#yes the movie was predictable and the same formula of always

[greenapplebling]

Unpopular opinion but I loved Antman 3 and I don't think I enjoyed a marvel movie sm since the Thanos arc

I said this before and I'll stand by it now: Antman never disappoints

#i loved the superhero family thing they got going on #i love stan and casey's father-daughter relationship 💖💖 #i loved kang prime #yes the movie was predictable and the same formula of always #but i loved it anyway #yami talks #marvel #mcu #antman #antman 3 quantumania #antman 3 #antman and the wasp #the wasp

[3fluffies]

A Review: Damsel

Readers, ye be warned, HERE BE MAJOR SPOILERS!

I got interested from the trailers on Facebook. Right up my alley, a genre medieval fantasy film with dragons, arranged marriages, lush sets, and a very unsubtle grrrl power message. I've never seen Brown in Stranger Things (a crime for sci-fi/fantasy fans, I know, I'll get around to it) but in a few smaller roles. The whole cast was a Who's Who list: Angela Bassett, Robin Wright, and Ray Winstone.

The movie obviously had a big budget, an all-star cast, and a good concept. It looked promising.

It was...mediocre. Very. My overall reaction was disappointment.

Brown was very good. There were great performances by all of the cast considering I've seen most of the stars in at least two other notable roles, but thought of them as these characters (as opposed to actors like Tom Cruise, who I always view as Tom Cruise no matter who he plays, same with Sandra Bullock and Brad Pitt).

But they had so little to work with.

This movie had good bones. The concept was all there for an epic, or at least a strong batch of characters and world-building. No, it was in no way an earth-shatteringly ground-breaking NEW idea. The concept is fairly formulaic. Maybe it's just me, but I don't care - give me a formulaic but well-written story over CREATIVE for the sake of it any day. (Okay, my example of this is one of my favorite films, The Chronicles of Riddick, so a connoisseur I cannot call myself. But you get the idea.)

But I came away from the film unsatisfied, because there was just so little meat on those bones. We know Brown's Elodie comes from a northern (kingdom? principality? fife?) with a harsh climate and grinding poverty where she does physical work to help serve her starving people. She had a mother (they always have dead mothers) whose memory she invokes at times, but a semi-affectionate relationship with her stepmother, Bassett's Lady Bayford. She has a younger sister she mutually adores and a noble, devoted father who also takes his duties to his people seriously.

But we don't know a damn thing about their fifedom except that all the trees have been cut for firewood, people are dining at Ye Olde Breadline, and the situation is so desperate as winter approach that Lord Bayford reluctantly sells his beloved daughter to be a human sacrifice disguised as a marriage. This universe has bride prices instead of dowries.

In the kingdom of Aurea, Wright's Queen Isabelle is suitably intimidating, manipulative, and morally bankrupt, King whateverthehellhisnameis never speaks, Prince Henry expresses some dismay over the fates of his bride(s) but goes along with it. We learn Elodie's is the second in a series of three ancient ceremonies - Aurea's first king sacrificed his three daughters for peace with the dragon and each subsequent generation must sacrifice three more women of royal blood.

Instead, Prince gets three hasty weddings in a row with some random foreign lady, a handshake with cut palms to make each bride's blood royal, chuck the bride into the chasm above the dragon's cave, debt paid. The dragon likes to play with her food, and Elodie has the wits to survive thanks to a head for maps and mazes (one of the only semi-developed character traits we got on her).

Lord Bayford leads a few searchers into the caves to rescue her, in a predictable attack of conscience, and also predictably gets dead after shouting for Elodie not to come to him and save herself when he's at the dragon's mercy. So she forgives him, but also develops sympathy for the dragon, whose three offspring were killed without provocation when the ancient king of Aurea invaded the dragon's lair. Someone on Lord Bayford's search party mentions value in dragon's blood, but this is never developed.

Elodie escapes, Dragon isn't happy and starts raining fire around the mountain, alerting Queen Isabelle that the debt has gone unpaid. She hustles to the ship where Lady Bayford and Elodie's little sister Floria haven't sailed away, and kidnaps Floria to be the new sacrifice. Lady Bayford is unfatally stabbed but manages to find Elodie in the hills and tell her what happened, leading Elodie to rush back.

Dragon, believing the princesses she slays every generation to be of the bloodline that murdered her own daughters, is enraged that Elodie got away and takes Floria deep into her lair as a trap for Elodie. A rather weak battle ensues with Elodie trying to explain the truth about her "royal blood" and Dragon predictably refusing to accept, until Elodie outwits her enough to leave her at death's door. She tells Dragon again about the "ancient ceremony" and notes that Dragon has effectively been doing what was done to her - killing innocent daughters who are not actually of the Aurea royal bloodline. Dragon miserably asks Elodie to kill her, but Elodie predictably (are we sensing a pattern here?) declines and finds magic grubs in the cave to heal the dragon.

Back at the Aurea palace, Prince Henry's wedding to Dupe # 3 is in progress until Elodie interrupts. Prince Henry makes a feeble protest of his regrets for Elodie's fate, only to be shouted down by Queen Isabelle and ignored by Elodie, who exposes the plot to # 3. # 3 wisely takes Elodie's advice to grab her family and GTFO.

Queen Isabelle predictably mocks Elodie's revenge, only for Dragon to show up on the ramparts and torch the whole royal family. Elodie sails back to home with her sister and Lady Bayford, planning to jointly rule home with her stepmother - accompanied by the Dragon.

And...that's it. I honestly don't have a problem with any element of the plot. It's just written so bare when there was so much room for more. Its running time was 110 minutes, and it felt stunted and short. The plot might have done better as a miniseries, with time to flesh out the world and the characters especially.

In the best genre fiction, the locations, histories, and cultures are often "characters" in and of themselves. See: Hogwarts, Middle Earth and all locations therein, Gallifrey, Time Lords, elves, hobbits, Vulcans, Klingons, Arrakis, Fremen, the list goes on and on. This seems to be a point that the writers of Damsel utterly and completely missed.

(What's with the masks in the ceremony?)

(Does the dragon really just chill out for decades at a time in her cave apart from toying with and then torching three princesses every generation?)

(How did the Aurea royal family manage to gather up three girls from other parts of the world every generation and bump them off without also killing their families to keep word from getting out?)

(Did Aurea get wealth as part of the deal with the Dragon? If not, where?)

(Where is Elodie/Lord Bayford's land? Is it part of a larger kingdom? If not, why isn't he a king?)

(Where the hell do all the flaming birdies come from? Wouldn't birds have figured out after that many centuries to stay the hell away from the mountain?)

In almost any type of fiction, the best stories have well-developed characters with enough details about why they are the way they are for the viewer/reader to understand why they act the way they choose in the story. This is a point that the writers of Damsel clearly knew, but either didn't know how to implement or simply chose not to.

It had a good trailer. It had an incredible cast. It was a good concept. It had POTENTIAL!

Major writing fail.

PS - Discovered just as I was about to post this that a novelization came out last year. I'll probably still buy it. Half of why I love The Chronicles of Riddick is Alan Dean Foster's novel. Maybe the book will redeem the world, but it'll just make the screenwriters look that much worse.

#damsel #millie bobby brown #robin wright #angela bassett #netflix

[astraltrickster]

An issue I have with media critique is when people correctly point out problems with worsening quality control under late-stage capitalism, then completely undermine their point by putting on the thickest nostalgia goggles they can find.

This is really common in critique of video games - YES, developers are getting overreliant on day-one patches and crunch and it's getting worse because hehe line go up. YES, obsession with preorders and preorder bonuses is letting AAA studios get away with selling you garbage. YES, monetization models are getting greedier and greedier with microtransactions and lootboxes and DLC-locking major parts of a game. YES, this is extremely bad practice for both employees AND consumers.

NO, there was no magical Before Time when all commercially available games were passion projects and totally not cash grabs made by happy and totally not overworked developers and totally free of game-breaking glitches at launch. Before patches became a thing, if a game was broken at launch, if a cartridge would brick if you approached a quest the wrong way, if you would almost always get softlocked without a guide, those games would typically just bomb and get forgotten to time because they couldn't be fixed without just straight up being updated and rereleased. The idea that retro games were all masterpieces with only obscure glitches found by running into the tricks they used to carefully allocate the system's extremely limited memory is an invention of survivorship bias.

Or, how about film and special effects? YES, overreliance on greenscreen and CGI to avoid paying unionized prop and set and even costume designers is bad for everyone involved in the process except the CEOs. YES, movies getting increasingly formulaic, to the point where you can go to pretty much any big budget movie and predict what's going to happen by watching the clock equally if not more reliably than by watching the movie, is exhausting if you're over 12 or not successfully lured in by big names and nostalgia. YES, the anti-competitive practices by Disney are horrifying (and in fact even a halfway decent lawyer could easily argue that they're illegal, unfortunately Disney can afford to argue their way out of it), and YES, there used to be a lot more mid-size studios making a lot more varied films.

NO, there was no era where all practical effects were beautiful and no actor or film crew was ever mistreated to save a buck. NO, there was no time when the supergiants of the industry were willing to take big risks, or cared more about art than profits, unless you count Disney undermining their own projects to punish employees for being too ambitious (see: Treasure Planet). As for the less convincing side of practical effects, we're in love with them now because we've seen the monstrosities that have replaced them, but when they came out people pointed and laughed and rolled their eyes and thought "damn, they really were too cheap to do any better?"

The reason I hate this is the same reason I hate a lot of fandom and shipping drama: because take a step back and look at what's happening here. It sounds petty, because it's based on something fairly frivolous, but what's happening here is that you're correctly identifying a bad trend, but exaggerating the difference between then and now and romanticizing a past that never existed. You know, just like shit like trad recruiting.

Yeah, I know that sounds like catastrophizing, it's movies and video games! It's not like there have been entire reactionary movements born of people angry about something as stupid as gaming and using that as an excuse to take action on their bigoted ideals-

Oh. Wait. Huh.

But even if it never comes to the worst-case scenario, where you end up obsessing over some nostalgic golden age to the point of resisting any and all positive change and decide that NO, things were PERFECT once upon a time, We Need To Go Back, reject modernity etc. etc., and anyone who WASN'T happy in this perfect idyllic before time needs to be stamped out lest they ruin it for you everyone, you're still horribly oversimplifying the problem. We can't fix it by "going back" because even when things were better in the ways we can identify, the people with the money were already laying the groundwork for the exploitative hellscape we know today. Things need to be totally overhauled.

Don't fall into the nostalgia trap, and don't assume the nostalgia trap is harmless because "it's just games and movies."

#media #crapitalism #serious tag

[the-martyrfication-of-the-matron]

I don’t actually like romance.

Not sure if I’ve spoken about that much.

Romance isn’t a genre I much enjoy. I always just find it really poorly written. There have been few romances I’ve watched and went ‘ah yes, a show/movie I enjoy’ because they always follow the same formulas and are downright predictable.

Like I like writing it. I think romantic moments are adorable. Aaron and Aphmau being cute together, Garroth and Aphmau’s sweet pining moments, Zoey and Aphmau. But I don’t like genuine romance media. I’m upset about that too. Because I’m a sucker for cute, bonding moments between two characters, characters being in couples that speed along their character development, you get the idea. But actual romance shows and films are always such a disappointment.

But all that considering I’m so hyped for Young Royals season 2. It’s just good idk what else to say.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Eye See You (2002)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

Formulaic, contrived, dull and confusing, Eye See You (released as D-Tox outside North America) stinks of re-writes and re-shoots. Shelved for 3 years as it underwent endless changes to try and give it some kind of market value, I bet most people haven’t even heard of it despite a cast that includes Sylvester Stallone, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Patrick and Dina Meyer!

FBI agent Jake Malloy (Stallone) is pursuing a serial killer with a grudge against cops. When he stops them at great personal cost, Malloy falls into a deep depression and attempts suicide. Sent to a rehabilitation program designed for law enforcement officers by his best friend, Agent Chuck Hendricks (Charles S. Dutton), several bodies suddenly turn up. It appears the killer may have survived.

The first problem are the characters, which are so flat, unmemorable and so hurriedly introduced you cannot keep track of who’s who. I could’ve predicted the identity of the killer easy if I weren’t scrambling to figure out which staff members of the facility are still alive and which aren’t, or if that dead body was the bald dude with no lines, the depressed junior officer who just told us his tragic backstory in detail, or that guy played by Mif (is that right?). Even by eliminating the characters who are so obviously set up as antagonists they can’t possibly be villainous for real, there are so many people waiting to get butchered you can’t pinpoint how the ending will go. I don’t mean that in a good way.

Eye See You is one of THOSE serial killer films, the kind with a gimmicky murderer who is so intelligent and meticulous in his planning he must be a mind reader, or the luckiest person on Earth. For a large chunk of the film, director Jim Gillespie wants us to think the killer is dead when in fact, he’s followed Malloy to the rehab center to torment him some more. How did the killer know Malloy was going there? Was he always planning on eliminating one inmate after another, or is it just happy coincidence that a freak storm breaks out, cutting all communication to the outside world and trapping everyone indoors?

Even before then, things don’t add up. The killer’s gimmick is that he likes to drill through people’s eyes, usually when they’re looking through the peephole of their front door. He strikes with (apparently) the same weapon as the “Driller Killer” because it cuts through everything like it was butter and so quickly his victim can’t pull their faces away. How he knows, they’re looking through the peephole when he’s pressing his tool against it, I don’t know. So yes, he’s needlessly cruel. I mean following that up with calls telling Malloy “I see you” and leaving the same message under the corpses eyelids? It means he's killing people for the puns. Talk about inhumane. Then he follows it up by hanging his victims – apparently the man’s the fastest knot-tier in history.

During the last few minutes, Eye See You tumbles headlong down the stairwell of stupidity, transforming into an incoherent mess of an action scene whose conclusion is magnificent. I can’t believe I haven’t seen it done elsewhere. It’s the kind of braindead, ultra-macho kick in the pants you’d expect at the end of those violent and nudity-filled low-budget drunken action flicks as the electric guitar solo ends. I laughed loud and hard, which was certainly not the intended reaction.

You won’t see the ending of Eye See You coming, but only because it sets up the characters so badly and because you won't know just how dumb this film is until the conclusion. (On VHS, March 26, 2018)

#Eye See YOu #D-Tox #Jim GIllespie #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #Howard Swindle #Jitter Joint #Sylvester Stallone #Tom Berenger #Charles S. DUtton #Polly Walker #Sean Patrick Flanery #Dina Meyer #Robert Patrick #Robert Prosky #Courtney B. Vance #Jeffrey Wright #Kris Kristofferson #2002 movies #2002 films

[deltaengineering]

Spring Anime 2021: Embarrassment of Riches

So this current anime season absolutely stinks, which just makes the last one look even more impressive. Well, maybe not all of it...

Zombieland Saga Revenge

First off, you don't need to tell me that the following is a severe outlier opinion. We good? Ok. ZLSR is, in a word, subpar. I liked S1 back in the day, but it was already in the process of getting lazy towards the end. S2 continues this trend and is basically just another idol show. And as someone who actually does watch other idol shows I have to say that it's not a particularly good one of those either. The zombie gimmick has mostly stopped mattering and we're just doing what every idol show does, only with the odd occasional sight gag. The alleged subversive qualities mostly amount to a flashback for Yuugiri, which is admittedly the best part of the show but feels like it barely has anything to do with anything. Apart from that, it's a bunch of generic idol plots, rehashed character beats, shoddy attempts at twists (while not connecting to any setups from S1), and the obligatory "idols give us hope" ending, which is terribly hackneyed and flat out bad. Tae gets further memed into the ground, because of course she does. And there's stuff that was simply never good to begin with, like Kotarou and his comedy schtick, which gets truly insufferable now that there's no qualities to distract from it. It really makes me think that S1 wasn't even all that good to begin with and seems like an attempt to turn this surprise success into an easy money longrunner with no edge and no ambitions. "The idol show for people who don't watch idol shows" indeed, but not the way you mean it. 4/10

Bakuten

But not to dwell on the failures, with the second show we're already above the cut — barely. This one got my attention with its really impressive performance scenes early on and it totally sticks to that, which is even more impressive. But besides that? Well, this is by far the most predictable show in a season where I watched an unambitious Kiraralike and put ZLS on blast for having no ideas. The characters are a mixed bag, some are cool (Shida, Asawo), some are very annoying (Mashiro), but those are the supports. The main cast is extremely one-dimensional, which is fine until they try to heap a ton of pathos on their lead, which doesn't go well. But I guess execution matters, and Bakuten is slick enough to get by. Writing this down in stark daylight I feel like I overrated this show somewhat (I actually put it over the next one originally, which definitely doesn't hold up when thinking about it), but I was indeed mostly entertained. 6/10

Yakunara Mug Cup mo

Yeah. Of course Mug Cup definitely doesn't invent or subvert anything either, but it's a pretty good Kiraralike that's always entertaining to watch. Explaining the qualities of such a nothing genre is as difficult as ever, but it mostly comes down to me liking the characters and it having nothing to annoy me. It's shorter than normal, which is a plus for slim shows like this. And yeah, you can make an excessive amount of dick jokes with the clay fondling. That helps too. Looks are just fine, pleasant but nothing out of the ordinary. Comfy low-effort anime. 6/10

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song

This one is decent, but sadly still a major letdown. Because the first few episodes of Vivy were excellent and kicked ass, but then it became increasingly clear that the writing can't cash the checks the ideas wrote while the action starts running into severely diminishing returns. Vivy just keeps slowly getting worse and worse as it goes on, not by a huge amount each episode but by the end there's a pretty sizeable gulf between potential and result. Going into detail would probably be a little much for this venue because there's a lot, but from the top level view the issue is that while Vivy has good fundamental ideas and steals at the right places, it just isn't a smart show — it's schlock, and by the end, poorly thought out schlock that tries to smooth out every problem with liberal application of the big feels hammer and le epic twist at that. Yeah, couldn't tell that the Re:Zero dude was aboard here, for sure. That said, it still works pretty well as entertaining schlock that is not to be taken too seriously, and the characters are generally just very fun to watch even when they're doing stupid things. Still, I can't in good conscience rate this higher than Beatless, a show that looks like butt but properly executes on its ideas. 6/10

Super Cub

So this is 100% a Honda commercial, and I got really mad a Yuru Camp last season for being a blatant shill. Yet I'm feeling this, what gives? I think the main difference is that Super Cub is specifically a commercial for one product (and a very iconic product at that), while Yuru Camp is so all over the place that it ends up mostly a commercial for consumerism in general. And when Super Cub goes too hard on the product (which it does), it's at least pretty entertaining. That's something about Super Cub in general: It goes hard. Your regular Kiraralike this is not, because it's uncommonly slow, focused and moody - yes, it almost measures up to Yuru Camp at its best and demolishes it at its worst. Also, it's just extremely amusing to see sadblob Koguma grow a huge grizzly biker beard and become a badass outlaw dad to her goofy wife and cute daughter, all thanks to the power of afforable personal transportation. Needless to say, that can get unintentionally silly, but Super Cub has so much charm that it doesn't matter — it's great when it's good and still funny when it's not. 7/10

Shadows House

Shadows House turned up with a lot of potential, and I have to say it at least delivered on most of it. It has some problems; notably I'm not a fan of how the entire middle turned out to be a tournament arc of sorts that seems curiously inspired by Resident Evil memes, crest-shaped intentations and boulder punching included. I also think that this is a show that would be perfectly fine without explaining much, but I guess it is a shounen manga after all so we got dumped on eventually anyway. At least that came late - close relative Promised Neverland didn't show that much restraint. Shadows House is generally well written though, with great characters, interesting interactions and a great hook. But what really makes it memorable is that it's exceptionally good at the cute/creepy contrast, something that is often tried but rarely works as well as here, with great character designs and very appropriate production. I hope this gets a sequel, because it seems like it's just getting started. 7/10

SSSS.Dynazenon

Coming in with a fondness for Gridman, Dynazenon didn't have to do much to convince me. The surprise though is that it's not a rehash even if it's basically the same show, a character drama where occasionally huge and goofy fights break out. Dynazenon is Gridman done better, and the interesting part is how it accomplishes this - mainly by being far more conventional. I do appreciate that Gridman went for something weird and almost experimental, but that only really paid off towards the end while most of the show was a distraction/holding pattern. It just didn't feel like there was enough material for a full series there, more like a movie maybe, if even that. Dynazenon fixes this by just being a TV show, with an actual cast of characters that each have their own arc. And by spreading the material this way, Dynazenon ends up having a lot more nuance than its intensely focused predecessor, while having the same themes and not actually being any deeper. In a way, Gridman ends up looking like the spinoff in retrospect, while Dynazenon is the full package. 8/10

Thunderbolt Fantasy S3

So how good was this season? So good that Thunderbolt Fantasy doesn't end up at the top, that's how. And all the elements that made Tbolt such a sure thing are still there, big hammy puppets doing stunts and scheming never gets old. However, I do have to note that at this point, the writing appears to have gotten too comfortable. I don't expect it to ever top the amazing S1 ending, but at this point it's like Tbolt has stopped trying to deliver on endings at all and seems in the process of retooling itself into a longrunner instead. Barely anything gets resolved in S3 (the climax is that the climax of S2 is resolved again, for good this time... maybe), and everything else is just setting up plotpoints for the next season. Tbolt is truly lucky that it doesn't actually need to resolve anything to be a great time, but at this point I have to say that I'd appreciate it if they wrapped it up with S4. 8/10

Nomad: Megalobox 2

Speaking of sequels to shows I liked, Nomad doesn't so much improve upon its predecessor but steamrolls right over it. This is a tall order, since Megalobox was surprisingly good for a sports shounen and had a real nice, heartwarming ending that Nomad instantly negates for purposes of drama and everyone being extremely miserable. That sounds like a pretty terrible idea - and it would be, if Nomad wasn't as excellent as it is. To call it not the same show would be an understatement, because it's a true sequel, not just the same characters doing their thing some more, or new characters doing the same thing as the old ones did. Indeed my biggest problem with Megalobox was that it still closely adhered to its genre template and was very predictable; Nomad fixes this issue thoroughly. Nomad is about questioning what being a hotblooded shounen protagonist eventually leads you to, and how to fix everything you screwed up by being one. You could call it a deconstruction, but that term has been so abused for cynical, edgy "thing you like actually sucks" takes that I feel like it doesn't really fit here. Nomad isn't cynical at all, it's just a character drama about some boxers past their prime, and it being a sequel to a show that is indeed rather formulaic just enhances the experience. My biggest issue with it was that I really like what they did with Joe in this story, so the big focus on Mac's backstory felt like a distraction for a long time. But in the end that turned out to be absolutely necessary to make the ending work. The ending's just great, by the way, and I shall say not more about it. 9/10

Odd Taxi

Yeah boy, here's the show that has apparently become somewhat of a "greatest show you didn't watch" meme, which I can feel smug about because I don't need YouTubers to tell me what's good and followed this from day one. Anyway, Odd Taxi is indeed great, the greatest show in a few years even. What starts out as seemingly a relaxed hangout show in the vein of Midnight Diners quickly turns into a psychological murder mystery while never losing its quirky humor. The character writing is outstanding, with even small bit players being on a level that the average anime wishes it could have for leads. And the rollout of the mystery is exemplary, with answers given and new questions raised every episode with a satisfying and logical payoff in the end. This is also the rare anime that has rock solid production from the first to the last second; it's never really flashy but excellently done and highly consistent nonetheless. And the music just owns. I have a few complaints, mainly that there's a few logical weaknesses in the story (which wouldn't even register in a lesser show, but sticks out here since the rest is so immaculately constructed) and that the ending overextends on the emotions when the rest of the show is so reserved and dry in comparison. But those are only the reasons why I didn't give it perfect marks, and I almost did that anyway. 9/10

#Zombieland Saga #bakuten #yakunara mug cup mo #vivy: fluorite eye's song #super cub #shadows house #ssss.dynazenon #thunderbolt fantasy #nomad megalo box #odd taxi #anime #review #spring2021

[teabooksandsweets]

The real problem with the new ACGAS is not, in fact, the way it deviates from the books, which is something most adaptations do, and which can be done well, nor even the way it copies the BBC series, which is also common in new book adaptations. The real problem is the same problem as with many other recent book adaptations, and it is its disregard for the actual core of the stories, and their actual meaning.

As a series itself it is fine enough, because it tells a story in a solid sort of way, in a very conventional, but all in all fine manner, and with good sets, actors, costumes, etc. But it is not only bland and generic, when compared to its source material, it also misses the point. And it does so intentionally, because the actual core of Herriot's stories is simply not fashionable these days. And this attempt of combining a stylized period drama with a modern work place comedy is fun in itself, but it doesn't work for what it claims to be.

Herriot's stories and characters are real, and therefore not predictable, and they are stories about very individual people in individual situations. We meet many farmers, most of them poor, often shabby and worn and weather-beaten, not offering much of the attractive aesthetic that people want in a period drama.

There are also very many people, showing many glimpses of their difficult lives, and their stories often have unusual outcomes—stories that would, in most narratives work out happily, often end sadly, and stories that seem hopeless take surprisingly happy turns. These stories don't really conform to the typical way in which small sub-plots usually flow, but they also don't subvert them intentionally. They simply are what they are, and most of them are true or based on true events.

The important characters also don't adhere to character stereotypes, or to the now also stereotypical subversions of them: they are real people as Herriot knew them, and if they are altered from their real selves, then because one individual person can, of course, not fully capture other individuals, but they are not written according to any formula. They are real, even if we only see glimpses of them.

And the real problem with the new series: unlike the BBC series, which very nearly surpassed the books, or even the earlier movies, which I am personally not fond of, but which followed Herriot's approach very neatly, the new Channel 5 series is, essentially, adhering to the typical formula of non-offensive, solid, family friendly entertainment.

And there is nothing wrong with that for an original story, and there is nothing wrong with that for a simpler story, but it is wrong when the original material is much, much better than that. I like simple, fluffy entertainment, I support it, I want it, I think it is a good thing to have.

But the characters and storylines in it adhere to very simple character tropes, solid tropes, well-liked tropes, tropes that can fill out gaps in stories, but tropes that should not push individual strenghts out of them. A will-they-won't-they and a love triangle can be fine in some romances, but that is not what James and Helen's story is like, and it should never be so drawn-out. A rude and harsh character with a softer, hidden side can be very endearing, but it's as far from Siegfried's personality as it could possibly be. A character like whatever they did to Mrs Audrey Hall can be really interesting, but is entirely out of place in Skeldale House, and her relationship to Siegfried is offensive. (And so are Anna Madeley's and Sam West's comments on the show and their characters, but I don't hold the stupid things the actors say in interviews against the actual show. That is their own business.)

But what's more, a main-character centric story is usually alright, but it doesn't work in a series of very many stories about very many people, poor people, old people, sick people, unassuming people, people with hidden strenghts and hidden woes. And of the hard, harsh, yet beautiful and rewarding life in Yorkshire in the 1930s. And that is what the books are about, that is what their earlier adaptations have been about, and that is what's simply not considered pretty and neat enough for modern audiences.

That, and the disrespect with which it treats the real people they portray. Instead of respecting their privacy by establishing the main characters' personalities in a manner appropriate for a semi-fictional television series, they blurt out background information to avoid the effort of showing, rather than telling, and even sell tragical details as easter eggs. Instead of showing the little people, the weak people, the people in cold houses and on run down farms, they put their protagonists in pretty clothes, that look as though they had never been worn and were ready to be sold in vintage reproduction stores, and put in modernized and Americanized gimmicks to spare the audience the ordeal of seeing a little bit of dirt, a little bit of work, a little bit of poverty.

And, yes, it is a pretty series. And it works for what it is. And I think it is good to have one more hopeful, soft, warm piece of media in the world, because that is what we all need, that is what we should have.

But it is not what makes Herriot's stories what they are, not what makes the BBC series, and even the old movies what they are—it is not a story of the simple people, of the harsh life, of animals and of nature. Of veterinary work and scientific and social progress. And it is not always respectful. And it is not really adequate.

But it is not bad. Far from that. It is good as something else. It is good as a well-played, well-done, warm and fuzzy show, as a comedy and as a period drama, as a little bit of sweetness in a world of terribly dark and negative media. But it does not have that very special something, that very special something. They have washed it away.

#acgas 2020 #sorry for my rant i am not against it in any way and wish everyone a good time watching and enjoying it #i do enjoy it myself in parts #but herriot's books and the bbc series are extremely important to me and i have many feelings about the whole matter

[atopfourthwall]

how has being a reviewer changed in the past few years? I've been interested in reviewing different forms of media, inspired by several people including yourself, and it's definitely been shoved aside for video games and "lifestyle" channels. Do you think there's a way to get good revenue these days as a reviewer if you haven't been on here for years?

Yes, but it’s harder. Back when I started, the internet was VERY hungry for AVGN-style content - negative reviews talking about terrible media in an over the top manner, particularly because frustration can be funny and a lot of people hadn’t heard of a lot of the terrible movies of the past or present (or if they did, it was at least always fun to have a new perspective on it). It’s why we all tended to follow the same basic model - play-by-play of the movie/comic/game/etc., clip of the thing in question, then cut to us for pithy or sarcastic remark. However, like with any trend, audience tastes end up shifting. Even back in the day, people wanted me to talk more about good comics. Part of that was because a lot of my audience WEREN’T comic fans but wanted to get into them, while others were getting bored by the constant barrage of hate. Even creators themselves were getting burnt out on it - assuming you’re not genuinely annoyed at the thing you’re talking about (and truth be told, even when we’re looking at something we genuinely dislike, anger takes up a lot of energy, so it makes it that much harder to get that across so there’s a degree of acting required so that it doesn’t sound like you’re just bored or mildly annoyed), performing the same similar thing for years can wear down on ya, especially if you’re a creative person who wants some variety in the things you’re doing. As such, with a combination of people who were of DOING the same old thing combined with an audience who WANTED something different, you’ve got the rise of video essayists, less scripted content, or people being willing to do videos on media they actually enjoy. And because the longer-form content of video essays and the like requires a lot more time and research rather than just riffing, people tend to gravitate towards those more these days because it’s entertaining material that looks at media in ways that the mainstream doesn’t really do. You’re not seeing 40-minute deconstructions of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and how it relates to complicated relationships with abusive family on NBC or the like. The advantage of an independent Youtube/New Media channel is that they usually have zero oversight - no one you have to seek approval of to cover a subject. You just do what you want to do. Now, that of course has its flipside that sometimes someone needs to tell you “No, this is a terrible idea,” but that’s a risk even if you DID have some oversight if they don’t recognize potential issues. Now, reviewers of course are still around. Some newer ones, some older ones like me. The formula still exists and still works, but of course because it’s been around for over a decade the problem that exists with starting a new one now is standing out in the crowd. A lot of it comes down to genuine talent - express opinions and jokes that are unique (or at least uniquely presented), well-executed, and just have a good eye for material that people WANT to see talked about (or at least something no one else is doing that makes you different from anyone else) and you’ve got a leg-up. The downside of course is that the algorithm favors the predictable, samey type of stuff which is why you have entire channels devoted exclusively to a single franchise (or in my case, why History of Power Rangers is more popular than AT4W despite AT4W being my regular content) so you might not get the promotion you need. There is no surefire trick to BEING successful at this, I’m sorry to say. I lucked out in getting in at a good time when there were less people doing this (and very few doing comic books) and getting promoted on a very popular site, but you won’t necessarily have that advantage. It’s why when you start, you’ve got to do it more because you enjoy doing it rather than simply going for the money, because there’s no guarantee you’ll make it. Hell, even after 12 years of this, while I make more than enough to live on (and that’s with both Youtube AND Patreon), I’m not exactly living the high life.

[muthaz-rapapa]

Let’s talk TroPreCure! (^∀^ 🌺)

i’m so stupidly proud of this dumb pun “tropurikyua~”, hahahahaha

Last post of the year and wow is there are lot to be excited for!

I even had to make a list for the stuff I want to talk about and I’m sure I already forgot one or two things but we’ll get to them as we continue to float~ along the wave to February 28th, mmkay? :)

Now for what has peaked my interest so far. And yes, we have to talk about the following first:

1) HealPre the shortest Precure season??

Unless they plan for double features in February (which I doubt but you never know), HealPre is likely going to reach only 45 episodes long instead of the usual 48~50 before TroPre I’m using this shortening of the title for now so if there’s a better alternative, tell me and I’ll switch out begins its broadcast.

Understandable because the producers probably want to get back to their normal scheduling as soon as possible (toy sales, y’know) and I suspect pushing the start of the new season back by a month is the most they’re willing to compromise.

As for me, I’m quite happy about this since HealPre’s lost its hold on my attention a while ago so the sooner TroPre gets here, the better. Though the downside might be a scrambled climax and a rushed, underwhelming ending for HealPre (I dunno if it’s January’s titles that feel a bit messy or if the hiatus is still throwing me off) but whatever. We’ll refresh ourselves with the new blood Cures so it’s all good.

2) Tropical movie announced for Autumn 2021, no All Stars??

(source)

First saw this mentioned on Youtube somewhere but it’s all over the fandom forums by now. I mean, HealPre’s movie is set for March, the usual time slot for All Stars release. If Toei intended for there to be an All Stars in 2021, there’s no way they would announce the seasonal movie before it so speculations of them skipping it this year are probably true.

To squeeze it somewhere between March and October-ish would force them to readjust their budgets as well and I don’t think even Toei wants to go through that extra hassle after all the trouble the pandemic’s caused for everyone already. It’s just easier to resume All Stars in 2022.

That, and I think Laura being a major character in TroPre despite not having a Cure title (yet) would make for an awkward situation when the three latest teams gather so perhaps that’s also one of the reasons. But I’ll get back to Laura in a bit.

3) Cure Summer is a RAINBOW Cure

So god help me if I see anyone calling her a Pink Cure.

Yes, she’s the lead Cure for this season. NO, she is not a Pink Cure.

Look, even the official website has a rainbow overlay for her profile pic and text font while everyone else’s respective theme colors are a solid hue:

Therefore, RAINBOW.

In promotional material and merchandising, they’re probably going to advertise her primarily with pink bah and at worst, she might occasionally be labeled as a White Cure with multiple subcolors (her outfit is not pink-dominant) but definitely NOT. PINK.

...also, this goes without saying but f***yea, we finally got a lead Cure practically and unabashedly wearing the LGBTQ flag and you cannot tell me otherwise, Toei!

Own up to it! Declare Manatsu/Cure Summer as the Precure queer icon!

I’m not gonna stop yellin’ until you do! 😠

4) Laura = obvious midseason Cure is obvious

First of all, Laura is a babe. I already love her the best and she’s not even Precure yet. <3

Anyways, the set-up is pretty much in the description. Important main character who’s not a mascot, stated to have a self-confident personality and just speaks her mind (oooh, I like~ :D), magical/foreign being from another world looking for Precure to save her home, possesses her own special item(s), has aspirations to become the next Queen (so she’s a princess-candidate or something to that effect, I suppose).

We’ve seen various combinations of these traits in past midseason (and a few starter) Cures so nobody should be surprised when we all guessed that one of the Cures would be a real live mermaid.

The only question is why not just make Laura a Cure from the get-go if she’s introduced to us at the beginning (like Hime or Lala) and having a team of five with no unnecessary extra add-ons later on (like Smile).

Well, there’s a simple answer for that: formula.

Toei is afraid that if they don’t spit out some new animation sequence at the halfway and third quarter points of the show, the kids will lose interest and abandon the series altogether. Which means failed toy sales. Oh nooo... [/sarcasm]

...Yea. 

And this way they can also have Laura available in the Cure lineup for the next All Stars in 2022 instead of making her sit the fight out if we were going to have one in 2021. I’m convinced that’s gotta be one of the reasons. *shrug*

But ok, whatever. Her debut is gonna be later, that’s all. She’s a delayed Cure.  Midseason Cure, same difference.

Moving along to the more important stuff now like what’s her Cure name gonna be, y/y?

Well, knowing Toei, a translation of the term “mermaid” into another language is the most predictable route even though we already have a Cure Mermaid. Not like that ever stopped them from repeating words before (ex. Cure Happy vs Cure Felice). Though if they do go down that road, I hope they opt for the Spanish/Italian “sirena” and not the French “sirène” because the latter sounds too close to how Cure Selene is pronounced in Japanese. And, putting it nicely, we all know Japanese pronunciation of foreign words is as off kilter as can be.

Hell, even the the Portuguese “sereia” sounds aesthetic as hell so it’d be nice if they can just remember there are other languages that exist out there besides Japanese, English and French when making the final decision at the writing table! *stomps foot* >:/

Alternatively, “nereid” or “naiad” are good choices too but they remind me too much of Greek myths and Laura’s from the Grand Ocean which covers more than just a couple of seas (Greece is surrounded by three, btw) so...

I dunno. But whatever it’s gonna be, she’s definitely got a strong association with water and her powers will probably be based on that.

As for theme color, since there’s noticeably no blue or green Cure in the starter lineup, it’s likely she will take up that spot when she debuts around ep 20.

Pink is also open since Cure Summer, again, is technically not a Pink Cure and Laura’s hair and tail fin are hot and light pink respectively but looking at Laura’s design and concept, does anyone seriously believe that?

Her upper torso consists of aquamarine while the body of her tail is definitely some shade of cyan, implying they’re aiming for somewhere around the middle of green and blue on the lighter spectrum.

And yea, I’m aware that green and blue are considered exchangeable in some perspectives with how close some of their shades are to each other but officially, I think Laura’s gonna be grouped with the Green Cures.

Cuz of the hair. If Laura’s gonna keep it the same or a similar shade after transforming, that is. The Blues have always had cool-colored hair so putting Laura in with them might disrupt that harmony whereas if you put her with the few Greens there are (including Parfait), she’d fit right in.

I mean, we’ll see but that makes the most sense, doesn’t it?

On another note, I just want to say that I love how they added frills to her arms instead of letting her elbows go bare naked. It definitely makes her look more like a genuine mermaid than if she didn’t have them (remember, half fish doesn’t mean half the body :P).

5) Magical Items

Frankly, I’m tired of seeing the transformation device being a compact again even though one of the main motifs is make-up this season. But at least, as far as Precure compacts goes, the Tropical one is my favorite cuz of how cute and delightfully colorful its toy version looks! So I guess I’m okay with it.

The Heart Rouge Rod, though? ...I dunno. I think it would’ve been fine without that...straw (?) jutting out at the top. It looks weird, doesn’t it look weird? :S

As for the collectible clip-ons, I can live without those for the rest of my life. Yeesh.

Laura’s items, the Aqua Pot and the Ocean Prism Mirror.

Again with the portable, travel-size housing. *sigh* 😩

Alright, I can let this year slide cuz Laura (I’m so soft for her, omg) probably won’t be getting legs for 20 weeks so she’s got to move about on land somehow. But unless they’re really thinking about turning this idea of carrying your apartment around in your bag/pocket/purse into a reality (cuz that would be effin’ awesome), please be more creative with your toys.

On the other hand, I’m much more interested in the Ocean Prism Mirror but from what Kusyami (the Precure merchandise reviews I follow on Youtube) said in his latest vid, this is the ED dance item so don’t know if it’ll actually have an relevance to the story or not. But I did hear him mention it having something to do with the Queen as well and since Laura wishes to become Queen, maybe it’ll be important after all? Maybe it’s her transformation device?

That’d be super cool. Let’s continue the trend of the midseason Cure having a different transformation item than the starters. Honestly, we should alternate every other year or two but we’ve gone three seasons with all of them using the same henshin gimmicks up till HealPre and I just want a break from that.

6) Fin sleeves??

These look so impractical for combat so maybe it’s exclusive to group attacks.

And/or a sort of precursor to the super forms?

*GASP* Does that mean they all eventually turn into mermaids? 🤩

7) Yui finally became Precure!! 😭

lol, it’s all crack from this point on so don’t take it too seriously but man, after Yuni’s deceptive braids, I thought I wasn’t gonna see anything that reminded me of Yui for a while and lo behold, Sango.

kehehehehehe xD;

Though Yui might be closer to Minori in terms of personal interests (fairytales and storybooks).

8) Akira, the actual Onee-chan version

I didn’t think this when I first saw her but once I read “Onee-san” in her profile, there’s no saving you now. Sorry, Asuka. 😅

Also, damn, do her sandals make her feet look big! Compare them to the heels she wears as Flamingo. Are they even the same?! lololol

9) ...this sounds awfully familiar...

Translation:

Tokimeku Tokonatsu! [Exciting/Thrilling Everlasting Summer!] Cure Summer! Kirameku Hoseki! [Sparkling Jewel!] Cure Coral!  Hirameku Fuurutsu! [Flashing Fruit!] Cure Papaya!

Japanese reiteration:

Mallow/Mao: Pink no tokimeki! Lillie: Blue no kirameki! Lana/Suiren: Yellow no kagayaki!

….........

@Toei 

Care to explain yourselves, punks?! 

୧(ʘ ∀ ʘ ╬)

#it is 1:30 AM and im hungry and still have to do work on new year's eve so i'll come back to amuse-rage later #tropical rouge! precure #precure 2021 #cure summer #cure coral #cure papaya #cure flamingo #laura la mer

[aion-rsa]

How the Jaws Scene in Back to the Future Part 2 Predicted Modern Blockbusters

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Back to the Future Part II is a strange movie. As a sequel that director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale never intended to make, the ambitious follow-up to one of the greatest sci-fi comedies of all time was put into production simultaneously with Part III, which may have ultimately hurt the middle chapter since Zemeckis was still shooting scenes filmed in the Old West while editing Part II’s trippy vision of the then distant future…of 2015.

Even so, there are elements in the second Back to the Future that still play like gangbusters today, particularly in the sequences set during 2015. To be sure, part of the charm now is what those wild guesses about the future got wrong—such as the idea we’d all be driving around in flying cars, or even simply own cheap cars that didn’t run on fossil fuels. There were no real hover boards in 2015 (or 2021 for that matter), nor even automated Texaco pumps. Yet what Back to the Future Part II got very right is the numbing horror of something like Jaws 19.

Indeed, one of the best bits in the whole film is a slight dig at BTTF’s own studio, as well as the legacy of the film’s producer. The original Jaws is of course the first modern Hollywood blockbuster and it put Steven Spielberg on the map. With its innovative storytelling of leaving the monster to the imagination before finally providing the spectacle in the third act, Jaws is a masterpiece in narrative restraint that could still play for all audiences.

…Which is something no one would say about the three cash-in Jaws sequels that Universal Pictures green lit in the span of 12 years after 1975. In fact, when Back to the Future Part II was released in ’89, it’d only been two years since Jaws: The Revenge, the one where the ghost of Jaws went Bahamas and chased the Chief Brody character’s widow to the Caribbean while on a vendetta for what happened in ’75. It’s kind of hilarious.

As is the scene in Back to the Future Part II. In that sequence, Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly stands slack jawed in the middle of Hill Valley’s town square, the same space that was so memorably used in the first BTTF film where Marty was forced to finally accept he’d traveled to the year 1985. In the sequel, he comes to realize what it means to be in 2015 when he turns around to face the local multiplex, which has only one film on its marquee: Jaws 19. And then to demonstrate to Marty the state of 21st century special effects, the “HOLOMAX” release teases its thrills as a holographic Great White Shark emerges from the building and descends on Marty’s head.

Perhaps like many an audience member who choked on their popcorn kernels in ’75 with fear, Marty screams bloody murder—and then realizes it’s just a movie and scoffs, “The shark still looks fake.” Yes, it always did, but at least in the first movie that didn’t matter so much.

At the time, the scene was a nice dig at Universal’s expense as well as the Jaws franchise as a whole. What was once the most revolutionary Hollywood movie of 1975 had become a punchline by 1989: a once glorious title that’d been run into the ground with endless cash grab sequels. And the joke is even funnier because of the “19” in the title. Nineteen movies of the same franchise. Could you even imagine?!

Oh, how sweet the irony is, then, that one of the most absurd notions in Back to the Future Part II turned out to be the most true! No, there haven’t been 19 Jaws movies (yet), but that might be by virtue of the studio churning the franchise’s mystique into putty before Gen-Xers and Millennials could grow up with it beneath unsullied nostalgia glasses. Nevertheless, the future where Jaws 19 could exist came true.

Consider that we scoff at the idea of 19 Jaws movies being made in 40 years, but Marvel Studios has released 25 pictures in only 13, with two more due out before Christmas 2021. And that doesn’t even include the television shows that are now coming to dominate Disney+.

I know what some will say: Marvel movies are a series of interconnected franchises, as opposed to one amorphous content farm. But that’s not entirely accurate. There are exceptions, of course, which stand out as singularly distinct from other MCU efforts. There’s Black Panther, for instance. That 2018 Oscar nominee is totally removed from the events of The Avengers, you might say. Then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy and its wacky space opera shenanigans occurring literal light years away from the events of Iron Man 3.

And yet, the appeal for most moviegoers, and the brilliance of Marvel’s marketing strategy, is that they all seem like the same thing to the undiscerning eye. And even to the discerning one, there is a pat familiarity to the formula, story beats, and sitcom-esque ability to wink at the audience at its own silliness. Tonally, they all feel of one piece. Hence why the first Shang-Chi movie was gladly welcomed by the industry last month as Marvel’s latest blockbuster hit—a feat borne in large off it being the next Marvel movie, as opposed to a new original property without a built-in audience.

It’s an aspect to the whole series which caused Dune director Denis Villeneuve to suggest that some Marvel movies are “cut and paste.” It’s also a formula which aids the studio to force its millions of fans to see it “as all connected” and be encouraged to go see the Ant-Man sequel they might otherwise skip in order to discover how its post-credits scene will set up the deus ex machina for Avengers: Endgame.

And that aforementioned Black Panther originally had its protagonist introduced in Captain America: Civil War, an Avengers movie by another name. It’s also the only “Cap” flick to cross $1 billion because they stuck Iron Man in it. Similarly, James Gunn’s Guardians films are genuinely auteur-driven, yet they still worked as a years-long tease of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame’s big bad: Thanos. Hell, Infinity War’s biggest selling point in the trailer was seeing the Avengers and Guardians meet face-to-face for the first time.

The methods and talent being used to produce these endless sequels are far more sophisticated and entertaining than the hack work which produced Jaws: The Revenge, but then that’s why Jaws only lasted four movies and Marvel’s already mapping out its 30th “event” in the next few years.

This is not meant to only criticize Marvel, however. They are simply the most successful studio at exploiting their intellectual property in the 21st century. Universal’s own Fast and Furious movies aren’t half bad at that game, though. This summer just saw the 10th “Fast Saga” movie when you count Hobbs and Shaw. And while Vin Diesel claims the 11th main line Fast and Furious movie will be the last, you just know with its own Avengers-sized cast that Hobbs and Shaw will be merely the first spinoff franchise from “the family.”

Even Spielberg, who was reportedly never happy with the Jaws sequels and what they did to his first masterwork, has been much more ready to “open up” later successes like Jurassic Park. Considered a “smart” blockbuster entertainment in 1993 that inspired genuine awe from millions of moviegoers, that film’s fourth sequel (which was produced by Spielberg, like all the follow-ups) reveled in watching dinosaurs stalk around a haunted house, as if they were Frankenstein and Dracula. Next year’s Jurassic World: Dominion is supposedly intended to be the “final” film of the three most recent, Chris Pratt-led sequels, as well as another sendoff to the original 1993 movie’s cast. Yet it seems dubious that it’ll be the last film set in that “universe.”

After all, the “Skywalker Saga” ended with a whimper in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but Disney is preparing to churn out more Star Wars movies and TV shows than ever before in the next decade.

This is not to say you should feel ashamed for enjoying any of these movies or franchises. Folks like what they like. But what Back to the Future Part II perhaps unintentionally predicted was that audiences would have an appetite for a proverbial Jaws 19.

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When BTTF became a trilogy, sequels were still seen as a creatively risky proposition. Filmmakers often maintained artistic credibility by attempting to turn sequels into a larger thematic whole—often as a trilogy. Lucas set that standard with Star Wars, and only after his buddy Francis Ford Coppola claimed he’d never make another Godfather movie after Part II. Spielberg originally walked away from Indiana Jones after three movies, and many likely wish he’d stayed firm about that in retrospect. Meanwhile, Zemeckis and Gale have done the near impossible thing: refuse to allow Universal to make a fourth Back to the Future movie or reboot the series entirely.

But equivocations in the industry about a proverbial Jaws 19 are long gone. What was once a cheeky riff on the dystopian Coca-Cola billboard ads in Blade Runner have become a modern day reality in 2021. And hey, there’s now a real holographic Times Square billboard ad for that, too.

The post How the Jaws Scene in Back to the Future Part 2 Predicted Modern Blockbusters appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/39HMnzU

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[mk-wizard]

Another Top 10 Reasons TF Needs to Change its Status Quo

After making this list, I realised 10 reasons are not enough and that alone is telling. After some thought, I realised there are many reasons though these are the ones that are most important as to why Transformers needs to change its status quo.

1- Proper representation that is respectful and with the times matters. - Did you know that Jazz is so far the only confirmed Transformer of colour and every damn time he is used, he’s a stereotype of a black person? Did you also know that even though everyone knows Knockout from Transformers Prime is gay, the writers denied it by denying that Transformers don’t have genders or orientations even though it has been confirmed that they do since Beast Wars? Also, the first openly “oriental” Transformers are a little ridiculous to look at it. Windblade looks like a geisha girl with hair and make up to match. Then we have Drift who looks and acts like a stereotypical overly stern samurai. And let’s not forget Transformers Animated Ratchet who is another stereotypical old man character who is predictably grouchy, not fun, anti-social, borderline ageist and has PTSD. I hate being politically correct, but as a progressive and open minded person, it’s getting a bit ridiculous that the writing still treats the times like it is the 1980s in which every type of character is a stereotype of itself. Write characters naturally and don’t be afraid to make diversity a natural thing without extremism in culture, colour or anything. And that thing that the writers said about Knockout was outright offensive. Why create a character who is gay if you’re going to force him to stay in the closet? And what really stinks about that low blow move is that Knockout is NOT a stereotype of what he is and not everything is about him being gay. He is a well written fleshed out character. Transformers has to move on from the 1980s and accept diversity with open arms respectfully.

2- Children do not follow a status quo when they play with the Transformer toys. - Here’s a secret that’s not a secret at all, people. When kids play with their toys, they don’t always make them act the way they are “supposed” to. When I was a girl, I used to pretend Barbie was a superhero and sometimes, when I played with Transformers, I didn’t always have them fighting. Sometimes, I used to pretend the Transformers would do regular stuff like go out, visit friends and stuff. I even used to know someone online whose daughter pretended Arcee was married to one of the Seekers (I don’t recall which one) and played house with them with other bots acting as their kids and neighbours. If kids don’t follow a status quo and are open to different settings when playing with the Transformers, they are going to be open to shows/movies/comics that don’t follow a status quo. In fact, I think it they would love it.

3- We need more movies and specials like Bumblebee. - In other words, films that showcase a fan favourite to give them their own backstory and character development which answers a lot of the questions fans have. Even if they are just straight to Blu-Ray or Netflix movies. I mean, DC and Marvel has tons of made for TV only animated movies and they’re great. I would love to see a movie that showcases Prowl, Arcee or tells us Megatron’s origin story.

4- A prequel of Transformers is worth telling. - Beyond short mini comic series, we have never delved into the origin of Megatron, Optimus or how the entire war began. All we know is that in the beginning, Megatron’s intentions were noble, but then went bad and he ruined Cybertron, so the Autobots rebelled. Transformers War for Cybertron attempts to give us a prequel, but it’s not quite one. It’s still a story about the war, but in the earlier phase while it was still happening on Cybetron only. Give us a real prequel. Please.

5- There are confirmed bad Autobots and it’s high time we treated them like villains properly. - Devcon is a bounty hunter who is Autobot by faction, but he doesn’t follow the Autobot values or any morals as he is just concerned with getting paid, and he has been known to do heinous things just to get a buck. Then there is Repugnus who hence his name, is the kind of guy who will disgust you because he is sadistic, he has no honour, he cheats, he fights dirty and has been discharged multiple times from the army for taking things too far. And for the record, the Decepticons won’t have him in their ranks because even they think he’s too distasteful. I think it would be interesting and good writing to showcase these two as reoccurring villains who even face consequences like villains instead of “pardoning” them just because they are Autobots.

6- Does Optimus have to be the Prime in every series? - Seriously, this formula is getting old. Even Robots In Disguise snuck Optimus in as Prime and it was supposed to be Bumblebee’s time to shine. Then there was Beast Wars who had an Optimus as a leader too. You don’t even have to kill Optimus! Just have a different group of bots with a different leader. Star Trek does that with every different series and it’s great for it. And get creative with the settings through that: exploration, repairing Cybertron, politics, home life, etc.

7- Make different versions of the same character DIFFERENT. - Transformers Armada always stood out to me as a series because it was the one series where Starscream was not only not concerned with overthrowing Megatron, he was the complete opposite! He was loyal to Megatron and just wanted his appreciation, and above all else, Starscream was a good guy. In fact, a lot of characters were very different from their moulds. Maybe we should do this more often. Make an Optimus who is not very nice, make a Megatron who is empathetic, etc. If you’re going to put out a new story and make the characters look different, why not make them different on the inside too? I think that would be fun.

8- Transformers is in fact alienating new fans by keeping the status quo. - A lot of the suggestions I am making are not from me a lot. A lot of fans especially the newer ones are begging for fresh new ideas, but for the most part, a large majority of Transformers’ media is just Autobots vs. Decepticons or something like it. If you keep ignoring the suggestions of new fans, you will cease having new fans.

9- It is ok for characters to fall in love and be in love. - If there is one thing that Beast Wars did right, it was incorporating romance into the storytelling. And it did it beautifully. A huge chunk of Blackarachnia’s character development was thanks to falling in love and with a great guy above all else. Moreover, it didn’t stop her, her boyfriend or anyone around them from being badass, goofy and going on with life in other ways that were not romantic. I also want to add that it is important for kids to see all of that so they can learn that love is not yucky. And that for most grown ups, falling in love and starting a family is a good thing and an adventure within itself worth taking. And more importantly, you don’t stop being you just because you’re married and have kids. Yes, some people don’t want to marry or have kids, but keeping everyone childfree and alone is just as unnatural and unrealistic as having them all get hitched and multiply. Besides, it has been confirmed that Transformers can be in love, be male or female and reproduce like we do. There’s no point of hiding it.

10- Transformer epilogues are worth telling. - Just as a prequel is worth telling, so is an epilogue. We sort of get that with Rescue Bots Academy after Transformers Prime and Robots In Disguise, but what about other series? What happened after G1 and how did the peace treaty between Autobots and Decepticons go down? Did it work out? How did characters adapt to peace? How did they deal with trauma and PTSD? What was life like for the civilians after? Were the problems that spawned the war fixed? Do Autobots and Decepticons even live together on Cybertron? Personally, I would love to see all of that as a huge fan of Steven Universe Future and Picard. Just because one story ends doesn’t mean another can’t begin. I think it would be a lot of fun and also, it would give closure to many Transformer series that never got any.

Do any of you have good reasons you can all think of as to why Transformers needs to change its status quo?

#transformers #transformers fandom #transformers fanfiction #transformers ratchet #transformers bumblebee #bumblebee #transformers devcon #transformers repugnus #repugnus #devcon #transformers optimus prime #optimus prime #status quo #fanfiction #megatron

[toujoursmiraculous]

With all the Salt in the Fandom...

I’m writing this extremely long post because for some reason, a lot of salt and rant videos that were made within the past month have been popping up in my recommendations on YouTube after watching a couple of ML episodes, about why they think Miraculous Ladybug is “hot trash”, “irredeemable”, and just really ripping the show apart and overdramatizing scenes, but then tacking on “but I still love the show.” If you’re going to hate on something to the point it sounds like it makes you really angry and disgusted just to think or talk about, you don’t truly love it, but the idea of what you wish it to be. I’ve seen some points brought up explaining why they feel the show sucks, as well as quite a number of people who agree or agreed after hearing their points, and I want to address some of those things because I think they’re important.

The show’s formula is too repetitive. We knew that was going to likely be defining part of the show after watching season 1. But as season 2 and season 3 progressed, it became less repetitive, less predictable. We’ve also been told season 4 will have (nearly) every episode have a sort of “Chat Blanc” bomb in each one. So it sounds like things are going to really change up and get interesting. Obviously someone’s almost always going to get akumatized and obviously Ladybug and Chat Noir (and maybe others) will come along and stop them in the end, even if it takes more than one episode and there will be some kind of event/conflict in their regular everyday lives going on at the same time. I feel like that’s pretty typical of all TV shows and movies, particularly those with secret identities and double lives.

The progress of “Y” episode was taken away in “X” episode! Ugh, this is pathetic! Both the reason for this and this topic itself have been talked about a lot, but it seems a lot of people still don’t know or have forgotten. The airing order when episodes came out on different networks around the world, and the order it is presented on sites like Netflix, for instance, are very much mixed up and out of order. While the creators made the show so you could see (almost) every episode without seeing a previous one to enjoy the episode, there is still a chronological timeline that exists that makes things better. Each episode was described as a puzzle piece, so when you finished, you could put it all together and discover new things about the show. It was recommended by Thomas to watch S3 based on Production Order that can be found next to each episode here. For the other seasons, there are posts suggesting the episodes in order for chronological order. S1′s here and S2′s here have the best chronological order lists that I’ve found and enjoy watching the show in this order. I remember back in the day watching new episodes of Kim Possible (yes, I’m old), and suddenly she had a car that wasn’t explained. I thought, huh, that’s weird. Then a later episode, they showed her getting her car. It’s just something that happens sometimes with cartoons, unfortunately, and there’s no real work around when episodes aren’t able to all be delivered at once or in huge chunks, and you’ve got dozens of networks globally wanting to air whatever they can get to meet demand. I’d also like to point out that sometimes when people/characters make progress, we end up taking a step or more back again. It’s realistic, it’s normal, it happens. It’s part of life and it also helps us grow and figure out what we’re doing wrong. In the show, it’s most notably seen with Chloe. She’s very much a WIP.

Episodes like Chris Master, Stormy Weather 2, Puppeteer 2, Chat Blanc, etc did nothing for the progress of the show and are just fan service. Chris Master introduced us to Nino’s brother Chris. While most of it seems pretty unimportant, we got a look at a new character that not only has had some important episodes, but seems like he may be a bigger character in the future. Stormy Weather 2, we learned how Nathalie feels about Adrien and Gabriel, her inner thoughts about taking on the job. We saw Ladybug express how she feels working with Chat Noir and got to see some glimpses of how she looks at him when he isn’t looking. And Adrien began to really think of Marinette as being someone who could love him, and seemed both happy by that idea, and sad when he realized because of Luka, that likely wasn’t the case. Puppeteer 2, while filled with secondhand embarrassment due to Tikki’s suggestion literally a minute before that scene, of how she should play act. She took that and then runs into the “statue” and her just being silly and out there, thinking he wasn’t real and she was all alone. She would never do something like this if she was knowingly going up to the actual Adrien, okay. There have been so many shows/movies I’ve seen where characters do some weird af stuff to dummies, statues, pillows, pictures, etc when they were young teens. Let me also remind everyone that yes, she smelled the “statue” and took some hair that she thought was yak hair, but people that visit the museum keep tearing apart Adrien’s statue to the point that he needs to come back in to remake parts of it. It’s not just Marinette being “creepy”. This episode shared some important points. Adrien really doesn’t quite know what he should and shouldn’t do around his friends because being around them in a non-school setting is still pretty new to him. He learned that maybe playing a prank like that could hurt someone like it did Marinette, and he’d never want to do that to anyone, especially her. She was very embarrassed and likely realized she shouldn’t be so over-the-top. We seem to keep forgetting, these are 14-year-old kids that are going to do 14-year-old things that are cringe and stupid. People need to stop looking at them through adult lenses and their POVs. In the end, she came very close yet again to telling him how she feels, but he had to go and pretty much tell her he loved someone else. It just was not the right time. And sometimes there’s nothing wrong with getting a cute episode that doesn’t have any real ties to the rest of the show on occasion. (:

Marinette and Adrien never getting together because Marinette just can’t go up to him and say “I like you” and it being dragged out forever makes me not want to watch anymore. It’s not that hard, Marinette! Just do it! Continuing on with what was said previously with Chat Blanc, Marinette has made multiple attempts to tell him how she feels. But there’s always something that gets in the way: she forgot to sign the card, her plan was too convoluted when she needed simplicity, she felt it was the wrong time, she mixed up the notes and prescription, Adrien stopped her from saying it... But in Chat Blanc she finally got the opportunity to give him something she made for him, with hearts on it, signed by her. Yes, him piecing that she was Ladybug helped get the ball rolling, but he seemed over the moon about Marinette being Ladybug, not Ladybug being Marinette (there is a big difference). From what we were given in the episode, Adrien never slipped up knowing her identity, he never accidentally called her m’lady, never hinted at who she was or who he was, because what mattered was Marinette. Marinette also from the bits we saw, seemed like she got over her obsessiveness/weird behavior everyone rags on her about awfully quickly, which isn’t surprising to me because she’s no longer that girl with a simple crush that isn’t reciprocated and doesn’t know what to do about it. Their Ladynoir scenes also showed that things were just the same dynamic as always. Proving to us that when they do know, everything will eventually end up just fine with their relationship in that regard. The issue though, is as Bunnyx pointed out, there is a time and place for everything. There’s a reason her attempts have always failed, and we know that if she were to succeed so long as Gabriel attempts to target Marinette or Adrien to akumatize (we had 3 attempts last season on Marinette: Chameleon, Chat Blanc, Ladybug) then he’s going to use their relationship against them and it could lead to some serious destruction like Chat Blanc did, which was one of many reasons why Chat Blanc isn’t just “fan service”. It’s more than just the fear of their identities being ousted to Hawk Moth at this point. Things need to fall into place so that it won’t lead to terrible things, and that’s what they’re going to do.They’re going to work it out. I find this to actually be really interesting and unique. A lot of shows either bring characters together purely for the drama factor, or get them together fairly early to throw in some personal drama between the two to break them up just to have them fight to get back together again towards the end. That’s not the purpose of Miraculous Ladybug so I’m glad they didn’t quickly get together without issues the end or had them together to end things just to bring them back together, and gave us build up so when they do end up together, it’s meaningful and beautiful and sticks.

Marinette’s a creep and Adrien’s a disrespectful idiot who can’t see past Ladybug and doesn’t know what “no” means, so they don’t deserve each other and Adrigami and Lukanette make better pairings (even though Luka has zero personality). Again, Marinette will grow out of it.  We’ve seen a glimpse that shows us as much. Chat’s also not making Ladybug uncomfortable in the way some like to push that he does. Felix is a good example to see when she’s clearly very uncomfortable, and that she��ll handle it if she becomes uncomfortable. The boy has Adrien’s face, and she didn’t hesitate to punch him in it and say “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?”. As for being aware of his feelings, Chat Blanc (again, a lot of things happen in that episode) literally admitted to her that he always felt something that made him feel like she was more than just a friend to him, but he didn’t understand it when he had someone he loved already. The fact it wasn’t from the same timeline doesn’t take away that this is how he’s always felt. But he always wanted to be around her, always wanted her to be happy, praised her about as highly as anybody could be praised, and was noticeably disappointed when the possibility of her liking him was dashed. He hesitates and denies when it’s brought up if he likes her, but it’s very clear he does. Adrigami and Lukanette, and I’ve said it in a post or two before, but watching them makes me feel a bit weird and I that “this feels wrong” rushes to mind whenever I see a scene with either pairing later in S3, because I can see that Marinette and Adrien aren’t genuinely happy and at ease around Luka and Kagami, and I just feel so bad for both of them feeling like this is what they should do. Kagami gets on Adrien’s case about why he does things she doesn’t agree with, pushing the fact that they’re so alike, so they belong together. He also felt like he was supposed to try things out with Kagami because Plagg convinced him to try to see someone else. Kagami happened to be the first girl he encountered after that, and it’s convenient since he’s always around her because of his father. When she wanted to kiss him in Heart Hunter/Love Eater, he felt uncomfortable with that and stepped back, saying it didn’t feel like he thought it would. Instead of being able to understand that, she made it about her feelings and asked when he would be ready, even though that’s not a question he can answer. Marinette with Luka, he’s really sweet and is always there for her, and she knows that. She’s very pleased and flattered Luka has admitted he has feelings for her (I mean who wouldn’t be?), but something about him stops her from being able to confide in him when she needs it. Not just because of the topic, but when she started crying and leaned on him, she then seemed to have thought “Oh wait, I shouldn’t be crying in his arms like this.” She seems kind of restricted with him, like she can’t bring herself to try to have feelings for him in that way. Both Adrien and Marinette seem to feel like they need to be with these two, despite it not being what either truly want. I know quite a few people really do ship these two pairings, which is great, I do like Lukanette personally. But I see it from Mari and Adrien’s POVs and I want to happen what would make them happy in the end, not what viewers may want based on personal preference. I feel that’s much more satisfying to watch. And don’t get me started on all the examples of why the Love Square just makes total sense. Moments both big and small, there are tons provided if you just pay attention. There are so many things in this show that doesn’t revolve around a romantic relationship between Marinette and Adrien to enjoy. I see too many people complain about this aspect of it and it seems to ruin the show for them if it doesn’t go how they want or because the reveal hasn’t happened yet. Or certain episodes/scenes weren’t handled like they wanted and they’ve already planned out the end of the show based on one of these scenes/eps. Or even that they prefer the way others have written it. But I want to remind everyone that the show is still far from over and that there are many things to love and look forward to! The end hasn’t come yet, we don’t even have any idea how that’ll go, or how the reveal will go. It could be something that makes plotters, theorists, and writers go “Wow, that’s better than what I wanted!” We just don’t know and that’s the beauty of it. You’ll never see the beauty and positivity if all you see is the ugly and negativity from everything.

#ml #miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #some anti-salt #love square #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #ladybug #chat noir #ml fandom #miraculous fans #stop being so negative

[thephantomssiren]

Ye of little faith. Why do you doubt?

There seems to be a lot of doubt in the Reylo fandom about whether we’ll get our happy ending in The Rise of Skywalker. From what I’ve gathered, people seem to doubt that Disney would let Kylo live after all the bad things he’s done, or doubt that Kylo/Ben will be redeemed (because that is too predictable) and are almost certain that he will not survive this trilogy if he is redeemed. If you are a Reylo that is doubting whether Rey and Kylo will get their happy ending I have a few things to tell you, that will hopefully ease your fears about their fate in The Rise of Skywalker. 

Since the beginning of the Star Wars trilogy, the main story has always revolved around two things: love and hope. Allow me to repeat myself, love and hope have been a running theme in the story since the beginning! It was Anakin’s love for his mother and the hope that he’d one day see her again that gave him the strength to leave her to become a Jedi, and it was Shmi’s hope in his future and her love for her son that gave her the strength to let him go. It was his love for Padme, and the hope that he could find a way to save her from death that made Anakin fall to the Dark Side. It was Luke’s hope that Anakin was still a part of Vader that allowed him to see that he could be turned, and Vader’s love for his son that gave him the strength to defeat the Emperor and return to the Light Side. It was the hope that Leia had in Ben Kenobi that began the original story, and I believe it will be her hope that her son Ben Solo isn’t gone, and the love she has for him that will end it (or at least play a pivotal role in the story). A story that has centered around the ideas of hope and love cannot and will not end in tragedy. 

Remember too that Star Wars is now in the hands of Disney. What is it that Disney is known for? That’s right... bringing fairy tale stories about hope and love that end in happily-ever-after to life for all ages to enjoy. Disney has invested too much time and money in the development of the new characters’ stories to kill them off in the end...or to have the story end on a miserable and tragic note. Where’s the hope found in that? Star Wars was always written for children. George has often referred to star wars as a fairy tale for children. What message would it send to children who love the character of Kylo Ren, if he should die at the end of The Rise of Skywalker unloved and unredeemed because of the bad things he has done (in a time of war I remind you)? I don’t think Disney would veer away from their winning formula of hope, love, and happily ever after for the sake of pleasing a few loud voices in the Star Wars community.

Something else I think Reylos should keep in mind is that we’ve been told that JJ and KK consulted with George about the story for The Rise of Skywalker. George has always said that “Star Wars is like poetry, it rhymes.” Already we’ve seen various nods to the originals and prequels within TFA and TLJ, but there’s one thing that was in the prequels and the originals that hasn’t been eluded to yet and that’s the big celebration sequence. In the prequels we see a big celebration at the end of The Phantom Menace when the Naboo and Gungans celebrate the peace they’ve achieved between their two “worlds”. At the end of Return of the Jedi, we see a huge celebration with the Rebels and Ewoks (and the rest of the galaxy) celebrating the end of the Empire and the freedom they now have. So far, we haven’t seen a celebration scene of the same magnitude in this new trilogy, which means we’re due for one in The Rise of Skywalker. And I’m pretty sure this isn’t it:

No, we are going to see the most epic galaxy-wide celebration sequence in Star Wars history in The Rise of Skywalker...and who knows perhaps that celebration will revolve around a wedding (to echo Anakin and Padme’s at the end of Attack of the Clones). Remember, it’s like poetry...it rhymes!

Lastly, let’s not forget that there have been too many hints about a relationship developing between Kylo and Rey for them not to explicitly address it in the final film. I do not think that they would expose us (and the general audience) to so much Reylo-centric content leading up to the release of the movie for no apparent reason. In other words, I don’t think Reylo will be left ambiguous in The Rise of Skywalker...it’s going to be obvious. Reylo is the plot! Remember Rey and Kylo are two halves of our protagonist, and the prince and princess of this story according to JJ, and “the story we really care about”.

So no more doubting, Reylos! We are getting fed next month, and Rey and Kylo/Ben are getting that happily ever after that they both deserve, because Disney would do that!

#reylo #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #just my thoughts #words of encouragement #no doubt #the rise of skywalker #the last jedi #the force awakens #daisy ridley #adam driver #disney #star wars #jj abrams #thephantomssiren #bendemption #save ben solo #save the galaxy #episode 9 #episode 9 thoughts

[hudsontfreeman]

Noticing (or a Case for Seinfeld Living)

It’s really impossible to know definitively, but I’d say I’m about halfway through the fourth or fifth season of the second reboot of my life’s tv show.

This is more of an estimate - I’m not really sure how I’ve been dividing up the seasons. Obviously, the first season was the 3-4 years at the beginning where nobody really knew what was going on and the protagonist was kind of just there. He was arguably, more of a blank canvas for the audience to see themselves through, as the real protagonists (his mom and dad) did all the expository heavy lifting. To be fair, this was just an introduction to the series and audiences were at least impressed enough for it to be renewed.

The formula found its bearings in the second season, as most successful shows tend to do, and stayed more or less on track for ten seasons till adolescence prompted a hard reboot. I can’t stress enough how much the show changed: episodes varied widely week to week, multiple characters were booted, the previously so-called co-protagonists of the show (those rascally parents) occasionally became outright antagonists, etc… It was quite frankly, not that great of a show, and in many ways traded the lack of conflict of its predecessor, with an abundance of conflict rarely resolved. It was not a show anyone was enjoying and the second college reboot was a welcome return to form.

This latest season is not half bad. We’ve got a lot of good series-wide story arcs going. There is a fair amount of midseason conflict, reoccurring characters that are staying relatively fresh (with the exception of Trevor), a decent theme song (it’s currently some experimental jazz from hell), and I’m really feeling like the protagonist is “starting to figure out what his deal is”, so to speak.

It is important to note that the protagonist has “started to figure out what his deal is” many times before this season, so I wouldn’t necessarily trust his judgement, but the confidence is remarkable.

He, at the very least, seems to finally be able to admit that he is not a cool person, which is certainly progress. Naively, though; he is convinced that this admission might very well be the first step to eventually becoming cool.

Most engaged viewers know this is a misstep.

~

“Life’s not like a movie” might be as useless of a phrase as it is pervasive. The assumption of the phrase implies that everyone is going around living their lives like the main character in a blockbuster comedy - cartoonishly pursuing their dreams, accidentally falling in love, and somehow, repeatedly being surprised when things don’t work out the way they think things should.

This is clearly false. No one thinks like this.

No one thinks everything will work out. No one thinks they’ll get everything they want. No one thinks their life is simple. No one thinks they’ll find the complete answer to the question they’ve been asking all along.

No one is nearly as naive about their existence as we seem to think they are. And I don’t think people watch movies and TV shows because they want these things either.

Sure, maybe there is someone out there who says they want life to be this uncomplicated, straightforward thing, but no one actually believes them. Nearly every person I’ve ever met genuinely believes that they are the true pragmatist. Has anyone ever actually met a consciously sincere idealist? Who wants to be the sucker?

Perhaps I’m generalizing, but I don’t think people watch television or movies, read books, and tell stories because they are innocently convinced of the simplicity of their narrative structure or because they want to vicariously live through that simplicity either. People are not starry-eyed, gullible children, nor do they wish they could be. People reflect their lives through story, not because they make life seem simple, but because these stories make life seem meaningful. I would go as far as to say - they don’t just make life seem meaningful, they remind them that it already is.

~

My friend Trevor and I believe genuinely, that we are this latest generation’s reincarnation of the 90’s sitcom, Seinfeld. He is George and I am Jerry, respectively. We’ve drawn out many of the parallels over the course of our friendship and I will list them here now:

- Trevor is short and stocky (George), while I am tall(er) and lanky (Jerry).

- My friend, Sam (Kramer) often walks into my house unannounced, hair lopsided, looking to “borrow” things from my kitchen.

- We routinely complain about our lives at various diners/coffee shops loudly and with little sympathy for the people around us. (The plot of the show)

- We improvise neurotic standup routines about the absurdity of mundane life and our own selfishness. (Much like George and Jerry, these routines are more sad than they are funny)

The only thing we’ve failed to find a direct parallel for is Elaine, as perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the show, was the fantasy of anyone staying good friends with their ex.

All of these specific comparisons aside, I think what Trevor and I really like about this joke, is the idea that the only difference between our lives “in the real world” and our lives as tv characters, is the perspective that comes with observing rather than experiencing. What I mean by that is to say, there is something inherently and beautifully constructive about observing years as seasons, days as episodes, and people as characters. They become features of the life we are actively noticing, not just necessities of the existence we are passively being forced to endure.

As many sad, 90s-sitcom-obsessives like myself know, the significance of the creation of the Seinfeld rested in the catchphrase Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld sold the show on - it’s “a show about nothing.” The idea of it was, if you take a comedian like Seinfeld and put him in a variety of mundane settings, the jokes will come, not from heightening his experiences, but by letting him endlessly interpose his observations on the absurdity of the mundane itself. But I don’t think that’s significant in the way people may think it is.

Yes, George/Jerry/Elaine/Kramer are funny, goofy people with above average neurotic tendencies. Yes, it is a situational comedy written by professional comedy writers, building narratives out of the ways standups get their material. Yes, it broke many mainstream television conventions and historically broke the formula of the sitcom. But I think the most brilliant thing Seinfeld did, is definitively inspire the tacit belief that everything is worth paying attention to. Maybe, it’s worth noticing because its infuriating, or ridiculous, or hilarious, or disturbing, etc… But absolutely everything demands to be noticed.

In the fourth season of Seinfeld (arguably the best and most influential season), George and Jerry begin developing a TV show in much the same way Seinfeld and Larry David did four years prior. Throughout episode after episode, they go back and forth trying to come up with some fresh idea to wow NBC executives. This goes on with some degree of expected laziness and hijinks till George finally has it. Ever the meta-self-referential goldmine, George decides it should be “a show about nothing.” NBC executives are neither wowed nor thrilled, but the pilot get’s made, and all the characters in Seinfeld get remade in the show-within-the-show - “Jerry”. This was genius for two reasons.

It justified itself as a show by explaining its own concept directly to the audience through the show itself. (Perhaps the reason why this season skyrocketed the shows viewership)

It explained how television works, and more importantly, it explained how stories work.

The characters of Seinfeld, much like the characters of any story where the writer takes the time to describe them, are just bizarre people living in our bizarre world. Brought to their logical conclusions, television characters are human beings incapable of not observing the particularities of their existence. They go to the same coffee shops, they hang out with the exact same people, and they can’t stop scrutinizing the smallest detail of, or change, to that reality. Television shows remind us that the details of our existence are interesting.

The characters we surround ourselves with can be the funniest people in the world when we notice why they do what they do. The job we spend thirty to seventy hours a week at can be the weirdest thing in the world when we notice how ridiculous it is. This year can be a not-so great season. Tomorrow can be a particularly great episode. The television show we’re participating in can be surprising and disappointing and funny and sad and predictable and strange, but its a show we choose whether or not to watch - just watch it!

~

Sometimes, when I have a bad day, I go home, I go to bed, and I narrate out loud, “Hudson was not having a good day.” It almost always helps. Not because it reminds me that I am an insane person and that’s funny, but because it reminds me that I am a character in a movie I am watching, not just playing a role in. I am the protagonist of my own movie, playing a character in other people’s movies, learning how to notice why we’re in a movie at all. Any moment that we don’t realize that, that the story is meaningful, whatever it is, is a moment lost to ourselves.

"Life’s not like a movie” is a pointless phrase that doesn’t mean anything about anyone. We know life is not simple, but we want life to be consequential. Stories tell us it is. So we remind ourselves by telling the stories and listening to the stories and vice versa and on and on till we're dead and death is always a pretty good story too. (Almost always a great tv show or movie)

Life may not be painless or easy, but it is certainly interesting. Movies, television, novels, myths, comics, plays, etc… Those things are at their best when they remind us that the only difference between letting living pass us by and actively choosing to experience existence, is the amount of attention we pay to it. The latest season of the tv show that is my being is sometimes pretty rough, especially when I’m arguing with Trevor about who the main character is, but it is not boring. I can’t ask for much else.

#writing #in this essay i will #essay #personal essay #seinfeld #existentialism #existential humor

[kendrixtermina]

Sigh. Chibnall.

Jodie Whittaker and demographic realism

So I want to make clear that I have no problems whatsoever with Jodie Whittaker’s performance - the character seamlessly kept walking across the screen, she has great energy, love the steampunk goggles. 

Honestly I’ve always believed that giving existing characters a demographic change is not really as revolutionary or helpful as ppl think; New characters and stories (esp. told by writers of those samedemographics) solve the problem much better. Keeping specificity is often better than losing it, and the character still has a background (from an “advanced” civilization that used to do dirty deeds and is still kind of uppity attitudes, a character who’s decided to be against that attitude but still needs to be knocked own from the occasional uppity moment; It makes sense for them to look like a british dude, and they have the freedom to go wherever problems like sexism and racism don’t exist so... ), and will be linked to its origin.  But at worst something that will look dated in a few years like the 80s outfits, the show’s done dated and crowdpleasing before; There’s no hard reason not to do it and I expected no quality dip. 

It certainly worked as as attention grab, the premiere drew a lot of attention but that only lasted as long as it took for the reviews to go sour. But one of the main good things its proponents said could come of it was to help the lack of female anti heroes. So far she really didn’t get to anti hero much; It’s not Whittaker, it’s the scripts. 

I want to make this clear: Varied demograpics are good; 

This is why I kind of hate the term “diversity” is one of those vague euphemisms if you mean “demographic representation”, “social equity” or “demographic realism” just say that. 

In a way this is a good thing, it used to be only the best boldest writers who could get away, noadays it has become acceptable to have varied casts. And that’s how it should be artshouldn’t have to have to pass some arbitrary quality standard to simply reflect reality. But as the rebootverse and star trek discovery should’ve proved realistic demographics can’t replace good writing. Sometimes lack of realistic demographis is associated with bad writing because both come from play-it-safe more-of-the-same consummerism focussed sameyness, often someone who goes against the formulas has a solid vision which makes them good, and focussing on ignored topics and perspectives can yield new ideas (consider stuff like Wonder Woman, Get Out, Black Panther... which were just good, novel movies) but you could have a super interesting memorable story where everyone is a medieval european monk, but the characters are differentiated by personality, attitude, beliefs, or something where the cast ticks all sort of all demographic boxes but the characters are 1D and the story trite and predictable

On the one hand you get those gamergate adjacent fanboys who make “diversity” and “good writing” out to be enimical opposites and then you have the purists/antis who treat any critique of writing to be founded in having something against realistic demographics. You need both! 

Series 11

There were good things about it: An attempt at leastto do more of your classic thought provoking space operas or going back to the shows’ pulp fiction roots, covering some historic periods/topics other than the classic historical fiction tropes (they got a pakistani writer, had Yaz and Ryan discuss social topics among themselves etc.), the emotional story centered around this family coping with a loss, having Ryan sort of be the “main” companion and the one the rest of the team is protective of

But overall the reason I didn’t rush to watch s12 as soon as it came out is that it was a bit... bland. The team interacted mostly with each other; The Doctor had more charge with one shot characters like King James or the Solitract than she really did with the companions. Graham was such a missed opportunity. Remember how everyone loved the dynamic with Wilfred? No attempt to strike a bond over how they’re the older party members, or the professional xenophile trying to nudge the bilbo baggins like reluctant hero? We’re told the Doctor really likes Yaz, and I believe it cause she always liked people like that, but are we shown?

For all that Moffat and RTD were very different writers with different strenghts and weaknesses, both were very character-driven writers, and that was really missing here a bit. 

Some ppl said they didn’t give Yaz enough screentime or personality - but the thing is, they did try. They just failed. They let her make little remarks here and there about her homelife, they just never really assembled into a whole beyond buzzwords and inspirational platitudes and the Standard Companion Traits. I didn’t get a read on what she’s about or who she’s like until the pakisan episode where she unlike Barbara, Donna etc. immediately accepted that the past can’t be changed. Ah, I finally thought, she’s a very responsible dutiful person.

Everything lacks edges and defining moments. 

So far, I didn’t sweat it. I though, ok, not everything can be the high-concept character driven spec fic epic type of story that is my personal favorite. Every time there was some addition to the mythos in any way someone cried ruined forever. When the time lords first appeared. When the time war was introduced. 

The classics too were lower on the character driven ness; Still good pulp fiction content. (imho the character concepts themselves were often pretty good, just not used to the fullest and some of the actresses were treated crappy backstage)

I thought “okey, it wouldn’t be good to break with the tradition of making the sussequent incarnations contrasting”

I did think that there was much liberty with the additions which the others did do only towards the end when it feltmore earned, but, the addition of say, sisters, isn’t too disruptive

Series 12 and the Timeless Child Nonsense

The frustrating thing about this is that it COULD have been good. 

The Master teaming up with the cybermen to try and take over Gallifrey is precisely the sort of story the classics would’ve done. 

“Your society is founded on a shady secret and exploitation of the innocent” is a good plot twist especially in these times. The Master finding that secret and using it to his advantage - also very him. 

Imagine what it could have been like if it had been approached from the perspective of someone who, for all that they were a rebel, still sort of profited from being part of that society, someone who wants to take responsibility for that past and would maybe have to make some tough choice to let the exploitation victim go because it’s right even if it has cosequences for themselves and their civilization. 

but then you ruin that by immediately taking the protagonist out of that society. They and they alone are the victim. 

like this plot could have been good except for the twist that the Doctor and the timeless child are the same. 

Not connecting it to existing lore about the earlier war game days, everything with Omega and Rassilon, that bit about the Time Lord becoming what they were through exposure to the untempered schism... that might be forgiven. Even if it does stretch the suspension of disbelief that every single piece of sci fi scanning equipment in the show didn’t pick anything up; Not to mention that it destroys the stake on every heroic sacrifice or death prophecy plot, every time a companion or oneshot character took the bullet, the whole “out of regens” plot...

This is not me being mad about things being added or changed, but this being done in such a way that undermines the philosophy, the whole flavor... 

Yes, the MC is mysterious, the 7th Doctor arcs did a lot with this etc. but doesn’t spelling something out this clear not deplete rather than add to that? It#s a definite answer even if the final origin isn’t clear. 

But they’re so much else.

The trickster hero accomplishing great deeds with planning, guile, improvisation and duct tape, the implicit value that ressourcefulness trumps raw power. 

The rebel, different because they chose to be or made themselves to be such through their adventures, sticking to their own values in a close-minded society - who embodies & encourages thinking for yourself in every situation and universal plot, who battles enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen that represent comformity

Yeah they have many names yeah they take out gods... but all this was the result of their actions & path in pursuit of knowledge, and also, as Moffat once stated, the funny part is that behind all the fearsome reputation is wit and duct tape. 

The fish in a small pond who started out a misfit, failed their tardis driving exam... etc. and often made a point that they didn’t want immortality or endless godlike power. That’s meaningless if they had it to begin with. 

The explorer who wanted to see more than their corner of the world. 

The ANTI HERO that’s made alltogether too tragic here, too absolved from their uppity civilization

All that is wiped away if they were this special creature to begin with.

Where WAS the philosophy, rly? The big humanist speeches that made me love the show. 

Going Forward

So I think - I HOPE - that this in particular will be treated like the “half human” thing from the TV movie or the now josses additional origin stories from the audios, or be handwaved under the “you cant get it wrong cause everything is in flux” carpet

It’s the Master effing with her to pay her back for the half broken chameleon arch thing. 

It’s possible the Child actually existed, long dead or trapped somewhere - again, dirty mystery at the bottom of a stck-up society is a good twist. but this shouldn’t be more than another maybe in the multiple choice past not a definite answer. 

Also, i hate this line of thought but I can’t stave it off: Why is is now that the MC looks female that we get this vulnerable, passively victimized tomato surprise rather than something with an ugly but definite choice in it. 

I will probably ignore it - parts of me resents this cause “your civilization is based on a lie” could be such a good plot twist (then again the existing twists to that end from the classics and End of Time do enough rly) but if i have to choose between that and the basic meaning of the character....

#Doctor Who #timeless child #chris chibnall

[oceanmonsters]

thoughts on “tall girl”

I’m gonna make another post actually going into detail (edit: made post here) about some of the points that really bothered me (because I had a Lot of thoughts while watching this) this is just an overview & what I was thinking while actually watching the film:

movie about a straight white girl opening with Make Me Feel by Janelle Monáe playing...........

the movie is going so hard straight off the bat with the “Jodi is alienated and unaccepted by society because of her height” with the parallel being made between Jodi and the character in the book

“You think your life is hard” god I was really trying to go into this movie with an open mind but literally within the first 5 minutes they’re doing exactly what I predicted and making it seem like being tall is literally the biggest source of oppression ever. Like yes, her life is harder than it would be if she was average height but she’s still a rich cis straight white girl. That doesn’t mean she can’t have problems but there are SO MANY people with lives harder than hers. This line was so tone deaf that it’s so hard to give the rest of the movie a chance.

“How’s the weather up there” is literally being treated as if it’s a slur. Like yes it’s annoying but it’s really not that deep.

this school seems very racially diverse which is usually a good thing but when you’re framing the white girl as having the biggest problems and being picked on / harassed by everyone else, it’s really not...

the scene with the mom taking about her “problems” in high school for being so beautiful and popular and asking Jodi if that counts as adversity and her being like ‘what the fuck, is this what she really thinks adversity is’ is literally a metaphor for me watching this movie rn

her friend Jack is Sam from American Vandal and that’s not relevant to the plot but I keep thinking of his name as Sam now

Sam: He might not even be smart

Stig: *writes the molecular formula of the molecule drawn for which literally all you have to do is count the number of atoms of each type, and happened to recognise the molecule

Sam: oh NO what’s he DOING fuck I’m screwed he’s a genius he’s literally the PERFECT GUY

also is the movie really trying to tell me Jodi is the tallest person in her whole school? There are NO guys taller than her? Because my school was definitely smaller than most American schools and there were definitely at least 5 guys in my year taller than 6’

most of the mean girls making fun of & laughing at Jodi are WOC which really feels wrong...

why is he talking about c-sections what the fuck that was so creepy!

why is Jodi acting like just because she’s tall she somehow has some sort of claim to Stig over Kimmy... like I know Kimmy was horrible to her and now she’s dating the guy she likes which sucks but Jodi’s not entitled to Stig’s affections and he clearly likes Kimmy back but she’s acting like Stig is rightfully hers or smth

Sam is the best thing about about this movie so far, like his character is annoying but he’s actually not bland and is somewhat amusing to watch

also I literally can’t remember his character’s name, they just call him Dunkers or Dunkleman, they haven’t mentioned his first name since they first introduced him so I’m just gonna keep calling him Sam

he just kissed her even though he has a girlfriend... Jodi, run away girl

why is she enabling her sister’s extreme dieting?? This is a teen movie, they should really not be normalising this

I don’t know if it’s because of Griffin’s acting or because of how bland the other characters are so far but Sam is actually my favourite character so far even though he’s annoying and is actively trying to sabotage their relationship... like at least he has personality

also she keeps going on about how tall girls never get the guy or aren’t considered attractive or whatever but she’s had 3 GUYS be interested in her throughout the course of the movie

this kissing scene is making me very uncomfortable... like it’s sooooo zoomed in on their faces to show how they’re all looking at each other

who let Sam just come into her room while she’s sleeping???

he’s sitting on her bed and watching her hello????

he’s now weirdly touching her hair

SHE FUCKIN DECKED HIM SHKSHDKSJ and he deserved it

also this has been bothering me for a while but why does this kid wear so many rings. Who made this style choice bc it adds nothing to his character and imo just looks weird

I’ve also been noticing this for a few scenes but her house is SUPER nice, damn. Like she’s definitely rich, which makes the “You think your life is hard?” comment even more tone deaf.

okay Sam’s actually redeemed himself, if your friend wouldn’t charge at someone way bigger than them with a fucking crate for being an asshole to you are they even your friend

although DAMN if he’d actually hit him with that crate he could have seriously injured him, he was going straight for the head

why was everyone cheering so much for that bland, cheesy speech that was all about her. If I were in that crowd I’d just be like “girl get down & let us enjoy our dance, jesus.” Like realistically hardly anyone would be invested or really care about what she has to say because they literally don’t know or care about her. The movie’s acting like she’s known by everyone in the school, when in reality while people would recognise her they probably really don’t care that much.

also yes, some people in her school are assholes but I refuse to believe that the majority of her school constantly going on about her height - especially if she’s been at the school for a long time, they should be well past used to it by now. Most people in the crowd probably literally just don’t care about her at all and just want this to be over

this guy carried his shit around in a milk crate for all this time JUST IN CASE she ever wanted to kiss him?? I honestly don’t know how to feel about this because on one hand that’s a really extra level of dedication, which I somewhat respect but on the other hand... it’s just way too much

I literally feel nothing for this couple at all - I like Sam but as a couple, I wasn’t rooting for them or particularly happy or satisfied when they got together. Also, they didn’t show Jodi liking him at all up until this point. He was in love with her but there was no indication that she had any kind of feelings for him whatsoever. I guess it could be one of those situations where something happens and you see them in a whole new light and realise that you’ve been overlooking them the whole time but I feel like the timespan between her realising this and then getting together was way too short for me to actually care about them as a couple because for like 98% of the movie the attraction was completely one sided. If they’d shown her starting to have feelings for him earlier in the movie, e.g. when he started dating Liz, and shown her feeling jealous or upset or anything that indicates she actually does have underlying feelings for him but is scared to date him because of the height difference or whatever, I think I would’ve found the romance way more believable.

Also the characters of colour are so underdeveloped & sidelined in this movie - there’s Fareeda, who is literally just a walking “angry black girl”+”sassy supportive black friend” stereotype. She has no other development throughout this entire film. We literally know nothing about her other than that she’s Jodi’s best friend and always sticks up for / supports her even though she’s clearly ungrateful. Kimmy is a one dimensional caricature of a Mean Girl with apparently nothing else that matters to her but being a dick to Kimmy for no reason and being popular and being Homecoming Queen. There’s literally no reason given for why she hates Jodi so much either, because she’s never shown being awful to anyone else - she just really has it out for Jodi. And apart from Fareeda, the only named characters of colour only exist to be rejected romantic interests for the white characters and have no purpose or personality beyond this.

Overall I wouldn’t say this was the worst movie I’ve watched but I disliked it more than a lot of objectively worse movies I’ve watched - it was definitely one of the least enjoyable and most frustrating movies I’ve ever watched. I was hoping that even though the premise seemed dumb it would still be a cute, enjoyable teen movie - but they focused so much on how much supposed adversity she faced and how difficult life is for a tall girl that it’s hard to focus on anything else. Honestly I think that if they’d just cut out all of the dialogue about how hard life was for her, about adversity, about how “tall girls don’t get happy endings” or whatever, the movie could actually have been somewhat enjoyable with the rest of the plot being the same. It could’ve just been about a taller-than-average girl who feels insecure about her height trying to date a tall guy but realising her best friend is actually the right guy for her - and realising that it’s not the world that’s holding her back, it’s actually her own insecurities. My opinions on the quality of the plot and romance are obviously just my opinions and you obviously don’t have to agree with them but I don’t think you can deny how objectively tone deaf the premise is and how the characters of colours are basically sidelined and only exist to support the white character’s storylines, which is why I’m definitely putting this movie in the Never Watch Again pile.

#tall girl #tall girl spoilers #movie review #kind of #it’s not really a review it’s just an outpouring of my thoughts but it’s still Reviewing the movie