#Also the movie is kinda a mess where you can tell that there was corporate meddling.

[emuanon34]

The duet between the main hero and villain in Disney’s Wish sounds like a love song out of context and I hope to god someone makes a Jack Frost X Toothiana or Jelsa or Jackunzel AMV.

[msmarvelouswinchester]

Love In Sin

Chapter 4

Summary - Special Agent Winchester is forced to go undercover with his frenemy Special Agent L/N when they try to track down a notorious drug dealer. How will Y/N and Dean complete their task? Will their relationship worsen or will new feelings emerge between them?

Pairing - AU Detective!Dean Winchester x Reader

Series Warning - Angst, Slow burn, Fluff, Implied Smut, Mentions of crime and drug, Swearing.

Chapter Warning - Slow Burn and a teeny tiny bit of angst.

Word Count - 2.5k+

Square Filled - Diner Food ( @spndeanbingo )

A/N - Beta'd by the lovely @deanwanddamons

Spn divider by the talented @talesmaniac89

Series Masterlist

My Masterlist

“How's the preparation for the party going?” Dean asked as he poked his head into the room where you were sitting on the floor, a mass of utter destruction around you.

“Woah sweetheart, it looks like you fought a war. What the hell happened?” Dean asked.

“I am exhausted, cranky and I am tired of putting up these damn streamers,” your hair was a mess, you were beyond tired and you needed coffee in your system. And you were also hungry.

“You should have called me. Y/N/N, let me help you,” Dean said and took a bunch of streamers in his hands.

“No Winchester, leave those. You have already helped me enough during unpacking. I should be able to put up a little decorations in the house. I am a special Agent for fucks sake.”

“Now I get it. Come on,” Dean said and pulled you up onto your feet.

“Where? Dean, we have the party tomorrow and I have so much to do! Ugh, who tells you to arrange a party the day after you move into a house?” you grumbled.

“Apparently the executive director of the bureau,” Dean chuckled, “And I am taking you out for a walk. You need food and coffee in you and neither of us are in the mood to cook.”

“How do you know I need coffee and food?” You narrowed your eyes at him.

“I have eyes, sweetheart,” Dean smirked at you, “I know how grumpy you are when you are hungry. You can’t even function properly.”

Dean was right. Food really lifts up your mood. You both went out for a walk and came across a little diner in the area. It was small but beautiful.

“One burger with fries, an apple pie divided in two and two cups of black coffee please,” Dean ordered.

“Coming right up sir,” a young blonde girl responded from behind the counter.

You and Dean took a seat at the diner.

“Why are we even arranging a party, what's the reason?” You asked.

“Just moved in, new house. A....a housewarming party?” Dean said deep in thought.

“That….sounds appropriate.”

“So it's settled then. A housewarming party,” Dean said, a small smile playing on his lips.

“Alright. Since I'm married to you, I should know some stuff about you just so I don't stutter when people ask me about my own husband. Tell me about yourself - where are your parents? What are your hobbies, other than watching the movie Die Hard on repeat?” you said.

“Hey, the Die Hard movie is a classic. You should learn to appreciate good films. As you know my name’s Dean Winchester, no middle name,” Dean smirked, “I have a younger brother, Sam who is a lawyer. He is engaged to this girl named Jessica-”

“Wait! Jessica? As in Jessica Moore? I think I know her. Maybe I went to high school with her,” you said thinking aloud.

“Small world,” Dean gave you a tiny shrug, “My parents are still together. My dad, John Winchester owns a garage and my mom, Mary Winchester owns a coffee shop near my parents’ house. My life's pretty boring. Tell me about yourself.”

“Well you already know a lot about me because apparently ‘you have eyes’,” you chuckled, “but my name is Y/N M/N L/N, I do have a middle name. I have two brothers named Michael and Gabriel, I am the youngest. My Mom and Dad are still together too. My Dad, Y/D/N works at a corporate office and my Mom Y/M/N used to teach at a primary school. So my life's pretty boring too.”

“Here's your order,” the server interrupted your conversation by placing three plates on your table, “and here's your coffee.”

The girl kept eyeing Dean. You cleared your throat as you saw him turning towards the waitress with a stupid smirk on his face. You took his hands and entangled your fingers with his, making him jump and look back at you.

“Nothing else,” you said in a cold voice surprising the girl and Dean. The girl walked away from your table quickly.

“Jealousy is a bad colour on you sweetheart,” Dean said to you in a cocky tone.

“Why would I be jealous? I am not jealous,” you replied but that was a big, fat lie. A switch had been flipped as soon as you saw that waitress ogling Dean. Maybe you were jealous.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said with a stupid smirk plastered on his face.

“I was not jealous but I think you should try to keep it in your pants if you want this cover to work,” you pointed out to him.

“Ooh, an affair, maybe it will spice things up a bit,” he winked.

“Dean,” you glared at him as he raised his hands in defence.

“So,” Dean said stabbing the piece of pie with a fork, “Any past relationships I should know about?”

“No,” You said after swallowing the piece of burger - the food was so good, “why should I tell you about my past relationships?”

“Let's see, I am your husband and I think I should know about your ex boyfriends...ex flings.”

“Fake husband. How many times do I have to remind you?”

“Okay, keep your secrets to yourself. I was just trying to make some small talk,” he shrugged.

“God you're so nosy. Fine,” you said biting into a single fry, “I don't have many ex-boyfriends or ‘flings’ as you may say, but I was in a serious relationship with a guy named Cain for almost three years but...uh-then we broke up and now he..he is just a bad memory. What about you?”

“Kinda the same. Had a few serious relationships. The last one was with a girl named Lisa. After two years of dating we realised we weren't made for each other so we broke up - it was an amicable breakup,” Dean said.

“No one night stands? Girls would kill to have a one night stand with you,” you said.

“Will you kill to have a one night stand with me?” He asked, making you choke on your food.

“W-what?” You said after regaining your composure.

“Just saying. We have the arrangement - you and I are already married. You can experience the full package if you want too,” Dean smirked.

“N-no, thanks,” you said and gulped down a glass of water. This man will be the death of you.

“So, tell me about Cain. I mean I have to live upto your expectations.”

“Trust me, you don't want to be like Cain,” you said, swallowing hard. You didn't want to speak about the topic of Cain, he was just a bad memory, no scratch that, the worst memory of your life.

“Did he hurt you?” Dean asked, his voice soft.

“No.” You looked down at your plate, suddenly finding it too interesting.

“He hurt you, didn't he?” Dean clenched his jaw.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in my past relationships? It's not important to our job. We are work colleagues, let's just keep it that way,” you said and abruptly left the table and went out of the diner.

You didn't know why you lashed out at Dean like that. Maybe because you were still not ready to talk about Cain. No one knew why you guys broke up - not even your parents, but Dean was just trying to talk to you as a friend. Now he was going to think of you as an overdramatic bitch. You buried your face into your hands as you heard footsteps approaching you.

“Y/N? I am sorry for what happened back there. I-I definitely crossed a line I wasn't supposed to cross. You're right - we are work colleagues, let's keep it that way,” Dean told you, “just remember whatever Cain did, you don't deserve it.”

You looked up to him and saw him staring at you.

“Come on, let's go back to the house. We have a lot of work to do,” he said and snaked his arms across your waist, making you jump a bit.

“Just to keep the cover,” Dean whispered into your ears. You nodded but you'd be lying if you said that your heart didn't skip a beat when he pulled you closer to him.

You opened your mouth to speak, but you were interrupted by the ping of your phone, which indicated you had received a new text.

“Oh look at that. Now what does Mr. Singer need? A BBQ party in our backyard?” Dean said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“According to trustful, internal sources, the right hand man of Crowley is apparently one of our neighbours,” you said reading the text as you saw the gears turning in Dean's head.

“So we gotta be cautious at the party. One slip, and our entire cover will be blown,” Dean said, immediately slipping into the serious work mode which you loved.

“Let's go and meet the neighbours then, husband,” you smirked at him.

“After you, sweetheart,” he grinned back at you.

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

Feedback is appreciated!

[atamascolily]

Lily liveblogs: “Resistance Reborn,” part four

When we last left off, Finn and Poe and friends were about to go to a birthday party for one of Maz's smugger friends who has the list macguffin they're after. Please note they're not actually crashing this party for once - Maz got them actual invitations, lol.

Meanwhile, Bratt the Brat comes back to the office and beats Yama to a pulp, only to be taken aback when his superiors commend her for her loyalty in reporting Monti's theft. But he's offered a chance to prove his loyalty if he can fix the mess, even though he's still in denial about Yama and Monti's true allegiances because he’s a sexist asshole.  

The party is awesome - ocean and fish and rich people and smugglers, with the First Order providing security (??). Poe and Finn eat a bunch of sea-themed canapes and banter. It's delightful and I want entire fics of this instead of, like, three pages. They had to bring presents, and one of the other members of Poe's team got the gifts, so it's a surprise to him too when the birthday girl opens it, but it's a dwarf lylek, a spiky hermit-crab/praying mantis creature that stays small "as long as you don't feed it flesh".

The guest of honor is delighted because--who would have guessed?--she used to be an entomologist! I love her, and I'm kinda sad she's a throwaway character, because she's a member of the Collective, the Corellian techie version of antifa, which sounds wayyyy more interesting than the actual book.  

(I was also hoping that the lylek would start devouring canapes when the First Order inevitably breaks up the party and the shooting starts, only for the lylek to get HUGE and start going after stormtroopers... but alas, no, that doesn't happen either. DON'T TEASE ME LIKE THAT, OKAY??)

There's an auction to get the list macguffin as a fundraiser for the Collective and Poe is trying to figure out what the trick is because they're rapidly running out of cash. CorSec breaks up the party in the name of the First Order, which is weird because I thought the FO was providing security, but whatever.

Wedge, Norra, Snap, and Tasa Nasz, the ex-Imperial badass, go to the shipyards to steal ships for the Resistance. There's a Baleen-class freighter, and I love it. They run into Yama Dee, badly injured from Bratt's beating, and we learn that Yama is 15, so Bratt isn't just an abusive asshole, he's a child abuser, ughhh. Our heroes are rightly incensed and vow to help Yama, who is uniquely positioned to give them what they need.

Leia and Rey are sitting around on Ryloth, when... Rey has a bad feeling seconds before the First Order starts taking over (for totally unrelated reasons) and the Resistance forces have to GTFO.

Back at the party, the birthday girl is devastated because her husband was shot in front of her, so she agrees to give Poe the list macguffin for revenge (it's hidden in her jewelry in the form of a snake, which is a nice touch). They jump into a pool to escape the FO, and Finn hauls them out. Poe is afraid she's lost the necklace, but it turns out to come when called, which everyone agrees is awesome.

Bratt attacks the FO officer accusing him of treason and runs back to his office to track down information about Monti the Traitor--only to find Wedge and company with Yama and the escaped prisoners (including Leia's old political friend). Yama confronts Bratt, who denies everything, and Yama is appalled when she realizes she's parrotting his exact same arguments, that she is becoming the same as her abuser.

They fight, only to be interrupted by Teza, who is unsympathetic when she learns Bratt is the one who beat Yama in the first place. She tells Bratt he has a choice: either let Yama continue the beatdown, or she shoots him. Bratt is aghast at the idea of letting Yama beat him, so Teza shoots him and he bleeds out on the floor in astonishment while everyone else walks out. Leia's senatorial friend tries to offer him a hand up, but Bratt bats it away and dies alone and confused.

(Please note that the main reason the ex-Imperial comes along seems to be so she can be the agent of divine justice without our "good" heroes having to get their hands dirty. For all that ST fans like to talk about "edginess" and "grey Jedi" and "moral complexity" in TLJ, this is still Star Wars and our heroes don't shoot (usually) shoot people at point-blank range and leave them to die even when they're assholes.)

Wedge and company meet up with Poe and company, who have lost their own ship, so they steal a FO shuttle and escape with the prisoners and the full list. Since Ryloth is no longer safe, Poe makes a deal with the Collective for a safe haven in exchange for the rest of their credits.

Leia and her old friend have a tearful reunion. Poe makes an inspiring speech about scattering to the winds to become the spark that will burn the FO down. I don't know how much sense that makes in terms of strategy and tactics, but everybody is impressed. Poe has overcome all his angst about Crait and is happy to be--in charge? Second in command? I have no idea how the chain of command even works right now.

Wedge and Norra leave to do their own stuff; Snap wants to go with them, but Poe won't let him. Finn says he's coming with Poe, and that's Rey's cue to show up.

"Where are we going?" Both men turned to find Rey, looking expectant.

Finn grinned. "I didn't want to ask."

Rey grinned back. "You didn't have to."

The two friends laughed, leaning in to touch shoulders in acknowledgment. Rey looked at Poe, eyes narrowed as if unsure. "You don't mind?"

Poe pressed a hand to his heart, giving Rey a small bow. "I'm honored."

She flushed, pleased as he'd hoped she would be.

This is great, and I love it, but this doesn't have as much emotional resonance as it could have because THIS IS LITERALLY THE SECOND TIME IN THIS BOOK THAT ALL THREE OF THEM HAVE BEEN IN THE SAME ROOM WITH EACH OTHER AND REY AND POE HAVE SPOKEN TO EACH OTHER and so it feels like... it wasn't really earned??

Leia is smiling at the three of them in satisfaction because "the Resistance is in good hands" and "she's got us".

Poe slung an arm around Finn's shoulders and pulled Rey in close on the opposite side.

"That's right, Poe said. She's got us.

"Now let's go and save the galaxy."

Again, this is all A++ good, but I don't feel like any of this has been earned. At all. Like, does Poe know anything about why Leia believes in Rey, what Rey can do? They're just all friends now because of Finn even though Poe and Rey barely know each other?? Is he this affectionate with everyone?? I don't mind this closeness, but... it would have been nice to have more of this earlier so it doesn't feel so out of the blue and forced.

Also, what did this book accomplish? So the Resistance has some ships now. It has a few more fighters, they freed a bunch of influential prisoners from the New Republic that the First Order had taken into custody, and they have a list of current and future targets to warn. And they're not dead yet, so that's good.

But Leia and Rey barely got to do anything in this book, Rose is barely there at all, and Finn is only tangentially involved at the end. Most of the plot features Poe, Wedge, and occasionally other characters like Bratt, Snap, and Dross Squadron.

So despite the marketing, which makes it sound like this is an All-Resistance Adventure featuring our main trio, I would say Poe is the protagonist, because he's the only one with a character arc: moving from depressed and angsty over the failed mutiny at Crait to letting go of his failures and moving on to be a leader. There's also a smaller arc with Wedge moving from retired warrior and active farmer back to warrior again, but it's much less nuanced.

Outside of that, though, the book feels like it's tugging in too many direction and not going anywhere near the ones I find most interesting. There are lots of characters I'm expected to care about who are not in the films, and little in the narrative itself makes me want to. (The only reason I know about Leia's friend, for instance, is because I read a summary of Bloodline on Wookieepeedia.) It feels like Disney made a very deliberate decision to make all the plotlines 100% more convoluted and confusing than they needed to be, just so you'd read/buy all the supplementary material, and that is a... choice, I guess. But it makes me grumpy.

Honestly, if I wasn't writing a ST fix-it fic, I wouldn't have bothered with this. I found Resistance Reborn to be adequate, but mostly unexceptional, and occasionally frustrating. The few really delightful bits are when major movie characters are together in the same room, but that is weirdly and woefully rare, and I honestly do not understand what the story group/Disney was thinking here in not making those the meat of the book.

Question: who is Disney's target audience for this book? I'm honestly not sure, and I'm not sure they know, either, and I think this book demonstrates that. Which is... really weird for a billion-dollar corporation intent on milking every last cent out of the franchise, that's all. I don't get it. 

TL;DR:

The Good:

Stormpilot feels (brotp or otp depending on your preferred ship)

the Collective (Corellian techie antifa) 

Poe’s fabulous hair

fancy dress party heist

Wedge’s garden and space chickens

barely any mention of Kylo Ren whatsoever

The Meh:

loads and loads of characters that are not in the movies and therefore hard to keep track of or care

macguffin plot macguffin

cooler plot threads and story ideas are teased and never followed up on (in this book, at least)

The WTF:

movie characters barely interact with each other

assuming they have a role at all

does any of this matter?

feels like filler

[chiawrites]

Being a novice journalist and working as Eddie’s rookie would include;;

** GENDER NEUTRAL UWU **

You both met through Lewis. Obviously. 

You were applying for a job, but considering Lewis knew you from one of the cases he took on back in his reporter days at your college, you didn’t need to do much- just hand him your portfolio and be on your way 

It wasn’t that simple. 

Eddie, in all his glorious self, was sprawled on the office chair, feet propped on his boss’ desk, when you went in

Lewis introduced you to your new mentor-slash-partner, and immediately you recognized him

Squeaking fan noises ensued (“Oh my god you’re internet famous” “I can’t believe I’m meeting you right now, holy shit” “You took down like five corporate companies through your reporting,, dude you’re a legend”)

Not long after the ten minute rant about the few pieces Eddie had done on food market conspiracies, you were both oh-so-generously gifted a case where three people had gone missing. 

Being investigative reporters, (self-proclaimed but still) the two of you decided to go do some digging

You both stayed up all night at the office, neck deep in takeout and case files

It continued like this for a few weeks

You and Eddie became friends pretty quickly 

In the mornings, you were in charge of fuel- you got coffee. Black with three sugars for Eddie, double double for you. Eddie was in charge of sustenance, namely from the doughnut shop he lived extremely close to. 

You despised his motorcycle, only because it wasn’t necessarily a two-seater and you were a little extremely paranoid that you’d tumble off the back and be left behind 

Nonetheless, that bike was kinda sexy, you weren’t gonna lie 

aNYWAYS, 

You refused to be in the shots for his actual videos. A few times he insisted and you awkwardly sat there, pen and pad in hand, staring into the lens like a deer in headlights 

All the same, it was a literal honour to work alongside him 

Conspiracists and skeptics adored him

Not that you were one of them, really, you just thought he was badass 

That is, until the incident with Carlton Drake 

“I don’t understand why we have to pretend like he’s a good guy, Y/N.” “Because we want to keep our jobs.” “But people deserve to know! He’s taking people off the street and killing them. You can’t tell me to act like he’s doing good things for this country.” “Eat your McMuffin and be quiet, I’m not arguing over this.” 

You tried your best to convince him to shut up about the missing persons cases that seemed to be linked with Carlton, but Eddie Brock is NOT a quitter and of course, that led to the both of you being dragged out of the Life Foundation

Which also led to you both losing your jobs. 

He didn’t understand exactly why you had to be let off, cause you kept your mouth shut the entire interview

“They didn’t even do anything! Why the fuck are they getting let go? Lewis, c’mon. I understand kicking me off the crew but Y/L/N doesn’t deserve to be dragged down cause of me.” “Eddie, they’re guilty by association. Carlton wants everyone involved laid off. I can’t control that.” 

Of course, you mocked him for being such a humanitarian for standing up for you, but you felt terrible about it after seeing Anne give back her ring 

The two of you drifted apart. 

Skip to six months later,,

You’d gotten a new job at a TV newscast place, as an assistant/intern 

It wasn’t much, but it paid the rent. 

Oddly enough, you ran into Eddie a few months later in Mrs. Chen’s store. It was the closest convenience store to your apartment, but you’d never seen Eddie around there before. 

(It was definitely not awkward up in this bitch) 

“Hey, Eddie.” “Uh, hey Y/N.” You’d looked at your feet before meeting his eyes once again. “How are you?” You’d asked, with a lot of sympathy, and a touch of pity. He didn’t look like he was doing well, but hey- everyone hits rock bottom, right? “Fine. Fine, yeah- Just searching for another place to work right now, but I’m getting by.” 

Your heart was stuck in your throat. Nostalgia was what you were feeling. 

Slowly, you two started talking again 

Late night movie marathons (that you told yourself were entirely platonic and not at all stay-at-home dates) were your favourite loneliness cures

When Dr. Skirth hit him the fuck up, guess who was there to talk him into trying to do good and check it out 

Cause if she was lying, and there was literally nothing there, what could it hurt? Carlton already made his job go bye-bye and his fiancee too so there’s not much left to take from him

Thanks to you, he literally just went for it 

Its was like 4AM when he did 

Fuckin hell?? That man does NOT sleep 

When it was a decent time for a human being to actually be awake, you called Eddie to see how it went but you were surprised to see the line busy 

(At that point he was at home calling Skirth but uh) 

He usually prioritized your calls so you decided to go and check things out 

Bad idea. 

The door was slightly ajar, and it was a fucking meSS

“Eddie?” You’d called. He was passed out in the tub. 

You tried to shake him awake but he was knocked the fuck out and refused to open his eyes 

Whatever the hell happened there, you refused to mess with it

You swept up a bit of the tater tot fiasco but you were about to be late for work so you bolted 

The next day you were called up by Anne

How the raging frick she got your number was an absolute mystery to you 

Although she could’ve just called your workplace and squeezed it out of the secretary. Anne is a fucking dominatrix, she can get anything if she demands hard enough 

“Y/N?” “That’s me.” “You and Eddie are close, right?” “I guess so?” “Can you come down to the hospital, please?” 

You flipped your shit 

What kind of trouble did that man get himself into this time 

He didn’t, in fact, get himself into anything but the MRI machine, which he proceeded to violently convulse in under your panicked stare 

“Get him out of there. DID YOU HEAR ME? I SAID OUT, NOW.” 

The whole parasite thing scared the shit out of you but making a big deal of it would probably put Eddie under even more stress. 

You took him home

And he just flopped on the couch and stayed there 

Fast forward to the point where he goes AGAIN to the damn hospital, but instead of Anne being Venom’s prey, it’s you. 

Which means the kiss was weirder than it should’ve been but hey,

You enjoyed it more than you’d cared to admit

Luckily after the incident, when Eddie got hired back to do the show, you got hired back too

Which meant you were once again the person behind the camera, and Eddie was the one in front, living his best life 

uwu feel free to add on more in the comments 

[sol1056]

git along little nonnies

Got a whole bunch of you on related themes, so I’m just gonna do this all at once: a bunch of questions about DW, spinoffs, merchandise, business, management, support (and protest) and whatnot. In no particular order.

Ok there are petitions and peaceful boycotts directed at DW but problem is they aren’t addressing the EPs and things they, not DW, did so how are we to sign them, how to handle this when this could at best confuse the situation and not give any results and at worst, make matters even worse about what we want regarding DW addressing things? 

Here’s what companies care about: money. Everything else is gravy.

If you want a corporation to pay attention to your complaints, then you need to figure out their sources of income, and find a way to threaten that. If the social reprobation is high enough, damage to the brand can translate into lost sales, but the tempest required to make that happen must be much, much larger than anything I’ve seen the fandom manage. 

I’ve been saying this all along: voices are far more powerful than signatures. If twenty thousand people wrote or called in, and said what they liked vs what upset them, that would have a far greater impact. Certainly a lot more than a list of names with no emotion beyond a request that may not even be something DW can, or would, fulfill.  

And don’t even get me started on mailing stuff in. Cute, but hardly actionable.  

Do you know what kind of contracts DW sign, as in, are they obligated to air all seasons, can they choose not to air them, do the companies they work with (netflix, wep) have a say or more say than them? Who gets the last word? Is airing all seasons squarely on DW or more? 

As I’m not a corporate lawyer employed by any of the signatories, I can’t tell you what the contract stipulated. What I can tell you is that a contract of the magnitude of the DW-WEP-Netflix agreement probably had a dissertation worth of riders covering the different types of possible defaults or breaches, and the penalties for each. Additionally, the contract also likely covered what constituted ‘satisfactory delivery’ of the product. 

To take it down to a really simple level: you place an order at a restaurant. You expect to get it, eat it, and pay for it. You don’t expect to be told, “hey, we burnt your steak and we’re out of butter for your sweet potatoes, so have some green beans instead,” and then be told you still owe the full amount, anyway. 

Netflix wouldn’t settle for ordering (and paying for) something never delivered, anymore than you would. Sure, any corporation worth their over-inflated stock options would try --- but that’s the point of contracts, to make sure they can’t. 

Netflix paid, DW delivers, end of story.  

 ...do you think ppl in charge didn't think EPs would tell they made changes and also thought they'd manage to bury it? And then they got in trouble and DW is going thru changes for that reason? -waves at DW goings on and silence.

I got lost in all the pronouns, there. Who’s the first ‘they,’ the EPs or DW execs? Is the second ‘they’ referring to the same as the first? So... I’m not really sure what you’re positing, but if the ‘DW is going through changes’ is implying DW’s got a shakeup and/or is promoting its head-of-TV to president and that’s somehow connected to two newbie EPs screwing up?

I’d say the chances are so infinitesimal as to be nearly in the negative. (I should also note, the press release listed successful shows Cohn oversaw, yet oddly did not include VLD.) DW is not a three-person start up; it has stakeholders and a board and a C-suite to satisfy. Cohn got that promotion ‘cause she’s got a track record going back thirty years, most recently growing DW’s TV division from 8 to 800 in five years. 

Most corporations tend to announce their new CEO or President like someone woke up that morning and went, hey, I’ve got a great idea. Truth is, it’s usually in the works for at least a year, sometimes several years, or more. The only thing that has me side-eyeing the announcement is the silence around who’ll fill Cohn’s previous position. 

But that’s again less to do with a single series, and more to do with what it says about DW as a whole, business-wise. 

What meaningful changes could the new president Margie Cohn make that would be different than the last one? Also I'm sorry if your getting a bunch of Voltron/DW questions lately, you just seem to be the most knowledgeable person on this platform.

I’d be willing to bet I’m far from the most knowledgeable person; I’m just someone not bound by an NDA, and curious enough to do a bit of digging and jaded enough to talk about (most) of what I find. 

A president can have immense impact on a company’s direction; that’s kinda why they exist, to set that high-level strategy. That said, Cohn will be bound by all contracts signed by her predecessor. The TV side (barring someone filling the shoes she left) will probably continue as it was. The theatrical side (which she’s taking over) will be where we’ll probably see any major changes. 

And even those aren’t likely to be on films currently in production. Hell, given theatrical animation can take up to five years, I’m not sure that’d show much change, either. Look instead to changes in investors, new deals, and new properties. 

What do you think DW will do about a sequel if there’s really no bible? Theres tons of plot holes & abandoned storylines. VLD will never feel satisfying, and fans already argued with different interpretations based on conflicting content, without a nice satisfying explanation...

I know this is the first of a three-part ask, but I’m skipping the rest because the only answer possible is to your very first question: the bible doesn’t matter. 

Any new series --- even a continuation --- will construct its own bible. Same as we’d do in fandom: they’ll patch together what they can, fill in blanks as they need, and gloss the rest, or retcon it outright. Even if there were a bible, diligently followed, that doesn’t mean the next series is automatically beholden to it. Some franchises would care (ie Star Wars) while others might let a reboot mess with the details (ie Star Trek). 

For every continuation, there’s gradations in between, since otherwise what’s the interest for creative minds, if you’re obligated to follow someone else’s script exactly? So, no. The absence of a story bible doesn’t preclude the next iteration making its own, as it needs, to whatever extent it requires. 

I was wandering around the hot topic online store, and i noticed a shirt that raised a few flags and questions. it's the 'Voltron Location' shirt. it has all the paladins in different places in a star globe chart thing? with what might possibly be planet designations. plus Lance is the only one not inside his blue colored bubble. Keith is in Red and Shiro in Black again. it's interesting at least.

Nearly all the shirts use the same base images, just changed up. It feels a little like someone handed a designer a half-dozen images with a request for forty-something designs --- and now HT is just throwing them all at the wall to see what sticks (or sells). 

HT’s stuff has been pretty consistent, from what I’ve heard: Shiro is Black, Keith is Red, etc. Considering the t-shirts seem to be selling out regularly (along with various other sidelines), I’d say someone is savvy as to the fact that the segment of fandom spending the most money is also the segment that prefers the S1/S2 lineup. 

If that’s what customers want, it’s smart business for DW to provide.

(Yes, that applies on more than one level.)

There are VLD comic books being released by LionForge Comics, are those considered canon? Do LM and JDS have any involvement? They take place before Season 7and8 but I don't wanna support the original EPs.

Every fandom has its own stand on what counts as canon. Sometimes (especially with adaptations) you’ll find fandoms being explicit as to whether they’re book or movie (ie HP and LotR). I expect the same will eventually shake out in VLD’s fandom, too. 

From everything I’ve heard, Hedrick and Iverson were handed the comics and ran with it. I suppose that would argue for seeing the comics as canon, being they were written by people also writing the main series... but from what I can tell, it’s one-way. The show affected the comics, but nothing in the comics ever affected the series.

That said, your purchases have nothing to do with the original EPs. All you’re doing is telling DW you like the VLD-iteration of Voltron.

What are your thoughts on the final vld poster? I feel like it’s missing the end. Allura is randomly staring back into nothing.

It’s a clever idea to do a poster for each season, but it’s not something I’ve ever paid any attention to, really. If it were drawn by the head writer? That might mean the artist had more insight than, say, a storyboarder or animator. But even then... cool picture, still not-canon. I’m only interested in canon.

Do you think that Voltron was rushed purposely by the EP's. [...] Wouldn't this effect the quality of, well, everything? I feel as if they got frustrated with the show at that point and just wanted out.

Dude. There are times I sit here and just stare into space, bewildered yet again not just at the thought of 39 episodes released in one year --- but doing that with 26 as a last-minute cut-and-paste rearrangement. All I can tell you is that what I’ve seen from animation people and aficionados (and friends) is that three full seasons in one calendar year is just bonkers. 

If DW hadn’t wanted the schedule that packed, the EPs aren’t the ones getting the say. That’s a DW-Netflix thing. I really wonder whether DW used VLD as a guinea pig. TH went a year between S1 and S2, and the numbers slumped badly. Perhaps DW wanted to know if more episodes, more often, would keep fan interest high? DW has experienced execs, but they’re all from broadcast; how you arrange and time things in the brave new world of binge-watching is a completely different beast. 

So, it’s possible it was less of a rush job to get the show out, and more from a desire to see what'd happen to release so much, so close together. 

I still think it’s a bonkers schedule, though.

"Relaunch the whole property" sounds like they won't continue expanding the whole vld universe and they'll make a new itineration. Though if they do a spin-off it'd likely be on the vld universe surrounding the new "Legendary Defenders" from the epilogue. And "especially given the response" do you think after the negative response from s8, wouldn't be better for WEP to not keep working with Dreamworks? Or maybe they need to clean their brand from vld fiasco? What can you say about all of this?

I can say you might try re-reading, because boy is that a radical interpretation of the text. Remember, Jeremy was speaking before S8, and all indication is that he was caught off-guard as much as the fans. Re-read in light of Jeremy (at the time) appearing to expect S8 to be a crowd-pleaser.   

...I'm becoming more confident in my belief that DW has something planned for Voltron. I mean they are still heavily promoting the show, LionForge is still publishing Voltron comics, and merchandise is still being made. These don't seem like the actions of a company trying to get people to forget a show. 

You’re not wrong. Up to the last few days of 2018, DW gave every indication they wanted S8 quietly buried. Nothing they’ve done since has fit that pattern --- including the anomaly of failing to announce their 2019 series. Something is going on, that’s for certain. 

Did DW really just throw the VAs to the wolves [for] three days? and there's still no official stance? One panel was enough. They had [the VAs] take the heat for them? But thankfully fans felt sorry for them? Which could also have been the goal, shut the fans up [with] the VAs of the characters who got the worst treatment and who love their characters ... Yes DW this really makes me trust you /sarcasm/

I don’t think that was the original plan. Let’s pretend DW released its 2019 schedule via press release in the first few days of January, and among those was an announcement of a VLD sequel or spinoff, coming late 2019. 

People wouldn’t be fussing over putting the VAs through three panels. They’d be complaining we didn’t get the biggest room for every panel. The majority of the fandom doesn’t trust the EPs, and is wary of DW --- really, the only ones who retain any goodwill, at this point, are the VAs. So who better than to assure a nervous fandom about the goodness of the second iteration than the VAs whose characters were most shafted by the first iteration?

What breaks this is that immediately after S8 dropped, Josh and Kimberly went silent on twitter. AJ slipped into passive-aggressive snarking; Jeremy fell off the radar and usually he’s pretty interactive with his fans. Bex pretty much wiped  VLD from her stream, possibly including deleting older tweets. Neil tried to engage and made a hash of it, bless his heart. 

Josh and Kimberly are consummate professionals who reliably promote the series after every season drop, but their radio silence continued for almost two weeks. This wasn’t the first season that came saddled with controversy; if there was a time to go quiet, it was after S7. Something else was going on. 

I have strong suspicions backed by research, but if I’m right, I’d be stepping on a major legal landmine. In the interest of not getting blown up, I’ll only say that the VAs appearing for those three panels (and their low-key and mostly diplomatic hedging around VLD’s conclusion) was a good sign that all parties involved are willing to work things out.   

[DW was] quick to handle the Season 7 backlash and have stayed mum on what is arguably a much worse reaction to the 8th and final season.

and

I believe the S8 of voltron we got was not the original ending we were supposed to get and highly edited. My question is why? What was the point of changing the original ending? [The] radio silence from DW and the cast is driving me nuts. I wish DW would make a statement.

DW is in an interesting place. Its TV side is barely five years old, but dominated by execs with long-time broadcast experience, predating vibrant interactivity afforded by platforms like twitter, tumblr, or instagram. DW’s background as a theatrical company also seems to incline it away from any ongoing engagement with the audience. It releases a movie and by the time that hits theaters, DW is onto the next thing. 

It’s a strong contrast with production studios like Zagtoon (Miraculous), who penned an open letter to their fandom about production delays. Or little studios like Wonderstorm (The Dragon Prince) whose deft use of twitter and tumblr sets their brand apart. Or Federator (Castlevania), with their witty marketing campaigns and willingness to engage with fans. Even Disney was willing to be open about its errors with Tiana, and to make clear how it was striving to do better --- so there’s no excuse that only small studios do such outreach.

My guess is that DW's core leadership is from the school of business in which admitting a mistake is tantamount to ritual suicide. Don’t blink first, or maybe the rule is never let them see you sweat, but whatever it is, DW is turning into a textbook case of how silence can damage a brand. 

Companies have multiple avenues to reach customers directly, now. Our modern technologies are a two-way street, and good companies leverage that to create not passive fandoms but active communities. It takes work, careful planning, and some level of transparency --- something old-school execs find highly uncomfortable, to be honest --- but in this day and age, those are crucial building-blocks to achieving any kind of audience loyalty.

DW isn’t going to render itself obsolete (at least not overnight), but it's on a track to end up as the studio whose work audiences only watch when there’s nothing better being offered. Unfortunately for DW, there’s a hell of a lot of other studios out there, and they're all offering something better. 

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Ant-Man (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Four (22.22% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Fourteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

It’s delightful. 

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Maggie passes with Cassie as she puts her to bed.

Female characters:

Peggy Carter.

Hope Van Dyne.

Cassie.

Maggie.

Male characters:

Howard Stark.

Hank Pym.

Scott Lang.

Peachy.

Luis.

Dale.

Kurt.

Dave.

Darren Cross.

Frank.

Paxton.

Gale.

Mitchell Carson.

Sam Wilson.

OTHER NOTES:

Dave calls Scott a pussy, and Scott is not fussed at all about accepting the attempted insult.

Ah, the old ‘wish you’d call me dad’ cliche, the most worn-out lazy way to establish an antagonistic parent/child relationship. 

“a sustainable environment of well-being”, what an excellent fascist euphemism.

Maggie is very reasonable with Scott about the conditions for seeing Cassie; it’s refreshing to not have this played as ‘harpy ex-wife refuses to let man see his child because she’s just the worst!’ Maggie has a child to look after - and has been doing so for years now while Scott was in jail - and she has every right to impose rules on how things proceed, Scott doesn’t get to just march in and have things his way ‘because she’s my daughter!’ Children are not possessions or status symbols, and this movie does a nice job of recognising that and having the adult characters recognise that and behave in reasonable and understanding ways for Cassie’s benefit rather than their own egos. Other films should take note. Also, real people.

“Yeah man, it killed DiCaprio.”

Turning lambs into goo is worse than kicking puppies. What a monster.

They do a pretty solid job with the reason for Hope not being allowed to don the suit instead. It has strong potential for seeming like flat-out sexism, the idea that a woman can’t get the job done (in universe) and that a female hero won’t sell (out universe), and while that may indeed still be the core reason, they still pull off the reasoning as if it’s genuine.

Pym’s excuse for why he never told Hope the truth about her mother’s death, on the other hand, is pretty fuckin’ weak. Tell people to stop pretending ‘I was trying to protect you’ is a reasonable explanation for lies. It’s super-high - easily Top 5 - on my list of Worst and Most Tedious Cliche Lines.

Kurt suggests that the suit is the work of gypsies and it’s...not the best line they could have picked. Something less racist instead, maybe? No?

Cross is really fixated on Pym as a father figure. It’s different. I like different.

“That’s a messed-up looking dog.”

Scott and Paxton making peace is so great. Paxton peeing in all the corners and Scott being all jealous and threatened by Paxton ‘usurping his place in the family’ would have been such a predictable cliche for them to use, and this very palatable mature adult behaviour is sooo much better. This is how you stop normalising petty possessive rivalries. 

Luis is magical, and also, mad cultured. I love it, but I love even more that they don’t hang a lantern on it, they just let it be part of his character.

Ok, I confess, this is probably gonna be a weird sort of meandering review, because I’ve had this post sitting in my drafts for two months gathering dust while I deal with the mental and physical fatigue of the first trimester of a pregnancy (it’s FUN), and now the due date for this post (pun definitely intended) is right on the horizon, so...I’m just gonna get it done, and it’ll be whatever the heck it is in the end. This is not a complex film filled with deep nuance, it’s basically just an action-y heist movie with some hand-waved scifi on top. And there’s ants. It’s not a hard film to talk about, so you’ll excuse me if it doesn’t get my very best effort. I’m kinda busy growing a human over here.

I remember a lot of grumbling and even some outrage in fandom, back when this film was announced; a lot of people upset that the MCU was bringing in a comparatively little-known and perhaps little-loved superhero like Ant-Man when they still hadn’t bothered with a single female-led film yet, and various complaints about the problematic nature of the Ant-Man character from the comics (referring, I believe, to the Hank Pym version). And then, of course, there was the doubt about whether or not an Ant-Man story was just a fucking idiotic idea in the first place, what with the questionable application of science and the even more questionable appeal of a tiny little man running around playing with ants. Expectations were not high. And yet, Ant-Man pulls through, not just with a great fun romp, but with what I consider one of the more entertaining films the MCU has churned out to date.

I have made my fair share of sour comments about previous films in the MCU and their unimaginative paint-by-numbers plots, and so what I’d like to talk about with Ant-Man is how it manages to be such a success to me despite an essentially uncomplicated story that follows a predictable narrative arc the likes of which we’ve all seen a hundred times before. The basic tenets of a heist movie are all there; the basic tenets of a good vs evil story play straight, alongside a low-key but typical redemption plot, and some plight-of-the-regular-guy vs corporate greed and warmongering, and the leading man hooks up with the leading lady in the end and proves himself as a hero to his family and all that jazz. We know every one of these story and character beats. So. Why do they work?

Let me back this up a second to talk about a couple of major-league pet peeves of mine, the one a microcosmic version of the other: firstly, when people say ‘all Marvel films are basically the same’, and secondly, the Advanced Level Faux-Intellectual Douche version of that sentiment, when people declare that ‘there’s no such thing as originality anymore! There are only seven types of story in the world anyway! Everything is derivative!’ It’s an obnoxious absence of a viewpoint that betrays a lack of imagination and a use of such broad-strokes surface-level comprehension as to be essentially meaningless. Sure, if you break down story concepts to their most fundamental core drives, you can summarise their arcs in a relatively small number of ways, and familiarity with these core concepts can provide a degree of predictability in the way things play out. But that doesn’t mean that every single version of, say, the classic Hero’s Journey is the same damn story, and therefore a useless derivation from which no entertainment or message can be gleaned. If someone asks you to tell them the plot of a movie and you just go ‘oh, it’s a Hero’s Journey’ and leave it at that, you’ve told them almost nothing about what to actually expect. The Matrix is a very, very different Hero’s Journey to The Lord of the Rings, which is a very different Hero’s Journey to Finding Nemo, which is not at all the same as Iron Man. And which of them is closest to The Odyssey, anyway? One of the most obvious differences with all of those examples is genre, and the traditional trappings which often (but not always) follow from them. Sure, the MCU films tend to all fit superhero-comic genre conventions, and some of them (particularly origin stories, as with Iron Man and Thor) may employ a lot of the same tropes while they’re at it. But does anyone really, genuinely think that Ant-Man is ‘basically the same’ as Captain America: The First Avenger? Is Guardians of the Galaxy almost indistinguishable from Black Panther? Does anyone who says ‘Marvel movies are all basically the same’ actually believe the words out of their own mouth, or do they just hope it makes them sound smart if they imply that they’re ‘above’ enjoying mainstream popcorn action?

All of this is to say, what makes Ant-Man work where other trope-heavy films fall apart? The same thing that makes literally any story ever work, and be worthwhile, whether it ‘breaks barriers’ or ‘teaches something’ or is considered ‘high art’ or not: details. Some films are too light on details, which makes them boring because they never really bother to build anything on top of those core foundations we know so well. Sometimes, the details - numerous as they might be - are too generic to have an impact, and the dull result is the same. Sometimes the details are too absurd to land, or there are too many to keep track of, or they require too much extraneous qualification to fit into the flow of the rest of the story, or they’re irrelevant to the rest of the story anyway. The thing about details? There are countless options. People come up with new ideas all the time, through the exercise of imagination or through developments and innovations in the real world. Basic, core plot arcs may be distilled to a handful of options, but story details are limitless, and the possibility of fun new combinations is always there, whether you’re inventing something entirely never-before-seen or not. The idea that you have to be shocking and unexpected to be worthwhile is ridiculous, and shepherds illogical contrivances and gimmicks without narrative cohesion or purpose much more often than it achieves something genuinely surprising with merit (and storytelling that prioritises ‘shocking twists’ is usually so busy trying to look clever it forgets to actually be clever, but, that’s another conversation). The point is, Ant-Man being a delightful film isn’t rocket science. It’s as simple as just a little forethought in the construction of its details.

As noted back near the top, the whole Ant-Man concept and its wobbly science was something that drew some doubt regarding whether or not it could be pulled off in a convincing manner; the solution to achieving that is to do more than just lean in to the idea. The film throws itself whole-heartedly into its core conceit and its tropes, and it drags us along with it to gleefully delight in the act. The story is not embarrassed by itself, it doesn’t try to keep its distance; instead, it gives us a flying ant named Antony, and a dramatic death scene for that ant. What is the point of the Pym particle science conceit if we don’t enjoy the comedic potential of an epic battle inside a briefcase, or on a child’s train set? Relevant to this also is the subject of casting choices (as much a detail-of-interest as anything; a single casting choice can legitimately make or break a film). Paul Rudd has a perfect blend of leading-man charisma and affable comedic chops; he plays Scott as a beta-personality, which is always a refreshing change-up for a lead, and one which invites other refreshing changes around him. It avoids tedious masculine antics in his interactions with other men, while encouraging balanced and respectful interactions with women; Scott never asserts himself as the boss or leader in his relationship with Luis and the rest of his crew, allowing for a smoothly-cooperative dynamic; no time or plot is wasted on pointless jostling for control of the operation with Pym; the idea that Scott needs to prove himself to the three female characters in his life - Hope, Maggie, and Cassie, each for similar but different reasons - is given legitimate weight, instead of implying that Scott and his perspective is inherently superior and correct and the onus is on the other characters to realise that, rather than being on him to live up to other people’s reasonable expectations. It should come as no surprise that the latter element is especially interesting and heartening in the context of this blog.

This is particularly good news when it comes to the kinds of relatively minor details which can make a huge difference in whether or not one reflects on a film in a positive or negative manner; the fact that the narrative supports and validates Hope’s anger, her frustration and resentment and her all-business-no-fun attitude, is vital to keeping a viewer like myself on-side with the film. Hope is never presented as someone who should ‘just loosen up’, or ‘have faith in her father’s plan’, the fact that she is denied the Ant-Man technology because Pym ‘can’t bare to risk losing her’ is offered as a reason but not as an excuse for something deeply patronising, and Scott proving that he can get the job done despite Hope’s misgivings about him is not framed as her being ‘wrong’ - her concerns were legitimate, as all her emotions across the film are, and the story never compromises on that in order to bolster another character. Whether or not Hope is well-handled is not important to the operation of the central narrative plot in a technical sense, but it means a lot in terms of delivering strong characters with satisfying arcs, and a central plot can easily fall flat if the characters participating in it don’t work well, individually or together.

I’m trying to wrap this up coherently, but it’s just as well that I disclaimered myself in the beginning because all I’ve got are frayed pieces of, probably, five other paragraphs I could waffle about. It’s not a complex film, no, but it has a surprising amount of quality details, the more I think about it, even regarding aspects of the movie that I liked less than others (Pym, for example, I did not love, but I like that the movie never tried to pass off his ‘genius’ as an excuse for him being a significantly flawed figure in the lives of most people who encountered him, often with bitter consequences. I’m also a big fan of the fact that both he and Scott have complicated but loving relationships with their daughters, considering that Hollywood has a hyper-obsession with the idea of ‘A Man And His Son’ as the beating heart of family narratives). I’m going to close this out with what may be my personal favourite refreshing detail of this movie, and that’s the mature adult relationship between Scott, Maggie, and Paxton. I mentioned it already in the notes, but honestly, how many times have we seen that toxic cliche, with the shrewish ex-wife and the terrible new man in her life, where the main character (who is Doing His Best!) has to prove through [insert plot heroics] that ex-wife is WRONG and should have stayed with him, the father of her child(ren), because did we mention, her new man is terrible and the main character is always right and good and better! In the end, ex-wife almost certainly leaves her terrible new man to get back together with the main character, because he is Doing His Best and that’s more important than actually being a stable/responsible person! The American nuclear family is the ideal! Divorce is for heathens! Y’all know that toxic plot. I can think of three different examples of it in action right off the top of my head, with no effort required. Point is, the degree to which I was utterly thrilled by this movie subverting cliche at every turn of its family saga really cannot be overstated. Maggie is a reasonable person! Scott respects that Cassie’s needs are more important than his wants! Paxton cares about his family and genuinely wants Scott to land on his feet, for the benefit of everyone! There’s no jealous posturing and Scott acting all hurt about being ‘replaced’! HE LITERALLY THANKS PAXTON FOR EVERYTHING HE DOES, WHEN HAVE I EVER SEEN THAT BEFORE?! Honestly, you don’t have to tell the most original story in the world to tell a story that resonates. You don’t even have to avoid common tropes, you just have to think about what you want to do with them. It’s not rocket science. It’s just good honest storytelling.

With ants.

[takerfoxx]

As it so happens, my unplanned little rant about the Lego Movie sequel kinda ends up being a great jumping-off point, as here is another little rant that I’ve actually been working on and off ever since that discussion about grimdark deconstructions and how to and not to do them, mainly to just get it off my chest all in one go.

See, I (obviously) like darker stories, but like everyone else I got my storytelling pet peeves. And the biggest one is something I’ve talked about here and there, something that I call Redshirt Philosophy. Basically, this refers to the narrative treating the protagonists as the only ones whose lives matter, and any nameless passerby and/or walk-on is free game. By this, I don’t mean that it’s bad to only kill bystanders and side-characters while sparing the mains, I’m saying that it’s bad to treat those deaths like they don’t matter and that they happen with no consequences.

But there’s a sub-category of that that pisses me off even more: the concept of the Unintentional Karma Houdini. Basically, a Karma Houdini is someone who does something really bad and gets away with it. They go upon their merry way suffering no repercussions.

Now, in of itself, this isn’t a bad plot device, and it can be done well if it’s intentional to make a point. However, when a character who is supposed to be the hero does something bad and it’s not treated as something bad, or if it’s just brushed off with no consequences, or if the bad guys switches sides but is never held accountable in any way for their heinous acts…then yeah, that really gets to me.

So without further ado, here’s my list of good guys who did bad things badly and it still pisses me off!

Warning: the following contains spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Warcraft 3, Elfen Lied, Future Diary, Game of Thrones, and Angel. Yes, I will be saying some bad things about most of those. So...take that for what it’s worth.

1. Protagonists who did bad things and were either treated as being in the right or at least insufficiently called out, but I am still a fan of the series and even still like the character. It’s just that these incidents kind of stick in my craw.

A. Buffy’s “Everyone but Me Sucks” speech, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’m starting off with the least offensive incident, as well as the most understandable, even if I still think it was bad writing. Okay, some quick background: in season 7, the Big Bad known as the First Evil starts sending its henchmen to wipe out the entire Slayer line by killing off all the girls who had the potential to become the next Vampire Slayer when the current one died (which, due to a weird loophole, actually wasn’t Buffy, but she still had her powers and shit). Anyway, all the surviving potentials get together and go to Buffy for help, who takes them into her house to shelter them and train them to defend themselves, even though they didn’t have any supernatural power.

Now, the thing about the First Evil was that it couldn’t become corporeal and interact directly with our world, which is why it had to work through agents. However, it could take on the form of anyone that had died to speak to people, just not actually touch them. Which meant that it could still appear in Buffy’s house to fuck with the gang, which it did.

The worst incident is when they noticed that a girl named Chloe was late in coming to breakfast, so they went to her room to wake her up. But upon entering, they find Chloe’s body hanging from the ceiling, with another Chloe standing next to her. It turned out that the First Evil had been speaking to her all night, slowly twisting her around and finally convinced her to kill herself.

Naturally, everyone is shocked and horrified. Buffy buries the body by herself in the back and then calls everyone together for a meeting. From there, she has this to say about their recently departed friend.

“Anyone want to say a few words about Chloe? Let me. Chloe was an idiot. Chloe was stupid. She was weak. And anyone in a rush to be the next dead body I bury, it's easy. Just...think of Chloe, and do what she did.”

She then proceeds to ream everyone for hiding behind her and letting her do all the work, giving them the “Get your shit together or die” speech. Of course everyone is offended and angry, but over the course of the next few episodes they start doing just that: pulling themselves together and becoming more proactive in the fight. All well and good; after all, sometimes leaders have to be harsh and tell people exactly what they need to hear to save their lives. It ain’t always going to be pretty, and you do sometimes need to be mean, especially when it’s a matter of life or death. I’m sure commanders out in the field have often had to make similar speeches to their surviving men, especially after one of them cracked and took the easy way out.

There’s…just a couple problems with the execution here.

See, this is the last we ever hear about Chloe. She freaks out, kills herself, and gets verbally bashed by the person she went to for help. And that’s that. She straight up loses, and that’s that. And call me a softie, but I have a real problem with introducing a terrified girl, have her get mentally tortured by the literal embodiment of Evil itself to the point where she takes her own life, and having the final word on her in the whole show be…that. And from the main character no less! It goes back to the whole disposable victim thing, which is funny, considering that the whole reason the show even existed was because Joss Whedon would always feel sorry for the cheerleader who would get killed off at the start of schlocky monster movies and wanted to see them fight back and kick the monster’s ass. Understandable, but it’s weird that that same trope would get used over and over again in his own show, all to make the monster of the week look scary. And again! There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but it’s kind of noticeable when you have a kid’s head explode in one episode and have Buffy just make a joke about it, have a girl get her heart torn out in another and have her supposed best friend mention their bond all of once right after and then forget all about her, and then there’s the whole thing with Jesse in the first episode and…well, you get the idea. Joss, man, what are you doing?

But this wasn’t just a monster tearing out some teenager’s throat out. This was a suicide, followed by a verbal condemnation of the victim. Which, in a real life setting, wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but the fact of the matter is that no matter how much reality you want to inject into your fantasy show about vampires, ghosts, and robotic internet demons (look it up), your show does not exist in a vacuum. It wasn’t just the characters hearing that speech, it was thousands of people all over the world. And if you’re going to tackle a subject such as suicide, then you have to be really, really careful about how you handle it. Did it never occur to the writers that there might be people in their audience struggling with suicidal thoughts themselves, who were constantly told that their problems were all their fault, that they were being a burden, or maybe some of them had actually attempted it, failed, and were all called weak, useless, stupid, what have you?

Interestingly enough, I recently stumbled across an old Buffy message board, which had a thread debating this very topic. And it was pretty fascinating reading the various viewpoints, with many agreeing with me that the writers kinda dropped the ball here, especially since there were many points in the series where Buffy also gave up, succumbed to fear and despair, and even attempted to end her life. Plus, she wasn’t nearly so vicious when the First Evil nearly convinced Angel to kill himself in an earlier season. Others were of the opinion that while harsh, it was something that needed to be said, and that Chloe’s actions were cowardly and selfish considering what it would do to her friends. Plus, given the immense amount of pressure Buffy was under with all the trauma she had already suffered, snapping like that was perfectly understandable. And I can’t lie, I do see where both sides were coming from.

I guess my main problem with this episode wasn’t that the speech itself happened, but that it ended up being the final word on Chloe, which was pretty messed up.

So what would I have done differently? Well, if we must keep the speech, then fine. Have Buffy slag her off to motivate everyone to get their shit together. However, don’t let that be the final thing that’s said about the terrified girl who was manipulated and intimidated into committing suicide.

Earlier in the episode, it’s mentioned that Chloe had been a big fan of Winnie the Pooh, something that the First Evil used to taunt her friends. So, after the speech, after the fight and whatever it was that everyone did to get their heads into the game, just stick in another scene, one that’s just a few seconds long, where, when nobody’s watching, Buffy goes into the backyard and just leaves a Winnie the Pooh doll on Chloe’s grave, indicating that she did feel bad for her but had to say what she did. That’s it, that little bit of empathy is all I ask.

B. Hermione Granger’s scarring of Marietta Edgecombe in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Ho boy, this is a complicated one.

All right. So, Order of the Phoenix is my favorite of the Harry Potter books, mainly owing to Dolores Umbridge being a brilliantly written character in just how incredibly scummy she is, and the whole plot of her versus the school was just gold. And…kind of topical, now that I think about it.

But anyway, though it’s my favorite of the books, it also has my least favorite scene. Quick background: Umbridge has taken over the school and pretty much nixed Defense Against the Dark Arts, which is now needed more than ever. To counter this, Harry and co. take it upon themselves to start teaching it to the students. They form a group called Dumbledore’s Army and make their hideout in a magical room hidden from Umbridge and her minions to practice. However, someone sells them out, the room is raided, everyone is caught, and Harry is rushed to Umbridge’s office to be interrogated.

There, it’s revealed that the traitor was one Marietta Edgecombe, best friend of Harry’s girlfriend Cho Chang. This is discovered because Hermione had hexed the contract she had everyone sign to cause pus-filled blisters write out the word SNEAK across her face, something that apparently none of the brilliant and experienced wizards they got teaching at Hogwarts can remove. In fact, her final scene in the series shows her wearing a veil over her face to hide it.

Of course the heroes get out of their predicament in the end, but it pretty much destroys Harry and Cho’s relationship, as Harry is understandably a little peeved about that whole betraying him and his friends to a sadistic fascist thing and felt that Hermione’s hex had been brilliant, while Cho sticks up for her, saying that she’s actually a good person who had been the only one of her friends to stick with her after the murder of her previous boyfriend Cedric Diggory, and she had just made a (big) mistake, given that she hadn’t even wanted to join the DA in the first place and didn’t trust Harry to begin with, given that her mother worked for the Ministry of Magic, which wasn’t exactly keen on Harry at that point. Plus, she was kinda put out that Hemione had hexed them all without telling them, so basically they fight and break up.

Anyway, this in itself wouldn’t be much of an issue. A bit character that we barely know sells the good guys out, gets humiliated in return, and the good guys prevail in the end. What makes this something of a sticking point for me is due to one of the first of the many controversial social media canon details that JK Rowling would become infamous for dropping: that the blisters would indeed leave permanent scarring, and that she feels that this is wholly justified, given that she, and I quote, “Loathes a traitor.”

Okay.

There is…a lot to unpack here, and it has become even more divisive in the fandom than the Chloe thing I mentioned above. One camp holds that while betraying the DA was a rotten thing to do, the hex still crosses the line, given that scarring a sixteen year old for life for one mistake is really messed up, that she hadn’t even wanted to join the DA in the first place but had been pressured into it, that given that she had a parent in the Ministry of Magic she was probably subject to a lot of anti-Harry propaganda and genuinely thought he was a bad person, and that she had probably been singled out by Umbridge and interrogated, likely with her mother’s job being threatened. The flipside argues that she had to know that she still sold everyone out to a sadistic fascist, that Hermione was a minor herself and isn’t subject to the same rules that an adult would be, that Umbridge’s perchance for torture was well established at that point, that she had to know that her friend Cho would be punished with everyone else, and that teenager or no, there is no excuse for supporting someone like Umbridge. I mean, Hitler Youth and all that.

To tell the truth, like the Chloe thing above, I can see where both sides are coming from. On the one hand, I can see how someone like Marietta could be led to believe that Harry was trouble and feel that she was endangering her family by associating with him. Plus, we have no idea what the circumstances surrounding her betrayal were, though given Rowling’s words on the topic I guess Umbridge didn’t have to probe hard. On the other, she did sell out everyone to get pretty much tortured, so that deserved some kind of retribution, so good points all around.

But that’s not really where I personally have a problem. My problem is that Rowling’s addendum on the whole affair goes against the rules of the world she created, and even the themes of the book itself. Also, if Rowling wanted us to agree with her, then she fucked up the execution.

First, let’s take the bit where it the blisters left permanent scars. This is a world where they can make bones grow back, inflate bodies like a balloon without doing permanent harm, and where even mutilations are temporary (if painful) inconveniences. The only thing that can cause permanent damage is Dark Magic, hence Harry’s scar.

So…how exactly does Hermione’s hex permanently scar Marietta then?

Jumping off that, this isn’t the only instance of permanent scarring in that book. One of the many horrible things Umbridge did to students was force them to write lines with a magic pen that literally carved out those lines into their skin, resulting in Harry picking up a new scar that read I MUST NOT TELL LIES. The fact that this scar can’t be removed with magic is one of the many clues that Umbridge is more than just a pompous asshole and had dealings with something darker.

Look, I’m not saying that the two situations are a one-to-one parallel, but it just feels kind of uncomfortable for the book to treat magically scarring kids as something horrible and unforgiveable (which it is!), only to laud one of the heroes for doing it right after, regardless of circumstances. It…just doesn’t sit right.

Plus, you know, there is the point that when you get down to it, the hex is kind of a problem in of itself. Like Cho pointed out, putting it on everyone without telling them is a little messed up, and it makes it completely useless as a deterrent. Why not use a tongue-tying spell or something? Then again, logic was never really the series’ appeal.

And finally, how the hell are we supposed to feel righteous indignation about a character that gets zero lines, just sort of hovers in the background, and has a character we already know to be sympathetic defend her? With Umbridge we had ample on-page reason to hate her, but we never get to see her finally get her just rewards in the end. The Malfoys are all sorts of horrible throughout the books, but other than some humiliation they apparently come through it unscathed. So really, this whole thing just feels weird.

How to fix? Simple. JUST DON’T PUT IN THE PART ABOUT PERMANENT SCARRING!!! All the rest about the hex can be written off as Hermione just not thinking things through. And without the scars, it sort of works. Marietta still gets paid back for her betrayal but isn’t disfigured for life, and the whole things becomes a lot less uncomfortable.

Hell, why not take advantage of the situation? Give Marietta some character growth, bring her back to redeem herself like they did with Percy, and he was way worse. Hell, Snape was downright monstrous, and he was made out to be this tragic redemption story.

Sigh. I know the movies get a lot of flak for the stuff they’ve changed, but switching things so that Cho was magically compelled to give up the secret and sidestepping the issue entirely was a good idea.

2. Heroic (or at least, portrayed as sympathetic) characters who cross the line so thoroughly that I now loath them and am infuriated whenever I think about them, but I am still a big fan of the rest of the series they appear in.

A. Tyrande Whisperwind’s slaughter of the Watchers to free Illidan Stormrage, from Warcraft 3: The Reign of Chaos.

Yeah…fuck this character.

All right, this happens pretty deep into the plot, so here’s the cliffnotes: demons are invading the world, and the remnants of civilization need to put aside their differences to stop them. In particular, the priestess Tyrande and her husband Malfurion, the Arch-Druid, set out to awaken their people’s sleeping druids for reinforcements. But while delving into the cave where said druids are napping, they come across a strange locked door. It turns out that the door leads to the prison of Illidan Stormrage, Malfurion’s traitor brother, who was imprisoned for turning on the Night Elves due to his lust for magical power. Tyrande has the brilliant idea that they should free Illidan to help fight the demons, BECAUSE THAT TOTALLY SOUNDS LIKE A SWELL IDEA! Malfurion says no, Tyrande tell him that she’s gonna do it anyway, and fucks off to do just that.

Beyond the door, she’s confronted by the Watchers, a group of Night Elves and their forest allies who had been entrusted with defending Illidan’s prison, who respectfully inform her that they will not waver in their duty and she does not have the authority to say otherwise.

So…she slaughters them.

All of them.

She wanted to free a dangerous traitor, the guards said no, and she kills them for it.

Yeah. That is a thing that happens.

But hey! Illidan is free now, and he agrees to fight the demons for her. And wouldn’t you know it, on day one he manages to destroy a powerful demonic artifact that was corrupting the forest and kill Tichondrius, one of the demons’ primary leaders, so that worked out!

…a pity that his lust for power took over and he absorbed all of the artifact’s power, turning him into a monstrous demonic beast and leading to Tyrande and Malfurion to become so horrified that they imprison him once again.

…nah, just kidding. They banish him, basically freeing him to do as he pleases. And as it turns out, what he pleases ends up being summon up a bunch of monsters from the depths and use them to strike at Night Elf villages, massacring its inhabitants.

Good job, Tyrande. You really know how to pick ‘em.

But you know what’s worse? You know what takes this whole ordeal from a massive fuck-up to completely killing any possible redemption for the character for me? As it turned out, Maiev Shadowsong, the leader of the Watchers, was out on patrol at the time and narrowing missed being murdered off with the others. And when she got back and found her friends dead and her prisoner freed, she gathered up what remained of the Watchers and immediately set off after Illidan.

Well, she finds him, but he and his new allies prove to be too much, so she calls for help. And Malfurion and Tyrande answer, with Tyrande even admitting that the whole thing was her fault and thus it was her responsibility to fix! Okay, okay, it’s a step in the right direction. Doesn’t really make up for what she did, but at least she’s…

Oh wait. Maiev calls her out on pretty much everything, and Tyrande’s response is, and I QUOTE, “I did what I thought was right. You are in no position to judge me.”

…

Oh, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bitch, YOU MURDERED HER FRIENDS! YOU FREED ILLIDAN, WHO HAS SINCE MASSACRED YOUR OWN PEOPLE! SHE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO JUDGE YOU!

Hell, waaaaaaaaay back earlier in the series, the human prince Arthas kills all the inhabitants of a city call Stratholme, all whom had recently become infected with the Undead plague, and it’s treated as his moral even horizon, the point where there’s no turning back from his descent into evil. Except…while terrible, he at least had a very good reason for doing what he did. Those people were literally moments away from turning into zombies, and there was no way to save them. Whereas Tyrande causes the deaths of even more innocent lives, whether directly or indirectly, but it’s treated as, at worse, as a whoopsie-daisy on her part. Meanwhile, Maiev is made out to be this revenge-obsessed extremist.

So…yeah. Fuck Tyrande. And hey, I still kind of like him, but fuck Malfurion too for letting it slide.

B. Just about everything about Lucy from Elfen Lied.

All right, cards on the table: of all my favorite anime/manga, Elfen Lied is easily the most flawed. The violence is beyond gratuitous, the nudity is sometimes downright silly in how nonsensical it is, the plot is completely inconsequential, and the sudden mood changes aren't exactly gracefully done.

Still, I’ve always had a soft spot for schlock that embraces its own schlockiness, and it has enough of my personal favorite tropes to make me love it. Hell, it was my freaking avatar for the longest time!

That being said, I do have one major issue with it, and that is the central character: Lucy.

Yes, the chick whose eye used to be my avatar.

I hate Lucy.

Why? Because she’s a psychotic serial killer who’s graphically murdered hundreds of innocent people out of pure sadistic nihilism. One of her first acts upon coming into her powers is to kill a random family just so she could hide out in their house, and that’s when she was a child. There’s a scene that establishes that she’s mastered the art of giving passersby brain aneurysms just so she can murder more effectively without drawing attention to herself. She tears Kouta’s family apart, including his little sister, because she was jealous. She has a breakdown and massacres an entire festival full of people. One of her first acts upon regaining her memories and wandering off is to use that brain aneurysm thing to kill a passing girl…just for walking by!

And that’s just the stuff we see her doing on-screen!

Now granted, the series doesn’t make it out that she’s still somehow a good person, though they do portray her as sympathetic for…reasons, and even treats her like the hero in some parts. However, there is a scene in the anime where, upon learning all this, still forgives her and even kisses her! And yes, that includes learning that she’s the one who murdered his little sister! At least in the manga he tells her off and tries to make her promise not to kill anyone else! And she also gets a terrible death in the process, so there’s that.

But I guess most of my issues come from how others fans still try to stick up for her. I had a friend who once said that she was justified for everything because kid-Kouta lied about the gender of his cousin. Uh, yeah, nooooo. She’s a monster, end of.

Oh, what’s that? She has a tragic backstory of abuse and neglect? Well, whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo. Guess who else has the same? Just about every Batman villain, and most of them are portrayed as dangerous monsters! Except…for the ones who are cute girls. Huh, imagine that.

Wait, she had an alternate personality intrinsic to the Diclonius driving her to kill? Well, I’d just might buy that, except for one problem: Nana exists. Nana, another Diclonius who is shown having the same alternate personality issue but also fighting it off and goes through the whole series without ever killing anyone else, despite enduring even more horrible torture and abuse than Lucy! And that’s why Nana is a ball of love and delight and fully deserved her happy ending and fuck Lucy.

Although…just to be clear, I’m not talking about Nyu: the childish other alternate personality that Lucy reverts to as a result of her amnesia. Nyu’s great. Nyu’s adorable and innocent, and since the series treats her like her own character, I will too.

But yeah, Lucy’s an irredeemable monster and screw anyone who says otherwise. Man, that on top of how much of a mess this series was, why did I like it so much?

=looks down at my Nana-themed mousepad=

Oh yeah.

Thank God for Nana.

And finally…

3. Protagonists who did so many terrible things and were never held accountable for their actions that I stopped liking them entirely, actively rooted for their failure, and eventually stopped liking the series as a whole.

For this entry, there really is only one example: every single one of the main characters of Future Diary.

Oh, Future Diary…

See, I used to be a big fan of this manga. Back when I first started IM, it was my favorite, and I eagerly awaited every month for the new installment. I mean, it was pretty much Battle Royale meets Code Geass, of course I would be a fan!

However, as the series went on and my favorite characters were all killed off, leaving the four mains, I started to realize something:

I did not like these people.

They were all pretty terrible people, in fact. All of them had either done something really, really awful or were complicit in the others’ actions, and they never really got held accountable for what they did, with their actions just treated as, “Oh, BIG SHOCKING PLOT TWIST!!!!” So by the time the series reached its end and they all got a happy ending, I felt no happiness for them. In fact, I was kinda pissed.

Later, when the anime first started airing, I watched the first couple episodes, and seeing their actions actually animated before me made it worse. I hated them, and I hated the fact that nothing they did ever had any real consequences for them.

Now, looking back on it years later, I can really see what a mess this series was. Nearly every aspect about the plot, setting, and character growth is pretty illogical and inconsistent to the point of being outright stupid. But that’s just the icing on the cake for me, and not my main reason for hating this series. My beef comes down to these people, and the things they did.

Yuki Amano

A lot of these people bash this guy for being weak and passive, a bit like Shinji Ikari. Personally, as someone who actually liked Shinji, that part didn’t bother me.

Him deliberately betraying an entire orphanage and gunning down all the orphans sure as hell did though.

As did him almost immediately forgiving his father and wanting to live with said asshole EVEN AFTER HIS DAD MURDERED HIS MOM! And this is just swept aside because yay, his dad is back!

Yuno Gasai

Ho boy, where do I start with the Queen of Yanderes? Well, let’s get this out of the way: I actually don’t have an issue with her creepy stalking. It’s her schtick, and if executed well it can actually work.

It…wasn’t executed well. It just was a long list of making her do crazy shit for big shocks, and outside of her Yuki obsession, she had pretty much no other characteristics.

Also, in the second episode, she deliberately sets off a bunch of bombs that massacres scores of innocent teenagers over a misunderstanding.

And after that happens, it is never brought up again.

So yeah.

Minene Uryu

Let’s start with the fact that she is a literal terrorist who has killed scores of innocent families.

And that she blew up part of Yuki’s school to get his attention, also probably killing several children.

And no, she isn’t held accountable for this. At all. Why? Because she’s cool, I guess.

Masumi Nishijima

Doesn’t kill anyone like the others…but hey, what about him completely ignoring the fact that he falls head-over-heels in love with Minene and even proposes to her, despite knowing that she’s massacred hundreds of innocent people and it’s actually his job to bring her in? Talk about being completely useless as a police officer.

And the worst of it? All the above get one kind of happy ending or another.

Yeah, no. Fuck each and every one of them.

Even though this is by far the worst offender, I’m not going to spend as much time on it, as it’s easier to rant about something that does a lot of things right only to fail spectacularly in one regard. Future Diary instead does so many things wrong that it’s kind of beyond saving and not really worth getting heated up about. Which is a shame, because the concept could have worked in the hands of a better writer, but instead, we got a dumb, illogical mess full of characters that are impossible to root for.

But okay, I’ve ranted on and on about these instances that piss me off, but are there any examples of series doing this right? As if in, actually holding characters accountable and making them suffer consequences for their actions when they usually wouldn’t?

Well, obviously, but there are a few instances that really stand out in my mind, because they’re instances that would normally get glossed over without mention, but the writers actually had the wherewithal to ensure that this wouldn’t happen. And they really make me happy.

A.      Sandor Clegane stands trial for the murder of the Micah the butcher’s boy, in Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.

It’s kind of funny that Ice and Fire would be on this list, seeing how it’s full of innocent people getting slaughtered, tortured, and raped, even by the “good guys’” hands at times. You’d honestly think that I wouldn’t even touch it as a result.

And yet, it is the rare example of someone going all in on the ultra-darkness but actually doing it right. Because no matter who it is doing the bad thing, who they do it to, and how well laid their plans are, they always seem to suffer consequences for their actions.

In this particular example, there is a scene where Sandor Clegane casually murders a little boy named Micah in the first book because evil Prince Joffrey did a thing. And of course, none of the bad guys suffer any repercussions. At the time, I chalked it up to another example of just how unfair this medieval fantasy world is meant to be.

Flash forward another book or two. The king is dead, chaos reigns, and the Stark family has been scattered to the winds. Little Arya Stark, who had been a friend of Micah, falls in with a group of good guy outlaws. And to her surprise, they have taken the now renegade Sandor Clegane hostage.

Naturally, since the Hound had been one of Joffrey’s top henchmen, this is a big catch for them, but since they insist on doing things honorably and giving him a fair trial, they run into the problem of being unable to pin any specific crime on him, since most of the stuff they come up with was actually carried out by other people or they can’t prove that Sandor was involved. But then Arya brings up Micah, which Sandor actually did, and of course the outlaws seize upon.

Now, when I read this, I actually put the book down for a moment to pump my fist. Because holy crap, they’re actually acknowledging that whole thing! It wasn’t just another example of an innocent person getting offed for shock value without the perpetrator being held accountable! It was getting brought up, and not only that, it was being used as a plot point! It was beautiful!

Of course, Sandor does actually win the resulting trial by combat and is set free, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Song of Ice and Fire, as grimdark as it is, is fully committed to holding all of its characters responsible for their actions, and sometimes small cruelties will come back in huge ways, and I think that’s awesome.

Another example from the same series is Theon Greyjoy. Now, here is a guy whose insecurities lead him to betray the family he was raised by, steal their home, execute their associates, and even murder a couple of little boys and cover their bodies with tar just to make his men think that he had successfully killed the Stark boys rather than admit that they got away. Now normally, this would put him right at the top of my shit list, and it did for a while. But surprise surprise, the story actually manages to make him look sympathetic again, by…

1.      Showing full well how his insecurities have caused him to make these mistakes

2.      Have him get called out by pretty much everyone over how horrible his actions are

3.      Show full well that he understands this, and feels rotten about it deep down inside

4.      Have him essentially put through hell as a result, to the point where he’s physically mutilated and mentally scarred by Ramsay Bolton’s…administrations

5.      Have him go through even more hell to try to redeem himself and put his life on the line to protect someone innocent

6.      Make him acknowledge that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, but he’s going to try to do whatever he can to atone for his sins once he gets his identity back

Through all that, when he finally is forgiven by Jon Snow and welcomed back into the Stark family, it does feel earned, and not through excusing what he did, but by acknowledging it and dealing with it directly.

B.      Spike shows genuine remorse for his past, in Buffy/Angel

Kind of weird to include Buffy/Angel in this section after already calling it out before, but I’m pretty sure these two episodes had different writers.

Anyway, Spike is undoubtedly one of the most, if not the most popular characters in the Buffyverse, and it should come as no surprise that he’s my personal favorite. Quick background for anyone who hasn’t seen the series: he is a British punk-rock vampire renowned for loving violence and besting two Slayers in one-on-one combat. He started off as a main villain, but became so popular that the writers nixed his planned death and spent several seasons slowly bringing him over to the good guys’ side, first out of necessity, but giving him a redemption arc (which was controversial for…reasons) that ultimately ended with him fighting to get his soul back and become an actual hero. So, hoorays all around.

However, there still is the lingering problem of him having spent over a hundred years torturing and killing his way across the world. The last season of Buffy tried to address that by revealing that one of the heroes’ new allies was the son of one of Spike’s victim and wasn’t too keen on working with the monster that killed his mothers, but their execution of said idea was…deeply flawed, to say the least.

Things got better when Spike made the jump over to Buffy’s sister series Angel. In it, a rogue Slayer named Dana, who has been rendered mentally unstable after an evil man murdered her family and tortured her as a child, is deluded into believing that Spike was the man that ruined her life. As such, she kidnaps him, tortures him, and even cuts off his hands (don’t worry, he’s a vampire, they can deal). Then the cavalry arrives to save the day. Dana is captured and handed off to people that can actually help her, Spike is rescued, and goes to the hospital to have his hands sewn back on. Like I said: vampire. They can do that.

Anyway, Angel then uncharacteristically goes to visit Spike, and as a bit of a surprise Spike doesn’t seem to hold any anger toward Dana at all, and instead says something to the tune of, “What? I’m supposed to be angry because hers wasn’t one of the hundreds of families I killed? I spent so much time being a monster, I never stopped to look back at the victims.”

This is great, as it 1, acknowledges the wrong he’s done, 2, shows that no matter what he does to redeem himself, it’s always going to hang over him, and 3, puts no blame on Dana whatsoever. And with that, I felt like I was free to like and root for Spike without having an asterisk hovering over everything.

And honestly, that’s all I ask for. Acknowledgement. Accountability. Acceptance of consequences. Because otherwise, it just leaves a rotten taste in my mouth, and the more I see it happen in fiction, the more it bugs me.

So, that’s my rant about storytelling for today. My next posts will probably be something more positive.

[permian-tropos]

Tbch, I really love Rose's anti capitalistic ways of yelling RÉVOLUTION! left and right and wrecking all the shit, I really do. But. The way she treated Finn was constantly having me be like ???lady. DAFUQ. is. your. problème??? I mean. What the fuck is Finn really to her? Hero? Traitor? Coward? At first she practically worships him. But then she constantly belittles him and side-eyes him as if he's going to sell them out to the FO (plot-twist, it was the shady cynical dude, what a subversion)

And I really think that, didn’t she actually deserve better? Why was her arc so… inconsistent? Is that even the right word? I mean. What was her purpose in the end, really? Telling Finn how bad war is? AKA what he literally realizes 10 minutes into the previous movie? (I don’t know the actual timestamp, but I guess you catch my drift) REALLY? Oh, boy, is a soldier who had been looking at nothing but dark grey and black walls for basically his entire life not permitted to express wonder over a richly glowing city, not exactly something a stormtrooper sees every day. But after all the shit goes down and they are back to the others on Crait and *suddenly* Finn jumps in to risk his life for his new friends he barely knows (aka what he did in TFA already) suddenly she’s “in love” with him? (Unless that kiss was purely platonic, but I doubt that) I put that under quotations because it looked as fake as all the het rom coms where there’s literally no chemistry between the romantic leads. I dunno. Maybe I should have messaged you privately, you don’t even have to hop in onto all this mess. I’m sorry for going off like that, but I have kinda a conflicted relationship with the portrayal of Rose. Especially since Kelly-Marie Tran is such a sweetheart and a good person and I wish that she gets many cool roles in the future. I’m just so pissed that she felt to me like a half baked pizza that got wet because the delivery guy was sent through the rain by his boss? Does that make sense?

It’s okay! I’m going to defend Rose as best I can cause I do really like her, and I think people would be less disappointed in her if they gave her a second chance. We all would prefer it if we liked her, surely? 

I just made a post about how the way she treats Finn reminds me so much of how I wrote a self-insert OC to treat my fictional crush. Like despite not having much IRL attraction I remember the feeling of wanting to fight the object of affection because gah they’re just so hhdshj.

But I also want people to see Rose like an ordinary person. A really ordinary person, except she’s been through so much. Imagine yourself in her shoes, actually dropped in the middle of this big drama and not comfortably spectating it. Cause I have a twin sibling, and if they died, I wouldn’t expect to act rational on the very day it happened. KMT sells Rose’s anguish so well for me in her first scene, that everything she does with Finn that’s antagonistic feels like she’s just lashing out at the world. That’s not bad writing, it’s really realistic. It doesn’t make Rose a bad person. Her pain is real. 

Paige wasn’t just Rose’s family, she was Rose’s only family and last connection to her home. I don’t think that many people from the Otomok System made it out. So now on top of imagining the death of your closest family, imagine losing the only person left who remembers your childhood, who remembers the home you lost. That’s why Rose is so upset. 

On Canto Bight, Rose doesn’t just tell Finn how bad “war” is. Rose tells Finn that rich assholes are responsible. And not everyone knows this. Not everyone realizes that war is run by the rich assholes, and that they basically do not face significant consequences for any of it. Not everyone knows that the corporate board member who designed a significant part of Auschwitz got out of jail within seven years and got back onto the board of his old company (Bayer) and onto several other boards of several other companies. I just found that out really recently and boy does it fuck me up.

I think Rose is clearly falling for Finn throughout the movie, too, and her frustration with him isn’t a sign she hates him. She just really loathes Canto Bight because of what she personally went through, and doesn’t want him to admire it. Maybe you think he should be allowed to, but Rose has her reasons for feeling strongly about it and it’s good to write a character who acts on internal logic. Her anger isn’t supposed to be 100% fair or rational, it’s just supposed to make sense for her. It’s supposed to be sensible for her to feel these things, given her situation. That’s character writing. 

Additionally, I don’t think there needed to be chemistry between them. Nothing’s confirmed about Finn’s feelings for Rose, as far as I know. He respects her and cares about her, but I don’t think he was falling for her quite as much as she was for him in this film. Rose is not only a bit shy and awkward, but she notes over and over that Finn is thinking about Rey. She only makes a move when it seems she might never get the chance – up until then she’s not actually trying to attract his attention because she doesn’t expect anything to happen between them. Chemistry is about showing mutual attraction being subtly communicated. Rose likes Finn but she doesn’t think she’s going to get to date him and she doesn’t try flirt at all, so he has nothing to respond to for there to be any chemistry at all. 

[taaroko]

Post-IW MCU Rewatch: Ant-Man

Yay, time for Ant-Man! This one has rather grown on me over the last couple of viewings (not that I ever didn’t like it).  

Hi middle-aged Peggy! (Isn’t it great how many times Hayley Atwell managed to get herself into these movies beyond what the original plan was, out of sheer enthusiasm? Yeah, I’m still bitter Agent Carter got cancelled.)

The music for the logo is awesome.

My killjoy brother says the main reason he dislikes this movie is that he doesn’t think it makes sense that Hank would ever trust some stranger (Scott) with his tech. Um. Hank has been protective of the tech because he doesn’t want it to be abused. But Scott proved he wasn’t a corporate goon by going to prison for screwing over a corrupt corporation. He’s proven himself. Also he doesn’t have the knowledge to make more of the particles, so he can’t steal any of the secrets himself. 

Luis is probably my favorite sidekick in the whole MCU. He’s irrepressibly cheerful, he compulsively makes delicious-looking waffles, he’s a refined wine man and fan of neo-cubism yet also steals two smoothie machines, and when he goes into ramble mode it’s the greatest thing ever.

Anyone who has ever worked food service has met an idiot like Scott’s customer. Also his boss is basically David Brent. Trying way too hard to be cool, but kind of a git and a coward.

Scott’s attitude is super endearing. Very chill, understated reactions to things that annoy him. You get the impression that it’s not so much that he’s a very patient man as that he’s just so used to stuff like Luis’s antics that he’s become kind of inured to it. He’s also able to roll with the punches. Getting fired from Baskin Robbins could’ve made him bitter and angry, but instead he just kind of shrugs and takes that Mango Fruit Blast. He’s not prideful at all. 

I called the tank being real by the second time the keychain appeared onscreen. Chekhov’s Tank!

Hello, Darren Cross, dude who is only not the worst MCU villain because Malekith exists. (How did Malekith manage to have less of a personality than Darren? It’s absurd.)

The ad video for the Yellowjacket is horrifying. Do people actually make ad videos for advanced weaponry? Do they narrate them with movie narrator voices and tidy up the diction to make them sound like wonderful good pieces of technology, but in a not-entirely-convincing way?

How is a hand on a shoulder such a sinister and obvious sign of impending murder?

Cassie is the most adorable little girl ever, and the kid playing her is a really good actress. I love that Scott is a dad. It makes him much more interesting. (Also is he the only divorcé in the entire MCU? Wait no, May is too. I think he’s the only one in the movies, though.)

“He’s so ugly! I LOVE HIM!” AAAAGH. SO CUTE.

I love that all the little details keep coming back. (The tank, the “La Cucaracha” horn.” Just lots of really good callbacks. It’s hard to believe this movie had production issues with changing directors.)

The way Darren kills that guy by shrinking him, and then wipes him up and flushes him, is ridiculously horrific. And the way he looks in the mirror after that is probably the most interesting he ever is in the movie. He knows the path he’s going down, and he’s not stopping.

So it’s not entirely clear. Is Hope dating Darren? Are they living together? Or are they just business partners? I’m confused.

YES LUIS STORY TIME. This is like Kid History, and it’s my favorite thing. Please please please make an MCU recap narrated by Luis, Marvel.

This music is weird and fun. I love it.

Scott parkouring is great. I wonder why he developed that skillset when he was just an electrical engineer. Has he been doing it since he was a kid?

Scott is like the midpoint between Tony Stark and Peter Quill in almost every way. Good at outside-the-box solutions, has engineering skills (but not at Tony’s level), a sense of humor that’s more self-deprecating than Tony’s but less wide-eyed dorky than Peter’s, etc. That’s awesome.

Could you be more transparently evil than using a bleating white lamb for your ill-fated lab experiments?

Huh. There’s a moment where Scott looks in the mirror too. Is that meant to be a contrast with when Darren does it? For Scott, it’s a moment where he resigns himself to failing, even though he caved and did the burglary. I don’t really see the connection, emotionally, to the way Darren looked in the mirror, but I guess one of them is the apprentice Hank rejected, and the other is the apprentice he ultimately chose. *shrug*

Ant-Man perspective is great. The encounter with the rat is terrifying.

You broke Scott’s chill, Hank!

Okay, so Scott’s actual superpower is changing his clothes at the speed of light. It was entirely unnecessary for them to give him such a small interval of time to get the suit on.

“What happens if I throw up in this helmet?”

There were zero bullet ants on the floor in the initial wide shot of the room. Also in the second wide shot. Which takes place two seconds before Scott tries to put his foot on the floor. Did they...forget to render ants in those shots? Or did they forget there were going to be ants there when they filmed from that angle? Gonna count that one as a mistake, because they could not have gotten all over the floor that fast.

They really needed to do more to explain about Darren’s brain chemistry getting messed up by the particles, because as far as I can tell, the first time he ever shrinks himself is on the helicopter at the end. How do these particles make him evil/crazy, exactly? What was he like before? What have the particles done to Hank?

Also they shouldn’t have explained the particles as changing “atomic relative distance” without also explaining that the suit allows you to control your weight relative to size. Because sometimes Ant-Man appears to weigh as much as he looks like he should, but the rest of the time, he’s clearly still 180 lbs in that tiny space (with the reverse problem when he becomes Giant-Man). If he always weighed 180 lbs while being the size of an ant, he would constantly punch through surfaces by walking on them, and if he was always the weight of an ant, he’d be powerless to do anything except be sneaky.

The montages in this movie are great.

Scott uses Hope’s move later. :D And she was totally checking him out.

Huh. Hope and Scott’s conversation in the car happens exactly halfway through the movie, and it’s the turning point. This is when they start being on the same team.

Hank’s revelation about Janet comes rather out of nowhere. I feel like they could’ve woven that in more effectively. It’s also a little exposition-heavy to entirely work on the emotional level.

This gesture by Scott is one of the best things.

I love the crossovers. Crossovers forever! (Seriously, put Thor cameos in future GotG movies and Loki cameos in future Doctor Strange movies. No, I don’t for a second believe Loki is really dead.)

Poor Sam. He missed out on Sokovia just to get trolled by this rando in a shrinking suit.

Hope saw Scott use her move! Hee!

Sinister hand on shoulder!

Okay, Hope’s “I’m at home” line is why I was confused about whether she and Darren were dating and living together. But it occurs to me now that there’s not really an implication that it’s his home too. So I think they’re just business partners. Good. Because Darren being double-crossed by his girlfriend and failing to react on that level would have made him a much worse character than he already was.

Seriously love Luis, and the other two guys are great too. Excellent crew of wombats.

I love the wallpaper in Hank’s house. Also, just, all of Hank’s house. It’s so pretty.

Okay I absolutely believe that Luis was the only guy to ever knock out that huge dude from the prison. He’s been knocking people out with single punches left and right on this job so far. I love him even more now! That’s such a cool little bit of consistency for him.

Is it true that cops use Crown Victorias as their undercover cars most often? Because I’ve kind of assimilated that as real-life trivia ever since theaters.

What was the point of frying the servers if they were just going to shrink the building to nothing anyway?

Kurt and Tip are hilarious. “There was a black guy who looked exactly like me who attacked us and put us in the back of this disgusting van!”

So if the Avengers have spent the last year taking down Hydra facilities, how are there still people in Hydra who can spend billions for Yellowjacket suits?

I thought Hank was going to die the first time I saw this. Now I’m betting this will be a How to Train Your Dragon situation with Ant-Man and the Wasp, where not long after we discover the long-lost mom, the dad gets killed.

Darren’s villain music is the best thing about him. It’s very unnerving.

All the fights while Scott’s in the suit are so much fun to watch.

“Are we the good guys? Feels kinda weird.”

I don’t like that the chain attachment on the tank also gets huge. And how does a tank cushion a three-storey drop?

That Darren is able to shoot ants is very silly and weird. Would’ve worked better if there was buckshot or something. But still. This movie made me care about an ant dying.

Dangit, Darren, you just killed everyone else in the chopper. You suck.

Briefcase fight! I remember how hard everyone laughed when “Disintegration” started playing in theaters. So great.

All the abrupt cuts from epic to insignificantly small are what make these fights so funny and awesome.

Bug zapper! I watched this with my dad recently (his first time seeing it) and he laughed so hard at the bug zapper.

Another tased Avenger!

So I thought this movie was going to be stupid, right up until the trailer got to the bit with Thomas the Tank Engine. Then I knew it was going to be amazing. It’s still probably my favorite moment in the whole movie.

They kinda overdid it with the “back it up” bit.

Giant ant! Poor Paxton.

Did anyone not see it coming from the moment Hank talked about going sub-atomic that Scott was going to have to do it at the end?

The infinite shrink is mesmerizing to look at. I bet this movie was cool in 3-D. (I have glasses, so 3-D is not so fun.)

Hi Janet!

The bottom half of that face in the photo actually looks kinda like Michelle Pfeiffer’s face. Nice work!

Hahaha, I love that Cassie kept the ant as a dog.

MORE STORIES FROM LUIS! The way he blinks too many times after he finishes is what really clinches it.

So yeah, I like me a heist movie, and it was definitely a brilliant decision on Marvel’s part to go small (figuratively and literally) with the next movie after Ultron. It is a mistake to think you always have to escalate your threats in a series. That was the problem for a while with Supernatural, and it’s definitely a problem in shows like Dragonball Z and Naruto too. Ant-Man was the perfect way to scale back and remind us that these movies are a ton of fun. I’m so glad that they did the same thing with the scheduling of Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and I can’t wait for July 6.

I really hope Ant-Man and the Wasp does the same thing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 did, and goes deeper with the characters instead of just getting bigger in scope. Because Ant-Man is one of the more surface-level movies in the MCU. Scott doesn’t really carry a lot of angst, so even though his arc is about proving he can be the hero Cassie sees him as, it’s pretty chill, with just a couple of moments where he loses...hope...(dang it) in his ability to make this work and be the dad he wants to be.

The bigger emotional arc was Hank and Hope, because Hope absolutely carries her angst and bitterness in a big way. They’re kind of a representation of what Scott and Cassie could end up being if Scott doesn’t get his crap together. And Darren is an evil parallel for Scott, obviously. All of the different arcs probably would’ve worked better if they’d spent enough time and effort on Darren to make him interesting. But the lack of depth in all of the arcs doesn’t ruin the movie because it’s a comedy. This is deliberately a light, fun comedy action movie, and it’s great.

Also it has a good and memorable soundtrack, so bonus points.

[briangroth27]

Ready Player One Review

I went into Ready Player One with polarized preconceptions. Several friends loved the book so I was initially excited, but in the run-up to the film's release hate exploded online and I saw all manner of spoilers and scans of troubling chunks of the novel, which made me much more wary. I still liked the story’s idea so the trailers’ focus on nostalgia didn’t bother me, but I didn’t know what to expect going in. I was pleasantly surprised: it’s a fun roller coaster! There are several strong ideas at play, even if they aren't fleshed out as much as they could've been. It definitely seems like most of the book’s problematic stuff has been excised, making for a fast-moving, enjoyable film with a strong, important message.

Full Spoilers…

Tye Sheridan was solid as Wade Watts/Parzival, a generally good guy obsessed with OASIS’ virtual playground and the quest to win control of it. Sheridan was awkward and geeky enough to sell a classic nerd persona without being so overbearing or unlikable that it's unbelievable Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) would fall for him (or that we would root for him). An altercation in the real world with Wade’s aunt’s (Susan Lynch) boyfriend (Ralph Ineson) was a nice moment for Sheridan to show Watts’ vulnerability and fear, giving a glimpse of how differently he reacted to challenges outside the OASIS. I would’ve liked to see more opportunities for that in the script, particularly after Art3mis meets him for real. While I was glad Wade was toned way down from what I’ve heard he is in the novel, I think he’s written a bit too safely. He’s likable, but he’s so much an everyman that he lacks conflict. I don’t think genuinely good characters are boring, but challenging their beliefs is a way to make goodness interesting and this film doesn’t do a lot of that. That could’ve been easily remedied by playing up a few aspects of the movie version to give him a stronger arc. For example, Wade’s poor and wants to win the contest so he can live a life of luxury (winning comes with a huge payday). Why not use that selfish—if understandable, in a world consumed by severe economic decline no one cares about because they all escape to the OASIS—instinct to spark more conflict with Art3mis, who wants to better the world with her winnings? Why not have Wade argue that it’s easier to play in the OASIS than to endlessly fight and maybe really die for people who don’t care about the real world? Maybe even let the promise of relaxation, safety, and an end to financial worries tempt her a bit so her values are challenged as well. When she beats that temptation to carry on with her crusade, Wade could also realize there are more important things than his own comfort.

Also, Wade declares his love for Art3mis way faster than anyone could reasonably love someone, somewhat undercutting the “take chances with your heart” lesson he learns later, so I wish the script had given him time to find out what real love is. He could still be intimidated by the enormity of real love, necessitating that lesson when actual feelings are on the line. While I don’t think their love story is any shallower than in the average film, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been deepened. Lean into Wade’s instant “movie love” and have it mess up Art3mis’ quest by making his help a hindrance for a while. His eagerness to connect with her does destroy his real life, but the movie only comments on how foolish he is to reveal his real name, not that his infatuation is the cause. I also wish there was much more reaction to Wade’s family being murdered; it radicalizes him to Art3mis’ cause (making his aunt into yet another woman in a refrigerator, unfortunately) and Sheridan is good at conveying the loss for the few moments the film lets him live in it, but beyond that it felt like the loss got forgotten somewhere. Even when Wade and his friends intercept villain Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) as he’s exiting the OASIS and trap him in a simulation, Wade’s rage at his aunt’s death seems to be mostly an act, because he has a totally cool head as soon as he leaves Sorrento’s presence. Had the movie presented this as an example of how disconnected players had become from people in their real lives (even if they do make friends with people online), it would’ve been a strong, compelling rebuke of the OASIS. If that’s the intention, it needed a vocalized realization and a moment for Sheridan to explore it.

Olivia Cooke was awesome and driven as Samantha Cook/Art3mis, who—like others have pointed out—had a stronger plot and motivation than Wade did. Since her father died a debtor worked to death by the evil corporation IOI, she was out to prevent them from winning the contest and (in the book, so I’ve been told) wants to use her financial winnings to better the real world. I wish that end goal had been clearly articulated in the movie, because while I like the idea that the world is so bad that the only thing worth fighting for is an escape from it, the huge sum of money the players were competing for could make a real difference. Also, it might have been interesting for Art3mis to be out to shut down the game altogether. There's a literal "delete the OASIS" button—which I kinda wish was designed to look like the Ghostbusters’ Containment Unit—introduced at the end that's never referenced elsewhere, so why not tease it earlier as part of Art3mis' mission? Shutting down the game (and reimbursing everyone for their virtual loot) so that people would be forced to focus on bettering and living in the real world would’ve been a logical goal for her. That's where you could play up Wade's reverence for James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and his OASIS by making him argue for the importance of a game, leading to them compromising with the "close the OASIS on Tuesdays and Thursdays" idea at they implement in end.

Samantha immediately shutting down Wade shortening her real name to Sam after they met in the real world was a nice beat; it was a small moment, but it’s cool that she got to assert her chosen identity in the real world as well as online. I loved that she was weirded out by Wade saying he loved her so quickly and that she called him out on not really knowing her, instead only seeing the parts she wanted him to see. Those both felt like realistic reactions and smart commentary on internet (and real-life) interactions as informed by movies where all romance is a speedy fairy tale. I do wish they'd continued to subvert and expand on those ideas, however. They could've played up her insecurities about her real self beyond being embarrassed by a birthmark, which would've been a nice contrast to Wade's confidence in the OASIS vs. his considerably more fearful real-world persona. It also would've been nice if more than her birthmark had thrown Wade off. Props to him for not caring about her physical appearance, but that's a really low bar; why not include some personality traits he doesn't like? Different tastes in pop culture? Are there things about Wade or his interests she doesn’t like? At the very least, her rebellion could've fueled conflict between them and created much more drama than her apprehension about her birthmark did. Her drive could've been too much for him at first, since he just wanted a cozy life and she's putting her real self in danger. Now that I think about it, playing that up could’ve been a reference itself to Han and Leia in the original Star Wars. While conflict and challenges would’ve generated more sparks and, eventually, a stronger bond, both Sheridan and Cooke sold what they got and I liked them together. While I appreciated that they were drawn as more or less equally capable in the contest (and Samantha was definitely more capable in the real world), I didn’t need her to tell Wade she knew he'd win: it seemed less supportive and more like it undercut her own skills to nod at him being some kind of savior. She does get a lot to do in securing Wade’s access to the final challenge from behind enemy lines, though, which was cool and made winning a bit more of a team effort.

I liked Wade’s best friend Aech (Lena Waithe) a lot and the reveal that the male avatar was controlled by a woman was cool. It was also a nice touch that her mechanic skills weren’t received with shock once her friends knew who she was (and that she didn’t need to explain how she was such a good mechanic!). Waithe was good with what she got, but I wish they'd used her to explore the idea that the OASIS lets you be anyone and anything you want a bit more. Wade gets confidence, Samantha gets beauty and the power to strike back, and Sho (Philip Zao) gets respect beyond his years, but letting Helen articulate exactly what she gets out of the OASIS could’ve been a powerful moment and an argument for its positive aspects. I’m glad the movie at least nodded at her being a lesbian (by having her avatar enjoy making out with the Shining ghost (Gem Refoufi)) instead of ignoring that altogether, though that’s the perfect example of something that could’ve been expanded upon by giving her a moment to say the OASIS allowed her to acceptably live her truth. I wish we’d gotten to know Wade’s pals Sho and Daito (Win Morisaki) better as well. They could've at least had varied goals; rather than seeking control and fortune, maybe one of them could’ve just been down to complete the challenges like a trophy hunter in today’s video games. In general, I would've liked to see more of Wade's competitors before he brings everyone together at the climax. TJ Miller’s I-R0k is a great counterpart to Wade, given he comes off as a much more problematic nerd than Watts does, but he’s still essentially an IOI stooge rather than a player with his own agenda. Are there rebel Gunters Art3mis works with that do extreme things she doesn't approve of? There's only so much screen time, of course, but after the first leg of the Egg Hunt it felt like only the High Five and IOI were invested in the quest.

Mendelsohn was good as the evil businessman in charge of keeping IOI's profits up. That he wanted to monetize the OASIS by putting ads all over it and wanted to charge for its use made him a good avatar for both Hollywood leaning on nostalgia instead of creating new things and for the forces opposed to net neutrality, since this tech should be for everyone. The fact that he was greedier than outright mustache-twirling evil (until he started killing people) was a smart choice that kept him human. At the same time, that greed quickly led him down a "who cares" path: he has no concern about zeroing out everyone scrambling for the Easter Egg, which would bankrupt everyone against him (I hope Wade restored those players' coin counts!), and that was good character progression. I also liked his fake geek scene: being fed trivia to convince Wade they were the same (and his general exasperation with geek culture) was a good way to make him markedly different from every other character in the movie, particularly the younger generation. I also liked the change in his response to confronting Wade as an “inferior” geek and Wade as a competent rebel threat. I've seen it jokingly pointed out that a rich white guy like Sorrento just admitting he's a criminal and giving up at the end is the most unrealistic thing in the movie, but I think that's foreshadowed by Wade confronting him with the "gun." Nolan respects the gamers when they show the capability to end his life; as soon as they're willing to play by his rules, he takes them seriously and backs down almost immediately. Like Wade’s online courage and offline weakness, Nolan has an “avatar” of strength in the real world around people he believes are less than him. 

Contrasting with Sorrento, I really liked that the IOI researchers (Turlough Convery, Joe Hurst, Eric Sigmundsson, James Dryden, Danielle Phillips, Rona Morrison, Khalil Madovi, Morris Minelli) were truly invested in the outcome of the game and (eventually) watching Wade win it. Their glee at the success of the hunt and the purity of the final challenge added a lot of texture to them. They may have sold out to IOI (or simply been forced into working with them because of debt or promises of riches), but they weren't just heartless drones. While I appreciated that depth, I was a little confused about the power IOI wields in general in this world. One of their divisions seemed to be a (virtual) privatized debtor’s prison and I would've liked to see what that was like when not engaged in the egg hunt (assuming it existed before Halliday's challenge). That seems ripe for the potential to program nightmares into prisoner’s minds when the only crime was falling behind on their debts. I've been told that in the book, IOI's Sixers are more like indentured servants and I could see that spin in the film (particularly through Samantha's dad), but some clarity on what their actual power level and place in society was would've been appreciated, because it certainly looked like Samantha had been arrested by them. It was also a little odd that IOI could blow up part of the Cleveland Stacks and no authorities cared or even showed up until the end, unless that's a comment on the classism of this society. Despite that lack of clarity, "the common people vs. a corporation with too much power" is a solid theme and the movie plays it well. I also appreciated that Sorrento’s real-world muscle was headed up by a woman, F’nale Zandor (Hannah John-Kamen). She could’ve easily been a guy and most movies would’ve gone that way, but making her a strong, dangerous woman who didn’t like Sorrento that much was a cool choice. It would’ve been nice for Samantha, Sho, and Daito to be able to defeat her instead of Wade (who was focused on the OASIS during their fight), though.

I liked Halliday and his quiet sadness in the wake of the important lesson about connections he'd learned too late. He seems much more likable and understandable than what I've heard about his book counterpart. I'm pretty quiet in real life, so I could definitely relate to his difficulty opening up to people. The fact that his quest to know his favorite pop culture is really a quest to appreciate the game and the world outside by connecting with real people (first Halliday, then people in your real life) was an awesome twist. Whether Halliday is really dead or not doesn't matter to me; either way, he is free of his creation and has found a successor who can do what he couldn’t. Halliday’s programmed self leaving with his childhood self was a perfect exit from the story for him. Simon Pegg gave a solid, unexpectedly subdued performance as Halliday's former friend Ogden Morrow that I liked a lot. He had a good bit of tragedy to him over falling out with Halliday and I liked how he figured into the OASIS world. Serving as the docent of the Halliday museum felt like a cool way to honor his friend and preserve his memory while potentially trying to figure out exactly what drove them apart. I’m glad that the fact that Halliday was in love with Og’s wife wasn’t played to make anyone look bad—rather, it was treated as just something that happened—and the real tragedy was that they fell apart over something Og probably would’ve forgiven Halliday for had they just talked about it instead of Halliday bottling it all up inside (another lost connection).

I liked the references in Halliday's virtual world—I love 80s/90s pop culture—but almost none of the cameos stunned me. They were more like set dressing selling the idea of a nostalgia playground and that’s all they needed to be. If they were the real characters instead of players using avatars, we'd lose focus on Wade, Samantha, etc. and their struggle. While we do get glimpses of interests beyond the 80s/90s—the Adam West Batmobile, King Kong, mentions of steampunk, and disco music (bizarrely referred to as "old school"...all of this is old nowadays, not to mention to teens in the 2040s)—as others have noted it would've been nice to see more diverse fandoms represented by the Gunters, even while they were engaged in cracking Halliday's 80s/90s-focused challenge. It would've brought more variety to the characters. As for the contest itself, I loved the race and The Shining test a lot. The race for the first key, through a twisting and turning New York, was a great adaptation of racing games that made me think of Split/Second. It also featured two of my favorite cameos in the movie, Rexy from Jurassic Park and King Kong, because those “were” those characters. The Shining challenge for the second key featured an excellent recreation of Stanley Kubrick's movie before morphing into pretty much exactly what I'd imagine a bombastic video game version of that film would be, which was cool. That adaptation being hated by Stephen King was also a nice tie to Halliday becoming disillusioned by what people were giving up to use his game. Jack Torrence’s fall and attempt to destroy his family also feels like a pretty perfect (if extreme) parallel to Halliday feeling he’d betrayed his best friend by secretly loving his wife and cutting him out of the company. The chaotic melee leading up to the final key was fine, but full of players I didn't know or care about so it fell flatter than it probably should have (one of the "real" characters thrown into that battle gets a great moment, though). On the other hand, the final challenge was a nice, quiet moment that fit the film's theme and Halliday's lesson. It felt right to bring it all down to one player connecting with the designer of one game. The actual final challenge was perfectly personal too, but they totally missed a chance to homage The Last Crusade by having Halliday’s wizard avatar say “You have chosen…wisely.”  

I liked the ideas behind this world quite a bit. It’s definitely prescient to showcase a world in love with distractions and games to the point where they stop interacting with real people or doing something worthwhile with their lives (who among us hasn’t gotten distracted by Twitter or Facebook and put off doing something we should be doing?). They did a great job of showing how much people were wrapped up in their virtual lives, spending real money (even their mortgage money!) on virtual trinkets and upgrades. That real-world financial connection made the stakes high enough to carry the film for me. It's true Wade and the High Five are only fighting for a recreational toy (even if it has other applications like education) without having goals for their lives outside the OASIS, but in the dystopia they live in (and in our real world), people need a release and escape: our lives can't just be work/school, food, bathroom breaks, and sleep. That's why we go to movies and play games in the first place. It's why people shouldn't police what people on food stamps use them for; existence should be more than just existing. At the same time, remembering the OASIS is just a game, not the pinnacle of your existence, is a great message and the movie walks the line between these seemingly at-odds lessons very well. To that end, I wish they'd said the High Five were going to use their enormous winnings to make the real world somewhere people would want to explore too.

I'm interested to see if the novel expands on what you can do in the OASIS beyond playing. I did miss the first minute or two—I came in as Wade was introducing his treadmill/haptic suit—so perhaps some of these elements were referenced and I just missed it. I've heard kids go to school inside it and that's an interesting opportunity for students to be exposed to any facet of history/science/whatever in a tactile way through VR. I'd be interested to see how much work is done online in conjunction with OASIS applications, if any. Do people buy their food with OASIS coins? The more real-world things are wrapped up in the program, the more crucial it becomes to save it from a corporation that wants to eventually price people out of vital services. On a more personal level, seeing more people experimenting with how they present themselves to the world would've been great. If they can literally be anything or anyone, a lot of personal freedom is also at stake. Aech and Shao touch on this freedom, as does Art3mis with her idealized appearance, but I would've loved to see more, particularly with today's political battles over transgender rights. In terms of how people in this future interact with each other, I found it disheartening that even 30 years from now, in a world where everyone is constantly online playing in the OASIS, Wade still has trouble believing a girl—even the famous Art3mis!—could be an expert at trivia. This very modern problem doesn't come up much in the movie, but the Slappers Only line stood out to me. Wade and Samantha test each other on Goldeneye 64 knowledge, which is fine, but it's obvious by what she says that she'd know what Slappers Only is without Wade mansplaining it.

From the look of trailers, I never would've guessed Steven Spielberg directed this. However, he brought his trademark heart and humanity to the CGI elements and video game structure; even in unfamiliar trappings, it felt and acted like a Spielberg movie. Despite areas where the characters could've been fleshed out to create more conflict or explore the personal freedom of the OASIS, Spielberg's touch and the strength of his performers kept them likable and engaging. He also maintained a quick pace: this didn’t feel like a two and a half hour movie at all. I thought the CGI looked good, given this was supposed to be a video game with game graphics. Since it intentionally looked "off" from reality, it wasn't jarring to have anime-inspired avatars or constantly shifting geography. I liked that the score had touches of film scores from the 80s in it; those bits of nostalgia did get me. From the excerpts I've read online, most of the novel’s problematic elements were removed for the adaptation. Wade doesn't show any transphobia—Aech brings up the idea that Art3mis could be a guy and Wade denies it, but seems to accept that possibility anyway. They're worried Art3mis is a guy who’ll steal Wade’s coins, not that he’s a guy who wants to date him. There's no "masturbation manifesto,” no super-long lists of everything Wade has studied (partially because they can just show us all the references and partially because the movie has a more personal egg hunt). Wade's attempts to make Art3mis like him are also toned down or cut altogether, though I wouldn't have minded including one or two and subverting them to teach him that real love isn't like in a movie where grand gestures and "persistence"/stalking will get you everywhere. Unfortunately, it did seem like there was still a noticeable lack of content by female and minority artists, though. Thriller gets a shoutout, but only as a costume Wade considers wearing. As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, there was also a lack of 80s content that was geared toward girls. Why not have Jem and the Holograms playing the club Wade and Samantha go to or something? This section of the OASIS is curated to Halliday’s tastes, sure, but if we’re going all-in on the 80s and 90s, largely ignoring minority and female artists is a pretty huge oversight.

I don’t think my critiques here are about movie-ruining problems, just areas where a good, solid film could’ve been exceptional. Even if its characters could’ve been expanded to make more of an impact and statement, Ready Player One is definitely worth seeing! It's an exciting adventure with heart and a great, relevant message. I had a lot of fun and I recommend it!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

[timelapsedgamer]

The Waste of Westworld

So now we have come to the end of Westworld season 3. I never know what to make of this show. Because I like it. But yet, its kinda,, bad. Plus, no one that I know watches it. And that one person who does, cannot grasp what is going on,, or is a month or three behind,  so trying to talk about it is useless.

But like I said, I do like it. The overall story and general theme is great.

For those who might not know what Westworld is..The HBO series and original movie plots revolves around a future-ish vacation park, where the guests interact with lifelike robots/androids.. To play out storied scenarios. But because everything is robots and computer driven, the guests can literally do anything to the lifelike “hosts”. Murder, rape, bank robberies...  it’s all very possible in Westworld. But of course something goes wrong with the system and the Hosts start fighting back.

Anyhow. The first season of the series was pretty gripping. We get a better look at the beginnings of the park and its founders, while following the subtle changes in the Hosts that lead to the mentioned security failure.  

What the series added that the original movies only slightly eluded to was much more of the behind the scenes, dark corporate side of things. And that bit made the darker twist possible.

Throw in a sizable bit of sleight of hand moving timelines and you got a couple of story points that are quietly coming at you from different ends of that timeline that are all moving towards a finale that neatly ties up those ends and sets up the whole series to move forward perfectly. At this point, the show was really in its groove.

Then season two came along.

The set up of the first season really had season two pointed in a great direction. But instead of running with the fantastic plot, the show decided to run with the other thing it was known for,, the jumping around on the timeline thing.

That alone wouldn't be so bad, but doing it just to confuse people, did just that. It was so all over the place, with little explanation. It became too confusing to half of the people trying to follow along.

And for those who did manage to keep things mostly sorted, it became quite clear that the confusion was done on purpose, with no reason other than to mess with them.

To be fair, the second season story was actually pretty good.. if you laid it out in direct order, without all the fluff and misdirection. But by itself,, very short.

So by keeping the audience turned this way and that way by uselessly bouncing forward and backward, not knowing what the hell was happening, it allowed the short plot to be spread out for the length of the season, but then never really tying things up as good as season one.

But it did more or less open the door for season three. I say more or less because it really felt like they were also leaving the door open to fade away and not return.

But season three did return.

I haven't mentioned the acting in the two previous seasons. We all know Westworld has won many awards in its first two seasons for both acting and support actors.

So just to say it… I don't see why.

The weakest link of Westworld for me has always been its poor acting. Some of its great don't get me wrong. Ed Harris, Hopkins, Wright, Tessa Thompson.. Great! Even Evan Rachel Wood has moments, but she mostly provides nothing. But probably the worst of the bunch is Maeve, Thandie Newton. She ruins any immersion happening. And every season the acting seems to get worse and worse. To the point that I'm starting to think that its part of their gimmick.

Ok before getting to season three lets pull a few things together here.

Season two took a pretty hard nose dive with the confusion of the time jumping. May have lost a few people along the way.

They took one of the poorest actors, made her mostly the focus, plus very unrealistically and comically immortal. (Maeve)

Ok ok,, season three. Some where before work started on season 3, someone in the board room must have said,, “you what we need to do,, I think we need to stop this time jumping thing. I think we are confusing people a little too much”

GREAT! Good idea. I couldn't agree more. Just tell the story, let it happen in real time and stop using that gimmick.  I 100% agree..

But then he continues…. “And also, we should look at getting a new, more horrific actor to take a new up front role so the audience can forget at how badly acted Maeve is. Lets call Aaron Paul!”

Are you kidding? Who the hell though this was a good idea? If the idea was to make me cringe and mostly ignore a main character, then casting Aaron was the best choice. Im gonna say this casting choice is one of the worst moves of this series.

As far as the meat of season three goes.. What happened to the plot writing?  Was the writing all along that bad that only the forced misdirections made it bearable? Seems that way. Now that we have a straight foreword moving plot where one can focus on it.. there is nothing. Just... nothing.

Sure there are a few groovy action scenes and a few, oddly out of place plot point tie ups that only felt like time fillers rather than development. But for the most part, season three was a rushed mess that felt like it was being made up as they went.

Every episode left me thinking it was just one of those filler episodes to try to explain something, and next weeks episode would be back to being great!

Except none of that happened. Ever.

When I saw that the next weeks episode was the season finale, I literally said to my self.. “How can it be the finale? Nothing happened yet!”

The finale came around. It happened. I watched it. And I immediately thought. This entire season could have been just this one episode. Nearly nothing that happened in the previous nine episodes made any difference.

We all kinda thought we knew how it would turn out,, and thats exactly how it did. We didn't need nine hours of filler to get there.

Anyone who had watched both of previous seasons, only needs to watch season three finale and they would be perfectly caught up.

No other way to say it. Season three was a complete and utter waste of time.

The one good thing is that there is going to be at least a season 4. And the only direction that it can go is up.

This franchise had so much potential at one time, its just too bad that they went for gimmicky tactics, and that started its downfall. The story they had, that they used could have carried it, but sadly everything else around it crumbled and took it all down.

Timelapsed Scifi

[adalcs]

with great excitement and not so much honor i (re)introduce you a d a l a  c e r n y — resident activist & copyrighted the phrase ‘spread hummus not hate’. okay but serious business — hello there ! my name’s dallas & i am eighteen, and am from the netherlands. i love dogs, i love football, i love watermelon and i love any roleplay shenanigans. send me pictures of your pets ?1!? if you’d like to plot, talk, send me pictures of your pets, you could either like this post or message me at any time. it’s free, it’s a good offer js.

without further ado, meet adala cerny. your resident activist, environmentalist, feminist, metalhead and hummus addict. endlessly notorious for her bare face except for when she claims to wear lipstick as wair paint, making everyone vegan brownies, handing you out flyers to local protests and urging you to go green.

born and raised in portland, oregon, the only parental figure she had in her life —ever— was her mother. she grew up as the child of divorced parents. she barely remembers a time they were together & the marriage was pretty much doomed since the minute she was born, or at least that is somewhat what she assumes ? she stayed with her mother in portland while her father moved to new york city, to kickstart his business.

the reason he left was pretty much clear ; he was an absolute asshole, if you were to ask adala. daddy issues, you may ask ? well um , perhaps. adala had been more of an accident than anything, her parents weren’t too young but lacked maturity or the true desire for parenthood. they did decide to have the baby, as soon as they figured out they were pregnant. her father having a steady job, they were supposedly going to be fine, but everything turned to shit as soon as adala was actually born. her dad became more & more neglectful, not only in funds but also presence, and this perfect family they were supposedly creating was just nowhere to be found anymore. it was when adala was around two that the bomb truly exploded, resulting in her dad leaving to nyc and leaving them both behind in oregon.

long story short, they moved out of their family home into an apartment in the city center of portland where they lived their new lives together. it was just a two bedroom, small and tucked away in the back of some apartment building in the city, but they managed. they didn’t go without trouble at all, but they never went hungry, had a roof over their heads and they had each other. her dad was another story however ! the mandatory meetings with her dad ... those were tense, especially once adala grew older and more stubborn. her frustrations towards him just grow, and grow and grow.

she lived together with her mom ever since then & her mom is truly the person who shaped her and who taught her all her values. i guess you could typify her mom as a hippie ; peaceful and caring, yet fighting for what she believes in. she was a true activist, pro-feminism and environmentally friendly. notorious for inviting her friends around at night, with the house smelling of weed and adala herself tucked away in her room by that time. she wanted to live her life without restrictions & perhaps it ended up with her being more of a friend to adala rather than a mother figure, but they got along so well.

nevertheless, her mom taught her all the important things in life. she’s become independent, perhaps because of the lack of parental guidance but she knows how to take care of herself now, and she’s also a huge activist ! often tags along to protests together with her mom, even from an early age, a huge feminist, values sustainability, and thinks freedom and equality should be protected at all costs.

she’s very skeptical though of many things ; doesn’t trust big corporations, government or anyone’s sorry ass, really ? perhaps she’s a bit of a pessimist even, although she will argue that it’s called realism. the world is going to shit, and nobody’s realizing is her take on it. but whatever, she’s trying to make it the least bit better. better the world, start with yourself kinda ideas — i know, she’s a bit of a hypocrite in that sense with her own pessimistic outlook on nearly everything.

she has the biggest mouth in existence. she has no filter, and will tell you exactly what you need to hear, whether you want it or not ? which can both turn out good or bad. will probably end up dragging your ass even when you do not fully deserve it.

the actual epitome of stubborn ; will not believe anyone but herself until proven wrong completely. she will not change her stance on anything, no matter how hard one tries. out of the kindness of my heart, i would tell anyone to stop trying to convince her after two tries. i even bet if you look up the definition to stubborn, a picture of adala will show up without doubt. or at least it should. she does not cave.

she actually means well though — she’s judgmental, has an opinion on everything from the weather to what netflix movie you watch next, to the political successes of past american presidents, but she is loyal. she’ll be your shoulder to cry on, make whoever made you feel that way pay for it with her own bare hands if she would have had to, if you were only to ask. and once she cares for you, she somewhat always will. it’s a promise she can’t and won’t break.

she’s curious , has the tendency to ask questions for forever & ever and won’t stop until she knows every detail. she has an undying craving to know the why behind every question, behind every action.

so, two years ago she graduated high school & adala decided to go into the law program at bernard university. she now studies pre-law there and wants to go into environmental law as well, save the world ‘n all. the job field might be extra tough though, and it’s something she worries about but also something she needs to do for her conscience. she cannot fight for what is not right and what is not just. going into criminal justice for the money ? it’s something she would frown upon. she would rather go hungry then have to defend a murderer in a case he definitely commited.

the money was the real issue though ; she didn’t get a full ride scholarship and the tuition fee is way too high for her or her mother to pay out of their own pockets and with their father’s forced payment, she cannot pay everything. she’s taking on major, major loans in order to pay for this program however she is hoping that it will all be worth it in the end, when bernard will help her to find a proper job.

her love life ? an absolute mess, she perhaps doesn’t believe in love as fully as anyone else because of the situation her parents are in, but it doesn’t mean she does not yearn for something like it. she is just afraid to admit she’s looking to receive that same kind of love and loyalty she tries to give, i guess ? she is just not necessarily looking for something that takes away her freedom partially. i figure a relationship is something she sees as a burden rather than an addition to life, and perhaps she just has not yet found the person who is not a burden to her, but someone who feels part of her life with ease. she doesn’t want to tie herself down, perhaps. she is, however, completely open and at peace with her love life and sex life. she enjoys whatever she does, and she’s not afraid to give it a shot whenever she wants to — she’s confident enough in herself to make the right decisions, and perhaps that is why she is not ashamed, or completely dependent on what others think of her. she is only interested in her own morals and values.

her aesthetic is leather jackets ( fake leather , don’t hurt the animals kiddos ), metal music, mosh pits, long hair, ripped jeans, tied up graphic tees, boyfriend jeans or skater skirts, dark greens & navy blues, cold brew coffee, black lipstick, band patches, denim, second hand fashion & growing her own vegetables and herbs.

fun facts about her is that she’s super sustainable, hence why she grows her own veggies and is a vegetarian, will definitely promote everyone to do so as well. she loves rammstein, rise against & system of a down. has her favourite leather jacket with all pins on it and it’s gotten a holy status. the true statement piece in her closet. drinks coffee with milk because she thinks it tastes too bitter, although my theory is just that it reminds her of her own bitter soul too much.

CONNECTIONS PAGE CAN BE FOUND HERE ! i am open and available for plots of every kind, although i am super interested in certain close friendships, childhood plots, enemy plots that offer quite a lot of drama and generally plot heavy connections that will give us a lot to work with in threads. so if you’re looking for anyone for that one angsty plot you need, i got you.

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Day 59: Fight Club...kinda

Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump where I try to explain WTF happened in 2016 through 100 works and today we are going to talk about a failed movie.  I have to be honest with you folks, I had a lot of fucking trouble deciding whether I should include this one or not, because one one hand it is talking about the exact same Alt Right/Gamergate/MRA bullshit that was so pivital to getting Trump elected, and on the other hand it is a movie that utterly fails at delivering its ostensible point.  Since I’m assuming fucking everybody has seen this movie, you are all familiar with all of those people who unironically love this movie and want to be like Tyler Durden and people are like “omg those people totally miss the point of the movie” and yes they do.

That is entirely the fault of the movie, because despite what the movies intention is, the reality is that the movie makes the thing it is criticizing seem more appealing than than it means too, beacuse David Fincher has a major problem with restraints and loves overindlugence, and when you are criticizing overindulging while indulging in it, you get to weird sentences and also a failed movie.  Fight Club does not succeed at what Fight Club is attempting to make, and ultimately comes out equally in favor of its subject as against it, because failed film-making choices.  Because the movie only really works as the director intended (and I am assuming he did intend to mean this movie as a critic of toxic masculinity because that is what he said) if you go into the movie knowing exactly what the director intended, and that is really a failed movie.  Again this is a movie that is like “bah consumer culture’ and filled with Pepsi ads.  But I am recommending it anyways because if you do come into the film knowing its intentions, then it is extremely enlightening to the entire bullshit culture of Toxic Masculinity, though it ironically falls into the same traps it critiques.  

     Ok so if you have been on the internet for any degree of time you have encountered the whole manosphere and if you aren’t emotionally maladjusted, you see these pepole running around talking about manleness and man things and BEING A MAN and if you pay the slightest bit of attention you notice how like...contradictory it all is?  And I don’t mean in a politician “I say one thing but do another” sense of contradictory, I mean in a “Wait, really?” poser desperately trying to hang out with the cool kids contradiction.  For example, go unto Reddit, 4chan, 8chan and the various pro Trump sites and you will see all this stuff about how Trump is a real man who understands the masculine virtues unlike those girly sensitive easily offended liberals who care about feelings and are all wimps.  And if you are a fucking idiot, your response should be “Wait, isn’t Trump like the most easily offended obviously insecure man in the world who throws a giant hissy fit over the slightest provocation, never severed in the military (while mocking those who do) and is constantly showing his emotions at all times.  How the fuck is that masculine?  

    Or if you pay attention to Gamergate who are like “OMG , women/betas are so weak and overreact to everything”  And then you have a video game with a female protagonist and they go absolutely apeshit and whine like nobody has ever whined before?  Or you have people like Sargon of Akkad who are like “ZOMG free speech” and then they call for universities to have classes they don’t like purged without a shred of irony.  

Or the Golden One who says that the leftist Betas do nothing but whine about shit and then when somebody makes a video like this he tries to sue him for defamation.  LIke have you noticed (and will notice in the responses to this post) that the so called alpha masculine folks are also the biggest fucking badies in the world?  From Roosh V’s pathetic whining about feminists being mean to him for saying women don’t have brains, so Thunderf00t buying into long debunked pseudo science, to Davis Arueni saying how people try to pull down millionaires to then immediately critique millions who he doesn’t like (he has accomplished nothing himself of course), to the talk of “Neomasculinity going back to ancient Greece” which ignores the fact that their was a lot of sodomy going on back then, to the fact that the fucking Red Pill is from a movie made by two transwomen about systemic inequality.   The entire culture of masculinity is a giant contradictory of terms.  And I keep posting this, but its true, the people who stand for the working class are always getting behind rich assholes who just say a few phrases?

 Or how the religious right is always getting behind rich pricks who only care obtaining money and never seem to actually do anything christian.  

Or if any of you have had the misfortune of meeting Wall Street folks, they are all into macho culture, extreme sports and act like they are some sort of alpha males when they are all these fucking accountants who spend all day calling people trying to trick them out of their money.  Or the fact that you have libertarians like Adam Baldwin coming out to support Putin because he is a real man.  And that is really what I want to talk about with Fight Club, the fact that for all of its macho aspirations, they really don’t live up to any of the standards they set except for rhetoric, its a fucking cargo cult.  In a way, Fight Club feels like a commentary on 300, a big dumb hyper macho ultra violent stupid fucking movie that is also like....really gay.  And have you noticed that Fight Club is one of the most gay movies like...ever.  even if we ignore the way Tyler dresses, the entire relationship of the movie is about shirtless men holding each other and the core relationship in the film is between two men who not only love holding their hands, but are....ok they are basically dating, I mean this is hardly subtext.   They literally go “We should do this again some time” while smoking I mean come on.   Its really impossible to find any of these defenders of masculinity who don’t come off as a mix of pathetic and psychotic. 

And then you have the fact that the whole macho idea is being an individual and standing up conformist culture that makes you into a homogenized drone of the system....and then they start doing EXACTLY THAT.  They literally give up their names and start taking little pamphlets with basically nondisclosure agreements.  The whole point of the movie is how Fight Club is a fucking cult based on contradictions, like the fact that you aren’t suppose to speak of it, but you are expected to spread it.  Or the fact that the group comes into existence with men who have testicular cancer, or the fact that the only time actual happiness is found is when one stops buying into this macho bullshit.  I mean look at this video here contrasting self proclaimed masculine god among men “The Golden One” (no really he actually fucking said that) and a man whose goal in life seems to be as silly and unmasculine as possible.  

Beyond the fact that this video is hilarious and Hbomberguy is one of the best people for just undermining the entire macho subculture of the Alt Right, here is the thing...notice how Hbomberugy comes off as more traditionally masculine than the Golden One?  Like he just seems more confident and fucking relaxed.  But beyond that, notice how much this guy spends talking about feelings and emotions and all types of things traditionally described as girly.  Or here is a great example, the Golden One is all into fantasy as where he draws his traditional values, but the Granddaddy of fantasy, LOTRS, not only features LOTs of scenes of men crying, it also is centered upon you know...these guys

    Two extremely non-masculine men who not only cry frequently, but have this very close sensitive relationship where they talk about their feelings (and that is even before you get into the gay thing).  But you have these Alt Right folks taking the token most shallow levels stuff from the source material of both masculine mainstream culture and alternative culture and trying to internalize meaning out of them....they are fucking posers is what I’m getting at, oh dear its looped back around again 

   And the core of entire response is...people feeling lonely.  This isn’t just the film, go unto these fucking boards and you see people talking about white Genocide and the Red Pill in one sentence, and then crying openly about how they feel so lonely, unfulfilled and suicidal, I mean, I’m on tumblr, and I see people posting about depression, anxiety, not wanting to get up in the morning, not being able to go outside, not being able to work, living constantly on the edge as people who feel put upon by the world and let me tell you, there is nobody I’ve encountered on tumblr as utterly hopeless as the people I see on 4chan.  I”m not saying 4chan folks have worse problems, in fact I can assure you, they really really don’t, but they feel like they do, its a whole giant mess of feelings going on at all those sites.  Our protagonist has spent his whole life going “if I buy enough useless commercial junk, I stop being so lonely”.  And then “Hey if you due enough violence then guess what you belong”.  But this is the great bit (and by the way this is the bit the movie does not do enough to explore).  The system they are fighting against, the corporate neoliberal clintonian milktoast capitalist system that dehumanizes them?  They are right about how awful it is, but what they aren’t right about is who is responsible.  They blame women.  But who runs the credit card companies and corporate materialism and the Wall Street Banks...guess what?  They aren’t being run by feminists or muslims or black people or any other group who are supposedly being whiny for not wanting to get persecuted.  They are run by people like this 

or this

or this

Yeah, real leftist infiltration there fellows

   Also, going back to my theme of “The Right co-opts the left” that I have been talking about so much, notice how these MRAs, White Nationalists, Klansmen etc all kinda use SJW rhetoric?  Like the they use similar memes, rhetorical style, and even the whole identity politics support group style.  I mean if you spend too much time in the Alt Right interwebs, you find yourself seeing discussions privilege and triggering caused by black people and women, and these people really believe that despite congress being utterly white and male, they are the ones who are persecuted.  And its a cargo cult, its all about trappings and surface level appearance, not actual context, the Alt Right has the trappings of the progressive movement.  And the reason for this is that the progressives and the Alt Right actually hate the same target, project Mayhem’s attack on the credit card companies well...a lot of touchy feely, died hair, gender fluid, mixed race, Muslim, lesbian, pagan, liberal environmentalist who cries easily and talks about fan shipping on tumblr, they aren’t exactly weeping tears for the Credit Card Industry, they want it to die a slow death.

Like...this guy

   They are doing more to reject the system than Tyler Durden ever did, because the instinctive response to have of those things is contempt or revulsion, while mainstream society doesn’t really lack so called Alpha Males fighting with other men to take down society with violence.   Also I really want to reiterate that the whole Alpha/Beta wolf model is how the behave in captivity, which as Hbomberguy said, kinda sums up the entire Alt Right movement in a nutshell.   As always, they lash out at centrists and call it leftists 

Gee, does that remind you of anything?  These people are losers who want to believe in the Right Wing ideological principles, but don’t know what to do when it doesn’t bear out in reality, so rather than admit that they believed in a lie, they hope if they can double down, they can somehow make it real again.  Because if they admit that the entire premise itself was at fault, that is a lot scarier than what ever giant conspiracy theory they dream up, better to pretend to believe that Jews run the world than admit that you’ve put faith in a lie. 

Because these aren’t macho people fighting against the feminine, those people exist and they are also really awful, but the absolute worse comes from the people who feel like they don’t quite fit.  And that is what is going on in project mayhem, these desperate sad people are getting screwed over by those who run society, but rather than addressing you know...the actual problem, they just kind of incoherently lash out at people who suffer more then them, and surprise surprise, nothing actually gets done.  The movie kinda fails this, I honestly could make a whole series of post on both why Fight Club is brilliant and why it completely fails at what it sets out to do.  BUt it does get at how self defeating this all is, and how people who love the masculine virtues don’t even seem to understand them, never exhibit any but the trappings of them, and always seem to behave not as leftists do, but as they accuse leftists of doing.  So I suppose it is only fitting that the ultimate crybaby macho man wound up becoming president by appealing to exactly these people I suppose.  People are surprised that Trump is contradictory and are confused why people would support him, except...that’s the point, the whole point is that he is contradictory, that the people who cry out for individualism seem desperate to submerge their will to that of a strong man.

If you want a nice concise  summery of what I am talking about, check out this video by Folding Ideas, its very dry and kind of pretentious, but his actual point is really useful and informative.  

[preciousmetals0]

Biotech Buyouts and Peloton Fallouts

Biotech Buyouts and Peloton Fallouts:

Don’t Get Fooled Again

OK, dear readers. Today’s secret word is “tariffs.”

When you hear the secret word, scream really loud!

As if you all weren’t screaming really loud already. The Dow is down more than 400 points, and all the major market indexes have shed roughly 1% or more.

And why are we mired deep in the red today? Because President Trump said the quiet part out loud. You know when thoughts run through your head and you think: “I shouldn’t say that out loud”? That’s what happened with Trump at a London news conference this morning.

When asked about a trade deal between the U.S. and China, Trump said that a deal was “dependent on one thing — do I want to make it.” We all kinda thought he did. He did publish a book titled The Art of the Deal, after all.

But, later in that same news conference, Trump added: “I have no deadline, no. In some ways, I think it’s better to wait until after the election if you want to know the truth. But I’m not going to say that, I just think that.”

Umm … do you want to tell him, or should I? (Psst — that’s the part you weren’t supposed to say out loud!)

Luckily for both of us, the market has already spoken up … rather loudly. And it’s not happy about delaying a China trade deal until after the 2020 elections.

Adding to today’s mess, Trump is readying tariffs (screeeeam!) of up to 100% on $2.4 billion in French imports in retaliation for a new French digital-services tax.

You’d think we’re done, but no!

The U.S. is also considering increased tariffs (screeeeam!) on the EU after the World Trade Organization ruled that Airbus was receiving “market-distorting subsidies.”

At a NATO press conference this morning, Trump weighed in on the ruling: “We’re going to tax Airbus … that’s going to be very good for Boeing.”

The Takeaway: 

I … I don’t even know where to start. There’s just so much to unpack here. Trump is handing out tariffs (screeeam!) like my grandfather used to pass out Werther’s Originals when the grandkids came over to visit.

What’s more, the “do I want to make it” talk about the U.S.-China trade deal … hasn’t the U.S. economy suffered enough? I’m not talking about investors or Wall Street. We’re all making out like bandits trading the ups and downs of the market this year.

We’re handing out billions in subsidies to farmers to make up for the impact of this trade war. I know they’ve suffered enough.

You know what it looks like to me when Trump says he might wait until 2020 to make a deal with China? It looks like he’s punting.

I know some of you are going to write in and tell me: “I know your politics now! You’ve tipped your hand, and I can’t trust you anymore.”

But, honestly, what do you do when you can’t force through the deal you want to make? You stall.

Either one of two things is going to happen in 2020:

One, Trump will win reelection and have four more years of leverage to push against a stalling Chinese trade delegation. (And, let’s be honest here, we know they’re stalling on several key trade points just for this reason.)

Two, Trump will not win reelection, and the next administration will have to deal with China … and that will become a political talking point for years to come.

I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad move. Politically speaking, punting the Chinese trade deal down the road is brilliant for Trump. And, if it gets the U.S. back on equal footing with the world’s second-largest economy, it’s brilliant for the country as well.

In the long run, something must be done about the Chinese trade situation.

However, punting after all the White House’s talking points said we were so close to a deal has ramifications — both economic and financial.

The question now becomes: Will President Trump once again try to calm Wall Street’s nerves? And will it believe him this time around?

On that note, I’ll leave you with a quote from former President George W. Bush: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me … you can’t get fooled again.”

Note: As Great Stuff was going to press, Trump downplayed Wall Street’s sell-off, calling it “peanuts” compared to making a good trade deal with China.

I guess the gloves are off now?

In that case, now, more than ever, you need a stable source of income. A voice of sanity in the coming storm. If you haven’t explored the possibilities of Ted Bauman’s The Bauman Letter, do so now.

Click here to learn how to subscribe now and gain the secrets to endless income!

The Good: Time for Therapy

While the rest of the market is tanking hard, the biotechnology sector is soaring. The spark for this rally is the $3 billion buyout of gene-therapy specialist Audentes Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: BOLD).

Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc. (OTC: ALPMY) said this morning that it’s buying Audentes for $60 per share in cash — more than double BOLD’s closing price of $28.61 yesterday.

With the acquisition, Astellas gains access to several revolutionary gene-therapy treatments, including pipeline treatments for Pompe disease and X-linked myotubular myopathy.

Don’t worry — I don’t know what either of those are either. Feel free to Google them later. The point is, both are rare genetic diseases that have resisted traditional drug treatments so far. Gene therapy has been the only approach that appears to be making headway.

Such is the case around the biotechnology sector. So far this year, Big Pharma companies have snapped up gene-therapy firms like they’re the latest hot fashion. And they are.

The analyst community is taking note. Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Raymond said: “We do think with this deal now just the latest in a string of gene therapy take outs, and still many large pharma players without critical mass or meaningful exposure to gene therapy, it’s fair to ask—who’s next?”

That’s a really (really) long way of saying that Big Pharma companies have a lot of cash and want in on the gene-therapy revolution.

Now, I know you’re probably wondering: “How do I get a piece of the biotech action?” Well, friends, I have a solution for that … or, rather, Banyan Hill expert Jeff Yastine has a solution for that.

Jeff has all the details on a $450 million biotech company that is set to soar. And if you act quickly, you can get in on the ground floor before the Big Pharma firms take notice.

Click here now for all the details.

The Bad: 1 + 1 = Less Than 2

The steel and aluminum sectors are rallying this week following the U.S.’s reinstatement of tariffs on Brazil and Argentina. But not everyone is participating in the rally.

Iron ore miner Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE: CLF) is digging a hole today after announcing it will buy steel products maker AK Steel Holding Corp. (NYSE: AKS) for $1.1 billion.

Typically, the acquiring company’s stock falls following such a deal, but CLF is getting hammered — down more than 11% at last check.

Why? Because, somehow, Cleveland-Cliffs is really bad at math. After running the initial numbers, analysts have figured out that the combined company would be worth less than before the merger. Yes, less.

Part of the problem is that AK Steel is one of Cleveland-Cliffs’ biggest customers. In other words, the deal lowers Cleveland-Cliffs’ iron ore profits. The other part of the problem is corporate debt. Both companies have a combined debt load of about $8 billion, while the combined market capitalization of both firms is less than $4 billion.

Someone needs a lesson in responsible borrowing.

The Ugly: Bad Viral, No Doughnut

Most ad executives will tell you that “going viral” is the best thing that can happen to a company. Those ad executives might want to check with Peloton Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: PTON) before continuing that line of thought.

The company’s latest holiday ad for its $2,000 stationary bike and $39 subscription membership can only be described as “Black Mirror creepy.” It’s the tale of a husband who gets his wife a Peloton for Christmas and her life-changing journey with said bike.

Now, I’ve been married for more than 20 years to my lovely wife … and I know that there are certain things you just don’t surprise your spouse with. Workout equipment is one of those things.

The internet is having a field day ripping this ad apart. Aside from the horror movie references — one Twitter user “thought this was the start to a remake of cloverfield or something” — the new ad does nothing but reinforce the overly affluent, unnecessary lifestyle choice of the brand.

Apparently, you need an immaculate home and a large picture window to even own a Peloton — at least according to every single one of its ads.

If you think I’m overreacting, just look at PTON today. The stock is down more than 7% following the internet’s reaction to the ad.

Today’s marketing lesson is this: Going viral giveth, and going viral taketh away.

Speaking of workouts and getting healthy, we’re closing in on the end of the year … and that means New Year’s resolutions. That also means a flood of new members at your local gym. (Unless you own a big house with a picture window … you’re getting a Peloton!)

Regular gym members know that this phenomenon only lasts through the first month or two of the year. It’s a pain, but, like the migrating crabs of Christmas Island, it eventually goes away.

So, today’s Chart of the Week details the primary reasons why Americans stop going to the gym. (I know it isn’t a boutique gym or health club, but Peloton investors really should watch out for reason No. 1 on this list.)

Great Stuff: Feed the Beast

Oh, yes. It’s that time again.

It’s time to go tell it on the Great Stuff mountain!

You have two days to write in to GreatStuffToday@banyanhill.com if you want to make this week’s edition of Reader Feedback.

Send me your comments, questions or snide remarks.

We take all kinds here. But no cursing, please. We can’t publish that s#&%.

Here, let’s get your yodeling started:

Are you getting a Peloton for Christmas? (If so, do you also have a large picture window to put it in front of?)

How is following the Great Stuff Trade War Cycle chart working out for you?

Tariffs … right?

What do you believe is the biggest threat to the U.S. economy right now?

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? (It’s an old meme, sir, but it checks out.)

The answers to these questions and more can be yours for the low, low cost of dropping a line to GreatStuffToday@banyanhill.com.

Act now! Quantities of Great Stuff aren’t limited … but still, act now.

Finally, don’t forget to like and follow Great Stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

[goldira01]

Don’t Get Fooled Again

OK, dear readers. Today’s secret word is “tariffs.”

When you hear the secret word, scream really loud!

As if you all weren’t screaming really loud already. The Dow is down more than 400 points, and all the major market indexes have shed roughly 1% or more.

And why are we mired deep in the red today? Because President Trump said the quiet part out loud. You know when thoughts run through your head and you think: “I shouldn’t say that out loud”? That’s what happened with Trump at a London news conference this morning.

When asked about a trade deal between the U.S. and China, Trump said that a deal was “dependent on one thing — do I want to make it.” We all kinda thought he did. He did publish a book titled The Art of the Deal, after all.

But, later in that same news conference, Trump added: “I have no deadline, no. In some ways, I think it’s better to wait until after the election if you want to know the truth. But I’m not going to say that, I just think that.”

Umm … do you want to tell him, or should I? (Psst — that’s the part you weren’t supposed to say out loud!)

Luckily for both of us, the market has already spoken up … rather loudly. And it’s not happy about delaying a China trade deal until after the 2020 elections.

Adding to today’s mess, Trump is readying tariffs (screeeeam!) of up to 100% on $2.4 billion in French imports in retaliation for a new French digital-services tax.

You’d think we’re done, but no!

The U.S. is also considering increased tariffs (screeeeam!) on the EU after the World Trade Organization ruled that Airbus was receiving “market-distorting subsidies.”

At a NATO press conference this morning, Trump weighed in on the ruling: “We’re going to tax Airbus … that’s going to be very good for Boeing.”

The Takeaway: 

I … I don’t even know where to start. There’s just so much to unpack here. Trump is handing out tariffs (screeeam!) like my grandfather used to pass out Werther’s Originals when the grandkids came over to visit.

What’s more, the “do I want to make it” talk about the U.S.-China trade deal … hasn’t the U.S. economy suffered enough? I’m not talking about investors or Wall Street. We’re all making out like bandits trading the ups and downs of the market this year.

We’re handing out billions in subsidies to farmers to make up for the impact of this trade war. I know they’ve suffered enough.

You know what it looks like to me when Trump says he might wait until 2020 to make a deal with China? It looks like he’s punting.

I know some of you are going to write in and tell me: “I know your politics now! You’ve tipped your hand, and I can’t trust you anymore.”

But, honestly, what do you do when you can’t force through the deal you want to make? You stall.

Either one of two things is going to happen in 2020:

One, Trump will win reelection and have four more years of leverage to push against a stalling Chinese trade delegation. (And, let’s be honest here, we know they’re stalling on several key trade points just for this reason.)

Two, Trump will not win reelection, and the next administration will have to deal with China … and that will become a political talking point for years to come.

I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad move. Politically speaking, punting the Chinese trade deal down the road is brilliant for Trump. And, if it gets the U.S. back on equal footing with the world’s second-largest economy, it’s brilliant for the country as well.

In the long run, something must be done about the Chinese trade situation.

However, punting after all the White House’s talking points said we were so close to a deal has ramifications — both economic and financial.

The question now becomes: Will President Trump once again try to calm Wall Street’s nerves? And will it believe him this time around?

On that note, I’ll leave you with a quote from former President George W. Bush: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me … you can’t get fooled again.”

Note: As Great Stuff was going to press, Trump downplayed Wall Street’s sell-off, calling it “peanuts” compared to making a good trade deal with China.

I guess the gloves are off now?

In that case, now, more than ever, you need a stable source of income. A voice of sanity in the coming storm. If you haven’t explored the possibilities of Ted Bauman’s The Bauman Letter, do so now.

Click here to learn how to subscribe now and gain the secrets to endless income!

The Good: Time for Therapy

While the rest of the market is tanking hard, the biotechnology sector is soaring. The spark for this rally is the $3 billion buyout of gene-therapy specialist Audentes Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: BOLD).

Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc. (OTC: ALPMY) said this morning that it’s buying Audentes for $60 per share in cash — more than double BOLD’s closing price of $28.61 yesterday.

With the acquisition, Astellas gains access to several revolutionary gene-therapy treatments, including pipeline treatments for Pompe disease and X-linked myotubular myopathy.

Don’t worry — I don’t know what either of those are either. Feel free to Google them later. The point is, both are rare genetic diseases that have resisted traditional drug treatments so far. Gene therapy has been the only approach that appears to be making headway.

Such is the case around the biotechnology sector. So far this year, Big Pharma companies have snapped up gene-therapy firms like they’re the latest hot fashion. And they are.

The analyst community is taking note. Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Raymond said: “We do think with this deal now just the latest in a string of gene therapy take outs, and still many large pharma players without critical mass or meaningful exposure to gene therapy, it’s fair to ask—who’s next?”

That’s a really (really) long way of saying that Big Pharma companies have a lot of cash and want in on the gene-therapy revolution.

Now, I know you’re probably wondering: “How do I get a piece of the biotech action?” Well, friends, I have a solution for that … or, rather, Banyan Hill expert Jeff Yastine has a solution for that.

Jeff has all the details on a $450 million biotech company that is set to soar. And if you act quickly, you can get in on the ground floor before the Big Pharma firms take notice.

Click here now for all the details.

The Bad: 1 + 1 = Less Than 2

The steel and aluminum sectors are rallying this week following the U.S.’s reinstatement of tariffs on Brazil and Argentina. But not everyone is participating in the rally.

Iron ore miner Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE: CLF) is digging a hole today after announcing it will buy steel products maker AK Steel Holding Corp. (NYSE: AKS) for $1.1 billion.

Typically, the acquiring company’s stock falls following such a deal, but CLF is getting hammered — down more than 11% at last check.

Why? Because, somehow, Cleveland-Cliffs is really bad at math. After running the initial numbers, analysts have figured out that the combined company would be worth less than before the merger. Yes, less.

Part of the problem is that AK Steel is one of Cleveland-Cliffs’ biggest customers. In other words, the deal lowers Cleveland-Cliffs’ iron ore profits. The other part of the problem is corporate debt. Both companies have a combined debt load of about $8 billion, while the combined market capitalization of both firms is less than $4 billion.

Someone needs a lesson in responsible borrowing.

The Ugly: Bad Viral, No Doughnut

Most ad executives will tell you that “going viral” is the best thing that can happen to a company. Those ad executives might want to check with Peloton Interactive Inc. (Nasdaq: PTON) before continuing that line of thought.

The company’s latest holiday ad for its $2,000 stationary bike and $39 subscription membership can only be described as “Black Mirror creepy.” It’s the tale of a husband who gets his wife a Peloton for Christmas and her life-changing journey with said bike.

Now, I’ve been married for more than 20 years to my lovely wife … and I know that there are certain things you just don’t surprise your spouse with. Workout equipment is one of those things.

The internet is having a field day ripping this ad apart. Aside from the horror movie references — one Twitter user “thought this was the start to a remake of cloverfield or something” — the new ad does nothing but reinforce the overly affluent, unnecessary lifestyle choice of the brand.

Apparently, you need an immaculate home and a large picture window to even own a Peloton — at least according to every single one of its ads.

If you think I’m overreacting, just look at PTON today. The stock is down more than 7% following the internet’s reaction to the ad.

Today’s marketing lesson is this: Going viral giveth, and going viral taketh away.

Speaking of workouts and getting healthy, we’re closing in on the end of the year … and that means New Year’s resolutions. That also means a flood of new members at your local gym. (Unless you own a big house with a picture window … you’re getting a Peloton!)

Regular gym members know that this phenomenon only lasts through the first month or two of the year. It’s a pain, but, like the migrating crabs of Christmas Island, it eventually goes away.

So, today’s Chart of the Week details the primary reasons why Americans stop going to the gym. (I know it isn’t a boutique gym or health club, but Peloton investors really should watch out for reason No. 1 on this list.)

Great Stuff: Feed the Beast

Oh, yes. It’s that time again.

It’s time to go tell it on the Great Stuff mountain!

You have two days to write in to GreatStuffToday@banyanhill.com if you want to make this week’s edition of Reader Feedback.

Send me your comments, questions or snide remarks.

We take all kinds here. But no cursing, please. We can’t publish that s#&%.

Here, let’s get your yodeling started:

Are you getting a Peloton for Christmas? (If so, do you also have a large picture window to put it in front of?)

How is following the Great Stuff Trade War Cycle chart working out for you?

Tariffs … right?

What do you believe is the biggest threat to the U.S. economy right now?

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? (It’s an old meme, sir, but it checks out.)

The answers to these questions and more can be yours for the low, low cost of dropping a line to GreatStuffToday@banyanhill.com.

Act now! Quantities of Great Stuff aren’t limited … but still, act now.

Finally, don’t forget to like and follow Great Stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

[deevolutionisreal]

Devo Corporate Anthem

This post originally appeared on de-evolution.band

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! - Track 1 - Devo Corporate Anthem

Jon: You ready for some Duty Now?

Chris: Hell yeah! I'm really excited to crack this album.

Jon: Same here. It's a fun one.

Chris: Should we discuss the album in general a bit first?

Jon: Well in highschool I had it on a two-fer CD with New Traditionalists, and it had the weird alternate "Science Guy" imagery on the cover instead of the standard CMYK barcode mess.

Chris: Ohhhhh. Is that the European cover?

Jon: I've always assumed so, but never quite looked into it.

Chris: That's cool. I like that cover.

Jon: But yeah that disc got the most spins from me back then.

Chris: That's awesome. I didn't hear this album until way later. This one fell through the cracks for a long time. And I think I was inspired to go back and listen after you telling me you really liked it as a kid.

Jon: Oh sweet.

Chris: And I felt like, whoa, what is this?

Jon: Yeah it has a distinct energy to it.

Chris: Having listened to Hardcore I can trace more of a line between that and duty, than I can for Q&A, but it has a whole different energy. No more Brian Eno.

Jon: I can see that.

Chris: Less jittery, more…idk.

Jon: Confident but still neurotic as shit.

Chris: I feel like the vibe on this album is really distinct, but I can't describe it well.

Jon: Maybe by the end of this experiment we'll be able to put our fingers on it!

Chris: Alright, then let's get to it!

Jon: Count it off!

Chris: We're getting our mandatory corporate anthem in 3, 2, 1, now! I love this opening.

Jon: This was one of those songs I never knew was a "real" song with a title, cuz it was on the Men Who Make The Music tape as an interlude kinda. Where they just stand in line with wind blowing on them, and salute toward the end.

Jon: Hell yeah. Do we have more to say?

Chris: No I think we covered it.

Chris: It feels like a whacky British comedy making fun of the king.

Jon: Haha, I see it.

Chris: I read on Wikipedia that this is a ode to a movie?

Jon: Oh shit, is it? It definitely feels like an Overture of some sort.

Chris: Rollerball, apparently.

Jon: Oooooh. I haven't seen that (somehow).

Chris: Yeah me neither.

Jon: I do love the notion of a "Corporate Anthem."

Chris: Yeah absolutely. Sets the tone. Is this the first Devo song to be entirely synth? Also, is it entirely synth? Sounds like it to my ear.

Jon: It might be? I think the cymbal crashes are real though.

Chris: Sure. They have some interesting filtering on them, tho. They almost sound static-y.

Jon: True. I'll need to listen closer next time.

Chris: Cool. Continuing our linking conversation from last album, this I think perfectly leads into Clockout.

Jon: Agreed! Kind of a quiet/loud thing. It sets it up nicely. Have you ever seen that clip of a kid playing crash cymbals at a school performance, but he drops one and instead of picking it up, just faces the flag and salutes?

Chris: Ha no I have not seen that.

Chris: Is that kid in a youtube video or was it staged?

Chris: Lolol. Whaaaaat. Is that a rule or something? You drop a cymbal and to honor the flag you salute or something?

Jon: Haha no idea. But it came to mind when listening to something as regal as this song.

Chris: I would love a mashup of these two things.

Jon: Ooooooh shit. Be the change my man.

Chris: Shit, I just signed myself up. Alright, I'll do it, mister!