#review Massacre Play

[lazycranberrydoodles]

its prosecutor jiang wanyin!!!! oh fuck!!! / gifs + au rambling below the cut / follow for more mdzs x aa crossover stuff :3

all the gifs i made (poses traced off franziska):

hes so similar to franziska when you think about it. theyre both deeply insecure tsundere adoptive younger sibling of successful main characters. who carry whips. something something edgeworth choosing death and wwx actually dying also

his share code is HWFEFF if you wanna use him in a trial! you can't share backgrounds but heres the scenery from the donghua i used.

the easiest way to put custom stuff into objection.lol is to send it in discord and then use the link from opening it in your browser :)

a whole lot of AU stuff

the art im making is for if mdzs was an ace attorney game, playing from WWX's POV to solve various mysteries/cases over the course of the plot. so this scene would be from turnabout goddess, which would loosely cover the dafan mountain mystery.

cases include:

Turnabout Revenge (Mo Manor, quick introductory first case)

Turnabout Goddess (Dafan mountain, the good times flashback)

Turnabout Saber (the man-eating castle (omg hiii nhs))

The Blind Turnabout (Yi City arc)

Turnabout Deviation (the Koi Tower conference, Empathy on NMJ ala turnabout memories or beginnings. opening cutscene is his qi deviation)

The Blood-Soaked Turnabout (second Burial Mounds siege, flashbacks: Xuanwu, Sunshot, YLLZ, Nightless City massacre)

Turnabout Lotus Seeds (testimony about JGY, tree scene, golden core reveal, bathtub scene. opening cutscene could be JGS' death but that would make it canon rather than ambiguous)

Turnabout Confession (Guanyin temple)

the problem with splitting novel!mdzs into turnabouts is that flashbacks are a huge chunk of the book but they don't have mysteries/ cases to solve so they've gotta be lumped together with present day stuff. imo? many of the flashbacks would likely have to be abridged so they could be retold ala DL-6, SL-9, or the fourth grade incident, where characters talk about it over some pieces of art. this is really difficult when theres a metric ton of unspoken, complex, and signifcant history between every character lmao

there's not as much of a problem with the cql timeline but i have not finished it. so.

the opening cutscenes in ace attorney always show the murder and/or the murderer plotting. the first cutscene of the game would be MXY summoning WWX, muttering about getting revenge on his family (it would also be good for him to mention the yllz being dead because that's how the novel starts.) cut to WWX's POV as he wakes up covered in blood and the investigation segment begins.

for investigations of monsters (goddess, saber, etc) the cutscene would be a scene of some poor throwaway cultivator getting their shit wrecked.

it would be cool to make a breakdown for JGY but again I need to review that scene cause I don't know who I'd base him on. maybe Vasquez or Dahlia.

tell me your thoughts!! i'm working off of a mdzs summary/ skimming the novel because i don't remember it too well so if i get anything wrong please yell at me

Jin Ling's sprites & Nie Huaisang's sprites / masterpost

[sashasspace]

MOVIE LOVER TRAIT BY SASHA'S SPACE

This CAS trait is for sims who love to watch movies. The movies from Movie Hangout and movie theater options from Growing Together are included in this trait. This trait is meant for child sims to elder sims. There are 34 in-game movies, so that means your sims will have 34 wants plus other social-related wants. Thank you so much for supporting my first-ever mod, the love language mod.

Packs Needed: Mostly Growing Together and Movie Hangout, but there are some wants that have Get Famous and one want is from Kids Hangout.

HOW DOES THIS MOD WORK? Your sim will wants to watch movies. For Growing Together’s movie theater wants, the symbol will all be the same. This is also true for Movie Hangouts. IMPORTANT NOTE: Sims who don’t enjoy a movie won’t have a want completed, so I recommend you to cheat it with UI cheats mod. Right-click over the want and complete it like that.

Child sim wants: Watch Moonlight Massacre III Watch SuperKids Cortex Catastrophe  Watch Lost Dog’s Journey Home Watch The Adventures of Spaceship Simulation Watch the Sheriff from Alpha Centauri Watch Yibs Yibs! Watch A Room with No Door Watch Of Tea & Treachery Watch VoidBop: The Movie Watch Critters from Mauven Forest: The Last Llama Watch Peter Barker’s Homecoming Hijinks Watch SuperKids: Agent Diaper Eat Popcorn Imitate movie scene Read books under the covers Discuss love for movies Complain about movie Talk about your favorite movie Talk about the movie you last watched Declare your favorite movie genre Text a friend about a movie Invite a friend and watch a movie with them Watch a movie Perform a puppet show Dream about the cartoon world Join the drama club Host a sleepover *you can use MizoreYuuki's mod that unlocks plan social events for child sims as a bonus way to complete the want if you want* Read the book from that one movie

Teens to Elder wants: Watch Simder Watch College Cram Watch Moonlight Massacre III Watch Roaring Vice Watch SuperKids: Cortex Catastrophe Watch Lost Dog’s Journey Home The Khlumzee Sisters Watch Diamonds Are For Sims Watch The Adventures of Spaceship Simulation Watch the Sheriff from Alpha Centauri Watch Yibs Yibs! Watch Of Tea & Treachery Watch VoidBop: The Movie Watch Princess Cordelia’s Pirates Watch Captain Sigma: Olympus Landing Watch All My Friends are Fred Watch Tournament of Honor Watch A Room with No Door Watch Critters from Mauven Forest: The Last Llama Watch Packs & Prejudice Watch Treasures of Aarbyville Watch The Great Pickle Capers Watch Dusk Glow 3: Shadowmoon Watch Peter Barker’s Homecoming Hijinks Watch Simder 2: Master Suite Watch Live and Let Diamond Watch Missing Handlebars Watch Gentlemen Corgi: A Memoir Watch SuperKids: Agent Diaper Watch Untamed Treachery of the Heart Eat Popcorn Discuss love for movies Complain about movie Talk about your favorite movie Talk about the last movie you watched Text a friend about a movie Declare a movie as your favorite genre Video Call Call a friend and talk to them about movies Cuddle while watching a movie Argue about movie Take a selfie with a movie star Ask for autograph Watch movie with Watch movie Gossip about actors Throw a movie party Movie and chill Create a movie review SimTube channel Reenact a scene on a mirror Ask a celeb for a hug  Ask to take a picture of a celebrity Talk about Starlight Accolades Go to the movie theatre alone Talk to a youngin’ about old movies **Adults and Elder sims only** Reminisce about past movies *Elder Sims only* Join the acting career **Young Adult Sims to Elder Sims only** Join the Drama Club *Teen and Child Sims only* 

I don't recommend this mod for people who use movie overrides because it may be a bit annoying to keep getting wants on movies you don't have in your game since you have an override. I'll consider making an override user-friendly version for this trait in the future♥

General mods I recommend for people who play with wants Wants Reroll by Lumpinou UI cheats by Weerbesu Searchable Pie menu by Twisted Mexi

Credits

Ravasheen for listing all the Growing Together movies

SimsVIP for listing all the movies from Movie Hangout

Zerbu mod constructor v5

Lot51 Tuning Builder

Sims 4 Studio

EA & The Sims

TwistedMexi Better Exceptions

Nisa K x Scumbumbo Tuning Error Notifier

Tee for teaching me how to create wants/buffs 🫶🏾

Cepzid for helping me with a situation goal

Jordy for motivating me and for inspiring me to add a scary buff+ starlight accolade tea

My amazing testers love you 🥹

Pose makers and the cc creators I used for the thumbnail tysm♥

To all my motivators, my family, friends, subscribers on YouTube, and all of you who’ve been leaving amazing comments on all my social media, I worked on this for you. Thank you for being part of this journey with me. To celebrate all my recent milestones, check my video out to join the giveaway for Growing Together and Movie Hangout to celebrate all my recent milestones. The video also shows how this mod works. This mod will be in early access for two weeks.

For any modder who wants to translate any of my mods, I don't mind if you upload it on your Patreon or any other website that monetizes, BUT I do not want you to post it on CurseForge. I would also like it if you keep the mods up publicly for download no early access/paywall. If any translator translates mods before the early access period, please wait till the mod is public to release it for everyone.

A bonus mod I recommend to help the in-game movie experience is the RVSN film reaper mod (movie theaters in all worlds). Btw I will create a Tumblr post on all my favorite mods for movie gameplay in the coming days!

DOWNLOAD EARLY ACCESS// Public August 25,2024

[thegayhimbo]

Stranger Things The First Shadow Review

Synopsis: Following a horrific incident from their previous life in Nevada, the Creel family relocates to Hawkins, Indiana in an attempt to make a fresh start and instill a sense of normalcy in their son, Henry Creel. However, Henry is anything but normal, and harbors a dark secret of his own that scares both himself and his family. When a series of gruesome animal killings takes place, attracting the attention of a group of teenage outcasts and a Doctor with his own agenda, Henry realizes his secret is about to be exposed, and is forced into a reckoning that will change the course of his life, and of Hawkins, forever.........

Observations:

FINALLY!!!!

I've been waiting for MONTHS to see The First Shadow. As far back as January, we got tickets and made plans to travel to London specifically for this. Last Thursday (June 20, 2024), we were able to view it on-stage.

Was it worth it? Short answer: YES.

This is going to be divided into several parts. The first bit will detail my experience at the play, and the remaining parts will contain SPOILER HEAVY analysis of the story, the characters, and plot revelations tied directly to the mythology of the show. There's a lot to speculate on where the Duffer Brothers will take the final season from here.

Part 1: My Experience

In terms of production value, this was top-notch. I loved the set designs, from Hawkins High School, to the classic 50s Diner the characters hang out at, to the gothic Creel House, to the cold white rooms of Hawkins Lab, to the hellish landscape of Upside Down, and so on. The 50s aesthetic works well, and there were multiple shots that conveyed the sense I was watching an episode from the show.

The special effects were spectacular. Huge shout-out to the way they choreographed the mutilation of both animals and humans. It actually looked like bones being snapped and limbs twisted around. There's even a disturbing scene where Hopper and Bob are digging up the carcass of a butchered cat, and the prop they used for it looked realistic (combined with dirt and blood for nauseating effect). The lighting also helped elevate the creepiness of it all.

The music was also great. They had a nice selection of 50s songs, but they also brought back familiar themes from the show. One of my favorite musical cues was the use of Philip Glass's "Window of Appearances" which is heard when Vecna's origins are revealed in "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" (Season 4, Episode 7). They also use it in the climax of this play:

The actors brought their A-game, but the two performances that really stood out for me were Isabella Pappas as Joyce and Louis McCartney as Henry Creel. Pappas does a stellar job combining Joyce's world-weary "I'm sick of everyone's bullshit" attitude with the fierceness that makes Joyce stand out as a character. It reminded me a little of Natalia Dyer's performance as Nancy Wheeler, especially with the "take charge" attitude that both of them have.

As for McCartney, he was the show-stealer. I didn't go into this play expecting to feel any sympathy for Vecna, but the emotional depth McCartney brings to his performance elevates the character to a 3-dimensional complex tragic villain, which makes his eventual fall to evil all the more heartbreaking.

The audience I was with was fully immersed. Most of the jokes got a laugh, there were a few screams when jump-scares occurred, and there was a standing ovation at the end when the cast came out to give a bow. Even during intermission, everyone was chatting happily about the play, and I heard nothing but compliments.

My only regret is, due to a scheduling conflict that day, we ended up missing the first 5 minutes, and they wouldn't let us in the theater until the title cards came up. We did see parts of the beginning on a TV screen in the lobby (and one of the patrons was gracious enough to fill us in on what happened), but I wish I'd been in the theater for the beginning. My advice is GET THERE EARLY if you plan to see it. The theater fills quickly, and they may not let you in at certain points.

The only minor nitpick I have about the quality of the play is there were a few moments I had a hard time understanding what certain characters were saying. This was mostly in the scenes with Henry/One/Vecna when he was either screaming or alternating to his demonic voice. I was usually able to figure out what was going on, but I wish the dialogue had been clearer.

Overall, this was a fun experience, and I even brought back memorabilia from it:

Part 2: Characters/Story (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!)

It's pretty much advertised in the synopsis, but the play takes place in 1959 when Joyce, Hopper, and Bob are in high school during the time the Creel family moves into Hawkins. The story is largely centered on Henry Creel's villain origins as he becomes more unhinged due to the power he possesses. This leads to a series of pet killings in Hawkins that catches the attention of Hopper, who ropes in both Joyce and Bob to investigate and find the culprit. All the while, Joyce is struggling to put on a play at Hawkins High School (i.e. The Dark of the Moon), which coincidentally happens to have Henry/One/Vecna as the main star! :)

These three arcs sound like they shouldn't connect at all, but to the Duffer Brothers credit, they manage to thread them in a way that's believable and engaging. Joyce's exasperated attempts to get The Dark of the Moon off the ground provide some light comedy to what is essentially a grim story, and it was a nice way for the audience to see all the adult characters from the show (i.e. Ted Wheeler, Karen Wheeler, Al Munson, Lonnie Byers, Sue Sinclair, Charles Sinclair, etc) as they were during their teen years.

The investigation of Hopper, Joyce, and Bob into the pet killings hearkens back to the old-fashioned dynamic the Party had in the first season when they were looking into Will's disappearance.

As for Henry/One/Vecna, his arc was well executed and horrifying on so many levels:

The way a young Henry Creel was portrayed in this play was oddly endearing. I mentioned earlier that McCartney brings a lot of emotional depth to the character, and by that, I mean he portrays teenage Henry as awkward, shy, creepy, funny, and even sympathetic at times. He's a kid who doesn't feel comfortable in his own skin, who has a hard time interacting with other people, and has powers that frighten him with the added side-effect of NOT knowing how to control them yet. Victor Creel mentioned to Nancy and Robin in S4 that Henry was a "sensitive child" and it turns out that was meant literally: Lights go on or off (or even explode) whenever Henry's mood fluctuates (making Henry constantly jumpy), he can unknowingly tune into the radio with his powers and mistakes it for voices in his head, he can read the thoughts/moods of other people, he can create illusions (similar to Kali/Eight), and whenever he tries experimenting with his powers, it ends in disaster. In short, he's someone who's terrified of his own shadow, and almost everything in his environment sets him off. At the same time though, there are some relatable qualities to him, such as his love for comics like Captain Midnight (which he eagerly shares with Patty), and there is an internal struggle he deals with for most of the play to genuinely be a good person in spite of the demons (both literal and figurative) that threaten to overwhelm him. He reminds me of Will Byers in some ways, and I am dead sure that parallel between these two characters was intentional on the Duffer Brothers part.

Contrary to what's implied on the show, it turns out Henry had his powers long before he moved to Hawkins. Previously, he lived in Rachel, Nevada until an incident between him and another boy resulted in said boy ending up in a wheelchair. It's ambiguous whether Henry deliberately attacked the boy or if it was an accident (it could have been either one), but it was enough to force his family to move. His parents (particularly his mother) are insistent on pretending everything is normal and that Henry will eventually get better, all the while putting more of an emotional strain on Henry as he tries (and fails) to conform.

We get a little more insight into Henry's parents, and it's not pretty: Victor Creel was already established on the show as a war veteran with severe trauma and PTSD over killing innocents during a raid, and the play depicts him the same way, with the added effect of being so wrapped up with his own issues that he fails to see his own son spiraling. The sad thing is there are scenes indicating he does love Henry (and also defends Henry's relationship with Patty, referring to it as "puppy love") but he isn't able to convey that in a way which makes Henry feel safe.

As for Virginia Creel, I don't know if this was intentional in the narration, but I found her unlikable. Putting aside the unsettling 50s Stepford Wife persona she projected, her treatment of Henry bordered on emotional abuse. She likely didn't intend that, but everything, from her attempts to keep Henry isolated from the one relationship that brings him any happiness, to constantly treating him like a time bomb waiting to go off, to pretending everything is okay when it isn't.........all of this causes whatever mother/son relationship she has with Henry to deteriorate. There's even one nasty scene where she smacks him, though she quickly regrets it when Henry lashes out in anger and forces his mom to witness a vision of herself being covered in spiders when she was locked in the closet by her abusive parents as a child. In some ways, it reminded me a little of the Norma/Norman Bates relationship from the Psycho series (minus the incest subtext) in how unhealthy it is. It was deeply uncomfortable seeing her attempt to force Henry to be something he wasn't just so she could maintain the image that she and her family were perfect. And when she realized she couldn't do that, she finally tried to wash her hands of Henry the moment Dr. Brenner showed up and offered to take Henry into his care ("Lock him up and throw away the key" to paraphrase one of her comments). I get that this is set in the 50s where there's plenty of values dissonance with how parents raised their kids at that time, and there is some context behind why she was scared of her son and his behavior (because there were times Henry wasn't acting okay), but she still handled this situation poorly and contributed to Henry internalizing his trauma and insecurities until they exploded out of him in the worst possible way. It was bad enough that Henry was dealing with something he didn't understand, but she needlessly added on to those problems.

Alice (Henry's sister) is also in the play, but she only appears in a few brief scenes, and sadly doesn't get a lot of characterization beyond being the "cheerful child" in the family. It's implied she knows that something is wrong with her brother, but doesn't look closely at it. Interestingly, they portray her like she's Henry's younger sister, even though the show established that she's supposed to be older (There's a news article in S4 that claims Henry was 12 and Alice was 15 when the Creel murders happened). Other than that, there isn't really much to say about Alice.

The three main characters (Joyce, Hopper, Bob) have their familiar quirks that will follow them into adulthood: Bob is nerdy, smart, good with technology (which comes in handy in their investigation) and the host of a radio show. Hopper is the disgruntled son of the Chief of Police who's trying to make something of his life. Joyce is high-strung, in a dead-end relationship with Lonnie, and trying to find a balance between optimism and pessimism. In a way, I'm reminded of the Steve/Jonathan/Nancy dynamic we briefly got in the S1 finale, with Joyce having similarities to Nancy, Bob to Jonathan, and Hopper to Steve. This was clearly set up as a love triangle between the 3 of them, and I have to question if the Duffer Brothers deliberately did this to foreshadow what could end up happening between Steve/Jonathan/Nancy in S5. In any case, Joyce, Hopper, and Bob investigate the animal killings when they start to happen, and while they come close to figuring out who it is, they ultimately miss the mark and pin the crime on the wrong person (Poor Victor Creel). Sadly, by that time, it's too late, and both Virginia and Alice Creel are dead.

There is a new character introduced named Patty Newby who plays an important role. She's the adopted sister of Bob and was revealed to have been taken in (or stolen as a child, as Henry later claims) by Bob's father, Principal Newby. Despite his misanthropy and awkward nature, Henry takes an interest in Patty, and the two of them develop genuine affection for one another. When Patty auditions for Joyce's play, Henry helps her with her lines (which leads to both of them getting cast as the main leads), and later feels comfortable enough to share his secret powers with her, including giving her a glamorous vision of starring and singing in a Las Vegas show. Against all odds, I actually found the relationship between Henry and Patty to be cute. Not only did it humanize Henry, but the way it was presented made sense: Both of them are outcasts with deep insecurities that they're trying to work through. Patty feels like an outsider in her family and at school due to her race (which isn't helped by people like Dustin's father making disgustingly bigoted comment towards her during class) and her complicated relationship with her adopted dad, who treats her coldly. Since Henry also feels like an outcast in his family, he's able to empathize with her, and both of them try to encourage the best in one another. In a moment of genuine kindness, Henry helps Patty locate her biological mother (who coincidentally is also a singer), and Patty returns the favor by trying to encourage Henry into believing that he is a good person and that there are positives with his powers.

I know some fans will complain about how Patty was never mentioned on the show even though she's supposed to be adopted siblings with Bob, but I'm not bothered by that. Nothing about her existence contradicts anything on the show, and it was nice to see a redeemable side to Henry that proves he wasn't a complete monster to begin with. The only thing that's harsher in hindsight is that, because Patty and Bob were close growing up, and because of Henry's affection for Patty, it makes what he does to Bob in S2 (i.e. siccing the demodogs on Bob) a lot more vile.

Finally, there's Dr. Brenner himself: If there was ever any doubt that he saw Henry and the other special kids like El as a means to an end, this play erases that. He is at his absolute worst here. Manipulative. Cruel. Determined to push Henry over the edge. Egging Henry into murdering a convicted prisoner, even though Henry fights back against doing that, all so Brenner can test him. Hurling verbal abuse at Henry, and then playing up the "Loving Papa" persona in the same way he would do with El years later. It really says something that he is the most loathsome character in the play, and that he doesn't see Henry as a person so much as a tool.

This was already a given on the show, but I still remember fans who kept making apologies for Brenner's behavior in S4 while insisting he really did care about Henry and the other kids in spite of his abuse of them. 🙄 I always maintained those were garbage apologies, and this play only reinforces that. Even though Henry is ultimately responsible for the choices he makes (regardless of the negative influences in his life), there is an argument to be had that Brenner bears responsibility for destroying whatever remaining goodness Henry had left in him until Henry became the cold, calculating monster with a plethora of rage and a deep hatred for humanity to accompany it.

Part 3: Revelations

For a while now, I've held theories that the powers El, Henry, and the other special kids have had were connected to the Upside Down. These theories were even talked about in my reviews for Stranger Things Six, Stranger Things The Other Side, and Stranger Things Suspicious Minds. I've also speculated on the idea that the Mind Flayer might be its own entity, and that Henry/One/Vecna didn't create it so much as gave it a form when he found those black particles in the Upside Down decades later.

This play confirms those theories: Not only is the Upside Down connected to their powers, but it's revealed in this play that the Mind Flayer acted as a malevolent corrupter to a young Henry, which would later lead to him becoming the monstrous Vecna.

At the beginning of the play, there's a flashback to 1943 where the U.S. military was experimenting with a new technology on the USS Eldridge to create a force field to hide the ship from the Germans during WWII. Interestingly, this bit was based on a real life experiment called "Project Rainbow," and the pamphlet I bought gives more details about it:

In the play, the technology caused the ship to end up in the Upside Down, where most of the crew was slaughtered by Demogorgons. The sole survivor turned out to be Dr. Brenner's father, who came back to the real world with altered blood in his system. He ends up dying, but passed on his secret to his son, kick-starting Brenner's scientific pursuits for the military. In other words: Brenner was aware of the Upside Down long before El banished Vecna to it in 1979.

Fast-forward a few years later. Henry is in Rachel, Nevada, playing in one of the caves with a spyglass when he encounters a rogue scientist who worked under Brenner in Nevada. Brenner had spent years attempting to replicate the experiment on the USS Eldridge in Nevada, and one of his scientists had stolen key technology and fled to the caves. When Henry discovers the technology, it transports both him and the scientist to the Upside Down. The scientist is killed, but Henry gets exposed to a malevolent entity (The Mind Flayer) before he is transported back to this world. Just like with Brenner's father, his blood is altered, and so is his personality. Brenner would later be able to track Henry down due to the spyglass he dropped in the caves after his exposure. In spite of escaping the Upside Down, Henry was now connected to the Mind Flayer, who spends the majority of the play acting as a malicious influence driving Henry to kill, and chipping away at his personality bit-by-bit:

It's not really a spoiler to say Henry is behind the pet killings in Hawkins (since he was shown killing animals on the show), but the difference here is the play makes it ambiguous how much control Henry has over his powers and actions. The Mind Flayer certainly uses Henry as a vessel, but there are moments Henry was shown to be capable of resisting it, indicating there was some manner of agency on Henry's part. In some moments, he chose to drive off the monster, whereas in others (like the deaths of Virginia and Alice Creel), he allowed the monster to work through him.

Like I said, these are theories I've held for a while now, so it felt gratifying to see them validated. While Vecna's monologue to El in 1979 implies that he was always a sociopath with powers who acted on his own accord with no outside influence, it's important to note that Vecna in that scene is an unreliable narrator twisting past events to paint himself a certain way to El. Part of it may be that he doesn't want to admit he was a victim of the Mind Flayer and that he made his own choices (Which is true: He DID have choices and the ability to reject the Mind Flayer, which we see in one scene when the Mind Flayer attacks Patty's father, and Henry intervenes on Patty's behalf to save him). Part of it may be that he's been under the hold of the Mind Flayer for so many years that, by the time El meets him, he's come to believe he and The Mind Flayer are one in the same.

Either way, regardless of what happened, there were a lot of elements stacked against Henry that makes me pity him: The Mind Flayer's influence, Brenner exploiting Henry's powers for his own selfish scientific desires instead of genuinely helping him, his parents trying to force Henry to be normal and shove down his issues instead of taking the time to deal with them..............the only positive thing Henry had going for him was his relationship with Patty. Her determination to see the good in Henry and his powers, and her belief that Henry could rise above the darkness gave some brief salvation for him. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to save him, and the darkness won in the end.

There is a slight change I was okay with: In the show, Henry mentions that he fell into a coma after killing his mother and sister. While that is true to some extent, he actually wakes up a few hours later and flees the house to go find Patty at the school. He encounters Joyce in the basement (after the power gets knocked out) and, in a scene that's both creepy and sad, he acknowledges that Joyce is a good person and warns her that the world will punish her for it while taking away everything she holds dear. There's a dark irony to his words considering he would later be responsible for the disappearance of her son, the death of Bob, and most of the problems Joyce would later deal with on the show.

Following his encounter with Joyce, Henry finds Patty on an elevated stage platform, and begs her to run away with him. She is basically his last hope at this point, and even that is taken away when Brenner manages to track him and Patty down. There's a whole "Good Angel/Bad Devil" exchange that occurs as Patty (the Angel) implores Henry to fight against The Mind Flayer while Brenner (the Devil) snarls that Henry is already a monster and he might as well accept it. All of this cultivates in Henry using his powers on Patty, having finally surrendered to the Mind Flayer's influence, and throwing her from the rafters, almost killing her. Henry passes out after this, and Brenner takes him back to Hawkins Lab, where he will spend the next 20 years as Brenner's prisoner. Patty manages to survive the fall and, thanks to information Henry gave her earlier, she's able to locate her biological mother in Las Vegas and reunite with her. The last act of redemption Henry would ever have.

These revelations help give context to the mythology of the show. They explain what motivated Dr. Brenner for so many years. They explain the Mind Flayer was well aware of this world, and that Brenner was aware of the Upside Down long before El opened the gate in 1983. They explain Henry already had troubling aspects to begin with, and that his encounter with the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer only amplified those problems. They explain how and why Henry became disillusioned, nihilistic, and angry over the next 2 decades, and how he would project that onto his enemies once he became Vecna. They explain why Henry/One/Vecna takes an interest in certain characters on the show, from El (whose upbringing and struggles are similar to what Henry went through as a child) to Will (who shares similar traits with him as an outcast and a nerd) to even Billy (with both of them projecting their rage onto the world), and went as far as to target them. And, most importantly, it explains how Henry and other special kids like Kali and El got their powers.

This does raise interesting questions that I hope S5 will explore more of:

Since Will was kidnapped and taken to the Upside Down in S1, does this mean his blood type has been altered as well due to his exposure to the Mind Flayer? Does he now possess some kind of power similar to El that we haven't seen yet but might be unveiled in the last season?

And what about the Upside Down freezing in time in 1983? Considering the Upside Down remained consistent as a hellish environment (even after El banished Vecna to it in 1979), this gives the impression that what happened there was an anomaly. I still maintain Will's disappearance had something to do with the altered environment, and I have provided theories for it in my review of Stranger Things The Other Side, but it's still a question that remains unanswered by this play.

And then there's Patty: She does survive, and last we see of Patty is her reuniting with her biological mom, but it's also mentioned she disappeared and that Bob (her adopted brother) misses her and plays songs over his radio podcast in her memory. Did Bob ever find Patty following this, or did he die before that could happen? Does she even remember Bob or Henry, or did the fall (which injured her badly enough that she now walks with a cane) cause her retrograde amnesia? Is it possible S5 might bring her back, and she could have some role in reaching out to Henry/One/Vecna? Is she still alive at this point?

So many questions that I'm hoping S5 provides answers for.

Part 4: Themes

It's no coincidence that the play Joyce produces for the school holds parallels to the tragedy of Henry and Patty's relationship. The Dark of the Moon is a ballad about a "witch boy" named John who falls in love with a human girl named Barbara Allen. He is given a human form on the condition that she remains true to him. Through a series of tragic events (including the death of their child at the hands of religiously-crazed townsfolk), Barbara ends up betraying John, causing him to lose his humanity and become a part of the fog from the place he came from.

If we're drawing direct parallels, it's pretty obvious Henry is John, the "witch boy" embedded with special powers who falls for the human girl, Barbara/Patty. The difference is that the "humanity" of Henry is more metaphorical than literal: He attempts to not give into the monstrous influence of the Mind Flayer, and Patty recognizes this and is determined to help him through the love she gives him. However, the key difference is Patty isn't the one who betrays Henry. If anything, she remains a loyal friend and confidant to Henry (even AFTER Brenner tells her that Henry killed his mother and sister) and desperately tries to convey to Henry that she believes in him and that he can fight off The Mind Flayer. Unfortunately, that proves insufficient, and it's Henry who inflicts the final betrayal on Patty, destroying their relationship, and causing Henry to become prisoner of Dr. Brenner at Hawkins Lab. He is the "witch boy" who returned to where he came from.

It should be noted that the ballad this play is based on contains these final lyrics:

They laid poor Barbra by the old church gate,

With the wild, wild rose growin' nigh her,

And witch boy roamed the mountain high,

'Til mountain fog became him.

And then one morn, before the dawn,

The fog rolled down that mountain,

It came to rest nigh Barbara's rose,

and watered there a briar.

The rose and briar climbed the old church gate,

'Til they could grow no higher,

And there they tied in a true love's knot,

The rose wrapped 'round the briar.

And so a witch and human gal,

Had conquered death eternal,

And 'neath the darkness of the moon,

Their love's entwined forever.

Could this be foreshadowing that, as evil as Henry/One/Vecna has become, there is still a chance at redemption for him through Patty? That whatever love he held for her could bring back Henry's humanity and allow him to overcome the Mind Flayer one last time? They did a similar thing with Billy Hargrove in S3 (with the platonic love he had for his mother), and since love is one of the key forces that's been shown to repel the Mind Flayer, it could work again in Henry's favor if he chooses to take it.

However, a lot of this is tied to whether Henry is capable of remorse or empathy at this point, and considering what we've seen on the show, it's a safe bet to say whatever humanity he had left in him is now gone. I'm doubtful that even if Patty shows up in S5, it'll be enough to redeem Henry. There are some things you can't come back from, and regardless of the negative influences he was dealing with, Henry still had choices, and he chose to hurt others.

In a way, Henry's story reminds me of Coriolanus Snow's arc in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Despite the relationship he has with Lucy Gray Baird, it wasn't enough to cancel out his negative personality traits (narcissism, entitlement, etc) and whatever love he may have had for her isn't enough to redeem him, or prevent him from becoming the tyrant we all know and loathe by the events of The Hunger Games.

Another theme present was the exploration of the adult characters and how the personality traits they had as teens continue well into adulthood. It's been speculated before by various groups of people that, internally, there's a certain point where you stop growing mentally and remain the same age, and that definitely seems to be the case here with some characters. The problem is that while these qualities might have been excusable when they were teenagers, they become less appealing as time goes on:

Ted Wheeler, for example, is depicted in the play as a dumb jock who's clueless most of the time. Fast-forward to the 80s, and he's now an apathetic father who still remains clueless. Not only is this not cute anymore, it's frustrating to his wife and those around him.

Karen Wheeler is depicted in her teens as interested in her youth and beauty and dating Ted BECAUSE he's a hot jock. By the time she's an adult, she's still into that (though she does make more of an effort to be emotionally available to her kids unlike Ted) and her desire for youth and a passionate relationship almost leads her to sleeping with Billy despite the inappropriate age difference between the two. 🤮

Jim Hopper is a younger man with a fractured relationship with his abusive father, and a lot of his motivation is rooted in trying to stick it to his dad and prove that he isn't the loser his father thinks he is. It's why he takes an interest in the animal killings around Hawkins and conducts an investigation similar to how police would do it. It's also why he joins the Vietnam War later (as he would later tell Enzo/Dmitri in S4). Even later becoming the Chief of Police on the show likely has its roots in this. Years later, long after his dad is likely dead, he's still trying to prove him wrong.

Lonnie Byers is depicted as a douchebag, even as a teen, who isn't really interested in making something of his life, who's coasting off other people, and really doesn't have any desire to improve himself. Come Season 1, and is it any surprised he's a deadbeat dad who's divorced from Joyce and still making shitty decisions down the line?

Same goes for Al Munson: The play depicts him as an improv actor who's deeply self-centered, who isn't as good as he thinks he is, and is someone who just annoys everyone around him with his antics. Anyone who's read Flight of Icarus knows he doesn't get any better as an adult, and it has completely wrecked his relationship with his brother Wayne and his son Eddie.

And then there's Dustin's father: "Asshole" is the best term I can use to describe him. He's very belittling and not well-liked (even among his peers), and it doesn't surprise me that Mrs. Henderson (who's also shown to be a cat-lover as a teenager) would eventually split with him and raised Dustin on her own.

There are a few positives though: Both Charles and Sue Sinclair come out of the play as decent people, and Sue is shown to be a loyal friend to Joyce, helping Joyce to get her play organized. I can see why they ended up together, and I maintain both Lucas and Erica are lucky to have them as parents.

The overall point is, like with Henry (who also never really grew up, and is now an angry kid trapped in the body of a 30-something adult), there is a theme that change is a process you have to work on. All of these characters (including Henry) have their own flaws they have to work through, and it is a choice about whether you put in the hard work of overcoming those flaws, or you surrender to them and let them dictate your life and stilt your growth. It's always an uphill battle, and it's never easy, but when the alternative is hurting the people around you, I would argue it's worth the effort for their sake.

Final Thoughts:

While there is some leeway between how events in the play can be interpreted, there is one tiny retcon that was hard to ignore: Henry's age. In the show, it's specifically mentioned in the newspaper article that Nancy and Robin look up that Henry was 12 when Virginia and Alice Creel were killed. However, this play retcons his age to being 14 years old. My guess is this was likely done so that Henry would be a freshman, and therefore able to attend Hawkins High School with Joyce, Hopper, Bob, and the other characters. While I don't mind this retcon for story purposes, it still sticks out like a sore thumb, and I wish the Duffer Brothers would take better care with details like that, especially after what happened in S4 with Will's birthday being forgotten.

There is a pamphlet for 10€ that they sell at the Phoenix Theater that gives more information about the play, its cast, and the central ideas behind the story. You can even see it in the picture above with the other memorabilia I collected (next to the t-shirts I bought). If you're going to see the play, I highly recommend purchasing it. It's worth the money.

Overall, this was a well-written play that I'm willing to accept as canon. I hope the events in this play are referenced in S5, and have a role in how the show's story unfolds. I highly recommend getting a ticket for anyone who is a Stranger Things fan! :)

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (January 21-27, 2024)

Godzilla Minus One made awards show history in both Japan and the U.S. this week. Its Oscar nomination for best Visual Effects is the first of the series (Godzilla [1998], Godzilla [2014] and Godzilla vs. Kong were previously shortlisted) and the first for any Japanese film. Small wonder Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, and their team went berserk when the nomination was announced. The other nominees are The Creator, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Napoleon, and Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. According to IndieWire, The Creator has the edge, but Minus One could very well win. And while it naturally made less headlines in the Anglosphere, Minus One also picked up a whopping 12 Japan Academy Film Prize nominations, exceeding Shin Godzilla's 10.

Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color is now in North American theaters. I was intrigued enough to make it my fourth theatrical viewing of this movie, but in the end it did basically strike me as a gimmick. Godzilla Minus One was shot digitally with sets designed for color, so making it actually look like a film from the 40s was always going to be an uphill battle. Even with the regrade, there wasn’t a ton of contrast in most shots, and some of the scenes taking place at night were quite hard to see. Still, apart from the Odo Island massacre, I found the Godzilla scenes as gripping as ever.

Thanks to Minus Color, Minus One made $2.6 million this weekend, crawling back into the box office top 10. Its total in the U.S. and Canada now stands at $55 million, third among all foreign-language films released in the U.S.

Brush of the God, Keizo Murase's directorial debut after a lifetime in movies, is finally complete. It'll play at the Osaka Asian Film Festival in March (link contains more images), and hopefully travel overseas very soon. Murase will also receive an Association Special Award at the Japan Academy Film Prize.

Clover Press shipped out copies of Godzilla & Kong: The Cinematic Storyboard Art of Richard Bennett to Kickstarter backers, myself included. It's an excellent art book, and there are plenty of deleted and altered scenes mixed in with more familiar sequences. Believe it or not, Bennett drew the panel above for Kong: Skull Island—they considered having James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) flash back to an encounter with King Ghidorah in Vietnam. Not sure how that would've worked, as Ghidorah is generally not one to lie low for a few decades, but it's the first I've ever heard of it being considered. I'm hoping to post some more scans soon. Here's the order link.

Minecraft social media accounts teased a crossover with the Monsterverse, in what's likely to be the most high-profile of the Godzilla x Kong video game collaborations. The Mobzilla mod was created over 10 years ago, so this is long overdue.

The big toy news this week was Titanic Creations revealing the digital sculpt for its Yongary figure. This guy's had even less figures than Gorgo - I can only think of one, and very few of them were made - so expect massive demand. New Godzilla toys were also on display at London Toy Fair, both at the Playmates booth and among the plushies made by an unknown company.

[familyabolisher]

In 1937, urban planners debated turning Tel Aviv into a ‘Riviera city’ in a proposal called the Grunblatt scheme, which is reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s unrealised 1933 Plan Obus to demolish the Cape of Algiers and construct an elevated highway along its coastline. Today, many of the Palestinian beaches belong to private developers and hotels. This is part of a longstanding policy of effacement, whereby Palestinian scenes of dispossession become sites of Zionist leisure. After the massacre of residents in al-Tantura (occupied May 22–23, 1948; population of 1,500) in 1948, the Palestinian population was driven out. A mass grave of several dozen bodies remains, and today it lies under the parking lot of Dor beach, near Haifa. These processes are not unique to Palestine, architecture and redevelopment play essential roles in the construction of a revisionist urban coloniality. Both Tel Aviv and Algiers were given the moniker ‘White City’.

But Tel Aviv is not particularly white. Off-white maybe, mostly grey. Sharon Rotbard’s WHITE CITY, BLACK CITY (2015) examines the Bauhaus style that is the city’s pride. The Ashkenazi elite of Tel Aviv sought refuge in the ‘values of order and rationality’, she explains, against ‘the amorphous black chaos’ of the present. ‘It enabled many Tel Avivians to conduct wealthy bourgeois lifestyles, and at the same time to expose a socialist and progressive façade, to take solace in the assurance that while their city was clearly grey and faded, it was actually white and clean; that although it was no more than a provincial Western outpost, it was as international as the International Style; and that although it was modern, it was historic.’

The early essays about the local International Style in HA’IR and HA’ARETZ newspapers praised it as neither historic nor revolutionary, but as a sensible innovation, emphasising ‘usability, economy, modesty, cleanliness’. Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus represents the aestheticisation of sterility, which was the style’s original function, in a clear through line from the sanatorium that helped to popularise it. The export of this architecture to the colonies held the promise of ridding the cities of their distinct character, of curing the tropics of their diseases.

These architectures, then, reinforce a psychogeography of ‘cleanliness’. In light of the increasing visibility and political power of the messianic-Zionist bloc in the Israeli governing coalition (Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud alongside the Hasidic political parties United Torah Judaism and Shas), the re-emphasis of Tel Aviv’s White City’s heritage serves as a coping strategy of sorts for Tel Aviv’s settlers in particular. It allows them to self-narrate as ‘liberal’ and to separate themselves from an unwashed ‘Other Israel’, supporting the story that Tel Aviv’s relationship to the rest of the state is of a cosmopolitan vestigial organ. This is romantic, but untrue. While the fanatical settler foot soldiers that roam the frontier are perhaps the most visible parts of the Israeli project, a quieter enemy remains at work – the state’s bureaucratic violences, dressed as system planners and administrators. Tel Aviv’s ghouls in their windowless offices stare at population registries of Palestinians, a blinking red button in front of them, adding to their press releases a Biblical or archaeological citation to camouflage the ethnic cleansing.

[stevethehairington]

okay so. overall review:

actually not as bad as i expected it to be! and not as bad as i thought it was going to turn out while i was in the trenches there lol. i still wished it focused a little more on eddie's home life/relationship with his dad and uncle AND his friends, and had way less of the romance stuff (read: none), BUT i will admit that there ended up being a lot less of the romance stuff than i initially expected and a lot less than it seemed like there would be while still in the middle of the book.

the paige stuff still made me uncomfy bc i didn't like the power dynamics there (paige had something eddie wanted desperately, and i don't like the idea that that could have had something to do with his "feelings" for her/why he engaged with them ((esp bc let's be real — he didn't seem super torn up over not getting to be with her in the end)) or that she used that to her advantage bc there was ALSO something in it for her) BUT i will say they did make it slightly less skeezy than i expected bc she was only a couple years older than him instead of like. significantly older like i expected.

i do wish there was more about eddie's friends and their fallout and reconciliation. his friends were super important to him and he just. dropped them. like that. and there was BARELY any blowback. like yeah there was a fight with ronnie, but we never actually got to see the reactions of any of the other hellfire/corroded coffin guys, and i would've liked to see that. same with the reconciliation, it felt very minimal — i would've liked to see more of how that played out too.

I LOVED EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SECOND OF WAYNE MUNSON CONTENT, THAT MAN IS A GIFT HE IS AN ANGEL I ADORE HIM WITH EVERYTHING IN ME. IF THERE IS ONE THING THIS BOOK HAS DONE IT HAS SOLIDIFIED MY STANCE THAT WAYNE MUNSON IS THE BEST GOD DAMN CHARACTER AND I WOULD DIE FOR HIM.

as for eddie — i think the author did an alright job finding his voice. there were times where i thought she really nailed it, but there were also A LOT of times where i thought "he would never say that!!" "he would never do that!!". it wasn't very consistent, but overall it wasn't awful and there were some good parts!

the other characters we know and love that made cameos — VERY fun to see them (gareth, chrissy, jason, hopper, will, jonathan!!!) gareth was ESPECIALLY fun to see because they really embraced that feral chihuahua boy energy we love to assign to him. BUT. i am SO incredibly upset with how badly they massacred my boy tommy h (whOSE LAST NAME THEY COULDNT EVEN GET RIGHT I MEAN W H A T!?) they fucking. got his characterization SO BAD. it was awful. i am. personally offended by it (joking, mostly rhsjsi). (as a tommy lover i am. devastated tho. HE WOULD NOT DO THAT!!!)

OH ALSO — reefer rick. WHAT a fun dude. hes out here in his robe and bunny slippers drinking darjeeling tea, living it up. what a guy.

id like to give a huge FUCK YOU to principal higgins too! they made that dude a straight up MONSTER. he was unnecessarily CRUEL and some of the things he said straight up to eddies face,,,,,,, sir what the FUCK. i know the 80s was a different time but jesus fucking cHRIST was casual cruelty and bullying from grown ass ADULTS commonplace? i sure hope not.

ALSO FUCK AL MUNSON LIVES ALL MY HOMIES HATE AL MUNSON LIVES. that man was AWFUL, TRULY HONESTLY GENUINELY THE WORST. neglectful and cruel and downright AWFUL. NOT ONLY DID HE CONSISTENTLY ABANDON EDDIE THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE BUT THEN HE DREW EDDIE INTO HIS SCHEMES, CONNED HIM, FUCKED UP REAL BIG, AND THEN LEFT EDDIE IN THE ASHES OF THEIR — OF HIS — HOME AS THE ONLY PERSON LEFT WITH THE COP WHO GOT SHOT AND IS LIKE SLOWLY BLEEDING OUT. TALK ABOUT FUCKING TRAUMA WHAT THE FUCK. i hope he got flayed ALIVE by charlie greene lmao it would serve him right that absolute twat waffle.

also, im gonna be real. the end of that book was actually INSANELY depressing. like, it tried to be positive because you gotta end on a positive note right? but it just fell. COMPLETELY flat. bc we all know what happens to eddie in canon. he's sitting there reenrolling in school, peacoking around about how he's GOING to finish high school and he's GOING to graduate and he's GOING to show principal higgins that he CAN do it and that he ISNT the fuckup deliquent he's convinced he is. BUT WE ALL KNOW HE DOESNT FUCKING GET THAT IN CANON. he's taking waynes advice and fully embracing who he is and he's learning to be comfortable in his own skin and to rise above all the noise of people who don't like him and think he's a freak. ONLY WE KNOW HE NEVER TRULY GETS TO DO THAT EITHER BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW HOW IT ENDS IN CANON. so yeah it just ends up being a REALLY fucking BLEAK ending because all of that "positivity" is absolutely tainted. it's fucking soured. and i am once again INSANELY INFURIATED about eddies death. so fuck the duffers, again.

also, eddie munson literally never caught a fucking break. not one fucking break. his ENTIRE life was just one series of tragedies after the other and it truly just continued on that way until he fucking died. honestly, its a goddamn MIRACLE that he has ANY ounce of positivity and optimism and hope left in his life when we get to him in s4. thatd how utter dogshit a hand he has been dealt in life. and it only.got worse from there. and i will NEVER forgive ANYONE involved in his creation for that.

so yeah! that concludes my journey reading flight of icarus. it was a wild ride lol.

[vesseloftherevolution]

Napoleon 2023, Review

I saw this with @idefilarate, and it was such a train-wreck. There was so much wrong with it, in the funniest way imaginable. We spent the entire film whispering what was wrong to each other.

This will be a long post, and I’m aware a lot of other people have already made some excellent points on here.

I can see what Ridley Scott was attempting with this film, and there are several reasons it didn’t work. I also have some historical specific points to make.

Directing Choices, Acting Problems, and the English Propaganda

It can be argued that Scott was trying to show Napoleon in a “more human” light, and I am always perfectly happy with that interpretation. It could also be argued he was deliberately showing Napoleon in a negative light, which I am also fine with. However, this film didn’t really do either. Napoleon did not seem more human for his brutish behaviour to Josephine, the childish tantrums or the forced jokes. If Scott had wanted a proper negative light, he would have focused on Napoleon’s ruthlessness, such as with the Massacre in Egypt, and his willingness to bypass the laws.

The overall sense I got when watching the film was that it was too compressed. The action went from point to point without showing how on Earth it got there. We had about ten minutes of Napoleon as consul, and then he was unexpectedly emperor, with a token line from Talleyrand about becoming emperor. Too much stuff in not enough time. However, I was also bored. By the time it got to Napoleon on Elba, I half felt like taking out my phone and doing something else. There was no narrative arc to keep the load of action in place, and the characters went through no real development.

There was some good acting. The lady playing Letizia Bonaparte was excellent, for the ten minutes we saw of her, as was Talleyrand. There were even a few scenes with the main characters (like Josephine cooing over the baby) that I actively enjoyed. But for the main part, every character had one mode and that was it. Napoleon was sulky and incompetently panicked. Josephine was moody or upset in a coquettish way. Tzar Alexis I was obnoxiously cheerful about everything.

I can see, as others have pointed out, that Scott was following English propaganda of the “Corsican Ogre”. However, he payed no attention to the fact that Wellington had a good deal of respect for Napoleon as a general, and that part of Napoleon’s charm for the English press was just how astonishingly unexpected he was. This wasn’t a caricature of Napoleon. This was a caricature of a caricature.

Historical Inaccuracies

Oh. Where to start with the many many many things that were wrong with this. I am fairly lenient when it comes to historical accuracy in fiction. Authors and filmmakers are allowed some artistic liberties, otherwise they wouldn’t be writing fiction. However, the sheer amount of nonsense Scott made up is incredible. I am going to list it in bullet-points, so as not to rant too much:

The age gap between Josephine and Napoleon, and how that messed up their relationship.

The utter butchery of FRev, including Marie Antoinette executed in 1789, and Robespierre looking like Danton and spouting random nonsense.

Hot-shot destroying the ships in Toulon harbour, whilst N hadn’t finished capturing little Gibraltar.

Josephine’s dress hanging off her shoulder as if she were a whore.

The lake battle with “the high ground”. It doesn’t deserve the name of Austerlitz.

The lack of tactics in any of the battles. Just men running at each other.

Josephine and Napoleon’s relationship being at best toxic and strained.

Napoleon returned from Elba because Josephine had a fling with Alexander, despite the fact Josephine had historically died earlier that year.

Letizia making Napoleon cheat randomly.

The scopes at Waterloo, the lack of farmhouses, the tents just behind the lines.

Wellington being clumsy and talking too much nonsense.

The use of Ça Ira and the Camagnole (which was in itself somewhat good), but the utter lack of any of the other excellent Napoleonic folk songs and military marches.

That is all that immediately comes to mind. Having said all that, I did enjoy the cinematography, and it was worth seeing, just to confirm my suspicions that it was a mess, and that there are many better films. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this rant! Let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed off the list of failings.

[herbofgraceandpeace]

My informal review of The Last Graduate (here be spoilers)

Well, I just finished The Last Graduate, and I’m just sitting with all my muscles clenched in tension and sorrow, lol

But seriously, what an interesting ending……I’m not sure what to make of it yet? The narrative was leading you to expect a big push/big sacrifice from El when something inevitably went wrong, and I was hoping that everything would simply go right (obviously), but I wasnt unaware of Orion’s opportunity to make the self-sacrifice play. WAS IT NECESSARY THOUGH???? *insert look how they massacred my boy meme. i think i read way too much of this book late last night (whoops), so my comprehension of it is not as developed as with the first book (shame on me for reading too fast like a glutton), but what a great sequel! I liked watching El wrestle with learning to trust people and work as a team, I loved watching her relationship with sisters sorry her friends develop, and I loved the growth of her relationship with Orion as well*. I will say I think his character has been a little underutilized at times, in a way not untypical for a romantic interest of either gender, but Novik that’s my mannnnnnnnnnnn, I wanna read about him! But we definitely did get some good scenes that developed he and El’s relationship and seemed the seeds for some of his own character development (let this man GROW). I’m not sure yet how I think the ending plays into that. If Patience-Fortitude was truly going to recenter the world, then his sacrifice was noble and necessary. But if it wasn’t, then why does my precious child need to kill it himself instead of letting El cast it into the void, hmmm? Side note: I loved El finally coming to appreciate the Scholomance cause I was freaking devastated by her willingness to condemn it. Maybe if I had suffered as much as she had, I’d hate my Alma mater too, but the loss of a place you know so well, a place where you have the happy memories of making your first friends—that’s gotta count for something, right?

I forgot to mention this in my review of A Deadly Education, but El’s Mom and their relationship is so important. God bless her, I’d love to meet her. I’d be exasperated at her character role as the Sole Voice of Truth and Goodness, except that’s the truths attributed to her are valuable, nuanced, and beautiful, and her knowledge of them makes sense in the context of how she has chosen to live her life. A life of uncomprising, open-hearted service and self-sacrifice teaches you a lot! Which brings us to one of my favorite bits of the book. I adore that Novik, Scholomance, and El all realize that you have to be faithful in the little moments because they shape you!!!! She had grown accustomed to saving the freshman instead of sacrificing them for her own benefit, and this shaped her character and prepared her to realize and then do what needed to be done to save them all. (I have so many good quotes saved without page numbers, so you’ll get those later, but boy howdy, these books have so beautiful things to say)

I’m so, so invested in what’s going to happen in the next book, but I’m not ready to have finished this delightful trilogy either. They’re going to be great rereads for sure! Here’s hoping things turn out okay for Orion (also why did El’s mother warn her off him? We do not know.) I’d love to see El get to change the world with her tiny enclaves, despite my dislike of large stakes in a story since they often render the plot unwieldy to the point of disbelief. It’s hard to write a story about something that changes the world without either 1. Writing Lord of the Rings or 2. Being massively and disgustingly reductive about what it takes to change the world and the u comfortable, uncontrollable consequences of doing so. Nevertheless, I am ready to be hurt again!

*I am once again asking for people not to put sex scenes in books. Please. Don’t do it. Ever.

[daydreaming-robot]

My review for murder drones episode seven

SPOILER WARNING

Holy shit they were not kidding when they said so much is gonna be revealed. That is one hell of a lore bomb.

- First thing first, the Absolute Solver said that N was one of the main reasons that it wants them to retain their personalities after the trio was repurposed. Which confirms a long speculation I had. N and J’s personalities stayed the same, while V on the other hand, has her personality altered to a more ruthless state. In the beginning of episode two, V has a more softer and sweet personality back when they were all worker drones.

- The heart is actually Nori, Uzi’s mother. Who apparently survived everything. As shown in episode two the only way to kill a murder done is at the heart, seems like it also works for hosts of the Absolute Solver. By the way, why does Nori don’t want her own daughter to know that she’s alive( it’s already told to her by N either way)

- The cross is actually an USB drive that halts the Solver’s possession. Which it wants to destroy (and did it in the episode)

- When J recognizes the railgun, the visor says “Prior Hazard” pretty much says she remembered her own death

AND NOW THE MAJOR POINTS

- How the core collapsed is insane, as that’s what the Solver wanted. Apparently the humans put Nori in a private facility to prevent the Solver from taking over. And the intern grabbed Nori’s friend, Yeva for help. When the Solver got booted out from Nori’s system it played one last trick. The singularity explosion. Nori cannot control it so Yeva has to cut her hand off, but a major red flag is how the hand fell into the fleshy pit. And the core of Copper 9 went bye bye

- It’s getting more and more obvious that N killed Uzi’s mother, I dread the day it’s finally told. Uzi’s reaction isn’t gonna be good

- The vision(or flashback) N had. It showed all the disassembly drones massacring all humans on Copper 9. But at the end of it, N’s screen flashed purple and said “ Access Denied, Contact Admin” pretty much assuming that N and maybe V are resistant to the Solver’s influence. Thanks to Uzi’s hacking

- THE REVEAL THAT TESSA IS CYN IS INSANE. The Solver fused Cyn’s zombie drone body with TESSA is both insane and terrifying at the same time. Cyn is wearing TESSA’S SKIN AND HAIR, also her drone number is 1001, interesting to note.

- The ending scene, I have no idea how Uzi, ended up in outer space. And the shot of the planet, including the core crater looks like an eyeball looking at Uzi(that’s on me)

This episode left me on the edge of my seat and I’m scared for the season finale

[purplesigebert]

Thanks for tagging me @forasecondtherewedwon 💜!

rules: list 5 of your favourite books on a poll, so your followers can vote which book they think captures your vibe the best

Tagging: @the-road-betwixt, @austennerdita2533, @galvanizedfriend, @orlissa, and @cbk1000.

Book summaries from Goodreads below the cut:

A Murder for Her Majesty by Beth Hilgartner

Horrified at having witnessed her father's murder and fearing that the killers are agents of Queen Elizabeth I, eleven-year-old Alice Tuckfield hides in the Yorkshire cathedral by disguising herself as one of the choirboys.

The Way Lies North by Jean Rae Baxter

This young adult historical novel focuses on Charlotte and her family, Loyalists who are forced to flee their home in the Mohawk Valley as a result of the violence of the 'Sons of Liberty' during the American Revolution. At the beginning, fifteen-year-old Charlotte Hooper and her parents begin the long trek north to the safety of Fort Haldimand (near present-day Kingston).

The novel portrays Charlotte's struggle on the difficult journey north, and the even more difficult task of making a new home in British Canada. In the flight north, the Mohawk nation plays an important role, and Charlotte learns much about their customs and way of life, to the point where she is renamed 'Woman of Two Worlds.' Later in the novel she is able to repay her aboriginal friends when she plays an important part in helping the Oneidas to become once again members of the Iroquois confederacy under British protection.

Strong and capable, Charlotte breaks the stereotype of the eighteenth-century woman, while revealing a positive relationship between the Loyalists and aboriginal peoples.

The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry

Ekaterinburg, Russia: July 16, 1918. Ten months have passed since Nicholas II’s reign was cut short by revolutionaries. Tonight, the White Army advances on the town where the Tsar and his family are being held captive by the Bolsheviks. Nicholas dares to hope for salvation. Instead, the Romanovs are coldly and methodically executed. Moscow: Present Day. Atlanta lawyer Miles Lord, fluent in Russian and well versed in the country’s history, is thrilled to be in Moscow on the eve of such a momentous event. After the fall of Communism and a succession of weak governments, the Russian people have voted to bring back the monarchy. The new tsar will be chosen from the distant relatives of Nicholas II by a specially appointed commission, and Miles’ job is to perform a background check on the Tsarist candidate favored by a powerful group of Western businessmen. But research quickly becomes the least of Miles’ concerns when he is nearly killed by gunmen on a city plaza. Suddenly Miles is racing across continents, shadowed by nefarious henchmen. At first, his only question is why people are pursuing him. But after a strange conversation with a mysterious Russian, who steers Miles toward the writings of Rasputin, he becomes desperate to know more–most important, what really happened to the family of Russia’s last tsar? His only companion is Akilina Petrov, a Russian circus performer sympathetic to his struggle, and his only guide is a cryptic message from Rasputin that implies that the bloody night of so long ago is not the last chapter in the Romanovs’ story . . . and that someone might even have survived the massacre. The prophecy’s implications are earth-shattering–not only for the future of the tsar and mother Russia, but also for Miles himself.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling

Harry Potter, along with his best friends, Ron and Hermione, is about to start his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry can't wait to get back to school after the summer holidays. (Who wouldn't if they lived with the horrible Dursleys?) But when Harry gets to Hogwarts, the atmosphere is tense. There's an escaped mass murderer on the loose, and the sinister prison guards of Azkaban have been called in to guard the school...

[olderthannetfic]

Opinions on Hogwarts Legacy now that it’s come out and is well received by people who aren’t Harry Potter fans? From what I understand JK Rowling didn’t have any creative input and while there are allegations of other members on the creative team being shady, it’s unlikely all that different from other creative studios that people enjoy without qualms, but don’t afford the same attention to.

I’ve heard there’s even a “trans potion” in the game. Which sounds awesome. And when people ARE playing/streaming it but donating any money they get to pro trans group they’re still getting vilified. What’s that about?

Questions are, am I supposed to “care” or feel like im not “a good person”, words I’ve seen being thrown around right now, for either playing the game, finding interesting, or not caring about the topic at all?

Also, what actual influence does Rowling have other than being a big mouthed bigot?

--

Nonnie, do you live under a rock?

The big issue people are taking with the game isn't trans stuff but antisemitism.

I have yet to hear a really detailed review of how the game feels in practice, something that's hard to quantify and that really does matter when we're evaluating fantasy worldbuilding that seems suspiciously like it includes real life bigotry.

The plot appears to be about evil goblin bankers wanting to take over the world, which is already about a thousand red flags, but we were waiting to see what the full game would contain. Early reports are that it's much, much worse than even the previews made people fear.

What I know right now is that they put a fucking shofar in as a goblin artifact. Granted, there are lots of horns in the world, but that thing really does look like a shofar. Some of the goblin rebellion details seem to have been cribbed from real life massacres of Jews. I'm waiting for more concrete details and reviews by people I trust.

But people I trust and people who are playing this game don't overlap that much, so I don't have much data yet.

Gentile tumblr thinks Jews are white and therefore acceptable targets. Antisemitism gets blown off as not that big of a deal. But in practice, there are fucktons of pro-genocide shitbags all over the place spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, and it looks like one of them wrote this shitty game.

The reason people aren't going "YIKES!" more is partly because not many have made it all the way through the plot yet and partly because they're too ignorant to detect its subtext.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

The Dark Secret of Kung Fu Panda (Part 1)...

... Shifu is kind of a shitty teacher.

But only if you live in the West!

Apparently, you all like Panda analysis, so let's talk about cross-cultural translations, Theravada Buddhism, filial piety, and the ultimate futility of writers trying to impart a specific interpretation to a diverse audience - just to start! Then, I'll come back on Thursday and we can unpack WTF is the deal with that Dragon Scroll.

American movies can pick up a lot of box office cash in China, so they try like hell to stay inoffensive and relevant to Eastern and Western audiences. Often, they fail spectacularly.

But Kung Fu Panda pulled it off! ...With just a little wobble on the dismount.

Chinese audiences have little to complain about when it comes to these guys:

But here in the West, we can't seem to stop coming up with reasons all three of 'em got a raw deal - even the ones who were a little bit genocide-y.

And especially this li'l guy.

Aw, no, look how cute!

People will bend over backwards to defend that cute kid (and sexy adult), to the point of throwing Oogway, Shifu, Po, Tigress, or the whole franchise under a bus.

There are folks out there who are gonna die mad about Tai Lung's lack of a redemption arc and humiliating demise. Like, literally.

To their credit, the Kung Fu Panda team caught this after some early screenings and tried to fix it. Tai Lung's betrayal and attempt to steal the scroll just wasn't enough, so they added a massacre, and every villain after Tai Lung had an impressive kill count woven into their backstory right from the start.

(Not that it necessarily helped, if you happen to look this bad boy up on DeviantArt.)

In a wuxia film, and in Chinese culture in general, betraying your father/teacher, and asking that they betray their father/teacher is more than enough to make a villain. Given that filial piety is the basis of all ethics, as taught by Confucius himself, what went down in the Jade Palace was an attempt to burn society itself to the ground, all because one guy felt entitled to a shiny piece of paper. That is Captain Planet levels of self-destructive evil.

All three movie villains pulled off some violation of this fundamental ethical duty. Tai Lung betrayed his father/teacher. Lord Shen betrayed his parents - and managed to let his teacher go, with sadness and disappointment on both sides. Kai betrayed his adoptive brother - although from his point of view, his brother betrayed him, so he may be the most sympathetic of them through this lens.

The only way to impart this level of wrong across cultures is to add a lot of murdering, and even then it doesn't quite scan. Tai Lung didn't even necessarily kill anyone in the village; cartoons get nervous about the word "die" around these here parts, so they just said he "laid waste." Well, that could mean a lot of things! Does that guy deserve decades of solitary in a hell-prison for (in my mind) doing nothing more than calling out an unfair action and leaving a bad Yelp review of Mr. Ping's noodles?

I can't trust a bird who eats noodles, I don't care how cute his hat is!

So, it's not just that the violation of ethics doesn't carry, the concept of "unfair" crept into a place where it really doesn't belong. Traditionally, it is perfectly acceptable for a Kung Fu Master to be a total piece of shit who motivates his students to learn out of sheer spite and puts them through hell.

Oh, yeah, I remember him. That moustache looks familiar...

If we're coming from a place where we buy that trope and expect it to be played straight, Shifu's mistake was being too nice to Tai Lung. His student's self-esteem was insufficiently crushed! That boy had the nerve to break his own Master's leg! Thank goodness Shifu became a cold, uncaring, emotionally-distant task master - just in time to raise Tigress right!

Yes. Good. Never let on that you're pleased with anything your student does. That'll keep 'em in line!

But a Western audience isn't going to buy that. Shifu just looks like a jerk, and Tigress is a jerk... In fact, all of the Five, save Viper (who is just that nice) seem like jerks, and Oogway is a troll.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have something urgent to do? I think blowing out these candles, one-by-one, is rather important too."

Being an utter troll is also a valid way to teach kung fu, and Buddhist practices in general, which is definitely where Oogway is coming from. I peg him as a Theravada Buddhist, due to the way he teaches, and one scene in particular from the third movie.

Enlightenment isn't something you just hand over like a piece of paper, it's something everyone has to find for themself, in their own way. It's not possible to teach Tai Lung or Po self worth, and it's not possible to teach Shifu to lighten up, so the best a smart teacher can do is give them a good nudge, then step back and see what happens.

...Even if that "nudge" requires one to ascend to the Spirit Realm and leave your most stubborn student to clean up his own damn mess.

But there aren't as many Buddhists watching in the West, so what's a writer to do?

Well, they split the difference. Tigress did grow up better than Tai Lung, in accordance with the tropes, but it turns out she's not done learning and growing, and neither is Shifu (or the rest of the Five, but they don't get much of an arc. There are time constraints!). Their arrogance and lack of flexibility render them incapable of working with someone like Po - and they gotta figure out what they're doing wrong fast, 'cos Shifu's other teaching mistake is on his way back! In China, Shifu is learning to be a better teacher. In the West, he's learning to stop being a shitty teacher! And it takes him all three movies to grasp the humility he needs to learn from Po. Tigress, on the other hand, learns to respect Po and soft style by the end of film one.

When Western values are applied, Shifu comes off as a very slow learner, due to his own impatience and inability to slow down. But that's okay. He does learn, he's clearly trying, and we love him anyway.

Well, most of us do. Some of us can't get over that cute, fluffy little leopard, and we don't buy the (admittedly imperfect) attempt to make this story intelligible across cultures. These folks tend to focus their ire, much like Tai Lung himself, on that useless piece of paper the troll stuffed in a temple like it was something important, and the jerk led Tai Lung to believe was rightfully his. Why can't the boy just have his useless piece of paper, huh?

Well, I'll come back later and I'll tell ya.

[eretzyisrael]

How WWII Nazi propaganda led to the Arab war with Israel

Six years of relentless anti-Jewish propaganda, beamed to the Arab world day and night during WWII, led to the Arab  war against Israel i 1948, German political  scientist Matthias Kuntzel claims in his important book, Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East (Routledge, 2023). Review in JNS News by Lyn Julius:

A member of the Handschar SS division reading the ‘Islam and Judaism’ pamphlet, supposedly written by the Paslestinian wartime Mufti

Arab antisemitism is not a response to the creation of Israel, it is the driving force behind the Arab-Israeli conflict. Too many people reverse cause and effect. They blame the antisemitism suffered by world Jewry on the existence of Israel.

This is the central thesis in Matthias Küntzel’s book Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East, newly published in an English translation.

Küntzel, a German political scientist and historian, holds that the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was an aftershock of World War II and a direct result of antisemitic Nazi propaganda. In effect, the Nazi war against the Jews became the Arab war against Israel. This issue is worth revisiting in the light of new studies—notably by Professor Jeffrey Herf—into the impact of Nazi propaganda on the Arab world, as well as work that explores the role played by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini.

Küntzel covered some of this territory in his previous eye-opening book Jihad and Jew-Hatred. In that work, he explained how the Germans financed both the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti’s activities during the 1930s. From small beginnings, by the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood had a million men under arms. After the war, ideologue Sayid Qutb provided the intellectual underpinnings for the Muslim Brotherhood’s antisemitism in his book The Struggle Against the Jews.

Antisemitism was at the core of the Muslim Brotherhood’s reactionary mass movement against modernity. The agents of this modernity, the Brotherhood believed, were the Jews. As a result, the war against Israel marked the end of what Küntzel calls Islam’s liberal phase, a time when Arab elites tried to reap the benefits of modernity. The end of this phase found expression in the mass exodus of Jews from the Arab world.

According to Küntzel, barrages of antisemitic propaganda were broadcast day and night over the entire six years of World War II from the Zeesen station in Germany. It had a considerable effect on an impressionable and largely illiterate Arab world, which continues today. As the great Middle East expert Bernard Lewis wrote, “Since 1945, certain Arab countries have been the only places in the world where hardcore, Nazi-style antisemitism is publicly endorsed and propagated.”

It is hard to gauge the extent to which Nazi propaganda translated into actual antisemitic violence during World War II. When the Nazis were winning, they and their Arab allies were preparing for the battles to follow. Nazi propaganda is often cited as one of the main causes behind the 1941 massacre of Iraqi Jews known as the Farhud. But even when the Allies reversed the tide of the war in Nov. 1942, antisemitic propaganda could have been a factor behind violence against Jews in North Africa.

Küntzel has come under fire from those who believe that Islam has always been antisemitic. The Quran does contain anti-Jewish verses, but Küntzel argues that it was the Mufti who fused those verses with European myths of Jewish power and conspiracy.

In 1937, a pamphlet called Islam and Judaism began to circulate in the Muslim world. It was the first attempt to use religion in order to spread antisemitism. It is believed to have been written by the Mufti himself, who was the main purveyor of ideological Islamic antisemitism. For example, the Mufti had already patented the myth that the Jews aim to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and Muslims need to defend the shrine at all costs.

Islamized antisemitism was repeatedly mobilized to block compromise and normalization between Arabs and Jews, Küntzel claims. The Mufti himself terrorized the moderate Palestinian Arab majority into adopting extremist views. For example, members of the moderate Nashashibi clan and their supporters were murdered during the Arab revolt of 1936-39. Other opponents of the Mufti were killed between 1946 and 1948.

But war with Israel was not inevitable. Küntzel claims that it was only in 1947, at a meeting of the Arab League, that Egypt accepted responsibility for the struggle in Palestine. Arab elites were loath to go to war, but the mass hysteria generated by Muslim Brotherhood propaganda and the Mufti’s incitement proved irresistible.

Not all Muslims are antisemitic, just as not all Christians are antisemitic. Nonetheless, Küntzel writes, pro-Hitler sentiments are alive and well among Arabs and Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.

Last month, we received a stark reminder that such sentiments are not only rampant among the rank and file, but in the Palestinian leadership. Addressing the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas made blatantly antisemitic remarks,exonerating Hitler of antisemitism. This undermines the widespread Western belief that Israel is to blame for the lack of peace.

Küntzel’s book is an important one. It is a clear-sighted and timely vindication of the idea that, as Küntzel puts it, it is not “Jewish settlement blocs, but Palestinian ideological blocs, that present the biggest obstacle to a peace settlement.”

Read article in full

The post How WWII Nazi propaganda led to the Arab war with Israel appeared first on Point of No Return.

[catdotjpeg]

Photos from a die-in in front of the Prime Minister’s Office (首相官邸) in Tokyo, Japan, on 2 Nov. The protest was led by the Network Against Arms Trafficking (武器取引反対ネットワーク) (NAJAT). The rally description states:

The Israeli military continues to massacre Gaza residents by carrying out unprecedented and violent indiscriminate air strikes , as well as launching an invasion by ground troops. Already, more than 8,300 people, including more than 3,400 children, have been killed, creating an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

Under these circumstances, the Japanese government has decided to impose sanctions, including asset freezing, on Hamas executives who carried out indiscriminate attacks. On the other hand, it has not clearly condemned the genocide committed by Israel, abstained from the United Nations General Assembly's humanitarian truce resolution, and has not called for an end to the attacks. This is clearly a double standard.

First of all, we need a ceasefire as soon as possible. While the so-called "G7" countries, such as the United States and Europe , are effectively supporting the genocide committed by Israel, Japan, which has barely distanced itself from it, has an important role to play. The Japanese government should use every means possible to pressure the Israeli government into agreeing to a ceasefire, including reviewing the Japan-Israel Defense Exchange Memorandum and the Japan-Israel Investment Agreement, as well as imposing economic sanctions.  We will hold a die-in in front of the Prime Minister's official residence, demanding that Foreign Minister Kamikawa, who will be visiting Israel and other countries starting November 2nd, firmly demand that the Israeli government stop the attacks.

Sugihara Koji, a representative from NAJAT, shared photos and video from the action, stating that 150 people participated in the die-in. Participants also read messages from Gazans describing the situation on the ground. 

"I think about how lonely the injured men, women and children in the hospital are. I can't stop thinking about that child waiting for her mother to come back to life or that woman waiting for her family to get out of the rubble. Gaza feels so alone and betrayed."

Another participant shared a statement:

When I tell my friends about Gaza, they say, "It's complicated, isn't it?'' Our crime is that we start with, "It's complicated, isn't it?'' People who have the right to live the same lives as us are simply killed. The world is ignoring our voices and saying, "You have no dignity." It's not because it's difficult, but let's listen to the voices that are out there and raise our voices.

Die-in participants were harassed by Kojimachi police who stated, “Lying down or sitting in a way that obstructs traffic is a violation of the Road Traffic Act.” Sugihara stated that local police had “lined up the cones in advance and regulated it, so it [wasn’t] obstructing traffic at all.” 

[tomorrowusa]

This is the Texas of Greg Abbott and Ted "Cancún" Cruz where kids get less consideration than guns.

If police had been told that the school library contained books about slavery or LGBTQ+ acceptance at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde they would have barged in with guns blazing instead of spending over an hour playing with themselves outside the school while kids were being murdered by yet another gun nut.

The long-awaited report detailed systemic failures by both state and local law enforcement surrounding the massacre, one of the worst school shootings in US history, including the events that contributed to the 77-minute delay between the arrival of first responders and when the shooter was killed. “The victims and survivors should’ve never been trapped with that shooter for more than an hour as they waited for their rescue,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a Thursday press conference discussing the contents of the report. “The families of the victims deserved more than incomplete, inaccurate, and conflicting communications from officials of their loved ones.” [ ... ] The report, based on a review of more than 14,000 pieces of data and more than 260 interviews, also directly called out Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department officials, including former police chief Pete Arredondo for instructing officers not to enter some classrooms until keys had been secured. While the police response to the shooting has been heavily criticized, it’s important to note that the Texas GOP has been blocking gun safety legislation that could’ve potentially stopped this shooting from occurring.

Among Texas Republicans, the right to conduct school shootings is revered and is enshrined in the sacred 2nd Amendment. Police in Texas have to be careful not to offend the gun-worshiping GOP establishment.

The Department of Justice report can be read in its entirety below.

Critical Incident Review Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School

We already know what a horrible tragedy this was. Reading about the lack of professionalism, gross incompetence, and outright cowardice of Texas law enforcement will make your blood boil.

Republican governors like Greg Abbott want to force women to have babies by denying them reproductive freedom. But once those kids are born they are of little interest to Republicans.

[fernandidilly-yo]

A Mostly Unbiased Review of Netflix’s Avatar The Last Airbender:

I had avoided any spoilers/trailers/press releases of this show for the sole purpose of being as unbiased as I possibly could. I knew absolutely nothing about this show going in. I was doing my best to give it a fair chance, even with the past live-action’s corpse hanging over our heads.

So, as an og Avatar fan, here’s is my overly annalistic take on Netflix’s Live Action Avatar Series. In as neat of a chronological order as I can give them.

(Heavy Spoilers)

Wish they would have let Katara do the opening credits like she did in the show, it was a good way of giving her depth and showing what kind of person she was, someone filled with hope.

But I can forgive it.

Love the costume and set designs, you can see the love and care that went into making them.

Love that we got to see more of the Air Nomads.

And the fact that there was a Comet Festival makes a lot of sense actually.

I also really appreciate Aang and Gyatso’s relationship, the lines “can’t I just keep pretending I’m your friend?” and “you are my friend…you will always be my friend.” Actually straight up killed me.

The line brought to life just how young Aang is, a twelve-year-old boy. Which made it all the more gut-wrenching.

However, all this build up, Aang and Gyatso’s scene, showing us the genocide, it felt like it was leading to something.

But when Aang is triggered into the Avatar State upon seeing the destruction of his home…it fell very flat.

He had more emotion at finding out he was the Avatar than he did seeing his people massacred…Netflix, would it have killed you to use some fake tears, have the kid emote, let him scream a little?

I don’t think I’m asking for much.

Zuko’s scar who? I don’t see her.  

I like the awkwardness that the actor brought to Sokka’s character, felt real for a teenage boy and he played it well.

Gran Gran straight up taking lines from the show. I like it, and the fact that Gran Gran was the one that originally told Katara the legend, it fits.

This however, is some of the only times they use any lines from the original show. :\

Love Zuko’s room. Top Teir. Artist Zuko is kind-of-canon, and I am here for it. Love the dragon scales, the notes, the drawings and maps on the walls.

And I also love, love, love that Zuko has trinkets from his travels, as well as Avatar artifacts. 🤌

I’m sorry but why do Sokka and Katara’s necklaces look like they’re made of plastic? Do better, Art Department.

Shout out for giving Katara her hair-loopies.

Also, credit to the Make Up Department, you somehow made Aang’s arrow look like the shows while still giving it more detail. Something that was apparently impossible in 2010.

Also! Asian/Native people exist! Something that also didn’t seem to be true in 2010!