I watched kung fu panda 1 & 2 back to back and Cried. MY THOUGHTS AND FAVORITE PARTS BELOW!!
I fucking love movies that are so confident in themselves and their identities. Kung fu panda was never unsure of itself it just went All in on amazing fight choreography and colors and animation and Awesomeness silliness . AND INCREDIBLE PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS. ALL THE CHARACTER INTERACTIONS ARE SO BELIEVABLE. No forced heterosexual romance?? (Or ANY romance.) In MY western animated 2008 movie?? What is this????!!!
I fucking love that Tai Lung is hyped up so MUCH to be unstoppable and intimidating throughout this whole movie and yet the final battle with Po is so believable. They didn’t nerf Tai Lung at all to be equal with Po, Po is just so confident of himself and his fighting style is unlike anything Tai has ever encountered. HE HAS NEVER FACED SILLY FIGHTING. That’s his weakness….. He wasn’t silly enough. And throughout the film Po is like. Really doubting who he is and hating on himself but it’s so empowering by the end. He’s just so Him! And IT WORKS!!!!!!!!
Okay ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There were a lot of really cool shots like this😊😊😊 it’s kind of an anime .
Tai lung is so awesome and idk he’s hot too what else do I say. Great backstory too. Although I wish he had a little more.. why was he so power hungry? Was he just Like That. Fair. Also They make thr villans kind of objectively hot in this franchise. I wouldn’t PERSONALLY…. But if you said you would… I totally get that….
Tigress is the best character also. She was totally living in tai lung’s shadow I wish she got more validation from shifu it’s so sad. I LOVE HOW WELL THE FLASHBACKS SHOW DONT TELL !!!
OK ACTUALLY MAYBE OOGWAY IS THE BEST CHARACTER. I love how they made him so old and trembly. But so wise and at peace . That’s a silly detail but I liked it ok
Also shifu and po’s dynamic is so fucking good. And very cute! HAVE I SAID GREAT CHARACTER INTERACTIONS. The “you may now eat” dumpling bowl scene is the best scene in the whole movie. It’s so delightful.. probably followed by tai lung’s prison breakout and oogway’s passing.. THE RANGE OF THIS FILM!!!!!!
I love the “you’re a monster and I created you but I loved you” thing going on with shifu and tai lung.. I’m crazy.
Oops that’s another tai lung gif it was an accident!!! I would pet him and then I would die
I just wish the rest of the 5 got to have some more character development but there’s Five of them and that’s a Lot . The sprinkles we get of their characters is nice though ! I mean Sprinkles. TELL ME MORE ABOHT VIPER PLEASE SHES SUCH A SWEETHEART. WHAT WAS HER CHARACTER GROWTH WITH NOT HAVING FANGS… tell me….. do the others have something about them too…
Anyways super fuckin iconic movie and beautiful
Another thing I liked was when the characters made Animal Noises of their irl counterparts like tai lung making kitty meow (in pain) and shen making peacock calls while fighting. I just love little details like That okay!!!
Me???? Crying at kung fu Panda 2 ? Po finally coming to terms with his past repressed childhood memories and his village being massacred and from that still being able to embrace who he is in the present got to me ok!
Shen is so tragic and Delightfully Evil. He’s so unhinged and he has so much inner turmoil that he Never reflects on constructively. And He’s destructive about it! She’s a sadistic War criminal! And a little bit theater kid. very Theatrical. Kind of gay. “Your parents never loved you” PROJECTING MUCH? ?? 💔💔 AND THE WAY HE JUST ACCEPTS HIS DEATH FROM HIS OWN WEAPON AT THE END. He literally just closes his eyes and Takes It at point blank range. He was not ok. He reached a point of no return the moment he tried to kill off the pandas. AND HE WOULD RATHER DIE THAN SHOW WEAKNESS… HES SO FUCKED!!!and My friend used to have a crush on him. Did I mention cool as fuck character design. I love his metal talon things it makes him that much more menacing
Ok girl your scary
My friend made such a good observation about the inner peace/raindrop motif. The raindrop/drop of water that keeps hitting his head… annoying him… nagging at him… that’s symbolism for his Repressed Memories.. his identity crisis .. the incredible repeating urge to need to know who he is So Bad so much so that he’ll go in DEATHS WAY to know!! 🥴 AND IN THE SCENE WHERE HE RELIVES IT… IT RAINS… AND HES OK WITH IT…. THIS MOVIE IS FUCKING BEAUTOFUL AND I WASNT EXPECTING ANY LESS!!!!!!
ALSO I LOVED THE FOCUS ON TIGRESS / PO INTERACTIONS IT WAS SO CUTE. I’m so happy they’re friends now.. tigress definitely hated him The Most in the first movie . she called him a disgrace to kung fu and everything it stands for To his Face. Ouch ! But they are chill now I think.
They’re so fucking sad and wet here. I love them…
I’m also glad they toned down the fatphobia in the 2nd movie . In the first film Even though it was usually framed as a hurtful thing towards Po, it was also frequently used as a joke thing at his expense💔kinda mean spirited !! But hes still framed as cool and awesome anyways so. Ur giving Mixed Messages….
MR PING IS SUCH A GOOD DAD. WAAUUHGHHHHHHHHHH HE CARES ABOUT PO SO MUCH
There are certain details you might not pick up on if you dont watch these movies back to back also. I like how Mr Ping mentioned he wish he sold tofu in the first movie and then in the second movie he sells both noodles AND tofu now!! It’s just very cute and shows that a lot of care and passion goes into these :)
What a great franchise also. I saw the 2nd movie once on theaters and I only remembered parts of it. I’ve never seen the 3rd movie! And I just might!! DREAMWORKS DOESNT DISAPPOINT!!usually
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Sobbing uncontrollably reading through a dissertation about the college experience of students with ADHD. It is like reading a report about my life that just says over and over "My experiences are real. My hardships are real. I am not lazy, I am not dumb. My struggles were not my fault, and they were not a moral failing. The failure was with the system, not with me."
Here's a line that got me in particular:
"Hotez et al.(2022) compared the health, academic, and non-academic capacities of a nationally representative sample of U.S. first-year college students with ADHD and without ADHD. Students with ADHD self-reported lower academic aspirations and more feelings of depression and overwhelm, ranking themselves lower in their general emotional health. The fact that students with ADHD scored in the highest 10th percentile for many non-academic traits, such as artistic ability, computer skills, creativity, public speaking, social confidence, self-understanding and understanding of others, compassion, and risk-tasking, suggests that this population has strengths that are frequently underappreciated in academia."
(the paper is a thesis called "Understanding the Collegiate Experience for Students With ADHD" by Gia Long, 2022)
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Id love to hear ur interpretation and analysis on falin! She’s one of my favorite characters and and I was wondering what ur thoughts on her are
Man, I struggle to think of anything I could say about Falin that others have not already said. But she's one of my favorite things about Dungeon Meshi too.
So much of the story revolves around Falin, and she's not even there. Tumblr loves to talk about haunting the narrative, but Falin might be one of the best examples of it ever put to page. She's dead. She's alive. She's dead. She's alive. She's alive but she's missing, she's alive but she isn't herself. She's dead but she might wake. She's dead but she's frozen in ice. She's alive but she's sleepwalking. They chase her ghost and they chase her body all through the story.
I think what Kui does with her is fascinating. Not just as character with a personality we can analyze, but as an object in a narrative- that's why I say she's one of my favorite things about the story, because I also mean it in a mechanical sense. As a writer, Kui's really good at misdirection- that is, setting you up to believe or expect something about a character or a plot, and then turning that on its head. It's most apparent with Kabru, but it works really well with Falin too.
Because the precious little sister is a very well known character archetype, right? So is the gentle healer. The heart of the party. The white mage girl. The damsel in distress. The martyr.
And this isn't a Laura Palmer situation, where we find out that beneath her wholesome surface there's something dark and troubled. No, Falin truly is a kind and gentle person. That isn't where the misdirection leads (and that, too, I think, is another misdirection- it's not "Plot twist, she isn't as nice as you thought!", which would almost be too easy).
The misdirection here is more about structure than about character (but also, yeah- a little about character).
What I mean is, with these archetypes firmly in mind, along with a whole other host of fantasy genre expectations, I think anyone who goes into Dungeon Meshi un-spoiled probably expects Falin's rescue to be an endgame event; at least on a subconscious level, where you're not really thinking about it but in the back of your head you're already stretching out the story to place Falin firmly in the distance. Fire breathing dragon at the bottom of the dungeon is perfect final boss material, right? Slay the dragon. Rescue the princess.
And Falin is the perfect prize in the traditional old school fantasy that the concept of the titular dungeon is a send-up to. Blonde (white), soft-spoken, sweet-natured, beloved by everyone. An angelic figure.
Maybe that's why Ryoko Kui gave her white wings.
It is sort of jarring when chapter 23 rolls around and it's already time to fight the red dragon. And it takes a few chapters, but they succeed. And then Falin's impossible resurrection succeeds. But by then you guess that this is not going to be the story you expected it to be.
I want to point out that Falin spends a lot of time getting, well, babied, post-resurrection. Marcille washes her in the bath, despite Falin stating that she's capable of washing herself. Marcille schools her about her mana use despite Falin demonstrating that she is not hurting for mana, and brushes aside Falin's explanations. Both Marcille and Laios refuse to actually tell her what happened. Laios scruffs up her hair like she's a little kid and scolds her for something she can't remember doing. Marcille explicitly calls her a little kid when Falin tries to talk about how much she's grown.
Of course I'm not saying that Laios was wrong to act like a big brother, or that Marcille shouldn't be worried about taking care of her shell-shocked friend in the bath. But the framing of it clearly shows a Falin who is struggling to be heard.
If you'd like to address the big gay elephant in the room while we're here, I want to state for the record that- whether you read her as gay or not -I think Marcille is completely oblivious during this. Because Falin is her little friend from school. Her best friend, yes, but also the young tallman student she, in her infinite elven wisdom, had to mentor and look after. Marcille has not yet accepted that Falin is an adult now, nor has she accepted that she, herself, is only barely past teenagerhood developmentally and is not nearly as mature as she believes. Of course she'd scrub Falin in the bath and fuss over her.
Falin, meanwhile, seems more than aware of her own adult body and the inappropriate way Marcille is treating it.
The mana-sharing scene is, I think, Falin trying to get a little of her own back. How do you like it, Marcille?
And she tries again in bed.
Maybe she's wondering if their relationship will change now that they're grown ups. If Marcille prefers her as a little girl, or at least as a woman who lets herself be guided like one; if Marcille will react badly if Falin keeps trying to assert herself. She also might be subtly trying to signal to Marcille that bed sharing, like bathing, carries a different weight to it when you do it as adults rather than as children.
With all this in mind, the decision to turn Falin from the precious prize they rescued into to the vicious dragon they have to slay, hits a lot harder.
Falin with a powerful, monstrous, destructive body. Falin, who couldn't even stand to cause people pain from using healing spells, slaughtering half a dozen people in brutal ways. And that's not her, she's being mind-controlled, but as an object in the story she has completely flipped. From damsel to threat.
And I love that she carries a little bit of that with her when she's resurrected again.
Because she's no longer the girl who's going to let herself be stifled by her brother's and her best friend's co-dependency, no matter how much she loves them. She's different now: stronger, eyes open, forging her own path instead of following in their wake. Falin is still going to come back to them again, but this time it won't be because they chased her. It'll be because they let her go.
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late nights w/ sebastian when you cant sleep, so he wraps his arms around you, snuggly settling his tail against your back to push your closer to his chest.
"what're you so bugged about? it’s been almost an hour. you can relax around me, you know?”
he’s chuckling like it’s some sort of joke to him, but his heart's practically pounding in his chest, resonating with your own. your cheek smushes above his heart, shutting your eyes once your body lulls down, thanks to the rhythm of his heart; and enjoying the feeling of sebastian against you, no matter how cold he may be. your heat passes onto him anyway.
“... like that.” his voice is so soft, you wouldn’t even be able to hear it if you weren’t up against him right now. “just stay close.”
“please.”
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papa bakugo and the thought that he intently raises his kids in ways to be unlike him.
and when they're older, asking serious questions about parenting like: why did you make sure we were friends with everyone on the playground? why did you always have to step away when you were mad? how come you don't like us seeing videos of you when you were younger?
he tells them it's because he never wanted them to turn out like him—that leading by example has always been more effective, and he wasn't exactly the best example back then. still doesn't feel like he is now but he's trying (at least, that's what you say, and it must count for something).
and his kids are confused because what does he mean he isn't the best example? all they want is to be like him.
they want the same fire, the dedication he puts in day in and day out; how he only ever gives his best and never backs down. one of the greatest lessons they've learnt from their papa is that a promise is a promise and you deliver on it. no matter what.
they want the same balance he's achieved, making time for both work and his family but especially his family—how they've never once felt second in his life; how he's managed to show up to every game, every performance like the superdad he is. and even when he doesn't make it for the entire thing, you can bet he's rushing in, all soot-covered and polo unbuttoned with the base of his suit underneath.
(you never told your kids, but on katsuki's 14th father's day, you held him while he cried, tears of relief from his eyes. he was watching their surprise, a day-in-the-life reenactment video of pro-dad bakugo katsuki, starring the kids and you).
they want to love the way he loves them, the way he loves you—attentive and all-in because bakugo katsuki never half-asses anything. he adds personal touches to each plate of breakfast he cooks: bear pancakes for his little girl, egg done scrambled and another sunny-side up for his two boys. and you always insist on having what he's having because you don't want to add to the hassle, but he knows your signature morning drink and serves it right by the plate beside his, always yours.
you always tell him that having your kids turn out like him now is all you could ever want, and he always scoffs, tuts and laughs like it can't possibly be true. but maybe if your kids tell him now, that they want to be just like their papa, he'll believe it—all the good in him that everyone sees but he can't seem to.
you hope he doesn't see it as a bad thing—that his kids have grown and chosen to in the shape of him.
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