#of all the things to focus on about the remake... its the most boring ship war of all time

[retconomics]

Going into the ff7r tag to absorb it through osmosis cuz I'm not buying a ps5 for just that game and the clo/ti and claer/ith debates are back like shut up theyre all dating each other and are happy!!! Instead you should talk about how beautiful baby boy barret looked in his sailor uniform!!!!!

[thebad---catholic]

My problems with AOS

Well here I am, 10 years late with an opinion no one asked for, but I have to write this down and throw into the void so that I can be at peace. I’ve been salty about this film franchise for a very long time now. This will mostly focus on Star Trek (2009) with the other two movies sprinkled in.

1. Starfleet

Honestly where do I even begin? In TOS, Starfleet was modeled after the navy (idk how accurately, but Roddenberry was in the air force so I’m assuming he’d know how all that works). You can get a feel for the chain of command, and everything feels natural with character ages and things like that. There’s a procedure for everything.

AOS Starfleet feels more like a high school club than an interplanetary exploration organization. Jim is supposed to be twenty-five when he gets the rank of captain- after he was almost expelled for cheating. He has no idea how to operate or run a starship. TOS Kirk moved through the ranks of Starfleet and was promoted on merit and leadership skills- he worked for his position.

Why was Jim the only person who knew what was happening when Nero showed up? Was there any requirements to joining to Starfleet other than get on the shuttle? Why did the linguist not know the difference between Vulcan and Romulan when they’re the linguist? How did Pike bypass the chain of command to appoint Jim Kirk as First Officer which was an obvious show of favoritism to someone was about to be thrown out of the academy? Why the fuck was he allowed to keep the title of captain? What the fuck?

Speaking of Jim.

2. Jim Kirk’s Character

I...don’t like Jim’s character in this film. It’s not terrible for a younger version of Kirk, but like I said though, there’s no reason Kirk should be this young. And in this one he’s just kinda a douche.

We know from TOS that Kirk gets around, but he genuinely cares for his exes, and in general respects women. He uses sex appeal as a strategy, but more than anything this comes off as a subversion of the femme fatal trope bc Kirk is a man. In the movie, he’s just a standard action movie protag who has lots of sex just because.

The scene when the Orion woman says she loves him and he replied “that’s so weird” is just...so weird? Like I can’t imagine Kirk doing anything in that situation than backing off and explaining that he doesn’t feel the same way. The scene continues with him hiding under the bed when Uhura walks in. Watching how the camera angle makes Jim out to be a voyeur made me uncomfortable then and it still does. It could be explained that Jim is trying to figure out Uhura’s identity or that he’s listening in and people look at who they’re listening to but like...she was in her underwear. You shouldn’t look at people while they’re getting undressed, especially when they don’t even know you’re there? Is that a hot take? Apparently.

In TOS there’s this really nice scene in This Side of Paradise(S1E24) where the whole crew is high (again) and has abandoned ship, leaving Kirk to tend to things. We see Jim move around the ship with a little clip pad and make the proper checks. This is a captain who knows his stuff. That is the Kirk we should have seen if we’re going to see Jim become captain.

AOS kirk goes through a standard “stop being an asshole” arc commonplace for male protagonists, but this happens well past the point he should stop being an asshole. Either the AOS series should’ve been a prequel with Jim becoming captain at the end of the trilogy, or he should’ve been older with a completely different arc- maybe coming to terms with his rank? Imposter syndrome? Learning to trust his crew and building trust with them? Building a friendship with Spock and McCoy? There’s a lot to work with here.

3. Spock and Uhura’s relationship

Why. Like why. For what. Por Que.

I like giving Uhura a bigger role, I don’t like making her a love interest to do that.

It doesn’t make sense for either of their characters. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, linguist expert who handles all transmissions to and from the enterprise- an icon of black women’s representation is now demoted to Spock’s nagging girlfriend. This bothers me more than a little bit.

It manages to make even less sense for Spock. A hallmark of Spock’s character is his duality. He struggles to combat his emotions and the human half of him. His repeating character arc in TOS is coming to terms with humanity while upholding the Vulcan way of life. Having him in an established romantic relationship before this arc is supposed to happen just makes for a boring romantic subplot about a relationship that shouldn’t happen and that I don’t care about.

TOS Vulcan culture is kinda shitty. Explicitly patriarchal and stuff, and also kinda racist against humans. The source of Spock’s inner conflict is not himself but a society that views him as lesser for being half human. However, one thing that I can certainly understand from a “logical” (logic in quotations bc racism and sexism is fucking stupid) people is ritualized arranged marriages. It just...makes sense to me that Vulcans would simply have their mates chosen for them and then marry that person and be done with it. Neat. Logical. Conformity.

This makes Spock and Uhura’s relationship even stranger. Why would Spock go so against conformity that he dates someone before he truly comes to terms with himself? Even if they throw out ponfarr and arranged marriage, it still doesn’t work but now it especially doesn’t work.

My personal theory is that Spock and Uhura’s relationship was established purely to make shippers shut up. It’s no secret Spirk is the most popular ship from TOS. I have no doubt they knew this while writing the movie. So to quietly wrap a no homo on Spock and Kirk’s friendship, they use Uhura as a prop to do so.

The teacher/student dynamic should only be relegated to fan fiction and the throwaway line about oral sensitivity makes me cringe. Every. Time.

4. McCoy

Karl Urbans performance is easily my favorite part of this movie. He captures DeForrest Kelley so well it hurts. He made Leonard Nimoy cry. His chemistry with Pine made McKirk go from the most underrated triumvirate ship in TOS to rival Spirks popularity in AOS. His scenes with Zachary Quinto are just *chefs kiss*.

So why doesn’t he have more of a role? The triumvirate is missing a third.

In particular, there’s a scene where Uhura, Kirk, and Spock make their way down to a planet to talk to a Klingon. I can’t remember which movie it was or why, but Spock and Uhura were bickering and Kirk remarks “can we do this later?”

The line was funny. It would’ve been golden if it was McCoy and not Uhura.

A fantastic performance by an underutilized character in a movie where that character should’ve been at the forefront.

5. Representation

I am skeptical of any movie that advertises diversity. Nonetheless, it made me happy to know Sulu was going to be gay. This is Star Trek after all, known for its diversity and large LGBT fan base, and an homage to George Takai who’s a gay man irl. So whatever.

The fact that I wasn’t expecting much says a lot about the current state of LGBT rep in media but this blink-and-you-miss-it shit is really starting to get to me.

I mean he jus- he doesn’t even give his husband a KISS. Like why.

6. Destroying Vulcan

WHY. Oh god why.

This isn’t Star Wars, JJ. We don’t do that here.

Imploding Vulcan was the most god awful shock value bullshit plot device I’ve ever seen in a movie and it was done entirely to make Spock sad. Besides the gaping plot hole of “why did Nero go back in time to destroy Vulcan when he could’ve just saved Romulus” I’m just grasping to find a purpose for this particular event. New fans don’t care at all about Vulcan while I was enraged that they would do Amanda that dirty.

It’s not just that they did that, it’s more that they did it like that. Vulcan’s destruction should’ve caused a federation wide meltdown as the biggest catastrophe in the entire franchise. If they were gonna make the stakes so pointlessly high, they should’ve treated the destruction of Vulcan exactly how they would treat the destruction of earth. There a million ways to treat that event with more gravity and million better plot lines that don’t involve G E N O C I D E

7. Miscellaneous petty bullshit because I’m a baby

-lower the fucking stakes Jesus Christ

-Don’t like the set. It’s bright and white and boring and gives me a headache. You don’t need a remake of the old set but like have fun ya know? Shit looks like an Apple store.

-Christine and I are the same in that we are both soft and are thirsty for Spock. Imagine my surprise to learn she wasn’t fucking there. Same with Janice but I’m more pressed about Christine. I don’t even remember the name of that blonde doctor lady who is Not Christine but i didn’t want her.

-The costumes in AOS look boring but still don’t feel like a uniform either. I deadass think Chris Pines outfit in the SNL skit looked better than the actual movie (minor adjustments needed)

-I didn’t notice this at first but someone pointed out that women’s uniforms don’t signify rank and now I can’t not see it. I don’t...think this movie treats women good? Or McCoy? Or just people who deserve better?

-Lens Flare

-I get why they did it but I don’t like that they misquoted the opening theme to say “no one” instead of “no man”. I probably wouldn’t have even notice except they gave the line to Uhura. Comes off as just a touch too “yay feminism” which is really rich coming from that treated Uhura like an object to be looked at when she wasn’t too busy being Spock’s emotional support gf, and completely cut two women from the main cast.

8. Conclusions

If I could describe these movies in one word it’d be generic. Which sucks because Star Trek far from generic.

They’re fun to watch but not think about. It was nice that I got to see a Star Trek movie in theaters. I just wish it as the same Trek I saw on TV.

[calliecat93]

Top 10 Disney Couples

Last year for Valentines, I did a post on some of my favorite all-time ships. I wanted to do something like that again this year, so I decided to do Disney specifically. I’m only gonna count the main animated features (with one exception), so no Pixar but maybe I’ll give that its own list next year. Also, because I put this ship on my list last year, I’m going to exclude Rapunzel/Eugene (they’d be Number 2 otherwise) so that I can talk about some other pairings that I love. And trust me, when it comes to Disney, I got plenty.

Okay, here we go~

#10. Milo Thatch/Kida (Atlantis the Lost Empire)

Atlantis is one of the most underrated Disney films ever, and same with this pair. Okay so I guess technically they didn’t get together since there wasn’t a kiss or anything... but come on! While their intentions were all in the second half of the movie, it was just so... sweet to me. Milo had it rough through the whole movie with so many people belittling him. Even though he made friends with the crew and doing so got them to do the right thing, they were still pretty harsh on the poor guy in the start. He had been mocked due to his dreams, but never gave up even when his inexperience and dorkiness got in the way.

Kida though? She seemed endeared by him. Just like Milo had a curiosity in finding Atlantis and learning of their culture, Kida was interested in Milo and the world he came from. She might be the very first person aside form Mr. Whitmore who acted kindly to Milo right off the bat and asked him to help her save her people and culture. Milo didn’t go for the money, he went because it was his grandfather’s dream, and in turn his dream. They were so cute and fun together as they learned about each other's worlds, and of course, Milo did everything he possibly could to save Kida after she and the crystal bonded, as well as the entire city. Even at the risk of his own life. And just that hug between them at the end and Milo choosing to stay in Atlantis. Just... beautiful. This pair might be subtle, but it's just so sweet and respectful to each other and I just love them.

#9. Duchess and Thomas O’Malley (The Aristocats)

I think this was one of the first movies I ever saw in my life. My mom said I used to watch it all the time as a kid anyways. Heck, pretty sure this movie is why I love cats so much.

Anyways, this pair is cute. Duchess is a classy lady, while Thomas is a swinger. But they just have this natural chemistry the minute that they met. They don’t judge each other from their different walks of life or anything. You can tell that Duchess was charmed the second Thomas first came on. But what sells is, while thrown off for a moment, when Thomas realizes Duchess has kittens? He pretty much goes into dad mode instantly and tries to keep them happy/protect them. I mean he didn't have to help Marie when she fell out of the milk truck at that point, but he did it because it was the right thing to do. He wasn't one of those assholes who got thrown off cause the girl had kids. Heck, that seemed to bring them closer together.

But yeah, it’s just nice and charming to me. There’s nothing real deep about it, but IDK. There’s just something endearing about it to me. Maybe t’s due to Eva Gabor’s performance as Duchess, which also kinda helps with a pairing later on. But I just find them charming and Thomas showed to be a good guy and a good father figure. Sometimes you don’t need a lot of depth for a pair, you just gotta make the sense of romance come off. Disney has always been good at that, and this pair demonstrates that.

#8. Cinderella/Prince Charming (Cinderella)

So to be fair this one has little to no development. Which is kind fo a thing with some of the early Disney films n it’s things like this that Frozen pointed out... even though it kinda fell into the same cliche, but ah well. But you know what? As I said, Disney is usually pretty damn good at making you like a pair, even if it’s out of focus. This one is a prime example. We don’t see much of the Prince, but at the same time there is so much there.

Throughout the movie, we saw Cinderella belittled and abused by her stepfamily. She’s treated like a slave and gets her dreams literally torn apart right in front of her eyes. But she tries to remain kind and hopeful, and the Fairy Godmother rewards her for it. She gets the one night at the Bal. She didn’t go intending to find love, he went because for one time in her life since her parents died, she could have one night of happiness. That was all she wanted. Then Charming saw her. It was him who got struck with love at first sight It was him who walked out on th other girls and approached her. A prince noticed this girl who felt that she was a lowly servant, and danced with her. FOr Cinderella, that had to be so touching and amazing that can we blame her for being so in love after? After someone finally, finally gave her some long overdue affection.

Yeah in RL this can be dangerous. But it isn’t RL. It’s a fairy tale. Cindy earned her happy ending. And if we needed genuine proof about the Prince, A Twist in Time showed that he was indeed a good, heroic person. He didn’t judge Anastasia off her looks. When he found out the truth, he went to find Cinderella and remembered his love for her. He never cared that Cindy was a servant or anything. He loved her when he saw her, and clearly loved her for who she was. Cindy found someone who would give her the love that was so cruelly denied form her and she got out of her abusive family through it. Is it perfect? No, and I can give the remake points for doing a better job at developing the romance. But even so, it’s just s beautiful pair I loved since like... three years old. As such IDC what anyone says, I will always love them. 

#7. Belle/Beast aka Adam (Beauty and the Beast)

It might be a surprise to some, but... I’m not a huge fan of Beauty and the Beast. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. I just feel like Belle, compared to Ariel and some of the later princesses is a little too boring. I still love her though. She’s bookish and kind and is seen as weird by her town, but she pursues what she enjoys anyways. She refuses Gaston’s advances as, while she had expressed wanting love, she didn’t want it with a brute like him. She wanted to choose herself. Then The Beast happens.

People tot his day still like to throw the Stockholm Syndrome card around, but it is idiotic. Belle never caved to Beast when he acted like a brute. But he did see that he wasn't a bad person when he saved her from the wolves, ad she chose to tend to him because she’s a good person. Yes, Beast needs her to break the curse, but Belle doesn’t just cave in either. Beast has to change himself to earn Belles's affection, and over time he does. He learns to be kinder and sure it’s a work in progress, but he does try and he does become better. It goes form needing Belle out of necessity, to genuinely falling in love with her because of her kindness towards him. Belle made Beast a better person, and once she saw the person he truly was, she fell in love with him.

But even then, despite those feelings, Belle decides to leave because her father needed her. Beast, instead of trying to force her to stay, allows her to go. That’s how much he loved her at that point. He loved her enough to let her go, even though that meant he’d be doomed. But it’s through that act, that selflessness, that allows the curse to eventually break. Because of Belle, Beast broke away form being a monster and spared Gaston. Because Belle saw the good in Beast, she stood up to Gaston and went back to save the man she loved. Because of that love, the curse was broken, and Beast became Adam once more. Belle saved Adam. Even if I’m not a huge fan of that film, it’s such a beautiful demonstration of the power of love and they truly deserved each other. A tale as old as time, indeed.

#6. Miss Bianca/Bernard (The Rescuers)

THIS IS THE MOST UNDERRATED DISNEY SHIP EVER.

I love these two so much. Again, its a rather understated pair, but it just works. Bernard is the nervous janitor of the Rescue Aid Society, but he clearly believes int heir cause as shown when he sings the anthem outside. Bianca is the Sweedish representative who has many admirers, but her heart is set on her job. She takes a liking to Bernard because she sees that compared to pretty much everyone else, he believes in rescuing those in trouble with the same passion as she does. He also shows how much he cares for her by being worried about her going to save Penny. Not because she’s a girl, but because he wants her to be safe. That clearly touched her and is why she picked him to be her co-agent.

They both work well together, Binca encouraging Bernard and being the charmer, more relaxed one. Bernard is frequently nervous, but he has a clear knack for the job and does it well. By the time they are on the way to Devil’s Bayou, it’s clear that they’ve acknowledged their feelings for one another. Ther’s no major arc or anything, it’s just two individuals feeling mutually attracted and feeling comfortable with their feelings. They work very well together and manage to rescue Penny, and later Doby in the sequel. The sequel retains the same charm, and the end where Bernard finally proposes makes me smile big every single time.

It’s just a lovely pairing that works so well and it is soooo underrated. It needs more love.

#5. Tiana/Prince Naveen (The Princess and the Frog)

I love this pair so much. It’s a classic ‘came from two different worlds’ story. You have the hard-working and ambitious Tiana and the lazy, spoiled Prince Naveen. Tiana is a good person, but she tends to put work over everything else and never lets herself relax. Naveen is a fun and intelligent man, but he’s spoiled and doesn’t know how to do anything, which caused his parents to cut him off. Due to this, Naveen got himself cured and he ended up passing it onto Tiana.

It is through each other that they find what is missing. Naveen has someone who actually pushes him to work and to realize his own flaws. How he doesn’t know how to act in the real world, even though he shows that he has plenty of skills if he tried. Having someone like Tiana who didn’t fall for his charm and pushed him to actually do things got him to better himself, and it clearly drew him to her. With Tiana, Naveen helped her see that there is more to life than working hard. It’s okay to take a step back and to find things like love. Her dream will always be there, but love will only come around every so often. It helps Tiana ease up and believe in things like wishing stars again, and it paid off for her.

Even at the end, when it looks like they’ll never become human, they accept it. Naveen almost gives up his freedom to marry Charlotte not to turn human again but to let Tiana fulfill her dream. Tiana realizes that she loves Naveen and even if it means losing what she wanted, she’ll still have what she needs, just like her father did. But it works out as once they get married, Tiana is now a princess and their kiss breaks the spell. Tiana got her dream. Naveen did everything he could to make that dream happen, including work with his own bare hands. They got the thing they both wanted and needed, and it’s just beautiful. Neither one are perfect, but their love is genuine, and I adore them and their journey,

#4. Hercules/Meg (Hercules)

I just realises that 5-2 are all from Musher and Clements directed films. Huh. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though. Those two are so good at making likable couples. Even if they only have to much time to develop them, they make them good and their live believable and I love them. Hercules and Meg are no exception.

Unlike other heroines, Meg is a little older and less innocent. Herc is the more innocent one this time around. Herc is a good-hearted guy trying to figure out who he is and wants to be a hero to reunite with his God family. He saves Meg where despite some clumsiness, he pulls it off. Meg is clearly amused and Herc is lovestruck by her beaut. But of course, Meg is with Hades due to selling her soul to save her lover... who left her for another woman. Meg is cynical and hurt, and considering she pretty much gave up her soul for a man who left her without so much as a thank you, it’s hard to blame her.

Even though Hades makes her get close to Herc to find his weakness, Meg ends up falling for him due to his kindness and genuine heroic heart. She’s in denial of it because of what she experienced, but he wins her over. So much so that even if it means eternal servitude, she refuses to help Hades anymore. Unfortunately, it only gives Hades what he needs to break Herc, and it hurts them both. But despite clearly being heartbroken by the deception and being powerless, Herc trie to save everyone anyways. THen Meg sacrifices herself to save him and restore his power, making Herc realize she did really love him. Herc grew to love Meg because she was smart, funny, and she made him feel less alone. Seeing that she was willing to die for him, despite all that happened, really showed how strong that love truly was. Meg again sacrificed herself to save who she loved, and Hercules proved he was a hero by going to the Underworld himself to save Meg. He was willing to sell his own soul to let Meg leave, and this act got him his full Godhood restored.

But the best part? At the end despite finally being deemed a True Hero and being back at Mount Olympus, what does Hercules do? He gives it up. For Meg. He finally found the place he came form... but it wasn’t where he belonged. He belonged on Earth. The place that raised him. The place he found Meg. His parents are stunned, but clearly happy for him and grant his wish. They finally get to kiss, and it feels so earned. Hercules found someone who loves him for him and can fill the void. Meg found some genuinely kind who would never leave or hurt her. That's the best way to describe this pair, genuine.

#3. Ariel/Eric (The Little Mermaid)

In many ways, this pairing set up the basis for many pairings to come.

Ariel is a mermaid who wants to be human. Eric is an adventurous prince wanting to enjoy life. One fateful night, Ariel stumbled upon his ship and it was love at first sight. Not just on her end either. When she saved him, Eric got one glimpse at her, but could only remember her voice. He wanted to find this mysterious girl again (a fact many critics seem to ignore) and thus the stage is set. After Triton destroys her grotto, Ariel takes Ursula’s deal and becomes human, and gets her chance to woo Eric.

These two are just adorable. People still get on Ariel for her choice here, and yeah she fell in love super fast. But she already wanted to be human, and I think some of her feelings were more infatuation than real love at first. But once humans, we see that Eric is a genuinely nice guy. Even though he thinks Ariel isn’t the girl since she can’t talk, what doe she do? He takes her to the palace anyways because clearly, she needs help and shelter, and he’s willing to give her that. I think that’s what gets Ariel to truly love him, seeing that he’s a good person and kind of her ideal vision of what humans are like. Then Ariel, despite being mute, is just so charming and weet that Eric ends up feeling attracted to her. So much sot hat once Grimm points it out to him, he gives up on his curiosity over the girl who saved him and is about to turn his affections towards Ariel. Sure Ursula messed that up, but it showed that no, he didn’t fall for Ariel because it turned out she was that girl. He fell in love with Ariel because of who Ariel was. Just as she fell for him because of who he was.

I truly did not care that their romance was rushed. It was genuinely charming and sweet. They were both good people, and seeing two good people happy is perfectly fine. Especially at the end where once she found out what Ursula was doing, Ariel went after them even though she couldn’t swim in her human form. Eric, despite being human, went to save Ariel from Ursula, and she, in turn, saved him from getting blasted. Then Eric finished Ursula once and for all, nearly getting killed int he process but this proves himself worthy to Triton. He grants Ariel legs, and the two can finally be together. The critics and ‘feminists’ can say what they want, they are adorable and just good for each other and as I said, are the template for so many couples afterwards. I love them, dang it!

#2. Aladdin/Princess Jasmine (Aladdin)

IDK what it is about these two! They’re just so... perfect! IDK how to explain why, but I’m gonna try.

Like I said, Musker and Clements are just really good at making likable pairs. Aladdin is a street rat striving for more. Jasmine is a princess who wants freedom. When they meet, its true love. It doesn't even feel like Aladdin fell for her cause she was pretty, it truly feels like he saw his soulmate for the first time. Then the two find a common link in feeling trapped in their lives. They both want more. Want to create something better for themselves. And they find that they may just be able to get that through each other. But then Aladidn is arrested and Jafar lies that he was executed, breaking Jasmine and essentially ensuring that she wasn’t going to leave again.

Then Prince Ali shows up. Jasmine is angered because he appears pompous and because her everyone si trying to make decisions about her without her consent. She isn’t a prize to be won. Ali, of course, is Aladdin, and once Jasmine tells him off, he realizes how the persona he’s putting on is wrong. He acts more like himself, showing that he likes Jasmine not because of her looks or money, but because she’s a fun, strong-willed person. Once she sees this and suspects he’s Aladdin, she goes with him on the magic carpet. A Whole New World is one of the most romantic scenes in any movie period. You will never be able to convince me otherwise. It ends with Jasmine realizing Ali’s identity, and while he still lies, Aladdin acts like himself and Jasmine falls for the person he truly is.

But of course, Aladdin is still lying. So he still needs to prove himself worthy after. Which he does by defeating Jafar despite having only his street rat skills to aid him. But he accomplishes it masterfully. He realizes that he can't live a lie or force Genie into servitude just to fulfill his won want. He frees Genie, but he didn't need his magic by then. he more than proved himself to the Sultan, who lets Jasmine choose who she wants. I think he’d have done this long before if not for Jafar’s hypnosis, and the smile of Jasmine’s face is just beautiful. She chooses Aladdin, and it is indeed a whole new world for both of them. It’s just so genuine and pure and I love them.

So... back at the top, I said there was one exception to the ‘strictly form Disney animated features’ rule. Why? Because I just could not leave this one off. It would feel wrong because it is one of, if not the, most perfect and longest-lasting couples in all fo entertainment. Who am I talking about? 

#1. Mickey and Minnie Mouse

As the old saying goes: it all started with a mouse.

Mickey and Minnie is so freakin pure it makes me feel the warm fuzzies if I so much as see a photo of them. Really, anything they are in together makes me feel that way. For over ninety years, these two have graced pretty much every media form ever and have been together in some fashion throughout it. They have the same birthday and last name for crying out loud! This was destiny!

Both Mickey and Minnie are sweet and endearing. Mickey is the face of Disney and while I know some find him bland and one-note, there’s always just been this charm to him. I love how much of a sweetie he is, and he does have his mischevious streak. Minnie over the years has become more sassy and stern, letting her not just be Mickey’s girlfriend. But no matter what changes the two have been through, their utter love for each other has never faded away. You can put them in anything in any setting, and they will be head over heel for each other. 

I mean even their longest-lasting voice actors, Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, got married due to these roles. Mickey ad Minie got married in real life. It really showed too. You could just tell that Mickey and Minnie, Wayne and Russi, were just so in love and it made you love them. It’s something that’s gonna be hard due to Wayne and Russi’s passings, but true love is eternal. That love will always exit through Mickey and Minnie. Even when Bret Iwan and Chris Diamantopolis took over Mickey, you still feel the love between Mickey and Minnie and I’m sure that whoever takes over Minnie will also keep that intact. That love is immortalized, and I will continue to love every second of it.

Mickey Mouse is the one who started it all, but Mickey and Minnie are the ones who started Disney’s pure love stories. I think that’s something that Disney has always been good at. Sure the romances can be rushed and happen at first sight. Even they’ve made fun of themselves for it But they’re just so good at it. As they say, don’t fix what ain’t broke. Maybe give it a fresh coat of paint, but don’t fix what doesn't need it. I look forward to seeing future Disney pairs, and I will cherish them all, both old and new Happy Valentines Day everyone~

[lightsandlostbells]

Skam Italia episode 9 reaction

shout out to the sheer number of snake emojis in the comments on any clip featuring or mentioning Martino

Episode 9

Clip 1 - Silvia spills the beans

Skam Italia being educational, kinda! I’m going to try out this headache technique. 

According to the subs I found, Sana’s janitor told her about it? … her housekeeper? That’s probably closer to what it was but I just like the idea of Sana going around striking up conversations with janitors.

But another version of the subs didn’t have that part at all so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dear Lord, Silvia, chill the hell out. Someone sitting in someone else’s car doesn’t mean they’re dating. Although lmao, Eva and Noora could have stood to learn that in season 2.

Actually, I do get how Silvia would be upset? She’s really jumping the gun but Edoardo just treated her like crap in front of people. I would probably be a little hurt that my friend was maybe hanging out with someone who hurt me. The problem with Silvia is that her motivation is less, “Eva, how could you associate with someone who’s treated me like garbage?” and more, “Eva, what were you doing with my mans???”

Evaaaaa, why did you trade that completely obvious look with Eleonora??? Just make it seem the most suspicious you can. I mean, if you don’t want to spill the whole truth about Edoardo digging for info on Eleonora, you can literally say “I studied for my exam in the car and he asked me about it” and technically that’s not a lie.

The flashbacks with Eva and Laura were pretty cute. Aesthetic hair-braiding!

I do like Sana immediately being like “lol why would you trust Laura” and bringing up the water throwing incident as a sort of logical evidence why Laura isn’t the greatest, as opposed to Vilde/Silvia saying something dumb and Islamophobic and Sana having to mention the water incident as proof of her loyalty.  Also Silvia looks humbled by Sana mentioning she was defending Silvia’s honor. 

Sana asking Silvia whether she has to meet her mother was a nice way of calming the situation for Eva’s sake while getting Silvia to leave before the problem can escalate. It was thoughtful for Silvia, too, as it gave her a chance to escape instead of digging the hole deeper.

I'm glad that the Edoardo lift had more plot relevance than just ship teasing (multi-tasking is A+) and I think that it’s good to illustrate how much it would break Eva is to lose a friend again. Her offering to let Silvia listen to the message she left Martino as proof is rather heartbreaking in its desperation. On the other hand, I don’t know how I feel about the emotional impact of this scene having to be more about poor Eva weeping and having to beg Silvia for forgiveness over something that was ultimately trivial and meant nothing, and that we as the audience know meant nothing, rather than Eva dealing with the guilt that she’s been carrying around for months over destroying her relationship with her best friend. That is the Big Secret Eva has been hiding from both her new friends and the audience so it probably needs more focus (which to be fair, is elaborated on in the bathroom scene later).

I saw some talk of how people thought it was an improvement that Silvia didn’t call Eva a slut, and while of course it’s nice that she didn’t do so, I don’t get why it’s better for Silvia not to call Eva a slut in this version since Noora directly confronts Vilde about it in the moment, it’s not like it was this casual misogyny in the show that went unaddressed. That was the point, it was a teachable moment. It’s certainly not worse that the moment wasn’t there, I just think it’s more about how it’s handled than anything else. (Also, I mean … Vilde being a jerk was specifically a tip off that something was going on with her.) 

Clip 2 - Eva talks to a friendly serpent

Martino knows all the school drama and social scene. It is pretty damn shady of him to be like oh yeah, they didn’t invite you because that girl whose boyfriend you kissed, her friend is organizing it, when he is responsible for the apparent non-invite in the first place, or so he would think. But he’s so casual about it. Not much guilt when he tells her that. Maaaaybe a little more when she starts to tell him about what she’s dealing with at school? IDK.

Eva sounds less angry or frustrated, more defeated.

I’m still wondering what her arc is going to be? Because there isn’t that pressing question of “who are you?” and her not having her own identity, it’s like … I guess she’s questioning whether she’s become a bad person? Sort of? She has Silvia making assumptions about her being a bad person, Laura thinks she is a bad person based on events that really happened, and Gio is questioning why she hangs around with bad people. That could be an area to explore in terms of her relationship with Laura but I’m not all that sure how it would play regarding her and Gio since Gio has made many of the same mistakes she has, he can’t exactly talk.

Martino trying to pull some reverse psychology is cute because he can’t quite keep a straight face. 

Sucks that this friendship is about to go down the toilet!

Clip 3 - Eva and the older girls

Heh, this angsty song gets cut off as soon as we establish that Maria does not give a crap who Eva is.

I always enjoy this scene and this advice. It’s one of the most underrated parts of season 1. These girls didn’t seem as invested as giving Eva some friendly advice but again, love that they get interested in their own sexual exploits rather than Eva’s and she ends up just walking away.

It’s nice that there was a totally logical, boring reason they didn’t get invites though how were they planning to invite everyone else once they stopped on Facebook? Word of mouth?

Mmm, I don’t know if I totally buy that Alice’s BFF doesn’t give a shit at all who Eva is? Of course her maturity is nice, and I can certainly buy that she doesn’t care enough to keep Eva from being invited to the party, but Alice got in a physical fight with this girl because she was that upset. . Like who were those girls accompanying Alice in the fight if not her friends? (At first they seemed like they wanted to hold Alice back but by the end it seemed like they were fighting as well.)

I think I’d have preferred if Maria was like, “Just between you and me, Federico is a fuckboy and I’m glad Alice can see the truth now,” or “I don’t like that my best friend was hurt, but I’m not petty enough to keep you off the list” or “I love Alice but she overreacts to everything and makes a lot of drama.” Or just some explanation for her total lack of fucks. The older Norwegian girls weren’t like, Iben’s best friends, correct? They weren’t even in the same grade? Maria has her BFF involved.

Clip 4 - Hippogriff

Fede, teach me your ways of absorbing information just as Sana showed us how to get rid of headaches.

Sana having an uncharacteristically soft moment and trying to deny it. She’s been really blunt with Silvia but their relationship has been all about helping Silvia with no apparent gain for Sana, except friendship.

Also she’s very reluctant to spread rumors, like this Sana goes from hard to soft pretty fast.

Federico and Laura leaving the men’s bathroom together sure adds a layer to Edoardo’s comment about Silvia hanging around the boy’s bathroom! That is just a thing these characters do, hook up in bathrooms. In S3 Martino can just wander into any men’s bathroom and find a girl to pretend to like.

Clip 5 - Eva and Laura and Alice

Nice use of music with the tense beat going as Eva drags off Laura, then it cuts off abruptly as Eva is about to get real and vulnerable.

This is easily the best acting Italian Eva has done so far. There have been a few “emotional” scenes where I thought she seemed too theatrical and not natural for the material but this was very good. I almost wanted them to stretch it out longer, as in the original, so we could get more of this performance.

And I’m pretty sure Laura was crying too by the end, which is very touching. I do think it’s one of S1’s best aspects how the Ingrid/Laura is not the villain, is actually the wronged party, but that she and Eva are able to come to a peaceful resolution.

It’s pretty sad that Eva made that little attempt at a wave back in the first clip. She really missed Laura.

Ha, I didn’t care for that Alice intro, though! Seeing her come up in the hallway definitely distracted from this intense, emotional acting between Eva and Laura. Especially because the moving music keeps going as she’s spying on them, and only cuts off when she throws her books down. I think it would’ve been more effective to keep the Eva-Laura shots going and keep us really engrossed in their dialogue, and then when Laura mentions Fede, suddenly cut to Alice standing like right there in the doorway and cut off the music, for a true jolt and change in the scene’s energy.

Alice’s actress looks so defeated as she realizes what a piece of shit her boyfriend is. And it’s nice that she apologizes and asks how Eva is doing. You know, before she inadvertently reveals Eva has been betrayed by a good friend.

“He looks like he cares about you” does that mean Martino looked pained when he told Alice about Eva and Fede? Boyyyy, why did you do such a stupid thing? (I know why, it’s still stupid.)

General Comments:

This has been a solid remake and overall they’re handling Eva’s emotional turmoil well. The point I’m wondering about is what Eva’s ultimate conclusion/personal statement is going to be since they’ve left out a lot of the questioning of her identity and insinuations that she is a follower not making her own choices. Season one’s strength lay a lot in that finale so I hope they have something cohesive for her character.

I am not Italian so if I misunderstood something or missed context, feel free to correct me.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

[wazafam]

The Exorcist's sequels and prequels have always struggled to live up to the classic original, but an upcoming reboot can hopefully right the ship. 1973's The Exorcist, directed by Hollywood icon William Friedkin, is almost inarguably one of the greatest and scariest movies of all time. While just about every movie has its vocal detractors, The Exorcist is a rare find in that even those not in love with it will acknowledge that it's a well-crafted, well-acted film.

The scare factor of The Exorcist is probably higher for those viewers holding a devout Christian faith, especially Catholic, but that's by no means required to enjoy the film. Many people who aren't religious still find The Exorcist's concepts upsetting and terrifying, even if they consider them to be purely a work of fiction, and not corresponding to things that might actually be possible. One of the highest-grossing horror movies ever, The Exorcist is, in the view of millions, a certified masterpiece.

Related: Recasting The Exorcist In 2020 (Every Main Character)

Unfortunately, that can't be said for any of its follow-ups, even the somewhat popular TV series. Now, after more than 15 years since the last Exorcist movie hit theaters, Halloween director David Gordon Green is set to helm a new sequel. This could represent a return to form for the franchise, but past mistakes should be avoided, lest Exorcist fans end up let down and disappointed yet again.

The Exorcist sequels and prequels are quite the odd lot of films, and the writers and directors involved with them just seemed incapable of cracking what made the classic original so special. 1977's Exorcist 2: The Heretic likely needs no introduction at this point, if only because it's widely regarded as one of the worst horror sequels ever. It's silly, convoluted, confusing, and when Father Lamont is almost seduced by a teenage Regan, creepy for all the wrong reasons. Gone is the polish and class inherent to the original, which seems highbrow even considering some of its shockingly graphic content.

The Exorcist 3 has become a bit of a cult classic, but it took decades, and while it's a fine horror movie, it's a poor Exorcist follow-up. It doesn't feel like an Exorcist sequel, and when it tries to force in an exorcism sequence, the scene feels entirely out of place. The dueling prequels, Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist are both disappointments as well. The Beginning has terrible special effects, lame plot twists, and a cringe-worthy attempt to redo the ending exorcism of the original. Then there's Dominion, which is better than The Beginning, but instead of being laughably awful is just plain boring for most of its run time. The Exorcist sequels and prequels are a mixed bag of alternately straying too far from what fans loved about the original, and trying to awkwardly cram scenes reminiscent of Regan MacNeil's exorcism into a story where they don't fit.

While an Exorcist movie reboot - or even worse, a full-on remake of the original - has been threatened briefly over the years, it wasn't until August 2020 that the project finally seemed to get moving. However, while those initial reports dubbed the potential film a reboot, more recent updates in December 2020 have re-framed the project as a sequel to the first Exorcist. Plot details beyond that are unavailable, but a great first move has already been made in the hiring of David Gordon Green to direct. Green helmed the highly successful 2018 Halloween sequel/reboot, and also directs its upcoming follow-ups Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.

Related: Midsommar’s Secret The Exorcist Easter Egg Explained

With Halloween 2018, Green famously took the approach to retconning all prior sequels and crafting a continuation of only John Carpenter's classic. Green could try to go the same route with his Exorcist, bringing back Linda Blair as a now aging Regan MacNeil, and perhaps even Ellen Burstyn as her mother Chris. Sadly, Max von Sydow and Jason Miller obviously won't be able to return, as they've since passed away. At the same time, Regan's story was pretty definitively concluded, and despite her surprise appearance played by Geena Davis in the Exorcist TV series, bringing her back risks undercutting the original, something the horrible Exorcist 2 already did once.

Considering the potential issues outlined above concerning the return of Regan MacNeil, if she does come back, it should only be for a cameo, or perhaps a small supporting role. What The Exorcist needs to do is go back to basics, and focus on trying to replicate what worked in the original. That's not to say that the story should be a carbon copy, as that would be boring. However, it should indeed focus on a possessed child and their harried single parent, one who goes to the Catholic Church for help as a last resort. The climax of the film should also involve a harrowing, difficult exorcism.

Beyond that though, the specifics can be altered. The script could still give Exorcist fans what they want, but also leave some room for innovation. The increasingly secular societal lens of modern times could also play a role, as Father Karras and the church were already skeptical of performing an exorcism in 1973, and one assumes the view on it being an outdated, arcane practice would have increased exponentially by the 2020s. One mistake David Gordon Green's Exorcist sequel should definitely make a point to avoid though is getting lost in trying to create a convoluted mythology surrounding Pazuzu, Father Merrin, Regan, or anyone else. As shocking as its content was, The Exorcist's story was also rather simple. Possession happens, things get worse, priests are called in, exorcism takes place, day is saved, but not without casualties. There's no need to over-complicate things, as doing so is often a detriment to horror's effectiveness. Go back to basics and keep things simple, and fans might finally get a worthy Exorcist sequel.

More: Why The Exorcist Is Still One Of The Scariest Horror Movies Ever Made

Why The Exorcist Sequels Failed (& How The New Movie Can Succeed) from https://ift.tt/35CsyZ1

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Mrs Kirk {Part 5}

Fandom: Star Trek

Pairing: Jim Kirk x Reader  (She/Her identifying)

Warning: Angst, hurt

Writer: @imaginesofeveryfandom aka @thequeenofthehobbits

Summary/request: You and Jim get married. Accidentally. On a new federation planet. Without knowing about it. Turns out its legally binding. Fuck.

Part 1 X, Part 2 X, Part 3 X, Part 4 X, Part 6 X

A week went by rather quickly. You learnt that Jim had a bad habit of leaving laundry on the floor, that he tried his best to get time free to have lunch with you where you’d discuss each other. He’d ask you questions about growing up and what books or movies you liked and take a genuine interest which was so strange at first. Originally it had felt a little bit like an interrogation, but that had gone away over the week and talking with him became almost natural.

He still called you Moonbeam.

You still shared a bed but each evening and each morning became more natural. Waking up to him had become a ritual, he was there and he would roll over when you tried to wake him up, he’d eventually get up and smile at you. On the odd occasion he’d be up before you, dressed and energetic, in some cases he tickled you awake and you claimed you hated him. More and more you fell asleep closer to each other, the gap between the two of you slowly closing until you fell asleep with an arm around your waist and your cheek pressed against his chest. It almost seemed normal until you started thinking about it too hard. Then you realised that this whole situation wasn’t really normal, but maybe that was okay.

Do things really need to be normal for them to be good and right?

A week in and a lot of the crew had grown used to the new development, while people were still curious they didn’t outright stare at you in the corridors nor did they make jokes or comments when you walked past. In general people had calmed down and it made things a lot less uncomfortable when you only had to deal with close friends asking questions and making comments.

You were sealing a wound shut on one of the newbies from engineering when Uhura walked in. You’d been friends with Nyota since the academy, having lived next to each other. Nyota had needed someone to vent to about Gaila and the men she brought back and you needed help with your xenolinguistics class so it worked out all in all and the two of you had grown close. You were still close, spending lunches and dinners together, shore leave was spent together in bars watching Chekov try and often fail at seducing people.

“I thought you were on shift?” You ask her, she’s usually on the bridge this time of day monitoring communications even if sometimes there’s nothing to monitor. You’d listened to enough rants about how boring it could get to know that it wasn’t quite as busy as the med bay was. At least you always had at least one injury or sickness to handle.

“We’re going on an away mission…I decided to come tell you because otherwise you’d worry.”

“I’ll worry anyway. Who’s going?” You finish with the red shirt, telling him he can leave and begin cleaning up the space where he’d been, remaking the medical bed. You know that certain people, Jim for example, always go on away missions and it worried you because Jim was notorious for getting hurt on every single one. To varying degrees. You know him now, he’s more than just your captain and you’re worried he might get himself killed for the second time.

“Myself, Spock, the Captain, a few of the security people, Leonard.”

“Which means I put you in charge of my med bay.” You watch Leonard leave his office, grumpy as per usual, phaser at his side. He hated away missions but he was also one of the most qualified doctors on the ship.

“The nurse? You do have other doctors here.”

“But I trust you. Also these lot are all bloodsucking bastards.”

“You should probably keep that opinion to yourself, Len.” You watch a few of the doctors’ glare at him due to his words. But agreed with him in a way. A lot of the doctors were very…stuck up. They cared more about getting people out of med bay then actually looking after them. Not all of them were bad, but then you supposed Leonard had a point in picking someone he trusted to boss everyone about in his absence.

“We have to go…I’ll see you at dinner?”

“Of course you will, Nyota.” She leaves first, long ponytail swinging behind. You’re sure she’s going along because of some communication issue, but that doesn’t mean that she’s entirely safe. It’s discomforting to think that she might not actually be there at dinner that rather she’d be in the med bay but you tell yourself it’s just that voice called fear talking and not rationality.

Leonard lingers a moment, an uncharacteristic softness to him, hand patting you on the shoulder, “I’ll make sure your husband doesn’t die.” It’s said as a joke, a quirk of a lip, a lifted eyebrow. But you know he knows you’re worried about Jim. You won’t admit it. You won’t admit that after just a week you’re terrified of him leaving…but he knows. You don’t need to say anything. Leonard always knew.

“Don’t die either, Len.”

“I’ll try not to, kid.” You hate when he calls you kid, but in that moment it’s a bittersweet sort of hate. The sort that reminds you that you’d miss it if he wasn’t there to call you that anymore.

Watching people walk away is hard. Part of you is glad Jim didn’t come to say goodbye to you. Not sure you could watch another person walk away into uncertainty. It also means you can trick yourself into believing that he didn’t say goodbye because he knew nothing would happen, because the away mission would be simple and harmless.

You tried to distract yourself while they were gone, spending time reorganising supplies, caring for Engineers who’d hurt themselves…but there was always an awareness in the back of your mind that they were all down on a planet where they could get hurt. It bothered you, you realised, not just because you had friends down there, but because you had Jim down there.

It was something you’d been attempting to ignore. To put off thinking about but with the med bay quiet and with worry niggling at you it was becoming harder to ignore. You’d always been attracted to Jim, in the academy he’d been unattainable and beautiful, once he became captain it only increased. But the past week…had made you attracted to him in a different regard. He wasn’t just physically beautiful; he was kind and silly and fun…he was dreadfully intelligent and could be irritating as well. You knew it had started to go past base attraction. You liked him. You didn’t want to admit how much but you liked him.

You liked how warm he was. You liked how comforting sleeping in the same bed with him is. You liked how much respect he had for you and everyone. You liked that he called you Moonbeam and that he wanted to give this marriage thing ago. You liked how blue his eyes were. You liked the way his hair fell in his face. You liked when he talked about himself and told you stories or discussed xenoanthropology with you. You liked him. More than you’d admit it.

It wasn’t just friendly admiration…you knew that. It was the warmth in your chest, those moments of pure affection you felt for him. It was something much more romantic…if not dissimilar. It was more than a little terrifying to be married to someone you’d started to fall for and had no idea of knowing if that person felt the same.

Your comm rang out and you grabbed, “Y/L/N, here” You could hear phaser fire and the sound of running feet through what sounded like foliage.

“Kid! Get the med bay ready!”

“What happened?!” You turn to tell junior nurses and the doctors to prep for whatever might come through those doors. It wasn’t the first time you’d been in the med bay during an emergency but every time was just as nerve wrecking as the last. That jolt of adrenaline at knowing someone needed your help, the adrenaline that had kept you on your feet for 24 hours once during an outbreak of the flu.

“It’s Jim.” You don’t need to hear any more than that, you can’t hear any more than that. It’s like you’re underwater for a moment, the panic dulling the sounds you hear and it takes a nurse bumping into you for you to come to your sense and begin helping despite not knowing what Leonard would need, what was wrong with Jim.

You swear your heart stops when he comes through the doors on a stretcher, he’s conscious you can see that but he’s barely aware and what awareness he has seems to be panic. He is bloodied and hurt and you try not to look at the wounds as you help Leonard get him onto a medical bed.

“Moonbeam…” A weak hand grabs your uniform as you turn to call out to a nurse standing nearby. He’s grasping it so weakly that you could ignore it, but you don’t. He’s blinking up at you barely aware of his surroundings and you for go your job to grasp that hand with your own and stand by his head.

“Leonard?”

“You keep him calm and I’ll fix him up, kid.” He flickers a glance up at you before returning to his work.

You feel your stomach turn as you look at the blood, the open wounds across his torso, before you look away and focus on his face. Your free hand pushing hair from his face and gently moving the back of your hand across his cheek, calming, soothing. He can’t go into shock you realise and the thought that he could terrifies you.

“I’m right here, James…I’m not going anywhere.” You weren’t. You weren’t. Fear wouldn’t let you leave him. Wouldn’t let you move. A week and he’d captured you in his net and that thought that he might let you go by leaving hurt so badly.

[dynared]

Moonlighting, Thundercats, Korra, and why you never want to resolve romantic tension halfway through a series

In the mid 80′s, Bruce Willis starred in a loopy, fourth wall breaking series called Moonlighting, the premise of which…was pretty much a knockoff of a similar show called Remington Steele, about a quirky detective and a failing actress running a detective agency, trying to keeping it profitable, and the sexual tension that emerged throughout the series.  The driving force behind the series was the insane amount of sexual tension between co-stars Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis.  The problem with the show was that said tension was resolved…in the third season.

When there were two more seasons to go.

It gets even worse for the show because due to various commitments including Shepard being pregnant and Willis shooting Die Hard, the relationship never did anything.  And thus, the term “Moonlighting Syndrome” was born.

Moonlighting Syndrome, referred to over at TV Tropes as “Shipping Bed Death” is what happens when writers make a couple canon, and then do nothing with them.  It’s often said that the journey means more than the destination, but if you arrive at the destination and then there’s nothing there, you as a writer well…you’re stuck.

In the rather nutty shipping world, where everyone demands that their pairings be made canon immediately and we focus on said pairings in the show, I’m going to argue that this is idea is ultimately faulty and more often than not, having your character hook up in the middle of the show, when their entire relationship (or the fandom equivalent of such) runs on unresolved sexual tension, will inevitably doom said relationship.

The funny thing about all the anger and shipping rage/accusations of homophobia/biphobia/whatever phobia/just admit you want to see two characters kiss and them kissing two other people makes you mad for some unexplained reason wars in certain fandoms (coughVoltroncough) is that there was a much smaller scale example of this with another 80′s cartoon remake, Thundercats.

80′s Thundercats was what happens when Japanese animators and American writers all get high on hallucinogenic substances and try to write a series.

Wait.

80′s Thundercats was a series about the last survivors of the Planet Thundera, who found themselves stranded on a far future Earth where they met new friends and protected their new home from the mechanisation of Mumm-Ra.  It made no sense, much like Voltron made no sense given all its edits, but it was still a beloved children's franchise.  So when it got remade in 2011, the idea, much like Voltron was to take all that childhood nostalgia and wrap it up in a coherent plot, updating the aesthetics and visuals.  Gone was the “survivors of a destroyed planet” plot replaced with “survivors of a destroyed kingdom”.

One of those plots involved a love triangle between the naive young king of a destroyed kingdom Lion-O, his adopted brother Tygra, and the mysterious Cheetara, who in this new version was a sage that was implied to be the only one who actually knew what the party had to do.

And at first, it’s implied that she could like either of them, or neither of them, far more preoccupied with stopping the armies that decimated her kingdom and their mysterious benefactor Mumm-Ra than relationship drama.

Until one episode - “New Alliances.”  Here it was retconned that Tygra had been crushing on Cheetara since before the series began, as opposed to the pilot establishing she had never met the group before.  She apparently returned this affection and everyone was happy.

And the series wasn’t even a quarter of the way done.

Yeah, in eliminating the tension with a retcon and establishing that the matter was over, and Lion-O was fairly OK with it eliminated a ton of tension from the group dynamic, particularly the brotherly rivalry.  It also had the unfortunate side effect of making Cheetara something of a damsel, her ability to guide the group now gone in favor of the romantic attachment of a co-lead.  They had nothing for them, and as a result, they became boring.

Then the series got canceled halfway into its planned run, and writers went on record saying if they would have been allowed to continue, they would have re-introduced the romantic tension, and possibly broken up Tyra and Cheetara.  So even if you were on board with that couple, the series might have split them up anyway, because being together they were far less interesting.

Okay, you’re thinking, that’s one example and the show got canceled!  That won’t happen to the show I like!

Not pictured is my Chesire cat grin.

The Legend of Korra gets a lot of flack, most of it deserved, some not.  However, one of the biggest points of criticism is how awfully the romance was handled in the first two seasons and how heavily it focused on said romance to the point Season 3′s abandonment of romantic tension was seen as a welcome relief.

In particuarly, in the first and what was supposed to be the only season, Korra falls in love with an aloof boy named Mako because he’s thinner than his brother Bolin.  They save the city and make out.  THE END.

Except wait!  That wasn’t the end!  The show got renewed and the pair had to have a functional relationship, something head writers Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko had no freaking clue how to do.  So the entire season had the characters engaging in an endless roulette of argument/makeout session/argument with no chemistry (as in they had no common ground and only showed up on screen together to argue or kiss) until they broke up at the end of the season admitting things were never going to work out.

It’s almost kind of sad that Korra and Asami’s relationship is going to be the central focus of a comic book series because if it’s as poorly written as Mako and Korra were, no amount of points for diversity will save it from being painful to read.

So the next time you think about yelling at creators to make your ship canon RIGHT NOW, be careful what you ask for.  You might end up getting a house built on sand, and those don’t stand for very long.

[gman-003]

Aesthetics - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword analyzed, Part Five

(This is part of my ongoing series analyzing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, part of a bigger series where I play through and then talk excessively about every game in the Zelda series. If you want to catch up, earlier installments discussed the use of patterns, the story and how it fits into the chronology, the controls, and the flow and friction)

Video games are composite art. They combine dozens of artistic (and non-artistic) disciplines. You have game designers, writers, musicians, and an entire array of visual artists, specializing in textures, models, animation, lighting, and all kinds of other things. I've been focusing a lot on the game design, since that's an understudied field, but all the other elements deserve analysis too. We've already examined the story, so today, we'll take a look at the look of Skyward Sword.

Good: Overall art direction, graphics

When I review games, I make a distinction between "art" and "graphics". The former, as I use the term, is the timeless quality of the art direction, divorced from that specific implementation in the game; the latter is the technical work of making the software turn the artistic vision into reality, judged by what the hardware can theoretically handle. "Art" is that which shows up even in the manual and advertising, that which is unchanged in remakes and ports. Skyward Sword, on the whole, does an excellent job on both fronts.

The graphics are nothing to write home about by 2017 standards, but for a Wii game, it looks excellent. It's important to remember just how weak the Wii was, even compared to the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. It also has some real limitations on what you can do with it, beyond just strength - since the processor design was identical to the Gamecube, it had very little flexibility, requiring a lot of trickery from programmers to get many special effects.

I'm not really equipped to dig into the technical functioning of it, but just from playing, it seems to hold a mostly-stable 30fps, rendering the game at 360p and upscaling to 480p before rendering UI elements. This is a common trick for console games - this hides the jaggies you get with no antialiasing, and fonts benefit far more from the increased resolution than the 3D environment does, while not costing nearly so much processing time to render. There was some consistent framerate drops during certain cutscenes - most scenes of a Timeshift Stone have some really nasty reduction in framerate - but during gameplay, it seems to be solid, which is when it really matters.

Some very interesting effect is done to create a depth-of-field-like effect, blurring the far background in a painting-like way. Again, I don't have the tools (or, quite frankly, the skills and time) to dig into exactly how this is done, but the effect is really well-done. This serves a gameplay purpose too, by making foreground objects (like enemies or items) stand out more from the background.

The design of most of the characters is also spot-on. Everything is stylized, anatomy is often exaggerated, and colors are bright and vibrant. There's visual depth to everything, lots of layers, which balances out the flatter colors. Faces are expressive. Costumes are iconic without being overly simple.

Even lots of the fully background characters look pretty good. Wander through Skyloft, and you'll see lots of interesting characters. There are very few background characters with a bland or boring design.

Okay: The Heroes

Which makes it so weird that the two central characters of the game are so dull. Skyward Sword's Link and Zelda aren't bad, really. They're just... completely unremarkable. 

Link is bland. He doesn't have any of that exaggerated styling that made other characters fun. He just looks like the Link from Twilight Princess with new textures. There's very little depth or layering - the dominant feature is just that blank green tunic. Given how much green there is in the environment, Link often fades into the background. This never reached the level of a gameplay issue, at least for me, but it's still not great when the player character isn't visually distinct from the game world, especially when the story is about him entering a strange new world.

Link also just doesn't fit in. His proportions are far more realistic than the rest, making him look out of place next to caricatures like Beedle or Strich or Gondo. It's not consistent - he looks fine beside Pipit or Kina or Peatrice - but that inconsistency is itself a minor problem.

Zelda's first design in the game is fine. It's got contrast, it's got depth, it's not the best thing ever but it's pretty good. And she's very well animated - I won't call it Pixar quality but it's leagues ahead of where they were even a few years prior. She's emotionally expressive and responsive. But then she has a costume change, and it's just... nothing.

It's a white dress. No other color. No layers. No depth. No frills or poofs or anything, besides a bit of lace designs that you can only see in the concept art. They still have her moving well but it's just... so... wasted. Could they really think of nothing more visually interesting than a featureless white dress to symbolize the purification stuff? You don't see her in this outfit all that much, but it's the outfit she's in for the majority of the game, so it's still very important. It wouldn't have taken much to make her design better. Give her any splash of color - a red rope belt (red string has a suitable symbolic meaning in east-asian culture), a purple feather from her Loftwing in her hair, anything really that isn't plain featureless white. Even making that lace rendition of the Hyrulian Royal Crest more visible would have worked. Even if you absolutely insisted on flat white, you could layer the clothing to give depth instead of a featureless white void. Or give her more to wear - a wimple or veil over her head even adds to that "purification" intent (and it's not like Zelda games haven't borrowed religious imagery before). I can't really point to anything that was actually done wrong with Link or Zelda. They just aren't nearly as good as many of the other characters.

Bad: The Villains

Some stuff was just outright bad, though.

Tentalus, the boss of the Sandship dungeon, is a bizarrely cartoonish enemy design. If its battle was intentionally funny, that could have worked - but the fight is framed as one of the most dramatic in the game. The ship shudders under its attack from the moment it appears, twisting in a section reminiscent of the Call of Duty 4 level "Crew Expendable", of all things. The skies are dark under the pouring rain, lit by distant lightning... the music builds to an ominous tension... as this Baby's First Lovecraftian Horror shows up. It's purple Cthulhu with tentacle dreadlocks. As more than one fan artist has noted, Tentalus looks like it came from a Monsters Inc. knockoff, not a Zelda game with a French Impressionist aesthetic.

And the single eye as a weak point, in this late stage of the game, is frankly unnecessary. Any player who's made it this far knows how boss weak points work. Absent a gameplay justification, it just further serves to make the boss look child-like.

For a boss that features so prominently in the game, The Imprisoned is also quite poorly designed. His core problem is his lack of features, and how the "gameplay-oriented" features look so out of place.

On the face of it, a dark behemoth, featureless except for a gaping maw, seems like a perfectly fine idea. The early concept art certainly looks good. But now add some white blobs as "toes" that serve as weak points - first, it distracts from that singular focus on the mouth, and second it undercuts the intimidating look of the boss, because seriously, you kill the boss by stabbing its toes? The same thing happens when, in the second and third forms, they added some ungainly long arms, tipped with white blobs as "fingers". They were certainly necessary to make the boss fight playable, but there had to have been another way to do it. It just reeks of a boss that was designed by an artist, and then had to have gameplay elements tacked on.

The Imprisoned also fits very poorly with the painterly aesthetic of the rest of the game. It, almost alone in the game, is harshly geometric, with his hundreds of identical scales. The concept art is quite a bit more abstract, so maybe it's a matter of the Wii not having the horsepower for all those particle effects. But I have to judge the game they released, not the game they wanted to make, and this game has a central villain that doesn't fit.

Had that felt more deliberate, it could have worked. The Twili had that sort of effect in Twilight Princess, with a techno-ish sound and harsh digital effects to play up their alien-ness to Hyrule. But in every way except its appearance, The Imprisoned fits the game normally - normal music, normal gameplay, normal sound effects.

Overall, the game's aesthetic sensibilities are on point. It really is a lovely game. But those few mistakes are all the more glaring when they're surrounded by excellence.

Next time: the greatest flaw of Skyward Sword

[briarcastle]

Finished: 9/3/2017

Posted: 1/02/2018

Resident Evil 7 was a disjointed experience for me. The things I liked about the game, I ended up liking a lot but it was very easy to put those positive qualities aside due to its negatives. What I write about is going to be overwhelmingly spoiler heavy, more so than usual, as the gameplay is fairly simple and won't take up the brunt of my focus, though I'll start there.

Foregoing both traditional styles RE has used so far, fixed cameras and third person, Resident Evil 7 now joins the very long list of first person horror titles. It's not a change that hurts the game in any way but it does go a way towards diminishing its identity. Right away RE7 looks like and feels foreign, despite a clamor from it’s designers that it’s a return to its roots.

Main protagonist Ethan wobbles and plods like an inhumanly slow drunk with little regard for his life, or his self stated goals of saving his wife. The game trades away your ability to control the character in an effort to add tension, akin to what was attempted in The Evil Within. Like that, it’s simply frustrating.

Adding onto this is a certain repetition in how you tackle the game. Combat is largely reserved for bosses in the first 70% of the game, and of the enemies there are you won’t encounter much variety. Four total types, outside of bosses. Five if you count bugs. You’ll spend most of your time just walking around these enemies, and only dealing with them if they’re between you and an item.

The tension-by-way-of-handicap (but not really) extends to combat, as well. Ethan awkwardly handles all of the games guns, but thankfully due to how easy it is to skirt a majority of the enemies, you’ll have ample ammo to use on most of the bosses. And the boss fights are good set piece battles. They make excellent use of characters and environments. They’re entertaining. A lot of thought was put into a few of the fights, and they shine. Though the last boss of the game may as well of been a cutscene, for how little agency you really have in that fight, it oddly threw away nearly everything the game seemed to learn from the interesting set pieces of all the previous boss fights.

Level design goes from astounding to downright awful. The Baker Estate is a fantastic realization of a horror movie setting made into a real playground, and I was constantly impressed with the amount of detail and level of fidelity put into it. Unfortunately, once you leave the estate and move onto the crashed ship and the salt mines, that ends. The ship is a tedious, time-consuming trip through ugly identical hallways in what feels like discounted DLC and the salt mines is a jog through one giant gray cave. Both are huge departures from the Baker Estate, in terms of visual design and the effort put into crafting the levels themselves.

Moving further away from mechanics, the visuals and soundtrack of the game are thoroughly excellent. Resident Evil hasn’t seen a step forward like this since Remake. And that’s where I start to run into my problem with the game. Everything Resident Evil makes this game worse. Whenever the game is on it’s own, in it’s own little world; when it’s a bottle episode? It’s fantastic, it’s fun, it’s cheesy, it’s a B-Horror movie with Jack as an over-the-top psycho killer and you don’t know what’s happening and that’s okay.

When it falls apart is when all of Resident Evil comes spilling in to try and remind you of all of the terrible story that has happened and that’s going to happen to ruin the fun that was just happening. When it tries to explain the nonsense. When it doesn’t realize it’s plot holes are less of an issue when it leaves them on the table and doesn’t try to science them away with another bioweapon gone wrong.

They couldn’t just let us have the crazy Bakers? That wasn’t enough?

About 60% or so through the game, you rescue Mia. Or Zoe, the Baker daughter, who you’ve never met and only talked to on the phone about five times and have no conceivable reason to choose over your wife, the woman you set out to rescue. After that, you escape, and during your escape you’re thwarted by Evie, the evil little bio-weapon-girl and then stuck on a rusted-out ship that was transporting her, and Mia, some time before.

And then the game switches over to Mia in the past, for what I can only call Exposition Gameplay. All of the madness of the Baker household bleeds away for boring hallway trodding as you’re given ample ammo, an assault rifle, explosives, tons of monsters to gun down, and a clear goal. And a partner on the radio who is force feeding you backstory minute by minute. Again, I don’t even know why I, as the player, am here other than to hear this clumsy exposition dump. Put this garbage in a cutscene and just get it over with. This isn’t fun. This isn’t the game I signed up for. You just sandbagged me.

After you run through the ship once, you return to the present, as Mia again, still on the ship, to...once again meander around the exact same ship. This time it’s rusty and paths are closed off, but it’s still the exact same layout. They’re making you play the exact same area twice in a row. Upon reaching the end and finding Ethan, you switch back, and head to the salt mines, where it just becomes a gauntlet of enemies till you reach the final boss, who is largely there for cinematic purposes and ultimately what I found to be an unsatisfying ending to the game.

I would’ve been happier with Ethan and <choose X> to just ride off on the boat, wordlessly. Leaving all that insanity unexplained, leaving it all a mystery. Sometimes that’s just more interesting. Sometimes the explanation is a lot less rewarding than what we’ll come up with on our own.

There are hours of this game that don’t belong. That are simply there to justify this being a Resident Evil game, and not another IP. And that’s not good. Because there is a good game in here, a special one. It’s a bummer Capcom wasn’t brave enough to let it out. It could’ve been the start of something new.