#everything has to be a fucking franchise with a fanbase now it's insane

[comfortunit]

Hi, no judgement I'm just curious, what does it mean to be anti-fandom?

you know how fandoms behave? the groupthink? like genuinely a kind of mob mentality? are you familiar with the phenomena of fanon overtaking canon? of people being completely unable to analyze a work outside of a distinctly FANDOM lens? like all they care about is "i'm in denial about this character dying" and "it's canon in my heart" and the neil-gaiman-worshipping ass bullshit about how "we told canon to get lost!"

at this point, what i'm about to say is an ice cold take but that shit's annoying. beyond annoying, it's fucking disgusting to me. everything is just tropes to them, it's "but i want to be the protagonist, too!"

it's literally like marketing to them. everything is diluted, nothing is genuine, nothing is real. it's all just cheap imitation. everything is "transformative" fanfiction and fanart and no matter how many times they re-read, rewatch, replay the source material, the hermeneutic cycle has long since died; they bring no new genuine experiences to their re-examination of the work as it truly exists, only "i loved this completely incoherently derivative AU fanfiction so much i'm going to re-read the series with that as my perspective/framework", over and over and over. each time getting further and further from coherence. everything is hollow. everything has been eaten out from the inside.

like whatever if people want to call this dramatic then fuck them. if/when a work of fiction matters to you, like really matters to people, WHY is it that the fandom's first instinct is to remove these characters, whose meaning is defined by the story in which they exist, hollow them out, project themselves into them, and treat these stories and source material like everything has to be theirs now? why does everything have to be shallow derivatives of an original? can you not examine characters as they really are? get to know them as they exist? is that really such a difficult task?

and when it comes to murderbot, why not make a secunit oc? why must the fandom treat murderbot like it's a doll, it's a possession that belongs to them. is its entire story not an arc about autonomy and personhood? is that not the fucking core and soul of its source material? has it not expended chapter after chapter explicitly reminding the reader that it fucking hates being forced to do things it doesn't want to do? what genuine substance, what meaning is being brought by the fans, the fandom? anything? i have seen nothing but depraved conduct from the murderbot fandom. people are expected to "just let people enjoy things 🥺" as if that sentiment doesn't come from the most pathetically insecure corners of their fandom-brained shipping-sick heads. let people enjoy things? who's fucking stopping you from enjoying things? can you not handle difficult source material without sweetening it and processing it to make it easier to swallow? the flagrant disregard for genuine representation of a perspective that i have never seen represented before is what really sickens me, it's just so deeply wrong. there's something so horribly corrupted and repulsive about that.

and yes i take this very personally because i resonate deeply with the pov the murderbot diaries portrays, but on a more objective level, 'fandom' is not a sustainable way to approach anything. it's not a sustainable way to watch films or television shows, it's not a sustainable way to analyze music (have you fucking seen how swifties behave? do you remember how directioners behaved?), videogames, poetry, books, artwork, anything. anything except franchises. ask yourself, is murderbot a fucking franchise to you? then go to the fandom wiki, patronize the fandom reddit, participate in the fandom discord server, leave kudos on fanfiction written by the franchisees putting their own spin on murderbot like it's a hard rock cafe.

there has to be a line drawn sometimes between 'harmless fun' (here's an idea: make some fucking OCs!) and creating fandomized misrepresentations of source material that already possesses an incredible soul... and replacing that soul with something soulless.

and i'm not fucking saying that people have to agree with me. i know people disagree strongly with me. yes, i think the people who disagree are fucking kidding themselves, inhaling the fandom nitrous-oxide, and 'turning their brains off' instead of engaging critically with the literature itself. but this is my opinion. this is what i feel and believe.

[corruptedforce]

Is there any fandom you regret exploring?

Have you ever developed an OC for a certain fandom?

What are you looking for in a ship?

Do you tend to focus on shipping or do you not care at all?

Questions for the Mun // @hxdrostorm // Accepting!

Is there any fandom you regret exploring?

I want to say no, because of the connections I made with some people, over the years, and the chance to develop characters that honestly are like a part of me now. 

Glee was honestly insanely toxic, but I have a close friend for 10+ years, and despite the fact that the actor is problematic, the character isn’t and I wrote Noah Puckerman for a very long time, and I will always have a little bit of him, in me. 

Harry Potter, I have friends that I will love forever and I will love James Potter and Harry Potter and despise Severus Snape for all eternity. So much of me as a writer comes from writing James, for as long as I did.  He doesn’t come to me as easily as he once did, but James/Lily are my OTP of all OTP’s, and I would never have met @possiblypadme, who I could not imagine not knowing.

Sons of Anarchy could be a mess, but Jax Teller is my favorite fictional character of all time, and Sons of Anarchy is my favorite show. It was something that got me through a horrible time, so I can’t watch it easily anymore, but I love everything about Jax and met some wonderful people, again. I could not have developed Jax without having the Wendy and Tara that I did for so long, and am endlessly grateful to people like Vesta and Lisa, who I know how to find on Discord but not on Tumblr now lol. 

Vikings could be a mess, but I played Ragnar, Bjorn, King Ecbert, Alfred, Hvitsert, Father Cuthbert, Judith, Aethelred,  I’m missing some I’m sure and I met some of the best people, and am actually really close friends with someone who was on Vikings. But, I would never take back by time in that fandom and I still do write Ragnar, Alfred, and Bjorn.  It gave me so so many people but so much development with @findablog and @contrecoeurs especially, along with a few others.

Star Wars, I am happy here, so I can’t say I have regrets. I’ve gone a little sour because of a few things, in the last couple weeks. Being gaslit and having people randomly soft block or block you out of nowhere is a weird feeling?  Sometimes, I feel like I want an exit interview but the unknown is better and there’s a situation that I’m just done crying over.  

Baseball, which for me is the Cubs and the Yankees.  I was born a Cubs fan. My mom has been watching them since the 60′s. We broke a 108 year drought in 2016, and when they weren’t producing, the fucking piece of shit, moronic asseating upper management traded the core of the team, which also included the face of the franchise, the love of my life Anthony Rizzo. I’ll always love the Cubs fanbase but I’ll admit that they became a bunch of entitled assholes after we won the championship. We went from lovable losers to jerks.  But, I had to follow Rizzo to the Yankees, aka the Evil Empire.  So look, the Yankees fandom is toxic af, they threaten their players family and don’t know how to be loyal but my fave is happy there, so I have to support him. So, I can’t regret it.

Have you ever developed an OC for a certain fandom?

Yes. I developed Marlene McKinnon’s older brother Marcus in the Harry Potter Marauders Era. He’s basically the only one. Many people can make fabulous OC’s. I’m not one of them. 

What are you looking for in a ship?

CHEMISTRY. I don’t like it without chemistry. I am well aware that Anakin has a canon ship, that he’s obsessed with, but if there’s no chemistry, I can’t and won’t write it.  It’s got to have that chemistry and dramatic pull.  I’m open to pretty much anything ship wise, but I have to have that chemistry.  He is 99% heterosexual so I do stick only to that, and Rex.  But, that comes to chemistry too. 

Do you tend to focus on shipping or do you not care at all?

I’m somewhere down the middle. Anakin is the King of Attachment.  I can’t have him not get attachment to people, because it is who he is. His emotions consume him.  But, unless there is a significant amount of chemistry (like with Anakin & Sabe), it’s hard for him to fall in love with not Padme.  

Also, I know everyone likes to think Vader has no emotions, but he’s capable of attachment too.  

But, I’m not here to write ships. Anakin is just a horny mess, and things happen???? But, his development and complexity is my first goal. 

[thevindicativevordan]

What do you think of the X-Men? From their beginnings to now, even stuff like Inhumans vs X-Men, HOXPOX, and the O5, I want all the details.

Please don't swell my ego any more than it is already. Man where do I even begin with this franchise? Going to give a general overview and if you want my opinions on specific characters/stories you'll have to ask. Because this franchise is too enormous to cover everything in detail in one post.

Spent so much fucking time trying to get a good pic that encompassed everything about the X-Mythos I like and none of them could do it. Djurdjevic's spread came the closest but I couldn't get the whole banner uploaded and looking good, so Brooks House of X promo will have to do. Sums up the big appeal and big drawback of the X-Men: they are absolutely huge in scope and concept. They're superheroes, counterculture icons, stand-ins for racial discrimination, or champions of sexual rights. They were the first team to make diversity an important element, and they've usually been very progressive in terms of representing people who don't usually get to see main characters who look like them in comics. Mutants are the underdogs, the outcasts of superheroes in much the same way as Spider-Man. Fighting to protect a world that hates and fears them no matter how many lives they save, the X-Men are an easy power fantasy for anyone who grows up "not fitting in" with the rest of society.

They're also a complete mess of in-fighting fandoms and shippers, everyone constantly screaming for their favorite to be given more panel time, and how Marvel is racist/sexist/whatever for not giving their favorite the spotlight. Numbers-wise they utterly outclass any other cast besides the Legion of Superheroes in terms of size. Unlike the Legion which can barely stay relevant, the X-Men are still some of the most popular heroes ever, despite Marvel themselves attempting to tank the franchise relatively recently. Before the MCU changed the game, these guys were the biggest heroes at Marvel and in the comics industry at large. Wolverine was showing up in every fucking book long before Batman followed suit. Outside of Spider-Man these guys are the most "Marvel" heroes of all in terms of being "flawed heroes who could be YOU".

Never really been my favorite franchise to be blunt. Oh I like them well enough for all the reasons people usually do, no obscure favorite mutants here. Cyclops, Wolverine, and Emma Frost are my "X-Men Trinity" although Logan's really had a fall-off in popularity for me personally. Lacking that obsession with the more obscure characters is probably why I'm not as big on the franchise as others. Can't be bothered to try to make sense of all the convoluted storytelling involving time travel and alternate dimensions that justifies why characters like Cable can continue to exist. Just not that interested in digging through the Marvel wiki for answers, and that means shit like "why is Jubilee a vampire now?" help to gatekeep me out. Without possessing the hardcore fanaticism of their fanbase, anyone trying to get into their comics is usually going to be repelled by the opaque nature of their continuity. Doesn't help either that as far as my introduction to them, I'm as basic as it gets.

My first exposure to them was the Singer X-Men movies and those were enough to teach me the basics of the franchise. Mutants were discriminated against, they protected a world that hated and feared them, and everything revolved around Wolverine. Still have never seen any of the animated X-Men cartoons which is kind of insane in retrospect. Maybe not seeing those cartoons and instead watching the DCAU is what pushed me towards DC as a kid. Regardless it left me without much nostalgia for "classic" X-Men.

Not that anyone really has much nostalgia for "classic X-Men". The pre-Claremont era is pretty cliché and basic, but the building blocks are there. Lee came up with the idea of the "x-gene" so that he wouldn't have to keep track of various different backgrounds. Professor X wants to form a team to protect mutants from violence at the hands of bigoted humans, and to protect humans from evil mutants such as the X-Men's first villain Magneto. Magneto himself is basically Dr. Doom in terms of being an evil conqueror with ambitions to rule the world, none of his nuance is present at the start, that took Claremont coming onboard. The X-Men series didn't sell very and ended up getting cancelled. For a while it subsided on reprints of old issues, which got enough interest to convince Marvel there was still a chance of making the franchise work. Enter Giant-Sized X-Men #1:

This was the issue that reignited interest and set the franchise on the path to dominance. Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, they were all much more popular than the O5 X-Men with the exception of Cyclops and Jean Grey. Foundation for a new direction was built here, and when Claremont took over he pushed the franchise to new heights. This is where Magneto having genuine points to make as well as a sympathetic background that makes you understand his ideology comes from. Here's where I have to make a confession: Aside from God Loves, Man Kills and Days of Future Past I didn't enjoy the Claremont era at all. Maybe it's just too old for me, it read as clunky, characters constantly monologuing for pages on end, Claremont's fetishes constantly showing up (dude was and is so horny), and the soap opera storytelling just bored me. The Phoenix Saga was a chore to wrap my head around, and all the poignancy of it got ruined by idiotic retcons that constantly argued about whether or not it was really Jean who was the Phoenix or whether it was her clone (God what is it with Marvel and convoluted ass clone stories?).

What came next after he left though was even worse. 90s X-Men was basically their peak in terms of popularity and sales, but Christ did the books fucking suck in my opinion. Gorgeous art with terrible storytelling, how Apocalypse took off I'll never know his storyline was mind-numbing to me. Truthfully I think the X-Men owe a lot of their success to their animated cartoon and video games made during this era, I think those got more kids invested in the franchise than the comics did. Jim Lee made his name here so the industry owes the X-Men franchise a lot. Without Lee becoming a huge name do we get Image? Does Lee end up at DC? Maybe, maybe not, but the 90s X-Men had a massive long-term impact on the industry as a whole simply for making Lee into the hottest artist in comics. All good (or terrible if you're me) things come to an end and what came next is one of three X-Men comic runs I actually like. No surprise that the traditional X-Fanbase hates it since it radically shook things up.

New millennium meant a new writer and a new status quo for Marvel's top franchise. Grant Morrison had made their name revamping floundering teams for DC such as JLA and Doom Patrol. Now they had joined the competition and were put to work at revamping the biggest book Marvel had: The X-Men. Love their New X-Men run so much, it's still probably my favorite X-Men run and it holds the esteemed honor of being the first X-Men run I read start to finish. Despite being known as the continuity guy who loves deep cuts into The Lore™, Morrison's New X-Men run is still the most beginner friendly X-Men run in my opinion. Synergizing with the first X-Men movie, the mutants ditch the superhero costumes for black leather jackets, and ditch the Claremont soap opera storytelling for Morrison's trademark storytelling which is equal parts blockbuster and psychedelic. Looking at this run in light of the knowledge that Morrison was in the mood to revamp the Superman franchise, I can't help seeing this as them applying that itch to recreate a franchise for the 21st century that was intended for Superman instead to the X-Men.

Thinking back, this is also the series that started to shift the X-Men at the very least away from the traditional superhero model which all of Marvel would later follow suit in doing. Professor X gets outed as a mutant by Cassandra Nova, Xavier's School actually becomes a real school with students, mutants start to become their own "species" with their own culture, etc. Most importantly this run is where the idea that mutants aren't a stand-in for race or sex but for the youth was introduced. Mutants aren't going to inherit the Earth in some far off future age, they were going to take over from humanity in a few decades at most. Seems a small change but it's actually huge because it means mutants aren't going to be a minority for long. That the mutants know this means they're far less inclined to just take humanity's hatred and turn the other cheek, which means Xavier's dream seems downright quisling to them. That the humans know they only have a little time left means the fear and hatred is going to skyrocket, hence Genosha and all the other events of Morrison's run.

To really talk about this run would require it's own post, but it brought a level of fresh ideas to the X-Men franchise that wouldn't be matched until Hickman. Hilariously even when Marvel immediately tried to erase Morrison's work as the Big 2 usually do once they get off a book, Morrison's run still cast a huge shadow over everything that followed. You don't get House of M without Morrison's run and you don't get everything post M-Day without the contrast of the mutants going from unstoppable inheritors to fearful remnants. You also don't get my other favorite run, Whedon's Astounding X-Men.

Whedon may be a shit but he was the only one who really tried to pick up Morrison's ideas and use them while also trying to appease the X-Fans who were screaming bloody murder after Morrison totally revamped the franchise. X-Men go back to wearing costumes again, they go back to being superheroes, Kitty and Colossus come back to the team. But Emma Frost replacing Jean as the main X-Woman stays, the school stays, the idea of the generational clash between humans and mutants, and that same clash occurring within the X-Men themselves stays. You get concepts like a mutant "cure" which feels right in line with how Morrison portrayed humanity as desperately trying to buy themselves time.

Managing to please both the old fans and new ones like me is no small feat, but this run managed to do it. Other than Morrison this is still probably the best "entry" run for readers who want to get into X-Men comics without having to suffer through pre-21st century comics storytelling. Also while Morrison planted the seeds, this is where Cyclops becomes cool as fuck. Cyclops as Mutant Batman really gets rolling here and not having Jean around to make Scott and Logan fight over her does wonders for both. Actually can buy the idea that those two were friends because of this run, they give each other shit, but they have one another's backs when external threats show up. Emma also really gets to continue her development of becoming accepted as a "hero", seen with how her and Kitty treat each other at the start and how they bid farewell at the end. Really love this run.

Right. Well after Whedon and M-Day we basically get what Hickman rightfully calls "The Lost Decade". Never-ending fucking genocide attempts all to serve Quesada's need to reset everything back to what he wanted. Much like Spider-Man the X-Men are really just running in place, but at least we got to keep Emma. Schism is a shitty attempt at copying Civil War for the X-Men except even more fucking stupid and just makes Wolverine look like a hypocrite. Logan gets mad that Cyclops wants mutant kids to fight so they don't get genocided and runs off to found a new school (which he does a shit job overseeing and just gets drunk all the time). Hope Summers is introduced as the "Mutant Messiah", an interesting concept that goes nowhere on account of the absolutely terrible Avengers vs. X-Men.

Hoooooly shit that fucking story, how do you make an event even dumber than Schism? Marvel found a way (and also fucked over Hickman who wanted to use Xavier for his Avengers run). Avengers was becoming Marvel's biggest team and brand and there was growing butthurt over Fox refusing to give back the rights, so Marvel decided to make sure everyone knew who the top dogs were now. Much like how Tony was supposedly in the "right" in Civil War, the Avengers are supposed to be in the right here but the writers rebel and dump on them. No one comes out looking good due to everyone being written as idiots, but at least we got the badass Phoenix Five costumes. Having exhausted her only narrative reason for being after temporarily merging with the Phoenix and making more mutants, Hope disappears from relevance until Hickman brings her back.

Bendis takes over and does a shit job. The O5 storyline is boring and fully convinced me that Jean killing those people as Phoenix is entirely in character given how flippant she is about abusing her telepathic powers. Iceman becomes gay, with the initial glee giving way to everyone realizing that Jean is a bigger bitch than Emma when it comes to invading peoples minds. Cyclops becomes Rightclops as readers outright reject Marvel editorial's insistence that Cyclops was a villain for trying to save his race. Despite Bendis starting off promising a "mutant revolution" under a more militant Cyclops, nothing happens. Scott just sort of gives up that idea or I guess he was "merely pretending" as instead Bendis wastes a year on an Original Sin tie-in story about Xavier and Mystique being married for some movie synergy I guess? Favorite part was that Logan was in the room when the will was read at the beginning of the storyline, but because it took so long and he died in the meantime, when Bendis completely retcons his own story out of continuity, Logan isn't there when we return to that opening scene. God that is hilarious looking back, an entire year-long story that was completely pointless.

After Bendis we got the worst of the Inhumans push. Basically this was peak Marvel being petty that they didn't own the X-Men film rights and trying to make the Inhumans into replacements. Culminating in Inhumans vs. X-Men, where Marvel managed to kill two franchise with one story, the mutants and the Inhumans face off. The Mutants want to destroy the Terrigen clouds which kill every mutant exposed to them. The Inhumans want to stop them except at the end when they don't. Cyclops had been built up as "mutant Hitler" before this event hit with the implication being he had done something heinous. Someone must've gotten cold feet because Cyclops dies as he lived, completely in the right. After murdering Cyclops for trying to destroy the clouds, the Inhumans destroy the clouds themselves upon learning the clouds kill mutants despite Terrigen supposedly being sacred to them. Totally worthless event that left the X-Men with their two male leads dead concurrently (Wolverine and Cyclops) and the Inhumans looking like utter assholes for somehow not knowing the clouds were killing mutants.

There was some more shitty runs by Rosenberg, Bunn, and Taylor afterwards. Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey all returned from the dead but all of that was leading up something new. After the utter dogshit of the Lost Decade, even the notoriously anti-innovation X-Fandom was sick of constant genocides, Claremont nostalgia throwbacks, and running in circles. It was time for something new. It was time for someone new.

Hickman returned to Marvel with a bang restoring the X-Books as the hottest must reads in the Marvel line-up. 20 years after Morrison's run, this was the sequel to that era. Mutants came roaring back to reclaim their place as the inheritors of the Earth. Fan favorites who had been dead for years returned on account of the mutants conquering death. Krakoa became a home for all mutants, a powerful nation that forced humanity to recognize it in a way the earlier nations of Utopia and Genosha had failed. Old foes were turned into tense allies and new foes rose to replace them. Moira was revealed to be not the token "good" human ally but a mutant, and the most important mutant of all due to what she knew about the biggest threat to mutants. Hovering in the background was the threat of Moira's lives: the true successors to humanity. Machines not mutants were going to take over and every attempt to stop them by Moira had failed. Could this attempt succeed? That was the premise that fueled excitement and speculation. With every victory the mutants claimed were they merely hastening their own defeat? It's a question that seems to be getting resolved in Inferno where Hickman will be tying up loose ends and leaving the franchise. He's built a status quo that seems popular enough to outlast him, something Morrison wasn't able to do, but I must confess that I don't see the same level of excitement or interest sticking around once Hickman leaves. None of the other writers except Wells on Hellions have managed to hook me. Whether I keep reading depends on how Inferno ends and whether Duggan can hold my interest.

Absolutely think it's a mistake that they're not following Hickman's plan, but whether that comes back to bite them in the ass remains to be seen. Current status quo of the mutants is leaving me mixed. Love the worldbuilding when it comes to Krakoa, love how Hickman explained why mutants arouse such fear and hate but not mutates, love how he cleaned up crap like what makes an "omega" mutant, love having X-Men and their villains living together and trying to make this nation work. God I wish Scott and Emma were still together though, Jean just can't compete, and the other writers seem to be trying to just tell "normal" X-Men stories rather than taking advantage of the shift in status quo Hickman built up. Have to see what the next wave of books has in store, starting off with a Wolverine event is not exactly reassuring me about the post-Hickman era.

HiX-Men was the shot in the arm the franchise needed after a decade of being unmitigated garbage. Successfully making Morrison's ideas more palatable in a similar way to what Snyder did with Batman, while also like Snyder in that he brought big ideas of his own, Hickman really set up the mutants to grow and evolve as is their nature. To really deep dive into the changes Hickman brought would require a post of it's own same as Morrison's, and I don't plan to do that until after Inferno at the earliest. Whether they actually do evolve is going to depend on both the success of the writers in handling the franchise after Hickman exits, and also what the MCU chooses to do. Whatever the MCU does with the X-Men, I predict Marvel will follow suit, so hopefully Feige will treat Cyclops better than the previous movies did. Give us a non-shit take on Emma too while you're at it please?

[cant-blink]

Favorite and Least Favorite Ghidorah Incarnations

Probably gonna regret making this post, but it’s been a long time coming, so let’s do it. I guess I should warn, not suitable for people sensitive to opinions that might be different from their own. Can’t believe I have to say that about a list of fav Ghidorahs, but alas...

Anyway, enjoy!

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Let’s start with my Top 5 favorite Ghidorahs! Going from my most favorite down! All five of these are amazing and any one can easily become my #1 at any given time! :D But at the moment, my number 1 is...

Showa Ghidorah

Showa Ghidorah should come to nobody’s surprise, given how much I’ve been writing about him lately! I admit though, it wasn’t always like this. It took some time for him to grow on me, and he actually used to be one of my least favorite through design alone. But he has grown exponentially on me, and now I love everything about him! The manes are unique and I love the crescent moons on his heads too. His eyes are so big, and I feel they have more expression compared to other Ghidorahs. And the inspiration of the more traditional Eastern-style dragon is there in his face too. 

His backstory and personality, though, is what really got me to change my mind about the character. His personality is perfect as far as I’m concerned! Coming from space to destroy planets just for the lolz, cackling maniacally all the way! Even the fact he was mind-controlled was something for me to delve into in my stories, on how such a thing impacts the character. It really opened my eyes to the more subtle parts to his personality, like I realize that Ghiddy wants NOTHING to do with Earth. He tried to destroy it once and that failure is all he needed to know to stay away. The plot device of mind-control is used to keep him coming back in future movies! Even when he defeated Godzilla and Rodan, he chose to fly away back into space! There’s layers to his character if you look deep enough!

There’s just so much story-potential to this guy, I love it! Even in real life, he has an arc, going from one of my least favorites to being the top of this list! That’s definitely special!

Overall, a lot of love for this character, often wrestling with Legendary for the number 1 spot! Speaking of which...

Legendary Ghidorah

The one that started it all for me and they’re second on the list?! Blasphemy!! Nah, seriously though, Showa and Legendary really do often switch places for me all the time! Just right now, Showa has squeezed into the top spot. For now........

Anyway, Legendary Ghidorah needs no explanation for being a favorite incarnation of the character. Whilst Godzilla has always been a very vague presence in my life, KotM’s is what had me diving headfirst into the fandom, all because of Ghidorah. Their design is amazing, sleek and intimidating! The detail that they whip up storms just by flying creates an awesome menacing atmosphere everytime they’re on screen!

The personalities between the heads is unique, providing all sorts of material for my writer side to explore! Their backstory is left open for me to explore as well, like where they came from and how their species functions! It’s been a lot of fun! I may be slightly burnt out from how much I’ve written and posted about them, but make no mistake, I still ADORE this Ghidorah and I have them to thank for starting this whole page in the first place! 

Shin Ghidorah

That’s right, Shin Ghidorah exists in official TOHO canon and he needs more love!!

Shin Ghidorah was one I was introduced to not long after I learned Kamata-kun (oh, and Shin Godzilla) was a thing. With my obsession with Ghidorah, I wanted to know if there was a Ghidorah in the Shin universe and after some digging, I found that there was! Featured in a ride in Universal Studios Japan! And better yet, videos of it exists on youtube! I loved it the second I saw it! 

The design is amazing and surprisingly unique! This is because Shin Ghidorah was originally a scrapped concept for the original Showa Ghidorah! Like, Shin Ghidorah is basically an oversized three-headed Skullcrawler with wings! Because you see those “legs” he has? Those are actually ARMS!! Ghidorah could’ve been a giant Skullcrawler all this time!!

I also love his movements, oddly enough. He doesn’t just fly, he SWIMS though the air, something I don’t recall seeing in any other Ghidorah!

The only thing I don’t like about him... is the fact that he wasn’t around longer! A shame the ride is so short, I would’ve LOVED to see more of him in a movie. Oh well...

Grand/Cretaceous Ghidorah

Both are the same individual, so they’re both in this entry! I remember learning about him through a video talking about Ghidorah’s most sadistic moment and this was it. Grand Ghidorah kidnaps children with the sole intent to devour them, but he doesnt eat them right away, no. He holds them hostage to stew in their terror, returning to them every so often just to listen to their screams and cries. You know he’s enjoying every minute, knowing he’s torn families apart. Without a doubt, all this is just a game before he destroys the world as Ghiddys do. The way he toyed with Mothra Leo, leaving him to suffer after beating him to near-death. Or the way he possessed one of the Mothra twins to try to kill her own sister! It was great! He has such a regal design too! I can see why the fanbase have come to call him Grand King Ghidorah, he’s absolutely majestic. Shame he’s overshadowed, likely due to not being in a Godzilla movie.

Cretaceous Ghidorah has a more Western-dragon look to him and it works. He is basically a baby Ghidorah and he is so cute! His big eyes and squeaky roars, I love it! He also SOMEHOW made me feel sorry for my least favorite dinosaur! That's some true power right there!

The regeneration ability too, is amazing! This is likely where Legendary got the idea, but Grand does it better by regenning from just a small piece of tail left behind. Just badass, all around!

Void Ghidorah

A controversial pick, I know. I made a whole post about my detailed thoughts on Void Ghidorah, see here. Long story short: I think he has great potential, just suffered from piss poor execution. I love the idea of turning this alien dragon into an interdimensional GOD, with followers and everything. His full-body model looks amazing! He’s the biggest and most powerful Ghidorah yet, the biggest kaiju in the entire franchise in fact, and I don’t see him ever being topped. Granted, I dun really judge how much I like a kaiju based on how strong they are, but it’s a bonus here. He needs all the help he can get!

Adding more, his roars are insane, not just a combination of Showa and Heisei Ghidorah! But sounds that are truly otherworldly.

Void Ghidorah deserves love, and a better movie. Guess I’ll just settle on Godzilla: Star-eating Wings as the go-to Void Ghidorah video!

-

I have no real opinion on the new ride Ghidorah, as I have yet to watch the full "movie” and thus, can’t judge how well I’ll like it compared to the others. So for now, tis neutral.

-

Now I’m totally going to get hate for this list of “least favorite Ghidorahs”, but this is my opinion. I don’t like any of them, and they’re all outshined by my favorite non-Ghidorah kaijus, and some even being beaten by my “meh” kaijus! Anyway, this is gonna go from “best” least favorite to my “worst” least favorite. Here goes:

Heisei/Mecha-Ghidorah

Tis no secret that I don’t particularly like Heisei’s version of the character. I’ve mentioned it more than enough. Oddly though, I liked the design when I first looked through Ghidorahs from past movies, and I DISLIKED Showa Ghidorah’s design. How things have changed when I learned more about both of them... 

Now I’ve grown to not like Heisei very much. They took Ghidorah as an alien dragon that destroys planets for fun, and turned him into pets that I’m sure are meant to be cute, but just remind me of Furby’s in how creepy they are (tis not the good kind of creepy either!). I like the scrapped idea of him being an attempt to clone Showa Ghidorah from DNA left behind when he destroyed Venus, so I keep that canon in my head just for some attempt to like him more. Tis why I call him “Kitty Ghiddy” whenever I write him, I legit cannot take him seriously. Such a shame that he’s basically replaced Showa Ghiddy on merchandise, so it’s harder for me to find said Showa Ghiddy because of this thing. Oh, well.

Oh, and he replaced the BIDIBIDI of Showa with generic Rodan calls. And he also turns into a good guy at the end of the movie with Mecha-Ghidorah, and.... well, go down to the next entry for my thoughts on stuff like that.

GMK Ghidorah

He’s a good guy here. They nerfed the fuck out of him by having him be a juvenile (not even done well like Cretaceous Ghidorah), and turned him into a good guy. Granted, he was never meant to be in this movie in the first place and it shows. I’m a villain kind of person, and Ghidorah’s evilness is one of the biggest draws to his character for me. So taking that away... It just doesn’t work for me. It says something when I like GODZILLA more than Ghidorah in a movie. His design is okay, so at least he has that going. But...

Desghidorah

I really don’t like the design of the character. That’s literally it. I think four-legged Ghidorahs are very awkward looking; Ghidorah has a lot going on as is, three heads, two wings, two legs, two tails. Adding more legs... it’s just too much going on that tips the scales from ‘awesome’ to ‘messy’ in my mind. I can’t explain too well why I really don’t like the four-legged look to Ghidorahs, I just really don’t. But credit, he does pull off the look slightly better than the last one on my list.

AND MY LEAST FAVORITE GHIDORAH AND LIKELY TO GET A MOB ON ME IS.....

Keizer Ghidorah/Monster X

“An awkward horse” is what someone described him to me as, and I can’t help but agree. Again, that four-legged look breaks it for me but somehow, he looks EVEN MORE awkward than Des. I just can’t look passed it. Maybe it’s the front legs, or the wings looking too small for his body. Des just LOOKS a bit more natural in his four-legged-ness. 

Making it worse for me, Keizer has a second form that I REALLY don’t like: Monster X. They don’t even resemble each other. I can’t help but feel MX was supposed to be his own Kaiju, but they felt pressured to make Ghidorah the final boss so they combined them. Dunno if that’s the case, but it feels like that to me. Not even getting into the “how the hell does a dragon come out of THAT, where does it all GO when he changes back?”. And the biggest thing: I don’t like human-looking characters. I don’t care for human characters at all in any sort of media, or anything that resembles humans too closely. I skip human scenes entirely just to get to the monsters. Tis why I don’t really care for gijinkas either. As far as I’m concerned, I like the kaiju for being kaiju, and making them human just takes away all things interesting.

If Ghidorah kept everything intact about his personality, but you made him human... I wouldn’t even give his character a second glance, much less devote my Tumblr page to him! But yeah, tangent over. Monster X just looks too human for my tastes. 

Plus, tis hard to compete for my attention when you’re in the same movie as FW Gigan! It says something when Showa Gigan and Showa Ghidorah can share the screen and I love them both, but FW Gigan completely outshines FW Ghidorah...

-

So there we go, a complete list of my thoughts for every Ghidorah incarnation that I can think of. Hopefully I didn’t miss any. Again, these are my opinions and you’re free to like whatever Ghidorah. I’mma sleep now.

[newtedison]

my thoughts on the crank palace

i touched about this a bit on twitter (@newtedison_) but i figured i would Try and touch on my points more here (spoilers obv) again, its sort of lengthy

1. im gonna start with talking about the ending because i need to get it out of the way. either i havent read the books in a while and i forgot some canon (which could very well be true, i literally forgot that Bliss was a thing) or this ending makes no sense and is (somehow) setting up for a tdc sequel? so first off, newt was shot in the Head with a Bullet and somehow didnt immediately die? i know that that can happen in real life but it just seems so unlikely that not only would he not die, but he would survive long enough for someone from WCKD to transport him back to their labs and try to revive him. and who the fuck was he talking to? did thomas get newt’s journal at some point and i just dont remember? like i said, either im forgetting stuff or this ending doesnt make sense and is setting up a sequel which...i’ll get to later

2. why was this written? like, what was the point? i understand that this wasnt going to be all sunshine and rainbows but i feel like i was reading torture porn. like, literally all that happens is newt gets tortured (which is described in detail) by WCKD soldiers, has bouts of insane-fueled rage where he KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE, and then he dies. ??? what did this contribute to the canon? what was this trying to accomplish? truthfully, i never really wanted a newt-POV...well, anything except for maybe those little nuggets he wrote some time ago. but even if i HAD wanted a newt-POV novella, this is not what i would have wanted. he KNOWS that newt is almost universally the most loved character in this franchise. you can tell because he constantly uses him as a way to get fans in his good graces again. so why on earth would he take that character that so many people love and write a novella where its torture porn and a descent into madness before death? i am not interested in that At All. i’ve read fics (and even written a drabble) where newt is a Crank, and those were more respectful and easier to read than tcp. the parts where newt is having bouts of the Flare were literally exhausting to read; it was described in such vivid and torturous detail that it made me sick reading it. and it didnt help that newt is a character i care a lot about. i didn’t need to know what becoming a Crank felt like. the way it was described in the other books (and even the movies) told me everything i needed to know. the way thomas and everyone found newt at the crank palace in tdc and hes described as obviously not well, but not knowing what exactly happened to him...thats good enough on its own. the mystery of what exactly newt had to endure is part of what gives his journey more emotional depth. not everything needs to be written out and explained. not every gap needs to be filled in. 

3. me saying “the characterization felt off” is going to make some people roll their eyes because ‘duh, sami, the characterization will be off because he’s going insane’ to which i say...exactly. we weren’t really reading a newt-POV novella, were we? even if he isn’t past the Gone in the beginning, hes clearly not the same person we knew him as. the whole novella felt like an uncanny valley situation; i knew i was supposed to be reading about newt, but it felt like i was reading about someone else who looked like him. and that is part of what made this such a disconnect and made me lose interest at parts. not only that, but the world building and lore is inconsistent. newt makes a comment about how it used to rain in the glade, and apparently (as ive been told) that is simply not true. keisha having somehow working cell phone that magically connects her to her family also doesnt make sense. how would they have each others’ numbers? what are the odds that they BOTH found working cell phones in an apocalypse? i get that its a novella but you cant just throw something that crazy in there as a plot convenience. actually work on your plot and world building in a cohesive way, please. and another thing that doesnt make sense...

4. ...is newt finding out that sonya is his sister. if there was anything i would have wanted from a newt-pov novella, it would have been this. him finding out that not only is sonya his sister, but he already knows her post-WCKD. something that would have made this novella actually captivating, contributing something worthwhile to the canon that i would actually want to read, is if newt found out while in the crank palace that sonya was his sister; the Flare would remove that part of the Slice in his brain, and he would realize it was her. then, knowing that he couldnt go past the Gone before seeing her, he would try to find a way to get back to her. he could learn this after thomas and everyone originally see him, so it could match up with the canon. and then, by the time 250 comes along, hes lost all hope of that actually happening, and lashes out to thomas in a fit of rage. the journey of him trying to find his ACTUAL sister would have meant more to me than the story of keisha and dante. trust me, i love a found family trope as much as the next girl. but this series is FULL of the found family trope. it pretty much is the backbone of the franchise. so to see a blood family dynamic would have been a refreshing change of pace that i actually would have been interested in reading. also, the way that newt DOES find out about sonya is...underwhelming. he just randomly says “you remind me of my sister, sonya” to keisha in the WCKD truck. first of all, sonya is not the name you would actually know her by. you would know her by her birth name (which is lizzy? elizabeth?). second, why does he act like he didnt already meet her in the series? when the WCKD doctor tells him sonya is his sister and is alive, hes so surprised. wouldn’t he have known that already? why is there not more emphasis on the fact he already met her? that would have been a really interesting dynamic to explore, and im sad they didnt

5. the pacing and dialogue of tcp is so dragged out. i remember specifically there was a section where newt goes to talk to keisha after she starts abandoning dante, and i swear to god there was a page and a half of text before anything ACTUALLY happened or anyone ACTUALLY said anything. dashner described a launcher at one point as “the energy dependent electric firing projectile device.” that’s SIX words to describe a stun gun. a fucking stun gun! we know what it is! why did you have to use six words??? it just felt like everything was dragged and stretched to the longest it could possibly be and it added to the exhaustion i felt while reading it

6. okay i cant end it without talking about newtmas. its very obvious by now that newtmas is a VERY large part of this fanbase. its clearly the most popular ship and what keeps a lot of people interested in this series. even the marketing team for the MOVIES used newtmas as a advertising tactic (i.e.; using thomas and newt standing face to face as a thumbnail for the trailer, emphasizing newtmas based questions in interviews, even making a fucking facebook memories video for them. yes that last one is real). not only does dashner use newt as a way to lure fans in; he also uses newtmas. the parts that were sprinkled into this were so obvious that it didnt feel authentic. i cant speak for the original trilogy; i dont know the culture around ships back then, and i dont know how much it influenced his writing at the time. but the scenes in those books felt more genuine than tcp. by genuine i mean; he wrote scenes without a relationship in mind, but the chemistry had noticeable subtext that, while unintentional, was largely agreed upon by the larger audience. the parts of newtmas he added into tcp felt artificial and forced, likely as a way for people to take snippets of and use as a free marketing tool for him. one example you might have already seen; “he had already gotten used to his post-thomas, post-WCKD life.” the fact that dashner SPECIFICALLY used the phrase “post-thomas” rather than “post-his friends” or something similar shows that he is using newtmas as a hook on purpose. not only that, but to make newt’s last thoughts as he died “tommy. tommy will understand...” is...wow. first of all, i never wanted to know what newt’s dying thoughts were, but thanks, i guess? and second, when we all initially thought newt died underneath thomas with a gun to his head, i was pretty much inferred that newts last thoughts would probably be about thomas; they would sort of have to be, given the circumstances. so adding that in gives me the same feeling that “i’m coming for you, newt” at the end of the fever code gave me. not as offensive, but written very much on purpose. and the ending is implying that there will somehow be a sequel where thomas gets newt’s journal from...someone. at this point, i can only think that this sequel will retroactively make newtmas canon somehow. now that newt has been confirmed as gay, it could happen. which brings me to my last point...

7. hearing dashner confirm newt is gay was already mind-boggling before. now that i’ve read the crank palace...im angry. im very angry. i think its safe to say that newt is the character that suffers the most in this series. you can argue with me but hes definitely high on the list, if not #1. so; you take this character. you give him a horribly sad arc in the original trilogy, then decide to expand upon it and tell us, your largely QUEER fanbase, exactly how painful and torturous his last days were, in detail. and then you tell us he’s gay. something that is never mentioned in the canon, only in an offhanded reply to a tweet of someone calling you out. on a base level, i can understand why people would be happy. representation (i guess), seeing themselves in the character, having their headcanons be confirmed. great. but what i see is you telling your largely queer fanbase “hey, you see the only confirmed gay character? im going to literally write torture porn about him before killing him off and offer it to you like im providing a service to your community.” how fucked up is that? “hey, kids, if youre gay, you WILL be violently tortured and become violent and a danger to the ones you love. then you will die and your love will never be reciprocated.” what a message! and if he DOES end up retroactively making newtmas “canon” in some weird sequel...i will start foaming at the mouth. THIS is an example of how not all queer representation is good or genuine.

i’ve definitely forgotten some points but this is long enough already. let me know if you agree or if theres anything else you want to add! im interested in what you guys think

(8. I JUST REMEMBERED!!! if WCKD needed to study newt so bad bc sonya is his sister and is immune while he isnt, why did they let him run around the crank palace in the first place??? you cant test his vitals or anything you’re literally just watching him. what is the point????)

[plasticnightmaredoll]

The full-length trailer for "Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2" DLC has been released and

AHHDBGHGAHGFFF!!!!!!

😍😍😍🤩🤩🤩😲😲😲😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺😁😁😁

id Software, why are you giving the fans what they want?!

Why does this look SO DAMN GOOD? 😫😫😫😫

I don't know if anything should be this epic?

But "The Ancient Gods Part 2" looks like iconic af already.

And with that, I have some thoughts!

My experience with "The Ancient Gods" and Doom's reboot game series

While I have played "Doom Eternal" and "Doom" 2016 a few times each, I haven't played "The Ancient Gods Part 1" yet. I do know some of the key plot points, though, namely the Dark Lord regaining his body so the Doom Slayer can kill him once and for all. I just haven't had the time, energy, or patience to play the DLC, mostly because my current job is kicking my ass, I'm super stressed, and I feel like I'm rushed on my days off. I don't have much time after work to do anything save for exercise (on a couple days), showering, and eating. It's not prime time for gaming. At all.

Also, I have been kind of hooked on survival horror games as that is technically my favorite genre of games.

I'll play "The Ancient Gods," both parts, at some point in the near future, but not sure exactly when.

The end?

Something I noticed in the trailer is it seems to indicate that "The Ancient Gods" is the conclusion to the Doom reboot story.

But that can't be right, can it? As far as I know, the Doom reboot games have done very well, and, also as far as I know, id Software hasn't pissed off a good chunk of their fanbase by doing dumb shit (like NRS and MK11)

I'm guessing this isn't truly the end. I mean, at the end of "Doom Eternal," it was said that the Doom Slayer's fight is well....eternal. And can you really destroy hell? Banish it for good? I have my doubts 🤔

They could do spin-offs, too, I suppose, since they have created a Doom Universe for the first time ever. It's a thought 🤷‍♀️

And, uh, id Software may respect their fans and their creation, but they in business to make money, and if Doom is bringing in the cash then the logical thing to do is...make more Doom. 💲💲💲💲

The Dark Lord is here!

Why the hell is this bitch hiding inside a robotic armored suit???

Get the fuck out of there and fight me like a (demon) man!

But seriously, this is the Dark Lord of Hell, so why is he not fighting the Slayer one on one WITHOUT the robotic armored suit????

HE SCARED OF THE SLAYER?

HE WEENIE?

I can't say I'm very intimidated by the guy....not after seeing this. Doesn't mean I think the game is going to be bad. I think it's hilarious that the Dark Lord is appearing in battle like this.

Lord of the Rings?!

I can't be the only one who thought of "Lord of the Rings" here.

Asgard?

This reminds me of the Bifrost Bridge and Asgard in general. I mean, it's a place that seems to be floating somewhere with waterfalls running over the edge into the air below.

I am MCU Trash and ...

The final battle for "The Ancient Gods Part 2" reminds me of the final battle in "Avengers: Endgame."

I MEAN, AM I WRONG?

Now, I know what some might be thinking:

"But this is so derivative! id Software just copied 'Endgame's' epic battle instead of making up their own 😑"

Well, here's how I see it:

Marvel hasn't placed a copyright/trademark on "Endgame's" final battle, so if anyone wants to style a fight/battle based on it, it's not illegal.

People copy each other's works all the time. Well, it's not like people copy stuff ALL the time. Sometimes, a creative idea references a previous creative idea. Writings inspired by other writings, art inspired by other art, movies inspired by other movies, songs inspired by other songs...So, this is nothing new.

If id Software wanted to have an epic final battle against the forces of Hell, it makes sense that, instead of making the Doom Slayer do EVERYTHING, there would be forces coming to fight alongside him. I'm sure plenty of beings have beef with Hell, and when someone stands up to fight against it, then it would be time to rally the troops to join the guy and kick some goddamn ass. I can't think of any vastly different ways to style/choreograph this fight. I mean, yeah, id Software could have been a little less obvious with their references/inspiration, but, I don't think it's a big deal.

If you're going to make a fictional epic battle modeled after another fictional epic battle, then "Avengers: Endgame's" final battle IS that battle.

I know some people see the MCU as trash, but I strongly disagree. I have enjoyed the vast majority of it so far, and am excited to see more.

Some people think "Endgame" is overrated and doesn't deserve to be in the top 5 highest-grossing films. Well, that's just your opinion, Guys, and I disagree with you. 🤷‍♀️ It's a 3-hour movie that feels more like 2-2.5 hours, which is an accomplishment in and of itself! I have seen movies 2 hours long that felt 10 hours long -- and not in a good way. I have seen movies 3 hours long that felt like 3 fucking hours. So, I think "Endgame" deserves some credit here.

Some think "Avatar" and "Titanic" are more worthy, especially since they have won various awards, including Oscars, and "Endgame" didn't win much. Ok, so, the Oscars are fucking bullshit anymore, just political garbage and barely anything to do with quality or talent. Winning awards doesn't always mean the world, either. "Avatar" and "Titanic" are both HIGHLY overrated in my opinion. Amazing visual effects, terrible stories. I won't go into detail because y'all wouldn't like my thoughts anyway.

"The Ancient Gods Part 2" has a fucking amazing final battle and I don't care what anyone says! It's DOOM all the way to the max! I mean, we're taking part in a massive assault on Hell for the first time in the Doom franchise. How is that NOT awesome?

The release date is what?!

As far as I know, id Software didn't advertise the release date for "The Ancient Gods Part 2" until the official full-length trailer was released on March 17th.

And we find out in said trailer that this DLC is coming out TOMORROW.

MARCH 18th.

WHAT OMG AJJHSAHAahgAHFAF?! 😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲

How....is id Software allowed to be this fucking LEGENDARY?

Final Thoughts

I really hope this isn't the end for the Doom reboot series. I mean, they took the time to build a little universe in Doom Eternal, so it seems like a real shame to end the story now.

I can't get over the final battle between Hell and... The Forces of Good? Not sure what else to call them. But it's pretty much what I would expect of such a thing in a Doom game. It's grand, epic, cinematic, awesome, incredible, insane, brutal, chaotic, and pure carnage.

I seriously wonder how "The Ancient Gods Part 2" will end.....will there be a teaser/hint at future installments?

[lost-in-zembla]

Disco Elysium or: How I learned to Stop Wallowing and Love the Game

I will now review a videogame. No real spoilers. Just very vague descriptions below.

My writing this is uncharacteristic of me. I find most writing surrounding the video game industry to be repugnant. The industry (including the media surrounding that industry) relies upon the subsumption of subcultures on the fringe into the very center of the infernal machine where the dedicated and nostalgic nature of its fanbase can be exploited for capital. It’s the same process that produces Iron Man Funko Pops. Call me a jaded and pretentious pseudointellectual poseur, but in the case of Marvel the idea that this fucking billion dollar franchise with the biggest actors in the world somehow retains this guise of this ‘geek’ subculture is disturbing to me.

(If you have played the game Disco Elysium, then you can probably already see part of why I enjoy it so goddamn much.)

I don’t mean we should gatekeep. My point is the media attached to these quote-geek-unquote industries wants to milk the same cash cow (e.g. 10 AWESOME THINGS IN THE LAST OF US 2!) Coming from an academic environment of criticism, I crave at least the appearance of an honest and thorough critique of art. In my experience, you really need to go past the surface to find any reliable ‘takes’ on contemporary videogames. That being said, there’s a lot of good work being done in the form of video essays.

In any case, I play videogames relatively often. Competitive shooters, mostly. But I suffer no story in videogames. Why would I? I read the most *genius* pieces of literature in the English language. I’m too *good* for that. So when I heard all the buzz about Disco Elysium last fall, it fell on deaf ears. Detectives? Disco? Isometry? Story-heavy. Ugh. I’m interested in none of that. But about a week ago, a friend of mine bought the game. Unlike me, he is a real adult with a real job so it was just a whim on his part, I believe. I looked at the game and, with Steam’s lax refund policy in mind, I bought it. In the past week I have put approximately thirty hours into this game. This review is a way for me to explore my own thoughts surrounding the game, thoughts that I didn’t include in my steam review (See below.)

So it was devastating, sure. And this devastation was somehow positive. One thing that I would like to make clear about me talking about this game is that it is fucking useless. Disco Elysium possesses that quality that exists in all great art; it is irreducible. When I try to explain this game to my friends, I find that my words fail to describe what’s so great about the game. Let me give you the elevator review I’ve come up with. *This game has allowed me to explore the breadth of human experience*. It’s an absolutely insane thing to say about a game. The writing, the art style, the story, the world, the RPG gameplay, they all work together to create a kind of experience that I have never encountered in a piece of art before aside from those few, fleeting moments when you feel as though you truly *get* an encyclopedic novel you’re reading (and in my case I usually don’t get it.)

I will not delve too deeply into the mechanics of the game. There are probably plenty of articles and videos that describe the game already. Put simply, the game is about choices. You can choose to solve the murder however you want. You can say absolutely batshit things to people. You can say mildly bemusing things. You can speak apocalyptic prophesies, espouse communism, conservatism, Moralism. race science.. There are moments when you genuinely *feel* like you can say anything, which is quite a feat when you really only have a few dialogue options at any given moment.

As you’ve noticed, this is not a review of the videogame. Playing this game after a tough breakup was sort of earth-shattering. I mean, not only am I navigating through a strange virtual world with its own history and culture and cosmological makeup, I’m diegetically grieving over being left by my *divinely* beautiful ex while I, the player, undergo a similar process and find similar coping mechanisms. Playing this game was like knowing the funniest clown in the world, a clown so funny that you thank him when he occasionally punches you in the chest to make you *feel things*.

The plan wasn’t to make a character whose qualities reflected my own. I just wanted to play the game. I wanted to win. It just so happened that because *I* was the one playing the game, the character essentially turned into me. It doesn’t help that I, too, have had my issues with alcohol, drugs, commitment, and mental health (in no particular order). The character ended up becoming *me* in a way that I’d never experienced before. I faced ethical dilemmas. My ideology was shaken. This game achieves unbelievable mimesis.

Here’s the wild thing: this game has changed me. I feel like a thirteen-year-old white boy who just watched The Boondock Saints and got a pretty okay over-the-pants handjob at the same time. I’m thinking about my life in terms of choices. The game enforces a kind of perspective of the world that highlights its contingency and the permanence of choices. You can, of course, save your progress in the game and reload whenever, but I found myself just sort of riding out the bad choices I made unless they were game-ruiningly catastrophic. (E.g. I had a “thought” equipped that made me fail every unrepeatable *red* check during a pivotal firefight; it was a hilarious disaster. We were essentially mowed down.) I stood by most of my bad choices. After all, I made the choice using the information I had at the time.

I am not good at this game. I absolutely bungled the investigation. I was just a pawn for forces far greater than myself. Seven people died, and I know that I could’ve saved a few of those people, if not all of them. I think about it sometimes. I think about what I could have done, how I could have gone deeper to find out what’s *really* going on, how I could take control of the investigation rather than be taken control of. Maybe I’ll play the game through again, but the first playthrough is kind of magical if you know absolutely nothing about the game like I did. If not for an absolute deus ex machina at the end, I would have been taken to the madhouse. It would have been an unbelievable failure.

During that deus ex machina moment, by the way, a goddamn tear rolled down my cheek. Yeah, I’m in a rough place, personally. But I don’t *cry* over characters in art. They’re not real. But damn if that changed.  I tell you it’s changed *me*. I care more for characters. I know they’re not real but they represent something that I can relate to, no matter who they are. This game has made me think about empathy more. Maybe it’s because I dumped all my points in the emotional skills. Maybe I’d be more violent if I rolled with the physical skills. Maybe I’d feel like a superstar if that’s what I chose to pursue in the game. Disco Elysium feels open-ended enough that if you sign up for the story, the aesthetic, and the investigation itself, then you can get whatever you want out of the experience. The game, again, achieves incredible mimesis.

The mimesis is so convincing in Disco Elysium that it feels as open-ended as reality, with one caveat: you *know* it's a game. You, as a player, know that the experience of Disco Elysium is a designed one, that it was created as a sort of origami structure, that there is narrative and, god help us, *meaning*. What this game-knowledge afforded me during my playthrough was the constant sensation of synchronicity. I found myself saying “I don’t know how this element will fold into the grand structure of the game, and it almost seems impossible that it should become part of the investigation narrative.” But because I know it’s a game, I am graced with the confidence of the highly religious. Everything will come together in the end.

This is not a review for a videogame. This is a confession. I am deeply flawed and I want to change that. My worldview has been shaken because of a videogame. I don’t want to be that kind of animal anymore.

I’m trying to empower myself, to become more aware that my choices do indeed matter, have always mattered. I’m trying to be more pragmatic, to consider the things I want to do in terms of their result rather than the momentary pleasure I will derive from doing them. Now *that’s* a change for me. 

I’m trying to be more empathetic, more willing to imagine the perspectives of others. 

I am trying to give the world around me the benefit of the doubt. It is easy for me to think of the world as a random coincidence of matter, but if you look at the world with totality in mind everything seems to take on this Spinozan glow of divinity. The human mind is a meaning-making machine, I think. If I look at the world as fundamentally devoid of meaning, then that is still meaning. It is nihil-ism. It’s still an -ism. But if I ascribe to the world a kind of glowing potential, as though meaning were to be found in every speck of matter, then I feel invited to participate in this massive dance that we’re all a part of. 

I’m trying to be more adventurous, because beneath the surface of things there seems to be a vast network of relationships, causation, possibility and, god help me, *story*. Or maybe it’s not beneath the surface of things, maybe there is no Deleuzian schizophrenic depth beneath the surface, perhaps the world is a homogenous and ever-developing surface upon which I constellate meaning and, thereby, create it. I’m trying to create a story for myself that will hold a candle to my experience playing Disco Elysium. I didn’t ask for this; it was just what I needed. It was, in a word, unforgettable.

[gomjabbar]

i’ve had a few friends and online people asking me what exactly is going on with power rangers and hasbro and why it’s such a big deal so i’ve typed up a somewhat concise summary of the whole situation:

power rangers is an american-made adaptation of a japanese series called super sentai. they take the fight footage and replace everything in-between it with american actors, plus some of their own original fight footage. pretty straightforward

toei is the company that produces super sentai, while bandai makes the toys. in the 90s a company called saban (own and ran by billionaire haim saban) bought the rights to a super sentai series called “zyuranger”. his company took the fight footage and made it into MMPR and that’s how the franchise started

it was really popular but saban brands ended up running into their own financial troubles in the late 90s and went bankrupt. they sold a lot of their assets to disney, but saban insisted that power rangers be included in the purchase so it continued going. a show like PR was pittance to disney so they kinda shrugged and went “euhh, alright.” disney produced their own seasons in the same way saban did for a few years until 2010, when saban brands reformed and bought the rights back

the disney era had plenty of decent to good PR seasons but disney never really cared about power rangers and planned on canning it for good before saban bought it back. saban as a company was never super well-liked but people were excited the creators of the franchise got it back. i liken it to your estranged dad coming back in your college years promising to be the dad he should’ve been from the beginning. you’re hopeful and believe this will be the start of something good

and like a deadbeat dad, saban utterly disappointed everyone

the “neo-saban” seasons have, for the most part, been middling to downright awful, dependent on nostalgia pandering and cut-and-paste storytelling. on top of that, saban has outright skipped several sentai seasons, including the series “go-busters”, a show that was an entire loveletter to power rangers and sentai’s american counterpart

people were expecting power rangers to have another boom because a big-budget, michael bay-styled power rangers film came out last year. and it flopped. not just in ticket sales but in toys. the power rangers movie toys had some of the worst shelf-warming i’ve ever seen in the franchise’s history

so saban brands fielded this huge “revival” effort to make power rangers relevant again after the franchise teetered into oblivion in the hands of disney. and they fucked it up every step of the way. in possibly the best decision in saban brands’ recent history, they knew they didn’t have what it takes and threw in the towel

earlier this year, the entire power rangers fanbase was shocked when they announced that hasbro was not only taking over the toy production of power rangers, but then announced months later that they had bought the entire franchise from saban. it cannot be stressed how absolutely crazy this is. in japan, bandai is 40% of why sentai is made. toei produces the show, but bandai provides a huge chunk of funding. in america, bandai’s (much hated) american branch made power rangers’ toys as a result. bandai in japan is a widely beloved company but their american branch just doesn’t give a shit. PR toys fucking suck

and now? bandai has absolutely zero involvement with sentai’s american counterpart. hasbro will be producing the show and the toys, much like they do with transformers. again, that’s insane. nothing like this has ever happened before. hasbro and saban jointly just gave bandai the nastiest middle finger ever

and as if that wasn’t insane enough, hasbro announced that they would be going backwards so they could adapt “go-busters.” a season that was skipped before because saban and bandai didn’t think it’d do well. hasbro deliberately chose a less marketable season because they don’t give a fuck and are so confident they can do better than saban ever could

hasbro is a company that’s (mostly) well-liked, known for listening to fans and also genuinely just love the IPs they work on. they’re also a HUGE toy company so most fans are already sold over on the buyout. it’s hard to tell what will happen in the future, but i personally think whatever happens will still be better than what saban could do. one of the franchise representatives at hasbro used this phrase to refer to the upcoming toylines, but i think it applies to the franchise at large: “it’s a brand new day.”

[brothermouzongaming]

Your favorite pub/dev is shady

I spend a lot of time dragging Publishers like EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and others. As warranted and deserved as it is, we can’t become too dreamy-eyed even in the cases of our favorite faces in gaming. So with this post, I wanted to take a rock to the stained glass windows of your favorite companies and some of mine. In the words of Run the Jewels “Kill your masters”.

Bethesda

Creation Club is one of the biggest issues beyond the more notorious faults of the infamous Bethesda. Creation Club is paid mods. I don’t care what Pete Hines says, when you pay money to modify the game it’s paid fucking mods dude. This is a direct encroachment on one of the best and most pure aspects of PC gaming. Modding turns games into different experiencing, fixes the bugs that a lot of their games ship with and never get fixed because it’s “part of the charm” or “just works”. Which brings me to my next point: Bethesda is the only studio in gaming that gets away with this every single time. Ubisoft put out AC Unity and was grilled for months after release about facial texture issues and whatnot. Everyone gets railed while Bethesda gets a pass every time. Also, can we talk about how one year ago from this E3 Bethesda was waving the single player flag as high and hard as they can? Only to bring out Fallout76 and it’s an online shared world game. I have no problem with doing things differently or moving in a different direction for a non-main title game. Perhaps maybe you should’ve held off on this for another year or two? Made it less of a surprise? I think a lot of fans will come around to this title but the sharp pivot is understandably jarring and Bethesda maybe should’ve anticipated that.  Alongside the mighty shitty practice of pre-ordering for a beta code....what the fuck kind of “money now” bullshit is that. That literally defeats the purpose of a beta for a lot of people. Getting to test out this wildly different experience is important to people that care about the franchise but just aren’t willing to pay for something they aren’t sure they’re going to enjoy. A reasoning that is perfectly understandable in my opinion. I love Bethesda but holy god do they get away with murder without so much as a strange look from the majority of people. 

Microsoft

I’ll get the obvious issue of console exclusives out of the way. This is straight up disgraceful the way they do the loyal fans of Xbox. Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, Forza Motorsport 7, Halo Wars 2, and Cuphead. Remove Cuphead from that list and it’s a little pathetic especially considering some big name exclusives they had for the 360 (Saints Row, DoA4, Fable 2, Lost Odyssey, N3). The Xbox One’s initial reveal and release state were woefully tone deaf. A sad attempt to pander to gimmicks that shouldn’t be the focus of a console: motion sensors and television streamlining. Yes, they eventually corrected that mistake but to even consider such a poor decision was clearly a poor attempt to reach everyone but gamers. This entire generation was a bit of a misstep, unfortunately, outside of the impressively powerful Xbox One X there is next to nothing for Microsoft to actually boast about outside of the new console benchmark. What games have they contributed to their fanbase and loyal customers? This aspect isn’t so much shady as it is dumb. From the release of the One X with no games. To the games they backed so fervently only for them to flop hard. It’s clear they’re working on it given the recent studio acquisitions and the shift in focus some studios are going to be making. Why they had to forsake an entire generation for this to happen is simply beyond me. 

Nintendo

Between their online service and the interesting terms/ conditions of said service. The shitty pre-orders they offer for said internet service which is one of the most insane requests of a company I’ve ever heard of. Can we talk about the vice grip on their content/IPs? Ever notice you don’t see much Nintendo content on YouTube? Seriously look up anything Nintendo and the new games many videos don’t feature unique gameplay. I’m not saying there aren’t any videos but it’s known that Nintendo can and will take down any video they see fit. Yes, it’s well within their rights as a company to do so. However, when Nintendo is doing it to fans, people who are trying to celebrate and appreciate what they’ve done, it comes across as wildly ungrateful. Especially when ya know, they wouldn’t be anything without the wildly enthusiastic customer base. Prime example: a YouTuber recreated the Bomb-omb Battlefield stage in Unity. It was nostalgic, beautiful, and kind of funny. What did Nintendo do? They order a DMC Takedown on the video. A harmless recreation video this wasn’t even any kind of playable game and wasn’t going to be. What was the point of this? Who benefits? They could’ve capitalized and got to work on a remake, tell me that wouldn’t sell. Instead, they insist on hurting fans for what boils down to free advertisement. I think Nintendo is so focused on being Nintendo that they’ve lost what it means to be...Nintendo. If that makes sense.

Sony

Sony has been hacked so many times I genuinely think Paul Blart runs their cyber security department. Sony needs to get their shit together in this area of their service ya know the cornerstone of the console in the modern era. Alongside that, Sony is very pressed on keeping their system and IP, and everything about it very isolated. Xbox and Nintendo are down for cross-play and Sony is sitting in the corner arms crossed not wanting to join in. When they know damn well that’s where all this is going anyway. Not to mention their strange aversion to modding on titles that lead to strangled communities in games like Skyrim and Fallout4. I’ve also already talked about PSNow v GamePass and how much better GamePass is despite it coming out years after PSNow. Yes this section is short but the problems are very big and potentially damaging to Sony and their reputation. They need to get on the ball or find themselves in Microsoft’s position come the next generation. 

Take-Two Interactive (Rockstar and 2k)

TTI as a publisher is deceptively devious. They lay low and in the background unlike EA making sure everyone knows when a subsidiary works on a game that it’s also theirs. Take-Two owns two very prominent developers in the industry (2k and Rockstar) and they know it because at every turn they are monetizing them. GTA 5 is amazing, GTA online is a pay to win crapshoot. Planes costing an upwards of 20 to 40 real-world dollars. The in-game currency is difficult to earn in massive quantities required to pay such exuberant price tags. The shark cards were so well implemented it made GTA the most lucrative entertainment franchise of all time. They were so successful that games like NBA 2k and Red Dead Redemption 2 will feature them. Games that do not need them at all and only make the games a lifeless money hole. RDD2 isn’t out but the publisher already stated that monetization was going to be a focus on their games from here on out. 

[judgesabo]

In Infinite Finality

So this is going to be my first non-Homestuck post here. I usually try to keep to that theme so people know what they’re getting and not get bogged down by politics or whatever else. But this is rather important to me personally, and we likely won’t get a better time to address it, so I’ll make the effort. This isn’t a theory post or anything though, it’s just a goodbye to a company I once knew.

For those not in the loop, or reading this after the fact, today Marc Laidlaw released his genderbent “fanfiction” of what he had planned Half Life 2: Episode 3, which can be read here. Marc Laidlaw was a lead writer for the entire Half Life series at Valve until he left the company last year in 2016, so this can essentially be taken as a leaked story for what they had planned back in 2007 when the last game came out.

Communication with Valve over the course of this period has been infamous. Episode 3 was originally planned to be released back in 2007 back when this entire process began, yet a decade later we have heard only two major bits of information on it, the first being a leak by an anonymous source of some out dated concept art back in 2012, and the second being this. From today. Valve doesn’t even seem to even recognize the existence of Half Life fans anymore, not even to simply confirm that it isn’t happening.

It’s painful to see what remains to this day as one of my favorite franchises lost and forgotten.

To really get this across though, I’d like to remember better days.

I distinctly recall as a kid watching my dad play the original Half Life. I think it was the first shooter I ever saw, and it astounded me. I didn’t really “get” the entire concept back then, nor did I remember the title, but the idea that there was a game where I could walk around as this person and save the world from an alien invasion stuck with me.

But by the time I was old enough to really play video games, new things had come out and I paid attention to those instead.

Then when Half Life 2 came out, I found my way into a physical copy of it. I didn’t know what this “Steam” thing was that it wanted me to download to play it, so I put it off. I still have it; it’s in my hands right now.

In the summer of 2008, this changed. While I was at camp, a friend told me about this cool game called Portal. He described it to me as being filled with action, puzzles, clever writing, unique gameplay, set in an interesting world... it hit all my checkmarks. While I couldn’t play it directly at the time, I could find the Flash version, and just like he said, it was mind bending. It reshaped how I had to think about space, to be “thinking with portals,” and the thought that there was something out there that was this but in 3D was astounding.

I eventually got Portal only to find it was everything he described to me and more. Not only was is superbly written, but the more I dug into it, the more I would uncover. Little secrets were hidden throughout the world, and if you were clever you could find this giant backstory to the series, about the mysterious Ratman or Cave Johnson, or find the history of this company as it tried desperately to get funding in competition against Black Mesa.

So naturally, hearing about this Black Mesa place, I needed to play Half Life, and my expectations were blown away yet again. Fast, fun gameplay, a story of epic proportions, and more mysterious forces seemingly beyond human comprehension. It made you feel like a hero.

Among this I found act fan communities creating whole new projects like Freeman’s Mind, which remains one of my favorite channels to this day. And then there were spin offs of that as well. I found fanart, music, and theories, and not to mention Black Mesa Source as a ground up remake of the original game simply created out of the love of the fanbase. Just like with Portal, the more I would dig the more I would uncover, revealing this elaborate and well constructed universe to explore. The more I would try out, the more impressed I’d be. Not to mention other games like Team Fortress 2 to start and just enjoy playing with friends. And to top it all off was Steam, a platform most famous for simply throwing these games at you with deals, not only for Valve’s own games with groupings like the Orange Box, but all games.

Valve, to me, was this cornucopia of creativity and excellent game design. In my eyes they could do no wrong, and while Valve Time was already infamous back then, there was so much to already explore, I could wait. Half Life 2 Episode 3 was in the works, Portal was a success beyond anything even Valve had planned for, and the future was bright. Left 4 Dead 2 released somewhere in there as well, but I didn’t pay it much mind.

My patience was rewarded in March 2010, less than two years later, when Portal quietly received an update adding radios to each level, providing clues that the community I had come to know was quickly unfolding into a whole new story, and a sequel was on its way. It was disheartening that we still hadn’t received any news on Episode 3, but my favorite game was getting a sequel! How could I not be happy? Besides, Portal had originally just been the tag along to apologize for Episode 2 being late. I knew that if we waited long enough, Valve would present us with a finely polished product which would surpass our expectations. They would regularly interact with their communities and clearly loved making the games just as much as we did playing them. Valve would count to 3 eventually.

Portal 2 faced some delays (more of that infamous Valve Time, haha), but it did eventually come out the next year and it was... good. It was a good game. It went through a lot of the old ground Portal had. Didn’t offer much new. The tone had changed. Things that had previous been in the background were brought to the foreground, and when I digged into it I found significantly less despite it being the bigger and more richly detailed game. Some parts didn’t really make sense. But it was alright, and had a lot of clever moments, and most people I talked to seemed to love it even more than the original, which frankly confused me. I’d like to talk about these differences in more detail in a separate post later, but for now Zero Punctuation hit a lot of the issues.

So I continued to wait, started watching E3 just for the chance that we would once again get news, that the dramatic cliffhanger we were left with would be addressed, or at least to get a sign that some more of that patented Valve creativity was still at work. People began to stop talking about Episode 3 and instead talked of Half Life 3 as the big title in the works. After all, the entire point of the episodic structure was for these short games to come out quickly. Valve had even suggested that they would be coming out on a monthly basis, but haha, classic Valve Time, it took years instead. We still had their promises to go off of.

I still remembered warnings from Doug Lombardi that Episode 3 would come out even later than Episode 2 did, Gabe Newell talking about how they might add a deaf character, about how the next Half Life would return to the darker roots missing in Portal 2, of bits of code in other minor releases by Valve making explicit reference to Episode 3 assets, Gabe Newell coming out to meet “protesters” hoping for some news, discussions of “Ricochet 2″ talked about openly, and Gabe shown working at a forge on a crowbar, saying how it took time. In 2012, like a breath of fresh air, some concept art apparently from back in 2008 was even leaked, showing that there was indeed actual work done by Valve showing that it wasn’t just all lies. A multitude of little pieces to let us know that it was still alive, that hope was not dead, the list of which has disappeared from Valve’s dead forums but can be found here on the wiki. Sure Valve seemed focused on that DOTA 2 game, but who really cared about that. Just another joke on them not being able to count to 3, haha.

Things became worse. Calls for Communication weren’t answered. Any kind of discussion by Valve at all became further and further apart, and what was there was abandoning what we were promised. Talk about abandoning single player games entirely were common, and Gabe even seemed dismissive of putting out more Half Life sequels and making bizarre claims like how Valve would be breaking new ground by focusing on multiplayer because there’d never been commercially successful multiplayer games before. Source 2 eventually came out (can’t count to 3, haha), but all the attention was focused on that DOTA 2 game which was still around and getting regular updates and news. Valve started focusing on hardware, trying to play catch up with their competition, making a big deal about releasing a normal controller, or working with other non-Valve groups to develop VR hardware.

The Know releases a video claiming that an anonymous inside source from Valve officially confirmed Half Life 3 as dead, with Valve too scared to release a new game to meet the insanely high expectations as well as some other problems, but Marc Laidlaw dismissed Valve ever being scared. Then old talent that had been with Valve from the beginning like Doug Lombardi and Marc began leaving, the few creative masterminds we still knew were there, gone.

Years pass in complete silence. The 10th anniversary of Episode 3′s announcement comes and goes in complete silence. And what we do hear isn’t much better. In AMA’s even as early as last January, and we still get the same line from Gaben, still joking about the number 3 and refusing to confirm or deny whether anything will come from the series, refusing to give closure one way or another, and even stating how Valve just loves to troll fans by making t-shirts and posters of Half Life 3.

Instead of the game we were promised or a new IP, Valve has now stooped to copying others, and we get a fucking card game for Dota 2, something not even fans of Dota 2 wanted.

And now, out of nowhere, we have this, a look into what might have been. And it doesn’t come from Valve, but from a man we once loved who’s moved on, and seems to despair at how things turned out.

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.

This is simultaneously the most news we’ve heard about Half Life 2 and also the most disheartening. It’s a stab at an old wound long scabbed over, a reminder that the talent we used to adore was real and not just the stuff of myth and legend.

The comparison I look around and see people making is one of death, that this is the final nail on the coffin, and this is the only burial that our good friends at Black Mesa and in the Resistance will ever receive. I’ve made that comparison myself already.

But now that I sit here and write this out, that I look over everything, I don’t think that’s the right answer.

Marc even followed up with a tweet pointing out that an old, unused script is not a sign that nothing will ever come out. And he’s right. Valve may indeed release something one day. Valve still lives and breathes, and is making tons of money through Steam.

Instead, the more apt analogy is that of someone suffering from Alzheimer's. A deeply loved relative has fallen ill and has slowly become a shadow of their former self, making occasional references to the glory days as we smile, nod, and pat their hand. What happened today was a brief moment of clarity breaking through their mind, and getting a chance to talk to them as they once were in their prime, and the moment quickly passes away again.

It’s a reminder of what was lost, and that no matter what they do now, the Valve I knew is gone forever. The talent behind what we knew and loved have left, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone to replace them. No matter what happens now, the cake was a lie. And I want to be wrong so very badly. Even now I can look around and see them walking around the corner, just like their old self, and going on some new adventure.

But here we are. And seeing how quickly the community latched onto this, onto anything proves that I’m not alone.

I wish Valve nothing but the best. Even for their stupid card game.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

2020: The Year That ALMOST Saved Culture

CONTENT WARNING: Culture is fucked; COVID and death; cocaine and deceased hookers. You know, the usual.

So, before COVID rocked up and basically fucked everything, 2020 looked like it might be the year that legitimately saved cinematic (and potentially televisual) culture. For years- and I mean insufferable fucking years- big genre-oriented studios (both cinematic and televised) ignored long-time fans and established fan-bases in order to cater to a more mainstream audience with less abtruse, specific tastes. Ghostbusters 2016 thought that it could get away with sucking the wit and surprisingly downbeat verbal, character-driven humour out of the franchise, leaving only the slapstick shell with a lazy, gender-flipped gimmick to draw dipshits in like the dangling light on a deep sea angler fish. Star Trek: Discovery moved in the opposite direction, taking an earnest, hopeful series with a vast ensemble cast and tightening the focus around one bell-end while everyone bickered like fuckwits in the background in a bid to create a more pointlessly fraught mood that low-brow angst-havers could relate to. Hellboy 2019 traded touching, likeable characters and a world that balanced Lovecraftian darkness with off-the-cuff whimsy for overblown spectacle and flat characters (made worse by the fact the film purported to be truer to the original comics but had clearly missed the point). And you know what, I’m still in the camp that says the Disney-era Star Wars films were a pretentious waste of time that shat on the legacy of the original just as badly as the fucking awful prequels.

However, perhaps the saddest on-screen failure of the last few years was Justice League. Fuck. Justice League should have been great. A lot of people hated the darker, grimier take of the Snyder-helmed Man of Steel/ Batman v Superman/ etc early DCEU, but I- and a large, loyal fanbase besides- absolutely loved it. It was great to see a version of the superhero genre that played so confidently with the real-world consequences of superpowers and the concept of modern mythology. And then poor old Snyder couldn’t finish Justice League, because he suffered a bereavement and the studio took the opportunity to rope Joss Whedon into the project because he’s a more accessible, mainstream director (no offence to Whedon, incidentally- I actually love his work on his own fucking projects: he just shouldn’t have been near this one). The studio’s thinking seemed to be that getting A LOT OF MONEY from a loyal fanbase of die-hard supporters wasn’t sufficient and they’d rather have ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, courtesy of a vast sea of mainstream consumers. Predictably, the film was a tonally-inconsistent mess and didn’t even make a lot of money, because (unlike die-hard fans) mainstream film-goers are flighty culture-hussies with no staying power who are easily distracted by every shiny object to bounce through their peripheral vision. The whole DCEU was forced to re-tool its direction and we got some good films out of it (most notably Shazam!, which just kicked a million times more arse than it had any right to), but the dream of an actual mature, nuanced, mythically-resonant superhero project with big cinema bucks behind it died on the vine.

Bascially, between the shitty virtue-signalling of gender-flipped sci-fi reboots, the over-the-top edgelord grimwashing of niche, charming little fantasies and the neutering of genuinely dark and complex budding superhero universes, the genre landscape at the end of 2019 was a fucking wasteland populated by horrible, poorly-conceived mutant franchises with terminally damaged DNA and no real sense of unique identity. Even the Terminator series finally seemed to be dying, and after so many bad movies and comebacks, I think we’d all just assumed that one was unkillable. Culturally, us nerds were in the shit. It was the eleventh hour and the cavalry weren’t coming.

Then something remarkable and quite possibly unprecedented happened. The big money folks behind the major studios stopped acting like the arrogant, charmless, talentless fuckwads that they are and instead (let jaws drop across the world) actually listened to fans! Not ‘audiences’, in that horribly amorphous and meaningless sense of the word, but the actual fucking fans. The studio bosses actually stopped snorting cocaine off of dead hookers for a minute and took the time to make a good decision. It started, rather grandly, with a sequel to a new Ghostbusters film... except this one wasn’t going to be a reboot or a retelling with a more air-headed script and a cast more palatable to modern audiences. Instead, it was to be a sequel to the original 80s films that specifically erased the 2016 reboot and refocused on characters who- while updated for the modern world- could still be more closely identified with the fans who loved the originals than whatever insane what-stupid-people-want checklist the 2016 berks were working from.

Other smaller things were happening at around the same time. Notably, towards the end of 2019, a truly lovely ten-year-old zombie comedy called Zombieland got a long overdue sequel that was entirely in the spirit of the original with no ridiculous attempt to bring it up-to-date, while adverts for the next installment of the semi-dormant Kingsman series started cropping up at the beginning of 2020. As isolated incidents, these things were just flashes in the pan: little positives in a cultural landscape of mind-squanching negativity. Contextualised by the arrival of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, they pointed towards a genre film industry that realised (at least on some level) something had gone terribly, terribly wrong and was edging its way back to a previous era of film-making from before everything when terribly, terribly wrong.

Then, the icing on the cake: the release of the Justice League Snyder Cut was finally announced. Zacky-boy was going to be allowed to finish his own fucking film (albeit, probably, in the form of a six-part miniseries) and the superhero genre was going to gain, at the very least, a last hoorah for the abortive darker-mythic project started in Man of Steel and, at the very most, a whole new timeline to keep that dream alive. I can’t really express my feelings on The Snyder Cut in a single paragraph- I’m gonna need to take a whole blog entry for that one, which I will do, soon. Suffice it to say, I was a very happy bunny.

Then COVID happened. 2020 was supposed to be the year to fix everything- or at least, all the things that could be fixed (Doctor Who was still broken beyond repair and, outside of the cultural sphere, the world was still fucked, with an upper class twit in 10 Downing Street and an evil cheesy whatsit in the Whitehouse). But, with cinemas closing and the production of new cultural artefacts getting bottlenecked by the sudden demobilisation of content creators, the high hopes that 2020 brought with it started to evaporate.

Britain is just now coming out of Lockdown (too early to be safe, by the way- did I mention we have a twit for a Prime Minister?) and that could be... interesting. You see, while coming out of Lockdown midway through the year before a vaccine is ready might be a very bad thing for humans, it could be a pretty good thing for culture, because it gives us time to play catch-up. There’s still time to release the films and miniseries that we need to start healing the liminal dustbowl that genre fiction has become. Here’s hoping that we can still salvage that at least. I mean, it’s no substitute for saveing actual humans from the crisis, but the situation we have is the situation we have and we might as well make the best of it. Roll on the fucking Snyder Cut.

[flauntpage]

NBA Dunk of the Week: Damian Lillard Is the Daniel Day-Lewis of Dunking

Having watched more than half of the games he’s ever played, I remain fascinated by the spirit that powers Damian Lillard. The national media and the broader basketball chattering classes think of him as Steph Lite: a gifted player whose dribbling, shooting, and driving games line up, almost by coincidence, with the currents of the modern world and yet are juuuuust short of being refined enough to challenge the Golden State Warriors, or to draw the Blazers out of the well and into the thirsty belly of true glorious victory or whatever.

They’re wrong, though. Even if he isn’t really better than that—which, I don’t know, I honestly don’t give a shit—Damian Lillard is possessed by a spirit of competition that is moving to watch, a craving for victory subdued in a quiet spirit that drives him to beautiful places, in both triumph and defeat. To watch him over and over is to be constantly taken aback by how much he brings with a physical and skill toolkit that occasionally can seem limited. He is every bullshit columnist's dream manifestation of a winner, toiling away in a market that, out of view of national press and the national fanbase, loves the shit out of him.

In the past few games, Portland’s fortunes have been, well, fucking shit. After a 5-1 road trip, the team went home, dropped three in a row for no particular reason, found themselves injured, and then went on the road to square off with the Rockets and the Warriors, the two best teams in basketball right now. It’s an insanely shitty scene, five straight losses, the whole season getting a 45-pound plate gently set on its back, the Blazers staring down a season of irrelevance with beady little eyes.

But, in defeat as in victory, Lillard has done what he could. He went for 35 and drilled nine threes in the game against the Rockets, doing everything he could to withstand 48 fucking points from James Harden. He followed that up with a 39-point effort in his hometown, Oakland, where he did everything he could to overcome an enormous early lead from the Warriors, playing big in the face of near-certain defeat, attempting to right a ship being thrown off course by the overwhelmingly stiff yellow currents of Golden State brutality.

One of the things he did was dunk.

The relationship Lillard has with dunking is the weirdest I think I’ve ever seen between a player and a shot. He was in a dunk contest once—some truly surprising shit considering the fact that he goes really, really far out of his way to, like, not dunk all that often. Layups on fast breaks and whatnot. He did it then, I suspect, to prove to a world that didn’t see him do it all that often that he actually could. His presence on that Dunk-Court was weird. It was even weirder when it turned out he was pretty good.

When it happens, it’s not just weird, it’s usually meaningful. Lillard is, in his way, the Daniel Day-Lewis of dunking, only uncorking one every few years, constantly threatening to retire, but always bringing well-crafted fire to the bang.

Here we see Lillard, having played a whole heap of minutes, square down against Kevin Durant, fake left, catch the bigger forward off his feet, drive right, rise up in the lane, and slam one down while David West looks on in futility.

His team, down double digits and living in a wild skid that threatens the core structures of the franchise, probably needed like a ten-point shot and a negative-seven-point block to catch up with the ruthless Warrior Machine on Monday. Lillard can’t do either of those things, but, walking across the tightrope of catastrophe, he felt he had to take SOMETHING out of his spiritual suitcase, bring something startling, spit whatever gas he could find into the engine to get the fires going, for Christ’s sake.

And so he tried to dunk through the team. He dredged up the last bit of spirit he had left, and tried to bang his way out of the trap the Blazers have made for themselves. It didn’t work, because nothing works against the Warriors. They’re a pit that suffocates everything they touch, clever tricks scattered to the wind, great players drowned in the madness of self, sophisticated team concepts out-maneuvered and overpowered by a perpetual motion machine.

Lillard’s dunk here is THE picture of the overwhelming futility that the NBA is experiencing in the Warriors era. You do everything you can—you cross over the second best player in the league, jump as high as you can, dunk for the first time in recent memory—but it just doesn’t matter. Three-pointers wouldn’t matter, a crisp pass wouldn’t matter, leading his team with every last drop of charisma wouldn’t matter. The current drowns everyone eventually.

Honorable Mention Dunk of the Week: Draymond and Javale

This pass is so stupid. It’s fun, but also it’s extremely stupid, and I'm annoyed that it worked. I think Draymond is cool, but his NBA career has just been IMPOSSIBLY charmed, and this, right here, is Exhibit A. You know that he was supposed to play like ten minutes during the Dubs' 67-win season, before David Lee got injured and he had to get into the starting lineup? What a lucky SOB.

NBA Dunk of the Week: Damian Lillard Is the Daniel Day-Lewis of Dunking published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

NBA Dunk of the Week: Damian Lillard Is the Daniel Day-Lewis of Dunking

Having watched more than half of the games he’s ever played, I remain fascinated by the spirit that powers Damian Lillard. The national media and the broader basketball chattering classes think of him as Steph Lite: a gifted player whose dribbling, shooting, and driving games line up, almost by coincidence, with the currents of the modern world and yet are juuuuust short of being refined enough to challenge the Golden State Warriors, or to draw the Blazers out of the well and into the thirsty belly of true glorious victory or whatever.

They’re wrong, though. Even if he isn’t really better than that—which, I don’t know, I honestly don’t give a shit—Damian Lillard is possessed by a spirit of competition that is moving to watch, a craving for victory subdued in a quiet spirit that drives him to beautiful places, in both triumph and defeat. To watch him over and over is to be constantly taken aback by how much he brings with a physical and skill toolkit that occasionally can seem limited. He is every bullshit columnist’s dream manifestation of a winner, toiling away in a market that, out of view of national press and the national fanbase, loves the shit out of him.

In the past few games, Portland’s fortunes have been, well, fucking shit. After a 5-1 road trip, the team went home, dropped three in a row for no particular reason, found themselves injured, and then went on the road to square off with the Rockets and the Warriors, the two best teams in basketball right now. It’s an insanely shitty scene, five straight losses, the whole season getting a 45-pound plate gently set on its back, the Blazers staring down a season of irrelevance with beady little eyes.

But, in defeat as in victory, Lillard has done what he could. He went for 35 and drilled nine threes in the game against the Rockets, doing everything he could to withstand 48 fucking points from James Harden. He followed that up with a 39-point effort in his hometown, Oakland, where he did everything he could to overcome an enormous early lead from the Warriors, playing big in the face of near-certain defeat, attempting to right a ship being thrown off course by the overwhelmingly stiff yellow currents of Golden State brutality.

One of the things he did was dunk.

The relationship Lillard has with dunking is the weirdest I think I’ve ever seen between a player and a shot. He was in a dunk contest once—some truly surprising shit considering the fact that he goes really, really far out of his way to, like, not dunk all that often. Layups on fast breaks and whatnot. He did it then, I suspect, to prove to a world that didn’t see him do it all that often that he actually could. His presence on that Dunk-Court was weird. It was even weirder when it turned out he was pretty good.

When it happens, it’s not just weird, it’s usually meaningful. Lillard is, in his way, the Daniel Day-Lewis of dunking, only uncorking one every few years, constantly threatening to retire, but always bringing well-crafted fire to the bang.

Here we see Lillard, having played a whole heap of minutes, square down against Kevin Durant, fake left, catch the bigger forward off his feet, drive right, rise up in the lane, and slam one down while David West looks on in futility.

His team, down double digits and living in a wild skid that threatens the core structures of the franchise, probably needed like a ten-point shot and a negative-seven-point block to catch up with the ruthless Warrior Machine on Monday. Lillard can’t do either of those things, but, walking across the tightrope of catastrophe, he felt he had to take SOMETHING out of his spiritual suitcase, bring something startling, spit whatever gas he could find into the engine to get the fires going, for Christ’s sake.

And so he tried to dunk through the team. He dredged up the last bit of spirit he had left, and tried to bang his way out of the trap the Blazers have made for themselves. It didn’t work, because nothing works against the Warriors. They’re a pit that suffocates everything they touch, clever tricks scattered to the wind, great players drowned in the madness of self, sophisticated team concepts out-maneuvered and overpowered by a perpetual motion machine.

Lillard’s dunk here is THE picture of the overwhelming futility that the NBA is experiencing in the Warriors era. You do everything you can—you cross over the second best player in the league, jump as high as you can, dunk for the first time in recent memory—but it just doesn’t matter. Three-pointers wouldn’t matter, a crisp pass wouldn’t matter, leading his team with every last drop of charisma wouldn’t matter. The current drowns everyone eventually.

Honorable Mention Dunk of the Week: Draymond and Javale

This pass is so stupid. It’s fun, but also it’s extremely stupid, and I’m annoyed that it worked. I think Draymond is cool, but his NBA career has just been IMPOSSIBLY charmed, and this, right here, is Exhibit A. You know that he was supposed to play like ten minutes during the Dubs’ 67-win season, before David Lee got injured and he had to get into the starting lineup? What a lucky SOB.

NBA Dunk of the Week: Damian Lillard Is the Daniel Day-Lewis of Dunking syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[flauntpage]

NBA Dunk of the Week: Damian Lillard Is the Daniel Day-Lewis of Dunking

Having watched more than half of the games he’s ever played, I remain fascinated by the spirit that powers Damian Lillard. The national media and the broader basketball chattering classes think of him as Steph Lite: a gifted player whose dribbling, shooting, and driving games line up, almost by coincidence, with the currents of the modern world and yet are juuuuust short of being refined enough to challenge the Golden State Warriors, or to draw the Blazers out of the well and into the thirsty belly of true glorious victory or whatever.

They’re wrong, though. Even if he isn’t really better than that—which, I don’t know, I honestly don’t give a shit—Damian Lillard is possessed by a spirit of competition that is moving to watch, a craving for victory subdued in a quiet spirit that drives him to beautiful places, in both triumph and defeat. To watch him over and over is to be constantly taken aback by how much he brings with a physical and skill toolkit that occasionally can seem limited. He is every bullshit columnist's dream manifestation of a winner, toiling away in a market that, out of view of national press and the national fanbase, loves the shit out of him.

In the past few games, Portland’s fortunes have been, well, fucking shit. After a 5-1 road trip, the team went home, dropped three in a row for no particular reason, found themselves injured, and then went on the road to square off with the Rockets and the Warriors, the two best teams in basketball right now. It’s an insanely shitty scene, five straight losses, the whole season getting a 45-pound plate gently set on its back, the Blazers staring down a season of irrelevance with beady little eyes.

But, in defeat as in victory, Lillard has done what he could. He went for 35 and drilled nine threes in the game against the Rockets, doing everything he could to withstand 48 fucking points from James Harden. He followed that up with a 39-point effort in his hometown, Oakland, where he did everything he could to overcome an enormous early lead from the Warriors, playing big in the face of near-certain defeat, attempting to right a ship being thrown off course by the overwhelmingly stiff yellow currents of Golden State brutality.

One of the things he did was dunk.

The relationship Lillard has with dunking is the weirdest I think I’ve ever seen between a player and a shot. He was in a dunk contest once—some truly surprising shit considering the fact that he goes really, really far out of his way to, like, not dunk all that often. Layups on fast breaks and whatnot. He did it then, I suspect, to prove to a world that didn’t see him do it all that often that he actually could. His presence on that Dunk-Court was weird. It was even weirder when it turned out he was pretty good.

When it happens, it’s not just weird, it’s usually meaningful. Lillard is, in his way, the Daniel Day-Lewis of dunking, only uncorking one every few years, constantly threatening to retire, but always bringing well-crafted fire to the bang.

Here we see Lillard, having played a whole heap of minutes, square down against Kevin Durant, fake left, catch the bigger forward off his feet, drive right, rise up in the lane, and slam one down while David West looks on in futility.

His team, down double digits and living in a wild skid that threatens the core structures of the franchise, probably needed like a ten-point shot and a negative-seven-point block to catch up with the ruthless Warrior Machine on Monday. Lillard can’t do either of those things, but, walking across the tightrope of catastrophe, he felt he had to take SOMETHING out of his spiritual suitcase, bring something startling, spit whatever gas he could find into the engine to get the fires going, for Christ’s sake.

And so he tried to dunk through the team. He dredged up the last bit of spirit he had left, and tried to bang his way out of the trap the Blazers have made for themselves. It didn’t work, because nothing works against the Warriors. They’re a pit that suffocates everything they touch, clever tricks scattered to the wind, great players drowned in the madness of self, sophisticated team concepts out-maneuvered and overpowered by a perpetual motion machine.

Lillard’s dunk here is THE picture of the overwhelming futility that the NBA is experiencing in the Warriors era. You do everything you can—you cross over the second best player in the league, jump as high as you can, dunk for the first time in recent memory—but it just doesn’t matter. Three-pointers wouldn’t matter, a crisp pass wouldn’t matter, leading his team with every last drop of charisma wouldn’t matter. The current drowns everyone eventually.

Honorable Mention Dunk of the Week: Draymond and Javale

This pass is so stupid. It’s fun, but also it’s extremely stupid, and I'm annoyed that it worked. I think Draymond is cool, but his NBA career has just been IMPOSSIBLY charmed, and this, right here, is Exhibit A. You know that he was supposed to play like ten minutes during the Dubs' 67-win season, before David Lee got injured and he had to get into the starting lineup? What a lucky SOB.

NBA Dunk of the Week: Damian Lillard Is the Daniel Day-Lewis of Dunking published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv