#like it's so egregious why is there a title card about the scene being in the afterlife. im not a fucking idiot please please please please

[mwagneto]

girl WHAT london? when?

[genericpuff]

The excessively passive voice when talking about Minthe being intended to have BPD is hilarious. "It was thought to have her written with BPD"? So weird

Honestly, once you start noticing this passive voice in how Rachel writes and talks, it's kind of hard to unsee.

Like, for starters, the BPD example. It's very non-committal, almost as if to sound like she never actually wrote her with BPD, it was just an 'idea' that she could neither confirm or deny as canon. But then you read the episode with the slap and-

It's- it's literally called "Splitting". It's about as subtle as a brick to the face. This entire episode showcases Minthe having an actual literal episode of splitting and it's plain as day to anyone who can read the title card and put two and two together. So for the wording to be so passive around her characterization... it wasn't "thought" to have her written with BPD, she was written with BPD.

Another example that sticks out in my mind of Rachel's passive writing is far later in Season 3, when Demeter reunites with Persephone and naturally expects her to come back home with her.

This line still fucking bothers me to this day. Besides the fact that it's just really poorly written dialogue, Persephone describes her being in love with Hades as if it's just some coincidental thing that happened to her that she can't avoid and not a deliberate choice she's making. "It would seem" my ass, Persephone is a coward for not being upfront and just talking to her mother like an adult by saying, "Mother, I love you, and I understand why you want me to come home, but I'm in love with Hades and want to stay in the Underworld with him." Instead the way it's worded is almost designed to absolve Persephone of any and all agency in her own decisions and active participation in her relationship with Hades by instead making it out to be just some circumstance that she can't get herself out of.

Again, this isn't quite as egregious as the aforementioned BPD scene, but it's still irritating because Rachel writes like this a lot throughout LO. And it's not just the dialogue either, entire decisions throughout the comic are flip-flopped and kept vague by Rachel so she can give herself plausible deniability over the narrative. I could come up with some of my own examples, but I think she managed to speak for herself just fine in the end-of-series Q&A that left both critics and fans of the series massively confused and disappointed:

LO is full of half-committed plotlines because Rachel herself can't commit to her own decisions. So the decisions she does make are left vague enough that hardcore fans are willing enough to fill in the blanks themselves, but anyone who asks her genuinely what her plan was, she just gives the same wordy "IDK it's up to your interpretation!" response. It's like she thinks people are asking her as just another reader who can only speculate, but she's literally the author, so why is she acting like her guess is as good as theirs?

Well, because that's how she wrote LO. That's how she's always written comics, with vague half-finished thoughts and just enough for readers to do the mental gymnastics of making sense of it all just to give her the credit for "smart writing" that she never actually did because she stopped paying attention after the first sentence. And that method of being vague for the sake of audience interpretation is fine for illustrations or anything that isn't trying to be a concise narrative, but LO did try to be that and it really shows how hard it failed in doing so when its own creator can't even come up with something slightly plausible to explain all the questions people had in the end. "There is some backstory there" but proceeds to not actually expand on said backstory. "I like to imply things without outright telling people", so do I, but the difference is that Rachel is using that as a crutch to not answer the questions she setup for her readers and then didn't resolve after five years. There's not wanting to spoon feed people the plot, and then there's literally refusing to explain your decisions when writing said plot, almost because you don't know any more than they do.

The entirety of LO is rooted in Rachel's passiveness, from her inability to answer questions concisely to every little plot point that was established and dropped throughout the comic's run. Writing a story is a series of decisions, deciding what to keep, deciding what not to keep, deciding what has to be changed, etc. and Rachel just... doesn't seem like someone who's ever been capable of making those decisions, especially when she's writing an actual long form story to the end and doesn't have the luxury of dropping it whenever it feels convenient for her like she did several times with The Doctor Pepper Show. Once she was actually held to a standard, once she was actually signed into a contract that expected her to make those decisions, she failed to and it culminated in one of the messiest conclusions to a story I've seen since Game of Thrones.

LO is kind of like Schrodinger's Cat - a plot point can be or not be whatever it needs to be so that Rachel can be either praised for smart writing she never did or absolved of bad writing that she did do. It's equally parts interesting and vague enough that whatever her readers give her credit for writing, she can give them a thumbs-up and go "you're totally right, champ!" and proceed to take all the credit of being a "good writer" from the efforts of her own audience who had to jump through a million hoops to make sense of her own messy writing.

But when she's put on the spot by those very same readers to answer for her own decisions, she can't.

Because she never made them.

Because there was never anything "deeper" going on, that's just what her style of "distraction writing" made you believe. The plot never lets you stop to think about what you just read long enough before zipping away to the next thing and distracting you with a new twist or a new character or a new plot point, and before you know it, you've gone weeks without reading about the last thing that was established you probably haven't even realized that those questions never got answered. Sometimes Rachel remembers to get back to those things and resolves them within a handful of panels, other times she forgets them entirely and just leaves them to rot in the hopes that no one ever calls her out on it. And when they do... she can just pull the get-out-of-jail-free "Welp, it's up to your interpretation!" card and get that credit all over again for being deep and insightful, meanwhile those who are rightfully dissatisfied with that answer are blanket-accused of "getting mad at Rachel for not writing the story they wanted".

To close out this ask that, per tradition, turned into an essay, I'd like to recall the famous words of fictional detective Benoit Blanc: "Look into the clear center of this glass onion... Miles Bron is an idiot!"

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

just because you’re afraid it doesn’t mean you’re broken.

Titans 3.05

once more into the cold dark void of the internet with my stream-of-consciousness take on a superhero tv show...

spoilers ahead.

1. i cannot believe that among the first things i get to hear in this episode with my own two ears is the line 'eluded our overdudes'. why must you give me such pain along with so much joy, show?

1.5. scarecrow stringing jason along on this path to red-hood-dom is not something i would’ve ever expected, but does kind of make sense. 

1.55. i don’t know all the details of the original resurrection arc in the comics but i like that jason, weirdly, has a greater role to play in his own demise and rebirth? i think it makes it easier to draw a line between his past trauma, the demonstrably shitty and terrifying responsibility of being robin, the ways bruce and the titans wronged him, his responses to that, the reasons he turns to scarecrow, and his final evolution to red hood. it makes for a smoother character arc rather than a one that was interrupted for two decades before somebody went oh hey let’s resurrect that kid that the audience once voted to kill and make him an anti-hero!

1.75. what’s crane giving him? anti fear toxin? anyway, crane is a fucking creep and i’m not sure i want to see a whole lot of him on my screen.

2. oh, um, heads up: there’s a long sequence of unsteady cam + flickering lights right after the title card upto the 3:16 mark. it’s a bit headache-inducing so if you want to skip, you can go ahead and do that. 

2.45. that’s... weird... why would he dream about... donna...

ok, who am i kidding. i’m going to jump right into my theory about Why Titans Makes Sense Actually because the show itself is apparently not interested in explaining itself:

a) it makes no sense for jason to be conjuring up donna--who famously did not care much for him!--in his dreams. (he wasn’t even there when she died.) or for her to be telling him don’t go or there’s still time.

b) this leads me to think that that’s actually donna, in some sort of limbo between life and death, the kind of place where jericho used to be

c) rachel has demonstrated that she has the power to link the minds of the titans across great distances--she called jason and hank/dawn for help in 2.01, she linked up everybody later in the season, projected dick’s hallucination of his father into their brains without even realising she was doing it, and in the finale, she managed to get dick into conner’s brain. she’s in themyscira now. is this how she gets donna back to life? but reaching out to her in that non-space between life and death?

d) the next obvious question is: why isn’t donna appearing in the dreams of the other titans? she probably is, but they have better reason to be dreaming about her since they were actually close to her, unlike jason.

e) but why would she warn jason in particular? does she foresee jason entering the afterlife--however briefly? does she have an idea of what jason plans to do and what he will become?

f) anyway, more trippy mindscapes and weird psychic powers, yay!

2.5. my heart clenched when bruce comforted jason post-nightmare: clearly i’ve been reading way too much batfam fic. this is a side of bruce we haven’t really been told to expect by all the characters on the show calling him a ‘psychopath’ (*cough*unreliablenarrators*cough*) and him getting jason to speak to a professional speaks volumes about the kind of self-reflection he’s done post dick’s departure, and maybe some of the regrets he has with regards to how he dealt with dick’s traumas.

i mean, just look at him when jason dismisses his concerns! BRUCE IS TRYING JASON

anyway, i have a whole lot more i want to say about this, but i’ll save it for later. 

also: LESLIE THOMPKINS!!!!

3. i really like molly--and i love that she’s a friend from before jason got taken in by bruce, the implication that they meet up regularly and that she’s a grounding influence on him (tho clearly not grounding enough to not go along with his dumbass idea about confronting a child trafficker alone). 

3.5. aw, jason. robin was his armour against everything in the world that would throw him down and chew him to bits, but san francisco proved that even robin wasn’t enough to protect him. it’s really interesting how ‘disillusionment with the idea of robin’ is so integral to the traumas of both dick and jason but in such different ways. 

4. LESLIE!!!!!!! i even forgive her office being so goddamn blue because leslie! 

4.5. it makes so much sense for titans!verse leslie to be a therapist, because this show is so inward looking anyway, and therapist sessions are a useful tool to showcase this character work in a story. besides, at least in fanfic, leslie often seems to double up as a counsellor anyway. 

4.6. oh man. i’m not terribly convinced by walters’ red hood (tho i think that may be the point--argh. i’ll come back to this thought later. have to stop getting distracted!) but he plays the asshole kid that’s trying not to let any real emotion seep through really well.

“you’d like me to punch you, wouldn’t you”

5. not sure what to think of batman’s little trophy case other than the show winking unsubtly at us and going look look - catwoman! the riddler! two face! you excited yet?! it’s like the scene from the end of amazing spiderman 2 when they were trying to drum up excitement for a sinister six spinoff by having harry osborne walk by a bunch of display cases with stuff from iconic villains in them.

... but then again, bruce does like to display a lot of shit in his batcave, including his dead robin’s bloodstained costume, so.

5.5. bruce is so soft with jason it’s killing me. beyond just trying to learn from his mistakes with dick, it speaks to his own genuine desire to balance his dedication to gotham with doing the best by his sons, although he’s often not successful with that. 

i love that titans is really playing the long game with bruce wayne, with each season and character-perspective sliding in fresh pieces of a bigger puzzle. titans’ bruce has always been a phantom of other peoples’ making, but now we’re getting the idea that he’s a whole lot more complicated than other people make it seem.

5.75. it really recontextualises some of his actions from previous seasons: the fact that he locked dick out of his security systems in 1.06 is likely his way of respecting dick’s independence and his desire not to be associated with batman/gotham anymore. jason knowing about bruce’s tracker while dick doesn’t is probably bruce trying to be more honest and upfront with his charges. bruce sending jason packing off to sanfran to spend time with the titans is probably not him passing on a big responsibility to dick (as i first uncharitably thought) but him trying to get jason out of the toxic influence of gotham for a while and a sign of his trust in dick as a leader and a mentor,

5.8. i mean, bruce is a prick, but he’s also human.

6. i think leslie is doing some good work with jason here, though she may have overstepped the line with her line about robin as a construct being projected by a man with BPD. her speculations about bruce’s diagnosis have no place in her session with jason, and if bruce confides in her, an egregious violation of patient-therapist confidentiality. 

(about the diagnosis itself... i don’t know. i can’t really confirm or refute this without a whole lot more information, and i’m not sure if the writer of this episode means BPD in the same way an actual professional might.)

6.5. i think a huge thing that gets missed out in a lot of recent comics as well as movies/shows is that bruce didn’t create the robin persona out of whole cloth. dick did. he’s the starting point of that legacy and to call it entirely bruce’s creation is blatant erasure of that. in fact, i’m surprised that dick doesn’t feature more in the conversations they’re having about the pressures of being robin. after all, the guy had been robin--bruce’s partner--for such a long time before jason. 

6.8. (and here’s the primal part of me that resonates the deepest with dick grayson--the Eldest Daughter part--that’s sort of resentful: that jason gets the therapy and softness and the learning from mistakes when it took years and years for bruce to reach out in any meaningful way to dick.)

7. oooh that was a great scene!

it’s fun to do these stream-of-consciousness live reactions, because the moment you step down from your soapbox, the episode goes right into tackling what you were just complaining about. bruce means well, he’s learning, but he goes about exactly the wrong way to help jason: taking away robin now can’t be read by jason as anything but a devastating judgment call from bruce. and iain glen really sells the moment that bruce realises this--too late--and his helplessness in trying to get jason to see that it isn’t jason’s fault that he’s trying to do this. he loves jason enough that jason is enough. 

7.5. aaaah so jason brings up the elephant in the room at last. dick got everything makes sense from his perspective, where getting to put on a costume and fight crime means approval, means being something stronger and better than you are. dick got to be robin, then nightwing, and a leader of a whole team of other costume-clad heroes. 

8. ... how did jason just walk into arkham????? this is ridiculous.

8.3. i mean, clearly jason’s not thinking straight, but betraying batman like this puts his possibilities of being robin again even further away. 

8.5. watching that chemistry experiment montage was strangely funny. this guy is looking for an antidote to fear? well, constantly mixing up and inhaling gases concocted by a mad-scientist supervillain is something only the very fearless--reckless to the point of foolishness!--would do. what’s to say crane’s not given you a formula for a drug that will keep you tethered to his every will and whim? hmmmm?

8.7. so he sought out the joker to... test the formula??? 

9. wow the “loud and clear... boss” hits different after a whole episode of them referring to each other as father and son.

9.3. waitwaitwait HOLD UP. wait a DANG MINUTE. you’re telling me that scarecrow had enough resources that he could not only have folks on the outside steal jason away and dunk him in a lazarus pit (i TOLD you that this show would bring up and dismiss ra’s al ghul in a ten second aside! I TOLD YOU) but also have his own little chemistry lab in the basement, AND have enough resources for jason to build his red hood persona???????? all of this in barely twenty four hours?

well there goes my ‘jason orchestrated his death’ theory. it was nice while it lasted. *cups hands to the sky* fly away, my baby.

9.6. a part of me is gleeful at the rushed nature of such an iconic transformation though, especially when compared to all the character work that went before it. we’re so used to getting the opposite that it’s fucking delightful to have a show that’s more interested in exploring its characters’ minds rather than battle scenes or recreating transformations from the comics. that’s taken such bold and exciting steps to fully convey all the nuances of its most recognisable character, bruce wayne, from casting an older actor to play him to unflinchingly showing just how damaging the vigilante lifestyle has been to him and the people he loves. BRILLIANT

*sporfle*

10. again, heads up: a whole lot of flashing lights between 40:28 and 42:00. 

10.3. i guess it’s the super-compressed timeline that’s really throwing me off. where did he have the time to get/develop the mind control thing from? or is it something that he got from the cabal of villains that he intimidated at the beginning of 3.02? very messy.

10.5. i love molly, i hope she shows up again this season.

11. aaaand that’s it! that was a solid episode as flashback episodes go, but now i can’t wait to return to the present.

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 26

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 26 - Photograph

From the South Third Ring Road overpass, turn right and cross a small road covered by empress trees to reach Shenjiayuan.

The fragments of low-rise buildings and the chaotic street stalls on both sides of the street were standoffish in such a modern city. However, this was one of the country's famous antique marketplaces, and tens of thousands of people came here every day with lots of money to spend, risking being baked by the sun and getting heatstroke by lingering around each of the stalls, hoping to find one or two hidden treasures stashed away in a corner somewhere. It was an industry gaining some traction. There were many speculators, collectors, tourists, calligraphers, painters, and even gamblers among them. They firmly believe that a city thousands of years old hid unknown wealth somewhere. It was this mentality that gave them a similar look; intoxicated and wild-eyed with a long outstretched tongue, drooling over the crude high antique imitations on the stalls.

This was the place where Lin Yan made countless memories when he was a teenager. The middle school he went to was nearby. After school, he often came here alone with his schoolbag on his back. Back then, there weren't as many people. There was a very polluted river nearby that hadn't been turned into a landfill yet. The air was always filled with the smell of stinky salted fish. The vendors who set up stalls hadn't yet learned to casually laze about while sneaking glances at the faces of customers to judge how much money they could cheat out of them.

The old days were like rolls of yellowed newspapers. A young man in a light blue school uniform walked through it, exchanging his pocket money for a piece of colored glaze from the late Qing Dynasty. He squatted in front of a stall to sift through the options. The old man at the stall was smoking a cigarette while telling the story of Liulichang in the late Qing Dynasty. Lin Yan didn't know why he was only interested in street stalls when kids his age were saving up to buy posters of celebrities. Just like when they were gushing over the Belgian chocolates their relatives brought home, he was still obsessed for years with the pot full of honey hard candy the old lady in front of the school had.

The wood, rice paper, and the dusty rusticity of the old objects held a taste of time, and teenage Lin Yan couldn't help but be immersed in it. Like a lone fish in the stream.

The sun was shining on the ground at 3 o'clock that afternoon. Lin Yan carried a bulging bag in his left hand and a cup of roasted sencha milk tea in his right. He paced slowly in the crowd, the grass green V-neck T-shirt and cotton calf-length pants standing out. He didn't know why antique hunters liked to wear black, the dust on their clothes making them look like they had just crawled out of the ground.

"Here, it's weirdly hot. Do you want a sip?" Lin Yan shook the milk tea, the ice cube hitting the wall of the cup with a soft thud. Onlookers thought he was talking to the air when actually there was an invisible person next to him helping take off some of the weight of the bag. That mean, even though Lin Yan was carrying a lot of things, it didn't take much effort.

Xiao Yu lowered his head and took a sip where Lin Yan had touched. He bit on the straw a few times and turned his head.

Lin Yan wanted to laugh a little, and brought the cup back to the corner of his mouth.

A-Yan said that Xiao Yu might remember more following him around, so Lin Yan took him to the antique market after breakfast, hoping that something from his own time period might bring something back. Who would've guessed that, after going through all these stalls, lots of purchases were made but there was no progress with the ghost's memory. Lin Yan glanced at the bag in his hand. It was stuffed with clothes bought from a well-known Hanfu store in Shenjiayuan. They were well-made and expensive. Most people only bought them to complete a Hanfu set for their collection. For Lin Yan to buy these kinds of clothes on a daily errand, that was really a rare sight. Even the clerk couldn't help but do a double take.

Xiao Yu didn't understand the time they were currently living in, so he stood his ground and refused to adapt his style to the times. Lin Yan rolled his eyes and glared at him bitterly. He thought, you're the boss here making me throw away my money while I'm just your servant who follows behind you and pays.

Right after they left one store, before he could recover from the purchase, Xiao Yu suddenly stopped when he passed a woodworking shop. Lin Yan looked at the store’s gorgeous decorations and pieces of pearwood and red sandalwood furniture, whining that he really couldn't afford this stuff. Xiao Yu ignored him and dragged him inside. Thirty minutes later, Lin Yan swiped his card to check out under the watchful eye of the clerk and bought a beautiful Tongzhi wood guqin.

"Oh great ancestor, what more do you want?" Lin Yan tucked the order slip from the woodworking shop into his pocket and glared daggers at Xiao Yu.

Xiao Yu shook his head nonchalantly.

There were more people on the street. Some of them didn't know the treasures that they had found, and they couldn't hide their excitement, sneaking a peek at what they have just bought. Some of them had grim faces, looking like they had been ripped off. There were also groups of foreign tourists wearing Lei Feng hats gathered at the roadside to buy shadow puppets. Occasionally, they turned around and curiously look at the antique city, which was built in the traditional Chinese-style.

In the market area to the south, there were large ancient buildings imitating Ming and Qing style architecture. The bustling narrow street seemed like scene straight out of the Water Margin. The wooden window on the second floor were pushed up, supported by a short stick. Looking up, he could see customers sipping tea. The shopkeeper was a short man, busily carrying a large teapot back and forth.

The narrow street lead to a large emerald-green stall covered with plastic tarps to offer shade from the sun. Lin Yan and Xiao Yu walked under the shadow of the tarps when they heard a familiar voice yelling loudly.

"Look at how green the colour is and how good the water head* is! You won't be able to find another one at this price anywhere in Shenjiayuan!" The peddler selling jade pieces had a round belly, one foot on the stool, holding up a transparent fortune bracelet, spittle flying everywhere. The plainly dressed middle-aged woman in front of the stall looked hesitant. She took the bracelet and took another look at it.

*(T/N: Water head [水头] refers to how light shines through jade. Kind of like how the light would look if it were shining through water. There's a list of transparencies if you want to look at how jade is graded, but basically the best jade has a vivid colour with even transparency across the whole piece.)

"It's too expensive, lower the price a bit." The woman said sincerely.

"It's so green, so transparent, I can't go any lower. Miss, if you want a lower price, it'll affect my livelihood. Don't waste my time." The peddler grabbed the bracelet, his eyes bulging.

"I wanted to buy it for my daughter as a birthday gift. It's too expensive. It'd be a pity if she dropped it. Give me the lowest you can go."

"Here." The peddler rolled his eyes. He took out his calculator, punched in a few numbers, and showed it to the woman in front of him, "Is this all right? I can't go any lower!"

Lin Yan couldn't help but lean over and glance at the numbers on the screen. He let out a laugh.

The peddler squinted at him.

Lin Yan shook his head. He took the bracelet and said to the woman: "Don't buy this, he's fooling you."

"Hey, hey, what are you trying to say? I'm running an honest business here. If you don't believe me, go around and ask. . ."

Lin Yan smirked. He put the roasted sencha tea cup on the stall and held the bracelet at a different angle. The curved surface reflected the light from the plastic roof. He said to the woman buying the bracelet: "Look at the blurred edges of the reflection. If you look closely, you can see that there are very fine meshes on the surface." Lin Yan raised the bracelet to let the light through. "There is purple fluorescence inside, indicating that the reason this bracelet is so transparent because of acid washing and a glue filling."

"Also, notice how the green is only sitting on the surface and doesn't reach the middle. That means it was dyed after the fact. This thing is worth one or two hundred yuan. Don't buy it."

The peddler's nose and eyes scrunched up. At first glance, they looked like a dried walnut.

"Oh." The middle-aged woman hurriedly stuffed an envelope containing the money back into her bag, repeatedly thanking Lin Yan.

When she left, the peddler huffed. Pissed, he turned his head away, not looking at Lin Yan. Even his swollen belly seemed to be flatter than before.

"What else should I do when I notice that someone with money on the street?"

Lin Yan roughly flicked the peddler's forehead: "Everyone here has money. It's embarrassing to lie like this, there's no skill in it."

Several surrounding stalls burst out laughing. The peddler rolled his eyes back to normal. He grabbed Lin Yan’s milk tea and poured a few mouthfuls out of the plastic lid. He muttered while he crunched on the ice cubes: “I don't fool people in this business. It's not my fault their eyesight is poor. No refunds is the standard."

This much was true. Antique jade sales rely on good eyesight. Figuring out which store has more genuine products than fake depends on the customer. They can't return them either so the shop doesn't have to admit they were fakes. Lin Yan clicked his tongue: "These people don't know what to look for. You're just trying to make your father think you're good at this job."

The peddler rolled his eyes, knowing that he was in a bad position and couldn't say anything.

Lin Yan had been a frequent visitor to this antique market since he was a child. Since choosing his major in university, he preferred to come to the small stalls to practice his appraisal skills when he had nothing else to do. See what was selling for a high price but was bought for a low price. He was also kind and helped others pick out the best items, so many peddlers knew him. For example, Lin Yan first met this guy's father, a very honest old man. He even took out the receipt with the price he paid for it when he bargained with customers. Unfortunately, when Lin Yan graduated from high school, the old man fell ill and his son took over the business. and this was the leeching peddler in from of him.

Lin Yan wasn't polite with him. When he walked around the stall, he took out a copper box from under the table. Inside were piles of Ming and Qing paperweights. These objects were all family heirlooms that the original stall owner received from nearby residents’ homes when he was young. Lin Yan had just remembered this box of objects then dragged Xiao Yu over to look at them. Brass mirrors, jade bracelets, thumb rings, snuff boxes, tobacco pipes; Xiao Yu looked over them all and just shook his head. Lin Yan threw the last piece back into the box and patted the dust on his clothes, a little frustrated.

"That box has been there for ages and no one's ever touched it. What are you looking at it for?" The peddler kept squinting at him and was too curious not to ask about it.

"Looking for Ming Dynasty artifacts for my classes." Lin Yan actually didn't know what he was looking for. He moved on and put the box back.

"Ming Dynasty?" The peddler didn't care about the bracelet anymore. "Old man Liu has lots stashed away."

"No, no, no. . ." Lin Yan hurriedly refused, but he thought about it and sighed, "Forget it. I've been shopping all day and haven't gone there. I'll give it a try."

"Don't say the wrong thing. Good luck." The peddler made a face.

The shop run by old man Liu was quite famous in Shenjiayuan. Not just because he was the only antique peddler to sell only sell antique pictures, but also because he was notoriously grumpy. Every day, he'd leave the shop and hang up his old camera in the park to make money. Whenever he went to the shop to buy something, the owner was never there. Walking down the street, he ran into him wearing an old Mao suit, cursing and waving around. His thin mantis-like face was slanted and a pair of glasses rested on his nose at an angle. Sometimes the lens' were shattered like cobwebs, and sometimes the lens' weren't there at all.

His shop sells old photographs of the old city, hung densely from the floor to the ceiling. Because old photographs were difficult to reprint, they were also very expensive. The sub districts of Qianmen, Dashilan, old gardens in the setting sun in 1872, passers-by in long gowns with thin faces and numb eyes. The TV station came to interview him, but only half the program was filmed. From photographers to reporters, old man Liu chewed them all out without exception. The interview never went anywhere, and the shop still didn't have any business. The old man still walked around outside with his camera everyday.

The shop was in the northwest corner of Shenjiayuan and its location was considered unlucky. There was a symbol meant to ward off evil spirits designed by a famous Feng Shui master hung on the door. Xiao Yu couldn't enter and stood at the door waiting for Lin Yan.

Lin Yan looked at the ominous storefront. For the first time, he felt reluctant to part with Xiao Yu.

Unsurprisingly, Old Man Liu wasn't in the shop. A seven or eight-year-old girl in a red jacket was facing away from him. She was pointing at a photo on the wall and muttering something. When she heard someone enter the door, she turned back and grinned at Lin Yan.

Lin Yan was a little surprised. This little girl was his neighbor. Although he didn’t know where she lived, he often saw her running around in the yard downstairs in a dirty red dress. Sometimes when Lin Yan went out to buy dinner at night, he saw her playing with cats in the yard, no one coming to bring her home. He hadn't seen her often in the past month and he didn't expect to see her here.

Was it possible she was related to that strange old man? No wonder no one cared about her playing outside everyday, Lin Yan thought.

"Why are you here by yourself?" Lin Yan knelt down and asked her in a soft voice.

The little girl was lean, her eyes staring straight at Lin Yan, grinning silently. Lin Yan suddenly felt that the little girl’s smile probably made people feel uncomfortable. It didn’t seem right to call it a smile, but just a casual grin. The corners of her mouth were upturned but her eyes were dull. Wearing such an old jacket in summer, she seemed to be left behind by the times, like the rest of the photos in the room.

Lin Yan hesitated on whether he leave and wait outside for the strange old man.

"What the hell you XX, I XXXX. . ." Lin Yan was distracted, and suddenly there was a thud. Old man Liu hugging his broken camera fell through the front door. He fell on all fours in an extremely embarrassed posture, landing on the only part of the floor that had sunlight hitting it.

"A-Are you okay?" Lin Yan rushed over to help. Unexpectedly, the old man gave him a sour look. He rolled over and sat on the ground, patting the dirt on his knees, and continued his tirade of curses towards the door relentlessly. Lin Yan stood awkwardly off to the side, neither leaving nor staying.

The old man felt he had cursed enough. He grunted and got to his feet. When he turned his head and saw Lin Yan, his eyes widened like he had discovered a whole new world, and said with a quacking voice: "What are you doing here?"

"I came to buy something." Lin Yan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Shouldn't that be the first thing the shop owner thinks of when he sees a customer in the store?

"Leave. What is there to buy? Young people are clueless." The old man held his stern gaze and walked around behind the counter, irritated: "Why are you still standing there? You have no business being here!"

Lin Yan didn't want to talk nonsense with the old man, so he pat his back and turned to leave.

"Hey! Wait!" The old man yelled. Lin Yan had just reached the door and was so frightened by the voice that he came to a halt.

"You look good, I'll take a picture of you." The old man suddenly walked out from behind the counter with his camera in hand. He grabbed Lin Yan by the collar and pulled him into the room. After couple of pushes, he stood beside the little girl. He squatted down involuntarily, and the shutter sounded with a few clicks. The old man's furrowed face appeared from behind the camera and he smacked his lips with satisfaction.

After the shutter, several photos appeared from the top of the camera. The old man took one in his hand and glanced at it. He pulled one out and shoved it at Lin Yan: "You take it."

Lin Yan was shown the strength of this old man. He turned his face angrily, trying to walk out, rubbing his shoulder: "I don't want to."

"Take it!" The old man yelled in Lin Yan's ear, making his ears ring.

Lin Yan took it and glanced speechlessly. He saw that in the black-and-white picture he stood like a wooden pole, staring expressionlessly at the wall. The background was dimmed, and the entire thing looked like a horror picture people would share online.

What's wrong with. . .

Lin Yan eyes widened and a nerve in his head popped. He couldn't help taking a step back, looking at himself in the photo. When he looked at the spot where he was standing when the picture was taken, it felt like a bucket of ice water was poured over his head.

The little girl who took the picture with him just now wasn't in the photo. He was the only person in the black and white background straight out of a horror movie.

Lin Yan hesitantly looked up. The girl in red was standing where he stood, wearing an out-of-date ragged jacket, grinning at him biting her fingernail.

"Hehe, hehe." The old man held up the camera to his crooked eyes and a piece of the lens fell to the ground. "Perfect, great picture."

Lin Yan crawled out of the house.

The sun was bitterly hot and the bustling street was swarming with people. Xiao Yu was standing casually by the doorway. Lin Yan couldn't say a word, swallowing hard. He rushed over and wrapped him up in a fierce hug.

[all-souls-matinee]

Paranormal Activity

I went through ‘a very strange time in my life’ a few years ago where I watched every single Paranormal Activity movie, some multiple times, thinking that would have no impact on my psyche. So here I am, someone who thinks the the franchise is bad and yet can remember every plot thread and every scare, and I might as well do something with that. These will be graded on a curve (scale of 1-5 stars) and not by their overall worth as movies.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

★★★★☆

Today the first movie in the franchise is lampooned for being boring and amateurish, with unlikable lead characters and a plot that doesn’t really go anywhere, but how are those not points in its favor? Isn’t that what found footage is all about? Critics and scholars contend it’s singlehandedly responsible for the genre craze that swept the United States in the 2010s after a relative lull in the early aughts, and it’s easy to see why. I’m not going to go so far as to say Paranormal Activity is a good movie (it’s not), but it is a very easy and engaging watch. 

With a cast of only two people and hardly any outside characters the story plays out as a domestic drama; yes, there are long stretches of nothing happening but it ratchets up suspense in a way that was unusual and refreshing at the time. Using a camera to feel in control of an out-of-control situation was a theme broached by the much better Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity leans into it as a central thesis, making sure it’s a white hetero rich guy that’s doing the recording and only subverting that expectation in later films. The movie was even supposed to end [mild spoilers] with Possessed Katie beating her obnoxious husband Micah over the head with his beloved camera and the film cutting to black, and I think it leaves the story weaker and more scattered for having left that out. 

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

★★☆☆☆

Before I get into why this one sucks, I’ll give it the benefit of being the most solid entry in the franchise by far. As a prequel to the first movie it does its job by introducing additional family members in a bigger house with more cameras. They have to contend with the same demon, so it’s the same thing we’ve seen before but with much higher stakes, and that’s a perfectly good idea for building a franchise. I admire it for that.

Anything beyond structure and pacing is so much worse it’s laughable. Where PA1 had some originality going for it PA2 throws in every horror stereotype it can think of, including an insanely awful running bit about how the family’s Mexican housekeeper is the only one who can sense ghosts. The most novel addition to the franchise is extensive lore about the demon wanting to own a baby because of a pact made with a coven of witches, which made audiences across America lean forward in their seats and say ‘... what?’ Decisions like that cost the movie any kind of levity, scares, or interest in the characters, which were kind of essential things for the movie to have.

I’d honestly give it 1 star if it weren’t for the extensive drama over the automated pool cleaner. We spend so much time watching this thing I think I developed an emotional bond with it.

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

★★★★★

Paranormal Activity 3 is another prequel that takes us back to when the leads of the first two movies- Katie and Christie- were little girls experiencing demonic activity in the 80s (their stepdad is a videographer, which gets us past the question of how anyone in the 80s would have tens of video cameras skillfully set up around their home.) Objectively it sounds like even more of a pathetic cashgrab than PA2, but, and this might be the hottest take I will ever have when it comes to horror movies, it does its job it in a way that’s such a prefect mixture of original/bizarre content and safe bankable boringness that it’s the best movie in the franchise. It certainly cemented it for what it is today.

Movie no. 3 drops the ‘this really happened’ show the first two movies put on in trying to be like other found footage horror (read: The Blair Witch Project.) No more actors and characters sharing names, no more title cards thanking the police for footage, we’re all in on the game at this point and you don’t realize how much of a relief that is until it’s happened. Instead of trying to make the characters realistic and falling flat, they let them be a little more like characters to great success. Everyone plays their role in the story and makes the shaky plot work. It’s not good writing, but it has people react to things in interesting ways and builds up the lore of the franchise more effectively than either of the first two movies (helped along by a batshit insane finale that makes no sense but is so much fun it doesn’t actually matter.) 

This is also by far the ‘scariest’ movie in the franchise, and I think it’s a combination of practice and not taking everything so deadly seriously. Comedy helps balance things out (my favorite is a sex scene that folds into an earthquake scene that folds into a shot of earthquake dust landing on a ghost), and they’ve gotten tension-building nothingness down to a science. Using a camera attached to a slowly oscillating fan and a camera trained on a mirror in a dark room? Perfect ideas for freaking your audience out.

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

★☆☆☆☆

Paranormal Activity 4 was the long-awaited actual-sequel to the events of the first movie, using the hours of information and lore given to us by the prequels as a backdrop, and it... really flounders under that responsibility. We’re introduced to an all-new cast of characters, with a teenage girl taking the lead for a change of pace that doesn’t really go anywhere, and spend the first half of the movie wondering why the family we’ve spent so much time with was pushed to the side (it must be important.) The reason we’re given is that this new family has an adopted son who is (twist!) the witch-stolen-demon-proxy baby from movie two.

PA4 has the opposite problem of PA2; it’s not awful, but is so shaky and has so much lost potential it seems to drop all of the pieces at once. It does some cool things with suspense an xbox kinect, and the acting is fine, but while no one is watching a Paranormal Activity sequel for the screenplay this one needed good, grounded writing and didn’t get that. The loose plotting of the third movie was saved by its characters and by being a little more tongue-in-cheek, but 4 doesn’t have that to fall back on and has way more moving pieces than 3 ever did. The ending is especially egregious, bizarre even by nth-sequel-in-a-horror-franchise standards, and is never brought up again. Points for a convoluted weird plot that makes no sense, points redacted for a convoluted weird plot that makes no sense.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

★★★☆☆

Paranormal Activity 5 is so off-the-rails insane that it gets the coveted 3 stars, deserving or no. After back-to-back prequels and a disappointing long-awaited sequel, no one was sure exactly what this was going to be, and the movie seems to feel the same way.

Gone is the lore-heavy and tension-heavy stuff from the preceding years of footage. For the first half of the movie we follow a first-gen high school graduate named Jesse, who breaks into a mysterious neighbor’s house with his best friend. He gets bitten by a ghost and infected with ghost superpowers, then he and his friend group + love interest have a grand old time doing skateboard and levitation tricks using the ghost superpowers. I’m not exaggerating for comedic effect; it’s so dumb I love it ardently. Why aren’t all sequels like this??? 

Obviously the ghost superpowers turn out to be A Bad Thing tenuously connected to all the witch/demon stuff, and we have to get back to jump scares (now with added body horror), but the ways in which it does eventually tie back to the franchise are so ridiculous it’s delightful, and the twist ending, for once in this entire nightmare, is fantastic.

Paranormal Activity 6: The Ghost Dimension 3D (2015)

This one came out after my original paranormal activity run, and I considered watching it for the sake of being able to finish the article in good faith but I just can’t you guys. I couldn’t do it. Look at this.

That said, the thing about these movies is that none of them are a complete waste of time; even the worst entries in the lineup are entertaining and fun in a reality-tv-trainwreck sort of way, and that’s all very calculated. No matter what your opinion they earned the right to make this a franchise with too many movies and extensive lore. Happy halloween.

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 3: High on Concept

If you wait long enough, you’ll find something good to say.

Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue / My Roommate is a Cat

What: Misanthropic mystery author picks up tough stray cat, both get healed.

✅ The cat acts like a cat, the misanthrope acts like a misanthrope.

✅ The approach of telling the same simple story from the perspective of two characters that can’t really communicate effectively is interesting.

✅ This is very basic, but it works. I like both characters, and it's generally inoffensive. Pretty much Barakamon with less of a focus on telling you exactly what to feel. Might watch more of this.

❌ I see we’re now at the point where shows get localized titles that sound like lazy translations of bland Japanese names even when the Japanese title is not that bland to begin with. Lovely.

Dimension High School

What: A bunch of kids press XXX and YYY and are sucked. Wooow.

✅✅ The wraparound segments look extremely realistic. If there was more lensflares and shots of feet I’d almost say someone has finally beaten KyoAni in making anime look like a cheap, egregiously overacted J-Drama.

❌❌ Sadly, the puzzle dimension they end up in just looks like homemade MMD animation, because it is. I mean, at least it’s mocapped, but apparently with a Kinect.

❌❌ E.g., they make jokes about clipping and they kinda have to because everything clips into everything else all the time.

❌❌ Did I mention that all they actually do is solve lame puzzles and fail to be funny about it? It’s really getting to the levels of the dreaded “barely animated voice actor improv podcast” at these points.

♎ Suwabe’s in it, and that’s never an outright bad thing. He’s voicing the quizmaster, in the process proving he’d do anything for a paycheck. I wonder if he has a fiverr acocunt.

Domestic na Kanojo

What: Highschooler loses virginity to one night stand, finds out that it was the sister of the teacher he has a crush on. Incidentally, the mother of both also just married his father. Zany!

✅ This is presented like a low-key, slow drama, and it’s not even bad at that. Some good directing going on here, at least in the beginning.

❌❌ Really just too bad that it’s impossible to take seriously with a setup as contrived as this, not to mention taking it as seriously as it apparently wants to be taken. It’s also not exactly original.

❌ I’m not gonna say that sketchy relationships can’t work (it worked fine for KoiAme, for example), but embedding your suddenly also incestuous pupil-teacher affair in the setting of a harem comedy, complete with other sister walking in on attempted drunk blackout kiss, is not giving me confidence that this has the chops to pull it off.

❌❌ The show this reminds me the most of is Love and Lies, and that’s a real bad calling card to have.

Girly Air Force

What: Girl-shaped fighter jets fall in love with a dude.

❌❌ It’s just another military-hardware-is-cute-girls-actually show in the vein of Strike Witches, the kind where they think that having a few plane CG models is already thrilling content.

❌❌ But then it doesn’t even turn out to be that in practice, because most of the episode is taken up by lame “worldbuilding” (i.e., coming up with excuses for why your fanservice show has to be the way it is) and trying to make your bland harem lead interesting, which is a futile endeavour.

❌ The most interesting part is still the CG dogfighting, such as it is. It’s not great either. Also, girly planes are pink.

♎ Honestly got a laugh out of them randomly picking a Gripen as heroine unit  in addition to actual JSADF hardware, because that’s a sleek-looking plane. The biggest prank the JSADF ever pulled on the otaku industry is buying the chubby F-35, which is nowhere to be seen here.

Go-toubun no Hanayome / The Quintessential Quintuplets

What: Empoverished highschooler is hired as a tutor for some rich quintuplets with large breasts.

❌ This is a blatant harem setup that would make a 2003 bishoujo VN blush.

✅ However, in practice it’s much better than it sounds. It knows it’s a wacky romcom with a dumb premise and it does not pretend otherwise.

✅ So it’s lighthearted, but it’s also surprisingly classy. In fact, it’s classier than Domestic no Kanojo, which is a show that’s actually trying to look respectable and failing.

✅ The relationships are also very feisty, with an energy that a comedy needs. There’s a lot of sass to go around here. Probably the best of these I’ve seen in a while, so I’ll give it three eps.

Kemurikusa

What: After getting pulled off the sequel, the Kemono Friends crew made their own version. Presumably there are blackjack and hookers in this show’s future.

❌ If you are a fan of KF’s “charms”, fear not, you would not be able to tell these people made another anime before. It's still total amateur hour.

❌❌ It’s not even the “looks”, though those certainly are not a highlight. The design is okay and the animation is bad, but I’m not incapable of enjoying shows with bad animation. What really kills it is the editing. I usually don’t comment on editing because that’s almost always competent and only very rarely great, but Kemurikusa has uniquely lazy and badly timed editing. Every shot being seconds longer than it needs to be is already an annoyance in low-key dialog scenes, but the alleged action is laughable and allows you a long, unblinking stare at every frame of bad animation. I really do wonder why they even bother with it when it’s so terrible.

✅ The setting seems alright, even though it’s just a reskinned Kemono Friends. At least it’s not gijinka nonsense this time (which makes one wonder where the gimmick characters are supposed to come from, but I digress), and it’s more upfront about what it actually is too. I’d call it mildly intriguing.

❌ I don’t mind mystery and certainly prefer it to exposition bombs, but instead of that this episode quickly establishes the most basic facts... and then repeats them over and over and over some more. Combined with non-editing, this makes for horrible pacing. 

♎ I had no opinion on KF’s longer-term qualities, because the first episode was so boring I never got any further. I won’t have an opinion on this show’s long-term qualities for the same reason.

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka

What: Magical girls are tragic, shoot gun’s.

❌❌ Yo bro, what if magical girls but dark? Surely such a thing has never been attempted.

❌ The particular source of grim here is that these girls are war vets and fight with semi-realistic weaponry, so there’s a fair bit of the ol’ milwank in this one as well.

❌ The best part of the entire show is that the enemies they originally fought looked like cute teddy bears. Of course, this is dropped in favor of just slicing and dicing some random terrorists in the main narrative. I guess “dark magical girl” is still too outlandish a concept, gotta go with ripping off The Punisher again.

❌ The characters so far are nothing special, you got your PTSD Rambo and the generically cute tomodachis she swears to protect. Such contrast!

❌❌ If you must make these 80s action movies with some otaku gimmick pasted on top, would you mind making the action look good at least? Because I don’t care how many gallons of blood you paint in your dramatic but conspicuously non-moving pans.

Meiji Tokyo Renka

What: Spiritually sensitive lonelygirl gets kitsuned to the Meiji era, which is full of delicious beef and some handsome men too I guess.

✅ This isn’t an outright comedy, but it goes all in on everyone’s fabulosity level to a degree that it’s really already three quarters to Dame x Prince.

✅ Similarly, the lead is not quite as unimpressed with these hams as Ani was, but she certainly has a lot more interest in roast beef than in these guys always trying to pull her into sparkly chin-holding poses &c.

✅ Meiji Tokyo Renka doesn’t seem to be anything special, but it gets the tone right and is expressive enough to not become boring.

♎ While certainly watchable right now, with these there’s always the chance that it decides to launch into real drama in the long run, which in turn almost always goes wrong.

Yakusoku no Neverland / The Promised Neverland

What: An orphanage’s happy daily life gets upended by the realisation that they’re just pizza rolls for some demonic entities.

✅ I watched this right after Kemurikusa and let me tell you, it sure helps if you’ve got professionals on the team. This is a highly competent show as far as cinematography and editing is concerned. While there isn’t any reason to go all out on the action sakuga, this show looks real good.

❌ I’m not feeling the character design, to be specific I think everyone’s chin is too big. This sounds like a real assholy nitpick, but be aware that this will impact around 90% of the time you watch this. 

✅ The premise is workable for a shounen manga, even if hardly original (remember Owari no Seraph?) At least it’s not kids with superpowers spamming beams at each other while discussing the nature of heroism, and seems to be going for a more mindgames-based approach in the vein of Death Note. The characters are just barely good enough so far. In the end it’s not so much the premise, but how well the production values are able to sell it. And that’s what Neverland is good at.

❌ It’s specifically a Weekly Shounen Jump manga, and that is huge red flag. Sure enough, while the visuals and mood deliver, the dialog writing justifiably assumes the reader is a moron. Almost every line in this is either straight universe exposition or someone reading someone else’s character sheet back to them. It’s insane and not even necessary because their actions establish all of this just fine, but hey, WSJ readers amirite?

❌ Also, since it’s a successful WSJ property, don’t expect an ending or be prepared to watch this show for years. Most likely both.

♎ This seems like it could be entertaining once the exposition is out of the way and the real meat of the narrative starts. Then again, at that point pacing would come into play, which is yet another achilles heel of WSJ-style shounen manga. Against my better judgement, I’ll probably have a look how this develops, but I don’t expect much.

[thesportssoundoff]

“No point in a deceitful lead in, you’re gonna watch anyways” UFC in Greenville Preview

Joey

June 20th

How to describe this card. Hmm. Pointless feels almost too harsh. Inconsequential? Whatever word you choose to describe 12 fights of nothin' I'd suggest you use it to your hearts content. This card is a mix of pointless yet fun action fights and just plain pointless fights. This card by and large is just a collection of fighters either coming off a win or having snapped a losing streak all doing stuff. There's little to no name value and it's just a collection of fights. At the same time being fair TO the fights, some of these have big action quality on paper. The main and co-main event are great fights and beyond that you have a few interesting fights at women's flyweight, Luis Pena's return to 155 lbs against a returning Matt Wiman, a welterweight action fight throwdown and some interesting stuff at middleweight. It's a meaningless filler fight card but it's got potential to be worth your time should you sit in for it. Ready?

Fights: 12

Debuts: Deron Winn, Eric Spicely

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 3 (Markus Perez OUT/Bruno Silva IN vs Deron Winn/Bruno Silva OUT, Eric Spicely IN vs Derron Winn/Cody Stamman OUT, John Lineker IN vs Rob Font)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 4 (Renato Moicano, John Lineker, Korean Zombie, Kevin Holland)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 1 (Syuri Kondo)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: (Dan Ige, Kevin Aguilar, Montana De La Rosa, Andrea Lee)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC): 23-17

Korean Zombie- 1-1 Renato Moicano- 3-2 Rob Font- 2-2 John Lineker- 3-2 Randy Brown- 1-2 Bryan Barberena- 2-2 Kevin Holland- 2-1 Alessio Di Chirico- 2-1 Montana De La Rosa- 3-0 Andrea Lee- 2-0 Ashley Yoder- 1-2 Syuri Kondo- 1-2

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Bantamweight-  2 (30) Featherweight- 2 (28)) Middleweight- 2 (20) Women’s Flyweight-  2 (18) Women’s Strawweight- 1 (16) Lightweight-  1 (39) Heavyweight- 1 (16) Welterweight- 1 (34)

Light Heavyweight- (22) Women’s Bantamweight- (8) Women’s Featherweight- (6)

Flyweight- (7)

2019 Number Tracker

Debuting Fighters (15-37)- Deron Winn, Eric Spicely

Short Notice Fighters (15-20)- Eric Spicely, John Lineker

Second Fight (36-9)- Anderson dos Santos, Ariane Lipski, Jair Rozenstruik

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (12-22)- Matt Wiman

Undefeated Fighters (21-25)- Deron  Winn, Jairzinho Rozenstruik

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (8-8)-

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (16-13)- Luis Pena

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- So who needs the win more in this main event? Both guys are coming off losses and both guys are giving ground in the 145 lbs division that's actually kinda sorta in need of some new faces. After Volkanovski and Zhabit, Max Holloway doesn't have much remaining and Frankie Edgar, should he win the title, probably isn't long for the MMA scene either. Both fighters were finished in their last fight but both have interesting in roads to the title. Renato Moicano has a low key solid resume with wins over the likes of Calvin Kattar, Jeremy Stephens, Zubair Tukhogov and Cub Swanson and as one of the rare young-ish upside-ish Brazilians with some steam, he may not be too far away from a title shot. Conversely the Korean Zombie remains a sneaky popular fighter (when FS1 numbers started tanking toward the end of the deal, the Korean Zombie vs Yair and Bermudez did reputable numbers) who is always in exciting fights. Injuries and a military assignment might've taken away his prime but he's probably still good enough to be in the mix as they say. It's worth remembering he probably beats Yair Rodriguez if he doesn't get hit with the hail mary elbow. That said, ya can't rewrite history so what we're left with is a really fun action fighter who has had two fights since 2013 and one of his wins was over a guy who wound up eventually retiring in 2018. Not exactly a resume for success in 2019. So who needs this more? The Brazilian fighter who has twice failed in his "step up" fight (subbed vs Ortega, TKO'd vs Aldo) or the Korean Zombie who may have seen his title window violently closed vs Yair Rodriguez?

2- Trying to think of how the featherweight fights down the stretch shake out, I wonder if the winner of this fight gets Zhabit in September and the runner up gets Ortega.

3-I've referred to this as a "Let's See Who's More Broken?" fight and while that may be harsh, I can't act like one of the bigger question marks about this fight isn't trying to figure out who is more cracked.

4- If Renato Moicano has a weakness; it's that he lulls defensively and tends to struggle when he's forced to handle pressure. Brian Ortega beat him by wrecking him to the body and never giving him space to breathe despite Brian Ortega eating a ton of shots. The Korean Zombie's career has been earmarked by wars upon wars and you'd have to assume that in terms of PRESSURE (not movement or footwork but just pressure), he can replicate Ortega's gameplan while hitting a lot harder. The question is whether he becomes too predictable offensively because Moicano's fight processor runs at high speed and he has great vision.

5- I feel like Rob Font is such a throwback to when bantamweight was kinda getting thicker and dudes like him were considered vital pieces to the developing puzzle. Now he's just a guy passed over by like ten other bantamweights. That year and change between debut and his second fight really put a stop to that.

6- Is the winner of Andrea Lee vs Montana De La Rosa the #1 contender? At the rate Valentina is fighting at, she could realistically fight the winner of this one in the fall.

7-  I'm not entirely sure what John Lineker's complaints were about regarding not fighting often enough. They tried to book him to fight in 2017 in December and he got yanked. They tried to book him in December of 2018 and Cruz got yanked and then HE was hurt so they rescheduled it for January and he got hurt (or never recovered) and so Lineker wound up fighting in April. It's not like they're not trying to get him fights, he's just having a tough time making it to them.

8- If it's true that Allen Crowder apparently asked for $100,000 for the Greg Hardy rematch, I wonder if he could be theoretically one loss away from getting sent out of the org. Makes his fight with Jair Rozenstruik a bit more intriguing.

9- Why is Ashley Yoder vs Syuri Kondo on the main card over Kevin Aguilar/Dan Ige, Luis Pena/Matt Wiman or Winn/Spicely? I know card placement is sort of irrelevant but this seems particularly egregious.

10- Alessio Di Chirico is 2-2 in the UFC and showcased some promise in his last two fights vs Oluwale Bangbose and Julian Marquez. I wonder if Di Cihrico is going to be what we all expected Marvin Vettori to be? Kevin Holland should be a good test for both guys since Alessio rarely makes mistakes and has the power to pop Holland if he decides to get momentarily stupid in there. Holland has pretty much every physical advantage and when guys at 185+ fight, cardio kinda doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

11- Cannot emphasize how great of a fight Kevin Aguilar vs Dan Ige figures to be.

12- The image of 5'5 Deron Winn fighting at MW in the UFC cage is going to make me pine for seeing Gustavo Balart in the UFC.

[prixmiumarchive]

For the tv series ask- Arrow

send me a tv series and I’ll tell you:

my all-time ultimate fave character: Like, honestly, Oliver Queen. Sometimes I’ve really disliked him, and of course I hate f*ckboy college dropout Oliver, but his character development is just so good?

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: Slade Wilson. To say I didn’t like him ever would be incorrect, but I basically went from finding pre-mirakuru Slade kind of interesting but gruff and his dynamic with Oliver and Shado interesting to I love this man and I will defend his honor and die on this hill pretty hard and fast circa S5 finale which is what dragged me back into this show in the first place. 

a character I used to like but now don’t: Unfortunately, I have a hard time liking Roy Harper in Arrow as much as I once did due to the actor being kind of incorrigible in his stupid and sometimes racist behavior. A lot of the time I am pretty ignorant of what goes on with the performers behind the scenes, but his multiple instances of blackface were pretty egregious and hard to miss knowing about. With an in-universe-only perspective, I like Roy Harper, but he’s the only one I kind of like but also have this major cringe factor about liking due to outside-canon reasons.

a character I’m indifferent about: Like, half the male villains on this show. Male heroes? I’m down. Ladies? Very down. But... like... no. Another random dude in a suit out to make some money or whatever else. Fuck off, arrow through chest, goodbye. I think that’s the point, though. I also... don’t... care about Helena Bertinelli very much, but I blame it a lot on the tone of the acting she got. I feel like she’s a neat concept but executed badly.

a character who deserved better: LAUREL LANCE

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Hmmm. I don’t really know of canon ones that we were narratively supposed to like that I didn’t like other than, maybe, from a certain angle Laurel/Oliver in the way they tried to execute it sometimes, but like, that’s complicated. My first time watching, I wasn’t a big fan of S2!Sara/Oliver, but in retrospect as a character development thing I like it just fine.

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Island OT3 (Oliver/Slade/Shado) and Merlance!!!!!!!

a cute, low-key ship: Olicity, from my point of view.

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: I enjoy my very specific self-concept of Laurel/Oliver but it does not involve them being together on Earth 1 ultimately. I think I remember thinking Felicity/Ray was cute and fine? But it has been so long since I saw that bit that I can’t speak with authority about it. I assume that was unpopular, given the popularity of Olicity.

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: I don’t have a specific answer for this except that Laurel’s last words being presented the way they were is COMPLETE BULLSHIT AND I’M MAD. I’m not here for THAT Laurel-->Oliver meta-vomit nonsense. 

my favourite storyline/moment: The S5 finale is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. Also I love the latter half of S1 / early S2 island storyline the mostest and bestest. I just generally like this show, though, except, of course, for parts that suck.

a storyline that never should have been written: The aspect of Olicity where it almost cannibalized itself and its own show. I REALLY LIKE Olicity, like, a lot. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them now, ever, but it seems like late S3 and S4 (which I haven’t seen partly because of what I was hearing at the time) were a nightmare in terms of the Romance nearly smothering everything that was good about Arrow to death. I still have a chip on my shoulder and always will about how Laurel’s last words seem designed to prop up Olicity as much as they do anything else when Olicity was destined for failure at least at that point in time and the way things were being written/going. They had to kill Olicity for a while to save the show, and that’s a problem. Learn to write, writers. People liked Olicity because it was organically a part of the show, not because it was one of those Katamari Damacy balls that consumed everything in its path.

my first thoughts on the show: This is really good, and I’m gonna have that title card little bar of music in my head for the rest of my life.

my thoughts now: I’m really glad I came back to this show, and I wish that it didn’t seem like that people who initially liked Arrow have largely jumped ship for all the other or some other of the CW DCTV properties while acting like Arrow is show-non-grata in the “Arrowverse” it started. Personally, I hate it being called the “Arrowverse” which is why I pretty much always say DCTV, but the fact is that none of these big, amazing things would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for Arrow, and yes, there have been times when Arrow has gone pretty far afield, but it is still a really nice show. I’m even more determined to like it now than I was back when I first got into it. I’m working on rewatching it and closing my gaps of knowledge. And you know what? If I don’t like it, that’s what fanfiction is for. I like the core of what’s there, and I’m going to enjoy it, damn it. (Thank you @trufflemores​ for the encouragement in your meta work on this topic.)

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: The Marvel Cinematic Universe

That’s right, I am reviewing the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe in a single, definitive essay! Why would I, a single, brave and foolhardy man dare tackle such a task?

Because I can’t actually be bothered to write about most of the films individually.

The usual reason I write these reviews is to shine a light on media that lacks a wide appeal and does something interesting with its storytelling. I want to write stories, and studying the works of others is a good way to do that.

Now, I like the Marvel Cinematic Universe quite a lot. There somethings I’d like to be done a little differently, and I do dislike how it’s becoming increasingly locked with continuity so you have to pretty much watch the whole thing as a 19-part film series, but it executes on its promises.

Point is, I watched Avengers: Infinity War after dedicating a significant amount of time catching up on the films.

I also realized that by ranking the films, you can get a good approximation on a person’s narrative preferences.

So I’ll give a quick blurb on the films before listing them.

So enough forwarding, let’s go through these films. Spoilers, obviously.

To be fair, there’s a rift part way through. I started my catch-up with The Winter Soldier, so it’s been years since I watched anything before that. I’ll mark the rift and preemptively admit that early films may deserve better than I give.

Iron Man

The film that started it all, much to everyone’s excitement. It’s probably the most conventional superhero film of the series, but it did it’s job very well.

The Incredible Hulk

The most forgettable film. Very little carried over from it, to the point that it might as well no longer be canon.

Iron Man 2

Starts putting the work into actually building the MCU, but the story itself is one of the weakest.

Thor

I actually really liked Thor. Seems to usually be considered one of the lesser films, but I liked the fish out of water narrative, Thor himself is very charismatic, and Loki remains one of the MCU’s better written villains.

It also begins to establish that Thor has the potential for strong comedy. Just takes them a while to finally realize the potential.

Really, my biggest gripe is the ‘Norse Magic is just highly advanced technology’ angle that poisoned magic for so long. I like fantasy, and I really like how Superhero universes throw genres into a blender to make a colorful Speculative Fiction smoothie. Let magic be magic!

Captain America: The First Avenger

The subtitle’s a bit egregious, but this is my favorite of the phase one films. Good period piece, good hero, and the Red Skull is a level of pulpy villain I want more of.

The Avengers

So I seem to be one of the few who think this film was just okay. A landmark of shared universe films, yes, but I found the story wanting. Just a bunch of set up to fight aliens in New York, but nothing I feel I could sink my teeth into. It’s fine.

Iron Man 3

Another unexciting film. Tony Stark keeps learning the same ‘be a better person’ lesson, and I’m tired of it.

The Mandarin Twist was killer, though. The sort of playing with lore the series needs to take advantage of. The films are… let’s call it a dusty slate. There’s a lot of toys to play with, and expectations for how to use them, but it’s a chance to take a deep breath and streamline things. Incidentally, racism is a great topic to iron out while we’re here.

Thor: The Dark World

Yeah, not even I can defend this one. I liked the set designs. But Christopher Eccleston is wasted.[1] The plot was muddy. Jane Foster[2] twisted the knife in the corpse of Asgard Magic.

I actually did want to give this movie a rewatch, but it wasn’t checked in to the library when I started the undertaking, and I recalled it being unimpressive in the theaters. Good opening fight scene, though.

The Rift (Oooh, scary)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Not one of my favorites. Winter Soldier seems to be very well regarded, but both times I watched it, I found myself bored. It takes itself way too seriously for a Comic Book Movie, and it's very heavy on action scenes built around gun firing and punching that I don't enjoy.

The plot is built on a relatively subdued premise, questioning political corruption and monitoring the citizenry. There's also no grandiose villain.

Winter of Soldier fails to feel larger than life, and besides affirming Steve Rogers’ dedication to Bucky, it doesn't feel like it left much of an impact on the universe. So it falls short on my personal list.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Ah, finally, the movies are cutting loose. About time.

Guardians of the Galaxy is fun. Can't we just have fun? Yes. And we should.

Actual color design, fresh and exciting cast, fantastical setting, and actually making the bland villain work by having Ronan be essentially a force of nature instead of a person.

Also a soundtrack so distinctive it’s a calling card as good as Captain America’s shield. And it stands on its own legs, while all the previous films pretty much used the mounting lore as scaffolding.

And it’s just fun. It makes me smile and want to watch it again soon after watching.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Sigh.

So, first viewing I couldn’t maintain focus. Second viewing, I could focus on Ultron’s scenes through the second act before it all goes blurry.

There’s too many characters. I’m not sure I can even give any reasonable summary of the plot. A bunch of dull, shakey cam fight scenes, the entire cast taken to their blandest characterization, and just… ugh.

Also, Ultron is supposed to be a Pym creation. He looks like a bug. This makes no sense.

The worst part is later films keep referring to the events of Age of Ultron like anyone could comprehend what happened.

I’m even putting it below The Dark World, because that one at least had some interesting visual and notable scenes.

Ant-Man

A superhero heist film.

Goofy characters and witty dialogue.

Fight scenes I enjoy.

I really like Ant-Man. It’s a good origin film, the heroes are all the right sort of dingy white to make them likeable and interesting.

And it finally helped me realize what I want from combat: visual clarity, inventive choreography, and originality.[3] Because of the gimmick of shrinking and growing, the camera needs to actually frame the scenes to show off scale. And playing with scale also makes the fights interesting, since you never fully know what will come into play and how.

Also, I just enjoy heist films. The more ridiculous the better.

Captain America: Civil War

Sorry, but I’m on team ‘This is Avengers 2.5’. But, in that light, still notably better than previous team up movies.

Yes, it’s mostly about Captain America and Iron Man, but just about everyone who appears gets their narratives progressed somewhat, the plot is clear once we get past discussing the Accords (which themselves are boring).

The only complaint I have is I feel they fired this particular plot a bit early. From my layman understanding of the original comics, one of the main thrusts of the Civil War was oversight, yes, but also maintaining secret identities, which, if they let the roster build up some (including more secret identities)[4] it would be much more easy to follow than ‘We can’t let what happened in Age of Ultron happen again!’ Because no one knows what happened in that movie.

Also, big points for not killing the Bad Guy. It should be a low bar, but I personally hate the tradition of villains dying for their crimes. It’s overdone, and limits the talent pool for later stories.

Doctor Strange

I liked this movie, but also don’t know if I have much to say. They’re finally letting Magic be Magic, which I am 100% down with. An element of Dark magic not being evil magic[5]

The bad guys were forgettable. The Good Guys fun. I’m waiting to see more, but there’s a lot of good will built up.

Should’ve cast more Asian actors, though.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

‘Well, you love the first one, does the second one exceed it?’

No. But that’s fine. There’s a few clumsy attempts to recapture lightning that don’t pan out, but it’s not particularly hindered by it. The absurdity and joyous joke-cracking continued, and the pathos that was introduced was earned.

It’s a good movie, a worthy successor to the first, but doesn’t quite beat the original on my personal list.

Spider-Man Homecoming

Title’s kind of on the nose, isn’t it Marvel?

Fun fact, I haven’t seen any of the Andrew Garfield films as my stance was ‘I’m voting with my wallet, and I want Spidey in the MCU.’ Now that that happened, the two The Amazing Spider-Man movies don’t matter anyways!

Tom Holland is perfect for the role, both in the suit and out as he manages to capture awkward youth at a level never before seen. The plot’s interesting (even though the big twist was spoiled for me),[6] the movie drips with charm, and it’s fun to see Marvel’s big money maker fight DC’s![7]

Homecoming does perpetuate the conflict with poor communication (Happy’s indifference is narratively justified, Iron Man’s not), but they also let the villain live at the end, so I guess it cancels out?

Good movie. I recommend it.

Thor: Ragnarok

I’m… okay with this film?

So the creative team finally figure out comedy is Thor’s strength and leaned into it, which I, of course, love. But the story also feels unfocused. Is it about Thor versus his family? Oh, wait, now he’s on an alien world in a coliseum. But there’s just one fight before he easily escapes. Hulk’s back, and Hulk himself is an actual character! But Hulk and Banner don’t have much effect on the plot once away from the Grand Master. And suddenly we’re back to the Asgard stuff.

Narratively, it works, but the stuff with Grand Master felt more like a diversion than actual meat. Still, they’ve shifted the tone of Thor films to that of Guardians of the Galaxy so I’m not upset.

Excited for whatever’s next, but Ragnarok didn’t pump me up like most people.

Still, hopefully the Earth-based movies catch on and lighten up.

Black Panther

I liked it, but also feel underqualified to discuss it. Saw it in theaters, so that was fun!

Lot of villain killing, though, which is a shame since Klaue was oddly affable. I want way more than we got of him!

There’s a lot of good storytelling through design and minor actions (I particularly love how Killmonger snapped his spear in half to make a shortspear). They did a good job of carefully modulating the mood with well placed jokes (especially with M’Baku, who took such joy in messing with unexpected guests).

It’s a good film for a hero that I don’t know much about, and I’m interested for more.

Avengers: Infinity War

Ah, finally, the big moment! Did they stick the landing?

Yes! Then they took another jump, so I’m waiting to see if they can finish the gymnastic routine.

At the very least, Infinity War has vastly exceeded the previous Avenger films. The universe is bigger now, and everyone’s involved and I could follow every plot point! So big applause for that.

I’ve got a couple nitpicks, of course. I wish they stuck with Thanos’s original motivation[8] just to continue to embrace the absurdities of comic storylines. The whole ‘we need to cut all populations in half’ doesn’t stand up to any thought (populations repleniish, you could’ve doubled resources, heck, turn it into a Long Earth situation, you stupid purple Homer Simpson).

But all the praise is (currently) right. It’s a good movie.

Admittedly, the scenes actually taking place on Earth weren’t as compelling as Thanos’s quest, Thor’s mission, or the Guardians meeting Tony Stark’s team, but that’s just a summary of the whole franchise. I enjoy it more when they go high concept and have fun.

They could’ve chosen the deaths better. It’s a mix of unfair (all but one of my Guardians had to go!?), and overly obvious with impermanence (Spider-Man can’t stay dead, Sony will riot).

Also, didn’t really feel much like a war.

The List

Final Standings from worst to best(based on my personal impressions)

The Incredible Hulk Avengers: Age of Ultron Thor: The Dark World Iron Man 2 Iron Man 3 Captain America: The Winter Soldier The Avengers Iron Man 1 Thor Captain America: Civil War Doctor Strange Black Panther Captain America: the First Avenger Thor: Ragnarok Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Spider-Man Homecoming Ant-Man Guardians of the Galaxy

Now, you may be asking ‘Where’s Infinity War?’

That’s a fair question. I’m holding off on ranking it because it’s obviously a Part One. Its story is currently incomplete, and there’s also the chance the next film will sour the first. It happens. But as it stands, it’d be Top 5, easy.

So, what can we divine about me from this ranking? I enjoy fun and high concepts. The more gritty and ‘real’ you try to make your story, or repeatedly spinning your wheels is a detriment. I’m also very much a character-first guy.

Maybe there’s something else you can interpret. Feel free to send me any feedback you’ve got. I enjoy thinking about my entertainment.

As for what’s coming up in the MCU? Well, the next film is a sequel to Ant-Man, my second favorite film, so that’s exciting. We’ve also got Captain Marvel, a character I know next to nothing about, which really excites me. It’ll be fun to get introduced to completely new lore, without my nerdy foreknowledge questioning choices.

Then there’s Infinity War part 2 (or whatever they’re going to call it). Now, personally, I want Thanos to be defeated by Squirrel Girl because I am a massive nerd. But I know that won’t happen. But Part One built up good faith the first two Avenger film squandered, so I’m anticipating it.

All in all, feels like the movies are moving into a good direction. I’m still trepidatious about the inter-film lore getting too entangled, but solving the Thanos situation is a good point to back off and just focus on telling good individual stories.

At least until they can bring in Dr. Doom. No one else would dare follow Thanos except DOOM!

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send me questions and comments, check out my various other works, and support my patreon. Help fund the extended Canvas Universe.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Not that he ever seems to like the jobs he takes. [2] Who also clearly wants a divorce from this franchise. She hasn’t been relevant… ever, really. [3] The final battle of Guardians of the Galaxy adds ‘clear goals’ to the list. Baddies want to touch the ground, good guys need to prevent that. Defined endstates. [4] My stance on this tropes has always been ‘Keep secret from the general public, but tell your dang Aunt, Peter.’ [5] I don’t talk about it much, but it’s one of my lesser irks. Why can’t Darkness be good, or at least a true neutral force. Night time’s nice. [6] Thanks Reddit. [7] Micheal Keaton’s great. [8] Let Thanos be in love with Death, you cowards!