#and second even with that interpretation this is so much fucking funnier BECAUSE it’s not the like

[mintyyukimevt]

My friend @potterzilla threw this at me today and i cannot express with words how funny I find it and how happy it makes me LOL

[virahaus]

Thinking more obikin thoughts,,,,

(I should make this a series at this point aknsksns)

Anyway in a fix it universe where padme and Anakin are just besties, and Obi-Wan promised Anakin that after the war they could do whatever they want (comic compliant that's right),,, we arrive to completely-oblivious-of-his-feelings!Anakin & trying-to-woo-your-former-padawan!Obiwan combo 👀

Obi-Wan trying to give Anakin presents and bring him out on dates all over the galaxy, keeping his arm always around Anakin's waist and being affectionate,,,, all of this and Anakin, while drinking it up like a sponge, just doesn't get it. He thinks Obi-Wan is being affectionate because the war is over and after their last almost-death situation the council just doesn't care to reprimand about their obvious attachment anymore.

All of this is resolved, impossibly, by anonymous fanmail. The Jedi (even if they survived in this scenario) took a mighty blow on their public imagine with all the subtle propaganda Palpatine sprouted about them so they are trying to reply to the galaxy concerns and misconceptions about them. All jedi who are knights and masters are eligible for this fan mail stunt and the more famous they are the more of it they get.

Anakin gets a lot of fanmail where they gush about his and Obi-Wan romantic relationship and while at the start he's totally dumbfounded about it, the more they cite things he and Obi-Wan have been doing in these last few months (and years, let's be honest) the more he being (unknowingly) in a relationship with Obi-Wan makes sense. He gets his freak out with padme (who thought they were just being discreet and smacks some good sense into Anakin) and so for the next outing Obi-Wan organises for them, Anakin tries to up the game to see how Obi-Wan responds,,,, and Obi-Wan is Enthusiastic™ about it (poor man was going mad thinking he was doing something Wrong and now all of a sudden Anakin begins to initiate,, some more encouraging touches so he's Ecstatic).

Just think: them going on romantic dates for months, but with no kisses, Obi-Wan staying patient because he knows Anakin has never done this before but getting progressively more depressed thinking he may have interpreted this wrong, and then out of the blue Anakin kisses him after their date. Obi-Wan mind is blown. Man is going to worship is boy now that he has the all clear lmao

(even funnier is thinking about Obi-Wan pestering other jedi about it and getting smashed while crying that Anakin maybe changes his mind. Quinlan just drops him into his apartment and vows to never ask about Anakin again while Obi-Wan drinks: it only gets him Obi-Wan dirty old man rants or his infinite sadness rants. No in between).

Even more hilarious is the fanmail being explicit at some point (everyone says to Anakin that he must be enjoying Obi-Wan big dick energy so much) and Anakin first thought is be offended that ppl would think of him as the bottom - and then getting turned on by the thought of being fucked into incoherence by Obi-Wan. Classical Anakin behaviour Mr."I want to be in control" and then having a meltdown the second he gets the supposed control he wanted. Poor boy just needs to be fucked pliant and he'll be good.

Anyway, that's it. My 1 am obikin thoughts strike again.

[happyk44]

hi happy! whats ur interpretation of jason graces character? be as short or long as u want <3

The way I immediately knew my answer would be long as fuck as soon as I read the question 😂

Thanks for asking though -- I have a lot of interpretations of Jason's character. My default is wolf!Jason, which is to say I think due to his young age the effects of being raised by wolves, he retained some more animalistic behaviours that were then forcibly repressed due to the leadership requirement. Some people have argued Jason wasn't in the Wolf House long enough to retain those traits, which, okay, fine, that's a valid argument, but I say Jason having a problem with biting people is infinitely funnier so who cares.

I'm variable on when he leaves the Wolf House. We know he was there for at least a few months - sometimes I place it at a year or make him leave around 6, 7. Either way, he always leaves alone. I think of the venture from the Wolf House to Camp Jupiter to typically be a group activity, the newbies learning how to work together as a pack, as a team, in a real-life environment, but Jason is different, he's special, so he has to walk it alone.

If he stays at the Wolf House until he's about 10, 11, then we move into feral!Jason territory, where Jason has essentially become a feral/wild child. There's two variations of feral!Jason I like.

The first variation is Jason lives at camp and is often taken on quests to be used as weapon. He's not really a camper and no one interacts with him besides Reyna and a couple older campers. He lives alone in a hut near the river. He's learned some people skills but he doesn't see or think of himself as human.

The second variation is also known as the underworld Jason au because in this one Pluto "adopts" him as a pet. Essentially Jason is so feral that the people at camp can't handle it. He's convenient on quests, but he's also a wildcard and extremely aggressive, so sometimes it's not worth it. So they call on Pluto to please help them get rid of them since, well, do you know how to kill a tornado? But instead of putting him down, Pluto takes Jason in. Jason lives full-time in the underworld as Pluto's dog. He's much happier in this AU because he has a dedicated pack, where in the previous versions he's constantly being dropped and forced to take on a lone wolf lifestyle.

He's severely devoted to Pluto, and is loyal to the other members in the underworld crew. He loves to chase the chickens and creep up on the cows and basically irritate the fuck out of Menoetes who wants this little brat to stop fucking with the farm animals. Pluto treats Jason 100% like a pet dog, and the others treat him between the varying layers of "this is a human child" and "this is a definitely a wolf pup disguised as a human child".

Then there's the DID!Jason AU, where Jason develops DID due to the trauma of growing up the wolf house. His psyche essential fractures into four parts:

Jason, the host, ages with the body, looks like the body, albeit with less scars

JJ, traumholder, little, he's about five to seven years old and nonverbal, he looks like a young Jason with bandages

Grace, protector, he's around late thirties, early forties, shapeshifter (can only shapeshift into a wolf for obvious reasons), he has black hair

T, caretaker, partial introject of Thalia, her age slides from ten to nineteen (i wanted to make her an age-slider since Jason was very young when he was taken from Thalia and young kids do not generally have an accurate understanding of people's ages, ya know?), she's also a partial introject because she's modelled after Thalia as a caretaking figure but her personality and appearance differ in aspects, such as T has long hair, Thalia (as far as we know) has always had short hair, T is much brighter and enthusiastic where even when she was younger, I imagine Thalia was probably more sullen due to the complications of her home life and maybe more anxious when it came to Jason and his safety

Other bits and pieces:

suffers from depersonalization - even outside the DID AU, he lacks a solid sense of identity. It's one of the core problems in the series (one that I don't think was well explored or finished well tbh). He was raised to be a specific way and has never been allowed to anything else

autistic with an extreme sense of justice and obsession for the rules

dog boy

alexithymic with a severe emotional disconnection from his traumas. He can and will talk about wolf house training, situations where he almost died or was left for dead, times where he was tortured, etc, very easily and contentedly. He lacks the emotional connection that tells him these events were painful and traumatic, and cannot understand why people may get upset with him for talking about it so candidly. He doesn't bring it up willy nilly though, but if you ask him, he answers honestly and bluntly because he doesn't have social awareness to understand that there may be some things that should be held back

suicidal but in denial about it. Suicide is shameful and disgusting. He would never kill himself. He would, however, throw himself into every sacrificial option presented to him because dying for your loved ones is an honourable death.

low cognitive empathy, but strong emotional/compassionate empathy. He doesn't always understand why most people feel the way they do, especially if he disagrees with the situation they're experiencing a feeling over. For example, say someone killed themselves and their partner is crying about. Jason does not have the ability to understand to their partner's sadness because he sees suicide as shameful and cannot separate that from his capacity to care. However, he is still a very compassionate person, and will quickly jump into action to soothe them over their loss, even if he personally thinks, "why are you crying, they were clearly immoral and pathetic" the whole time.

side note: You may see people talk about having high cognitive empathy but low compassionate empathy - this is basically the opposite of Jason, where you have a strong understanding of why someone feels the way they do, but there is no internal drive to help them. Jason has the drive to help, but lacks the understanding/ability to relate

he is not very visibly expressive. I headcanon that he used to (and probably still does) practice making facial expressions in the mirror after everyone else had gone to bed. He's very good at mimicking human expressions and "acting" the part, even if he doesn't get why

experiences chronic pain, but due to a general disconnection from his personhood he doesn't pay much attention to it. He also thinks that its normal and trying to convince him that its not never works because if it wasn't normal then why has he been feeling it for so long. In the DID!AU, T is the one who is most disconnected from their pain and has to consciously do her best not to aggravate it when she's at the front. Grace is the one who is most connected to the pain and feels it more strongly than the other three

despite his adherence to laws of the land, hierachies don't make too much sense to him. This can be because of being raised by wolves, or just a general autism thing, but he actively treats everyone equally and has to consciously remember to treat people ranked higher than him in a different way than he'd treat people equal or below him in rank. Unlike other people though, Jason often gets a pass on this "insubordinate" behavour because of his status as Jupiter's son. It does mean that a lot of the time he fucks up on certain things and has a reputation among some campers for being an asshole because he doesn't know how to sugarcoat things for people younger or beneath him in rank

he's religious! I heacanon that the Romans are more inclined to follow their gods spiritually and religiously. They follow the old holidays (often modified for modern times), they follow the traditions, they have shrines of different gods, many kids will often pray to their parent and maybe one or two other gods. However, if they were to leave New Rome, some would likely not continue this practice, or at least not to the degree they did previously. Jason, however, is not like that. He is very connected to Religio Romana and follows the calendar, the daily rites, etc, etc, very closely. His gods of choice are Juno and Lupa (aka his moms). He does worship his father, but that's more of a respect, he's my dad, I have to kind of thing. After the events of BoO, Jason slowly starts to scale back in his worship of his dad while he researches older and forgotten gods. He may choose to adopt gods outside the Roman pantheon into his worship, but he will continue to follow the Roman traditions as he does so.

part of why he scales back his worship of his dad is that he becomes very disillusioned with who his father is versus the image of the man he'd grown up with. Jupiter is law and order, sound logic, the face of Rome, and yet, in person, Jason sees a paranoid old man who can't take criticism or admit when he's wrong - this can be seen as part of his inability to fully understand/respect the hierarchy of things. His father is king of the gods, none of his decisions are incorrect, and how dare you ever insuinate that especially in front of the people who are supposed to respect, fear, and revere him, but where someone like Percy would argue against that because they rebel against authority, especially when that authority has been a pain in their ass from day one, Jason can't make that connection because he doesn't fully see other people's authority in that way. To him, his dad is a god, yes, but like any god, like any person, he is still just some guy and can be unwise at times

This is really funny to me because I also think of Zeus/Jupiter as being autistic as well, so at the end of the day it's his fault his son doesn't respect him lol

he's very physically affectionate and loves so so much when people play with his hair (aka when they pet him. he is. a dog at heart)

he has a lot of sensory issues. the main one I usually mention is his hair. he keeps it cropped short because he physically can't stand it when it grows longer.

And I think this is long enough plus my brain is stalling so I am going to end this here. Depending on the story, these things may or may not be present in how I write him, but in general, yeah.

Thanks for asking! I had a lot of fun rambling 😂😂

[theredpharaoah]

And imma need y’all to stop tryna compare Visenya and Alicent. Two completely different women in two completely different situations. You can not reduce them to just “Two Queens who usurped the rightful rulers”. Because when it comes to Visenya, there’s actually a question of who is the rightful ruler. Visenya arguably did more for The 7 Kingdoms than any of her siblings. She conquered the most kingdoms, she did most of the day-to-day ruling(especially after Rhaenys’ death), she created the Kingsguard, and she oversaw the building of The Red Keep. Furthermore, for all we know, Maegor could’ve been the rightful heir. Visenya was Aegon’s first wife, and it was Valyrian tradition to marry the elder sister. It makes the most sense that her child would be first in the line of succession, not Rhaenys’. And Visenya tried to help Aenys over and over again but he wouldn’t fucking listen. Even when she told him he’d declared himself unfit to rule by giving Maegor Blackfyre, I don’t think she was saying “Give up the throne to Maegor.”. I think she was saying something more like “That’s what it looks like you just said. That was a bad move politically Aenys. Especially since people already doubt your strength”. And then Aenys had the nerve to proclaim Aegon II the Prince of Dragonstone. He knew that was Maegor’s title, and I’m assuming Aegon intentionally left Dragonstone to be passed down through Visenya’s line. it’s the least he could’ve done tbh. And no I don’t think she killed Aenys. If it was that easy for her to do, she would’ve did it way before then. And I highly doubt she feared Aegon or Balerion. I really don’t think she could kill her own kin tbh. Furthermore, It didn’t seem like Visenya had much of a presence in Aenys or his children’s lives(probably because of Aegon). So I can’t say she was wrong to assume that they’d be as spineless as their father. Or maybe she saw what the future for women in this household would look like under them. Aenys and his line were too keen to adopt andal traditions. Maegor’s line might’ve went more for a syncretization of Valyrian culture with Westerosi culture. And even if she didn’t think they’d be weak rulers; what does that leave her line with? Maybe she was just sick of getting nothing in return for all the work she put in? And she was being painted as a villain regardless of what she did, so why not just be the villain and get the shit over with? Not that I consider her a villain, and I don’t think the majority of Westeros interprets her as a villain either. Maegor’s rule was very much needed to deal with The Faith. I refuse to believe that second rate pentoshi witch could poison a Dragonlord who also dabbled in magic like Visenya. I’m inclined to think it was depression that saw her waste away so fast in a year.

Meanwhile, Alicent did nothing for the kingdoms and just wanted her family to have power. Rhaenyra was the declared heir for 20 years. She wasn’t weak, she had strong backers, and by all accounts would’ve made a good and fair ruler. Furthermore, her own son didn’t even want the throne. He just wanted to be able to be gross in peace. And that’s what makes the show even funnier to me. Cuz Otto’s always going on about Daemon and Rhaenyra turning the court into a brothel, but who’s terrorizing maids, sleeping with 12 year olds, and watching children fight to the death - one of them his own? Be serious.

[don-quixotine]

I can't be the only one who wasn’t particularly impressed with Challengers, right?

I mean. The cinematography was great. The music made me feel like I was at a rave in Berlin with the hottest people on Feeld. And the premise was absolutely excellent. Chef's Kiss. Delectable. A pair of bisexual boys being dominated by Mother as they pathetically try to make her their girlfriend? Yes, please. It's the reason I watched it, because it had so much potential.

But.

Is this really it? Is this really all bi representation can come to in this, the year 2024?

I'm just tired.

I'm tired that bisexuals in adult media are represented as these messy, toxic, "don’t know what they want and make it everyone's problem" archetypes that are so demeaning. And that's if they're represented at all.

The bisexuality of Patrick and Art (but more so of Art) is completely left up to your interpretation, and in a world of media that has to come to represent lesbians and gay men in better light, the fact that the same cannot be said about bisexuals is a pity.

I guess, in a way, interpretation is all the bi's have both on and off screen, as it is difficult to pin-point a moment, or a look, or a way of acting that is undeniably Bisexual Coded™️ outside of the sexual spehere.

But that's precisely the point. That is what is so tiring about this conversation. The fact that society's interpretation of bisexuality never moves past a codification, and it's a catch-22. Bisexuality cannot be put in an either/or box. The orientation, and even identity at some points, is fully dependent on context, so it is difficult to grasp by people only attracted to one gender, regardless of context. But because it is contextual and therefore difficult to grasp by society at large, it is often overlooked and misinterpreted, leading to an internalization of negative perceptions and a lack of a third space in the social and mediatic imaginary.

What I am saying is that Challengers had an opportunity to celebrate the bisexuality of Art and Patrick. But instead, it made it a problem. It made it the conflict and called it a day.

And I haven't even mentioned the absolute shit it took on polyamory. Because boy.

It is the same complaint, though. It's about the conflict being based on the miscommunications and unspoken affections of these three people, them clearly being suited for each other, and then throwing in the expectation that the girl HAS to pick one and handling it in the worst possible way. It felt cheap. It felt unintellingent. It felt as "queer" and as "spicy" as that one Saltburn scene was to anyone who has spent more than 5 seconds on Wattpad or AO3: Absolutely mild.

It was baiting at its best for poor polyamory. It was bastardized as a sexy little fantasy the straights and monogamists could indulge in for 2 hours of running time, but now, now, kids. Remember to take your moral of the story with you: Polyamory is Bad, and you can only have The One™️. I mean, there wouldn't have been any toxicity if the conflict had been handled through the lens of normalization of polyamory, and that’s what makes it so frustrating. It would've been funnier, steamier, to have these three come to terms with what they felt and find an arrangement. It would have been more interesting to have Art and Tashi find a way to make ammends with Patrick and reconcile. It would've been wittier if an external force came in between their polyamorous arrangement. Hell, if you wanted to keep your crappy plot, you could've had Patrick fuck Art instead of Tashi as a moment of conflict resolution and that would have sufficed to improve it. But no. Writers in Hollywood have tiny T-Rex hands, and low-hanging fruit is all they're good for.

And look, I get it. I know the movie wasn't supposed to spell it out for you. I know the point was to read between the lines, because this was a tennis movie that wasn't at all about tennis. I know that in the end, there's room for interpretation, to believe that Tashi was hoping they would reconcile and that in the end, they do. I know that. But my point is that the arguments that build the movie's identity as bisexual (and even poly) are blink-and-you-miss-it moments. And on top of that, the qualities that make these characters arguably queer are painted in a negative light.

So, like, yeah. I don’t know who the audience was for this movie. But clearly not the bi's and not the poly's lol.

I saw it with my own polycule, and we couldn't stop raging lol.

[legionofpotatoes]

Hello! I just saw your new Blasto poster and it's v good! I was wondering if you would give a quick rundown of your "process"? I love the style, and I'm trying to get back into digital art, so I think it might benefit me and several others. :-)

Hi there, thanks for waiting! I went ahead and cleared this with Bioware so I could answer your question with some in-depth references from our actual process. So I hope this ends up useful both technically and in terms of approach. And not too much of an overkill!

It's tricky to speak of the process here by starting at style, because the initial pitch was quite varied and it could have really gone anywhere. Ultimately what dictates the most high-level building blocks in something like this is layout and color, and choosing those are essential steps in focusing up the concept and eventually informing the style part as well.

I mention this because that pipeline illustrates a key difference between client work and personal work. I could start with style if this was my passion project, but I had to stay loose to Bioware's pitch and conform to the our iterative process (despite them knowing my work well and even providing very clear north star from my own work as a target).

So, when the idea isn't yours, but you are told to play to your strengths, how do you interpret a pitch to design a mock movie poster for Blasto? My approach: look at the raw pitch and your vision as two ingredients in a soup. And then bust out a number of sketches that each contain different dosages of those ingredients. One will be super close to reference and play to your established work, one will be as literal a translation of the pitch as possible, one will be a loose mix of the two that organically tows that line, etc.

The pitch was for Blasto to have a dirty-harry-style spy movie poster that would feature the infamous tagline without walloping into obscene territory. The reference was my fan poster for Boba Fett. So I came up with these:

Immediately from the reference I understood what they had in mind; the "tentacle gun tornado" variant came first as a safe bet for a target. Then I went ahead and looked at old spy thriller posters and came up with #2; no loose plot details, just tropes and visual flair from that illustrated poster era. You can tell how different the style would end up being if we'd gone down that route. And then I had a bunch of variations on #3, which by-and-large all involved Blasto in action and a larger framing device shrouding a villain character. That was also in-line with my earlier work but communicated that detective story feel stronger.

I tried not to shoehorn the humor here; playing it straight felt funnier. It's a fucking jellyfish there cocking a gun with two tentacles. You can't crank the knob on that any further. And technically speaking, these weren't ultra-polished thumbnails. I don't push fidelity in my work anyway, but since I like to communicate depth, strong silhouettes, and tight composition, I tried to hit those targets with loose grayscale values and call it a day. Thumbnailing is its own goal-oriented task.

The tools I use here are just basic brushes and flats, with some semblance of a sketchy line layer. Again, no technical craft, but hints at what strengths we'll squeeze out of the layout. Which as I mentioned in the beginning is primary building block #1.

So naturally once we chose an option it was time to get to #2; colors. I did a second pass at the sketch, brought everything out into rough lines, enriched the dynamism with more implied details and quickly blocked it in with colors that I then spent a very, very long time alternating into palettes.

Picking a color palette and sticking to it early on is one of my personal unwritten rules and it's a nice feather in the cap when managing client expectations during the concepting phase. I looked at those same old posters, then some contemporaries, then my own reference points, and pulled all sorts of wacky color combos until I whittled them down to six I really thought would work well for the target. I took care to maintain a sense of depth in values, since this was a center-stage character-action focused piece. And yes, I think this is a good place to start being deliberate with that, and not to go all wishy-washy until the broad strokes are locked in. You can always play with accent pops afterwards, but fundamentals are fundamentals and their service to your thumbnails is invaluable.

Of course, if that was just me, I would have a style and even a color target set much much earlier. But exercises like these are still good to do mid-process; challenge your own vision, discover new ideas, maybe even a trick you can migrate over. It also helps you see a roughly rounded version of what the finished thing will look like; and that's always extra gas in the tank. This is why I always evangelize iterative-holistic processes instead of linear ones; it's exciting to see layout and colors working together into a cohesive, unique thumbnail, even if it's a simplistic doodle. It motivates you to finish the thing. By comparison, spending a day hyper-rendering a leg then zooming out and seeing nothing but that leg is, unsurprisingly, deflating.

Anyway, we went with #2, and that basically meant Boba Fett but make it Blasto. And I was just fine with that :D from there, the process becomes simple; it's a sprint to final that involves as many flexible and mutable parts as you can muster. You have to stay nimble and ready to incorporate comments on very fundamental levels, so you use lots of layers, and you make very deliberate choices in order to serve the high-level goals.

Here is where the "style" of it comes into play as I try to wrangle legibility and effective framing out of the thumb. I use depth-softened colors in linework and spend time building up the main characters so they have that organic pop when the eye wanders over them. It was fun gathering reference for all the iconic guns and designing the asari out of scraps of Blasto lore (and don't even get me started on the hoopla I raised about determining the correct amount of hanar tentacles).

Illium, in terms of visual priority, is a backdrop; a forest of texture, so I use very little lines and mostly focus on breaking up the various "plates" to create, again, a sense of depth. It's vector-based shapes all the way here, dotted with lights representing windows and skycars, softened in values near their base, arranged to fit most of the other elements around them. They also create a nice symbolic "fence" that Blasto rises above of, as if the city itself is the corruption that only he is uniquely equipped to fight. This was all semiotic nonsense that came to me in the process, but was still super informed by the original layout.

And then you just add in all the details and ideas without violating those basic rules of color depth and clean composition that were promised to the client by the very first sketch. All those things like planets and stars and fumes end up being glorified framing devices for centering the focus on our heroes, adhering to some internal math of element relation and action lines, and helping guide the viewer to what matters most and not overwhelm them with visual noise. I don't know how exactly to coach this, but references and study help a LOT.

Ultimately it's that exercise in restraint and concerted effort that ends up becoming a "style", and is subsequently super rewarding because the thing then is both effective and representative of your initial pitch. Style is very seldom the starting point; it's the product of tricks and quirks and discipline that you pick up throughout years of doing this. It's boring and obvious, but yes.

Just start and keep drawing to build those tricks up and be holistic in your approach and challenge your instincts and study contemporaries and iterate and iterate and iterate. Trust me, it's so worth it.

You might even get Blasto to tell you he loves your work.

[judeharoldvich]

i just feel like. we could have had guillermo realising he didnt want to be a vampire while he was still in vampiric limbo, or else even directly after turning. or it could have happened at the last possible moment or even a moment too late and all these ways it would have hit just as hard with the right execution but instead we got like. a fanfiction interpretation of how he would react like yes i absolutely believe he'd realise at exactly the wrong moment that vampirism isnt for him i do believe he'd cry about it i don't believe he'd be a little bitch and make nandor kill the guy who stuck his neck out (figuratively and literally) for him (albeit having been paid i guess) because he's too pissy to do it isnt he LITERALLY a van helsing isnt he literally a vampire killer would he not have had an easier time killing derek to honour his own conviction toward not killing humans seeing as derek is a vampire or else wouldnt it have been more impactful, maybe even funnier as well, if he had bitched and moaned about not killing people and then without a second thought fucking shanked the guy who turned him despite their sacred bond because ultimately guillermo values family and as he said being a vampire only isolated him because he had to leave his bio family AND his chosen family behind for a while so killing a vampire he didnt even like that much wouldnt faze him. idk theres just so many ways they couldve gone with it and all of them couldve been justified with guillermos characterisation AND been hilariously funny and tragic at the same time but they opted for the most boring anticlimactic ending and its not even anticlimactic in a funny way. they couldve at least made it funny

[recurring-polynya]

The more I think about the scarf thing the more deranged it gets. Does Renji know - he must be aware it's worth 99 bajillion ghost-yen, but does he know it's a *family heirloom*? Is he aware that he got a genuine passed-down-to-the-eldest-child-lo-unto-these-many-generations Traditional Kuchiki Accessory tossed on his head for unclear reasons? Has Byakuya had to explain its disappearance to family members? Maybe they just don't ask him things anymore. You do you, Byakuya, we don't want to know

(2/2): Having actually read your followup reply, okay, so Renji didn’t actually hang on to it, that does make more sense, but I do think it would be much funnier if he did. Byakuya ordered a knockoff on Ghost Etsy and has been wearing that since, Renji has a slightly-bloodstained million-dollar scarf which he is extremely confused by 

So, speaking of deranged, for starters, please read my absolutely unhinged crackpot theory that Unohana used this opportunity to steal Byakuya’s scarf. (Note: this is anime only: Renji still has it in the manga)

Secondly, I love scarf discourse, absolutely my favorite flavor of Bleach discourse. Let’s look back at that character profile even though I posted it, like 2 days ago, because time marches on and Tumblr is an ephemeral river of garbage:

Now, I have always interpreted this to mean that it’s a style of scarf that is only allowed to be worn by the clan head, but that each clan head has their own (or multiples) custom made by this particular line of weavers. I probably decided this for exactly the reason that you state: it seems unlikely that Byakuya would breezily toss an irreplaceable family artifact onto the gross lump of meat that used to be his adjutant, but it did look really cool, lest we forget. While we’re at it, let’s relive that magical moment:

lol. Also, as you can see, that thing definitely got Renji’s blood on it and not just a little. I’m sure Byakuya felt like he was doing this as a sign of ??respect?? but can you just imagine being Renji, lying on the ground, hoping that maybe at least you bought Ichigo a little time to save Rukia as your lifeblood soaks into the earth and then you feel something flutter over you and you’re like “what the fuck dude why is there a scarf on my head? why?”

I think maybe Byakuya doesn’t care about the scarf and possibly even hates it. The next time he wears it into a fight, he gets blood all over it again when he dramatically slices his own arm tendons-- in other words, he definitely could have done this in a way that did not result in ruining a second gazillion kan scarf.

Why does he even wear it to work??? I would just leave it at home!!! This is even funnier to me because Renji also insists on buying sunglasses that cost half a year’s salary, wearing them to fights, and breaking them immediately. Who let these two men run a squad??? It’s no wonder they are besties professional colleagues with a particularly good rapport!!!

Byakuya actually stops wearing the scarf after this. For a while, I thought he might have given it to Rukia in the TYBW (I bet the clan would love that!), but that theory did not hold up to rigorous analysis.

Anyway, I *adore* the idea that Byakuya wears knock-off scarves to work, but I do not think he could bring himself to do so, I think he just keeps buying them.

[anxiouspandatheatrekid]

✨Ranking of Black Friday songs✨

17- Monsters And Men (Reprise)

Rewatched Black Friday recently while this one is still good, I just feel like McNamara didn't need another song. The ending with the scream overlap is nice though!

16- Wiggly Jingle

Do I need to say anything about this one? I get it's meaning in the context of the show but I shit you not when I first watched Black Friday I was unsure if this one was meant ironic or not. I was a little scared the whole show was going to be like this at first. I don't really like the song itself but the choreography is great!

15- Monsters And Men

Haven't really gotten into this one yet, I realize that it's good but it's just not that catchy to me as of now. The ending is pretty great though.

14- Adore Me

Great acting on Lauren's part. A bit slow for my taste and short but ut was supposed to be longer so I get why they cut it. Also really funny ending. Love the choreography.

13- Califor.M.I.A

Always great when that song starts while your mom is around. Anyways. I like the energy of this one, while the letter part is a little long and I wish the "that's not how cameras work babe" part would have been included on the cast recording, it's still pretty good. Also relatable.

12- Wiggle

I was a little sad that Lauren didn't get any great songs in Black Friday, but I've come to like her songs quite a lot lately. Especially the dance break at the ending of this one is pretty cool. I am not a fan of the stylistic singing choices on Lauren's part if I'm honest but to give her credit the song is pretty much the lowest she has had to sing.

11- Deck The Halls

Really catchy and funny to watch if you've seen way too many Christmas/holiday movies, but I kinda dislike that the entire dialogue was kept on the cast recording. But sidenote, I love the fact that they included this movie so well in the show and also referenced it in NMT. A bop overall and even funnier because of how straight it is played.

10- Made In America

Yes I got into this song not so long ago but Joey is (I know I have said this way too many times on this list) low key terrifying. He did a great job though. Also I skip the Wiggly part because it still feels weird to me. Joey really flexed his wagon on fire muscles here.

9- If I Fail You

I feel like this one is very similar to What Tim Wants, not only because they are sung by the same character and are about the literal same topic, they're also quite similar in melody because the second part is a reprise. Either way, it's a good song (if not a little long). Also considering I love What Tim Wants, to me it gets considerably better when the melody transitions to the second part.

8- What Do You Say

Also a great song. That's it. A little slow but really cute and it has a well timed ending. All the group numbers have a special place in my heart because the cast is so fucking talented. Also this one is very funny too.

7- Our Doors Are Open

Also a little slow for my taste but I love that Corey had a chance to shine here. The more I listen to it the more I appreciate the song.

6- Black Friday

Jesus. There have been many different interpretations of this song, and I still like the overall "I'm going to die, fuck you all" vibe. And while it is about her near death experience and I relate to it for that I think everyone can relate to the hopeless feeling of having to give up before you even had the chance to try something. The song is sad as fuck.

5- Do You Want To Play?

At first I thought this one was boring but the harmonies... Besides the fact that the song deeply terrifies me, I have to say that the part where they suddenly start screaming/laughing (u know the part) is chilling and sounds amazing at the same time.

4- What If Tomorrow Comes

Overall this is a good finale and especially the ending gives me chills every time, but I feel like it repeats itself. Starkid finale songs tend to be very loud and dynamic, but in this case I feel like the seriousness of the show is matched better with a cautious song like this one.

3- Take Me Back

Also listen to this one on repeat. The actors' voices match well and this song has a strong emotional core and yes I have belted this when I was home alone.

2- Feast Or Famine

I mean the hunger games character of this one is just overwhelming. Honestly this song describes the whole show, and it's super fun to listen to.

1- What Tim Wants

I get this is a controversial opinion but this is 100% the best song. I feel like Dylan is great in this one and the relationship between Tim and Tom is delivered perfectly. Usually solos rank low on my lists by default because I like change within the songs and group harmonies and that stuff, which proves how great this song is even more. Love this one, no notes.

Do you agree? Love to chat about Black Friday so feel free to dm/comment!

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

I just watched the Korean and Japanese versions of the Death Note musical and I have Some Thoughts

- both casts are equally good singers but I think I prefer the Japanese cast’s acting by a little bit

L’s Korean actor is much better at conveying his conviction and sense of justice, but his Japanese actor is better with his expressions and mannerisms

the Korean production is the only one that keeps the scene where L assumes that the other investigators are annoyed with him because he’s the only one with sweets and offers to share them. so major points there.

similarly, Light’s Korean actor has his arrogance down pat, and his Japanese actor is better at conveying his frustration and sadism

(like when he’s explaining to Rem how the only way to free Misa is for Rem to die, he’s barely keeping himself from grinning like a nut, it’s awful and great)

Korean Ryuk is funnier though. much better evil laugh.

points to Japanese Ryuk for constantly lying all over the stage though

Japanese Ryuk is noticeably older while Korean Ryuk looks about Light’s age, I’m not sure which interpretation is better

- Ryuk has a whole song entirely dedicated to ROASTING LIGHT. I love it. get his ass.

- hey Soichiro maybe “Become a God unto yourself!” isn’t the best advice to be giving your son. just a suggestion.

- no potato chips to be seen anywhere but hey you cut what you’ve got to cut

- I COMPLETELY forgot that Misa had a tragic backstory that explained why she loves Kira so much. and that she had not one but two shinigami so in love with her they died for it.

- I haven’t watched it since middle school so I forget: was Misa sending Light a message through her new song in the show? either way I liked how it’s done here

- Japanese Light looks so viscerally uncomfortable during Sayu’s song literally singing his praises, it’s so funny

Misa coming in near the end to turn it from a lighthearted (from Sayu’s perspective) sisterly love song into a villain love ballad is really good

- Misa: Just to meet you, I worked myself half to death!

Light: [leaves]

then Rem starts singing a reprise of her song about how love is a cruel dream that will vanish eventually

and in the Japanese version Ryuk laughs at her and starts mockingly singing along with her?! what a diiiiiiick

- L and Light have an entirely serious emotionally charged rivals duet during their tennis match. fucking amazing

the whole time their fangirls are yelling the score from the sidelines

- Rem you poor lesbian

- THE ENDING THOUGH. OH GOD.

it’s been so long that I actually forget how Light killing L went in the manga, but it had to be more dignified than this

like of course I understand they had to shrink things down for time but damn

“At last I can prove that Kira is you” like it’s all but outright said that L is AWARE that his actions are being manipulated by Light and there’s nothing he can do about it? gOD

the bootleg of the Korean production I watched is really dark so I can’t see Light’s face, but I can picture him smirking like an asshole through the whole thing, meanwhile Japanese Light is grinning and growling and practically fucking salivating at the prospect of L’s death

Light putting his face right up to the muzzle of the gun before L is forced to turn it on himself

Korean L half laughing and half crying with the gun to his head. good fucking god. I’m in pain.

Korean Ryuk sounds legitimately disappointed when he realizes he’s back to square one and the only interesting thing left to do is kill Light

Japanese Light straight up trying to shoot Ryuk in the back when he sees him writing his name in the Death Note. points for effort king

Soichiro AND SAYU finding Light’s dead body in the warehouse? WHAT IS SAYU EVEN DOING HERE

- interesting question: is the ensemble singing Kira’s praises throughout the whole show real, or are they all in Light’s head?

- AND THE TICKING CLOCK IN THE BACKGROUND WHEN THE DEATH NOTE’S 40-SECOND TIMER STARTS. INSPIRED. AMAZING.

[mevekagvain]

Chapter 93 - Fancy chair, love it.

- So my theory is that Raizel just never learnt how to write in Lukedonian either.

- Tbh the janitor is suspicious. Like how hard was he googling M-21?

Chapter 94 - SUYIIIIIIIIIIII

- Ah geez the first of the racistly depicted characters.

Chapter 96 - Suyi getting mad at the kids for complaining about Hansu is so funny like when she first appears you think she's perhaps a stuck up celebrity or a pushover but it turns out she's just a really sweet friend.

- Suyi being stunned by Rai's looks but not falling for him (same with Yuna) is one of the things I always liked about Noblesse. Like sure in the first meeting they get blushy but I'll just jot that down to the inherent beauty of nobles since I can't relate to it at all.

Chapter 97 - Frankenstein's house always being stocked with so much food because the kids just started coming over daily is hilarious. Even funnier since Frankenstein obviously thinks it's overkill but is the one stocking up anyway.

Chapter 98 - Regis and Seira 🥺 Seira's og outfit was the best one she had like it only goes downhill from here folks.

Chapter 99 - It would have been so funny if Frankenstein went "they must be cosplayers" instead of realising the two were nobles.

- Regis taking all the initiative shows how it's his roadtrip coming of age journey which is pretty clever. Also Seira's just like that but still.

- Shinwoo stop exercising in class bro. Do not flex on the rest of us this is so rude 😭😭😭

- Regis confidently saying he's a noble in class to humans he doesn't plan on mind controlling... Baby boy why are you so dumb? How is this hiding your identity??? And Seira just lets him,,, good for her.

Chapter 100 - Ah yes their elegance boner at seeing Raizel... nobles are so fucking weird.

- M-21 thinking he won't get any information because of his time at the Union and thus being surprised at how open Frankenstein is is actually really sweet. Like yeah I still think Frankenstein is an unethical and questionable person but he is kind to most humans (werewolves and nobles can go fuck themselves I guess lmao).

Chapter 101 - The second hand embarrassment I felt when M-21 called the two noblesse... how do I even consume content?

- Yeah 100% most union members don't know the difference between nobles and vampires. I bet they'd classify jiangshi as either mutants or werewolves. Or to be more specific, that would be the classification given to low leveled members. On one hand I think it's dumb that the Union gives members twisted information because how would they even use it? But on the other hand it makes sense since it prevents said members from seeking nobles for help. After all, if they believe even the 'noblesse' are vampires that drink blood, than obviously they won't see them as possible escape routes.

- 'Noblesse only applies to one person'. Yeah because Rai's brother is fucking dead. And so is whoever was his predecessor/parent.

Chapter 102 - Those bullies got backup so fucking fast like Shinwoo literally just asked Regis and Seira if they were okay then boom! They're back.

Chapter 103- Regis going ??? essentially when Shinwoo tells him to take care of Seira is so funny like yes ofc he's confused she's literally a clan leader + noble females aren't physically weaker + noble women work out just like the men.

- Rude, Regis. You can't just ask someone why they're mingling among humans. You're doing that too. Who doesn't mingle among humans smh. Even cats and pigeons mingle with us.

Chapter 105 - Love how everyone else in the household is so sick of ramyeon like Raizel stop please you're being selfish.

Chapter 106 - Frankenstein is the definition of the 'right in front of my salad?' meme at Regis and M-21 arguing at the dinner table. Then there's Seira and Raizel just waiting for the noodles to get soggy so he can't even eat. Wish Urokai could see him getting tortured like this.

- The soldier rejecting backup because he knows the enemy is the Union hurts my heart. Wanting to prevent casualties... iwi

Chapter 107 - Shark how tf do you not know about South Korea? That's one of the asian countries people actually know about. I guess maybe it's because this is from around a decade back? K-pop is more recent and made the country more visible I guess.

- Ah yes Takeo. Forever known as "the first time I read Noblesse and he appeared I thought he was Marie's sister since they had the same hairstyle". Like I thought that before even learning about the Aris Taivra fiasco. My power 😔

- Oh don't worry M-21, Frankenstein stopped experimenting on people 830 years ago. You know, as one does.

Chapter 108 - Shark has like no general knowledge. Geography? History? Tf is that I guess.

- Tao saying they're the worst possible people for the job is so funny like yeah he's right. "All we do is massacre people in warzones why are we in Seoul?"

- The rest of the squad complain or are confused about the peace meanwhile Takeo is vibing. He's the normal guy TM of the group.

- Ah yes noble lore. If you take canon at face value than the fact that nobles were around when humans first emerged and there being about 2-3 clan leaders before the current generation means you can estimate their lifespan. Ofc it differs wildly depending on how you interpret the 'first humans' part. I'll assume there were 3 generations before the current generation (mvp lord being the third generation) and won't be adding the current generation since a 0.5-2k years is kinda meaningless. I'll also be assuming that mvp lord entered eternal sleep at around the same age as his predecessors and that he would have died soon from old age anyway (since canonically they do have limited lifespans). If we assume it's just the first human ancestors (7 million years ago) than the average pureblood lifespan is 2.33 million years. If we assume it's when homo sapiens started to emerge (300k years ago) than it's 100k years. If it's about modern humans (130k years ago) than it's 43.3k years. Regardless I'll ignore it since my hcs are that nobles are effectively immortal unless killed and that the 2-3 clan leaders is a misconception due to a mix of Gechutel just straight up lying, because there are clans that have had fewer clan leaders, because I have nobles settling on Lukedonia only 30k years ago, and because Gechutel is factoring in his own age of 10.2k so it's more like 'There have been 2-3 Ru clan leaders before the Ru clan leader 10k years ago since after we settled in Lukedonia'. There's also the possibility that nobles didn't have lords or clan leaders until a few thousand years ago in canon but the species has existed for much longer.

- 'Nobles are individualistic... They don't despise humans but don't love them either.' Humans w/ ants. Now if the ants were capable of speaking with us it'd be exactly the same situation.

Chapter 109 - "What were they researching here?" Since when does the Union research anything aside from human modifications Kranz? Why do you even need to ask? More seriously this means that the Union doesn't actually only do human experimentation and weapons lmao. The other shit just isn't relevant I guess. It's a shame, I'd have loved to see how a lab focused on like, fixing up polluted waters, would be fit into the story.

- The fact that Tao beat Jake up is never mentioned enough. Also confirms that Jake was lying out of his ass about being the strongest.

- Marie being the weakest assassination squad member is interesting like I know why Crombel doesn't need bodyguards as the reader but you'd think the Union would be suspicious of him not having a stronger bodyguard. Also I still can't believe the Union doesn't bother learning who the members are aside from the ones Crombel tells them about like. Bro???

- Shark calling Takeo uptight is hilarious because the guy literally just shot the falling ceiling light which is the opposite of uptight. Either he was preventing them from getting hurt/being caught or he wanted that to happen considering the fact that he shot it and it shattered. And then he just goes back to leaning against the wall. Takeo please 🤣

Chapter 110 - And Shinwoo's still staying over at Ikhans place. Wonder when he's gonna move back. I really love their dynamic like yeah I beg my sister to get me food all the time too. Also love the apron and skeleton hoodie.

- Shinwoo went through the five stages of grief pretty quick huh? Like yeah it's his own misunderstanding that Ikhan is dating someone but still. Homophobia is annoying as always though.

Chapter 111 - Suyi paying for their food is so sweet of her and also I relate so much like yeah mood that's me and no I don't want to be paid back.

- Takeo,,, the fact that he just hands his wallet over because he doesn't like violence and doesn't want to beat them up,,, my heart. Otoh... how did he even get cornered in an dark shady alleyway lmao.

- Aris managing to make herself look like a teenager as Taivra is interesting since Takeo says he wants her to be able to go to school like Yuna and Shinwoo when he's treating them. I guess she looks younger without makeup.

- Takeo just straight up pointing his gun at Shark in public because he mentioned Taivra... anger issues much? I understand why but taking your gun out is an overreaction.

[literaphobe]

season 2 of she-ra rated by catradora content

the frozen forest: “aw, cute, you can turn your sword into stuff.” very interesting how adora has to literally train not by fighting any real soldiers in the horde just... catra. light hope scanned her brain and knew she wouldn’t bother to run after anyone else :/ which. is true. call her out!! she fights bots too but she has more or less no issues with them even though she’s no expert with turning her sword into stuff yet, but then catra comes out, and suddenly adora can’t even block a single punch because catra laughed at her :( AND suddenly her sword can’t turn into anything but a cup. why adora? are you thirsty? it’s even funnier because none of this is real, and adora KNOWS that none of this is real, but she’s still Affected when fake catra says her seductive “hey adora” and she decides oh i know! i’ll turn my sword into a d*ldo with holes! oh wait never mind, is that a flute? damn it now she wants to Serenade catra. that’s even gayer than wanting to have sex with her. “did you mean to do that? because if you did it’s a terrible weapon.” “is not! >:(“ adora’s comebacks are like. kindergarten quality shit. i would make fun of catra’s insult too but in her defense that’s not actually catra. so adora tries to hit fake catra with her musical instrument and it doesn’t really work so she tackles fake catra and pins her to the ground. and looks,,, low key aroused as she does it okay adora.... she’s not real please remember that.... ur already a furry please don’t also be a bot fucker “what are you waiting for? you gonna play me a song on that thing?” yes she WAS catra! that’s what i’ve been SAYING don’t be mean to your girlfriend when she’s trying to serenade you :( adora gets angry after this latest act of oppression so she raises her hand, about to hit fake catra, but she stops right before the weapon can make contact, and her face softens. “i knew you couldn’t do it.” fake catra fades and the audience finds out something adora already knew. none of this was real, and even if she had hit fake catra and killed her, real catra would be fine. And Yet,,,,, big fucking sigh bros. haha y’all ever so hung up on a chick that you can’t even kill a fake simulation of her? even though she’s your enemy? lmaoooooo anyway the training simulation ends and adora is so depressed she transforms out of her she-ra form and asks “did you have to make her so mean? :(“ even tho light hope is about to come out and yell gay slurs at her. light hope shows up and is very confused. is catra... not mean? was my catra ooc miss adora? :/ did this catra hit different? too hostile? not like what ur used to? :/ go to hell adora if you made catra into a sim and picked her defining trait it WOULD be MEAN god everyone’s a critic. and then adora is like ok ur right :( catra is mean.... but have you considered making your simulation’s fake catra one that will hold me gently in her arms? have you considered that maybe i don’t want to fight her and that i want to kiss her instead? god damn it light hope you bitch. you fucking homophobe.

light hope is like okay cool. this latest performance was ur worst one btw and adora is like why do you THINK and is like i wanna be the very best :( like no one ever was :( and protecc etheria :( “but catra, she’s just in my head” ;) oh yeah i bet she is adora JFJSJDJSJD “when you grow up with someone, they know how to push your buttons :(” that’s very true adora. but you also grew up with many people such as lonnie, rogelio, and kyle. and you don’t seem to give a shit about them :/ so i guess “grow up with someone” really means “be in love” huh. i love you but do NOT lie to me ever again. after this, we see the real catra :’) she’s back at the horde training kyle, lonnie, and rogelio. “she-ra is too strong to defeat with force alone. but she’s slow and easily manipulated.” yeah maybe for you! maybe she slows down when she fights you because ur pretty and ur voice is sexy! way to flex ur privilege :( not everyone can manipulate she-ra because she’s not in love with all of them ok :( just u :( later on, we’re back at the war meeting in bright moon. bow says “we’re defeating the bots, but more keep coming. while we’re using our resources to hold our borders, the horde hasn’t had to deploy a single soldier.” hey! that’s a perfectly normal statement right! one that does not mention any specific person. there should be no reason for anyone to respond to this by bringing up any individual. guess what adora says. guess what she fucking says. i’m so fucking done oh my god. “typical catra >:(“ did... did bow MENTION catfkakdjsjdjsjs????? i’m fucking WHEEZING. adora. baby. could u. like. chill out? :/ re catra? for like one second? no? okay guess i’ll have to live with it. adora is so hung up over the “hey adora ;)” she heard from fake catra during training that she has to repay the favor when she fights entrapta’s upgraded bots. adora looks into the camera of one of the bots and just. she just KNOWS catra is watching and she’s correct. and she’s like “hey catra ;)” before punching the camera and cutting the live stream. catra’s response isn’t to immediately ditch the horde and go kiss adora (booooooo) but to. try and explode she-ra using one of the other bots. okay. i guess we all cope with arousal in different ways :/ when the bot explodes and adora realizes her attempt at seduction did not work out the way she intended (press f to pay respects), she gets all “>:( catra” which is very cute and iconic of her. and it’s apparently her way of coping with the situation so i’ll just let her be! 9/10

ties that bind: fuck you swift wind. what the FUCK. i can’t believe adora had to go on some stupid quest with the horse all because she would be fiFTy sEVeN pERcenT mOrE eFFeCtivE with him. who gives a shit. catra getting kidnapped and tied up is clearly the superior plot here and adora wasn’t there for it?? which, i know is the whole point, but also, why did they have to put her with the horse. would’ve rather seen adora with literally any of the princesses instead. haha jk. but also, am i? it is important that adora gets over her hatred of swift wind and bonds with him. but also, is it? sigh, let’s get on with the show. bow and glimmer set out to go bring back entrapta. “let’s go get adora!” bow baby. u r so woke. i love that attitude. yes y’all should’ve absolutely brought adora along. no she was not doing anything important. “adora’s training!!!!” glimmer baby i love u but why :( why would u do this :( anyway, bow and glimmer get tricked into thinking the horde is torturing entrapta so they (accidentally) kidnap catra. bow is an absolute sweetheart who just. is sweet to everyone so he tries bonding w catra and is like “come on, i bet even the horde has friends. what about adora? :3 you two grew up together. what was she like as a kid? :3” because adora is bow’s best friend and he wants to know more about her <3 best boy <3 and catra just hisses at him because if she spoke she would probably say. adora was everything to me. adora made me laugh, she played with me, she took care of me, she protected me even when everyone else looked the other way. just seeing her would put a smile on my face. she held my hand. she hugged me. she was my shoulder to cry on. adora was the only good thing in my life at the horde. i have been in love with her my entire life. and now she’s she-ra. anyway. catra decides to annoy glimmer into letting her go, and glimmer gets so frustrated that she says “how did adora take years of this? she didn’t run away from the horde. she ran away from YOU” which. is about the most horrifying thing you could say to catra since she like. really believes that. and adora’s not even there to defend herself :( and say shit like. Well It Helped That I Was In Love With Catra And That Every Moment We Spent Together Was Filled With Laughter And Joy Because No One Else Has Ever Made Me This Happy Even When We Were Stuck Together In The Worst Place On Etheria—stuff like that u know? :/ anyway catra is like :’( —> >:’( “adora’s gonna dump u one day too glimmer!!” + “you and adora are perfect for each other, i’ll give you that. earnest, naive, ridiculously easy to manipulate. it’s adorable!” wow catra. u think…… adora…. is…. adorable? wow…. :’) djdjdjdjdjdj but yeah. she really said my gf is cute! my gf is earnest! and that’s pretty much it on the catradora front. notice how i didn’t say a word about the horse plot. yeah. :) i mean i physically couldn’t because this is a catradora based evaluation post. but ya. u get the point. 7/10

signals: huh! nothing! except when glimmer says “catra was right!” and adora’s face is like... u kno. u know how she gets when catra is suddenly brought up. 2/10 but the whole ghosts thing is cute. adora believing and wholeheartedly being scared of ghosts makes me think... catradora buzzfeed unsolved AU

roll with it: the absolute RIGHTS of this episode. adora planning obsessively because “you’re not taking the biggest variable into account :( catra </3 she’s been behind every horde plan, she led the attack on bright moon, she’s devious, she’s very cute—“ and everyone is like omg adora calm down,,,, okay fine we’ll fantasize about ur gf. so everyone is all: this is my catra headcanon <3 glimmer is like. catra is a sexy femme fatale. bow is like. catra and i would make so many sick fucking puns. and adora is like :( y’all are all headcanoning catra WRONG :( she’s sexy and funny and cute the Way She Is :( why mess with the original recipe? :( except she’s wrong because season 4 and 5 will exist one day. but she is not wrong because season 1-3 catra is also very good. adora u do u. have fun laughing at everyone’s interpretations of ur gf. go ahead and brag about how uve been in love w her ur entire life. adora is like. all ur plans suck. obviously catra would block or duck or jump up really high or look really cute or smile and dazzle u with her charms. how DARE you underestimate my enemy gf. and then everyone devolves into their cool plans again and adora is like CATRA CATRA CATRA >:( so everyone is like ok fine we are going 2 bully her. and we get this epic scene where they do impressions of catra, but it is visualized like: different versions of catra keep flanking adora, and she in that scene is clearly very seriously considering having a fourway with femme fatale catra, prom catra, and punny og catra. but in like uh.... a cool platonic way. anyway, everyone is like. hey adora. we know ur paranoid and obsessed with ur gf. but can we just attack the horde now? could you chill the fuck out? and adora is like. u wanna know the worst that could happen? fine. “i’m the heaviest hitter, so catra will separate me right away. trap me, take my sword, do Something so i’m helpless when she turns on you. she knows Everything about me, EXACTLY what i’ll do, EXACTLY how to take me out. they’ll overwhelm frosta and mermista with bots, they’ll fire on perfuma, and use her to draw bow out into the open, pinning him between the bots and the horde soldiers. glimmer will teleport in to save him, but she won’t have enough magic left to get out, trapping them both. catra will make me watch all of it before she Finishes Me Off.” which..... weirdly kinky, but okay, and also weirdly sweet if u think about it? like catra grew up thinking she was never as good as adora but adora even with her new she-ra powers now is convinced that catra is so good that she can predict and counter and overpower anything adora throws at her, even with her super-powered friends and allies <3 and she...... lets it paralyze her with fear and blames herself for anything that could possibly go wrong which is really sad and not good :( but stuff can be two things! and. we’re kind of trying to be gay here so let’s continue on the gay train <3 the princess alliance realizes that adora has major issues and give her love and support so adora is like oh nice!!! time to run in without a plan and stay true to my brute strength colors <3 and she’s so excited to see her gf..... only to find out, her gf isn’t there?????? the fuck???? she spent hours planning their fight date only to get stood the fuck up??????? she’s so distraught over it as she fights scorpia she goes through the five stages of grief. she’s like... catra’s really not here?? and she left you in charge???? and babe i get that ur jealous and upset that ur gf didn’t show up but hey :( don’t hate crime scorpia like that :( 8/10

white out: adora is upset that she hasn’t seen her enemy gf in a while so when the squad finds out that the horde is doing stuff in the north(?) adora decides that they must immediately go there in case the horde (catra) is doing stuff that she must stop the horde (catra) from doing immediately. and it works! they bump into the super pal trio! but before that, we see entrapta show catra the red disk that makes she-ra go RAGE and adora go floop. it’s basically a Make Adora Delirious/Drunk Crystal <3 catra gets an evil hate boner when she hears that the disk “takes away she-ra’s powers” and is like damn entrapta ;) why didn’t you tell me about that sooner ;) later on, the best friend squad bumps into the super pal trio! adora sees catra and is like. hey remember last episode? what the fuck was that babe. step the FUCK up. run away with me? <3 but here’s a more literal break down of what really happened: catra is threatening entrapta as she... tends to do when she’s interrupted by adora who says “catra! >:(“ completely ignoring that there are other people there who she should also greet. i mean it’s just manners u know? “it’s been a while.” is not an excuse. u haven’t seen entrapta either for an even longer time. and u had nothing to say to her? i get that ur gay and in love but have some respect okay :( catra is happy and decides it’s time to seduce her. we get yet another “heyyy adora ;)” for the books. adora starts to ignore everyone present again and banters pettily with catra about how catra lost the battle of bright moon, because you know :( she hasn’t seen her gf in a while :( and she didn’t get to rub things like that in her face :( and catra is like haha lmaooooo loserrrrr and it really pisses adora off so she’s like okay down to business then! go away >:( and catra’s like oh u want me to go away? make me ;) and so they literally. run away from everyone else. i’m not making this shit up they literally said those things and just ditched the group. and both groups, who have not said a fucking word to each other since this confrontation began because the lesbians are so fucking loud and clearly everything they discuss is personal and not an invitation for group convo, they’re all left there to be like..... i guess we should fight each other now? and scorpia is like UGHHH goddamn it. and u really feel for her u know? :/ u try and u try to ask a girl out and she’s so stupid she doesn’t know ur asking her out on a date, but her stupid ex walks in and all she has to do is run and catra runs in front of her ready to go on a date. what the fuck. anyway, catra and adora are also fighting. adora’s better at transforming her sword into stuff now so she summons a rope (ok kinkster) to grab catra’s leg and pull her towards her and she threatens catra with her sword, saying “don’t move.” catra’s response? “oh, please. you’d never have the guts.” and god damn it catra it’s not that she doesn’t have the guts! :( it’s that she loves you and doesn’t want to hurt you! and also she’s not into necrophilia! catra continues with “you know, as much as i love our fights, it’s way too cold for this.” i hate them so fucking much. they really do get off on this shit!!! i hate them but also mood!!!! stop flirting with each other ur both so goddamn annoying omg. “why don’t we try something new? ;)” yeah. something new like hmm what if y’all kissed? haha, just a suggestion! but no, catra decides to use the red crystal thingy :( haha SIKE i’m not :( at all i’m very much :) because we’ve been WAITING for drunk adora. i love that delirious baby. what a fucking cutie. but because she-ra’s sword is the one who gets poisoned, she-ra goes all angry and evil and catra is like that’s hot! but it’s not what i signed up for but also... oh lmao she’s fighting her friends? nice. this is hot again. complacently, catra goes “this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened!” causing evil!she-ra to realize she exists and trying to kill catra for real, and catra is like NEVER MIND I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS and she’s like “adora wait :(“ which is like. babe no :( babe u were supposed to turn evil in a sexy way :( we could be sexy and evil together baby :( babe :( thankfully for catra adora’s not the only one who has a crush on her so scorpia tackles she-ra, separating her from her sword, and she goes back to adora. catra gets the sword, laughs, and says “that went so much better than i could’ve ever hoped.” did it?????? ur so stupid ur gf was about to murder u and u were ready to simp for ur life. then she goes “looks like you’re mine now, adora. >;)” and like. lifts adora’s face up by the chin with the tail end of the sword. and. let me just take a deep breath here. uh. What The Fuck Is That. HELLO?????? why is that. okay. HHHHHH. why!!!! good god!!!!! i hate sexual tension. anyway, catra tells scorpia to carry adora inside bc adora’s not wearing enough layers and she doesn’t want her gf to get cold :( jk but uh, they get adora inside, and catra is once again obsessed with her. she sits right next to her and pines like “always so perfect.... look at you now.... (i HATE how sexual this sounds) you’re coming back to the horde under my command.....” like. COME ON. why is she like this. ur allowed to be evil but i draw the LINE at u flirting with adora she’s not even AWAKE. and scorpia is like. could u. could u not be obsessed w adora for one second? it’s kinda harshing my vibe :/ and catra is like hehe she ra go >:( haha funney. we can turn the rebellion’s own hero against them. That’s Good™ i wonder which of your friends i’ll have you annihilate first... and then she giggles to herself and it’s so cute but babe. once again. stop flirting with adora while she’s out cold she won’t be able to flirt back :( and then the most. upsetting part of the ep happens. catra LEAVES and makes scorpia watch over adora before adora even wakes up so we don’t get! to see! catra with drunk/delirious adora!!!!!! what the FUCK. what is the POINT. i am DISTRAUGHT. hello?????? why were we robbed. whatever. it’s still good but come on not even one scene? :( scorpia is annoyed as she should be and is like UGH just wanted to be alone with catra but nooooo im stuck babysitting her “”””””ex-best friend””””””” which we all know is code for just. ex. LMAO fkdkdkdk like this isn’t even reaching we BEEN knew. anyway adora is being. so cute. so goddamn cute i am in love. adora barely even remembers her name but when scorpia is like hm what’s the passcode to the lab? adora goes BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP and puts in catra’s super long fave number. that is so fucking cute that she knows and remembers that and thinks that catra would use it even tho she’s not even. in the right state of mind. and scorpia gets jealous obviously like ohhhh u know catra’s favorite number and i don’t! u grew up with catra and she’s been in love with you her whole life and i don’t have that! fuck u adora. even when u and catra are fighting each other tryna kill each other u can tell there’s a real bond there :( and like scorpia I’m so sorry baby I know :( they’re in love and it’s very annoying :( and i know adora is very annoying but have you also considered that she is very cute? that she is so lovely? and yeah that’s why catra is in love with her and shit :( seahawk and scorpia fight over adora and adora is like. hehe. catra mean <3 she’s so mean <3 and so hot and cute and sexy <3 omg im gonna marry her hehehehe <3 both sides reconvene to fight the bug, and adora finds glimmer vaguely familiar but doesn’t recognize who she is exactly. but she’ll remember catra’s long ass fave number. ok whore. catra, who’s also stupid, sees adora and is like guess I’ll drop all other priorities to get her! and tells scorpia to find the sword because she’s going after adora again. she’s so determined to keep adora that she.... catches a moving arrow. and throws it away. fjdjdjdjddj DAMN ok sheer gay determination is THAT strong huh. but it’s also sad because catra’s so busy fighting she doesn’t get to see adora being super cute :( it’s fucking wasted and not FAIR. catra thinks it’s funny that anyone would expect her to willingly give the disk up, because she’s got control of adora now, and control of adora means that adora won’t leave her.... which is not healthy :( but also HHHHHH but also it’s okay because their relationship gets healthy in the future and that’s very sexy of them <3 the disk is broken by scorpia in the end, and as adora regains.... conscious???ness????? idk??? her sense of reality??? sobers up???? anyway she and catra exchange this one last very heavy look, right before catra is grabbed by scorpia 9/10, except i want to take away so many points because of the wasted potential, but also i wanna add back so many points because of “looks like you’re mine now, adora ;)”

light spinner: ewwww shadow weaver ewwwww hordak i’m so sorry catra baby so sorry u had to interact with them instead of adora :( 0/10 </3

reunion: I AM SO SORRY. I AM SO FUCKING SORRY. THIS EP IS SO GOOD. BUT. I CANNOT BELIEVE I HAVE TO SAY THIS. THIS IS ONLY BECAUSE THIS IS A CATRADORA EVALUATION OK. therefore the rating is.... is..... :( 0/10 :( i know i am distraught too. :( despite what a masterpiece it was... there was no catradora :(

[skarchomp]

How much of the mcu was good and how much of it was us getting caught up in the excitement of seeing comic crossovers in the big screen

i was actually just thinking about this 

iron man: i liked it when i was 14 but, to be fair, i was 14

incredible hulk: christ alive how come nobody can make a movie about the hulk, a nerd who turns into the tazmanian devil, even a little entertaining

iron man 2: imagine watching iron man without the benefit of being 14 and knowing what bad movies are and you have iron man 2

thor: tom hiddleston was the first actor to give some kind of actual performance in the mcu which is great and i absolutely hate him for it

captain america the first avenger: this one is actually a fun little pulp action film that i think would work best as a standalone thing

avengers: we really went and let joss whedon get away with calling himself a feminist huh

iron man 3: i thought it was pretty fun but in hindsight every movie after it trying to ignore it and do a different more boring tone really was the first sign of disney tightening its grip on the mcu

thor 2: did you know christopher eccelston was in this movie? i wouldnt blame you if you didnt

captain america the winter soldier: okay yeah this is probably one of the most overhyped films ever made but id being lying if i said i wasnt on board too when it came out. there's a scene where captain america beats up a plane.

guardians of the galaxy: i would love this movie if it starred someone other than chris pratt

age of ultron: WE REALLY WENT AND LET JOSS WHEDON GET AWAY WITH CALLING HIMSELF A FEMINIST HUH

ant-man: nothing amazing, but i appreciated a more comedic and visually interesting superhero film that was fairly small-stakes and just about a guy and not a cop

captain america civil war: well it's sure the best avengers movie

dr strange: who the fuck saw dr strange

guardians of the galaxy vol 2: you know how "the chain" is a really well-made, emotional, captivating song made by talented people, but "hooked on a feeling" is funnier? anyway,

spider-man homecoming: terrible interpretation of spider-man but i was willing to give them a chance, like maybe they just had to work out the kinks in the first movie and the second one would be better

thor ragnarok: breath of fresh air, easily one of the best marvel movies and arguably one of the best superhero movies ever made

black panther: it was nice to have an mcu movie that wanted to have an actual message, it's just a shame it feels like the disney family-friendly wide audience appeal version

avengers infinity war: if a superhero movie is gonna be bad, it should at least have the decency to be funny and boy oh boy i cant tell you how much i laughed at this flick, i mean i literally can't

ant-man and the wasp: super underrated, basically took all the good parts of the first movie and played them up more, these guys are so fucking small lmao

captain marvel: people had to make up discourse about this film because there's nothing actually interesting about it

avengers endgame: when i saw this a dude in the theater laughed out loud when it cut to iron man in the hospital and that guy is all i care about

spider-man far from home: the second one was not better

[ssnakey-b]

FF8 English-French translarison, part 24: Return of the Translarison!

Holy shit, have I seriously not posted a new part since February?! Well, it’s time to get back to business. Since it’s been a while, in case you forgot, last time, the team was getting ready to face Edea for the second and last time. Let’s get to it.

We start with another example of Fujin telling us a bit more than in English as instead of just “FATIGUED!”, she says “I can’t take it any more!”.

Meanwhile, instead of “Let’s just go. ...Let’s get it over with, ya know?”, Raijin says “Come on, let’s keep going! We gotta end this!”

To this, English Fujin rplies “REQUEST” (which I’m still not sure what she means by that since she doesn’t actually request anything) while her French counterpart says “I’ve had it!”. A little dialogue follows.

English:

Raijin: ...We’re leavin’ Seifer up to you now, ya know? We don’t know what’s going on anymore, ya know? ...We just want the old Seifer back, ya know?”

Squall: (Seifer... He probably thinks he can’t go back now.) All right.

French:

Raijin: Seifer, we’ve had enough... this isn’t fun for us. We don’t know what’s going on! You weren’t like that before...

Squall: (Seifer won’t give up. No, not now...) I see...

I’ll give the English text that it’s a nice bit of characterization that Raijin is basically asking Squall to save Seifer from himself, or at least stop him from going even further down the deep end than he already has but man, do these annoying catchphrases and gimmick destroy any atmosphere for me. I really don’t understand why English-language translators are so obsessed with them (and if they were in the original Japanese, well, not everything needs to be translated directly).

Seriously, professional translators, you gotta understand that you don’t need to commit to a running gag every goddamn time to the detriment of everything else. Even if you don’t think it takes you out of the story, running gags get really old really quick.

Also, we once again get a hint that Seifer used to be better, which would have been nice to actually see in the game rather than constantly be assured that it used to be the case because again, we see more genuine chemistry between the Jin Team & Squall than between him and Seifer.

Anyway, with that rant over, let’s continue. This guy, who gives you the first key card, says mostly the same thing in both versions, but I wanted to bring it up because of an UNFORGIVABLE mistake in the French version. That’s right, despite the sentence being pluralized, they used the pronoun “Il” without an S, which is the singular form!! I really hope whomever wrote that atone by cutting off their pinky at the first knuckle.

On a more serious level, there is also an interesting little bit in the English version where he mentions that most students were kicked out, which is absent in the French version. And I mean, I guess it doesn’t need to be stated explicitly, but I think it’s nice to have it confirmed that Galbadia Garden was completely recycled into a military base, as it adds to the tragedy that the student basically lost their home IMO. Although I guess at least it means they’re not being held hostages.

And now it’s time to finally meet these hockey-playing monsters we’ve been told about so long ago. I just love that the devs actually made those, and that they decided that their reaction to a massive battles would be to take the opportunity to get involved in the fight for no real reason.

And yes, as you may have noticed the Slappers are called Jason in the French version of the game, because why not throw in a Friday the 13th reference for good measure? And if you remember (in which case, congrats on the good memory considering how long ago that was), this ties into another reference that’s been invented by the French version, where they explained that these guys psych themselves up for a match by watching horror movies such as Friday the 13th. Just amazing!

But wait! That’s not all! Because if you scan them, the French version also explicitly mentions that the Jasons are, in fact, students at Galbadia Garden. I mean, you could gather that information in the English version as well, but to have it explicitly stated here just makes it that much funnier to me. Just imagine having to take classes with these things next to you. Do they keep the masks on? What do they look under there? Please, Square-Enix, cancel the remaster and put your resources towards giving us a spin-off expanding on this lore. THIS is what the world needs!

Sadly, we must leave the Jasons, but we do get to meet Cerberus! The original dog from Hell!

Massive difference in tone between the versions when it comes to Cerberus, or Cerbères in French (the last E is silent, as is the S). In English, he’s very blunt, talking less like an immortal demonic being and more like a pro wrestling Heel, yeeling in all caps “PRETTY CONFIDENT. LET’S SEE HOW YOU DO. SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!” which by the way, really makes me wish he went “I LIKE WHAT YOU GOT” upon being defeated.

In French, he is more eloquent and collected, saying “What arrogance! Mere mortals! Show me what you’re capable of!”. And while his actual line upon defeat is “NOT BAD...MORTALS” in English, in French, he simply says “Interesting”.

One last detail about this fight I’d like to mention. After Irvine mentions he doesn’t know that Guardian Force, French Squall simply says “Let’s take it!” but I like the English version a lot more here, as Squall goes “Ahh... let’s just take it.”

Yeah, sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. And I think that says a lot as to where Squall is mentally at this point. Just done. Fuck it. I mean, he just fought a team of horror-inspired hockey monsters, there’s no point in questioning anything any more.

Much to my dismay, it’s time to meet up with Seifer again. The dialogue stays mostly consistent across both versions, with the one notable detail being that in the English version, when addressing Linoa, he says “remember a year ago we...” whereas in French, he says “and yet, a year ago...” so the English version hints at a slightly deeper, perhaps more reciprocal relationship.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the only acknowledgement Seifer gives of any previous relationship between the two in either version, and it’s in an optional bit of dialogue that only appears if Linoa is in the party at this point. This is why I am not buying this supposed love triangle for a second. Much like every part of the supposed rivalry between Seifer and Squall, it barely exists, what little is there is completely superficial and Seifer is blatantly outmatched right form the get go.

And look, I’m not here to tell you you’re right of wrong in your headcanons or fanfics or whatever, I really don’t care. However, it always annoys me when people go on and on about how deep and meaningful this love triangle when it’s really not. In fact, it barely is at all. So again, I’m not giving people shit if they want to make it a thing, but you gotta keep in mind that whatever story you give them is entirely your creation. Because when it comes to what’s actually shown in the game, well, it’s almost nothing, which makes me wonder why it’s even there to begin with. The extent of their story is: Linoa thought Seifer was hot, Seifer might have thought the same about her, maybe?

Anyway, second rant over, there’s a small difference in the dialogue with Irvine. In English, Seifer says “Hey, you’re a Galbadian student, get over here.” to which irvine replies “I’m happy right here, thank you.”

In french, Seifer says “Hey, the Galbadian, you’re coming back home?” and he answers with “I like my new country better” which I don’t think is actually quite what’s going on but I will admit is an interesting take on this scene.

Again, things are pretty similar in the dialogue between Squall and Seifer leading up to the battle, with Squall saying Seifer is just another monster in both versions, although Seifer’s last line before the fight is different... and very stupid either way. In English, he says “You guys are the monsters” and in French he says “I think of myself as a Boss, yeah”.

Well I’m glad both lines are equally cringeworthy, with English Seifer cribbing his from a 12 year old trying to sound deep and French Seifer just coming across like the kind of douche that The Lonely Island likes to parody. Also, I think the French version may have attempted to be cute. Get it? Because he’s a boss battle! HA HA no.

In the auditorium, we have a slight difference in Edea’s opening line. In English, she refers to Squall as “the legendary SeeD destined to face me”. In French, she calls him “the famous Seed whose coming is announced by all”. It seems a bit weird to me as I’m not getting the impression that Squall is all that famous in-universe so it would be weird that “all” would announce his arrival.

So I think the English version works a little bit better as it gives the impression she knows that due to her insight into future events. Then again, you could argue that French Ultimecia is talking about her original timeline, where perhaps Squall was leading the charge against her and he had become some kind of hero to the people of that time, and that she is trying to stop him before he can become that hero. After all, for someone like Ultimecia, it would make sense to view the various timelines as one and the same.

So we fight, I grab Alexander (known in French as Alexandre, so almost the same, but the English name will still show in my game due to my save file getting confused) and during Squall’s blackout, we get a slight difference that once again at the two translations being based off the original Japanese rather than each-other, as in English, Squall complains about his body hurting whereas in French, it’s specifically his head, so it appears we have different interpretations going on.

Similarly, after Edea asks if she was able to protect Ellone (which interestingly, shows that Edea is at least not always aware of what Ultimecia is doing), English Squall thins “I don’t understand”, showing general confusion at the situation, whereas French Squall thinks “I don’t know.” replying directly to her question about Ellone.

And that’s it for today! Next time, we’ll see how differently Squall reacts to Linoa’s situation in both versions as we finally start taking on the 3rd CD content. I hope you all enjoyed this return of the translarison, I honestly didn’t realize it had been this long. I promise I’ll try and be more regular again, even though as I’ve said before, the only schedule for this is “when I feel like it”.

Now speaking of future updates, in case you missed it, I would like to start streaming my gameplay sessions on Twitch as I take screenshots and comment on what’s happening, and hopeuflly take your questions and observations. If it”‘s something that sounds interesting to you, I would really like you to say so by commenting on this post, dropping me a line or however you see fit, and if/when it happens, you can join us at twitch.tv/ssnakeyb. Either way, likes and reblogs are always appreciated to help spread the word.

Have a nice day, everyone! I’l be seeing you next time!

[mst3kproject]

1009: Hamlet, Prinz von Dänemark

I spent a buck-fifty Canadian to download this movie. There’s not much you can get for a buck-fifty Canadian.  One sour soother, maybe, or a chipped coffee mug from a garage sale that has a photo of somebody else’s grandparents on it.  So now you know how much Hamlet is worth.

We all know the story of Hamlet, whether we wanted to or not. King Hamlet of Denmark was murdered by his brother Claudius, who then married Queen Gertrude and stole the throne.  We can’t be having that, so the king’s ghost appears to his son, Hamlet Jr, and tells him he must take revenge.  Junior then spends the whole rest of the play wandering around pondering the afterlife and battering his girlfriend Ophelia before finally running Claudius through during a climactic duel during which pretty much everybody else dies, too, except for the ones who were already dead.  Nobody has ever given me a convincing explanation of why these people have names like Horatio and Laertes instead of Svend and Rolf.

I’m definitely not going to try to review Hamlet itself, Shakespeare’s play, because I don’t know a damned thing about Hamlet.  I deliberately went out and murdered those brain cells with alcohol immediately after writing my final exam.  Instead I’m going to have to talk about this movie in itself, how it fares both as a film and as a retelling of this story.

That second point is a big one.  Hamlet has been done, a lot, and as the bots point out with their sketch about their all-percussion version, it’s really hard to do anything unique with it anymore.  If you’re an acting troupe who wants to give it a try, that’s cool because it means people will get to see live theatre, but if you’re making a movie you really need to bring something new to the table.  An interesting interpretation, an actor or director that people really want to see, an unusual setting or time period, something like that.  This Hamlet has none of that.

I am reasonably sure that what the movie is trying to do is to look like a stage play, much as The Magic Voyage of Sinbad was trying to look like an opera.  Sinbad pulled it off with extravagant sets and operatic bombast.  By contrast everything in Hamlet, from pillars to thrones to flights of stairs, looks like it’s made out of concrete.  There is very little music, which somehow makes the whole thing feel even more doom-and-gloom-y than Hamlet already does.  The costumes go for a semi-fantasy look somewhere between Elizabethan and medieval, which is very stagey, and the effect is heightened by the fact that most of the characters never seem to change their clothes. The actors don’t look comfortable in them, though, which means they look uncomfortable in their characters as well. Queen Gertrude in particular looks like she’s too worried about damaging her gown to move easily in it, and the giant chain around Claudius’ neck is absurd.

Adding to the impression that the movie was shot in somebody’s basement, it’s lit very pootly when it’s lit at all.  A lot of shots are quite dull, lit in a way that shows where things are but doesn’t create mood or drama.  The film is in black and white and the characters wear black, or at least colours so dark you can’t tell the difference, which leaves night shots (such as the one where Horatio and the guards are chasing after the king’s ghost) looking like a bunch of heads floating around.

It is, of course, very difficult to judge a dubbed performance. The actors we’re watching appear to be going for a sort of heightened melodrama, part of the idea that we’re meant to feel like we’re watching a stage play.  The dub actors, on the other hand, don’t seem to have gotten the memo.  A lot of them mumble, particularly Maximilian Schell as Hamlet, which is really weird because he’s dubbing himself.  Sometimes they manage to make the Shakespearean English sound very natural, but that often jars with the physical performances.  I have no idea what sort of accents some of them think they’re doing. There are a few who don’t seem to be trying to do an accent at all, while others sound like they’re aiming for British (because it’s Shakespeare?), German (because the movie’s German?) or Damn Worwelf.

Most of the actors are kind of bland-looking, and those who stand out do so because they look weirdly wrong for the parts they’re playing.  Polonius with his little mustache looks like a physics teacher who feels naked because he’s not wearing a necktie.  He’s also dubbed by John Banner, so if you keep hearing this is so klandinkto! every time he speaks… that’s why.  If Hamlet himself looks familiar, it may be because Maximilian Schell was Dr. Reinhardt in The Black Hole, or maybe it’s because he looks a lot like the guy in Atlantic Rim that I referred to as MacGuyver. He’s a very fine actor who won an academy award for Judgment at Nuremburg, but he’s way out of place as Hamlet.  His Hollywood good looks and crooked little smile make it feel like he’s trying to play Hamlet as a dashing heartthrob.

For all that, there are a couple of moments in this movie that I quite like.  The scene in which Hamlet is nodding and smiling to the wedding guests while the Too Too Solid Flesh soliloquy begins in voiceover is quite nicely done.  It gives you a very visceral sense of this man who is forced to bottle up his anger and grief.  I also like that during the Murder of Gonzago scene, the camera focuses not on the players but on the audience reaction.  Claudius and Gertrude smile at each other when the players talk about love, and then grow uncomfortable as the play condemns re-marriage.  Ophelia’s embroidery is an attempt at symbolism, the arum being a popular funeral flower.  Too bad it’s so in-your-face that it loses all subtlety.

On the whole, though, Hamlet is just dull.  The spartan, ugly sets and dark costumes offer us very little to look at, and in some of the darker scenes there’s almost nothing to see at all. The physical and dub performances don’t match, and neither hold the attention.  Watching it feels like a two-hour slog through a tarry morass of depression.

I kind of wonder what the purpose of this movie was supposed to be. It was made for TV in the sixties, and I guess it was an attempt to capitalize on the Germans’ love of Shakespeare – because Germans do definitely love Shakespeare, sometimes considering themselves to have a better claim on him than England because unlike the English, they respect him.  More Shakespeare plays are performed in Germany every year than in England, and in the leadup to World War II the Nazi regime tried to get rid of him, couldn’t, and had to settle for picking and choosing which translations were ‘German enough’ for them (this always reminds me of the joke about Hamlet being better in the original Klingon).

If this is the case, I would like to know what the Germans who saw this movie in its original broadcast thought of it.  Sixty-year-old reviews of made-for-tv movies in foreign languages are hard to find even online, so I honestly have no idea.  I know that people who have seen this English version hate it, and I have a hard time imagining it being much better in German even when you love Shakespeare unconditionally.  The fact that the Germans do love Shakespeare just makes it seem that much more likely that they’d consider this dreary pork-filled version an insult to him.

It’s also interesting to think about what made the Best Brains pick this one out as an MST3K project.  The movie is definitely bad, and in its own way it fits right in with a lot of the black-and-white crap from the Joel era that tries so hard to be important and just ends up being depressing.  Yet the source material remains as something a lot of people would consider untouchable (the Germans being high on that list… although Shakespeare himself, purveyor of fine penis jokes to Her Majesty the Queen since 1591, would probably be totally okay with the MST3K treatment.  He must have heard way more vicious audience commentary).  My guess it was something they considered a challenge to themselves, in the same way as RiffTrax tackled Casablanca just to see if they could do it.  The Amazing Colossal Transplanted Sci-Fi Channel Episode Guide entry on the episode is kind of interesting, as Kevin mentions the feeling that they had to be funnier than usual in order to live up to the play’s legend.

My high school English teachers (the same ones who inflicted The Most Dangerous Game on me) insisted that Hamlet is a play which should make you think.  I’m pretty sure this is not what they meant, but the thing I’ve always found myself thinking about while watching or reading it is the idea of marrying one’s brother’s widow.  The church of the time said that this was equivalent to marrying one’s own sister (Claudius indeed calls Gertrude our sometime sister) and frowned upon it most heavily, and this would have been common knowledge in Elizabethan England because it was Henry VIII’s excuse for divorcing Catherine of Aragon and marrying Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth’s mother (never mind that he’d also fucked Anne’s sister Mary).  By portraying this as villainous behaviour, Shakespeare was sucking up to the Queen, emphasizing that her mom’s marriage was way more legit than Catherine’s.  Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[drawbauchery]

So, overall thoughts on HTTYD-3?

novel-length thoughts under the cut with spoilers for the book series as well! and i can’t believe i have to say this but if anyone tags this as “httyd critical” or something equally stupid i will end you

things that were BLEH

toothless left hiccup way too easily. you cannot convince me that this dragon would up and leave that boy for any reason and intend to never come back. it happened so quickly that it looked like he chose a dragon he just met over his best friend, like he lost interest in hiccup now that there’s another night fury, or something close to a night fury. obviously that’s not all there is to it, and the scene was still good, but…….the pacing…….

the fact that he left hiccup at all is going way against the book’s ending, which they did nicely in all other ways. (it was their plan from the beginning to mirror the book ending, hence the comparisons!!) “toothless will never leave me” is a line book!hiccup says with confidence, backed up by the fact that while the other dragons are in fact going into hiding, toothless keeps coming back to him. he stays away longer and longer each time he goes, but they both know they won’t be separated forever. but in the movie it’s just…i don’t want to think about the fact that toothless can stay away from hiccup for ten years.

the light fury. just. the light fury. even before the second movie came out the last thing i wanted was a Girl ™ night fury to conveniently show up and get with toothless but WELL. there are so many old fanfics out there of toothless meeting a white night fury with eyelashes and having babies and ugghhh

i didn’t trust her?? throughout the entire movie??? they said she was bait, and i thought, ok, she’s meg from hercules. she’s gonna act seductive but then she’s gonna change her tune later, right? but the whole time i was expecting her to turn on them or something. we never learn about her or what she was trying to do, really. so it was jarring for me that ultimately toothless did choose her (and the hidden world) over hiccup. 

she was fine by the end when she saved hiccup and made a goofy face. and her design/animation is beautiful. but she could’ve been funnier and less….shady

toothless taking too long to recognize hiccup in the epilogue. i guess some people interpreted that as him forgetting about hiccup, but i!!! can’t consider that without getting depressed. i personally think he should’ve hopped onto the boat and tackled hiccup without a second thought. actually, i think he should’ve done what he did in the book and fucking visit once in a while why did you just leave your boy like that toothless what’s wrong with you in this movie 

(a lot of these gripes come from the fact that hiccup and toothless’ friendship is one of the most important things ever to me and them being apart for any reason at all is just not something i can handle asldkfn)

the fact that snotlout and eret didn’t end up together. we know the real reason snotlout’s crushes never work out

hicCUP’S HOUSE BURNING ;-; poor house.

the fact that my favorite scene in gift of the night fury, when toothless destroys his new tail because he only wants to fly with hiccup, is going to be almost tainted knowing that he’ll eventually use a new tail to leave and NEVER COME BACK fuck

you expect me to believe cloudjumper would ever leave valka? foolish.

0/10 no dagur

things that WEREN’T bleh

like everything else

the pacing sans at the separation scene was SO MUCH BETTER than the second movie. it really felt more like the first one. there could’ve been a few more quiet or slow scenes, but i liked seeing hiccup act more dorky and nervous and working on the tail. and his insecurities being addressed was nice.

HICCUP SWORDFIGHTING YESSSS

they actually added tears to hiccup’s face this time. remember when he looked up after sobbing over his dead father and his face was just. dry

tuffnut and ruffnut having bigger roles! and i shipped tuffcup back in the day so it was a nice surprise to see them sharing scenes alksdnf

and..ruffnut and fishlegs? is that canon??? pls? 

the flashbacks. lord help me. all i ever wanted was to see a flashback of kid hiccup and they decided to give me two and murder me in the process

i’m like 9999999999% sure that hiccup’s stuffed animal was the one he reunited with in the show

stoick was so fuckin gentle and affectionate with his tiny son and i can imagine him just holding hiccup 24/7 and kissing his head and doting on him and promising to protect him forever and. and. hhh

toothless’ chicken dance

toothless’ bear hugs

ASTRID’S HAIR

fishlegs and the gronkle baby i want a spinoff 

actually give me a spinoff of ALL the babies. i turned into a waterfall when the hiccstrid kids showed up they were the cutest things ever and so were toothless’ babies (if only funko didn’t spoil those) 

hiccup and astrid eye fucking each other while setting off an explosion, while the score mirrored the moment in the first movie when astrid epically walks away from an explosion. love on the battlefield indeed

“what are you gonna do about it?” “probably something stupid.”

“get rid of the limp!” “i hAV e a p RO S theT IC Le G”

“who died and made you chief?!”

“oh, NOW you can draw”

the hidden world blew me away like jesus christmas take me there

hiccup’s wedding suit made him look like a prince!

gobber being fatherly. he always was like an uncle, and it’s nice to know he’s kind of stepping in and looking after hiccup more closely, as if to reassure stoick that hiccup’s doing fine.

hiccup being CHIEFLY and all his friends up in front with him during the meeting!

dat villain tho. any villain that sneaks into the hero’s house and nonchalantly makes tea automatically wins in my book

the fact that grimmel is what hiccup could’ve been. that was a nice subtle comparison there.

me internally moaning and groaning at how it looked like astrid was gonna be captured by one of grimmel’s dragons in the escape scene but instead she swung around and kicked its face. that’s my GIRL

hiccup’s face

hiccup’s voice

hiccup’s outfits 

hiccup

and for all my griping, the fact that toothless and hiccup find each other in the end is the most important thing. this movie made up for..almost all the heartbreak i went through after i saw the second one. at least i left the theater crying happy tears instead of shocked and horrified ones :DDDDD

ALSO WTF END CREDITS THAT WAS SO UNFAIR I’M SUING DREAMWORKS I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THAT