing to have in a mod if it wasn’t for, again, the FUCKING SLAVERY!

Like, fuck, just imagine the slave auction:

Scripted scene, you can’t do anything, you are marched with the other slaves to a stage, the orc guy is the auction master, he sells:

1) The first slave, a vampire, to your future master.

2) Then an argonian young woman (”Plucked fresh from the windhelm docks” they say, and they sell her to some noble dude as his “new handmaiden,” which is SO FUCKING CREEPY ON SO MANY LEVELS LIKE... Even if you put aside the prospect of knowing her from the docks both in and out of universe (There is a potential Argonian spouse at the windhelm docks after all), this is bad? SO SO FUCKING BAD? BY ALL POSSIBLE ANGLES?)

3) Then they can’t sell a 50 year old argonian dude so they go “remove lot number 3 from the auction blog) and they gut him right in front of me??? By then going “he’ll make a good purse” because HOLY FUCK?????

4) Then you get sold in a auction battle between Neloth 2.0 but shittier and the local blacksmith, both locals (this, again, after mentioning that if you get sold to a local they’ll cut your tongue out), and you then get sold to Neloth 2.0 but shittier...

You can’t fucking stop any of this. You can’t do a “destroy the dark brotherhood” questline, you can’t prevent the kidnapping, even if you go out the city, some dumb magic will stop you from revealing its location to the competent authorities, who, again, are actually in cahoots with the slavers, so it’s not like they’d help!

And the mod clearly tries to make you, again, empathize and understand the fucking SLAVERS and their fucking position as SLAVERS like some BULLSHIT because fucking CENTRISM or some shit and REALLY?

So... to end this shit: Project AHO? Is some sort of weird, borderline feticistic mod about dunmers still being slavers and fucking rolling with it. It breaks canon and lore (after presenting itself as a mod that explores and faithfully depicts the lore), has a very railroady main quest after, again, mentioning its non linear path, and, agAIN, TRIES REALLY HARD TO MAKE YOU EMPATHIZE WITH THOSE BASTARDS.

So, I give it a 2 BB8s out of 10 for the dumb star wars reference companion, if you want to play it be fucking warned by its content.

#skyrim #elder scrolls #project aho #critical #tes #telvanni #tw: slavery

[alexanderessex3dstoryart]

Character Design and Script Writing - Cyberpunk 2077 Case Study - 29/12/2020

For today’s research for both projects, I wanted to make a case study for a game I feel very much influenced by in terms for the aesthetics and designs for the Character Design project as well as the background atmosphere and visualization for the script towards the script-writing essay. I was fortunate enough to be provided a copy of the game to play it to experience what it’s like to explore these areas as well as well as having a book looking at the extensive lore that the game provides as well as artwork from the game.

From playing the game, your offered a series of roles that you can start yourself choosing from Nomad, Street Kid and Corporative roles. Each of these roles allow the story to be taken in different places making the game very personal to how you want to live if you were living in this world yourself. I myself went with the Nomad route and one instance I had that really struck me was when you first enter into ‘Night City’ for the first time. As you cross the border, you halt at a traffic stop within the city to watch a group of people robbing a shop for money. The group tries to escape and enter in the car but the city’s police comes flying in from above and immediately grapple down onto the city floor and fire without hesitation at the crooks. It leads to an intense bloodbath of the crooks and all you can do is just watch all the action happen in front of your car having front row seat to it all. Both you and your companion are devoid of all emotion not from the trauma of it, but this gruesome human onslaught doesn't seem to phase them one bit. In fact, nobody in the city is phased by it at all. 

Instances like these help establish what kind of world you’ve just entered as it’s presented as a kill or be killed setting. This works perfectly for the kind of idea I want to cover for the script-writing portion of the project as it’s not just the tone I want to loosely base this off from, but characters reactions to horrific acts and how it doesn't bat an eye to them showing how de-sensitised they are with it. This to me makes it feel like the city is transforming people’s mindsets to think the world is always meant to be like this giving no people hope to ever explore or Challenger themselves having seen what happens if you rebel or stand out. 

I think adding onto that, the trailer of Cyberpunk 2077 when it launched on the 10th of December helps to back this up. Whilst the game itself is very action heavy, dark and bloody, the trailer really emphasis and represents what kind of game your in store for. Specifically, it’s all about people, family and the connections you make in the world promoting the RPG mechanics of the game as there’s real people living through all of this madness which is where you the player are there to dwell and experience those stories being told to you.

This is help emphaised in the trailer by how little the protagonist fights at all being replaced with close up shots of people’s faces and showing their raw emotions to events that happen in the game like body language of hugging each other further pushing that sense of family and connection. All these moments are harmonised together with the music of the trailer which really brings the connection across. I think this is because it’s not very traditional to have soft sounding and emotional music for a violet game as many people could disregard it because it’s different. But the music plays to  the trailer’s strengths from how delicate people’s lives are here with long stares on people’s faces and two people having dinner outside. These little bit of human interaction makes us feel more for the content we are watching.

Looking at the trailer in a more character design approach, faces were the big draw for me specifically between the Maelstorm and the human’s faces. The human faces have this really interesting line design on their face where LED stripes shine out of their face. They look modified and give off a artificial wrinkle vibe to them helping to deliver that cyberpunk look to them. Although in  strange way to me, it makes them look a lot sadder whenever they have a natural face with no emotion on them. This detail to me feels it flows nicely with where I want to take my story in the script-writing process as people often get cybernetic augmentations to make themselves feel better similar to plastic surgery. That’s not to say there isn’t good cybernetics but in this world of mine, cybernetics are mostly seen of a way of fitting into the city and losing part of your character which is what my Hyde character is so opposed to.

Cyberpunk 2077 — Official Launch Trailer — V

In addition to playing the game, I also received the book looking at the lore of the game and background information. Reading through, it thoroughly details a lot of how the world works like how even the littlest of things influence how the world ticks presenting a really thorough case on it’s world-building which gives me great inspiration to how I might approach it. There was one thing that stood out to me in the book which was to do with these special devices called ‘Braindancers’ which serve as really advanced virtual reality headsets and specifically how they mention it’s usage of celebrities as people can get too attached to the devices praising celebrities through it like they’re part of their lives and losing their identity because of it. This reminded me from a scene from Ghost in the Shell (1997) film where a garbage man loses all his memories from his mind being hacked leaving him completely hollow inside with no memories attached to him. I feel both of these instances I want to get across in the script-writing from maybe the dangers of idolising and retaining your character.

Book

After reading the book, I thought I explore the game and take screenshots of areas that I found to be interesting for the script-writing process mainly areas like the slums and the city as those were my favorite to experience from how much they contrast from each other. What’s really nice with the game is that it has a built in photo mode where you can pause the game and screenshot a specific section of the world which you can then filter it to your hearts content.

The first image is one of the first slum looking environments that you find in a quest. Personally, I love the darkness that engulfs the scene here with only the lighting of the dim blue light and lanterns struggles to beat the darkness. Not to mention the smoke coming from the ground really helps to add character by all the gasses and smoke being stored and cramped in the smaller parts of the city whilst the outer city looks all glamorous.

Speaking of the city, this is a screenshot I took from the city center which is filled to the brim with architecture although strangely, not as much lighting as I would of thought would be put in here. Therese bright neon lights on the higher decks of the city sure but down below, it looks a lot darker and forgotten about in comparison. This look is something I definitely want to express in the script as it acts symbolic to the false persona that the city gives off compared to what we see on the outside.

Going back to character design, three different characters stood out to me when I was playing the game those being: Crusher, the Malestorm Gang and Johnny Silverhand.  

Crusher is this large mechanical figure that serves as a threatening bodyguard to anybody that is unfortunate to step in it’s way. Looking at him characterful, I really love the denseness of the character as he looks like this unstoppable moving force that forces itself into conflict with thinking it over. He reminds me of my Hyde character a lot not just from personality, but also the sheer bulkiness that he imposes to us. To me, this how I would want my Hyde character to be built up thick and dense when it comes to modelling him,

Having already discovered the Malestorm gang before earlier on in my research, what I found interesting about them in playing the game were their arms specifically the pipping that goes into them to create this cross between industrial and cybernetic arm. Whilst this is an easy comparison to make to my Hyde character as the arm is quite bulky, I would say it more perfectly suits my Jekyll character more from how human sized it is despite looking so mechanical if we were to compare this a sleek cyborg arm like Johnny Silverhand’s bionic arm. 

In addition to the arms of these characters, the eyes are such a huge part of the aesthetic I really enjoy from them with their use of shapes and neon lights lighting up the scenery wherever they go. The lore behind the design is that if you want to join the gang, you have to get your eyes gouged out and replaced with these artificial eyes instead which is really creepy but fascinating to me. I think terms of the Jekyll character, the eyes seemed to be a better fit for my Hyde character giving the him a more menacing and threatening aura to him.

Only Malestorm Eyes

And lastly, one other character I felt inspired by was ‘Johnny Silverhand’ your companion in the game. His bionic arm is what sticks out to me the most as it has a very sleek and well rounded design like it was designed for a human. I can imagine for the Jekyll character that i could combine aspects of the Maelstorm gangs arms with the one that Johnny possess to form a very chunky top but gradually becomes a lot thinner as the arm goes down.

Back to the character itself, there are two design aspects I like being the muscular structure and the consideration for re topology on Johnny’s bionic arm. The overall muscular structure is how i slightly imagine Jekyll’s body to be as well built. But maybe I might consider less muscular meat on his body due to him not as exercising as much to an average human. I raised the question of retopology to how the arm acts on a ball and socket set up for the arm to flex which I thought was quite interesting to see as I wonder if that was considered first before making the character.

Sketches of Johnny Silverhand before Keanu Reeves came onto the game

I think from look at all of these character designs, I have good ideas for what I would like to do to my models from the rough sketches I have of them already. I feel the idea of Johnny and the Maelstorm gang’s arm being fused together is an idea I want to hold onto despite thinking my Hyde character as inspiration for the mdoel. Overall, the research on character design on ‘Cyberpunk 2077′ has been invaluable due to having so many of the elements and ideas I want to cover being found here in this game.

#ScriptWrtitingBA2a #CharacterDesignBA2a

[the-desolated-quill]

The Quill Seal Of Approval Awards - The Best Of 2019

Hey guys! I’m still alive!

Sorry for my two month absence. Things have been pretty difficult at home lately. I’ve been having a really hard time at university lately, my mental health has suffered as a result, and oh yeah, there’s a worldwide pandemic going on and we’re all probably going to die!

So thanks to this Coronavirus, my uni has been shut down, which means I now suddenly have a lot more free time. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to catch up on things I’ve missed. Yes it’s once again time to hand out the most coveted and prestigious of awards that every writer, producer and director so desperately craves (or at least they would if they actually knew this existed). The Quill Seal Of Approval Awards. Where I list the very best the creative industry had to offer over the course of 2019. (yes I know it’s now March 2020, but if Jon Campea can release a best of 2019 list in February, then I should be able to get away with it). For there is no greater honour on this planet than to have your work of creative artistry praised and acknowledged on an obscure blog by an anonymous snob. That’s the dream, isn’t it?

First a couple of parish notices. Obviously due to various other commitments, I haven’t had the chance to experience everything 2019 had to offer, so this list will be limited to the media and literature I personally got to experience. So sorry that HBO’s Watchmen TV series won’t be on this list. I know everyone loves it, but I’ve only seen one episode so far (and will be posting a review on that soon) as I’ve only just gotten around to watching it. Also bear in mind this is my subjective opinion. If you disagree with my choices, that’s fine. Go write your own list. I won’t be upset. You have every right to like what you like.

...

But if you disagree with me, then you’re a philistine and a poopyhead. That’s not my opinion. That’s a scientific fact that’s been proven in a lab by grown-ups. Sorry. The truth hurts, I know.

Shazam!

Do you remember the days when superhero films used to be fun? When they weren’t some heavily militarised, dark and angsty loners with all the charm and charisma of a pub toilet at closing time? If you do, then you’re going to love Shazam. A funny and moving film about a kid that can transform himself into a Godlike chosen one figure through space magic.

Joking aside, Shazam is an exceptionally good movie with a strong cast, great writing and a very personal and intimate story about self worth and finding your place in the world. For those who have grown sick of these soulless, big budget, CGI heavy superhero flicks with world ending conflicts that end up meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things, Shazam serves as the perfect antidote.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

I’m very much late to the party when it comes to John Wick. I’ve never exactly had the highest opinion of Keanu Reeves as a credible action star and I’ve always found the Matrix movies to be overrated trash with delusions of grandeur, but after constant nagging from my friend @dicapitoe​ I eventually gave in and watched the first one. I loved it so much, I watched the second one immediately afterwards, and then the following day I went to see Chapter 3 in the cinema. Now I think it’s safe to assume I’m a fan.

I actually don’t want to say too much because I want to do in-depth reviews of these films at some point, but needless to say, John Wick: Chapter 3 earns its place on this list. Hell, the whole franchise deserves a Quill Seal Of Approval Award. John Wick is a masterclass in visual storytelling and worldbuilding, and Chapter 3 continues this exciting and dramatic narrative with great confidence and skill. Oh and Keanu Reeves, I take back every snide comment I’ve ever said. You sir, are a national treasure. Can’t wait for more :D

Joker

No! No! Stop! You, yes, you, the one who’s about to comment saying how wrong I am and that Joker is a derivative, dangerous movie. May I remind you once again that this is my list. It’s fine if you don’t agree. In fact I can understand completely why some people really don’t like this film. That being said, I very much enjoyed it and I feel it represents a unique achievement for the comic book movie genre. As superhero movies from The Dark Knight to Captain America: The Winter Soldier to Black Panther have been slowly and steadily proving that these films can not only be socially relevant, but can also be considered high art, Joker represents the genre’s apotheosis. It’s a smart and sharply written film that doesn’t shy away from exploring its themes of mental health, social neglect and narcissism, and it demonstrates the reason why characters like Batman and the Joker have been a staple of popular culture for so long. Even after all this time, we’re still finding new ways of reinterpreting them and exploring them. Combined with Hildur Guonadottir’s amazing score and a career defining performance from Joaquin Phoenix, Joker is truly a force to be reckoned with, much like the title character himself.

Elementary - Season 7

CBS’ brilliant adaptation of Sherlock Holmes sadly came to an end in 2019, but not before one last excellent season.

Elementary has always stood head and shoulders above its BBC counterpart in terms of quality, but personally I always felt that the show never managed to live up to the heights of its very first season with Moriarty. While Moriarty ultimately doesn’t return sadly, we get a great substitute in the form of Odin Reichenbach, a tech mogul who uses social media for his own ends in his misguided pursuit of justice. He serves as a great source of moral conflict for Sherlock and Joan, who have been known to use morally questionable tactics themselves, and is a compelling antagonist. Under showrunner Rob Doherty’s expert direction, Elementary ends on a high as we see the stories of Holmes, Watson, Gregson and Bell conclude in an emotional and satisfying finale. It’s sad to see a great show like this end, but it felt like the right time to stop and I’m glad the Elementary team kept their high standards throughout and were allowed to finish the show properly on their own terms. You will be greatly missed.

The Outer Worlds

Have you heard the news? Single player video games are dead! Nobody wants RPGs anymore apparently! It’s all about ‘live services’ and multiplayer looter shooters. Nobody wants a story driven, single player RPG these days.

Wait! What’s this? A story driven, single player RPG?! And people actually like it?!?! OMG!

Yes, from the people that brought you Fallout: New Vegas comes a new IP that makes a mockery of the AAA industry and their greedy trend chasing. Introducing The Outer Worlds. Set in the Halcyon Colony in the far future where rampant capitalism has taken over and disrupted society, you play as a colonist that’s been recently released from cryogenic suspension and has been tasked with saving the colony from the Board who are hellbent on taking away humanity’s civil liberties and destroying lives all for the sake of profit. The lore and setting is beautifully realised and the writing contains the same wit and satirical charm as Fallout. It also boasts a wonderfully diverse cast of characters, including a very unorthodox vicar and an openly asexual companion. Add to that some super smooth first person shooter combat and a great amount of freedom in customisation and roleplaying, The Outer Worlds proves definitively that single player isn’t dead. Take note Bethesda.

And there we have it. 2019 is finally over and done with. Now we can finally look forward to 2020. Assuming we’re all still alive by the end of the year :S

#the quill seal of approval awards #the quill seal of approval awards 2019 #best of the year #review #opinion

[saltoftheplanet]

Why I’m skeptical about the Final Fantasy VII Remake

I’m skeptical that the remake will be good because there will be a lot of changes that will impact the direction, tone and narrative of the game, and Square Enix’s track record suggests to me that those inevitable changes will destroy and undercut what was special about the original game.

An essay breaking that down piece by piece is under the cut.

There will be a lot of changes

The remake will represent a huge and doubtlessly beautiful graphical update. With these updates, however, comes the need for a variety of new directorial decisions. For example, how should the camera behave during cutscenes? Who should they frame, and how? What will their body language and facial expressions show? Now that all the cutscenes will be voice acted, what tone will characters speak familiar lines with?

Likewise, the game is switching to a third-person, over-the-shoulder view. The original FFVII used a fixed camera and prerendered backgrounds to create a world that felt rich, full, and often cluttered. Every level will require redesign to account for the new way of moving about the world, and the amount of assets required to create the same feeling and to direct your attention in a same way will be exponentially higher. Likewise, there will need to be changes to account for the new combat system, as stages will need to be designed for both exploration and combat in many cases.

The episodic format of the game will necessitate changes to the pacing. Successful episodic games excel at creating self-contained rising and falling action and narrative arcs within each episode. Conversely, Final Fantasy VII was plotted and paced as a single complete narrative. Either the pace and order of events will need to be changed to make each episode stand strongly on its own, or the episodes on their own will be gawky and suffer pacing issues as they are pulled out of context from the greater whole.

Finally, the narrative itself will change. We have yet to see a verbatim line in each of the trailers, so the script itself is being rewritten, and with it many nuances will change. Square has stated point-blank that story changes are on the table. Finally, the compilation of Final Fantasy VII and the various Ultimanias released over the years have added a variety of changes to the narrative and to the lore. The teaser trailers we’ve seen so far have been in-line with the Midgar we see in Advent Children, itself a massive change to the famously ambiguous ending of the original game.

Direction and tone will be affected

All of these changes will not be neutral. In just about every decision of how this story is retold, some things are necessarily going to be emphasized and de-emphasized. Each of these decisions will carry and shift meaning in subtle ways. In that sense, the remake should more truly be considered an adaptation.

Examine the opening of FFVII; a meandering view of the stars fades into Aeris’ face. A single long shot pulls back to the city of Midgar. The tone here is mysterious, and the amount of time dedicated to the environment equals or surpasses the time spent on a character. This direction in cinematography echoes the game’s focus, as it is very much a story about the interplay between the characters as they exist inside of larger, overwhelming forces and environments.

The remake does have the opportunity to give us more meaningful cinematography in its cutscenes, but it may also make directorial decisions that change the meaning or impact of scenes. Especially likely is an increased focus on the characters and the action, and implicitly, the “cool” factor of both of those things, seeing as how the Remake and Square Enix as a company largely foreground great visuals and cool sequences. There’s absolutely room for that, of course, considering the bike scene in the original - but the broader point here is that no intervention can be neutral, and the Remake will inevitably have a different focus from the original.

One influential decision the writers have made is in their audience. All promotional material thus far has been aimed squarely at “returning” players, with no explanations offered for newcomers. What we’ve seen so far is in line with the marketing material - they are not simply trying to recreate FFVII as it was, but also tap into our collective sense of familiarity about it. The direct engagement with an expected audience means they will likely try to recreate the feeling of the experience rather than the experience itself, which would then necessitate certain story changes to keep things surprising or mysterious. This approach will inevitably widen the gulf between the remake and the original game.

SquareEnix’s Track Record

SquareEnix has been behind many beloved games, but they are not the company they were when they released FFVII. Their track record over the past decade, maybe even closer to the past 15 years, has been one of spotty quality, half-baked ideas, poor execution, and a narrative flexibility that suggests a lack of commitment to telling a story with singular vision and protecting the integrity of that story. Whatever your opinion or personal enjoyment of more recent Final Fantasy entries, they objectively lack the clarity and direction that made older entries of this series so beloved. To be completely clear, it is not that I believe these stories could never get there; it is that I’m keenly aware of the fact that they came short.

But more relevant than Square’s entries in the mainline Final Fantasy franchise are the entries to the Compilation of FFVII. These, two, have come with a variety of directorial changes that the new format and technology demanded. They’ve built their own lexicon that will likely be drawn upon in the creation of the remake, and that bring subtle changes along with them. For instance - Advent Children’s visually spectacular fight scenes introduced us to the idea that the characters were all able to leap vast distances and perform acrobatics mid-fight, and we’ve seen this idea carried forward into all subsequent entries of the series, even though it’s somewhat at odds with the more grounded, cyberpunk tone of the original game that earmarked these kinds of superhuman abilities as specifically unusual.

That may seem like a minor quibble, but I would argue that it’s a series of minor changes that have led to the difference in tone and focus between the compilation and the original game, and it comes down to a variety of directorial decisions that continue to be pertinent. For example, in Advent Children, the writing team made a decision to base Cloud’s character around what people would most remember from the game, and decided that would probably be the Cloud that we see at the beginning of the game. This decision was in play as early as his cameo in Kingdom Hearts, and for as inconsequential as it may have seemed then, it’s carried a rippling effect with it. By choosing to write the character in a way that they felt most fans would recognize, they also chose to downplay the growth and the specific quirks that wound up making that character interesting - a repeated issue with many of the characters.

Likewise, because the compilation prioritizes its returning Final Fantasy VII fans, it also tends to prioritize fanservice and recognizable, digestable moments over the overarching narrative of the world of Final Fantasy VII. One memorable example would be a cute Yuffie cameo in the midst of the Wutai War in Crisis Core, a war we are told repeatedly was extremely brutal and which actually destroyed Yuffie’s home and embittered her for years thereafter. The result is a story that’s at odds with itself due to tonal and character inconsistency. The prioritization of a quick moment of familiar joy robs the character of her impact in the long term, and this pattern is repeated for many other characters throughout.

Of course, the compilation has changed more than tone and framing of characters, and has also contributed several ideas to the world of Final Fantasy VII that are now in play. For example, the idea that upon death, people return to the Lifestream, whereby their spiritual energy is used by the planet to create new life. This is a distinctly animist idea that the Compilation has leaned away from, as they cannot cameo dead characters if those characters have since been reincarnate as trees. The compilation has since introduced the notion that a person’s soul and consciousness not only stays intact, but that they can come into contact with the living - an idea that’s fundamentally at odds with the themes of life, loss, death, existentialism and uncertainty that are extant in the original game.

Finally, though not least significantly, Polygon’s An Oral History of Final Fantasy 7 reveals that the reason Advent Children and subsequently the compilation was created was to save Square Enix from financial ruin, not to continue the story for its own sake. It is important to acknowledge the reality that Final Fantasy VII is bankable, and the reason for the remake to begin with may very well be that bankability rather than a good faith intention to retell a story that touched many. The episodic nature of the release does nothing to help that faith, nor does the fact that initial development was outsourced to a third party.

What was so special about FFVII

“So what?” you might ask. Even if there are a ton of changes, and those change the direction and tone of the game, does that really mean it won’t or can’t be good? To that - the jury is out. But I don’t particularly care if the FFVII remake is a good video game - I care if it’s a good representation of FFVII.

I admit without reservation that FFVII is, to use a technical term, anime trash. It has lots of rule of cool sequences that keep the game light, bits of spotty translation, and narrative stumbles. It is not a perfect work. But there is a reason why it was enduring; there was meaning to it, and that meaning was what made it special and unique.

FFVII was a ponderous game. It seldom presented an idea without later exploring and unpacking it. Its characters are seldom what they appear, the mission they undergo is hardly as noble as it seems, and what you expected to happen simply didn’t. It’s rife with deliberate ambiguity and doesn’t work overly hard to explain itself. Its story is shot through with uncertainty, about identity, faith, morality, justice, and every other waymark we use to navigate our life. Its most memorable moments rest in the loss of that certainty, and its most triumphant in the character’s perseverance regardless.

Though FFVII is primarily remembered and beloved for how it made people feel, it wasn’t written to be deliberately provocative or emotionally manipulative. The story was deeply impacted by a real-world loss, and the mandate of the team at the time was to convey that loss for how it truly felt, without the celluloid gloss and tropes like a dying speech that have since proliferated through the compilation. There was an honesty, an integrity and a complexity to this story that caused people to argue in earnest that it was the first video game that could truly be considered a piece of art.

I think the ephemeral nature of these qualities often leads people to conclude that FFVII is mainly loved due to “nostalgia,” but that’s a dismissive take that fails to acknowledge the deliberateness and consistency of its themes and ideas. The same care has very obviously not been given to any of the subsequent FFVII games.

In other words: this was never going to be an easy game to remake. A remake worthy of standing on the same pedestal as the original would require the same careful dedication to thematic consistency and integrity, to tone and feeling as the original. It would require careful thought to the impact and presentation of each of the monumental changes demanded by the new technology and platform.

Square-Enix has yet to do anything to suggest that it is up to this task. I have tremendous empathy for the development team that is taking on this task, but that doesn’t mean I have faith in their ability to really, truly, pull it off.

#final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii remake #ffvii #e3 #ff7 remake

[chriscdcase95]

Halloween: Why the Thorn Trilogy was as underrated as "Twenty Years Later" was overrated

So yeah, I said it. And now I’m gonna explain it.

This may be some nostalgia of mine talking but as a long time fan of the Halloween series - I am talking when I was ten years old, when I was first getting into horror genre- I grew up on the old Halloween sequels consisting of the Thorn trilogy and the Twenty Years Later story lines. I know they are considered separate continuities and timelines, but y'know broad strokes, Easter-eggs, and the fact early script drafts for Twenty Years Later (Or H-20) intended to tie them together before they were cut from the final film, you can make the case they are ostensibly canon to each other, but that’s about it.

The Thorn Trilogy isn’t considered the best of the series; many fans looking down on the fifth and sixth film as being the least popular of the films. I think the only reason they aren’t considered by fans the worse in the series is because Resurrection exists, and was that followed by Rob Zombie’s remake duology. On the flip side, H-20 and 2018 are considered the golden calves of the franchise, and for the life of me, I never saw the appeal of the formers popularity. Now I can see why people have problems with the Thorn trilogy - especially regarding the cult and curse plot element of the sixth film. Unpopular opinion, but the sixth film was my favourite of the series - maybe has to do with my autism appealing me with both world building and the familiar - or that it seemed to tie up one storyline, but at the same time set up so much that I was disappointed that it didn’t continue.

For context, this post is partially inspired by Schaffrillas Productions video about Shrek 2. In this I will be using the criteria of what he describes as a “Perfect Sequel” which I’ll apply to the Halloween series, and as his Shrek 2 video says, there’s no such thing as the perfect movie; there’s too many variables to cover in a single movie alone, while a movie can preform it’s functions as a sequel perfectly even that doesn’t mean the movie itself is perfect. The “Perfect Sequel” criteria goes as such; expanding the universe; continue the story; introduce new themes or expand on old themes; leave an impact on the franchise.

Like Schaffrillas Productions, I will use this criteria to determine what the Thorn trilogy did right over H-20. Now am I gonna throw the 2018 sequel into the equation ? Maybe for compare and contrast purposes, but the 2018 sequel hits those same beats. There really is no competition between H-20 and 2018, I don’t question why the latter is considered a fan favorite. What I am primarily doing here is comparing the old sequels, and 2018 barely comes into the equation.

Does the Thorn Trilogy expand the films universe ? Does is continue the story ? As far as continuing the story goes ? Well that’s a no brainier; Halloween II begins where the original film ends; Return of Michael Myers picks up ten years later with Michael waking up from a coma after his seeming death in the second; Revenge follows Return and that leads to Curse. You get the picture, there’s an overarching story here.

“But does it introduce new themes that impact the franchise ?” You ask. Not the Thorn trilogy itself, but the second film does. Halloween II kinda sorta introduces a supernatural element to Michael by hinting a connection to the an ancient element of Halloween - more specifically the lord of the dead Samhain-  but more importantly revealing that Michael and Laurie are brother and sister. The supernatural stuff is explored exclusively throughout Return to Curse, but ever since it was revealed the entire Halloween series hinged off of Michael and Laurie’s familial connection. Even in 2018 where they discontinue the sibling aspect, the theme of family permeates the plot, with the focus hear being on Laurie, her family drama, her need to protect them and how Michael not only affected her but her family.  

In what’s relevant here is Michael and Laurie’s family connection is the focal point of the Thorn Trilogy, albeit not through Laurie herself; our lead character in Return and Revenge is Jamie Lloyd, the orphaned daughter of Laurie Strode and niece of Michael Myers, and she is what made their relationship the most plot relevant. Before Michael even wakes up from his coma, we are introduced to Jamie being haunted and even bullied over the fact that she’s and orphan and how her uncle is the infamous boogeyman. Her mother is gone, and she never even met her uncle, and yet both their shadows hang over her. Once Michael learns he has a niece that’s still alive, that’s all he needs to get up and at ‘em and nothings gonna stop him from getting his hands on her. And once he does in Curse ? It’s their baby he’s after next!  Yes, their baby. Michael is the biological father of Jamie’s son Steven, who becomes his new target and finds an adoptive family in Tommy Doyle, Karla Strode, and her son Danny, who take the responsibility to protect Steven from not only Michael, but an evil cult that will no doubt be following them for some time. So we have something set up; a possible future confrontation between Michael and his vengeful son, and defeat the cult that has been mentoring Michael and orchestrating his rampages from behind the scenes.

So what comes next ? H-20 gives us Dawson’s Creek with a serial killer. One of the things I mark against H-20 was I felt it lacked the same kind of substance as the previous trilogy. For something that was conceived as the finale of the Halloween saga, I just couldn’t get emotionally invested, and maybe it had to do with the later release of Resurrection and the knowledge of what comes next. Maybe I was deflated that Jamie wouldn’t get justice, or that we wouldn’t find out what became of Little Baby Steven. Sure we got a plot about Laurie being a protective mother towards her son John, but for some reason I couldn’t really empathize with John in comparison to Jamie - not helping his case is that 2018 Laurie has a new daughter in Karen who has the same kind of baggage John had with Laurie, was a more interesting in characterization. John was a just a Dawson’s Creek student who serves as someone Laurie needs to fight for, only to be forgotten in Resurrection. Unlike Jamie or Karen, John was more of a plot device than a character.

As far as expanding on the previous films themes go, H-20 doesn’t really do this. It’s focus is on Laurie and her incoming “final” confrontation with her brother…but it doesn’t feel like it has the same weight. Laurie’s having her nightmares, she’s living in paranoia and the constant fear of her brother inevitably coming after her again, and how it took a toll on her relationship with her son. That’s all well and good, but the problem is the emotions feel underwhelming here. I’m not bashing the acting or anything, but I think I was supposed to take Laurie and John’s screaming match when they argue about Michael more seriously than I actually did (their second scene together by the way). Maybe they should have focused more on Laurie’s angst, and her relationship with her son, but it all felt rushed and emotionally underdeveloped in comparison to Laurie’s emotional scars shown in 2018, which felt like they had a little more weight here. 2018 gave us a slow burn with them, H-20 gave us the last three episodes of Game of Thrones.

Also the fact its Halloween night is barely a factor in this movie. There’s more focus on a trip to Yosemite Park than the actual holiday, and none of the characters don’t even go on the trip itself. Hell, this movie and it’s sequel were released in the summer.

“What about expanding the films universe ?” As I said above, I think the main thing I liked about the Thorn trilogy was it’s world building. It is next to 2018 with the most lore filled storylines in the series, (and I expect more to come from 2018’s sequels). And the Thorn trilogy not only captured the atmosphere, but tied the lore of the actual holiday of Halloween much better than H-20. And for better or worse, we dig in a little more into the mystery that is Michael Myers and his family. Or do we ?

Short answer is “Depends on what version of the sixth movie you watch.” Yeah I know the sixth movie introduces the Thorn cult and curse, but there is are differences between the Theatrical Cut and the Producers Cut on account of things that have been added, cut or changed outright between the two versions. The Producers Cut is the only version Michael being a puppet of the Thorn Curse and tool to this cult. The Theatrical Cut plays around with this idea but doesn’t explore it beyond a theory Tommy has, but isn’t verified in the cut itself. As far as the Theatrical Cut is concerned, Michael is just a rage driven psychopath.

And honestly I get that one of the supposed appeals to Michael Myers is the mystery of his character. Everyone goes off about how he was such a cool villain in the first movie was because of his mysteriousness and the questions left unanswered and go on and on about it. But here’s the thing, the point of a mystery is the need to solve it, the need to explore and find out more about this mysterious figure. Michael being a mysterious figure can work in one or two movies before it gets boring and he just becomes a blank slate, a carboard cut-out. And really that was one of the problems Michael had in H-20. The Thorn Trilogy gives three movies to find out more about Michael, and his familial connection to Laurie Strode is the focus, even with Laurie out of the picture. Some would say because we find out more about Michael, his status as a villain is cheapened, but I always thought he becomes more interesting the more we find out about him.

In H-20, we got nothing with Michael. We don’t find out anything really new or interesting, or anything that really makes him that much of a threat. The whole movie was about a showdown he was going to have with Laurie twenty years after his first rampage, but there’s no real substance with Michael this time around. And this isn’t the same as 2018 going back to basics by following only the first movie - H-20 explicitly follows the second movie so this is the same Michael who hints at a supernatural element, the same Michael who is revealed to be Laurie’s brother, but none of that is really important here. The brother and sister element - the crux of these two characters, isn’t of importance here as it was for the Thorn trilogy; the closest we get to that is the scene where Laurie kills someone she thinks is Michael, which leads to Resurrection.

Michael and Laurie felt more related in 2018 than they ever did in H-20. And speaking of 2018, I know they brought Michael back to his original form, but considering there’s two sequels to that movie in the works, there is only so much you can do before Michael becomes “cheapened” by finding out more about him or become boring by keeping him a blank slate. Like I said, Michael can only really get away with being enigmatic for one or two movies before it just becomes a crutch and excuse which would result in him becoming boring.

As far as world building goes, the H-20 storyline doesn’t really expand the universe besides taking us to a boarding school in California, but I can give it leniency since it was gonna originally be a follow up on the previous trilogy. Now onto comparing characters.

Laurie Strode as a Protagonist

While it goes with out saying that Laurie Strode is a runner up when it comes to being the OG Final Girl. In the same way Michael helped define the slasher villain, Laurie is helped define what the final girl is. In just about every timeline and storyline in the Halloween series, all it took was one night to shape Laurie as her fateful encounter with Michael. In the first two movies, Laurie was a great protagonist, she was the naive, inexperienced teenage girl, and even a sisterly figure to Tommy Doyle. She was a protective babysitter who risks her neck to not just survive the night against a psychotic stalker, but protect the kids that are in her care. And that was just the first movie.

The second movie (which takes place on the same night mind you) things get personal with the brother/sister relationship. In this movie, the family aspect did impact Laurie; Laurie was the first person who finds out the truth and has a dream induced flashback of when she met Michael when she was younger shortly after her mother told her she was adopted. Laurie wakes up and the revelation that the seeming stranger that just murdered her friends is her brother, it puts her into a brief catatonic shock…although she might have been faking it while planning an escape. Point is the brother revelation had an effect on her.

But watching II and Twenty Years Later back to back, I just didn’t feel that it the same impact as it did in the previous movie. Michael’s relation to Laurie wasn’t as important in this film as it did the previous films. If it wasn’t for the fact that the brother-sister thing was mentioned a few times, it didn’t feel like it had that much of a weight to it. It didn’t feel like Laurie was afraid of her brother here, but rather just the guy who terrorized her. Like I said, above, Laurie and Michael felt more “related” in 2018 than they did in H-20, despite that aspect being cut out. The closest we get to Laurie having a moment of “this is my brother” is the scene where she kills some poor sap she thinks is Michael.

The focus in both H-20 and 2018 is about Laurie’s trauma and paranoia about Michael coming after her and her children. But overall I felt 2018!Laurie was the better take on the character, especially in that aspect; we see how strained her relationship with her daughter is and how close she is with her granddaughter. 2018!Laurie’s life effectively went down the tubes and Michael never stopped haunting her, and has burned himself into her very soul, that it would be irrelevant whether or not they are blood related. It’s gotten to the point where her daughter barely has a relationship with her. Despite this and having little to lose, 2018!Laurie has spent forty years preparing for a showdown with Michael, and is just itching for him to come loose again, arming herself, fortifying her house, keeping herself in shape the whole nine yards. Because it makes her that much stronger, makes her a little bit harder, makes her that much wiser, so thanks for making her a fighter.

H-20!Laurie spent twenty years just living in fear of Michael that at some point to the point that she faked her death, but doesn’t do much of else. And honestly despite her trauma and paranoia in this movie, I was less sympathetic to this take on Laurie, because she has a lot more to lose. She hasn’t had her life ruined by Michael in the same way 2018!Laurie has, in fact she lived a more comfortable (dare I say) privileged life, as the headmistress of a boarding school in sunny California, and still has a considerably more positive relationship with her son, and it’s only after Michael catches up to her, she’s ready to confront him and (seemingly) kill him. And I just couldn’t feel the same emotions with H-20!Laurie as I did with the 2018 counterpart.

I thought that H-20 was a little rushed with her character development and arc. But I think what made me unsympathetic is because Resurrection made it hard for me to root for in retrospect, and the fact H-20 was originally going to be directly tied with the Thorn trilogy; keep in mind as far as the Thorn trilogy goes, Laurie was killed in a car accident, which left her daughter Jamie virtually alone, with her mothers death taking an obvious toll on her, which dear old uncle Michael is out to kill her. H-20 reveals Laurie faked her death, and considering the original plans to tie the two stories, this effectively means that Laurie faked her death, abandoned Jamie with seemingly no regard for her, and let Jamie go through Hell alone. And I’m supposed to feel sorry for Laurie because of twenty years of nightmares ? Yeah, 2018!Laurie is the mother that Jamie deserves.

Which leads us too…

Jamie Lloyd as a protagonist

Now Jamie was considered a fan favorite upon her introduction, and in my opinion is one of the most thematically important characters in the series. As I explained above, Jamie is the linchpin of Michael and Laurie’s relationship, being both Laurie’s daughter and Michael’s niece. From such, both characters shadows hang over Jamie, despite and because of Laurie being out of the picture. Despite being a child, Jamie is subjected to the trauma of her mothers passing and her relationship with the boogeyman being public knowledge (and other children bully her over it, I can’t get over that).

Now there’s two kind of protagonist dynamics that Laurie and Jamie fill that contrast each other; Laurie is the protector of the cute, Jamie is the cute. But Laurie’s not around, and Jamie would be completely alone if it where not for her foster sister Rachel, Rachel’s friends, the local and state police and a mob of vigilantes. Well unfortunately, the Jamie Lloyd Protection Squad are a non issue to Michael who had squad of his own in the form of the Thorn cult, and these fuckers don’t play around. The world will stop at nothing at kicking Jamie down, and kicking her while she’s down, just for existing. If that’s not enough, she is held captive for years by a cult, forcibly impregnated by Michael and disemboweled in the sixth movie.

Did I mention Jamie was an eight to nine year old kid in the fourth and fifth movie ? I can see why Danielle Harris is disgruntled that she couldn’t return. Fun fact, Danielle Harris wanted the sixth film to have Jamie die killing Michael once and for all to save her baby. But because this is Jamie Lloyd we are talking about, she’s not allowed to get justice. You could make the argument that Jamie gets points dying to save her baby in the actual movie…but it wasn’t Danielle Harris playing, so whatevs I guess.

As I already said, what made Jamie a little more interesting for me than H-20!Laurie is that her connection to Michael being more emphasized here than with Laurie. This was first shown in the fourth movie and expanded upon in the fifth, which implies Michael has some sort of psychic and emotional link with Jamie. Under Michael’s influence, Jamie attacks her foster mother, and is subsequently institutionalized, and is still terrorized by Michael through nightmares, visions and seizures, as Michael continuously taunts Jamie with the murders of her protection squad. That’s when it hit me; Jamie and Michael are Ying and Yang, and that’s why it worked. Where Jamie was innocence, Michael was purely evil.

Michael is the human personification of evil, it only makes sense he be connected to someone who is pure and simply innocent. These two effect each other, and compliment each other. I’m honestly curious how this connection played out during Jamie’s captivity, because despite everything she’s been through, she was still innocent enough to try to reach out to Michael a final time. In the fifth film Michael has a bizarre moment of humanity and feels brief remorse due to Jamie’s influence and on the flip side, Jamie has a brief moment of darkness due to Michael’s influence. So of course I’m going to avoid a certain Mad Titan’s quote about perfect balance, because the meme is too easy. It dawns on me that I may be reading into something that isn’t there, but dear reader is what all theorists and analysts such as myself do ?

And speaking of perfect balance, that is another reason why I think a storyline about baby Steven introduced in the sixth film is a wasted chance. Not only is his *ahem* “origin” anti-hero backstory material, but think about what Steve represents; he’s a living combination of Jamie’s innocence and Michael’s evil. He is someone who not only carries Laurie and Jamie’s legacy on his back, but Michael’s legacy as well. Thematically speaking, he is prime material to be the one to one day kill Michael once and for all. But we got more of Michael fighting Laurie, so I guess that’s cool.

Michael Myers as a villain

Okay, what can I say about Michael as a villain that hasn’t already been said ? I mean what movie does him best ? Many would say the first two. But what does a better job at “expanding” Michael. Many would also say the 2018 sequel, but that’s not primarily what I’m comparing here, so we are sticking with the old school sequels. Michael’s main appeal to the bulk of the fandom was the mystery aspect of him in the first movie. But “Michael is cool because he’s mysterious” can only work for one or two movies before it becomes a crutch and as a result turns Michael into blank slate. And considering that 2018 has two sequels in the work, Michael is likely to get some “expansion” to keep him interesting, and that’s because the appeal to a mystery is the inherent need to solve it. 

But that is beside the point. In my personal opinion, Michael’s appeal wasn’t that he was a mystery, but that he was the human personification of evil, and from such I think the only way Michael can really be cheapened is if he was given something to humanize him like love, empathy or sympathetic qualities. And no, the single tear in the fifth movie ultimately means nothing considering what happens down the line. So as long as Michael is evil and doing inherently evil deeds, I don’t see it as cheapening him.

So how does one expand on Michael and his evil correctly ? Make him a bigger threat with each passing sequel, and give him more heinous deeds under his belt.

In the second movie, he massacres a hospital to get to Laurie. The fourth movie has him slaughtering an entire police force and a vigilante mob just to get to Jamie. The fifth movie has Michael track down Jamie’s friends and foster sister, and display their corpses as a way to taunt Jamie. Sixth movie, he disembowels Jamie after she gives birth - mocking Jamie for trying reach out to him no less! - before seeking out and trying to kill their baby, and massacres a group of followers for thinking they can control him. There’s also Steven’s conception, which is universally regarded as too far even for Michael. 2018 has Michael kill a child onscreen, exceed the body count of the first movie before he even gets his mask back -and just to get his mask back- kills several people in different houses in a matter of minutes, and uses a cops severed head as a makeshift Jack-o-Lantern. You see that ? In almost each sequel, Michael was more of a threat, and was more “creative” when it came to his evil. He fulfilled a function as a villain and evil personified with no real humanity and no moral restraint.

What about H-20 ? Compared to those other movies, Michael was boring here. He kills three people at the beginning of H-20 and three more in the third act, but isn’t really creative or spectacular (except for using a skate for one kill). The bulk of the movie is Michael just traveling to the boarding school Laurie is hiding in, but doesn’t really do anything of substance. I wouldn’t mind too much, but back in the day this was billed as the final movie. The only creative thing Michael does is fake his death and that isn’t revealed until Resurrection which was near universally disowned by the fandom. Give Resurrection this, it adds more to Michael’s rap sheet. We do get a brief montage at the beginning of H-20 that implies that Michael has gone on a killing spree across the country, but the problem is it breaks the “show don’t tell rule”.

I’ll give them this, we do get a comic book miniseries called Nightdance set in the H-20 continuity, that expands on Michael’s evil and menace in ways I won’t spoil here because I recommend it, and it’s not as well known as Resurrection despite being considered by some to be the better follow up. It’s almost a shame this wasn’t made into a movie, because in the actual movies in that timeline Michael didn’t feel as threatening or menacing, took a lot of the edge off his character, and made him especially weak compared to the previous sequels. You could make the argument that the movie was mainly focused on Laurie’s facing her demons, the problem was that everything was rushed and undeveloped in that department, so Laurie’s character arc doesn’t really make up for it.

Compare and contrast this with 2018, which gave us a slow burn focus on how Michael effected Laurie, Laurie’s relationship with her family and quickly shown us the stakes Michael’s threat poses. It really makes me question why H-20 was seen as such a golden calf back in the day. It seems to me that is was mostly because Jamie Lee Curtis made a comeback for that movie.

Conclusion

So that’s my reasoning for why the Thorn trilogy hits the “Perfect Sequel” beats over H-20; it had more lore and world building; had a greater focus on the themes introduced in the second film; a more sympathetic protagonist; Michael’s evil was empathized more; and an atmosphere closer related to the actual holiday of Halloween. 2018 had some of the same beats at the Thorn trilogy, but I’m not gonna a final decision until the 2018 sequels are finished. It’s a personal standard of mine to wait until the story is over before I make a final decision.

I will give 2018 points so far for building it’s new lore and developing it’s new characters in one movie, but I think it has it’s problems too. Mainly that 2018 felt more like a big “Fix It” fanfic brought to the cinema, and was a little heavy when it came to self referencing humor, call-backs and leaning on the fourth wall, and fandom wish fulfillment. 2018 isn’t a bad movie, it’s one of my favorite sequels, but even so I can’t get around the whole “fanfic-ish” feel I got from watching it.

Pretty much the one thing H-20 has over 2018 was that it didn’t try too hard to be Scream, which was a formula most late 90’s horror films followed. At most we were given a quick Scream cameo, that could possibly shatter the canon if I think of it too much. H-20 went out of its way by not copying Scream during the writing process. Little known fact, but while H-20 was intended to be the last Halloween film, the studio had this rule was that Michael Myers wasn’t allowed to actually be killed off, so a sequel was planned in advance to clarify he was still alive; the original plan was that “Michael” would be a obsessed fan and copycat; that idea was scrapped possibly for following the “Scream formula” too much, and what we got instead was the infamous paramedic twist in Resurrection.

#halloween #Halloween Return of Michael Myers #Halloween Revenge of Michael Myers #Halloween Curse of Michael Myers #Halloween Twenty Years Later #halloween resurrection #Halloween Nightdance #michael myers #laurie strode #Jamie Lloyd #Steven Lloyd #tommy doyle #John Tate #Jamie Lee Curtis #Danielle Harris #unpopular opinion

[fukutomichi]

Venting out for the last time about TROS an moving on...

...I am a less upset than last Wednesday, but I think reading about all the behind the scenes drama, kinda made me more accepting of the fact that this shit was doomed from the start anyways.

The obviously had no plan whatsoever for the sequels. NO PLAN. No plan about the characters or the story. Who was the genius who thought “You know what? Let’s wing it and see what happens” like some type of free impromptu writing essay that you’re not ready for and just need to bullshit your way out to get a passing D grade...

How can you acquire one of the biggest franchises, that has A GALAXY as a setting, a story told IN THE PAST TENSE and go “Shit what do we do?? We gotta go back to the Skywalkers!!” You can literally go anywhere you want with the story. ANYTIME AND ANYWHERE, hell even cherrypick concepts from the old canons and use them as a base. At least I will always appreciate Rian for touching on the KOTOR 2 concept that both light and dark are wrong when you lean into one side more having too strong convictions. You can’t see in too much darkness, but you can go blind by too much light as well. I mean, he basically helped to have the prequels some ground now with how the jedi got their downfall. But Rian killed off Luke...J.J killed off Han Solo?

This is where my biggest gripe comes in again. Why did they involve the old cast...I mean were people expecting that they were gonna do jumping stunts and jedi trainings? It was set up form the get go that they were just there to give them a send off AKA kill them off, just so Disney can have a clean slate to start. They already had a clean slate, my mind is still boggled on why did they choose the first option. For getting seats in the cinema? When you say STAR WARS you already have a full theatre!!

They obviously didn’t prepare and just rushed to the opportunity to churn out something as fast as they can while they were still on the Marvel wave, cause I REMEMBER being so freaking excited for Star Wars 1313, an Uncharted looking game that was going to explore THE UNDERWORLD, the undercuty of Coruscant, the heaven for mercs and bounty-hunters...And then Disney bought LucasArts and it got canned...I remember I was furious cause a long period had passed since we had a good SW game and it was canceled just like that. We were robbed of a what it seemed like a heavy story/action game...this was towards the end 2012, and the TFA teaser dropped at the end of 2014.

An entire team of story-writers, people that know the deeper lore and rules of the world, PEOPLE THAT CAN GIVE YOU GUIDELINES on where you can take your story...Nope, no need for advice. I can crap on J.J all I want, but J.J answers to an even bigger boss, so how could Kenedy have thought “Lets give the directors what they wanna do, let them film their story” Sure, BUT DON’T THEY STILL NEED ADVICE FROM THE STORY GROUP!!?.

It’s not like J.J was not involved with TLJ, he was sure as hell present. But Rian worked with the story group...so what happened there? Was J.J acting like a diva cause Rian changed his Palpatine theory? I’m also kinda glad that J.J got shut down about doing the Son of Mortis being the bad guy all along. And it shows how much he didn’t even bother to understand that character. The Son was no twirling mustache villain, he was an aspect of the dark force. The entire Mortis episode was almost serving like a foreshadowing of the downfall of both Jedi and Sith...And the Chosen one being Anakin, bringing balance...

There a detail in one of Mark’s interviews, when Rian was going by J.J script and noticed that it was BB8 that was with Rey and Chewie when they were going to fly to Luke’s island...It was Rian that insisted that R2D2 should be the one present not BB8. There are TONS of details like this throughout interviews. It looks like J.J was trying to push his own ideas at the cost of “we need to just keep going forward with this no need to put that much emphasis on details”

How on earth did killing Snoke present a problem? Like...you already solved one part, a bunch of cloned Snokes right? Wasn’t one of the biggest wishes of Palpi to live on forever? Well guess what! This Snoke dude knows a way to transfer his soul each time he dies. It’s not a new concept! AGAIN it would bring the prequels to the conversation like ”Oh shit! Did Palpatine dabble with cloning cause of that? Was he trying to learn the secret?” That would explain Snoke looking disfigured with each time he comes back looking more horrible, BUT going weaker. It does still give the expectation of “OH!! Snoke is Darth Plagueis!” which everyone was thinking in the first place, after the shitshow that was this Ep.9 it would have been better HOWEVER predictable it may have been. Predictable is not always bad. BUT THIS is how you connect the old with the new. THERE’S ALWAYS A BIGGER FISH! “Pfft Plagueis? Snoke is even OLDER” Palpatine has been aware of someone waiting in the Unknown Regions, the Chiss Ascendancy are scared and looking for any kind of alies to defeat “pure evil”. And Snoke is just a taste of what awaits in the Unknown Regions waiting to push through now that a huge vacuum of power is left open with Palpatine and Vader gone, with the New Republic STILL UNABLE to try to establish itself from all the fallout from the Empire. You can present THE SCALE OF THE GALAXY like this, IT’S STILL UNKNOWN. The dark side is not just Palpatine or a sith army. IT’S ANCIENT AND SCARY and has NO LIMITS!!! Darth Nihilus HELLO?? A literal boogeyman of a force user that even made sith shitting bricks, the living embodiment when the dark force go beyond, A LITERAL VOID OF A BEING!! 

And there you go problem Snoke Dead solved, you just need to set up the villain’s business. Waiting for Palpatine to die? Vader gone? Manipulating Kylo just to unlock something he can?...There you go J.J, I pitched you a less shitty continuation for Snoke in Ep.9 in just under 7 minutes, didn’t need to disrespect Palpi, or Vader’s sacrifice or the OG trio’s story. THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN SET UP J.J!!! BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE BOTHERED TO READ AT LEAST ONE BOOK OR CONSULTED WITH THE LUCAS STORY TEAM!?! HMMMM???...Apparently he only cared about the pew pew. =________=

...I’m tired pulling out things from my ass just to make sense of this mess...

Next year is gonna be interesting to see how LucasFilm is gonna be handled and if they are gonna have their own Game of Thrones situation behind the scenes, AKA who’s gonna be in charge of the Star Wars throne...cause I’m sure as hell it’s not gonna be Kathleen Kenedy anymore. Give it to someone who cares and is already deeply involved with the world. You know I’m already talking about Dave Filoni. Just look at the beauty that was Rebels. First season was shaky, but as it went on UGH! So good! The fact that the man put out a character that no one was fan of in Clone Wars, Ahsoka, and made her a fan favorite by the end...THAT’S a person who I want to be in charge of Star Wars, someone WHO CARES FOR THE CHARACTERS AND STORY!! I mean, the man introduced TIME TRAVELING PORTALS THAT MAKE SENSE AND WORK!!! TIME TRAVEL!!

No more directors “doing their vision and leaving their mark” NO! STOP! They either work close with the story group or can yeet themselves out, respect the established rules and lore of the world or they can go on their way and make their own Planet Battles...

This whole project was a group effort nonetheless, regardless of who directed or wrote the script, who consulted whom, and in my book I would grade them with a big F. The only saving grace are the actors. What a waste of a golden cast.

With all this now puked out of me...I think I’m done with this.

I’m excited for Mandalorian, excited for Clone Wars in February, for the new Thrwan books, as much as I hate EA, I really hope they give Respawn another Jedi Fallen Order to work on...And I hope the next trilogy (if there even is a plan for one now) doesn’t involve any Skywalkers or Palpatines whatsoever. NO MORE LEGACY NAMES. Please for the love of everything. 

Knights of the Old Republic is still the best Star Wars story that George Lucas wishes he thought of instead of his bodysnatcher midichlorian fever dream, and The Lord of the Rings is still left as the undisputed way of how to handle a movie trilogy.

If they played their cards right and knew what they were doing from the start, they had chance to start a Solo saga which I would have given it a pass. Oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#another ramble just to top it off...no more... #shut it fuku

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 24: A Stranger Among Us (Transcript) - 28th December 2015

tw: death, gore, death of children, disease

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Folklore is a living thing. In many ways, the stories we tell and the lessons we pass on are like a tree - the branches reach out into generations and cultures, sometimes in obvious ways, and other times reaching surprising new places. One good example of this would be of the folklore surrounding small fairy people that we’ve discussed here before. Pukwudgies, trolls, goblins, puka and dozens of similar variations are scattered across the world with amazing consistency and reach. How or why is something we’ll probably never fully understand, but it shows us how folklore can spread, how it can migrate, and how it can build upon the past. At the same time, though, folklore has roots, and they run deeper than we might expect. Some stories that we still whisper about in the dark today have crossed the lips of people for centuries, and in some cases, millennia. When I hear a story for the first time or discover a new collection of tales that have been widely distributed, I often stop and ask myself the same questions: where did it come from? What lies at the bottom of the narrative? What are its roots? Outside of Halloween, there is no other time of the year (at least for European cultures, that is) where folklore rushes to the forefront of everyone’s lives with such significance, such power, and such ease as the Christmas season, and rightly so. There is so much there to unpack and explore: the tree, the gifts, the food, and the nocturnal visit from a stranger, one who has seemingly stalked our lives all year long, and yet we blindly welcome into our home. And if there’s one lesson that folklore has taught us over the centuries, it’s to beware of strangers – they aren’t always who they seem to be. I’m Aaron Mahnke and this is Lore.

When we think of coal in our stockings and food and drink left out for a visitor, we rarely pair those ideas with the image of a woman flying through the air on a broomstick, but in Italy there are those who still tell the story of La Befana. Befana’s story has been told since at least the 13th century, originally connected with the Christian feast of the Epiphany. But while many people have never heard of her, the details of her story are eerily familiar. During her visit, Befana was said to enter homes through the chimney. She’s typically depicted carrying a basket or bag full of gifts, but is also known to leave behind a lump of coal or a single stick for children who fail to behave during the year. Before leaving each home, Befana would sweep the floor with her broom, something scholars see as a metaphor for sweeping away the deeds of the previous year, and then she would eat the food left out for her – oftentimes sausage and broccoli. Side note: cookies and milk sound so much better, don’t they? Interestingly enough, Befana is not the only Christmas legend with a passing resemblance to a witch. In the German Alps, there have been stories of another female figure dating back to the 10th century. Some call her Perchta or Berchta, or later Bertha. Jacob Grimm, while researching his Deutsche Mythologie, theorised that she was one of the ancient Germanic mother goddesses. She and her sisters were said to have taught humanity the arts of agriculture, spinning wool and cooking. Over time, though, her legend began to integrate with parts of the Christmas season. Because of her role in teaching humanity the basics of home management, Perchta’s meaning began to shift over the centuries, turning her into the punisher of those who worked during the holidays, failed to feast properly and, much later, hunting down the lazy, and what better time for her to conduct an end of year review, so to speak, than Christmas? Just how did Perchta dish out her punishment on the people of Germany? Well, a hint can be found in her other popular title: the belly-slitter. During the 12 days of Christmas, she would travel through the towns and inspect the people’s behaviour. If they had followed the rules and done right in her eyes, they were rewarded. If they had not been good, though, she was known to have a very nasty side. Anyone disobedient enough to warrant punishment, adult or child alike, would have their stomachs ripped open. Perchta would scoop out whatever might still be inside, pull out the full length of their intestines, and then stuff the victim’s belly with garbage, straw and rocks. While a stomach full of refuse might seem… a little over the top, that distinction actually goes to another ancient female in folklore.

While stories of Grýla, the mythical giant goddess, are far outside the common narrative of Christmas for many of us, for the people of Iceland she is still a whispered source of dread among children. One of the earliest mentions of Grýla dates back to the 13th century collection of Icelandic mythology known as the Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson. According to the many stories told about her over the centuries, Grýla possesses the ability to locate disobedient children. She can do this year-round, so they say, and because of that she was often used as a parental tool to coerce children into doing what they were told. It was in the Christmas season, though, that Grýla became even more monstrous. That was when she was said to climb out of her home in the mountain and make her way toward the towns. She would hunt far and wide for all the naughty children and then take them back to her cave. Once there, she would cut them up, place them in her stew, and devour them. And, according to the legend, she never ran out of food.

There have been other stories of strangers told throughout the centuries, but not all have happy endings. In fact, there is often more loss than gain when it comes to the visits of some of those legends. In the northern Alps, stories have been told for generations about the travelling stranger known as Belsnickel. Considered to be one of the helpers of Saint Nicholas, Belsnickel travels ahead of the big, red man and dispenses his own form of Christmas cheer – with physical abuse. Descriptions of Belsnickel liken him to the wild men of old, with torn and dirty clothes fashioned from animal skins and furs, and a face that is covered in a snarled, filthy beard. Some stories report that he wears a mask with a long tongue protruding from the mouth. According to the legend, which spans centuries in both Germany and the American state of Pennsylvania, Belsnickel would enter the home of a family and scatter nuts and sweets on the floor for the children to collect. And then, with their backs to him, he would lash out with a switch made of hazel or birch, whipping their backs and leaving red marks. And Belsnickel isn’t alone – another travelling stranger from the same region, one who has seen a rise in popularity around the globe, is a creature known as Krampus. At first blush, Krampus sounds similar in many ways to the other strangers in European folklore, but what sets him apart is truly frightening. It is said that Krampus visits the homes of children during the Christmas season, but he doesn’t have a dual nature – there is no reward or special treat when he comes to town. No, his sole purpose and passion in life is to dole out punishment on children who have failed to obey and do their work. Like Belsnickel, he too carries a switch, but in most stories there are more than one. Apparently, he beats so many children that he needs a few spare branches, so he carries them in a bundle. In addition, he is often depicted wearing chains and some form of large sack or cart because ultimately, Krampus isn’t as interested in beating children as he is in taking them. When he arrives in each legend, we are greeted by the appearance of a wild, demonic creature with long horns, cloven feet and a twisted face. After beating the disobedient children, Krampus chains them up and tosses them into his sack before vanishing as quickly as he came, taking the children with him back to hell.

The origins of Krampus are still unclear, but some scholars think that the legend predates Christianity. Instead, they believe that the story has roots in an ancient alpine myth of a horned god of the witches. Even the switch, his weapon of choice, might have been a carry-over from the initiation rites of witches, where the novices were beaten. Far from forgotten, festivals are held throughout Europe to this day that feature many of these legends; events like Krampusnacht in Germany and the Befana festival in Urbania attract tens of thousands, who dress in masks and dance and celebrate. Like Halloween, these are instances where monsters and strangers have been embraced and elevated to something of a children’s story, which is ironic when you understand the roots. Stripping away the detail, Krampus has (from a 30-thousand-foot view) more than a passing resemblance to Pan, the Greek horned god of nature, shepherds, flocks, and mountains. Along with his musical flute, Pan is often known for robbing the innocence from people, usually through sexual means. In a culture that saw the threshold between childhood and adulthood as the loss of virginity, Pan figuratively stole people’s children, and when you think of it that way, it’s more than easy to see similarities, not only between Krampus and Pan, but also between Pan and a character that Disney has helped us all fall in love with: Peter Pan. While he might be able to fly, has no horns and is missing the cloven feet that Pan sports in every image and statue, Peter Pan fulfils the role perfectly. He arrives at night, he carries a flute and lures our children away to another place. It’s a modern story with a familiar ending, but it was far from the first of its kind. That honour, according to some, falls to a small German village in 1284. You might already know the story, but the truth beneath it is far worse than you’d ever expect. In 1284, the German village of Hamlin was struggling with an infestation of rats. Now, I’ve only seen a few rats myself over years, but I also don’t live in a densely populated urban area like New York City or London. But in medieval Europe, from what I can gather, rats were as abundant as squirrels, only bigger and more disease-ridden. It’s hard to imagine the impact that an infestation of rats could have on a town today. If we found a half-eaten bag of flour in the cupboard, there’s a grocery store down the street where we could get more, year-round. But in the Middle Ages, food was grown locally and used throughout the year. If rats ate and ruined the food supplies, there was little a town could do - rats meant death in many instances. According to the story that has been passed down through the centuries since then, a stranger entered Hamelin in the Spring of 1284. He was dressed in colourful clothing, possessed what we might call today as a “silver tongue”, and claimed to have a very unusual, although also very timely, skill – he was a rat catcher. As a profession, rat catching dates back centuries, but it’s rarely seen as a safe and sanitary job. The risk of being bitten or contracting some disease carried by the rats has always been a hazard of the job, and while the exact nature of their involvement has been up for debate for decades, most scholars agree that rats have been key players in the spread of plague - particularly the Black Death of the 14th century, and there were few truly effective tools at their disposal, which made the job that much more difficult. Some rat catchers used a special breed of terrier while others made use of traps, but the most effective tool for centuries was also the most minimal and inexpensive of them all, bare hands - and seeing as how most rats prefer to stay hidden inside dark places, this was a risky technique. The motivation for it all, though, was the meritocracy of it; the more you caught, the more you earned, and while there’s no documented proof of this rumour, it’s been whispered for centuries that rat catchers would sometimes raise their own rats in captivity and then turn them in as part of the job, inflating their numbers and then their pay. This allowed them to pad their pay checks when business was slow, and it also earned them a shady reputation. As a side note, one of the most famous rat catchers in London’s history was a man named Jack Black, who claimed that his black-tan terrier was the father of all the black-tan terriers in London, and who pioneered the art of breeding rats and keeping them as pets. He even wore an outfit made entirely of scarlet cloth, with a big, wide sash across his chest that had two cast iron rats on it. He was probably also a riot at parties, but I can’t confirm that – just a hunch.

The man who walked into Hamelin that June wasn’t any less of a character, if the legends are to be believed. He wore an outrageous outfit, although his was reportedly one of multicoloured fabric that was known back then as “pied” (which was typically a sort of blotchy pattern), and he carried a tool that no other rat catcher claimed to use - a flute - and the mayor of Hamelin trusted the man. Maybe it was the not-so-subtle allusion his appearance made to the ancient stories of the god Pan, a deity who tended flocks of animals and played a flute; maybe it was the man’s marketing ability, that silver tongue and outrageous outfit; perhaps he overpromised and won the mayor’s approval - whatever the reason, this stranger was said to have struck a deal. He would catch all the rats in town, he told the mayor. He would lead them out of the town and away from their lives and he would do this, he said, with his musical instrument, a pipe that he claimed would lure them away. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would have been sceptical. The mayor, though, was desperate. Sure, they haggled over the price, but in the end the stranger won. The exact amount of money differs from version to version of the story, but in all of them it’s an exorbitant sum, and that’s the point. Hamelin was so desperate that they were willing to overpay for a solution, and then he got to work. According to all the stories, and even the children’s tales we were raised on, the piper picked up his flute and began to play. As if driven by some magical force, all of the rats in Hamelin scuttled out of their hiding places and began to crowd around him; streams of them, thousands of them, all writhing in a mass at his feet. Then, when it seemed like they had all come out, he marched out of town and down to the Vesser river. The stories say that he was beyond successful. Most accounts say that all but one of the rats drowned in the river that day. Hamelin’s troubles were over, for a while. You see, the piper returned later to collect his money - he had done the job they had hired him to perform, the rats were gone, but for some unknown reason, the mayor refused to pay him. Now, the stories don’t say why, but we can speculate. Maybe it was because the stranger didn’t return with any bodies to show for his work, as was the custom for a rat catcher. How could the town pay him per head when there were no heads to count? At any rate, the mayor turned the stranger away and the man, clearly taken advantage of, stormed out of the village, but not before turning to face the people of Hamelin and proclaim a curse on them. He would return one day, he said, and when he did, he would have his revenge. Remember, this is a story that has been passed down for 800 years - most of what we know about the real events is pure legend, based loosely on scattered reports of a stained-glass window in the church there, in Hamelin. The window itself was lost in 1660, but there a drawings of it that predate the destruction as far back as the 14th century, and the earliest mention of these events is a 1384 entry in the Hamelin town records. The events were recorded, of course, because the stranger did return. According to the story, though, he changed clothing, trading in his colourful robes for the uniform of a hunter. Gone was the salesman; the stranger was returning for vengeance. While the adults were in church on June 26th, the stranger strode into town and began to play his flute again. This time, rather than crowds of writhing rats, it was the children who clambered out of the houses. They flooded the streets, gathering around the strange visitor, and then, when they were all present, he marched them out of town, never to be seen again. There are, of course, a number of morals to this story, but the one that has stuck with us for centuries remains ever-true: never trust a stranger.

Folklore is full of strangers. In many stories, it’s flat-out amazing just how much freedom we have given them in our lives. Even stories of someone as benign as Santa Claus have an element of danger when you view them from outside cultural fishbowl. Here’s the story of a strange man who stalks our children year-round, noting their behaviour and secret desires, who then breaks into our homes, eats our food, and leaves a few presents to prove that he was there. For the people of Hamelin, though, that stranger cost them far more than a plate of cookies. Their ill treatment of the man who came to town led to the loss of their children, and as difficult as it is to believe, the story of Hamelin is true – part of it, at least. Scholars are in agreement that the rats were a later addition to the tale, showing up about 300 years after the events were said to have taken place. But as far back as the records go, there has always been a stranger, a visitor from the outside, who leaves with the children, and although it’s taken a very long time to figure out why, some historians think they have the answer. To understand the truth, they say, we first have to understand the political culture that Hamelin found itself in. In 1227, about 50 years prior to the events of Hamelin, a battle took place on the border between what was then the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark, pushing the Danish border north of modern-day Germany. As a result, a whole new territory opened up that needed colonists. Men called “locators” were assigned to travel the land and find volunteers to populate this new territory, who often wore colourful clothing. They were eloquent speakers. They were, in a sense, a lot like today’s door-to-door salesmen. The empire needed farmers and craftsmen and soldiers to protect these new lands, but it was hard to find people willing to uproot their lives and travel north, especially when that new land was alongside a contested, military-heavy border. It was a hard sell, and so when the locators came knocking, rather than shipping off a handful of adult volunteers, townsfolk would sometimes get creative. Instead of paying with their own lives, they would sell their children to these men. The proof, it turns out, is in the phonebook, and on Google maps. Many town names along a line between Hamelin and Poland bear a striking resemblance to town names from medieval Germany, oftentimes even showing up more than once. Even more compelling, surnames from the 1284 Hamelin town records still show up in phonebooks in Pomerania, a region of Poland along the Baltic sea. The folklore, you see, tells a colourful story, one that’s as easy for children to swallow as a spoonful of honey, but the truth that the story hides turns out to be far less palatable. An entire town, desperate for a solution to their economic and social challenges, actually sold their children off to recruiters hoping to colonise new lands. It’s a plot reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in that these people constructed a fantasy around certain events, and then passed that lie on to later generations in order to justify their actions and avoid questions. In the end, an outsider did indeed come to Hamelin that day, but he wasn’t the one who took the children. No, it turns out that the true monsters were already there, living in the house next door, shopping in the market, farming the fields. The most dangerous stranger, it seems, isn’t the outsider – it’s the one that hides among us.

[Closing statements]

#lore podcast #podcast transcripts #aaron mahnke #christmas #krampus #pied piper of hamelin #folklore #italy #iceland #germany #transcripts #24

[rivetgoth]

The Twin HCs

Okay, so without the third movie (which supposedly was gonna delve into Lucifer’s backstory and Hell’s beginnings) we’ll never really know the lore for the Twin sadly, and I’ve spent a billion years thinking about it so I’m just gonna throw my headcanons at you all. I’ve put a lot of time & thought into all of this and included MANY sources both from the movies and from outside sources, but of course it may not prove to be canon should Terrance ever decide to release info we didn’t previously have :)

The Twin was the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve. Aside from “demon snake” making this already an obvious conclusion to jump to, this fits to me because June is meant to be an Eve-like figure in “Alleluia!”, as she “eats forbidden fruit” (the book she takes even has an apple on it) and she’s cast out of God’s kingdom for trying to gain knowledge that God didn’t want her to have. The Twin is the very first being she truly interacts with in Hell, and he lures and tempts her and then steals from her. Plus a lot of what he does with Merrywood is tempt her and lure her into losing everything. It feels like a fitting parallel.

Edit: By complete coincidence I had to read some literary analysis recently that actually explored the fact that the serpent in the Garden of Eden has frequently specifically not only been used as a symbol of trickery (very very obviously fitting of the Twin), but also of a symbol of theft, which fits the Twin stealing June’s horseshoe pin from her as well, and being the carny specifically chosen to confront Merrywood in the first film after she’s damned to Hell for literally being a thief. Some scholars actually also consider the serpent a symbol of sexual desire, which is fitting since I want the Twin to f

(Actually, as a side note, what’s super interesting about that is that in Dante’s Divine Comedy the part of Hell that thieves are sent to is specifically filled with serpents, because of the reason stated above. As punishment for thievery the serpents rob the damned souls of their own identity.... THAT SOUNDS... FAMILIAR, RIGHT. ANYWAY...)

Genesis 3:14- “So the LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.’”

So after the Twin tricked Eve into tasting the forbidden fruit, God curses him and all serpents to live the rest of their lives crawling on the ground. Who knows what the Twin looked like prior to this curse. We have no way of knowing, but now he was in the form of what we think of as a modern day legless, armless noodle creature. A snake.

However, Lucifer defied God, perhaps at the Twin’s plea (more on that in a second), and gave the Twin a human form with legs and all. This was a big deal, because it was a very early act of defiance against God and his wishes from Lucifer, as these were still the early days after the fall.

Nivek Ogre on the Twin- “I myself tend to have too much empathy so I wanted to make him very sympathetic. I kind of saw him as one of the original shells that were shucked down to hell. He probably made a bargain with the man below and is now living in fear trying to escape his fate by taking on the appearance of another. However while doing this he tends to see the best parts of him which gave him a slight bit of humanity. He also would see their nastiest thoughts which ultimately would do them in. It is both an empathetic and vicious character. I see myself as the bait for Lucifer.“ [source]

The “bargain with the man below” is left ambiguous; I think that could realistically fit my headcanon, if you envision that the “bargain” the Twin made with Lucifer was to defy God’s curse on him and give him a human form. However, if you go along with that idea, Ogre’s words also imply that the Twin isn’t necessarily happy with what he got on his end of the bargain. He “lives in fear trying to escape his fate”...

...Which brings me to my next point, which is that Lucifer’s powers are not nearly as strong as God’s, especially not at this point, when he was still young and had only just begun his work on Hell, and Lucifer certainly can’t create life. He could only kind of give the Twin a facade of a human form.

In “Alleluia!”, during the flashback with June, we see the Twin’s skin is different. He appears to have serpent scales almost breaking out of more human flesh, as opposed to the fully scaled form we see later on in the future (in the first movie and at the end of the second). We also see that the Twin uses a cane sometimes in the first movie.

An article about the makeup for the second movie- “[The Twin’s] make-up goes back and forth from past to present. Through the film we finally see him become the lizard-like Twin through a series of different looks like leprosy.” [source]

Note that maaaybe this isn’t the most reliable source on concrete facts, especially considering the fact that the Twin is referred to as a lizard rather than a snake lol (and I think he is definitely supposed to be a snake, he... he hisses), but it’s a good and official quote to point out the obviously intentional visual change and progression in the film. I also think the leprosy comment is interesting and fits the theme; leprosy is seen in the Bible as an uncleanliness that only God can cure. If Lucifer gave the Twin a body that goes against God’s wishes, perhaps it would begin to “fall apart” in a way similar to the way the Bible claims one who is unclean from God’s blessing would?

(comparison between the Twin’s flashback makeup and “present” makeup)

I think the Twin’s body degenerated over time and slowly returned to a more serpentine form. Lucifer’s powers could only do so much. Now, at the point he’s at by the time we see him in the first movie, I don’t think his condition will get “worse.” I don’t think he’s going to lose his humanoid form altogether, but I think initially, at the very beginning, he looked significantly more humanoid, and as time has gone on his skin has shed (the way a snake’s would) back into scales and his legs have become weaker, and it can cause him a great deal of pain to walk on them for too long a period of time, because they’re entirely unnatural to him. They directly defy God’s wishes. The Twin drinks and uses a cane, we see that in the first movie. I think he deals with a lot of physical pain.

Nivek Ogre on the Twin Part 2- “My character is the twin who’s an empath and someone who is able to take on the characteristics - physical and emotional - of anybody that they come in contact with. He’s a trickster, but at the same time I think he is one of the most empathetic characters in hell because he’s able to feel all of your pain, all of your troubles and all of the worries that you have. But also all of the secrets and the nastiness. That’s where it turns dark for him. He does show empathy, but he’s still, at the very heart of it very sociopathic and reptilian almost - in a way, cold blooded.” [source]

This quote gives the best insight to the Twin as a character, I think. To summarize as well as inject some of my own interpretation and headcanon, the Twin is very much a snake at heart. “Cold blooded,” as Ogre puts it, both literally and metaphorically. I think the Twin has a sense of morality on a totally different plain than other people, and I think he’s very instinct driven. I think he enjoys shiny things and carnival games because frankly he’s a simple creature and he’s amused and distracted and pleased easily by these things because, again, he’s a snake. He was a snake and there’s a part of him that will always be a snake. He certainly is not human, and does not have a human conscience.

However, I don’t think this makes him “evil” at all. As Ogre states numerous times, the Twin is a very, very empathetic creature, which also makes sense to me in the context of him being a snake. Snakes can sense emotion in a very unique way; they’re sensitive to touch and feeling and if a person shows fear around a snake, for example, the snake is more likely to be tense and aggressive. Being calm around snakes is imperative for their own comfort or else they lash out or flee. So in a way, snakes are incredibly empathetic, but in a very instinct-driven way. The Twin, too, can sense the emotions of others to an extreme, even supernatural degree. He can take their emotions on and adopt them as his own. He feels their pain and their fears and the darkness in their hearts that sent them to Hell in the first place. But, like Ogre said, at the end of the day he’s very “sociopathic” about it, and these don’t necessarily impact him in a long term negative way that they would a human taking on the extreme negative emotions of others, so he’s the perfect man for the job down in Hell of doing exactly that.

Although there’s no long term emotional exhaustion from the Twin when he takes these emotions on, and he’s able to “cope” with feeling negative emotion pretty easily and simply reflect it back on the person to torment them, I think that experiencing these emotions does “humanize” him in a way, or “gives him a slight bit of humanity,” as Ogre says. The Twin doesn’t experience human emotion firsthand, but he does secondhand, and that’s stopped him from being literally nothing but an instinct-driven snake. There’s something more there.

I also think the Twin is, in a strange way, very much a big brother figure for the other carnies. He has no ill feeling towards them. Actually, he has no ill feelings towards anyone (except perhaps God and his angels). Again, he’s not evil. He’s among the carnies in every major crowd scene, participating and having fun alongside the others. He’s in every audience during the songs of the first movie, even participating and laughing and throwing coins and drinking with the others, he dances with everyone at the end, and he throws his armband with everyone else in the second, and claps and cheers for June when she does the same.

He was one of the first beings in Hell, and the other carnies, I think, are very aware that he’s incredibly powerful and full of knowledge - and secrets. I think a lot of them have a lot of respect for him, and maybe fear him a bit; they certainly wouldn’t tease him the way they do the Magician. It doesn’t help that I don’t think he’s necessarily wildly social and he can be very hard to understand and connect with on an emotional level (because, again, he’s a snake), but he does care in his own way. He is, after all, an empath, and he can relate deeply to their experience of being cast out by God and trapped in Hell for eternity. He’s driven primarily by instinct, and his idea of friendship probably mostly is based around playing cards and other silly carnival games because he really clearly enjoys that, and he would have absolutely no qualms robbing you if you had something shiny on your person, but he still does care about the other carnies and has fun with them when he’s around them, even if he’s a bit cold and intimidating and difficult to interact with one-on-one.

If another carny were “make the first move” interacting with the Twin, like actually coming to his tent and initiating a conversation or asking to play a game with him, I think that’d actually make him really happy, and he’d be really happy to have someone to spend time with. He seems like he’s enjoying playing cards with Wick at the beginning of the first movie!

Cute! =}

As for some more fun headcanons I have that aren’t grounded in much but they make me happy:

The Twin hisses when he speaks because he has a snake accent. He’s gotten good at covering that accent when he’s in another person’s form, but he still slips up sometimes and you can still hear him hissing in another person’s voice. He’s working on it.

The Twin likes to tell stories, and he can get very excited while he’s telling them, and if he gets too excited, he’ll start taking the form of the people in the story as he’s telling it. Like, “And then the Magician said THIS-” [takes the form of the Magician without even realizing it]. It’s actually very entertaining and makes his stories even more fun to listen to, and he really doesn’t notice he’s doing it.

The Twin is actually impressed by the Magician’s magic on good days, which makes the Magician feel really proud of himself because the Twin is such a well respected figure in Hell, but he really shouldn’t be all too proud because actually, the Twin literally is just impressed by shiny things. The Magician conjures up some sparkles and the Twin acts like it’s the best thing he’s ever fucking seen (but, in seriousness, he’s also impressed by the Magician’s little magic tricks, because the Twin himself clearly dabbles in magic tricks in his own games, so the two of them can actually bond over that shared interest).

The Twin sheds every... I dunno, thousand years? Ten thousand years? It’s not a wildly frequent occurrence, but he sheds just like a regular snake would, which is a wildly unpleasant process. When a snake sheds, their ENTIRE body sheds, including their EYES. For a period of time before shedding a snake is almost entirely blind as its skin encloses its eyes. He’s incredibly uncomfortable during this time, not only is he blind but there’s, like, a literal full layer of skin half-attached to his body. He probably spends this time hidden away inside his tent, not social at all. Snakes in general tend to be more cautious and reserved and hostile should they be bothered during this time, because they’re so vulnerable. He’s in an extra pissy mood during this time. Then, afterwards, he gets a shiny new coat, bright green and very pretty, but it’s very sensitive at first, so he’s still not very keen on social interaction for awhile LOL. 

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT!!!!!!!!!! THERE’S MORE HONESTLY but I figured I’d keep it at this since this is already long as hell, buuuuut I wanted to share OKAY I love him. 💕🐍💕

#THIS IS SO LONG I JUST HAD TO SHARE OK. #the devil's carnival #alleluia! the devil's carnival #tdc

[scorpio-karma]

Tyler Lockwood for the meme

How I feel about this character: 

Love him. He’s one of the most well rounded characters and has the most development of all of them. He goes from an complete asshole and near rapist to a loyal, loving, caring person I could respect, and did the transformation in an entirely convincing way. He is the redemption arc the writers wished the “anti-heroes” of the show had and yet they took no notes from it.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Bonnie: I think I ship him with her most right now. This is a ship I most ship due to fanfiction but fanfic is making me realize how compatible they would be. I already headcanon that they lost their virginity together, but there was a whole lot more they could have done with them. First they’re the only of their kind that’s a main character, they’re the only POC’S and as such they’re the worst treated characters, and they’re both very loyal and understand that the stakes are higher than Mystic Falls (Tyler moreso than Bonnie). They have so man parallels it’s ridiculous, I have a post in my drafts that notes them and when I’m finished I will post it. Secondly, this is more of a symptom of fanfic, but they’re so adorable together especially added with the fact that they’ve known each other they’re whole lives and it plays out so well in fanfic and would have played out really well in the show. And lastly, it’s one of those many, many ships that we were robbed of due to Plec’s racism, so not getting them makes me want them even more.

Caroline: Despite the fact that Tyler gets paired with her because Plec didn’t want him with Bonnie, and despite the fact that she’s the reason he has his screen time cut, Forewood was quite cute together. 4x06 has soured a lot of my initial feelings about them together but in the long run they were cute together in the time they had. 

Jeremy: I mildly ship this one, I do wish they wouldn’t have stopped their screen time together but something bothers about the idea that they only reason Jeremy cares about him is because he has a crush on him and vise versa. This one that I can’t quite separate the TVD writing with the ship because I know that’s exactly how Plec would play it out and then both characters would have ended up dead by the end of the season. But separating the ship from the writing it could have been great and added more depth to Tyler’s character, but I never felt he was missing much depth. He’s the character they unknowingly gave the most depth and then ignored. All in all it’s a solid ship for him.   

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Matt: Face it, he was a good friend to Tyler despite Tyler not being the best friend back to him, which does change, and he’s the only one to show any emotions at his funeral. He’s also always there to make him feel better when he’s seriously down and Tyler gave him his house. I can’t discount aby of that, Matt is Tyler’s best friend. 

Jeremy: He’s on here again, but I guess that’s because I like them more as friends. I like it when romance isn’t the driving factor for two characters to interact which is probably why I latched on to them more as friends when I watched the show before they completely dropped them all together

Bonnie: I’m putting her on here again because with how much they have in common added with growing up together I find it ridiculous that they aren’t at the very least friends. She brought him back from the dead for Christ sake they should have definitely been on more friendly terms (and he should have at least thanked her for it).

My unpopular opinion about this character

He is the worst treated male character on the show which doesn’t sound that unpopular, but most people think that Stefan is the worst treated because he lost Elena, or Matt because he’s against vampires, or Jeremy because he’s compelled to forget a lot. Tyler was the worst treated male and Bonnie was the worst treated female which isn’t surprising since they’re both POC’s. He’s shoved off screen for unnecessary amounts of time, has his major developments with his werewolfism??? developed off screen and is put through the most physical pain compared to not only the the other male characters, but as a werewolf. When you see the other werewolves turn they are never in as much pain as Tyler was. His treatment as a character almost completely mirrors Bonnie’s the only difference is that it’s to a much lesser degree and on some level it can be seen as retribution for his behavior in season 1 where Bonnie never did anything to deserve that. However that brings up another issue which is why is he the only one to have to pay and in such a violent manner, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole.

He was more important to the plot than Caroline. That one actually is objectively an unpopular opinion especially with how beloved Caroline is. But I’ve pointed it out before, Caroline is a run of the mill vampire in a show filled with vampires and Tyler is the sole werewolf on a show that just kills them off like they’re nothing. He could have easily been who they explore werewolves and they’re lore through, but they brought on Hayley and chose to explore it on another show. Although note something: Tyler doesn’t spend that much time as a werewolf–he triggers it at the beginning of S2 and is a hybrid by the beginning of S3–and when he becomes a hybrid, he becomes one of many, losing what made him unique as a character making him just like everyone else because the Hybrids were mostly enhanced vampire in the way that vampires were just enhanced human. I could theorize that that was the first step in tearing down his character, but we don’t have that kind of time.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

There are a lot of things I wish for this character but I guess if I’m going to narrow it down to one it would be for him to have never been a Hybrid. That’s when he completely loses his agency and becomes a slave to Klaus, that’s when the show started shoving him off screen more, but only to facilitate Klaroline, and that’s when his story stops being his own and he’s just lumped together with the rest of the MFG and is expected to follow along with them. If he’d have stayed a werewolf, I have no doubt that his screen time still would have been cut, but it would have given way to explore werewolves and the Lockwood’s more because much like Bonnie there’s a bit a mystery there with Tyler and how little was known about the curse. (But make it known thee’s A LOT MORE not known about the Bennett’s and more potential there.) Tyler staying a werewolf left a lot more potential for his character and would have screwed him over waay less just due to not being a slave alone, but in a lot more ways.

#asks #tyler lockwood #ask meme

[phantom-le6]

Film Re-Review - Star Trek: Nemesis

As I’m very much feeling a case of Trek fatigue at the moment, and because I’ve been neglecting other projects to focus on completing these reviews, I’ve decided to make this weekend a quick two-for-one posting weekend, and I present my re-review for the fourth and final TNG movie.  For those now following me on Tumblr who don’t see my posts on Facebook regarding these reviews, just to let you know this won’t be the last bit of Trek I do. I did Deep Space Nine years ago when I used to post my reviews on Facebook, and while I’m not aiming to repost those reviews, I am planning to review the Voyager series after I take a break with some non-Trek films and the Batman animated series.  Also, in the very short term I’ll be making up lost time on some novel prep, so if my posts are bit infrequent for a little while, don’t worry.  Now, with that bit of house-keeping out of the way, let’s have a look at Nemesis.

Plot (as given by Wikipedia):

During a session of the Romulan Imperial Senate, the military offers the plans to join forces with the Reman military and invade the Federation, but the Praetor refuses. As such a green thalaron radiation mist is released into the room by the military and everyone is killed. Meanwhile, the crew of the USS Enterprise-E prepares to bid farewell to long time first officer Commander William Riker and Counselor Deanna Troi, who are soon to be married on Betazed. En route, they discover a positronic energy reading on a planet in the Kolaran system near the Romulan Neutral Zone. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Lieutenant Commander Worf, and Lieutenant Commander Data land on Kolarus III and discover the remnants of an android resembling Data. When the android is reassembled it reveals its name is B-4, and the crew deduce he is a less advanced earlier version of Data.

 Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway orders the crew to conduct a diplomatic mission to Romulus. Janeway informs Picard that the Romulan government has undergone a military coup and is now controlled by a Reman named Shinzon, saying he wants peace with the Federation and to bring freedom to Remus. This is a surprising development as the Romulans had regarded Remans as an undesirable caste used principally as slave labour and shock troops during the Dominion War, due to their long history of prejudice.

 Upon their arrival on Romulus, the crew learns that Shinzon is actually a clone of Picard, following a secret experiment conducted by the Romulans to take Picard's place in Starfleet as a spy; however, he and the project were abandoned after a political change in the Romulan government left him cast away to Remus as a slave. It is there that he meets his Reman brethren and effects his rise to power. It was also on Remus where Shinzon constructed his flagship, a heavily armed warship named Scimitar, with a completely undetectable cloaking device, an arsenal of weapons, and virtually impregnable shields.

 Though the diplomatic mission seems to go smoothly, the crew discovers that the Scimitar is emitting low levels of extremely dangerous thalaron radiation (the same radiation used to assassinate the Romulan senate), several unauthorized computer accesses take place aboard the Enterprise, and Troi is mentally attacked by Shinzon while she is having sex with Riker. Shinzon captures Picard for reasons he does not make clear, though later Dr Beverly Crusher informs Picard that Shinzon is slowly dying from the accelerated ageing from his cloning process, and thus needs Picard's blood to live. Shinzon also transports B-4 aboard the Scimitar, revealing that Shinzon was behind the placing of B-4 on Kolarus III in order to lure Picard to Romulus. However, the B-4 Shinzon transported is actually Data posing as B-4 — he rescues Picard and they make their escape back to their ship. Realizing that the Scimitar is a weaponized thalaron emitter with enough power to destroy all life forms in a fleet of ships as well as an entire planet, Data deduces that Shinzon is using the warship to conquer the Federation and destroy Earth.

 The Enterprise races back towards Federation space, but is soon ambushed by the Scimitar, disabling the Enterprise's warp drive in the process. In the ensuing assault, the Enterprise is outmatched. Two Romulan warbirds arrive and assist in the assault, but Shinzon destroys one warbird and disables the other. Refocusing his attention on Picard, Shinzon further damages the Enterprise.

 Refusing to surrender, Picard uses his heavily damaged ship to ram the Scimitar, causing moderate damage including disabling the disrupter banks. Shinzon then initializes the Scimitar's thalaron weapon in a desperate attempt to take the Enterprise down with him. Picard boards the vessel alone and faces Shinzon. Unable to prevent the weapon's activation, Picard kills Shinzon by impaling him through the abdomen with part of a metallic support strut. Data arrives with a single-use personal transporter, using it to quickly beam the captain back to the Enterprise before destroying the ship at the cost of his life, shutting down the weapon in the process.

 While the severely damaged Enterprise is under repair in a space dock in Earth orbit, Picard bids farewell to newly promoted Captain Riker who is off to command the USS Titan, to begin a true peace negotiation mission with Romulus. Picard then meets with android B-4, whereupon he discovers that Data had succeeded in copying the engrams of his neural net into B-4's positronic matrix not long before his death.

Review:

Having re-watched Nemesis, and then looking back at how I reviewed it originally when I was considering these films just as a film series, I can’t say my feeling about this instalment in the franchise has really changed much.  It’s not the best TNG film, but I think some of the negative rep it has gained isn’t deserved.  Only some, mind; I have to agree that the film was a bit too dark in places, especially the ‘psychic rape’ scene Troi is subjected to mid-film.  Not only was that excessively dark in the film that had little light to it, but the show had already done this kind of thing before, albeit more metaphorically.  It wasn’t necessary and spoke to the fact that the director Stuart Baird was the wrong choice.  Frakes, or failing him another Trek actor-turned-director like Stewart or Burton, should have been at the helm.  Baird’s poor performance as director proves that Trek is best handled ‘in-house’ when it comes to behind the camera talent.

 Now as to what makes Nemesis good, I’m going to begin by quoting a couple of paragraphs from my original review;

“So, what is it that makes Nemesis a good film? Well, aside from quality action and special effects, the plot examines issues relevant in modern society, which of course is what the best of Trek always does.  In this case, Picard and Data are confronted by would-be duplicates of themselves in the characters of Shinzon and B-4, and this brings up the issue of whether or not we’re seeing two of each character or four separate characters. In essence, Picard facing his clone is a metaphor for our current-day issue of whether cloning is acceptable, whether such a science robs us of our individuality or not.

 Of course, the answer is it doesn’t – as Data points out in one scene, B-4 and Shinzon lack the desire to better themselves possessed by Picard and Data.  For all their similarities, too much about the circumstances in which each character was created and raised is different for them to be the same, and the same applies to any clone.  If you cloned an adult, that clone would have to go through their own childhood, and the difference in environment, from the people in their life to the culture they’re exposed to, would be too different from what the DNA donor experienced growing up, and consequently you would end up with a new, different individual. Cloning may produce a genetic replica of someone, but it can never replicate someone in their entirety, can never copy that which makes any one person truly unique.”

 The film also brings a lot of closure to the TNG franchise, which is strange considering a fifth TNG film was supposed to be in development at the same time Nemesis was in production.  Riker’s promoted and off on the Titan with Troi, Data sacrifices himself, and I can’t really see B4 as a substitute Data, nor Riker serving under Picard now that they’re the same rank.  To do a fifth film with just the TNG cast, you’d have to demote Riker and either not use Data at all or pull off some last-minute cross-time beam-out on Data.  However, it seems that the fifth film might have included more alumni from the spin-off shows, and that’s an idea that I think could have worked.  In fact, at some point I really want to try and write my own version of such a story, because I think Trek hasn’t really capitalised on its own cross-over potential much down the years.

 In terms of Data’s part in the story, I think he gets a good ending to his story within the world of Trek.  Self-sacrifice for friends, family, duty and the service of a worthy cause are one of the defining attributes of humanity, and given that Data has always been about exploring the human condition, it is fitting that he goes out in the most human way imaginable.  However, some aspects of his story are somewhat flawed in terms of continuity.  First, we find a random brother of Data’s and what does the crew do?  Do they stop and think ‘hang on, we don’t know anything about this android, let’s give it a real work over’?  No, they just reassemble it, which in the series was exactly how the crew was almost destroyed by Data’s other brother Lore.  Picard’s crew must have a flat line for a learning curve to have not learned the error of their ways by now.

 Second, this film makes absolutely no reference to Data’s emotion chip, something all of the past three movies did to some extent. In Generations it was a key plot point, and in First Contact, while in Insurrection it got one mention before presenting a point of inconsistency in Spiner’s performance as Data.  In this film, it’s neither heard from nor seen, and it seems annoying that Data’s final appearance essentially regresses him to an earlier point in his evolution as a character.  Even more disappointing is that he never got to return to any concepts that failed in the series because he lacked the emotion chip.  A proper Data romance of some kind would have been nice to see in the TNG films before he was killed off, for example.

 On the plus side, the film doesn’t lack in terms of the quality of its guest cast; you’ve got Whoopi Goldbery and Wil Weaton giving their final performances as Guinan and Wesley Crusher, for starters, as well as Kathryn Janeway from Voyager making an appearance.  Add to that a brief appearance by Alan Dale and the inclusions of such notable actors as Tom Hardy (then at the start of his acting career), Ron Perlman (he of Hellboy and Blade II fame, among other things) and Dina Meyer (who I mainly know from Starship Troopers and guest-appearances on Friends and NCIS), and it’s a decent compliment to line up alongside the main TNG cast.

 However, all the great casting in the world and all the wonderful issue exploration that is the heart of good Trek can fully redeem Nemesis.  Leaving aside outside factors like releasing alongside the fourth of the Brosnan Bond films and the second Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings films, the film is mostly undone by writing flaws and a bad choice of director.  I also think it’s strange that instead of putting the failure of Nemesis down to all of this, the powers-that-be further linked in the poor performance of prequel series Enterprise and the previous TNG film to conclude it was a case of ‘franchise fatigue’.  With the correct writers and directors, and if Trek had moved forward with its shows instead trying to regress backwards with a pre-Kirk series, not to mention a better choice of release date, more Trek could easily have been done and accepted gladly.  This wasn’t franchise fatigue; it was creative blunders plain and simple.  For me, Nemesis scored 8 out of 10 originally, and while I am inclined to mark it down this time, I only do so to 7 out of 10.

[deltahalo241]

Halo 3 Review

Halo 3 is probably the most popular game in the long running Halo Franchise. It was a system seller for the Xbox 360 and for many people, it was their gateway into the series. So while Halo 3 has managed to craft this legendary status around itself. Does it live up to it? And, looking back over 10 years since its launch, has it held up compared to modern games. These are the questions I intend to answer as I take a look back at the heavy hitting title of 2007 and give my honest opinions of it.

Starting with the story, we have to talk about the fact that Halo 2 was originally going to be the end of the franchise, and that Halo 3 only came about because Bungie set their sights too high and had to end Halo 2 on a cliffhanger. Because of this, Halo 3 has to both tell its own story, as well as finishing off Halo 2's. Halo 3 is comprised of 10 missions, though one is just a cutscene and doesn't really count. So all in all there are 9 missions in the game, making it somewhat shorter than Halo 2. The big issue for me when it comes to Halo 3's campaign is the pacing, or lack of it. The story goes nowhere for 6 out of the 9 missions, preferring to faff about on Earth. These 6 missions are what I believe to be the way Bungie were going to finish Halo 2, or how they were retro-actively ending Halo 2 at least. Specifically Mission 5 is where I believe the ending for Halo 2 would have been. Mission 6 has lots of problems of its own that need to be brought up. To sum it up, in Mission 6, the Flood arrives at Earth on an infected Covenant Battle-cruiser. Long time fans of the Halo series will know the Flood as the all consuming parasite responsible for wiping out the Forerunners, and who took over High Charity (The Covenants Holy City) at the end of Halo 2. So this is a pretty big deal. On board the Flood infested ship, Master Chief finds a message from Cortana talking about the Ark, this is the beginning of the issues. Cortana didn't know about the Ark, she wasn't with Johnson and Miranda when 343 Guilty Spark revealed its existence to them, so how could she have found out about it? One option could be that she took it from the database of Installation 04, but if so why didn't she tell anyone about it? It would seem like a pretty big deal to me, especially when there's a portal to it on Earth that she seems to know about as well. Secondly, how did she even get the message on the ship in the first place? She was on High Charity, the message is on a physical storage device. Did she create it and put it on the back of a Flood to carry into the vessel? And when & how did she record it without the Gravemind knowing? She was being interrogated by him after all and we know how it can corrupt AIs. The threat at the start of the mission, the Flood is also dispatched by the Covenant at the end, meaning the stakes for Earth are pretty much over. The Covenant have left and the Flood on the planet are dead. This mission also introduces us to a new plot point. According to Cortana, there's a way to stop the Flood for good at the Ark, without having to fire the remaining Halo rings, a Forerunner weapon that perhaps, wasn't finished in time to save them, but could save us. Unfortunatly, Halo 3 immediatley drops this plot point, making the entirety of mission 6, pointless. The plot point leads no-where and the threat introduced at the start of the level, is gone by the end of it. It feels like the remainder of some earlier draft of the story, one that I would have liked to see for sure.

As so much time is spent at Earth, it means by the time the game actually gets to the Ark, there's only 4 missions left in the campaign. This doesn't give you a lot of time to really explore the ark, like you could explore the ring in Halo CE. 2 missions in on the Ark and the Prophet of Truth is dead, killed in a cutscene like the Prophet of Mercy before him. This is so that the game can say 'Aha! The Gravemind is actually the true villain!' as he betrays you just after helping you reach Truth. The trouble is the game only has 2 missions left at this point, and in only one of them do you actually interact with the Gravemind to any large degree. His betrayal is also somewhat odd, his tentacles raise up above Master Chief and the Arbiter as he talks about how he's going to kill everything, then fails to grab a slow moving Pelican Dropship as it escapes, only succeding at knocking Arby and Chief off of it before having his tentacles retreat and sending waves of combat forms to attack you, basically it builds up a boss fight and then nothing happens, you just trudge back through the same hallway you fought through not 5 minutes earlier, only now you're fighting the Flood. The mission after that has you delve into the Flood nest in order to retrieve Cortana. The mission itself looks great, the flood biomass over the walls really gives you an idea of what could happen if the flood gets loose. The level layout is extremely confusing and you may find yourself dying a lot as there are constantly spawning enemies including many Flood Pureforms, alongside the confusing layout, you may find it to be an exercise in frustration. This level also serves to rob the Flood of some of their menace. Looking at it lore wise, Master Chief just walked into the belly of the beast, grabbed his holographic friend had a quick chat with her and then strolled back out again. The Flood don't even seem to do anything to stop the damaged pelican he escapes on from leaving. It makes them seem incompetant. The final mission of the game has you heading to a Halo Ring, the intent being to fire it to kill the Flood infestation. This actually conflicts with what we were told in Halo CE, that the Halos don't kill the Flood, they kill its food and let it starve to death. You fight through more Combat Forms and the gravemind taunts you a little, then you get to the final chamber. Guilty Spark informs us that the ring isn't ready to fire, and that it'll take a few more days before it's ready. When Johnson informs him that they don't have that much time, Spark goes rampant and kills him, this had been foreshadowed earlier when Spark zapped a marine who wanted to check out his internals, to make sure he was functioning right, but anyone who had played from Halo CE could probably see this betrayal coming a mile off. You then have to go through an easy and boring boss fight against Guilty Spark before you can finally activate the Halo ring, as the ring is unfinished it starts falling apart, destroying itself and dealing massive damage to the Ark. Which conveniantly solves that plot hole of the Rings only killing the Floods food. This leads to the final section of the game, a Warthog run similar to the one from Combat Evolved, though not as fun. And then the campaign ends. It's a bit sudden, and they of course tease that the franchise will be continued in the future (Which it was, with Halo 4)

Now that I've finished talking about the single player, I can move onto the multiplayer. This is what most people will remember when it comes to Halo 3, as it had a massive online community back when it was released. Halo 3 offered a good range of game-modes for the player to enjoy and a wide range of maps to play on, though you may find people vetoing maps until they get the ones they want, which means you'll find yourself playing on Valhalla or Guardian a lot for instance. The weapon sandbox has been expanded from Halo 2, now new Brute weapons are in the mix as well. Unfortunatly, there's not much reason to use them. There's not a lot that sets the Spiker apart from the SMG for instance, or the Mauler from the Shotgun. The Gravity Hammer is a fun new power weapon that rivals the Energy Sword and I think it's an excellent addition to the game. Two new grenade types have been added as well, the Fire-bomb grenade and the Spike Grenade. The Fire-bomb is what it says on the tin, an incendiary grenade that burns the person it hits to death. The Spike Grenade is similar in some ways to the Plasma Grenade, it sticks onto a vehicles or surface and explodes, the difference being that the Spike Grenade is somewhat directional. Like the Fire-bomb, it's a one hit kill. Some new vehicles have also been added to the mix. The UNSC gets the Hornet VTOL and the Mongoose ATV. The Covenant lose the Spectre from Halo 2, but gain the Brute Chopper and Prowler. The Chopper is the Brute equivelant to the Ghost, only has the special ability of being able to destroy light vehicles by ramming into them whilst boosting, which is usefel in game-modes like Capture the Flag, if the enemy team is escaping with the flag in a Warthog. The Prowler on the other hand is pretty much just the Spectre, but with a Brute theme. It has a single turret on the front, rather than the rear and two side skirts for passengers to hold on. Aside from that, there's nothing else unique about it, as I said; it's a Spectre with a Brute skin. Halo 3 was also popular for Major League Gaming at first. Though there were some noticable problems for those ultra competitve players. Halo 3's netcode was a little poor, this made blood-shots (Shots that hit the enemy from your perspective, but don't register in the game, and so do no damage) rather common, which annoyed a lot of competitive players. Halo 3 also did not utilize hitscan like the previous games in the series had, rather players had to lead shots if they wanted them to land. This took a bit of getting used to for a lot of veteren players. The Battle Rifle also had some poor weapon spread as it would seem as though one shot was always going to miss, unless you were right in your enemies face. The Assault Rifle also felt a little weak as well. This may in part be due to the sound design used on the weapons, which I felt was a little sub-par in a lot of ways. Another new feature that was added in Halo 3 was Forge mode, that let people edit maps by adding in new weapons of vehicles or items and the like wherever they wanted. The mode was a bit simplistic but I won't count that against the game here as it was the first instance of the feature and what players did with it far exceeded their expectations.

Overall I'd say Halo 3 is a pretty solid game, despite what may appear as my hatred for it, I do actually like the game. But its multiplayer far outdoes its campaign. Halo 3 is an old game now, going on 11 years old. You'll find the population for online is rather low, struggling to get above 2000 people at the best of times. This is compounded by the fact the player base is split across the Master Chief collection, Halo 3 on Xbox One backwards compatibility and those still playing the game on the Xbox 360. There are some issues with the multiplayer netcode, but if you're just playing casually, then you probably won't notice too many issues. While the weapon sandbox is a little dull, it's not too bad and there's a nice variety between the weapons. The campaigns story is quite bad but you'll probably have a lot of fun with the missions themselves, the scarab fights are quite fun (even if they make the scarab feel like a bit of a pathetic miniboss) and the settings are somewhat diverse. Halo 3 is available on the Xbox 360, as a backwards compatible title on the Xbox One and is also in the Masterchief Collection. If you would like to purchase a copy, then follow the link below:

Halo 3 - Xbox 360

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Easter Evil: 10 Movies With Bunnies Gone Bad

The Easter weekend obviously has its religious meaning but to the more secular among us, it’s really more about marking the beginning of Spring, sunnier weather, warmer temperatures and longer days. Sure, you could get outside more, but seriously, why not just do what you always do and stay inside to watch a movie?

But there are no scary Easter movies, you say. We beg to differ. Easter-approriate movies are out there beyond The Greatest Story Ever Told and Easter Parade, you need only look as far as the 10 scary rabbits and evil bunnies below.

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Let’s start off with something tame, Nick Park’s classic stop-motion animation duo who take a walk on the wild side with this outing that’s part Wolfman, part The Fly, and full of the characteristic British charm of the renowned Aardman Animation studio. When Wallace’s own mad science turns him into a vegetable hungry were-rabbit, Gromit must protect his human companion from the hunter Lord Quartermaine, who’s trying to bag the were-rabbit to impress Lady Tottington. It’s not exactly a scary movie, but like any good horror, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit offers sympathy for the monster, and is a reminder that short cuts to achieve difficult goals – like losing weight by eating more veggies – can have some unintended consequences.

  The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

There’s nothing in the hat. – Uncle Walt’s magic trick is not exactly what you expect in Joe Dante’s portion of the 1983 anthology film based on the classic Twilight Zone series created by Rod Serling. Borrowing from the series’ well-known Nightmare as a Child episode, Dante’s outing sees the affable Helen drawn into a family home where everything’s off kilter. Little does Helen know that this is not young Anthony’s real family, but surrogates he forcefully recruited after killing his own family with his near infinite, God-like powers. As the coup de grace after dinner, Uncle Walt pulls a rabbit from the hat. But not just any old fluffy bunny, he pulls out a zany, Looney Tunes-esque stop-motion concoction from hell. It scares poor Helen enough to make Anthony start thinking that maybe he’s gone too far…

  Fatal Attraction (1987)

Such flagrant bunny abuse will not be ignored. Fatal Attraction is about a successful New York lawyer named Dan who decides to celebrate having the house to himself for the weekend by having an affair. Unfortunately for him, the object of his limited desire was Alex, who can’t accept that Dan was in it for a good time, and not a long time. As part of an escalating series of violent outbursts, Alex targets Dan’s family, and in one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Dan’s wife Beth comes home to find a boiling pot on the stove. As Beth cautious approaches the pot we see her daughter Ellen run up to the coupe that houses her beloved rabbit. As Ellen cries to Dan that her bunny is missing, Beth takes the lid off the pot and finds *ahem* rabbit stew. Hollywood lore suggests a real dead rabbit was used in the scene, but it’s worth noting that aside from Alex in the film’s finale, the bunny is the only casualty in Fatal Attraction.

  Watership Down (1978)

While not scary in a conventional sense, try not and be disturbed by this animated adaption of the classic Richard Adams novel. The story follows a group of rabbits that try to find a new home for themselves when the seer, Fiver, has a vision of their warren in the English countryside suffering an apocalypse. The rabbits’ quest to find a new sanctuary forces them to go through cats, dogs, hawks, hunters, farmers, death traps, and even other more vicious rabbits, which all adds up to something that looks like Disney version of the Donner Party. Heck, there’s even a rabbit Grim Reaper that appears to our heroes at a couple of key points in the film, including the end when leader Hazel, (voiced by John Hurt by the way), is ushered into the rabbit afterlife. Try not thinking about that when you take the kids to see Peter Rabbit!

  Donnie Darko (2001)

This would not be a complete list of scary rabbits without the most famous imaginary “leporidae” sidekick since Harvey. Or is Frank imaginary? Filled with signs and portents, weird science and teenage angst, a likely imaginary man named Frank in an ill-formed black rabbit costume isn’t the weirdest thing in Donnie Darko. The vision of Frank not only gives Donnie a warning about the end of the world (sort of), but he bolsters in Donnie a new found attitude about exploring the mysteries of time, and casting off the latent hypocrisies of 1980s suburbia. Was Frank ever real? It’s an interesting question, for he might have been a manifestation of Donnie’s new found ability to see through time, or an alter that allowed Donnie to overcome his own shyness. On the other hand, maybe Donnie had a thing for messed up looking rabbit people.

  Sexy Beast (2000)

Some people like hunting rabbits, but in Sexy Beast the rabbit hunts you. Well, sort of. In what might be described as Elmer Fudd’s worst nightmare, ex-convict Gary Dove, played by Ray Winstone, has a vision of a demonic rabbit man riding up to him on horseback, dismounting, and pointing a machine gun at him while he eats a nice meal. It’s like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with a long-eared Grinch carrying an uzi, and while Ben Kingsley gets all due credit for his truly intimidating (and profanity-laden) performance as a London gangster, try and shake the image of that creepy looking rabbit with a killer instinct.

  The Witch (2015)

When if comes to evil animals in Robert Eggers’ “conventional” (according to him) horror movie, The Witch, a lot of people focus on the goat Black Phillip, but what about the black hare? Young Caleb spots the bunny while out on an early morning hunt with his big sister Thomasin and he chases it even after the horse throws Thomasin off. When Caleb gets lost alone in the woods, he stumbles on a hovel and a young woman that lures him to come inside, which seems like the 17th century equivalent of eating Tide pods, an obvious danger, and you should probably know better, but you just can’t help yourself. But whose fault is it really that Caleb became prey to a witch? The black rabbit, of course!

  Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

While Monty Python is not exactly synonymous with horror, it’s hard to find a rabbit scene more gory then the one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The titular quest leads Arthur and his knights to a cave guarded by the Rabbit of Caerbannog. Despite the somewhat vague but emphatic warnings by Tim the Enchanter, the Round Table knights are thoroughly unimpressed with their latest challenge, at least until Sir Bors is attacked and decapitated. The Rabbit of Caerbannog proves himself more than a match for the knights, and only the “Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch” is able to deal with the rabbit permanently. There’s a lesson here about not underestimating your opponent. There’s also a lesson that bunnies are bloodsuckers and killers, but that seems to get overlooked.

  Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! (2006)

There is a small, but surprising subgenre of slasher movies about people in bunny suits, but one of the better ones is Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! It is of a Rob Zombie mold, about hideous low lives who get their proper comeuppance and the one delivering it here is a killer in a bunny mask. It’s highly violent, highly disturbing, and will likely shade every future experience you have with contractors and power tools, but it does have a delightful twist in the end, not to mention a delightfully twisted ending. Not all killers in rabbit costumes are made in the same vein, but if you’re looking for a low-budget horror delight to counteract all those typically bright and cheerful Easter feelings, this is your remedy.

  Night of the Lepus (1972)

A forgotten classic in the science creates big animals horror subgenre, but one that’s fascinating if for nothing else then being about giant mutant rabbits overrunning a small ranching town. In fact, Night of the Lepus makes a nice bookend with Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit because they’re both about using science to find a humane way to reduce the rabbit population, but they’re also about that process going horribly wrong. If you can’t buy the ludicrous concept, that’s fine because the pre-CG effects do nothing to help the suspension of disbelief. The effect of the over running horde of giant rabbits is achieved through a combination of close-ups, miniatures, green screen, and yes, humans in rabbit costumes. Unbelievable? Certainly! A terribly good time on an Easter weekend? Absolutely!

The post Easter Evil: 10 Movies With Bunnies Gone Bad appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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