#but it fails to do anything compelling with those bits in a cohesive way

[willowcrowned]

“Making anyone over the age of 8 watch tcw should be forbidden” okay, but why?

because it’s bad in the way only bad kids shows can be. and then it’s also bad in fifteen other ways

[nightcoremoon]

so for the first time I saw batman: the killing joke.

...

it was okay I guess. but massively overrated. I expected some fucking masterpiece of cinema but instead it was just two unrelated short films that were more style and flash than substance.

so first off, barbara's storyline was mediocre. franz wasn't a compelling villain; just a creep, and a trust fund brat. oh wow he's a mafia kid who stole his family's fortune by hacking. if it was the falcone family I'd have cared more but it wasn't so it's just some faceless deathfodder rando. who gives a shit. the whole situation was just a vehicle to shove batman's dick into babs. which kinda fucks over bruce's character here and judging by the timeline kinda makes him a bit of a groomer, yikes. bruce and gordon have known each other since bruce was a young boy and we know that bruce is way older than babs so yeah bruce totally knew her from birth until present day, he literally utilized an active power dynamic to police her crimefighting activities, and he should have fucking known better and stopped her when she kissed him because it would (and did) compromise their professional dynamic, but hey, batdick. and at least barbara recognized that she was behaving emotionally rather than logically when it came to bruce and paris and took the high road out. that would be a serviceable standalone episode to write her on a bus in a serialization but THIS IS A MOVIE. so for a waste of an already short runtime it's like having an appetizer before your meal but instead of something like a crab cake before stuffed flounder, you get greasy onion petals that are more fried batter than onion before getting a well done cheeseburger that's just a glorified hockey puck on a sponge with a kraft single on top. the animation and vocal delivery were excellent of course, not gonna disparage that aspect, so it was well made, but the writing was just not very good. a polished turd. quantic dream must have developed it then because it feels like I watched a david cage production.

so in a 78 minute movie, five of which were the credits, we had a half hour Disney/Pixar short except those bring joy and this brought boring. also there were a lot of shots of her ass tits and underwear that were obnoxiously male-gazey and there was a token gay for the sole purpose of dangling a carrot on a stick for the queers. look kids, warner brothers and dc comics cares about the lgbts! give us money! a waste of time before the real reason why anyone came to see the movie that literally only exists to pad out the runtime to make it a feature length (even though paying a full ticket would've been a total ripoff because, again, IT WAS ONLY 78. even 9 was 81 minutes long and that had an amazing storyline so I forgave it, but 78 minutes? ugh.

also, GOTHAM RAGE??? CRINGE. SO CRINGE.

alright now for the joker segment.

*ahem*

what the fuck? that sucked! *throws tomato*

mark hamill and the joker's lines and the art and the cinematography and the choreography was all good and the plot was cohesive. I get it.

but holy shit was the writing weak as fuck.

okay so some rando breaks the J-ster out of Arkham (already unlikely but ugh whatever), he didn't turn a trick or recruit or anything, he just went to purchase a carnival. or, steal one. but wait, he DID recruit, but he went to get all of the stereotypical Circus Freak™ stereotypes. little people, fat lady, bearded lady, wolf man, strongman, diaper man (wait, what?), and the two headed woman. I guess if you don't really think about why all of them were super readily available in the outskirts between arkham and gotham [i just realized they both end with -am] then it makes enough sense. and then literally right after that HE RECRUITS SOME GUYS TO HELP HIM KIDNAP GORDON. and then strips and photographs barbara. um. ew. you can tell the writer and director were men. Alan Moore is constantly molesting women in his comics and this one trick pony should be put down already. but whatever. the plot is weak and it only gets saved by the flashback sequences.

oh.

oh no.

they're not that great.

he's a failed unfunny comedian who just wants some money to move his wife to a better house so he turns to thievery with the mob. OR YOU COULD JUST STOP GOING TO THE BAR AND BLOWING IT ALL ON BOOZE. I mean the cops knew where to find him after all so clearly he's a repeat customer (or moore is a bad plot writer who relies on convenience and shut the fuck up and don't critically analyze it). alright so he gets wrapped up in the mob to perform a heist on a playing card factory. GET IT, BECAUSE HE'S THE JOKER??? and he uses the moniker of the red hood to retain his anonymity. I expected the mobsters to be working for francisco but no the paris storyline was only cooked up screenplay for passing the runtime so why would they do something clever and interesting and make the film cohesive? that'd be really stupid to make the movie feel more like one movie and not two short films. at least when grindhouse & planet terror did it they advertised themselves as an anthology film. whatever. he falls in the vat of acid which melts the red hood to his face and I gotta say that's actually a pretty good idea to get his face white and his hair green and his lips red. I like that part. oh wait I forgot about the most important part! his wife gets shoved in the refrigerator. OH WOW THAT'S JUST SO COMPELLING AND ORIGINAL, TOTALLY NOT SOMETHING THAT ALREADY HAPPENED TO GREEN LANTERN. TWICE. although she wasn't literally shoved into a literal refrigerator like alex was. rip in frozen pieces you absolute legend of a trope namer. alright, so... so the joker is sad because his wife died. you know, the wife we saw for two minutes and knew the moment we saw her drenched in sepia she was gonna die. and she died offscreen. kyle's gf died and he was fine. gordon's wife died and he was fine. batman's parents both died and he was fine. oh boo hoo someone I love died! fuck off. I am so goddamn sick of people trying to justify their evil with "I was sad once". it's a stupid trope and it's not compelling. the only valid version is doctor doofenshmirtz' evil(er) version in the PF movie because it's hilarious that it's because of a toy train because that's the emotional depth that fridgewomen is treated with in all of these storylines. but at least batman said so. oh yeah, I almost totally forgot, batman's in this movie.

batman punches people and nonlethally takes them out. by suffocating them and letting them get stabbed and throwing them into pits of spikes and HEY WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND! okay let's just ignore that bit and hope that the little people squeezed between the gaps in the spikes and the strongman could breathe in the face mask and the two headed women had KO gas and the fat lady was fat enough that the knives only stabbed her cellulite. it wouldn't be the biggest reach one would have to make in watching this fucking disaster of a plot mess.

now I did like that it was actually batman, and by that I mean he gave a shit about the insane because he recognizes that mental illness is not a cause of dangerous or criminal behavior, just a potential exacerbating factor if it wasn't treated. yeah he brutalized mobsters and crime lords but they were mostly in self defense while gathering intel. he politely asked sal maroni and the sex workers for information and they gave it to him without violence- he manhandled maroni but only after he reached into his pocket for a cigar which could've been a gun. also batman says sex work should be decriminalized if only by not ratting them out to the cops. he was a genuinely good person in the second half of the movie. too bad it was ruined by the shitty first half that made him a borderline groomer.

joker's song was... bad. mark hamill performed his ass off but the song wasn't that good. it just tried to be willy wonka if he was a voyeuristic monster. oh yeah have the only girl character be paralyzed stripped and photographed only to give her father ManPain™. again... the fuck? joker and batman were both gross but, again. male writers. if it was a one-off I could drop a thermian argument because, alright one and done makes sense, especially 1988 standards. but it saturated and soured the entire goddamn movie because of abhorrent pacing decisions. so you're goddamn right I'm gonna bring it up twice! joker was a creep, his plan was dumb, nolan and burton and lord/miller and even ayer had better motivations. YES I AM SAYING THAT JARED LETO'S JOKER HAD BETTER WRITING THAN MARK HAMILL'S JOKER. not nearly to the level of ledger nicholson or galifanakis but hamill didn't have a lot to work with here and I maintain that his performance was amazing; honestly I like his the best out of all of them but just... not here. but I think I can cut some slack to firelord ozai and luke skywalker even if he just phoned it in here which he didn't. writing was just weak. and that's all there is to it. don't anon me and threaten to remove my bones ok?

alright so batman and joker fought and joker got the upper hand and was gonna kill him but it was a prop gun. haha. they had a heart to heart and batman tells joker that he wants to help him get better, even after joker killed robin and molested barbara and traumatized gordon and did countless other travesties, he still said he would help. but joker said no, and told a joke that was good enough to make batman laugh. and then the credits rolled.

...

what a completely pointless and empty ending. oh it's deep and meaningful and poignant? ok sure, I guess, movie, but you didn't earn that. shyamalan did the same thing a dozen times. that doesn't make him any less of a shit writer.

I can understand the concept of batman laughing at joker's joke, humanizing him.

I get it. I see what they tried to do. I respect it.

but this movie was massively overhyped and overrated and I expected it to be so much better than it was. but overall to me it was just another batman cartoon to throw on top of the pile. maybe it was influential to graphic novels. maybe it shaped batman into what he is today. it published right as tim burton's movie and I can respect its place in the pantheon of comic history. but sometimes things that are classic...

aren't that great.

citizen kane, casablanca, the maltese falcon, the treasure of the sierra madre, gone with the wind, singing in the rain, all of them are classic and legendary pieces of art. but they're just not that good, interesting, appealing, watchable, or FUN. they were good at the time- I mean come on we all know them today- but on going back you'd have to really appreciate the finer details to still love the movies today. and this belongs there, in the vault, to be appreciated from afar. influential if dated.

but god am I still disappointed nonetheless.

TL;DR

it was just okay. had some good ideas, had some really bad ideas, had some ugly stuff. overall mediocre. first half 5/10, second half 7/10, overall 6/10.

[dangan-meme-palace]

Hey, dear! So I have a question. Do you have an opinion on Tenko? (yes more questions because why not) ~Mod Maki

Heya~! I sure do! And don't worry about asking questions cuz I love answering them!

Fair warning: This will be long as fuck.

Tenko

Tenko is a very solid character with very entertaining and interesting traits that set her apart from most of her peers. She also has a plethora of flaws that would've been enjoyable to see her overcome, and no, I'm not just talking about her drooling and her hatred of men.

Speaking positively, Tenko is a very upbeat person who likes to help others and protect them as best she can, not taking dumb risks with her life but also not unwilling to step up for the sake of others if the need arises. She's very passionate and energetic about things and gives her all for the sake of the things she's interested in, proving to be a very dedicated disciple. An unfortunately lesser known fact about her is that she's very sensitive to the emotions of others and can be seen both giving very wise, heartfelt advice to others while trying her best to uplift them or reflecting on their views of her. She has a genuinely interesting and unique past that adds a lot of depth to her character and brings up struggles that you never would have guessed she had. She also expresses interesting points, morals, and concerns relating to the killing game that make it feel as if she is actually immersed in the setting (which a few v3 characters sadly lack.)

Strong in both body and heart, courageously willing to tackle challenges, and earnestly wanting to improve herself with a zeal that few other members of the V3 cast can match; Tenko has a lot of positive qualities that make her likable, if not lovable.

Having said that, she also has quite a few flaws, but I don't think that they detract from her character. In fact, I think they add quite a bit to her– ...most of them anyway. For now though let's just talk what her flaws actually are: Tenko is a loud, gullible, obnoxious girl who is quick to point fingers at people she finds suspicious (usually men) and will casually insult people she doesn't like. She's self conscious about a lot of things, including her looks, her volume, and her rambunctiousness. Most prominently, she's also very, uh, drooly over Himiko.

Her self consciousness, willinglyness to improve, and past are by far the best of her traits, because of the amount of positive potential for development and intrigue they add to her character.

Her parents sent her to her dojo because they didn't want to deal with their annoying daughter, so they sent her away making her extremely self conscious about the way she acts to this day. With the help of her master she tries her best to work on those traits so that she can become the refined and elegant type of woman that she idolizes due to the standards set by her parents.

Obviously she's still a major work in progress, but it's supremely refreshing to see a character that's already working on themselves instead of yet another girl with trauma being fixed by someone else, most likely by falling in love with a man *cough cough Maki cough cough*. I'm a big fan of self improvement stories simply because they're usually shunted to the side in favor of yet another fixer-upper story, and while that's my own preference, it truly does work in Tenko's favor because it makes her seem that much more natural. She has clear motivations that believably influence her personality and flaws with a set path to self improvement that she's already walking and will continue to walk of her own volition for her own sake.

Her drooly-ness is obviously her worst trait, not only because it's based on gross stereotypes or because it makes Himiko uncomfortable, but because if literally goes against the rest of her character. All of her other traits are cohesive and mesh well with each other, but her most defined flaw runs counter to everything she stands for.

She's shown as someone very conscious of the way others view her –to the point of putting herself down when others compliment her– and very intuitive/sensitive to the feelings and thoughts of others. There is no way for Tenko to not have noticed that she was making Himiko uncomfortable and there is no way that Tenko, who is already very self concious about the way she acts and has a character entirely based on improving herself for the sake of that self consciousness, wouldn't stop as soon as she realizes that she's acting the same way she condemns men for acting. It goes against everything her character stands for and all of her core personality traits.

I'm not saying that it should be ignored –because it shouldn't, unwanted advances are definitely something to be critical of– however this inconsistency is definitely something that was shoehorned in to make her into a ~qUiRkY~ character rather than anything born of her canon personality. It's not a trait authentic to Tenko, but rather something tacked on in order to portray a ~wAcKy~ archetype as danganronpa so often loves to do with it's characters.

Wrapping this up, the moments where I think Tenko truly shined and where her traits showcased in the best possible way were when she infiltrated the student council and planned to convince Angie to stop with the help of Shuichi and Maki, the moment when she talks to Shuichi after he takes off his hat and she tells him that she also wants to fulfill Kaede's wish and tells him to never go back on the progress he's made, and of course her FTEs.

The first one because it was an interesting solution to a very valid concern, the second one because it shows off her compassion and empathy better than most scenes with her do, and the third one because it focuses on her past where she is flawed and then the present where she is still working on those flaws, showing both a determination to change and also just adding some really enriching context that explains Why Tenko is The Way She Is in a very well written way.

All in all, I love Tenko for who she is and while I acknowledge that her actions towards Himiko are canon and should definitely be criticized despite any well-meaning intentions she might have had, I don't believe it was core to her character or even in-character in the first place. Tenko, in my eyes, is a girl in the middle of working on herself with a genuinely moving and entertaining in-between phase with flaws that never fails to make me smile with her caring and bright demeanor. I love this girl and genuinely think that she would have been a more compelling, amusing, and fascinating character with better development potential than the survivors of V3 combined.

[paperwick]

Dragon Age Tarot Style Guide: Part Two

The second of my at least three part set of tarot tutorials. This sentence will link to the first one on composition if you haven’t seen it. It’s been a four year gap between these, and I apologize for that. To all you who messaged me and reminded me of this project, thank you. You kept me from forgetting and I’m glad. <3

It won’t be another four years until I post the next segment, which will be pattern and texture focused. It’ll hopefully be in the next month or two. 

This is going to be a long post, so I’m putting it under the cut. Apologies to the mobile users! 

As a general disclaimer, this is an unofficial guide, I’ve never worked with Bioware. All of this is based on how I approach tarot design, my inspiration being heavily rooted in Dragon Age Inquisition’s companion card designs. 

Secondly, I know nothing about tarot. I tend to use http://www.ata-tarot.com/resource/cards/ heavily as a resource for my understanding of the cards and their meanings.You don’t need to know anything about tarot to do illustrations, just have as much fun as you can. <3 

So I typically work with a color composition in mind, but for those who are struggling to imagine a color scheme, my best advice for coming up with a palette is to just throw down some colors in this sort of an arrangement.

Your Main is going to be whats forming the base of the card, or it’ll be the most widely used color. Backgrounds usually make up the main, but sometimes it’s a foreground element or the character’s clothing. 

Your Cores are going to be colors that accent the base. You can make these pretty wild to be honest, but complementary colors and triads tend to work best for a balanced color composition. That’s what you’re trying to achieve with these--balance. Think about what’s drawing the most attention. The red in this example I did with the Iron Bull is very strong, and the teal I chose is fighting with it so my last color is something a bit more desaturated that accents the teal instead of picking another aggressive color, like a saturated yellow. 

The Accent or HL color is whatever you’re going to use to add the final focus notes. It will typically be your brightest or your most saturated color, though not always. Sometimes your HL color might be the darkest of the composition because your main and core colors are naturally bright. It should be used sparingly, or if you’re using a lot of it, focused in one area.

You can use more colors than this! For my example card with Bull, you can see I made his pants a sort of subdued yellow and added accents to the background and lit parts of his body in in different colors, But you’ll want to keep your major colors limited to keep it cohesive. If you start losing cohesion, I recommend using a gradient map over your picture set to multiply or soft light (not at 100%) to tone down your most divergent colors, and you can mask out areas where appropriate. 

This Bull card is one I made by picking my colors first then deciding on the content and composition. Color picking can be done first, or second as I’ve done with the rest of my examples. 

Card #1: Rayne Amell   [ @dracoangel​ ]

The Queen of Cups

This card went though several iterations with color, and the end product is less about story and more about atmosphere. The drawn composition reflects more of the story: she conceals her thoughts and feelings, but the world bends around her like water. I wanted to add more purple to this card, considering the character’s preference for it, so I skewed the color scheme in the final to be more purple. The first version probably makes for a more cohesive palette, but it lacks the same depth and drama as the one with purple. I added another core color to the second palette, which is totally okay to do. Sometimes the core palette might be 7 colors, sometimes it’s 2. The idea is to strike a balance. Colors that are super eye catching like the red in the scarf might better serve the composition as a lesser accent, whereas the purple core is a great fill because it’s fairly desaturated and doesn’t demand as much attention.

The HL color takes up a fair amount of this composition, but note that it’s strongest in the top two thirds, and is centered in the top third. The foreground water also cradles it against one of the darkest purples of the card, which helps center focus up top.

Card #2: Valora Lavellan [  @kylorensprettymuchanasshole​ ]

The Devil

This was the most difficult of the palettes, I’m working with two separate light sources in two wildly different locations. On the one side you’re at an ancient elvhen temple, on the other, in a burning chantry. It only made sense to have two different palettes for this composition. Where I really failed here was in not having a color that bridged the two sides. If you can engineer a color to be in between two differing palettes, you’re in a good place. 

With that in mind, I revisited the thumbnail. 

The execution is a little weak, but the idea works. The bridge color could work in either of the palettes and is a midway point between the two most similar values of the core colors. It’s used primarily where the separate palettes meet each other smoothing that transition. In this instance, it also helps to define the figure and double down on where the focus is, since before it was fighting between the top left and bottom right corners. Now the focus works as a diagonal from one corner to the other.

Double palettes are hard, but can make for some truly dynamic color compositions.

Card #3: Iothari Mahariel [ @theuselesspotoo ]

Six of Swords

This card was a struggle for completely different reasons. The palette is pretty homogeneous, primarily purple, with a hint of green. This one could use far more variation, and the challenge is in driving interest with such a limited palette. This is where your values are going to be super important. Your darks vs lights are always hugely apart of composition, but in limited palettes they do the most work in driving interest. Make sure to break up some of your larger and more prominent shapes with value differences, the snow vs the dark stone beneath it.

If that isn’t enough though, there’s a few tricks that can help push focus where you want it without heavily changing the color scheme. 

We have three very distinct planes in this; the sky, the distant mountains and skyhold, and the cliff the figure is standing on. We can push the far mountain plane back by reducing the brightness of it, and we can pull the nearby plane closer by adding stronger highlights to the lit areas. I also brightened up the figure since they were getting lost in the sky a bit. 

In addition, I popped the foreground colors with just a bit more red, to separate that plane from the more bluish purple mountain plane. 

Just those small changes really sharpened up the focus of the composition, and we were able to keep the palette fairly limited. 

Card #4: Tighe Lavellan   [ @queen-scribbles​ ]

Nine of Wands

This palette was a breeze compared to the others. We’re working with complementary colors, reds versus greens, and very little divergence in either direction. The bottom half is primarily reds, the top greens, and they meet in the middle with a soft orange and harsh yellow. Palettes with complementary colors are the easiest to work with, the important part is making sure their balance works with your drawn composition because they like to fight. All of my reds are limited and desaturated because the greens and yellows, by the nature of the composition, are the most demanding elements. 

Card #5:  Lathari Lavellan [ @jisabeau​ ]

The Chariot

I knew what I wanted for this one immediately when I started it. I really wanted the character to be falling into a void, to mirror their emotional crisis when dealing with the deadly white bear of their past. But though this works fairly well as a base palette, it’s really missing the intense horror I wanted when I started. 

So in my edits I pulled them further apart, and pushed the darks even further. The challenge here is having a dual focus, since I don’t really know if either stand out enough from one another at this phase. I have to pick a focus, either the bright whites of the bear or the strong orange/green tones of the character. 

This is probably the strongest focus-wise.

But I enjoy the color notes of this one far more. 

The point here is, sometimes things aren’t perfect, and that’s also okay. Pick your favorite, or at least pick one, and take that to completion. It’ll occur to you while finishing it what I needs. Which brings us to the final point, similar to that of tutorial part one: 

Final Note: Don’t spend overlong on one thumbnail. I’ve spent days in the thumbnailing stage, that’s fine, but don’t spend more than 1 hour on any one color thumbnail drawing; it’s not worth it. If an idea is good but not great, just start a new thumbnail of something similar, and you’ll stumble onto the right composition.

Remember to explore your own color intuition. My way of doing this might be helpful, but if it’s not, don’t feel compelled to follow it. Everyone has a unique vision, and we’ve got to feel out our own paths. 

If you have any questions, send them to paperwick [at] gmail [dot] com under the heading “Color Tutorial: Questions”, OR comment on this post (I might not see them on a reblog) and I’ll pool them into one area and answer as many as I can in a separate post.

Finally, I’d like to give another shout out to everyone who sent their character breakdowns to me for this. I wish I had time to get to all of them, and I really appreciate you taking the time to put them together! Thank you all so much!

Not making promises on when Part Three will come out, but it WILL be coming out. Thanks for reading through all this, I hope it’s been helpful. 

[tb5-heavenward]

You just know I'm going to ask about Covenant now, right?

well since you two are two of the only people who know about covenant (and i’m sorry bud, your editorial sensibilities are going to have to put up with my stylistic lower caps) and since I’ve finally watched that shitshow of a most recent episode, I am totally down to talk about covenant.

but first let’s talk a little bit about TAG

TAG is terrible.

Visually the show is gorgeous. It has improved by leaps and bounds and it was charming when it started and it is awesome now. WETA are absolutely the bedrock of what makes this show worth watching, and I love the visuals more and more as they continue to push those boundaries. The cinnamontography, etc.

The Thunderbirds are amazing. They are beautiful, intricate, wonderfully clever machines. Their pilots ain’t half bad either. If you know and truly love the show and think about them all as well and deeply as they deserve, I think it’s impossible to honestly pick a favourite. International Rescue is a fantastic premise. The Tracys and their associates are all strong, compelling characters who have been iterated into an updated retro-future and made universally deeper and more interesting.

The bread and butter conceit of the show is awesome, the tension and conflict and creativity around solving complex problems that they manage to demonstrate in the course of a twenty-two minute episode sometimes just boggles the mind. When IR gets put up against the forces of nature and straight bad luck and pure, audacious dumbassery, we have gotten some of the best moments this show has to offer.

And those first season episodes were ugly as shit and everybody sounded the same and there were maybe three spare models between the entire NPC cast, but my GOD did S1 ever have heart. The soul of the show belongs to S1 and no one will change my mind about that. Try it. EOS was incredible. Skyhook was the definition of a balanced ensemble episode. Fireflash. Tunnels of Time. Relic. Recharge. Extraction. S2 came back swinging out of the gate with Ghost Ship. Up from the Depths was an absolute masterclass and actually changed the stakes in the show for the first time. Bolt from the Blue. Power Play. Hyperspeed. We all know which episodes were fucking good as hell. S3 comes out and the visuals have improved yet further. They have firmly found their feet as animators and as actors and as characters. We are finally actually starting to learn about these boys and their father, the most glaringly obvious hole in the show at large. Night and Day. Life Signs. And then SOS 1/2 and a complete and total paradigm shift. There is a sense of mortality to TAG now and it is an edge of realism that SHOULD be able to elevate it beyond what it’s been so far.

And yet.

TAG is fucking terrible.

Five years on, I am entitled to say, TAG is absolutely the goddamn worst sometimes, holy fucking shit. And what makes that terribleness terrible in and of itself—is that it’s because this show fails to recognize its most fundamental strengths. It fails to know what its audience will really connect to. And it’s because the writers’ room must be the goddamn wild west at this point, with the sort of nonsense these fucks are throwing at the wall and hoping to see it stick. It’s because whoever is in charge of the overall narrative arc of these seventy-odd episodes has not done what’s necessary to ensure TAG’s cohesion as a unified work.

(y’all hang onto your butts, i’m gonna do another brick wall metaphor.)

So what we have, five years on and seventy-odd episodes later, is a heap of bricks that WANT to be a wall, and we’re led to the impression that they’re SUPPOSED to be a wall, but they haven’t been put together by any single person. They have been put together by a rotating cast of a few dozen people who orient the bricks they’re given in slightly different ways sometimes, or who lay them at odd angles or who brought their own bricks from home for some reason. David Tennant is there. He must have cost at least half the budget for all of S2. All in all, he’s just another brick in the wall.

We know by this point that there is some asshole vaguely in charge of the idea of the wall. You can kind of tell that he’s at least heard of walls and he would definitely like to build one, but he isn’t exactly making it happen. There is an edifice here. It is wall-like, in some regions. At the end of the day though, most people who come across it also step over it, no problem. Or they chisel out the bricks that look to be worth saving and kick the rest of the wall over. That’s just fandom. That’s what fandom does.

Now, it is necessary at any point when talking about children’s media to talk about another series that ran three seasons over sixty-one episodes, and covered a level of geopolitical conflict over the course of a single year from the perspective of five incredibly gifted young people, all of whom were complex and flawed and sympathetic, and who knew they were responsible with putting the world to right with their own hands and set about doing that in the face of incredible odds, against villains who were no less than ruthlessly sociopathic.

ATLA sets a high bar. TAG was never going to be ATLA.

But fuck, I wish it had tried.

I wish the people who had set out to remake this story had sat down together and said, “Over the course of the next three seasons, we will tell the story of what International Rescue is. We will explain how it came to be. We will have strong themes that persist through the show and repeat themselves for emphasis: One Problem At A Time, You Can’t Save Everyone, Someone Has To Try. We will explain who these boys are and how they came to be this way. We will make it deeply and obviously clear what they do, how they do it, and why. We will give them limits. We will let them fail. We will give them flaws, we will let them clash with each other. We will let them grow and change. We will give them one deep, powerful loss that is the bedrock of what they became. We will put a powerful force in the world that loathes and opposes them at all costs. We will give them a tiny fragment of hope to chase and chase and chase and let them catch it only at the moment when they’v’e finally learned that they can let it go.”

I wish there had been rules. I wish there hadn’t been a new villain crammed into every season, in a show where the villains are objectively the weakest part. To add four villains to a show that barely has room for one and then to expect to make them ALL have a sympathetic edge somehow—it’s absolute fucking idiocy. I don’t care that The Hood is Kayo’s Uncle and Smiled In a Picture One Time. I don’t care that The Mechanic Is Apparently Being Mind Controlled Though No Indication Of That Was Given At Any Point in His History Until We Were Told So Explicitly. I don’t fucking CARE that Havoc Gets Yelled At By Her Boss Who Is Mean. I don’t give a shit that Fuse Is Apparently Too Stupid To Have Recognized The Moral Component Of Any Of His Criminal Acts Up Until He Inflicts Them On The Tracys.

You know which villains are objectively incredible in this show? Langstrom Fischler. Professor Harold. Francois Lemaire. Ned Fucking Tedford, who is a villain on the grounds that he is an obstacle, a problem to be solved, a concept of a person so hapless that they have multiple times strayed in the most incredible kind of peril. The strongest villains in this show are the ones who are just PEOPLE. People who are being careless. Or who are being greedy. Or who are being self-aggrandizing. People who exhibit traits equal and opposite to what our boys in blue exemplify.

I don’t know. We’re coming to the end of S3, we’re nearing their grand, incredible climax, this promised moment of potential reunion—and I wish I cared. I really wish I could. But there’s so much clutter. There’s so much their pulling DIRECTLY out of their asses in the home stretch. There are so many loose threads, there are so many concepts that were introduced and then never explored, or which were introduced in the end game and then never reinforced. There is so much information that we should have had from the start, so many mysteries that went unsolved and uncared about because they were unmentioned. There is not enough room for them to resolve anything in a meanignful way. There it so much that it seems like THEY didn’t know, and they SHOULD HAVE. They had time. Five fucking years, they had so much time to figure this out. And yet.

anyway.

So, covenant. Covenant basically a codeword for what I would’ve done differently, the last time I got mad about this whole endemic problem with the writing in this show, round about two years ago now.

Covenant is just a good word, really, and while it means something as a title, that relevance has kind of degraded a bit. It was going to be a rewrite of the end of Season 2, and sort of a retrofitting of Season 2 as a whole. It was going to explore the ideas that they put down and then never picked up, it was going to seriously address a lot of the core conflicts in the show and set things in motion to resolve those problems. I have it started. I have a good couple thousand words of the beginning, but it’s a good enough beginning that it could potentially begin something else, and so I won’t publish it here, in case I end up using it somewhere else. As is, it’s a priveleged-eyes-only sort of work, it’s only really been passed around my inner circle. If anyone is interested in hearing more about that, hit me up and I’ll elabourate. But for now, it is quarter past eleven, and I have ranted for long enough.

[jclie]

— && guests may mistake me as ( elizabeth olsen ), but really i am ( jolie madison + cis female + she/her ) and my DOB is ( 7/29/1992 ). i am a ( musician ) and would like to stay in suite ( 314 ). i won’t be much of a bother because i am ( driven, audacious, & charismatic ), but i can also be ( perfectionistic, reticent & self-sabotaging ) at times. personally, i like to ( paint, hike, try new recipes & sing karaoke ) when i have the time to relax, and my favorite snack is ( chai sugar cookies ) to have in my suite.

hi everyone! i’m red, and the only excuse i have for this dropping so late is that Work Sucks and has held me up, but i am here and ready to love u all! rlly, what better to do with the remaining bits of summer ( and being awake, tbh ) than join this super cute group and put my intro post together? so yes, here is the 411 on jolie, with a more *~cohesive~* bio and stats page on their way — i am so excited to get to know all of your muses and begin interacting! i promise i do not bite so if you’re feeling brave, pop over in the ims, or, just wait me out, because i’m sure i’ll be appearing in them soon enough :~)

general info

full name: jolie drew madison

nicknames: j, jo, jojo (calling her this is a bit of a death sentence unless you have explicit permission), mads

date of birth: july twenty-ninth, 1992 (27)

zodiac: leo

sexual orientation: bisexual

birthplace: chicago, illinois

occupation: musician

hogwarts house: slytherin

mbti: enfj

suite #: 314

tw: drug use

past

born on a wednesday in chicago, illinois to a set of parents who had a very “informal” relationship to say the least — to make a complicated situation as cut and dry as possible, jolie’s parents were best friends with benefits. her mom wound up pregnant and decided to keep the baby. instead of jumping to some rash decision like getting married solely for the sake of their child, they decided to simply remain friends and split custody in the best way they knew how that didn’t require a mediator in the form of a family court judge. her parents remained close friends (and still are) once jolie was born; custody was weirdly split with jolie spending the majority of her time with her mom. they were an unconventional sort of family but a family nonetheless. dad does something with numbers (yes, think chandler bing), and mom is a local business owner.

as a kid, jolie never knew a stranger, and therefore had no trouble making friends once she hit school age. she was the kid who never found her niche group or “clique” because her feet were wet in several of them. school was not a miserable time for her. she had her friends, was a solid a/b student. jolie was a big perfectionist though, it not uncommon for her to beat herself up over something incredibly minute and self-sabotaging herself as punishment or because she didn’t know how to adequately process her feelings of anxiousness — she’d procrastinate, cut people off or drive them away, things of that nature.

music was always in her life, but it was a very casual thing in her world, situated on a backburner. it was something that she was able to bond over with her dad more so than her mom; her dad was a massive music junkie, loved sharing his favorite songs with her, bought her her first vinyl player when she was twelve and supplied her with every album under the sun, whether it was one she wanted or one of his favorites or just one he thought she might enjoy. she was in dance classes as a preschooler (this was an epic fail, because not even her rhythm could save her from the generally awkward disaster she is whenever she dances) and took piano lessons in elementary school, but she didn’t love either? she felt very restricted when it came to formal lessons, and almost needed the freedom to explore and learn it on her own terms — she ended up teaching herself guitar on her dad’s guitar on the weekends she spent at his place. there was also the 6 month stint her junior year of high school when she and some friends started a garage band (which jolie represses to a certain degree because the embarrassment it invokes is on another level) but it was mostly just an idea formulated from boredom and was something to pass the time, nothing really serious. 

jolie found herself at a bit of a crossroads after her graduation. most of her friends were off to college but college did not seem like the kind of environment for her. she didn’t know what she wanted to do with herself or her life, but she knew she had to do something. so she pretty much copied and pasted what one of her close friends was doing at the time, decided to go to northwestern and share an apartment with her and pray that something would speak to her along the way. spoiler alert: nothing did. her first year quickly fizzled and faded for her and most of her time was spent going to parties, embracing the social scene, the like. nothing of real educational value.  

she was still fucking around when it came to music; she’d met some people in one of her creative writing classes (the only class that she legitimately finished and enjoyed) and would go to open mic nights or other gigs around town. never meeting a stranger meant jolie was good at networking, making friends with other musicians — the more she spent time immersed in the world, the more she felt compelled towards music. she began writing songs that weren’t just the product of teenage angst (see: that awful high school band), even took a few music classes at northwestern. 

by the time she hit her junior year, she was over classes and was pretty much only taking filler classes still, wasting her money while she bar tended at one of the bars close by. but she’d never felt more creatively charged; she was putting her nose to the grindstone in writing songs, recording songs in her bedroom so she wouldn’t wake up her roommates, playing gigs on her nights off work literally anywhere that would take her, and using those new-er friendships to her advantage. she had gained some local traction but things really didn’t explode until she started posting original songs online and got contacted by a few record labels. jolie was hesitant to sign with anyone but she got one of her friends in pre-law to help her look over contracts and pretend to be her manager and eventually signed. subsequently, she dropped out of college and went to work on the music thing full time.

from 21-23, jolie was pretty much doing nothing but playing festivals and clocking in hours at studios. most of her time was spent on the road and she absolutely loved it  — she loved the music festival atmosphere, loved the crowds, loved meeting other bands and fans. she was pretty much touring on the few songs she had released, covers, and unreleased tracks from a wip, but it worked for her and it worked for the fans. she released her first album, ultraviolet on her 23rd birthday, and hit the road again. 

jolie missed her “college” life with the parties and socialization at her fingertips, so she started elbowing her way into that scene while she was on tour — at first, it wasn’t anything to bat an eye at, but jolie’s limits were very fluid. being on tour was draining and the perfectionist in her would always find something to berate herself about, and getting out of her head was the only way that she felt she could truly enjoy the whirlwind success that was happening to her. the drugs started as a one-time thing, just to try it, and then she was using regularly, and then it got to a point where she couldn’t go more than an hour without a line of coke. the drugs stripped away a lot of what made her jolie and left her with a more miserable, grouchier version of herself where her highs were almost normal and likable and the lows were hell to be around. 

she came off of ultraviolet’s tour and essentially jumped right back into the studio (she was beginning to break through in mainstream music, with her last promotional single off ultraviolet hitting mainstream radio and doing fairly well) for album #2. it was finished and ready to go, but by that point, the drug use had gotten to an all-time high and the constant turning a blind eye to it from her team was no longer possible. she ended up od’ing and that was it  — there was an intervention in the hospital room, and it was off to rehab for jolie. album got postponed and she basically fell off the radar.

she didn’t really make a “comeback” until she was knocking on 26′s doorstep, and by that point she’d been in rehab, getting sober, and then laying low for nearly two years. by the time she was releasing her first single for the new album cycle, she’d all but scrapped the record she’d made before rehab and had something else put together entirely. she released wonderland, which did very, very well. she toured for it and it was wildly different than anything she’d done prior — venues were bigger, more fans, just a whole different circus all around. 

probably the one thing she was more proud of than the music was her sobriety, and going on two years of being sober, not much else was important to her. she knew had a pretty black and white view of was good for her and what wasn’t, so after the tour wrapped, she decided to come home. she never pegged herself for the type to get “homesick” because her spirit was very much the wandering type, but she knew she needed to get out of la and nyc. back to chicago it was — which is how we get to the malnati. 

present

she’s in what she’d aptly describe as “professional limbo” — she’s not actively working on any one project, she’s just kind of floating until she can find something to tether herself to, whether it’s a single song or an album or something else that appears on her radar. she’s just taking things easy for the time being.

career wise, think marina, l*na —  more of a cult favorite than a mainstream artist. not going to get mobbed when she goes out and about, able to fly under the radar for the most part. as far as her music goes, i don’t necessarily know if i’ll claim any one artist’s discography and adopt as her own; in my head, jolie’s alt pop. think somewhere along the lines of hayley williams, st. vincent, tove lo, splash of the 1975.

personality wise at this point in her life: will charm the pants off of just about anyone she comes into contact with. flirty. a little goofy, hella sarcastic. there’s method to her madness even if no one else gets it. is still a little guarded when it comes to talking about herself. doesn’t mind talking about what’s happened to her but when it comes to the feelings and emotions as to why those things happened, she shuts down. it’s why she’s a musician: why talk about your feelings when you could just write them into a song and pretend they don’t exist beyond that, lmao. is the passive aggressive type, bottles things up and simmers. 

being in the kitchen and cooking has been a tactile sort of therapy for her, especially in her hiatus years. she loves trying new recipes, baking at random (all) hours, sometimes likes to pretend she’s on an episode of master chef. she’s a dork, your honor.

has a thing for polaroids. she has a blank moleskine notebook that she has put through a total ringer, gluing polaroids and other little mementos onto pages as a journal of sorts.

has a stick and poke tattoo (among other professional ones) on her ribcage that she gave herself when she was sixteen. it’s a tiny smiley face. 

her middle name came from her dad’s middle name (andrew).

if you want someone to go out with you at night (or during the day, she’s not picky) and just aimlessly wander around the city, letting things find you, she’s your girl. she loves a good adventure.

i headcanon jolie as predominantly dirty blonde/brunette lizzie? but she is also the type who has ruined her hair over the years over all the impromptu dying so... welcome to close your eyes and pretend hour.

plot ideas

this is by no means a comprehensive list of plots, just stuff off the top of my head that i’d like to see? again, i promise i don’t bite, so pls hmu if one of these appeals to you or if you just wanna brainstorm, i live for that shit!!

jolie’s a chicago native, went to college here, so 👀

meredith to her cristina — basically her best friend (not gender specific, either) who tells it to jolie like it is, doesn’t mind if she laments about how the world sucks every now and again, the person she’s calling if she needs help with a body

physically and/or emotionally, somebody who checks in on jolie and that she checks in on as well. we love a solid support system

exes — jolie’s a little bit (a lot of bit) of a player?? so i’d love to see exes that maybe didn’t end too hot, ex fwb or ex flings that never made it official, people she ghosted, exes that don’t want to get back together but don’t like seeing each other with anyone else, anything under that sun

jolie also is a Lowkey (read: highkey) commitment-phobe, but i’d rlly love for her to maybe have an ex that she was so In Love with that she was willing to push through it bc she saw herself with them forever..... and then, for reasons tbd, it ended, and it absolutely crushed jolie

someone who, on the occasion of needing to scratch an itch, is very good about getting the job done. it’s casual sex. there are zero romantic feelings involved, there is no getting jealous when the other person finds a relationship, the two are just good friends who have seen (and will probably continue to see) each other naked #yeehaw

maybe someone who was at one of jolie’s gigs when she was still playing bars that she bought a drink and kept in touch with or smth? or someone she met when she was still predominately playing small sets at festivals? idk i’m rambling someone stop me

a “muse”??? like, someone jolie is fascinated with / inspired by and she finds herself writing songs about / for

gimme someone who’s like an acquaintance at best, they’ve maybe got mutual friends and therefore they hang out a bit but they’re always arguing with one another for whatever reason (they both probably annoy each other) but they’ve got mad sexual tension going on? maybe they act on it, maybe they don’t, but either way, they lowkey enjoy the bantering and being at one another’s throats even if they act otherwise

jolie is a night owl, so... gimme someone who she can turn up at their room at some unholy hour (or that turns up at her room at said unholy hour) and watch a movie with or make a mess of the kitchen from fixing a premature breakfast

maybe someone who knew jolie when she was not in a good place?? and things are still v much tense / unresolved between them for whatever reason

and stuff for the event omg PLS *makes grabby hands*

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, six times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (35.71% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

The pacing is a disaster, the story is weak, and if the style of comedy isn’t to your taste it can be very grating, but the central theme has at least some glimmers of genuine quality.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Gamora passes with Ayesha. Nebula and Gamora conflict. Gamora asks Mantis about her empathic abilities. Gamora passes with Mantis. Gamora and Nebula fight. Gamora confronts Mantis.

Female characters:

Meredith Quill.

Gamora.

Ayesha.

Nebula.

Mantis.

Male characters:

Ego.

Peter Quill.

Drax.

Rocket.

Groot.

Stakar Ogord.

Yondu Udonta.

Taserface.

Kraglin.

OTHER NOTES:

Nice of Ayesha to randomly exposition on the way her people are created, even though it is not relevant to the plot or anything else at all. 

Gold Ben Browder is the highlight of this film. Because it’s Ben Browder. And he’s gold.

The immature escape-from-the-Sovereign-fleet bickering between Quill and Rocket (with chimes in from Drax) while Gamora is the Token Female and Wet Blanket is just...chafing a really tedious cliche. 

Drax hanging out the back of the ship as they’re crashing is one of those things where the characters are so unrealistically indestructible it makes it hard to engage with the idea that they’re ever in real danger. That happens a lot in this movie.

Android prostitutes. Sigh.

Daddy issues. Never seen that done before. Thrilling.

First time I saw this movie I thought it was a weird choice to make the raccoon the main character of the B plot, but to be honest, Rocket is the best of the Guardian characters and front-lining him is one of the better choices of the film.

The whole idea that Quill was able to hold an Infinity Stone because he’s half god really fucks over the whole ‘the Guardians teamed up to withstand the power of the stone together’ thing. Like, nevermind, that whole climactic moment from the first film didn’t mean shit, Quill is a half-god.

Kraglin thinks that Nebula would be the type to buy a pretty necklace or a nice hat and this is just one of those weak, gender-stereotyped jokes that makes me annoyed at the lack of awareness in writing ALIEN CULTURES and also just, like, the basic ability to comprehend character personalities. I complained about this when I reviewed the first Guardians film, but honestly. Whether in throwaway lines or entire plot arcs, these movies are rife with gendered writing, more than any other films in the MCU so far, and that doesn’t make a lick of sense. ALIEN. CULTURES. GUYS. 

He’s playing catch with his dad and MY GOD, glowy god power should not be this trite and boring. 

This script has a bad habit of over-playing its jokes. You gotta know when to stop, y’all.

URRRGGH, the momentum of this movie straight-up dies every time the plot shifts back to Quill and his dull daddy issues. The imbalance between the A and B plots is staggering.

Gamora and Nebula’s conflict and eventual reconciliation is one of those few quality emotional beats in this movie; the recognition that the hate that has been engendered between them comes from the abuse they suffered at Thanos’ hands, and that they are both victims of him, not of one another. It’s a kind of insightfulness that is surprising, considering the cliches and under-developed arcs that populate the rest of the film.

Credit where it’s due for genuinely funny jokes that they don’t overplay: the Mary Poppins gag, Drax’s nipples, the giant Pac-Man.

Yondu deserved a better movie, man. I don’t know why the rest of this story is such a mess when the little slivers it gets right are so spot-on.

So, daddy issues. It’s one of the most overdone cliches in the history of storytelling, typically stemming from a very performative-masculine root (the father as the only/most important role model for his son, specifically in modelling manliness), and/or the old-fashioned patriarchal idea of the son as his father’s heir (and the idea that that makes the relationship between a father and son more profound than any other). Men love to write stories about their daddy issues, despite the fact that they’re rarely interesting or unusual or different to the billion other daddy issues stories that have already been told. As such, the fact that this movie is built around that same-old-same cliche is a fact distinctly to its detriment; that said, it’s also the one well from which it draws any spark of meaningful inspiration. 

The dot points above have already made it clear to which sparks of inspiration I refer; the Daddy Issues threads with Gamora and Nebula and their abusive father Thanos, and Quill’s realisation of the way Yondu ended up filling the fatherhood role in his life. Gamora and Nebula’s Daddy Issues are automatically fresher than the average on account of them not being dudes (Ant-Man had the same thing going for it, though that movie made a much greater strength out of it); that said, the fact that Thanos’ terrible parenting forms the backbone of the two sisters’ conflict and eventual unification is not what makes that slice of the plot work: it’s the sibling bonding, not the Daddy Issues. The sibling bonding is where the fire’s really at (again, enriched by the fact that the characters are female; funny how the under-representation of women (or any group) in media can make even small amounts of representation seem impressive just for existing), but unfortunately, that bond is pared down to the absolute minimum number of scenes possible for functionality as a subplot, and therefore we never really get to enjoy what it offers so much as we kinda point and wave at it as it goes by. Yondu gets a bit more play, both through the character’s own ruminations on his life/personality/relationships while hanging in the B plot with Rocket, and through Quill’s Daddy Issues whining in the A plot to which Yondu’s relevance provides the only saving grace. Still, Yondu’s place in the plot and in Quill’s life only gains narrative weight in the final act, leading to a cathartic denouement for the character, but not for the film itself. The bloated emptiness of the A plot with Ego is something which Yondu’s meaningful sendoff cannot retroactively undo.

I’m...trying to figure out if I have anything nice to say at all regarding Ego and all that he entails, but I’m not coming up with anything. A godlike character who is also kinda-sorta a literal planet should not be so devoid of interesting factors, and yet, here we are. With every overdone boring Daddy Issues cliche in the book, played straight. We’ve got ‘I never knew my father!’ abandonment-resentment! We’ve got father-son bonding (heavy Americana edition)! We’ve got the heir-to-my-empire, follow-in-my-footsteps schtick! If it’s overdone and boring, we’ve got it! The fancy special effects visuals can’t make up for the total absence of compelling plot (the first movie in the franchise also made that mistake, though it at least faked it on the plot front a little better), and the shapelessness of the story on Ego prior to the reveal wreaks havoc on the pacing of the movie; where the B plot has trajectory from the jump, the A plot just kinda wanders around, having nothing new or interesting to do or say, nor even any thoughtful ways to bring itself around to that aforementioned reveal (as with the first film, things just kind of conveniently happen and characters go places and say things at the opportune times; nothing flows naturally from one event to the next, cause and effect style. I am baffled that people think James Gunn knows how to plot).

Speaking of characters going places and saying things, this film also does a very poor job of utilising its cast in a meaningful way, which makes it kinda embarrassing that it’s called Guardians of the Galaxy as if the whole team actually matters. Much like in the first film, Drax is just an extra without any real plot or purpose of his own, no narrative or character arc to speak of beyond being a total douche to the new female character on the block, Mantis (the fact that the movie uses Mantis as a punching bag and laughing stock for the so-called good guys is among its more tasteless sins). Groot, meanwhile, was already more of a gimmick than a character, but that’s up to eleven now, and like Drax he could pretty easily be excised from the story without lasting effect. Gamora’s interactions with Nebula are really her only good fodder; her tangential attachment to Quill is incidental and has no personal relevance for Gamora, she’s just providing someone for Quill to bounce his inane misogyny off, because how would we recognise him without it? Quill being the centre of this plot does at least make sense this time (sleeping pill that it is), unlike in the first film where he was frankly pointless to the story; nevertheless, the drudging Daddy Issues cliche of this movie fails to make anything insightful or impactful out of Quill’s experiences. As noted earlier, Rocket is, bizarrely, the only character who feels like his story matters, and it’s his and Yondu’s character exploration that wins the prize as the highlight of an overall weak, spectacle-laden film that thinks it’s much funnier than it really is. 

It’s no secret at this point that I don’t care for the Guardians franchise, but it isn’t complete absent glimmers of good promise and creative storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s also largely overrun with lazy plotting and vaguely-connected strings of shenanigans that prioritise rapidly-staling comedic beats over any semblance of narrative cohesion or character development. A rocking soundtrack and a smattering of toilet humour does not a worthy film make; it’s not like I’m going in looking for some high-brow drama, I just prefer my entertainment to hang together a little better than this does, and it surprises me a bit to hear people sing the praises of something so very, very messy. Whatever. It did its job for Marvel’s bottom line, so I don’t expect they’ll cook up any quality improvements for the third film of the franchise, when it comes. I sure would be glad to be wrong, though. There’s so much potential they’re wasting here.

[plotlinehotline]

In the story I'm planning there is a decent sized group of main characters plus recurring characters who have smaller but important roles to play in moving the story forward. With such a large group, do you have any tips for how to organize and prioritize which characters get more scenes and development?

Developing and Organizing Character Arcs 

@suksi-vittuun

It’s as if you already knew what I was going to say! Yes, when you’re balancing a lot of characters, your first step is to make sure that each character is crucial to the plot and that their story arc is helping to move your plot forward. Since you included those key criteria in your ask, I’ll assume that you’ve already determined all this. 

When you’ve got a lot of characters, it’s assumed that each character (or set of characters) has their own story arc (and get ready; I use the word “arc” a million times in this post). The arc should be able to tell a complete story from beginning to end, but when combined with the other arcs in the novel will form a complete, complex narrative.

For example, if you’re familiar with Harry Potter, then you know his story arc in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, but Draco Malfoy has his own story arc, that mostly happens “off-screen,” where he is plotting to murder Dumbledore. We see his story arc collide with Harry’s towards the end when Snape steps in to kill Dumbledore for Malfoy (and consequently, Snape has his own story arc too! He’s advising Dumbledore on what to do about his damaged hand, and he’s keeping an eye on Malfoy after making the Unbreakable Vow). 

Name any character that’s even briefly mentioned in a novel, and you could technically devise a story arc for that character that fills in the gaps of all the times they appear “on screen.”

1. So first things first - make a list of the characters you’re concerned about. If you’re unsure about any of them, go ahead and include them in this list. Then, for each character, write out as much of their story arc as you can. If there are uncertainties in any of the arcs, do your best to fill them in. 

There are lots of fun ways you can organize this, depending on the tools you have. If you’re more into free-hand, you can keep your arc notes in a journal, with tabs for each character (use post-it tabs, labeled/colored masking tape, or improvise ways of dividing the notebook). You might also use a binder and have actual dividers. Digitally, you could use separate Word documents, or if you have other writing software like Scrivener, you can use separate docs within your story file, and even have character profiles associated with each. 

Now earlier I threw out the terms “on-screen” and “off-screen” and it’s important to note the difference between them. Don’t limit your thinking to what’s actually on the page - think beyond what you intend to show scenically. Think of your novel as highlighting the key points of each arc; you still need to understand more than the key points. This knowledge helps you keep the narrative cohesive, and it helps you make additions and subtractions to the story as you need to (because chances are, during the editing process, you will make changes). 

So really elaborate when you write out your characters’ arcs. Throw in information that you think you may not even use, and be as detailed as you can. During this process, think about what each character wants, and what needs to happen in order to get what they want. If nothing else, determine what’s motivating each character as that will help drive the arc and you’ll be able to see it more vividly. 

Once you have this, then you can begin to think about actual “on-screen” content. 

2. Second, go through each arc and decide what you will actually write into the story. 

Now’s the time to decide between on-screen and off-screen content. Only you can decide what scenes to include in your story, but I would advise choosing scenes where something changes, whether this change is something literal (the character getting fired, let’s say) or whether the change is internal (the moment when the character decides to quit). Change may also be seen in relationships - when two characters fight or reconcile. Scenes that reveal some sort of backstory are also good, as are scenes where some important plot detail is discovered. 

Do your best to whittle down what you outlined in the character arc (the more characters you have, the harder you should try), but don’t be so selective that you lose the meat of the arc. A novel that only features a few scenes for each of twenty characters might work if the characters are compelling enough, but for a plot centric novel that’s trying to tell a complex narrative, you need more content with each character to get readers invested. Think about Stephen King’s books that feature large casts (It or The Stand), or Game of Thrones, or books by David Foster Wallace - they’re thick. If this is the kind of narrative you’re looking to tell, I’d recommend checking out any of those (a friend of mine also recommended Robert Jordan, especially if your novel is fantasy). 

Don’t forget the element of mystery as well. There are some details you’ll want to hide from the readers until the end, so allow yourself some room to exclude the parts of plot arcs that spoil your big reveals. In doing this, you’ll also be deciding what parts (if any) you do show - these will serve as hints, or foreshadowing of what ultimately happens.

Deciding what it is or isn’t important is one of those writer skills that you have to constantly work to master, but if you go into the process with a 50-100 word summary of your book, you can constantly go back to that summary and ask yourself if these things you’re considering including have anything to do with that summary. This will help you answer the question: Should this be in the novel?

Use your character arc docs to list these scenes that you want to include. You may end up with some “maybes” that you’re not sure about, so maybe highlight those in a different color, or put an asterisk or something beside them to remind yourself that you’re undecided. 

3. Put them all together.

Now, go to each arc document and copy all the scenes you selected and put them into one giant doc. Don’t worry about the order as you’re going - just get them all in one place first. Then, put the scenes in the order that you see them occurring. You can do this with paper/pen while referring to your screen, or perhaps a separate document, or you could even just copy and paste within the doc you’re already using to reorder them. 

Start with the obvious ones, and save any that could happen in multiple places until the very end. By the time you get to those scenes, you’ll have a better look at your story’s timeline and it might be easier to find potential places for these scenes. 

I also recommend choosing a unique color to either highlight or use as the text color for each character so you can visually see which characters have the most scenes. If you’re looking at your outline and you only see a couple of green spots, for instance, you can evaluate whether that character is getting enough screen time, or if they even need any. 

4. Consider the overlap (and how POV comes into play).

I’ve been avoiding this a little bit to avoid confusing everyone, but you also can’t forget that some arcs will overlap with one another, and you’ll have characters that will “pop up” in different arcs, or even be “missing” from their own arcs. The key is determining whose arc each scene is mostly contributing to. The scene may be advancing both arcs, but the idea is choosing whose arc it advances more. 

Going back to my earlier example, Harry and Malfoy each have their own arcs, but Harry often shows up in Malfoy’s and vice versa. Despite his “on-screen” absence, I would argue that the scenes where Malfoy fails to kill Dumbledore (the bewitchment of Katie Bell, and when Ron gets poisoned) do more to advance Malfoy’s arc than Harry’s, as Malfoy’s continued failures affect his mental state, as well as his position with the Death Eaters. So even though we don’t see Malfoy on-screen (since the perpetrator is meant to be a bit of a mystery, and because we’re from Harry’s POV), these scenes would be listed under Malfoy’s story arc.  

When it comes to prioritizing which characters you should develop more, that’s your choice. Once you’ve presented the bare minimum for each character, or the selected scenes that tell the story arc sufficiently, then you get to decide which ones we delve deeper into. There were enough scenes in Half Blood Prince to sufficiently tell Malfoy’s story arc, but if JKR had wanted to, she could have chosen to include scenes from Malfoy’s perspective to advance his development and garner more sympathy from readers. As a writer, she made the choice not to do this. As such, it’s your decision which characters you want in the spotlight and which you’d rather the reader be more distant from. 

So the bottom line here is that it’s not simple. Writing novels with big casts never is, so prepare yourself for the monumental task in front of you. Accept that you might be confused about what you’ve got going on quite frequently (and then reward yourself with candy anytime you feel like you actually have your shit together). Outlining is key, and hopefully this blog post helps you get closer to establishing an outline. 

5. Lastly, let your outline guide you, but don’t let it control you.

Once you’ve put all those scenes in a potential order, you’ll find that you may add new scenes from your arcs that you dismissed earlier (or ones you come up with later), and you also might delete ones that you used to think were super important. Allow yourself this freedom, because much of what you do in your draft is difficult to determine until you start writing it. 

Mia also just did a post on managing large casts of characters with a few tips that may be helpful to you when building your cast. We also have a few other posts on large casts if you want to check those out too. 

Good luck with your epic story!

-Rebekah

P.S. Thank you Megan for discussing this ask with me ;)

[irlpinkiepie]

Put On Your Sunday Best

(and mingle with unsuspecting christian men)

a mjbyy fic

There's a certain amount of familiarity with death that's to be expected for most people. When you're friends with a girl who resurrects the dead for fun and a boy who dies on a weekly basis, it becomes a lot less scary.

For other people, that is. Dealing with your own death is still pretty hard.

[ao3]

When she opened her eyes, she knew exactly what she was expecting to see, and this wasn’t it.

In her defense, she hadn’t actually killed anyone, or at least, not in a way that they didn’t get better from. But there’s something about a softball bat swinging towards your face that makes you question some of your previous life decisions, and Cookie Girl had definitely made a lot of decisions that upon reflection definitely should have been questioned.

Like, yeah, Cookie Dude could be kind of a jerk sometimes, but she could probably have done with attacking him slightly less. But on the other hand, what are you supposed to do when someone comes up to you in middle school and says, “Hi, I’ve got almost the same name as you, except I’m cooler than you and I can regenerate,” honestly? Plus, he did kind of just kill her, and as much as she knew you couldn’t justify the past by the future, she felt kind of vindicated anyway.

What about that time to convince all her friends to fast? Nah, none of them even did, and while she might have had a resoundingly terrible swimming day, it was really only her own fault. And Cookie Dude’s fault too, for pushing her into the pool! She knew there was a reason she kept killing him.

Okay, well, she questioned her decisions, and her answer was that they were mostly pretty good. Still, she was expecting to open her eyes and see the whole ‘fire and demons and and Pokémon and rock and roll’ that Marbel was always going on about, and not floating above her own corpse, still face down in a pool of blood on the same hospital floor she was just in. There was still something weirdly compelling about the way that the trickles of liquid soaked into the cracks on the tile floor, the gentle splatters which spread out from her—

That was her—

She floated out through the ceiling. Existential angst was a new one for her, and it was especially bizarre to consider the fact that she was dead in such a graphic and personal way. Also, she was a ghost now? That rocks; there’s no point in having supernatural powers if you don’t use ‘em from time to time. Or, like, pretty much always.

It was a good thing she actually had them, though. She briefly imagined an alternate universe in which she floated up to the ceiling and hit her head instead of going through, which would have been incredibly awkward for a number of reasons. Or maybe it wasn’t? She still had no idea if anyone else could even perceive her, given that she was dead and wow she really was dead.

No corporeal form meant no more softball, no more hanging out with friends. Could she even talk to people? Was she just cursed to live forever, doing nothing but watching silently? Maybe this was hell.

An ice cream cone fell from the sky straight towards her head, and she reflexively closed her eyes before she failed to feel it hit her. Opening her eyes, she saw the pointed end of the cone sticking out a couple inches from her face, and the drips of melting vanilla caramel ran down through her ethereal torso, and she felt sick to her nonexistent stomach. She had to get inside, and fast.

She wasn’t sure why she instinctively flew to Ribbonista’s house, but she was glad she did; the moment she passed through the house’s walls, she collapsed on the floor, and the comfort from seeing the friendly paintings and bright colors of her friend’s living room was the only thing separating her from a complete breakdown. After absorbing enough of this atmosphere to calm herself, she closed her eyes, and suddenly she realized that aside from the faint sounds of cars passing in the distance, there wasn’t a single thing she could sense. It was as though the entire universe had been blocked off from her, so she stayed like that for a while, and then opened her eyes again. The room was slightly brighter, but beyond that, nothing else had changed.

Well, now was as good a time as any to try to get to grips with things, she figured. Metaphysics still being too uncomfortable a topic to deal with, she settled for trying to understanding just the physics. She could see and hear things, and she could pass through walls and float. What else was up her metaphorical sleeve?

She was on the ground. How was she not falling through the floor? Tentatively, she reached a hand down from her side through the floor, and was met with no resistance - at which point her entire body began to fall through the plush carpet and into the dirt. Panicking, she began to float, and gently moved herself up to her original location.

Okay, she thought, this floor used to be solid. It should be solid. When she tried the same test again, though, she noticed that her hand could no longer move past the floor; every time she tried to push past it, an invisible force repelled the movement. She wasn’t exactly able to feel the carpet, but moving a ghostly hand over its surface revealed a gentle flow in the force’s pattern which matched the carpet’s appearance, and there was something about that sensation that still kind of felt like feeling things. It wasn’t much, but Cookie Girl felt safe enough to consciously flip herself back over and rest her feet on the carpet.

She took a couple of tentative steps forward, and upon realizing the knack, burst out into a sprint throughout the living room and into the kitchen. She could still walk. That was enough like feeling human again that she was happy.

“I still wanna fly, though,” she said, floating up into Ribbonista’s bedroom and collapsing on the bed.

She didn’t ruffle a single sheet as she slept.

“Oh my god, it’s freezing outside… I should have got a coat a couple hours ago, but— this ice cream is just so cool,” sighed Ribbonista as she walked through her front door and shut it gently behind her. “Heehee, cool, because it’s cold too.” She smiled to herself as she said it; taking off her shoes at the door, she spent a moment enjoying the soft comfort of her socks against the carpet before spinning around and seeing her coat rack completely empty.

“Oh… I guess I’ll have to go upstairs, then.” Ribbonista made a note to herself to bring down a coat to leave on that rack, now that it was winter-y-er outside. Actually, make that two coats; she didn’t want any of them to feel lonely.

It had been a long while since she had done a thorough search of her closet, and this inspection revealed outfits she had almost forgotten about. Her Halloween costume! Back when she was still majorly crushing on Cones, and decided that dressing as his favorite animal and singing a song about him in front of the entire class was a good idea. God, she needed to be more subtle with her crushes; she took the rabbit costume and laid it gently on the bed. And how about her swimsuits!!! Summer fun time flashbacks, huh! She put them on the bed too, promising herself that she would come back later and put them away. For now, though, the excitement of wearing summer clothes in the winter and feeling cute was too much to bear.

And then this dress. Taking it off its hanger and spinning it around, Ribbonista took a moment to admire her handiwork. Fur lining and orange ribbons? Maybe not the most cohesive choice, but there was only so much extra material from the Spiderman play. Besides, she was only listening from backstage, and showing off for a day at the festival was definitely an experience. Especially given the only people who could even see her outfit were her classmates, which—

“Oh my god…” she whispered, nearly dropping the garment at her feet. It hadn’t really hit her until now exactly how devastating the last few days had been. She watched one of her friends die right in front of her, and if it weren’t for Furi’s quick action, she would have killed him. Demonica was hospitalized and barely survived, and her ex-boyfriend broke up with her, after he flew into space and abandoned her - not to mention the whole “being in a coma for several days” thing. Now that she was on her own, it became a lot harder to distract herself from those feelings, and her legs began to shake, then to buckle.

When Ribbonista woke, she saw Cookie Girl in front of her, desperately trying to comfort her in her own Cookie Girl way.

“Thank god, you’re not catatonic again,” she said, wiping a hand across her forehead. “You doin’ okay? Need me to beat up Cones for you? I’m a ghost now, so that might be a little tricky, but I’ll do my best.”

Ribbonista could only blink in shock. “A-a gh-ghost???” she whimpered.

“Relax! I’m one of the friendly ghosts. Like Casper!” Cookie Girl smiled and sat down on the floor, placing a pale, translucent hand on Ribbonista’s head. She couldn’t feel anything when it happened, though.

She stopped, and took a deep breath in and out. It only makes sense to be afraid of things that make sense. Her friend was still alive, even after she watched her die? Sitting in her room, trying to make her feel better? That definitely didn’t make any sense.

“Oh my god…” she whispered to herself.

Which meant, she was going to have to do her best to not be afraid.

“Don’t worry if you need some time to take it in,” Cookie Girl smirked. “It took me a little bit too; it’s actually really cool once you get used to it.” And with that, she fell halfway through the floor, flipped over so she was upside down, and then rose back up so the tips of her pink hair were just above the carpet. “See! Ghost powers.”

“Is-is this a dream?” It felt silly even as the words left her mouth, but Ribbonista was out of explanations.

Hearing her say that, Cookie Girl spun herself back around and sat down on the bed. “You know,” she said with a shrug, “I really don’t know. What time is it, quarter past seven? Is that morning or evening?”

Ribbonista looked up at her wall for the clock, and saw the same time there that her friend had just said out loud. “Uh, yeah, evening, I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay, so I’ve been dead for about fifteen hours. If this is a dream, I’d really like to wake up now.” She collapsed onto the bed, her body passing through the accoutrements of Ribbonista’s closet which had piled on top of the sheets. Then, with a start, her whole body jolted up a few inches, hovering just above the heap of clothes.

“Oh, hey, I recognize some of these!” Cookie Girl exclaimed. She had now turned her head over, staring down at the outfits on the bed. “What’s the occasion? Fashion party?”

Ribbonista blushed awkwardly before mumbling, “I was… looking for a coat.”

The only response she received for some time was a deliberate blink, followed by Cookie Girl closing her eyes again and… was she crying? Did ghosts even have tears?

“Right,” Cookie Girl said, interrupting her thoughts. Her ghostly expression looked determined. “Yup, it’s cold out. Because of the ice cream. You should grab one of those. Because it’s cold out.”

Confused, Ribbonista asked, “Are you OK, Cookie Gi—”

“How about that one?” she inquired, pointing to a thick, bright pink wool coat in the closet. “Perfect, let’s go,” she said frantically before disappearing through the wall.

“Wait! W-where are we going?” Ribbonista asked her friend.

“To see Marbel? Duh.”

Cookie Girl did another spin before flying back out of the room. Even outside, she couldn’t help but do a few more flips. It was just so much fun.

This did seem like the best course of action, though. Leaving Ribbonista alone would probably mean she’d go catatonic again, and that was something neither of them were looking forward to. Besides, she couldn’t think of a more qualified expert on the occult than Marbel, and there was something about the idea of staying as a ghost forever that seemed less than ideal. Sure, flying was cool, but it was also probably the sort of thing that would get you kicked out of a softball league pretty quickly. And is life really worth living without playing softball at university, moving on to a long and slightly scandalous life in professional sports, followed by settling down with a former teammate in the countryside? Heck, she still wasn’t even sure if she’d be allowed back in school if she was dead.

The point being, she was going to talk to Marbel, and Ribbonista was going to come with her, and hopefully after a brief conversation and a minimal number of pentacles she would be alive again.

“Don’t suppose you know the way?” she asked.

“O-oh, yeah. Follow me,” replied Ribbonista as she looked around for a moment, then settled on a direction across the street and into the woods and started walking; Cookie Girl raised herself about a foot in the air and started lazily floating alongside her.

There was something truly embarrassing about crashing face first into a pine tree while being a ghost who can pass through solid objects. Humiliating, even. Clearly, she needed more practice with this whole disappearing and reappearing thing; for now, though, Cookie Girl simply elected to land on her feet and start walking hand in invisible hand with her friend.

She told herself it was just to make sure Ribbonista was feeling alright, but no amount of fallen ice cream could change the wild uncertainty of dark forests in winter; in all honesty, the littered vanilla caramel cones only made the whole forest seem like a scene straight out of a surreal horror movie. No wonder Marbel lived around here, or, apparently she did; Cookie Girl’s grasp on directions wasn’t the best, and it took until the two of them had left the woods and been confronted with the tall black spires of Marbel’s mansion that she felt like she was going the right direction.

Cookie Girl knocked gently on the imposing wooden doors, then with increasingly more force, frustrated that she seemed unable to produce a sound. “Okay, you need to knock for me,” she declared, before focusing and lowering herself into the front lawn. She stayed there until she heard the creak of the doors, and then Marbel’s voice expressing a confused greeting, and then she shot up from the ground and yelled “Boo!” as loudly as she could muster.

“Gasp! You’re alive!” Marbel responded, putting a hand over her open mouth. Despite this reaction, Cookie Girl was fairly certain that she was genuinely surprised.

“Well, not alive,” Cookie Girl corrected. “I’m still pretty dead, but that hasn’t stopped me from hanging around. You have any idea why?” As she spoke, she started gently bobbing in and out of the ground; partly just to prove her point, but also just to keep getting the hang of it.

Marbel slowly blinked at her, and then shut the door, calling out to her, “Come on in, then.”

Turning around halfway into the foyer, Cookie Girl turned back towards Ribbonista. “Do you want to join us? I won’t mind.”

“N-no thank you,” came Ribbonista’s response. “This feels like it’s gonna be spooky…”

A shrug was all Cookie Girl offered before flying back into Marbel’s house and following her through its hallways. She really needed to spend more time here; Marbel’s tendency towards the demonic when it came to decorating could be a bit overbearing, but there was something about the coffins and skulls littering the various rooms which seemed rebellious in a cool, teenage girl way.

Pulling a thick, leather-bound book from a bookshelf in the living room, Marbel lay down on the couch and started absentmindedly flicking through the pages.

Cookie Girl hovered.

A particular section caught her interest; she sat up and stared intently at the pages she had opened to, humming inquisitively and pointing to one paragraph with a smile. She nodded, flipped to the next page, and quickly flipped back, then set the book down on her lap satisfied.

Cookie Girl hovered.

“This is a really good book,” Marbel said finally.

“And the fact that your friend has been turned into a ghost and needs saving?”

“Oh! Yes,” she sputtered. “Well, the bad news is that I can’t resurrect your body while you’re hanging around as a ghost. It has to be a free spirit to work, you know.”

“And would this be a better or worse resurrection than the beach zombie?” Cookie Girl asked cautiously. “Because I don’t want to be like that.”

“His name is Pochi-san,” Marbel disapprovingly corrected, “and it would definitely be better.”

“So how do I stop being a ghost? It’s not like anyone can kill me again, I don’t think.”

Marbel sighed. “If only it were that easy… Nope, I’m afraid the cure to ghostliness is as old as time. You got stuck as a ghost ‘cause there’s something you still have to do on Earth.”

She pondered that for a moment. Something she had to do. The thought of continuing any part of the life she had planned still seemed so far out of her grasp. If she was a ghost, she couldn’t go to school, or play softball, or hang out with her friends in public, or—

Or—

“Are you okay, Cookie Girl?” Marbel asked, her hand moving through her friend’s translucent torso and onto the floor.

But Cookie Girl had already burst into tears.

“What do you mean I’m not allowed visitors?” Demonica asked belligerently. “What kind of policy is that?”

The doctor sitting at the foot of her bed simply shook her head. “Might I remind you, young miss, that the last time you had visitors, you tore out your IV catheter and ran away for several hours before being rehospitalized?”

“Yeah, so what’s your point?” she replied, genuinely confused.

Her doctor could only sigh. “My job… is to keep you safe. And when you bring along an entourage of guests, make a mess of the room, and run away in the midst of me trying to provide you with vital care, it becomes extremely hard to do my job.” Demonica could practically feel the frost from her icy words, and very nearly shivered.

“Ugh, fine. Can I at least get some privacy, then?”

“You know what? Sure.” The doctor stood up with a start and walked briskly to the door. “I could use a break myself, to be honest.”

As soon as she heard the click of the hospital door closing, Demonica leaned over to the window next to her bed and slid it open. The temporary chill from outside was unpleasant, and she pulled her blankets tighter over herself as she waited, but she knew that soon, Furi would show up and come visit and the two of them could hang out and wait that was Ribbonista what was she doing here what on Earth is going—

“Is my body still in there? ‘Cause I’m not going in there if it is,” she heard Cookie Girl yell from the distance.

Wait, Cookie Girl—?

Now she knew how Ribbonista felt, at least.

“Don’t worry, you’re good!” yelled Ribbon out the window before turning to her friend in the hospital bed. “Hi Demonica!! Cookie Girl is a ghost now. Ghoooooooooooooooooooooost.”

“O-oh! Hey, you two!” Demonica waved nervously as she saw Cookie Girl float in through the wall. She was past the point of questioning things at this point, and greeted her with a blank nod.

“So, here’s the deal,” Cookie Girl said flatly. “Apparently, dying at 15 means there’s something unresolved I’ve gotta do before I can stop being a ghost and Marbel can bring me back to life, and I don’t have many options as a ghost. You have any clues?”

Don’t. Question.

Demonica took a deep breath.

“Well, if I remember correctly, in a lot of the ghost stories I’ve heard, the ghost is trying to find out something about how they died—”

“Yeah,” interrupted Cookie Girl, “and I already know that much. Cookie Dude beat me up because I didn’t reciprocate his creepy years-long crush on me and he was too dumb to realize that people who aren’t him can die.”

“B-but I thought you—?” Ribbonista tried to ask, before being similarly cut off.

“Everyone makes mistakes in middle school. Thinking I liked guys was just one of them. Let’s talk about anything else.”

Okay, maybe it was worth questioning this - Demonica had never seen Cookie Girl this upset. “Are you feeling alright?”

In response, Cookie Girl collapsed and fell through the floor.

When she rose back up a few seconds later, she had pale tears streaming down her reddening face. “Do you know how awful it feels to have all of your life’s dreams ripped away from you, having to watch all your friends move on without you, knowing there’s nothing you can do about it?”

There was another moment of silence before she burst into another fit of sobbing, gently falling to the floor face down by the door. Patches of red still stained the floor near her head from her last visit to this hospital room.

Demonica wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this situation, but there was one thing she definitely could do. Slowly rising from her bed, she walked carefully over to where Cookie Girl lay and knelt down next to her, the hem of her gown catching under her knees. She smiled a warm smile, outstretched a hand, and gave her spectral friend a pat on the back.

“Listen,” she whispered, “I may not understand what you’re going through here. I might not even be able to help. But you’re my friend, and I’m gonna stick with you, no matter what. I promise.”

Cookie Girl rolled over and tried to wipe the tears from her eyes, but only succeeded in throwing her arm through her face. At that, she giggled slightly, then looked up to Demonica and smiled back. “That really does mean a lot to me,” she replied. “Thank you.”

At that, Demonica breathed a sigh of relief.

“But,” Cookie Girl interrupted, “that still doesn’t change the facts of the situation. I’m still a ghost, and that still sucks, and I’ll probably be stuck like this forever.”

“What about the unfinished business that Marbel mentioned?” Ribbonista asked.

Cookie Girl rose to her feet, shaking her head. “There’s not really much I can do when I’m dead. Definitely not any of the things I planned to do with my life.” She reached over to a pencil on the desk next to her. “I can’t even pick up a pencil anymore,” she said sadly, picking it up.

And then dropping it to the floor with a stunned expression on her face.

“Ribbonista, tell Marbel to find my body. I know what it is now.”

She smiled, picked up her softball bat, and headed for her target.

His unmistakable blue hair stood out like a signal flare in a sea of white ice cream, and his head was still looking away.

A rush of moving air caused him to turn around, and the last thing he saw before impact was a spectral Cookie Girl swinging a bat at him.

Cookie Girl flew over the corpse, watching it carefully, and soon saw the bloody tears of flesh begin to once again stitch themselves together.

She grinned. She was going to enjoy every single second of this.

[atleastputinsomeeffortinuroc]

Rant/Review: Detective Conan Movies 1-20 --aka-- Kill the Beast

(And no. I will not be following up on that Bleedman thing from earlier. I tried. I failed…Please do not make me.)

As many of you might already know, I have certain…shall we say, STRONG feelings towards Detective Conan and Case Closed. I both love it and loathe it for reasons that you can see in an earlier little rant of mine where I go over in EXCRUCIATING detail my exact emotions towards this goddamned thing. I ain’t gonna repeat myself, but I will simply preface thislittle thing by reciting just a fraction of my thoughts towards the show so you know: I hate Conan/Shinichi himself, because I think he’s an uncaring asshole, and Kogoro Mouri is a gift because he’s the only character that seems to show at least an inkling of GROWTH which the show doesn’t seem to comprehend. Boom. That’s all you have to know really. I listed off my thoughts, and that should’ve been the end.

Should have being the operative phrase.

Y’see, I guess I’m a bit of a sadistic bastard who is just cruisin’ for a bruisin’, because recently I decided to try something. After watching a couple episodes of Case Closed on a whim, I was…well, horrified by what I was watching. And no, it wasn’t because of the dub. (If anything the dub made it a little bearable because of Moore’s great delivery for every line, but that’s neither here nor there…though some line reads of the other characters were uh…less than stellar.) Everything about it was just…BAD. It could’ve been because I chose the worst episodes accidentally at first, but…it was just DIFFICULT to sit through. I watched a couple more episodes, and it got better but…that first sitting was just so difficult, that I found it hard to remember why it was I liked the series so much as a kid, and why I feel the need to defend it at some points. As such, I decided to take on the Herculean task…of watching all twenty of the Detective Conan movies.

ALL. TWENTY. 

(Not including the Lupin III crossover, or the new one about the love letters…but I suppose I’ll end up watching those two out of pure curiosity at some point.)

I spent a good week trucking through every one of these motherfuckers, and let me tell you, IT WASN’T EASY. It was surprisingly difficult. After a while, they start getting repetitious, formulaic, pointless, and even annoying. REALLY annoying. Yeah, you could argue my feelings and thoughts are down to personal taste, and I can just shove my opinion out my ass…but I went in BEGGING for these movies to win me over. I didn’t want to hate them. And hell, SOME OF THEM I DID END UP LIKING. But a good chunk fell into my dreaded expectation for them, and a few even did surprisingly worse in some cases.

I’ve been putting this task off for so long, anyway. I knew, deep down, that I had to see them all. To know if there was any chance that the show had returned to form, or even if there was any form to return to. I told my friends that I kept on thinking back to “The Mob Song” about killing the beast when I decided to do this. The lyrics in particular feeling oddly fitting for what I was about to do. “…It’s a nightmare, but it’s one exciting ride. Say a prayer, then we’re there at the drawbridge of a castle, where there’s somthing truly TERRIBLE inside….See him roar, see him foam, but we’re not coming home till he’s DEAD. GOOD AND DEAD. KILL. THE. BEAST.”

Bit of an…extended metaphor, I grant you, but I can’t just let this beast haunt me.

(And before you ask, yes. The first six movies I watched dubbed, while the rest were subbed to give them the best shot to win me over (because nostalgia), but I’ll try to refer to them as much as I can with their original Japanese names. I may go back and watch them subbed…but I have had to sit through twenty of these goddamned things so don’t expect me to do it any time soon.)

Anyways…let’s kill this goddamned beast. Here. We. GO.

The Time Bombed Skyscraper felt very much like just an elongated episode of Case Closed/ Detective Conan. Granted, a very GOOD episode of Case Closed/Detective Conan, but an episode nonetheless. It’s got everything: twists, turns, bombs, and bullshit. Hell, it actually starts off exactly like an episode of Case Closed/Detective Conan too, with them wrapping up a case with Conan knocking Mouri out. It made me kinda nostalgic towards the series, and briefly reminded me about what I loved about it. Its over-the-top ridiculousness that also remained to be a fun little whodunit of the week. The film itself was consistent with the plot, and remained on a single large mystery with a serial bomber. As to that serial bomber’s motivation after the reveal, it was…eh? It’s a tortured artist who wants to blow all of his works because he’s a perfectionist…and he’s wrapping Kudou into it because…he wants to play a game while he does it? Sure, the mysterious one pulling the string is a fun villain to have, but the villain’s gotta have either an actual good motive, or be so powerful that all these smaller things amuse him/her in order for that to work. The villain fits neither of those, as while he is closest to the latter, he doesn’t actually have build-up to this drastic measure. You’d think he’d start off small with the crimes until he worked his way up ala The Most Dangerous Game or Kraven the Hunter, but no. He just jumps straight to bombs that he just HAS for some reason. This then leads to the main issue with the film. It just leans too heavily on the mystery, without giving much acknowledgment to the characters. Action set-pieces and chase scenes replaced character development and intrigue with the characters, until the end. But by the time you got to the end, while not completely devoid of emotional weight, which I’m gonna give props to the voice actors behind Mouri and Ran in the dub (or Moore and Rachel) for knocking it outta the park at that end scene, it still could’ve had much more of an oomph if we got more time with the characters. Especially with Ran/Rachel, as she spent most of the time with Serena/Sonoko and pining, as per usual. That being said, the ending was still rather tense and touching. While the animation leaves much to be desired, it evens it out with the action scenes, but, as mentioned before, that leaves it with the issue of just being a longer version of the better episodes of Case Closed/Detective Conan. Is it narratively satisfying? Weeell, ish. It does wrap up the bomb plot, but as for where that leaves the characters…save for the continuity of Leo Joel being the father of a character in a later movie, but we’ll get to that when we get to that. It doesn’t do what you’d want a movie to do, which is expand upon these characters and develop them. Make them more compelling. That or else advance the main plot. It had some good moments, but it just was not enough to leave an impression. ((6/10))

The Fourteenth Target taunted me. It gave me the illusion of perhaps breaking down Mouri’s character, with character moments that were surprisingly solid, seeing a younger Mouri and Megure (which was fun as hell to see in brief,) but yeah, it collapsed underneath its own weight. Intriguing moments in the mystery be damned. The motive for the killer was…it sucked. It sucked SOOOOOOOO bad. Like, you think this is an ex-con going after everyone and anyone that Mouri cared about, which can lead to a lot of interesting character moments if they decided to go that direction. But, of course, it never did. It decided that he was only using that motive FOR COVER to kill several other people for a reason so dumb that it makes Lex Luthor from Batman v Superman look like a goddamned GENIUS. The movie showed Mouri be a badass, sure. And I always live for that kind of shit, but it wasn’t worth it in this thing. The animation, due to how early it was made, also looked just…bad. It looked like just a longer episode from season 2 or 3, save for maybe a couple nice shots with a car, but making the bells and whistles pretty, while not even looking at your engine is a piss poor way to make sure your car works, if you catch my drift. (That may seem weird that I give the other a pass on animation, but not this one, but...I dunno. This one felt extra janky to me. I’ll give it a pass all the same, but still.) The only real praise I can give it, save for the other things I’ve stated, was that its narrative was cohesive and it at least had some character moments that keep it from being completely unwatchable. And that really shouldn’t be a compliment, as much as an expectation for any film in general. ((5/10))

The Last Wizard of the Century was so close. I kind of liked it at some points, but it missed the truly great boat somewhere along the line. In fact, I’d hesitate to call this one anything other than passable, honestly. It’s a filler movie that has echoes of a classic Indiana Jones type adventure. And, to be honest, it does that kinda shit REALLY well. The movie has a classic adventure feel after the Kaito Kid heist comes and goes, and when it does, it feels fresh n’ new for Detective Conan. It has fun traps, treasures and a fun little cast of characters, while also having some really solid comedy sprinkled here and there, and even having a legitimate touching moment towards the end when you see what it is the “memories” egg does. But, that all being said…yeah, this movie’s got issues. Chief among them being that the Kaito Kid shit at the beginning feels like a completely different movie from the rest once we get into the Indiana Jones-esque plot. Heiji is brought in, all of those folks who are immediately associated with Kaito show up, and, after Kaito gets shot—the movie flips on a dime. Those characters are never seen from again. That being said, how they worked Kaito INTO the Indiana Jones-esque plot was cool with him being disguised as Shiratori, but that still doesn’t excuse the fact that it was plot whiplash with how little it felt like it connected. Granted, they’re both fun in their own respects, and keeps you interested, but it’s just really jarring. And then…there’s the scene. The scene I always think about when it comes to this show that makes my blood boil. The “reveal” scene. Right at the end, after they’ve been slowly building up that Ran’s been figuring out “wait…Conan might actually be Shinichi” in an honestly interesting way, with just showing her staring at Conan in the background (except for the end where the straw that broke the camel’s back with her is…honestly it’s really weak. They could’ve done something—ANYTHING, but they didn’t and chose…something just completely underwhelming), until the very end where she finally breaks. She’s in tears, begging for Conan to just tell her that he isn’t Jimmy, and after a moment, he thinks to himself, “I can’t do this anymore.” AND RIGHT BEFORE. HE DECIDES TO REVEAL HIS IDENTITY. IT’S A BIG FUCK YOU, AND KAITO SHOWS UP AND PRETENDS TO BE SHINICHI FOR A BRIEF SECOND TO PERPETUATE THE LIE. Narratively, it’s lackluster. Granted, it makes sense for Kaito to do Jimmy a good turn as he took care of his bird, but…BUT THE ENTIRE SET UP FOR THE REVEAL WAS POINTLESS. While what they did was kind of clever, it never amounted to anything. It didn’t go into detail about WHY Conan’s been keeping this a lie, or WHY he might decide to change his mind and tell her. He just sees her cry and is like “eh, fuck it.” Which makes the reasoning as to WHY HE CONTINUES TO LIE EVEN STUPIDER. GAAAAAAAAAAAH....But. That all being said. The movie does still have its moments. The two separate plots, while jarring to watch back to back, are fun, and how Conan breaks the killer down in the Knight Room is REALLY cool in how it’s done. Does it feel like just a long episode? Eeeeh, ish. Again, there are some really cool moments in here that separate it from the regular Detective Conan fair, but not really. Just…fuck me, I hate this Ran and Shinichi will-they-won’t-they bullshit, because the answer is always the same: “…not yet, we’re still milking this sonnuvabitch.” But, overall, it’s passable. ((6/10))

Captured in Her Eyes is weird. For every good thing this movie does, and I do mean GOOD, it also bungles it up somehow. For example, the movie has two REALLY great things going for it. This police thriller mystery, and the amnesia of Ran. Both are tackled in these really serious ways, and suggests a lot of introspection of the characters. As, not only are half of the suspects cops we already know (one of which ACTUALLY HAS HER LIFE ON THE LINE DURING THE ENTIRE MOVIE,) but it also suggests that it’s going to analyze just why exactly Ran has the relationships that she does in the show. Both of them are making you question EVERYTHING about the characters you know. And that is a BRILLIANT fucking concept. And in some respects…it kind of delivers. There are some surprisingly effective quiet moments, some in depth character dissection with none other than my main man Kogoro Fuckin’ MOURI, and a lot of just REALLY well placed tension. But, the show still bungles it in some fashions. There are some tonal heel turns that make you do a double take, and the show never really dives into the one character relationship that it should in great detail: Shinichi and Ran. Ran starts remembering Shinichi first, for some reason, and…it’s never really explained why. Because of…love? But even then, why does she think that she loves him? She’s got no memory of it, so why the hell is she thinking that way? She also lost all of her memories because she blamed herself for the “death” of Sato, but that’s never really fixed, or at the very least alleviated. It should be this GRAND EMOTIONAL MOMENT when Ran comes to an epiphany of the fact that some things are out of her control, and to stand up for herself…but if she did that, that means that the relationship between Ran and Shinichi might be on the rocks, so, yeah. They do NOT do that. I mean, they KIND OF do? But it isn’t in a really STRONG way. Plus…there’s the kids who are…not gonna lie, they’re really annoying this time around. Granted, they do actually ACCOMPLISH something, and it does show Ran’s humanity despite having amnesia, but still. It should also be noted, that this movie DOES have the issue of not addressing the elephant in the room with most of this mystery: CONAN IS A KID. SO WHY THE FUCK ARE THE POLICE EVEN HUMORING THIS MOTHERFUCKER DURING SUCH A MURDER INVESTIGATION? WHY WOULD THE POLICE DEPARTMENT SHOWING HIM EVIDENCE?! That and the ending is WAY too clean for my liking. Everything gets wrapped up into a bow just a little TOO well. There should be at least SOME small form of tragedy to transpire after all of this. I mean, especially after we just sat through and listened to the villain go through a monologue about why he did what he did. TO A KID. The ending, save for a couple REALLY cool visuals with the “OH GOD I REMEMBER EVERYTHING” scene, falls flat on its face, in my opinion. Anywho, aside from those MASSIVE issues, this is definitely worth at least a glance if you’re familiar with the series. While it DOESN’T go in the direction you’d like it to go, it does at the very least NOD to it, and it does have an interesting little thriller angle to keep you entertained. It ain’t perfect (surprise, surprise) but it’s definitely got some parts in it that are DEFINITELY worth watching. The question is, is it good enough to stomach through the bad? Up to you. ((7/10))

Countdown to Heaven couldn’t have come a second sooner. Because that–THAT is what I’m talking about! Nice action, solid comedy, and ACTUAL. CHARACTER. DEVELOPMENT. I think I should just emphasize that: ACTUAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. I know I’ve talked about this point a lot, but in terms of making something that has characters that you give a shit about, you usually need that development to make them more dynamic. And what’s more, they gave development to the KID CHARACTERS. AND THEY WEREN’T ANNOYING LIKE THEY USUALLY ARE! They just acted like kids, and actually had their moments that made each of them shine! That’s IMPRESSIVE, considering the show’s track record! Not only that, but Ai got a LOT of screen time in this movie, as the movie’s plot is partially linked to the black organization, and while I usually find her character to be a bore, this time I actually genuinely felt for her. I gave a shit about her emotional struggle, her need to find a place to call home after all of her shit went up in smoke. It was, overall, so well DONE. Not only that, but the Ran and Shinichi romance thing in this one DIDN’T make me want to gauge my eyes out with a spork! Mainly because THEY ADDRESS THE ISSUE FINALLY. Which is Conan confronting the fact, however briefly, that he is telling everyone to stop lying AND YET HE HAS NO ROOM TO TALK! Granted, this only goes on for…like a couple sentences, but at LEAST they actually talk about it. And even though it does go for that whole “I can’t die without seeing him one last time” bullshit that I usually hate in this show at the end, it kind of works in this movie. Mainly because it’s one of the earlier movies, and they CAN get away with that. Especially when Ran is ACTUALLY DOING SOME BADASS SHIT WHILE SHE DOES IT, AND ISN’T JUST PINING FOR SHINICHI. The mystery itself was pretty fun too. Had your twists, and turns, and even had the black organization in it, and ACTUALLY had them be worth a damn! They balanced both near perfectly, and had a surprisingly good sense of humor to it. My one gripe is the motive of the killer…because it is honestly VERY weak, but I mean, the mystery leading up to it was cool, and I do love me some clues that were LITERALLY in the background that you had to actually look for to find. Also, there is some artsy thing the dude does when he’s mad at the end, when his plan is revealed is REALLY on the nose…but I still liked it, for some reason. Probably because of the lighting of the scene when it happened. That sounds a lot like more of a backhanded compliment than a critique, but goddammit, I really loved this one. I mean, I guess my main issue would be that damn riddle thing at the beginning that they always add, but even THEN it had a point to it, as it brought itself around at the end and basically echoed the theme of the film itself of how far one will go to escape isolation of the mind. Again, not a critique…OH! I KNOW! That title sequence was REALLY dated. That, and there’s this one moment where the music cue just does NOT work at all…yeah, I know that’s a weak thing to complain about, but come on! It brought a smile to my face, and reminded me why I fell in love with the series all those years ago. Over the top 00’s cheese, a fun whodunit, and it even added in what I’ve always wanted to see in the series: a good ol’ dosage of character development. What’s not to love? ((8/10))

The Phantom of Baker Street seems to be following in Countdown’s footsteps in that it’s a movie I can actually recommend. Of all the films I’ve seen thus far, this is one one that seems to be the most cohesive, and the most cinematic. Including Countdown to Heaven. This film’s got everything, from killer lighting, emotional weight, and EVEN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT…albiet from side characters who you never see again—BUT STILL. Ya boi is gonna start counting that shit, as I hadn’t seen that before now. Everything in this film just works…y’know, despite the oddball fuckin’ concept that’s basically SAO and the RDJ Sherlock Holmes’ offspring. It still makes it work. There’s an interesting mystery sprinkled throughout, good tension—and is the perfect example of what happens when you take the issue of showing the criminal in one of these mystery flicks. Whilst the killer was shown in this film as well, the movie didn’t spend more than half the runtime reexplaining the crime to you that you just saw, rather, it splits this mystery, this time being investigated by Kudou’s father in a much quieter fashion than the usual fair, and juxtaposes it with the video game’s mystery that Conan’s stuck in. The parallels between the two are intentional, as you’d expect. And that’s to tackle a THEME. This theme being the always classic “sins of the father.” About the weight that holds, and whether or not you can or should crumble underneath it, as well as, in some respects, you can’t avoid it and they will overwhelm you. The film even takes some jabs against the Japanese culture, to make almost a social commentary about how it treats its own citizens. I don’t know if that’s the work of the dub, or if that was in the original, but it still provided LAYERS. L A Y E R S. That all being said, the film does still have a good chunk of issues. Most of which stem from two things: the premise itself and the twist. The premise is…yeah, you’ve gotta be able to swallow this one if you want to get anything out of it. It’s certainly weird to see Conan and the gang running around Victorian London in an attempt to stop Jack the Ripper, while still somehow being in the Sherlock Holmes universe…in a video game…where they will all die if they all get taken out. Again, it’s a bit of a hard pill to swallow, considering what is expected from movies involving Detective Conan, but if you can do it, it’s great. And then, there’s the twist. The twist both makes a lot of sense…but also no sense what so ever. And that’s the identity of “Noah’s Ark.” While some of his actions add up, at that same moment, none of his emotions or cocky, dickish attitude adds up to what “Noah’s Ark” wanted to accomplish and it felt like he was more or less trying to detriment himself from actually getting friends…There’s also a couple other minor things that bothered me, like the voice acting of one of the characters just felt off. AND I KNOW, THAT SEEING ME COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DUB SEEMS COMPLETELY OUT OF LEFT FIELD, but I’m sorry, Moriarty’s voice sounded more ridiculous than the Moriarty from Sherlock at some points. Either way, it was still a load of fun. Kinda left a lot to be desired in terms of development of the main cast, but it did have fun with its premise, and considering the line-up I’ve seen so far, that’s saying a LOT. In fact, I could see how this film could arguably be the deepest in the franchise with how much it decided to run with the ball. My main gripes, and want for more character, and some of the voice acting is going to drag it down from being my favorite of the series, but it’s damn near close. Who knows? Maybe it’ll just be getting better from here on out? ((8/10))

Or…y’know, not. Crossroads at the Ancient Capital isn’t really a movie about Detective Conan, as much as it’s about Detective Heiji. Which could be fine…if you actually like the character. Which I don’t. I personally find him to be this unnaturally boring know-it-all side character that only works in certain scenarios. Now, on a positive note, this movie can have some interesting aspects to it when it wants to. Specifically, when it goes into the bullshit involving Kyoto’s history, and culture. They never outright explain it to you, but just have it happen and you just observe. Coming from a guy who has never seen that kind of stuff before, it kept me somewhat captivated when it was on screen. And I say somewhat, because the rest of this movie is just completely boring. The mystery is bland, the characters are meh, and they made the cardinal sin of making Mouri come off as annoying. How. Fucking. DARE you. Then, the ending comes and just turns the insanity dial up to 11 with some Naruto action bullshit, which comes completely out of left field. I swear, there are two times in this movie where the show just gives the middle finger to physics, and yet also wants you to believe this is a serious drama. Gimme a break. Also, before I forget, the reveal about who the girl Heiji fell in love with back in the day was BULLshit. It’s supposed to be adorable, but it’s bullshit convenience that actually might not work, considering a newspaper article that’s shown in the movie. And to add onto my hatred of the RanxShinichi, you’ve got a bunch of bullshit with the two in eachother’s arms, which is just…Oi. I know it’s just my contempt towards the relationship, but even then it wasn’t even that well done. Them talking lasts for like…one second, and then he KNOCKS HER OUT. Because OH GOD WHAT IF SHE SEES ME TRANSFORM BACK. Granted, the imagery of Shinichi holding Ran’s knocked out body, while he’s having a near heart attack is a REALLY cool image, but it’s there for a couple frames, so it ain’t exactly worth the sit through. Even if you like Heiji’s character, there’s not a lot to really get in this. He does…basically nothing interesting, character wise, and makes the whole thing this huge yawn fest with a couple cultural tidbits splashed in there to try and distract you from how boring it is. The more I think about it, the worse it gets, honestly. It’s just THAT boring. And no, I’m not doing this because this is the first movie I’ve watched that isn’t a dub. If it was a dub, it’d still have the same rating that I’m giving it now. ((3/10))

Y’know going from Phantom to Crossroads was jarring as hell already. But adding Magician of the Silver Sky immediately after? Lord, this isn’t helping matters. You have one that just has weight and surprising depth behind it, to a snoozefest, to a movie that is basically three episodes smashed together. Magician is just a whole lot of meeeehhhh. Basically you have one part Kaito Kid episode, one part murder, and third part “oh shit, we’ve got to land this plane.” The thief shit ends anti-climactically as it doesn’t go anywhere, and the how and reason for the murder is…it has holes for DAYS, let me tell you. Like if you hate your job with this woman, fucking QUIT. Pride be DAMNED, she’s keeping you from getting more work and advancing your career. You got the name of that Hollywood man, fucking CALL HIM—anyway. The only thing that’s actually anything remotely good is the plane landing scenes…but even then, it turns into an instructional video later, and you end up just NOT caring in the slightest. There are no themes, no character depth, no nothing. The only thing remotely interesting is when Ran just blows up at Shinichi for always just dropping in and out of thin air, and she finally reveals that she “likes him”—I’m sorry, but limiting it to “like” is FUCKING LAME. GO ALL OUT IF YOU’RE GONNA DO THAT—but even then, it’s swept under the rug as Ran thinks that the person she told that to was Kaito…I know I hate their relationship, but come on. But I mean, at least it wasn’t completely boring? ((4/10))

Strategy above the Depths film was…it’s hard to describe. It showed you who the “villain” was right off the bat, but doesn’t nearly show off any good execution as Phantom did, so everything felt…off for a Detective Conan movie. It almost didn’t feel like a mystery, or anything, really. It was more events that just happened. Were the events leading to a central theme? At the time while I was watching it, I didn’t think so. The events felt more like filler, some of which were a pain to get through and made my eyes roll. I spent the entire time trying to figure out what the film was trying to do…that is until the end. This, ladies and gentlemen, was another attempt to make a Mouri movie. And let me tell you, I’m left wanting more again. But, I will give the flick this, it did give me somethin’ to chew on. Mouri wasn’t presented as the village idiot most of the time this film around. Sure, he was a doofus and did make an ass of himself in front of a huge crowd of people, but surprisingly he was acting like an actual detective. Throughout the movie he brought up good points, he analyzed everyone’s alibi, and actually caught the baddie. On his own. Which was amazing. In some ways, it almost reminds me of Crossroads, where the movie mainly focused on a side character, but unlike Crossroads, this time around it’s interesting. Mainly because it focused on what makes Mouri interesting, which is the fact that he isn’t perfect. So when he does figure it out, it’s a mind-blow, as well as being oddly touching in a way. There was a flawed humanity you saw in him, this time ‘round. Granted, there are flaws that keep this thing pinned down. The mystery itself wasn’t mind bending as you could tell who the bad guy is from a mile away, Ran’s “character” left much to be desired, and, as I said, it still had some filler…though on that last point I’ll give it a pass. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the filler contributed to the end of the movie, so it is kind of warranted, albeit it could have been done better and add to a theme the movie could tackle. Was it as perfect as I’d like it to be? No. But it does actually provide some kind of character depth to one of my favorites in the show. And they don’t sugar coat it by making him perfect, he is still an incompetent sonuvabitch, but you see where his heart is, and that he’s just trying. Even at the end, when he’s throwing down with the villain of the movie, he was losing. BAD. It made you tense, you wanted to finally see this man succeed. At least ONCE. And it delivered. There’s some Ran and Shinichi shit in here, but I didn’t mind it, particularly. I…I honestly do not know where to put this. On the one hand, it did what Countdown did, and provided, while not character development, but character depth to at least some degree. It also did the thing that Phantom did and showed the bad guy before the case was solved, so, if they’re going to go that same route, it should still work. However, it was still sloppy in execution. As I’ve said, the mystery, for the most part, was boring as it felt as though the writer didn’t know how to execute tension properly, which Phantom was able to do in spades. That and the filler made this one really drag, even if it was partially warranted. I wanna give this thing praise for actually going that extra mile by giving something that’s character related, but I don’t think it’s earned it in as it never went far enough in that same vein…But it is definitely a movie I’m going to have to see again to get a better feel for. ((5.5/10))

The Requiem of a Detective…or The Private Eye’s Requiem?…I dunno, I keep getting different title names for it, and I can’t seem to figure out which one is the official translation, but whatever. This film provided one of the most PROMISING IDEAS…but dashed it in exchange for maintaining the status quo. I went into this with high hopes, with the firm belief that maybe—JUST MAYBE!—this could be the great movie in this series, as many people have touted it as the best of this movie series. But alas, it ain’t. I’ll forgive the Reboot-esque 3D models, as it was just a part of the time. But what I will NOT forgive, is setting up an interesting dynamic that could really have your characters shine…and replace it with bullshit that we’ve seen over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Ok. So you have this dude who has Kogoro and Conan’s loved ones stuck in Miracle Land with bombs strapped to their wrists. And, in exchange for them solving some riddle/mystery by a certain time limit, those loved ones get to live. So now, it’s a race against the clock as Kogoro and Conan have to solve the case. And, initially, it ain’t half bad. I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again. Kogoro is my favorite character, and to see him and Conan bounce off each other in that beginning section was REALLY fun. But then, as it progresses, Kogoro is tossed out for Heiji. Then for “totally not Kaito Kid.” And that’s honestly kind of a letdown, as I was hoping to see the two AT LEAST bond. Having the characters, y’know, PROGRESS. BECOME CLOSER?! AT LEAST UNDERSTAND EACHOTHER?! BUT NO! LET’S GET BACK TO THE BANTER BETWEEN HEIJI AND CONAN SOME MORE. IT’S NOT LIKE WE’VE SEEN THAT 50,000 TIMES. And the movie doesn’t even do anything interesting with THEM either. They’re just sort of…there. Granted, maybe this could be fixed with a good mystery? NOPE! The mystery is something I figured out the instant I saw all the clues. There were no twists, there were no turns—it was completely straight forward. And that is the main issue. They’re just repeating themselves in this. Nothing new is said, nothing interesting is had—nothing. To say this was disappointing, is an understatement. But I will give it this, there was actually some REALLY good tension right at the end with the bombs in the restaurant…the only issue, is that it’s right at the end. Only things interesting about this was both that, and Kogoro being awesome with that little note he wrote, and his little 1v1s with Conan. But that lasted for not even a blink of the running time, so yeah. It isn’t savin’ this turkey anytime soon…but I’ll give it .5 points for trying. ((4.5/10))

I was told that Jolly Roger of the Deep Azure was the worst one in the movie series…and I can kind of see why. This movie didn’t insult me, nor was it completely abhorrent, but it still had some reeeeaally obvious issues. Chief among these issues is the whole idea they wasted. You set up two female pirates from the old days, and go on about how they did a bunch of shit, and you put Sonoko and Ran there and say “LOOK AT THESE GUYS! THEY’RE TOOOOOOOTALLY JUST LIKE THE PIRATE GIRLS!” when they do not actually show anything about how they’re related personality wise. If the movie focused on Ran and Sonoko, and we saw their friendship blossom to ACTUALLY WARRANT THE PARALLEL between these two pirates, then sure. Alright. I’ll buy it. But they don’t. If anything, the pirates are just there for background purposes. As well as a lot of the stuff in this movie, honestly. Nothing felt like it mattered. There was a man who died after being CHEWED UP BY SHARKS, and it doesn’t really affect anything in the overall plot. I feel I should reiterated that, a man DIED, and the death’s purpose was…nonexistent. Not only that, but even when it came to the plot, the motive of the killer made a whole lot of sense! AND ALSO. For something that’s supposed to be this GRAND MYSTERY, this INDIANA JONES type shit, why are the puzzles so FUCKING OBVIOUS!? Literally, the old man figured it out with an old map he had…and pointed to the island everyone had been to that looked EXACTLY LIKE A SKULL. GEE. I WONDER WHERE THE PIRATE TREASURE IS?! You mean to tell me that nobody even TRIED to look in there?! Nobody actually BOTHERED to go searching in the dumbass catacombs, and tried BLOWING THE DOORS OPEN?! Or, I dunno, SOLVING THE OBVIOUS AS HELL PUZZLE FOR THE DOOR?! Nothing in this movie added up, and the movie doesn’t seem to CARE that it didn’t add up. Nothing affects anything in the grand scheme. Character moments are non-existent, save for one freak-out moment by Mouri that was brief, and I wanted expanded on, but I never get because why should good things happen to good people? The opening was just…weird, too. Like it had a brief Lupin III thing that was just…there for the sake of being there. Which is another thing, different characters, or things are just brought up and dropped for no real reason, adding to that idea that everything. Felt. Pointless. Why bother telling this story, if there’s nothing for the characters to gain from it, or anything interesting to keep the audience entertained? Only good thing is that this had the best title sequence out of all of the movies, in my opinion. It’s still a chore, especially this many movies in, but with the way it flowed as the characters were interacting in the car, I couldn’t help but think that it felt natural. For once the characters aren’t COMPLETE morons, so I’ll also give ‘em that…well at least for the most part. The killer, who you know who it is the instant he hits the screen with how “not obvious” he is, is a moron. Also, there was something he did that was so distinct that never came into play in the end, again adding to the whole dropping random things. But, backhanded compliments aside, that’s really it with the positives. With no twists, no mystery, no character, and no effort…the only thing going for it is that it didn’t completely piss me off. It just bored me. But, is that innately better, or worse? ((3/10))

FULL SCORE OF FEAR WAS REALLY GODDAMN DUMB. LIKE, Ok. Ok. Lemme breathe. Do not misunderstand me. There are some really, FUCKING REALLY good moments in this thing. Which, in no part, is DIRECTLY linked to the music choice used in this thing. In fact, I’d hazard to say that there is a scene around the middle/end that is probably one of the best scenes I have SEEN thus far in one of these movies, due to how well the music and the scene just WORKED (it’s the Amazing Grace flashback sequence, if you wanted to know.) When it does shit like that, and uses minimal dialogue with the compliment of some of that SWEET classical music, it does take on a life of its own, which makes it a standout among these movies that, to be honest, have started to blend together. BUT. THAT ALL BEING SAID, CHRIST ON CRUTCHES WAS THIS MOVIE DUMB. Like, it’s not dumb on the levels of where it’s so bad that it becomes enjoyable, but more of dumb in the sense of HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW THIS BASIC FUCKING THING WORKS?! LIKE. OK. Ok. First of all. The shit with the phone and calling people WITH YOUR VOICE TO MIMIC THE DIAL-TONE. IS THE STUPIDEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN. You mean to tell me that you can use the human voice to mimic the dial tone, in the EXACT HERTZ NEEDED, ACROSS A LAKE, WHERE NATURAL SOUNDS SURROUND YOU, AND WHILE THE PHONE IS DANGLING AND SWAYING UPSIDE DOWN WHILE BEING HELD BY THE WIRE—FUCK YOURSELF. NO. NOT HOW THAT WORKS. SECONDLY. SOUNDPROOFING DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY. I do not care how much soundproofing shit you shove up the ass of this concert hall, YOU CAN’T MUTE EXPLOSIONS. ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY’RE LITERALLY A DICK MEASURE AWAY. BASIC FUCKING LOGIC. And even with some sort of black magic bullshit…YOU MEAN TO TELL ME NOBODY SMELLED THE SMOKE!? NOBODY LEFT TO TAKE A PISS OUTSIDE AND NOTICED “HEY. LOOK. THERE’S A FUCKING WAR GOING ON OUTSIDE.” THIRDLY. DOES NO ONE HAVE PERIPHERAL HEARING?! THERE’S A GUNSHOT RIGHT BEFORE A PERFORMANCE, AND NOBODY APPARENTLY HEARS IT. OK. COOL. FOURTHLY. APPARENTLY, CUFFING A GUY WITH A BOMB DETONATOR ISN’T POLICE PROCEDURE! ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE’S A GUN HE MAGICALLY PULLS OUT OF HIS ASS FOR THE FINAL CONFRONTATION. GOD. Logical BOUNDS exist THROUGHOUT the second half of this movie. Fuck jumping the shark, we’ve jumped that shark’s entire family LINEAGE with this shit. And when your show is based off of “one truth prevailing” and how logic can always see its way through…yeah, no. Go fuck yourself. I will give the movie this, the first half of this movie ain’t half bad. It has some surprisingly solid comedy, and the beginning of an interesting delve into an actual FIGHT between Ran and Shinichi which peers into their relationship…BUT BECAUSE LIFE HATES ME, THE SECOND HALF JUST BUNGLES THAT LAST PART UP. Like, REALLY?! Your response is “oh look there’s a parallel between this guy who could never forgive his best friend for…being a pretty decent dude, honestly. Like think about it, that motherfucker basically gave you a music hall for being his best friend, and even though it was making you depressed, rather than saying ‘y’know, imma sell this property and go back to what makes me happy,’ Imma blow you all to hell…to Shinichi calling you an idiot.” Like, yes. I get it. Forgiveness is important. BUT NUMBER ONE, THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOESN’T DESERVE IT, SO WHY ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUDIENCE THIS—granted, this isn’t the WORST thing Shinichi’s done, but the fact that it ends with Ran saying “you didn’t even have to apologize for me to forgive you” or something along those lines just made me fucking SICK. CHRIST. I HATE THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH A BURNING PASSION BECAUSE IT COMPLETELY MAKES NO SENSE AND IS DAMN NEAR THE DEFINITION OF A LEECH….Fuck me. It does have some things that save it from being the downright worst I’ve seen outta here…but Christ was this dumb. ((4/10))

I remember watching The Raven Chaser years and years ago, and I just have very vivid memories about how it just pissed me off. So, coming back to it, I was dreading watching it. But, to my pleasant surprise…it wasn’t half bad. Honestly, it is one of the better Conan movies I’ve seen thus far. It had some solid action, solid tension, cool mystery, and the introduction to a REALLY cool Black Organization member who was, and as of this day from what I’ve seen, the most effective at his job, as he both infiltrates a band of cops during a serial killer investigation, and also is able to find out Conan’s actual identity…in the first 45ish minutes of the movie. The only issue with that is…he doesn’t do anything about it for a good…like hour. Whilst that could be seen as driving tension…it really isn’t. How? Well, ok. Lemme ‘splain to you you ‘bout a little thing in cinema called the “show-the-bomb” trick. There’s this old cinema belief that Hitchcock used that was deemed extremely effective when it came to tension. Basically, you show the audience a bomb underneath the table, pan up, and through that single shot, you just have them talking, without them noticing that a bomb is right underneath them. That immediately creates tension throughout the scene. And whilst that could possibly be what this movie was going for, with showing the audience that someone knows about Conan’s identity to create tension as they WAIT for something to come out of it in anticipation, it doesn’t exactly work in this scenario because, unlike the “show-the-bomb” trick, you know it’s going to go off in a certain set amount of time. And even though you’re shown that the hidden organization member MIGHT have told Gin, nothing comes of it. There’s no suggestion to the audience that his life, or the lives of his loved ones, are in any danger, save for the way a couple sentences are phrased early on. But that’s mainly because the focus shifts. I’m finding that to be another real issue with these movies. A lack of focus. They try to do two things at once, rather than trying to one and balancing it well. The only exception being Countdown and Phantom. Countdown didn’t try to put too much on its plate, as it focused on Ai’s character development, and how it played on her fears of being alone, which was partially mirrored by the killer of that film being someone who had the only real stability in his life be taken away from him. As for Phantom, it actually DID manage to balance two separate mysteries, but it was able to do so through proper pacing and tension while also showing a character go through a kind of arc. The Raven Chaser tries to pile on two separate mysteries, without actually going in depth with anyone’s character. Again, the movie is good. The mystery was fun, and the organization preceded to be kickass in this version…But it’s JUST good. Nothing spectacular. It could have been so much more if they’d just dropped the mystery for once, and actually had something that went into Conan’s goddamn character. You give me that movie, and I’ll finally be happy…but something tells me that I won’t, will I? ((6.5/10))

The Lost Ship in the Sky… Riiiiiight. This a weird one, to be sure. I mean…where do I even begin? Do with I start with how it’s first 15 minutes were the worst I’ve seen come out of one of these movies thus far? Do I start with how damn near wasted a fantastic concept of Ran thinking that Shinichi was Kaito Kid was? Do I start with how this film had the most badass villains I’ve seen come out of these movies thus far with their little homage to Die Hard? Or do I start with the astonishing fact that this is the first time I’ve ever actually LIKED Kaito Kid’s character, when he was placed next to Conan for that little bit they had? Let’s start with that one, because I REALLY liked that part. For what little time these two shared in screentime, they SOLD. Their dynamic was lightning fast, and was damn near flawless when compared to how boring it usually is. Call me nuts, but I prefer Kaito Kid like that. Vulnerable, and slightly airheaded, while still remaining to be at the top of his game through sheer luck. Accompany that with Conan’s hard-nosed personality, and you’ve got a fantastic combo. And do not get me STARTED with how great and intimidating these villains were. They got down to business, played no shit, and were just fun to watch muck around with the characters. And that, my friends, is probably where the compliments stop. Because while those things are fantastic, and I will not stop singing those praises…yeah, it still screws up at some points. Mainly with something that I really wanted to see delved into that was completely sidetracked: Ran thinking that Shinichi is Kid. THAT is an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I’ve always thought it could give some new perspective on their relationship. How WOULD Ran react if she’s shown that Shinichi is actually just a thief all this time that he’s spent lying to her, and claiming he was on important business? Well, unfortunately, that’s never delved into. We get a hint, but it reverts to, at the end “Shinichi, you need to turn yourself in!” which feels…completely weird in terms of her character? Like, I get that she has a rigid moral code and all, but the movie itself never really explores that idea of what would make her tell the “love of her life” to…go to jail. Like…that feels like a waste to me, y’know? I mean granted, it does end with Ran kissing Kid, which was fun for me because I THRIVE ON SHINICHI’S PAIN, but it wasn’t really worth it. Also, the sound design in this one was particularly off. At some points, the music cues are just…bad. That music does not fit with that. Stop, for the love of god, please stop. All in all, definitely one of the more entertaining Detective Conan films. I did find myself getting giddy at points…only to get disappointed because what I was getting giddy over never came, but at least there was SOMETHING. It’s no Crossroads, but it certainly ain’t no Countdown either. ((6/10))

Quarter of Silence is surprisingly relatively solid, looking back on it. It was a smaller piece about a tiny town, and this intricate lie that these folks within in it have built, and how it’s all crumbling around them the instant that a little boy miraculously awakens from an eight year coma. That in and of itself is a killer set-up, and it lends itself to echoes of thrillers and crime movies that BEG to be told…but this is Detective Conan we’re talking about, so that doesn’t happen. As I said this was a RELATIVELY solid movie. It still falls into the pitfalls of what makes Detective Conan movies what they are. They focus on the wrong items, and choose to play into these tropes that they themselves are beating beyond death itself, rather than expanding upon these ideas, and exploring what they’d mean for our main characters. They mention this in passing, but the kid who awakens from a coma is now eight years older than he used to be, and now he’s in this state of shock where he doesn’t recognize anyone anymore, and doesn’t fully know how to handle this sudden time jump. That’s a VERY OBVIOUS parallel to Conan and Ai’s situation. So what do they do?! They save it for a small freak-out scene, where the character TELLS US his situation, rather than SHOWING us, and Ai makes the VERY BLUNT COMMENT about the parallel. That’s it. Never expanded upon. Because FUCK YOU for wanting depth. The film chooses, again, to focus on things that we’ve already seen done to death. The kids, Kogoro wanting a girlfriend, Ran not liking that, the quiz shit with Agasa, banter between Ai and Conan that doesn’t accomplish anything, Sonoko pestering Ran about her obsession with Shinichi, Ran PINING for Shinichi, and blah, blah, blah. With such a lack of variety, it leaves you staring at the screen and BEGGING for something to fucking HAPPEN. Luckily, the movie provides some solace. Some shots are downright gorgeous, and the action scenes ain’t too shabby. Hell, the cold open, pun not intended, was REALLY great this time around…until it cut to an action scene. The mystery, again, is pretty fun. Giving off an almost Fargo-esque vibe to the homegrown murderers that are either trying to cover it up to maintain normality, or fueled by greed. When it does that, it’s fun. Which is to say…when it doesn’t focus on Conan and his group, the movie is actually pretty competent, while still lacking. I feel like that says a lot about how the movie likes to treat its main cast of characters… ((5/10))

The Eleventh Striker was just weak. There was nothing character wise. The editing was godawful. It focused on these soccer pricks, and they didn’t even amount anything in the grand scheme. And then there’s this celebrity soccer player that’s plopped in there just for kicks (pun not intended.) He’s just there! Playing soccer with Conan while a shitty pop song plays halfway through the movie. Because…fuck you. Characters that are brought in are dropped, and never resolved. The main characters themselves are really just…bad, this time round, save for the end. Ai is…ok, remember when I said I finally liked her character? Well this movie made me reconsider that fact, because she’s fucking…WEIRD. She does things to Conan…for…reasons? Unexplained reasons, specifically. Ran is…I’m not even gonna say she was there, that implies that a character with that name was there, which there wasn’t. There was a cardboard cutout that didn’t contribute in the slightest except for as a damsel in distress…AGAIN. Y’see, a reason I loved and still love Countdown, is the fact that Ran wasn’t a goddamn damsel in distress. She got shit DONE. She saved Conan’s ass. SEVERAL TIMES. Here…she does nothing, except for accidentally sit on a bomb. Wheeeeeee. Slight props I will give to this thing, there was no stupid joke made by Sonoko about “OH SHINICHI” to taunt Ran, which has been in every movie I’ve seen thus far…and it’s gotten old. REAL quick. Like I got tired of it 3 movies IN kinda old. So to see a movie NOT do that was…a relief to see. Kogoro was pretty solid in this movie, showing that there’s an actual human behind the drunkard, but, again, I’d like more. ESPECIALLY in this one. As the motive of the killer links himself to something that Kogoro did in the past, and yet it’s never gone into. It’s not explored on an emotional level. Whilst the motive behind this killer’s shtick is pretty solid, and had a couple REALLY nice things goin’ on at the end with visuals, with the guy kinda going insane with grief, the movie fails to really go into that in detail and, frankly, doesn’t match up with the shit he DOES. He wants Kogoro and the fans of a soccer team to suffer for accidentally letting a kid die…THEN WHY NOT ATTACK KOGORO SPECIFICALLY?! MAKE HIM SUFFER AS HE HAS SUFFERED BY, OH I DUNNO, GOING AFTER HIS DAUGHTER?! OR HIS FRIENDS?! You wanna go after the soccer fans—BUT HALF OF THEM WEREN’T EVEN THERE, YA DIPSHIT. FUCK, THAT’S DUMB. Conan points out it’s stupid and, yeah. It’s REALLY fucking stupid. Granted, one could argue he’s in an emotional state—BUT HE’S BEEN PLANNING THIS ELABORATE SHIT FOR MONTHS. YOU TELLIN’ ME HE DIDN’T ONCE STOP TO CONSIDER—hey. Maybe it’d be better if I went after this douche specifically, as some of these folks I’d be killing would have NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. Again. It’s a really cool motive. Emotional, wraps around to his lost passions of soccer, and shows that his one tie to humanity has been severed. It’s a rad concept. I LOVE THAT CONCEPT. THAT’S ONE OF THE REASONS I LOVE ZEMO IN CIVIL WAR, BUT IT DOESN’T WORK HERE. BECAUSE THE PEOPLE HE’S TRYING TO KILL WILL NOT BE AFFECTED. AND YOU’RE LETTING KOGORO PLAY IN YOUR GAME, RATHER THAN ACTUALLY GETTING REVENGE BECAUSE…FUCK. I’ve changed my mind. I was going to give it a higher score, but no. No, no, no, no, no. This movie was STUPID that somehow gets worse the more you think about it. It had some cool shots, but at least Full Score had music to make up for its short comings. HOTDAMN was this one just a chore. And that after credits scene was a big middle finger, too. Go to hell. ((3.5/10))

Private Eye on the Distant Sea definitely reminds me a lot of Captured in Her Eyes as being this mixed bag, which is surprising, as I thought going into this that this was going to be the worst movie of the bunch, as it was listed as such by several websites. But I can safely tell you that it very much ISN’T. It’s also not the best either, and it has more bad than good unlike Captured in Her Eyes wich was more good than bad, but I’m gonna get to that. I do want to mention that, for the most part, this felt like a goddamn propaganda piece. Like, do you remember why I was impressed with how brutally honest Phantom was in its commentary about the Japanese education system? Well, FUCK THAT! Here we’re giving the navy the good ol’ military salute it DESERVES. I didn’t think it detracted from the film, as I mostly found myself chuckling about it, and thinking back to how some really, REALLY terrible movies from America do the exact same goddamn thing, but, much like those American films, when they do that, the showboating (pun not intended) delays the plot in more ways than one, and you leave your audience just waiting to go for a good chunk of the movie. And honestly, that’s the worst crime you can commit. Like, suck the dick of whatever military branch you want, they deserve it, and all the power to ya, but if you’re in a movie format, then goddammit, at least have it flow. The environment itself wasn’t really anything to write home about, either. When I think back to the film, I remember how boring and uninteresting that setting was, which was odd, considering how much it felt like it was supposed to be doing the opposite with its never-ending praise of the navy. As for the mystery…it was actually really good. The reveal of who killed the man with one arm is honestly very well motivated, and is really fun to try and pin down, especially when it isn’t completely telegraphed, and there was a legitimately well placed red herring throughout. To the point, where you honestly believed the case was over, only to have the tables turned on you. There are also a couple really good moments in this movie, and surprisingly well done comedy—especially towards the beginning. But, that being said, the movie does have its fair share of issues. And lord almighty, are they issues. First and foremost of them being that film, logically, has no real reason to take place. There’s a spy aboard this ship, and they know that this spy is aboard this ship, and yet, despite this being a military vehicle, and, again, A SPY THAT COULD REVEAL INTERNATIONAL SECRETS THAT ARE ON THIS SAME BOAT, they let on tourists because…well that’s not really explained either. There are several times where I was left scratching my head, and wondering why the hell the boat hasn’t turned around already. ESPECIALLY considering that the boat had an APPENDAGE OF A DEAD MAN ON BOARD. BUT NO! WE MUST MAINTAIN COVER BECAUSE…yeah. Logic for set-up is very RARE to find in this movie. Maybe the Japanese military is more lax than US military, but I don’t buy for a second that a boat with that much important shit on board, and with a spy also on board, would just make rounds around the sea for no reason. ALSO. WHY WOULD THEY JUST LET CIVILIANS IN THE ROOM WHERE THEY PLAN OUT THEIR SHIT?! ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE’S A WOMAN MISSING. GET THE CRYING CHILDREN OUT, SO YOU CAN FUCKING CONCENTRATE. CHRIST THAT BOTHERED THE EVER LOVING PISS OUTTA ME. There’s also the little issue of the final act being unnecessary. Granted, it does provide some really good emotional moments with Conan, which is REMARKABLE TO SEE, seeing as how for the longest time I’ve found it so difficult to see him actually show any genuine emotion towards Ran, that to see him actually break down into tears, if only for a second, was a NIIIICE change of pace. But that in itself contains a small issue, of the reason WHY Ran (who is the woman drowning in this scenario, btw) came from the brink of death. The power of love. And THAT is bullshit. This ain’t a goddamn fairy tale, this is Detective fucking Conan. If you’re going to have her life rescued, have it be with Conan using logic, or hell, SOMEBODY using logic. Granted, they HALF did, but that’s not what TRULY saved Ran’s ass in the end. That was one true love pulled out the ass of a unicorn bullshit. The good parts in the movie DO keep it from just completely crashing and burning, but I ain’t gonna lie, the bad parts do keep this thing anchored to the bottom of the sea. ((4/10))

The Dimensional Sniper. To quote from the movie itself…”OH CHRIST.” I can’t even properly DESCRIBE to you the amount of unintentional enjoyment I derived from this fuckin’ thing. Specifically because of the AMERICAN “ACTORS” THEY GOT IN THIS SHIT. MAN OH MAN. WERE THEY BAD. But in that so bad, it’s fucking GOLD sort of way. IT’S HILARIOUS. It’s has to be seen to be believed. Anywho, much like the other movies, main supporting characters are dropped. Like Mouri. And Megure. But, y’know, it at least keeps the characters who are SUSPECTS from disappearing unlike some other movies I’ve seen thus far. Plus, the amount of just STRAIGHT CHEESE that the series is INFAMOUS AND JUST FAMOUS for is on FULL DISPLAY HERE. It gives the middle finger to physics several times, and doesn’t give a damn what you have to say about that. And…lord, I’m sorry, but I can’t just stop talking about these voice actors. There was a dude who sounded like a watered down Soldier 76 who yelled “YUH-YOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUU” at the top of his lungs, and I had to pause the movie because I was laughing so hard. Add to that the fact that they’re trying to make this American Sniper-esque story, because I’m guessing the screenwriter or director watched that movie the night before and churned this out without knowing how the military in America WORKS, which is on full display when it comes to the scheme that set the killer into motion…coming from a kid from a military town, it’s either the most insulting thing I’ve ever seen, or the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m gonna say the latter. Especially when the actual killer is this…I don’t even know what to call him. The amount of homoerotic undertones are so paramount they become OVERTONES. It’s obviously unintentional, but it’s there. And it’s HILARIOUS. ESPECIALLY with that fucking “acting” going on. When I jokingly say “anime is a sin,” this is definitely what I’m thinking about. But you can’t help but just enjoy the “sin” and all of its glory. It’s like a movie interpretation of “Devil’s Food Cake.” It’s completely unhealthy, but hotdamn is it a good time. The film also helped by the fact that the action in this piece ain’t half bad. It’s pretty solid, for the most part, surprisingly. Though the characters are, surprise surprise, severely lacking. The ending is the stupidest and funniest thing I’ve seen in a while, especially when Ran does her equivalent of a Gurren Lagan speech. There were also two characters that were apparently regulars who I wasn’t familiar with, Sera and Okiya. No clue as to who they’re supposed to be since I haven’t been keeping up with the show as it is...y’know 800+ episodes. But from what I’ve seen in here…meh, they’re Ok. I mean…Sera is basically a female Heiji, but with a more tolerable attitude. And Okiya was…a character? I think? I dunno. Point is, this movie was unintentionally funny as hell. Definitely among the so bad it’s good territory. As such, this is going to get the low, low, LOW ranking it deserves, but just know that this is one that I’d actually recommend…though not for any reason the filmmakers were hoping for, I assure you. ((3/10))

Sunflowers of Inferno was just plain generic. It does all the rounds you expect it to, what with this being a Kaito Kid vs movie–which is a thing, if you haven’t noticed. And, similar to that of what I’m noticing of these later movies, it’s just sort of there. It lacks any sort of point except for “HEY! WE MADE AN EPISODE LONG ENOUGH TO BE A MOVIE!” But, anyway, as something that is just dumb fun…it’s Ok. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s certainly lacking. Take the character development. You have these “seven samurai” (which is a fun little reference and cool ass name to-boot,) who are these curators who are keeping these van Gogh paintings safe. And then, when fit hits the shan, it’s revealed that there is a traitor amongst them. Later on in the movie, one of the characters is revealed to have a dark past, and having apparently shot his brother over these paintings, which we see in one of the coolest scenes in this movie. But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter. He has NOTHING to do with the point at hand. The ACTUAL “Judas” in the group is some underdeveloped bitch that makes the killers from every other movie look like a GENIUS. The killer is surprisingly underwhelming, and the twist of who it is comes out of nowhere…mainly because it feels completely tacked on. The development of these “seven samurai” is lop-sided, and not well handled in the slightest, save for Charlie and the “other traitor,” who technically isn’t a traitor, but even then it wasn’t that well telegraphed as to how ANYONE could figure it out. I’m not saying tell your audience “THIS IS THE GUY,” but at least make some REFERENCE to it so that way it can blow your audience’s mind when they see it. (Not saying the second dude who is doing it’s well hidden, he’s not. But who he actually turns out to be is…this sounds really confusing, probably, and I’m going to stop while I’m ahead.) But I will say, I dug the shit out of Charlie during this movie, mainly because he was tired of Conan’s shit. Then there’s the treatment of Conan’s “harem.” *shudder* Ran continues to be that character who, while she can kick your ass, only does it at the orders of some guy she’s in love with. Bit of a stretch from the badass I remember from the show, and Countdown. As for Ai…ok, after Countdown, I finally fell in love with her character. She finally grew on me. BUT, she’s also seemed to have turned into this woman PINING for Conan’s affection, despite knowing she’ll never have it. And…honestly, the show isn’t giving me much room to not think that Conan and Ai are right for eachother, when Conan shares more secrets and is more personal with Ai than Ran, who he CONTINUES TO LIE TO…got a bit off topic there, sorry. But anyways, Ai is reduced to also pining for Shinichi, despite actually having a more in-depth character than that. She uses her brains to think through a situation, and has often had to pull Shinichi out of the fire…so to have her sit on the sidelines this entire time and not contribute to the plot feels…pointless. Anyways, yeah. There are a couple cool scenes in the movie, despite my complaints, and there were some characters and moments I did enjoy. Lookin at YOU, Charlie. You magnificent bastard. But otherwise, meeeeeehhhhh. ((4/10))

The Darkest Nightmare was less of a dark nightmare as much as an alright daydream. There were cool action scenes, fun interludes, and probably one of the best endings to one of these movies that I’ve EVER seen with them killing off a character in a badass way after SOME ACTUAL FORM OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. I’m tellin’ ya, it is a thing of beauty for these movies. FINALLY we see that the hero can’t have his cake, and eat it to…only, it’s not the main character. It’s a side character they JUST introduce to add some intrigue. Ran is given the wayside for a really just pointless reason, and Mouri is just plain WASTED as he’s relegated to a background piece, and nothing really matters in the long run. The Organization are actually kind of FUN in this, as they aren’t completely and utterly incompetent, AND ACTUALLY APPEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN, WHAT…7 MOVIES?! But, again, it’s still underwhelming as it falls into the pit of actually having no REAL stakes in the matter. There’s no tension throughout this entire thing, until the very end with the ferris wheel. Granted, that scene is pretty fun, but because you have no real emotional connection to what’s going on, it doesn’t actually matter. Even the character who has amnesia suffers, as while she was the one who actually got character development, you don’t really care. Her development is, honestly, kinda sloppy as it reminds me of a lesser Captured in Her Eyes attempt, only now it’s the old “oh, I have kid friends now. So maybe…I shouldn’t be killing people!” cliché. Again, the end is pretty fun, even though there is one REALLY STUPID THING IN IT INVOLVING A HUGE SOCCER BALL, but you have to get through the rest to get it. OH, and before I forget, all of this will no doubt impact the characters…not. ((5.5/10))

–

AND THAT’S GAME, LADIES AND GERMS. 

All twenty FUCKING Detective Conan movies. Not including the ovas, the 21st film (which I heard may already be out?? But as the time I’m writing this, I couldn’t find it,) and the Lupin III crossover. 

I sat through all of these fuckin’ things, and let me tell you…I think I see the main issue with this show. I know I kind of touched on it in my previous rant, but it didn’t feel right, y’know? Like I was missing those exact words in which to properly pin down what exactly about the show felt wrong. Through these flicks, though each had its own set of problems, they all had the same large pressing issue that towered above them.

They leave you wanting to have seen more.

They come close, but save for two times, they swing and miss. Over and over. These movies don’t actually feel like movies for the most part. They feel like longer episodes with no real weight or baggage. A criticism of the show, and I agree with it, is that it’s basically INFINITE filler. The show doesn’t give a shit about its characters. All it cares about is the mysteries. In fact, you could argue that it’s very similar to the way in which a police procedural functions, with the focus not being relegated to the cops on the case, but the case itself. Only this show thinks that on subconscious level that you honestly do not give a shit about the cops investigating the case, as much as the case itself, so it doesn’t focus on it. The characters become lesser, and more of pawns in which to move the plot forward. This then leads to the question of, if your creator doesn’t give a damn about the characters, then why should your audience? Why should we care about wanting to see Ran and Shinichi back together? Why should we give a shit if Shinichi’s identity ever came out, especially if we haven’t seen those consequences to think Kudo’s worst fears might ever happen? Why should we think of the black organization as a threat if you’re not going to even address them for seven years in the show and the movies? Why do we care about Sonoko? Why do we care about Heiji? Why do we care about the kids? Megure? Sato? Takagi? Ran? Over the course of all these movies, there have only been two that I’ve actually cared about: Ai and Mouri. And that’s because both actually got some inkling of development, and they actually show at least a fraction of complexity to their respective characters. What’s more, I mainly got those moments from the earlier movies, when it felt like they had idea about where they wanted to go. But the more the franchise pressed on, the more the characters became caricatures of themselves…though I suppose that’s going to happen when you beat a dead horse for roughly 20+ years.

Final thoughts. This show continues to perplex me, and I think it always will. It’ll never do what I want it to do, but I just can’t help but hope. I want to see these characters finally change. I want consequences for actions. I want tension. I want intrigue. I want BASICALLY ANYTHING that suggests narrative competency. Twenty movies in, and I have two truly good movies to show for it. And it doesn’t look like it will be getting better any time soon…god damn this show…

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 4/18/20

Bloom Into You, Vol. 7 | By Nakatani Nio | Seven Seas – The majority of this volume is devoted to Sayaka, who finally works up the resolve to confess to Touko, despite knowing that she’s in love with Yuu. It goes exactly as you’d expect, but that does not diminish how well told this is. (The second novel might go into more detail.) We also get some backstory for the teacher and her partner, explaining how they got together and reminding both Sayaka and the reader that being in love with another woman is something that does not have to be confined to high school. As for Yuu and Touko, well, they’re almost there (and I will admit the scene where Seiji bluntly tells Yuu that they’re not the same (meaning Yuu isn’t asexual) was very well done). This remains fantastic. – Sean Gaffney

Hatsu*Haru, Vol. 11 | By Shizuki Fujisawa | Yen Press – I’ve pretty much resigned myself to reading this for the side couple, so I was delighted with their half of the manga, as Ayumi, after attempting to analyze love to death in an effort to run away from her own feelings gets a Big Damn Kiss and turns into a sop. It’s sweet, and god knows Takaya deserves it. Unfortunately, I’m still uninterested in Kagura and Tarou—she’s much better when she’s not being a weak drip, which she is here, and he’s so passive and understanding that it’s what’s actually preventing anything from happening. I suspect this story, despite a double convention, is not quite over, particularly given Tarou’s “huh? what’s love? can you eat it?” expression, but maybe twelve will give me more Ayumi. – Sean Gaffney

I Fell in Love After School, Vol. 2 | By Haruka Mitsui | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – While initially reluctant to become the manager of the boys’ volleyball team at her high school, Kao Hayama is now really putting her all into the role. That’s what makes I Fell in Love After School unique, when it otherwise would be a fairly straightforward shoujo romance. Often, when such a series involves a boy passionate about sports (like Waiting for Spring, for example) readers only see an occasional glimpse of games, which is never really enough to suit a sport manga enthusiast like me. Because Kao is the manager, however, much of the plot is sport-related, which I appreciate. On top of this, Kao’s burgeoning relationship with Nagisa Kuze is compelling. I appreciate that she is never a spaz, and that he’s not some cool prince type, but has flaws and vulnerabilities that Kao is adept at perceiving. I look forward to reading the rest of this series! – Michelle Smith

An Incurable Case of Love, Vol. 3 | By Maki Enjoji | Viz Media – I seem to be surprised lately with shoujo or josei romances hooking up faster than I expected. I guess Moonlighting Syndrome is not what it once was. In any case, yes, our lead couple are now a couple, though they haven’t gotten very far and he still tends to be a bit of a jerk if prodded. I am also rather impressed with the book continuing to emphasize the aspects of being a nurse, and what Sakura does well and does badly at, showing how she can’t simply use her natural empathy to win the day all the time. This comes in handy when she deals with a new nurse who is VERY interested in Tendo, and is also a better nurse on the non-empathic side of things. As always with this author, a very well-written heroine carries the day. – Sean Gaffney

My Hero Academia: School Briefs, Vol. 4 | By Kohei Horikoshi and Anri Yoshi | VIZ Media – This fourth installment of the My Hero Academia light novel series centers around the school festival. In “Prep,” Shinso takes out some trash and witnesses the other classes hard at work. (And thinks regarding Mineta, “He’s gotta get expelled for sexual harassment one of these days, right?” I SURE AS HELL HOPE SO, SHINSO!) The longest story depicts class 1-B’s play, and is pretty fun, but mostly just made me wish these characters got their own spinoff a la Vigilantes. My actual favorite was “Festival for All,” which takes a collage of panels from the manga and extrapolates scenes from them, like Shinsho hanging upside down in a haunted house, Midoriya making candy apples for Eri, et cetera. I will try very hard to forget the absolutely VILE thing Mineta says at the end of this otherwise very nice story. I think it was his grossest comment yet. – Michelle Smith

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Vol. 3 | By Satoru Yamaguchi and Nami Hidaka | Seven Seas – The gag here, and it really is a great one, is that despite winning the hearts of literally everyone around her, Katarina STILL ends up in the exact same cutscene from Fortune Lover that her evil version did. Of course, the cast IS all in love with her, so the scene goes south rather quickly—with everyone noting the bullying plot is far too well thought out to be planned by our Bakarina. The rest of the volume is more serious, as Maria goes missing, and dark magic is suspected. The suspect is obvious, but that doesn’t make the danger to Katarina any less great, and she ends the book in a coma. Can she manage to charm her way out of things while asleep? Fantastic. – Sean Gaffney

The Swamp | By Yoshiharu Tsuge | Drawn and Quarterly – As the first volume in Drawn & Quarterly’s series of Tsuge’s complete mature works, The Swamp brings together eleven of Tsuge’s short manga along with an essay by Mitsuhiro Asakawa which provides them with additional historical context. The stories collected in The Swamp were originally published between 1965 and 1966, most of them appearing as contributions to the influential alternative manga magazine Garo. Tsuge’s narratives are compelling, at times unsettling and at times humorous, but always offering insightful commentary on humanity. Even those that are more surreal have an underlying sense of truth. Most of the short manga featured in The Swamp have at least one twist to them to give the reader pause, whether in delight or in disquiet, or some combination of the two. Overall, it’s an immensely satisfying volume. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for Drawn & Quarterly’s second Tsuge collection, Red Flowers; this is not a series to miss. – Ash Brown

Takane & Hana, Vol. 14 | By Yuki Shiwasu | Viz Media – I will admit, Hana falling off their cruise ship into the water took me by surprise—I had to read it three times to get what was happening. Naturally, Takane goes after her, and so we end up with, of all things, a “castaways on an island” plotline, though it goes in a very Love Hina direction when it turns out that civilization is across the island. On the brighter note, we get the main couple telling the immediate romantic rivals about their coupledom, which is honestly better handled on Hana’s end. And because the only thing better than one problematic age-difference couple is TWO, there’s more with Nicola and Mizuki, as she still has a crush on him, and he is… at least getting to know her better. Unbalanced, but good. – Sean Gaffney

What’s Michael? Fatcat Collection, Vol. 1 | By Makoto Kobayashi | Dark Horse – What’s Michael? is a series I’d wanted to read for years, but quickly discovered is best enjoyed in small doses. The manga consists of six-page chapters that do not tell a cohesive narrative. Michael might live with a yakuza in one chapter and with a single lady in the next. Sometimes he has a mate and children. I liked best the chapters that employ nonverbal storytelling, like when Michael keeps laying on objects people need or when getting a ribbon stuck on his claw leads Michael to perform several pages of rhythmic gymnastics. As usual, I took some things too seriously, getting pissed off at an idiot who punches Michael for being disinterested in playing fetch and utterly failing to find anything funny in the plight of a poor, neglected dog. That said, the majority of this chunky omnibus was enjoyable, and I look forward to the second half. – Michelle Smith

By: Ash Brown

[moriganstrongheart]

World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 2 – Review

by Blizzard Entertainment 2017, Dark Horse Books Hardcover, 208 pages, $39.99 USD

Rating: ★★★★★

Good: Good presentation, well written Bad: Some instances of lazy writing

Many of the criticisms I have for World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 2 are similar to the ones I had for Volume 1; you can view that review here. To summarize:

There isn’t enough maps, and the ones included are not detailed enough

The book can’t decide if it’s a textbook or a storybook

​And yet, I believe that the second volume does not suffer as much as the first volume, as the second volume focuses on Draenor and most of the material is pulled directly from tie-in novels or the first Warcraft game. I also enjoyed this volume a lot more than the first one. As before, I have not read the third volume as of writing this review. I think the second volume does a good job of providing historical context for Draenor in a fresh, cohesive manner while faithfully retelling the events of the First War, Second War and the expedition to Draenor. Most of my issues this volume are personal and shouldn’t be taken into account when judging the quality of the text. The only major fallback in this volume is the increasing use of callbacks, which was as jarring as the use of “no one knows” in the first volume.

While I noticed the use of callbacks in the first volume, they became much more common within the second volume. I define callbacks as points in the narrative where the writers refer to an event previously left unexplained, and then proceed to provide details on said event in a separate narrative block. This wouldn’t be an issue if the purpose of the Chronicle was to tell the history of Warcraft; but as I concluded in my review of the first volume, the Chronicle is a storybook, not a textbook. The use of callbacks is a halfway measure—an attempt to tell a story while keeping the textbook format. And since most of the material in the second volume is pulled straight from tie-in novels, it’s obvious that these stories are meant to be enjoyed as literature and not as reference text. I must again conclude that the writers are sometimes just lazy, as they could not be bothered to properly segway moments in the narrative, using callbacks to detail important events instead of doing so when the event is first mentioned. They are more concerned with isolating story beats from each other than providing a cohesive narrative. Thankfully—as far as I could tell—they did not repeat their use of “no one knows”, as I can’t remember a single instance of it in this volume.

I was surprised by my enjoyment of Draenor history featured in the first half of the second volume. There was some changes I was uncomfortable with, but the story was well told and made sense within the context of the world. Maps are still lacking, though I don’t believe they were as integral in this volume as they were in the first. Draenor isn’t as important as Azeroth, so I was okay with there being only a minimal amounts of maps. I also enjoyed revisiting the events of the First War, Second War and expedition into Draenor; the original tie-in novels had been entertaining, though the details of each event in Azeroth’s history were always a bit vague to me. The Chronicle helped to solidify my understanding of those events. In particular, I was happy to have the events leading up to the opening of the Dark Portal retold in a more straightforward manner. Jeff Grubb did a magnificent job in Warcraft: The Last Guardian in telling a compelling story, but the actual events and their impact were always a bit hazy to me. The writing in Chronicle continues to be suburb, and I read the entire volume in one sitting, despite its length.

World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 2 is much more promising than the first volume, though that could be due to how solid Draenor lore, the First War and the Second War are within the Warcraft mythos. After all, the First War harkens back to the events in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, a game from 1995. Blizzard has had years to refine and re-imagine the events from that era. And the recent Warlords of Draenor expansion allowed Blizzard the freedom to build a new world from the ground up, without being constrained by previous entries in the series. World of Warcraft Chronicle: Volume 2 really shows what hard work and excellent world-building can do for a franchise.

Personal Rant

Just as with the first volume, I want to preface the following as being my personal observations regarding changes in the lore. My opinions should not be used as a critique of the quality of the Chronicle. There are also some minor spoilers from the Chronicle itself and from secondary media.

Once again I am torn on the use of Titans within the lore. As previously mentioned, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Draenor’s history. I had not had the chance to read into the lore when I played through Warlords of Draenor, primarily because I had little interest in the concept of time-travel or alternate dimensions. But the history of Draenor is fascinating and rich, with civilizations rising and falling, whole ecosystems uprooted and destroyed over milenia. It’s unfortunate—if not a little ironic—that Aggramar was the one to ultimately seed the Orcs. I’m not a fan of having all important elements in a narrative originating from the same source; life is random, and fiction should try to emulate that. Not everything needs a reason to exist or some grandiose origin to be important.

While I enjoyed the changes to primeval Draenor, some of the changes made to Orc history hit me hard, particularly when it came to Gul’dan. I thought Golden’s telling of the rise of the Horde was one of the best pieces of storytelling in Warcraft lore, so I was a bit miffed when some of her work was replaced by new lore included in Warlords of Draenor. I can only attribute it to the sudden infatuation Blizzard has had with Gul’dan since Warlords of Draenor, continuing all the way through Legion. I’m personally not a fan of Gul’dan; he always seemed comically evil, even when compared to other villains like Arthas and Deathwing. I’m also having a hard time coming to grips with the changes to Void lore that began in the first volume. With the Hammer of Twilight and Cho’Gall making their appearance, I pine for the days where these characters could just be crazy without needing an evil force whispering doomsay in their ears. Oh, and the fact the Ogres had a thriving civilization is still difficult for me to swallow, especially considering the way the Orcs interacted with them a hundred or so years before the opening of the Dark Portal.

I had no issues with anything following the opening of the Dark Portal beyond the need to repeatedly mention how characters were only pretending to trust each other. I would have also preferred that Sargeras have nothing to do with the Orcs until after they were corrupted by Mannoroth and Kil’jaeden. I’d like to think Kil’jaeden would go out of his way to hunt down the Draenei, only to fail. In the wake of his failure, Sargeras could then swoop in and use the Orcs as a way to weaken the mortals on Azeroth. In general I have issues with how the Burning Legion’s power is represented. They have the ability to open a portal to Draenor without a warlock’s aid to materialize a pit lord, but they cannot summon Archimonde, Kil’jaeden or Sargeras to Azeroth without aid of mortal? It could be easily explained away as Azeroth being protected by the Titans or the Old Gods, but so far it just seems as though their power is as strong as it needs to be to move the plot along. I’m also interested to see how Blizzard will eventually handle the fact that there’s an entirely separate reality with another Burning Legion, but that will have to wait until the fourth, currently unreleased volume.

Official Book Website