#It would be SUCH a GOOD character arc for Lava Lamp

[completeoveranalysis]

[4]

AND NOW WE GET PIFFLE CALL BACKS?

Oh Clamp really do love me. This is unreasonably perfect. 

Who else begins the climactic fight of the series with, “Hey, remember this double layered question I posed 135 chapters ago? Let’s revisit that now!”

WHICH IS VERY GENEROUS OF THEM in the way that it signposts an exact conversation for us to think about and realise (without having to reread the whole series yet again) that the whole conversation between Syaoran and Fai in Piffle was REALLY HEAVILY honed in on the secret Lava Lamp crushing guilt and backstory we didn’t know about until now. 

Which is wild in the meta sense knowing that CLAMP planned for that exact sentiment to be the very core of a character we wouldn’t even understand for another 130 chapters, but also on the character level knowing (in hindsight) that Lava Lamp himself was hearing this conversation happen in real time and probably had an absolutely horrible time knowing that they were discussing ethics behind the soul-crushing decision he made that broke the universe and is still suffering AND seeing the consequences of. 

But how absolutely fascinating that after Shara our cloned Syaoran ended up developing such a similar insecurity about messing with timelines and the consequences of doing so completely independently from Lava Lamp. The parallel lives of these parallel people. The hitsuzen of it all. 

AND! Fai gives almost the same advice! 

Last time he said, “You can ponder over that all you want[…] but right now, it won’t do us a bit of good,” and, “If there’s something that you can accomplish if you try, then the thing to do is try. ‘Changing history’ is an idea on too grand a scale for a person to do anything about. It’s also important to accept that there are things you just can’t do.” And he was talking specifically between the Shura/Shara timeline changes at the time, but in relation to Clow? Lava Lamp holds himself accountable for every single thing that happened, but he didn’t do all of that. He was just trying to achieve a goal - which is framed here as a good thing (and is very good advice for dealing with anxiety besides). 

At his core Fai sees this same struggle playing out in each Syaoran and gave them both the same tips - but this time he can reference the previous time and really hammer it home. 

And, deliciously, it echoes even stronger here. The advice is to ignore all the things you can’t control. Just focus on what you want, and do what you can to achieve it.

Lava Lamp might still feel that he ruined the universe, but that won’t help him right now. Like Fai said last time, that’s on too grand a scale for him to ever take on his own. He has one thing he wants to achieve and he should focus on that. The timeline will sort itself out later. 

Which is SUCH a solid Dad moment. Kurogane gets to tell Evil Wolverine to fuck off, Fai and Kurogane get to flirt and insult Evil Wolverine to his face, and now Fai gets to give a touching character moment to Lava Lamp as they all share the final story beat together. It ties the Syaoran experience together (ironically, since the other Syaoran he WAS speaking to is RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM but may or may not have the soul to remember the moment at all), and ties both sides of the plot together into this one big family moment. 

Though I’m slightly suspicious of Fai last time mentioning that It’s also important to accept that there are things you just can’t do. 

[nightcolorz]

Hiii I wanna share some head-cannons I have about Armand’s autism :D

Here we go:

- I think he’d LOVE a good lava lamp

- Daniel and him are adhd + autism excellency

-I also think his powers with the mind gift definitely show how he uses nonverbal communication. Yet to add on, I always interpreted his powers as kinda a two way street if that makes sense?? Like using his powers to better understand the people around him, so he can better understand what they’re trying to communicate to him? Like being able to read someone’s mind without trying to figure out all the complicated 4d chess that is neurotypical social interaction. (Idk if that made sense)

-vocal stims !! I think he’d sometimes get echolalia with certain words that daniel says (I say this bc I’m the same way, except I just really like meowing with my cats 😭)

-speaking of cats, I think Armand would get along SO well with them!! He would have the magic touch.

Ahhh unrelated, but on the topic of Armand being autistic, do you think he’d know that he’s autistic? How do you think his process of realizing he is on the spectrum play out?

I love ur headcanons SO MUCH OMGG ur 100% correct anon I love u. The vocal stimming is practically canon!! In the vampire Armand’s narration Armand often repeats the same words multiple times in a row which I see as a form of vocal stimming. I think I’ve made the same lava lamp and devils minion adhd + autism duo commentary before when talking to friends, anon we might share a brain <33

And I looooveee ur question ehhehehehhe, I actually think about this a lot! I think Armand definitely knows that there is something different about his brain that separates him from others and is longing to understand what that is, which I think could easily lead him on the road of discovering that he is autistic since that is how I and many other ppl found out. But I don’t think the label is something he would be aware of or connect to himself if a third party didn’t explain it to him or point it out. I think he’d have a few barriers keeping him from coming to that realization, like having a person from the 1500’s understanding of mental health and disabilities and an anxiety of being studied, interviewed, questioned, etc. Armand finds analyzing himself very difficult and talking to people about himself also very difficult, so I think both self diagnosis and formal diagnosis would be a struggle for him. But, not an impossible struggle. Especially during post canon when Armand goes through an improvement arc and becomes a bit more healthier and self aware, I think his desire to improve combined with his desire to understand why he feels so alienated would cumulate in discovering he’s on the spectrum. I think that he is aware enough of his own symptoms that if he was given a label and an explanation he would accept it pretty easily and willingly, and as I said find it comforting to know the reason for his differences. The difficult part for Armand emotionally when he finds this out would be realizing the extent he was taken advantage of, hurt, and wronged by everyone in his life once he begins to understand that his vulnerabilities r due to a disability and not some ambiguous character flaw

thank u sm for the ask anon AHHHHH I could talk about autistic Armand forever bless u

[i-read-shitty-comics]

Requiem of the Rose King

Genres:

Drama, Historical, Romance

Content Warnings:

Emotional Abuse, Demonisation of Queerness, Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse

Average Rating: 8.07/10

Synopsis:

The crown of England has been hotly contested throughout history, and in the Middle Ages, a series of great civil wars becomes known as the War of the Roses. Claiming a right to the throne, the Duke of York seeks to unseat King Henry VI and his heir in order to become king himself.

On a dark day filled with many ill omens, the Duke gains a son: Richard Plantagenet, third of his name. Neither male nor female, but instead possessing characteristics of both sexes, Richard III is immediately reviled by his mother. Her hatred defines his childhood, leading to a deep disgust toward his own body and an adverse reaction to being called a demon.

Richard grows up troubled by visions of England's former foe, Joan of Arc, who taunts that he will bring ruin to all who know him. He believes that he can attain salvation by helping his father achieve his destiny of becoming the king. However, cursed by the expectations of both his mother and Joan, will Richard's actions instead drag his family down into darkness?

My Rating: 9/10

My Opinion:

I absolutely love this.

Now, if my English teacher would ever come across this she would probably ask herself if someone brainwashed me because this is based on two plays by Shakespear, one of which I read in her second language English class and hated to hell and back.

However, Requiem of the Rose King fixes a lot of the problems I had in the original play.

Here Richard is not just an evil person that is evil and essentially a Disney villain that doesn’t have to keep things pg but an actual person, who is power hungry but so are most people around him.

He isn’t a morally good person, but so is almost everyone around him.

Requiem of the Rose King also changes Richard’s “demonic trait” from scurrilous to being intersex and giving it a completely new message of essentially saying that queer people had a really bad time during the 15th century for the people in the back who think that gay people got invented in the 80’s, together with poc in europe and lava lamps.

Also, despite a lot of characters sharing the same name, there are like five Edwards, Requiem makes them a lot easier to differentiate than the original play, so don’t worry about that stuff.

Recommended to:

Fans of dark fairy tales, queer fiction, historical fiction and lots and lots of intrigue and drama. Also I can see fans of Game of Thrones liking this as well if they are fine with a smaller scale intrigue and no fantasy elements.

[dragynkeep]

For the character ask meme: Ilia!

meme, not accepting.

my top three ships for the character.

non canon catmeleon ( ilia / blake. ) non canon lava lamp ( ilia / yang. ) illiad ( ilia / pyrrha. )

my three least favourite ships for the character.

catmeleon ( ilia / blake. ) prismatic ponytails ( ilia / weiss. ) lava lamp ( ilia / yang. )

my biggest criticism for the character.

definitely her coming out scene. now, ilia being an antagonist & a lesbian is not a bad thing on the surface  —  but there are a few influencing factors that make this scene & her as a character super yikes in retrospect. one, that she was not only the first confirmed lesbian rep on the show, but the first confirmed queer rep overall. for that to come in the form of an antagonist, considering the queer coding of villains in media only reinforces negative stereotypes that queer people, especially lesbians who are stereotyped as aggressive & predatory, still fight today.

secondly was the way she was confirmed a lesbian. in the scene she confesses her love for blake, blake is also restrained on her knees, terrified & begging ilia to let her go & stop this while ilia is complaining that blake never looked at her the way she looked at her male love interest. it also frames ilia sending blake to her abuser & then going off to murder blake’s parents as some form of petty revenge, much like an incel killing a woman who rejected them  —  rather than a far better motivation in that blake had chosen humans over the white fang, humans who had gotten ilia’s parents killed & do nothing about faunus suffering in remnant.

ilia was an important character for queer & lesbian rep in a show that had spent five years with only cishet characters. but that doesn’t mean that the way she came out or the coding of her character, packaged with her piss poor redemption arc, should be accepted or endorsed as the way for these cishet writers to write queer stories.

my favourite thing about the character.

her story. ilia’s the daughter of miners who tragically died in a mine accident, had to hide herself to fit into an oppressive society  —  which more fits a queer representation of oppression than a racial one  —  & eventually she chose to abandon those lies to live her true self. ilia is unapologetically angry, as she should be for the racial abuse & oppression she’s suffered, but there was also a lot of good traits that prevented her from being irredeemable to a larger audience. she was cruel & violent, but she was also caring & loving & just wanted justice for her parents, for her people & for herself. while i think her story could’ve been done far better, the core elements to it are relatable & endear me to her, through similar experiences.

a headcanon i have about them.

ilia loved to jot down small stories in a notebook, stemming from her father’s past time of telling her wild bedtime stories of heroic faunus who saved the day & gained the adoration of all, bringing their people into a new era. her favourite was of kimimila, the butterfly warrior who stole the heart of the faunus queen & their romance.

what i would change about them if i was making a re-write.

erase that fucking confession scene & actually give her a proper redemption arc ; especially when we had such good motivators for her behaviour already like her parents deaths & the oppression she faced.

what i think of their character allusion and what (if anything) i would change about it.

oh my god, just give her one besides gay. the fact that ilia’s name is meant to mean rainbow in lakota but doesn’t because mkek’s research fails that bad is so frustrating, especially when there’s a depth of native american mythologies to draw from for ilia as a character.

however, if you wanted to keep her in line with the jungle book allusion of the white fang, i saw someone suggest kaa & change her faunus type which could be interesting.

[noro124]

ok i wrote this up immediately & forgot about it in drafts, but my thoughts on promare under the cut

- COLORS SHAPES MOTION ANIMATION SEXY CUBE TRIANGLESHAPES SHAPES SHAPES GEOMETRY

- the part right in the beginning introducing the 3 mad burnish. general 1, general 2, & just the absolute pinnacle of character design sit on the throne arrogant head tilt is the sexiest thing ive seen in my entire life. pointy black armor???? fire motorcycle???? ghhfosigjfh my god

- so was the fight after that. the arrogance. the swirling the sword around. the drama. god

- the devotion of lio's two generals I wanna know more about them they were just like YEAH I LOVE YOU BOSS I'M GONNA SHOOT YOU OUT OF A CANNON. i love them. specifically gueira. 

- also from the lio’s side of things, we see that he only took over mad burnish a couple months before the main plot, so why did kray keep saying “HE HAS BEEN OUR ENEMY FOR 30 YEARS”. like even in galo’s side of things, we see meis & gueira ONLY in that first cutscene. where was lio then. 

- required moment where it shows “main group of characters aren’t racist!” w the  “not all burnish are bad people! the terrorists are bad people & the rest of them are just trying to live.” i liked watching them stand up for the pizza guy though. 

- Galo Realizes Racism Is Happening And He Helped With It, Emotional Turmoil Moments. that whole bit was really good. also the fact he wasn’t a burnt the whole time.

- the whole team of characters galo's with. I love em. fantastic. 

- pink haired girl never got her character arc finished rip her but it's fine. thought her crush on galo was kinda forced but honestly they didn’t push it as hard as i expected, so! good enough

- pink haired girl’s sister is still like. a war criminal tho. she still helped kray try to commit genocide. i see no redemption. 

- speaking of kray can yall PLEASE be nasty somewhere else don’t make me see kray x one of the main leads ever again

- THE VOLCANO SCENE. THE DRAGON. OH MY GOD OH MY FUCKING GOD OH M FJ AGHJK DFKHFDG DVGJN H THAT SCENE WAS THE BEST SCENE IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE. OH MY FUCKING GOD. KAKUSEI KAKUSEI KAKUSEI OH MFADSKJ GJ 

- “HE’S CRYING” 

- that was also cool since i didn’t know what galo was going to do at this point. i thought he might join lio in beating the shit out of kray but then he STOPPED him. my friends i was with were like “i really like how the story was about galo’s choices & his actions rather than eveything else” & tbh i can’t analyze anything ever so i didn’t notice but that’s cool

- Deus x machina 😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😂😂😂😂😂😂 bro that's  FUCKING LAVA LAMP VOLTRON. it was so funny “why did you choose us?” “i didn’t” what would you have done if we didn’t fall directly on top of your lab? “well i guess the world would have ended.” thanks. and then he just was like “well that’s enough” & died

- “Galo Thymos & Lio Fotia, only you two can stop the end of the world.” Aina was standing RIGHT there. like she was RIGHT next to them. 

- warp tunnel lookin like oxenfree tbh 

- tbh i did not understand what made galo fireproof at the end. 

- i also can’t believe they showed two dudes kissing on the big screen & didn’t play it off as a joke. like i know it was the burnt equivalent of cpr. i know. i know it was galo doing everything he could to bring lio back. but it was a Passionate And Tender Kiss. galo cradled lio’s head & everything. i was dissolving. god they are BROS they are IN LOVE there is OFFICIAL ART OF THEM LIKE GETTING MARRIED 

[imagitory]

Tory Reviews Aladdin (2019)! [SPOILERS]

Yes, people, I finally got around to seeing this thing! And now it’s time to talk about it. For those of you who want a spoiler-free review, I will say that as Disney live action remakes go, this is one of the better ones. It doesn’t disrespect the original, and it brings in some new ideas of varying quality -- but hey, at least some of those ideas are good! It still follows the original film’s structure a little too closely for my taste (unsurprising, given that it uses a good chunk of the same music and similar characters), but there were enough differences that it didn’t feel like a beat-for-beat rehash like the Beauty and the Beast remake did. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a great movie, but if you’re not difficult to please like I am and you aren’t jaded by the idea of Disney live action remakes in general, I wager there is a lot here that you could enjoy. 

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers, feel free to read on! Come on...don’t you trust me?

The Good!

+I love the idea of Jasmine actively wanting to rule Agrabah. It makes for a very different Jasmine from the original animated version, one who is likable in her own way and stands apart as her own distinct character. In the original, Jasmine just wants to be free to make her own choices, and honestly, that is enough on its own. She already has been raised with large expectations on her shoulders, so it makes sense that she would envy Aladdin for having no chains or responsibilities, and therefore why she would run away from home. This remake plays Jasmine a little differently, though -- she wants to be free too, but in a way that helps people. She knows she’s been given power, but she hasn’t been free to use it, and she sees plenty of people with power, like Jafar, who misuse it. How identifiable is that struggle, for so many women with privilege! It’s a struggle that men of all stripes don’t entirely understand, and it’s a nice conflict for our secondary protagonist. It also puts a cherry on top of the Sultan’s gesture from the first film where he changes the law and lets Jasmine choose who she wants to marry -- now she can not only make that choice, but whatever other choices she wishes, too.

+Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott were good casting choices for Aladdin and Jasmine. Mena has this wonderful boyish quality that reminds me a lot of Scott Weinger’s Aladdin, while Naomi brings a wonderful class to Jasmine’s part.

+Involving Jasmine in the One Jump Ahead sequence was an interesting way to tie Aladdin’s introduction and the scene where Aladdin saves Jasmine together, which further emphasizes that the film will focus around these two as dual protagonists, rather than mainly around Aladdin with Jasmine as a deutragonist.

+Aladdin sneaking into the palace to give Jasmine back her bracelet was a great idea. Gone is Jafar’s weird wheel machine that tells him who his Diamond in the Rough is -- now he knows because he sees Aladdin break in just to return something to the princess. Added is more development for Aladdin and Jasmine’s relationship -- not only does Jasmine get to see where Aladdin lives, but she gets to see the grayness of him from the get-go. And really, more scenes for our two love interests to interact together is always a good thing, when it comes to us identifying with their relationship.

+The visuals, both in the backgrounds and costumes, were well done. I still don’t entirely get the fusion of Indian and Arabian styles (this film REALLY played up the Bollywood influence in this story set in the Arabian desert), but it looks rather nice. I’ve been saying for a long while that I want Disney to make an animated movie set in India and inspired by Bollywood, and this film makes me want one all the more. No halfsies on the Bollywood stuff -- I want it ALL over the movie, and I wanted it beautifully animated and scored. Disney, get on it.

+I’ll be honest -- Will Smith is no Robin Williams and I’ll get to some issues I had with his characterization in a minute, but he really did give the role his all and he made the part his own. He played to his strengths rather than try to imitate Robin and by doing so portrayed a very distinctive, memorable, and rather likable Genie. The idea of being clever with one’s words when making a wish also harks back to folk tales about Djinn where they’re more like tricksters, and I thought that was clever.

+The Arabian Nights opening number was EXCELLENTLY handled. I actually got super excited listening to it, just like with the original’s sequence, and I wasn’t expecting that. The use of the musical number to introduce the key players in the story, including Jafar’s interest in retrieving the lamp from the Cave of Wonders, also was very good.

+Friend Like Me wasn’t half-bad, either! Will put a lot of energy into the number and even though it started off way too slowly in the beginning, once it got going, the song itself and the visuals were pretty fun.

+Genie wishing to become human reminded me a bit of DuckTales the Movie: The Treasure of the Lost Lamp, but I still liked it. Admittedly it feels as though there should’ve been a way for Genie to stay a Genie and just be free to use his powers the way he wanted...but hey, the transformation into a human makes for good visual symbolism.

+Although overall the Cave of Wonders sequence wasn’t anything impressive, I liked the little homage to the final battle in Return of Jafar where Aladdin has to jump from rock fragment to rock fragment while floating in a sea of lava.

+This remake did capture one of the central tenants of the original film -- that Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie (and, in this story, even Jafar) have their own cages, but in the end what unlocks all of their cages is empathy. Genie befriends Aladdin and it’s through that friendship that he earns his freedom. Jasmine falls in love with Aladdin and stands up for him and her kingdom, and it is through that compassion that she becomes Sultan Sultana (goddamn it, film, she’d be a Sultana, just call her that). Aladdin comes to see Genie’s and Jasmine’s prisons as clearly as his own and in doing so is able to outwit Jafar and save the kingdom. And Jafar, by only wallowing in his own pain and refusing to acknowledge the pain of others, just keeps trying to take what others have until he loses what he had to begin with: his freedom.

The Not-So-Good...

+Jafar. *dodges knives* OKAY, HOLD ON. Before I go into what I didn’t like, I will be kind first. I truly do understand the rationale behind this characterization -- namely, that Jafar is supposed to now be a foil for Aladdin, as in “Be careful, or you could end up like this guy.” And that idea by itself isn’t a bad one. The problem is the film hammers in that point a liiiittle too much in scripted dialogue, and in trying to make Jafar more “sympathetic” (I don’t know if I’d say he actually was, but the film seems to be trying to make him that way), it actually makes him much less interesting, in my opinion. In the Aladdin TV series, there was another “foil” to Aladdin in the form of Mozenrath the sorcerer, but Mozenrath was still egocentric, charismatic, cocky, clever, ruthless, and threatening. Throughout the entire film, this Jafar just seems way less confident and powerful than he should be. While in the original film, Jafar moving slowly and purposefully made him this dark cloud over the proceedings, highlighting the contrasts between him and the rest of the jovial cast, in this version, it only served to make the character look boring and lacking in energy. If the filmmakers had wanted to make Jafar like Aladdin, make him like Aladdin! Make him charming. Make him witty. Make him fun to watch. And then also make him a selfish, pig-headed, sexist asshole. Have him sing the Prince Ali reprise. Have him smirk and sneer. Have him enjoy putting Jasmine down. Have his confrontations with Aladdin be like looking through a cracked mirror -- have there be this terrible, electric charge of hatred between them whenever they stare each other down, for they are each what the other would despise being, and yet they’ll smirk at each other through their hatred because they won’t let the other see that they got to them. In other words, HAVE MORE FUN WRITING YOUR VILLAIN, DISNEY. Character development is good and all, but if your villain isn’t interesting and fun to watch, then why bother writing one at all?

+Dahlia really was as pointless as I’d feared. All she really serves to be is Jasmine’s friend (wasn’t Rajah already that?) and a love interest for Genie (did we really need that?) -- she never really steps out of the other characters’ shadows and becomes her own person. Why couldn’t she have her own cage to escape from, her own story arc, her own personality that wasn’t there to just be a foil to Jasmine’s? If Jasmine is disdainful of someone, Dahlia likes them. If Jasmine isn’t impressed by something, Dahlia is. If Jasmine trusts someone, Dahlia expresses doubts. That basically is the start and end of her character, and it’s such a shame, as we certainly could use more female characters in male-dominated stories like this, where we can see multiple, but still equally useful and interesting ways to be a woman. But putting in another female character just for her to be a sidekick and a love interest is not the way to do that.

+The CGI really did stick out like a sore thumb in places. It could sometimes look aesthetically nice, like in the Friend Like Me sequence, but it still rarely looked real, and in the case of things that were supposed to be real like Rajah, Abu, and Carpet, it got uncomfortable. And yeah, Abu and Carpet were therefore also much less likable than in the original film, with Abu having nearly no comedic potential and Carpet losing a lot of its extroversion and energy. Rajah ended up the most like his original self out of all of them, but he still rarely looked real, to me.

+Iago should have either been just a normal parrot or more like his regular, energized, animated self. The way they portrayed him, sitting in that murky middle ground of being like a real parrot but not just repeating whatever he heard, made for a very uninteresting character. If he’s going to have his own mind, give him his own personality that sets him apart from Jafar -- if he’s going to be more like an animal, use his repeating of standard phrases in clever ways to make that clear.

+As much as I liked Jasmine’s new motivation, her story arc would’ve been much stronger if she hadn’t been as strong at the start and she’d discovered the power inside herself along the way. At one point, Aladdin says sometimes you just have to take risks, as if Jasmine has been playing things too safe -- well, was sneaking out into town under the noses of her guards not a risk? Was giving bread to starving children without a thought about the cost not a risk? Was hiding a thief who bust into the palace in your room not a risk? Was pursuing a romance with that same thief not a risk? When do we see that’s something this Jasmine needs to learn? Jasmine’s supposed “arc” about standing up for herself and others is the whole driving force behind Jasmine’s new song Speechless, but it falls flat for me because we don’t see Jasmine holding her tongue and staying silent. She still speaks out against the princes seeking her hand and she still tries to argue with the Sultan and Jafar. And on the note of Speechless, the way that number is staged really didn’t give the song its proper justice. The sequence is all in her head, making everything go in slow motion and making people appear and disappear when it’s convenient -- how much stronger would that scene have been if the song had accompanied her storming back into the palace and standing up to Jafar, singing loudly right into his face that she has no interest in staying silent the way he told her to?

+The Captain of the Guard was an absolute nothing character in the story until Jafar takes over Agrabah near the climax, at which point everyone seems to want him on their side all of a sudden. He says he’ll obey the Sultan and it seems like the film wants him to be the script’s version of Okoye from Black Panther, but unlike Okoye, he got no focus or development beforehand, so we don’t care when he decides to stand by Jafar when he becomes Sultan or when Jasmine convinces him to stand up to him in the very next scene. And for all the words Jasmine cries at the Captain that he has a choice, she also says that the guards will follow him if he does the right thing -- what, do those guards not also have a choice to do the right thing? Do they have to follow their Captain?

+The addition of Jasmine’s mother’s kingdom does give some reason for Jasmine’s fashion sense being a mix of Indian and Arabian influences (you know, as in she’s biracial and her mother’s country is more India-inspired compared to Agrabah, which is more Arabia-inspired), but otherwise the kingdom’s addition really didn’t add much in the script. Jafar keeps talking about invading it, presumably because he wants to become a dictator and have an empire and blah, but we never see it and never learn much about it except that it was Jasmine’s mother’s country. And as much as the biracial influences could explain Jasmine’s wardrobe, it doesn’t justify the Bollywood dance sequence in the palace -- I mean, Genie was controlling Aladdin’s limbs the whole time, but how did everyone else know that dance sequence? It’d be one thing if it was supposed to be non-deigetic, as in it’s representative of Aladdin as Ali interacting with Jasmine and so it doesn’t matter that everyone knows the dance, but it can’t be non-deigetic if Genie has to control Aladdin so that he can dance like everyone else is.

+On that note, Genie says that “Ali got [Aladdin] in the door, but Aladdin has to be the one to open it” when he’s trying to encourage Aladdin to be himself when interacting with Jasmine...but then, literally, a few minutes later, he’s controlling Aladdin’s limbs and making him break-dance in the ballroom. WTH, Genie? I thought you understood that Aladdin just had to be himself, why are you suddenly so confused about why your tricks aren’t impressing Jasmine?!

+The Cave of Wonders was such a let-down. Not only was the treasure kind of measly and unremarkable compared to the room piled high with various kind of treasures from all over the globe in the original, but we get such emphasis on Aladdin not touching any of it, but Aladdin has to step all over it in order to get at the lamp. And I guess touching the Magic Carpet also doesn’t count. If the idea is not to take it, that’d be one thing, but even Abu only picks up the gem, he makes no movement to hide it or take it away with him. Plus the wonderful build-up for the cave in the original, where Aladdin walks slowly down this long trek of the stairs, only to arrive in a room full to the brim with treasure, is instead replaced with just -- plop! Landing in a heap in the middle of an actual cave with some treasure littered here and there, until la-dee-da, you end up in the main room where the lamp is and more treasure is tossed haphazardly around. Yawn.

+As much as I will give Will Smith credit for clearly doing his best, the friendship between Genie and Aladdin really didn’t work that well for me. The scene where Aladdin breaks Genie’s heart and goes back on his word was just so utterly hollow in how it was scripted and directed -- rather than giving the actors a spring board to allow them to express raw emotion, whether by yelling, going abruptly quiet, lashing out, expressing vulnerability, anything, it hampered any sincerity from shining through. Genie told us how he felt, but he didn’t show it. He said his heart was breaking, but he didn’t express it and I didn’t feel it. And unfortunately part of that comes back to how Genie is written. In the original movie, we love Genie and Aladdin’s friendship because of the genuine affection between them and because of Genie’s vulnerability when he admits that he wants his freedom more than anything else in the world. Aladdin asking Genie what he would wish for is what opens Genie up, and Aladdin promising to set Genie free is what makes him hope. At that point, he's solidly in Aladdin’s corner and does everything he can to help Aladdin like a true friend would. In this version, Genie is more reluctant to trust Aladdin, which makes it so their friendship has less time to develop, at which point the betrayal of trust doesn’t mean as much. Another wrinkle that is lost from Robin Williams’s portrayal is that Genie’s humor is in some ways a cover for Genie’s more vulnerable, sad feelings. Will uses it more like a front, something to puff himself up, but Robin uses it the way someone uses humor to hide their depression -- namely, despite his crummy circumstances, he resolves to be happy and make others happy. It’s a sign of resilience, rather than pride, and as relatable as the pride rationale is, using humor as a means to mask one’s unhappiness I think made for a very sweet, compassionate, admirable, dare I say heroic character. That character admittedly does play more to Robin’s strengths than Will’s, so I understand the change, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still prefer Robin’s characterization of Genie.

+The new “rubbing the lamp and saying ‘I wish’“ rule wasn’t a bad idea, but then Genie circumvents it to save Aladdin’s life anyway, at which point, why have it in the first place? To make it all the more essential to be holding the lamp? Well, holding it makes you the Genie’s master anyway -- it was that way in the original film already -- so why use the semantics? And on that note, why didn’t Aladdin or Jasmine just friggin’ make a wish when they first snatched the lamp back from Jafar, during that whole chase scene? They had the lamp in their friggin’ hands a good chunk of the time -- if you don’t want to waste your last wish, Aladdin, have Jasmine do it, rather than just keep trying to play keep-away with the crazy big Roc that Jafar turned Iago into? (As a side, that thing wasn’t even half as scary as Snake!Jafar. Just sayin’.)

+The ending’s pacing felt much clunkier compared to the original. As interesting as you would think a chase scene through Agrabah on a Magic Carpet would be, it served to only be a long detour, as at the end everyone just ended up right back where they started. At least in the original, Jafar still held the lamp, so Aladdin was still fighting to get it the entire time, and the stakes were raised a little bit more over time, when Jasmine was trapped in an hour glass, Abu was turned into a wind-up toy, Carpet was magically unwoven, Jafar blew fire around Aladdin and turned into a giant snake, and right before Aladdin could save Jasmine, Jafar snatched him up in his coils. In the original climax, Aladdin is chasing the same goal, only for more and more of his options to be ripped away from him and things to get worse and worse by the minute. In the remake, the first half of the climax is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

+The music -- OOOH, this irritated me. There was so much potential in a lot of it, really -- as mentioned, Arabian Nights and Friend Like Me were actually pretty good, and even Prince Ali was better than I expected and Speechless, although badly staged and not as musically memorable as the other songs, worked all right. But A Whole New World and especially One Jump Ahead and its reprises made me really, really mad. One Jump Ahead started off so promising, with a much more Arabian sound to its backing track -- then Mena Massoud starts singing, and boom, there’s the autotune, and suddenly the backing track sounds like something out of a Disney Channel Original Movie. Then we get Aladdin’s sad reprises of the number, which were frankly pathetic. Brad Kane was so good at bringing such softness and pathos into the short tune -- when he sang “Riffraff -- street rat! I don’t buy that! If only they’d look closer...!”, you feel this empathetic clenching in your heart -- you feel his pain, you understand it. But Massoud, as good of an actor as he is, sounds flat, disinterested, and cold when singing, no doubt because he lacks the confidence in it, and the autotune only serves to dull any emotion in his voice  further. Then there’s A Whole New World, which didn’t make me as angry as even if it is autotuned, Naomi Scott does bring some energy to the song where Massoud does not, but for how good of a song it is, the performance and the sequence surrounding it were kind of embarrassing. Massoud and Scott sounded like two amateurs doing some lifeless Disney karaoke, and the scene accompanying the song was monochromatic and lacking in scope or excitement. I understand if you don’t want Aladdin and Jasmine to go on “the fastest World Tour ever” again, but at the very least, give us some scenery that isn’t just one of five shades of blue! We don’t see any color until after the song is over and the two watch this festival in the town square. A Whole New World is easily one of the most romantic songs in the Disney library if not the most romantic, and it deserved better than this.

+They gave Aladdin this quasi-inventor aspect where he had jerry-rigged special stairs to appear and hoisted a canopy into existence in his hide-out. I immediately remembered the same quirk being needlessly added onto Belle in the Beauty and the Beast remake and Clara in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and got really irritated -- seriously, Disney, does EVERYONE need to be an inventor of some sort in your LA movies now?? -- and sure enough, just like with Belle, that quality of Aladdin’s is never brought up again, and like with Clara, the trait doesn’t add any depth or interest to the character. It could’ve been cool if the filmmakers had modified it slightly, making it more like Quasimodo’s artistic creativity in how he sees the world and/or the Phantom of the Opera’s love of magic transforming his dreary, lonely world into something beautiful. Jasmine even cites that Aladdin can do “magic,” as in, “hey, maybe that can be referenced again, like his resourcefulness and creativity are the true magic, not what the Genie can give him,” but yeah, it’s never brought up again, so there was no point to those additions.

+Although the film got the tenant of people having different cages that can be unlocked by empathy down, it also added a moral that in my opinion not only contradicts the story, but could also be interpreted very badly. At the beginning of the movie, Genie and Dahlia’s kids look enviously at a boat larger than theirs and dream of having a boat like that, and Genie tells them the story of Aladdin, Jasmine, and the lamp supposedly to teach them to be happy with what you have. Not a horrible lesson, really...but here’s the problem -- THE FILM DOESN’T TEACH YOU THAT. If Aladdin had just been happy with what he’d had, he never would’ve met the Genie, fallen in love with Jasmine, and lived happily ever after. If Jasmine had just been happy with what she’d had, she would’ve married a terrible prince she didn’t love and never been Sultana. If Genie had just been happy with what he’d had, he would’ve never befriended Aladdin and earned his freedom. And I’m sorry, but trying to tell people like this -- a poor man struggling to survive on the streets, a woman being locked out of her birth right because of her gender, and a literal slave -- that they shouldn’t seek what others have that they don’t? I mean...are you serious?? Really?? THAT is the moral you want to add onto this story?? In the original, the moral was “it’s not what is outside, but what is inside that counts,” which ties into the tenant of empathy I mentioned earlier. I know that the filmmakers were trying to make a point about greed, and it is a good point to make, not to just mindlessly chase after what you don’t have and forget what you do have...but at the same time, all of these characters had a good reason to chase something they didn’t have and they were happier when they earned it.

As Disney remakes go, Aladdin (2019) in my opinion is better than the predecessors I have seen. Unlike Maleficent, it didn’t take pot-shots at the original movie or its characters. Unlike Cinderella (2015), its feminist themes were central to the female character’s arc and fit with the story being told. Unlike Beauty and the Beast (2017), it didn’t just take the original movie and pile a bunch of superfluous stuff on top of it so as to make it look different. It also took good ideas from those three movies as well. Like Maleficent, this film tried to tell an old story from a new angle. Like Cinderella (2015), it reinterpreted the characters and their relationships. Like Beauty and the Beast (2017), it tried to respect what people loved about the original. Admittedly this film is still not even half as good as the original in my mind, because even the fresh ideas were added onto a pre-existing structure from another movie that had been full of new ideas, but it’s still much better than I had been expecting. I wasn’t impressed, exactly, but I got a few laughs and felt some positive feelings while watching this. Let’s hope that the Lion King remake learns some lessons from this movie and only improves on the formula -- and finally does their original’s classic soundtrack some JUSTICE this time!!

Overall Grade: C

[signor-signor]

Trending 27th (July 2018)

Believe it or else, three years have passed since Disney made the biggest mistake in the history of television animation in the 2010s: canceling the well-received Wander Over Yonder before the second season got the chance to prove itself (and several months after the third season was fully conceived).

So, what would my reaction be if a third season of Wander Over Yonder were to happen? The answer is quite simple.

I would rejoice!

Let me expand on my answer, though, in a way that explains why I still support the show.

Before 2008, I had little-to-no interest in Disney Channel because of its heavy reliance on live-action sitcoms. I had no reason to tune into that channel back then, but a certain animated show about a couple of stepbrothers finding ways to spend summer vacation came along and made me change my mind. When I discovered Phineas and Ferb, I was in for a treat. An original premise, quirky characters, subplots connecting with main plots, unique feats not possible in live-action shows... P&F had the whole kit and caboodle and was the one show I would watch whenever a new episode came on.

Then in 2010, we got Fish Hooks. While it had certain moments I would love to forget, it did have a diverse cast of water-dwelling characters living in a pet shop and focused on the life and times of three high school fish. That might be why I kept tuning into the show for new episodes, which, consequently, might have contributed to its chance at getting a third season, giving the show the privilege of spanning four years of high school.

Believe it or not, one thing that got me interested in Gravity Falls in 2012 was the fact that its creator happened to be the voice of Clamantha from Fish Hooks. I never knew Alex Hirsch was capable of doing many voices. I often think of the voice of Grunkle Stan as his take on Krusty the Klown from The Simpsons. And I did find his voice for Soos fun to hear and imitate. I think what got me even more interested back then was the involvement of Matt Chapman, one of the many men of hundreds of voices and one of the two brothers who created the Homestar Runner body of work, which I’ve been following since 2003. That, and cryptic codes you find in the credits. Truth be told, I had no idea how much of an impact it would have among viewers.

These are just three animated shows that had me stay tuned on the Disney Channel before mid-2013. This leads us to my rising interest in Wander Over Yonder, which also premiered in 2013 on said channel. Knowing this was a feel-good kind of show starring Jack McBrayer and created by @crackmccraigen, the experienced genius behind The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, I would be a total fool for missing out on it. The characters are diverse and so are the environments. There’s always something brand-spanking new in every episode. I cannot tell a lie. It’s the funniest, cleverest, and most well thought-out cartoon I’ve ever watched. Considering the other Disney shows in the resurgence weren’t in jeopardy, I was sure Disney had succeeded in boosting my interest in their animated fare. Regardless of hiatuses, I saw no signs of the company lousing up their shows’ schedules. I actually thought the show would be too good to fail even after the move to Disney XD in early 2014.

Even though the three aforementioned shows weren’t as impressive as WOY animation-wise and humor-wise, I’d managed to catch up on them. I also watched The 7D, Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, and Star vs. the Forces of Evil on Disney XD, all because the company was going in the right direction. Like many viewers, I was completely unaware of the actions the heads of Disney were going to take, one of which involved choosing one or a few over the others.

When I got the news of WOY getting a second season (and the 11 1-minute shorts that preceded it), I made sure not to miss it because I enjoyed the first season. Before the bad news broke out in March of 2016, I had already moved on from Fish Hooks, Phineas and Ferb, and Gravity Falls because they had absolutely no unfinished business after they ended properly. When I found via DaBurninator’s DeviantArt account that Wander got canceled one week before S2 started even though a whole third season was planned out in early 2015, I became puzzled and felt betrayed. It’s like the Disney bosses didn’t give any thought to how the fans would feel. “Disney, how could you?” I thought. I had other questions in mind.

“What about Fish Hooks? It may not be as popular as Phineas and Ferb, but it got 3 seasons!”

“What makes them think there’s no need to make more episodes?”

“What did we ever do to be denied to know what happens after the second season?”

“Do they know what Craig went through to get his third season pitch together?”

Craig has been in the business for more than 20 years and his amazing ideas for S3 get snubbed by a company with the notion of dreams coming true? That is absolutely unheard of. He hasn’t done anything wrong before and after leaving Cartoon Network. Sure, he had a student film with an inappropriate title that got a much more suitable name when he got started with Hanna-Barbera, but I know dang well he was giving his all to make one of the best shows in the history of Disney television. He was trying to make a show that takes place in outer space, utilizes characters with structures that follow the “lava lamp theory,” and mixes hilarity and critical thinking. He was making for Disney a show that could leave a good impression on the viewers and show them that kindness can be a good thing. No other show by Disney could ever offer the same satisfaction demonstrated in WOY, that’s why I currently have little-to-no interest in Disney shows not created by Craig. I still suspect the higher Disney bosses like Fish Hooks more than they like WOY.

If people had no interest or faith in WOY, would they have allowed songs from My Fair Hatey to be recorded at Capitol Records? The point is, if the WOY crew members went above and beyond to make WOY good, we MUST give it tons of attention! I still do.

Back to my answer to the question of Trending 27th. If a third season of WOY were to ever happen, I would rejoice by hugging everyone around me and spreading the word. If I made doubly sure that it is the case, I’d probably happily laugh in hysterics, but that’d be because after years of putting up with the popularity of higher-rated Disney shows (especially GF and SvtFoE) and inspiring WOY fans to fight harder, I would know all our efforts would have finally paid off. I’d also have renewed my trust in Disney television.

Just imagine, the lips of Craig and his crew would be unsealed and we would finally get to witness these things in S3.

•The first scene consisting of Dominator grumpily orbbling through space (and maybe looking at the picture she took in The Flower)

•A new angle that’s “delightfully petty but wholly Dominator”

•The construction and launch of The Star Nomad (thanks to Future-Worm, we know who owns it)

•The space primate

•The threat worse than Dominator

•Peepers’s arc

•More Wander/Sylvia/Hater/Peepers team-ups

•More info on Demurra and Dracor’s children

•More Eye on the Skullship

•Emperor Awesome’s “ultimate comeuppance”

•Major Threat being a recurring character

•Returning characters (like the Black Cube, Ripov, Neckbeard, to name a few)

•What the other villains have been up to since The Bad Neighbors

•New characters (that means new ALFs - Alien Life Forms)

•Possibly a new musical

•Lord Hater’s origin story and how he and Peepers met (still waiting for it!)

•And most important, Wander being tested in a cool way

•And also most important, a message saying, “Thanks for watching!”

Get the picture? We would see all this and more become a reality if we leave shows with no unfinished business alone, ease up on shows that aren’t in danger of cancellation, and pay more attention to discontinued shows calling for proper closure. We can’t stand idly by while that space pod accident remains unexplained. We must let Disney know there IS a need for one more season (or TV movie) so we can see WOY end properly before Craig decides to retire.

[michiopa]

Persepolis Rising thoughts WITH HELLA SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK 

OKAY HERE WE GO

ROCI CREW THOUGHTS

i wish so much that naomi and holden could have actually retired and been happy, if anyone deserves it it’s those two

Captain Bobbie Draper is everything i didn’t realize i wanted until holden was talking about it. I’m really gald she did get a ship in the end, even if it wasn’t the Roci

Amos’ singular chapter was so good, one of my faves tbh. The fight with him and bobbie was good and the fact that she WINS was perfect.

I cannot WAIT to see how his dynamic with Bobbie evolves, the fact that she will actually make him deal with his shit where no one else ever really has is just perfect

I do wish the writers would spend more time with alex and his emotions. i did like how they acknowledged that he held the crew together in a way

alright it’s gotta be talked about

Clarissa

i saw her death coming but that didn’t make it hurt less. I wish she would have died, not better because her death had the weight an impact it should have, but i wish amos could have been with her, that more of her family could have been with her.

speaking of clarissa and amos holy SHIT i wasn’t expecting their relationship to be exactly what i wanted but it happened

the fact that of all the crew it was naomi, the one clarissa nearly killed, that was with her when she died fucking BROKE me

Other characters

the fact that chrisjen is still alive and kicking was very important and such a nice surprise. I really want her to live through the series if only out of spite

i loved all the brief mentions of past characters, it was nice getting confirmations that they are okay

WHERE IS FILIP NAGATA. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM

It’s been so long since i read CB that i don’t remember a lot of the protomolecule stuff but BOI. duarte might be the WORST but he needs to stop fucking around with this stuff. I genuinely wonder if we’re going to see the beings that killed the creators of the protomolecule

Structural stuff 

not going to lie reading this book felt like watching a disaster in slow motion, and that’s not a knock on the writing. it was that feeling of helplessness, knowing everything is going to go wrong but not being able to look away. i’ve never really had a book make me feel like that before

this one was absolutely a step up in quality again, not that i didn’t like BA but it was weak and PR imo was much better (still not the strongest book but that’s just because it was setting up the final arc of the series)

I made a post about it earlier but god acting like duarte’s theory about ideaolgically conquering a place would mean more stability is like, THE most obvious thing to any first year poli sci student. literally was a question on my intro politics class test in college. OF COURSE soft power is more effective if it can be pulled off, it doesn’t take a political genius to see that. it’s like boiling a frog, it won’t jump out if it doesn’t realize it’s dying.

THE QUOTES I LOVED

There were kids old enough to vote now who’d never known what it meant to have only one sun. She didn’t know what Earth or Mars or Sol would be to them.

I need a POV from a kid like this. Singh was one thing, but he still remembered Sol. 

The vast alien intelligence that had engineered the ring gates and the massive ruins in the systems beyond them had found ways to manipulate distance , but the speed of light was the speed of light , and seemed like it always would be .

one of those, idk it’s just neat quotes. 

Anytime a few like - minded people could put together the resources for a colony and the fees for passage through the ring gates , the seeds of a new society could be sown out there among the stars .

i just love this one too, so hopeful BEFORE EVERYTHING GOES TO SHIT

In Holden’s experience , humanity’s drive out into the universe was maybe one part hunger for adventure and exploration to two parts just wanting to get the hell away from each other .

#mood

Alex , the best friend she’d ever had , and the person she’d realized recently she had every intention of growing old with , in spite of never having seen him naked.

this was honestly so important to me? like it’s clear they love each other but not really in a romantic way and as someone who is somewhere on the aro spectrum this meant so much.

The images from the seedpods could be the encrypted records of the fallen civilization that had built miracles they were still only beginning to understand . Or they could be the spores of whatever had killed them . Or they could be lava lamps . Who fucking knew ?

drummer’s humor is so on point i love it

In the dream , she knew all of that . But what she felt was relief . Saba was dead , and so he was safe now . Nothing bad could happen to him anymore . She couldn’t fail him or abandon him or feel the weight of his disappointment.

this CRUSHED ME 

In his opinion , faith was generally for people who were bad at math .

Singh’s one (1) funny line

“ There has to be a way to come to a final decision . ” 

“ No , there doesn’t . Every time someone starts talking about final anythings in politics , that means the atrocities are warming up . Humanity has done amazing things by just muddling through , arguing and complaining and fighting and negotiating . It’s messy and undignified , but it’s when we’re at our best , because everyone gets to have a voice in it . Even if everyone else is trying to shout it down . Whenever there’s just one voice that matters , something terrible comes out of it . ”

god this was one of the most impactful lines in the book. but then, that’s just jim holden. i love him

If she died here , would Saba see it ? Would the official Laconian newsfeeds be how they said goodbye ?

i nearly cried at this. drummer and her love for saba was so good, reminded me a lot of chrisjen and her husband tbh

It was always strange to remember that she knew things that other people didn’t . Not just about power - and signal - routing protocols . What it was like to murder someone who’d only ever been kind to you . How it felt when the people you’d dedicated your life to killing took you in as family . Even though she knew better , she always defaulted to the idea that her life wasn’t singular . That whatever she’d done must not have been that odd , because after all , she’d done it .

so this is where i started crying and pretty much just didn’t stop for the rest of the book. clarissa means so much to me

Some sins carried their own punishment . Sometimes redemption meant carrying the past with you forever . She’d gotten used to that over the years , but it was still pretty fucking inconvenient .

This is tied with holden’s thing for the best line in the book, so good

“ It’s the reward of old age , ” Avasarala said . “ You live long enough , and you can watch everything you worked for become irrelevant . ”

just a g8 chrisjen line

[completeoveranalysis]

~

Warning! This post contains spoilers up to chapter 170 of Tsubasa (and Chapter 71 of xxxHolic). Please skip this if you have not read that far.

Please also make no comments about what happens after that point in either manga.

~

SO here is the other splash image that really stuck out to me:

This time not because of the Seresu arc but because of how the Infinity arc itself ends.

Here's the link to the original post the image is from if you'd like the full context, but the particular quote from that post I want to use as a reference is here:

"Syaoran also sits on the throne - which as far as I can tell, isn’t his. ... The only one ever wearing the crown they’re all wearing [on their clothes] is Sakura. Now, does it make sense that Syaoran has usurped her throne? Heck yeah! He’s stolen everything from her. He’s stolen her journey (they’re following him now, always a step behind), he’s stolen her feathers, and he’s stolen the person she’s in love with."

Where I was kind of on the right track but couldn't have possibly guessed what all the chess imagery was ultimately feeding into. Looking back now the initial liveblogs for all of these Chess-related splash images are such a big mix of different iconography, so it’s very fun reading through all my old guesses back then. I think I did a really good job of trying to decipher some of it, especially the Cinderella and Snow White imagery in Chapter 140, but the Chess was a bit trickier.

Which, like, understandable, because the chess game that was happening in the chapters was stressful as heck and did not end well, but there is a nice conclusion to it with this image which is easier to read now - especially in regards to Sakura. Because it's made very clear to the viewer that the symbol of the Queen piece is in reference to her; both in these splash images (where she wears the crown at one point, and every character wears the symbol in ways that reflect their allegiance to her) and in the plotline, where she functions as the Queen of the battles taking place. Here is another good example of the symbol being used for Sakura with it right there on her throne, and the two Syaoran's wearing the symbol in smaller ways to represent their relationship to her. But with that all in mind? I had no idea what it was really getting at with Syaoran on Sakura's throne here.

BUT NOW I DO.

If you go back to that example I just gave with Sakura sitting on her throne? It's a different throne! It still makes it very clear that she's undeniably the Queen piece, with the symbol in gold actually being a key part of the throne itself.

And the throne Syaoran sits on? It has the crown symbol as part of the decoration, but it's not representing him, it's just a small symbol to show that matches Sakura's throne. This throne is his own.

He's the King piece.

(And, important distinction; the throne is not Lava Lamp's, but our original plotline Syaoran who is now in Autopilot mode.)

This wouldn't have occurred to me the first time through because I was focused so much on what this might mean for Sakura, and how she related to everyone else, but the way the Infinity Arc ends really hammers this home. After all, Sakura is the mastermind in this arc - everything that happens is according to her plan. She's not playing chess just during the literal chess matches, but during the entire plotline, moving every character and circumstance into place to enact her final plan; to activate both Chi's at once, absorb both their feather's, and trigger Fai's curse - resulting in her pseudo (if purely physical) death. But like we see in the plotline, this isn't a loss - it's a win. It's exactly how she planned things to unfold, and it will lead her to winning the game.

Just in case anyone isn't familiar, in Chess the queen is the most powerful piece capable of the widest variety of moves - but the queen is not the endgame goal. You can lose the queen piece in any game and (besides losing a powerful piece) it's not the end of the world. You can still win the game without the queen piece. It's the King piece that's the Win/Loss condition. The King is the piece you have to keep safe at all costs, even if you lose other pieces in the process. The second the King dies, the match is over. You've lost.

And this matches exactly how Sakura played the series events. She was the Queen in control of every move, and Syaoran was the Win condition she was focused on. She foresaw Fai killing Syaoran in the future - which, for her, is the Losing Scenario. She planned everything to avoid this, and she succeeded! She lost the Queen piece (ie, her physical body) but won the ultimate goal of keeping the King safe. She won the 3D future chess game that she was playing by herself, and positioned herself in the place that would have the most benefit for the victory at the end. (Which I still haven't seen, but she was VERY confident about this having a better result than Fai killing Syaoran.)

I'm also super happy that this ties in really well with the fairy tale allusions I talked about back in Chapter 140, but in ways I wasn't aware of back then either.

I talked about Snow White and how the apple (that shows up in a lot of the splash images in Infinity) may have been referring to Sakura's tendency to sleep a lot. What I didn't realise was that Sakura was essentially about to pull the Big Brain Snow White maneuver on herself to ultimately win her chess game. While in Snow White the poison apple is a trap, here Sakura sprung the trap intentionally. Fai is the apple she bit into deliberately - she arranged it so that killed her body, breaking his own curse, and sent her to the World of Dreams (and thus, she is asleep) which also placed her in a Glass Coffin (aka The Jam Jar of Dreams - Im sorry I have no memory of what it's really called). So the Snow White metaphor is now complete.

But also Cinderella! In the image for 140 Sakura is trying on a glass slipper - so she's Cinderella figure as well. But at this point in the plot the clock hadn't struck midnight just yet - like Cinderella, Sakura knew the exact time limit she had to work with, and for her the timing had to be PRECISE. She spent all of Infinity stressed out of her mind about this plan she couldn't trust anyone else with, knowing full well that if she missed the window even slightly it would ruin absolutely everything and they would all lose. Which, funnily enough, makes Yuuko the fairy godmother, since she provided Sakura with the magic she needed to make her plan happen (via wishes). This also means that Fai stabbing her with the sword is the exact moment the clock struck twelve - and like the spell finishing, Sakura could finally drop the act and explain what she had done, even as all the magic disappeared (ie, her luck being traded away). There's even a detransformation sequence of a sort, with her body and soul going in two different directions. But either way, the Cinderella metaphor is also complete!

And with all that done the last part I want to talk about is back in the image of Syaoran on the throne. He's framed on either side with the curtains that portray the chess board, and they're tied back by chains with him in the very centre. He is visually chained to the board - which, like, of course he is. With his Autopilot programming in place he's essentially just a chess piece without any will of his own - a winning piece, for sure, but he's still being moved around without his choice. He's playing the game on auto, making the moves that will lead him to the winning gambit, but without his individual soul he has no choice but to keep playing until the game is over. The goal he's working towards isn't even his - it's Evil Wolverine's. So in the same way that everyone else was a chess piece in Sakura's strategy (if, sort of, willingly), including Sakura herself, Syaoran is a piece being moved around in Evil Wolverine's favour - though if he dies, it's game over for Sakura's side as well.

I'm unclear if Syaoran dying would be a game over scenario for Evil Wolverine, but at the very least it would end the game he is currently playing.

So, in the hyper future 3D chess game that Sakura was playing by herself she couldn't properly win the game for her side by taking out Syaoran because he's her king piece too. Syaoran is the piece at the centre of everything, and will be the key to winning the game for either side. We just have to wait and see if Sakura's gambit will pay off in the way she thinks it will.