#the movie explores a lot!

[pynkhues]

Juno!!

never seen | want to see | the worst | bad | whatever | not my thing | good | great | favorite | masterpiece

I actually get a little defensive when it comes to Juno, because I think the flack Diablo Cody got after the movie was unwarranted. She's a great writer and this swell of shitty backlash against her, to me, felt like a byproduct of her a) being a woman, b) having been a sex worker, and c) the fact that women have always been at the heart of the stories she's told, from Juno to Jennifer's Body to United States of Tara to One Mississippi.

That's not to say I think she's a perfect screenwriter undeserving of criticism, because I think there are plenty of genuine criticisms to be made of her work, particularly around white feminism and pacing issues, but I think a lot of the criticism was about discrediting her as a writer at all, particularly in the sort of meme-ification of her dialogue.

Juno deserved every accolade it got at the time, and I begrudge the revisionist history of it. It's a good movie. It's not anti-choice, because Juno comes close to getting an abortion and just decides it's not what she, herself, wants; it's sharp and compelling, and the late act solidarity between Juno and Jennifer Garner's Vanessa is a moment I really, really love.

It's a messy, imperfect, complicated film, but it's also one I hold a lot of affection for, in no small part because I was about 16 when it came out, and I remember seeing it at the cinema and just knowing, for one of the first times in my life, that a woman wrote it, and that meant a lot to me at the time.

ask me about a film

[macbethz]

suburbia; or the sad, quiet horror of getting everything you ever wanted

"No Surprises," Radiohead // Safe (1995) // Kingdom Come, J.G. Ballard // Blue Velvet (1986) // "Once in a Lifetime," Talking Heads // Little Shop of Horrors (1986) // Jon Ware on I Am In Eskew // Vivarium (2019) // "His 'n' Hers," Pulp // The Truman Show (1998) // White Noise, Don DeLillo // Supergod, Warren Ellis and Garrie Gastonny // 17776, Jon Bois // photograph of 1970s Las Vegas underground Cold War bunker // Disco Elysium, ZA/UM

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - The Caribbean

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: death mention / family death mention / ]

Mhmm I sure love thinking of the reality where we did get more time to really know Karai and her dynamics with the bros. Losing her hit hard in the finale, but it would’ve hit much, much harder had we known Karai longer and really saw her relationships develop with everyone.

I especially would have been interested in her dynamic with Leo, as past iterations often have the two of them clash in ideals and the like while still sharing many characteristics. Two sides of the same coin, and all that. Her specifically being the bros’ Gram-Gram also adds a whole new dynamic as well.

Imagine how interesting it would be, to have Karai start off on Leo’s side for once, showing wholly just how alike the two are at their cores and bonding as family without the worry of betrayal or animosity that other iterations suffer through, only to have Karai die anyway. Their parting hug and the desperate look of horror Leo wears later on would have hit that much harder, I feel.

[now-you-sound-like-a-jedi]

Okay so there's the beginnings of a debate going on in the notes of one of my posts about Satine's Mandalore. Someone arguing that her method of governance wasn't sustainable has posed the question "what would have happened if the Trade Federation tried to blockade Mandalore?" but like?? It would have been more or less the same as when the Trade Federation tried to blockade Naboo??

The Naboo weren't warriors either, all they had were a ragtag group of pilots and politicians, two Jedi and the Gungans, and the Gungans were overwhelmed and captured by the end. The Naboo blockade failed because Anakin took out the control ship and Padmé stopped Nute Gunray. And- hold on a second, who were Satine's friends again?

It doesn't even matter that the Senate wouldn't necessarily support the Jedi helping Mandalore like they did Naboo, because both Obi-Wan and Padmé demonstrated that, given the choice between obeying the Senate and helping Satine, they would choose the latter. And you know that if either of them said "hey, we're going to Mandalore to help Satine and kill some battle droids", both Anakin and Ahsoka would be like "cool, I'll get my cloak".

Let's be real here, Nute Gunray would be running home with his tail between his legs in less than forty-eight standard hours.

And also, Satine canonically carries a deactivator with her at all times and has the aim of a military marksman. She is demonstrably perfectly capable of wrecking a bunch of droids and, what's more, she has absolutely no reservations about doing so.

In conclusion? I'd like to see the Trade Federation try.

[movie-robotnik-positivity]

Jim Carrey once mentioned that he likes playing Robotnik because the character is not always the same. He keeps evolving both physically and mentally, growing more bitter and ego-driven over time.

So it makes sense that if he's playing Robotnik again, he won't be the same as he was before.

[melonthesprigatito]

I already had my Inside Out 2 wish fulfilled, now I found out that we're getting Zootopia 2 and The Incredibles 3 too? I'm SCREAMING-

[pianokantzart]

Thing I wish was explored more in fic/fanart: Luigi feeling guilt over revealing Mario's name, even if under duress. Once the crisis is over and Luigi has time to think, he realizes how that slip-up could have gotten Mario killed. Him feeling like, had they swapped places, Mario never would have revealed Luigi's name.

This feeds into my headcanon that after he was rescued, Luigi didn't ever talk about his time in The Dark Lands, and certainly didn't talk about the interrogation. Not only is there a lot of fear connected to those memories, but a lot of guilt and shame, not just because of what his brother went through to save him, but the fact that he didn't put up a fight against The Shy Guys and... most of all... the fact that he gave in and cracked during Bowser's interrogation. Like you said, he feels like if they'd swapped places Mario wouldn't have been so "weak."

It is definitely something I'd like to see explored further.

[jacarandaaaas]

uhhh I’m bored so hot take: this fandom constantly reduces luisas character down to be only her trauma🧍‍♀️

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Maid and The Crocodile

standalone YA high fantasy romance, set in the world of Raybearer (10 years later)

a girl ages out of her orphanage and searches for a job as a maid - but before she’s hired, she accidentally gets bound to the Crocodile - a god thought to steal girls through his shrines throughout the cities

she wants nothing to do with him or his curse, and gets herself a job as a Curse Eater at an inn, consuming the spiritual residue of their past mistakes and regrets

but her past and her connection to the Crocodile won’t go away, and she gets caught up in his revolutionary ambitions

disabled MC (vitiligo, cane user)

[awaythe-clock]

The Green knight is like. Its about honour. Its about regret. Its about fear. Its about courage. Its about shame. Its about the cyclical nature of the world. Its about mirrors and parallels. Its about your mom and you. Its about death and decay. Its about choices. Its about magic. Its about trying to avoid the unavoidable. Its about aging. Its about changes you aren’t ready for but have to go through anyways. Its about chances you wanted but were too scared to take. Its about gently kissing and caressing dev patels face. Its about expectations. Its about disappointing people. Its about how you look back at all the things you couldve done differently and forward to the things that may come. Its about the unyielding but loving power of nature and life. Its about being a person.

[noirtek]

when it comes to saw characters having their personalities completely mutilated by fans i think adam suffers the most by a long shot

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Monstropolis

[redheadlesbianfreak]

Every single TMNT movie is about Leo and Raph's shaky relationship and then them making up with each other by the end of it. Meanwhile, Mikey and Donnie are literally just there kinda messing around in the background. The only exceptions are pretty much Mutant Mayhem and Turtles Forever. Maybe TMNT vs. Batman, I haven't seen that one though.

Give us a movie about Mikey and Donnie's relationship you cowards. They are such a fun duo, and are usually very close, change my mind. Leo and Raph's relationship is fine, but we've beaten that horse to death by now. It's time to focus on the other two.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

Hi hello I watched all of carmilla in a weekend when I was 17 because a student teacher who in retrospect I had a bit of a crush on mentioned that she knew one of the actresses. also I am pretty invested in all your recent vampire stuff because I watched iwtv in 2 days last week because your edit intrigued me

oh hiiii 🫶 thank you for indulging me. thats so cool that you watched iwtv! did it live up to the expectation?

i also watched carmilla at 17! or like, 17-19. i found it when s2 had just started and followed it to the end. did something permanent to my brain but i think it was a good thing. on rewatch now im like, i was right to like this. like it's a solid show, it's good. it has its flaws obviously but it's well written, the emotional moments still get me, i can see why i liked it and i still like it now even when it's not anymore, you know, meeting every need that baby gay me didnt even know they had

what it doesnt reaallyy do though - i dont remember if i posted abt this or if i left it in my drafts but - is explore vampirism as a concept. their subject matter is more lesbianism than vampirism. which is great! thats what they wanted to do and they did it and it's very good. but reading interview with the vampire the book rn im realising how much potential vampires have to be metaphors for like so many things and i started wondering like 'wait, did carmilla just not really engage with it or did it all go over my head'. but it just didnt really engage with it all that much. which again is fine bc that wasnt what they were doing. im glad they were more about the lesbianism than the vampirism

but there's this interesting difference in framing, because in iwtv they keep calling armand 'ancient' right? and emphasising how old he is. and he's like 500? and i was like 'wait isnt carmilla like 400?'. she isnt, shes 340, but still, thats getting there, you know? and we know quite a lot about her history, but kind of just the Big Events. when she was turned, the events of the novella, coffin of blood, silas. thats sort of what we know. but none of the long lonely slog of history day to day you know? with armand i feel like we can really feel how much time everything takes. how every one of those years is made up of single days. with carmilla i dont feel that as much. i keep kind of thinking about daniel, when louis calls him a boy in the first episode, saying "im an old man, with all the triggers that come with it"

because carmilla might look 18 (or mid twenties at this point) but she has lived all that time. shes also seen her native land be claimed by like a succession of ruling powers, right? like armand. shes been buried alive, like louis. when lestat is born, shes already 80 years old, shes lived a whole human lifetime, and the entire adult part of it shes been a vampire. shes lived through 1680-1870 being a lure. i compared her to abigail hobbs in some tags on a post, i dont know if youre familiar with hannibal the tv show, but i do also kinda keep thinking about that comparison

if youre not familiar, in the first episode of hannibal the murderer of the week is this guy garrett jacob hobbs who kills and cannibalises girls who resemble his daughter. and later on it turns out she was made to be his lure. like they'd go places and he'd sent her to the victims to make friends and maybe get them back to their home or smth. not sure if they specified all the details. but that's what carmilla did for mother. and in s2 we hear from mattie that while every couple of decades carmilla had to lure victims for the fish god, she also seemed to just enjoy humans between those times, right? like the doctor, gets lonely, gets a new companion. but we've only sort of got mattie's mocking word for it ("dont eat him, hes a poet! or her, shes got such a wonderful voice. or that one, shes just too pretty to ruin"), we don't know exactly from carmilla's point of view what she was doing or why. if mattie's talking about stuff that happened after the blood coffin, 1950-now, then i think it's a fair assumption based on what carmilla says in the s1 sock puppet show that after she'd figured out what the real situation was and what her role in it was, when she'd started trying to save girls from being sacrificed, that she mightve been doing the same trying to save people from becoming mattie's victims. it's probably more likely that she was just trying to find excuses to stop mattie from sucking someone dry rather than actually having like an aesthetic based morality. but it might be a bit of both. im still trying to figure out what her philosophy actually is, like i dont know what existentialism actually means ghkfjghkj but i will

i also found it pretty striking in the movie when shes turning back into a vampire she says like "this was supposed to be done, you know? the blood lust, the self-loathing, the sleeping tied to a chair in my own bedroom". thats what defines her vampirism, wanting blood and hating yourself for it (the third part is a joke/reference to s1 but also i think meaningful for how she sees her relationship with laura when she IS a vampire. little bit of that 'she will reject me for my monstrousness' shining through). and thats what defines vampirism for lots of vampires across the genre obviously, but i dont know, it struck me. we dont get a lot from carmilla's pov, we know a fair amount about her, but the story is always told through laura. we get laura's diaries, but just snippets here and there from carmilla, what shes thinking, how shes feeling

and i love that shes a philosopher. i love that thats how she seems to try and find something to hold onto, in a world that kind of moves around her, having been murdered, kidnapped, turned and groomed to be a lure on the cusp of adulthood, never having been properly loved (the relationship with her father wasnt good she says in s3, and her mortal mother i dont think has ever been mentioned (like laura's)). the only good relationship she seems to have had for the better part of 3 centuries seems to have been mattie, and mattie seems to love being a vampire. i can imagine carmilla just sort of going along with anything mattie wants to do just because shes so desperate for that friendship. not like, against her will necessarily really. but more like, she hasnt even had the space to develop her own will, you know? and philosophy lets you do that. philosophy gives you frameworks to understand the world and to develop your own opinions on it. and by the 21st century she seems to have developed those opinions, she has a sense of her own values, but shes also still stuck in that same situation. shes jaded and cynical in the face of laura's optimism and strong moral code a lot of the time in s1 because she feels probably pretty powerless. like she does what she can to save some girls but at the end of the day shes scared of her mother and she has nowhere else to go really, right?

i like how she grapples with that over the course of the series, in tandem with laura grappling with her black and white morality. she sort of jumps ship from her mother to laura bc theyve fallen in love, but then laura still stuck in her hero thinking refuses to see her monstrous side. not literally bc i think the biological vampirism never seemed to be a problem for laura, but morally. the having murdered. carmilla needs laura to see that and love her while seeing it bc the last girl she loved rejected her for being a vampire.

but you see her kind of swing back and forth in s2. she softens first with laura but then they break up and she leans back hard into the sarcastic cynic defense mechanisms, leans hard into "im a monster, dont expect heroism from me". but thats like, it's sort of learned helplessness i think. it's powerlessness, resignation. bc morally shes not a monster. maybe she doesnt have as strong a drive to help other people as laura does and is a little more selfishly hedonistic in that she just wants to enjoy her/their life, but she doesnt hurt people for fun, she never has. she just sort of didnt have another option for a Really long time. so she pretends she doesnt care. "im a vampire, this is what i do, this is who i am". but clearly from the way she talks about it when she turns back into one, she doesnt enjoy it

and i like how she goes even further in s3, where she starts swinging even more to the heroic side, bc she sees hope. shes like "wow if we kill my mother, i'd be free". theres hope and she becomes like a lot more active. and shes like that at the start of the movie too, a lot happier, a lot more relaxed, and then vampirism is back and bam depression gfhgkjh like shes immediately more gloomy, ashamed of her past and her self, retreats into herself

sorry i just took this as an opportunity to dump all the carmilla thoughts floating in my head on you. you didnt ask fhkghgjh consider this an open invitation to you or anyone else to come talk to me about carmilla