This show’s big message is (very corny and very true) the power of love. Yes, Ed and Stede have a romantic love and their's is the central relationship, but it's not solely about romantic love or partnership. They're friends first - Stede's first offer is not of romance, but of friendship. He looks at this man who, again, proclaims himself a bad person and friendless and says "I'm your friend." There's no ulterior motive there.
But it doesn't start or end there. The crew is all about love - the friendships and connections, romantic, nonromantic, sexual, platonic. Buttons loving the sea, Frenchie and Roach's friendship, Jim and Olu and Archie's polycule, Fang's tenderness and love of animals, everyone loving Wee John, Wee John's love for knitting and creation, Lucius and Pete's romance, Lucius's love of art (and sleeping with everyone), Swede and Jackie's weird little romance, Zheng and Auntie's care for each other, Zheng and Olu’s developing romance, Stede’s being a father to his crew, Stede’s imperfect care for his family, Mary and Annie's ridiculous marriage. All the friendships that exist. Just love.
And then there’s Izzy. Izzy who wants to die. Who confesses his love and gets shot but who is also told that Ed loved him as best he could. And what happens then? The crew see him suffering and go "he needs to be cared for." Rather than laughing and pointing and celebrating that a man who hurt them is in pain himself, they show him love. They give him a new leg and a new name, but leave it up to him whether to accept it. Just like what Stede offers Ed, and really what all the love on this show is based on, it has no strings or conditions - it’s an act of pure love. Izzy can choose whether to accept it and how to accept it, and he does. It helps to heal him. He's loved.*
*Which is honestly why the whole "they disrespected him in death!" makes me mad. They loved him! They showed him love! He died surrounded by people who were crying at his loss, even though he caused a lot of hurt to them, being held by a man he loved, who was himself weeping at the loss of his family. His last words may have been about Ed and Ed finding people who loved him, but it was about himself too! He's part of Blackbeard. They buried him on land, marking his grave with things that were important to him, and in a place where he could be near the person he cared for (and where his grave could be cared for too). They gave him back a missing piece of himself, they offered him a new name, they celebrated his joy when he chose to share it. How dare anyone say that they disrespected him?
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I'm so tired of people telling those of us who are upset about the LA atla remake that we are "being too dramatic" or are just "finding things to be upset about". We are allowed to be upset that something that we love so dearly has been butchered, AGAIN. If you liked it, then that's your personal opinion, but don't sit here and tell those of us who didn't that we're the problem.
I personally think the CGI, costumes, and sets all look terrible. None of it is immersive. Sure, it LOOKS like atla, but it doesn't FEEL like atla. The heart of the og is gone, and people are allowed to be upset about this. They've altered characters to the point that they aren't the character anymore (looking at you Aang and Katara), which is a huge upset for me personally because Katara is one of my favorite characters ever. So watching her be turned into someone meek and docile is more than a slap to the face. Not to mention them removing her as the narrator as if Bryke themselves didn't state that Katara is the person the story is being told through. And before you start telling me that Aang is the same. No, he isn't. Major parts of his development through season 1 (him coming to terms with the fact that he's the avatar and embracing that role, and him also accepting the fact that he RAN AWAY and how he is never going to do that again, which is also pivotal to his character later on) are completely removed. And don't even get me started on what they did to Kataang. Regardless of whether you ship them or not, those 2 are deeply connected to one another from the start, and their relationship is a big part of the show, so to see that butchered is heartbreaking for me.
This isn't just about them "making some changes" or it not being a 1:1 adaptation. I'm fine with adaptations that aren't 1:1. What I'm upset about is that the changes they are making are VITAL changes to characters and dynamics between characters. They're rushing through the plot and condensing the story (and I will scream if I hear one more person say that it's because they couldn't fit it all in with their runtime. The runtime is an HOUR LONGER than the og, so yes, they did have the time). The changes they are making make it evident that they do not understand the og show, and if you don't feel like that, fine, once again, that's YOUR opinion, just as this is MY opinion. So stop telling us we have no right to be upset and that we just want to hate everything. That's not true. What is true is that we are expressing valid complaints about another bad adaptation of something dear to us.
Edit: If you also come at people who are upset bc they were expecting a faithful adaptation and didn't get it bc "its not supposed to be the cartoon," you're missing the whole point. An adaptation is ADAPTING SOMETHING from one medium to the other, not rewriting it. "Yall expected it to be just like the cartoon." No, I expected a FAITHFUL ADAPTATION and was met with poorly written fanfiction.
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I think a lot about Leo standing up for his brothers in the things that really matter to them.
Like- Leo is the one who immediately pushes Mikey and Donnie into finding Raph the second it’s clear that their oldest brother is missing because he knows Raph can’t handle being separated like that.
Leo is the one who stands up for Mikey when Mikey wants to go on a solo mission, actively vouching for him and being the one to convince Raph into letting Mikey go, because being independent and proving himself just as capable of standing on his own two feet as everyone else means so much to Mikey.
And Leo defends Donnie’s honor in particular when his brothers’ intelligence is insulted because Leo is well aware of how important Donnie’s smarts are to him - and how important having those smarts valued and acknowledged is as well.
All this goes right into just how well Leo knows his brothers. For as much as he’ll tease or fight with them, he knows them, and he loves them.
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thinking about how Humans Are Space Orcs stories always talk about how indestructible humans are, our endurance, our ability to withstand common poisons, etc. and thats all well and good, its really fun to read, but it gets repetitive after a while because we aren't all like that.
And that got me thinking about why this trope is so common in the first place, and the conclusion I came to is actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Not everyone is allowed to go into space. This is true now, with the number of physical restrictions placed on astronauts (including height limits), but I imagine it's just as strict in some imaginary future where humans are first coming into contact with alien species. Because in that case there will definitely be military personnel alongside any possible diplomatic parties.
And I imagine that all interactions aliens have ever had up until this point have been with trained personnel. Even basic military troops conform to this standard, to some degree. So aliens meet us and they're shocked and horrified to discover that we have no obvious weaknesses, we're all either crazy smart or crazy strong (still always a little crazy, academia and war will do that to you), and not only that but we like, literally all the same height so there's no way to tell any of us apart.
And Humans Are Death Worlders stories spread throughout the galaxy. Years or decades or centuries of interspecies suspicion and hostilities preventing any alien from setting foot/claw/limb/appendage/etc. on Earth until slowly more beings are allowed to come through. And not just diplomats who keep to government buildings, but tourists. Exchange students. Temporary visitors granted permission to go wherever they please, so they go out in search of 'real terran culture' and what do they find?
Humans with innate heart defects that prevent them from drinking caffeine. Humans with chronic pain and chronic fatigue who lack the boundless endurance humans are supposedly famous for. Humans too tall or too short or too fat to be allowed into space. Humans who are so scared of the world they need to take pills just to function. Humans with IBS who can't stand spicy foods, capsaicin really is poison to them. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease, my god all the autoimmune disorders out there, humans who struggle to function because their own bodies fight them. Humans who bruise easily and take too long to heal. Humans who sustained one too many concussions and now struggle to talk and read and write. Humans who've had strokes. Humans who were born unable to talk or hear or speak, and humans who through some accident lost that ability later.
Aliens visit Earth, and do you know what they find? Humanity, in all its wholeness.
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hi!!!! there been news articles saying that the working conditions of spiderverse were rlly rlly bad to the point of 100 ppl quitting or someting…. sorry to be liek an annoying reporter and b kinda invasive but is this tru D:
the big article that came out, for anyone curious: https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/spider-verse-animation-four-artists-on-making-the-sequel.html
there are some aspects about the article that i don't feel comfortable commenting on, but yes a lot of animators did quit. a lot of it had to do with the issues mentioned in the article, but a lot also left because disney opened a studio in vancouver (where sony imageworks is located) and had to hire an entire crew. i don't blame people for leaving spiderverse to get in on being a part of establishing the disney vancouver studio
i will also say that some of the information going around is incorrect; we did not work 11 hours a day, 7 days a week for over a year. working 7 days a week is illegal, and though some people worked sundays, they were clearly told that they could not work the next saturday if they worked a sunday. we encouraged people to not work ghost hours, and OT was always optional (except for saturday work towards the end, but nobody was punished or anything if they couldn't work a saturday). we also get paid for OT. i was on the movie for over a year but we certainly weren't crunching that whole time. like the article said, we were idle for a long time
it was undeniably a hard movie to work on and with such a large crew, everyone had a wide variety of experiences. the anonymous animators in the article aren't wrong, but i will say that there are people that felt differently, or not as strongly as them. it's a complicated issue that doesn't have a simple solution
i just hope this doesn't tarnish your view of the movie. we worked hard on it and everyone's immense celebration of the animation is making all that hard work very worth it!
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