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spacemagicandlaserswords · 11 months

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The Clone Wars 2x13 ‘Voyage of Temptation’ Reaction

There was so much in that little “Very well.” from Obi-Wan

Anakin is on to you Obi-Wan and you are not helping yourself with all of those defensive and unsubtle reactions.

Why did that clone sound like an Aussie? G’day mate?

Lol of course there’s something in the crates

Satine is making an impassioned argument against war but it is rather undermined by her lying on a pile of plush cushions on top of a giant stepped throne that positions her above her subjects so she is literally looking down on them. The opulent setting, servant droids and champers being passed around doesn’t help either.

“I meant no disrespect.” said with all the underlying sass possible. That “Really” from Satine shows that she saw right through it.

“Senators, I presume you are acquainted with the collection of half-truths and hyperbole known as Obi-Wan Kenobi.” SCREECHING THE SAVAGERY

“Your highness is too kind.” The Sassery Continues!

I only noticed this while pausing but why the fuck does Orn Free Taa have two Twi’lek girls hanging off him?!

I love the framing here when Obi-Wan is addressing Satine. He’s almost at her eye level even though she’s on top of her throne pedestal. Visual metaphor for how similar they are yet how they are kept apart from eye other due to their duty to their beliefs? So close and yet so far.

Mum and Dad are fighting again.

“I think a multitude makes discord, not good counsel.” Satine absolutely shutting down Orn Free Taa. I love her. She takes absolutely no shit.

“There may be two sides to every dilemma but the Duchess only favours hers.” And you don’t only favour yours Obi-Wan? Side eyeing

Hello Mixer! Oh, they’ve named a clone, and we’re in a dark and spooky environment. He’s not going to last very long is he?

R2 you cheeky little shit

The clones definitely sound Australian. They’re supposed to be Kiwis, not Aussies. Very different accents. Humans are space australians though so maybe we can use that as the loosest of explanations?

“Droids” (derogatory). Is immediately stabbed to death by a droid.

The flirting continues! I mean fighting! The fighting continues. Yes, they’re definitely fighting. Totally not flirting at all.

“Even extremists can be reasoned with.” I love you Satine but I’m gonna have to disagree with you on that one.

“Ah, the sarcasm of a soldier.” “The delusion of a dreamer.” So that’s where this exchange comes from. That is some serious staring contest going on and neither is backing down.

“Fine.” ALL THE SASS

Oh rip Redeye, we didn’t even find out his name until after his gruesome death.

The jump from the clone getting stabbed to death by the droid to the opulent surrounds of the upper levels of the ship was jarring. Probably intentionally so.

“You and Satine have a history.” ya don’t say

CACKLING at Obi-Wan’s side eye at Anakin after he said Obi-Wan’s description of his year protecting Satine sounded romantic. Anakin did have a point though. Obi-Wan’s voice definitely sounded like he was reminiscing about old (romantic) times.

“That would’ve been problematic.” YA DON’T SAY

Anakin finding out his Master had a girlfriend?! Surprised pikachu face.

“A jedi must not form attachments” says the little shit with A WIFE

“But he usually leaves out the undercurrent of remorse.” Aw sadge

“Alright men, what’s the problem? I’m missing dinner.” Anakin back to being a shit again I see. Normal service has resumed.

Anakin did you just cut off Cody to talk to your droid?! How Dare.

Giant empty box in an obvious spot in the cargo bay. Yup, that looks pretty obviously out of place.

“That’s not good.” Do I have to say it again?

Anakin talking to R2 like he’s a dog. That is definitely Talking To My Dog Voice. WHOSEAGOODDROIDYESYOUARE

The droid walking out the dead body of Redeye is maximum levels of creepy

Is this a spider droid?

Oof lightsaber right through the droid eye

Oh of course there are babies. Of course it had creepy tiny baby assassin probe droids. More nightmare fuel.

It’s probably cruel but I did laugh at Orn Free Taa screaming and running away from the tiny assassin probe droids.

They’re fighting back to back and protecting each other! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah

“Do you always carry a deactivator?” Obi-Wan is so not impressed

“Just because I’m a pacifist doesn’t mean I won’t defend myself.” “Now you sound like a jedi.” Hmmmm he’s got a point there

I don’t think Rex got the braincell today

“I meant the scar I got after you fell and dropped me.” “Oh. Yes.” CACKLING AND SCREECHING

Satine completely stepping on Obi-Wan’s knight in shining armour moment there.

I think that quote about how people treat those below them rather than those equal to or above them is really relevant to Anakin here, who treated that droid like absolute shit.

A traitor?! The sinister plot thickens!

Dark!Obi-Wan decides to come out and play as he basically threatens the senators with an assassin droid.

Hello to senator Kin Robb

Called it. I thought there was something off about that dude when we met him in the last episode, though I thought he was a slimy advisor rather than a senator. Reminded me of Wormtongue from LotR

Obi-Wan did you just hit the assassin droid away from Satine with a frying pan?!

So Merrick has instantly transformed from smooth talking slimy advisor/senator to OTT scenery chewing villain

Lmao at Cody just randomly shooting into the air when the baby assassin droid leapt onto his bucket

Rex freaking out and smacking into the storage crates as he tries to keep the other baby assassin droid off his bucket

Anakin: Well, we found the little ones. What about the mother? Rex: Haven’t seen it Also Rex: *immediately gets body slammed by the mother assassin droid*

Rex when you see the mother assassin droid, don’t just point at it! Poor Rex, he definitely didn’t get the braincell for this mission

Rex just catching the assassin droids giant stabby legs and then kicking it off him like it’s nothing

Rex taking it up a notch and leaping on top of the assassin droid, pinning it under his boot and blasting all the tiny assassin droids to bits. Sir did you have to go So Hard?

I didn’t catch this until I replayed this little section over quite a few times but Anakin actually signals to Cody to stop firing at the mother assassin droid so that Anakin can fling his lightsaber at it and chop off some of its legs.

I also didn’t notice this little detail until after multiple replays but the mother assassin droid actually headbuts Rex straight in the bucket. Poor Rex, if he didn’t have the braincell today before that then he definitely doesn’t now.

Also the assassin droid sounds like it screams when Rex steps on it. He can step on me like that any time he likes

“This may not be the time to ask” YA THINK ANAKIN?!

Lol @ Obi-Wan’s defensive reaction. It definitely has a bearing on the situation at hand. Their reactions and expressions after are just as hilarious. Poor little Obi-Wan and his sad little face.

That is one weird looking ship

Well that’s one way of boarding a ship

“Anakin, she’s not my girlfriend!” CACKLING

Merrik has gone full villain stereotype

“Satine…” MYEMOTIONS.GIF

OMG THIS WHOLE LOVE CONFESSION SCENE

“I’ve loved you from the moment you came to my aid all those years ago.” SOBBING

Also, Merrik’s look of utter disgust in the background and the overly dramatic eyeroll is absolutely sending me

“Satine, this is hardly the time or place for…” DAMMIT MAN LISTEN TO HER

Satine: *puppy dog eyes* Obi-Wan: Alright

“Had you said the word, I would have left the Jedi order.” SHAKING AND CRYING

Merrik utterly ruining the moment there. Though the absolute over the top scenery chewing villainry that he’s channeling is still deeply amusing me.

Was that a tactical love confession from Satine? I’m not saying it wasn’t genuine or real, just that it seemed a both obvious and clever time to tell the love of your life that you’ve loved him ever since you met. We’ve already seen that Satine is exceptionally smart and shrewd and I wouldn’t put it past her.

“You have the romantic soul of a slug Merrik *stomps* and slugs are so often trod upon.” YASSSS GET HIS ASS SATINE

Merrik getting his villain monologue in. He has got them in a philosophical quandary though and he knows it. I am absolutely loving the over the top sarcastic overly dramatic villain mode. It’s like they’ve got every stereotypical villain trope and shoved it in him.

Merrik: “Who’ll strike first and brand themselves a cold-blooded killer?” Anakin: Me!

That was definitely a slowed down few notes of the Imperial March playing over the shot of Anakin popping up after stabbing Merrik through the chest with his lightsaber. It’s an interesting juxtaposition because Anakin pops up from the bottom of the screen with this little smile and looking almost sweet and wide-eyed. Yet the music is hinting at what we all know happens in the future. Another thing I didn’t notice until multiple replays of this little section is that the framing of Anakin here is also very dark. The entire background is black or dark grey. Plus his armour and jedi robes are black, very dark grey and red. How did anyone not see this coming? Or rather, they probably did and didn’t know how to handle it or realise it was past the point of no return until it was too late.

“Obi-Wan, I…” DAMMIT CODY. Why did you have to pick now to be your usual hyper competent Marshal Commander self? Talk about a cock block

“I must get back to the business of diplomacy.” Nooooooooo

“As you say Duchess, some other time.” SOBBING

That feels like Obi-Wan’s version of “As you wish.” from The Princess Bride.

That is a lot of fancy words and diplomacy and Great Negotiator-ing for ILOVEYOU

“I’m still not sure about the beard.” CACKLING

Obi-Wan’s little concerned and flustered reaction. My girlfriend doesn’t like my beard?!

“It hides too much of your handsome face.” Dayum gurl Satine with the smooth talking moves right there.

Anakin: A very remarkable woman. Obi-Wan: She is indeed. Anakin: Ya know, if you need any tips on how to keep a relationship a secret, I know a guy.

Also, that hand on the shoulder from Anakin spoke volumes

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specter319 · 6 months

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𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: 𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗟 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

Authors Note: It's been a while, and I do apologize for the wait. With the likes of mental health and finals taking the forefront and the incident that has taken the CoD community by the heart. I leave this little chapter as a means to try and comfort those still troubled by it and hope this can bring you some joy or inspiration, Fly High Vincent.

Gif Credit: Daniel Bruehl

Pairing: Damon 'Ninja' West x Kaden Lincoln, Simon 'Ghost' Riley x John 'Soap' MacTavish, Zack 'Nemo' Hayes x Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick. Word Count: 1.3k words no use of y/n eventual relationship establishment, however, Damon and Kaden are married. Summary: In a nation unaccustomed to war, Australia's newly elected government faces a dire crisis when rumours of a biological weapon on home soil, send shockwaves through the Government's defence sector. Dispatching a team of elite operatives to deal with it, the containment goes heads up as they look for other options.

The Black Angel Squad is soon assigned as the situation quickly spirals out of control behind the team's back unknowingly, and to stop a bleeding wound, Task Force 141 is brought in to assist them amid a frantic cabinet meeting of last-minute options and consistent fuck ups, forging an uneasy alliance between two teams. As tensions soar on both ends, questions arise about one thing: Was this the making of a weapon to begin with? Warnings: slow-burn, zombies, canon typical violence associated with Call of Duty, gruesome depictions of death, blood, swearing. ao3 version [Prev] [Next]

It was just a little over eight in the afternoon before a sudden tension was felt in the bones of a man, ironically enough, hidden behind a calcium veil, it was almost as if without even looking up from the conjoined notes of his inner workings that he could sense a presence at the door.

Before the form of the body could even knock, it was without hesitation that the male finally piped up as he signed away yet another form of action.

“Come in,” He was hoping it was that rapscallion Scotsman who was about to disturb him with useless conversation - anything to get away from a report that drained his life away only to have to replenish it with the likes of a non-existent sleep. But it wasn’t, instead, a younger, more reserved form of a man stood in front of him - Gaz.

“You’re urgently needed in the meeting room, Lieutenant. Price is calling all of us down here,” There was a hesitant form in his voice, he could hear it. Something had obviously gotten Price’s attention, and by the look of urgency in his eyes as Simon finally looked up from his paperwork. It was obviously no joke, usually Gaz would be off on his own thoughts, much like himself, or, hanging around Price. But the sucked in lips and almost targeted eyes had Simon moving his body before his mind could even calculate just as to where to go. And Gaz only knew to follow, closing the Lieutenants office door as they hurriedly walked down the corridors to the one place that never seemingly was abandoned for too long. Once more having people hanging around it, planning a move with what to do next.

“The whole team is there?” Ghost repeated as he looked over his shoulder

“Soap was about to come and get you before Price called him in, so I came and got you. Says a good majority of the Australian Government is there, plus Laswell is now involved apparently.”

“The Australian Government?” Ghost enquired as they entered the room, both met with waiting eyes from Soap and Price. As Ghost naturally gravitated towards the shorter Scotsman and looked over at the screen in front of them.

“Laswell.”

“Ghost, Gaz, good to see you,” Laswell spoke quickly

“Likewise,” Gaz chimed in.

“I do apologise for the short notice boys but, I’ve apparently been informed that there’s rumblings of a possible biological warfare happening out in a country that’s least expected in and amongst the giant spiders the size of a shoe. We got a report sent from Katherine about an attack and, well, I’ll let these guys say the rest. Prime Minister Wilson, if you want to take main stage,” Laswell stated before he spoke.

“Thank you Kate,” Wilson replied before he cleared his throat and began speaking up. “I was informed that, thanks to a few strings, favours and a very amazing Kate Laswell, that your Task Force is one of the best out there, though we have our own, not to brag. You’re going to be needed alongside them. Three days ago around 8:34 PM or 11:04 GMT your time, a complaint was made to local Northern Territory Police about a suspicious woman getting violent and angry, screaming as she ran around like a crazed lunatic. But, she never said anything verbally, just, screaming. Police were called to the scene after they tracked her down and tried to arrest the woman, but she had gotten violent all the more and she was shot on sight, during this process, it’s been reported that she had blood seeping from her eye sockets and had bitten a police officer.”

“Steamin’ Jesus,” Soap murmured “Blood from her eye sockets?”

“Correct, I’d state just exactly why but, I’m waiting for Professor Campbell to get back from her call regarding any further information about the report. What I can say, is the fact that, this is an isolated incident so far, and we’re keeping an eye on the police officer, in case anything goes south.”

“Do apologise for the wait, I was just in a call with the local hospital that was holding the police officer. What did I miss?” Professor Campbell interrupted. Appearing fully in the camera’s view.

“Nothing much, we were just explaining as to what was going on incident wise and how this is an isolated incident as far as we know,” She was about to state more information, but was suddenly interjected by someone unknown to her.

“Why are we getting involved in it, your government has enough resources, doesn’t it?” Ghost budded in as he looked over at the screen. They had stated it themselves, a better task force than the one’s that they had right before them.

“Who might you be?” Professor Campbell questioned the man, interested by his own mask.

“Lieutenant Ghost,” A pause, she was caught off guard by the name, obviously.

“Okay, Lieutenant Ghost, well, we do have resources at hand, we have every security resource and health department on this because, this has been the first known case for someone to be bleeding from their eye socket, as far as we’re aware of. Though there is the cases where people can cry blood. According to three police reports I’ve gotten back, including the officer that was bitten. This was not at all the case, usually where it would form in the tear duct of the eye, it was forming on the middle of her eye sockets.”

No one knew what to truly say as they all looked at each other, how could you process any of that statement that you had been told.

“That’s impossible,” Gaz finally responded.

“It’s not, the crying part isn’t anyway. The only time tear duct bleeding usually happens, or as it’s better known for it’s scientific name, haemolacria. Is through trauma, surgery or infectious diseases. Given the reports of how this had occurred, we’re being led to believe that this could be the latter, and a few discussions had stated the possibility of plausible use of a biological weapon,”

“So you’re telling us, that you have no hardened evidence that this is a biological weapon, and you’re only giving us possibilities?” Captain Price asked. “I am not going to have my men risked until such time as you can safely state that you know it really is.”

“It’s the possibility that this might be a situated attack on the lives of millions of Australians that could be at risk if this isn’t chased up, which is why we asked you guys and our own team. We don’t know until such time as there is no plausible evidence that it isn’t a biological weapon. And we need your help to find out because if something happens here, god knows when the bloody rest of the world will fall to it,”

John was left in the bouts of a crossroads as he tensed up and grabbed at the seams of his shirt instinctively. He took in a deep breath before sighing and finally chancing it.

“What do we do if we find out it is?”

“Then you’ll be quarantined to make sure that you and your men aren’t infected with the disease, all the while we set up parameters that will keep the others safe and stop any of this before it gets out to the public, and handle the weapon accordingly.” It was the usual political jargon of ‘That’ll be when we get to it’. Looking over at his men, Price nodded before he finally gave in, knowing just what was at hand - but knowing that all of his men, him included, could deliver on it.

“When are we set to move?”

“As soon as you possibly can,” The professor stated simply. Given the mood in the room that John had seen as he looked around, this was apparently a hell of a lot more serious then what was initially thought.

And his task force had seemingly formed into a disease control team right under his nose.

#spectersblog #cod fanfic #cod #operationsentinel #cod mw2 #soapghost #specterwrites #cod mw22 #call of duty zombies #codfanfiction #cod mwii #cod fic #call of duty modern warfare #call of duty #call of duty fanfic #call of duty x reader #kyle gaz garrick #zombies

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hyenasheep · 10 months

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No way i finally finished my metalhead spidersona no way

Anyway

This is

Lowan / Death Spider

Some info and lore

Mainly using he/them for him but any pronouns is super okie dokie

Black/Death metal

7’3” tall

Australian

Owns a white munchkin cat called Wurrona

Got bit by radioactive hunstman

Early 20s

Very poor vision, especially if there’s a sharp light, usually orientating well with loud noises

Hypersensitive, able to feel the smallest air movements including those made by noises

I’m still workin on his lore but in his universe was a nuclear apocalypse caused by green goblin, Lowan was one of the soldiers and right before he left Australia, he met with his Goblin and outside the building that later exploded got bit by a radioactive giant hunstman, causing his nonstandard height, losing almost completely his vision, having super strength, giving them tougher skin and loud screech attack.

they’re menacing, do not talk much, usually communicating trough nodding/few words as a response and occasional sign language. Since Hobie is like the older brother of the group, my sona is their mentor/adoptive dad (even so they’re just as young as Hobie). Even so they look spooky hes actually good with kids and animals. deep inside they’re just this big gentle giant who wants to chill with you in the same room while listening to music

#spiderverse #spiderman astv #spiderman #spiderman into the spiderverse #spiderman across the spiderverse #death metal #black metal #oc #spidersona #original character #digital drawing #corpse paint

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amphiptere-art · 5 months

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Still not done with the crimple introduction. Remember you can just ask about them now. I'll be giving little tidbits of the introduction so you guys can at least see how they interact and work.

Here's what I got so far after today. Not too much different from last time but a couple more paragraphs.

Blue Moon was confused. They had been teleported randomly. He was in the daycare. Well, what they perceived as the daycare. It had the same jungle gyms and basic layout. The only difference is that the theme seem to have shifted. There was no more Castle. It looked like somebody had properly themed it with kids cove. Big wavy decorations with ships and sand. As if the entirety of the daycare was an island.

Thankfully this daycare was closed at the moment. So they did not cause a fright. Although the lack of a moon demanding where they came from was a little confusing. Then again they had been to many places. But no one had approached them yet. Certainly somebody was running the daycare? Thankfully they're question was answered as they saw movement.

The thing crawled out of the Play structure. Planting itself on the bridge. It looked strange. It crawled like a spider. Which wasn't the strangest thing they've seen, but this thing moved.. differently? It was reminiscent of a mini music man. There was more poking out though. It almost looked exposed. That there are pieces out of place. There was a snakey nature to it too. I like it slithered and crawled at the same time. It was very alien.

Description intermission- description at bottom of page.

Blue Moon caught its eyes. They were very interesting. Mismatched and moving in all the wrong directions. Well some of them were. They started to peep their head above the bridge sides. Their face was like a dog, but the more they crawled forward the more Blue Moon realized this was not the standard animatronic. It was a mishmash of parts. Two different heads. Too many arms. Not enough hands and legs to match. All of it was exposed to. The scent of metal filled their sensors.

Blue Moon flinched as they were addressed. Not expecting the almost southern, Australian sounding voice. The thing tilting their head to the side as the hand that was on where their head should go grappled onto the side of the bridge. Allowing the rest of the body to dangle.

“Well hello there. You don't look like you're standard animatronic. You got some height on ya buddy. Look like some sort of giant statue. Although I suppose those questions should be for later. Greetings are always a first. So hi buddy. I'm Crimple. The lovely caretaker of this fine place. Who are ya?”

Blue Moon could do nothing but stare for a second. The thing moved exaggeratedly. Hands waving wildly. Although there was a pose with every movement. It looked more like a performance. The hands and arms also extended. The little discs that made up the animatronics upper limbs and neck moved about so arms and legs could be made longer. It was like some exaggerated magic trick with how they were thrown about. Dancing around almost like nano machines extending and contracting a limb.

Blue Moon finally snapped out of their stupor. Cut off guard as the thing move the discs that made up a long arm into their neck. Stretching it forward to reach Blue Moon's face.

“Come on! Don't leave me hanging!”

A couple of the discs and a hand moved forward on the extended neck. Extending a shorter hand and arm right below their head. In a similar motion to a handshake.

“Blue Moon is what my name is. I would say it would seem strange but I feel it is inaccurate given what yours is.”

“Haha. You and me buddy. Strangest names in all the pizza plex. Although I would say you're stranger. You definitely don't look like anyone I've ever seen.”

“No you would have not seen me before. For I have opened many universes doors. Not on purpose as much as I wish. If I could have the control of others I would gleefully switch.”

“Ahh. You're one of those universe hoppers. Seen a couple, Although not many. Definitely not one like you. You're so big! What are you?”

Blue Moon was about to answer before they stuttered. The little thing finally jumping off of the bridge and scuttling over. All of their discs combining to make a very long neck. Hands and leftover feet hanging off the sides of it. They sacrifice one of their more normal looking limbs to the neck also. Finally meeting Blue Moon face-to-face. Where they could only stare into their eyes as they let out a small cackle.

“Dear goodness, 14 feet-ish. You really are a tall bugger.”

The Tower that allowed them to look Blue Moon in the eyes started to crumble. Discs falling off in an exaggerated fashion as a reformed back into the previous shape.

“Bet that's got to make life a pain sometimes. Wouldn't you like to be like me? Able to freely shift your limbs just in the right places. Who's got to be worried about being too tall when you can make yourself a snake.”

Some of the discs moved towards the smaller head. Lengthening its neck length while also giving it a tail without moving it. The whole contraption slithering comedically before it started to move back to the previous positions.

“Then again, it's not like you can freely change your shape like me. You have an interesting design nonetheless. Nothing wrong with it. Just unfamiliar to me.”

“yes… if I could inquire. What is your design's desire?”

“Why wouldn't ya- Oh right you're not from here. Ya ever heard of mangle? And I don't mean no Toy glam-rock foxy. I'm talking about good old toy foxy. The one that got ripped apart and renamed mangle. If you know who they are, The rest shouldn't be that hard to conclude.”

“I've heard of the name yes. But it seems like something the company would detest.”

“Ha. Perhaps. But mangle was the star show of the kids corner. It was a whole new thing that she could come apart Willie nilly. So the company just decided to make that kid safe. None of my metal is pointy, and snapping off my limbs won't cause me any harm.”

“But your bones are made of metal. All of it exposed. A tasty treat to me, but a danger exposed.”

“Don't worry about me smashing a kid. Casing isn't exactly the softest thing to be hit by anyways. I got control of me motors. Although what's with you calling me a tasty treat. You like what you see.”

Krimple widened their arms and leaned back dramatically. Attempting to show off the most of their exoskeleton. The site made Blue Moon cringe. But not because they found it appealing. It was because it was far to appealing as a meal. Shaking their head in firm denial.

“Ohhhh. You meaning that more literally aren't ya. Well trust me I got a couple of metal pieces to spare. It's not like I'm exactly keeping this whole body together.”

Crimple exaggeratedly disconnected all their discs. Their parts falling about in an uncoordinated fashion. it really looked like they were a tower of blocks that had fallen over. Although their pieces were still functional. They're Jaws opening wide in a smile. What hands had landed upright splayed their fingers. Even the feet wiggled their toes.

#crimple #red blue and black

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blubushie · 1 year

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HI I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! why did you drink your own pee? what did that taste like? whats your favorite snake? whats your favorite lizard? favorite turtle? whats your favorite australian saying? whats your favorite sea animal besides killer whales? what color is your hair? how about your eyes? how tall are you? whats bushgender mean? do you play any instruments? whats the model of your car? what color is it? can you get custom license plates in australia? do YOU have a custom license plate?

Ah, Christ. Knew telling you cunts that would come back to bite me in the arse.

Why did you drink your own piss?

I was dying and thirsty. My pride and dignity is not more important than my life. So I drank my own piss. On the plus side, it worked. I had enough moisture in me to keep trekking for two days until I found actual water and then I was so half-lucid with dehydration that I almost drowned myself trying to drink it. On the plus side I got one helluva story and a new name!

(Don't do dehydration, kids.)

What did that taste like?

Tangy.

What's your favourite snake?

The one in me daks. Really though, probably Oxyuranus microlepidotus, or the dandarabilla. Most venomous snake on the planet, but not the most dangerous since these snakes are only really found in a VERY small region of the Outback in which VERY few people live, so you're very unlikely to encounter one. That said they do have the most toxic venom of all snake species on the planet (with the highest untreated lethality rate of all snake species at OVER EIGHTY PERCENT) and their venom goes into effect about 30 minutes after envenomation, and fatality usually occurs within 45 minutes of envenomation. So if you get bit you're fucked, basically.

Unlike many snakes, the dandarabilla ALSO has an envenomation rate of OVER EIGHTY PERCENT. That means that over 80% of the time they're going to inject venom. Venomous snakes can do something called a "dry bite," which is usually used as a warning strike and consists of them biting you without injecting venom. But the dandarabilla says "fuck that and fuck you, cunt" and INJECTS VENOM OVER EIGHTY PERCENT OF THE TIME.

Compare that to Crotalus atrox, the western diamondback rattlesnake, who only injects venom 60% of the time.

What's your favourite lizard?

The one in me daks. (For those of you that don't get it, chucking a piss is also called "draining the lizard" here.) My answer is Varanus giganteus, the perentie. I saw one eat a cat once. They scare me. I like them. (Also I fought one for rights to a pig carcass that I shot so they have no fear of humans.)

Favourite turtle?

The one in me- Okay this joke isn't working now. Macrochelys temminckii, the alligator snapping turtle. They're cool as hell, look fucking prehistoric, and can bite my fingers off. I think they're neat.

What's your favourite Australian saying?

"Well I'm not here to fuck spiders." City roos will tell you that we made that up as a joke for tourists but it's bullshit, we actually do say that in the Outback. We also use the alternative "Well I didn't come here to finger dingos." We're very crass, us Aussies.

If you ever want to find an Aussie in the wild just shout "AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE" and any Aussies in the vicinity will immediately reply "OI OI OI!" It's our mating call.

I also love our age-old curse of "May your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down," which literally translates to "May your chickens (chooks) turn into emus and kick your toilet (dunny) down."

Also "dry as a dead dingo's donger," meaning you're very thirsty, "don't come the raw prawn with me," which means "don't try to pull one over on me," and every meaning of our slang usage of the word "piss."

What's your favourite sea animal besides orcas?

Octopodes are cool as. I love giant isopods. Siphonophores are pretty spiffy. I'd like to see marine iguanas.

What colour is your hair? How about your eyes? How tall are you?

I was born a strawberry blonde, but as I've gotten older it's darkened to a dirty blonde (I've got some neat natural highlights though). On good days (and with a lot of sun) it really lightens up to a golden blonde but that's usually only visible at the bottom of my mullet that gets sunlight. Most of my hair is obscured by my hat so it stays dark. I have light blue eyes that sort of alternate between blue and grey depending on the amount of light (grey in a room, light blue in direct sunlight). I'm a manlet and that's all I'm going to say about my height (I got my mum's shortness).

What's bushgender mean?

Honestly, I just... don't care about gender? It doesn't exist out in the bush. There's just my own biology and I'm not reminded of gender at all until I interact with people. I like it that way. I'm not necessarily nonbinary since I'm a bloke, it's just that gender is a complete afterthought to me so I just don't think about it. My gender is the bush. I am a bushie. The land doesn't care what I think of myself so why should I?

Do you play any instruments?

I can make dove calls with my hands. Also I play the harmonica but I'm terrible at it.

What's the model of your car? What colour is it?

'99 Ford. Not telling you the model because I don't like stalkers lmao but it's a ute with a camper in the tray. It's white. The paint reflects heat instead of absorbing so my engine is less likely to overheat in the Outback sun. Also white's an inoffensive colour so it stands out less in the bush than, say, black or blue or red or whatever.

Can you get custom number plates in Australia? Do you have a custom number plate?

Yes you can and yes I do! I run a business after all! I need to have something that identifies me!

#blu whos

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detectivejigsawpines · 2 years

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The Ultimate Disney Villain Showdown-Part 3

I think that covers the animals. Now on to part 2 of Round 1-Mundane Villains!

Hans (Frozen)

Manipulator

Heartstomper

Yet another guy who just can't wait to be king

Strengths: Manipulation, charm, cunning, charisma, singing voice, horse, nice sideburns, sword

Weaknesses: Being punched in the face, sisterly love

VERSUS

Sheriff of Nottingham (Robin Hood)

The original Wolf of Wall Street

Tax collector

Big-bellied bully

Strengths: Intelligence, strength, sword, capable of throwing his weight around, light on his feet for his size, pettiness

Weaknesses: Incompetent vulture sidekicks, unnecessary cruelty, occasional inability to see through disguises, being chased by tents, catchy songs, having a twangy southern accent in medieval England

****

Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians)

Sadistic puppy killer

Fur fashion fiend

I don't care what the new movie tries to tell you, she is not a good or sympathetic person

Strengths: Ruthlessness, determination, intelligence, being a rich white female with a bobbed haircut, intimidation, drives like a maniac, terrifyingly awesome mansion

Weaknesses: Temper, impatience, incompetent henchmen, future lung cancer victim, greed, vindictiveness, able to be outsmarted by dogs

VERSUS

Madam Medusa (The Rescuers)

Child labor supporter

Cruella expy

Yet another example of a Karen

Strengths: Shotgun, pet crocodiles, intimidation, boat driving skills, manipulation, determination

Weaknesses: Impatience, temper, fear of mice, hotheadedness, bad boss, vanity, able to be outsmarted by mice

****

Shan Yu (Mulan)

Leader of the Hun Army

Howling wind

Possibly genetic experiment crossbreeding him with a hawk or something-check out those eyes

Strengths: Intelligence, sword, pet hawk, strength, freaky yellow eyes, giant freaking army, ruthlessness, determination

Weaknesses: Avalanches, fireworks

VERSUS

Mr. Scroop (Treasure Planet)

Technically an alien, but just go with it

Spider psycho

Israel Hands expy

Strengths: Giant pincers, ability to crawl on ceiling, vindictiveness, cunning, manipulation, eavesdropping, being part of a criminally underrated awesome movie

Weaknesses: Temper, impatience, the cold void of space

****

Percival C. McLeach (The Rescuers Down Under)

Poacher

Walking Australian stereotype

Surprisingly frightening by virtue of how willing he is to murder a child in cold blood, and because of the face he makes in that one scene

Strengths: Manipulation, being voiced by George C. Scott, strength, multiple weapons, Joanna (lizard sidekick), cool hat, determination, ruthlessness, intimidation

Weaknesses: Bad boss, beer gut, temper, gets outsmarted by mice

VERSUS

Lyle Tiberius Rourke (Atlantis)

Mercenary

Graverobber

Double-parker (allegedly)

Strengths: Manipulation, combat skills, ruthlessness, weapons, intimidation, pettiness

Weaknesses: Lack of conscience, ultimately a sellout, can't handle being cut by magic blue glass

****

Gaston (Beauty and the Beast)

Hunter

Stalker

Self-entitled bas...ketcase

Strengths: Charisma, cunning, manipulation, weapons, determination, slyness, popularity, good looks, deep singing voice, combat and hunting skills, high alcohol consumption

Weaknesses: Overblown sense of entitlement, illiterate-ness, vanity, selfishness, inability to accept rejection

VERSUS

Clayton (Tarzan)

Hunter

Poacher

Boss level after defeating Sabor

Strengths: Shotgun, machete, stealth, cunning, determination, manipulation, hunting skills, voiced by BRIAN BLESSED, absolutely massive chin

Weaknesses: Temper, impatience, berserker rage, susceptible to vines (not the Internet kind)

****

Bradford Buzzard (DuckTales)

Accountant

Leader of secret organization

Massive killjoy

Strengths: Manipulation, secret-keeping, espionage, bookkeeping, cunning, caution, practicality

Weaknesses: Control freakishness, fear of potentially dangerous situations, unresolved childhood trauma, inability to accept own villainy

VERSUS

Dawn Bellwether (Zootopia)

Born leader (it's literally in her last name)

Fearmonger

Political terrorist

Strengths: Hench-rams, manipulation, determination, deceptively cute appearance, ruthlessness

Weaknesses: Not physically strong, cute fluffy sheep, hatred of predator animals

****

Bill Sykes (Oliver & Company)

Gangster

Loan shark

Kidnapper

Strengths: Dobermans, intimidation, realistically horrifying, determination, willingness to kidnap a little girl

Weaknesses: Underestimating weaker parties, future lung cancer patient, trains

VERSUS

Governor Ratcliffe (Pocahontas)

Gold-digger (literally)

Designated villain on account of name

Historically inaccurate

Strengths: Charisma, opportunistic, authority, musket, nice hat, gets two villain songs in the same movie

Weaknesses: Greed, recklessness, racism, uncompromising

****

Lady Tremaine (Cinderella)

Evil Stepmother

Amateur slavedriver/domestic abuser

Social climber

Strengths: Manipulation, authority, expressing disappointment, cunning, using casual cruelty to ensure cooperation, looking absolutely terrifying in the above scene, being voiced by the same woman who voices Maleficent

Weaknesses: Jealousy, greed, helplessness against true love or whatever 🙄

VERSUS

Mother Gothel (Tangled)

Wannabe flower child

She and Frollo would be a match made...somewhere

Terrible babysitter

Strengths: Emotional abuse, semi-immortality, cunning, manipulation, ruthlessness, deception, not afraid to get her hands dirty

Weaknesses: Vanity, selfishness, unused to defiance, unwilling to age gracefully

****

Captain Hook (Peter Pan)

Pirate

Neverland inhabitant

Wannabe child murderer

Strengths: Hook (well, duh), swordsmanship, cunning, crew, cannons, loophole abuse, wrath, very snazzy dresser

Weaknesses: Cowardly, whiny, crippling fear of crocodile, obsession, overconfidence, semi-competent crew, constantly beaten by a child

VERSUS

Judge Claude Frollo (Hunchback of Notre Dame)

Religious leader

Hypocrite

Abusive parent

Strengths: Authority, religious mania, being voiced by Tony Jay, awesome villain song, even more awesome hat, manipulation, deception, ability to destroy self-esteem, determination

Weaknesses: Obsession, decades of suppressed libido, xenophobia, tendency to talk/sing to the fireplace, hallucinations, lava

****

Toffee (Star vs. The Forces of Evil)

Former general

Bipedal lizard

Nice dresser

Strengths: Regeneration, manipulation, intelligence, practicality, strength, possession, nice suit, patience

Weaknesses: Boring, dresses like a lawyer, sadly underutilized by his own show which had a TOTAL COPOUT ENDING THAT WAS SO STUPID I CAN'T EVEN-

*Deep breath, deep breath*

...You saw nothing. Just move along, nothing to see here.

VERSUS

Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (Phineas and Ferb)

Evil scientist (NOT a pharmacist)

Either a genius or an idiot, it's hard to tell

Most wholesome villain ever

Strengths: Titanium arms, ability to build -inators in a day or less, ability to break or at least lean on fourth wall, combat skills (at least when up against platypus), ability to burst into random song and dance numbers at the drop of a hat, ability to break cycle of abuse and do his best to be a good father to his daughter, virtually indestructible

Weaknesses: Easily distracted (possibly ADHD), almond brittle, unresolved childhood trauma, pettiness, loneliness, social awkwardness, doesn't seem to understand the concept of NOT including self-destruct buttons on -inators, fears bats and vending machines

#ultimate disney villain showdown #mundane villains #round one

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popentertainment-moviereviews · 16 days

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STING (2024)

Starring Tony J. Black, Alyla Browne, Alcira Carpio, Silvia Colloca, Ryan Corr, Jermaine Fowler, Noni Hazlehurst, Rowland Holmes, Danny Kim, Penelope Mitchell and Robyn Nevin.

Screenplay by Kiah Roache-Turner.

Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner.

Distributed by Well Go USA Entertainment. 91 minutes. Rated R.

Occasionally Sting can’t quite decide if it is a creature-feature horror film or a heartfelt family drama. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work on either level, although it does have enough comic jump scares to make it some cheesy fun. After all, Sting doesn’t take itself too seriously, so why should we? (I am saying that both as a positive and as a negative.)

The story revolves around a strangely mutating spider who grows from a small normal size to the size of a hog in the space of a few days. And, needless to say, the bigger the spider gets, the bigger its meals become. She starts with eating the many, many cockroaches in a Brooklyn tenement apartment, and quickly graduates to small pets, and then tenants and exterminators. (I honestly have no way of telling the sex of a spider, but one of the characters refers to the creature as a she, so I’ll take her word for it.)

It also revolves around a family living in the building, particularly the young daughter Charlotte (Alyla Brown). She lives with her mother Heather (Penelope Mitchell), stepfather Ethan (Ryan Corr) and her infant sister. Ethan is a struggling comic book artist who took a job as the super at an old Brooklyn tenement apartment run by his slumlord mother-in-law. (Even though very little of the film takes place outside of the apartment, it doesn’t really look all that much like Brooklyn, and since it’s an Australian film, I’d assume it was made there.)

Ethan and Charlotte are working together on a comic book which actually has gotten sold and might be their big break if they can only get it finished, and yet Charlotte doesn’t particularly seem to like Ethan at all. In fact, honestly, Charlotte appears to be bit of a budding sociopath through much of the film – and not just because she thinks an aggressive, fast-growing spider makes for a good secret pet – until she eventually shows humanity when on the run from the giant spider and trying to save her family.

She had found the spider while on one of her apparently regular jaunts through the ventilation system of the old building. She apparently breaks into the other apartments through the huge vents, just to steal grandma’s dolls, make vaguely creepy Instagram posts of other people’s stuff, or simply to look around. In one of those nocturnal visits, she finds a spider crawled on her hand. Instead of trying to get it off, she decides to keep it as a pet. For the record, she names the spider Sting after the sword in The Lord of the Rings, not the former Police singer.

Eventually Sting gets loose in the same ventilation system and starts either killing or capturing the people in massive webs.

It’s sort of cheesy and sort of silly, but sort of fun too. And really, that’s all this film is trying for.

Jermaine Fowler adds some decent comic relief in the role of an exterminator who may have met his match with this arachnid. Honestly, other than him and the main family, most of the characters are sort of one-dimensional spider bait, but that’s okay, we’re not looking for deep characterization in a giant spider movie. We are looking for scares, and Sting delivers the goods just often enough to make it worth a look if it shows up on cable at 3:00 in the morning sometime.

Jay S. Jacobs

youtube

#Sting #2024 #Movie Review #Jermaine Fowler #Jay S. Jacobs #Youtube

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autitm · 1 month

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Get out of my notes w this australian animals r scary murders bullshit we dont have any animals that could actually be interested in eating a human and therefore none of them are actually interested in attacking a human. You are only at risk if you are provoking the animal. Using venom to kill a human is dangerous and a waste of energy for the animal they will only do it as a last resort because putting themselves up close and personal with a giant creature they cant possibly hope to beat is actually really fucking dangerous. Most invenomnations take hours to kill a human the only exception being the sydney funnel web which still gives u plenty of time to squash the damn spider. Your only at risk of wildlife if ur up north and swimming in summer without a stingersuit. Or the off chance you step on a croc, also in the north. Whereas over in north america u have bears, moose, wolves, coyotes, and aligators all of which are just as likely to be able to injure you as those crocs accept yk theyre combined range stretches to about your entire country. Australia is no more dangerous than anywhere else and you guys r just being annoying as fuck.

#0w0.txt

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yeonchi · 1 year

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Thirteenth Doctor Reviews: The Final Verdict (and Ncuti Gatwa is the Doctor)

In July 2017, Jodie Whittaker was announced as the Thirteenth Doctor, taking over Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor as the first actress to play the Doctor. Seeing the reaction to the casting led me to realise that I should see how she does in the series first before making any judgements, which I expressed in a November 2017 post that served as the prelude to this review series. Cut to May 2022 and Ncuti Gatwa was announced to be taking over as the Doctor after Jodie Whittaker announced her departure alongside Chris Chibnall the year before.

Given how much time has passed between July 2017 and now, it’s amazing to see how things have changed throughout this time. When I started this review series in October 2018, I had come out of a pretty toxic phase in my internet career (that almost saw me deplatformed) and was trying to find my feet after turning a new leaf. Now in October 2022, I’m talking about the things I love (from a new point of view) while maintaining a balance between my personal and online lives. It’s almost like this review series has seen me through a significant phase of character development.

Now with Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall’s era on Doctor Who well and truly over, I take a look back at my reviews and give my final reflections and verdict for the whole era.

Series recap

These are recaps of each series’ reviews with some extra thoughts made in hindsight.

Series 11

Series 11 is the series I have the most positive view of, though part of it can be attributed to me being a bit dense on SJW politics and trying to find ways to justify it in my head. Graham O’Brien, Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin Khan join the Doctor as her diverse fam from different walks of life. There is no major running story arc in this series and given what we saw in the next two series, it’s another reason why I see this series in a more positive light.

Despite this, the series does still have its flaws. Why wasn’t Krasko’s past elaborated on so as to give context on what people he murdered or why he, as someone presumably from the 52nd century, thought the Civil Rights Movement was when “things started to go wrong”? Why did the Doctor criticise Jack Robertson for shooting the giant spider even though she knew it was dying anyway? Why wasn’t Manish the one who shot Prem instead of that other guy?

According to Bowlestrek (and possibly some others), this series felt like a slight on white men and single fathers, with several episodes containing at least one villain-coded white male, but I honestly didn’t feel that vibe when I first watched those episodes. I probably wouldn’t feel that vibe if I watched those episodes again, but hey, I’m not a white Canadian who’s bitter about SJWs taking over multiple fandoms, I’m an Asian-Australian with niche interests who’s becoming bitter at the world around me and trying to understand why.

Also, I said that I liked The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, but given how Chibnall admitted that it was his least favourite script of his entire tenure because the filmed version was only the first draft (he didn't have time to do a second draft because he was helping all the rookie writers and doing rewrites), I want to come out and say that I only liked the episode ironically.

Series 12

With the previous series electing not to bring back any old enemies, Series 12 decided to revisit the broken trend (following the return of the Daleks in the previous New Year’s Special, Resolution), with the first returning villain being the Master, who was last thought to have been killed on the Mondasian colony ship as Missy. This series also reintroduced two-parters after doing away with them in the previous series. Notably, I went on holiday just as the third episode aired and came back just before the fifth episode premiered on Australia, so I ended up having to write up reviews for three episodes in the space of five days. Luckily, I wrote down some notes on my phone so I was able to get them out quicker.

Unfortunately, this series is what redpilled me to the SJW agenda going on in the Chibnall era. Orphan 55 served as nothing but a lecture about climate change without at least a decent resolution to the remaining characters featured in it. Then we get to the biggest turning point of the series, namely the Timeless Child revelation. After the Master revealed to the Doctor that he destroyed Gallifrey in Spyfall Part Two, the Doctor meets a woman named Ruth Clayton in Fugitive of the Judoon, who is apparently revealed to be a previously-unknown incarnation of the Doctor, known as the Fugitive Doctor. The relation between the two Doctors (apart from them being the same) is left up to the viewer until the Master tells the Doctor about the Timeless Child and that she was said child, at which point it becomes implied that the Fugitive Doctor is indeed the Doctor’s past incarnation, on top of being specialer than special.

Yaz does get a bit of a highlight after Graham and Ryan’s mini-arc in the last series, but it isn’t much. Sadly, Graham and Ryan leave the series in Revolution of the Daleks. I probably would have liked them to stay for another year given how things would unfold in 2020, but the filming for Series 12 ended at the end of October 2019 and the filming for Series 13 wouldn’t commence until November 2020, so the timing wouldn’t have been right there.

Series 13

After two years of waiting and an absolutely atrocious promotion campaign that didn’t reveal the release date until three weeks before the premiere, Series 13 came out in a different format than usual. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Series 13 was slated to be only 8 episodes long instead of 11 (which was already cut down from 13 and a Christmas Special back during the RTD and Moffat eras), which was later confirmed to be a six-episode serial collectively titled Flux along with three specials, one of which was additionally commissioned for the BBC’s Centenary. Following Graham and Ryan’s departure, their place in the TARDIS would be taken by Dan Lewis from Liverpool.

After my redpilling in Series 12, I decided to hold the series to a higher standard than I did before. The series in general was alright, but it still had its flaws; we were jumping all over the place with plot threads and characters who served little relevance until the end, every second episode was extended instead of balancing the lengths of each episode, and the main villains of the series (Swarm and Azure) ended up being overshadowed by lesser villains (the Sontarans and the Grand Serpent) in the finale.

Unsurprisingly, this series doubled down on the Timeless Child revelation, with a woman, revealed to be Tecteun, confirming what the Master said to the Doctor at the end of Series 12, essentially killing off any potential speculation to the contrary. Surprisingly though, the revelation was not elaborated on further as the Doctor dumped the fob watch containing her apparent past into the TARDIS, thereby pussying out of the double-down. The last two episodes of the series were negatively rated because of those reasons.

As for the specials, Eve of the Daleks was a boring New Year’s Special with an annoying female guest character, while Legend of the Sea Devils was a pretty good Easter Special with good Cantonese language representation, though it felt like it could have been a regular episode seeing as it was only 50 minutes long and it had no mention of Easter. Although The Power of the Doctor, in the end, never revisited or retconned the Timeless Child revelation, it brought back old companions and Doctors for the memberberries. So admittedly, while Flux in itself was abysmal enough for me to nearly null out my review score, the 2022 Specials kind of redeemed it, but not by much.

Top 5 good things about the Chibnall era

Even among Chibnall’s disgraces to the franchise, we did get some gems out of it. Not gonna lie, it was a bit complicated trying to think of good things to talk about this era.

1. Can You Hear Me?

This episode actually got me to open up about some people from my past and later, it inspired me to talk about the IRL context to the characters and elements featured in my personal project when I started the Kisekae Insights series in the second half of 2020. This episode also provided significant character development for Graham, Ryan and Yaz where it was scarce in other episodes. Of course, there was one element in the episode that in the end, I didn’t like, which I’ll talk about in a bit.

2. Returning characters

In Series 12, we had the surprise return of Captain Jack Harkness in Fugitive of the Judoon before he returned again in Revolution of the Daleks. Unfortunately though, his actor, John Barrowman, had been cancelled earlier in the year due to accusations of sexual harrassment that resurfaced while similar accusations were being raised of Noel Clarke, who played Mickey Smith.

Series 13 saw the return of Kate Stewart with a rather lackluster level of involvement, though that was later made up in The Power of the Doctor, which also featured the return of Ace, Tegan Jovanka, Mel Bush, Jo Jones and Ian Chesterton alongside Graham and Dan. In addition, the First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors also appeared as projections or figments of the Doctor’s consciousness while at the end, the Tenth Doctor returned as the Fourteenth Doctor in a surprise move to prepare for the 60th anniversary specials in 2023.

In all honesty, the returning characters and allusions to past series during the Chibnall era felt like memberberries because they were coming off a series that was lackluster at best and disgraceful at worst. It didn’t look so bad during the RTD or Moffat eras because for the most part, the former was riding highs of success by the time Series 4 was being produced, while the latter was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the series.

3. Stellar performances from some actors

A couple of actors I’d like to highlight are Sacha Dhawan and Jo Martin, who respectively played O, the Spy Master and Ruth, the Fugitive Doctor. Although they played characters who were admittedly unnecessary (the Master had died and I would have rather had the Rani return, while Ruth, you’ll see later), they did a great job expressing their characters regardless, particularly since the Spy Master felt like a ripoff of John Simm as Harold Saxon, but with a classic series twist (shown by his readoption of the TCE and unique TARDIS among other things) and the Fugitive Doctor felt more like the Doctor than the Thirteenth Doctor was.

I will say though, it’s funny that the Master and Ruth were announced to be getting Big Finish audio spinoffs up to a fortnight after Legend of the Sea Devils aired when it previously took years for the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors’ content to be cleared; this happened in August 2014, while in January 2018, the Twelfth Doctor’s content was cleared, just over a week following the broadcast of Twice Upon a Time. From the announcement, it appears as though the Thirteenth Doctor’s content was cleared six months before The Power of the Doctor was released, though it can be argued that the episode was completed a year before. But hey, I suppose if anyone in the Chibnall era deserves a Big Finish spinoff, then it’s the Master and Ruth.

4. Graham and Ryan’s character development

Although Series 11 had no clear-cut story arc, the relationship between Graham and Ryan follows a minor arc in the series as Graham tries to get Ryan to acknowledge him as his stepgrandfather, with a bit of r/FellowKids to boot. We see this in a few episodes where Graham tries to get Ryan to fistbump him only to be rejected, then in the finale, Ryan finally reciprocated Graham’s fistbump. Additionally, this series also shows Graham trying to deal with Grace’s death before finally learning to move on.

5. Select episodes

Aside from Can You Hear Me?, Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, Praxeus and The Haunting of Villa Diodati are some of the best episodes out of Series 12. The Haunting of Villa Diodati did seem a little boring at the start, but it all changed once the Lone Cyberman showed up. While there wasn’t an episode in Series 11 I would say that I really liked, Village of the Angels is probably my favourite episode from Series 13; likewise with The Haunting of Villa Diodati, the first half doesn’t have a lot going for it, but the second part is where the episode starts to get good. It’s likely that way because both episodes were written by the same writer (Maxine Alderton) and they were both broadcast before their respective series finales.

As for the specials, Resolution was a pretty great episode, followed by Legend of the Sea Devils and admittedly, The Power of the Doctor.

Top 5 bad things about the Chibnall era

Unsurprisingly, this series feels like it has more negatives than positives, particularly in Series 12 and 13. Originally, my plan for this section was going to be “top 5 bad things about the Chibnall era apart from the Timeless Child”, but I just had to put it in anyway.

1. The Timeless Child storyline

The Timeless Child storyline makes up the main background arc of the Chibnall era, making it a highlight and one of the reasons why this era isn’t fondly received by a lot of people.

The first mention of the Timeless Child was in The Ghost Monument, then it wasn’t mentioned again until the end of Spyfall Part Two, when the Master revealed that he destroyed Gallifrey because of what he learnt about the Timeless Child. In Fugitive of the Judoon, the inclusion of Ruth and the Fugitive Doctor was a secret addition on Chibnall’s part (I wouldn’t really say last-minute tbh) that played into his plans for the arc. Ascension of the Cybermen featured a C-plot centred around an Irish policeman named Brendan, which was revealed to have been a cover-up for the Timeless Child revelation that would be elaborated on in the next episode, The Timeless Children.

The story goes that Tecteun, a Shobogan and one of the indigenous beings of Gallifrey, found the Timeless Child beneath a wormhole into another universe and adopted them. However, upon discovering their ability to regenerate following an accident, Tecteun studied and experimented the Timeless Child for a way to replicate this regeneration, presumably killing them multiple times in the process while doing so (as regeneration is normally seen as the death of an incarnation). Eventually, Tecteun was able to replicate this on herself and as a result, she gave this power to other Shobogans, but limiting them to a maximum of twelve regenerations. This was the creation of the Time Lords, thereby making the Timeless Child their genetic template. Later on, the Timeless Child would come to work for the Division alongside Tecteun and eventually, Tecteun would have their memories removed as they became the Doctor and decided to leave the Division (presumably in their Ruth incarnation).

With this, the Doctor is no longer originally from Gallifrey and the First Doctor is not the first incarnation of the Doctor that we know. The Doctor ends up being a chosen one that spawns a group of chosen ones only to end up being reduced to the group they spawned. If this origin story was exclusive to the extended media (like the story of The Other) then it would have been fine, but it was introduced on-screen on a series where TV is god. It raises too many questions and plot holes, it makes the Doctor’s past complicated (as if it wasn’t complicated enough) and it was never deeply elaborated on again.

Later on, near the end of Flux, the Doctor would come into possession of the fob watch apparently containing all the lost memories of her past as the Timeless Child, but when she had the opportunity to open it and regain her memories, she decided to dump it in the TARDIS.

In an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, Chibnall admitted that the inspiration for this storyline was personal as he was adopted and he wanted to explore the adoption myth, about where someone is from versus who someone is. Mind you, in a world where #StopAsianHate crybabies think asking “Where are you really from?” is a microaggression, this really isn’t a good look. Also, being adopted doesn’t give Chibnall an excuse to disrespect nearly 60 years of canon the way he did. In a video breaking down the story of Flux and putting it into context with the Timeless Child arc, Chibnall justifies pussying out of the double-down as a “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing, but by that point, we had waited two years for something significant to come out of it, so it just felt a bit spiteful.

People say that the Timeless Child twist allows new stories to be told and adds mystery to the Doctor’s character. In regards to the first point, The Time of the Doctor already did so by giving the Doctor another regeneration cycle. While it does potentially allow alternate and non-canon Doctors to be canonised, I’d rather it be left to the fandom or extended media and not dictated by the TV series itself. In regards to the second point, unpopular opinion, but the Doctor doesn’t need any more mystery than they already have since the Moffat era, particularly when it destroys canon the way the Timeless Child arc did. We know that the Doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey who stole a TARDIS and became a renegade. Thanks to RTD, we know that the Time Lords fought the Daleks in the Time War and both sides were wiped out thanks to the Doctor. Thanks to Moffat, we know that neither the Eighth or the Ninth Doctors fought in the Time War, but a previously unknown incarnation who future incarnations rejected, but later came to accept. The Hybrid arc ended up being unnecessary, but it wasn’t as bad as the Timeless Child arc was even with the answer being non-existent or deliberately ambiguous. Also, over 30 years have passed since the Valeyard’s introduction and nobody ever bothered to address his existence yet. What gives?

Before the double-down, a lot of people were hoping that the Master was lying about what he discovered. Some went the easy way out and speculated that the Master was the Timeless Child, but I don’t agree with it because the Master’s past is likely just as complicated as the Doctors and even then, it doesn’t address Ruth’s place in the timeline (I’ll buy pre-Hartnell at best, but not between the Second and Third Doctors).

However, my ideal solution would be that the Doctor is actually cloned from the Timeless Child and that Ruth is one of the Timeless Child’s incarnations. The Time Lords attempted to clone the Timeless Child but ended up creating an ordinary male Time Lord instead, so they dumped him somewhere and left him to live his life as he did. The clone eventually becomes the Thirteenth Doctor and meets the Timeless Child again, who is now in her Ruth incarnation, and after a few encounters, she encounters Ruth getting their memories erased by the Division. The Doctor somehow saved the Timeless Child and set them up to live a new life; maybe they became a child again without their memories and the Doctor brought them back to the planet where Tecteun found them and they began walking hand-in-hand towards the future, or the Doctor managed to prevent or interrupt the process and save Ruth while also defeating the Division for good before leaving her to live her own life in her TARDIS. Or better yet, don’t do the Timeless Child altogether and instead address something else that’s important, say the Valeyard. Though I must say, given how this arc was never elaborated on in the 2022 specials, I think I could buy the Doctor being a clone of the Timeless Child and Tecteun deciding not to reveal that the Doctor was a clone so as to save her the trouble of wondering whether she was the clone or not, like the Space Beth arc in Rick and Morty.

Personally, I will not accept that the Doctor was the Timeless Child or had any incarnations pre-Hartnell First, including Ruth or the Morbius incarnations (which I believe to be Morbius’ incarnations); William Hartnell’s First Doctor always was, and always will be, the original Doctor.

2. The Doctor’s callous dismissal of Graham’s cancer concerns

Towards the end of Can You Hear Me?, Graham tells the Doctor about his fear that his cancer might come back before the Doctor responds, “I’m still quite socially awkward” without any reassuring words. In another interview with Doctor Who Magazine, Chibnall states that Graham’s cancer concerns were inspired from his own cancer diagnosis at the age of 22. After learning this, I honestly think that scene is totally something r/thathappened, but this is fiction, not real life, so it wouldn’t have hurt to put in some reassuring words because fiction doesn’t have to follow real life to a T. Heck, even Chibnall admitted in that interview that there was another version of that scene where the Doctor does give Graham some reassuring words. Here, I’ll give you my example that I quickly made up in the first hiatusbreaker update: “I should say a reassuring thing now, shouldn’t I? I’m still quite socially awkward, but I just want you to know that you’ve got me, Ryan and Yaz in the TARDIS, and we’ll be there for you if anything happens, just as you have been there for us.”

OK, so people might not know how to respond to something they have no experience of (which is understandable) and Chibnall was just trying to express that through the Doctor, but you’d think that the Doctor has lived for so long that they would at least be able to show empathy and support, particularly in an episode that mainly focused on mental health issues. Even with context, the way the scene was written still makes it look like the Doctor was being callously dismissive of Graham’s concerns. Yes, I know the Doctor said she was socially awkward and that I said in my review that her fam should have known this because they’ve been with her for so long, but sometimes opinions change when you get a better understanding of the situation from different people and it still doesn’t excuse the way she dodged the subject.

Look, being adopted and being diagnosed with cancer when you’re young are relatable situations, but this feels like Chibnall brought them up as excuses for the flawed writing in the respective episodes.

3. Hamfisted SJW politics without entertaining stories to back them up

The third episodes of Series 11 and 12, Rosa and Orphan 55, were the two series-requisite SJW-fest episodes focusing on social justice topics, namely racism and climate change. Unfortunately, they didn’t end up being as entertaining as expected; Rosa failed to elaborate on the background behind Krasko’s imprisonment and racism, while Orphan 55 failed to provide a decent resolution for Bella and Kane, making the episode’s ending feel like the Doctor lecturing the audience. I suppose improving the episodes the way I suggested wouldn’t do much to change the nature of how the episodes were presented, but at least it would make it entertaining.

Arachnids in the UK and Revolution of the Daleks featured Jack Robertson, an American businessman who served as an expy of Donald Trump, though in retrospect, given events that happened in the past two years, he could also be seen as an expy of Joe Biden, given how Robertson was shown to hate Trump in-universe (meaning that he could only be a Democrat candidate) and his actor, Chris Noth, is a liberal who got #MeToo’d in 2021. It’s so hilariously pathetic.

War of the Sontarans was an entertaining episode, but it featured Mary Seacole, who some say wasn’t actually a nurse even though she did help save lives on the battlefield. I didn’t know a lot about Mary Seacole and I’m not from the UK so I didn’t really care much for her character, but I believe that Seacole should be applauded for the good deeds she did, whether she was actually a nurse or not.

4. Lack of promotion and elusive marketing

I don’t know if it’s just me, but there hasn’t been a lot of marketing surrounding this series, with each series only getting trailers or release dates three weeks before their premiere. Even in the RTD or Moffat eras, the promotion of the series typically began at least three months before they were due to premiere. During Series 13, however, the BBC were being deliberately elusive with their promotion of the series with their #FindTheDoctor ARG that didn’t even reveal an airdate followed by an advertising campaign in Liverpool that also involved them deactivating their social media accounts for a day. The fact that the whole campaign won awards just shows how people will accept anything when they’ve been blueballed for two years.

On top of that, there used to be a lot more behind-the-scenes insights before the Chibnall era with Doctor Who Confidential, but as the years went on, the featurettes became shorter, now going up to around 5 minutes at most. Additionally, from 2009 to 2013, there were quite a number of documentaries produced as retrospectives to the series, with a majority of them being produced by BBC America in response to the series’ growing interest in the US and the 50th anniversary. All this reduction in behind-the-scenes content just goes to show how far this series has fallen over the past decade.

5. Poor writing and lack of significant character development

While Graham and Ryan did get significant character development throughout their appearances on the series, the Doctor and Yaz didn’t get much compared to them.

The Thirteenth Doctor ended up being an expy of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors without any attempt to make her unique or understanding how the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors’ qualities make them unique. The Thirteenth Doctor’s moral outrages at people killing enemies (like the giant spider, the Sontarans and Marsissus the Sea Devil) were clearly ripped off from similar notions from the Tenth Doctor, along with his aversion to weapons, survivor’s guilt and “no second chances” attitude, but Chibnall didn’t seem to understand why those elements mattered to the Tenth Doctor nor the potential consequences of keeping the enemies alive. Aside from the Timeless Child, there’s no particular moment in this series that cements the Thirteenth Doctor as the Doctor (yes, I mentioned that thing at the start of Series 11, but that was post-regenerative and things have changed since then). I suppose the Doctor’s character can be summed up by whatever it says on the TARDIS Data Core article about her, but I don’t think that it’s enough.

Yaz got very little character development during Series 11 and 12, but then Series 13 went out of its way to regress her character development. OK, so we know that Yaz is a socially-awkward Muslim who was bullied at school and suffered racism while working as a police officer, but meeting the Doctor changed her life and eventually, she decided to quit the police force after randomly going on secondment for extended periods of time (and those ten months she spent being obsessed with finding the Doctor). Upon being separated from the Doctor and Dan in the Crimea and being transported to the Temple of Atropos, we saw that she had to have “WWTDD” - “What would the Doctor do?” - written on her hand (like a child) when at that point in her adventures with the Doctor, that phrase should have been the first thing that came to mind, not to mention that she has also been a police officer, potentially signifying that Yaz is too incompetent to rely on her instincts and logic. Later on, when Yaz gets trapped in the 20th century with Dan and Professor Jericho, she couldn’t recall the year they had to get back to even though she and Dan were supposed to know. They only figure it out once they get to Joseph Williamson’s tunnels in Liverpool and they find the door leading back to 2021. I don’t really believe in it myself, but there’s a reason why people like Bowlestrek and NoelZone call her “Yaz the plank”.

Throughout her run, the Doctor seemingly showed favouritism towards Yaz, which the fandom soon spinned into a ship known as “Thasmin”. This ship was explored during Series 13, but it was kind of rushed and there wasn’t much development because Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens never planned on exploring it, though the resolution was okay. Eve of the Daleks apparently showed Dan “outing” Yaz to the Doctor, but I’m not LGBT so I can’t really comment on it.

Dan, like Yaz, doesn’t get a lot of character development, but I feel like we know enough about him in his first episode to conclude that he doesn’t need it that much, not to mention his sense of humor and the meme of him being “Evil Dan”.

And one more thing, I’ve got to mention Ryan’s dyspraxia, because it was only mentioned in like five episodes and it didn’t play that much a part in his character development nor do we see it affecting his adventures with the Doctor negatively. Chibnall could have written Ryan with autism and I wouldn’t be able to notice this.

A common rebuttal for the Chibnall era being bad because of its wokeness is “It’s not the politics, it’s the writing!” Um, is it possible that both things (among others) could have contributed to the Chibnall era being bad? Let me put it another way: The series isn’t bad because the writing is woke, but the series is woke because the writing is bad.

During the RTD and Moffat eras, the showrunners were working on other shows while working on Doctor Who; RTD was producing Casanova while working on Series 1, then was overseeing Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures throughout Series 2 to 4 and even continuing after stepping down as showrunner in 2009, while Steven Moffat was producing Sherlock alongside Mark Gatiss simultaneously throughout his run as showrunner. Chris Chibnall, however, was not shown to be overseeing anything else while realising his “five-year plan” for Doctor Who (though given the coronavirus pandemic, he probably couldn’t do anything else even if he wanted to), so in all honesty, he had no excuse for the quality of writing we got from him. On the other hand, though, the Chibnall era was all about fresh blood in the name of diversity, so I could probably forgive the amateurish quality as being produced by rookies and not by experienced individuals. We can only hope that the RTD2 era will really bring back the show we knew and loved.

Final points tally

So in a few episodes, the Doctor has been giving out points, which she changed to gold stars and stickers as the series went on. Out of interest, I’ve been keeping a tally and I’d thought I’d sum everything up to see how everyone did.

Yaz: 20 (10 points S11E5, gold star S12E6)

Ryan: 20 (gold star S11E6, gold star S12E6)

The Doctor: 5 (given by Ruth S12E4)

Graham: 10 (gold star S12E6)

Gabriela/Adam/Jake: 10 (one gold star each S12E6)

Jack Harkness: 10 (gold star NY2021)

Mary Seacole: 15 (gold star and sticker S13E2)

The Master: 15 (self-granted gold star and sticker BBC100)

Yaz and Ryan are at equal first with 20 points, Mary Seacole and the Master are at equal second with 15 points (if you want to count the Master giving himself points), Graham along with Gabriela, Adam and Jake from Praxeus are third with 10 points and ironically, the Doctor is last at 5 points.

Final era rating and verdict

Specials are included in the ratings.

Series 11: 81/110 (73%)

Series 12: 83/110 (75%)

Series 13: 18/90 (20%) Hypothetical: 47/90 (52%) Conservative: 27/90 (30%)

Final era total: 175/310 (56%) Hypothetical era total: 211/310 (68%) Conservative era total: 191/310 (61%)

In the end, despite all the flaws and disgraces I pointed out with the Chibnall era, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I compared Chris Chibnall with Kamen Rider producer Shinichiro Shirakura and writers Shoji Yonemura and Toshiki Inoue; that comparison continues to stand even at the end of the Chibnall era. In terms of wokeness, to compare the three showrunners of the revived series up to now, RTD is someone who has been woke from the beginning, yet knows how to subtly incorporate politics in a way that still makes the episode entertaining; Steven Moffat is someone who had to learn how to be woke judging from the reception of Series 10; while Chris Chibnall is the r/FellowKids version of woke. The way the Chibnall era was presented seemed to be appealing to a new generation of younger viewers (given the modern music used in Series 11 and its promos back in 2018), but as time went on, it seemingly stopped appealing to some of the more hardcore fans with the Timeless Child arc. Would I still go to say that Chibnall is a hack writer? Maybe. I’m not a good judge of acting skill or film production, but I like to think that everyone, cast and crew alike, did an okay job with what they were given; undoubtedly, this era would have been better with different people at the helm.

Look, I’ve been trying to stay positive about this entire series, but I think we all need to accept that this era of Doctor Who sucked. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past 2-3 years, it’s that sometimes, the people you hate, or the people you think you’re supposed to hate, were right about some things (but not necessarily everything) all along. In politics, it might be the people you call conspiracy theorists, grifters, anti-vaxxers, facists and Nazis, or even individuals like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, Pauline Hanson or Craig Kelly. In Doctor Who, it’s the people you might call racists, sexists, or NMDs (Not My Doctors); the people you gatekeeping assholes don’t consider fans because you think fans have to accept everything offered to you like consumers without being allowed to complain. Yes, and I am really saying this, people like Bowlestrek, Nerdrotic, Heel vs Babyface and NoelZone were right all along.

Although I don’t join in the fan discourse of the series on social media, I have to condemn the actions of people like Trilbee (Mr Tardis), Jay Exci and Tharries; Trilbee’s videos on Bowlestrek incited his fans to harass him, with one even making repugnant remarks about him doing something unspeakable with dogs, Jay Exci debating Bowlestrek and failing to properly counter anything he says while giving the excuse that he was tired, and Tharries used Bowlestrek and NoelZone for clout before turning on them. I’m just listing vague examples here, but I’m sure other people may have receipts. You may think NMDs are bad, but let me tell you that the people calling out NMDs are just as bad as them, so they should stop trying to act like they’re innocent of their actions just because they have the clout of their enabling fanbases.

When I started these reviews, I set out two questions that I hoped to answer with these reviews. I briefly answered them in the prelude for the Flux reviews and I’ll answer them again in this post:

1. How does Jodie Whittaker’s performance set the bar for other Doctors after her, male or female?

If it weren’t for Jo Martin and The Power of the Doctor, Jodie Whittaker would have set a really low bar for future female Doctors, but now, I can say that maybe another woman can become the Doctor in 10-15 years and do a better job than Jodie Whittaker, regardless of whether you feel she did her best with the material she was given. As I said in the aforementioned post, just because one Doctor acts one way doesn’t mean another Doctor will act the same way and as such, each Doctor should be measured and judged individually.

2. Will the so-called “SJW/feminist/diversity agenda” affect the way I see and think about Doctor Who?

Admittedly, it did, but it was mostly because Chibnall was being rather unsubtle about it, and even then, all the SJW red flags I found, especially in regards to Rosa and Orphan 55, got me talking about racism and climate change among other things. I was hoping that I’d find something offensive about Hong Kong, but it’s good that there wasn’t; in fact, Legend of the Sea Devils did a good job in Cantonese language representation, something that was last seen briefly in the third episode of the Third Doctor serial, The Mind of Evil. There was also the case of Chibnall adding LGBT characters for representation in Series 11 before they got killed off, but Praxeus did it right because the LGBT representation wasn’t killed off in the end.

Looking forward to RTD2 and Ncuti Gatwa

Admittedly, I was going to do a post about Ncuti Gatwa’s casting back in May, but I never really got around to it, so I’m doing this here.

So right after The Power of the Doctor concluded, we got a sneak peek into the 60th Anniversary Specials, then a couple of days later, the new Doctor Who logo was unveiled, reverting to a classic design, while also announcing that the BBC are joining forces with Disney on Doctor Who, with the BBC continuing to broadcast the show in the UK while the rest of the world (except Ireland) will have it exclusively on Disney+. Also, Disney is expected to give the show higher budgets than before, on top of Sony having a majority stake in Bad Wolf Studios, so yeah. OK, I can kind of get behind putting it on Disney+ worldwide so everyone can get it at the same time (and without ads unlike on BBC America), but why does it have to be streaming-exclusive? In Australia, the ABC will no longer be airing new episodes as a result and I don’t know how many other countries will get screwed over because they can’t watch it for free.

Honestly, the only reason why the series is still on the BBC in the UK (aside from them being the creators of the series) is because RTD is a fervent supporter of the BBC and the licence fee. I know that streaming appears to be the growing trend nowadays, but aside from it being free, I watch the episodes on ABC iView because I know they’ll be available on there right after they premiere in the UK so I can watch them as quickly as possible in order to avoid spoilers. While the Disney+ deal does make it easier for some people to watch the episodes, it’s actually become harder for others to do the same. I hope the BBC and Disney are able to chalk up some kind of a deal to give broadcasting rights to other broadcasters including the ABC, but if nothing changes by November next year, at least we’ll always have torrents.

Going into conspiracy theory territory and speculate on why things are the way they are. I suspect that RTD was asked to come back after the outrage that the Timeless Child arc caused; the BBC fired Chibnall and decided not to renew Jodie Whittaker’s contract, but were told that they could do a final series to wrap things up. Jodie leaving after three series would be believable, but Chibnall leaving after one Doctor would be surprising. If it weren’t for RTD’s willingness to return, the series may have been cancelled and The Power of the Doctor would likely have ended with a fade to black. Other conspiracy theories say that “Chaos in Cardiff” actually happened and that Chibnall and Whittaker were going to quit after Series 11 but were asked to return for Series 12, but that kind of neglects Chibnall’s “five-year plan” comment from the start of his era. There’s also the “hostile takeover” theory I covered in the Flux prelude which kind of turned out to be true but not really. I guess time will only tell.

UPDATE - 19 November 2022: So RTD has come out and confessed that he asked the BBC if he could come back to Doctor Who as early as December 2020 following the lockdown tweetalong for The Runaway Bride when he suggested the idea to Catherine Tate, who then suggested it to David Tennant. Once he knew that both of them were willing to return, RTD emailed Piers Wenger, Director of Drama at the BBC, to throw the idea out there. While this may have been the case, there is still the possibility that either person wanted to return to Doctor Who or the BBC was willing to let RTD come back because of the outrage that the Timeless Child revelation caused. Given what we would later see during Series 13, it was a good thing that RTD decided to come back when he did.

When Ncuti Gatwa was announced as the Doctor back in May, my first thought was, “Well, at least the Doctor’s a man again.” Jo Martin aside, Ncuti will be the first black actor to play a numbered incarnation of the Doctor and his incarnation is slated to be the first gay Doctor. RTD has stated that Ncuti’s casting wasn’t about diversity and representation, but a couple of days before that, he stated that he had someone else in mind before Ncuti came in to audition and “simply stole it”, which makes me a little suspicious, but at any rate I look forward to seeing how he does as the Doctor.

Aside from Ncuti, Yasmin Finney, a trans-female actor, has been cast as Rose and is slated to be the new companion with her debut being in the 60th anniversary specials. On top of that, David Tennant has been announced to be returning as the Fourteenth Doctor alongside Catherine Tate, (the late) Bernard Cribbins, Jacqueline King and Karl Collins, reprising their roles from the RTD era. Neil Patrick Harris has also been cast as a villain who is apparently slated to be the Celestial Toymaker, but further details aren’t known as of yet.

UPDATE - 19 November 2022: Apparently Millie Gibson has been cast as Ruby Sunday, who will be the Fifteenth Doctor’s first companion. So is Rose going to be in Series 14 or what?

The three 60th anniversary specials are due to air in November 2023 before Ncuti’s first episode is expected to premiere “over the festive period” in 2023. In the review for Eve of the Daleks, I was raging about why RTD couldn’t do Series 14 early in 2023 before the 60th anniversary specials, but I can sort of see why the arrangements are what they are now.

While the Chibnall era all but killed off most of my interest for Doctor Who, RTD’s return reinvigorated it and now, I would like to announce that I intend to continue reviewing new Doctor Who episodes, even if only for the content. At the start of this review series, I had plans to give up this series if the next Doctor was a woman, but now, I’m happy to remain as a casual fan (this would be the same if Jo Martin were actually announced to be the next Doctor). My focus in the Chibnall era was seeing how the SJW agenda would affect how I see the series; for the RTD2 era, my focus will change to seeing how RTD does (in writing and the SJW agenda) in comparison to Chibnall.

This series of reviews has been simultaneously posted to a Google Site which I share with my friends on my personal Facebook account. This was because I was still hesitant at sharing my personal project outside of my Facebook friends back then and I also wanted to share my findings on the Chibnall era without revealing this Tumblr to anyone, not that anyone would care nowadays. For future reviews, they will be exclusive to Tumblr and I won’t be doing the bookending prelude and epilogue posts for the era, just the ones for each series.

I would like to acknowledge everyone who read and liked my reviews over the past four years, even if they were few and far between. I would also like to acknowledge Blogtor Who, as it was the site where I got most of my review header screenshots from (as shown in the collage below). Like I said, I’ll be back for the RTD2 era, but until then, feel free to follow me and check out my content both related and not related to Doctor Who, such as Kisekae Insights, Doctor Who 10 for 10 and my reviews of Koei Tecmo’s Warriors games, which are being lined up for future release.

Once again, thanks for following the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews and I hope to see you around.

#doctor who #thirteenth doctor #doctor who review #thirteenth doctor review

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miss-smutty · 3 years

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Chapter 1

A/N- I've teased y'all for so long I hope this series is going to live up to expectations, I'm confident it will though because I'm addicted and it's been super easy for me to write - I'm up to chapter 3 so far so updates can be on time! There's a slight age gap between my professor Hemsy and OC Jess but she's twenty and completely legal. You know this is gunna be a giant tease fest for the first couple of chapters cos that sexual tension is fucking gold 🥵

Summary- Jess meets the man of her dreams and then stupidly leaves without getting his number. Will fate bring them together again?

Word count- 1.5 K

Pairing- Professor!Chris Hemsworth x OC

Warnings- Swearing, age gap

18+ only!

Disclaimer: This is an entire work of fiction/AU and has no affiliation to real life what so ever! This is a fictional story about fictional characters who happen to share names and faces with some real people.

Posted: 5th August 2021

Taglist:- @innerpaperexpertcloud @pandaxnienke @chickensarentcheap @jjpogueprincess @longlostinanotherworld @mostly-marvel-musings @darklydeliciousdesires @monet-belle

@skyfullofsong123 @swaggysposts

Chapter 2

I pulled out a chair at the last available table in the unusually busy coffee shop, I thought I might've caught a break choosing the one outside of campus but alas I was wrong.

I was about to sit down when the chair opposite me slid out from under the table, my eyes lifted to meet with the most sparkly blue eyes i'd ever seen. The sight of him took my breath away. Literally.

I stood staring, frozen on the spot, my mouth slightly ajar as I looked him up and down. He was tall, so tall, definitely over 6ft and built like a dream. Thick thighs straining against his fitted trousers, wide muscular shoulders and I just knew there was a six-pack hiding behind that tight t-shirt.

"Sorry. You were here first, I'll just grab a take-out." He smirked a side smile, amused at how I was so obviously checking him out but his sexy Australian accent distracted you from anything else.

"It's fine, I'm on my own. I don't mind if you want to sit there too." I mentally face palmed myself, drawing attention to the fact I was alone wasn't the best idea but then again he was alone too. "I don't bite." I added trying my best to flirt.

It seemed to work, he smiled at me as he sat down and I took the time to admire his handsome face. He was quite clearly a lot older than me, the laughter lines around his eyes a tell tale sign but he was still quite possibly the best looking man I'd ever laid eyes on. His hair was fair and the short beard framed his face perfectly but the one thing that stood out the most were those piercing ocean-blue eyes.

"So do you come here often?" I cocked my eyebrow at him over my coffee cup making him laugh at my reaction. "Sorry, it's been a while." He said nervously, running his hand through his hair.

"It's been a while since you spoke to a stranger or…?" I questioned casually.

"It's been a while since I spoke to an attractive woman." He finished, his eyes sparkling as he watched me almost choke on my drink.

"Oh, I err…. I don't think you're doing too badly." I absentmindedly circled my finger around the rim of my cup, crossing my leg over my other and accidently rubbing my foot up his leg. My cheeks felt hot and flushed as I looked up into his eyes and saw him smiling slyly.

"Evidently. We're already playing footsie under the table." He smiled widely, a genuine smile that stretched the corners of his mouth. I smiled back at him shyly, thinking of something to say to change the subject before I ended up looking like a tomato.

"What part of Australia are you from?"

"I'm originally from Melbourne but I lived in Byron Bay before I came to America."

"Awesome. I've always wanted to go to Australia, the Spiders put me off though."

"Yeah I think they put most people off but in heavily populated areas they stay pretty much hidden, I think it's the size that scare people." How have I made this conversation go from flirting to talking about spiders? And how do I get back to flirting?

"Are we still talking about spiders?" I raised my eyebrows questioningly and laughed at the innuendo, flicking my hair over my shoulder. I noticed something in his eyes when I did so, a hunger, just a little flash and then it was gone again. I'm sure I didn't imagine it though because his eyes lingered on my exposed shoulders.

I checked my watch subtly, not wanting him to think he was boring me but I had to get to class and couldn't be late again, not when this semester had only just started.

"I'm really sorry, I'm gonna have to run, I'm going to be late. It was really nice meeting you." I gathered up my bags, ready to leave.

"Already? You've only just got here." He looked disappointed, his smile fading. His mouth opened as if he was going to say something else and then closed again when he saw I was ready to leave. "It was really nice to meet you too, hopefully I'll see you again." His eyes sparkled as he looked into mine, standing from his chair to get the door for me. I felt fireworks when his hand brushed against the small of my back and his face lingered close to mine. The tension was unreal, like we were the only people in the room as his eyes hungrily stared into my soul, undressing me with his eyes. My heart stopped beating when his face moved closer to mine so I could feel his breath on my lips, the smell of coffee and his aftershave filling my nostrils. I paused, my feet routed to the spot, I wanted him to kiss me so badly but I moved away at the last minute. Surely he wasn't actually going to kiss me, we'd only just met, that would be ridiculous. Wouldn't it?

********

I spent most of class daydreaming about my tall handsome stranger and the way he looked at me but most of all how I didn't even get his name. Or his number.

Now I was feeling sorry for myself because it would just be my luck to meet the man of my dreams and then never see him again. So I'd moped about all day and avoided the invitations for drinks after class. Instead I'd

gotten home early, changed into some sweats and settled myself in front of the TV for the night.

"What's up with your face?" My roommate, Ellie said as she walked into our room, throwing her bags onto her bed.

"What're you talking about?"

"Your face. Looks like you're chewing on a wasp."

"Feeling sorry for myself." I pout pathetically.

"Why, what've you done now?" She rolled her eyes, kicking off her shoes and throwing her legs up onto the bed. I felt so lucky to have a roommate like Ellie, during our freshman year she'd become my best friend practically straight away and now after two years together we were practically sisters.

I sat up in bed cross legged and faced Ellie, getting myself ready to spill my misfortunes of the day with her.

"Well, I went to Impresso's this morning to get my morning coffee before class." She nodded, showing her enthusiasm by also sitting cross legged on her own bed, facing me. "And it was packed full of students, there was only one table left. So I went to grab it as soon as I could." She raised her eyebrow at me, wondering where I was going with the story. "And I kid you not, the most attractive man I have ever seen, pulls out the chair opposite me."

"Oh my god! No way. Did you talk? Oh my god, this is like the perfect chick flick. Carry on." I smiled at her excitement.

"I told him I didn't mind if he sat there, I mean of course I didn't mind, you should've seen him El. Oh, oh, oh I almost forgot" I flapped my hands, bouncing on the spot. "He was fucking Australian."

"Fuck off, you're lying. Drop dead gorgeous with the sexiest accent ever. How is this even real? Now remind me why you're sat there with a face like a slapped arse?"

"I panicked when I had to leave, didn't want to be late for class and I didn't get his number, didn't even give him chance to ask for mine."

"Wow! Ok, now I understand. What were you thinking?"

"I wasn't thinking, I was panicking and you know what I'm like when I panic." You sulk.

"It's ok, maybe you'll bump into him again."

"Yeah, right. I should be so lucky."

"Cheer up." she says throwing a cushion at me. "There's a party at Alpha Kappa this weekend, I'm sure we can find you someone to help get over your mystery man. Or under should I say?" She raised her eyebrow at me, smiling slyly and making me laugh. She always did know how to cheer me up and maybe a party is what I needed.

There must be some good looking boys around campus that could make me forget about my Australian hunk. Surely? I thought about the guys I'd seen around campus, the guys I'd seen at frat parties and that's definitely not what I wanted. How could a twenty year old boy match to the masculine, experienced man I met this morning. My mind was set, I'd dipped my feet ever slightly into the mature pool and that's what I wanted more than anything. There was always something missing with previous boyfriends and I was tired of all the game playing. I wanted someone who knew what they wanted and wasn't afraid to get it.

The only thing was, he didn't know I was only twenty and I had no way of finding him again. If fate did bring us back together, would he mind that I was still a student? That I couldn't even drink when we went on dates?

Who am I kidding? Of course he would mind, he could get any woman he wanted, why would he want me?

#smut #chris hemsworth #chris hemsworth fanfic #chris hemsworth smut #chris hemsworth x reader #chris hemsworth x you #chris Hemsworth series #chris Hemsworth X oc #mcu rpf

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godofsexdrugsandrocknroll · 3 years

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Green Lantern Jaune!AU

*In the middle of the Fall of Beacon*

Jaune: *To Cinder* In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night--

Cinder: *Hopped up on her ego* Really? This is the best you have, Nikos? A cheat who’s read too much manga?

Pyrrha: *Staring in horror*

Jaune: --No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!

Cinder: *Rolls her eyes, aims arrow at Jaune instead*

Jaune: Let Those Who Worship Evil’s Might, Beware My Power--

Cinder: *Shoots arrow*

Jaune: Green Lantern’s Light!

*A flash of green and Jaune’s wearing Alan Scott’s Kingdom Come Green Lantern suit*

Cinder: What!?

Pyrrha: *Gapes*

Cinder’s Arrow: *Disintegrates*

Jaune: Don’t worry Pyrrha, I got this!

-----------------

Jacques Schnee: *Blinded by Jaune’s transformation* What the devil!?

Weiss: *Sees her chance, kicks her father in the groin* That dolt, what does he think he’s doing? *Worriedly, poorly mimicking Jaune’s voice* ‘Oh no, I can’t do that Snow Angel, it’s bad enough I let you know but Remnant’s nowhere near ready for the attention of the rest of the galaxy!’ How is transforming in front of all of Vale supposed to be keeping that a secret!? *Stalks off worriedly in Jaune’s direction*

Jacques Schnee: *Rolls on the ground in agony*

-----------------

Blake: *Stemming Yang’s bleeding* I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so--

*Jaune transforms, Blake yelps*

Blake: *Gapes at the barely visible figure of Jaune* W-what!? Jaune’s the Emerald Knight!?

Yang: *Waking, weakly* B-Blake?

Blake: *Still stunned but realizes she can’t run now, not with Yang looking like at her like that*

-----------------

Adam Taurus: *Seething in apocalyptic fury* You again. You bastard, you just won’t stop interfering where you don’t belong!

White Fang Grunt: *Terrified of the emerald glow* Sir? What do we do? The last time we fought the Emerald Knight he nearly killed you.

Adam Taurus: *Audibly grinds teeth* We retreat.

White Fang Grunt: Sir!?

Adam Taurus: Don't make me repeat myself. We retreat. The only way we live to fight another day is if we live and that accursed blight on faunuskind won’t hesitate to kill our brothers and sisters in droves if we fight him now!

-----------------

Nora: --EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ren: *Sighs in defeat*

Nora: *Stops, cackling maniacally* If fearless leader’s a superhero then that means we are too, Renny! *Pink electricity crackles, Nora’s eyes begin glowing pink* Call me Thundermaiden! *Lifts Magnhild*

Worried Beowolf: Aroo?

-----------------

Velvet: *Breathes* Bloody rippa.

-----------------

Coco: *Lips pressed together, exhales explosively* Nine out of ten. That armor is sleek, aesthetically pleasing from any angle, those pauldrons are just muah and if Arc had been born with just one more X chromosome I’d have my head buried in his thighs and he’d be screaming my name for that fucking cape. *Sighs wistfully*

Neptune: *To himself* Oh yeah, because now’s the time for a boner.

Reese Chloris: *Zipping about* Maybe focus on the badass armor later, cause if you haven’t noticed-- *Is cut off by the roar of Coco’s minigun*

Coco: Yeah, yeah.

-----------------

Emerald: Get back here you traitorous coward!

Mercury: *Running away* Nope, fuck that! My old man fought the Emerald Knight last year, got his ass whooped up and down the Purple River and the Emerald Knight just straight up disappeared the fucker! Not only is fighting that dude suicide but I owe him one!

Emerald: You traitor! How dare you turn your back on Cinder, after all she’s done for you!

Mercury: *Rolls his eyes, kicks a Beringel at a now shrieking Emerald* Cinder offers me the chance to kill my old man. Emerald Knight wipes him off the face of Remnant. And these are the people I worked with.

-----------------

Ruby: Pyrrha, don’t worry, I’m holy guacamole with a side of chips. *Stares at Jaune in awe* OMIGOSH YOUR ARMOR IS SO COOL!

Cinder: *Incoherent screaming*

Ruby: *Gasps at Jaune’s massive emerald longsword* Th-th-th-th-- *Goes into a pitch only dogs can hear*

Jaune: *Cuts through two more of Cinder’s swords, creates a massive riot shield to block fire* Like Crocea Mors, Rubes? *Ruby shatters glass with her voice* Just a bit of my power. Alright, enough of you.

Cinder: You dare!? I am the Fall Maiden and I will have your girlfriend’s soul!

Jaune: Uh, Weiss is nowhere near--

Pyrrha: *Slumps, mutters* Thank you for reminding me Jaune, I had almost forgotten.

Jaune: You say something Pyr?

Cinder: *Flabbergasted* Then why!? Why stand in my path!? This will only end one way, you cheat! You’re a nobody! Nothing you have can stand before the powers of the Maidens! Not your strange aura or your paltry armor!

Jaune: Because. Pyrrha’s my friend. *Pyrrha gets teary eyed* It's not about where you were born or the powers you have or what you wear on your chest; it's about what you do. It’s about your actions. And I refuse to let innocent people be hurt in your lust for power! *Disappears Crocea Mors, creates heavy shackle constructs on Cinder and a muzzle construct over her mouth* And you’re right. The Guardians of Oa will be your judgment.

Cinder: *Wide eyed, stunned at her immediate defeat*

Ruby: *Gapes, is inspired by his words*

Pyrrha: *Stunned, happy to be alive, touched*

Weiss: *Arrives* Our hero. *Smiles* So much for secrecy, huh?

Jaune: *Sheepishly* Heh, yeah. Not sure Remnant’s really ready for the Corps. and all that comes with it but no way could I call myself a Lantern if I let Pyro Lady here get her way.

Weiss: *Haughtily* Yes, quite. *Smiles cheerfully* Well the good news is you seem to have given the others a second wind. *Gestures, strokes Jaune’s cheek*

Jaune: *Stares blankly as Huntsmen and Huntress tear through Grimm like they’re barely there, sees retreating White Fang and Atlas making arrests, mowing down Grimm; Grins* All in a--

Grimm Dragon: *Roars*

Cinder: *Eyes widen in glee*

Weiss: *Clutches Jaune’s side, aims Myrtenaster*

Jaune: AAAHHH! DRAGON! Trust in instincts!

*Giant green penis construct forms above the Dragon and slams down onto it, crushing the body*

Cinder: *Goes into catatonic shock*

Jaune: *Ignores Weiss pounding on his chest as she blushes furiously* Instincts bad!

Grimm Dragon: *Dies feeling oddly humiliated*

Weiss: Why!? Of all the things, why t-t-t-t-t-t-t-that!

Jaune: *Embarrassed, not making eye contact with a stunned Ruby or Pyrrha, defends himself* I didn’t hear you complaining last night when I made to-scale copies of Jaune Jr. so you could get spitroasted by your boyfriend! I *realizes what he just said* Oops.

Weiss: *Mortified beyond belief* I-I, you, n-no... *Sees gaping Ruby and Pyrrha, buries her face in his cape* H-he’s lying! I-I, noooo, I hate yoooooouuu!!!!!!

Jaune: I love you too, Snow Angel. *Blushes* Well, as far as official debuts go that could have been worse.

Winter: *Sounding angry and embarrassed as she stomps up the CCT stairs* W-Weiss, I’m well aware of how happy you are in your relationship but that is no reason to allow your boyfriend to advertise to the world in s-s-such lewd detail his p-p-p-his dingaling!

Yang: *Further down the stairs, sounding pained* BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Weiss: *Face is a tomato and she starts kicking an embarrassed Jaune’s armored shin*

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One: Look my Homelander avatar in the eyes and tell me Alan Scott’s armor in Kingdom Come wasn’t just made for a GL!Jaune story.

Two: Yes, that is a (very lightly) paraphrased Superman quote Jaune used.

Three: Instincts bad is a reference to a Spider-Man panel.

Four: Velvet is terribly accurate. My girlfriend is Australian and she uses ‘ripper’ regularly. It’s basically Australian for awesome.

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blueiskewl · 2 years

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Rare and Fragile Fossils Found at a Secret Site in Australia

Buried in Australia's so-called dead heart, a trove of exceptional fossils, including those of trapdoor spiders, giant cicadas, tiny fish and a feather from an ancient bird, reveal a unique snapshot of a time when rainforests carpeted the now mostly-arid continent.

Paleontologists discovered the fossil treasure-trove, known as a Lagerstätte ("storage site" in German) in New South Wales, in a region so arid that British geologist John Walter Gregory famously dubbed it the "dead heart of Australia" over 100 years ago. The Lagerstätte's location on private land was kept secret to protect it from illegal fossil collectors, while scientists excavated the remains of plants and animals that lived there sometime between 16 million and 11 million years ago.

The researchers unearthed remains that are unique in the Australian fossil record for the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago), they reported in a new study. Most of the prior Miocene finds that other scientists have unearthed in Australia were bones and teeth from larger animals — which are commonly preserved in Australia's dry landscapes. However, the new cache held fossils of small and delicate creatures such as spiders and insects, as well as flora from the Miocene rainforest.

By examining the well-preserved fossils with scanning electron microscopes (SEM), the study authors were able to image details as fine as individual cells and subcellular structures. Some of the images even revealed animals' last meals, such as fish, larvae and a partially digested dragonfly wing preserved inside fishes' bellies. In other fossilized scenes, a freshwater mussel clung to a fish's fin, and pollen grains were stuck to insects' bodies.

"This site gives us unprecedented insight into what these ecosystems were like," lead study author Matthew McCurry, a curator of paleontology at the Australian Museum, told Live Science in an email. "We now know how diverse these ecosystems were, which species lived in them and how these species interacted."

Paleontologists first visited the site — now named McGraths Flat — in 2017, after a farmer reported finding fossilized leaves in one of his fields. When the scientists investigated, "we were pleased to discover that the site yields a much wider range of fossils, including the remains of insects, spiders and fishes," McCurry said.

The fossil-bearing rock layer measures between 11,000 and 22,000 square feet (1,000 and 2,000 square meters), and paleontologists have thus far excavated just over 500 square feet (50 square m), according to McCurry. A matrix of iron-rich rock called goethite surrounded the fossils on top of a layer of sandstone. Plants and animal remains in a stagnant pool were likely encased in iron and other minerals after runoff from nearby basalt cliffs drained into the pool, known in Australia as a billabong, which preserved them in exquisite detail.

Now, millions of years later, researchers have begun piecing together the fossils to build a portrait of an extinct Australian rainforest. They found leaves from flowering plants, pollen, fungal spores, more than a dozen specimens of fish, "a wide diversity of fossilized insects and arachnids," and a feather from a bird that was about the size of a modern sparrow, the study authors reported. Analysis of the preserved leaves suggests that the average temperature at the time was about 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius).

"I find the spider fossils the most fascinating," McCurry said. Until now, only four fossil spiders were known from Australia, and researchers have so far found 13 spider fossils at McGrath Flats, McCurry said.

Preserved soft tissues in the feather and in the fishes' eyes and skin held another exciting detail: pigment-storing cell structures called melanosomes. Though the color itself isn't preserved, scientists can compare the shape, size and stacking patterns in the fossil melanosomes to those in modern animals. In doing so, paleontologists can often reconstruct the colors and patterns in extinct species, study co-author Michael Frese, an associate professor of science at the University of Canberra in Australia, said in a statement.

While much has been discovered at McGraths Flat, "this is really only the beginning of the work on the fossil site," McCurry said. "We now know the age of the deposit and how well-preserved the fossils are, but we have years of work ahead of us to describe and name all of the species we are finding. I think that McGraths Flat will become extremely important in building a more accurate picture about how Australia has changed over time."

By Mindy Weisberger.

#Rare and Fragile Fossils Found at a Secret Site in Australia #dead heart of australia #McGraths Flat #paleontologists #ancient fossils #history #history news

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pinkieloveheartpastel · 3 years

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Australian people be like: 😃

Even though there’s bench-pressing kangaroos on every corner waiting as you glide down with your little parachute to tussle with you for no reason at all other than they saw your ass, and flesh-eating fleas in the water waiting for the right moment to strike, and vehicles sitting out in the hot-ass sun heating up to 178 degrees, and spiders who are literally the size of those giant toy ones you get to buy whenever halloween comes by, like-

#australia #wtf Australia #seriously wtf

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 4/23/21: MORTAL KOMBAT, DEMON SLAYER, TOGETHER TOGETHER, STREET GANG, SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS

Ugh. Trying to maintain this column as a weekly entity during the final few weeks of the longest Oscar season ever has been really hard, and I’m not sure that will change once the Oscars are over either, because I look at the number of movies being released both theatrically and streaming over the next few weeks, and it makes my head hurt. Sorry for the kvetching, it just is what it is.

There are two big theatrical releases this weekend, Warner Bros’ MORTAL KOMBAT and DEMON SLAYER THE MOVIE: MUGEN TRAIN from FUNImation Entertainment, both which have already been released internationally. I also probably won’t be able to watch or review either before this column gets posted.

Mortal Kombat seems like the easiest sell being that it’s based on the popular Midway Games video game franchise introduced in the early ‘90s that led to a series of films, books, comics and you name it. It was a very popular fighting game that had over a dozen iterations including one in which MK characters fought against DC superheroes.

The very first Mortal Kombat movies opened in 1995, right amidst MK-mania, and it was directed by one Paul W.S. Anderson, his very first movie in a long line of video game-related movies, including a number of Resident Evil and the recent Monster Hunter. There are a lot of people who love those games, and yes, even people who love that and other movies, but to others, who may have been too old to get into the games when they came out, the whole thing about different fighters fighting each other just looks kind of studio. Even though I’m interested to see what producer James Wan brings to this reboot, I just don’t have much interest otherwise.

Unfortunately, and this is pretty daunting, Warner Bros. wasn’t sending out screeners to critics until Wednesday with a review embargo for Thursday night at 7pm, which is never a good sign, and yet, it continues Warner Bros. continuing the trend of being one of the only studios that screeners EVERY movie to film critics rather than just making them pay to see it on Thursday night or Friday. I hope to watch it and maybe add something Thursday night, time-permitting. Not sure you heard but the Oscars are Sunday.

As far as box office, Mortal Kombat opens on Friday but also premieres on HBO Max, and I’m not sure there will be as much urge to see MK on the largest screen possible, as there was with Godzilla vs. Kong. Because of that, I think the cap for this one over the three-day weekend is about $10 million but not much more and probably more frontloaded to Friday than we’ve seen in some time.

Mini-Review: As you can imagine from my statement above, I don’t hold the Mortal Kombat games or other iterations in any particular high esteem, so I’m basically jumping into this movie, directed by Simon McQuoid, just as a movie and not necessarily as a video game movie.

It starts off promising enough like a samurai movie with a flashback where we watch Hiroyuki Sanada’s hero sees his wife and son be killed by Joe Taslim’s character that will later become Sub-Zero. The general principle seems to be that there’s a world where people from other worlds fight each other to gain complete control. The hero is Lewis Tan’s MMA fighter Cole Young, presumably a popular character from the game? He is also soon attacked by Sub-Zero presumably because he’s marked with a dragon tattoo that deems him a champion of these fights, but he needs to find someone named Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to help him get to the “Mortal Kombat.” At the same time, he meets the movie’s most entertaining character, Kane,

played by Australian actor Josh Lawson, mainly because he swears constantly and cracks wise -- he’s a bit like Wolverine, actually, and he’s actually the best part of the movie.

Otherwise, everyone and everything is always so deadly serious that everyone else we meet just doesn’t have much impact, because frankly, none of these names or characters mean jack shit to me. Sure, some of them sound vaguely familiar but I was more interested in the great Asian actors who turn up including Tadanobu Asano’s Lord Raiden, who is gonna claim Earth if its champions lose at Mortal Kombat. And Sub-Zero basically just shows up and tries to kill everyone.

As with far too many action movies, the action itself is great, the writing and acting not so much.

As it goes along, things become more epic and fantasy-driven but that also makes the dialogue seem even worse. Similarly, the fight choreography is pretty great, but the movie still leans way too heavily on visual FX to keep it more interesting for anyone not too interested in MMA… like myself. When all else fails, they can show off Sub-Zero’s cool ice powers every chance possible as well as the other’s powers, but some of them (like Lord Raiden) just made me think of this as a rip-off of the great Big Trouble in Little China.

The thing is I’m not a fan of the video game nor of MMA, so Mortal Kombat really doesn’t have much to offer me. The whole thing just seems very silly, just like almost everything from the ‘90s. (How’s THAT for a bad take?)

That said, I thought the final battle was great, and I enjoyed some of the gorier aspects of the fights, too, and it all leads to my favorite part, which is the three-way fight between Cole, Sub-Zero, and… actually I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler or not, but it’s a pretty cool fight that almost makes up for some of the dumber characters introduced earlier on. (LIke that guy with four arms. I know he’s a character in the games, but I didn’t even care enough to look up his name.)

It’s perfectly fine that they decided to go Rated R with the movie since most of the nostalgia for this movie and franchise will be towards older guys, but at times, the CG blood is so hinky it feels like the decision to go R-rated was made well after it was filmed.

Even though I went in with the lowest of expectations, I still found most of Mortal Kombat kinda trite and boring, maybe something I’d appreciate more as a teenager but not so much as a grown adult. But what do you expect for a movie based on a video game that’s just a bunch of “cool fights”?

Rating: 5.5/10

And yet, Demon Slayer could be the surprise breakout of the weekend, considering the theatrical success FUNimation has had with theatrical releases of the My Hero Academia movies into theaters in 2018 and 2020, and the hugely successful Dragon Ball Super: Brolly, which grossed $31 million domestically after a surprise $20.2 million in its first five days in roughly 1,200 movies. In fact, it made $7 million its opening Wednesday in January 2019, and FUNimation is hoping that Demon Slayer will have a similar success by opening it for a single day (Thursday) in IMAX theaters before Mortal Kombat takes over on Friday.

Demon Slayer has already grossed $383.7 million internationally compared to Mortal Kombat’s $10.7 million, and you cannot ignore the huge popularity that anime has seen over the past few decades. In fact, a bunch of screenings for Demon Slayer in NYC have already sold out, although you have to bear in mind that these are 25% capacity theaters. Even so, I still think this can make $4 to 5 million on Thursday and another $7 to 8 million over the weekend, depending on the number of theaters. Yes, it will be quite frontloaded, and I’m not sure what the cap is on theaters and how that will affect how it does over the weekend, but expect a big Thursday and a more moderate weekend but one that might give both Mortal Kombat and Godzilla vs. Kong a run for the top of the box office.

Also hitting theaters before streaming on Netflix (on April 30) is THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES, the new animated movie produced by Chris Miller and Philip Lord, following their Oscar win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a little weird to open a new animated movies, presumably in select theaters, when such a hugely anticipated animated movie like Demon Slayer is opening, but Netflix won’t

The movie itself is directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe, and it involves a family named the Mitchells, whose eldest daughter Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) is leaving home for college, so her father (voiced by Danny McBride) decides that he’s going to drive her there and use it as the chance for a cross-country family trip. Meanwhile, it’s set up how the world becomes overrun with robots when a tech giant creates a new personal assistant.

I wasn’t sure whether I’d like this even though I’m generally a fan of all of Lord/Miller’s animated movies including both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies. It took me a little time to get into the family and the general premise. In some ways it reminded me of Edgar Wright’s The World’s End where it’s trying to merge these two disparate genres, but when they actually merge, it just doesn’t work as well as it may have seemed on paper. That worry is soon expunged, because Rianda finds ways to integrate the two ideas over time.

On the trip, the Mitchells run into their perfect family neighbors, the Poseys -- voiced by Krissy Teigen, John Legend and Charlyne Yi -- and you’d think they might be a bigger part of the movie then they actually are. I’m not sure I would have liked doing the family-vs.-family thing so soon after last year’s Croods movie, but I did love the dynamics of the Mitchells being a very relatable imperfect family with Danny McBride being particularly great voicing the family patriarch. It even has a really touching Pixar’s Up moment of Katie’s father watching old home movies of them together when she was younger.

In general, the filmmakers have assembled a pretty amazing voice cast that includes Conan O’Brien, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett. Actually the weirdest voice choice is Katie’s younger brother Aaron, voiced by Rianda himself, and it sounds like a strange older man trying to be a kid, so it doesn’t work as well as others.

What I genuinely liked about Mitchells vs. the Machines is that it doesn’t go out of its way to talk down to overly sensitive kiddies or skimp on the action while also including elements that parents will enjoy as well, and to me, that’s the ideal of a family film.

While some might feel that The Mitchells vs. the Machines is fairly standard animated fare, it ends up being a fun cross between National Lampoon’s Vacation (cleaned up for the kiddies) with Will Smith’s I, Robot, actually, and yet, it somehow does work. It’s a shame that it’s really not getting a theatrical release except to be awards-eligible.

Next, we have two really great movies I saw at Sundance this year and really enjoyed immensely…

So as I mentioned, I first saw Nikole Beckwith’s TOGETHER TOGETHER (Bleecker Street), starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison, at Sundance, and it was one of my favorite movies there with Helms playing a middle-aged single guy named Matt, who hires the much-younger Anna (Harrison) to be his surrogate, because he wants a baby. It’s a tough relationship thrown together due to each of their respective necessities.

Part of what drives the movie is how different Matt and Anna are, him being quite inappropriate with his suggestions and requests but not really having a working knowledge of female anatomy, pregnancy, delivery etc, but being really eager to raise a child and having the money that Anna clearly does not.

While I was familiar with Helms from The Office, The Hangover, etc. I really didn’t know Patti Harrison at all. Apparently, she’s a stand-up comic who hasn’t done a ton of acting, comedic or otherwise. That’s pretty amazing when you watch this movie and see her dry sardonic wit playing well against Helms’ generally lovable doofus. What I also didn’t realize and frankly, I don’t really see this as something even worth mentioning, is that she’s a trans woman playing a clearly CIS part, and she kills it. I certainly wouldn’t have known nor did it really affect my enjoyment of the movie, yet it still seems like such a brave statement on the part of the director and Harrison herself. The thing is that Harrison isn't just a terrific actress in her own right, but she brings out aspects of Helms that I never thought I would ever possibly see. (If it isn't obvious, I'm not the biggest fan of Helms.)

The movie has a great sense of humor, as it gets the most out of this awkward duo and then throws so many great supporting actors into the cast around them that it’s almost impossible not to enjoy the laughs. There’s the testy Sonogram tech, played by Sufe Bradshaw from Veep, who tries to maintain her composure and bite her tongue, but you can tell she’s having none of it. Others who show up, including Tig Notero, Norah Dunn and Fred Melamed. Just when you least expect it, Anna Conkle from Pen15, shows up as one of those delivery gurus that make the two of them feel even more awkward.

What’s nice is that this never turns into the typical meet cute rom-com that some might be expecting, as Beckwith’s film is more about friendship and companionship and being there for another, and the lack of that romantic spark even as chemistry develops between them is what makes this film so enjoyably unique. Beckwith’s sense of humor combined with her dynamic duo stars makes Together Together the best comedy about pregnancy probably since Knocked Up.

Another great Sundance movie and actually one of my two favorite recent documentaries AND one of the best movies I’ve seen this year is… you know what? I haven’t done this for a while so this is this week’s “CHOSEN ONE”!! (Fanfare)

(Photo courtesy: Robert Fuhring/Courtesy Sesame Workshop)

Marilyn (Mad Hot Ballroom) Agrilo’s STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET (Screen Media/HBO Documentaries) is a fantastic doc about the long-running and popular PBS kids show that’s every bit as good as Morgan Neville’s Mr. Rogers doc, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Which was robbed of an Oscar nomination a few years back.

Let me make something clear on the day I’m writing this, April 21, 2021, that this is my favorite movie of the year, the only one I’ve already given a 10/10, and the end of the year might come around, and I have a feeling it will still be my #1.

You see, I was raised a Sesame Street kid. It’s not like I didn’t read or play outside or not get the attention of my parents or family, but there was so much of my happy, young life that I could attribute to my time watching Sesame Street, and when you watch Marily Agrilo’s amazing doc, it all comes rushing back. There is stuff in this movie that I haven’t seen in maybe 50 years but that I clearly remember laughing at, and there’s stuff that got into the mind of a young Ed that influenced my love of humor and music and just outright insanity. Sure, I loved The Muppet Show, too, but it was a different experience, so to watch a movie about the show with all sorts of stuff I had never seen or knew, that’s what makes Street Gang such a brilliant documentary, and easily one of the best we’ll see this year. Of that I have no doubt.

From the very origins of the show with Joan Cooney developing a show that will be entertaining and educational to the kids being plopped down in front of the TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so they can learn something, it’s just 1:46 of straight-up wonderment.

Besides getting to see a lot of the beloved actors/characters from the show and many of the surviving players like Carol Spinney aka Big Bird/Oscar, you can see how this show tried to create something that wasn’t just constantly advertising to young minds.

More than anything, the show is a love letter to the bromance between Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and you get to see so many of their bits and outtakes that make their Muppets like Burt and Ernie and Grover and, of course, Kermit, so beloved by kids that even cynical adults like myself would revert childhood just thinking about them. Then on top of that there’s the wonderful music and songs of Christopher Cerf and Joe Raposo and others, songs that would permeate the mainstream populace and be remembered for decades.

The movie is just a tribute to the joy of childhood and learning to love and sing and dance and just have fun and not worry about the world. I’m not sure if kids these days have anything like that.

It also gets quite sad, and I’m not embarrassed to say that in the sequence that covers the death of Mr. Hooper, I was outright bawling, and a few minutes later, when Jim Henson dies in 1990, I completely lost it. That’s how much this show meant to me and to so many people over the decades, and Brava to Ms. Agrilo for creating just the perfect document to everything that Sesame Street brought to so many people’s lives. This is easily the best documentary this year, and woe be to any Academy that doesn’t remember it at year’s end.

The other fantastic doc out this week, though I actually got to see it last year, is Lisa Rovner’s SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS (Metrograph Pictures), which will play at the Metrograph, both on demand and part of its Digital Live Screenings (available to join for just $5 a month!). This is an endlessly fascinating doc that looks at the women of electronic music and the early days of synthesizers and synthesis and some of the female pioneers. It’s narrated by Laurie Anderson, which couldn’t be the more perfect combination.

The movie covers the likes of Suzanne Cianni; Forbidden Planet composers Louis and Bebe Barron, who created the first all-electronic score for that movie; the amazing Wendy Carlos, who electronically scored one of my favorite movies of all time, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange; Delia Derbyshire, who was also the subject of Caroline Catz’s short, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, which tragically, I missed when it premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March. Derbyshire was also famous for creating the iconic theme to “Doctor Who” while working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the '60s. Others who appear in the movie, either via archival footage or more recent interviews are Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel, who I was less familiar with.

The point is that as someone who was a fantastic for electronic music and synthesizers from a very early age and for someone who feels he’s very familiar with all angles of music, I learned a lot from watching Rovner’s film, and I enjoyed it just as much a second time, because the footage assembled proves what amazing work these women were doing and rarely if ever getting the credit for what they brought to electronic music, something that still resonates with the kids today who love things like EDM.

An endlessly fascinating film with so much great music and footage, Sisters with Transistors can be watched exclusively through the Metrograph’s Live Screening series, so don’t miss it!

Hitting Shudder this week is Chris Baugh’s BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (Shudder), which I didn’t get a chance to watch before writing this week’s column, but Shudder in general has been knocking it out of the park with the amazing horror movies it’s been releasing on a weekly basis. This one involves a quarelling father and son on a road who must survive the night when they awaken an ancient Irish vampire.

Also hitting theaters and streamers and digital this week:

THE MARIJUANA CONSPIRACY (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

MY WONDERFUL WANDA (Zeitgeist Films)

WET SEASON (Strand Releasing)

CRESTONE (Utopia)

VANQUISH (Lionsgate)

BLOODTHIRSTY (Brainstorm)

SASQUATCH (Hulu)

SHADOW AND BONE (Netflix)

And that wraps up this week. Next week? No idea… I know there’s stuff coming out but I probably won’t think about it until after THE OSCARS!!!! On Sunday.

#movies #mortalkombat #demonslayer #weekendwarrior #reviews #sisters with transistors #togethertogether #mitchellsvsmachines #streaming

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