#we got chekov minor love interest

[vulcanhello]

A LOT TO LOVE ABOUT STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES: CRISIS ON CENTAURUS BY BRAD FERGUSON

[panicked-herb]

Critique of Fionna and Cake’s Season Finale

It’s been a good couple months since the Fionna and Cake series finale came out. At first it felt lackluster to me, then it felt extremely disappointing, then gradually I felt more and more meh about it. I could see what they were trying to do, but it kept bothering me how bad the finale was in comparison to the earlier episodes.

Now I finally have time to write out my thoughts about it and make it everyone else's problem.

Important note before I start: All of this is just my opinions on a TV-14 show. If you disagree, that’s great and I’d be interested to hear why. Just please be respectful. 

What I Liked

The animation and visual storytelling was great. I liked that at the bus stop, they initially had Simon place Betty on the step below him, but later had him place her next to him. Too bad the writing doesn’t back this up (more on that later). 

The voice acting was good. This isn’t my forte, so no comments besides that. 

Most of the jokes landed for me. Especially Pawn Swan. He was easily the best part of Cheers for me. 

I loved the Lich speech to Glob

Blue Shift is such a feel good song it almost made me like the ending.

What I Didn't Like

Catharsis

My second biggest issue with these episodes is how little catharsis there was. We got to see Fionna get upset and cry, but that was mostly because the Scarab was kicking everybody's ass. I wished we got to see Cake get upset about how people don’t see her for who she is. Or potentially exploring her fears of going back to being a normal cat. 

I especially wished we got to see Simon ugly cry. This man has been through an apocalypse, lost his sanity, lost the love of his life, been depressed for years, and is now trying to curse himself. Dude literally said he missed being the Ice King because he was so out of it most of the time he didn’t realize how messed up his life was. He felt like almost everybody preferred him when he was cursed. Then he finally sees GolBetty after years of searching for a way to cure her, only to fail. There should have been some waterworks going on. 

Pacing

Generally, the pacing felt too slow for me. It made the episodes feel more like a second or third draft vs a finale result. The biggest offender to me was all the fights against the Scarab. Each individual battle was fine, but there were too many of them. We know the Scarab isn’t going to destroy their world in the end, so all the fights don’t do much besides look cool. Which would be fine, if they weren’t trying to make it emotionally impactful. 

This is relatively minor, but it bothers me that Casper and Nova are mostly in the episode Cheers when in basically all of the other episodes, the titular character(s) are the main focus for that episode. I think this could have been fixed, if they just cut back on the number of times they fight the Scarab. 

Pay Off

There were a lot of Chekov’s guns that either didn’t get fired or turned out to have only blanks (basically you could remove them from the story and it wouldn’t affect the plot much).

No Pay Off

Simon and Marceline’s phone call/ relationship: I know I wasn’t the only one hoping to see these two reunite after Simon tried to curse himself again. 

Dirt beet guys manuscript: This is minor, but I just feel like it would have been easy to fix. 

The time core: This is a classic case of Adventure Time world building, where they introduce a cool concept, but don’t do much with it. I don’t know what I wished they did with it. But I would have liked for them to do something.

Disappointing Pay Off

Cosmic entities that the Scarab imprisoned: Cake lets them go and they fight the Scarab. But that fight lasts for like a minute. We also see Kheirosiphon in the ending credits. But besides that, we don’t see much else. 

Everything in You song: The song is only used as a segway into the final flash back of Simon’s and Betty’s relationship. I’ll give it credit, the song is good and the scene is cute. However, you could remove it and there would be almost no effect. Considering Glob’s weakness is harmony (music), I really thought they were going to do something with it. 

Fionna’s top fantasy: Throughout the series, Fionna makes references to her dream fantasies (EX: castle made out of candy). We learn what her top fantasy is after their universe already becomes canon and they’re in their final (unnecessary) fight against the Scarab. Her top fantasy turns out to be turning into a giant woman. Ignoring the Totally Spies vibes that scene gives me, I think they really missed an opportunity to make this really sweet. In the final scene, instead of Fionna saying “Just a normal world.” She could have said something along the lines of, “This is my top fantasy”

Fionna and Cake turning things normal in other universes: Ignoring the Winter King, this plot point does almost nothing. Sure, Cake accidentally turns BMO into an alarm clock, but BMO was already dead. There’s also the Scarab’s speech, “All the worlds you've visited, all the people you've infected. Your little trip must have shown you the truth. It would be better for everyone if you were just gone.” But they themselves don’t ruin that many worlds. The only reason for them seriously thinking that is the Winter King. But he was a grade A asshole and removing his magic freed Princess Bubblegum from the madness he imposed on her. 

Casper and Nova

Before I start this section, there are two important things for me to mention

I should note that I've had over ten years to theorize about Simon and Betty. Naturally, I’ve probably forgotten some of my head cannons and character interpretations aren’t actually canon. Especially since we never really got much screen time for the two before Fionna and Cake. It also doesn’t help that Simon/ Ice King’s character arc hits close to home for personal reasons I’m not sharing in a tumblr post. But, it does mean that I’ve probably projected some of my feelings onto those characters at some point. 

I’ve never particularly liked how Betty’s been written. I wished she got more screen time in the original show and I STRONGLY dislike that they introduced the fact that she didn’t go on an expectation she was really excited about for a man she’s known for one day in one of the final episodes of the show. To me, it turned her character from an impulsive, headstrong woman who for all intents and purposes is stuck on an alien planet and the only person she knows who is still alive has magical dementia to a fucking manic pixie dream girl. She doesn’t need to have always been completely obsessed with Simon to explain why she’s going to desperate measures to save him. Once again, he’s the only person she knows in Ooo, but as the Ice King he’s basically a stranger. She also convinced him to give up his only chance to die as himself with the hope that she could save him. Finally, she loves him and doesn’t want him to suffer. 

Casper and Nova are pretty explicitly supposed to be narrative parallels to Simon and Betty and help show Simon the issues in their relationship. A lot of defense I’ve seen against criticism about this part of the story comes from a place of assuming the fandom is owo-ing the male character and doesn’t want to admit he has flaws. To be fair, it is a reasonable knee jerk reaction to have. Fandom has a LONG history of doing shit like this and villainizing women. But, at least in my case, this isn’t what's happening. 

Casper and Nova aren’t on equal footing because Nova keeps making unseen sacrifices for Casper and they always do things Caspers way. The moral that Simon is supposed to take from them is that he/ Casper should have realized how much Betty/ Nova was sacrificing for him all the time, stopped, and supported her. However, this isn’t the main issue Simon and Betty have. 

There are a total of two times where Simon does kind of stand to the side while Betty sacrifices herself:

The first trip planned to study petroglyphs in Australia: Simon jokingly offers Betty to go on his expedition with him. She accepts, which surprises him, and mentions offhandedly that she had another trip planned. Maybe he could have told her she could always go on another trip with him sometime else. But he could have just as easily assumed she wasn’t really interested in her original plan and if he asked if she was sure, it could come off as him telling her not to go.

The second trip planned to study petroglyphs in Australia: Simon stops Betty before she leaves for the bus and in the heat of the moment he says he always wants her by his side always. Betty still could have easily just given him his number and still go on her trip or they just agree to meet up later. Also, the show makes a point that Simon should have gone on the trip with her. I would like to note that Betty was planning to leave the day Simon realizes she has feelings for him. I don’t know how archeological expeditions exactly work, but joining so last second seems really rude to me. Also, he would have either needed to pack really quickly or bring nothing with him for a six month long trip. To add on, he won’t know what type of funding that trip was. For all he knew, it only had funds to send Betty over.

More often than not, we actually see Simon recognizing the sacrifices Betty is making and actively trying to stop her:

Betty time traveling into the future and away from basically everything she knows: Simon originally time travel calls her to apologize and tell her that he forgives her for leaving him as a way to allow her to move on. Betty chooses to jump through the portal. 

Dedicating herself to save him: Simon literally begged Betty to let him die rather than turning back into the Ice King. He only changes his mind after she begs him to give her a chance to save him. Everything she does afterwards, he’s either basically passed out or is cursed.

Merging with Glob: Simon begged Betty to forget the crown and escape Golb with him and Finn. Betty pushed him out of there and merged with Golb. Simon spent years trying to find a way to unfuse her with Golb. 

Not getting any acknowledgement for helping to find the Enchiridion: Simon wanted both of them to get credit. Betty told him that she wanted him to get all the credit. He awkwardly, but professionally, told her that she deserves the credit just as much as he does. She still turns down any acknowledgement. (I really don’t like this story beat because it could have been such a good chance to comment on how academia often discredits or ignores women)

We also have moments where they do things Betty’s way (or at the very least Betty does things her way) on their expedition together.

When crossing the river: Simon carefully walks across the rocks. Betty takes her shoes off and just walks through the river. Simon follows suit then slips and falls. I would just like to add that crossing a river without shoes on isn’t safe. It decreases trackson and increases your risk of cutting yourself in an open body of water. They should have just either dealt with the wet socks, brought a spare pair, or use water proof shoes.

When crossing an area full of snakes: Simon advises Betty to stick with the tried and true method for dealing with snakes. Betty decides to do the trick her mom taught her and runs through the area screaming. Simon doesn’t stop her. Instead once he sees that it’s working, he smiles.

As we see, with the exception of two instances (which could easily be changed without impacting the plot too much), Simon doesn’t need to learn the lesson that he should have supported Betty more and stopped her from sacrificing herself so much.

I think the bigger issue in Simon and Betty’s relationship is just how obsessed they are with each other. When the crown drives Simon insane and takes all his memories, the last thing Simon can remember is that he wants to marry his Princess. This leads him to literally kidnapping princesses. Betty time traveled 1000 years into the future after hearing Simon say he never saw her again after wearing the crown. In the process of trying to save him, she went mad herself. They’ve both spent years trying to save the other from and were willing to sacrifice themselves to do so (I’m fully convinced Simon didn’t have a plan for how to leave Golb’s dimension. I think the dude was just going to apologize to Betty then die).

Not Part of the Finale, But Still Bothers Me

Having Prismo be the one to actually write Fionna and Cake removes depth from Simon/ Ice King’s character. I liked how surprisingly good Fionna and Cake was and interpreted that as parts of Simon shining through. But they needed to have Fionna and Cake actually be real for the show, so they had Prismo make them. Instead of Prismo making them out of boredom, I think it would have been cool if he made them as a way to grieve Jake. Maybe after Jake died, Prismo turned to reading Fionna and Cake since his favorite person liked it and Cake’s basically a genderbent Jake. But, after reading everything the Ice King wrote he wanted more. Since he lives in the TIME ROOM, I don’t think it would be a stretch to allow him to interact with the timeline in weird ways (in fact I think we already saw this in the episode Is That You?). So, as a temporary solution Prismo made Fionna and Cake real and stores their universe in the Ice King’s head so he could get more stories out of them. Prismo meant to delete their world before the Ice King turned back into Simon, but he didn’t have the heart to. Also, they could have totally had Simon keep writing Fionna and Cake fanfiction like how he sometimes dresses up as Ice King. Except, this time, he writes them in his own modern day AU as a way to cope with how out of place he feels. 

Not part of this spin off, but it’s always irked me that Simon got to time travel to the past, but Betty didn’t. I get that Betty wanted to intentionally create a time paradox. But it still feels really hypocritical. Honestly, I think they should have just made Simon accidentally freeze her when he first puts on the crown. After Frost and Fire, when the Ice Kingdom got melted, have her thaw out and start researching ways to cure Simon. Then, during the episode she’s supposed to debut in, have her be the cause of Bella Noche. 

Conclusion

The finale had cool concepts, but it doesn't fully match up with everything that came before it.

[probablygayattorneys]

While we're on the topic of the remake of Another Code

(⚠️ SPOILERS FOR THE WII SEQUEL PART OF THE GAME⚠️ I'm going to try to not get into it in too much detail but I'm still putting the warning up)

I personally never owned a Wii, and for the longest time I wasn't even aware there was a sequel, so I was very excited to experience it for the first time in the Switch remake. I played it completely with no prior knowledge at all and i thought it was nice! But after finishing the game and doing some research about the sequel, it turns out they especially changed a lot of stuff compared to the original Wii game. I think they changed more in the sequel than in the original DS game?

There were some changes that were pretty nice, like them adding a couple more characters of colour when previously, Ashely and her mom were the only non-white people in the whole cast. I also like some of the characters' redesigns way more than their original designs.

Some other changes were a bit understandable, I guess. Like the remake completely removing two extremely minor NPCs who only had like 2 or 3 lines. Sure, that's fine

The changes that surprised me the most though, was the game completely changing a major character's backstory. In the original game, the character is alive, but in the remake, they had them actually be dead the whole time. Their motivations are very different too. There's also a side story that got removed from the remake as well. I don't understand why they felt the need to drastically change so much

Again, as someone who never played the Wii sequel before, I thought the remake version was pretty good and I had fun with it! But after learning how much was changed, I do feel a teensy tiny bit disappointed since I was really looking forward to seeing what exactly I missed out on, but I can't really do that with the remake.

It's a good game, don't get me wrong!! But yeah if anyone wants to experience what the original story was like, it's best to play the DS and Wii versions or watch a playthrough on youtube. The Switch version is more of a retelling of the story

I actually haven't played the sequel yet (I was undergoing a treatment that severely affected my memory and starting a completely unknown puzzle game while in that state seemed like a great way to miss a Chekov's gun until it shot me in the face, and then during that time a new girl started at work and we were talking about our hobbies and I mentioned my love for DS-era puzzle games "like Ace Attorney or Trace Memory" and she lost her shit because she had played Trace Memory when she was younger but then forgotten it's name and had been trying to remember for ages, and then since I wasn't using my switch at the time, I lent it to her so she could play the remake and she still has it, so I'm just... logging hours in Sims while I wait for her to finish it) so this is helpful information to know! I definitely want my first experience with it to be actually playing it myself, so I'll wait until Karina is done (though I also told her she could play all the other puzzle games because so help me god I will BRUTE FORCE HER INTO MY INTERESTS) (though I think the one she wants to play the most next is Hotel Dusk since we literally work at a hotel, so we'll probably trade off DS for switch and I'll have the chance to play it then) and then look up a playthrough or something. That's interesting that they made so many changes and also makes me even more wary and protective of Hotel Dusk. I will Kill Anyone Who Touches It.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Whole Cake Island

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano

sanji is such a self-sacrificial idiot. and i know that’s not exactly a ground-breaking statement, but it does define the entire first half of whole cake island, so it may as well be reiterated here: sanji does not value his own life as much as he should, and fails to grasp that other people care about him outside of what he can offer them, which is why he’s so surprised when luffy later comes charging headlong into big mom’s territory.

zou is a really good little arc, and it also mirrors the themes of whole cake island in miniature. the minks collectively make a massive sacrifice and risk absolutely everything to protect raizou, and wci is essentially all about loyalty and sacrifice, whether its sanji giving himself up to protect the strawhats and zeff or luffy and the strawhats facing impossible odds to rescue him to pedro giving up his life to get them all out of there safe.

huge fan of this panel partly just because it’s cute and partly because it’s a great visualization of just how dysfunctional the heights are in one piece.

zou is one of my favorite settings in one piece just for the sheer creativity of it. zunesha is so massive and so mysterious and so strange. and she really looks unspeakably old just from how she’s drawn, looming over everyone and everything, eyes hollow and empty, an entire forest and an entire people growing on her back that have been there for thousands of years. it’s just so neat and so wildly inventive.

this applies to zou as a whole, but i think it’s really cool how all the little threads that will become important during wano are set up so effectively even before whole cake island starts. we get this shot here of kidd beat to shit and then forget it because so much happens between here and when he shows up again in wano, but then oda punks us into caring about him and killer so much and this retroactively becomes very important.

ever since his introduction sanji’s always been a character basically defined by his adherence to his principles: always feeding the hungry, never wasting food, never hurting women, never using his hands in combat. he’s probably the most firmly principled person on the crew, and that’s more obvious in whole cake island than in any other arc except maybe baratie.

sanji is very stubbornly good, which puts him in acute contrast to his siblings and their general cruel apathy. it’s something i really like about him.

i’m a huge fan of big mom’s introduction, which is also our introduction to tottoland in general. it’s cutesy and colorful and musical while simultaneously being deeply creepy, with lyrics about killing people for ingredients and making jam out of blood, which is a great summary of the core of big mom’s character. she’s an old lady all in pink who lives in a cartoon fairy-tale land- but she’s also a deranged cannibal, and all those singing trees and flowers are animated by the life she steals from her citizens as tax.

whole cake island draws on a lot of fairy tale motifs (especially with brulee), and the contrast that saccharine appearance creates with how fucked up the actual content is is super effective and memorable, i think.

honestly i find most of the content of sanji with the vinsmokes just plain upsetting, which i’m sure is intentional, so i’m not going to go into it a lot here, but i am including this panel of him kicking niji in the face.

sad as this scene turns out, luffy’s absolute thrill at finding sanji and the corresponding bafflement of the vinsmokes as to how the fuck he even got there always kinda makes me grin.

i always love seeing people’s underestimations about luffy get thrown right the hell out the window- because let’s be honest, he’s easy to underestimate, he’s like a five and a half foot tall rubber teenager and not very physically intimidating and all, and then he goes and pulls off the impossible without blinking.

the thing that makes luffy unique as a captain has always been his willingness to rely on his crew, and his willingness to openly admit that reliance, like he did all the way back in arlong park. most of the other contenders for the pirate king’s crown we’ve seen- big mom, kaidou, crocodile once upon a time- have been stubbornly individualistic people who explicitly shown not to care for their crew and allies, generally seeing them as disposable.

luffy is the opposite of all of them, because his crew are everything to him, to the point of being willing to sacrifice his dream for them. and the loyalty he wins from them in return is unmatched, as opposed to big mom and kaidou, who both get cheerfully betrayed not just by their own crewmates but by their own children.

brook is really cool in whole cake island, and honestly it comes at just the right time for him as a character. ever since his introductory arc in thriller bark until this point he hasn’t gotten a ton of focus, so it’s great that he gets to be the mvp here and demonstrate exactly why he’s a strawhat pirate and how much he’s grown over the timeskip.

oda is generally really good at introducing and handling characters contained to a single arc/saga, but i do think he absolutely knocked it out of the park with pedro. he has an interesting backstory, compelling motivations, and basically an entire sub-arc ending in his death that never distracts from the main plot, but only ever adds to it.

pedro really feels like a fully realized character who’s had a whole life offscreen, who we just happened to catch at the very end of his story. i think that’s super impressive.

i really love this moment, because for me, this is the moment where whole cake island becomes a tremendous arc, and where the tides begin to turn and the dominoes begin to fall, one after the other. this is sanji hitting absolute rock bottom. the one ray of light he pinned all his hopes on was a lie, and he can’t even light a fucking cigarette.

but one piece is, very often, a story about picking yourself up even when you feel like you can’t.

i think there’s something lovely about how much one piece emphasizes the value of honestly asking for help. luffy waits for nami to ask for help, and for robin to say she wants to live, and for sanji to admit he just wants to go home, and then says, “okay, i’ll make that happen.”

it just makes me so happy how happy the stawhats are to know sanji’s back with them. it reminds me a lot of how they all brush off robin’s thanks after enies lobby. sure, they’re going to have to crash the wedding and confront big mom directly and might all die, but who cares? they’ve got sanji back. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, i love how much they love each other.

i think the gangster outfits are super fun, and i love that oda is committed enough to his aesthetics to come up with an excuse to put them all in formalwear. it pays off, they all look extremely snappy.

i know i just said it in the dressrosa posts but i’m reiterating it here because this is my favorite example of it by far: i love when oda does this split-screen thing with his panels. the contrast between the two halves of pudding is so severe and yet they’re so clearly the same person i honestly just find this pair of panels fascinating to look at.

this panel also kind of gets at my favorite thing about pudding as a character, really. i know she’s a little controversial in fandom, but i’ve always found her entertaining (at least post-reveal), especially in the contrast between her unhinged evil side and her genuinely sweet romantic side and her post-wedding tendency to randomly ping-pong between the two.

i just always like reminding people that sanji is fast enough and his observation haki good enough to dodge a surprise attack, while thoroughly distracted, from katakuri.

sanji in this arc tends to get shit from a certain side of fandom for being ‘useless’ since he doesn’t have a big climactic fight despite being the focus of the arc, which i think is thoroughly missing the point. sanji is still plenty capable in combat, as demonstrated both here and later, with chiffon and oven. it just happens that his strength isn’t what saves the day ultimately, because combat ability isn’t everything, which is the entire point of the vinsmoke backstory/subplot. sanji saves the day just by being kind.

i’ll admit big mom’s flashback isn’t one of my favorites, taken in isolation- there are some parts of it that kind of unresolved (at least as of now- i still suspect they’ll be followed up eventually), and in general, although there is a tragedy to it, it doesn’t quite hit the way many of the other more effective flashbacks do. that said, i do think it does a really good job of succinctly explaining why big mom is the way she is in the present: she’s a child who was never told no, who never grew or matured past the disappearance of her adopted mother. that’s it, and that’s enough.

i’ve always been a little bit in love with how seriously and consistently one piece handles its themes of found family, and sanji outright disowning judge in whole cake island is maybe the most outright they ever get: family is found, not made. you owe nothing to your blood and are never beholden to your abusers.

and i just like that a whole lot.

i do think the tamatebako is one of the best uses of chekov’s gun i’ve ever seen. we’re first shown it at the end of fishman island, it’s revealed it got sent off to big mom rigged with explosives which is a minor “oh fuck” moment, and then it gets forgotten about, because the entirety of punk hazard and dressrosa happens in between! which is a lot!

i remember when i reached the moment in whole cake island where we’re reminded that that bomb still exists and is still waiting to explode, i just started laughing hysterically out loud, because i’d completely forgotten, and now that i remembered i was just delighted to know it was going to definitely go off at some point, almost certainly in a very satisfying way.

pedro is, if i remember right, the first time the imagery of the coming dawn that will become quite important in wano really has attention drawn to it in-text- the recurring motif is there before this, of course, dating all the way back to the names of the first chapter (romance dawn) and first island (dawn island), but this is the first time it’s actively addressed in-story.

in doing so, oda essentially presents a fresh mystery for us, but one that has been set up so consistently ever since chapter one that it feels like it fits perfectly into the world and story.

luffy’s been punching way above his weight class ever since crocodile all the way back in alabasta, fighting enemies who clearly outmatch him but always managing to win anyways, but his fight with katakuri is maybe the clearest the sheer differential in strength ever gets, because katakuri’s powers are similar enough to luffy’s that he can pull off pretty much all of luffy’s techniques, but better. so luffy has to fall back on the two things that have always been his greatest strengths, again all the way back to crocodile in alabasta: innovation and sheer fucking stubbornness.

one thing i love about one piece is how no character is immune to being clowned on. absolutely nobody. everybody looks like an idiot sometimes, and it makes everything so much more fun than if the series took itself more seriously. katakuri basically actively tries to avert this by building up a fearsome, flawless, and utterly no-nonsense persona, but it winds up failing hard because it actually only makes the contrast and surprise of his actual personality and vices that much funnier.

i’ve always loved this one panel of carrot going sulong, because she just looks so monstrous, like a true werewolf. the same goes for the shift in big mom’s design when she starts going truly mad with starvation and gets even more threatening-looking (below). i just think oda should let women be monstrously scary more often.

i do really love that the entire climax of whole cake island hinges on the degree of trust and faith the strawhats, and sanji and luffy specifically, have in each other. they’re all facing massive challenges that would seem insurmountable to an outsider- luffy facing down a yonkou’s commander with a bounty of over a billion and sanji remaking a massive cake that took months to plan and make in just a few hours, the others evading big mom’s full forces and big mom herself for a full night- but none of them have even a shred of doubt that the others can manage it.

i wrote a meta post awhile back about one piece’s concept of ‘honor in a pirates’ fight, and what it came down to is this: honor can never be expected between pirates, but the best of them will show it anyways, and it can be a very telling judge of character. nobody would expect katakuri to do this, and luffy even calls him an idiot for it, but he has enough respect for luffy as a strong opponent to do it anyways, and that’s how we know for absolute certain that even though he’s an antagonist, he’s also a good, honorable person.

i really like the gesture of luffy leaving his hat over katakuri’s mouth, especially because until this point, we’re never even given any indication that he’s really noticed it, let alone that katakuri is insecure about it. he never reacts to or comments on it (which is in itself kind of unusual from someone who tends to nickname opponents by their appearances as often as luffy does) one way or another.

and then he does this, confirming all at once that he did fully notice and understand, he just doesn’t care. which i think sums up one of the more under-appreciated aspects of luffy’s character- he’s generally way more observant than people give him credit for, especially when it comes to people, it’s just that he has a very different sense of what’s important and what’s not than your average person.

i love the sheer contrast between big mom’s delighted, rapturous singing as she devours the wedding cake against the violence taking place on screen as her army rains fire and hell down on the thousand sunny. it parallels her initial introduction at the start of the arc perfectly, and is just an excellent way to close out the arc with a bang.

i said it earlier but it bears repeating here, for a different reason: luffy is not very physically intimidating. he’s shorter than most of the other main characters, he’s a lanky teenager, he dresses casually and his most identifiable accessory is a farm hat.

but then there are times when he looks like a captain, like a future pirate king, and it just looks so natural on him. i can never get over it.

i really like that, after spending a whole arc demonstrating just how different (and how much better) sanji is than the vinsmokes, it ends like this- showing us just how similar he’s grown up to the man he’s chosen as his real family, and just how proud zeff would be of him.

[danwhobrowses]

One Piece Chapter 979 - Initial Thoughts

Is anyone else nervous? I feel like we should be nervous...

After another week break we have One Piece, and I feel like these waits are gonna kill me before COVID gets close

But Spoilers for the Chapter, and Support the Official Release when it comes out

Another cover story bombshell, oh my fucking god! Just...How!? Pound you lucky son of a bitch how the fuck are you alive? The Will of P has not yet been snuffed out! Does that mean that Pedro and Pekoms may still have a chance at revival? What happened with Germa too, where is my Baeju!? Also the Tontottas finding him is gonna be hilarious, giant man and little people, hopefully we get a family reunion...and maybe some reverie news

Still very concerned about Law, he wasn’t cut from panel this time but he just looks very, solemn, like he’s about to do something he’s not all happy about

I find it odd that not everyone is clued in on Kanjuro being on Orochi’s side, sure it slows him down but even the people on the ships that were intercepting the scabbards were able to identify him as the traitor

Momo though has got some ideas, he knows how to use a sword but he’s only gonna be able to cut the rope before Kanjuro notices, I doubt he could even use it on Kaido. I dunno, Momo does not seem to be that kinda guy, also if he was able to control his DF he’d be able to escape those ropes much easier

We’ve got the Brachio Tank and Black Rhino back out, I liked the Fishman Island nod but this also means we’ll likely be getting Franky Shogun again, but Franky made note that there were upgrades so maybe it’ll be a new Iron Pirate/Super Armoured Me

Definitely laughed at the ‘He’s for sure gonna be spotted’ and ‘He’s for sure getting lost’ because it’s so painfully true. They have good intentions but they’ll sneak off, don’t be surprised if Zoro walks into the exact wrong room

Alas poor Sanji, you can’t get in the Harem Tank. Usopp does lowkey know how to be a ladykiller (though I doubt he thinks about it, he does have a doctor at home). But Carrot does work the Beast Pirates garb too, as does Robin...but as I said last chapter with Nami, you could put a paper bag on them and they’ll make it work.

Ooof, right in the Frobin there. We know what that was code for Franky, ride the back of your motorcycle you dog!

But Brook has to tickle my funny bone too by thinking it’s for him XD I guess the small victory here is that it reminds me of Grim Fandango; a giant beast that lives to build and upgrade riding a beast of a machine with a snarky skeleton at the back

Sanji still trying to get on the Tank though, he should really be using Stealth Black to find Luffy and Zoro, get a Monster Trio team up ¬u¬

But this does give Robin and Jimbei (whose Beast Pirates garb is cool but does nothing for being covert since it doesn’t cover his Sun Pirates tattoo at all) some time to chat, we’ve got a new formation as the Mature Duo, I would add Brook or Franky to that but the two do tend to do silly things from time to time

Someone is lurking though, which is a little worry, but I don’t think they’re enemies. I think if they were they would’ve jumped at the two at this point. Could be a scout, or it could be someone ready to throw another spanner in the system

Yup, I love Ulti, she tickles me with her dual personality. Also Sasaki’s cape is fire, kinda reminds me of Minato Namikaze from Naruto, I also think it’s a little telling that Who’s Who doesn’t have a cape or any long garment, it makes him stand out a little bit more

So King and Jack can now be accounted for, and the former is the one who summoned the Flying Six. It also seems clear that everyone knows that the Six want the Disasters’ spots

I will continue to add that Kaido keeps looking smaller and smaller, I mean, look at his debut panel

he’s standing in a crater and he still dwarves Kid, Hawkins and Apoo, but in the panel he looks like he’s about 3 times taller than Drake (who is 2.3m tall, about 20cm taller than Kid), his scale just feels reduced

Also on heights, Black Maria is taller than King. That is a Giant Woman

Bao Huang makes me feel like Oda’s been playing some Legend of Zelda in his spare time, though I ain’t mad at it

The schedule seems a bit weird, Orochi has a speech after Kaido? I guess it’s just a welcoming address because Kaido will afterwards be announcing the Big Mom alliance

Kaido is keeping a secret, and that is actually quite intriguing...it also means that the Raid will not succeed for a while, since we are to expect to hear this Chekov Announcement

Kaido’s son is not seen, but we know his name: Yamato. It’s a very interesting name to choose actually; it can refer to simply the dominant ethnic group of Japan, the clan, the period, the province, the Yamato Dynasty prince Yamato Takeru, Yamato-damashiii, could even go Okama with Yamato Nadeshiko or even just the battleship. It could also be a corruption of Yamata, which connects to Yamata no Orochi

For my money, Yamato would be based off of Takeru. With some minor wikipedia research it does have some narrative notes that could fit being Kaido’s son, I doubt he would slay an older brother because Kaido calls him an ‘idiot son’, but Takeru’s father Emperor Keiko kept sending him to other provinces, I could see Kaido sending Yamato across Wano or the world to try and emulate Oden, the last man he respected. Takeru’s legend is also interesting because he gets the Kusanagi sword, which Susanoo fished from the Yamata no Orochi, there’s also a brief note of cross dressing and composing the first sedoka in the Kai province, which can tie in with the other Yamatos listed

Yamato must be strong though if the Flying Six see it as troublesome, Yamato could be the one hiding in the bushes behind Robin and Jimbei. Him being relative to the announcement makes me think that Kaido has an arranged marriage for him, since that’s how Big Mom does alliances, maybe it’s to Pudding, or Smoothie, or that bitch Flampe

Ulti again has no fucking fear, the steel balls of this woman. But Kaido knows when to dangle the carrot, Who’s Who definitely wants that All Star spot, which continues to add focus on him

LUFFY! How is it that you manage to get to the big ass crowd of people, and it’s not like Kid is hard to find, look for someone with a Metal Arm next to a guy who blurts out FAFAFA...and of course he almost gets his cover blown by some drunkard and gets distracted by food (his chest scar is back now though after disappearing last chapter)

Oh god...memories of sweet-baby Tama are found in the reflection of the spilled soup, the Beasts Pirates being clear about how they disregard and waste the food while others starve. I bet Zoro and Sanji would also react similarly in this state for their own other reasons, hell even Big Mom could have a word or two to say about it, she really enjoyed that soup

But when Luffy has that glare, few things are gonna stop him

So obviously, really good chapter. A lot of lines have been drawn in the sand and we’re eager to know what comes next. But as much as I am eager I am waiting for the main thing to go wrong. We’ve already split our Monster Trio, in fact the largest group of the crew are the Weakling Trio in the Brachio tank with Sanji who could disappear anywhere, Shinobu and Carrot, there’s still the uncertainty with Law as well.

I am keen to know more about Yamato (though I am a tad let down that Katakuri isn’t related to Kaido, only because I wanna see Katakuri again) and about the Flying Six, but it’s also gonna be a tough spot if Luffy causes a rumble right now, Apoo and Queen are in that area and BM’s crew, Orochi and the Numbers are all within earshot.

Alas, another week break, though when Oda made the announcement about COVID I kinda did expect it, I guess I’ll just have to toil about it in my own spare time XD But what’s important is that everyone stays safe, and an extra week can help with the fan theories.

[xaz-fr]

Lair review for Emordnilap

@emordnilap-fr sorry for the delay. Last night turned into a Bad One and I didn't have the spoons for a review. And no cut because Tumblr sucks, sorry

First off we got Chekov! I didn't realize he was a dragon I'd bred until I actually looked at him so that was a happy accident! I just saw phthalo and was like "H I M". Even without looking I was like "Big Gay energy" and yeap, YEAP, on the money. His outfit screams soft high fashion twink okay? Like overly pampered sugar baby who's Daddy got him his own clothes line and now he spends all day looking hot and making clothes because fuck you do you know who I am?

His parents are so proud

Next up we got my girl Sigma. She's real pretty to look at and is using one of my FAVORITE fest so accents. It was made for abyss basic fucking fight me. And she's got some good spoopy lore and she's just overall very well corrdinated.

Then Hersh! I am a SUCKER for perma babies, I love perma babies. I was going to pick the other one but I picked him first lols. I also love stained so he wins the perma baby slot. He's just so... Warm and brown and cute and I love him. And he's a minor deity AND an apprentice confectioner, you know, NBD NBD, just a god making your chocolate brittle.

I just picked Maelstrom here because she's weird. Like weird to look at. Blue and orange are good color combos but man she's fucking weird. Like she's almost ugly but I can't stop looking at her. She's one of those ugly dragons that isn't just ugly like how color vomit fodder is (and she certainly is some vomit) she's ugly but interesting to look at. I've had a few of those: Ugly - But

Ngl I wasn't originally gonna pick your dragonsona and then

This and it made me fucking cackle a little. Overall not a bad dragon. Apparel choices are much to be desired. Please go to a nice clothes store and treat yourself so that isn't your OOTD my God

He looks better naked. But really I love the colors of him and how his poison matches his bee. Holy fuck I love stonewash poison. It and denim are totally underrated blue poisons and blues in general. Also getting big Rock Gay energy from this boy.

This one I was like "okay but do I like him???" kinda like Maelstrom. He's not bad looking I suppose. But he just ... Is forgettable. Like just completely forgettable. There's something about covering a dragon in so much apparel and hair that you lose them and it becomes impossible to remember them. I was mostly even interested in him because he's so BRIGHT and Drew my eye.

[masterthespianduchovny]

Let’s Talk About Narrative Literacy

As a disclaimer, I’d like to start off by saying I don’t mean to come off as condescending or anything like that, but this is important discussion we need to have. I’m not going to pretend I know everything there is to know about writing or even most of it, but one thing I do know incredibly well is how to follow a a narrative.

By this, I don’t simply mean casually consume it, but rather, process the what, why, when, how, etc regardless of if I personally care for it.

This is why, despite disliking a film, I will say with all seriousness, “this doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie, I just don’t like it.” Or if I do like something, I’ll say, “I love it, but it’s not a great movie.”

People may argue, “the fact that you love it makes it a great movie.”

And to this I say, “No.”

When I make qualifying statements about things, it’s because I’m differentiating between subjective and objective things. And, IMO, some cannot, which contributes to narrative illiteracy. When a person cannot distinguish their personal feelings from objective facts, your mental grip of a thing makes most conversations go standstill. Because, now, feelings are being argued and how can you tell anyone how they feel about something?

This becomes important for mediums like Game of Thrones and The Harry Potter series, but for different reasons. (There will be spoilers)

When it comes to Game of Thrones, the lack of understanding of literary functions such as foreshadowing, character development, narrative arcs, chekovs gun, and so forth is vexing.

Writing is about intentionality. There must be a reason the writer included x, y, and z. What purpose does it serve even if it’s very minor? Why is it there? How does it influence the character or narrative?

When people say the last few season of GOT is bad, esp the last episode, we aren’t saying this because we didn’t like ending, as in, it wasn’t our preferred ending. We don’t like it because it doesn’t make any sense narratively and that is a fundamental difference.

My favorite show of all time is the X-Files and, despite the utter mess seasons 8 and 9 are, I still watch it whenever I decide to do a series rewatch. It pains me, but I still do it. Despite the massive inconsistencies with the revival of season 10, I still watched it. But, after hearing about the complete break down of the characters, which is why the series lasted as long as it did and come back, I haven’t not seen the season 11 finale over a year later.

Technically, it could be argued, it ended how I wanted (romantically), but the narrative is so shit that the characters and their motivations don’t make any sense to me. They just don’t! I’m not sure anyone can argue otherwise.

I’ll probably still rewatch the x files (and may skip the last episode) before I ever rewatch GOT again. Perhaps I’m exaggerating, but that’s how nonsensical, pisspoor, and narratively destructive the ending was.

Let’s start off the many examples of some GOT viewers having poor narrative literacy:

1. Arya’s ending.

This isn’t about whether or not you like how her story ending, it’s about people arguing that it makes sense. It does not.

The two endings that makes sense for Arya was either ending up in Winterfell or Storms End.

Why?

Because, despite Arya’s kill list, her overarching narrative has always been about getting back to her family. Arya was with the NW because Yoren was supposed to take her to Jon who could then send her to winterfell. Arya wasn’t traveling through the woods for an adventure. She went from the NW to prisoners of Harrenhal, the BWB, and then the Hound. Arya was literally on the run for her life. The first time she had true agency, she tried to go to East Watch to get to Jon, but was unable to, so she went to Braavos.

At this time, Arya believed most of her family was dead or was unable to reach them. When she talks about going west of Westeros, it’s because she think there is nothing left for her in Westeros.

She is on her way to kill Cersei when the news of Jon being at winterfell literally makes her journey to kill Cersei and go to him instead. Despite aryablosong some of her humanity, it’s still there. Then, Gendry comes back and they have sex and she fully experienced her humanity and that’s when she truly understands what she has to live for. Not Gendry: but, life, love (in all forms), humanity, etc.

Arya regressing back to her list doesn’t make any narrative sense. What was the catalyst??? Remember she was acting strange by isolating herself during the celebration and when turning down Gendry’s proposal? I’m not saying she should’ve said yes, but she clearly wasn’t herself. What set that off? What made her think that Cersei was a threat she needed to take out and die for???

We could say she needed to hear it from the hound to live life, but imo, that’s bullshit because she learned that on the night of the battle. She (WE) was explicitly told by him to justify having her in KL. Arya wasn’t there for a narrative purpose, she was there for a visual purpose and to make us care about the citizens of KL dying from dragon’s fire. That’s it.

It makes even less sense because Arya stayed in KL for what reason??? She had no intentions on killing Dany herself. She served no purpose there and it showed.

I’m not against people trying to find the best out of Aryas ending, I’m saying her ending was executed poorly because it was inconsistent with everything we’ve seen before.

No, Arya has never expressed interest in being a warrior, but warriors were her idols. No, Arya isn’t against marriage, she’s against its function in her society. Arya not wanting to be a lady doesn’t mean she doesn’t want a position of power that she can use for good ie being a lord, which she explicitly said she wanted to be in the “not me” conversation.

And a double whammy as to how they fucked her chsradter up so much, Arya admired the Targaryen women who fought and were rulers. She named her direwolf Nymeria after a warrior Queen. To make her hate Dany, be xenophobic, and reject opportunities that would allow her to achieve her dreams is laughably bad writing.

People can argue that people change, but we can’t reference the “not me” convo and argue at the same time that people change. That’s having your cake and eating it too.

2. Narrative techniques like foreshadowing means nothing if it isn’t consistently built up. I’m going to use an example from the show “Atlanta”, so stop reading if you don’t want spoilers for season 2.

All season, it was foreshadowed that Earn would be fire by his cousin Al because he wasn’t doing enough and kept messing up. At the end, it was basically a given, but instead, Al doesn’t fire him because of something Earn did at the last minute. During this foreshadowing, we constantly saw that Al didn’t want to fire him, but wanted his cousin to manage him better and show that he actually would do whatever it took to help him succeed. Despite it being foreshadowed that he was getting fired, Earn keeping his job was also something subtext supported and ended up being a nice twist.

Another example of foreshadowing, Snape from Harry Potter. People still debate that Snape is evil blah blah blah. But, all throughout the series, the subtext always supported that Snape was on the good side, despite being a grey character.

None of his actions makes sense for someone flat out evil unless he was planning to pull a con on Voldemort to take his spot. But, when people argue with feelings and not logic, they make it make sense to them, despite ample evidence that proves otherwise.

I’m in my 20s now, but when I read this series when I was 9, I could never shake the subtext that Snape was fighting for the good guys.

This is all to say, the subtext of the SHOW doesn’t support Dany’s heel turn nor does the foreshadowing. Burning people isn’t proof because Dany used her dragons like northerners used their swords. Dany made tactical war decisions. To suddenly pervert it to support a narrative decision that was shoddily built because the show said so is narrative illiteracy.

The only reason I suspected that Dany could go mad was because of book readers. Not because the show built this reality up well, but bedause book readers kept talking about it non stop and usually those who hated her.

3. Jon’s identity. All of that drama for him to live beyond the wall??? Ned taking a hit to his honor? People saying it’s dire that Jon knows??? Riding Rhaegal?

What the fuck was this for?

Why did we bring Jon back to life???

How does Jon’s arc make narrative sense? How?

Bexause he ended up with the wildlings and tormund?

Even if you take out the prophecies, this shit is a mess. Part of this mess started because of his parents and Jon went through all of that shit to end up where he started.

4. What’s the point of the NK? The symbols? What does it mean???

I could go on and on, but I’m tired. Certain things become important because of how much we love the world that was created and the characters. I’m not saying it’s not important—it’s actually very important, but what’s also important is internal logic and consistency.

What’s also important is telling a story that truly makes sense and not because you like a character or “there’s just so many things to wrap up, so this is good enough.” When someone tells a story, they need to tell it or not bother at all.

Perhaps certain character arcs were emotionally satisfying, but they didn’t make any sense minus Theon. But, the series overall wasn’t emotionally satisfying, but rather, a major let down.

It sacrificed good storytelling to rush a conclusion where they’ve literally known the ending since the beginning. Very few movies or shows have down multiple big bads in one narrative arc that makes sense and GOT is not one of them.

It explained very little while having some think they addressed the pertinent details. Nothing was explained. Nothing makes sense.

Like, what was brans purpose? I don’t want HC and fan theories—give me a full explanation from the series.

How was his ending emotionally satisfying or Cersei’s or jaimes or almost anyone else?

How???

This is why I’m talking about narrative literacy/illiteracy. Many people don’t understand what they’re consuming and are relying on whatever the writers say.

But, these are men who scoffed at someone asking them about themes, to which they said, “this ain’t an 8th grade report.”

And for people who think I’m taking this too seriously, please fuck off. I mean, why are you reading this. To seriously address this potential mode of thinking, Emilia Clark drew strength during her near death experiences from Dany. Abuse victims saw Dany as a role model. Sophie turner learned things from Sansa.

Fictional people can have real life impact. So, what are we telling people who identify with these characters?

That no matter what you do you can’t escape your family legacy and you are your genes?

That you aren’t deserving of love and stability because you were in an emotionally dark place for a while?

That you abuser define who you are and you should be thankful for them?

That you’ll have to harm loved ones for the greater good and get punished for it.

That you can get rewarded I life for not doing shit in you’re born in the right family and have the right story.

That we’re doomed to repeat of families mistakes.

What’s the point?

What’s the lesson here?

GOT’s ending isn’t bad because it’s didn’t turn out the way I theorized—hell, I didn’t have any theories. It’s bad because it’s atrocious writing that betrays it’s characters, plot, and overall narrative. It poorly sets up events with terrible execution to subvert expectations or reach a point that they didn’t earn.

Characters and shows that earn what they strive for: Snape, the good place, 12 monkeys, earn not getting fired in Atlanta—but, this only happens when writers give a shit, which D&D did not.

And one last thing: for those who insist that Emilia didn’t understand her character, if you watch the GOT doc “the last watch”, almost every actor negatively responded to her getting killed. Conleth, kit, Lena, Peter, and so forth. These are people who embody the characters, some of which oppose her, and even they could not believe what the series did. It wasn’t simply shock. Some were devastated and Conleth was straight up pissed.

So, please, when you or if you dismiss criticism of the series for fans not getting what they want, please try to deconstruct the narrative and ask yourself if it makes sense. Ask yourself if you understand what the series is saying or trying to say. See if you are trying to rationalize conflicting things.

[artmd]

WT:

A satisfying short story is one in which you see the moral momentum or sympathetic momentum swing from one character to another over the course of the story. You think one character is making it right but really it’s something awful. Then you think the other character is the “good guy.” There are these reversals. And I have a real aversion to stories that end with the pendulum right in the middle. I like a radical swing right at the end. Like the ending of The Graduate. I like endings where people think they want something and they get that thing and then it turns out that that’s the wrong thing. That’s often how it is for us.

It’s interesting what you’re saying about Cheever. That seems remarkable to me. Right after I got out of graduate school I was surviving doing magazine work and had great gig with a few different magazines. I was never forced to write newsy stuff or celebrity profiles. They would just give me a topic, a human subject to go and chase for a while, and I would just spend time with truckers, or people who hung out at a horse track, or people who worked at Wal-Mart. Basically, they were character studies, maybe eight to ten thousand words. Because there was no angle and nothing was off-limits for the story I would have fifty to a hundred thousand words of notes for a ten thousand–word story. The process of assembling a piece was cold carpentry. I would see a scene that was good and another that was okay, and I would hammer those together. For years, I was trying to do the same thing with fiction. I would write a 150-page draft for what was supposed to be a thirty-page short story, but for me fiction has to find its way into a much smaller place. And there has to be a coherence of emotion. Just spinning a bunch of ideas and trying to cook that into something that is meaningful and says something that’s important about how people are, that never worked for me. Those always just disintegrated.

It’s all in the balance. Fiction is born out of rival impulses. When I write a funny story, it can feel cowardly and lame. So then I write a draft where I amp up the emotional stakes. I write a really earnest story. But then it can feel not-so-cool. So in the next draft, I focus on pairing down the sentimentality but ratcheting up the pyrotechnic stuff with the language. But then that will feel like cheating. So I go back and simplify it and make sure there aren’t too many metaphors and that any time I’m pulling a language trick it actually is in service of the story.

I was in an art gallery the other day with a friend of mine who is a painter, and we saw a painting that I thought was pretty cool. She said, “No, that sucks.” She said the artist didn’t build up the canvas. You can see whether somebody has gone at a visual or aesthetic problem a bunch of different ways. Each of those attacks leaves its trace on a piece of work. On a sentence level I’m not as brainy about it. I think about thread count. Anytime I read something that doesn’t have a tight weave, I stop reading.

I’m not that patient. But my disgust with the work was sincere. I had a decent enough publication record fairly early on where I had a couple of agents saying, “Yeah, we can probably sell this book now.” But the process of revision was what interested me. When I first started writing, I could write a short story in ten days or two weeks, so I thought that’s what a short story is: a funny or interesting anecdote on which you hang literary curtains and doilies and stuff. But the process changed so much for me. It became about waiting for the characters’ lungs to develop, for them to become real for me. Revision was humbling. I got to see the primitiveness and simplicity of the early drafts, but I also got to see that there was something useful there that I shouldn’t destroy if I could avoid it.

I think I was weirdly quite young. I had a strange appetite for language. In first grade, I wrote a couple of plays. One was a combined moral lesson on pet care and tooth decay. In college, I wanted to major in literature, but I somehow convinced myself that that would be a bourgeois and decadent thing to study. I majored in sociology and anthropology and thought I was going to get a PhD, but I just despised what the academics were doing with language. It was often an exercise in obscuring rather than actually revealing anything about people. For me, literary writing was a better way to get out of it.

...No, but it’s rare that we actually communicate when we have conversations. If I were to look at the transcripts of my conversations with my parents or ex-girlfriends, it’s not a conversation; it’s just two parallel monologues where people are saying what they want to get across and not really listening. If you have dialogue in which one character is responding to the other it just sounds fake. Part of it stems from the desire to have legible conflict in the stories without having to explain it in the narrative sections. Conflict is difficult to dramatize without it tilting into hysteria. Having tiny swords flashing in quiet conversation is a better way to get at it.

I haven’t read “Gooseberries” in fifteen years. I have yet to really crack the Chekhovian code. I remember reading Chekhov in high school. I would get to the end of the story and think, That’s it? That’s the story? A guy worries about his relationship with his wife and then goes outside and picks up a chicken? It’s a strange Russian thing. The moment gets a different sort of treatment. Chekhov is such an elegant writer and is able to do such beautiful things with minor moments, but for me it was really Carver who took Chekov’s approach and made it make sense to me for the first time. Carver was able to take a tiny, unattended moment and show you how it could cause a life to rock on its axis. For me, he was the first to make the quiet moment smack a big gong.

SF: How do you decide the location for despair or anxiety in your stories?

It has to be a moment that would endure in the long-term memory of the characters, an afternoon or day or month that twenty years down the line they would be able to recall. That may be why humiliation figures so largely in my stories, because there’s no emotional event that you can relive with painful granularity like humiliation. You can recall joy or anger or love, but when you think back on when you came to school with your fly down, you feel that hot burning shame in your chest just as you did when you first experienced it.

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #157 - Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) Getting any sort of footage or image before a studio logo is exceptionally rare. I appreciate that Paramount and the filmmakers decided to open the film with this dedication:

2) This is an end to a trilogy started by Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan, as it is a direct sequel to Star Trek III which was a direct sequel to Khan. Leonard Nimoy returns to direct after Star Trek III and decided to give the film a lighter tone as Star Trek was taking itself rather seriously. I think that works for this movie, but I also think the film succeeds because (out of the trilogy) it does the best of examining the crew outside of Kirk/Spock/Bones (as we shall see).

3)

Vulcan Computer [testing Spock’s recovery]: “How do you feel?”

Spock’s emotional arc - though it becomes more subtle as the film progresses - is a nice touch. The dude DIED. He’s not just going to walk away from that scot free. He’s Vulcan, so his intellect has been largely focused on. But it is his emotional recovery - getting in touch with his human side - which carries the Vulcan through this film. And I think it works wonderfully.

4) The noise the alien probe emits has a wonderfully ominous design to it. It is effective and makes you uncomfortable. You know something is up.

The entire idea of a mysterious alien probe with unknown intentions which is creating death and destruction (seemingly involuntarily) is very compelling to me. It is an idea in the same essence of “The Twilight Zone” or even something HG Welles would write. Mysterious, frightening, foreboding, and interesting.

5) This is the last film appearance of Lt. Saavik.

According to IMDb:

A scene written for but cut from the film explained why Saavik stays on Vulcan: she is pregnant with Spock's child, stemming from an event in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), when she "treated" the young Spock's pon farr. This was the character's final appearance in a Star Trek film.

I’m a little disappointed that Saavik was just kind of dropped. Apparently Nimoy and writer/producer Harve Bennett couldn’t think of anything for her to do in the 20th century, but this was an incredibly interesting and fun character from Wrath of Khan who just lost steam and disappeared. Ah well.

6)

Bones [after Kirk says Spock will recover alright]: “Are you sure? [Beat. Kirk is silent.] That’s what I thought.”

Neither of them are sure if they’re going to get their friend back, but they have to trust him. They have to try. Bones even later tries to strike up a conversation with Spock, checking him both as a doctor and as his friend. These small bits of concern are neatly effective in portraying the conflict Spock (and, in all honesty, the crew) is going through with his emotional recovery.

7) I love this line.

Spock: “There are other forms of intelligence on Earth, doctor. Only human arrogance would assume that [the probe] MUST be meant for man.”

8) So Kirk and the crew end up time traveling to the late 20th century in order to find some humpback wales and save earth from this probe. But here’s the thing: they’re never asked to do that. Quite the contrary, they’re being court martialed. They could spend the rest of their lives in jail. They have the perfect opportunity to escape and live the rest of their lives. But it is at the expense of the human race. It never even crosses their minds to run away. To not help. They take some seriously big risks for people who may jail them forever and without even a second thought. If that doesn’t speak to the character of these characters I don’t know what does.

9) I’ve never watched the original series of “Star Trek” but I know they time travelled before (at least once, maybe more; again I never watched). So I’m glad they include this line.

Kirk [about time travel]: “We’ve done it before.”

10) Man, these time travel effects are trippy. I love it.

11)

Kirk [about 1986 Earthlings]: “This is an extremely primitive and paranoid culture.”

This has always fucking bugged me in the “Star Trek” universe, although it might just be a personal thing. Yes, the human race as a whole can tend to suck. But why define us by the worst of our elements? Isn’t that just a loud minority? Why not remember the good in history. “This is an extremely primitive and paranoid culture.” What about the people on the Challenger who you dedicated to this film? They weren’t primitive or paranoid? What about people who fight for Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and other social justice movements? Why would we let the worst of humanity define us? I mean really? REALLY!?

Okay I’m done.

12) Leonard Nimoy said he wanted this film to have be lighter and boy is it that. This is by far the funniest Star Trek film ever made. Like, I don’t even know hot to properly communicate how funny it is. Here are some early examples of humor in the film:

Kirk [walking away from an invisible space ship he left in Golden Gate Park]: “Everyone remember where we parked.”

Pawn Broker [about Kirk’s glasses, when they need money]: “I’ll give you $100.”

Kirk [after a beat]: “Is that a lot?”

[Kirk and Spock get on a bus only to immediately walk off of it.]

Spock: “What does it mean, exact change?”

The time travel and 80s setting allow for some fish out of water comedy which is the film’s best feature in my opinion. There are so many brilliant and honest jokes derived from these characters. No one ever acts contrary to who they are. They’re them! They’re the best crew Star Fleet has ever had! But in the 80s...

(GIF originally posted by @andurile)

13) Gillian.

Gillian is a very important and very well done character in the film. She is the outsider. Our tether to reality and a key component to saving the whales (because, again, this is the Star Trek movie where they save the whales). She is unique unto herself, not JUST a plot device and I don’t think even someone for Kirk to get together with (I don’t remember if they kiss or not, but I don’t think so). She is passionate, empathetic and has genuine care for the animals under her care. A great character who I think the film is better off for having.

14)

Kirk [after Spock called him Admiral]: “Jim. You used to call me Jim.”

Kirk is obviously getting frustrated with Spock’s lack of emotional development. He went to hell and back, sacrificed his career and his future, all to save his friend. And now his friend isn’t totally back yet. It hardly leads to a big climactic fight but it is an undercurrent of the film which keeps rearing its head in important and compelling ways.

15) I love this line.

Spock [about whaling]: “To hunt a species to extinction is not logical.”

Gillian: “Whoever said the human race was logical?”

16) Honestly, the way Kirk reacts when he sees that Spock has dived into a tank with two whales in full view of everyone is my reaction too.

17) A little thing that bothers me in this film is when Gillian’s coworker calls her kiddo. He seems to be the same age as her and not her superior in anyway, so what is this demeaning bullshit?

18) Remember how I said this film was hysterical?

I think the pairings of Bones/Scotty and Uhura/Chekov are quite interesting. Even if we don’t get a deep examination of those relationships it’s pairings we haven’t really seen on their own before and which do show us just how comfortable everyone is around each other.

19) I love how Kirk just tells Gillian the truth. Yes he was massively bullshitting her for about twenty minutes but he just sort of lays it all out on the table at the end.

(Screencap originally posted by @icheb-of-nine)

And Gillian doesn’t get angry at this seeming insult of her intelligence and storm off like the cliché is. She obviously doesn’t believe Kirk but she roles with it anyway. Figures what the hell, and it pays off later.

20)

Kirk [to Spock, after he learns they might lose the whales and the earth could be doomed]: “You’re half human. Haven’t you got any goddamn feelings about that!?”

This is sort of the peak of Kirk’s frustrations with Spock. Again it plays out more as a subplot throughout the film but one which gives it heart and warmth. It is after this that Spock sort of starts getting it together.

21) Chekov and the navy is fun (although I don’t like their use of the word, “retard,” in the scene). It showcases the film’s humor beautifully AND allows actor Walter Koening to truly shine.

22) And THIS is the culmination of Spock’s emotional arc (or at least the earliest example of it):

Spock: “We must help Chekov.”

Kirk: “Is that the logical thing to do, Spock?”

Spock: “No, but it is the human thing to do.”

23) I LOVE Bones in the hospital!

He regrows a woman’s kidney with a pill! First and foremost Bones is a doctor and he will be a doctor no matter where he is or who the patient is. I think it’s great that they actually take this into consideration with his actions.

24) The entire scene where the former-crew of Enterprise (as they are on a Klingon ship now) rescue the whales is great. It is incredibly tense and conflict filled, packed with surprises (such as the ship saving the whales from the whalers while cloaked). All in all, a great climax.

25) This was James Doohan’s favorite line as Scotty.

(GIFs originally posted by @spaicetrek)

26) I love how Kirk’s “punishment” is to demote him from Admiral to Captain (which is something he wanted all along and which everyone knows).

27)

Kirk [after Gillian says she’s on a different starship]: “Why does it have to be goodbye?”

Because this series rarely brings back female characters introduced in the movies, it seems. (I’m thinking mainly of Carol Marcus.)

28)

Spock [after his father asks if there’s anything he wants his mom to know]: “Yes. Tell her...I feel fine.”

And with that Spock’s emotional journey is complete.

29) And the crew is returned to a recommissioned Enterprise. They are home (see title) and this trilogy is complete.

I wildly enjoy Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. You wouldn’t think a Star Trek film where they save the whales would work but it does. The lightened tone is well appreciated as is the choice to focus more on the crew of the enterprise. The humor is phenomenal, the message is heartwarming, and it is just a feel good film all around. A wonderful treat for fans old and new.

[ihamtmus]

17, 24 and 35 for the star trek ask 💛

OKAY THIS TOOK LONG! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SENDING THESE! And for your patience. ;)

17. What role would you have aboard a starship? WELL that’s a hard one! I always have a problem with “what’d your starfleet uniform color would be” and this is quite similar. I’d try to answer, though. I am studying English philology, as you probably know. Except for literature, culture and history stuff, I learn about linguistics and things like that. SO maybeeeee… maybe. Maybe I’d be a communications officer? Like Uhura?? But we also have to understand that there’s no Starfleet yet. We don’t know any aliens, we don’t travel too far away from Earth.. You see, my point is that if I lived in a Star Trek future, I could choose a different path. Currently, not many people become astronomers. But in a Star Trek universe, people literally live in space. I think I might be a navigator? Or someone dealing with relations with aliens. I don’t know. And we’ll never know. But one thing’s for sure: even if I don’t know what role would I have aboard a starship, I definitely WOULD BE aboard a starship. I could have any role, just Take Me Into Space And Let Me Stay There.

24. Which character do you relate to the most? Hahah, I see you chose some personal questions! Let’s see… WELL. I guess the answer has to be Julian Bashir. We’re both so excited so often? We can both appear childish because of that. We smile a lot. We look young, which, with the addition of excitation, makes people think we’re younger than we really are. We like talking.We can talk for AGES about things we’re interested in. We like to take our time while eating. We both love fantasies! Honestly, I think I’d spend quite a lot of time in those holosuites too. Sometimes we say before we think. We are quick to forgive. We can be annoying. We think we’re smart. We want people to like us. We both think that Miles, Jadzia and Garak are amazing and wonderful. We generally think well about people. Honestly, I relate to Julian a lot. Just let me mention another character real quick: Pavel Chekov. We’re both sometimes sarcastic… and let’s be honest, if I was stuck in space with a bunch of foreigners, I’d too talk about my country all the time. THIS THING WAS INVENTED IN POLAND!! And stuff like that.

35. A minor character you wish had become a main character? You know, Star Trek is a gift of a show that doesn’t leave us a place for too many regrets and wishes. I mean, look at the minor characters in DS9. So many of them became main characters! Look at Garak, Nog, Dukat or Rom. So I feel fulfilled in this area. Let’s not forget that even Morn got his own episode! Good job, DS9! But if I was very picky, I’d say: Not Enough Damar. Because there was not enough of Damar. I love him. Some minor characters, like Keiko, Ziyal or Leeta had little screentime… but I cannot say I wished they had more. WELL Ziyal should have lived, that’s for sure… But there was enough of them, in my opinion.As for TOS: we didn’t get much of anybody except for the main trio. We got more of them in the movies, yes, but in the series? There’s just so little of them. So I could say: all of them in TOS. But I think I’d rather say: I wouldn’t change a thing in TOS, let it focus on Kirk, Spock and McCoy, I’m perfectly fine with it.So, summing up this answer: Damar.

Thank you sooo much for this! It was so much fun!

It’s for this ask meme, feel free to send me some too!