#I expect better from the most expensive franchise in the world!

[starlight-vixen-emiko]

My first ever favorite Pokemon ever was Eevee...Because it was the only "cute" Pokemon that wasn't pink or Pikachu.

Then I saw Espeon and it was love at first sight...

But then the Popplio line became my favorite.

...Now my favorite Pokemon is Jirachi. Maybe because I just live and breathe star aesthetic.

I never thought much about Jirachi until now...

[kaseven7]

Should Dishonored 3 have time travel as a core mechanic, just like Deathloop has time loop? As much as I love the old formula of D1 and D2, I think it will change a lot, evolve into something else in D3.

But why change at all? Unfortunately the future of games like Dishonored, Deus Ex or Thief has been in trouble for a long time – they need to find a way to balance better the cost of development and lower sales. They are immersive sims - very expensive to make compared to linear games, as they need not only perfect combat, but also perfect stealth, interesting game systems to create emergent gameplay, great level design to make all these systems meaningful, highly interactive world to emphasize player choice and more. Even creating a simple narrative moment is a creative hell thanks to a huge amount of freedom given to players (like at least six ways to acquire the information from the archive in DOTO). In the same time, other aspects of immersive sims are expected to be on par with linear games: animations, graphics, gameplay’s lenght, plot.

All that costs are rarely compensated by good sale numbers. As „action games with brains”, immersive sims don’t appeal so much to general audience, despite being critically acclaimed games with a lot of rewards. Publishers know games like that are unlikely to turn out as breakout hits, so funding them is incredibly difficult. And Arkane Studio is probably the last bastion of the genre.

The amazing replayability of immersive sims is not easy for marketing (as a hook mostly for already hooked customers) and has become less valuable now in the still changing overcrowded game market - with a new game everyday, for sale, for free. A lot of people would play such games only once, judge it by a single experience, then move to another game and would never know how many things they have missed.

D2 is a game with the insane amount of work put into content, details, two characters with a different set of upgradable powers, gems like Clockwork Mansion and Crack in the Slab, but… with lower sale numbers than D1. I guess Arkane couldn’t just proceed with „we will do better with D3” – they needed to stop and rethink the formula for the franchise. If they couldn’t boost sales more, how can they lower the cost of development instead? Then Deathloop came out…

Deathloop as a bridge to Dishonored 3?

…and solved some of problems with clever creative decisions, for example:

Players complete the game experiencing not even tenth of scenarios you created for them? Make replaying levels the intergral part of the gameplay loop!

Art assets are the most expensive part of AAA game development? Play with time and space, so less of them is needed! (D2 and Deathloop have similiar gameplay lenght – now compare how many assets both games have...)

Cutscenes are super expensive? Avoid them with most of the plot told via radio communication.

Modeling and animating faces take a lot of time? Everyone wear masks now!

Manpipulating time was a part of Dishonored universe since D1, slowly building a stage for how everything is going to change heavily when the Outsider is finally gone. A few years ago there was a leak/hoax called „Darkness of Tyvia” – a next Dishonored game set in Tyvia, with versus-multiplayer and „annihilate the Outsider” as a goal. This and a few other things made me think that Deathloop could have been prototyped initially as Dishonored 3, but then the creators decided to bid farewell to characters of „the Kaldwin era” faster, building DOTO on D2 assets and making Deathloop first - to learn more how to handle games about time, what works there and what doesn’t.

That decision could leave Deathloop with only vague connections to Dishonored lore (letting fans to decide whether they believe this is the same universe or not), but also with a lot of creative freedom for Arkane. After all Deathloop’s gameplay turned out to be innovative and fun, but too far away from values that Dishonored series stand for, so it deserved a different story.

„I don’t like watching you die. I like killing you. There’s a difference.” by Julianna summs up Deathloop pretty well – it’s „high chaos, no consequences” fantasy. Using game mechanics to the fullest, killing dozens in a variety of creative ways, but enjoying the lack of a grimer outcome, no matter how terrible slaughter we have just caused. Dishonored shows us how our actions affect others, how every NPC is a human being, a part of this world: with hopes, fears, secrets, families to feed; with shocked and fightened face when we hurt them; mutilated body left behind for rats and bugs. Even villains like Daud or Billie might deserve a second chance sometimes. Deathloop does the opposite: NPC look like „made in China” crash test dummies, disappear with a puff after death, sometimes even commit careless suicides. They are here for the endless party and all things they brought to the Blackreef are plastic, garish, feel out of place; a lot of trash. Well, they are trash – just trash mobs, you realize later - you can kill them again and again, and it doesn’t change anything. The only exceptions in Deathloop are Visionaries and they don’t even need a mark „I’m the Visionary!” above their heads – they look like humans and killing humans matters in Arkane’s games:

„If you slaughter everybody — you killed the maids, you killed the old people, you killed the beggars — you’re great, here’s a medal, you’re a hero. We decided that sounds psychotic. It doesn’t match our values, it doesn’t match the way the world works, it doesn’t match the way any other fiction — imagine a novel where a guy wakes up in the morning, kills everybody in the house, goes down the street, kills everybody on the way to work, kills everybody in the office, and then at the very end of the novel, there is a scene where he is given a medal and made some sort of hero and anointed in some way. It doesn’t make any sense. What we wanted was to let you express yourself in the game, but to have the world react to that, at least in some way. Samuel Beechworth, betraying you and firing off that flare, was something we had to fight for." – Harvey Smith

DEATHLOOP SPOILER!

What’s worth to mention, the „good” ending of Deathloop is the one where Colt decides to not break the loop. How could he just return to a society after killing so many people? Is „they will reset at midnight” an excuse good enough for that? There is nothing and no one waiting for Colt out there anyway – his only relative is here, wanting to live as an overachiver god in this infinite hunting playground where everything is allowed, forgotten the very next day. Where they both can go for a beer, then have fun throwing Alexis into a meat grinder again and again. Colt and Julianna have become too accustomed to living without consequences to go back to the normal world.

END OF SPOILER

So, the point is: whatever kind of time manipulation mechanic D3 will have, it should take into account at least some consequences of our actions. It doesn’t have to work like D1/D2 chaos system or be as much restrictive, but players shouldn’t be able to murder everyone, then just press a reset button/go back in time like absolutely nothing happened. It wouldn’t feel like Dishonored otherwise.

How could time travel work in D3? Spoilers for D2, DOTO and The Veiled Terror book below!

Time works differently in the Void („All of time is meaningless here. Neither seconds nor centuries.") and in every places where the Void is leaking through (Stilton Manor, Void hollows). Some people with supernatural abilities can manipulate time a little bit (Bend Time, Foresight etc.), predict future (the Blind Sisters, Zhukov) or even travel in time (post-DOTO Billie Lurk).

Let’s play more with the old formula: So far dealing with main targets was simple: kill them or explore more to figure out a non-lethal option. Whatever we chose, it usually meant very little for the ending, determined mostly by the chaos system (with a few exceptions like Stilton, Duke or Paolo/Byrne in D2). What if our choices could have more meaning and we could learn about consequences of our actions sometime later, then have an opportunity to change them, now aware of how things will play out in the future? Go back in time, aimed with a knowledge about better solutions, alternative weapons, secret passages; reaching places unaccesible before (Void hollows create a lot of possibilities here), meeting people who wasn’t there. Saving people who will become our allies, neutralize people who will turn into tyrants. Figuring out the plan when we can’t be in all places at the same time, can’t make the world right – not at first try.

Nigthmares as a part of new chaos system? „The Void touches the minds of the dreaming and the dying alike.” After DOTO the whole Empire was plagued with nightmares for a few months, people screaming of fear and terror in the middle of the night. Some of them modified their own bodies (weird tattoos, bone charms pierced through their skin etc.) and became addicted to drugs, desperate to find a way to stop the dreams. It happened because someone was manipulating time. After altering the timeline in the Crack in the Slab mission, only the Outsider and Emily were fully aware of what has happened. He as a god of the Void, she as a time traveler. Billie didn’t remember anything, but later had constant nighmares about the moment when she was nearly killed by the Grand Guard, about terrible pain she experienced. She was slowly losing her mind, every morning taking awhile to know what's real. My theory: in D3 every person that was killed or harmed, but saved later with time travel, will have nightmares. The more they suffered the worse their dreams could be. People will go through sleep deprivation or even become insane like weepers or nest keepers. Maybe in the very, very bad scenario we could cause another Great Burning - an epochal event hinted since D1, which caused cultural destruction with people going from city to city, destroying and burning everything. Or maybe we will try to stop it?

The Void and its new deity:

Whatever time shenanigans we will go through, this all could end with a new deity restored to the Void. That's what the Abbey probably tried to do just after DOTO, recruting children through mysterious Trials of Aptitude for years, but they failed their mission and most of them went mad.

When the Outsider was still bound to the Void, he perceived time in the physical world as reapating in the same unending patterns. He disturbed that pattern by giving his Mark to people who would play pivotal role in the days to. He let them decide, but whenever they fell into routine and were no longer making a big difference, he lost his interest in them. Finally, he was able to spawn a chain of events that led to his end.

Without the Outsider the Void is destabilized, unmoored from the real world and Void rifts begin appearing across the empire, a chaotic bridge between the real and the unreal, fissures in the very fabric of reality. Manipulating time and space is now possible for individuals with a certain knowledge and abilities.

Cultists in the mine called the Outsider "a static point” upon which they build the foundation of this world and it seems like it’s impossible to go in time before the moment the Outsider was created (like the gate to the Ritual Hold – it has been broken since the foundation, so it always has been broken). So whatever new world we will create during time travels, we could stabilize it with the new deity. Maybe there would be a different way to do that than murdering a kid in a bloody ritual?

[valour-bradley]

|Feminist Opinion| .Personal Vent.

Women by nature were crafted to be the most high maintenance-sets of social gender disparity and the very expensive kind of species on this earth; I see why men get so exhausted and age faster because of us.

But being a woman is a very rare meticulous art, and also outrageously governed by many expectations and societal codes. It's why we just get tired of being girls, you know? We go through so much just for being a woman; the history of us goes centuries back.

It's insane what we had to do to get where we are today. It's why Feminism/Radical Fem is a clear societal, political, personal, and economic religion in today's world than many choose to abide by strictly. And it's why male feminists exist, and it doesn't make those men women either.

No, in fact, there are men out there who are very respectful, supportive and empowering of women and in women's rights and in a woman's destined purpose in life towards what it means in being a woman.

They- are still men as a whole who solely see women in a much better light and who never fell into the hands of toxic misogyny and the immoral isolationism from women that comes with that. But again, they are very rare to find.

But many of us despise and hate men- I'm one of them as we speak, because of the shit that keeps happening to women by men for generations and generations and generations. When does it stop? Never, apparently. I've been a victim of abuse since I was 13 by men, so can you really blame me?

And it's why I make video games a huge part of my life as a woman because adult feminine life is stressful and repetitive as fuck, so deal with it Gen X; men, you better fucking deal with it too. We as girls take pride in enjoying what we personally love as an individual; and it's games for me- hands down. Take it or leave it, girl gamers exist. It's not a shocker no more.

We're not here to please you, to please our parents, to please our men either, we're here to be successful in doing what we simply love, is that so hard? Just because many of us chose to do what is preferably more "boy oriented" (i.e., video games, sports, military, politics, cop, etc.) doesn't make us less of a woman, or an immature woman.

It's not our fault that you are an uncultured swine with little to no expansion of your horizons, and who didn't grow up being surrounded by video-games and the like, or have been accustomed in a generation that is so hardcore on gender roles. It was never in you at all to be more understanding and open-minded about things like this.

Mother nature makes more women than men for a very good reason and I think personally that's nature making up for all the discrimination, abuse/harassment, gender bias, gender genocide- the list frankly goes on and on.

And nature makes up for what was deemed an abomination known to mankind to something that could never change in what was done to women from the get-go. Men are responsible for their actions in being the first-born.

I'm ashamed even, to have to accept that we, as women, had to come out of the very ribs of men who- before time existed- held complete monstrous control over us.

Girls rule; boys drool. That's just how it always should be. It's time for us to shine now and take over certain things that were always controlled by men in the first place.

How you lived should never be the logical reason for you to mold our lives on how you want us to live in your eyes.

Many of us drop out of college, because it's simply not for us- and that's okay; it's not for everybody.

Many of us join the military, because it's simply our personal choice- and that's okay; it's not for everybody.

Many of us become a huge part of the gaming franchise, because it's our personal choice- and that's okay; it's not for everybody.

Many of us make a living from what we love to do outside of the white-collar success norms, because it's our personal choice- and that's okay; it's not for everybody.

We're tired of the lectures, the responsibilities and gender roles and societal/economic class norms. Let us be ourselves, you're making us very miserable.

— valour-bradley

[reversecreek]

snickers feverishly at myself for bringing in a 5th... who do i think i am? unstoppable? invincible? suddenly ripples my titanium plated pecs. maybe so. u can find her pinterest here n her playlist here. 

* margaret qualley, cis female + she/her  | you know bradley milligan, right? they’re twenty-four, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, all of their life? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to looking for knives by dyan like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole snow angels trampled through by your father’s footprints, casually reading a newspaper that’s catching flame & stubbing a cigarette against the wing mirror of a parked cop car thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is november 11th, so they’re a scorpio, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nai, 24, gmt she/her  )

HISTORY:

bradley has this memory of meeting her grandmother for the first time n everything in the room was frozen still. even the air. she didn’t feel like she cld move n she got the impression this is how it’d always been in the milligan lineage. the only thing that was allowed to act of it’s own accord was her grandmother’s eyes as she tracked every slightest flinch of muscle. when her father left the room her grandmother reached out and took bradley’s hand n bradley looked at this like it was smthn she’d never seen before until her grandmother leaned close and all she could stare at was a nicotine stain on one of her front teeth. “he’s cold, isn’t he? he’s always been cold. i don’t think he’s mine.” bradley could tell from how tight she held her hand that he was. she could tell by the way she smiled as she said it, too. the way she felt obliged to smile back.

growing up in a huge white house in aquila drive w pruned hedges sounds idyllic n looks it too. swanky cars w tinted windows in the long driveway. always men filing in and out under the cloak of night wearing expensive suits n smiles worthy of a politician’s billboard. bradley’s mum alyssa thought so too n that’s hw she got into this whole mess tbh. tony milligan is very good at advertising. he cld package a jarred human heart as strawberry jam and convince u to spread it on ur toast if he wanted to. he could make u smile politely as u ate ur own. 

alyssa ws this very pretty blonde kind of mysterious presence in a room. everyone wanted to kno her story or fk her but noone rly treated her like a person more just like a puzzle to solve. john green syndrome alert..... literally manic pixie dream girled bt on turbo charge. there were vague whispers she’d run away from home when she appeared in town out of nowhere bt nothing concrete. tony decided he wanted to crack the case n once he set his mind to something there was no changing it. they wound up embroiled in a whirlwind romance. head over heels. he came at romance hard and fast as a freight train. alyssa knew he was into shady things but not quite the full extent of it n honestly she didn’t care bc she wanted security n a family to call her own n tony promised that. they were married within a year. 

tony came frm money bt he wanted to carve his own path n make his own legacy. destined fr greatness he’d tell her. we’re destined for greatness. it sounds nice doesn’t it! alyssa thought so too.

(drugs mention tw) slowly over the yrs he essentially forged his own crime organisation tht only grew. he opened a strip club down the seedier side of irving called ‘no angels’ n this became the front thru which his gang ran drugs in the back (predominantly coke n they pride themselves fr having a Superior Blend apparently) as well as laundering cash n this also was kind of their home base to hang

(abuse tw) their marriage increasingly lost it’s shine n alyssa came to realise she’d been sold a lie n she didn’t rly know this person or what he was capable of right around the time bradley was born. by then it was kind of like Wow i am rly in this n there is not an exit door huh. i won’t go into details bt things were not good at all. bradley witnessed n experienced a lot of things she shouldn’t have growing up. she didn’t understand why other kids drew home in all these different coloured crayons like they were bright places to be. she didn’t understand why everyone got so excited when the bell rang at the end of the day bc she just felt sick. she rationalised tht this was normal when she was younger bc sometimes kids talked abt the monsters under their beds giving them nightmares n she thought mayb they were talking abt their dads too. as she got older she realised tht actually her world wasn’t the same as anyone else’s n she also realised no-one wld ever be able to tell her why. she started becoming friends with the angry feeling in her chest tht she used to try and swallow around this time. often she’d wander the mall for a while to put off going home. smoke on random park benches. watch trains rattle thru town from the vantage point of a random rooftop. 

(abuse, missing person implied, murder implied & grief tw) when bradley was 12 she woke up and all of her mum’s clothes were gone frm their drawers. no shoes anywhere. a framed photo of them at the beach holding bradley as a baby vanished from over the mantelpiece. when bradley asked her dad what was going on, tony essentially said “it was exhausting her. being here. being your mother. she didn’t want to do it any more, so now she’s gone” n then he hugged her. little details leaked into the mix over the yrs. at one point tony dismissed her as having flown overseas to a foreign country to drink in the sun like she’d always wanted even tho alyssa always told bradley she liked the snow best (once she even walked outside as it fell in a thin lace nightgown when tony was out n when bradley said “mom you’re gonna get cold” she only tugged her down and made her do snow angels until her lips looked blue). the most significant memory bradley can never shake from her head is her mother cupping a yellow tulip at the park n saying she hated them. when bradley asked why she only turned and smiled at her as she stroked the hair from her face n then said “because they look so happy”. after bradley’s mum vanished a long flower bed at the bottom of the garden was suddenly overrun with dozens of freshly planted yellow tulips. whenever bradley looked at them out of her window she got this sickly feeling in the pit of her stomach like she was visiting a cemetery. she suspected what had happened to her mum (especially as rumours circulated within tony’s organisation abt alyssa being unfaithful with someone tht used to work fr him) bt she cld never bring herself to truly accept it. thus she ws stuck in this strange purgatory state of not-quite-anger at her mum for “leaving” and not-quite-grief.

bradley rly started to transgress in school after her mum was gone. alyssa was always kind of a character when she’d pick bradley up (wasn’t doing well n acted kind of ‘eccentric’ i suppose u cld say) so tony managed to spin it all as a child acting out in the wake of an unfit mother uprooting n abandoning. bradley became........ interesting. JKHGFSSKJGHFSGHSKFGHFG. she’d snap n resort to violence very easily. very desensitised to it. students were kind of scared of her tbh. as this progressed into proper high school she got in w the more rowdy popular crowd solely bc she was so fking.... wild for lack of a better word. rly would just do anything fr the thrill. had no sense of ‘i shouldn’t do this bc it’s dangerous’. partied harder than anyone. bit back harder than anyone. no filter. hung w a lot of guys honestly bc they had less morals n either found her scariness cool or wanted to fk <3

(hospitalisation, depression & drugs tw) she’s had. a few stints in psychiatric institutions fr various reasons tbh. missed a small chunk of her senior yr fr this but it wasn’t widely known just kind of rumoured. she showcases a lot of similar symptoms to her mum who struggled w severe depression (which was difficult to cope w when ur husband was often pouring ur prescription down the drain fr kicks) n in order to compensate fr the lows she takes a lot of things to kick them into highs. drinks n snorts too much. bradley i love u bt i’m begging u to seek healthier coping mechanisms......

as the yrs went on (especially once alyssa had gone) tony rly started trying to integrate bradley into the business side of things...... she literally. is named bradley bc he was expecting a boy n he was like well let’s still call her bradley. n had in mind she’d still fulfil the role he wanted her to of being his little protege so to speak.... both sexist n ugly all in one fell swoop...... an example of this is he literally. bought her a mint green switchblade for her 14th birthday n named it tinkerbell bc it would “die without attention” aka using it. tht sounds like a healthy gift to give a child tony congratulations sis <3

in an ideal world bradley wld have gone to uni to study psychology bc she jst wants to know how the fk her dad is literally like that bt she probably stuck around n is now managing no angels along with billy n marco (billy’s in her dad’s gang n is, u guessed it, a cunt, n marco is his sort of right hand man so to speak) bc tony’s in the closest neighbouring city overseeing a second ‘no angels’ opening up there to expand into a franchise n widen their income margins. bradley wld also be sort of used as a honey trap type deal once she got older if they needed to lure ppl places n sometimes still is bt it depends. the guys in the club all know not to mess w bradley bc she’s tony’s daughter n literally kind of scary herself sometimes bt there’s also this certain allure tht comes with being the boss’ daughter n it kind of comes across in how they act or talk abt her. yes i will kill them all n no i won’t feel bad abt it <3

think that’s kind of all u need to kno history wise... blinks one eye out of sync w the other..... runs to personality

PERSONALITY:

a phrase i wld always use to describe bradley in old intros is “like a cup of black coffee with one grain of sugar that u don’t taste until the last sip”. also dark chocolate. lime. liquorice. she’s an acquired taste n i feel like u either love her or u hate her. 

cannot express how unpredictably chaotic she is..... frequently throws a drink in a stranger’s face jst to start something bc she’s bored. loves to hurl cheese slices across the room so they slap onto someone’s face out of nowhere. likes smashing things. stubbing cigarettes out on faces in framed family photographs. will literally pick a lock n then smash the window besides it to defeat the whole purpose just bc she found how neat it was boring. does anything fr the adrenaline n thrill. gets into far too many fights n fights dirty. probably been thrown out of every bar in town at least three times. banned from a bunch too.

she’s witty bt she has a dark sense of humour..... can be quite mean.......... loves to roast ppl for no reason........ honestly has some nathan young frm misfits aspects in that sense like jst seems untouchable emotionally n like she doesn’t take anything seriously n is fking outrageous about it.....

has this quality abt her tht kind of scares herself sometimes. it’s like she recognises parts of her dad in her. she’s very perceptive (bc she’s had to be over the yrs trying to read every micro-expression of her dad’s to predict what’s next) n like emotionally intelligent in a way which is ironic bc her own emotions r just an absolute minefield.... bt. she can read people quite well. gets this eerily calm look abt her sometimes n it’s jst like god what’s. she thinking. what’s she’s gna do. i’m shaking. a cool n controlled kind of rage can often be scarier than the explosive type n bradley does that well. grits my teeth n tugs on my collar....

very strong on the surface. hates being vulnerable. has this ingrained idea that crying is childish or rly any kind of emotional display within herself. 50% not taking things seriously 50% angry. tht’s how she comes across....... internally? whole different story. bt ppl don’t see that.

very cavalier abt some things. will flash her tits n not even think abt it. jst very out there...... one of her closest friends is a homeless man named joe who wears neon purple fishnets on his head n loves to spit on ppl from over an underpass. finds eccentric ppl like this funny n surrounds herself w them. loves to be kept on her toes.

LOVES driving stolen cars down the wrong side of the highway. it’s a lot.

fiercely loyal to a fault to a select few bt if u wrong her personally this can switch pretty quick. quite a force to b reckoned w n will hold a grudge. bt like. if ur a Chosen One she’d bury a body for u no questions asked. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS

deals to u: bradley isn’t like full time into dealing bt she does do it sometimes.... treats it kind of like a hobby bc the lesser ranked can do tht shit as far as she’s concerned bt.. sometimes also jst gets bored n is like. why not. might be chaotic. mayb they’ll try to rob me <3 we love the thrill <3 or like..... if ur friends w her she’ll deal to u n no she will not do a friends discount <3 or if she does there will definitely be some sort of stipulation attached <3

high skl crew: if ur muse is local n ws an absolutely demonic hell spawn in high skl tht went to 1974547254 parties n was outrageously chaotic n rude then. bradley probably was friends w them <3 her friendships tend to be surface level bt they’d definitely go out a bunch bt whether they actually knew a lot abt her life is debatable bt we could explore options fr this

people who work at no angels: no angels is her dad’s strip club in irving that she kind of helps to run now. it’s kind of a shifty environment. the place where ud have an outrageous bachelor party. u go for the first time w a fake id n u get served bt u also get ur wallet stolen n ur convinced someone spat in ur drink n u also kind of think there might b a hit on u now after u made eye contact too long w a broad shouldered man smoking in a back booth. scary environment. testament to her dad as a person. maybe ur muse is a dancer there or works the bar or security or whatever u name it....

ma’am are u ok?: ur muse found bradley passed out across two bus seats one time in smudged dark eyeliner a silver slip dress n the world’s chunkiest combat boots this town hs ever seen. sometimes she winds up in spots like this when she goes too hard n it’s absolutely dangerous n reckless bt that’s jst bradley <3 mayb they forged an unlikely friendship frm this strange meeting or maybe even? dare i say it? a romance? opposite worlds colliding? good influence? let’s go crazy. release ur inhibitions. feel the rain on ur skin.

hook-ups: bradley’s cavalier abt this stuff..... very unemotional typically..... mayb we cld do an unrequited thing that wld be angsty n fun altho i won’t lie i don’t kno if she’d be the one to catch the feelings.... she rarely sleeps over bt once when she woke up in someone’s bed she hiked over to straddle them carefully as possible so they wldn’t wake up n then pressed her knife to their neck as a fun little surprise where she said boo when they opened their eyes.... she’s a lot clearly.

watermelon slugger, hiiii: bradley has this habit where she gets a bunch of watermelons n then goes to a rooftop n throws them over the edge to watch them explode when they hit the pavement.... maybe ur muse almost got hit by one once n were like WTF???????? another quirky meet cute moment like the bus one <3 can’t stop w them <3 maybe she randomly invited ur muse to do it w her when they were like. a stranger of f the street. she was bored. decided to adopt them as a science experiment. we cn elaborate on this probably....

ouch charlie: similar territory bt she also sometimes shoots pedestrians w a bb gun from rooftops. mayb ur muse wld always get hit by one on a certain route they walked n finally one day they saw her head ducking down behind a ledge n then they see her in the street one day n are like HEY IT’S YOU............. WTF? n bradley’s like ya i’m christ risen again it’s a lot to take in i know...

rly jst anything... mutually destructive friends... exes.... in one rp a character tried to get close to bradley so he cld write an expose all book about her n her family which i found so fking funny so i’ll request that again.... people she’s fought.... ppl whose gf/bf she’s fk’d n it’s caused enemy status.... someone whose place she broke into and shaved their eyebrows off in the night only to draw them on again in crudely thin permanent sharpie lines.... roommates cld be fun n sexy i’d love that actually.... jst anything rly. go wild. kisses everyone tenderly on cheeks.

[smokeybrandreviews]

A Gentleman’s Deception

Arsene Lupin is literature’s greatest thief. He’s effectively the opposite of Sherlock Holmes. The character was created by French writer, Maurice Leblanc, at the turn of the century. That Eighteen to Nineteen hundred one, not the Nineteen to the Aughts one. It’s super weird to me that i have to make that stipulation. I’m old... Anyway, Lupin committed his very first gentleman man caper halfway through the first decade of the Twentieth century and has been stealing his way across literary history ever since. The character and his many klepto crusades have been adapted hundreds of times over the years, just like Holmes. If you’ve rad that name, and you like anime, there’s a damn good chance you are pretty familiar with on of these adaptions; Lupin III.

Arsene is a pretty popular character around the world but he never really took root here in the States, like Holmes eventually would. For a long time, Lupin III was the only version of Arsene with which i was familiar. If you couldn’t tell by the content in this blog, I'm a big of a weeb and the man adventures Monkey Punch has created with his oft, Red blazer emblazoned, sex crazed, Deadpool-esque, pervert thief, are required viewing. Lupin III is an excellent franchise with many, many, spin-offs and is worth the watch. The second most familiar version of Arsene comes from the most recent Persona title. The titular hero, the leader of the Phantom Thieves, initial Persona is, in fact, Arsene; a Fool based upon the character. Arsene has a great design but, being the first Persona you get, is kind of whack. I prefer Alice, Satanael, Mother Harlot, or Thanatos, but if you’re diligent, you can build a pretty hardbody Arsene. I mention these iterations because the French have created an updated, re-imagined, version of the Arsene narrative that was recently released on Netflix title simply, Lupin.

There’s been a bit of a resurgence in US interest with the classic Who Dunnit characters. A reboot of Murder on the Orient Express dropped a few years ago, followed by the absolutely excellent Knives Out. With the recent announcement of A Death on the Nile, it’s absolutely the right time to re-acclimate the international audience with Arsene and the French have done just that. This new take stars Omar Sy as Senegalese immigrant, Assane Diop. While not Lupin, himself, Diop has lived the Gentlemen thief life since he was a teenager, because of reasons. Expensive sh*t gets stolen, prisons are broken out of, people are killed, plot occurs; It’s really a pretty grand epic when you get right down to it. The show is available to watch right now on Netflix if you live in the US. I’m not entirely sure of the international releases available but, you know VPNs. That or go fly the Jolly Roger. You might want to hold off on that though. The juice maybe isn’t worth the squeeze...

I watched this whole series last night. It’s only five episode, most of which are around a half-hour long. The fifth is forty-five minutes long. It’s a brisk little commitment but it’s kind of a slog. The performances are pretty decent, lead by an incredibly strong showing from Sy, but the characters and  the content is rather pedestrian. The show is gorgeous but that’s more because it’s filmed on location in France and France is a beautiful city. That opening car chase at the Louvre? Simply exquisite. That’s about all i really enjoyed about this show. When you hear Arsene Lupin, you think glitz, panache, class, and spectacle. That was his trademark when out there committing his crimes. Diop does not have that flair. The way his capers are framed, feels more Ocean’s than Arsene’s, and it’s actually petty underwhelming. Considering this is the oft invoked “modern re-imagining”, the reduction opted to drain the whimsy in an effort to ground it in some sort of reality but reality is boring. That’s why we read books about a Gentlemen Thief in the first place. That’s why the character of Arsene Lupin has endured for a hundred years. That’s why Assane Diop will not.

The way this thing was presented, the way it was framed, i thought i was getting a crime Luthor. That was not what was delivered. There is a huge critical consensus that this is Netflix’s first international hit of the year but, like, nah? Sweet Home is better than this and that’s from Korea. I think the push for this show stems from all of the diversity on display. There is a great deal of it. Diop is African and shares a kid with a white woman. Progressive! Brace! Token-y! That type of sh*t gets critics going but, outside of one other Senegalese Diop uses for a job, there are no other black folks in this thing. Well, that’s not quite true. Diop’s dad is effectively the driving force of the narrative but he kills himself early on. There was this other black dude that Diop had to switch places with to get information out of his Pop’s cellmate but he was a drug dealer. You see what i mean about token-y? How genuine is your diversity when the only colored characters in your show are thieves, criminals, and cowards? Oh, that female  Senegalese I mentioned earlier? Yeah, she was the janitor. Lead janitor, mind you, so, you know, upward mobility. Ma is shattering that glass ceiling!

Overall, it’s not a bad show. It gets you to where you need to be in a relatively short amount of time but the journey there is kind of forgettable. I never really cared bout any one character in this show and expected much more from what i know about the lore. I notice that, with most french film, there is this almost indifference to how they create their work. It feels a little pretentious but that make for a lousy watch. This weird detachment came across when i watched that ridiculous Cuties last year, too. Interestingly enough, that problematic ass content had more diversity that this how. Ultimately, i thing Lupin is going to be an acquired taste for the US market. I can’t imagine this thing entertaining your common man here in the States but I'm sure the more political of us will tout this thing as some grand exercise in activism or whatever. It’s not that. Lupin is a pretty average revenge narrative with the occasional caper. It’s a rather hollow viewing experience and I'm really not interested in seeing where the plot goes next.

[dekusheroacademia]

Hello! I recently did a data visualization of ships fics on ao3, and, because I had an excel file of figures, an user encouraged me to post that as well!

Here I just want to compare the figures (funko, scale, prize, nendoroids, toys etc.) released for BNHA, compare it with other manga/anime and then check who are the popular characters.

My hero academia has 562 figures registered on MyFigurecollection. I will only use data from that website, and bear with me, I hope I don't miss any doubles! I will only consider figures as they are better tracked than other goods (plush, badges etc.). Count that I am not distinguishing between the scale figures (that can be pretty expensive, like ARTFJ or Revoltech - which I just bought btw, bye money) and more affordable figures (ex. the Banpresto line Age of Heroes).

Also, be mindful that all the data is about figures produced, not sold. Still, I would imagine that the more the demand (especially for certain characters), the more the production.

BNHA vs OTHERS

Comparing it with the most popular manga (calculated in sold tankobon over 100 million copies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_manga) we have

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(Touch is not in the list because I could not find the page on Myfigurecollection. Oishinbo is not in the list because it's a cooking manga).

As you can see One Piece is immensely popular in figures production too. BNHA, even if is not one of the most sold manga is here in the 6th place.

I then decided to see what is the rate of release for these figures. As this is just for fun I decided to do it pretty roughly by dividing the years the manga has been out for the amount of figures, basically calculating a "number of figures per year" value. Keep in mind that this has limitations regarding the possibility that recent years figures production could have increased and become cheaper.

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I was definitely surprised to see that not only One Piece is still first, but one of the most recent manga is actually second in figures per year (Demon Slayer). BNHA is at the fourth place.

Now, I realize that most popular manga is not always easily translated in most popular figures, but sadly I could not find a way to search for most popular franchises on MyFigurecollection. Still, none of the previously named manga is in the top 100 figures of the website (I really underestimated the popularity of Fate and Hatsune Miku).

Now, let's look at the BNHA figures!

(Be mindful that this count will count overlapping figures as well. Ex. if there is a statue of Bakugou and Deku, the count will count 1 for Bakugou and 1 for Deku. For this reason, if you count the total of all the characters you have 580 figures instead of the real number: 562)

CHARACTERS

As expected there are some very popular characters, and then some characters that only have a few figures. Finally, there's 18 characters that only have 1 figure.

Many of those "1 figures" are funko pops or Boku no Hero Academia World Collectable Figures, which are mini figures. Often, characters with 2 figures end up having both.

Let's look at Class 1 A.

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Checking the total numbers of figures for characters in Class 1 A: none of this is unexpected. Izuku, Bakugou and Uraraka are the top 4 characters, with more or less 20 figures of difference between each of them. Still in the realm of popularity we have Tsuyu, Iida and Kirishima, while other characters ends up with less than 6 figures each, or zero.

(technically Toru Hagakure has....infinite figures??)

Here's some percentages to visualize it better. Bakugou and Izuku together are almost 50% of all the BNHA figures.

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For Pro-Heroes

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For Pro Heroes only, All Might is the clear popularity winner, with more than 50% of the figures of Pro heroes characters. No other Pro Hero comes even close. But surprisingly, Hawks had an amount of figures comparable with Aizawa.

For Villains

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Shigaraki and Toga almost have the same amount of figures (26.23% Shigaraki, with 16 figures, and 24.59% Toga, with 15 figures).

Others

We also have a bunch of other students, each with 1 or 2 figures each (Kendo, Monoma, TestsuTetsu, Camie, Inasa, Seiji, Hatsume Mei, Nejire). These are mainly Funko or those mini mentioned previously.

Eri (3), Tamaki (2), Mirio (7) have instead scale/prize figures.

Looking at all the characters together, I decided to not clutter the pic too much, so I took only those characters that have 4 or more than 4 figures:

(bigger resolution)

And here you go! Deku, Bakugou and All Might are the top 3 released as figures characters.

Surprisingly, all villains are less popular than Tsuyu Auis, who has 22 figures.

Part 2 soon, where we look at what characters is the most sold and preferred  by male owners vs female owners (sadly, the website does not let you pick the right gender people might want, but differentiate only in f and m).

[youngbugandtonystank]

Why marvel fans love Pepper but hate gwyneth? Someone on twitter said she was the most unrelatable celeb ever and in a magazine, people labeled her the most hated woman on earth. Did she do something problematic? Or she a Trump supporter?

You know, years ago I was kinda curious as to why everyone hated her so much. She's listed as Hollywood's most hated actress too. She's always on one of those lists. 

Why Do So Many People Hate Gwyneth Paltrow?

Gwyneth Paltrow is perfectly aware of how obnoxious she can seem

Gwyneth Paltrow responds to that time a magazine named her The Most Hated Celebrity in the World

Why does everyone hate Gwyneth Paltrow?

Gwyneth Paltrow on Being the Most Hated Celebrity

And the list goes on.

Some people think she practices some dangerous spiritual teachings and she's giving people the wrong information. They also think she heavily promotes and sells questionable things that could be potentially dangerous. In some sense, this is true because medical professionals have been asked to check the products over. The majority of them say the products are not backed up by science and state that these items are actually dangerous. I think that she looks like a scammer in the eyes of other people because she sometimes falsely advertises her business and products. 

Some others say her cosmetics are way overpriced and really bad for your skin. I heard a drama about some healing stickers, etc. As a spiritual person myself, I can't really judge that much until I see her Netflix show so I can't really agree or disagree in this matter.

About the other things. After doing some investigation, I found out the real reason. At first, I thought it was some quirky personality trait but then I saw most of her interviews, press conferences, and her business promos. She's not a bad person but she's definitely a little out of touch. I'm guessing because she grew up in a wealthy environment, she rules out some stuff when talking about sensitive topics. I take her as a "Paris Hilton, Kim K, and Mariah Carey" personality type, you know? Like, she puts up on a funny sophisticated diva-like personality but she's different in private. It’s funny because some people hate her but have no problems buying Kylie’s overpriced products either. I buy their products, mostly because I love skincare and makeup but you don’t see me hating on them. 

I once saw a comment under one of her interviews saying: ‘and after watching this you think this woman is not married to Tony Stark?’ hahahahah. And gotta say, she's really funny lmaooo the other day I saw her in her youtube cooking show section (part of the Goop brand, I guess), she was doing holiday snacks. She started saying that anyone could do the ‘simple’ recipes at home and that they were practical or something like that. After saying that, you'd think she was about to do some Christmas cookies or some family recipe, instead, she put caviar on a chip and put the ‘snack’ on a fancy white plate lmaooooooooo I died and went to heaven. You can imagine the rest of the ‘holiday snacks’ that followed after that one. I'm not exactly rich as hell but let's just say I'm doing great with my finances thanks to my job (I thank God for that every day) so I'm usually around people like her, and this is why I can tell she's not a bad person, just out of touch. And what do I mean by that? Let me give you an example, after doing her ‘holiday snack lmao’ she started talking about how caviar is not necessarily expensive, she said that you don't exactly have to sell a limb to buy it and proceeded to say that she always serves the same thing at parties and that it's easy and practical to make. You get what I mean? For her, it's not a problem because she can afford it but for others, of course, it is. These kinds of comments come off as self-absorbed for other people. 

Another one, let's just put the children's hospital example this time, any other person would bring toys, medical support, or coloring books, someone like Gwyneth would bring expensive silk pillows, salty crackers, or scented vanilla candles lmao. I'm not saying she's doing it on purpose, I think she's not aware she's doing something inaccessible for others because she's always in that mindset/environment. For her, it's not something harmful. Same with the avengers thing, you have Tom Holland saying ‘thank you’ and ‘I'm lucky to be here’ every five seconds when talking about his experience in the franchise, Robert saying he wouldn't be where he is without the amazing actors surrounding him; always making sure to give them an opportunity to shine, Elizabeth Olsen moved to tears when a fan tells her that Wanda is her daily inspiration, Don Cheadle talking about how the Avengers movies have been the experience of a lifetime and how fortunate he is to be part of something so big. Gwyneth, on the other side, forgets she was even in the movies, gives spoilers without a filter in a movie that is the result of 11 years of hard work about her and Tony's characters (this is how I found out Morgan was real btw like months before the movie even if I also suspected they were going to do this years ago), and forgets her co-stars names to the point they have to reintroduce themselves to her LMFAO I get that the marvel franchise is not her entire life and focus, but I think you get the point I'm trying to make. Or, she could be doing this on purpose to troll her haters. 

She always does that. With everything. You just have to watch some of her interviews and you're going to be able to tell.

Someone on twitter said she was the most unrelatable celeb ever

Some people get mad when their fave turns out to be different in real life. Those people can't separate the fictional character from the actor/actress. Of course, she's not going to be like Pepper, I get that but some stans irrationally hate her for practically breathing. I understand that some of her opinions and actions seem a little materialistic and pretentious but she's not attacking anyone in particular. It's annoying? Sure, sometimes. Who wants to hear someone talk about their wealthy lifestyle when discussing sensitive or normal topics? No one. People love someone who they can relate to but you gotta understand Gwyneth is not doing it because she thinks she's better than you. That's just how her lifestyle is. Waaaay different than ours. The same applies to the other actors. You really think we're closer to having Zendaya's lifestyle only because we can relate to some of her jokes, because she wears baggy hipster clothes or because she uses less expensive skincare products for a ‘go to bed with me’ harper's bazaar video? (I love those videos btw lmao) No sweetheart, after doing an interview or those vids, they get escorted by their private security guards to the limo/expensive car waiting for them with a chauffeur ready to drive them to a photoshoot with vogue. Is that your typical Tuesday? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Or that we're one and the same with Sebastian Stan because he eats burgers on Thursdays and watches Rick and Morty in pajamas? (no idea if this is true, just an example) No. Of course not. They're celebrities, they get paid for showing their faces to the public. A simple statement out of them can make people talk about them for days. A simple selfie can turn into a Twitter trend. They're human? Sure, we have to respect that 100% but their lifestyle is totally different and this is something we should be aware of too. So we can't really expect Gwyneth to act just like us. I'm sure most of us would act the same as her if we were born in gold and caviar.

I once defended her in a YouTube comment section and some dudebro got angry at me and called me an ‘obsessive pepper x tony’ fan. *stares at the camera like in the office* I don't even ship pepperony lmaooooo

And I don’t know if she’s a Trump supporter, I’m going to dig around to see if this is true. 

So there you go, that's my opinion. And no, I don't care if you agree or not (this is not for you, op) it's an opinion, chill.

[silkdrill48]

Citing His ‘Baseball Acumen,’ the Yankees continue Aaron Boone

The Yankees re-signed supervisor Aaron Boone on Tuesday, inking him to a three-12 months deal that comprises a club alternative for the 2025 season. but in making the announcement, the crew’s owner made the marching orders abundantly clear for a franchise that has reached the playoffs in four straight seasons beneath Boone however has been bounced earlier and past each October: Get improved. “we now have an individual and manager in Aaron Boone who possesses the baseball acumen and widespread admire in our clubhouse to continue to book us forward,” Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ managing time-honored accomplice, referred to within the group’s remark. “As a crew and as a firm, we need to develop, evolve and enrich. We need to get stronger. period. i do know Aaron absolutely embraces our expectations of success, and that i seem ahead to drawing on his intelligence, instincts and leadership in pursuit of our next World sequence championship.” In video calls with newshounds on Tuesday, Yankees regular manager Brian Cashman and Boone, whose past contract expired after this season, actually agreed. “i will be able to support lead us to the top,” noted Boone, forty eight. “That’s why I’m right here. That’s why I came again. That’s why I at the beginning signed up to come right here. That’s what I’m chasing. just in my opinion attempting to continue to increase and grow in this job and subsequently, notwithstanding, the proof might be in the pudding.” introduced Cashman: “Are we decent sufficient? The reply isn't any. do we deserve to be better at what we do? The reply is yes. Do our enthusiasts deserve the better of the surest? always. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished and that i be apologetic about what my failures are.” Cashman, fifty four, reiterated what he had all through the Yankees’ seesawing 2021 season: Boone was “a part of the answer. He wasn’t an issue or the problem.” despite two weeks passing given that the Yankees misplaced the American League wild-card game to the Boston pink Sox — a lengthen Boone attributed to him weighing his future with his household, the changes to his coaching group of workers and negotiating with the Yankees — Cashman pointed out “there become on no account a doubt” on his conclusion that he wouldn’t re-signal Boone. “A manager is just pretty much as good as the avid gamers he’s got,” observed Cashman, who's unsigned previous the 2022 season. “Aaron’s pretty rattling respectable at his position. And as I’ve talked to gamers on our club, we deserve to demand excellence from them in all classes and discover tips on how to extract that out of them. however I also should discover as many fantastic teammates to surround them with.” Cashman likened the 92-win 2021 Yankees to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, at times appearing “unstoppable” and at times “unwatchable.” He talked about the crew went “backwards in categories we certainly didn’t see coming or are expecting.” One subject he referred to: The crew’s offense, a strength in old seasons, changed into inconsistent and comprehensive nineteenth out of 30 groups within the predominant leagues in runs scored per online game (four.39) and had the sixth highest strikeout expense (24.5 p.c). “We’re now not as athletic as we’d like to be, and positively now not as contact-oriented,” Cashman mentioned. He delivered that he and the entrance workplace necessary to set a stronger buffet table of alternate options — players, in other phrases — for Boone and the coaches. Cashman pointed out the Yankees could be available in the market for a shortstop as a result of Gleyber Torres, who sputtered this season, turned into greater perfect for 2nd base. but he didn’t close the door on altering the catcher — Gary Sanchez hit 23 domestic runs but regressed in alternative ways — or overhauling greater positions. counting on most of the identical key gamers over the past 4 years, the Yankees have posted a 328-218 regular-season checklist below Boone. He joined Mike Matheny (previously of the St. Louis Cardinals) as the simplest people in essential-league background to reach the postseason in every of their first four seasons as a manager. despite the talented, albeit imperfect, rosters and large payrolls, the Yankees’ title drought has reached 12 seasons. The previous two years were more of a struggle. After winning the American League East in 2019, they couldn’t capture the smaller-market, smaller-payroll Tampa Bay Rays in 2020 or this yr, reaching the playoffs as a wild-card crew as an alternative — and not getting some distance after that. “In other years that we had been knocked out, we had a legit shot to take a run on the American League title and signify the league on the earth sequence, and spot the place that might take us,” Cashman noted. “This certain yr, i thought we had an opportunity to do some damage and perhaps continue on, nonetheless it seemed like the manner our season turned into going every now and then that it also may be a primary-circular knockout, and that’s what actually took place.” Boone returns to a coaching staff that might be dramatically different than some other below his tenure. ultimate week, the Yankees suggested three coaches who had been with Boone on account that the beginning of his tenure that they would no longer be returning — the two hitting coaches and his close friend and third base instruct, Phil Nevin. “I don’t are looking to simply say we should get stronger — that’s obvious,” Boone stated. “It’s important to well known that I do think like we do have the individuals in location to get it completed. There’s received to be tweaks. There’s got to be changes. starting from my standpoint, and in our coaching staff, we’ve all bought to get a bit bit better and making certain we hang each different liable.” 토토사이트

[nosleepuntilvacation]

Hi! I've got another Mettaton×reader request for you, if you don't mind. The setting is that Mettaton gets badly damaged, and of course his crush is worried sick. They insist on helping Alphys with the repairs, even if it's small things like handing her the right tool or something. The repairs take a week or two, and the crush just camps over at Alphys' lab the whole time. But anyway! The scenario I want you to actually write is when Mettaton is finally rebooted and wakes up. (cont.)

(cont.) So when Mettaton comes to, his crush is sitting next to whatever table/bed/thing he’s laying on. They go “Thank god!” and probably tear up a bit, smiling like a fool. Mettaton is like, touched that they’ve waited for him like that. When he asks about it, the crush gets all flustered. Mettaton ofc teases them, and as the conversation/banter goes on they accidentally mention at some point that they helped Alphys with the repairs… Que more flustering and eventually (cont. IM SORRY)

(cont.) eventually they end up telling him how much he means to them. In their nervousness, they get a bit rambly and end up confessing their romantic feelings to him. Then they hang their head and don’t look up again until Mettaton tells that he feels the same. Then they’re both awkward and happy and they smooch and stuff. // Sorry if this long, 3-ask explanation is unclear and sorry this is so dramatic. Thank you for considering this.             

…this has been sitting in my inbox for over a year hasn’t it

dishonor on me, dishonor on my miltank, etc. etc. etc.

But I guess it’s better late than never…?

Below the cut: A Storm Leads to a Rainbow

(TW: Discussions and descriptions of a car accident, and the emotional and physical injuries resulting from it; brief mention of alcohol)

Two synthetic eyes open, and their owner groans, clutching his forehead. “Ugh… what happened?”

He looks in his immediate line of sight. The space-printed sheets on the bed he currently occupies, the posters displaying different franchises he likes (his own included), the star-shaped stickers on the ceiling… yep, this is definitely his guest room in Alphys’ place.

“But why–?” He reaches down and touches his hip. Just as he suspected, his charging cable is plugged securely into there. He barely has enough time to register this before he hears a familiar voice.

“Mettaton? Thank god!”

He sits up and looks over towards the source of the voice…

…and he promptly sees you sitting in one of his pink beanbag chairs, smiling like a weight had just been lifted away. And was he seeing things, or were those tears in your eyes?

“[Y/N]? I wasn’t expecting to see you here, sweetheart.” He smirks a bit. “Have you appointed yourself the president of my fan club? I’ll have you know that you’re competing with me for that position.”

“Heh…” To you, the sound of his voice is exactly what you need right now. You pull out your phone and open your text message program. “Just gonna let Alphys know you’re awake. She’s off jogging with Papyrus.”

After a few chuckles at his own joke, his smile soon becomes more genuine. “Thank you for thinking of me, though.”

“Of course.” You put your phone away after sending a message, and your smile becomes a little more sad as you try to ward off the rock forming in your throat. “When I heard about what had happened to you, I was so worried, and I couldn’t just…” You take a few deep breaths to keep the dam from bursting.

At this point, he can’t help but frown. “If you don’t mind me asking… what did happen to me, anyway? The last thing I remember was Bryan and I driving home, and before I knew it, our car tipped sideways. My whole body was in pain, I heard Bryan calling Alphys… and then I blacked out.” His hand clenches the mattress. “Is Bryan okay, by the way?”

“Yes. He had to visit the ER, but he wasn’t hurt too badly, and they let him go home after a few days. Anyway…”

After swallowing your nerves, you begin to explain the full story.

A little over a week ago, you had been visiting Alphys and Undyne and watching a movie with them. At one point in the movie, Alphys received a panicked phone call from Bryan, an orange mammal monster who seemed to be Mettaton’s frenemy of sorts. The two had been driving together to their respective homes after a production at the local theater when a drunk driver veered into their lane and crashed into Bryan’s car. When Alphys headed out to help, the scene indeed looked grisly, with roadside assistance having to help put the car upright again - and it was clear that at least half of the car would need repairs. Paramedics were helping Bryan into an ambulance…

“…and when she brought you back, I almost couldn’t look.” You shudder. “You looked like something chewed you up and spit you back out again!”

With a sneer, Mettaton folds his arms. “Oh, come on. I don’t taste that bad! Ask anyone who’s ever had one of my world-famous face steaks!” He taps his chin in thought. “Although, maybe I shouldn’t have made them so expensive at first…”

You chuckle nervously; at the time, you definitely wouldn’t have laughed if someone had made that joke, but now that Mettaton’s awake, the whole thing feels a little easier to put in the past.

“Honestly, though…” His expression softens into concern. “…my body looked that bad when Alphys brought me in?” He holds his hands in front of his face and wiggles his fingers, before peeking under the blankets and presumably checking his feet in a similar way. Next, he grabs a handheld mirror from the nightstand and studies his face, brushing his hair out of one of his eyes.

“Yeah…” You wipe away a few tears forming near your eyes. “If Alphys and I hadn’t fixed you up right away…” A shudder takes over your spine; you’re still not entirely sure how all the intricacies of his body work, and this was one situation where experimenting was not an option.

For a moment, Mettaton is silent…

…only to give you an odd look.

“Wait a minute… you helped Alphys with the repairs?”

“Uh–! Well!” Oh god, does he already know what you think of him? “She did most of the big work! I was just there to help hold you still, or to get her the right tools, or to keep an eye on you to make sure you were still stable while she was out getting more supplies and stuff. Undyne helped, too, when she wasn’t at work. Alphys and I took turns watching over you the first couple of nights, while you were still in somewhat critical condition…”

Mettaton blinks. “You even stayed over?”

“Y-yeah… I haven’t actually been home since I heard about the crash.”

By now, you can feel the floodgates open, tears rolling down your face as you explain yourself.

“I wanted to help Alphys as much as I could… I was so scared. You could have died if we hadn’t done enough in time, and if I hadn’t helped and you ended up dying… I don’t know if I could ever forgive myself if that happened. Especially because you’re my friend, and, well…”

Despite the more reasonable side of your mind not feeling ready to say it, your emotions are in full force right now, and you just blurt it out before you can stop yourself.

“I don’t know when it started, but I really wanted to tell you I love you.”

And with that, you lower your head and finally allow yourself to let out some quiet sobs as the many emotions of the past several days swamp over you: relief from knowing that Mettaton is most likely okay now, fear and sadness from the fact that he probably wouldn’t have made it if Alphys hadn’t gotten there in time, and that hard-to-describe sensation of knowing that, in the heat of the moment, you just confessed your romantic feelings towards your longtime crush. Your body and mind are just frozen like a slow computer as you try to quell this maelstrom of emotions.

It gets to the point where you can barely register it as Mettaton whispers your name and gently takes hold of your hand.

“Shh… everything’s going to be okay, darling. It was horrifying, and I was scared, too… but I feel so much better now.” A smooth thumb strokes the top of your hand as he continues. “In fact… as of late, I’ve realized that I’m in love with you, too.”

“R-really…?” You finally look up; despite your likely looking like an emotional wreck right now, Mettaton doesn’t seem to judge you for it, instead smiling.

“Absolutely, sweetheart. I’ve wanted to tell you for a little while; you’ve been such a wonderful friend to me. And knowing that you would go this far to help save my life… honestly, I’d do the same for you.”

A cheerful laugh escapes your throat; you’re not sure what to say, but you still manage a “Thank you…”

“And thank you, beautiful.”

For a few moments, neither of you are sure of what else to say amidst the glow of relief and new love, but eventually, Mettaton has a thought.

“Darling, when all of this has blown over a little more… would you, perhaps, like to go on a date with me? I can show you a few of my favorite places in town, and you can show me your favorites, if you’d like.”

“Sure.” There are still a few tears, but they come from a much happier place now. It’ll probably take a little while for everyone’s fears to disappear completely, but what’s important is that everyone is safe right now, and a potential tragedy has been averted.

Before you know it, you wrap your arms around Mettaton in a big hug, which he soon returns in kind before leaning in close to your face. He stops himself and looks into your eyes as if asking for permission, and when you smile and nod, he presses his lips to yours. It’s not the smoothest of kisses, but most first kisses typically aren’t.

Either way, you’re definitely not complaining.

You’re so lost in the kiss that you don’t hear the sound of the front door opening and closing in the other room, nor do you hear the sound of footsteps. Shortly afterwards, though, a small eep does get your attention.

The two of you break off the kiss and look towards the doorway, where Alphys is standing, still in her jogging outfit, with wide eyes.

“Oh! Uh… am I interrupting something?”

As you wave hello to Alphys, Mettaton gently smiles. “Alphys, darling, I’m so glad to see you. And don’t worry; I think everything’s going to be just fine.”

Alphys returns the smile. “Yeah… I’m so glad you’re awake. I’ll probably want to keep an eye on you for the next day or two, though. Just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.”

“That’s all right. As long as I have everyone cheering for me, I can absolutely manage this!”

You gently squeeze his hand, and he smiles at you.

After a second or two, Alphys pulls out her phone. “So, uh, want to order some pizza or something? I can shower while we wait for it to get here.”

Mettaton rests a hand on his soul casing. “Darling, I haven’t eaten in days, so that sounds absolutely perfect right now.”

“That sounds good to me too,” you say with a nod.

“Great! Let me open the app…”

As you all begin to figure out what you want, you can already picture the delicious taste of the food in your mind. Not only that, you can also picture some of the exciting, lovely things in your and Mettaton’s future… a future that you helped to secure for him.

Sometimes, even a harsh rainstorm can leave behind a beautiful rainbow.

[erictmason]

The Road To “Godzilla VS. Kong”, Day One

KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (AMERICAN VERSION)

Originally Released: June 26th, 1963

Director: Ishiro Honda

Writers: Shinichi Sekizawa, Paul Mason and Bruce Howard

Starring: Tadao Takashima, Kenji Sahara, Ichiro Arashima, Mie Hama, Michael Keith, Harry Halcomb

“King Kong VS. Godzilla” is a movie whose reputation often precedes it amongst certain circles of Genre Film fans.  Even if one is unaware of the convoluted, more than slightly seedy story behind its creation (short version: the original “King Kong”’s special-effects artist, Willis O’Brien, was interested in creating a sequel that would have pitted Kong against a giant animalistic version of the Frakenstein Monster, but shady producer John Beck wound up stealing the idea and, when American studios balked at the project for fear that the use of stop-motion animation to realize the effects work would be too expensive, wound up shopping it to the more cost-effective Toho Studios in Japan, who reconceived it as a new “Godzilla” project in hopes of revitalizing interest in the character), it is still one of the most singularly important Giant Monster Movies ever made.  For one thing, it basically defined The Kaiju Movie as we know it today; sure, the original “Gojira” from 1954 (and by extension its Americanized adaptation, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” in 1956) may have effectively created the genre, but you’ll notice the majority of such movies that exist today are more about Fanciful Title Bouts between two Clashing Monsters rather than somber moody Allegories about the horrors of Nuclear Weapons.  For another, it’s the movie that really put Godzilla himself on the map as a Big Star in his own right; at the time, he only had two prior films to his name, and while one of them was the aforementioned genre-creating watershed “Gojira”, the other was “Godzilla’s Counterattack” from 1956, which proved such a box-office disappointment that it put the character into retirement for the better part of a decade (and to give you a sense of just how much less weight the name “Godzilla” carried back then, when that movie was released in America in 1959, it was initially re-titled “Gigantis The Fire Monster”).  With “King Kong VS. Godzilla”, however, he would begin to star in more and more movies, building a film franchise that continues to this day.  

So it’s a bit of a shame that I’ve never liked it all that much.

To be clear, the “it” in question here is specifically the American version of the movie, which is the one most Western audiences would be familiar with since, until recently, it was the only one readily available to us (though Criterion finally corrected that back in 2019, when they included the original Japanese version of the movie as a bonus feature in their “Showa Era” collector’s set).  Certainly, it’s the one that I grew up watching as a kid, when my mom, ever so protective and knowing how easily upset I could be when Fictional Characters I Loved got hurt, made sure to watch ahead to see who exactly won the title match-up (and since it was Kong, I wouldn’t actually get around to finishing my viewing of the movie for a good long while).  Back then, of course, I viewed it very much through that childish prism of who I thought should win, and it was exactly the kind of Schoolyard Logic you’d expect: Kong was supposed to be a great deal smaller than Godzilla, and where Godzilla had his iconic fire breath, Kong had no extraordinary powers; Kid Me understandably concluded that this match-up really ought to be a shoe-in for Godzilla, which worked out well since Godzilla just so happened to be the one Kid Me actually cared about.  Kid Me was thus quite irritated to discover that, for the sake of this movie, Kong had in fact been significantly sized up and given random electricity-absorbing powers.  It felt like cheating to Kid Me, and it left me less than positively disposed towards the film proper.

These days, of course, I’m able to give the film a somewhat fairer shake, though I would be lying if I said that My Inner Childish Fan-Boy is completely quiet on the matter (in particular, it always bothers me that, to emphasize the advantage Kong’s electrical powers give him in their fight, the movie explicitly cites Godzilla’s “vulnerability” to electricity, despite one of the most singularly iconic images of the original “Gojira” being his ability to walk straight through a power-line barricade).  Indeed, my most recent re-watch for this very review honestly left me feeling fonder toward it than I was even on my last most recent re-watch (back in 2014, in preparation for the then-upcoming Gareth Edwards “Godzillla”, which we’ll also be getting to in this re-watch soon).  The portrayal of the title monsters themselves in particular left me much happier this time around than it has in the past; the design for Godzilla himself- thick around the center with big heavy-browed eyes and what appears to be a constantly self-amused grin, huge sharp claws that dominate the fingers and a tail that moves with a real sense of weight and purpose-took me a long time to warm up to, for example, but these days I would happily cite it as one of the very best of the original series.  Kong gets it a bit worse, sadly; the suit they design for him here (a fact that original “Kong” director Merian C. Cooper openly despised, incidentally; the idea of portraying Kong as just some guy in a gorilla costume was one of the things he explicitly set out to avoid in the original movie) has a distinctive enough face if not an especially memorable one, but the costume always looks and feels a bit raggedy, with the sagging pecs and ill-fitted arms (throughout the movie the suit switches between “regular” arms designed to allow the actor mobility, and extended arms to help give it a more ape-like gait; the result is that both versions feel weirdly out of place on the costume a lot of the time) looking especially awkward.  However, even beyond how they look, the way the monsters act is genuinely enjoyable, with Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla and Shoichi Hirose as Kong both putting in fantastic performances that imbue them with a great sense of personality that is just consistently delightful all movie long.  Whether it’s Godzilla hopping around, arms flailing in triumph whenever he manages to pull off another victory, or Kong drunkenly swallowing up giant pots’ worth of a narcotic usd to keep him docile, the movie very visibly delights in imbuing these creatures with fun foibles, and It’s no coincidence that the it’s at its strongest, not so much when the monsters are fighting, but when they are simply interacting as actual Characters: Godzilla here feels often like a particularly arrogant, boundlessly-energized child, while Kong is a bit more confused and subdued but quick to anger when irritated; their first meeting, when both these strong visible personalities most openly bounce off each other, is unquestionably my favorite moment of the movie.

The rest of it isn’t exactly bad, per se, but it is a lot less entertaining.  Some of that is simply what the American version inherited from the Japanese original, not least of all the noxiously racist portrayal of the Natives living on a remote pacific island with Kong (here named “Faro Island” for some reason instead of the usual “Skull Island”).  On top of the sins it recreates from the original “King Kong” (a fairly ooga-booga understanding of What Islanders Are Like, all of whom are portrayed by non-Native actors slathered in brownface make-up), it also includes a decently insulting bit wherein the initially-hostile islanders are pacified by the introduction of “magic” in the form of a hand-held radio and cartons of cigarettes.  There’s also the fact that the plot is driven almost entirely by Random Contrivance rather than anything that flows naturally from either the characters or the premise; Godzilla and Kong have no real compelling reason to meet, let alone fight, other than the pure coincidence of their both happening to be active at around the same time in the same part of the world (the American version attempts to ameliorate this somewhat by stating that the two are “instinctive rivals” who will be “naturally driven to destroy one another”, but that flimsy lip-service to Motivation just winds up making the otherwise-arbitrary plotting feel all the worse), and we are constantly bombarded by Total Coincidences as a way of shuffling the characters around from place to place with dizzying frequency.  But some of those troubles are only exacerbated by the approach the American version has taken to the material.  We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, but the Japanese “King Kong VS. Godzilla” is, at heart, a Satirical Comedy; this, unsurprisingly, was not an idea that went over well with Universal Studios in America, who chose to try and reshape that comedy into a more traditional Monster Movie.  An understandable objective, but not one the Japanese cut of the film made easy to achieve; to avoid the most overt Comic bits meant cutting almost all of the human characters in the film (most notably the eccentric executive Mr. Tako, played by Ichiro Arishima) down to only their most essential appearances, which in turn means that they all wind up feeling vaguely undefined and out of place in their own story (this feels especially true of our ostensible main character, Tadao Takashima‘s Sakurai, who is present enough to FEEL like a main character but has little left to do in this cut of the film). To make up the weight of all that cut footage, meanwhile, we get gobs of new footage consisting mostly of Michael Keith as a United Nations reporter talking at us in the most stultifying way possible, often joined by Harry Holcombe as an equally stultifying scientist (who apparently gets his knowledge of dinosaurs primarily from children’s picture books, which in fairness would explain a lot of the nonsense he ends up saying), though he also frequently talks with a fellow reporter played by James Yagi.  These scenes are not, perhaps, without their charms, but they also deaden the movie’s pacing, especially since nine times out of ten they exist mostly to reiterate stuff we already know because it literally just happened.  Given how much a faster pace seems to be one of the American cut’s top priorities (a sub-plot from the Japanese version about a submarine inadvertently encountering Godzilla is reduced to a single sequence for this version), that choice proves a counterintuitive one.

Because the other major problem with the American approach to this movie is that, to be frank, the Monster Action is nowhere near Epic enough to bear the weight this new cut puts on it.  Again, it’s not without its merits; Godzilla and Kong’s outsized personalities do a lot to lend even the less effective sequences a certain fun spirit, and there is still an unmistakably strong sense of craftsmanship to the miniatures used throughout the movie to create the appropriate sense of scale for our Monsters to play around in (the demolition of a recreation of Atami Castle shines a spotlight on that very fact).  But in terms of both their scope and their choreography, there’s just not enough There there; far too often, “King Kong VS. Godzilla”’s Big Marquee Action Scenes amount to the monsters just sort of lazily throwing rocks at each other, or else engaging in less-interesting recreations of their previous Iconic Moments (Kong especially goes through a truncated version of his original appearance’s third act, though here he ends up on top of the National Diet Building rather than the Empire State Building).  That’s slightly less of a problem in the Japanese version; again, there, the main thrust of the film lies in its comedy, and thus the Monster Action being relatively lightweight is less of a hinderance and more a spicy Flavoring to the main story.  But here, it is the main story, and while it’s pretty clear some real love went into the Effects Work (the puppetry especially is very solid; there are a few instances where the switch from Suit Actor to Puppet for Godzilla is borderline seamless, and I also enjoy the decently-animated feel of Kong’s facial puppet as well) it ultimately doesn’t have nearly enough substance to fill that role. This comes through especially clearly in the Final Showdown between the monsters; again, there is some deservedly iconic stuff here (Kong trying to shove a tree down Godzilla’s throat only to have it rebuffed in a puff of flames has become an impressively-enduring Meme for a reason) but, much like most of the story, winds up being driven far more by Contrivance than anything clever or satisfying (a bit where Kong knocks himself over feels especially annoying for how unmotivated it seems to be). It was always going to be a tall order to make a match-up with as much implicit weight to it (both metaphorical and literal) live up to the heightened expectations placed on it, maybe.  But even taking that into account, it’s hard not to feel like “King Kong VS. Godzilla” could have put a little more effort into things.

Still, I was saying, at the start, that I walked away from “King Kong VS. Godzilla” happier this time than in many of my past viewings.  And that is ultimately true: for as much as I find myself often wishing it could be a different movie, the movie it actually is already does manage to work decently well on its own terms.  The dub-work here in particular honestly deserves notice; in contrast to the standardized casts Toho would start using for most of its “Godzilla” movies moving forward, here we get a more distinctive sounding voice-cast who manage to put some real Life into their performances (the voice they give to Kenji Sahara’s Fujita stands out especially to me, nasally and over-earnest but capable of some real Fire when the moment calls for it, as befits the character).  And, again, whatever my beef with the Action Scenes, the actual portrayal of the Monsters really is uniquely fun (indeed, given how many other elements Toho would consistently crib from it, I’m often surprised that Godzilla’s distinctive body language throughout isn’t one of them), which winds up giving the movie enough Real Heart in the end to make it a positive Experience overall, even against the stuff that even now stands out to me as Not Up To Snuff.  At the very least, it’s a lot easier for me to recognize how and why this movie created the Legacy it did, even if the American Version makes a bit more of a mess out of it.  

[radramblog]

Star Wars Battlefront II (the good one)

My nonfunctional internet is preventing me not only from finishing off my essay, not only from watching the lecture that I would have shown up for were it not for mediary COVID restrictions, but it’s also stopping me from writing anything here that would require any sort of research or confirming details. That leaves me with less options that I would have thought.

Browsing through my Steam collection for ideas on what to talk about, and something jumped out at me pretty quickly.

Star Wars Battlefront II (the 2005 game, not Star Wars Battlefront 2, the sequel to the EA remake much maligned for malicious microtransactions) is a first/third person shooter that, while showing its age, remains one of the best games the franchise has ever put out. This is, of course, an opinion coming from someone who has yet to play Knights of the Old Republic, but it feels like Star Wars as a franchise has more misses than hits. So what makes this one land?

While I’m woefully unfamiliar with the early 00s shooters that Battlefront II was competing with (aside from Counter-Strike Source, but I’d argue that’s a different target market), I am extremely familiar with this one. I think part of why Battlefront II is so fondly remembered is on account of it being almost a gateway game for people getting into shooters in general- I for one played it extensively on my mate’s PS2 in primary school, and later on someone else’s PSP, and I doubt I would later have clicked so strongly with Halo if I hadn’t.

But what Battlefront II has more than anything else I feel is ambition. After the conclusion of the prequel trilogy, Star Wars’s universe was big, and the developers seemed interested in representing about as much of what we see of it’s style of warfare as they possibly could. As a result, the maps are a glorious smattering of worlds and terrains, loving and detailed recreations of places from the various films as well as a few that are probably new (I might just not remember them), each drizzled with vehicles and turrets and resources. Each of the game’s four factions share the basic units with very few differences (except for the Super Battle Droid), making them easy to understand and grasp for newer/younger players, with the complexity of each’s unique units paying off those willing to grapple with their weakness and play to their strengths. Some are definitely better than others, but that isn’t especially obvious at first. The basic classes reflect tropes seen in other games and while again some falter it’s not by enough that picking them in the wrong situation is a guaranteed blunder.

There are, of course, the heroes, major characters from the series granted to a player who’s doing pretty well, and I feel like this is another pretty well handled mechanic, even if a little awkward. There are enough of them, and they’re distributed enough between maps and factions, that they don’t tend to feel stale, and it’s pretty obvious that while they can absolutely ruin a team it’s also pretty easy to mishandle them. Unfortunately, heroes are related to one of my biggest complaints about the game, but we’ll get to that later.

One of the biggest selling points in my eyes are the dogfight levels. Now, I’ve never played X-Wing or the like, in fact my experiences with dogfighting games is extremely limited. But this part of the game fucks so hard. The design ideas begun with the class selection continue with the (admittedly small) range of starfighters you can pilot, with specialised interceptors, bombers, and landing craft to go alongside the effective all-rounders. The mode offers a variety of playstyles, between hunting down opponent’s fighters to bombing their flagships to boarding said flagships and destroying their systems from the inside. There is also the option of manually controlling the turrets, as well as acting as a gunner for someone else’s bomber/lander, but these positions are unfortunately underpowered and underexplored- they’re also, ultimately, less fun. But the dogfighting just feels right. I can’t really explain it, but moving in that 3-dimensional space feels not only satisfying but accurate to the source material in a way I don’t think any future Star Wars game has yet replicated.

I suppose the various game modes are worth discussing. Skirmishing on whatever map you want is the standard, at least in multiplayer, but there are a few unique offerings you won’t see in other modes- Hunt, where it’s a faction versus some of the series’s wildlife in a mode that always feels imbalanced towards one side or the other. There’s obviously Assault- the standard name for the space dogfights but on one ground map (Mos Eisley) it is of course the ever-popular heroes free-for-all, a chaotic mess but one where you can test out each one and figure out what their abilities actually do. But in the broader strokes, you’ve got the story, and the Galactic Conquest, as the two main other modes.

(oof, they really didnt build this with this resolution in mind huh)

That’s right, this game has a story, and it’s…okay? Ultimately it’s just a series of missions with the 501st, as they fight in the clone wars, turn on the Jedi, and ultimately become the Empire’s tool of oppression, separated by exposition. You get to run through some scenes from the movies, including the boarding at the start of the first movie and the Battle of Hoth, though some of the missions feel harder than intended- no matter how good the player is, the AI is not going to fare well in the tougher missions and you have a solid chance of ending up on your own.

Galactic Conquest is the game’s more unique selling point, being something like a basic version of Risk but with the dice-rolling battles replaced with Star Wars Battlefront II. You earn credits over time and through victory that you can spend unlocking types of units, getting new fleets to improve how many fronts you can wage war on, and unlock powerups for use in the actual battles. It’s largely fine, feeling like a bit more controlled and strategic version of just playing randoms in Instant Action, but it suffers the most from the biggest problem this game has.

The game’s truest flaw is its AI. They are dumb as a sack of potatoes, and the main thing holding the game back from perfection. And it was the early 00s so imperfect AI was to be expected, but it’s a bit more than imperfect here, I guess. Robits standing still while shooting you (or just at all, while you’re sniping them), extremely questionable vehicle and turret usage, and literally crashing starships into you, your flagship, or their own flagship. Bumping their difficulty up doesn’t really help, either. Even more egregious is the AI’s usage of heroes- or rather, that they don’t. If you’re playing single player, the game will always give earned heroes to you rather than your robot teammates, will not let one of them take if it if you decline to use the character, and you will never see one on the opposite side. This would imply that there wasn’t code for the Ais to use them, except there clearly is because Assault Mos Eisley exists- and they’re arguably much better there than in any other mode! It’s a real shame, because the low quality of the AI combined with the nature of the games means that victory is extremely polarised based on the player’s skill- if you bad all the way up to pretty decent at the game, your input basically doesn’t affect the outcome, whether you win or lose. If you’re good at the game, you will never lose at singleplayer, possible exception again being Assault Mos Eisley. It’s a little absurd, honestly. Also, I’m not even sure they go for the flag in CTF in space.

I am, however, willing to look past these flaws. The game is far from perfect, but it’s just incredibly fun. It’s a type of gameplay that they’ve tried to replicate, but never quite recaptured- and I think part of the reason for that is because the awkwardness is part of the charm. It’s nostalgic- both for those who played it when they were younger and just those in my generation who grew up on the Prequels. It’s also way more expensive on steam (bruh 14.5 AUD for real?) than I expected, but it goes on hard sales pretty often (I think I paid like a buck fifty for it), so it’ll be within budget at some point. I don’t know if I can recommend it for those who aren’t nostalgic, though, solely on account of those awkward features you likely wouldn’t be able to ignore like I do. And that’s a shame, because it’s not like they’ve made a better version of this game.

Fuck EA, basically.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Dobson’s favorite cartoon reviewed: The adventures of spandex girl in New York aka the Miraculous Ladybug movie

So THIS is not going to be about a Dobson comic, but rather with the lack of Dobson posting shit out here, I thought I give my opinion about something Dobson would have likely sperged out within the last few months. What could it be I want to talk about? The riots? The death of RBG? Cuties?

Are you insane? My brain may function better than Dobson’s, but even so I am not touching those subjects with a tong, seeing how I myself am lacking detailed knowledge on such subjects. No. I am talking about the cartoon that makes Dobson’s little brain (and dick) all tingly: Miraculous Ladybug.

For starters, let me just say that despite being an animation fan myself, I am not really into this show at all. For a magical girl show that goes on for over three seasons at this point, I just feel like nothing happens in it. Sure, A LOT of tokusatsu and magical girl shows run on repetitive monster of the week formulas, but overall they will still have some progression to themselves. Growing up with Sailor Moon, I always loved the first season and how it actually made me feel like things are increasingly at stake as the story progressed. Especially in the final episodes when the Senshis actually died protecting Sailor Moon and it was only thanks to a Deus ex machina everyone was reincarnated again. As melodramatic as Sailor Moon could be, at least each story arc had a beginning and ending that did not overstay its welcome. Ladybug meanwhile can be summed up as followed:

 Teenage girl is thirsty for obvious blond boy whose dad wants to get magic jewelry to necromance his comatose wife. Teenage girl gets magic jewelry and turns into heroine in ladybug mustered spandex suit that makes rule34 artists all tingly. Same goes for boy she has the hots for, only he becomes gimp catsuit shota bait. Bad guy transforms random citizens who feel down for some reason (often times connected to a blond whose family name Dobson can’t write) into action figure like super villains. Ladybug and Cat Noir defeat them, the damage is reseted, Ladybug and Cat Noir never figure out who the other one is despite things being so obvious Ray Charles could have seen that shit coming. Repeat not just for one, but ALL seasons so far and add as little as possible storywise to increase the roaster of characters, but not progress the plot.

 All that said, I can say that there are worse shows out there and for a show meant to sell toys to girls and be about a female hero, it is not THAT bad. But a) the creator is an asshole (think of functional Dobson) and b) there are still better shows to watch, even within the preteen magical girl genre, than this. Not to forget that this thing may be the indirect successor of Totally Spies and give certain people internet related fetishes within the next few years.

So, why am I believing Dobson would talk about the show at least for today more than he already tends to do on average? Because Ladybug actually got now a movie.

Well, it is called a movie, but in reality it is more of a 3 parter to start the fourth season if you really look into it. The thing is called Miraculous World: New York – United HeroeZ. It clocks in around 65 minutes and focuses on Marinette and Adrien in New York, teaming up with new heroes that are so unsubtlety promoted in this movie, I expect them to get their own spin off series by the end of next year so the showmakers can milk the cow even drier.

Let me try to elaborate in what is going to be a less than just a bit snarky summary with a few critical points and jokes at Dobson’s expense thrown in here. In other words, the typical biased youtube reaction channel/movie review.  Spoiler warnings are obvious and I promise than unlike certain pedos on youtube I am not going to focus on the assets of underaged French girls. I do warn however for increased levels of making a fool of myself by writing a multi page “mock summary” of this thing.

So because the movie is based on a children show, it has a very basic set up; Adrien and Marinette’s class is invited to spend one week in New York, because of a pointless international collaboration thing referred to as French-American Friendship week. The sheer existence of this showing that a) we needed any reason to get them there and b) this special was worked on LONG before COVID19 hit us all. And yes, I know animation takes its time to be done, I just think it is funny how in today’s international political climate and health situation this thing has become outdated already, when it is hitting the tv just now.

 At the same time, Adrien’s dad suspects that an artifact currently shown at a museum in New York may be a missing Miraculous that was owned by the Marquis de La Fayette and gifted to George Washington during the American Revolution. And yes, we are going there and you can guess what Hawkmoth’s goal this time is, while at the same time history gets fucked up the butt.

 But before we can get to any action in New York, we have to deal with the one thing Ladybug is known for best: Cringy shipping bait.

 Look, I know that shipping is a part of magical girl shows in general, but the shit going on in this cartoon is not only drawn out tediously even for children tv standards, I find it makes some characters outright dumb and unlikable. We get it Marinette, Adrien makes you tingle. But can you stop cringing your way through life around him in a manner that would make Tomoko Kuroki say that you are freaking pathetic?

I don’t want anybody else. when I think about Adrien I...

 Just three minutes into this movie she essentially melts away at a poster of Adrien and throughout the first 15 minutes she just simps away in the big blue yonder. For example by asking Adrien’s dad to allow his son to travel with the others to New York, obviously stumbling upon her words when she needs to remind herself that she can only see Adrien now as a friend and not love interest (because this is supposedly set after season 3, when she decided to go for the second price in form of the guy who plays guitar), insisting that she is only “friends” to the point even her best friend Alya gets fed up. Or when Marinette gets more than just “a bit” nervous at the chance of sitting on her flight to New York next to Adrien, resulting in her fucking that chance up so badly, I felt an headache approaching. 

Not gonna lie, I had to pause a few times because it got so cringy for me, I wondered why Dobson makes primarily jokes on Adrien’s expense when Marinette herself is female thirst personified. Even the movie seems to point out how the two are so obvious to each other, when Alya has the following to say about them: I can’t decide if they are the most cutest people I know, or the most embarrassing.

Thankfully it is at 18 minutes into it, we FINALLY get something of a conflict. While still on the plane (And Adrien and Marinette watching a sunset through a window) a villain shows up, trying to steal the jet engine midflight.

 Just roll with it

 Thankfully, before the plane can go down thanks to a Gremlin on the wing- I mean TECHNO PIRATE, the real stars of the movie show up.

 Wait, you thought this thing was going to be about Ladybug and Cat Noir being the primary heroes? WRONG!

 Okay, to put the summary on hold and explain what I mean: This “movie” introduces us to “United HeroeZ”, a group of American superheroes. Yeah, turns out Miraculous is essentially set in your average “Superheroes are everywhere, but primarily US dominated territory” world and this story is meant to introduce us to them and have Ladybug and Cat Noir team up in order to save the day. And while I don’t necessarily HATE the characters, I have to admit that I can’t help myself but snark quite a bit about them. Not only are they for the most part just expies of well known superheroes, the way how prominent two of them in particular are featured in this movie makes it very, VERY obvious that (As I stated earlier) this thing aims just to create a tie-in show for the creators to make more money of the property. Not just that, but their presence in a way reduces Adrien and Marinette’s importance as characters, even though the new ones at best would count as supportive characters overall. Which again makes me wonder, what does it say about Ladybug and Cat Noir’s “impact” in their own franchise when I actually find myself more interested in the side characters made to promote new toys, than the actual leads?

 Anyway, United HeroeZ defeats Techno Pirate and in doing so we are introduced to the main members of the group which are relevant for this movie:

So please, give an applause for…. MAJESTIA (aka actually decent Powergirl redesign/Non Superman)

 SPARROW (Aka yet another Robin that may get hit by a crowbar)

UNCANNEY VALLEY (aka The Shipper on Deck/Cleopatra in Tin Foil/Vision as your Waifu/the dumbest name you could have chosen for a character!)

NIGHT OWL (aka Alan Moore is going to be pissed!/Oh look, it’s Batman!)

You get where I am coming from when I call them expies, right?

 Anyway, with the plane safe the class finally gets to New York. Both Sparrow and Uncanney Valley get tasked to go undercover with the students and assure they are save during the trip, because plot reasons and New York is supposedly enough of a safe place that their services aren’t needed to fight bigger threats currently. Which confirms at the very least that a) this is not the Marvel Universe cause at this point the town may be ground zero yet again and b) a way more enjoyable version of the Big Apple than the real deal.

By the way, these are Uncanney (left) and Sparrow’s (right) civilian identities :

I can now imagine Dobson wanting to proclaim how problematic the character is for being a native American who looks the way she does. But believe me. It gets kinda worse in all the right ways.

 Also, we are 28 minutes into the movie and we are introduced to the dumbest thing in the movie yet. The arch enemy of the Condiment King; Hot Dog Dan.

A superhero hot dog vendor seller with a flying hot dog truck, whose hot dogs give you temporarily some random superpowers when you eat them. And it seems he uses hot dog tongs as weapons.

I don’t know what the people making this show take, but I am torn between wanting some of that myself and putting them into rehab.

 I really bring the character just up because he is as a concept in itself so ridiculous that part of me thinks he is a fever dream of Dobson. Otherwise he has no real bearing on what is going to happen on the rest of the movie. He is just relevant for a three minute long scene of a house roof party during which Adrien and Marinette dance for a bit.

 Speaking of relevance, the next day the class finally gets to do something on the trip that leads into conflict for our heroes to face. During a visit of the museum where the La Fayette related Miraculous is hold, Uncanny and Sparrow decide to play shipper on deck by forcing Marinette and Adrien in a room and attempting to set a really stupid plot into motion (and no, I don’t mean they enforce a reenactment of Steven Universe or something). At the same time the villains finally do something, when Hawkmoth (now in New York) turns Techno Pirate into his latest minion and have him attack the museum to steal a saber by La Fayette as distraction, while he takes the charm he is out for. Long story short: Our heroes FINALLY transform and have to fight with Uncanney and Sparrow against Techno Pirate on the roofs of Manhattan.

 And while I don’t think it is all that great of a fight, it still means something aside of Marinette cringing her way through the plot is happening and the heroes are actually in decent peril. Plus during the fight the movie gives me one of the funniest moments possible. You want to know what it is?

 Well, while fighting the bad guy, Cat Noir and Ladybug obviously trigger their miraculouses. And what does Ladybugs miraculous turn into this time, to help her develop a strategy to defeat the villain and save the day?

A bikepump.

 ... yeah, I am going to give all of you now 5 minutes to laugh it off. Believe me, I needed them too.

Sure, it is a cartoon and I doubt anyone working on the show is even aware of our favorite uncare bear, but come on. At this point the universe itself is either mocking Dobson or tries to set up the perfect opportunity for an obvious joke from my side.

Not helped by the fact that once the bike pump shows up, the dialogue between characters that follows is, and I quote:

Cat: A bicycle pump? What are you going to do with that?

Ladybug: I may have an idea, but you wouldn’t like it

 Anyway, believe it or not, the fight actually ends with a surprising shock moment. Cat Noir, while having his cataclysm powers active (you know, the powers that make him decompose anything he touches), being thrown by Techno Pirate at Ladybug, resulting in Uncanney protecting her and being turned into scrap metal. Which in turn causes Techno Pirate to make the acquaintance with Majestia’s fist, as Uncanney is more or less her adopted daughter and I guess she has seen what was going on (but did not interfere because the plot says so) until now, pummeling him so hard he flies through a few buildings and causes at least three 9/11 to happen on this day in New York.

So, yeah. Uncanney is dead. The heroes experiencing their darkest hour in the movie.

… welp, can’t have that for long, so less than 2 minutes later Ladybug uses the Magical bikepump…

5 minutes of laughter later

Got it out of the system? Good. As I was saying; She uses the fetish toy to reset all the damage done by the akumatized villain and in doing so fixes Uncanney too.

Welp, that was a waste of tension. Guess someone watched the entire Lars dying thing from Steven Universe.

So, damage undone, but Majestia and Night Owl pretty pissed at what happened, want Ladybug and Cat Noir to give up their miraculouses (I assume that is the correct plural) until they leave New York. You would expect this to result in some dramatic chase scene or confrontation with the older heroes, but because this movie has just like 22 minutes left and we need to close act two now, our heroes instead flee and end up in the sewers of New York.

There they do NOT team up with a group of mutated reptiles, but have a heart to heart talk (I never thought I would agree with Dobson on something, but I have to agree on this: The show is kinda fixated on having important stuff happening in sewer channels) that is sort of an argument Cat Noir and Ladybug also had during the fight. You see, because those two idiots haven’t  figured out their respective civilian identities yet (something even Sailor Moon would have figured out AFTER THREE SEASONS!) Marinette assumed that Cat Noir would be in Paris while she is in New York to keep the city save. And Adrien/Noir was okay with making the promise of keeping the city initially save, because his dad only allowed him on the trip the day after he made the promise. So when the two transform out of sight of the other in New York and meet, instead of asking some logical questions (like “where is Marinette/Adrien and why is Cat/Ladybug here?”) they kinda argue wtf Cat is doing here while Paris may be in danger.

Long story short, she is angry at him, he feels guilty for having disappointed her and the thing with turning Uncanney into scrap, Paris was attacked by Hawkmoth’s secretary unleashing temporarily some monster clone because Hawkmoth thought that distracts the heroes in Paris (and really just results in damage that makes a city that experienced the destruction of Notre Dame the year prior just feel numb) and because this is the turning point in the plot, our hero needs to do something just a bit too melodramatic. Which is that Adrien gives up his powers and runs away.

… so, up to the final part in which things to care about start to happen.

Hawkmoth now has the Miraculous and unleashes its Kwami who is this eagle themed little thing referring to itself as the “Kwami of Freedom”.

 … Yeah, this thing was NOT around for the last 200 years, wasn’t it?

 Anyway, it states that its powers are based on “freeing” people of limitations to achieve their full potential. What does that mean practically? It means that when Techno Pirate holds its powers on top of his regular powers increased by being akumatized, he can unleash some energy attack that removes moral inhibitions when getting hit by it.

… So it basically unleashes the Purge.

 Which is exactly what happens to Majestia and Night Owl, turning one into Man of Steel Superman causing nine additional 9/11s on top of the three prior (how the fuck did this movie manage to turn an American tragedy in a measuring unit?) and the other into All Star Batman.

Oh and it turns the President of the USA into a worse war monger than people accuse Trump of being.

Oh, this is NOT going to sit well with anyone...

… Yeah, sidenote: The president of the USA in this movie is essentially Michelle Obama who ALSO is a superhero with an American flag theme and besties with Majestica and Night Owl, trying to protect the exchange students. Because supposedly NOTHING better needs to be done. Once she gets hit by the “Freedom Feathers” or whatever you want to call the Kwami power, she pulls out the Football and activates turrets all over the USA, ready to blow up anything that moves into smithereens. Including at least 10.000 such turrets on the roofs of New York and a nuclear missile in the bay near the Statue of Liberty.

I’ll take it to the people with the eagle not the dove. If there is one thing that obedience is symptomatic of, it’s W-E-A-P-O-N-R-Y... WEAPONRY, from above!

(BTW, the rocket is animated like shit!)

I get the feeling someone on the production team is not the biggest fan of America.

 Anyway, with the heroes being useless and Marinette and Adrien mopping around for what happened during the battle (and Adrien being tricked by his dad to leave New York and get back on a plane cause this town is not save and Adrien can’t fucking stand up to his emotionally abusive father), Uncanney and Sparrow have to get the ball rolling so the day can be saved. Which means that Sparrow and Ladybug try to fight and distract people for time (off screen mostly), while Uncanney hijacks Adrien’s plane and brings him back to take up the gimp suit of Cat Noir again. Oh yeah, almost forgot, Uncanney, cause she is a robot, has figured out easily who Ladybug and Adrien really are cause scanning. Making our heroes literally dumber than a walking toaster.

 So the four finally together, fight Techno Pirate on the Statue of Liberty a second time (after some hijinx with another corrupted hero whose power is literally to create portals through doors, but he is irrelevant for anything so I skipped him up until now) and defeat him. He loses the Miraculous, Sparrow takes it on and becomes its next official owner, resulting in her costume turning into THIS

 So now we have the native American girl turn into an eagle based superhero with a costume that looks like out of a western based Lego set.

Real talk here: Unlike Dobson I do not believe that everything is political or offensive or some other shit. In fact I hate his comic where he talks about “skin color changes” of the black characters in Ladybug, because he essentially tries to create a race issue and tension where there is none, just because he is a social justice moron. Which gets especially funny when his ideas for a progressive female results in characters like the black rat pirat who kicks you in the face for being hetero or infantilizing the characters of Patty to make them visually more appealing to Max Karson.

That said, in this day and age, doing a character like that… kinda yaiks.

Like, on one hand I think the girl has an enjoyable personality and the design of her hero outfit is okay for a kids cartoon. It’s not like she also talks in some cartoonishly native way or has suddenly a tomahawk as a weapon.

On the other hand, it is kinda stereotypical from multiple ankles and unfortunately there is nothing to the character past this point. Oh sure, Sparrow has now Miraculous powers, but really, all she does now is just use her powers to nullify Techno Pirates influence on the adult heroes before Majestia manages to reenact the bad ending for Majora’s mask and that is it.

Granted,  there is Hawkmoth also almost starting World War 3, but that is really just happening at the site and dealt with almost instantly. To be more specific, because Ladybug and Cat Noir did not hand over their Miraculous, he lets Techno Pirate launch one of the missiles near the Statue of Liberty (worse president than Trump, honestly) but before the thing can hit anything, Majestia sweeps it away and throws it into the sun.

You know, if the show writers want to make Adrien’s dad even remotely “sympathetic” or interesting/intelligent, they increasingly fail. Cause I don’t know about you, but causing World War 3 does not really feel like it will benefit in bringing your comatose wife back.

Bottom line: Nuke has been burned, Techno Pirate gets defeated, all the damage reseted, Sparrow is now the official owner of the latest Miraculous and renames herself Eagle, everyone is happy, there is a big celebration for the class and Hawkmoth is convinced there might be other missing Miraculous all over the globe he wants to get his hands on, meaning season 4 may have more globe trotting Miraculous “action” once it starts.

And also the last scene of the movie shows Eagle and Uncanney meeting some other guardian of the Miraculous box who wants the Eagle charm, but she seemingly convinces him to team up, solidifying that this one hour “movie” was really just a backdoor pilot for a tie in series about an American centered heroine that is so big, a freaking monster truck could pass through this backdoor.

 Yeah, if you can’t tell, I am not a big fan of what I saw.

Look, I will openly admit that my opinion on this is in large parts already tainted by me not being part of the demographic which enjoys the show. So this was never going to be considered “good” in my opinion. That said, I tried to be neutral to it for the sake of fairness. And I kinda failed.

Sorry, but I genuinely do not think this is a good “movie”. First, with barely 65 minutes I don’t really consider it a movie and more of a tv special meant to lead into the next season of the show. Second, I expect of a movie based on a tv show to have slightly higher stakes and presentation value to it than what you would expect from any average episode it has to offer. Which this thing doesn’t. Oh sure, the animation is slightly improved in some scenes, but overall just the same. And frankly, the writing is just still as “bad” as in the original show, if in parts not even worse. Aside of the typical stables, such as the cringy romance that does not move forward but is kinda on the forefront, the main heroes stumbling more or less into the situations instead of being more active in their duties, Hawkmoth not even in a movie having a genuine plan aside of “get this, see how it will help me defeat two kids and fail”, the movie also just never manages to induce a proper escalation of conflict to make it feel like something “special”. For example, we have a shitton of temporarily corrupted heroes. Do Ladybug and Cat Noir ever properly face them off at one point or have meaningful/fun interactions with Sparrow and Uncanney or each other outside of the first three minutes of the movie? Nope! I can name a few movies based on animated shows that gave me enjoyment, even those following basic shonen anime rules. But this one isn’t really among them. And taking into account that I consider at least the Steven Universe movie enjoyable in a dumb way, that says something.

 There is also just the fact that it takes away from Ladybug and Cat Noir too much. Sure, I don’t like the romance stuff with them because I think it plays out in some of the cringiest way possible. But I would have been okay with them or other already established sidecharacters doing other stuff and having to face some conflict that is centered more around them.

Instead the movie finds this bizarre disbalance where it focuses too much and yet too little on completely new characters, that feel shoehorned in to create a starting point for a spin off, making Cat Noir and Ladybug secondary characters in their own movie.

I mean sure, I have seen many shonen anime based movies where there is a set of “movie only” characters interacting with our heroes, but they don’t take too much away from the heroes being heroes. Say what you want about the 13th movie of any long running shonen anime, at least Luffy, Naruto, Son Goku etc. are still the central characters of their respective franchise affiliated flic. Here however we take too much away from Ladybug and Cat, while at the same time focusing also too much on their “struggle” as Marinette and Adrien (or rather just Marinette making a fool out of herself while Adrien is utterly obvious to her behavior) while the major heroics are reserved for the movie characters only, that this entire thing should just be renamed “The Adventures of Mummy Robot and Not Robin, also starring two underaged kids that Dobson is obsessed about!”

 All that said, I will give it a few things.

1) Uncanney and Sparrow/Eagle, despite my jabs, are kinda enjoyable in terms of personality. So are their partners/parents (Majestica and Night Owl are actually the (adoptive?) mothers of their sidekicks and also a couple openly caling themselves love, so yay, L(GBT) representation) and if the show would ever decide to focus also a few episodes on other characters aside of Ladybug and Cat Noir, I wouldn’t mind to see them. I just don’t think they are the most original characters out there and I think I may speak for some fans of the show when I say it sucks, that when it comes to the “action” within this “action adventure show”, they take up the spotlight from the actual main characters.

2) The fight scenes against Techno Pirate were okay overall. Nothing mind blowing animation wise but okay for the standards of this franchise.

3) Eagle’s costume design is not the worst despite my jabs at it being “stereotypical”, at least under consideration of cartoon designs (again, I can think of more offensive shit from the 90s or the Dobbear himself)

4) Well, it wasn’t for me, but I can say it was at least still on the same level of quality as the show. Make out of that comment however whatever you want.

My verdict: Three out of five Dobson’s would approve this movie. The other two would rant about stereotypes and be too busy incest shipping Majestia with Uncanney based on one shot of the movie. And none of them would acknowledge the flaws that make the “movie” a badly disguised jumping point for a spin off that makes the Equestria Girls look subtle.

 Hope you got some enjoyment out of this rant that ironically may have been overall more retarted and detailed than anything Dobson may ever say in regard of this movie.

[akimmito]

Heroes are made by the path they choose

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Master List

Chapter 15

After the Akuma battle, Max calls everyone who participated in the battle to talk about what happened. Felix and Marinette agreed to meet later when they settled at the hotel, only Kagami excused herself because she had business to attend to.

An hour passes before everyone is gathered in the boardroom, where all meetings are held. Max stays on the computer, Luka has served snacks for the Kwami and tea for the others, everyone needs to relax to give their opinion, that will help them a bit to wait for Hugo to announce that the food is ready and they can eat, the good thing is that they finished the attack in good time.

Damian feels uncomfortable, perhaps a little irritable at feeling that he has failed at something. It was not his performance in battle, he did what was expected of him exceptionally, even Paris has had good opinions about him, even though he's a child. It bothers him not to identify what caused that feeling.

Everyone notices how introspective the child looks, but says nothing. It's best to let him meditate on what torments him, in the end, only Marinette is able to reach him effectively without receiving an angry look or offensive comment. The child can touch the angelic with his mother close (but sometimes even the worst of his character comes out).

"We're ready." Felix enters the boardroom wearing only the most basic suit, the sleeves of his white shirt roll up to his elbow, and instead of his black shoes, he wears gray, fluffy slippers. Only Felix would present himself like this with the dignity of a king.

By that time, Chloe has also arrived, taking advantage of the lunch hour to meet them, even Nathaniel has taken a break and has arrived, his expression is that of someone who has not slept in three days and is not very wrong, really not he's slept in three days (at that point, Marc is tempted to knock him out with a spatula to get him to sleep).

"We can start." Marinette sits next to Damian after giving him a kiss on the head, he just erases his annoyed expression as a sign of appreciation, calming himself by having her close. "What have they discovered?"

Marc sighs and waits for Max to put on screen the videos of the surroundings of the previous Akuma, it remains to be seen if this last Akuma Purple Dolphin had a similar origin, but with two that are the same, he's sure that this is also the case. When the images appear on the screen behind the engineer, everyone pays special attention to what is displayed.

"Those are images from before Abraham Bélanger was Akumatized, the butterfly suddenly appeared in front of a single camera, so we can assume that our villain moves close to the victims." Marc explains what he had already spoken to Max and Luka, but now they will add the additional information and debate theories. "We didn't discover anyone suspicious, so we also decided to check each owner's vehicles and background. Only one caught our attention."

"A vehicle by the name of Leonard Daract, which is a false name. Although there are several with that name, none of them reside in France and they are not the owners of a car of the registered model. "Max shows the records it found on the screen, since the only real connection is an affiliation with a ghost organization that, due to its investigation, it's a cover for money laundering, but they cannot identify the beneficiary of said scheme. Nicely covered with lots of fake names and dead ends. "Also the name of Jean Laperriére, owner of a vehicle captured away from the origin of the first Akuma, is among the members of B.K. Company. "

"So our villain is good at hiding." Felix analyzes the screen, thinking about which way to go from there. They must be smart and stop walking behind the villain to start taking steps forward.

"That also makes it easy for him to activate organized crime in the city, he already has a way to finance criminal groups without being tracked." Nathaniel comments and then just mutters a few random ideas, plus a couple of curses for the extra work.

"And if he has one, he must have more." Alix gives her little opinion, leaning back in her chair. "That brings me to what I discovered with Detective Fontaine, take. “She pulls out a USB stick and hands it to Max.

In a short time the case files are projected on the screen, the pieces of the bomb found, the witness reports and the names of the victims. Everyone observes a particular name: Nora Bélanger, twenty-two, died on the way to the hospital, the daughter of Abraham Bélanger, the Akumatized victim that day.

"What was the name of today's victim?" Damian asks, feeling that everything has been in motion since long before.

"Let's see. "Max starts reviewing the files on the second computer he has, it's easier that way and he doesn't overload the laptops with so much open file. A couple of minutes later, he has it. "Victoria Jouvet, last night reported a robbery at her house, but it was dismissed and this morning she received a message about it, minutes later, well, we already know what happened..."

"Since when did the police dismiss cases? Alix, did you know about that?"Marinette frowns, she doesn't like how Paris's safety is being affected. Since Mayor Bourgeois was no longer elected and a new mayor took over the city, many corruption cases were disappearing and a dismissal of cases, especially with the return of the butterfly, is not the best practice to keep healthy emotions.

"No, I had no idea." She almost growled about it, maybe she should talk more closely with Detective Fontaine about what's going on inside the police. Too good that she discovered that MT has that kind of jurisdiction, Chloe excelled in supporting the cause, she deserves a reward.

Max continues to collect information and decides to place an alert for registered crimes in the databases, to classify them and be able to monitor the victims. Perhaps there is a way to handle the most violent crimes that Paris has not seen in several years. Yes, there are still murders, robberies and rapes, but it is not something that happens every day and now with emotions as a vulnerable point, they need a way to redirect the negative effect in some way.

"Then the police are falling into old ways, we must clean it up. Kudbel, do you trust that detective?" She nods, resigned to having Felix continue calling her by her last name, sometimes someone's name escapes him, but he corrects him immediately, although she knows that he's fond of everyone, even if he denies it. "So I need you to start a joint investigation, we will make a file of every police in Paris to find out who are the corrupt, we will clean the place to avoid Akuma for police negligence. Any inappropriate behavior will be suspicious, we will remove all the dirty laundry, we have long ignored the police issue. If we only keep two assets in the entire city, it doesn't matter, there is a selection of recruits in the academy that can begin to be sent to the field from the moment we take out the vermin."

"Agree. It's fortunate that Detective Fontaine enjoys being hated by everyone."

"Our guy, tell him we send greetings." Marc says to lighten the mood a bit, although everyone is in work mode now.

"We must create a support project for families, if these police officers have children they must be protected and not left adrift by the mistakes of their parents. "Marinette takes out her phone to write down a reminder to consult Hugo about the possibilities of creating a project about it.

Nathaniel nods in support, also pulling out his phone to check his bank accounts and see if he can support, he doesn't have the exaggerated amounts of money Marinette has accumulated over the past few years at absurd speed, but he's in the same situation that she just He accumulates because neither he nor Marc spend too much, the most expensive thing they have is the apartment and they don't even have a car. They don’t spend beyond what is necessary.

Alix doesn't comment, she, if it were not for living with Chloe, would have a slightly less stable life. Having her own art school doesn't give her millions, but it's something that she really enjoys, just like being an Art History consultant at the Louvre, she doesn't complain, but sometimes she0s surprised at the gap that exists between her and  others. Felix with his millionaire family, Chloe with his exorbitant salary (and the Hotel, which remained in her hands when André was imprisoned for fraud, Chloe didn't touch her heart when she reformed it completely and changed its name, leaving not even the shadow than it was), Nathaniel and Marc have a very stable base of money for their comic book editorial and recently accepted two new writers and three cartoonists for the publication of new works, expanding the franchise, Max has an annual profit that rivals With Luka and his record label, Kagami and the Tsurugi company double Chloe's annual salary (and that's a lot of money)... And Marinette, she has managed to accumulate so much money in just five years that she's close to surpassing Felix's fortune, if her earnings continue to grow at the rate  it's going (and having two Wayne as her clients, she is sure it will happen) she really will go on those lists of the world's richest people. Yes, she is the one who earns the least because even Kim has more stable earnings. And almost all of them have made their salary base in the last four years, working even before starting university.

The MT is full of crazies with money, definitely, but aren't all vigilantes like that? She can bet her kidneys that Batman and Green Arrow are also crazy with money.

"Then with the police business going on. I think it is time to research every company in Paris, find any links with shell companies and list them. That includes ours. ”No one complains, knowing they are not going to be sidelined just because they could end up showing that in court and it is better to avoid suspicion. "All employees must also be investigated. It would be good to speak to Borealis to find out if his informants have any suspicious information. "

"I'll tell him to give us all the information he gets at the meeting." Now it's Chloe's turn to get her phone out and start sending messages.

"Going back to the bomb, do you have suspects?" Marc asks, redirecting the conversation.

"Only one. His name is Felipe Lombard, he was released from prison two years ago. He was arrested for exploiting an apartment building killing seventeen people in Marseille, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison and... I really think it should have been longer, but he came out because he made a deal with the prosecution to help dismantle a group of smuggling of weapons that the police had been following for years, but had no conclusive evidence. It seems they found the connection with him and it was one of two, or cooperating or adding another twenty years to the sentence. ”Alix explains with little interest. "He was found dead this morning, according to the detective's call... So we don't know if someone paid him or if he relapsed. "

"Ridiculous, completely ridiculous."

"I think we need to expand our allies..." Luka murmurs, weighing their options, they may have the equipment, but they need more people to give them information and, although Aurore's informants are useful, they are not enough to have more precise control than it happens on the streets. And its allies outside the country seldom have information that relates to Paris in any way.

"Yeah, but we will discuss that when it is the first meeting of the Order." Says Marinette. "By the way, our trip will be short, the jewel is in Istanbul, so after the small obligations that Felix committed to, we'll return. "

"Right, we'd better be going." Felix nods at her words.

Everything is saved and sent to the central database, all are removed and most go to the dining room where Hugo has just arrived thanks to Kaalki. Only Damian doesn't follow the others and instead hugs his mother.

"Sorry. "

"Oh? Why?" She immediately returns the hug and strokes his head lovingly.

"I'm just sorry... maybe I did something wrong."

"You don't have to apologize if you make a mistake, I don't expect you to be perfect or someone you're not for wanting to please me." She smiles and cradles her son's face, she can see the conflict in his green eyes. "I love you as you're."

"Me too, mother." He hides his face in her chest and clings to her as much as he can, feeling really loved and at home. And he decides it's best to ignore the information about soul mates, Constantine's sour gaze upon mentioning it is proof that it's not pleasant for his mother either.

-------

R. Grayson: I have a question regarding the design you submitted

Marie Lenoir: Yes?

R. Grayson: Why is the lining of my suit violet?

Marie Lenoir: Combines with the tie and with your eyes, your shade of blue is very vivid and beautiful

R. Grayson: Thanks, although my eyes are nothing compared to yours

Marie Lenoir: Thank you, I'm flattered.

--------

Lila Agreste is not a bad person, at least, she's not anymore. Being forced to marry Adrien taught her a few things, as well as being a reality hit on the course she was taking in her life. By the time the marriage contract was released, she no longer wanted to have anything to do with the Agreste and marrying the blonde was out of her plans, but she did.

How it happened?

Well, Adrien invested a great deal of money in cleaning up the family name and pleasing her in any way she wanted, that was what persuaded her. But as the years went by, she felt less comfortable with the situation, but she came to sympathize with Adrien's stance and stayed for it, despite the fact that she fell in love with another man. If only the heroes were less useless and found a way to wake Emilie from the coma, she would be free to return to Italy and plan her life with her lover.

She doesn't love Adrien, but she's fond of him. Seven years married in a friendly relationship generates that, he never questioned her and respected her space, in addition to taking her on many trips and including her in various jobs. Yes, she knows that she takes advantage sometimes, but she also feels quite bitter. She doesn't even find herself to lie about anything, she just wants to get out of that horrible life and for that she must play her cards well or the last years would have been a waste of time.

With the only person who keeps in touch during school days is Alya (who doesn't know anything about the contract), the others made their lives far away or their relationships with them fractured, but she knows what has become of all of them because her beloved husband he mentions from time to time, in addition to maintaining a close friendship with several of them. He has even gone to some dinners with him, although she was always uncomfortable.

The only one relevant to her record is Marinette, she was surprised by the turn she gave to her life after that discussion with her parents. She stopped being the annoying girl from school and became a force to be reckoned, the Lady Black brand emerged strongly and remains lifted with the same toughness as the beginning, even expanding to other areas besides fashion.

She's jealous, yes she's, but she learned to recognize that all of that was her effort. She didn't marry anyone to help her, she doesn't even have a partner nor does she need her to have a child. She still doesn't know the famous boy, but Damian Lenoir is not a name that is foreign to her, Alya complained about how that boy seemed about to stab her boyfriend with a table knife... Lila still doesn't understand that possessed her to date that nefarious guy, neither all the money in the world is worth to support such a disgusting man.

"Lila, here!" She smiles as best she can and approaches the table. Alya invited her and, being the girlfriend of the mayor's son, it's a very luxurious place. She has gone there, of course, Adrien sometimes invites her to places like this to give the appearance of a happy couple.

"Hi. "She still doesn't like how effusive the reporter is.

"How was your trip to Kazan? Russia must be beautiful. "She begins, it's been a month since they last saw each other and then just a few calls, Adrien always takes a long time in the cities. Not that she cares, but that gives her time to have a good time at her destinations.

"Wonderful. Adrien paid a tour guide to take us to know the secrets of the city, of course, two weeks is a long time, but we found ways to have a good time while balancing work. "A little lie, she spent most of the time alone, but she's not telling anyone that. Perhaps the only ones who know are Adrien's friends and, again, she returns to that overly successful group. It would have seemed unreal if she hadn't seen their growth firsthand.

"That's great, Lila! I would like to travel more, but Michel is always busy, at least we have the opportunity to have dinner every night. ”She nods as if she was really interested in knowing something about her boyfriend, Nino was a thousand times better and also more pleasant. She still remembers with disgust when Michel tried to seduce her, if he did the same with Marinette, it doesn't surprise her that his son was ready to riddle him with silverware.

"It must be difficult being a surgeon's girlfriend, they can call him randomly at some point."

"Yes, but it's worth it."

Lila wonders if Alya knows or plays stupid, her boyfriend is no better than excrement, however handsome or wealthy he's. Although the reporter has a hard time accepting when she's wrong and after three years of relationship, it would be disappointing, yes, maybe that's it.

-------

­­Alya Cessaire @Alya.Blogs.Out

Reunion! @ LilaA.Rossi

[Attached photo]

Tim Drake @TimDrakeW_

My brother just can't contain himself from flirting, his survival instincts are on the underground

Jason @IAm_YisusXD

@TimDrakeW_ Now what did he do?

Tim Drake @TimDrakeW_

@IAm_YisusXD the normal... only now he forgot that her son has dogs capable of devouring him.

[scientistowengottlieb-newtkelly]

Thoughts and feelings about Pacific Rim 2?

you sure you wanna open up that particular can of worms?

movie review time! be warned i'm not in a good mood as i am shaking in pain, however this review would have been scathing regardless. and none of this is to say pacific rim is perfect, it's not, but... aye, i have no words for the world of difference there. oh wait! i do:

so. first and foremost, i hate it. as both a movie and a sequel. did i find it entertaining? yes, mildly, so i suppose it did its job, however the only thing that keeps me watching it is because, simply, it's part of the pacific rim franchise whether we like it or not. therefore, i squeeze as much salvageable content from it as i can, such as how one might analyze the precursors, how we are to view hermann and newt as characters pre-, during, and post-uprising, what we are to expect from drifting (though this one i take with a grain of salt, there is a whole other rant preserved for the joke of an attempt to develop that shit within the movie)

one of my biggest issues with pacific rim is really simple: it plays out like DeKnight did not watch the first fucking movie or was scrolling through twitter while doing it and decided he'd make a cash grab since the first one was relatively popular. "haha the kaiju were going for mount fuji the whole time!!" bitch no they weren't!!! why the fuck did they end up anywhere near sydney, australia, then!!! why did they turn tail on places like manila and san fran instead of heading straight for japan!!! WHY DID THE ONE THAT WAS IN JAPAN NOT SUCCEED, THERE'S NO WAY WITH THOSE MARK 1 JAEGERS THEY'D HAVE BEEN ABLE TO REASONABLY FIGURE OUT THEIR PLAN AND WHERE THEY WERE GOING IN TIME TO STOP THEM!!! newt literally lays out what they are doing in the first movie and they completely ignored that!!! not to mention, if the destruction from elements found in mount fuji would have been enough to terraform the earth, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST FUCKING DO THAT WHEN THEY WERE SUPPOSEDLY ON EARTH AGES AGO??? THERE WERE VOLCANOES WITH THOSE SAME ELEMENTS BEFORE RIGHT NOW, VOLCANOES ARE NOT A RELATIVELY NEW THING EARTH CREATED SUDDENLY AND I WOULD IMAGINE NEITHER ARE THOSE ELEMENTS!!! IT MAKES NO SENSE!!! and.... okay the fucking drones. how did those bitches make breaches??? we know the breach is some result of precursor/kaiju technology, apparently they know the breach's atomic structure as hermann said in the first movie, but how tf some kaiju organs and tech from earth only is ALL it takes to open a breach... illudes and confuses me... why were no more breaches made by the precursors once they realized how long and how many resources it was taking to kill the humans off??? if it's??? shit they could do with simple earth materials + their own biology??? they could have ended things much faster??? shit just doesn't add up, idk, that was Vague and Annoyed Me

and the jaegers.... were....... strange? the fight scenes were so underwhelming, i could count on one hand the number of maneuvers—NOT SCENES, MANEUVERS—i thought were badass and moved well. their fighting was confusing and paced really weird and some of the moves they pulled... don't... work like that... like some of those scenes were just hand-to-hand combat but in big robot form and they didn't sit right with me at all.

and the characters......... oh my word, the characters. look: i love jake pentecost with all of my heart and soul and john boyega's beautiful acting just barely saves the movie from its poor writing. i do love him as a character. but can someone explain to me why in the world they thought it was a good idea to make the only black guy a black market thief/runner, deep-record criminal with daddy and authority issues, and who they dare try to play off as some kind of lazy??? they made him every stereotype they could and said "yeah let's go with that". i'm- aaaaaaaaaaaaaa and what was with the child soldiers??? ROBOCOPS?????? mako....... character assassination at its worst........ my baby......... but the movie was paced so GOD DAMN POORLY I GOT BORED AND LITERALLY MISSED HER DYING THE FIRST TIME I WATCHED IT. and i couldn't tell you the names of half of those poor damn kids, i really couldn't. and can i also say they killed off one of the only two darker skinned kids?? like y'all???? the other darker skinned kids (one of the children i can't remember the names of because it was uttered ONCE in the entire movie or some shit) didn't even GET characterization. my whole heart goes out to her and those other underdeveloped fucks. speaking of...... i am ashamed about jules. from the movie that brought us the mako mori test, they threw in a girl simply for the sake of some shitty, awkward, and unexplained love triangle between jake and White Angst without much else to put to her name. she deserved better. amara was... a decent shot, but very hit or miss because of the writing. i, personally, am very neutral about her leaning towards liking her, but i know people who swing love and who swing hate. liwen was like,,,, they tried really hard to make her unlikable at the beginning because "oh no, she must be the villain! GOTTEM plot twist!!!" and then suddenly she's no longer. threatening everyone except newt. idk i feel like they leaned to heavily one way and i got whiplash when she's actually another but there was nothing to... portray that. at all. i do like her character, and that says a lot because they got me to sympathize with a capitalist without actually regretting it later, but there could/should have been More there. she was powerful, though, in multiple different aspects, and we saw that from her CONSISTENTLY and i 😳🥵👀💕 mako mori test pass for her

now, let's talk about hermann (and by extention, newton, however he'll be getting a section all his own the rat bastard). that man is one of the single instances of decent cross-movie characterization i saw in the whole god damn film. the idea that he takes on newton's roles, that he is more outspoken for himself, that he is just slightly more unhinged after his drift with newton: THAT is on point. he's himself, you can see it, you still know that he's hermann with ever step, but there's something that has shifted in him in those 10 years and it's good without being too much. the "i still get nightmares" scene, the way he presents himself, that scene gives me chills because god bless burn gorman and his acting ability. every face and intonation of his voice is just wonderful and i think his performance was great for what he was given. king shit.

the biggest disappointment of my life came in the form of a kaiju vest wearing bitch at work. at his corporate job. as a boss. for a tech company that undermines all of his and, frankly, hermann's work over their lifetimes. 10 years older and exaggerated to the teeth. newton "move you fascist" geiszler. let me preface this by stating for all to see that i do not hate the idea of newton being the villain. story wise it was a bold move and there was something possible there. BUT THE IMPLICATION THAT ONE OF THE MOST OBVIOUSLY NEURODIVERGENT CHARACTERS IN THE WHOLE FUCKING FRANCHISE, ESPECIALLY GIVEN THAT HE HAS BEEN CHARACTERIZED AS HAVING A "BORDERLINE MANIC PERSONALITY" AKA HAVING ONE OF THE MOST DEMONIZED MENTAL ILLNESSES OUT THERE, ENDS UP ACTING AS THE GOD DAMN VILLAIN OF THE STORY IS A HOT GARBAGE TAKE WHEN YOU FACTOR IN THINGS LIKE POOR WRITING NOT MAKING IT CLEAR WHETHER OR NOT NEWTON IS EVEN IN CONTROL OF HIS OWN FACULTIES AND THE VAGUENESS OF "WILL HE BE 'REDEEMED' OR NOT" BEING UP IN THE AIR LIKELY NEVER TO BE CANONICALLY FUCKING ANSWERED BECAUSE BECKHAM AND DEKNIGHT SHAT OUT A MOVIE THAT BOMBED IN THE BOX OFFICE. we aren't even gonna TALK about the fact that this bitch got AWAY with it despite not even acting in a remotely stable way comparable to himself in the first movie in the 10 years he supposedly dropped off the map from all of his friends because, clearly, hermann hadn't seen him or he wouldn't be so excited with a picture of the two of them on his desk, nor would he have to tell newton about his idea for rocket thrusters with kaiju blood fuel because he would have simply written to him about it. for some strange reason people see his ass show up decked out in a suit he wouldn't even wear for Stacker Fucking Pentecost and a behavior of "Haha Gotta Listen To The Boss" and think "ah, yes, well, time changes a person. THIS BITCH HAS APPARENTLY BEEN LIKE THIS THE WHOLE TIME, YOU THINK HE GOT A JOB WITH LIWEN LOOKING AND ACTING LIKE HE DID BEFORE AND THERE WAS A SHIFT OVER TIME? NO, HE HAD TO HAVE CHANGED IN A SPLIT DECISION AND LIED ABOUT HIMSELF THROUGH HIS TEETH AND NO ONE CONTACTED HIM, OR WAS WORRIED ABOUT HIM, OR DECIDEDLY THOUGHT "YOU KNOW, HE MAY BE EMBOLDENED THAT HE SAVED THE WORLD, BUT I THINK SOMETHING LIKE THAT WOULD HAVE THE EXACT OPPOSITE EFFECT ON HIM AND HE WOULD DO HIS BEST TO AMPLIFY HIS CURRENT STANDING TRAITS. LISTENING TO AND KISSING THE BOOT OF AUTHORITY FIGURES? DIVORCING HIMSELF FROM HIS WORK WITH KAIJU XENOBIOLOGY THAT EVEN HERMANN PICKED UP? TO BECOME THE THING HE HATES? AND FOR WHAT? MONEY? FAME? BITCH WHO ARE YOU?" unreasonable. ridiculous attempt to do this just for a plot twist that was underwhelming at best. i've decided to stick to the fan theory that he was not in control 99% of the time but literally that movie causes such a hellfire path to appear in my wake as i think about it because i know people who don't take it like that and think newt wants what's happening because "haha horny kaiju man" and i wish to scream at the top of my lungs because this is exactly WHY you CANNOT spare ANY EXPENSE to the GOOD, PROPER, INTRICATE directing and writing of a character who is neurodivergent and also ONE OF THE CENTERS OF NOT JUST THE MOVIE YOU'RE WRITING, BUT THE FUCKING MOVIE AFTER THAT. i could go on but i sincerely don't fucking want to, despite how long i've been waiting for someone to willingly hear me out on all of this. all i'll say is if by some miracle they are greenlit for a third film and deknight's working on it and i see ANY sign of a bury your gays end for newt, i'm going to commit the first hate crime against a cishet white male.

to end, the only valid kaiju in that movie was the mega-kaiju, i don't remember the appearance or the names of the three that got through the breaches but the mega-kaiju could kill me and i'd die happy 🥰 beautiful design, that scale comparison when it came face to face with newt? amazing, chills, *chef's kiss* there are exactly two things i liked about uprising and that bitch is one of them.

sorry if this isn't what you wanted, but as i said i am in a bit of a bad mood and have been curled up in bed trying not to think that i'm dying and i've repressed all of this for a couple months now and very few people have actually heard PORTIONS of my frustration so. here it is.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Writing Inside the Lines

There is a certain type of poem called a sestina. I've written two of them, and let me tell you, they are tough. Rather than relying on rhyme and meter, they employ a pattern of six words that end each line in the first six stanzas, and then end or are contained in the final three lines. The six words also change which line they appear in in each stanza. If that sounds complicated, that's because it is. However, sestinas are a great form because they force you to write a good poem. You have to end the lines on those words, which means you must construct your sentences carefully. Also, if you don't want it to sound repetitive, you had better play with the meaning and connotation of those six words. You can't noodle around. You can't slack off. If you're going to write a sestina, you really have to care about it.

I think this idea of writing with certain rules can improve most stories. Especially in a world oversaturated with shock-value, twist endings, and an anyone-can-die mentality, writing inside the lines, so to speak, forces writers to be careful. When writers must practice restraint, their stories are prevented from going over the top, flying off the rails, and all that other awful stuff that our media is so glutted with recently. They have to care, and their stories will be better for it.

One example of this is the storytelling in traditionally animated films or those that use practical effects versus that in CGI. While some CGI films do have heartfelt storytelling, there are hundreds more that are a waste of the data used to make them. And while there are some weird or awkward 2-D films, I feel like the ratio of good to bad is far higher than in CGI. As for practical effects, they almost always work better in their tone and feeling than slapping up a bunch of ritzy computer graphics because you can. Why this discrepancy? Because traditional animation and practical effects are more expensive and time consuming than CGI. Thus, the creators have to be darned sure that their movie really needs a specific scene or character or monster. These elements can't just be thrown in with CGI. The creators have to self-edit, which leads to a tighter story with less fluff and kibble crammed on.

Another example is in scary stories made for children instead of adults. Because there are certain expectations--like you can't have gore, or killers running around murdering extras left and right--writers are forced to come up with more detailed monsters and worlds, which leads to creepier or more in-depth stories. Compare, say, Coraline, to 90% of monster movie for adults. The Bel-Dame is similar to a classic folklore monster, in that she seems to have limitation--she has to actually lure children and coax them in, rather than just grabbing them and sewing buttons into their eyes. She isn't your typical semi-omnipotent adult movie ghost who can go anywhere and kill anyone for no reason, but that makes her scarier. We know what she's capable of, and it's way worse than just killing someone in the bloodiest way possible.

Knowing how a story ends is also something that's been on my mind lately, due to two shows in particular: Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Tangled: The Series. Both of these shows are part of larger franchises. Not only must they use the previously established characters and settings of those worlds, but both have a previously established ending. So how does that affect what the writers are allowed to do in these stories?

We all know how the Clone Wars end: Order 66, the fall of the Jedi Order, and the establishment of the Empire. This knowledge, however, adds to the tension of the series rather than detracting from it. Every time there is a scene of the clone troopers bonding with their Jedi generals, in the back of your mind you can't help but think of the Order 66 scene in Revenge of the Sith. It adds a nice, thick layer of angst to what would otherwise be a normal military adventure show. We also know that Anakin goes to the Dark Side and why he does, but now (unlike in the movie), we get to see that slow progression toward it. We really get to like him as a character, but every so often, he'll be a little too ready to force choke someone, or flip out about slavery, or freak when those close to him are in mortal danger. It's fascinating getting to see his gradual growth into a more Vader-like personality. And, finally, there is Anakin's apprentice, the fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano. She's in the show from its pilot episode, but she's not in the movie. So the question of what happens to her, and where is she when Order 66 goes down, is always present just offscreen. That's suspense! That's drama!

You also have Tangled: the Series, aka Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, which is sandwiched between the movie and the short film "Tangled Ever After", where we see Eugene and Rapunzel get married. Thus, we know that her hair is going to get cut short again (it regrows magically in the pilot); so we can wonder and speculate as to how that's going to happen, now that her golden hair is back and unbreakable. We know that the main cast all lives, so the drama comes not from anyone-can-die, but from interpersonal relationships: Can this person be trusted? Will these people remain friends? Could any of these fallouts have been prevented? Perhaps the best part of this show's being a spin-off is what it does for the romance. Eugene and Rapunzel are in love at the beginning of the show, and they're in love at the end. We know this. Thus, we don't have any stupid "will they or won't they" or love triangles or anything. The drama comes from Rapunzel not feeling ready for the responsibilities of marriage (or princessing, for that matter), and Eugene wanting to settle down but still being patient and supporting her. It's one of the best romances ever written, and it's in a show for children. Maybe it's one of the best romances because it's in a show for children.

So the next time you are strapped for how to make your story more compelling, maybe impose a rule on yourself. How can you evoke horror without showing violence? How can you create a tense situation if you're not allowed to kill characters? How might showing the ending of a story first change how the audience experiences the rest of it? It might be a fun exercise, and it will almost certainly produce something better than mere shock value or twist endings could.

[popculturebuffet]

Jingle Belle: A Very Special Jingle Belle Special or A goofy holiday comic and a long tired rant about the animation industry

Ho ho ho and merry Christmas as we reach the final stretch of Christmas reviews and it’s all Christmas all the time for the rest of the week for obvious reasons. So we’re starting off by wrapping up Jingle Belle for the season with one more comission. While it’s from my usual client, It’s via patreon as for 5 bucks a month you can get a review a month of your choice. But since that hasn’t taken hold just yet, and won’t till next month, he asked to swap it for this month and here we are.  Not much to cover though this is the very comic where Jing hopped publishers from Oni Press to Dark Horse. The whys I genuinely do not know and at the time, I just know it’s weird to talk about Dark Horse these days. Their not dead nor entirely irrelvant, Resident Alien, which I really want to check out as it has a really engaging premise, is getting a tv show that I also want to check out as while i’m not sure if it’ll be good, it’s still Alan Tudyk playing an alien who can barely pass for human and it hilariously shows. Whenever that streams i’m not missing a second of that and we all know it. And Umbrella Academy, started during bigger days for the company, is one of netflix’s hottest shows and one of many shows on my to do list I haven’t gotten to because I procastinate like no one else and as taking an entire month to get to the newest loud house shows to the point another one popped up, it bites me in the ass a lot. Point is their not GONE in relevance.. but at the same time they’ve lost the huge tide of liscences they road in on. Except for the Joss Whedon stuff, Marvel’s pretty much taken EVERYTHING from them via various deals: Star Wars, Conan and now Alien. Their still standing and makes good art books and clearly given Resident Alien good content, they’ve lasted this long their not going anywhere, it’s just really weird to think about. I will however give them huge credit for giving out tons of comics in early quarantine, and being easily the most generous company next to marvel. I.e. one of the few that actually gave out full collections. 

But yeah at the time this was probably a safe move as Dark Horse had a love of one shots and likely a larger budget. Hence why from here on out the stories are in living color, and have a slightly diffrent art style to boot. Granted the character would shift artists but now it’s got a clear more cartoony art style I like a lot better courtsey of Jose Garabaldi. So yeah with christmas on our heels, let’s ring a ding jing, it’s A Very Special Jingle Belle Special. 

We won’t be covering the backup for this one though it is quite good, it’s just not what kev asked or paid for. 

We open on a parade!

While batman foils the joker’s poisioning scheme, Santa rides on a float proudly and   Jing is hanging out on the back grumpy. It’s a great introduction for new readers showing Santa being big and jolly and what you expect while Jing grumps in the back with a “Sheesh, Daddy”. That’s how you establish a character well in only a few panels. IT’s really great is what i’m saying. Some teens pop up but don’t belivie her about being Santa’s daughter and when going to a christmas shop to try and find figures of her, the owner claims he dosen’t.. and well violence insues. You’ve met jing right?  Anyways Jing is understandably a wee bit absolutely livid the world dosen’t know about her. Her parents sure but her? Nope. And it’s easy to see why: She’s the daughter of the world’s most famous man.. but despite all the holiday lore and junk she’s just the part he likes to hide from people.. or that’s how it feels. While he ducks it, she even gives him a nice save fatty it’s clear that even if she brought it up to rile him a bit.. she does feel on some level like he likes to tuck her away and hide her because he’s ashamed and because she’s not perfect. Granted she does act out and stuff, but she’s still his kid and i’ts still gotta sting. Though she has the perfect idea to fix this: A christmas special. Santa suggests just doing good deeds but Jing is right: her idea is better. Mostly because, as cyncial as this is.. more people are going to pay attention to a good holiday special than a celebrity’s kid doing charity and for far longer. A good christmas special just sticks in the brain and sticks with you forever. It’s why Santa Claus is Coming to Town and A Charlie Brown Christmas have lasted decades or why my list of best chirstmas specials is pretty weighty. They just stick with you so while this can’t possibly end well.. her plan is actually a really good one this time. 

So Jing takes her friends off the line to help her animate it, stop motion styles and they remind her of her LAST christmas special. 

I mean I’m a sucker for any refrence to Star Wars Holiday Special. You’d think after several decades of jokes at it’s expense, with tons of youtubers, many of whom are dead to me but that’s besides the point, tackling the thing without it getting stale, that we’d eventually grow tired of mocking it but .. no. It’s a bottomless well of what they were thinking. The only question left is why isn’t it on Disney Plus.. I mean.. you made a second one as an affectionate parody and in lego. Kids are going to know about this now. Just put the thing up. Even edited down or just some clips. You put Rise of Skywalker up there, you’ve proven your threshold for shame when it comes to this franchise is vast. Just person up and do it.  But Jing’s learned her lesson.. stop motion only and to follow the bouncing formula to sucess. So in the special which sadly isn’t all stop motion and is just drawn to resemble the specials, probably for the best but still, Jing and her animal pals are sneaking into a town where christmas was banned! Meeting the chirstmas legion of doom.. well okay that’s what i’m calling them. Burgermeister Budweiser! Bungle the Abominable Snow Monster! Frost Master and Heat BLister! The Frost Fakir.. wait the what?

........

I mean where do I even begin? I know this was during the war on terror, I know that.. but still I expect better from Paul Dini for a crosses the line twice joke than “hey let’s just make bin laden into an ice wizard!”. I mean South Park made fun of him too, but they went all out with a looney tunes homage. Put effort in. And even years after he died the lonely island did this beautiful thing in the film pop star: never stop stoppin, which you should watch seriously watch it it’s underated. 

Point is you can do better and if you don’t have room to do better then just.. don’t. You could’ve put in a t-rex in a top hat and monocle.  That would’ve genuinely been better... because it’s better than everything ever btu that’s besides the point. There’s also one last addition to the rogue’s gallery thank god. 

He hates her too. Now that gag is actually reallyf ucking funny. What’s also funny is how she solves things. By singing a nice and frinedly song about friendship to reform the villians.. or rather lure them over a bridge to get eaten by her orca friend. 

So Jing after showing it to her dad heads to market it with him trying to warn her netoworks haven’t aired this kind of thing in years. But she faces the greatest threat to all of television: network executives, who keep offering advices and basically change the thing all together for stupid reasons and think cartoons should only be for kids despite it wokring in the past. Aka the hells animators STILL go through. I think Paul was projecting just a wee bit with this one. Given again IT HASN’T CHANGED since then, I can’t blame him. Seriously Harvey Beaks was canceled, among MANY ohter nick shows including rise of the tmnt just because it wasn’t an instant hit, Cartoon Network and warner keep trying to make dumbed down remakes of great shows, and Disney, among other networks, is fairly homophobic and while finally allowing some gay on the network this year had to be fought and outright refused it on ducktales for no adquate reason, caring more about monney and the bible belt than doing the right thing. So yeah as you can tell this bit got to me a bit and was hard to read because it. hasn’t. changed. 16 years and not a lot has changed other than more women are getting a chance. And granted the “kids are our only audiencce argument” isn’t as strong and several shows are powered by other demographics it’s still an issue and still the reason several good shows have gotten the boot and why the jeph loeb era of marvel animation was terrible. Because guys like him thought it should JUST be for kids and the lowest common demoninator of htem. You can be clever and be for kids dammit. 

I apologize slightly for that it’s just something that’s been on my mind as shows dwindle and with ducktales gone the standard forbearaers for children’s animation are all pretty fresh faced. It’s just a lot to take in and i’ts been on my mind a lot. 

Back to the actual story the result is a pretty purtrid cutesy special.. Jing reacts how you’d expect, destroying the tapes covertly with a herd of musk ox and destroying the tape. But they find the 70′s special and we end on that which is pretty funny. The only thing I really don’t like here is the ending. The rest of this special is really good: it’s clever , has some good satire and some really funny jokes especially that hook one. The ending just feels a bit weak.. like yes Jing wanted to be noticed but it’s not really an unsympathetic motive and while she does some shady stuff the villians still basically win by airing her terrible holiday special all over again. It’s just not satisfying.  But yeah overall another pretty decent holiday comic with some good jokes. I”ll probably see Jing again next year, and it was fun getting to dip into these comics. THeir not my faviorites, but their still pretty decent and if the complete collection ends up on sale on comixology or you see it in a bookstore and you think it’d be up your ally i’d buy it. Again not my faviorite thing ever, but still enjoyable enough. Coming up this week of holiday cheer: ducks, more ducks, superheroes, and a best of list. 

Until next time: Courage.