So like one common theme when discussing bullying is the tendency for bullies to project their insecurities on their victims right? like them taking their own shit out on the people they bully?
so i know that may not be exaaaactly the case with Max Jagerman in Nerdy Prudes Must Die like the dude even in the afterlife just really fuckin likes terrorising the shit out of people due to his god complex BUUUUT what I found very interesting was when in the Nerdy Prudes Must Die sequence, he was telling Richie to repeat after him: "Who will pray for me when my body's gone or until another Richie comes along?" And mind you, this song comes directly after another musical sequence about all the teens in that high school being so fucking happy that Max was gone. And like, well yea you can't blame the kids for being happy that Top Terrorizer #1 is gone and that they don't have to abide by his social strata anymore - but then again, having nobody pray or give a fuck about Max after him being mysteriously missing for 2 weeks is,,kinda fucked up for Max no matter the kind of person he is. So, to see someone he victimised get the attention and appreciation I would assume Max would've wanted from his team especially after being missing for so long - it really does seem to me that he was projecting onto Richie when he was about to kill him and making him feel how little he will matter to other people when he dies - like what he could've felt after literally everyone considered the high school "objectively better" now that Max was gone.
Which makes things a whole lot more interesting when Max snaps out of his WHO WILL PRAY FOR YOU solo when Richie belts out I'M NOT A LOSER - henceforth defying the idea of worthlessness Max was projecting onto Richie. So damn.
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speedrun of things that cause me agony in the wondla tv series trailer:
whyyy did they have to make the sanctuary so sterile and minimalistic? the book sanctuaries had this charming clunky 70s sci-fi design to them – they were blocky and durable and Eva's was tangibly lived-in, even worn in some places, because that was the point! they were an experiment that outlived their usefulness, but people kept living in them & they felt like it. this feels like Kim Kardashian's creepy white torture house.
"this... is me." has this line not become extremely passé in trailers, like almost to the point of parody?
that is NOT Muthr. idk who that is, but she is not mothering. it's like they took her book design and stripped away anything that may have been even slightly challenging to the cocomelon-smoothed zeitgeist of current animation. she's just so... nothing. she doesn't even look like a robot so much as like.. the lame soul design from pixar's soul. book Muthr looked WEIRD, but you can see the ways in which she's literally a synthetic + superhuman recreation of a Mother Figure: her head shape mirrors the beehive hairdo, her big eyes are saccharine sweet, she has four arms bc she always needs to do a million things at once, etc. i get that this version of Muthr was probably way easier to animate, and i don't even think they had to stick to the original design 100% as long as they still did something interesting for her, but. they didn't.
rip Eva's sick as hell hairstyle. :( seriously, her complicated braids were so important. bc 1) they were an homage to Dorothy's braids in the wizard of oz, the book to which the whole trilogy is a love letter. 2) they immediately gave her a unique visual identity as a character. 3) they contributed to the world of Wondla feeling genuinely strange and foreign to our current one. 4) they subtly spoke to things like Eva's boredom and loneliness and all the time she had to herself.
the paltry mini braids and single low bun they gave her instead are WEAK. again, they didn't have to follow the books to the letter, but. they did kinda need to give us something more memorable and distinctive than this.
i mean... there is ofc the obvious question of why'd they make her 16 instead of going on 13 like she was in the books? but also, perhaps even more crucially, why does she look like a whole ass adult woman? wondla is very much a coming of age story, and it's really good at capturing the messiness of that experience in every way down to its character design. this Eva doesn't look messy, she looks like an influencer. also i hate that current disneyesque cgi character design.
her outfit's like... fine. but it was so fucking cute in the books. cute and ultra utilitarian, and unlike anything i'd ever really seen before. can't a girl have a vest with a funky collar, cool billowy balloon sleeves, and scrunchy knee socks? do yknow how many kids would want to be Eva for halloween if they simply gave her an outfit that looked cuter? they're leaving money on the damn table.
she wasn't done with her training for life on the surface in the books, and that was important. :/ not that anything could've really prepared her, but the fact that she was so young made her terror and anger all the more palpable. i guess i don't think it's inherently terrible for her to be a bit older in adaptation, but idk, at least let her retain that trial by fire/still kind of a scared kid quality that's integral to her arc.
the placement of the 'wondla' letters on the page makes no sense. it's meant to be the wonderful wizard of oz (or the wonderful wizard of oz by l. frank baum. i forget which, but ONE of those for sure), so by all accounts the l and a shouldn't be right next to each other like that, there should be more space between those two letters.
now i don't fully remember, but i super don't think that 'Eva find me' note was in the books. Eva would've been way more obsessed with it if it was. in the books, she doesn't know the 'wondla' page was actually left for her, it's just this strange anomaly she finds that gives her hope, but she sort of creates that hope herself. its origin is an honest to god mystery until the second book, and therefore, the meaning that Eva gives it is what really comes to define it.
it's not just that no one had seen a human in a long time, most aliens on Orbona had never seen a human at all until Eva came along. that's a big difference! though, this audio does sound chopped up from multiple sentences, so maybe disregard this.
i don't like that they gave away the 'Orbona was once Earth' twist right off the bat. i know it's not a wholly original trope in sci-fi, but this is a middle-grade/family series, and it straight up blew my mind to see as a kid that hadn't ever really read true sci-fi before. and Orbona is SO bizarre, and Eva is SO desperate to find other humans, that the reveal is extra jarring and bleak, and it creates such powerful tension. why give the impact of that away in the trailer?? why not just let people think she's stuck on an alien planet until they get the full emotional gut punch when they actually watch it for themselves?
where's the lake in Lacus? :/ that was... kinda the basis of Lacus' culture and design and all. like ok i see some water, but Lacus should be almost more water than village.
Otto's design!! why god why.
why is Otto furry, why are his eyes Like That, etc.
nooo, don't show the ruins of New York in the trailer, that's for the audience to discover in horror along with Eva.
also why does Otto (i think that's him talking at least?) sound like that? thumbs down.
what are the. uh. shark tale-looking creatures running on water. they're very shark tale-looking (derogatory). they don't look like they belong in this series?? like did this footage just get misfiled?
egads it's coming out at the end of this month. i'm gonna watch it of course. but the whole time i'll be thinking about what could've been. and i'll reread the books, too. >:|
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I was rewatching Hamilton today. And I noticed something curious...
In Schuyler Defeated, Hamilton accuses Burr of changing parties and taking his father-in-law's senate seat as something personally against him. When Burr was just doing it for his own benefit, to rise 'up and up again.' He warns Hamilton against his pride and how it will be the thing to make him fall one day.
Then, in Your Obedient Servant, Burr says that Hamilton voted for Jefferson, 'endorse his enemy', just to keep him from winning. When Hamilton was doing it mostly for the good of the nation.
Burr was being proud.
That's why, even though Hamilton died, he's the one who lost.
Burr's pride made him fall.
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My gf was listening to "White Blank Page" by Mumford and Sons and I once again told her that song is SO much better if it's gay.
She doesn't listen to the lyrics of songs but she's extremely good at literary analysis and this time she actually looked up the lyrics and has now come to the following conclusion: "It makes no sense if it's not gay."
My (objectively best) reading is this:
The narrator was in love with a guy who strung him along, never willing to be in a committed (or public) relationship with him and maybe insisting that it's extremely heterosexual "helping a bro out" sex, except in more intimate moments. Finally out of nowhere guy is suddenly committed to a woman and when Narrator confronted him, guy spat out homophobic vitriol and claimed he's not gay like the Narrator.
(For extra flavor imagine them as closeted, straight passing Midwestern flannel wearing, love-bonfires-and-camping guys who sat next to each other at church and elbowed and annoyed each other like best friends do and were each other's go-to source of emotional support! And then to suddenly shut Narrator out for the first time ever, by abruptly marrying a woman and insisting that he's always been straight and their relationship meant nothing...)
Here are the lyrics:
Can you lie next to her
And give her your heart, your heart
As well as your body?
And can you lie next to her
And confess your love, your love
As well as your folly?
And can you kneel before the king
And say, "I'm clean! I'm clean!" ?
But tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart?
Oh, tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart?
A white blank page and a swelling rage, rage
You did not think
When you sent me to the brink, to the brink
You desired my attention
But denied my affections, my affections
So tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart?
Oh, tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart?
Lead me to the truth and I
Will follow you with my whole life
Oh, lead me to the truth and I
Will follow you with my whole life
Why call multiple people "you" in a totally unclear way? Why would you claim that your female ex's new man can't love her AT ALL (not just as much as you did, AT ALL)? And invoking the judgment of God is so fucking tedious if you're just shaming your female ex for moving on or even cheating/getting with your friend. Also you look like a creepy asshole if you think a girl broke up with you for "loving her too much".
This song is tepid, badly written, and makes the narrator look like an asshole if it's NOT gay.
The gay reading is the ONLY compelling one.
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