#and the results (basically the whole opening of the movie) are the same

[cryptvokeeper]

In my time honored tradition of “I like rise Leo but in a slightly to the left way of the general fanon interpretation” I propose: yes, Leo was being a bad leader and not communicating with his team during the movie because he didn’t want the responsibility of being leader HOWEVER he was not purposely self-sabotaging in an effort to get Raph to take leadership back. Instead, he was going solo and not working with anyone in order to avoid leadership altogether and not make calls and decisions that could potentially fail.

[thoseyoulove]

Hello,Can you rank your Armand favorite relationshipw and why ? (I just love reading opinions , nothing serious)

Hi!

Fistly, thank you for the question! I get sometimes sending messages can be uncomfortable and you may not receive the nicest answers, but you don't need to explain yourself. Whether is a fun or serious question, asking my opinion or sharing your own: I LOVE talking about this universe and always welcome it.

Anyway, now to ranking!

P.S. This is long and contain spoilers. These opinions are based on the sequence from The Vampire Lestat to The Vampire Armand and aren't necessarily permanent.

Lesmand / Armandstat

Favorite relationship on the books as a whole for basically three reasons: it's always interesting (even on its smallest moments), they are deeply mirrored so it provides a compelling dynamic and is often intense. They are two sides of the same coin and parallel one another so much in terms of personalities and experiences. From their first interaction, it already seemed that they knew each other their whole lives because they could read one another like an open book. There is this mix of unconscious, but immediate recognition, understanding, curiosity, care, attraction, insecurity, fear, anger and frustration because they're the only ones that fully get each other. It's one thing to know someone for what they share or you observe, but you only fully comprehend somebody when you have a lot in common like they do. Still, that's terrifying because you're completely bare, vulnerable and forced to confront stuff you want to run away from. They have a lot of sharp dialogue and arguments where they throw the hardest truths on the other's face and they know how to push each other's buttons from day one. Yet, the fascination, affection and protection are still there and they always stay somewhat close. And that results in a lot of first class tension: what brings both together also pulls them apart and they're often fighting so many conflicting emotions (as a duo and individuals) because they keep going back and forth. Obviously, they're far from perfect and have both tremendously hurt one another verbally, physically and with Claudia's death (which Armand's is responsible for). But even then, they were never enemies or rivals. I get why people would use such words, but I think they would need to hate or wish bad things for each other to be classified as such and that's never happened. Even if they did something to give that impression, it wasn't genuine and they made themselves suffer in the process too. There was definitely hate for words said and things done, but for the person it was always love. Through the good, the bad, the ugly and the complicated. This dynamic defies definitions and there aren't enough words in any language I know to fully and precisely categorize or desxribe even it. For better or worse, they're on a league of their own and I've never seen anything like it on books, movies or TV shows.

2. Armand x Bianca

I love Bianca. She's been such a great addition and it's a breath of fresh air whenever she appears. It was so satisfying to see them being friends, connecting and Armand having something that was entirely his own without Marius being involved (though considering the pattern of this book, it will probably change). I also enjoy the fact they met and bonded as humans, you know? There's something lovely and unique about it since most pairings had one or both parties already being a vampire on their first encounter. And another sweet thing is that even centuries later Armand still emphasizes how he'll never forget her. They have become really special to me.

3. Armand & Riccardo

Usually relationships where one is a small or Marius is somewhat involved don't work for me, but that's an exception. Riccardo isn't as developed as Armand and part of this (creepy) palazzo where Marius keeps several teenagers/children in, but you do know enough to grow attached to him. Actually, given the situation these boys are in, I ended up caring about the ones who don't even have a name. And despite the proximity Marius has to them, the kids have friendships of their own. Obviously, this isn't the healthiest environment and they all deserved better, but I'm so glad they had each other and a sense of family (specially because some of them don't even remember their own relatives well anymore). That brings me some kind of comfort. There are these moments when Armand gets emotional thinking about how much he loves them all and would die for them and when he almost does and they're all (with Bianca) crying and Armand is surprised by their reactions because they loved him so much... It really moved me So, I adore them.

4. Armandiel

The Devil's Minion chapter is one of my top favorite pieces of The Queen of the Damned. Its best aspect is seeing Armand on his self-discovery journey and how Daniel was just patient and supportive. And that's so important, because a big part of Armand's characterization is how he has no sense of identity. He's gone through so much trauma since early and formative years and always adapted to please others or even make out alive. This made him lose key parts of his memory and every sense of self and he definitely needed that. So, to see Daniel not tell him what to do, but instead let him try new stuff, see what he loved or not, on his own terms and pace and Daniel just going along with him... It was wonderful. The only downsides is that I believe Daniel deserved more individual development and it was rushed. Twelve years deserved more chapters, probably books plural. That said, I bet the show will take its strong points and only elevate their story. And I can't wait because I've already lost my mind with them on season 2 (they have my favorite scene on the show, by the way).

Honorable mentions:

Armand & Benji + Sybelle

Haven't seen a lot of them, but Armand opened his book saying he was full of love and excitedly talking about these children he took in. There's also this moment he asked David if he liked his kids and he just sounded like a proud dad. It was adorable. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of them.

Armand & his family

There's been very little of them and I doubt there will be more, so I can't talk about their relationship per se, but the chapter they say goodbye is devastating and beautiful. Those recent posts of me losing my mind were because of it. I've never cried so much with art and rarely cried like that even in real life. It was an experience I'd never had before and an emotion I didn't know was humanly possible. I was mentally, emotionally and spiritually touched to the point of exhaustion. It's been the best part of The Vampire Armand, if not of the whole chronicles. And it will stick with me forever.

[everygame]

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Developed/Published by: Coal Supper / Panic Released: 1/08/2024 Completed: 7/08/2024 Completion: Finished it!

It seems contrarian for me to open this by saying this is definitely the best game of 2024 and it’s definitely going to be my favourite game of the year… but it’s true.

The thing, I suppose, that makes that kind of wild, declarative statement seem so difficult to declare is that… games are just so broad, aren’t they? Playing something like Thank Goodness You’re Here! is so unbelievably different from playing, say, my favourite game of last year, Hi-Fi Rush, that it doesn’t feel as easy to say as declaring one movie “the best film of the year.” I mean in that case, you still just sit there and watch a movie. There’s not quite the same… granularity of experience. I mean even if you were talking indie games, Balatro touches such a different part of my brain from Thank Goodness You’re Here! So how could I ever, really, compare them?

Well, you know what? Sometimes you gotta just stick your flag somewhere, and my flag goes in the top of a Yorkshire pudding, and when it unfurls it’s the flag… of Yorkshire. Which surprised me, because I’m Scottish, so normally it goes in the top of a Scotch pie, and it’s a Saltire, so I guess I really like Thank Goodness You’re Here!

To describe it, though, which is what you’ve paid for, Thank Goodness You’re Here is a non-evil Untitled Goose Game. You play, in some respects similarly, an agent of chaos in a small town: a tiny man with… jaundice(?) who has been sent to the town of Barnsworth to help the mayor, but end up in the tangle of everyone’s lives. You help them do things that sound explicitly rather simple like mowing a lawn to buying some soup… but it’s not simple at all.

Unlike Untitled Goose Game, your tiny man isn’t just a wee dick; you’re actually helping people, it just happens to be in a very anarchic fashion. You rise to the level of the town, rather than lowering it, so outside of a few smacky bum-bums, you never feel like you’re bullying anyone… well maybe that guy with the chimney. But the joke works.

It would be regressive to describe this game as “weird” or “crazy.” What it is, and what makes it so brilliant, is that it’s so British. If you love the era of British comedy that brought us things like Look Around You or Alan Partridge, you’ll feel right at home here, and I was genuinely laughing all the way through this. Mileage may vary: some jokes and sequences are unbelievably puerile, some are a little smutty; some are… disturbing, but there’s a joyful nature to this whole thing, and it’s all so rapid fire that if something falls flat, it’s not long before you’re laughing about something else.

I think also that the game has a near-perfect take on interactivity for this kind of story-based experience. Outside of special sequences basically all you can do is slap things or jump, but everything is reactive, and the level design is cleverly focused; your path through the game is a sequence of designed loops that you can’t deviate from, but as a result you don’t suffer from the kind of downtime you can struggle with in more open adventures and which can ruin immersion. 

Here you’ll never return to an area and discover it static, how you left it, and have to waffle around trying to find X or Y; you’re always moving forward onto Z. I can hear the criticisms, but at least for me this never felt restrictive; the only issue I really had was feeling that I had to put the game down regularly lest I finish it too quickly–though it’s surprisingly lengthy for something featuring so much bespoke art and sequences, at almost five hours.

To be honest, the game manages something that I wish designers of interactive experiences–think your Meow Wolfs, your Sleep No Mores–would learn from, which is how to always be guiding your player forward through a space and yet still allow them to experience it at their own pace. Sure, it has the benefit of being able to lock doors behind you, and there aren’t 300 other tiny men with jaundice trying to do everything in it at the same time (though I’d love to see that?) but I couldn’t help but be impressed with the flow.

(This may relate to me seeing Sleep No More before it closes just before playing this, finding it a hard to navigate mess of meaningless rooms in a warehouse and thinking it was fucking rubbish.)

The reason, really, that this is my game of the year already is that it’s trying to do something specific and it’s doing it as unbelievably fucking well as anyone probably could. Your dexterity won’t be challenged, your brain won’t be taxed, but they don’t need to be. Sure it’s a funhouse mirror, but if someone was to ask me “What’s the UK like?” from now on, I’ll probably just say “Play Thank Goodness You’re Here!”

Will I ever play it again? Absolutely. Not for a long time, I think, but I didn’t technically see “everything” according to the achievements, and I’d like to.

Final Thought: For categorisation sake, I would like to mention that I do think that Thank Goodness You’re Here! is largely specifically English, and Northern English at that, but there are enough commonalities and it features a big role for Davey Swatpaz that I think it’s fair to think of it as extremely British anyway. And speaking of the excellent casting, Matt Berry is in this and as always he’s brilliant. There are few games where I’d say “I really hope you run out and buy this” but there are few things that are such polished diamonds, and even though this was funded by Panic, who apparently have enough money that they can piss it up on a wall on the world’s most niche handheld (hey, I still bought it) smaller games are having such a rough time of it that when they’re good we should really, you know, reward that. Don’t just do it for me; do it for Tiny Tom. Or Big Ron.*

*pie size preference depending.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[thelindenpapers]

I actually wound up liking "The Woman King" as a movie way, WAY better than 300.

It is beautiful cinematically, it touches on some things and addresses some things that are good…

But please don't get it twisted, because that was NOT a historical movie. ^^;;; We know that.

The sunrises were beautiful, but I do not perceive it as a society that I wish to return to.

Because it does envision a world in which most of the hierarchies that plague us now, are still in place.

If you pay attention to the beginning, they're pretty adamant about showing this.

A lot of what is depicted seems like an attempt to say, "Look! This society in Africa was just as good as white people's, because, see: we had money, and patriarchy, and rich people, and kings, and war, too! That's what makes a civilization!"

For me, that whole attempt misses the plot on what it means to be a human.

There's a fundamental thing that I think that we miss when folks say, "Well, but look: white people are right, because they have all the money and all the power. They're "winning"!"

…Sure, that's winning….

If you enjoy being hated by your kids and having to down twelve Zoloft and two bottles of wine and step on the necks of fifty different people before breakfast, just to be able to stand being yourself for five fucking minutes… :/

Let's not pretend that these "winning" rich people and monarchs and oligarchs have healthy relationships with themselves, much less their families, much less anyone else.

The image of happiness that they project is often just that: a very carefully (and desperately) maintained IMAGE.

Even more basic than that: It's winning if you're a virus.

If you are an unselfaware gorilla, who lives in a troupe rather than a society, and your only idea of a "good" life is about domination and control. About who can you manipulate, who can you threaten, who can you hit over the head with a stick and gain power, for the sole purpose of just having power.

That is an ape troupe's idea of winning.

The kind of "winning" where scientists start to study you to try and figure out what's wrong with you.

We are apes, and descended from apes -- but we're not in an ape troupe...or really, we're not supposed to be.

We are HUMANS.

Humans are a KIND of ape, but we became different for a reason.

The fossil record shows a point, hundreds of thousands of years back in history, where the strongest apes -- the ones who were using violence and strength and threats to control and lord it over the other members of their community -- started dropping like flies.

Because one of the weaker apes had invented the blow gun.

And one of the other weaker apes knew how to make poison.

And all the other weaker apes agreed, "yeah, you know what, this guy is a fucking asshole, he needs to go!"

This happened multiple times across the populations of our ape ancestors, at roughly the same time frame in human evolution.

…And afterwards?

After our ancestors ended these strongest apes?

That's when our ape ancestors began to evolve at an EXPONENTIAL rate.

That's when we started to live by collaboration, consent, community, and trying to continually make conditions better for each other; instead of constantly trying to hoard and compete and get over on one another…that's when we started to have each other's backs on the regular.

After our ape ancestors sent their tyrants into the dirt; THAT'S when you start to see extremely complex language and tool-making and art and architecture EXPLODE across human culture: opening up all kinds of different options for life and for living.

All the things that make us FULLY human -- not just apes -- all these things resulted from us looking at nature's 'Might Makes Right', 'Red in Tooth and Claw', types of "winning", and saying to each other, "I'M SO SICK OF THIS SHIT!"

Nature is beautiful, yes. It birthed us. We need to cohabit with it sustainably and respectfully in order to live.

Yet, becoming human was an ancestral act of REVOLUTION.

It is relatively only very, very recently in the span of human existence when folk whose only loyalty is to capitalism and the made-up concept of whiteness, have swept across the world and RE-reframed the concept of "winning" according to fucking ape-brained bullshit that humanity had gotten rid of LONG ago.

They're doing it in ways that hurt not just everyone else, but themselves, too.

They are literally murdering the global ecosystem to do it.

And it disturbs me how many people have accepted that return to an absolute trash concept of "winning", instead of seeing it for what it is: NOT "the way humans just are"; but a regression, back into semi-conscious and ultimately suicidal ape-troupe mentality.

[stellernorth]

[dashboard simulator of a world without the ghostfacers effect where the true supernatural show is perceived]

🫀waityourrturn Follow

spot the difference stick figure violence and samruby moments

(1 note)

🟪 sparklezzstiel Follow

if i was the mall cop who got kid sam in trouble for stealing nail polish i would have instead helped him steal more nail polish. also i wouldn’t be a cop

(184 notes)

🧪dogsogdog4 Follow

hey i’m finally watched lazarus rising and i cannot see anything when “castiel” enters its just fully white and the static noise is kind of painful tbh lol. is this a my computer problem or what

(7 notes)

🎉 rowenapublicindecancy Follow

(52 notes)

🫐 numberfff000 Follow

you all aren’t taking like medical advice from supernatural right??? the medical advice that has resulted in canonically [checks notes] one (1) instance of blindness due to ingesting rubbing alcohol, two (2) toe amputations and one (1) case of SEPSIS?!

🎪 kevinscriminalrecord Follow

no we aren’t doing that

🌠 mixtapesextape Follow

Sounds like someone hasn't heard about the kitchen accident diy stitches girl from LiveJournal. So weird that the fandom today doesn't know about her, back in the day it was everywhere.

🎪 kevinscriminalrecord Follow

huh???

🧔‍♀️ heritagepostsof-spn Follow

Heritage Post.

(1943 notes)

🥬 fishhooklove Follow

day 1 of asking john winchester to put his cigs out on me

🤟hannahgirl Follow

could you stop

🥬 fishhooklove Follow

oh here come the buzzkills. i bet you thought it was hot when bela did it to dean. but i’m not allowed to express my interests i guess.

(218 notes)

⛸️ mangojuicecas Follow

Um Guys i had this guy i’m seeing over and we were taking. about watching a movie. and. im the most embarrassed i’ve ever been i can barely type this. and i opened my computer and clicked to the netflix tab. and it was paused mid crypt scene blowjob kill meeeee 😭😭😭

🩶 charlierowena2024 Follow

why would you ever stop halfway through. that's like looking at half of starry night then closing your eyes and leaving the museum

(78 notes)

🧑🏻‍🦳s6monster Follow

Uquiz - Which Supernatural scars are you?

I GOT RUBY’S ARM SCARS WAAAH

(3 notes)

👩‍🦰 cleopatralumineersrowena Follow

depeche mode master and servant spn bdsm and fight scene compilation amv we're really in it now

#using lyrics as censor bars is the innovation of the century

(59 notes)

🌂 kansaslawrence Follow

for everyone who said dean slamming his hand in the impala door when he was drunk wouldn't do that to his fingernails i did a similar thing (accidentally, before the show aired) #deancoded loll and it looked basically the same. here are pics of my and his hands afterwards side by side for reference

(482 notes)

🍄 0nth3h34d0f4p1n Follow

Another reason samruby is queercoded is how her spitting blood into his mouth parallels the champagne scene in my beautiful laundrette

(38 notes)

🎃 sammmyspooks Follow

2.16 "this disease pumping through my veins and i can't rip it out or scrub it clean--i've tried; i'm a whole new level of freak" and 8.21 "you used to read to me when i was little i mean really little" etc we all remember sir galahad speech. sooooo how young do you think sam was when he first tried

(739 notes)

🪼 ccoldfridge Follow

just remembered how dean tried his best to ask cas to take a female vessel so they could fuck heterosexually in ftbyam and i nearly passed out in the post office . castielllllll he was saying he wanted to fuck youuu

(63 notes)

🤵 a1waysenduphere Follow

comparing the endverse sam arc to the classic structure of a shakespearean tragedy

part 1: aloneness and exposition

keep reading

(382 notes)

👩 isolationnatural Follow

the way people #coquette #lanadelrey #femaleangst -ify claire's s12 shoplifting eating disorder getting into fights self medicating situation is so so weird and fucked up. we saw stanford era dean do literally exactly all the same shit but with him it's ohhh classic beautiful americana what a tragic figure i understand his emotions have depth and complexity THEY DID ALL THE SAME STUFF maybe think about why you see the situations differently

(294 notes)

🔵 butchruby4femanna Follow

why did i have to see dean naked that many times. just wondering again

(2 notes)

⚡ cassandrasam Follow

ok spn 5x20. so sam's kissing the demon possessing brady out of nostalgia and grief for his dead boyfriend, the demon's kissing back because he knows it will make sam more likely to listen to him, imagine if dean had walked in in that moment

❗greendean Follow

or crowley

(158 notes)

🍇 notgoodnatural Follow

hey everyone. wjsh i could have seen dean naked more times.

(10 notes)

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

I will not stand for Stephen Strange slander like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VIlrrQndG8

Well, that's a load of bullshit. I get not liking a character but this is such a basic misunderstanding of Stephen that I don't even know where to start.

I'm seeing a pattern lately in fandom that is starting to worry me a bit. I see many fans listing the mistakes of the heroes and using that to claim they're not actually heroes because they made a mistake or they were wrong once in the past. It's a weird belief that unless the heroes are perfect and do everything right, one single mistake is enough to condemn them. Or not even a mistake, if they take action and the outcome is anything but ideal and perfect and results in zero casualties, these fans will tear them apart.

Another thing that worries me is how many fans seem to be so against disobeying rules. I've seen this in discussions regarding CW, Wanda and now Stephen. A character not following rules is enough reason to be called a villain in these fans' eyes. But that only applies to the heroes though. The villains who do in fact break those rules are usually justified and coddled, their intentions assumed to be better than they really are and they're almost automatically made sympathetic by these fans.

Related to that, I've also noticed a lot of talk about the heroes sacrificing something big to save someone, and these fans wondering why would they even bother to do that. Like OP wonders why Stephen would get into so much trouble to save America's life when she's not that important and incursions are far more relevant. It blows my mind that these fans need to have it explained to them that yes, heroes do in fact save people. That's the whole point of their existence and the people they save don't need to be VIPs or crucial to the story, even if it's just one civilian... you gotta save them too. Do we really need to explain this now?

In Stephen's case, the whole point of his first movie is that he has to learn and let go of his need for control and his unmovable beliefs. It's to get him out of his comfort zone so that he will be open to other people's views so that he will see beyond himself. The OP just lists his mistakes and claims those are the only things that define him while at the same time completely ignoring every single time he showed he had learnt from them.

The NWH hate doesn't surprise me, Stephen was misunderstood heavily by a lot of fans in that movie, but I gotta say what bothers me the most is that OP seems to believe everyone suffered from the Snap... and what, Stephen didn't? The one man who had to watch 14 million different outcomes, who had to sacrifice his own life and had the weight of the entire universe upon his shoulders, who is most likely traumatized by it, he didn't suffer? No empathy at all for him?

And what's worse, OP blames Stephen for Wanda's behaviour. Lovely. Not the Darkhold, no, it's Stephen's fault. He should have reasoned with her. It's not like he literally tried to do that in the garden. 🙄

But this thing OP says is like a slap in the face: "Strange learnt nothing from any of this. He is still going to break the rules and cause problems because, ultimately, he's not really the one paying the price."

He's not the one paying the price. Unfuckingbelievable.

[poppy-metal]

Okay, let's into a silly cutsy little Christmas mood, and for that I offer you : Christmas decoration war AU

I don't know if you watch those very bad Christmas movies on the afternoon, but I watched one today, and it was about this really hardworking wedding planner, living in the city, the embodiment of "living for your work". She comes from a little town on the suburbs of the city and she used to come back every year to spend Christmas with her grandma. She managed to reduce the time of her visit more and more every year until she only spends three days there and then goes back to her work. Until this very specific year when her grandma gets very sick and she needs her here for the annual Christmas decoration contest.

So with the mood set up, I expose to you, Hardworking and petty!reader x christmas obsessed and overcompetitive!Jordan Li.

It's gonna be chaos.

Her Granny used to be the one organising the decoration contest and really the whole Christmas season in town, but since she's sick, the reader agrees to come for the whole month of December to organise it for her. That's when she meets... Jordan Li, the winner of the contest for years on end. They're a Christmas obsessed, competitive person, and they win, every year.

Of course, it's a small town, so everybody knows everybody, and so reader's arrival is talked about in the entire town. Jordan hears of it, and they meet as she is planning for the events such as the Christmas market, the Christmas ball... And they litteraly are so mean, telling her that it's absolutely not how her Granny used to do it and basically she should follow the traditions because it's better.

They get in a very petty argument, and reader being the city girl that she is, wants everything to be more modern, less traditional, and literally for it to loose all the coziness of it, the whole thing just another work without flavor for her. Jordan ends the argument with a remark super petty, maybe something about how she's a stuck up entitled brat or something.

Reader wants revenge, if you didn't get the memo in the name of the au.

Of course, she also has to take care of the house decoration war and organize everything so the judges and competition couldn't be rigged and all. But then she learns from a complete stranger who's jealous of them, that Jordan Li, the infuriating chick (their first meeting was indeed in female form because they wanted to be more incisive and we know now that male Jordan is a softie), wins every fucking year.

The revenge is found. Since her grandma definitely isn't participating this year, but her house is gigantic and she has a fuckton of decorations, reader decides to beat Jordan in the competition. Plus, it'll make her grandma happy to see her house all decorated, since, as you can see, everyone in this town is Christmas obsessed.

The contest is open to every house owner but not a lot actually participate, they're just here for the bloody competition. Every week, the judges eliminate a set number of houses until Christmas eve (the night of the ball), when the winner is finally announced.

So for weeks on end, Jordan and reader fight, bicker, and meet absolutely fucking everywhere, and during those four weeks, their relationship goes from enemies to frenemies, to lovers.

During that time, reader learns a lot about Jordan, because once again, it's a small town, everyone knows everything. They own the coffee shop and the hotel in town, which they inherited from their parents who died not so long ago (touchy subject), and they're a bigender supe, their power allowing them to actually shift into both genders (yes all of them are still supes, but reader potentially isn't). Reader learns more and more about Jordan and honestly, the little minx wooed her, and it's kinda the same for Jordan, with a lot more sexual frustration.

This frustration may or may not have led to a drunk one night stand with Jordan, which resulted in awkwardness and miscommunication, and reader wanting to beat them even more.

They end up kissing on Christmas eve and everything is nice and cool. Reader ends up adoring the Christmas obsessed Town and leaves her job in the city to work the job her grandma can't do anymore because she's in fact now retired.

I might actually write this AU...

Tell me what you think of it and as always, love you and take care ❤️

- 🥖

im gonna need you to go ahead and write the au fren

[cdelphiki]

I've always loved the story of Matilda. I've only seen the musical once because of how musicals work, and how hard it is to see them not live, but the 90s movie was my favorite movie as a kid. As an adult, Matilda has given me really strong Jason-Todd-feelings. Especially in the song "Naughty," in just how Matilda really subscribes to the idea that if she wants things to be better, or at least to have things made 'right,' she has to do it herself. She can't and shouldn't just sit back and take abuse, she should fight back, no matter how little she is. That spirit in itself just always reminded me of Jason.

But now with the Netflix movie, I've watched the musical several times this week and it's really made me listen to the music (before I only listened to a couple of the songs with any repetition) and Wow do I have feelings. But this song in particular, at first I was thinking about how it would reflect on Jason & Bruce before I realized something...

This is exactly how Tim's story plays out. The song is the final song in the play, and it's called Still Holding my Hand. The lyrics go:

I believed that I would never be able to rely on anybody else. And I was sure that I would just have to learn to survive all by myself. And one day I opened my eyes, and looked to find that the sky had turned blindingly blue. And right by my side was you quietly taking a stand, and you were holding my hand.

And just. Think about that. Tim Drake was this tiny little child who inserted himself in Bruce's life because Batman needed help. He didn't go to Batman for help in anything, and while canon is kind of all over the place on Tim's own situation, he was a neglected child in basically every version. In the main one most people tend to use, he rarely had his parents around, and was instead raised by boarding schools and the housekeeper. But none of those people are parents. They aren't people you can rely on. They're all employees of someone or something. They aren't the same thing as nannies, and even then, nannies aren't replacements for parents. I say that as a former nanny. People who take care of you for a living aren't permanent fixtures in your life, no matter how wonderful, supporting, and loving they are. And that will cause a wall to be built between you, especially if you're used to being moved around or just don't have the same one your whole childhood.

So Tim, being 12 or 13, didn't have anyone in his life he could rely on. He relied on himself, and was fiercely independent as a result. It's certainly one of his strengths, and it was what made him approach Batman and save him over and over again. But even if it was a strength of his, everyone, everyone, but especially children need people they can rely on. And once the grieving-Bruce resigned himself to training this child they bonded. Bruce started noticing things about Tim, about Tim's parents. Or... lack of Tim's parents, and so he stepped up further. He became a father figure in Tim's life. Even if he was hesitant, because Tim wasn't his kid.

And one day.... Tim opened his eyes and saw. And he realized that Bruce was there for him. Bruce cared about him, loved him even, and Tim trusted him with his entire being. Something he never thought would happen. Kid-him relying on an adult so heavily.

Anyway. Now listen to the song and cry with me about it.

[whiskersz]

Hi I saw you were doing matchups so I wanted to you try it out lol!

So some basic stuff I go by Aj I’m a trans guy who uses he/they pronouns, while I do have a small preference to girls or well just anyone falling under a feminine label I am open to about anyone! I want the matchup to be romantic and would prefer Husk and Angel to be excluded (I picture Husk as a father and I ship him and angel so be kinda weird lol)

For personality and what not I’m similar to Niffty in the whole absolutely chaotic kinda way but only with the people I know and trust, I’m very kind and while I’ll jokingly make fun of people I make sure they’re okay with it and aren’t actually uncomfortable. At first I’m very quiet and reserved (at most one or two comments) but after opening up it’s hard to get me to stop talking lol I’m also very sarcastic and make a lot of dirty jokes. Likes and dislikes is kinda hard, I like collecting plushies like a lot I could be compared to the “weird kid” (I love fnaf, batim, Beetlejuice, tadc, a lot more) I will say I absolutely love like physical touch and what not though I hate asking for things or starting something. My hobbies mainly include making art and what not I focus on visual art though I do like writing and acting a lot as well, I also love picking something up like a book or movie and just never finishing it lol! Tbh I don’t really have a type besides “sad but bad boy” and even then that’s not really a type lol. But yeah I uh think that’s it have an amazing day/night!

Hey Aj! Thank you for requesting a matchup! We have something in common, I also have the tendency to pick up things and never finishing them ahah; anyway!

A hug is coming your way, as I match you with...

Charlie!

Charlie is sunny, optimistic, and just the right person who would allow you to come out of your initial shell. She loves both your kindness and how chaotic you are, and I’m sure she would be very proud of herself for being able to let you open up quickly and witness your true personality; she loves a talkative and affectionate friend, even more so if they end up becoming her partner.

I’m sure she wouldn’t mind your sarcasm at all either, as long as you don’t get too rude with her; she chuckles at your jokes a lot and sometimes tries to be sarcastic back, resulting in her stammering on her words slightly as she admittedly isn’t the best at this kind of thing. It’s endearing to you though, really, and you reassure her that she doesn’t need to match your personality all the time, you find her lovely as she is – her eyes sparkle at that, finding you very romantic -.

She absolutely loves the fact that you like collecting plushies, in fact she’s a big fan of them herself! She insists on giving a name to each one of them, and if they already have one she wants to know the story behind them at all costs. She also surprises you with one of them from time to time, I feel like she would be at least a bit into gift-giving, and when you inevitably end up sleeping in the same bed she doesn’t want to exclude any of your plushies, resulting in you two sleeping completely surrounded by them!

Charlie is quite the creative person herself, in her own way: she likes musicals and singing, so if the things you’re into have some sort of fan songs or anything like that, she would enjoy learning them and getting into your own interests in general. She also loves anything that you make and showers you in compliments each time you show her one of your creations, which makes you blush a little. She also insists on showing the other residents of the Hotel, but it’s up to you if you want to do that or not, she totally understands if you’d rather keep your art private and in that case she’d feel honoured to be one of the lucky ones who gets to see it.

She encourages you to finish the things you start watching or reading, too! Mostly because she loves doing these activities with you, and she really wants to know what happens at the end...but she also feels guilty finishing them on her own, so if you’re looking for somebody who keeps you excited and entertained when you get into anything, she’s the right demon!

She’s also quite affectionate, hugging you, holding your hand and kissing your cheek whenever she gets the chance, so she doesn’t really mind that you’re not into initiating these kind of things as she will do it herself, as long as you let her know you enjoy it!

All in all you and Charlie definitely have a best friends to lovers kind of relationship, and if you’re wondering how this affects Vaggie (in case you’d be comfortable being in a poly relationship) I can actually see you two being on good terms, she agrees with you and Charlie dating wholeheartedly as I see you two getting along quite well, too!

[random4townheadcanons]

T and Z headcanons part 2!!

- they have seen each other at their absolute worst.

- Examples of this include:

- (From a previous post) the time when T slipped and fell in the shower and couldn’t get up, so Z had to go in and help him up.

- Here is how it went down:

- There was a loud thud and an “OWWW!” That came from the bathroom and Z immediately got up and ran to the door and yelled “T?! Are you ok?!” Which was followed by no response, so he said “ok, I’m coming in now.” T panicked and yelled “NO NO NO! I’M FINE, DON’T COME IN!” As Z heard him try to get up, he slipped and fell again.

- So Z said “T, I’m coming in. It’s ok, don’t worry.” And T groaned loudly.

- So Z opened the door, gave T a towel and practically had to carry him out of the shower, then drove him to the hospital after helping him get dressed.

- T tried to make a joke out of it in attempts to get out of going to the hospital but Z was too worried to let it slide, even though it only resulted in some painful bruises and difficulty moving for a few hours.

- T gave Z a ton of hugs and thanks and was extremely grateful. He wouldn’t shut up about it.

- Another example includes: when Z had an extreme panic attack in the middle of the night, and this is how it went down:

- T woke up to see Z distressed, in tears and struggling to breathe

- He asked Z what was wrong, and when Z tried to respond his words came out scrambled and he couldn’t form coherent sentences.

- This caused T to go into panic mode because he couldn’t tell if Z was having a stroke or some other serious health emergency, so naturally he also barely started to cry before trying to suppress it to not make Z panic more.

- So he helped Z get to the car as quickly as possible and drove at illegal speeds to the hospital.

- When they got there, T made them run a bunch of tests to make sure it was just a panic attack.

- They stayed for a little while and T talked to Z until he calmed down, then T drove him home.

- T made Z sleep over in his room because he didn’t want to leave him alone, not that Z would have chosen to sleep in his own room, because he’s like a little kid who never sleeps in their own bed anyway.

- Like when Z manages to sleep in his own bed for more than one night it’s a flex.

- These types of scenarios have basically cemented the fact that they’re (platonic) soulmates for life, because they’ve practically been through it all together.

- (Wow that was like a whole ass chapter book sorry lol).

- Sometimes when they’re walking somewhere in a group with the other members, T sits on Z’s shoulders like a little kid.

- They accompany each other at their doctors/dentist appointments for moral support because they’re still too scared to go alone.

- Same with when they have to use a public restroom (like what middle school girls do lol).

- T doesn’t wear his cap and Z doesn’t wear his headband nearly as often as people think.

- When one of them is sad or upset, the other one is too.

- They’ve never once fought before.

- (This includes all of the other members), but they always say “I love you” before they go to bed.

- They practically have no privacy or boundaries because they‘re so close that they do not care. Z could be in the shower (with a curtain, obviously) while T sits on the bathroom floor, playing his Nintendo switch (modern universe) and they just hang out and talk the whole time and that’s just the norm for them.

- They go to see the worst movies that no one else is seeing in theaters and laugh at them the entire time.

- If one of them has to go to the store to get something, the other one will always go too. Even if it’s for the smallest thing that only takes 5 minutes to get.

- They’re constantly sharing clothes; t shirts, hoodies, jeans, shorts, etc. if one of them is missing something from their closet, it’s in the other’s room.

- As someone with anxiety, Z shockingly doesn’t get stressed when he’s riding in the passenger’s seat of T’s car. He actually finds it relaxing to hang out and talk while they go for drives.

- They don’t have any secrets or anything that they don’t tell each other.

- Obviously Z cries the most out of all of them, and T is always a source of comfort to him, but also whenever T cries, Z is like a big warm pillow for T to hug and sob into.

- They’re avid Gravity Falls watchers (modern universe).

- Same with Coraline.

- And Lilo and Stitch.

- (As discussed in a previous post), whenever they go to the grocery store, T gets in the shopping cart and Z (while running) pushes him around the store.

- They are those best friends who occasionally kiss in photos (mostly Polaroids) every once in a blue moon because they just think it’s goofy and don’t get why people think it’s weird.

- They get really invested in each other’s hobbies.

- Like T really likes painting miniature figurines at the table with Z, and Z loves playing whatever video game T is currently hyperfixated on with him.

I could keep going but I think I’m gonna have to end the post here because there’s so many. I’ll make a part 3 soon 🤪

Anyway, I hope you liked them and keep sending requests!!

[haapy]

Fan Art, Fan Fiction, RPS & legal

grey areas...

I want to say something I will probably get canceled for, but I need to get this off my chest, because I feel like people start confusing some things here in the most recent discourse on X which can be very harmful to the fanart community.

Objectively speaking, the issue with this specific author publishing her fanfiction as a book (with different names!) is as problematic as RPS (Real Person Slash) fanfiction/art in general. It’s still a work of fiction, ART and not connected to the real people involved. However, it feels hypocritical to single her out while ignoring others who have done the same thing. The problem with RPS is that it uses real people’s personas and names in fictional stories and works of art, which can blur the lines for consumers who might have trouble separating reality from fiction.

We saw something similar with the drama "Youth," which was based on the BTS members, where the characters initially had the real names of band members, but were changed later to clarify the story wasn’t about their actual real lives.

That said, I understand why people are upset with how this specific author portrays Jimin. Personally, I avoid fanfiction that shows any of the members in a negative light, but I know people are also offended by explicit or NSFW art, which in this case, would be just as problematic. While I’m not getting into that, I do think it's wrong that she uses BTS members names as hashtags to get clout and promote her work and thus brining the BTS connection into this, which is the REAL problematic thing. If there’s anything illegal going on here, it’s probably her misuse of those hashtags, which should be a copyright violation at least. This creates a legal grey area, with a potential defamation claim looming on the horizon.

Getting upset about a specific portrayal of a character in fanfiction/fanart is kind of like being mad at your favorite actor for playing a villain in a movie and being afraid the general public could think that actor is an evil person in real life aswell. The real problem is when fans can’t separate the fiction/art from reality, which we know Taekookers especially struggle with. Basically I am saying, yes, people are too uneducated and not fit enough to consume this kind of stuff if they are unable to differ between reality and fiction.

We all know where the real hate and problematic narrations by Taekookers are coming from (I'm not opening this Pandorras Box now) and those kind's of fictions are only the result of this, not the source of the problem.

I think this whole discussion is very harmful for the fan art community and we should rather emphazize the importance of Disclaimers and age restrictions for this kind of content to make it accessable for a suitable audience that is able to understand how to classify this kind of art.

Personally, I think fan art — especially explicit or NSFW content — should stay within fan circles and be restricted by age with big disclaimers, not something that’s out there for everyone to consume. If people are okay with NSFW art of one ship but not another, whether the portrayal feels wrong because a member is "feminized" or depicts an "evil" character or whether it is something we like, because it's to our personal taste and ethics, then maybe one should reconsider NSFW fan art in general. Once we draw a line between art and reality, almost anything becomes fair game. If we think one kind of art is okay but another isn’t, just because it doesn’t match our personal taste or morals, that’s a bit hypocritical. Art is art — whether one likes it or not shouldn’t define what’s allowed. Of course this covers grey areas aswell, which is very commonly used in Manga/Anime etc, but legally, there is nothing wrong with it, even if it feels wrong.

Art exists to convey emotion, provoke thought, ignite imagination, and inspire dreams. It has the power to be unsettling, controversial, even embody what we abhor—all in the name of creation and expression.

It's a complete different story when the artist deliberately tries to manipulate reality to deceive the audience and make them believe something is factual when it is not, as we see with deepfakes and manipulative edits. Such actions are, without question, a crime.

For this reason I have the personal opinion that the more realistic an artwork is in shading and resemblence of a real photgraph, the more problematic it gets. I also only consume art that aligns with my own ethical codex and will only support such artists.

What we need to protect is fan art communities and create a save space for them. People who aren't introduced to it through disclaimers and age restrictions, shouldn't be able to access those things and artists shouldn't be scrutinized for expressing their creativity through art.

[gatormeister]

Just finished Endless Waltz, and it is absolutely fantastic. I loved every second of that movie. Took everything that was good in Gundam Wing and turned the dial up to eleven. Got just that little bit extra backstory for the pilots. More Tallgeese is always a good thing. I like the TV versions of the suits better in every case other than the Deathscythe Hell, that one's about equal with the TV appearance I'd say. Give Heavyarms back it's orange damn it!

Absolute pacifism was always a weak ideal in the show, mostly because it just sort of worked all the time just by Relena talking. It was only ever really opposed by war mongers. Endless Waltz finally shows the struggle that is maintaining peace and peaceful attitudes in a way outside of having some cartoonish monarchist/fascist practically look at the camera and call it naive before being proven wrong very shortly after. Which was fine in the show really, as I said in a previous post, Wing tried doing a lot with it's plot that it couldn't fully support, and the end result was some plot points that just never sat quite right.

Mariemaia was a seven year old trying to become a world dictator. She was just a puppet of course. Sort of a Haman and Mineva situation there. But every time she'd open her mouth to try and sound smart I could only think, "You are literally seven, what the hell are you talking about?" Which was funny.

My favorite suits from the series and movie would be the Tallgeese with the Tallgeese II be my favorite iteration, the Wing Gundam of course with Unit 01 the first iteration being my favorite of those, the Sandrock, and the Deathscythe Hell TV version. I liked the Leos and Tauruses, but the rest of the grunt suits just weren't big hits with me. I'd put the Leo above the Taurus, but I would also say that everything I like about the Leo, the Graze from Iron Blooded Orphans does the same but better.

Over all an okay to good series with a fantastic ending. I don't know if I'd watch the whole series over again, but I'd absolutely re-watch Endless Waltz. Next up is War in the Pocket followed by Stardust Memory and Thunderbolt, but before that I'm going to take a small break from Gundam. I may have only just started posting about the shows with Turn A, but I have been watching Gundam basically nonstop since around the August last year. Going from G-Witch, to IBO, to The Origin, 0079 the series, Zeta, Double Zeta, Char's Counterattack, 08th MS Team, Unicorn, Narrative, Turn A, and now Wing and Endless Waltz. It's been a lot, and I am ready to watch some shorter shows without giant robots in them... for at least a little bit. I'm thinking I go back to Gundam in February. I'll still be posting pictures of Gunpla I build in the meantime, but that's a lot different than sitting down and watching multiple shows that are around fifty epsiodes each. See ya!

(Edited to add Narrative into the list. A movie so self contained I literally forgot to put it in with the rest of Gundam.)

[lilliths-httyd-blog]

So I just watched Princess and the Popstar as part of my mega Barbie movie watch/rewatch. For reference, here's where it sits on my current personal tier list (I've seen more of them I promise, just not in a very long time). I feel that it's placement on my tier list is justified considering I feel the same way about it as I do Island Princess: two very good movies with just a few aspects which make me apprehensive about watching it twice (Tika. If Tika wasn't in Island Princess it would've been in yellow tier at least). I also didn't enjoy it as much as Diamond Castle or Three Musketeers, which are both films that came out in a similar timeframe to Princess and the Popstar. So, cyan-soon-to-be-green-tier-why-the-fuck-is-it-not-green-hold-on seems fitting.

I think y'all can tell that I like the Barbie movies.

Princess and the Popstar started off a banger (despite Princesses Wanna Have Fun being the bad kind of earworm - I hadn't watched the film in well over five years until today but that song was still getting stuck in my head every other week up until as of literally a few days ago probably). A nice little homage to Princess and the Pauper without totally ripping it off. Nice throwback to To Be a Princess there too, as a kid I hadn't seen Princess and the Pauper so I had no idea where the song came from or anything (literally I used to forget that the song was even in the movie) but as of today the original is literally my favourite Barbie movie ever so when I heard the opening lyrics I got... way too excited over this Barbie movie than I really should've. But yeah no the music in this damn movie is fantastic aside from the one song.

Tori and Keira were absolutely fantastic characters. They were VERY flawed but like can you blame them??? They're not even eighteen yet, they've both grown up in heavily restrictive environments (Keira having been performing since she was six and Tori acting out all the time as a result of the way she was brought up), have had such limited social interaction and have been taught to "never act your age" (act older than you really are) so it's totally reasonable that these girls are gonna fuck up and make mistakes and do stupid things (and hey they might be faking their identities but at least they're not committing identity theft pfffft). They don't have the wisdom of an average 17 year old yet but they're treated by everyone around them like they're so much older ESPECIALLY KEIRA (and yet she's the least impulsive one out of the two). Overall, I support womens wrongs. Genuinely listen to this movie's version of To Be a Princess, you'll absolutely get what I mean.

I still think that Serafina is superior to Vanessa but... Vanessa my beloved <3 Riff was not as fun but I love his name referring to a guitar riff while also being. Ya know. Dog.

My biggest complained about this movie is Crider's whole thing with the Diamond Gardenia like. If that whole plot hadn't been in the movie then it would've been so much better. Keep the whole drought thing for Tori's character development and whatnot, and make Amelia's whole thing about keeping Tori in line be about Amelia's Material Girl lifestyle and her not wanting Tori to find out about what kinda state the kingdom is in because "Vanessa, I'm a Material Girl" (make her an homage to best Barbie villain the Original Material Girl Preminger). Like girl does not want to give up her riches in order to help the populace. Do that instead of having an unrealistic magical diamond-growing plant and Basically Uncle Ian from Alvin and the Chipmunks having an unhealthy obsession with it... (the way he broke into the castle too like- those guards DESERVED to have their heads bonked with vases if that's how shit they are at their job).

To sum my thoughts up, I reckon this movie started off really strong but as soon as the Gardenia and Crider became a thing it began to very slowly fall off. A few changes could've made it so much better. Anyway it's nice to see that it wasn't as shit as I thought it would be, considering it was my childhood favourite :D

Also I stan Prince Liam. Dude was barely present, asked next to no questions and rolled with whatever out-of-left-field shenanigans were thrown at him and I support that. Also no forced romance or hinted feelings or anything, as far as I'm concerned he and Keira were just bros causing chaos together. Good for them.

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, gore and sexual references

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/08/review-deadpool-wolverine-2024.html>

Score: 3 out of 5

The Marvel Cinematic Universe's first R-rated film, and the long-awaited arrival of Deadpool into the MCU following Disney's buyout of 20th Century Fox, is exactly what I was expecting: a gleefully lowbrow pisstake on superhero movies that this time lets them train their fire directly on the 800-pound gorilla of the whole genre now that they're all under the same corporate umbrella. It's undoubtedly a weaker film than its two predecessors, one that is unfortunately afflicted by many of the problems that have recurred throughout the MCU in general and its later period in particular, most notably exceptionally thin narrative tissue that serves primarily as filler to get to the action, the jokes, and the laundry list of cameos. But really, that's just about what I expected from Deadpool entering the MCU: a movie where you knew Disney wouldn't let him interact with the really important stuff, especially not at a time when the whole franchise is at a crossroads thanks to declining reviews, audience burnout, and well-publicized behind-the-scenes troubles, and would instead give him his own little corner of the universe to fuck around with in exchange for mocking the shit out of the rest of it from the bleachers. The result is, basically, a oneshot Deadpool/MCU shitpost fanfic done professionally, a film that, for all that Wade Wilson hypes himself up as "Marvel Jesus" who's gonna save the MCU, knows that it doesn't really matter except maybe on a thematic level. It's a movie made for everybody who's gotten bored with superhero movies in general and Marvel's brand of such in particular, one that's also a pretty good example of the genre in its own right and a fun welcome party for Deadpool into his new home -- even if, and I can't believe I still have to say this after three Deadpool movies, parents absolutely, positively should not take their kids to see it.

(Kids themselves, on the other hand? Feel free to sneak in to your heart's content. I'm not gonna stop you. Shit, I'm the kind of guy who bought a metal water bottle specifically small enough to sneak it into theaters in my pockets. I swear, the Deadpool movies are basically this generation's version of RoboCop in terms of extremely R-rated films that kids seem to love anyway.)

You know exactly what kind of irreverent movie this is the moment it opens with Deadpool, in an effort to save his universe from destruction by the multiversal time-cops of the Time Variance Authority, nullifying the tragic, moving sendoff that Wolverine (and, by extension, Hugh Jackman) experienced at the end of Logan by literally digging up his grave and then defiling his corpse by using his adamantium-plated bones as weapons to brutally slaughter the TVA agents after him. (Oh, and spoilers for Logan. This movie spoils it anyway, so hey.) The entire plot is a metaphor for how Disney's buyout of 20th Century Fox means the end of Fox's X-Men movie universe and all the other superhero movie franchises that Fox produced, starting with the fact that Wolverine's death means that the timeline that he and Deadpool inhabited lost its "anchor being" -- which is to say, Wolverine was the breakout star of those movies, and the decision to kill him off marked the symbolic end of the X-Men movies. And the ambitious TVA bureaucrat Mr. Paradox has decided that, rather than let that timeline naturally decay and fade away over the course of a few millennia, they're gonna strip it for parts and then "prune" it with a sci-fi doomsday weapon that will delete it from existence. Deadpool decides that, even though Disney the TVA wants him in the MCU Sacred Timeline because he's that awesome a character, he's not gonna go if it means that all of his friends are gonna get blinked out of existence as their timeline is "pruned". No, he's gonna find a new Logan to replace the one his universe lost, and if that means crossing the TVA, so be it.

Thus begins a wild and wacky buddy action flick in which Deadpool manages to snatch a Logan wearing a comics-accurate blue-and-yellow Wolverine costume, but one who was also a failure in his own universe whose alcoholism caused him to let his fellow X-Men down in fatal, catastrophic fashion. Hugh Jackman, returning to the part he's played for over twenty years now (and, as Deadpool jokes, is probably gonna be dragged back to until he's ninety), serves largely as the straight man to Ryan Reynolds' off-the-wall humor as Deadpool, and as the film's emotional anchor who gets much of the drama and trauma in his life and past. There's no way his performance here would ever top Logan, but for the kind of movie this is, Jackman is still perfect for the part, establishing great buddy chemistry with Reynolds right off the bat as the two of them bicker, argue, fight, try to kill each other on multiple occasions, and eventually set aside their differences and become friends. At its core, underneath all the in-jokes and moments that have had comic book fans buzzing for months now thanks to the rumors circulating about them, this is a buddy cop movie without the cops, and Jackman and Reynolds sell it the way that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover sold it in Lethal Weapon.

As for everyone else, merely listing the characters who show up here, drawn from throughout the history of Marvel comic book adaptations over the last thirty years, would spoil half the fun. The experience of watching this as a lifelong fan of superhero movies is a two-hour version of the famous shot in The Avengers of Captain America saying "I understood that reference," and I'll admit that it's pretty shallow and, in its own way, suffers from a lot of the same problems with continuity lockout that have plagued the MCU lately. In this case, instead of the plots of movies and TV shows that came before it, this film asks you to be familiar with a lot of the backstage drama and inside baseball that's gone on with them, from canceled X-Men spinoffs to the prior roles of some of the MCU's biggest stars to a reboot that Kevin Feige and company have been trying to get made for years but which at this point seems to be cursed. If ever the term "Reddit movie" were to be applied to a film, this would be the ticket. Personally, I did, in fact, understand those references, being as I am in the prime demographic this movie was made for, a young man raised on superhero movies who does in fact use Reddit. As such, I laughed my ass off at a lot of the jokes here. That being said, I can easily imagine how a lot of this film's humor might fly over the head of somebody younger or much older than me who isn't familiar with the movies this one is referencing, and would wind up as lost as I did watching the third act of Last Action Hero when that movie turned into a parade of '90s Hollywood in-jokes. Fortunately, the general pop culture jokes and cheesy pop music dance sequences (with some Y2K-era bangers thrown in alongside the expected '80s classics) are things that I can't see ever getting old. This may be more of a "reference movie" than its predecessors, but make no mistake, it still has their sense of humor, and it taps that to the fullest.

Beyond the humor, what plot this movie has is pretty thin and exists mainly to propel it to the next joke or action scene. Emma Corrin was easily the standout in the supporting cast as the villain Cassandra Nova, an evil twin sister of Professor X who got banished to the Void and rules it as her own personal fiefdom. The role was honestly pretty thankless and existed largely to give the movie a superpowered villain, but Corrin utterly devours it, playing Cassandra like a femme version of Gene Wilder (who Reynolds compared their performance to) as a kinda smarmy, aristocratic, and mischievous figure whose friendly demeanor can vanish in an instant the moment she decides she doesn't like you. The action scenes are about what you'd expect from Marvel at this point, boasting that familiar blend of CGI spectacle with the wacky setups we've come to expect from anything with Deadpool in it, from the 20th Century Fox logo having been dumped into the Void to some very creative use of a Honda Odyssey. These movies were all about the humor and the raunch more than anything else, anyway, and having the action and plot here be basically MCU boilerplate but with more blood and gore keeps the spotlight squarely on such, even if it never reaches the heights it did in prior films.

The Bottom Line

Joining the MCU has taken away none of Deadpool's characteristic charm or bite and given him plenty of new targets to mock. There may not be much to this movie beyond humor and bloody violence, and it may not be as lightning-in-a-bottle awesome as the first two, but as far as a 128-minute joyride goes, I was never not amused.

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

Spooky season

So, I live in an old house that was, when I moved in, adjacent to an overgrown feral lot that had been seized by the state as derelict and then... kept that way. The previous owner’s solution to the state’s once-a-year maintenance schedule was to build a cinderblock wall along that edge of the property as tall as the building code would let it be.

It solved the problem, but it also means that entire side of my house is basically god’s blind spot. You can’t see it from any of the neighbors’ properties, and you can’t see it from much of my property, either.

This was never much of an issue, until I was sitting home alone one night watching a movie and I suddenly heard something scratching at one of the windows on that side of the house. Not light ‘scritch-scritch’ scratching, either—something was putting some weight behind those nails. I just about jumped out of my skin. I threw open the curtains—nothing. Check out the curtains at the other windows. Same deal—nothing.

It was late and very dark out, and I generally speaking don’t want to get axe-murdered, so I convinced myself it was just a reeeeeeeally big moth attracted to the light and tried to forget about it. The next morning there was nothing out of place or unusual on the side of the house, supporting the ‘forget about it’ plan of action.

Which is what I did for about a week, until it happened again. This time it was louder, lasted longer, and definitely was not a fucking moth. This time I also played it a little smarter and went to a different window and peeked out of the curtains from a better angle on the sly, which made it more unsettling that there was still absolutely goddamned nothing to be seen.

It wasn’t quite full dark this time, so I turned the outside lights on, grabbed one of those five-pound tactical flashlights, and ventured around the side of the house.

Nothing.

No tracks, no prints, nothing’s been disturbed except me. I didn’t hear anything aside from the scratching either time. I walk all the way around the house and back to the front door. Nothing.

Maybe, I tell myself, it’s a bird. Maybe it’s getting to be nesting season and some feathered asshole is just attacking everything it can see its reflection in.

A couple days after that, it’s the weekend. I don’t have to be up for work in the morning, so it’s almost midnight and I’m still awake, reading a book. It happens again. Louder, more frantic scratching. Right fucking behind me.

On the glass fucking door.

Around the minor inconvenience of having a fucking heart attack, because it’s late and something is clawing at the least secure feature a house can have two feet from my back, at this point I was quite frankly fucking done with the whole thing. I whip the blinds open and... nothing. Then I look down.

The smallest adult cat I have ever seen is sitting on its haunches, shoulders barely clearing the stop of the step, paws braced against the glass, glaring daggers at my indoor cat, who very clearly considers this my problem and not hers.

I smack the door, hard, and the cat takes off.

The little fucker kept this shit up for the rest of the goddamned month. I have no idea what sort of beef it decided it had with my cats, who aren’t allowed outside and never have been. Whatever it was, it resulted in me getting jump-scared at least once a week and having to go outside and physically chase the cat off to make it stop scratching at the window like some pint-sized feline Freddy Krueger on three separate occasions.

So this is my annual autumnal PSA: Keep your fucking cats indoors, you goddamned heathens. The rest of us don't need to put up with their WWE Smackdown bullshit while we're just trying to live our lives.

[morlock-holmes]

So I've had a lot of too passionate discussion about "AI art" (A term I am deeply unfond of) but they've lately clarified something for me, which is that I am now thinking that certain distinct things have been conflated in the popular discussion.

Incidentally, for the following discussion I'm only talking about image generation; while text generation apparently uses similar programing approaches, I feel like for end users the use case for generated text is very different from the use case for generated images.

So what I have realized lately, is that there are (at least) two ways to make revenue from AI art, and that these two different revenue streams have different implications for copyright law and data use in general.

I've been playing around a lot with Stable Diffusion, a group of open source image generation tools, because, what, I'm going to use a closed-source system like some kind of simp? No thank you.

Honestly, I still have a really poor understanding of how Stable-Diffusion models actually work; everything I've read has been either so technical that I come away with no information, or so dumbed down that I come away with no information. I'm working on it.

But on a basic caveman level, if you want to use Stable-Diffusion, you download a specific checkpoint model which is a big (A few gigs) file full of god knows what. You then download a GUI, you type a text prompt into the GUI as an input, your computer's GPU performs a whole bunch of calculations based on the prompt, and after a minute or so spits out one or more image files.

So, now that Grog explain magic box to you, it should be clear that there are actually two ways to generate revenue from this:

I can sell the individual image outputs, or;

I can sell the model file and access to hardware which does the calculations.

So, a company like Midjourney does the latter; they aren't selling individual pictures to scifi publishers to use as book covers, they are selling access to a proprietary model and the hardware to run it.

This means that copyright concerns are kind of different depending on which of those approaches you are talking about.

I think @squareallworthy was the first person I saw advance a certain argument for AI models as being copyright infringing.

People say that the model isn't the actual image, that it's just data taken from the image, but in a setting involving computers that's a very iffy distinction to draw. A .zip file containing a copy of, say, Marvel's Avengers is, in and of itself, just a bunch of data. I, as a person, can't actually see the movie just by looking at the binary code that composes that particular zip file.

But I can use a computer program to turn that data into a human-readable copy of the Avengers. I think we can agree that I can't evade copyright protections just by compressing my unauthorized copy into a zip folder.

So, take a stable-diffusion model like this one I found on CivitAI (Warning, there are NSFW images there, but they are blurred by default) and ask it to generate an image of Sega's copyrighted character Rouge The Bat and you can get a result like this:

Thereby proving that the checkpoint file contains copyrighted material in a manner similar to that of a .zip file or other compression file.

I think squareallworthy used some painting nobody has heard of to make the same point but the principle is the same either way.

I don't know if this is a knock-out argument in terms of copyright law; I would expect it to be far more difficult to generate, say, a specific panel of a specific Sonic the Hedgehog comic, but it's a colorable argument.

However, that argument applies only to the checkpoint model itself, and is far less convincing when applied to a given output.

Say I instead use the same model to create my own extremely original not derivative of anything in particular OC:

If I just publish the above image, you cannot in any way simply just use that jpeg to recreate the checkpoint model or any copyrighted data that might arguably be inside the checkpoint model.

To me, this is more like, imagine I have a stolen copy of Marvel's The Avengers. And imagine I write a computer program which, say, repeatedly samples the color of a random pixel in the movie at a random time, assigns each color a musical tone, and then outputs the whole thing as an avant garde audio file.

My argument would be that, sure, you might be able to get me for having an unauthorized copy of Marvels The Avengers, but the audio file itself is so transformative of the work that the original work cannot be derived from the audio file, so it would be absurd to say that the audio file has violated Disney's copyright.

I am very skeptical of attacks on this kind of image generation which rely on the idea that they constitute "theft".

Based on the reasoning above, I think you can only argue that the checkpoint models potentially violate copyright; the idea that my mouse girl represents a violation of Sega's copyright because the same model can produce an image of the mouse and an image of Rouge the Bat strikes me as absurd on the face.

The idea that the model itself violates copyright, while I don't agree, is certainly less obviously absurd.

But the danger here is that, if the models violate copyright laws, then that means that only truly giant corporations could produce them, because you'd either need to pay tremendous numbers of licensing fees OR just already own the copyright to an enormous pile of digital images.

Yes, that might hurt MidJourney, but it would definitely kill all open source image generation tech.

A world where this tech can be used easily by individuals, but legally we are only allowed to do so if we pay Adobe a monthly subscription fee strikes me as actively worse than a world where this tech is available open source to individuals.

PS - I originally wanted to do this demonstration with the main Stable-Diffusion models but they, and I cannot believe I am saying this, don't know who Rouge the Bat is. I'm kind of kidding on the square when I say that if these models didn't get any images of Rouge the Bat, they can't have harvested that much data from the internet.

PPS - In terms of the copyrightability of the output images, I generated forty-eight images of Rouge and 14 different prompts, and the numbers are even higher for the mouse girl. It turns out this model trained mostly on furry porn does not have the best grasp of what a shopping cart is. I played a LOT with the weights of individual prompt elements on the mouse girl trying to get something that was at all legible as a beer mug on top of her head. I also looked around to find the best model to use for the demonstration, and added some supplementary models which pulled the image in a certain direction. I was really considering inpainting before I just said, "Dang it, you can't work on these forever, just write the dang post already". My point is, I would argue that, while a tremendous amount of that image is not the result of my decision making, a significant chunk of it is, I would argue I had more input into the subject matter and composition than I would have for, say, a photograph of a neat bug I came across at random, and that photo of a neat bug already is copyrightable.