#just a game focused on going through the wormholes

[superbellsubways]

tpc dropping the coolest group of characters in one pair of games and then doing nothing with them

[okaratauri]

Re: the WIP ask game

Stranded and Scales!

Oh dear XD okay sry I’ve been a bit busy today it’s mah bday

okay so please please don’t judge me, but Stranded is based on a dream I had a long time ago.

so stranded is set sometime after Valkyrie and before Failure mode, except things have calmed down enough for the governments on earth to form a sort of internship program for college students to shadow the crew on Valkyrie. Don’t ask questions if somethings doesn’t add up, it’s a dream. So in the dream, I was a part of the internship program and was shadowing one of the engineers.

We were on a sort of routine check in with a Kristang relay station a couple light years away from a planet habited by a Kristang training facility for young warriors. Skippy had a mircorwormhole set up to monitor that planet. I had befriended Skippy and quickly became his favorite intern, bc well I mean I sung with him voluntarily. I was walking to his man cave to show him a new painting I had made, when something attacked the ship. We were just floating about in space while Skippy ransacked the relay station. The ship was sliced apart, like they were trying to cut Skippy out of the ship. Skippy, panicking and trying to save who he could on this side of Valkyrie, focused on the microwormhole and dumped a shit ton of his own power into it, managing to expand it into an unstable wormhole that connected to the atmosphere of the planet, a couple people were sheared to bits by the micro wormhole, but the parts of the ship that was cut off nearest to Skippy passed through and was dumped into the sky of the planet. The rest of the ship was being bombarded by whoever attacked and Valkyrie managed a chaotic jump away while the couple of us on the little piece with Skippy plummeted down. Skippy cut that microwormhole off and opened a new one to dump us lower near the ground into a tumble. Effectively stranding us on the planet. It was me, one other person and Skippy, but the other person got shot later on, so it was just me and Skippy on the planet being hunted by fanatic, young, moronic lizards. Don’t judge me. It was a dream. I thought it was cool 😭

Okay Scales dang it’s been a long while. It’s a bit incoherent but the basic gist is the main character is some sort of hybrid of an Angel (a Kellkie) and a human. And each human has a guardian angel and a demon that watches and influences their circumstances, but the main character (Opal’s) Kellkie died when she was young, leaving the demon (a Kellus named Amon) to become her “guardian angel” of sorts. It’s a bit lame but I thought it was cool a couple years ago XD I’m sure it’s been done before so I didn’t really flesh it out too much.

anywho, there u go :3

[im-just-kinda-here-k]

tell me about stellaris in the most autistic way imaginable (i wanna learn by infodump and infodump only)

(Srry this took me so long to answer I wanted to answer once I got home and promptly forgot about it lmao)

So! Stellaris. The 4x game where you genocide in space or something.

I'll start from the top, you will be designing a space-faring empire to play as, staring with...

SPECIES/HOME SYSTEM: This is where your gonna decide what your founding species looks like and what traits they have, as well as what their home planet/star are named. Not to mention you can write a short biography on your empires pre-ftl history here! Role-play wise this will affect your game greatly, but in terms of gameplay its only a big deal early on as barring some exceptions you will like end up with quite the melting pot, and any individual species traits will be of little consequence. The next part will be much more influential, however.

GOVERNMENT: Now we get into the real meat of your empire. Who are they? What do they stand for? What makes them stand out? How do they decide on their leaders? Do they decide on their leaders? You can be militaristic xenophiles who will fight tooth and nail to protect the galaxies people, or a curious hive mind that wants to hoard as much knowledge as it can without coming to blows with its neighbors, and yes, space nazis. Here you can also decide the past of your species, they could be fairly normal, simply reaching out into the stars after a few decades of booming economy, or they could've never lived on a planet at all, being born on floating habitats in the void.

MISC: Just some other details, your first leaders name/gender, what your ships look like, what your advisor sounds like, that kinda stuff.

GAMEPLAY: I'm sorry but I have that committed to muscle memory I would have a stroke if I tried to explain it. Montu and other stellaris youtubers are the best for that.

MODS: For when you've spent 200$ on dlc but want 600$ worth instead. This can be anything from simple tweaks to complete overhauls of the gameplay. My favorite are "gigastructural engineering and more" which expand on the megastructure system (just really big things that make the economy go brrrrrr) and adds lots of post endgame content. (Wanna rearrange entire star systems into mobile weapons platforms and pit them against space cats that consume millions of galaxies to outlive entropy?)

Then there's stellaris evolved, which changes literally every aspect of the game in some way we would be here all day so just know it's amazing.

Alright we've been through a few paragraphs of this so I think it's time to talk about one of my own empires!

THE EMPIRE OF SILDORIA: A long time ago, humans sent out colony ships into a wormhole found at the edge of the solar system, most were destroyed, but one of the surviving ones wound up in a random part of the galaxy, and went a-looking for a new home. But they couldn't find one, supplies were dwindling and systems were failing, so they took a gamble and took up residence in the upper atmosphere of an unusually stable gas giant. It was still a brutal task, where people were worked to death out of necessity rather than greed, but they pulled it off. Floating cities dot the gas planet of sildoria, and after scrounging up enough materials, they have made their way onto the galactic stage. It did not come without cost, however, as the humans, or rather, sildorians, have been fundamental changed by their experiences. Their psyche is unbreakable on a biological level, and their bodies are quite tough as well. They are instinctively inclined to reduce waste, and have a reduced birthrate as a result of cramped conditions. The sildorian government is an interesting one, while it is extremely focused on material gain and expansion of industry, they make sure to take as good care of their people as they can. A sildorian laborer will be expected to give everything they can spare in the workplace, and in exchange they will want for nothing at home. In the future the sildorian empire is likely to take forays into robotics and cybernetics to maximize productivity and comfort. OK that's all I have to say :D

[crystalelemental]

"karnilla74: If anything, the Clefable thing makes Lillie be the one who comes across a childish. Like, why was she against it evolving? It's not even hers."

So! I talked to my wife about this, and everything I'm about to say is from her. But I think that's really it. It's not entirely that Lusamine is a different character that's bothersome. It's how that impacts Lillie.

Anime Lillie is delightful and I love her. Her big hangup is she can't touch Pokemon, due to a trauma she can't remember. Faba opened an Ultra Wormhole to bring out a beast for Lusamine to see (without her orders), and the Nihilego that came through grabbed Lillie and tried to take her into the wormhole. Silvally saved her, but the entire experience got blocked out and she's left with a fear of contact from Pokemon. Good stuff! That's actually pretty interesting.

Her relationship with Lusamine, however, is obnoxious. Because it's exactly what it sounds like: it paints Lillie as actually being childish.

The Clefairy thing is up for interpretation. Lusamine says "I was the one raising it," but it's not entirely clear if it's hers or just the family Pokemon. Lillie has it in their old photo, so it might be like a pet dog and like...okay you can't evolve the family dog but like trading it for a different breed you liked better that the kids didn't. That kind of neglect. But the rest? Lusamine will excitedly proclaim how proud she is of her baby girl, and Lillie gets huffy because "Mom, you're embarrassing me, I'm not a child!" Lusamine gets pulled into business calls, and Lillie snaps that Lusamine must not care about her, which is understandable from the child's perspective but also the plot of like every family-focused movie from the 90s.

But the way the anime frames things does tend to point to Lillie being in the wrong, or at least being over-dramatic about it. It at least never invalidates her feelings on the matter, but it sure doesn't take them seriously. Like, the episode with the Ditto? Lillie's getting irritated with her mom for not spending time with them herself and being busy with work, as literally everyone around her is like "Wow Lillie, your mom is so cool," and ending on this kind of knowing look like "See? Isn't she being a good mom still? Aren't you being too harsh?" That is a huge 180 from the games' presentation of Lillie.

To make matters worse, the callouts that are referenced in that other post? Don't matter. I haven't reached the episode, but we know Lillie's going to have her callout toward Lusamine when they get back to Ultra Space. Guaranteed. And it won't have a fraction of the weight of the callout in the games, because Lillie has been doing this the entire time. As much as the anime keeps trying to tell Lillie it's her responsibility to talk to her mom about how she's feeling, going so far as to even have Burnet pass on that advice, she already does. Lillie has been telling her mother how she feels constantly. I don't like being treated like a kid, I don't like that you're spending all your time working. It's not point for point in those words, but Lillie is very clear even as she's snappy about it. Don't treat me like a kid and call me your baby in front of my friends. Don't bother calling me if you're going to work the whole time instead of talk. Lillie is very clear, but the anime wants to treat it like this is just missed communication because Lillie hasn't made herself known. And it's...jarring.

(my words now) Because it all comes back to making Lusamine more palatable. That's all this is about. A bunch of dudebros got really excited about her design being conventionally pretty, and when she was shown to just be intense and abuse with little redeeming about her, got mad she wasn't their waifu. So you get USUM turning down the evil and pivoting more directly into "grieving widower trying to protect her kids," and the anime going for quirky playful childish Lusamine whose flaws are so tame it's literally the plot of every show and movie for kids that tries to show a strained parent/child dynamic. It's the most flaccid, easily-digestible interpretation you can provide. It risks nothing, and as a result, says nothing. But also has the audacity to present this in a way where Lillie's...kinda just in the wrong. And literally everyone knows it. Because even children are aware that work is a priority, and that not having money means things get worse. Lillie's not unaware of this either. If pressed, she gives the usual "I know she's really busy and her work is important, I just wish" etc etc. She knows. And it's presented that way because anything more extreme makes Lusamine unlikable, or at least un-waifuable. And from the marketing perspective, that's just as bad.

I bitch about USUM every time it comes up, but I can't deny its success at roping that demographic in. People really do just want to be presented with a lady character that's, at worst, misdirected. Anything beyond that is bad writing and she's just horrible for its own sake, no need to delve into this any further no sir. It's just a shame that writers so rarely present us with well-written and dynamic female characters, but at least we have a few goods ones in these completely generic, likeable girls whose worst flaw is being slightly misguided or too immature (This is sarcasm, I hate fandom).

[fallenangelofsalt]

New art blog @fallenangelofsaltart and current story/worldbuilding project @magicpiratesinspace

The AUs currently spinning in my head like a microwave

No idea if I'll ever write them.

Every one of them has a happy ending, but the road to it will be hell on earth because i like angst :D

TWST

Inkloop: Horror/mystery focused. 10 NRC students are stuck in a time loop, unable to stop the others from overblotting, and questioning whenever remembering is a blessing or a curse. But they will not stop trying. They will have their happy ending. They don't care how many more times they have to die for it. (TWs: gore, temporary character death, gaslighting, betrayal, body horror, possession, it is overall my angstiest AU because it lets me go ham without fear of permanently killing off a character so be warned)(there is also a lot of crack because the game itself has a lot of crack-ish moments and all the events happen at some point during the loops, so one moment it's pure angst and then sentient plush toy doppelgangers start falling from the sky) (Rollo becomes important at some point)

TITWT(This Is The Worst Timeline): Yuu does not get Isekai'd. This has a lot worse consequences than you would expect. Luckily, every student that would have overblotted in another reality gets the chance to see for themselves what will happen if they continue down their current paths via good old time travel shanneningans. Spoiler alert, they will need So Much Therapy. (Psychological horror, probably)

PokeIsekai: Yuu comes from the Pokemon world. Yeah. Not new. But this time the NRC students get air dropped through an ultra-wormhole in their world instead. In different regions. And I mean air dropped. From pretty high up. Someone got a concussion. And- WHAT DO YOU MEAN KALIM LANDED ON HISUI!? (overall pretty fluffy. Kinda. The pokeworld doesn't eat meat/fish so Savannaclaw+Octavinelle aren't doing so well, but Scarabia is currently separated by a couple hundred years and Kalim is deep in a survival horror setting because I could not resist abusing the hell out of the Zoroarks' angst potential and also gave him amnesia)

TwistedKingdoms: Kingdom Hearts crossover but without KH characters. Mostly just the setup. Each dorm is a different world with a "princess" of the heart, the teachers are the overworked remaining Keyblade wielders, and it's a mad dash to keep the worlds from falling into darkness one after the other. Heartslabyul has already been lost. (No one dies! ...Permanently.)

BlotPoisoned: A new magic-based poison has been created, known for having no known antidote and its slow but lethal effects. Unfortunately, Kalim and Jamil get firsthand experience with it, and now Kalim must find a cure before its too late. (has themes of suicide, murder, mild consensual human experimentation and Jamil is in a coma for half the story) Has a bunch of OCs.

BNHA

Devil's Gaze: OC reincarnated as a newborn Aizawa Shouta. They are not Eraserhead. She is someone else. But he can't afford not to play his role. That doesn't mean they have to do things his way. (angst and fluff focused. OC is going through the wringer before they graduate while still making the best of their new life, then things mellow out once they reach 20 and then canon starts and shit hits the fan)

QuirkSoup: (Nearly)Everyone has a different quirk. This changes a LOT of things.

MagiMadness: Madoka Magica inspired Magical Girls(and boys) AU. With a few changes because I'm weak for angst and gore but also can't handle killing anyone(permanently). (extremely gory, the main characters keep losing limbs on the regular)

MCSM

Mobapocalypse: The command block is damaged, and the Witherstorm is not the only disaster to happen that day. In fact, it is the lesser evil. Now everyone has been turned into a mob hybrid, and Jesse is the only one who has kept their sanity. But with every monster, wolf, fox and cat out for their blood, destroying the command block and ending this madness will be one hell of a challenge. (Survival horror, Jesse is being literally hunted for sport)

No.285: Jesse doesn't want to be a hero. Aiden is a mother hen. Lukas is a delinquent. Petra is a scaredy cat. They are not supposed to be this way, but the story will play out still. He will make sure of it. (mystery, kinda. Might count as psychological horror) (TW: has themes of suicide)

MAD(Mutually Assured Destruction): Aiden and Jesse(pre-Endercon) Time Travel to the (canon divergent) future, where Aiden is the tyrant of the Blaze Empire and Jesse is the leader of the resistance against him. Eventually becomes canon divergence. (does it count as major character death if its a future version of your very much alive friend?)

InkyMystery

Inky Secret: This body is not his(why does it feel like it is), he does not know how the story ends(oh god stars why did he have to be a dish of all the magic races), and the existence of the Labyrinth keeps his mouth shut(he does not remember his own name, his old face, his life), but cuss it if he's not gonna try his best to help. (Classic transmigration story) (I gave the OC such an overpowered talent and then gave them self worth issues to balance it out)

KingdomHearts

BTDO(Below The Darkest Ocean): The realm of darkness has actual worlds instead of just being a Danger Beach. They're just under the ocean(and based in games instead of disney movies with 1 exeption Aka TOH) (actually, animes get included as long as they're game-based. Ex, YuGiOh). Sora learns this the hard way after waking up in TWST with amnesia post-KH3.

PrincessRiku: Sorikai RoleSwap AU where Riku is the Princess, Kairi is the Hero and Sora is the Villain. I don't think I've ever seen someone switch their roles like this, and I find the concept interesting.

YuGiOh

MagiCards: Magical Girl/Boy/Kid AU, crossover with a side of reincarnation, VRAINS is a thing, magic is real, of course, and one of my favorite tropes: your power doesn't define you. Even if said power was given to you by an eldritch evil card god.

Persona

DnS(P5, Demons+Swap): Mix of a Swap AU and Demon AU. Demons take the place of personas and Akechi is the Detective Prince, recently placed in Shibuya to work on the Calling Card Killer case, where evidence heavily suggests Demonic influence at play. P5-typical warnings cranked up to 11. Seriously, everything is worse.

Doorsverse: Mementos is now dead in a ditch, the thieves got more members, and the entire story has been scrambled to hell and back. Has both elements and characters from P3, P4 and P5S(apparently P1&2 too?). Velvet Room? Gone. Yaldabaoth? Never heard of him. Maruki? Got a reality check. Morgana? Has no idea what he's doing but he's sure doing it. (it eventually turned into a whole series rewrite)

ReincarnationProject: A collection of AUs centered around someone with Persona knowledge getting Isekai'd as one of the Persona characters and how that affects the story. Rules: Character must have died before the start of their main story, AKA Chie dies before P4 or Junpei dies before P3, and since their death was too early to count as part of the story itself, the universe makes up for lost potential by reviving the body and then placing another soul inside. Their knowledge affects their abilities, Arcana, Persona and how the Metaverse works around them. Slow, gradual but sure deaths have a chance of merging their souls and memories. Otherwise, the New Soul will not have the Old Soul's Arcana, memories or Persona without external cognitive influences.

Dollhouse: P5 Angstfest, NG+, Joker has a palace and things keep getting worse. Heavy gore, horror, repeated temporary character death and permanent Major Character Death. A bunch of horror tropes smashed together into a story and before I knew it someone died for real. Basically Inkloop but P5.

SilentWish: P5, TimeLoop, Joker has a Palace. (TWs: Gore, Horror, Existential Horror, Gaslighting, repeated temporary character death, his palace is so many levels of messed up)

TADP(The Amazing Digital Palace): The Amazing Digital Circus AU.

Persomon: Pokemon AU where Pokemon are a product of the Metaverse and exist in place of Personas.

Homestuck

HomeStranded: Dave accidentaly Fucks Up So Severely it crashed the game and the timeline and now its lagging and bugged like someone downloaded 200 mods and half contradict each other. Impossible things have become possible, timelines are merging, there's a second Alternia, and everyone's sessions have become borderline unwinable because everyone has the wrong classpect. ...Why is Lil Cal still here?

HomeStolen: 3 years after the disappearance of his and his friends' younger siblings, Kankri is starting to lose hope of ever seeing Karkat again, when a self-proclaimed AI chooses to request his help searching for a different group of missing children that might just be connected. AKA, roadtrip from hell to save the beta kids and trolls from a doomsday cult that drabbles on human experimentation, starring Kankri, Hal, and Damara.

Unheroic: Classic Hero/Vigilante/Villain AU, with Dave as the hero working to keep his siblings safe, Sollux as the vigilante who is tired of sitting still while people die, and Karkat as the villain with the highest hero kill count.

LegoMonkieKid

Ink and Bone: MK villain/feral/possessed arc with a side of psychological torture courtesy of LBD, AKA LBD and Azure team up and ruin everything.

AnimatorVsAnimation

Purple Gold: Gold is "alive" and Purple pays the unexpected price. Contains horror. Masterpost here.

Team Screen: Hero/Vigilante/Villain AU. Scorch, AKA Second, is the leader of the vigilante group Team Screen, composed of themself, Scare(Red), Scream(Green), Smoke(Blue) and String(Yellow). She and her friends fight crime and run from the law in the streets of the outernet, unaware of her father's dark past as the top villain Noogai, or his connection to the top 2 heroes and their leader.

Black Gold: Swap AU where Gold is a runaway, Purple has a staff, and Dark is Suffering.

Cursor Curse: Alan is cursed to become a halfstick, half cursor and half stick.

[mirrormazeworld]

will you be sad if your theories will turn out to be wrong or at least very different in the end? after all most theories dont come true because Yana Toboso has her own vision and all that. after all TWST has to work with a lot of constraints in terms of story. will you also consider writing a fanfic with your own version of some events if your theories will turn out wrong? it would be a shame to have all that incredible work go to waste

Hello anon! I will assume that you've read some of my theories so thank you for reading!

Will I be sad if my theories will turn out to be wrong? Good question.

In the very beginning, it was not my intention to become a twst theorist. I simply just dump everything inside of my head here as a concept for a world building of my yumeship. It is obvious I ship my Yuu with Crowley from my header which is already out of the question since most people will ship Yuu with the students. This alone is already different from the main story in my eyes.

All of those theories you've seen so far, it was actually just from Yana's statement in an interview that "Twisted Wonderland is inspired from Through the Looking Glass, and Lewis Carroll's way of writing has taught me(Yana) a lesson". In many modern version of Alice in Wonderland, Alice is often be shipped with Mad Hatter in a way. This is the base story of my yumeship, Ayumu(Yuu) as Alice x Crowley as Mad Hatter in a Wonderland (Twisted Wonderland). However, this rise a problem since we have little to no information of Crowley. And this is the main reason why I did a lot of research in Lewis Carroll's work because I want to base my yumeship lore on it, without knowing that it might really reveal some of the bigger mystery of Twisted Wonderland if it really proves to be true, because me and Yana based our story from the same source.

And as you said anon, it is inevitable to have my theories proved to be different from the game itself but it isn't all that surprising because although we did our story based on the same source, our main focus are different. Yana is more focused on the Disney villains with many Disney facts and Carroll's Wonderland as its framework. Mine is only focused on Crowley with Carroll's Wonderland as the story's framework but is backed up with scientific and mathematical facts more than Disney facts (although I might put some inside of it as well if I see it fits). And this is why in my hc Crowley can be "someone who doesn't have age and origin" rather than "his age and hometown is unknown" because this too actually can be explained scientificaly by theoretical physics and quantum physics, which also makes shipping Ayumu (Yuu) who is already an adult (19) in this case with Crowley becomes even more legal because Crowley here doesn't have age so I wish people would stop assuming me that I am somewhat a proship because I'm not.

Wonderland itself is a world with different logic than Alice's own world, and Twisted Wonderland is a world with twisted history that's been manipulated while being told for generations (Lilia's dialogue in chapter 6) so the main purpose of why those theories are there isn't to prove something is right or wrong, but rather so that people can understand what is the context behind the story before jumping to conclusion.

Yana said in the newest interview for twst in the app store that "you must be able to accept people think things differently from you, that is message we developed in this game"

Alice in Wonderland is a story about a girl falls into a pre-Einstein math version of wormhole so I don't see why I can't do the same thing with my own story, right? 👀

....though as for now I feel a bit reluctant to share about my yumeship lore because I'm actually not good in writing something and I'm still self conscious that people will see me as crazy ahaha

[clickerflight]

October 2023 - Sandstorm: Part 11

This part is literally just so self indulgent

Masterlist

Part 10

Content: Demon whumpee, mer whumpee, stranded, desert whump, cuffed together

...................................

Another quiet night, and another exhaustive morning later, Matsu and Laurance were back on the sands, walking as the sun beat down on them overhead. They both knew they needed to conserve water, but at the same time, they needed to keep their morale up, and chatting was one of the best ways to do so. Normally, they could speak through the magic bond that was shared with every member of their team, but since Laurance was still wearing a collar, it wasn’t really an option, and they were unable to break it off when they’d stopped at another rocky patch. 

So, they walked and chatted, Matsu with his eyes closed or turned to Laurance as he kept dowsing, and Laurance occasionally turning to search the horizon for any dark spots that might signal Kulor and Yor were catching up. 

They had been steadily traveling towards Icta, and by Laurance’s calculations, they had another three days travel before they got there. They needed to find water sometime in between here and there. Laurance thought they might be able to make it even if they didn’t find water, but it would be a very close thing, and they might need to start traveling at night and finding shelter in the day to hide from the sun. 

To distract himself from such worrying thoughts, he focused more on his conversation with Matsu, and just in time, too.

“I mean, the theory of portal glitches is all well and good, but we all know that Luker Isent’s book on it is complete garbage,” Matsu said, which stirred up righteous fury in Laurance. 

“Sir, I am going to have to ask you to take that back! Luker’s theories and maths are completely sound! It’s just that the instances where portal glitches can occur are so rare and hard to reproduce that it’s hard to study, so you have to give him some wiggle room there. I mean, he clearly explains that in the very first chapter!”

Matsu opened his eyes just so he could roll them at Laurance. “It’s just the fact that he argues with everyone that his theories are exact and perfect, when there is clearly room for him to be wrong! I mean, what about Madam Partha’s argument that half of the glitches aren’t even glitches and can be clearly attributed to the phenomenon experienced around wormholes-”

“And who’s to say all phenomena experienced around wormholes aren’t just a subcategory of portal glitches as a whole,” Laurance argued back. “I mean, there are plenty of observed glitches outside of wormhole interference, so it stands to reason that there are several entities that can cause these glitches, and wormholes are just one of the few that we can actually reasonably quantify!”

Matsu glowered, struggling for a response and finally landed on, “You just like Luker because he told you that you were one of the best portology mathematicians he’s ever worked with.”

“And you just like Madam  Partha because she’s as argumentative as you and gave you your favorite tea blend for your birthday,” Laurance replied just as quickly. “You are arguing with the best portology mathematician most people have ever worked with, as well as a former guard with years of insult slinging and gossip spilling under his belt. I can do this all day.”

“Outmatched at every turn,” Matsu said, half joking, but also partly annoyed. “Why couldn’t I have been stuck in the desert with Kira?”

“Because Kira is better at beating me in games of chance and Anisha is just hard to read so the two losers get stuck with the sucky job,” Laurance replied.

“Speaking of, why is Anisha so good at that? She managed to convince me to gamble away all of the Mantell Mix I managed to wrangle on my last trip out to that galaxy.”

“I don’t know all of her tricks,” Laurance admitted, “But a part of her strategy is unparalleled confidence that she’s going to win, especially when she has no idea what the cards actually mean.”

Mastu snorted. “Yup, that sounds like Anisha.”

They walked in silence for a moment before Laurance asked, “Does Kira cheat?”

“Oh yes. She cheats for sure. The only reason I know is because she told me when she was high on pain meds after that explosion over on Juktafar.”

“I knew it,” Laurance said, vindicated.

Matsu nodded. “Yeah. She says it’s not cheating if you can get away without-”

Matsu fell silent, his eyes coming open.

“What?” Laurance asked, worried. 

“Water,” Matsu whispered before he broke into a run. Laurance managed to catch on quickly enough that he didn’t get dragged by the chain as they ran. Matsu had tears streaming down his cheeks, heedless of the stitch in his side as they came over the top of the dune and looked out over the sands below. 

There, sure enough, was a bright blue oasis with a couple of palm trees fighting for their lives at the edge. 

Matsu ran even faster, Laurance just behind him as they skidded through the sand. Matsu didn’t even slow down, simply running straight into the water. The water that splashed up onto his legs and stomach with each jubilant step welcomed him, offering him peace and healing and hydration. It felt like home.

Matsu fell into the water as he finally got up to his waist, soaking his gills and skin. His body recognized the shift in environment as his legs merged together to become his long sweeping orange and black tail. The water on his scales felt natural and right as he moved to swim to the deepest part of the oasis when he felt a tug on his wrists. He flipped upside down, his tail coming out of the water to see Laurance, who had fallen on his face in the mud under the water. He was grinning, though, and Matsu could see he was holding his breath just fine. 

Laurance nodded, kicking his legs as Matsu turned back and swept his tail side to side, going deeper while Laurance followed, kept even by Matsu’s movement. There wasn’t much to see at the bottom besides some rocks and insects, and they soon headed back up to the surface. 

Laurance grabbed onto Matsu since Matsu had more stabilizing fins to help him tread water while Laurance was at a disadvantage without his arms. 

“Can we stay the night, do you think?” Matsu asked. 

Laurance hummed, thinking. “We probably shouldn’t. We have three more days before we reach Icta and I don’t want Yor and Kulor to catch up with us.”

Matsu tried to hide his disappointment, but Laurance knew him well enough to see it. 

“We’ll be here for a few hours at least,” Laurance assured him. “We should probably figure out some way to carry a little water with us.”

“Alright,” Matsu said and the two of them swam to the edge where the trees were. 

Laurance gasped when he spotted one with fruit hanging on it and got out to see it, Matsu dragging himself out of the water so his legs would come back. 

Laurance picked one of the darker fruits, splitting it open and smelling it, then licking it. He nodded and picked a few more, passing them to Matsu who ate a couple, getting up to look further in the underbrush. 

He jumped back with a surprised yelp as a huge lizard snapped at him, and Laurance was there in an instant, wrestling with the creature, which was certainly made more challenging by the short chain keeping Matsu and Laurance together. Matsu got drawn into the match as Laurance bashed a rock into the lizard’s skull, stunning it long enough for him to wrap an arm under its jaw and swiftly break its neck. 

Laurance laid there, holding the lizard as it slowly stopped twitching. 

“Is it poisonous?” Laurance asked hoarsely, panting for air and covered in sticky sand. 

Matsu took the lizard, unwrapping their chain from where it had gotten wrapped around the creature in the fight and looked it over for a minute. 

“Should be alright,” he said. 

Laurance grinned. “Do you think you can part it out while I see if I can get a fire going?”

“Sure,” Matsu said. With his energy restored by the water and surrounded by living things, it was an easy thing to coax out his claws and webbed hands, using his sharp teeth where necessary to clear out its organs and rip the lizard’s skin and limbs off. 

He set the skin out in the sun to dry as Laurance sat down with his supplies, stealing a tendon from the reptile to help him bow a stick to get enough friction to light a fire. 

Soon enough, they had a fire going and were eating their way through somewhat cooked reptile, drinking a fair amount of water each. When Laurance finally finished eating, he started dealing with the skin, cleaning it and shaping it. 

“It’s not going to be pretty,” Laurance said, dipping a skin in the oasis to fill it with water, tying it off with a tendon, “But it’ll do.”

Soon, they had a couple skins of water and wrapped up some of the meat and fruit. Matsu went for one more swim, laying in the shallow part for a long moment before he finally gave in to Laurance’s pestering. Matsu gave one last backward glance at the oasis and sighed a little. 

Laurance gave him a sympathetic look and said, “When we get home, you can spend a week living in the pool.”

“I know,” Matsu said softly, still disappointed. 

And with that, they kept going until nightfall where they slept in the barren sands, but this time with food and water in their bellies. 

Part 12

[punchyboy]

Here's a game I haven't played as much as I ought to. I bought Baldur's Gate 3 in early access just before it launched and I've mostly been playing multiplayer with the boys. I think it's high time I gave it some single player attention, and what better way than by bringing the glory of The Champion to the premises?

This is going to be a standard playthrough of Balanced mode without the Dark Urge background on a custom character.

Here's the punchy boy of the hour. The reason I went with Barb is that Monk is a lot more DEX focused, and The Champion is not about skill and efficiency. He's about punching BIG and HARD, preferably with painful things that most people aren't going to think of as weapons.

After our character is done, we proceed to the tutorial level.

So this is unusual. Our Champion has somehow found himself in distress. Between being captured and infected by Mind Flayers, things aren't very cash money right now. Still, we proceed through the ruined ship, which was apparently under siege by wyvern-riding alien warriors known as Githyanki. Soon enough, we meet one of their ilk.

Some funky mind-worm parasite wi-fi connects our brains briefly and we surmise that neither of us are thralls of the Mind Flayers. We agree to a partial truce and soon enough battle ensues with some imps nearby.

This is more like it. The Champion has an axe but who cares about that when you have a 95% chance of hurling your enemy like a rag doll straight onto another unfortunate soul. The Champion quite literally mops the floor with all these losers and quickly moves on.

I like to imagine he punches the unfamiliar device as a general response to what he doesn't understand. As usual, this triggers an encounter.

That was easy.

Here's a fun fact, I never knew you could try to jimmy Shadowheart's pod open.

Well, more than jimmy. This is a full on James-Johnsoning of it open through brute force alone. We're not really able to do it on this interaction but another one lets us roll a strength check.

Bugger.

Well. I say we leave this woman behind, seeing as all worthwhile options are exhausted. Goodbye, Shadowheart.

Gots me shit to do, sorry.

My man's so large the camera can't keep him in frame, it's great.

So this dude thinks we're his mind thralls because well, why wouldn't we be? He put a worm in our skulls. We're going to pretend for now. They're in a fight but it's really boring and I just throw imps around again until we reach the nerve machine that will take us out of Brazil.

As the psionic wormhole takes us from this blasted realm into another, The Champion is knocked free from the ship, falls five straight kilometers and survives, as he would.

Overall I'd say a nice prologue to the story of The Champion's chronicles in the Forgotten Realms of Baldur's Gate III. Tune in next time to find out if Shadowheart survived, if she's still mad at me, and how hard I have to punch her so that is no longer so.

[microtonalmatt]

Introducing a hostile and mysterious world

I'm still getting used to this site, so I'm not entirely sure what to use it for. Right now, my plan is to share progress on my games and music, of course, but the blog format entices me to share more detailed thoughts on specific subjects into the ether, whether or not anyone cares to read.

I have been watching a lot of classic science fiction TV, partly as research for my own science fiction game, Star Crucible. I never really watched TVshows as a kid and that pattern followed me into college. In 2017 I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time and found out I loved it. A few years ago, I began sampling other shows. I watched a bit of Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise, Babylon 5, and Stargate. The show I found myself hooked by the most was, probably to the dismay of many of its detractors, Star Trek Voyager.

Of the many Star Trek series, Voyager falls in a weird spot where its name is spoken in the same breath with the original series, TNG, and DS9 as the core and "best" Trek, yet it is frequently disparaged as terrible, though perhaps not as much as Enterprise. Voyager has some really bad episodes, it's true, but it also has some incredible highs, the cast is pretty well fleshed out and balanced, and there is a lot of humanity that I think Voyager explores better than other Trek shows.

The premise and long term goals of the show are very well laid out in the pilot episode: the starship Voyager is flung deep into a part of space far away from home and the federation and must travel back to familiar space. The problem however, is not finding the way home, as their sensors are more than capable of identifying where they are and where they want to go. The issue is the travel time required is unfeasible, and thus they must reach out to unknown alien cultures for assistance to make the journey. The Voyager crew must embrace new technology and share some of their own to survive, frequently in conflict with Trek's prime directive. And, in addition, half of Voyager's crew is made up of a dissenting faction of rebels that initially do not trust the military hierarchy of the federation. By the end of the pilot, it is very clear who the characters are, what their predicament is, and what they need to do, and how they plan to approach achieving their goals, and the series makes regular strides towards getting them home.

Just recently, I watched all of Farscape, a show with a similar premise which I enjoyed immensely. John Crichton and his motley crew of escaped alien prisoner friends must find their way home while fleeing the watchful eye of the Peacekeepers and other hostile aliens. The trouble is, through either a lack of initial planning or purposeful concealment or both, the introduction of Farscape's alien side of the galaxy is somewhat muddled.

Farscape's pilot focuses on getting the proverbial fish out of the proverbial water. John is an astronaut on Earth around 2000 and ends up in an accident that sends his solo-piloted module through a wormhole in the middle of a space battle. His craft accidentally collides with a small fighter craft and then is hauled into a larger organic ship, where he meets its alien pilot, three escaped prisoners, and a captured Peacekeeper. All of these characters, to one extent or another, want to find their way home. However, it's not initially obvious why this is a challenge for anyone other than John, because the level of technology available to this crew is not evident, and the prisoners are concealing their true goals.

Their ship, Moya, is a living creature called a leviathan, it has no weapons or means to defend itself, its starburst seems unreliable and random, and despite all of the aliens in the cast coming from space-faring cultures, none of them seem to have any idea where they are or any way of pinpointing what direction to travel aside from "away from Peacekeepers" into the "uncharted territories." At one point John asks to see a starchart in order to try to find a point of reference for where he is, and he is met with blank stares.

Sci-fi regularly breaks the laws of physics and realism for its narratives to work. However, it's hard to fathom how a part of the galaxy so rife with a multitude of diverse space-faring alien cultures constantly interacting can survive in space without a comprehensive mapping system for their neck of the woods. It took me nearly until the end of the first season to realize that the show was never going to make a serious attempt at establishing technological boundaries or relative location, both which I felt were essential to the progression of the overarching story. Granted, the true appeal of this show is its wide variety of interesting and weird aliens and the gradually developing troubled romance between John and the Peacekeeper Aeryn rather than a Trek-level dedication to worldbuilding.

I wanted to watch Farscape for inspiration to create aliens for Star Crucible, but I found myself thinking of Beeknighted instead. My current demo for the game does not yet establish much of the world and the player bee doesn't have a strong objective beyond "survive," so the subject has been on my mind. Much of the world map will be traversed by an airship-equivalent vessel called the Skepscog (literally a Beehive ("Skeps") ship ("cog")). How do I firmly establish the limitations and expectations of the world when the humans are using bows and arrows and bees are flying in skyships?

In the coming revised demo, Aife, the bee, will have the chance to meet a variety of other bee characters and learn about their place in the world. There are larger and more dangerous forces at work, the conflict between the humans and the troll, for instance, which will remain unknown for the player to discover. But I hope to better mesh the opening conflict with a more solid introduction to the world to give the story more weight and depth for those looking for it as I do.

Farscape is a harem isekai.

[youtwitinmyface]

NEWMEN #1

Written by Eric Stephenson and Rob Liefeld Drawn by Jeff Matsuda Published by Image Comics The Newman was a group of superheroes introduced in a crossover storyline called Extreme Prejudice, which ran through several issues of Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios comics that were published by Image Comics in 1993. The concept is not exactly original to be honest. They're basically the New Mutants, the comic that launched Liefeld to superstardom. It was revealed that some humans are born with the "Nu-Gene", which eventually manifests various superpowers in them. And for this there are many humans who fear and hate all people who are "Nu-Gene Positive." So wise adult has gathered a group of Nu-Gene Positive teenagers to train them how to use their powers.

Yeah, like I said, not exactly original. John Proctor is their leader/mentor. He had a connection to the original group of Newmen who existed back in the 1960's, but eventually disbanded. The kids on this team are the children of the originals, who Proctor assembled to face a supervillain called Quantum, who was basically the Extreme Studio's equivalent of Magneto.

In this first issue, which was published in April 1994, the team are living in a house in Seattle. The story opened with the teenagers playing basketball in the backyard. This is an effective way to introduce the characters and display their powers for the audience. We've got REIGN, a boy with various telekinetic powers which are focused through some type of emerald that he wears on his forehead. DASH, a girl who can run at super speed. BYRD, a boy with wings on his arms who can fly. EXIT, a boy who can create mini-wormholes in the air which allow him to transport himself and other objects instantly from one place to the next, like teleportation. And KODIAK, who's a big strong bear-like creature. The kids engage in a lot of trash-talking and horseplay, with Kodiak, in particular, being the butt of most jokes. After the game ends, Proctor calls them inside to lecture them on the need to improve their teamwork. Just then a story on the news saw an unnamed supervillain as attacked Washington University, and erected a wall of dirt around the campus. So Proctor has them suit up and head to the scene. The villain causing the ruckus calls himself Elemental, and he has the power to manipulate the ground...and air, and stuff. He's searching for something on the campus, but can't find it. and was actually ready to leave when the Newmen show up. They fight, they defeat him, and that's that. And it ends with a slight cliffhanger, which hints at the next threat the team will face. Overall it's a pretty generic book. As a teenager who bought everything Image published at the time I'm sure I loved it, but looking back at it as an adult I can see its weaknesses. I think this was Eric Stephenson's first full series as a writer, and I can see what he was going for, but as yet the characters weren't fully developed beyond creative names. It's hard not to compare this to Wildstorm's Gen 13, which debuted a couple of months earlier and also featured five teenagers born with superpowers who were led by an older man. That book was much better and would go on to become one of the biggest hits of the original Image Comics line-up. I believe this was also Jeff Matsuda's first professional work as an artist, and you can see the raw talent he possessed, but his work here is still very...90's. NEWMEN #1

[justyoursicanon]

🎶Headcanon Friday🎶

For the ego/character that Im going to make headcanons of for this Friday is Engineer Mark!

He doesn't exactly know how the internet works, especially games. He never really used the internet back at their home planet because he was too focused on becoming the dream head engineer that he is now.

But the Captain usually helps him learn some games, Gunther's the one that helps him specifically with the gun games.

VR was a huge thing for him, it helped him alot in giving him some good perspective views of space. Which helped him alot in making both the Invincible 1 and 2

Although after all the wormhole madness. When one of the crew members brought in the VR headset and asked Mark to try it. He was was really scared, it gave him the thought of what if everything wasn't over yet. That he's still in this crazy madness. It took him about an hour to take it off and he took the day off.

Vanilla, this guy likes vanilla. He also like Cookies n' cream as well.

There was one time he pretended he was flying the ship like a pirate because he made a pirate like steering wheel during some of his free time. Needless to say the Captain may have spotted him and laughed a little.

Oh ans the computer knows obviously. The computer usually teases it to him by mentioning a steering wheel.

Before the Captain gone on board the ship or mid preparing to travel. Mark would usually sit in his room or stop whatever he's building to rant about his ideas to Chica. When Mark gets excited about something during his rant, Chica encourages him by barking happily.

Coffee being the big deal for everyone was just chaos on its own. One time Mark had not slept for at least 4 days and one sip of coffee got him bouncing around the walls.

He listens to music when he's building and or looking through files and notes and sometimes sings along the music, he has sung aloud a couple of times and there was at least one time Celci popped in and told him to shut up-

And that's my headcanons for today's Headcanon friday! As I said, I can make multiple headcanons for headcanon friday and you can too! It can be about the septic egos, markiplier egos, sander sides, ect. Go ahead and share yours in my asks if ya want!

[dahniwitchoflight]

Pokemon Legends Ideas

speaking of pokemon though...

ideas for the various Pokemon Legends remake line:

Pokemon Legends: The Ancient Jungle/Mew

Based on an ancient jungle environment where fossil and dinosaur pokemon thrive an abound, the environment is thick muggy jungle and the lore of the game focuses on the discovery of the ancient pokemon Mew perhaps by following clues related to the origins of Ditto as potentially related to Mew, side stories about the origins of the legendary bird pokemon (also, even though Lugia is gen 2, perhaps he could be included here since hes the supposed leader of the bird trio? and the Johto game would focus on Ho-oh and the Beasts anyway) Mewtwo obivously wouldn’t feature but that’s fine he doesn’t need to, could easily have stories about Meltan and Melmetal instead, who are ancient pokemon

Pokemon Legends: The Burned Tower/Ho-oh

Based on a more traditional ancient Japanese style retelling of the origins of Ho-oh and the Legendary Beast trio, see the original tower burned, maybe finally see who exactly were the three original pokemon lost in the flames? with side stories about Celebi’s ancient forest and it’s travels through time but also GIVE ME UNOWN LORE BLEASE

Pokemon Legends: The Great Meteor/Jirachi

Goes into the ancient stories of the draconid people introduced in the delta episode of the ORAS remakes, Primal Ancient Kyogre and Groudon, at the peak of their power, a time where meteors constantly fell upon the earth and the first ever Mega-Evolution of Rayquaza, from the wish the first lorekeeper made upon the rainbow stone (Maybe this was originally just Jirachi themselves), plenty of side story content in the form of the Regi’s (Including Regigigas and Regidraco/Regieleki) and the twin Latias/Latios

Pokemon Legends: Arceus, duh

(but I can hope it’s not JUST Arceus, ples give some spotlight to the tons of underused in lore legendaries this gen, Darkrai, Cresselia, Shaymin, Manaphy, HEATRAN)

Pokemon Legends: The First Dragon/Kyurem/??? Pokemon that might have a different name then Kyurem

OBVIOUSLY gonna be about the first dragon, the true singular form of the original dragon that split into Kyurem, Reshiram and Zekrom and the conflict between the early factions of humans hinted from the story of black and white, give the Justice trio (Terrakion, Cobalion, Virizion, Keldeo) some side story content in the form of being active in those ancient human conflicts, Victini lore, the weather trio representing the wilderness of nature back in those times, Genesect very likely wouldn’t be a thing, but Meloetta could

Pokemon Legends: The Ultimate Weapon/Zygarde

Huge potential here for a pokemon game set during the great kalosian WAR, view the original stories of King AZ and the unique floette, how their story happened, give Zygarde some sort of role or function as antagonist against those who would create the weapon out of a captured Zerneas/Yveltal in it’s role as balancer of the natural order, easy easy side content stories, flesh out Diancie’s connection to the Carbinks, go into the story of that huge crystal sundial of Anistar City, Hoopa gots some cool stuff, and Volcanion could even have a role as something cool

Pokemon Legends: Ultra Space/Necrozma

While they could focus on Magearna for this game, since Magearna is the only pokemon with some Ancient Lore from within the region itself attached to it from this gen, I fell like Sun and Moon’s fancy legends game would actually be better served by exploring much deeper into the role of the Ultra Space, you get glimpses of the alien worlds when visiting the ultra beasts natural habitats, and you get the main Necrozma based city in ultraspace

Modern Alola is actually already very traditional, already holding fast to ancient observations and traditions that going back to plain olden times alola I feel wouldn’t do as much? Esp cuz all the interesting stuff back then the aura and totem Pokémon, all happened because of Necrozma’s fall into the world from Ultra Space

I think the intro would be best served as starting in the distant past of Alola sure, but then Necrozma falls out of Ultra Space, rips open a wormhole, and our protagonist is then Sucked Into it and their journey is throughout the cosmos of the space inbetween and giving legendary like lore to the actual Ultra Beasts themselves, Lunala and Solgaleo and Cosmog/Cosmoem originate from here anyway, so they could still be included in this story as our way back, perhaps as our original ally in the fight to stop Necrozma from devouring all the light of our world in the travels through ultra space

Marshadow and Zeraora should get some obvious love as well for sure

Pokemon Legends: The Darkest Day/Eternatus

So it’s true that we have a clear once a time story with the darkest day event from Eternatus’s history

but funnily enough, I kinda always figured that that “Darkest day” was actually Necrozma’s doing that got falsely attributed to Eternatus, since yknow, in eating of the light of the world, the day would actually darken, and doesn’t Eternatus look REALLY like something that popped out of an Ultra Wormhole? really makes you think...certainly would be a hell of a coincedence

On the flipside for “okay but what else would they do in ancient galar”, I feel like if they did do a Galar Legends game, I think a pokemon King Arthur type legendary story would be very cool, just legit make a pokemonized King Arthur/Calyrex story and we would go Nuts over it

sooo, Pokemon Legends: The Old Kingdom/Calyrex

obviously Calyrex and his steeds would be the main focus of this ancient tale with some sprinklings of Zacian/Zamazenta, but really when you glean through the ancient stories hidden in the galar, more of it focuses on the Acnient Kings of the galar region, and really Eternatus already got explored enough in the actual galar games anyway, give me the Dark Hidden Lore of Galar

but again, still some very cool side content with Zarude and Urshifu at least and perhaps maybe a tad more of the cuckoo galarian bird trio? make it tie all the way back to Legends Kanto game somehow? Ancient bird rivalry between twin trios of legendary birds would be a neat thing to explore

though how neat would it be if they actually tied all fo the ancient apolcalyptic stories from across the regions into one connected story?

in Hoenn it was that a great meteor threatened to destroy the planet so person wishes on a falling shiny rock to make the apocalypse go away, SunMoon has Necrozma darkening the sky and eating the light and when they got shattered it caused powerful shiny rocks to coalesce out of the sky, SwordShield had twin kings wish upon a magic shiny rock to make the darkest day go away

hey wait a minute, seeing a pattern there...

wonder if the great war of kalos old was also fought under some sky darkening event? and if it also involved the magical power of some shiny rock? and each region’s story is just their personal twist on the same ancient event, in the land of old, when all regions were once one...

what if the ancient conflict in Black/White’s history was actually the same war from kalos’s history? And it was actually a war between Unova and Kalos? Same war from two different sides of the conflict

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #527

Top Ten Videogames to Get the Sonic the Hedgehog Treatment

You can turn a game into a film. I mean, obviously you can; Raul Julia’s iconic performance as M. Bison in Street Fighter was nearly thirty years ago now. Talking about what games might make good movies is a bit redundant – so much so that I actually did this as a list in 2019. And, as serendipity would have it, the film that inspired that list was Sonic the Hedgehog. Wouldn’t you know it, a sequel has just come out! What are the chances? I’d say 319.7 million to one. That probably doesn’t make any sense. The film made a decent bit of cash, never mind, moving on.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Sonic. So it’s a videogame movie, obviously, but it’s also one of those films where human actors have to interact with CGI animal co-stars. These types of films are distinct from, say, Star Wars, where you have CGI characters such as Jar Jar Binks or Maz Kanata; I mean films like Alvin and the Chipmunks, Scooby Doo, Garfield, etc; films where, in a bygone age, the CG animal would almost certainly have been a traditional 2D animated character (as seen in the recent Tom and Jerry movie, the exception which proves the rule and cements my hypothesis!). Now I could – and one day probably will – do an entire Top Ten about these sorts of movies. but what I’m focusing on today is the fact that Sonic is not the only videogame character who could star in a Film Such As This! Oh no! There are lots! At least ten!

So that’s what we’re doing today. Ten games/game characters who could star in a Sonic-style live action/CGI movie. Not just “games that’d make films”; specifically games where your stars would be interacting with hoo-mans. And, naturally enough, I’ve provided explanation! Now one way of doing this would have been to go through the list of nineties platformers, but I’ve eschewed such thoughts; on the one hand, it’d have been to easy to list MegaDrive mascots, and on the other, nobody wants to see Bubsy the Bobcat or, Christ, Cool Spot in a movie. Not even the people who’d receive royalties.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the list.

Lemmings (1991): a beleaguered zoologist (James Marsden) discovers a new species of lemming – as predicted by his disgraced father (Brendan Gleeson). The lemmings could be his ticket to the big time, if he can stop them randomly wandering into things or blowing themselves up. Chaos ensues on the streets of Dundee, as Marsden learns to love the lemmings, and must stop them being nuked for profit.

Zool (1992): a beleaguered scientist (James Marsden) accidentally opens a portal to the Nth Dimension, bringing Zool into our works. Hijinks ensue as the ninja non-ant struggles to acclimatise, seeing evil everywhere, and eating lots of Chupa Chups. Meanwhile the wicked Mental Block (Brendan Gleeson) has followed him though the portal. In a post-credit scene, Zooz comes to look for Zool.

Putty Squad (1994): a beleaguered geneticist (James Marsden), down on his luck, accidentally invents a sentient putty. But his greedy boss (Brendan Gleeson) sees military potential, turning the putty into a crack fighting squad. Will our hero defend the putty or rake in the military industrial bucks?

Pikmin (2001): a beleaguered botanist (James Marsden) discovers a strange breed of plant-like creatures. They wreak havoc when he brings them back to the big city, but only a disgraced scientist (Brendan Gleeson) can help once big business get their hands on the cute but chaotic Pikmin.

Star Fox (1993): a beleaguered astronomer (James Marsden) sees strange lights in the sky, leading him to the crashed ship of Fox McCloud, who's followed a wormhole into our system. Now he needs to stay hidden but also contact his crew and foil the plans of the evil Emperor Andross (Brendan Gleeson), who is already on Earth.

Toonstruck (1996): a beleaguered animator (James Marsden), harangued by his producer (Brendan Gleeson), is surprised when his character Flux Wildly leaps from his computer and into the real world, causing untold chaos. Can our hero return him to his own world, and finish animating this scene before morning?

Gobliiins (1991): a beleaguered researcher (James Marsden), following the writings of his long-lost explorer father (Brendan Gleeson), discovers a family of three chaotic Goblins. Back in the big city they cause untold chaos, but also solve puzzles using their unique skills.

Animal Crossing (2001): a beleaguered travel agent (James Marsden) discovers a strange island populated by talking animals. Initially exploiting the tropical paradise for financial gain, will be learn the error of his ways? And will be finally pay off his loans to local entrepreneur/fearsome kingpin Tom Nook (Brendan Gleeson)?

Kirby’s Dream Land (1992): a beleaguered chef (James Marsden), on the search for new recipes, discovers a weird creature who can eat anything. Kirby makes him a star, especially with his money-grabbing publisher (Brendan Gleeson), but will Kirby literally eat him out of house and home?

Battletoads (1991): a beleaguered obstetrician (James Marsden) is shocked to discover three huge anthropomorphic talking frogs when on a hiking holiday in the Algarve. They've crashed their ship, and wouldn't you know it, shenanigans ensue. Can they get back into space and, I dunno, do something or the other, before being caught by the lawyer for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Brendan Gleeson)?

[asktherexsquad]

ok, its been a week now, here you go, it's the end of Rem and you two Rex's misery, you're welcome 😂

Well... Things are going pretty good, actually. Rocket's grinning broadly, sitting in a lawn chair as he looks down at the indoor skate park. Delighted, high pitched shrieks echo up from the bottom of the slopes, and it's not hard to figure out who it's coming from.

Rex has Rem strapped to his back in a modified backpack-turned-carrier, and the five-year-old has his arms wrapped tightly around his neck, squealing in delight. Rex seems unfazed, however, his focus remaining on treating the obstacles of the skatepark as a human obstacle course.

He has only just jumped down from pyramid before Rem pats his stubbly cheek and points excitedly. Jump on it! Jump on it!! he cries excitedly as he intimates the handrail. Without hesitating Rex expertly hops up onto the straight rail and runs across it, wobbling slightly as he kept his balance and making Rem yelp and laugh.

The wall!! Rem cries next. Go up the wall!!

With a grunt of confirmation, Rex turns to face the vert ramp, dashing forward as Rem yells in encouragement. Rex barely manages to reach the top, fingers catching the rim as Rem cheers. Slowly, carefully, Rex pulls himself and Rem up to the top of the platform, groaning as he drags himself to level ground.

"Uggghhhhhh...! Remy, I think you've put on a few pounds since last time!" Rex groans as he flops onto his stomach on the floor of the ship.

I'm getting bigger!! Rem confirms, scrambling out of the backpack and over Rex's back, making him groan in pain. I'm like... So much bigger!!

"Sooooo much," Rex agrees, staying flopped onto his front as Rem rummages through the front pouch of the backpack.

Having found what he was looking for, Rem happily sits down next to Rex, happily smacking the little prototypes of Rocket's and Rex's spacesuits together like action figures.

"That's... That's it?? The heroes traveled through... treacherous 'Skate Space' in their 'Backet Ship'... just to fight each other on the first planet they landed on??" Rex asked in mock horror as he catches his breath, rolling onto his side to watch the 'battle.'

Yeah! You make a good rocket ship! Rem says encouragingly, before focusing on making explosion sounds with his mouth as the purple hero jumped on top of the blue hero's head.

"Yeah? I was such a good ship they... had to fight each other?" Rex asks with a grin.

Yeah!! Rem agrees enthusiastically.

Rex chuckles, reaching into the backpack himself to grab something himself. "Well... What will happen when they discover..." Rex pulls out Rocket's stuffed dragon with a dramatic roar. "This planet is inhabited by an evil dragon?!?!"

NOOOO!! Rem cries dramatically. They have to... Rem lifts the heroes over his head. ...Fight together!!! Rem flings his hands forward to make his toys crash into the dragon, giving a ferocious roar of his own. They beat the evil dragon!!

"Oho, but the dragon isn't going down that easy! He can breathe... FOIYAH!!!" Rex makes a sound effect for flames as he smacks his hand into one of the 'heroes,' making Rem wail in defeat. "The purple hero gets melted!!!"

But they... their... their spacesuits don't gets melted! They're space suits!!! Rem insists, batting the dragon back and forth with the blue spacesuit. They can still win!!

All right, all right, if you two are gonna play games, you should move it away from the edge of the bowl, Rocket advises, scooping Rem up and making him squeal again.

But Rocket!! Our games!!! he protests.

You can keep playing! But... Rocket swings Rem through the air as he carries him away, making the little boy yell with laughter. You got sucked up by a wormhole!! And brought someplace safer.

Rex grins, standing up and following Rocket, making the dragon roar. "Oh no!! Rem, the dragon got brought through the wormhole too!!"

They... FIGHTS it!!! Rem shouts defiantly, waving his hands in the air even as Rocket shakes him. NEVER DEFEATED!!

Well said Rem! The heroes never get defeated!!~ Rocket agrees, stopping a safe distance from the skatepark and lifting Rem to his face to cover him in scratchy kisses.

Rem tries to push Rocket away, his laughter absolutely delighted.

Rex catches up to them and wraps his arms around both of them, leaning in to catch whoever he can with his own kisses.

Then, without warning, there's a bright flash of light. When it fades, Rem is standing beside them on his own two feet, his arms around both of his boys, his laugh deep and warm again.

"... Rem!!!" Rex and Rocket cry at the same time, trying to free themselves from his arms to get a good look at him again.

"Rem, you're back!!" Rex shouts in excitement, smacking his back excitedly. "Open your eyes!!!"

Rem does as he's told, blinking at his partners in shock as he realizes he can see eye-to-eye with them again. ... I'm back...! I'm me again!!

My boyfriend is back!! Finally!!! Rocket cries, before taking hold of Rem's face gently in his hands and kissing him deeply.

Rex laughs at them, rolling his eyes and ruffling Rem's hair. "Thanks for turning him back, whoever's up there. It's actually been a fun few weeks, but it's good to see him again."

[sage-nebula]

the pokemon company be like *thinly-veiled misogyny*

To be honest, the sexism isn’t even really thinly-veiled if you think about it. Like off the top of my head:

— Professor Juniper was our first female professor, and it took until Gen V to get her. But whereas all the other professors got to stand on their own without needing anyone else, Professor Juniper had to have her father come in to provide answers to various plot occurrences that she didn’t know. IIRC, she also inherited her practice from him, which was also something that the male professors before and after didn’t have to contend with. It’s a miracle that this was averted with Professors Magnolia and Sonia in Gen VIII, both of whom are women.

— Speaking of female professors being screwed over, in Gen VII we’re introduced to Professor Burnet, whose practice specifically focuses on ultra wormholes and disturbances in space-time (which makes sense since she was previously working on the Dream Radar). Given how much of the plot concerns ultra wormholes, you would think that she would be the main professor of the story, or at least play a big part. But you’re wrong! Instead she’s only in one mandatory scene, and then is basically never heard from again. Meanwhile, Kukui shows up all the goddamn time even though his goal (to create a League) is literally meaningless in the scope of the overall plot. (And even that could have been cool if it had delved into the socio-political ramifications of what overthrowing Alola’s current system of government for another one would mean, but now is not the time to get into the failings of Gen VII’s plot. I’ve gone through that enough times.)

— Back to Gen V for a second, we’re also given two rivals in the first of the Unova games: Bianca and Cheren. While Cheren, the male rival, is taken seriously and has it talked up over and over how great of a battler he is, Bianca has her Munna stolen from her halfway through the story and spends the rest of the game talking down on herself and ultimately deciding that her father was right and she really is not cut out to be a Pokémon Trainer. Keep in mind that Bianca was the first mandatory female rival in the games, because while May could be a rival in Gen III if you played as Brendan, if you chose to play as her, both rivals (Brendan and Wally) were male. So on that note, our rivals so far look like:

Gen I: Blue Oak (male)

Gen II: Silver (male)

Gen III: Wally (male), optional May (female), optional Brendan (male)

Gen IV: Barry (male) 

Gen V: Cheren (male), Bianca (female), Hugh (male)

Gen VI: Shauna (female), Tierno (male), Trevor (male), optional Serena (female), optional Calem (male)

Gen VII: Hau (male), Gladion (male)

Gen: Hop (male), Bede (male), Marnie (female)

So, let’s see. We only have two mandatory female rivals (Bianca and Marnie), as well as two optional female rivals (May and Serena). Meanwhile, we have twelve mandatory male rivals, as well as two optional male rivals (Brendan and Calem). To cap this off, while the mandatory male rivals (outside of the useless Kalos ones) are always treated as strong, competent battlers who have important roles in the story, our two mandatory female rivals, well . . .

Bianca: See above

Marnie: Gets battled a whole grand total of two times and has basically zero impact on the plot despite the fact that her brother is the only Gym Leader who didn’t give into Rose’s vision for how Galar should operate and use Dynamax evolution

And even when it comes to the optional ones, since Brendan is treated as the default MC by TPCi, that means May is the one who gives up training to go be a professor like her dad. (Which is the exact thing they basically did to Bianca in Gen V, except she studies under Juniper instead.) Serena at least keeps battling if she’s the rival, but jeez.

So to say there’s definite gender inequality where the rivals are concerned is a bit of an understatement.

— Moving away from the rivals, let’s talk about villains! We didn’t get a female villain until Gen VII with Lusamine, and even then she wasn’t allowed to stay a villain because I guess Game Freak doesn’t want to accept the fact that women can be evil, too. Moreover, all of Lusamine’s achievements come from the men in her life, and all of her motivations revolve around her husband. To spell it out:

- She inherited the Aether Foundation from her grandfather / father, without having founded it herself like we’re at first led to believe.

- Her husband Mohn was the one who discovered how the ultra wormholes work, not her. IIRC, he was also the primary researcher behind Type: Null’s creation.

- The reason why she does what she does is because she’s looking for her missing husband Mohn, with an added dash of “women just go crazy (and abuse their children) without their husbands!!1!!!” thrown in for flavor. 

Compare this to Giovanni, Maxie, Archie, Cyrus, Ghetsis, Colress, Lysandre, and now Chairman Rose, all of whom formed their own organizations (Giovanni inheriting his from his mother is anime only and does not pertain to the games at all) and had their own goals and desires, versus relying on someone else for those goals and desires. And as if Lusamine not being allowed to form her own organization and have her own goals for her own sake wasn’t bad enough, they then had to go and make it even worse in USUM by turning her into a damsel in distress in the Rainbow Rocket plot, depicting her as not only less capable as the male villains, but also less capable than her male subordinate. Gag me.

— On that note, Oleana is sorely underappreciated by basically everyone except the Twilight Wings writers considering she’s the only reason anything Rose did got done, yet got none of the credit for herself. Damn shame.

— Stepping away from the games for a moment, Generations was a hot mess in terms of sexism. First of all, they only ever used the male MCs, pretending that the female ones didn’t exist at all, even in cases where the female MCs are vastly more popular (e.g. May, Dawn, Hilda). Second, most of the episodes focused on male characters from the series, and the ones that didn’t were either there so they could disrespect the best character in the series by not giving her the episode she deserved (Zinnia), or were told from the point of view of a male character despite that it was supposed to be a female character’s story (Emma). And lastly, there was whatever the fuck that mess with Cheryl was. It was animated in a way that made it look like an anime not suitable for anyone under the age of eighteen. Like honestly, what the hell.

— Leaf has been consistently and constantly disrespected all over the franchise. Despite there allegedly being four trainers who left from Pallet Town (counting Ash) in the anime, Leaf has never been seen or mentioned even once throughout the two decades that anime has been running. They had an opportunity to show her in at least a cameo form in the 20th anniversary movie, but they chose not to do that either, adding yet another disappointment from that movie to the list. She had no appearances in Origins, no appearances in Generations, they didn’t do what they should have done in HGSS by making her the rival atop Mt Silver if you chose to play as Lyra, she wasn’t a skin for Pokémon Trainer in Super Smash Bros. until Ultimate, I’m pretty sure they never made an Amiibo for her either, they replaced her with her Special counterpart in LGPE and her characterization absolutely bonkers to boot, and back to Masters, SS Leaf doesn’t have the Main Character designation for the theme skills that SS Red has, and is also routinely left out of any story bits that feature Red or Blue. It’s a miracle she was even included in the Battling Legends event or whatever it was. As far as TPCi seems to be considered, Kanto only has one main character and that’s Red.

— Oh and speaking of Iris, they gave her the Gym Leader theme designation instead of the Champion designation, instead choosing to act like Alder is Unova’s only Champion when he, no offense, didn’t really fucking do anything in Gen V. :’) We hate to see it.

— In the current run of the anime, the two boys (Ash and Gou) have gotten to go around and have adventures for ~50 episodes while the girl (Koharu) has had to stay home and go to school. You can argue, “She wanted that!” all you want, but you have to remember that she only wants what the writers tell her to want, and the writers said the boys get to have adventures while the girls stay home. She finally has an Eevee and will presumably go on adventures now, but we’ll have to wait and see. And don’t get me wrong, I like Journeys and I love Gou as a character, but it is absolutely a Choice to not have a female lead present in the adventures at all and it’s one that the writers deliberately made for whatever reason.

— On that note, let’s look at Ash’s female companions, shall we? 

Misty: A Gym Leader who has a vague goal (water pokémon master) and is largely out of focus during her run as a primary companion. She had no rivals or in-series (as in, concrete ones she could accomplish before leaving the main cast) goals of her own.

May: A coordinator. Does have rivals and has a story, which is nice, but battling isn’t her focus.

Dawn: Another coordinator. Even more focus than May (she was written as a deuteragonist), but also not primarily focused on battling.

Iris: A battler (her Gym Leader / Champion Status is written out) who actually does get decent focus and a cool arc surrounding her connection to dragons. 

Serena: A performer, which is a girls-only career path that doesn’t have battling in it at all, unlike contests. Does have a goal, but much of her character is written around her crush for Ash and at the end of the series she says that he is her goal.

Lillie, Lana, Mallow: Honestly I didn’t watch enough of SM to have an opinion on how these three were handled outside of hating how Lusamine didn’t get to be a villain in the anime either.

Koharu: See above, she’s only just now getting to be involved with things.

Now, don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with being a coordinator (and we do see male coordinators too, such as Drew and Harley), and I think that both May and Dawn are wonderful characters. But it does make me feel some kind of way that the female characters were often given the “girly” sidequest while the male main character got to go for the Gym badges, especially since AG and DP went on for a good chunk of years. None of the ladies so far have been treated as badly as Serena was (that performer stuff is just nasty, I’m not sorry), but again, it’s a deliberate choice and something to think about, especially since I feel the only reason they didn’t go that route with Iris is because of her Gym Leader / Champion status in the games. 

I could probably think of more examples of the casual sexism in the series if I thought about it, but this is just from the top of my head. As you can see, there is a lot. All of this being said, and I’m putting major emphasis on this since I don’t want anyone to get it twisted—

I love Pokémon with my entire heart, flaws and all. It has been my hyperfixation for 22 years and that is not going to change any time soon. So DO NOT even dare suggest that I hate Pokémon, or shouldn’t play it, or anything like that. I will be playing Pokémon on my deathbed and nothing and no one will stop me.

But that being said, I criticize because I care. Because I wish it would do better. Pokémon is for everyone. It’s for boys, girls, nonbinary folks, and people all over the gender spectrum. But the treatment of its female characters and the abundance of favoritism shown toward the male characters leaves a lot to be desired (though at least girls are at the table, whereas trans folk are relegated to background NPCs and nonbinary folk are nowhere to be seen :/). I think Pokémon can get better—Magnolia and Sonia felt like a proper apology for how Juniper in particular was shafted, not to mention Burnet—but it’s got a long way to go.

(And also, yes, you’ve understood this right. Twilight Wings is the only anime series to not fuck up at all when it comes to sexism. You go, Twilight Wings. Four for you, Twilight Wings.)

[grigori77]

Summer 2021′s Movies - My Top Ten Favourite Films (Part 2)

The Top Ten:

10.  WEREWOLVES WITHIN – definitely one of the year’s biggest cinematic surprises so far, this darkly comic supernatural murder mystery from indie horror director Josh Ruben (Scare Me) is based on a video game, but you’d never know it – this bears so little resemblance to the original Ubisoft title that it’s a wonder anyone even bothered to make the connection, but even so, this is now notable for officially being the highest rated video game adaptation in Rotten Tomatoes history, with a Certified Fresh rating of 86%. Certainly it deserves that distinction, but there’s so much more to the film – this is an absolute blood-splattered joy, the title telling you everything you need to know about the story but belying the film’s pure, quirky genius.  Veep’s Sam Richardson is forest ranger Finn Wheeler, a gentle and socially awkward soul who arrives at his new post in the remote small town of Beaverton to discover the few, uniformly weird residents are divided over the oil pipeline proposition of forceful and abrasive businessman Sam Parker (The Hunt’s Wayne Duvall).  As he tries to fit in and find his feet, investigating the disappearance of a local dog while bonding with local mail carrier Cecily Moore (Other Space and This Is Us’ Milana Vayntrub), the discovery of a horribly mutilated human body leads to a standoff between the townsfolk and an enforced lockdown in the town’s ramshackle hotel as they try to work out who amongst them is the “werewolf” they suspect is responsible.  This is frequently hilarious, the offbeat script from appropriately named Mishna Wolff (I’m Down) dropping some absolutely zingers and crafting some enjoyably weird encounters and unexpected twists, while the uniformly excellent cast do much of the heavy-lifting to bring their rich, thoroughly oddball characters to vivid life – Richardson is thoroughly cuddly throughout, while Duvall is pleasingly loathsome, Casual’s Michaela Watkins is pleasingly grating as Trisha, flaky housewife to unrepentant local horn-dog Pete Anderton (Orange is the New Black’s Michael Chernus), and Cheyenne Jackson (American Horror Story) and Harry Guillen (best known, OF COURSE, as Guillermo in the TV version of What We Do In the Shadows) make an enjoyably spiky double-act as liberal gay couple Devon and Joaquim Wolfson; in the end, though, the film is roundly stolen by Vayntrub, who invests Cecily with a bubbly sweetness and snarky sass that makes it absolutely impossible to not fall completely in love with her (gods know I did).  This is a deeply funny film, packed with proper belly-laughs from start to finish, but like all the best horror comedies it takes its horror elements seriously, delivering some enjoyably effective scares and juicy gore, while the werewolf itself, when finally revealed, is realised through some top-notch prosthetics.  Altogether this was a most welcome under-the-radar surprise for the summer, and SO MUCH MORE than just an unusually great video game adaptation …

9.  THE TOMORROW WAR – although cinemas finally reopened in the UK in early summer, the bite of the COVID lockdown backlog was still very much in effect this blockbuster season, with several studios preferring to hedge their bets and wait for later release dates. Others turned to streaming services, including Paramount, who happily lined up a few heavyweight titles to open on major platforms in lieu of the big screen.  One of the biggest was this intended sci-fi action horror tentpole, meant to give Chris Pratt another potential franchise on top of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, which instead dropped in early July on Amazon Prime.  So, was it worth staying in on a Saturday night instead of heading out for something on the BIG screen?  Mostly yes, although it’s mainly a trashy, guilty pleasure big budget B-picture charm that makes this such a worthwhile experience – the film’s biggest influences are clearly Independence Day and Starship Troopers, two admirably clunky blockbusters that DEFINED prioritising big spectacle and overblown theatrics over intelligent writing and realistic storytelling.  It doesn’t help that the premise is pure bunk – in 2022, a wormhole opens from thirty years in the future, and a plea for help is sent back with a bunch of very young future soldiers.  Seems Earth will become overrun by an unstoppable swarm of nasty alien critters called Whitespikes in 25 years, and the desperate human counteroffensive have no choice but to bring soldiers from our present into the future to help them fight back and save the humanity from imminent extinction.  Less than a year later, the world’s standing armies have been decimated and a worldwide draft has been implemented, with normal everyday adults being sent through for a seven day tour from which very few return.  Pratt plays biology teacher and former Green Beret Dan Forrester, one of the latest batch of draftees to be sent into the future along with a selection of chefs, soccer moms and other average joes – his own training and experience serves him better than most when the shit hits the fan, but it soon becomes clear that he’s just as out of his depth as everyone else as the sheer enormity of the threat is revealed.  But when he becomes entangled with a desperate research outfit led by Muri (Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski) who seem to be on the verge of a potential world-changing scientific breakthrough, Dan realises there just might be a slender hope for humanity after all … this is every bit as over-the-top gung-ho bonkers as it sounds, and just as much fun.  Director Chris McKay may still be pretty fresh (with only The Lego Batman Movie under his belt to date), but he shows a lot of talent and potential for big budget blockbuster filmmaking here, delivering with guts and bravado on some major action sequences (a fraught ticking-clock SAR operation through a war-torn Miami is the film’s undeniable highlight, but a desperate battle to escape a blazing oil rig also really impresses), as well as handling some impressively complex visual effects work and wrangling some quality performances from his cast (altogether it bodes well for his future, which includes Nightwing and Johnny Quest as future projects).  Chris Pratt can do this kind of stuff in his sleep – Dan is his classic fallible and self-deprecating but ultimately solid and kind-hearted action hero fare, effortlessly likeable and easy to root for – and his supporting cast are equally solid, Strahovsky going toe-to-toe with him in the action sequences while also creating a rewardingly complex smart-woman/badass combo in Muri, while the other real standouts include Sam Richardson (Veep, Werewolves Within) and Edwin Hodge (The Purge movies) as fellow draftees Charlie and Dorian, the former a scared-out-of-his-mind tech geek while the latter is a seriously hardcore veteran serving his THIRD TOUR, and the ever brilliant J.K. Simmonds as Dan’s emotionally scarred estranged Vietnam-vet father, Jim.  Sure, it’s derivative as hell and thoroughly predictable (with more than one big twist you can see coming a mile away), but the pace is brisk, the atmosphere pregnant with a palpable doomed urgency, and the creatures themselves are a genuinely convincing world-ending threat, the design team and visual effects wizards creating genuine nightmare fuel in the feral and unrelenting Whitespikes.  Altogether this WAS an ideal way to spend a comfy Saturday night in, but I think it could have been JUST AS GOOD for a Saturday night OUT at the Pictures …

8.  ARMY OF THE DEAD – another high profile release that went straight to streaming was this genuine monster hit for Netflix from one of this century’s undeniable heavyweight action cinema masters, the indomitable Zack Snyder, who kicked off his career with an audience-dividing (but, as far as I’m concerned, ultimately MASSIVELY successful) remake of George Romero’s immortal Dawn of the Dead, and has finally returned to zombie horror after close to two decades away.  The end result is, undeniably, the biggest cinematic guilty pleasure of the entire summer, a bona fide outbreak horror EPIC in spite of its tightly focused story – Dave Bautista plays mercenary Scott Ward, leader a badass squad of soldiers of fortune who were among the few to escape a deadly outbreak of a zombie virus in the city of Las Vegas, enlisted to break into the vault of one of the Strip’s casinos by owner Bly Tanaka (a fantastically game turn from Hiroyuki Sanada) and rescue $200 million still locked away inside.  So what’s the catch?  Vegas remains ground zero for the outbreak, walled off from the outside world but still heavily infested within, and in less than three days the US military intends to sterilise the site with a tactical nuke.  Simple premise, down and dirty, trashy flick, right?  Wrong – Snyder has never believed in doing things small, having brought us unapologetically BIG cinema with the likes of 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel and, most notably, his version of Justice League, so this is another MASSIVE undertaking, every scene shot for maximum thrills or emotional impact, each set-piece executed with his characteristic militaristic precision and explosive predilection (a harrowing fight for survival against a freshly-awakened zombie horde in tightly packed casino corridors is the film’s undeniable highlight), and the gauzy, dreamlike cinematography gives even simple scenes an intriguing and evocative edge that really does make you feel like you’re watching something BIG.  The characters all feel larger-than-life too – Bautista can seem somewhat cartoonish at times, and this role definitely plays that as a strength, making Scott a rock-hard alpha male in the classic Hollywood mould, but he’s such a great actor that of course he’s able to invest the character with real rewarding complexity beneath the surface; Ana de la Reguera (Eastbound & Down) and Nora Arnezeder (Zoo, Mozart in the Jungle), meanwhile, both bring a healthy dose of oestrogen-fuelled badassery to proceedings as, respectively, Scott’s regular second-in-command, Maria Cruz, and Lilly the Coyote, Power’s Omari Hardwick and Matthias Schweighofer (You Are Wanted) make for a fun odd-couple double act as circular-saw-wielding merc Vanderohe and Dieter, the nervous, nerdy German safecracker brought in to crack the vault, and Fear the Walking Dead’s Garrett Dillahunt channels spectacular scumbag energy as Tanaka’s sleazy former casino boss Martin, while latecomer Tig Notaro (Star Trek Discovery) effortlessly rises above her last-minute-casting controversy to deliver brilliantly as sassy and acerbic chopper pilot Peters.  I think it goes without saying that Snyder can do this in his sleep, but he definitely wasn’t napping here – he pulled out all the stops on this one, delivering a thrilling, darkly comic and endearingly CRACKERS zombie flick that not only compares favourably to his own Dawn but is, undeniably, his best film for AGES.  Netflix certainly seem to be pleased with the results – a spinoff prequel, Army of Thieves, starring Dieter in another heist thriller, is set to drop in October, with an animated series following in the Spring, and there’s already rumours of a sequel in development.  I’m certainly up for more …

7.  BLACK WIDOW – no major blockbuster property was hit harder by COVID than the MCU, which saw its ENTIRE SLATE for 2020 delayed for over a year in the face of Marvel Studios bowing to the inevitability of the Pandemic and unwilling to sacrifice those all-important box-office receipts by just sending their films straight to streaming.  The most frustrating part for hardcore fans of the series was the delay of a standalone film that was already criminally overdue – the solo headlining vehicle of founding Avenger and bona fide female superhero ICON Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow.  Equally frustratingly, then, this film seems set to be overshadowed by real life controversy as star and producer Scarlett Johansson goes head-to-head with Disney in civil court over their breach-of-contract after they hedged their bets by releasing the film simultaneously in cinemas and on their own streaming platform, which has led to poor box office as many of the film’s potential audience chose to watch it at home instead of risk movie theatres with the virus still very much remaining a threat (and Disney have clearly reacted AGAIN, now backtracking on their release policy by instigating a new 45-day cinematic exclusivity window on all their big releases for the immediate future). But what of the film itself?  Well Black Widow is an interesting piece of work, director Cate Shortland (Berlin Syndrome) and screenwriter Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) delivering a decidedly stripped-back, lean and intellectual beast that bears greater resemblance to the more cerebral work of the Russo Brothers on their Captain America films than the more classically bombastic likes of Iron Man, Thor or the Avengers flicks, concentrating on story and characters over action and spectacle as we wind back the clock to before the events of Infinity War and Endgame, when Romanoff was on the run after Civil War, hunted by the government-appointed forces of US Secretary of State “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) after violating the Sokovia Accords.  Then a mysterious delivery throws her back into the fray as she finds herself targeted by a mysterious assassin, forcing her to team up with her estranged “sister” Yelena Belova (Midsommar’s Florence Pugh), another Black Widow who’s just gone rogue from the same Red Room Natasha escaped years ago, armed with a McGuffin capable of foiling a dastardly plot for world domination.  The reluctant duo need help in this endeavour though, enlisting the aid of their former “parents”, veteran Widow and scientist Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) and Alexie Shostakov (Stranger Things’ David Harbour), aka the Red Guardian, a Russian super-soldier intended to be their counterpart to Captain America, who’s been languishing in a Siberian gulag for the last twenty years. After the Earth-shaking, universe-changing events of recent MCU events, this film certainly feels like a much more self-contained, modest affair, playing for much smaller stakes, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less worthy of our attention – this is as precision-crafted as anything we’ve seen from Marvel so far, but it also feels like a refreshing change of pace after all those enormous cosmic shenanigans, while the script is as tight as a drum, propelling a taut, suspense-filled thriller that certainly doesn’t scrimp on the action front.  Sure, the set-pieces are very much in service of the story here, but they’re still the pre-requisite MCU rollercoaster rides, a selection of breathless chases and bone-crunching fights that really do play to the strengths of one of our favourite Avengers, but this is definitely one of those films where the real fireworks come when the film focuses on the characters – Johansson is so comfortable with her character she’s basically BECOME Natasha Romanoff, kickass and ruthless and complex and sassy and still just desperate for a family (though she hides it well throughout the film), while Weisz delivers one of her best performances in years as a peerless professional who keeps her emotions tightly reigned in but slowly comes to realise that she was never more happy than when she was pretending to be a simple mother, and Ray Winstone does a genuinely fantastic job of taking a character who could have been one of the MCU’s most disappointingly bland villains, General Dreykov, master of the Red Room, and investing him with enough oily charisma and intense presence to craft something truly memorable (frustratingly, the same cannot be said for the film’s supposed main physical threat, Taskmaster, who performs well in their frustratingly brief appearances but ultimately gets Darth Maul levels of short service).  The true scene-stealers in the film, however, are Alexie and Yelena – Harbour’s clearly having the time of his life hamming it up as a self-important, puffed-up peacock of a superhero who never got his shot and is clearly (rightly) decidedly bitter about it, preferring to relive the life he SHOULD have had instead of remembering the good in the one he got; Pugh, meanwhile, is THE BEST THING IN THE WHOLE MOVIE, easily matching Johanssen scene-for-scene in the action stakes but frequently out-performing her when it comes to acting, investing Yelena with a sweet naivety and innocence and a certain amount of quirky geekiness that makes for one of the year’s most endearing female protagonists (certainly one who, if the character goes the way I think she will, is thoroughly capable of carrying the torch for the foreseeable future).  In the end this is definitely one of the LEAST typical, by-the-numbers MCU films to date, and by delivering something a little different I think they’ve given us just the kind of leftfield swerve the series needs right now.  It’s certainly one of their most fascinating and rewarding films so far, and since it seems to be Johansson’s final tour of duty as the Black Widow, it’s also a most fitting farewell indeed.

6.  WRATH OF MAN – Guy Ritchie’s latest (regarded by many as a triumphant return to form, which I consider unfair since I don’t think he ever went away, especially after 2020’s spectacular The Gentlemen) is BY FAR his darkest film – let’s get this clear from the start.  Anyone who knows his work knows that Ritchie consistently maintains a near flawless balance and humour and seriousness in his films that gives them a welcome quirkiness that is one of his most distinctive trademarks, so for him to suddenly deliver a film which takes itself SO SERIOUSLY is one hell of a departure.  This is a film which almost REVELS in its darkness – Ritchie’s always loved bathing in man’s baser instincts, but Wrath of Man almost makes a kind of twisted VIRTUE out of wallowing in the genuine evils that men are capable of inflicting on each other.  The film certainly kicks off as it means to go on – In a tour-de-force single-shot opening, we watch a daring armoured car robbery on the streets of Los Angeles that goes horrifically wrong, an event which will have devastating consequences in the future.  Five months later, Fortico Security hires taciturn Brit Patrick Hill (Jason Statham) to work as a guard in one of their trucks, and on his first run he single-handedly foils another attempted robbery with genuinely uncanny combat skills. The company is thrilled, amazed by the sheer ability of their new hire, but Hill’s new colleagues are more concerned, wondering exactly what they’ve let themselves in for.  After a second foiled robbery, it becomes clear that Hill’s reputation has grown, but fellow guard Haiden (Holt McCallany), aka “Bullet”, begins to suspect there might be something darker going on … Ritchie is firing on all cylinders here, delivering a PERFECT slow-burn suspense thriller which plays its cards close to its chest and cranks up its piano wire tension with artful skill as it builds to a devastating, knuckle-whitening explosive heist that acts as a cathartic release for everything that’s built up over the past hour and a half.  In typical Ritchie style the narrative is non-linear, the story unfolding in four distinct parts told from clearly differentiated points of view, allowing the clues to be revealed at a trickle that effortlessly draws the viewer in as they fall deeper down the rabbit hole, leading to a harrowing but strangely poignant denouement which is perfectly in tune with everything that’s come before. It’s an immense pleasure finally getting to see Statham working with Ritchie again, and I don’t think he’s ever been better than he is here – he's always been a brilliantly understated actor, but there’s SO MUCH going on under Hill’s supposedly impenetrable calm that every little peek beneath the armour is a REVELATION; McCallany, meanwhile, has landed his best role since his short but VERY sweet supporting turn in Fight Club, seemingly likeable and fallible as the kind of easy-going co-worker anyone in the service industry would be THRILLED to have, but giving Bullet far more going on under the surface, while there are uniformly excellent performances from a top-shelf ensemble supporting cast which includes Josh Hartnett, Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Sicario), Andy Garcia, Laz Alonso (The Boys), Eddie Marsan, Niamh Algar (Raised By Wolves) and Darrell D’Silva (Informer, Domina), and a particularly edgy and intense turn from Scott Eastwood.  This is one of THE BEST thrillers of the year, by far, a masterpiece of mood, pace and plot that ensnares the viewer from its gripping opening and hooks them right up to the close, a triumph of the genre and EASILY Guy Ritchie’s best film since Snatch.  Regardless of whether or not it’s a RETURN to form, we can only hope he continues to deliver fare THIS GOOD in the future …

5.  FEAR STREET (PARTS 1-3) – Netflix have gotten increasingly ambitious with their original filmmaking over the years, and some of this years’ offerings have reached new heights of epic intention.  Their most exciting release of the summer was this adaptation of popular children’s horror author R.L. Stine’s popular book series, a truly gargantuan undertaking as the filmmakers set out to create an entire TRILOGY of films which were then released over three consecutive weekends.  Interestingly, these films are most definitely NOT for kids – this is proper, no-holds-barred supernatural slasher horror, delivering highly calibrated shocks and precision jump scares, a pervading atmosphere of insidious dread and a series of inventively gruesome kills.  The story revolves around two neighbouring small towns which have had vastly different fortunes over more than three centuries of existence – while the residents of Sunnyvale are unusually successful, living idyllic lives in peace and prosperity, luck has always been against the people of Shadyside, who languish in impoverishment, crime and misfortune, while the town has become known as the Murder Capital of the USA due to frequent spree killings.  Some attribute this to the supposed curse of a local urban legend, Sarah Fier, who became known as the Fier Witch after her execution for witchcraft in 1668, but others dismiss this as simple superstition.  Part 1 is set in 1994, as the latest outbreak of serial mayhem begins in Shadyside, dragging a small group of local teens – Deena Johnson (She Never Died’s Kiana Madeira) and Samantha Fraser (Olivia Scott Welch), a young lesbian couple going through a difficult breakup, Deena’s little brother Josh (The Haunted Hathaways’ Benjamin Flores Jr.), a nerdy history geek who spends most of his time playing video games or frequenting violent crime-buff online chatrooms, and their delinquent friends Simon (Eight Grade’s Fred Hechinger) and Kate (Julia Rehwald) – into the age-old ghostly conspiracy as they find themselves besieged by indestructible undead serial killers from the town’s past, reasoning that the only way they can escape with their lives is to solve the mystery and bring the Fier Witch some much needed closure.  Part 2, meanwhile, flashes back to a previous outbreak in 1977, in which local sisters Ziggy (Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink) and Cindy Berman (Emily Rudd), together with future Sunnyvale sheriff Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland) were among the kids hunted by said killers during a summer camp “colour war”.  As for Part 3, that goes all the way back to 1668 to tell the story of what REALLY happened to Sarah Fier, before wrapping up events in 1994, culminating in a terrifying, adrenaline-fuelled showdown in the Shadyside Mall.  Throughout, the youthful cast are EXCEPTIONAL, Madeira, Welch, Flores Jr., Sink and Rudd particularly impressing, while there are equally strong turns from Ashley Zuckerman (The Code, Designated Survivor) and Community’s Gillian Jacobs as the grown-up versions of two key ’77 kids, and a fun cameo from Maya Hawke in Part 1.  This is most definitely retro horror in the Stranger Things mould, perfectly executed period detail bringing fun nostalgic flavour to all three of the timelines while the peerless direction from Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon) and wire-tight, sharp-witted screenplays from Janiak, Kyle Killen (Lone Star, The Beaver), Phil Graziadel, Zak Olkewicz and Kate Trefry strike a perfect balance between knowing dark humour and knife-edged terror, as well as weaving an intriguingly complex narrative web that pulls the viewer in but never loses them to overcomplication.  The design, meanwhile, is evocative, the cinematography (from Stanger Things’ Caleb Heymann) is daring and magnificently moody, and the killers and other supernatural elements of the film are handled with skill through largely physical effects.  This is definitely not a standard, by-the-numbers slasher property, paying strong homage to the sub-genre’s rules but frequently subverting them with expert skill, and it’s as much fun as it is frightening.  Give us some more like this please, Netflix!

4.  THE SPARKS BROTHERS – those who’ve been following my reviews for a while will known that while I do sometimes shout about documentary films, they tend to show up in my runners-up lists – it’s a great rarity for one to land in one of my top tens.  This lovingly crafted deep-dive homage to cult band Sparks, from self-confessed rabid fanboy Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim), is something VERY SPECIAL INDEED, then … there’s a vague possibility some of you may have heard the name before, and many of you will know at least one or two of their biggest hits without knowing it was them (their greatest hit of all time, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, immediately springs to mind), but unless you’re REALLY serious about music it’s quite likely you have no idea who they are, namely two brothers from California, Russell and Ronald Mael, who formed a very sophisticated pop-rock band in the late 60s and then never really went away, having moments of fame but mostly working away in the background and influencing some of the greatest bands and musical artists that followed them, even if many never even knew where that influence originally came from. Wright’s film is an engrossing joy from start to finish (despite clocking in at two hours and twenty minutes), following their eclectic career from obscure inception as Halfnelson, through their first real big break with third album Kimono My Place, subsequent success and then fall from popularity in the mid-70s, through several subsequent revitalisations, all the way up to the present day with their long-awaited cinematic breakthrough, revolutionary musical feature Annette – throughout Wright keeps the tone light and the pace breezy, allowing a strong and endearing sense of irreverence to rule the day as fans, friends and the brothers themselves offer up fun anecdotes and wax lyrical about what is frequently a larger-than-life tragicomic soap opera, utilising fun, crappy animation and idiosyncratic stock footage inserts alongside talking-head interviews that were made with a decidedly tongue-in-cheek style – Mike Myers good-naturedly rants about how we can see his “damned mole” while 80s New Romantic icons Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, while shot together, are each individually labelled as “Duran”.  Ron and Russ themselves, meanwhile, are clearly having huge fun, gently ribbing each other and dropping some fun deadpan zingers throughout proceedings, easily playing to the band’s strong, idiosyncratic sense of hyper-intelligent humour, while the aforementioned celebrity talking-heads are just three amongst a whole wealth of famous faces that may surprise you – there’s even an appearance by Neil Gaiman, guys!  Altogether this is 2+ hours of bright and breezy fun chock full of great music and fascinating information, and even hardcore Sparks fans are likely to learn more than a little over the course of the film, while for those who have never heard of Sparks before it’s a FANTASTIC introduction to one of the greatest ever bands that you’ve never heard of.  With luck there might even be more than a few new fans before the year is out …

3.  GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE – Netflix’ BEST offering of the summer was this surprise hit from Israeli writer-director Navot Papushado (Rabies, Big Bad Wolves), a heavily stylised black comedy action thriller that passes the Bechdel Test with FLYING COLOURS.  Playing like a female-centric John Wick, it follows ice-cold, on-top-of-her-game assassin Sam (Karen Gillan) as her latest assignment has some unfortunate side effects, leading her to take on a reparation job to retrieve some missing cash for the local branch of the Irish Mob.  The only catch is that a group of thugs have kidnapped the original thief’s little girl, 12 year-old Emily (My Spy’s Chloe Coleman), and Sam, in an uncharacteristic moment of sympathy, decides to intervene, only for the money to be accidentally destroyed in the process.  Now she’s got the Mob and her own employers coming after her, and she not only has to save her own skin but also Emily’s, leading her to seek help from the one person she thought she might never see again – her mother, Scarlet (Lena Headey), a master assassin in her own right who’s been hiding from the Mob herself for years.  The plot may be simple but at times also a little over-the-top, but the film is never anything less than a pure, unadulterated pleasure, populated with fascinating, living and breathing characters of real complexity and nuance, while the script (co-written by relative newcomer Ehud Lavski) is tightly-reined and bursting with zingers.  Most importantly, though, Papushado really delivers on the action front – these are some of the best set-pieces I’ve seen this year, Gillan, her co-stars and the various stunt-performers acquitting themselves admirably in a series of spectacular fights, gun battles and a particularly imaginative car chase that would be the envy of many larger, more expensive productions.  Gillan and Coleman have a sweet, awkward chemistry, the MCU star particularly impressing in a subtly nuanced performance that also plays beautifully against Headey’s own tightly controlled turn, while there is awesome support from Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh and Carla Gugino as Sam’s adoptive aunts Anna May, Florence and Madeleine, a trio of “librarians” who run a fine side-line in illicit weaponry and are capable of unleashing some spectacular violence of their own; the film’s antagonists, on the other hand, are exclusively masculine – the mighty Ralph Inneson is quietly ruthless as Irish boss Jim McAlester, while The Terror’s Adam Nagaitis is considerably more mercurial as his mad dog nephew Virgil, and Paul Giamatti is the stately calm at the centre of the storm as Sam’s employer Nathan, the closest thing she has to a father.  There’s so much to enjoy in this movie, not just the wonderful characters and amazing action but also the singularly engrossing and idiosyncratic style, deeply affecting themes of the bonds of found family and the healing power of forgiveness, and a rewarding through-line of strong women triumphing against the brutalities of toxic masculinity.  I love this film, and I invite you to try it out, cuz I’m sure you will too.

2.  THE SUICIDE SQUAD – the most fun I’ve had at the cinema so far this year is the long-awaited (thanks a bunch, COVID) redress of another frustrating imbalance from the decidedly hit and miss DCEU superhero franchise, in which Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director James Gunn has finally delivered a PROPER Suicide Squad movie after David Ayer’s painfully compromised first stab at the property back in 2016.  That movie was enjoyable enough and had some great moments, but ultimately it was a clunky mess, and while some of the characters were done (quite) well, others were painfully botched, even ruined entirely.  Thankfully Warner Bros. clearly learned their lesson, giving Gunn free reign to do whatever he wanted, and the end result is about as close to perfect as the DCEU has come to date.  Once again the peerless Viola Davis plays US government official Amanda Waller, head of ARGUS and the undisputable most evil bitch in all the DC Universe, who presides over the metahuman prisoners of the notorious supermax Belle Reve Prison, cherry-picking inmates for her pet project Taskforce X, the titular Suicide Squad sent out to handle the kind of jobs nobody else wants, in exchange for years off their sentences but controlled by explosive implants injected into the base of their skulls.  Their latest mission sees another motley crew of D-bags dispatched to the fictional South African island nation of Corto Maltese to infiltrate Jotunheim, a former Nazi facility in which a dangerous extra-terrestrial entity that’s being developed into a fearful bioweapon, with orders to destroy the project in order to keep it out of the hands of a hostile anti-American regime which has taken control of the island through a violent coup.  Where the first Squad felt like a clumsily-arranged selection of stereotypes with a few genuinely promising characters unsuccessfully moulded into a decidedly forced found family, this new batch are convincingly organic – they may be dysfunctional and they’re all almost universally definitely BAD GUYS, but they WORK, the relationship dynamics that form between them feeling genuinely earned.  Gunn has already proven himself a master of putting a bunch of A-holes together and forging them into band of “heroes”, and he’s certainly pulled the job off again here, dredging the bottom of the DC Rogues Gallery for its most ridiculous Z-listers and somehow managing to make them compelling.  Sure, returning Squad-member Harley Quinn (the incomparable Margot Robbie, magnificent as ever) has already become a fully-realised character thanks to Birds of Prey, so there wasn’t much heavy-lifting to be done here, but Gunn genuinely seems to GET the character, so our favourite pixie-esque Agent of Chaos is an unbridled and thoroughly unpredictable joy here, while fellow veteran Colonel Rick Flagg (a particularly muscular and thoroughly game Joel Kinnaman) has this time received a much needed makeover, Gunn promoting him from being the first film’s sketchily-drawn “Captain Exposition” and turning him into a fully-ledged, well-thought-out human being with all the requisite baggage, including a newfound sense of humour; the newcomers, meanwhile, are a thoroughly fascinating bunch – reluctant “leader” Bloodsport/Robert DuBois (a typically robust and playful Idris Elba), unapologetic douchebag Peacemaker/Christopher Smith (probably the best performance I’ve EVER seen John Cena deliver), and socially awkward and seriously hard-done-by nerd (and by far the most idiotic DC villain of all time) the Polka-Dot Man/Abner Krill (a genuinely heart-breaking hangdog performance from Ant-Man’s David Dastmalchian); meanwhile there’s a fine trio of villainous turns from the film’s resident Big Bads, with Juan Diego Botta (Good Behaviour) and Joaquin Cosio (Quantum of Solace, Narcos: Mexico) making strong impressions as newly-installed dictator Silvio Luna and his corrupt right hand-man General Suarez, although both are EASILY eclipsed by the typically brilliant Peter Capaldi as louche and quietly deranged supervillain The Thinker/Gaius Greives (although the film’s ULTIMATE threat turns out to be something a whole lot bigger and more exotic). The film is ROUNDLY STOLEN, however, by a truly adorable double act (or TRIPLE act, if you want to get technical) – Daniella Melchior makes her breakthrough here in fine style as sweet, principled and kind-hearted narcoleptic second-generation supervillain Ratcatcher II/Cleo Cazo, who has the weird ability to control rats (and who has a pet rat named Sebastian who frequently steals scenes all on his own), while a particular fan-favourite B-lister makes his big screen debut here in the form of King Shark/Nanaue, a barely sentient anthropomorphic Great White “shark god” with an insatiable appetite for flesh and a naturally quizzical nature who was brilliantly mo-capped by Steve Agee (The Sarah Silverman Project, who also plays Waller’s hyperactive assistant John Economos) but then artfully completed with an ingenious vocal turn from Sylvester Stallone. James Gunn has crafted an absolute MASTERPIECE here, EASILY the best film he’s made to date, a riotous cavalcade of exquisitely observed and perfectly delivered dark humour and expertly wrangled narrative chaos that has great fun playing with the narrative flow, injects countless spot-on in-jokes and irreverent but utterly essential throwaway sight-gags, and totally endears us to this glorious gang of utter morons right from the start (in which Gunn delivers what has to be one of the most skilful deep-fakes in cinematic history).  Sure, there’s also plenty of action, and it’s executed with the kind of consummate skill we’ve now come to expect from Gunn (the absolute highlight is a wonderfully bonkers sequence in which Harley expertly rescues herself from captivity), but like everything else it’s predominantly played for laughs, and there’s no getting away from the fact that this film is an absolute RIOT.  By far the funniest thing I’ve seen so far this year, and if I’m honest this is the best of the DCEU offerings to date, too (for me, only the exceptional Birds of Prey can compare) – if Warner Bros. have any sense they’ll give Gunn more to do VERY SOON …

1.  A QUIET PLACE, PART II – while UK cinemas finally reopened in early May, I was determined that my first trip back to the Big Screen for 2021 was gonna be something SPECIAL, and indeed I already knew what that was going to be. Thankfully I was not disappointed by my choice – 2018’s A Quiet Place was MY VERY FAVOURITE horror movie of the 2010s, an undeniable masterclass in suspense and sustained screen terror wrapped around a refreshingly original killer concept, and I was among the many fans hoping we’d see more in the future, especially after the film’s teasingly open ending.  Against the odds (or perhaps not), writer-director/co-star John Krasinski has pulled off the seemingly impossible task of not only following up that high-wire act, but genuinely EQUALLING it in levels of quality – picking up RIGHT where the first film left off (at least after an AMAZING scene-setting opening in which we’re treated to the events of Day 1 of the downfall of humanity), rejoining the remnants of the Abbott family as they’re forced by circumstances to up-sticks from their idyllic farmhouse home and strike out into the outside world once more, painfully aware at all times that they must maintain perfect silence to avoid the ravenous attentions of the lethal blind alien beasties that now sit at the top of the food chain.  Circumstances quickly become dire, however, and embattled mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is forced to ally herself with estranged family friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy), now a haunted, desperate vagrant eking out a perilous existence in an abandoned factory, in order to safeguard the future of her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Marcus (Noah Jupe) and their newborn baby brother.  Regan, however, discovers evidence of more survivors, and with her newfound weapon against the aliens she recklessly decides to set off on her own in the hopes of aiding them before it’s too late … it may only be his second major blockbuster as a director, but Krasinski has once again proven he’s a true heavyweight talent, effortlessly carving out fresh ground in this already magnificently well-realised dystopian universe while also playing magnificently to the established strengths of what came before, delivering another peerless thrill-ride of unbearable tension and knuckle-whitening terror.  The central principle of utilising sound at a very strict premium is once again strictly adhered to here, available sources of dialogue once again exploited with consummate skill while sound design and score (another moody triumph from Marco Beltrami) again become THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of the whole production. The ruined world is once again realised beautifully throughout, most notably in the nightmarish environment of a wrecked commuter train, and Krasinski cranks up the tension before unleashing it in merciless explosions in a selection of harrowing encounters which guaranteed to leave viewers in a puddle of sweat.  The director mostly stays behind the camera this time round, but he does (obviously) put in an appearance in the opening flashback as the late Lee Abbott, making a potent impression which leaves a haunting absence that’s keenly felt throughout the remainder of the film, while Blunt continues to display mother lion ferocity as she fights to keep her children safe and Jupe plays crippling fear magnificently but is now starting to show a hidden spine of steel as Marcus finally starts to find his courage; the film once again belongs, however, to Simmonds, the young deaf actress once and for all proving she’s a genuine star in the making as she invests Regan with fierce wilfulness and stubborn determination that remains unshakeable even in the face of unspeakable horrors, and the relationship she develops with Emmett, reluctant as it may be, provides a strong new emotional focus for the story, Murphy bringing an attractive wounded humanity to his role as a man who’s lost anything and is being forced to learn to care for something again.  This is another triumph of the genre AND the artform in general, a masterpiece of atmosphere, performance and storytelling which builds magnificently on the skilful foundations laid by the first film, as well as setting things up perfectly for a third instalment which is all but certain to follow.  I definitely can’t wait.