#like you expect him to be a comic relief sidekick. NO. HES ACTUALLY A FLESHED OUT CHARACTER WITH CONFLICTS AND A RELATIONSHIP WITH MEGAMIND

[randomalistic]

LOOK AT THIS MAN. I just had my queer awakening for the 2nd time

[thankskenpenders]

So there’s this little cartoon you may have heard of...

As I’ve said on this blog before, I’d never watched all of SatAM. This might be shocking to hear from someone who runs a blog dedicated to Archie Sonic and one of the top twenty Bunnie Rabbot fangirls in the world. But it’s true.

SatAM was very difficult to track down compared to other Sonic cartoons when I was a kid, and I just never got around to watching it as an adult. So for the longest time, I had only ever seen the first episode, which I found uploaded in parts on YouTube in 2007. As the one cartoon featuring the characters I liked from the comics, it became sort of this holy grail of Sonic media for me as a kid, especially with people online always talking it up as the best thing ever and petitioning for a revival. Hell, to this day, a lot of people hold it up as this masterpiece and act like the Archie comics were a complete mockery of it

Anyway so I finally got around to watching the whole series with my boyfriend these past couple weeks, and it was pretty good. So instead of covering a comic today, here are some thoughts on the cartoon that started it all

General Thoughts

SatAM is a pretty good show. It isn’t the greatest piece of Sonic media ever, unlike what some older fans will tell you. It might not even be the best Sonic cartoon (you could easily make a case for the Japanese version of Sonic X, or Sonic Boom if you’re looking for something more comedic). It hasn’t aged the most gracefully, in some ways. The animation’s cheap, the stories sometimes bland. But for a DiC-produced video game cartoon from the early ‘90s, it’s really solid

I think that in many ways, SatAM is carried by the strength of its ideas over its actual execution. The darker, more serious tone is a really cool idea, even if at times it can get a little dull, and even if the show actually gets silly as hell pretty often. (This is a show where Snively literally tortures a captive Antoine by preparing French cuisine improperly.) That opening scene of Robotropolis in the first episode actually sets the mood really well and feels like it came straight out of some cyberpunk anime from the ‘80s or ‘90s. The concept of Robotnik turning people into robot slaves is really cool, even if surprisingly little was done with this aside from Uncle Chuck’s storyline. And I think the Freedom Fighters make a great supporting cast for Sonic, even if the writers didn’t use them to their full potential

Interestingly, I’d often heard from fans that season one was the stronger of the two, when I’d say that the opposite is true. Season one episodes were pretty samey, usually involving low stakes missions to Robotropolis with no real continuity, and Sally ended up being a damsel in distress more than I’d like--hell, so did Bunnie in a few episodes. It wasn’t bad, but it was highly repetitive, and I got a little bored at times. Season two had a few real stinkers (the Antoine episodes) and Dulcy was an unwelcome addition, but I thought the heavier focus on continuity gave the season some real momentum and more emotional weight, which made it way more enjoyable overall

Things I Liked

Sonic. I quite liked this version of Sonic, actually! Jaleel White is a great Sonic, and he was written pretty well. At times the extremely tubular ‘90s lingo was grating (I never wanna hear “Gotta juice!” again), but I was surprised to see that this version of Sonic had a lot of heart. He really cared about the well-being of his friends and Uncle Chuck, and they even let him cry a couple times. I thought they struck a good balance between snark and sincerity with him

Sally. I don’t think SatAM Sally was perfect, but I liked her. I’m still of the opinion that she should have been given more ways to defend herself physically (maybe some kind of power of her own) so that Sonic didn’t have to save her as much, but I liked the banter she and Sonic had. Unlike the early Archie comics, Sally doesn’t come off as the bossy girlfriend who ruins Sonic’s fun. Maybe it’s Jaleel White and Kath Soucie’s performances doing most of the work, but they had a fun back and forth dynamic, with Sally’s sarcasm keeping Sonic’s ego in check, but there still being clear chemistry between the two of them

I also liked the greatly reduced emphasis on her being a princess compared to much of Archie’s material. Like yeah, it’s there. Her dad’s the king, and left her some classified info via Nicole. But her status doesn’t really affect things much. They don’t talk about her having this grand destiny and being the next in line to rule. It’s clear that she’s in charge of the Freedom Fighters not because of her status, but because she’s smart, brave, and gets shit done. That’s the Sally I like.

Plus! In the finale, Sally insisted upon going with Sonic for the final confrontation, and was a crucial part of the climax. Her powering up with Sonic and matching his speed and strength ruled. Compare that to the climactic defeat of Robotnik in Archie, where she was fucking dead

Robotnik. I don’t think much needs to be said here. Jim Cummings rules as Robotnik, like everyone has always said. He’s just so evil and so much fun to watch

Snively??? I’ve never cared for Snively as a character, but Charlie Adler rules and his over-the-top performance made the character way funnier than he should’ve been. Just something about all the little noises he makes, and the way he almost shifts into the Red Guy voice at times

Nicole. It was fun to see Nicole start to get more of a personality in season two, having some banter with Sonic and also picking up some slang from him. It makes the later decision to turn Sally’s computer into a full character (which would have happened in season three, and obviously eventually became a big subplot in the comics) make a lot of sense

King Acorn. While he was only around briefly, I liked that he wasn’t a huge dick, unlike Archie’s King Max

Things I Didn’t Like

The misuse of the other Freedom Fighters. This is, by far, the show’s greatest crime.

I already write approximately 100k words a week on this blog about how I think Bunnie Rabbot is amazing and criminally underused, so I’ll keep this brief, but I was shocked to see how little she was used in this show. People tend to say Dulcy stole her screentime in season two, but she didn’t have much to do in the first season either! We somehow never got a single episode focusing on her. The one where she got temporarily deroboticized focused much more on Uncle Chuck. We never got to learn the story behind her roboticization, or delved into her feelings on the matter much. She mostly just served as a positive, lighthearted supporting member of the team who acts cute and gets some funny lines, but usually stays home

Antoine might have been even worse, honestly. Like, they used him so much! They had multiple episodes focusing entirely on him! And yet I’m not sure he ever really helped. Sonic and Sally kept taking him along, but every single time it felt like it would’ve been a wiser decision to bring Bunnie instead. The jokes about his broken English were just dumb, and god, the way he constantly hits on Sally and starts kissing her hand at the most inappropriate times is just SO fucking creepy. SatAM Antoine is just a horrible, one-dimensional stereotype. There’s a reason why readers of the Archie comics wanted him out of the series until later writers majorly rehabilitated him

Rotor also didn’t get much use, which was a shame, but it at least felt like he was used efficiently. I got the vibe that Rotor was much more bitter about the war with Robotnik than his friends, and it would’ve been interesting to see this explored more. At least we got that one fun episode where he went to space with Sonic

Dulcy. Oh my fucking god. I wanted to like Dulcy! I really did! But most of the time she was just a clutz used for comic relief, and they kept reusing the same joke where she crashed, bumped her head, got dizzy, and thought she was talking to her mom. This happened in almost every episode she was in.

The other miscellaneous Freedom Fighters. Like in the early Archie comics, none of the other miscellaneous Mobians they meet were as interesting as the core cast. They just always felt very bland and I was never as invested in them as the writers wanted me to be. Ari was boring, and that episode where they found the underground city and this other dude started hitting on Sally was a drag. Lupe’s cute though

Rings. This is a common problem in Sonic adaptations, but the fact that rings always serve as Sonic’s instant win button kind of sucks. Basically any time Sonic’s in a pinch, he pulls a ring out of his backpack, powers up, and wins. Not exactly a recipe for suspenseful action

Oh, also, I did kinda find it weird how much Sonic and Sally kissed? Like, all the time? Often while their friends just stand there and stare at them? Not something I’d expect from a Sonic cartoon

Things Archie Did Better

I’ll limit this to the first 50 issues or so, since I don’t think it would be fair to compare two short seasons of SatAM to the highlights of nearly 500 issues of comics

Tails. Tails is okay in SatAM, Archie just used him as Sonic’s sidekick way more. He was barely even in the show. Poor little guy only gets to play dirt hockey all day

Bunnie. Again, Bunnie was underutilized in both series, but the Archie comics did her better. They actually showed the story of how she got roboticized (even if it was a silly story), and they got to flesh her out a bit more. Gallagher showing that she was a carrot farmer before her roboticization and saying she wanted to be a hairdresser was at least something. And as I keep harping on, Rich Koslowski’s backup story in #37 where we find out Bunnie has recurring nightmares about her robot parts taking over and making her a threat to her friends? This single backup story did more to flesh her out than all 26 episodes of SatAM combined

Antoine. Not hard to do better than SatAM here, really. He was really bad early on, serving as little more than Sonic’s punching bag, but eventually they started to set up a romance between him and Bunnie and explored his past a bit, saying that Antoine’s father (his personal role model) was a member of the royal guard who was roboticized in the war. While he still had a long way to go, these were important first steps towards him being a decent character. Hell, these days, being Bunnie’s love interest is one of Antoine’s defining characteristics! And it doesn’t come from the cartoon at all

Roboticization in general. I was surprised how little this came up in the cartoon! In the comics, it’s such a central element. We see more of the heroes’ loved ones turned into robots, and we even got some fun stories where characters like Sonic and Sally were roboticized temporarily. The Freedom Fighters’ efforts to reverse the process was a major part of the plot for quite a while. Bunnie’s fear of losing control is a pretty important part of her character (even if it was only touched on briefly), and after they’re rescued, the rest of the Mobians fear that the “Robians” (including Sonic’s entire family) will turn evil again. It comes up a lot! There are interesting things to discuss here! But SatAM only really talks about Uncle Chuck. We never even see what happened to everyone else

Closing Thoughts

SatAM is not the best show in the world, but it is a solid and enjoyable one. It’s easy to see why people who grew up with it are fond of it, even if I think that it’s long past time certain fans quit acting like it’s the only valid take on the Sonic source material and petitioning for a third season. At the very least, the concepts and characters introduced here are strong ones, and it’s easy to see how they spawned over 20 years of comics exploring said ideas in greater detail. While I’m not sure I could recommend it to non-fans, I think it’s definitely worth checking out for Sonic fans who missed out on it (especially fans of the Archie comics)

Anyway I got to see Bunnie dropkick some Swatbots twice her height so I had fun

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, twice.

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

Eight (34.78% of cast).

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

Fifteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Neither characters nor plot are engaging enough to hold strong interest, making the film feel longer than it is, plus there’s one character in particular whose behaviour seriously rankles. It’s not a terrible movie, but it is thoroughly uninspiring.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Liz manages a brief pass with her mother before the dance. Liz says goodbye to Betty.

Female characters:

Betty Brant.

Liz Toomes.

Michelle.

Marjory.

May Parker.

Karen.

Mrs Toomes.

Pepper Potts.

Male characters:

Adrian Toomes.

Mason.

Peter Parker.

Happy Hogan.

Tony Stark.

Jason Ionelli.

Ned.

Flash.

Abraham.

Mr Delmar.

Gary.

Steve Rogers.

Coach Wilson.

Shocker.

Aaron Davis.

OTHER NOTES:

Ah, here’s Peter’s video log from Civil War, where he has no idea why he’s even there and it’s completely irresponsible and inappropriate for Tony to have brought him in on something catastrophically dangerous with no preparation and none of the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision! I hate it. This makes me extremely hate Tony. I know I mentioned it already when I reviewed Civil War, but it’s super-true and not going to change any time soon. 

See, this thing where Peter is sacrificing academic and social experiences to hang out for Tony’s promised phone call? That’s on Tony. You can’t just rope a kid into your bullshit and then kick him back out into the world with a vague false promise and no follow-up of any kind. That’s not how kids work. It’s not fair to people in general, but it is especially not how kids work.

Peter having to run because he’s in the suburbs and there are no tall buildings is probably the best gag in this movie.

The inclusion of that little detail about the Washington Monument being built by slaves. Mmmhmm.

I find the plotting of this film very dull and predictable, like ‘oh, and now we’ll have another action set piece, now some cutesy highschool stuff’, etc, and as such I feel it drags excessively and I’m just sitting here waiting for each bit to be done with so that we can get to the next, so that it can be over too, because I’m not attached enough to any one or thing that’s happening for the predictable beats to hold internal interest. That said, the Washington Monument piece is pretty good.

The ludicrous ferry accident, not so much.

Tony shows up, lot of shit-talking, blaming Peter for not magically intuiting information which Tony didn’t give him. Urgh. I deeply, deeply hate this version of Tony. 

Toomes reveal is the most inspired choice of the film. Keaton kills it on Toomes’ own revelation of Peter’s identity.

This movie sure does go on.

This ‘screwed the pooch’ joke makes me want to bleach my ears. Also, this whole Avenger/press conference business is still Tony completely failing to appreciate how he’s upended this kid’s life; the right thing to do in this situation is not to lean into it and go ‘ok, but what if I upended it...more?’, just like the right way to deal with it was emphatically not to just kick the kid to the curb to figure things out for himself after that initial upending. I imagine I would have enjoyed this film sooo much more if I were not raging at Tony throughout.

Ok, let me just purge on the Tony thing before I go any further, otherwise I’m never gonna be able to focus properly on the rest of the movie. I hate what they’ve done with Tony. That’s obvious. I really, deeply disagree with it. Tony was a hard character to get to like, but the Iron Man films did really solid, intelligent work at achieving it despite the many and sundry hurdles, and the key to that was the fact that they had Tony, consistently, recognising the ways that his actions hurt others and then making the effort to fix that and fix himself, not just blowing it off, making some flashy gesture or throwing some money at the problem and then breezing on out like everything’s fine and none of it’s on him. The Avengers films - particularly Ultron - did significant work at tarnishing the character development of the Iron Man films, and then Civil War came in and - amidst the many, many sins Tony committed in that movie - handed the introduction of Spider-Man over to Tony in an act of incredibly irresponsible and reckless child endangerment, which this film proceeded to double-down on by having Tony completely fail to be a reasonable, thinking adult at any point. Frankly, I don’t feel that Tony’s initial decision to involve Peter in Civil War is forgivable, there’s no walking that back, but the least he could have done is to recognise that fact and make appropriate amends, which - as above - does not mean ignoring the kid any more than it means pandering to his hero complex. It makes me feel really, really old to be saying it, but Peter is a minor, he doesn’t have a strong perspective on the world yet, but he’s also old enough and wise enough that he can’t just have people throwing rules at him and expecting obedience; he needs to be treated with the respect of having things explained, but he also needs oversight because he isn’t mature enough to make choices without it. He needs guidance. That’s the position which Tony actively puts himself in and then fails to follow through on, and it leaves Peter feeling that he has to prove himself, that he has to further endanger himself in order to win the mentorship that Tony promised. As a character response and an emotional position for Peter, that’s great story fodder and logical follow-on from his introduction, and I can’t fault that. For Tony Stark though, who manages to both start and end this movie without actually learning anything, it makes me infuriated beyond belief.

THAT SAID, let’s segue to the natural place: to Peter. The good news is, if this film gets only one thing right, it’s that very precise balance of Peter’s age, with all its accompanying tumult; Peter is mature enough to feel like he’s in control of his life and choices and capable of taking on new, big, adult things, but not mature enough to realise the limitations that come with his age in terms of experience and worldview. He has that ‘teenagers think they know everything’ factor, but without it being conveyed as either too arrogant or too whiny to be palatable. It’s a tough ask for teen characters, generally, as the creative forces behind them are almost invariably adults (and usually have been for quite some time), and it’s hard to recapture the mentality of a teen once you’ve grown beyond that mentality yourself. When Peter declares that school doesn’t matter anymore because he’s ‘probably never coming back’, he’s gonna become an Avenger and that’s his whole life plan right now, no real details, no clarity in what exactly that means for his day-to-day life or where he gets his income or how things might go in the long term, that’s a classic teen moment for him: his future is a concept, all of its parts internally encompassed, and it’s not just that he dismisses the questions, logistics, and concerns that an adult would know to raise, it’s that these things don’t even occur to him in the first place. Peter is in this middle-position, the transition from child to adult, and he’s not as far through that transition as he thinks he is (teenagers never are). Altogether, I may not be enamoured by this film, nor am I especially compelled by Tom Holland’s take on this character (he’s not bad, he’s just...not that enthralling, either), but the particular pitch of Peter’s mentality is spot-on without being, in itself, just another tromp through dull and overwrought teen-angst cliches.

The rest of the movie, on the other hand...I feel kinda bad about spending that over-long first paragraph railing against a certain billionaire who could have done us all a favour and not been in this film (or at least, not as prominently), giving Peter more of a chance to explore his spider-self and what it means to his life on his own terms, instead of being so heavily influenced by how he fits into the wider universe, and then maybe we could have fleshed out more of Peter’s normal life in order to make all the extraneous pieces of this story more meaningful, and less, y’know, extraneous. As-is, I don’t feel like I’ve got a lot to say about it, it’s fairly generic and unremarkable, and while there are some good set-up pieces - Toomes’ whole descent-to-criminal-enterprise-due-to-economic-pressures thing has great narrative potential and scope for reflection upon capitalism in the real world - the story never explores any of those pieces enough to even half-ass a real analysis of the idea. Toomes is rendered a mostly stock villain, the same as Liz gets little to make her more than a bland Love Interest, May is an interchangeable maternal figure, and Ned - while fun and easily a highlight in a cast that’s hardly vying for the title - is also a bit of a heavy-handed stereotype sitting in the comic relief/sidekick chair (the fact that he essentially references this in-story, fourth-wall-denting style, does not make it less uninspired). And I’m not sure how we’re supposed to see Zendaya’s MJ as anything other than a gimmick at this point, kinda seems like she was literally only there so that her preferred name could be used as a weightless ‘reveal’ at the end. Like I said up in the notes, I found the movie to be excessively predictable in a bad way, bringing me out of the viewing experience to count off the minutes and story beats, and as such, even though this is not the worst film Marvel has churned out to date, it is one of my least favourites. I know there are a lot of people who loved it, who love Tom Holland’s version of Peter Parker and found this movie light and fun, and it’s not that I can’t see where they’re coming from with that...I guess it’s just that whatever parts of the story are self-contained are so recycled from so many other films of this ilk, I can’t find anything to attach to, and then the rest of the story which could have been spent making something a little more interesting from those basic, predictable bones, instead is wasted on an over-emphasis on placing this movie into the MCU’s larger framework (an ironic waste of resources since you can easily skip this film without getting confused watching the next MCU movies with Spider-Man in them, Infinity War and Endgame). Anyway. I fear I’m just gonna start repeating myself for lack of anything else to say; I don’t care for this movie, it had at least a good little piece of heart in it but it wasted too much time on things which did not enhance this story or the wider universe anyway, I hate Tony Stark now. The end.

[loopy777]

What is your thoughts on the strenghts and weaknesses of Brandon Snderson as a writer?

Ooh, fun question.

I’ll get the weaknesses out of the way first (yes, just one): Brandon Sanderson’s writing is merely adequate. I never read a description from him that took my breath away, or wording that revealed some new insight about the world. His writing does its job, and nothing more. Perhaps related, Sanderson’s action sequences tend to be overly long and detailed; he goes into so much detail about all the various actions and movements that I lose track of what I’m supposed to be picturing, and none of it really matters- expect maybe to people keeping score about whether he’s playing fair with all the metal his Coinshots bounce off of.

This weakness doesn’t hold Sanderson back at all, though, because there are two axes of creating a novel, and Sanderson is a genius at the one that matters. One axis is Writing, which he’s just good enough at, and the other axis Storytelling, which is what has the real impact on the audience.

To illustrate how good Sanderson is at storytelling, I’ll summarize my experience reading the original Mistborn trilogy. I finished the first book and really enjoyed it; it had good characters and a plot that really came together and twists and a romance that didn’t make me roll my eyes and really interesting worldbuilding and wild ideas and a good climax. It also had plenty of mysteries that were left dangling at the end. And then I read the second book, and enjoyed that as well for the same reasons, but I noticed that a bunch of mysteries from the first book had still been left hanging, and a whole slate of new mysteries had been introduced, more than had been solved. So I expected the third book to hit the ground running and start serving up reveals right away.

Well, it didn’t. It started piling on new mysteries.

“Dude,” I said to an imaginary Brandon Sanderson, “you are *not* going to be able to bring this all together unless you start working overtime right now.”

And I continued reading, and the mysteries kept accumulating, and I was seriously waiting for everything to either completely collapse or the story duck out at the end on providing satisfactory answers.

But I got to the middle of the book, and suddenly the answers started popping up. They made sense. They fed into each other. They fueled the plot as it accelerated towards the climax. It turned out that everything was a complex array of dominoes that, when tipped in sequence, created a sound like a Bach composition and then when completely fallen over revealed Monet’s Water Lilies.

So yeah, Sanderson has the Storytelling chops to skate by on his adequate writing and still wind up being one of the novelists in the business right now.

The strength he’s probably most well known for is his worldbuilding. The guy is great at coming up with a High Concept or a Magic System he wants to play with, and then spinning out a fully-fleshed world that makes sense down to the most nitpicky details. Usually, I don’t see this level of worldbuilding combined with adequate attention to character or plot, but Sanderson is the exception that proves the rule. Only Tolkien, who wrote down every poem composed by an elf in his LotR universe, exceeds Sanderson.

On the subject of characters, Sanderson nails this. They’re interesting, diverse, funny, wise, pitiable, etc. They make me laugh and get me invested. Wayne, in the Mistborn sequel series, might actually be one of the best characters of all time. (Seriously. And he’s the Comic Relief Sidekick.) And then there’s-

Well, going into another great character of Sanderson’s might be a spoiler, for those who haven’t read the Mistborn sequel series. I’ll just say that the subplot surrounding this character, is one of my favorite romances of all time.

The last big strength of Sanderson’s is that he is, apparently, a writing machine. Look at the amount of stuff he’s written in 15 years! Yeesh! Way to make everyone feel inadequate.

That all said, I’m not sure I’ve read enough Sanderson to provide a complete rundown. I’m mainly writing this based on the Mistborn series (currently up to six novels, two short stories, and a novella), which is amazing and probably stands at the top of the fantasy genre, IMO. I also read the Elantris stand-alone novel, and while that had a lot of the same good points, it didn’t make much of an impact on me; it had good characters and interesting ideas and a twisty plot and a cool new magic system and a series of dominoes that tipped over at the end, but it was a much simpler array of dominoes and some of them didn’t connect in a satisfying way. It’s still a good novel I’d recommend to anyone who wants to read something fun, but that’s it.

(However, I have seen people describe it as their favorite novel, so perhaps I just wasn’t on the same wavelength as the book for whatever reason.)

So a possible weakness is that Sanderson can’t always coordinate all the twists he has in play in his complex plot-filled novels.

But jeez, I’d take a weakness like that any day.

[readingwebcomics]

Analyzing Questionable Content: Pages 101-150

While I’m all for body positivity Dora, that’s kind of public nudity. Most cities tend to frown on that. Although this IS your personal business you’re doing this in… I wonder what the law for that is? Like, do you have to pay for a permit to allow public nudity in a location you own? Or do city laws take precedent?

…I’m thinking about this too much, let’s move on.

Hey, it’s Raven again! Hi, Raven! And you thought I was kidding when I said the no-name character who showed up for all of one comic would come back as a regular character. This is part of the reason why I enjoy Jeph’s style – he can, and does, very easily take bit players he made for a single gag or to fulfill one role and flesh them out if he thinks they can serve a purpose or if they entertain him enough. The most famous example of this will be roughly 2900 comics from now so… holy shit, I just realized Bubbles is 1000 comics old! That’s crazy awesome!

Right. Sorry, some of you might not understand a word of what I just typed. Nevermind, moving right along.

Here we see the beginnings of Dora’s next character arc, if you’d like to call it that. I do have some questions about this as far as the in-universe time-scale goes, but I’ll touch on that later. Faye also invites Dora along to hang with her and Marten to indoctrinate her to the Hipster Lifestyle™ to serve two purposes: First, that their relationship as a boss and employee is relaxed enough that they’re comfortable doing this, telling us a lot about the way these two work together and the way this coffee shop is run without saying a lot. Second, this serves as the perfect in for Jeph to incorporate Dora into the main cast. From this point forward, Dora becomes a main secondary character, arguably a main character in her own right. The fact that she takes on a much more prominent role in this next batch of 50 comics and skyrockets to fourth-most frequent character is proof enough of that on its own, but we’ll touch on all that when we get to the data analysis at the end of this post.

Back with Marten, Steve is encouraging him to apologize to Faye. He offers a… novel solution to keep Marten from being the center of attention.

Seriously, the sheer, raw confidence on this guy alone is attractive as hell. And I’m only mildly ashamed to admit that to myself!

I hope you understand why I don’t need to explain why I should, nay, must provide this panel without any other context.

Same deal with this one.

And this comic puts me into hysterics every time I read it. I swear, this isn’t going to devolve into me just posting comics and saying “this is funny” or whatever. I just really, really like this progression of events right here. I wish we could see more of this Marten more often in modern QC – able to read a room quick enough to defuse the situation with absurdity or dry wit. It reminds us that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the boy does have a spine somewhere in that body.

And as immediate contrast, we jump here. This? This isn’t funny. This makes me not like Faye. This is actual abuse. And I know I talked about in the last post how including Faye retaliating against Marten physically and actually showing it happen in the comic rather than implying it with backfilling is the better method of storytelling but… Maybe it’s because she created a visible bruise, maybe it’s because of how candid she is about it, maybe it’s because of my own personal fucked-up past relationships (which admittedly never got physical but still), but this feels infinitely different than the Faye Jeph is trying to set up. He’ll have to do a damn good job in later comics to win me back to thinking Faye’s a likable character again.

Also Dora is definitely a woman of her word. I hope the coffee shop was empty right then. Actually, I hope it’s been a slow day from the point Faye started chasing her around with a dildo. Otherwise news might travel for all of the wrong reasons.

Faye tries to invite Dora over for festivities both as a friendly gesture because she expects her boss doesn’t get out much and because she wants to drag her from the dark abyss of Goth into the light of Hipster, only for her to turn the invitation down.

Not that it’s going to deter Faye, of course. Also, QC is in wide screen now. I have NO idea how that’s going to be represented on Tumblr considering how narrow my current theme at the time of writing is. Maybe I’ll change it, I dunno, I’m shit with this sort of thing. If you’re reading this and the page doesn’tlook like some faux notebook shit, I pulled myself together and fixed things. Go me.

Dora is being incredibly chill with this whole situation. Personally I’d be a hell of a lot more pissed. Although this does provide us with further insight to Faye’s character – someone who sees her next step, bulrushes her way towards it and has zero plans where to go after that until she arrives at her destination. She is aggressive and decisive, but to a fault as she doesn’t ever seem to really plan ahead. I’d say this makes her the perfect foil to Marten as someone who plans obsessively but never has the spine to go forward with anything but… Marten doesn’t really do much future-planning himself. He obsesses over little things and gets stuck in his own head, but he never really seems to look any further than maybe next week. Hm… I want all of us to keep this in mind for an offhand comment like, 500 or 600 comics from now. Trust me, it’ll make sense when we get to it.

And yet despite Faye’s self-assurance and aggressive nature, here she shows an outright refusal to accept or face the reality of the developing relationship between herself and Marten. Not just being coy, not just dancing around the issue, but straight-up not allowing herself to even consider what’s going down. Maybe I’m reading too much into this little exchange due to what I already know about her character, but this is an extremely unhealthy trait that speaks a lot to Faye’s character that she doesn’t want the world to see. We’ll be touching on this later.

I mostly like this comic for Marten and Pintsize’s reactions on the last panel. Marten makes a good straight man, and it’s not often we see Pintsize share that role either.

Faye you’re really not helping your case right now. Although it is interesting how hard Faye is showcases how into him Dora is, considering she has her own feelings for him and I highly doubt she’d be 100% cool with the two of them going off to make out.

So here we establish Anthro PCs relationships with humans – namely, they’re basically glorified pets. Pets that have human-level sapience. Don’t worry, Jeph comes to understand the unfortunate implications of this as well, and he goes on to change this in future comics. And by “change this” I mean “completely re-incorporate how AI works in this universe and establish QC as a near-future sci-fi setting.” But that’s not going to be for quite some time. For now, despite my poking fun at the horrific implications here, Jeph’s doing a good job taking the “funny robot sidekick” that’s supposed to be in every webcomic and creating proper lore behind it, making it feel like it belongs in this world rather than be used as a comic relief character and only a comic relief character.

Granted the Anthro PCs as a collective are going to be used as just comic relief right now but, y’know. Baby steps.

As said before, the fact that these guys are all fully sapient creatures makes the implications of this downright horrific. Also, that’s Ell. I have no idea if he ever comes back – I don’t remember him coming back at all – but I’m marking him down in the character statistics because he’s named.

This… actually has some interesting implications. Marten mentions needing Steve’s help with a date “the other day.” Does that mean he and Faye have known each other for an extremely short period of time? I highly doubt it, we’ve seen a number of times the time has moved from day to night, and the comic itself certainly implies at least a few weeks have passed. So unless by “the other day” Marten means “a month ago” then Marten has been dating women on the side while Faye’s been staying with him. That… seems extremely out of character for him considering the circumstances we’ve seen established in the comic thus far. Considering nothing else really comes from it and the fact if Marten was dating anyone on the side it would definitely be Dora, I’m going to go on the assumption Jeph simply made a mistake here and meant to say Marten was seeing someone a month or a few months back.

She’s cut off by Pintsize’s destructive laser that he’s using to assert himself as King among the Anthro PCs, don’t worry about it. What we should focus on instead is… well, this second panel here. On paper, this is really good. We’re getting some insight to Faye’s character here, the cracks in her mask are showing. We’re addressing the issue of her assaulting her friend and roommate, what she thinks about it, her current mindset and addressing that this is an actual problem. She’s openly apologizing, sincere in her conviction and clearly wants to fix things.

The problem with this is of course the fact that this is rushed as fuck.

Part of this, of course, has to be the fact that Jeph’s comic by nature is married to the structure of a four-panel comic. We have to set up Faye’s conversation, allow her to continue, but due to narrative convenience she needs to be cut off before she can finish what she’s saying. So the laser cuts her off and after the panel of action, we follow-up and end with the punchline of Pintsize having been made King among the Anthro PCs. And I get it – interrupt Faye before she can finish so you can keep the romantic ambiguity of “boys whom I…” Classic RomCom stuff. Problem is, this isn’t the time or place to do it. Keeping to the structure traps them into a situation where unfortunately Faye doesn’t have the breathing room to stretch this out and make it feel natural. This feels contrived from every angle and every sense of the word.

Easy way to fix this: Have this conversation take place while they’re walking home. Establish she feels bad, have her bounce off Marten and have this conversation naturally. Then either you can have Pintsize cut her off at the end there or maybe even she stops herself when she realizes she’s saying too much. There are ways to make this feel natural. This isn’t natural. Still, credit where it’s due, they’re at least touching on this topic here. Part of me wonders if Jeph had, like, a mental map of where he wanted Faye’s character to go but because he writes these page-by-page it ended up stumbling along and falling flat. A written outline of events can, and does, REALLY help in situations like this.

Then again I’m giving writing advice to a version of someone who existed fifteen years ago. I’m sure he’s got this all down himself nowadays, right?

Payoff to the previous comic.

Not only does this crack me up every time I read it, it also shows that Faye and Marten have gotten onto the same wavelength of humor. They’re also comfortable enough with each other that they can imply for a moment sexual favors before completely derailing the implication with the absurd. This is a far-cry from when Faye was trying to burn Marten with her mind back when Pintsize merely implied the two of them share a bed with each other.

Granted, it does kind of fly in the face of Faye’s reaction back at the LANPark. Still, good moment.

Speaking of Faye’s character…

Here we have Faye’s explanation for why she hides her southern accent. Makes sense.

And here, her explanation as to why she doesn’t use contractions… I’ve already said my piece on why I feel this makes zero sense, let’s move on.

And here we properly draw attention to Faye’s scar and establish the fact that her scar is a sore spot for her… was that a pun? It felt like a pun. Anyway, more and more it’s becoming clear that despite her outgoing nature, Faye has a LOT she keeps close to her chest.

Okay now I know that one was a pun, I’m sorry.

Point being, there’s a lot to Faye’s character we haven’t found out yet, plenty yet to explore in future comics. And I’d also like to point out, this? This is an extremely natural way to establish things about Faye, right here. This feels like something that would actually come up in a conversation rather than planted there for the sake of the audience, and I appreciate that. That said, this in conjunction with the last few moments makes this feel more like it’s time for Jeph to introduce and explain aspects of Faye’s character all at once, which deters a little bit from the natural feeling of this moment in particular. Or maybe I’m just being pedantic, I dunno. In a bubble, this comic works.

And here we get a flash of the personality we’ll see in Raven in the future. Just a spark though, the flame hasn’t risen up quite yet. Also a little detail about Dora that… again, doesn’t quite make sense given the timescale Jeph has established. I’ll touch on it later in this post when we find out exactly how old Dora is.

This… is an aspect of Marten’s personality that we never really touch on. Actually, this kind of goes toe-in-toe with his interest in Final Fantasy. Is Marten a fantasy buff? Does he enjoy escapist literature and media? Would he be super into Game of Thrones when it comes out as a series? These are questions that… unfortunately, don’t really get answered. I don’t know, I feel like these aspects of who Marten is ends up getting forgotten on the cutting room floor later on in the comic. Maybe they were only included as an off-handed joke, maybe Marten just developed as a character differently than what Jeph originally envisioned him as. Either way, these are parts of him that I think would be wonderful to bring back, especially with his current job and relationship in present-day coics.

Again, like a LOT of things I’m bringing up, we’ll get to that later.

In case you forgot that Faye is genuinely interested in Marten, a reminder and an assertion: She isn’t just interested in the skinny boy. She’s got it bad for him.

But, like a lot of things involving her personal life and feelings, she openly refutes them – not just to Dora but to herself.

Having gone out to give Dora a new look and indoctrinate her into the Cult of Hipster, Dora McPalerThanWhiteBread ends up sunburnt. Marten’s home, he has the lotion, we all know where this is going.

Heaven holds a place for those who pray… I wanted to follow this up with a clip of Sonic from Tails’ story in Sonic Adventure saying “hey hey hey” but surprisingly enough, that particular soundbite isn’t available anywhere. There are plenty of Let’s Plays that poke fun at it, but nothing with that line in particular.

Anyway, let’s talk about time frames. Dora said she got into the whole goth and coven stuff in High School and only now gotten bored of it. She’s 26. Let’s be EXTRA generous and assume she got into it in Senior Year, and she graduated at 18. That’s eight years this has been her life style, almost a third of her life. This wasn’t a phase, this was a genuine life style choice. Either Jeph got the timing wrong, or this is genuinely an identity crisis on Dora’s part because seriously, when something’s been a part of your life for so long I don’t blame you for not knowing where to go from there. I’m just surprised it took 8+ years for her to get sick of it. Then again, maybe that’s normal. I dunno, you can tell me if that’s a normal human thing. I’m literally autistic so I genuinely don’t know.

Setup… and also begging the question why you would give a libido to an AI, or how one would develop it naturally seeing as robots are incapable of sexual reproduction.

I haven’t really mentioned it until now, but Dora’s like aggressively bi. I can dig it. Guys and gals are both pretty in their own ways.

Ignore the lack of color for a second, Jeph wrote up this comic when he had like zero time and couldn’t color it in before he uploaded. Again, we have the HINT of something that Faye’s on the cusp of admitting that says more about her character only to be cut off once again. This feels a bit more natural than the situation at the LANPark. Still contrived by nature of Jeph introducing a conflict to purposefully cut her off, but an understandable narrative contrivance.

Also, remember when I mentioned the joke about the government level laser would come back as an actual plot point? Did you think I was joking? No, here we have Agent Turing (I can’t tell if that’s clever or if I should roll my eyes at this) here to take Pintsize in, dismantle him and take the dangerous laser back.

Faye takes it well.

Can you guess what consequences she suffers from assaulting a government agent? I’ll give you a hint – it’s about the same as the consequences she suffered from burning down an apartment.

Payoff.

And finally, we round off this batch of comics with Faye’s expert lying skills to fool Agent Turing…

Ah yes. The ever-deadly Space Owls. Not nearly as scary as Space Bears, though! They’re horrifying!

…not buying it? Yeah neither did my professors back in college.

As per usual, let’s compare a panel from the first and last comics in the batch to see how Jeph’s art style has improved.

It looks like he’s trying to get the proportions more… realistic? They’ve moved from “cartoons” to “cartoon versions of actual people” and it’s… eh, alright I guess? Personally I’m more of a fan of the more cartoon-ish style in the beginning of this batch, but beauty and eyes of beholders and all.

So overall, what did I think of this batch of comics? Personally, I think the humor is improving dramatically, this batch had the most comics that had me laughing aloud so far. And bringing Dora further into the limelight was a smart move on Jeph’s part – she’s just so likable, I want to see more of her. But as for the inter-personal conflicts… eh? It feels weaker than last batch. More is happening, progress is being made, but it feels… contrived. Artificial. It was the worst in the LANPark, but because that drew my eye I kept seeing every other piece of exposition as just that – exposition. Maybe I’m biased, I’ll fully admit that. I’ll also admit that the bit about Faye’s chest-scar was a well done piece of exposition without feeling like exposition.

I’ve said exposition way too much now, let’s move onto the stats (and for the record, Scarlet Manuka on the QC forums was kind enough to remind me that the name of Dora’s cat is Miéville, so while we haven’t been introduced to that name yet I’ll be using that in my stats from this point forward because it’s better than “Dora’s Cat”).

Faye: 47/50 – 94%

Marten: 41/50 – 82%

Dora: 31/50 – 62%

Pintsize: 18/50 – 36%

Turing: 3/50 – 6%

Steve: 2/50 – 4%

Raven: 2/50 – 4%

Ell: 1/50 – 2%

Grand Total:

Marten: 132/150 – 88%

Faye: 130/150 – 86.7%

Pintsize: 45/150 – 30%

Dora: 39/150 – 26%

Steve: 16/150 – 10.7%

Sara: 7/150 – 4.7%

Raven: 3/150 – 2%

Turing: 3/150 – 2%

Jim: 2/150 – 1.3%

Scott: 2/150 – 1.3%

Miéville: 1/150 – 0.7%

Ell: 1/150 – 0.7%

Faye is climbing up the ranks and getting closer to perfectly equal screentime with Marten across the whole series. Speaking of Faye, in this batch she pulled into first as the character in the most comics, the first time she’s been in more than Marten since the beginning. And Dora’s been in so many this last batch, she jumped up to fourth-most reoccurring character juuust behind Pintsize.

I’ll catch you next week for the epic conclusion to the Pintsize laser saga! And yet more insight on Faye’s past – hope you like ice cream! See you then.

[kylosrehn]

aos for the ask meme. or, if you've already gotten that (or you just wanna do both) the wider MCU.

the first character i ever fell in love with: Skye. Or Ward. I can’t really remember which came first. Probably Skye because she was so relatable and quirky and positive but I also loved grumpy pretending-not-to-care SO Ward. 

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: Skye… or Daisy I guess. I started losing interest around halfway through S2 with the whole Afterlife plot (and then just stopped watching the show altogether after the S2 finale lol) but S3 was the one that really left a bad taste in my mouth. And the start of S4 with emo vigilante Daisy. I don’t dislike her, but it’s a far cry from the love I had for her in the early days. Same with Jemma, actually. I really liked her in S1, this cute, quirky if slightly awkward scientist willing to bend the rules when she believes it’s the right thing to do. Afterwards things got… complicated. I like her more on her own, outside of FS scenes (which, when does that ever happen?) Can she/they ever have a storyline that doesn’t involve saving the other one? For science? No?

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: Hmm… I don’t think I have one? Once I decide I like something, I fall for it pretty hard. lol. I guess Daisy/Lincoln. That’s a funny one, because when they sort of started flirting in S2 I liked the idea of them together, and I thought they had a lot of potential. But once it actually happened I wasn’t into it at all. It felt kinda rushed and I just didn’t really see any chemistry between them. It was an ‘expectations vs. reality’ sort of thing for me.

my ultimate favorite character™: Oh gosh… Fitz, I guess? I mean, obviously I’m trash for Ophelia but I actually wasn’t all that fond of the whole Aida arc at the beginning… I liked her more in the Framework, and all the potential she had as a human (or Inhuman, whatever.) It’s funny because he sort of grew on me. I admittedly didn’t pay much attention to him in S1 because I was so wrapped up in Skyeward, but once they killed that storyline and started developing his character from the nerdy sidekick/comic relief to an actual, fleshed-out character dealing with brain damage, then yes I became involved. Still mourned the untimely demise of Skyeward in S2 though.

prettiest character: Fitz or Ward if it’s more ‘handsome’ pretty. Out of the ladies… Daisy, I suppose? Also Stephanie Malick because personal bias - yes I’ve loved Bethany Joy Lenz since One Tree Hill and they totally should’ve let her stick around for longer than two episodes god damn it.

my most hated character: I’m not particularly fond of Jemma. Or what they’ve done with her, I suppose. But god damn it if there’s one character I hate it’s Ruby. Really glad that arc is over.

my OTP: This one’s pretty obvious. Skye/Ward and Fitz/Ophelia. Hehe. 

my NOTP: Fitzsimmons sorry not sorry.

favorite episode: (In no particular order): 5.14, 4.16 and 1.17. Self Control and, frankly, all the Framework episodes, are strong contenders, but that’s my podium. 

saddest death: I’ve got to say Fitz. Mostly because it was so sudden and I honestly wasn’t expecting it at all. I genuinely didn’t think they’d have the balls to kill off one half of FS, especially on-screen. I was literally expecting him to miraculously pull through and just have his legs amputated or something. It felt so surreal. Of course, then they brought CryoFitz back into play so really it was all just one big cop-out (figures) but the shock factor was definitely there. It was just the right amount of sad and downright distressing and even unsettling, with the way he didn’t fully comprehend what was happening and just…slipped away. I also really liked how they didn’t cheapen the moment by making it all about FS, which was… honestly such a nice surprise? I preferred the shocked and unaware approach they took, and how he spent his last moments with… kind of the two most unlikely people - May whom he hasn’t ever really bonded with, a relationship which is made especially awkward by their experience in the Framework and the ‘super villain interrogation’ in 5.15; and Mack, who literally told him days or even hours earlier that he needs ‘fixing.’ It was all very weird and bizarre and surprising, and definitely felt like a solid punch to the gut. At least, until they straight up announced they’re going to essentially retcon it… Eh. Also, Ophelia? Maybe less sad and more just downright disturbing and gratuitously violent and graphic. 

favorite season: If Season 1 and 4.16-20 and 5.14 could somehow be merged into one season… that would be it. lol. Overall, I have to say S1. Most people hate it and call it the weakest season and, sure, it felt very formulaic and had this predictable ‘monster of the week’ format at first but it was genuinely enjoyable to watch. Every other season after that I just found myself getting angry at something. lol. I actually liked pretty much every character in S1 to some degree and because nothing was set in stone or made explicitly canon yet, there was a lot more freedom shipping-wise. There was no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ship, or ‘no you can’t like this character because of X, Y, Z’ it was just whatever you were into. For a while it seemed like pretty much all combinations of the Bus Kids ships had a decent chance of sailing. That’s a pretty damn good feeling. 

least favorite season: Hands down Season 5. I wasn’t a fan of Season 3 either (though admittedly I did like certain episodes/aspects of it) and Season 2 could’ve done without that whole ‘Real SHIELD’ plot but Season 5 takes the cake. I mean… seriously. It was a let down, especially after the hugely successful Framework arc (the show’s strongest point so far imo.) So naturally there was a lot of expectation and it kind of fell flat. They had maybe 2 or 3 strong episodes. The rest was riddled with plot holes, blatant fan service, lines that sounded like they pulled straight from fanfic, radical and often inexplicable shifts in character behaviour from one episode to the next that could be classified as borderline character assassination, frequent lack of continuity, too much time spent on characters that ultimately turned out to be irrelevant/got quickly killed off, writers seemingly forgetting what had happened in literally the previous episode, etc. There’s really no excuse for that mess. lol. Not to mention the at times pretty obvious budget cuts and the lack of decent lighting which made the space pod downright unwatchable at times. Really feels like the weakest, most disjointed and confused season of all. Which is a shame. Because it could’ve been great. But it just really… wasn’t.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: I don’t want to say Jemma but… Jemma? I guess part of the problem is that I feel there tends to be a discrepancy between the actual canonic on-screen representation of Jemma and fanon Jemma, at least in my experience. She (and Daisy) seem to get put on this imaginary pedestal a lot of the time and given leeway and all these concessions that other characters aren’t allowed. Sometimes I think I hate fandom’s approach to and treatment of certain characters more than I hate the actual character. Also, Mack and Bobbi? I feel like they’re pretty massive fandom faves as well and I never really got invested in them. I don’t hate them, they’re just… Meh. 

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: Leopold, the ultimate trash fave. Hehe. He’s just so deliciously messed up and complex and it’s so much fun to explore all of that. He’s like the one villain AOS completely unintentionally got right. Magnetic, charismatic, complicated. Sure, he only ever really shows up in about five episodes but in those five or six episodes they build a really solid character. We’re not told or shown everything, but that’s the point. Sometimes the implication is enough - and it’s super fun to fill in those gaps. And those suits. I mean, c’mon. lol

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: Literally no one on this show is a cinnamon roll anymore. lol. I think Ophelia easily could’ve had a really satisfying redemption arc if the writers were actually willing to get into that instead of just shelving their more complex characters and turning to the safe option of ‘let’s kill the baddie.’ Ward could’ve possibly been redeemed too (up to a certain point at least) but I guess part of his appeal is that he didn’t want to be? Uh… and out of the still alive ones (kind of??), Fitz. He’s had a really tough time literally since S2. I also liked Mace and Radcliffe and I kind of wish they got to stick around for a bit longer.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: Fitz/Ophelia. Obviously. I guess one of the more weirder ones is Hive/Stephanie. That’s… not remotely canon (I mean, I guess they kissed? lol) but in my headcanon Framework verse it is. Let’s be honest, there’s probably tons more because I always latch on to the more obscure stuff, but I can’t really think of anything else at the moment.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Philinda and Mackelena. I don’t ship either but I guess I can kind of see the appeal and I wish them all the best for the sake of the shippers because both of these pairings are frequently overshadowed by… well, the main ship. I can totally understand and sympathize with their frustration. 

[moonlights-inkwell]

He gives me toothache just by kissing me

Summary: A late night doing homework becomes something else when your best friend stops by to talk. 

Jason Todd x Reader

Robin! Jason Todd x Reader.

Word Count: 2072

Happy Valentine’s Day! …So the old version of this had some issues? So I fixed it? I guess this is sort of angsty at the end but is generally pretty fluffy.

Title is from Hozier’s Work Song.

It was late, so late that you could feel your eyelids fluttering shut as your elbow dug into your calculus homework, crumpling the sheet beyond comprehension. You would normally be asleep by now, but the need to finally finish all of your work had ensured that you had stayed up for several more hours than usual, and this extra time awake was definitely playing on your body. You hadn’t been this tired since… well ever. It was overwhelming really, head feeling heavier and heavier with every second until you jolted yourself back awake. The need to sleep combating with the need to finish ensured that you had been reading and rereading the same question for at least half an hour. The sound of knocking against the window was what finally drew you back to reality, head turning quickly to see the domino mask clad face of your best friend behind the glass, dark hair merging into the pitch black of the night sky behind him.  

Jason had shown up at Gotham Academy two years ago, after being taken in by Bruce Wayne, which had created a small amount of levity for you. Before Jason, you had been the New Kid at school- the new kid who wasn’t as rich as the rest. You were only at Gotham Academy because your grandmother had died, and in her will had left a fair amount of money to be spent on your education. That had been a bad idea. The other kids had treated you like shit for months until Jason showed up, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him despite your relief. No matter how shitty the other kids had been to you- and how much you had wanted them to stop treating you poorly- you didn’t want someone else to take your place as their new target, rather them to just lose interest and leave you alone. Your English Teacher had brought him forward on the first day, telling him to say somethings about himself but all that you were able to do was pay attention to how he looked. He was smaller than most of the kids in your class (something you had later found out was from malnutrition), with wide blue eyes which easily turned to catlike slits when he was angry- which seemed to be often, and messy curls of soot-coloured hair. He was cute, in a sort of sad way. You found out later from the whispers of some of the other kids that Jason had been taken in by Bruce Wayne, that he was from the Narrows- not that they described it like that. Street Rat was their usual terminology, and it made you hate them all the more. That was probably why, a few days later, when a kid called him a charity case in the middle of the cafeteria, you had decided that the only means of stopping the bullying once and for all was to punch the Bully in the face.  

The bullying subsided for both of you after that, and in its place you had gained Jason’s friendship, something that seemed somewhat impossible to anyone else. With Jason’s friendship came a fierce sort of protection, he had seemingly decided to become your own personal guard dog, protecting you as much as he possibly could. You notice the bruises after a few weeks, blooming on his legs and arms as if they had come from fights, the split and bruised knuckles such an often-seen part of his appearance that you became confused when they weren’t present. They make your mind race through all the possibilities on the planet; that the bruises are from falling, the split knuckles from some sort of secret fight club, because the alternative is too horrible for you to think about. The truth came out after a year when he finally confessed to you that he was Batman’s sidekick, not that you believed it at first. You only knew it was true when he came to your window later that night in uniform and grinned at you, face lit up and eyes shining mischievously in a way that just screamed ‘I told you so.’ It made his protective nature make sense, but also meant that the bruises that littered his arms and legs were was less worrying than you had previously thought. He happily shows you his mask while hidden away in the confines of your bedroom while he ‘showed you his moves’- which actually means that he showed off some sort of confused air karate before saying he couldn’t show his ‘real moves’ because they’d scare you off. You had laugh at that and flop onto the bed, his mask between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Robin. Jason. It seemed almost absurd.  

Now, he leans against the window frame as you pushed the glass upwards to allow him into the room, his lips turned up in a small, sad sort of smile as he climbs in. He’s taller now, finally taller than you, and broader too. The sadness is newer though, made even clearer as he peels the mask off of his face and stomps over to your bed (something that would have been comical with his scaled shorts and pixie boots if it wasn’t for how upset he seems). You reach out almost subconsciously and pull him into a gentle hug, his body rigid as your arms wind around his frame; he feels safe and warm even in his ridiculous costume, and your eyes slowly slip shut until you feel something warm and wet hit your cheek. Your [E/C] eyes look up and see the tears dripping down his cheeks.  

“…Jase?” Your voice is soft, to try and avoid the risk of your parents hearing you talking and coming in, but as your eyes glance at the red neon numbers on the digital alarm clock you decide it’s too late for your parents to be awake.

“Bat benched me.” He says softly and slides down onto the bed. “He benched me. I…”

“Oh Jay…” You whisper and hold his cheek softly. Him crying isn’t exactly new, Jason cries whenever he’s angry or excited- you can’t help but think that he must feel things so strongly that it’s overwhelming for him, and that’s why it’s never stopped making your heart clench. Sitting beside him, cheek cupped in your hand seems a good way to calm him, so you gently wipe the heavy flow of tears away. “He… it isn’t permanent right? I mean, you’re still Robin.” You whisper to try and calm him down, but his thin fingers wrap around your wrist. His grip is tight, even in spite of his green gloves, and it makes you flinch slightly from the unexpected display of strength.

“…Doesn’t matter. Cause I’m not stickin’ around.” His voice is louder than before, more conspiratorial as he leans in to you, the corner of his mouth turned up in what is either a small smirk or as a means of keeping from crying any further.

“What do you mean, not sticking around?” You ask worriedly, your thumbs stilling from wiping his cheeks. That could mean anything, but you found yourself silently praying that it didn’t mean that he was running away or anything stupid like that.  

“…My mom, I’m gonna go find my mom.” You turn your head in absolute confusion, lip caught between your teeth.  

“I thought you said she was-”

“Dead? That’s what I thought, but she wasn’t my mom.” He says, voice caught somewhere between feverish and overjoyed. “I’m going to find my real mom. She’s in Ethiopia, so I’m gonna go find her.”  

You know it’s selfish, but your jaw tightens and your hand shifts away from his face, almost angry that he would leave you, but his tight grip on your arm doesn’t stop or even loosen. You don’t want him to leave, and it’s cruel and selfish and harsh, so you swallow down that negative feeling and force a smile. His mom. How could you be so cruel as to tell him not to try and find his mother, just do you can have him around? So you don’t, choosing instead to nod and tilt your head.  

“That’s… fantastic, Jay. You need to find her.” His mom. Of course, he’d leave to find his Mom, even if it meant travelling all that way, but your heart still throbs painfully. You smile and gnaw at the soft flesh of your lip, too busy focusing on trying to keep positive that you don’t notice how Jason’s eyes flit down to your lips and how he moves closer to you, don’t notice how his hand slides up from your wrist to your upper arm until he pulls you into a kiss.  

It’s awkward, mainly because you hadn’t been expecting it in anyway shape or form. Kissing had never been something you spent much time thinking about other than in the confines of in romantic movies and classical literature; kissing was always for girls who look like Molly Ringwald to you, or boys like Paul Rudd in Clueless, or for heroines like Elizabeth Bennett or Emma Woodhouse, not for you. But here you are, sat on your bed in a t-shirt and pyjama shorts with your best friend, clad in his crime-fighting get up, kissing you like he thinks it’s his only chance to do so. His lips are cold and wind-chapped, moving slowly against your own, and working your lip free from the tight grip of your teeth. You finally respond after a minute or two, just before Jason could pull away, lips pressing back against his own which made him grin against you, free hand sliding up into your hair. It’s clumsy, but its soft and sweet and so very Jason that you can’t help but think that it’s the perfect first kiss. Equal parts romantic and soft to awkward and unaware. It’s not like the kisses from the movies you like or the the novels you read, or even anything like the kisses you had seen from public displays of affection that normally had your eyes rolling. It’s gentle in ways you aren’t used to. He pulls back to smile at you before brushing his lips against yours once more before you tug him back into another kiss, almost unwilling to let him go because you know if he stops kissing you he’ll leave.

After a few more minutes Jason breaks the kiss with a breathless smile, kisses your forehead and smiles. “I’m coming back for you, Okay? I promise. I’ll be back.” He kisses you chastely- little more than the smallest press of chapped lips against yours- but stops before you’re able to return it, then stands up and walks towards the window. “I’ll be back. You won’t even have enough time to miss me, and when I’m back, I’ll take you to Pauli’s for a date.” He smiles softly and gives you enough time to smile and nod excitedly. You watch as gets closer before your fingers close around the thin chain of the necklace that your grandmother had bought you before she died.  

“Jase!” You call after him before he’s able to get his leg over the window-frame, rushing to him. Undoing the clasp, you gently pull it off then grab his wrist and force the fabric of his glove down, you slowly wind the dainty chain around his wrist and smile, tugging the glove back up.  

“I can’t-” He starts but you cut him off with a soft kiss.  

“Give it back when you come home, yeah? Now you have to.” You hope that you don’t sound too desperate, and from the way that he smiles back at you, it’s safe to assume you don’t. He climbs away, and you sigh softly, leaning against the window ledge as he disappears into the night. You eventually stop staring off into the darkness to try and get some sleep, walking back to the bed and lay back. But now sleep refuses to come, so you let yourself drift off into a fantasy of the oncoming date; how much fun that date will be, what you should wear, how long you think you’ll have to wait for him to come home. You fall asleep with that on your mind, eyes slipping shut with your lips turned up in a peaceful smile.  

But he never comes home.

[gregorsamsadementiaravenway]

Stray notes after watching The Last Jedi

Or: why does this movie just keep getting worse whenever I remember it?

The notes are after the cut just in case someone hasn’t seen the film yet or doesn’t want a long ass bullet point post in their dash. Some of them are serious and well thought-out, some are nitpicky and some are there just for the heck of it.

“Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” - Why, that’s just peachy, Rian! Too bad the future your selling is a little shit.

In general, Rian Johnson doesn’t seem to have much respect for the past. See tathrin’s post about all the things established in TFA that were turned upside down in this film, but I think Johnson doesn’t have much consideration for the original trilogy either, reducing Chewbacca to a background character and trying to replace “May the Force be with you” with some other, less inspired line.

Seriously, why are they saying “Godspeed”? Did monotheism reach a galaxy far, far away and they now, suddenly, have a notion of God? And, while were at it, why is “treacherous snake” a thing, now? Are there snakes in the Star Was universe? ‘Cause, so far, all animals have been on the fantastic side of things. What else is there? Do they have kittens??? That’s an important question...

The movie had A LOT of hamfisted comic relief. Of course there were some honestly funny scenes (I will forever laugh at Rey feeling the Force with her hand), but most of the jokes felt very out of place. For instance, the first scene, with Hux and Poe. I laughed my ass off at that interaction, but that’s an SNL sketch, not a Star Wars scene. I was half expecting Matt, the radar technician, to show up.

Seriously, someone should tell Rian Johnson that he isn’t directing Guardians of the Galaxy. In more than one scene, the excess of jokes killed what should’ve a truly great, emotional moment.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much indifference do I feel towards porgs?

The ammount of queerbaiting that went into promoting this film was insane. Look, actors on franchises like this one have media training, so whenever, say, Oscar Isaac ran his mouth about the possibility of Finn/Poe being canon, he was at least authorized by Disney to do so (worst case scenario, he was instructed to sell this narrative). I didn’t particularly care about the ship and I think Poe Dameron could’ve died in TFA without any harm to the franchise, but to hamfist that non-sensical romance between Finn and Rose after feeding the fans’ hopes for a gay pairing was, in my opinion, downright cruel.

And don’t even get me started on Poe and Rey’s meaningful gaze at the end of the film, with Poe going all “I know” as if he’s Han Solo or some hot shit like that! Poe/Rey is the worst possible ship to become canon. Yes, the worst. Yes, you heard me, worse than Reylo.

Speaking of Reylo: after TFA, I said that I low-key shipped them ‘cause that’s the kind of fucked up ship I like. Look, there are people in this website who like to wear diapers and want to fuck Pennywise, so, screw you, I’m not apologizing for wanting to read fics about a fictional pairing made up of two adults. HOWEVER, this is not the sort of thing I want to be canon. From the get go, my opinion on Rey’s official love life has been “either she ends up with Finn or she ends up alone”. That being said, I think they handled the relationship between her and Kylo Ren very well in this film. I’m glad they didn’t deny the fucked up sexual tension that was going on there, especially coming from Ren’s side, and chose to play into it. A failed redemption arc fits them perfectly and Kylo Ren’s “please” when he asks Rey to rule beside him was a great moment for the character and one of the few truly emotional moments of the film.

But that thing were they get to hit on each other through the Force, sharing sad stories and touching hands? Yeah, I’m pretty certain I’ve read that fic. Actually, I’m pretty certain I’ve read about three fics like that.

Let’s keep on the Kylo Ren track for now, then: he did get some very nice character development in this film. The Last Jedi was more his than any other character’s, even Luke. For a minute there, before the movie came out, I thought they were going to make some changes to him due to the whole backlash, but they went full “overgrown angsty kid” with him in a way that actually made him more compelling. I like the way Luke’s fear ended up pushing a conflicted teenager into the Dark Side and that Kylo is still very much stuck at that moment. As usual with Sith and Sith by-products, Kylo Ren is moved by anger, and his anger feels much more real after this little bit of backstory.

Who is Snoke, though? Are they going to explain that in the next movie? It feels like they should’ve done it in this one, but I hope they at least give him some context before the trilogy is over.

Sooooo... Did your conflicted antagonist cladded in black, with black hair falling all over his face, just trick his bald, deformed Dark Lord by using his occlumency powers? *Owen Wilson voice* Wow.

“The Supreme Leader is dead. Long live the Supreme Leader.” - A perfect example of a really amazing moment botched by comic relief, ie, Snoke’s little tongue falling out of his dead body.

After the film ended, @robogigante​​ complained a lot about Hux’s transformation from an actual, threatening villan into a punchline, and, you know what? He’s right. There’s a scene there that looks like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I hate evil, square-headed BB-8?

I’m sort of glad Rey’s parents aren’t anyone important. Star Wars relies too much on heritage and it’s a nice change having a hero who isn’t Space Jesus or Space Jesus’ direct lineage. Her scene in the cave was incredibly beautiful.

They did point to something else in TFA, though, implying heavily that her origin was important and that Kylo Ren already knew about her. That was some Moffat level of badly written plot twist right there.

There’s something Emma Watson-y about Daisy Ridley. This is neither a compliment nor a complaint, just something I hadn’t noticed before.

Both Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver grew a lot as actors since the last movie, especially Driver. Even though it’s still hard to take Kylo Ren seriously sometimes due to Driver’s cry-baby face, he’s way more convincing in his rage and intensity than he was in TFA, where his acting felt a little too mechanical.

However, some of the other actors aren’t living up to their potential. John Boyega’s charisma is extremely underused and I know for a fact that Domnhall Gleeson can do a lot better than what he was given here. In a couple of scenes, even Hamill and Fisher seemed a little uncomfortable in their roles.

“Shit, we’ve already signed Lupita’s check! Gotta shove her in here, somewhere!” - I’m so sorry, honey. You are so beautiful and talented... You deserved way better than that.

Kelly Marie Tran is adorable and I absolutely love her in interviews and such. She seems like a delightful person. However, her character was completely unnecessary. Her only purpose was to serve as a future love interest to Finn, and I’ve made my thoughts about that pairing quite clear already.

“...it’s saving the ones we love...” - BITCH, YOU’VE KNOWN HIM FOR WHAT? A DAY?

As a matter of fact, all of that storyline felt completely unnecessary. It was as if the writers didn’t know what to do with Finn so they gave him a spunky sidekick and a pointless mission just to kill time. I found myself wishing he had spent the whole movie in a coma, and that’s really sad, because I really like John Boyega and was hoping he would become a strong protagonist for the franchise.

Another thing @robogigante​ pointed out (and I’m quoting him ‘cause I know he’s not making a post of his own) is that Holdo had no reason whatsoever to hide her plan from Poe or anyone else in the Resistance. She just... didn’t like Poe Dameron that much...

Excessive jokes aside, casino planet was okay and helped flesh out the Star Wars universe a little bit more. However, much like Phasma, Benicio Del Toro’s character (whose name I already forgot) was just another Boba Fett, all flash and no substance, and I particularly hate that “squeaky clean abused little children representing hope” crap. It’s one of the tackiest tropes in existence.

I did get the feeling that that kid is going to join the Resistance on the next movie. Like they’re going to do a ten year jump to justify Leia’s disappearance/death. It would also help the Rebels to get their shit back together, Kylo Ren to gain more control over the First Order and Rey to learn some more about the Force in order to meet her fate. The existence of that child is still horrible and that ending was so over the top I can’t even put it into words, but it’s a good hook for a leap that, if handled well, could be very good for the story.

I also got the feeling that they originally inteded to kill one member of the original trio per film. That would’ve been cool. Too bad Leia will have to die off screen.

Was it just me or is the timeline in this movie really weird? Poe’s plan seems to take place entirely in a day, maybe two, while Rey apparently spends at least a week in Luke’s island.

I’m glad Carrie Fisher got to have at least one badass Force user scene before dying. Her flight among the debris of the Rebel cruiser was a beautiful reminder of how powerful the Force can be, on par with Luke’s astral projection, not to mention a gorgeous scene in its own right.

Holdo and Leia definitely had a torrid love affair after the Organa-Solo divorce came through. No one will ever convince me otherwise.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I love the crystal foxes?

There was a preoccupying absence of wipe transitions and epic soundtrack inserts. Actually, I don’t even remember hearing any music at all. The editing was way too conservative. It didn’t even feel like a Star Wars movie, sometimes.

How is it possible that The Force Awakens was basically a remake of A New Hope and still felt more daring that The Last Jedi? Look, we already know you’re not killing any of the characters ‘cause they have to come back for the next installment, but raise those stakes a little bit, jeez! Give Kylo Ren and Snoke more conflict before their face-off, give Rey an opportunity to actually scare Luke with something that matters, give Finn and Poe a mission that actually means something to the Resistance, not a MacGuffin to keep them busy... Anything!

The Last Jedi is actually an okay-ish movie, to be honest, but, in a way, I think I disliked it even more than the prequels. Sure, The Phantom Menace is objectively a much worse film, but at least it had soul. George Lucas’ midichlorian and CGI packed soul, but soul nonetheless. The Last Jedi has nothing. I know Star Wars movies are all about the money, let’s not delude ourselves that this is in anyway high art, but this one just felt like the biggest money grabber of all. There is no personal investment in it whatsoever and no sign of what makes Star Wars Star Wars in the first place.

When’s Lando coming back?

BONUS: I am never watching a fucking 3D movie again in my life. The background always seems out of focus, it’s too expensive and I hate putting glasses on top of my glasses. I don’t care if I have to wait a month to watch the next Star Wars, I don’t care if I get spoilers, I’m not watching anything in 3D ever again.

[hq76]

Beauty and the Beast - Thoughts

Okie so this is going to be a long post, just a heads-up. There may be unintentional spoilers, and if anything I’ve said is offensive I’m really sorry, the last thing I want to do is to offend anyone... But basically here is everything I loved about this movie after seeing it yesterday.

- All the backstory was great! Things that didn’t make sense in the original were explained, like how the village totally forgot about this castle, and why the Beast had emotional issues, and the whole age thing under the spell.

- Some minor characters got their own backstories and personalities fleshed out - Cadenza the harpsichord and Madame Garderobe, Mrs Potts’ husband, Cogsworth’s wife...

- Maurice was really well developed. He wasn’t just a bumbling inventor, he was an artist, a genius, a caring father, and I really loved the relationship between him and Belle. ‘How Does A Moment Last Forever’ was beautiful, it said so much in so little time; and getting some backstory on Belle’s mother was also great.

- Philippe the horse has officially earned his awesomeness ranking among the Maximuses and Samsons of Disney horsedom (I mean he already had in the original, but having a real horse made it even better)

- Belle’s girl power vibe was great - the way she stood up to Gaston, and how sassy her reprise was

- The librarian (he’s a librarian right? There were about four books but I guess it’s still a library...) - I won’t call him “the black librarian” or anything, that’s like saying “the female politician” - but I liked his character, how he defended Maurice, and that yes, he was a person of colour, which was awesomesauce.

- Also in general the ethnic diversity in the movie was well done, I thought. There were several mixed-race couples toward the end and everyone was chill with it, so I think that was great.

- Gaston’s character arc was excellent! I loved how he wasn’t really evil at the beginning, just extremely narcissistic, but then took a darker path later on...

- The enchantress got her own story too! No spoilers but she was a cool character

- Belle and Adam bonding over books was beautiful - I loved the Shakespeare references and the poetry, even if it was borderline cheesy at times

- Adam’s reaction when Belle says her favourite play is Romeo and Juliet - hahahahaha

- But then how he reads Guinevere and Lancelot in secret - aahhh <3

- Oh and Belle’s squeal when she sees the library - I would so do the same...

- Dan Stevens’ acting rocked in general. Obviously I was expecting that because Downton Abbey, but he really added new depth to the Beast.

- I’ll admit it, I thought Emma Watson was a bit overhyped as an actress, but she was amazing. I was proven totally wrong and it was great.

- By the way, about Gaston’s Macbeth reference (“screw your courage to the sticking place”) - I know this was in the original, but does that mean he does read books upon occasion? Not the sappy romances, but the dark and gory ones?

- The new songs were great - the part with young Adam gave me goosebumps, as did, like, the whole of Evermore

- Also the Beast got really emo toward the end there, haha

- I was a bit sad that one of my favourite lines was cut - “Lefou, I’m afraid I’ve been thinking”, “a dangerous pastime -” “I know” - but it was okay.

- LEFOU!!! Okay, I’ve been building up to this, I could make an entire separate post about it so bear with me here. I was amongst those getting mad about an LGBT Disney character, for a whole bunch of reasons. The fact that his name literally means the Fool; that he’s your classic imbecilic sidekick; that he’s in love with a self-obsessed straight guy who does nothing but abuse him in return; that Disney is using him as some kind of marketing scheme and token “representation” (gee thanks Disney); that he’s pretty much just a joke, and that his sexuality is therefore made into a joke as well. But... I was proven really wrong about, like, all of this. I thought he was portrayed really well. He was so much more than just a stupid sidekick, so much more than the comic relief, so much MORE than the “token gay character”. He had real personality, his own values and character arc and everything... And the relationship between him and Gaston wasn’t really abusive, not at the beginning. They actually had a nice bond toward the start, Lefou wasn’t just some hopeless obedient guy following him around... And the best part was that when Gaston went from being narcissistic to being plain evil, Lefou had real integrity, he saw Gaston’s true colours and stepped right out of it. He stood up for what he believed in, and got his own happy ending. As for him being nothing more than a joke - I think it depends on the audience. People /could/ take him as just the comic relief, I heard plenty of people laughing at the beautiful moment where he dances with Stanley... But that was up to the viewer. Josh Gad acted him excellently, I thought. Lefou wasn’t a serious character - he was never meant to be - but the actor took the role seriously, so that if audiences looked past the humour, they could see the depth he’d added to him. Tl;dr - Josh Gad exceeded my expectations as Lefou and it was wonderful. 

- Not only that, Lefou got some of the best lines in the movie - the part where he tries to spell Gaston but realises he’s illiterate; the part where he calms Gaston by reminding him of “happy things, like war, and widows”; and how he tells those girls fawning over Gaston “It’s not gonna happen, ladies” (we were all thinking it)

- Which reminds me - STANLEY!! My new favourite minor Disney character... His face when Lefou sings “whose team they’d prefer to be on” and doffs him on the head; the way he grins when Madame Garderobe dresses him in girls’ clothing; and of course the part where he and Lefou dance - how they stare into each other’s eyes... Aahhh I ship it

- The whole symbolism about being a beast was super deep

- Oh and Stephen Chbosky wrote the screenplay! I didn’t realise until the end, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Anyway, overall I loved this movie, it was amazing and beautiful, and really did justice to the original... I’d recommend very muchly if you haven’t already seen it! :D

[moviemagistrate]

“Wonder Woman” review

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in being not-particularly-excited for “Wonder Woman”, the latest entry in the DC Extended Universe; after all, I did see the other films in the DCEU. There was the two-and-a-half-hour long trailer “Man of Steel”, the ambitious but notably flawed “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”, and “Suicide Squad”, a film that if I were forced to choose between seeing again and taking my own life, I would spend far too long considering. With skepticism in hand, I saw “Wonder Woman”, and I cannot remember the last time I was so happy to be so wrong about a film. This isn’t to say that the movie doesn’t have its own fair share of flaws (it does), but in at least one significant area, which is to inspire hope for the DCEU, it works wonders.

After a brief framing-device setup, the movie tells the origin story of Diana, princess of an isolated island of muscular, Amazonian warrior-babes. In a slow-but-alright prologue, she grows from an eager young girl who is sheltered from combat by her Queen mother to a formidable fighter when suddenly, dashing American soldier Steve Trevor crash lands in their waters. From him, she discovers the ongoing conflict of World War I and sets out alongside him to Europe to help save humanity from what she believes to be the machinations of Ares, the wrathful god of war. Writing it now, this sounds like silly, comic book-y stuff (and it is), but it works within the context of the movie, and the plot isn’t really the reason the movie works as well as it does, anyway.

Let’s talk about Gal Gadot. I was among those who were skeptical when Zack Snyder first cast her as Wonder Woman in BvS, despite his usual excellent penchant for casting his films. A model with acting experience that mainly consisted of “Fast & Furious” movies (not exactly acting showcases) being put in the shoes of the most famous female hero in comic book history has a lot to live up to, and while her limited role in BvS was decent, it didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Such is not the case here in her solo film. Finally given a character with outward personality and depth, she is absolutely phenomenal in what is legitimately one of the best portrayals of a comic book character in any movie. Diana is an idealist, a good-hearted and eager young woman (despite being centuries-old) with no small amount of naiveté and innocence but also someone who is also fiercely strong-willed and independent, and Gadot nails every aspect of her character and every bit of her development throughout the course of the movie, as well as being surprisingly funny. Sure, you could argue that there are probably some actresses out there who could offer some better line-deliveries, but in terms of sheer charisma and how she carries herself and how she makes you believe that she is Wonder Woman, I’d say that Snyder’s mostly-superlative casting record continues. By the end of the film you’ll be convinced that Gal Gadot is a fucking megastar.

The main reason the movie works so well for me is Diana’s relationship with Trevor, played by Chris Pine. A likable, cynical rogue who isn’t too much of a stretch for Pine considering he plays Kirk similarly in the new “Star Trek” films, but a character who is still given enough dimension and gravitas to make him memorable, which the naturally charismatic Pine plays to a tee. Their lack of familiarity with each other’s worlds and their clashes in communication leads to some nice fish-out-of-water humor (see Trevor’s bemusement at the glowing water on the island or Diana’s reaction to her first ice cream), but it’s their chemistry that is the beating heart of this film. The characters’ opposing worldviews supplies the needed character drama, but also helps creates a bond that feels as natural and fresh as any pairing in recent history. Just try watching the boat scene about 30 minutes into the movie without smiling, laughing, or feeling the fireworks these two create. This leads to a bond atypical of most movies, where their deepening relationship is based not on superiority of one over the other, but one of equality and respect, where you actually feel these two grow both individually and together. I might be harping too much on this matter, but this is easily the best romance in any comic book movie (yes, even better than Cap and Bucky). Other film couples have chemistry; these two are cooking Heisenberg-quality meth together and making it look effortless.

The rest of the cast is solid, as well. Of note are Steve’s three buddies who tag along with him and Diana on their mission. They initially seem like the typical diverse comic-relief sidekicks, but are surprisingly well-written and are even given their own moments that flesh out and humanize them more than you’d expect in this kind of film (and I’m always happy to see Scotsman Ewen Bremner onscreen). Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright are alright as Diana’s Amazon queen mother and warrior aunt, but they’re only in the opening third of the movie and spend much of it speaking in stilted “Game of Thrones” dialogue. While the actors who play the villains are good, their actual characters are one of the film’s main weaknesses, somewhat lacking in terms of depth and being interesting. We never really understand why Doctor Poison stoops to creating her devastating weapons of war, and [SPOILERS] the “surprise” late-reveal of Ares can be seen coming a mile away. [END SPOILERS] It’s somewhat ballsy to take a historical figure such as German general Erich Ludendorff and make him the cackling bad guy in your movie (with some unusually accurate attention to detail like his view of war and his pagan Norse worship), and while entertaining, he too suffers from a lack of depth and motivation beyond conquering the world (which again should be noted, is not entirely historically inaccurate).

Patty Jenkins is the first time a woman has directed a major superhero film (not counting Lexi Alexander’s low-budgeted but face-explodingly awesome “Punisher: War Zone”), and she brings a uniquely feminine perspective to Diana’s story, from her upbringing in an all-female society to her learning of the frustrating world of mankind to her loving and compassionate nature. Jenkins has only directed one movie 14 years ago and has only done a handful of TV stuff since then, so her ground as an action director is understandably a bit shaky. The action itself is pretty good, but between the slight over-reliance on Snyder-esque slo-mo and over-editing, you can kind of tell this is Jenkins’ first time doing this sort of thing (not helped by some shockingly crappy CGI). However, she makes up for this by spacing out the action well over the course of the movie, and giving each fight weight, story meaning, and character development for Diana. Along with Rupert Gregson-Williams’ pounding soundtrack, this comes together best in an outstanding mid-movie charge across no man’s land to liberate a Belgian village. 

Putting aside the action stuff, Jenkins’ strength lies in the character scenes. The boat scene and others like it feel so natural and well-done because Jenkins knows the importance of slowing a movie down to let us take in the characters and making us care for them. In these scenes, she shows moments of such humanity and personal growth that it really catches you off-guard how moving this film can be. Later in the film, there’s a scene where a character sacrifices themselves and the camera holds on their face for a while, and seeing this person come to terms with their death will both break your heart and take your breath away. Moments like this involve you in a story more than any giant CGI clusterfuck or ironic Marvelquip. Speaking of which, the film itself has a refreshingly good sense of humor, that in deference to modern superhero tradition never feels forced and feels like it’s coming naturally from the characters and their quirks instead of soulless hack writers making pop-culture references.

Despite all that the film does right, it’s not without its flaws. Along with the aforementioned dodgy special effects and the so-so villains, the film also tends to get bogged down in exposition. It has not only the early backstory narration (which at least has context since it’s a story being read to Diana by her mother) and the third-act “villain explains their motivations” monologue, but also fairly frequent occurrences of “newly-introduced character tells us who they are and what the situation is”. It’s still done relatively well, and I prefer it to a movie rushing through just to get to the next studio-mandated action beat, but they could have been more economic with these parts. Also, the third act is a bit of a letdown. Without spoiling much, it disappointingly becomes another huge CG-battle after the baddie monologue, the kind we’ve all seen dozens of times. Maybe some producer or studio exec is hoping that these types of climaxes will one day go full-circle and become exciting again. Finally, the very last shot of the movie is kind of silly; it has no real purpose and is only there because someone out there mistakenly thought it’d look cool.

Nevertheless, I’m writing this review a few days after seeing it, and I’m honestly still shocked at how much I was thrilled, entertained, and even moved by “Wonder Woman”. It’s just so rare for me to find a movie that actually clicks with me on an emotional level that I can easily recommend it despite its relatively-minor foibles. I’m not convinced the DCEU has its shit together as this film could just as likely be an anomaly, but “Wonder Woman” is miraculous solely by giving one the slightest bit of hope that “Justice League” will be good. As long as Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins make another one of these, I might just become optimistic about this franchise. You go, girls.

[recentanimenews]

My Hero Academia, Vols. 1-19

By Kohei Horikoshi | Published by VIZ Media

Reviewing nineteen volumes of a manga at once is a pretty daunting task, but here goes!

In a world where 80% of the population possesses superpowers known as “Quirks,” some people turned to villainy while others, officially trained and licensed, embarked upon careers of heroism to thwart them. Izuku Midoriya grew up idolizing heroes, particularly All Might, the Symbol of Peace, who always saves people with a smile. Unfortunately for Izuku, he was one of those unfortunate few without a Quirk and was forced to watch as his classmates and friends manifested abilities while he did not.

When Izuku is fourteen, he meets and impresses All Might when, despite being powerless, he rushes in to help his childhood friend Katsuki Bakugo when he is attacked by a sludge villain. As it turns out, All Might, who possesses a Quirk called One for All that endows him with super strength, was grievously injured several years previously in a battle with his nemesis, All for One. One for All is unique in that it can be passed on to a successor, and All Might has decided that Izuku is worthy of inheriting his power. All along, it’s been Izuku’s dream to attend U.A. High School and, after ten months of intensive training (and after ingesting one of All Might’s hairs), he succeeds in passing the entrance exam for U.A.’s Hero Course, much to Bakugo’s annoyance. (Bakugo believes he has been deceived about Izuku having been Quirkless all this time.)

Like many other shounen manga, part of the plot of My Hero Academia involves Izuku and the other students gradually getting stronger. Izuku goes through various stages of control over his power and eventually injures himself seriously to the point where he must switch to fighting primarily with his legs because his arms are so damaged. By volume nineteen, he can sustain 20% power only briefly, and All Might (who now teaches at U.A.) is training him how to, for the first time, add long-range attacks to his arsenal.

Meanwhile, just as Izuku is the protégé of All Might, All for One had taken a boy under his wing, as well. Tomura Shigaraki is a nihilistic villain with a particular grudge against All Might. He forms the League of Villains and so far has attempted to assassinate All Might at the school, attacked a training camp and kidnapped Bakugo, and ambushed a police caravan in order to steal Quirk-erasing drugs that had been seized from a former ally. While All Might exhausted the remainder of his powers to vanquish All for One, Shigaraki remains an active threat. Because of the power vacuum left by All Might’s retirement, the U.A. first years are able to take their provisional license exams earlier than normal and also go out into the field in work-study capacity.

The TL;DR version is: the plot is very good. Horikoshi-sensei writes with exuberance and mastery. However, the plot is not the reason I love My Hero Academia. I love it for the characters. I was thinking… I have read almost 90 volumes of One Piece by this point. Clearly, I enjoy it a lot and particularly admire the worldbuilding and continuity. However, while I’m fond of a few of the Straw Hats, I wouldn’t say I love any of them. Whereas with My Hero Academia, I love, like, ten of them. Here are some standouts:

• Izuku Midoriya – One of the things I really like about Izuku is that he’s smart. As a Quirkless hero fanboy, he spent a lot of time analyzing how they handled situations, and he’s good at coming up with strategies. Plus, he possesses all the idealistic qualities that a good shounen hero should have. He’s always out to help people, even if they don’t ask for it.

• Katsuki Bakugo – Bakugo has an explosive temper, but gradually reveals he’s a lot more sensitive that he lets on. Because of his volatile performance at the Sports Festival, Shigaraki targeted him, hoping to recruit him for the League of Villains. This ultimately led to All Might’s final confrontation with All for One, and Bakugo feels responsible that the Symbol of Peace (whom he also deeply admires) has been depowered. He’s the only one who knows Izuku’s secret and, after the most moving brawl I’ve ever seen in which he’s able to process some of the feelings he couldn’t express, he’s finally able to talk to Izuku without hostility. The day he actually smiles at Izuku, I will bawl.

• Shoto Todoroki – He became Izuku’s friend after the Sports Festival, in which Izuku encouraged him to finally embrace the half of his powers that came from his odious dad, #2 hero Endeavor. He’s still got a complex about his dad, but he’s working through it. And, for his part, Endeavor is trying to become a better hero, too, though he’s got a long way to go.

• Ochaco Uraraka – She’s a spunky girl who admires Izuku and has other feelings for him that she’s pushing aside for the moment. When she begins the series, she wants to become a hero for financial reasons, hoping to support her parents who’ve worked so hard. After her work study experience requires her to convey a dying hero to the hospital, she realizes in volume eighteen how much she just wants to save people. The monetary side has become less important.

• Eijiro Kirishima – Kirishima is just a supporting character until around volume fifteen, when he suddenly gets more fleshing out than even Ochaco or Ida (another of Izuku’s close friends) has received. He’s got an inferiority complex because his Quirk is purely defensive and castigates himself that he couldn’t help when Bakugo was taken. He presents himself as someone more confident and has a lot of noble ideals about what a hero should be, but I love that underneath that persona he’s a lot more complicated.

• Yuga Aoyama – In most other series, the kid who starts off being puffed up with pride over his own abilities (a naval laser!) would remain comic relief forever. But Horikoshi gives Aoyama several important heroic moments and, recently, he and Izuku have bonded over the fact that both of their Quirks cause them bodily harm, which doesn’t seem to be a problem for the other students. I would really love to see Aoyama star in his own arc.

• Mirio Togata – I was not prepared for the dizzying speed by which I’d come to love Mirio. He’s the one the principal (and All Might’s former sidekick, Sir Nighteye) originally had in mind as the next recipient of One for All. He’s optimistic and works hard and I love that he bears no grudge against Eri, a six-year-old girl that he lost his Quirk protecting. His return to heroism has been foreseen, so that’s something I’m looking forward to. His best friend Tamaki Amajiki is highly lovable, too.

• All Might – He’s not the greatest teacher, but he’s really trying hard. He serves as a father figure to Izuku and says encouraging things to him that make me verklempt, like “You’ve already exceeded my expectations more times than I can count. In my heart of hearts, I believe there’s something special in you and you alone.” That’s some Rupert Giles-y dialogue right there! And man, that battle with All for One.

• Shota Aizawa – I saved the best for last. Aizawa is the homeroom teacher for class I-A and I love him so, so much. He is a great teacher and puts a lot of thought into how best to encourage development in his students. One of my favorite Aizawa moments occurs at a press conference when he expresses absolute faith that Bakugo will not be tempted to join the League of Villains. “More than anyone, he pursues the title of top hero with all he has.” Later, during a home visit with Bakugo’s parents to discuss the new on-campus dormitories, Bakugo’s mom reveals how much she appreciated this proof that her son has been understood by his educators. “Most everything comes easy to him. His whole life, people’ve made a fuss about him… praising him for every little thing he does.” Aizawa sees Bakugo’s potential but also doesn’t let any of his shortcomings slide. I love, too, how he helps take care of Eri and buys her outfits with kitties on them.

Barring one, the other students in class 1-A are great, too, and I hope they get their own arcs as revelatory as Kirishima’s recent one. And then there’s class 1-B, who we’ve only glimpsed, as well as Hitoshi Shinso, a boy from the General Studies Course who may have the potential to transfer to the Hero Course.

Alas, there’s one thing and one particular character that I don’t love about My Hero Academia.

• Although the female characters are impressively varied in character design and personality and are always included in various heroic endeavors (and their abilities respected by the male characters), they just don’t get as much of the spotlight as the guys do. True, Ashida and Jiro are more to the fore during the School Festival arc, which is very welcome, but I want to see them out in the field kicking some serious ass.

• Minoru Mineta – Unlike the other students who’ve grown over the course of the series, Mineta starts off as a gross little pervert, remains a gross little pervert, and there’s zero indication that he’ll ever be anything other than a gross little pervert. He doesn’t see girls as people, but as objects, evaluated solely for their attractiveness. In fact, his first words to Eri in volume nineteen—who is, I reiterate, six years old—are, “Look me up in ten years.” I want Shigaraki to use his disintegration Quirk on him. Slowly. And then Shinso can have his spot.

Ultimately, I love this series unabashedly. I love it as much as I love Hikaru no Go, and that’s a lot. And as with Hikaru, I love the anime just as much as the manga and recommend both. It took until volume nineteen to make it to October of Izuku’s first year, so at that pace, we’re looking at around 38 volumes per school year times three years… Sounds good to me! I will plug my ears and go “la la la!” if anyone ever mentions a time jump. This is really too good to rush. Or miss.

My Hero Academia is ongoing in Japan, where volume 24 will be out in August. Volume 20 is due out in English in August. New chapters are also available in English on the Shonen Jump website and app.

Review copies for some volumes provided by the publisher.

By: Michelle Smith