#we need to kill off a character. for war realism. like guys

[mylittleredgirl]

Janet Fraiser deserved better 😭

truth coming out of my inbox to shame robert c. cooper and brad wright 😭

[leefi]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere Read-through | Part 1: Chapters 1-14

Part 1: 1-14 | Part 2: 14-22 | Part 3: 22-34 | Part 4: 34-64 | Part 5: 64-80 | Part 6: 81-90 | Part 7: 90-100 | Part 8: 100-127 (caught up here)

Hi!!!! I've been reading through this webnovel after seeing @ot3's pitch for it and started writing down some thoughts on the characters and worldbuilding and imminent murdering. This story is very, very long and I only reacted up to about chapter 33, so most of my thoughts will involve the worldbuilding and less the murder mystery aspect -- so if you're looking for theorizing you won't find much of that here. Since I'll be continuing eventually, I wanted to post what I did make note of to revisit later!

Most of these are not marked by chapter/section because I was lazy and I'm not sure how easy it will be to follow as a result, but everything is chronological.

everyone here is hijabi mashallah

The visual I'm getting of the solar system/local system/dimension they inhabit is kind of a blend of steampunk and fantasy and uhh some secret third thing. With the walls of their "universe" painted in that puella dollhouse witch lair style. Does the sun bounce around like a screensaver. Does it orbit their earth or is it on a fixed axis flung out into “space”? Does “space” even exist anymore? I’m assuming they’re in an enclosed area that they've created. Do they actively use arcane resources to keep objects (ie star and planets) sustaining themselves, or have they made them self sufficient?

everyone is so mean to Ptolema leave her alone what the fuckk let a bimbo live i want to kill you all you’re so annoying. Ptolema I WOULD be your friend and not ask all these weird ass questions. and we would hold hands and skip and giggle

Yes shes an airhead nepo baby but you guys could try doing anything other than snickering and rolling your eyes whenever she says stupid shit. If she starts arguing back about government war crimes during the Revolution or something then you have my blessing to beat her ass!

I HATE kamsurepa i HATE her i HAYE Her and her stupid ass name

Ran and Su have no chemistry its insane that theyre always hanging out every conversation is like uhhh (awkward silence) (rude comment from Ran) *Su voice* wow she gets me so well. every time they talk im like what the fuck just happened.

Su’s internal narration is too self aware for me. it’s like she talks like she knows she’s a character? or something. it's self-deprecating in a very bizarre way

im sorry i don’t know if i can continue with this. i know too many med students irl and these characters are literally pissing me off. compliments to the author for realism you knocked it out of the park

Oh, thank you very much!" Kam said, reverting back to her smiley-diplomatic form for a moment before stepping away from the counter and continuing as she handed us the cards. "...as far as it seems to me, the desire to reproduce is essentially an immature form of pursuing life-extension - this idea that you'll 'live on through your children' that's patently pseudo-mysticism justifying what is ultimately an animal instinct." ⬇️ I’m going to grab her ginger head and swing her around like bowser in mario 64. SHUT UPPPPP SHUT UP please tell me shes the one that dies

You know," I mused idly, my eyes wandering. "I think this is actually the fourth glass ceiling I've seen today." "Mm, it's true that you don't see a lot of women working in Aetheromancy," ⬇️ I know this is a small nitpick but aren’t we really far into the future why do they keep using terms like this 😭 gendered stuff like this still exists billions? trillions? of years into the future?

Why has the disco elysium skill tree randomly started talking to su. Is this her future self nagging her. Is she pulling a han sooyoung. when do we get to the various utsushikome ego deaths

"prosognostic overlap"…do ppl repeat faces? Are most people cloned at this point? What triggered the need for cloning surely medicine is advanced enough that childbirth or test tube babies are feasible? Can bodies be cloned and reinhabited to inhibit aging? Is there some disturbing psychological element to seeing someone with the same face as you? Does it make your brain short circuit? Kam mentioned having children earlier which I assume means people still give birth or have test tube babies, so i don’t know if it’s the result of cloning…but it does sound like a sameface sort of thing. What else would it be if not that though?

Actually, if they’ve figured out teleportation (whatever it was called when they went up the aetherbridge) - let's say they can atomize a body and reforming it elsewhere (though we don't know for sure yet, could also be a fold in spacetime) - transferring consciousness to an empty clone of yourself (and therefore effectively doing away with aging or death wholesale) sounds a lot more efficient and technologically practical than maintaining an organic system that naturally decays. Why keep on finding ways to push the human body past its limits when you could simply transfer a person to a new, identical vessel?

I feel like the key to immortality isn’t maintaining an organic body, which naturally tends towards systems of entropy (being a biological thing, entropy=decay), but rather delineating and separating human consciousness from its host and replicating its original environment perfectly. I’m not talking about making a copy of consciousness, which is just glorified cloning - I’m talking about *transferring* a consciousness.

You could almost call dementia itself the mind's tendency towards its own kind of entropy?

Though if you transfer a consciousness to a younger body, the dementia issue could still potentially remain. Depends on if it the author sees it as a solely physical phenomena (atrophy/buildup of inhibitors of the brain) or there's some metaphysical anomaly about amassing too many memories/"existing" too long in general

The way spellwork is described is really cool and feels super believable. Optimizing multiple concurrent spells into one “function” is intricate and sophisticated, and you have to dedicate a lot of brainpower to doing the math in your head. It’s like they’re coding the real world. I love the way lurina describes this it's awesome.

[anti-katsuki-lounge]

Going off what that one anonymous in your last few messages said with that one point of their discussion being the black and white morality only thing, that is exactly the same kind of purpose with these different levels & groups tied together over one thing, with power responsibility, & the “we know, or think, or can do better than the normal populace“ set up, always brings up something like Star Wars with the republics/force wielders of the light side of the force. Vs dark side users at any point in Star Wars history when they were in control less shit happens but because these murderous all powerful megalomaniacs are in charge.

any time in a hero world? There’s a moment in a story where are the heroes are undefeated, they’re always something while doing the right thing, technically only having that job because bad things happened in the first place. When bad guys are in charge, take over a town, defeat a hero, barely anything happens, everyone either unable to fight or going along with their new “rulers” means it’s a tense situation, but nothing else happens especially anything bad because the villain has their control now.

sort of in its own way following the sense of tell someone not to do something it will be done anyway & be stopped like a child reaching for a cookie. Say you don’t care and most of the time they won’t want to because part of the thrill isn’t getting the thing they want but getting what they want DESPITE being told they can’t

what certain worlds who have heroes, though like MHA and even Star Wars, they don’t realize that with things like vigilantes, antiheroes, grey Jedi, those that walk down the center are the ones who, sometimes, despite the big amount of time in the 90s they were everywhere and flooded the market and ruined morality at times, is that they can look from both sides and choose either option for what is BEST, not right vs wrong,

I never trust a villain, whose brought on to help save the world, because even though they will do it, because they want this world around to rule it, they will betray you once that job is done (looking at you tf prime Megatron when Unicorn starting waking up) so they can start trying to rule it.

I would not trust a hero to help me bring down a complete monster, who I am trying to get rid of for good, because they will believe too much in jail time, redemption, second chances, & blatantly ignoring repeats & warnings like a Stockholmed lover to shove a happy, good-natured, ideal down your throat because “killing is wrong”?

HOWEVER, would I trust someone like Spawn, (especially after Norse saga) Kratos, Deadpool, Wolverine, Red Hood, or even the Punisher, if I needed someone to help me stop someone who in a fit of madness & instability, & potentially a power trip, try to do a very awful thing for whatever reason or ideal they are pursuing?. If I had to go and stop someone who there is a 50-50 chance I either need to stop them & change their mind & help, OR if they are too far gone, put them down like a rabid dog, because there are too many monsters in this world

then THOSE are the types I would trust with this.

The world of MHA still fails, because while they keep their fantasy element, even in a basis of realism, that this fantasy is put onto, heroism as a job, police are still a thing, there’s a whole section of the government and businesses meant explicitly, for heroics, you get what we mean, it’s still has that power tripping DC Boy Scout bs that people pull with superman when they really don’t know how to write his humanity as a character (or shove Batman’s, no killing rule in your face as “because it’s wrong” and not because it’s the only thing that keeps him from being a worst monster than what took his parents and those he fights, “he who fights monsters” indeed.) where none of the villains no matter how bad they are, get to die, or be killed by the heroes hands & have it be meaningful, because it always have to be a simple defeat and lock up.

you have people that by power, scaling or character comparison, such as Shiggy AFO & muscular, compared to rappa, the episode 1 purse snatcher & gentle criminal, are complete monsters that should not be allowed to at worst live at best, never see the light of day outside of a max security cell ever again, compared to people who are just put in bad situations, & honestly are in no way the worst of the worst.

So many people would honestly agree the same way they say the joker, red skull, or palpatine need to die, but you don’t hear as many people say that mr. freeze, savage hulk, or even Boba Fett to an extent deserve to be killed/put down.

there are reasons for that, whether we have hindsight, as if you were or not, you can tell even in universe that some of these people are just doing it for situation or they never cross a specific line. It’s just a day at the office for them as much as it is for the hero who has to step in, say a one-liner, let their cape billow in the wind & arrest them.

compare that to those three from MHA and the other examples. They are absolute monster who take joy and killing body hundreds if not, thousands . Afo Has CENTURIES of tyrannical lordship under his belt and a specific line of murder that started with us BABY BROTHER. Shiggy has wiped out multiple cities to city blocks with single over power to tax gleeful smile on his face. The joker has been verbally say that to fill entire graveyards for fun. The red skull is a LITERAL NAZI so bad that in a crossover, even joker himself found it appalling. Muscular, loves killing, to the point that the only issue he has with those that stopping is that it seems like a child complaining whenever he’s told throwing a tantrum is the wrong thing to do. Palpatine needs no damn explanation. now the other examples? Rappa was in a suffocating strict environment that a battle born (literally with his quirk) warrior spirit couldn’t be contained until it broke out do the only outlet accessible when he did, underground cage matches. It shaped his whole demeanor as someone who loves to fight, that you can only end them in complete subjugation defeat or death. That purse snatcher? Wrong place wrong time he let loose his power & a show was made out of it. Gentle criminal? He doesn’t need any explanation. Mr. freeze? To be left alone to find a way to save the only person he has and the only thing that he believes can make him at least feel and emotional, because he doesn’t see himself that way anymore. Savage hulk? No matter how much good he does. He’ll always be remembered as a rampage and childish monstrosity, and a tortured wimp of a man who both are in their own ways to scare to truly use their strengths, when no one will look past that and see that they are just that, a broken man and a broken child in one body, who “just wants to be alone“.

no matter how well written they are or how badly respectively, ask someone like Izuku and someone else like Bakugo

after letting them know each and everyone of these listed individuals, back stories, reasons and motifs, should they be put down, try to save them, or arrest them, and make sure they never escape, what would be the answer we all know Izuku would say, and we all know the bullshit that Bakugo would spew.

izuku: everyone deserves to be saved, everyone needs a hero, villains need to be stopped, because that’s what heroes.

a noble sentiment or two out of that, but still black and white, simply because someone broke the law it’s now time to put them away, and punish them for it, barely ever asking or stopping to know why, and even when they do, my hero academia always realize back on that black and white bad guys need to be punished mentality

bakugou: who gives a rats ass, I’m stronger and lore suffered than them. I’ll fight Al lot Em and win to prove I’m the best, because heroes always win, and I’m the best hero, and no one will ever be better than me. They don’t deserve anything but a beat down and punishment. I’ll kill ‘Em all of o want to

truly, nothing but drivel sprouted from a power-hungry egomaniacal child, who was never properly punished, because the black and white world he was in see someone who has the power to uphold or be put in the position of strong unbeatable hero, and simply kept pushing him towards that goal that he wanted, but then was completely corrupted. (To be fair a scene or two Bakugo before getting his quirk such as reading, the congee on the buckets proves he was always a dick even at 3 years old) he wants nothing more than to uphold that status quo because it works best for him.

characters like knuckle duster, & the vigilante, series as a whole are seen, as far better than the main stories of MHA, because they’re more fleshed out and look at both sides. They’re REALISTIC IN THEIR MORALITIES. That’s why characters who have been both villain & hero, protagonist & antagonist on both sides of the law, are sometimes seen as great legends of writing, such as Dinobot from tf beast wars. They know what it takes to get the job done for both sides. simply killing for the cause like a good soldier because you were told to or going against wishes and orders because you personally don’t think it’s right by your own moral standards & you’ve been living a lie. They’ve compared what counts as failure, dishonor, sacrifice, & belief that you are right from both sides of the coin.

Beings in the world of MHA like all might (who openly said he tried killing afo a time or two & gets a pass) & Izuku, even (fanatical) Spinner & (creates those fanatics) Stain would never survive in certain parts of Marvel or DC, and other anime, because not everyone can properly have/write/create a world that has this black-and-white morality. As nostalgic, some of those shows seem, old shows like the original Star Trek, and the first seasons of a few long running procedural cop shows like ncis and criminal minds, in terms of morality, have aged poorly, not just from improper portrayal of say “on the spectrum like characters“ which, on its own involves many discussions of morality, but because they too easily fall into “aggressors are bad, peaceful people are good“ mentality like most non nuanced superhero stories. Kind of following the same logic of World War II and beyond era thinking that any German had to be a Nazi simply because they are home is we here they both came from, Germans In general, and the angry German who founded the nazi party.

that sort of thinking of black and white morality is altogether far too toxic to. Let’s stand in many places in the world like MHA are absolutely one of those places. All it does is keep feeding the negative feedback that lets people like Bakugo, muscular, joker, red skull, & so many others keep doing what they do because they either think it’s right, they think it’s right for them, or they think that they are right.

all in all morality is as much a spectrum as order vs chaos, & for these worlds to stick to the black and white morality, and never change, which, honestly Luke, calling out the bullshit of “the republic Jedi councils self praise and hypocrisy led to them being undermined by the guy sitting in an office in view of their fucking window” during the last Jedi (along with the showing of him NOT being this ultimate legend of heroism because he knows that’s bullshit too) is still one of the (two) best parts of modern Star Wars, as he points out that being so supremely good that you think you will always triumph over evil. or being so supremely evil, that you can never lose to something as simple as a hope filled goodie twoshoes (like Palpatine not expecting Vader to use love to finally break free as he gets a easy kill on saberless like because “oh the hero simply said I’m wrong and took the moral high ground [no obi-wan joke intended] oh well time to prove him wrong with the power of incredible violence.)

all it does is feed the loop constantly of both sides, going up and down like sides of a scale, but only when you equal both sides.

And even then it’s not always right. The punisher has had moments where he goes trump only committing mass murder on gangs, and super villains to every once in a while, crippling a pickpocket of all people. Someone abuses power just a little too much, Spawn once in a while, will traumatize them with literal hell knowledge.

but it’s far more believable than the 50,000 shonen anime world that constantly has the black and white bullshit go back-and-forth again and again and again. And when beings like Baka-Hoe Bitch-ski aka “lord explosion murder, mr fiture and always number 1 hero look at me and praise me” are born from that black and white world? Maybe it’s time to rethink the morality when it means letting people like that, become your protective symbols of greatness, and letting monster to wipe out cities for fun live, simply because killing is wrong.?

…

maybe instead of trying to redeem a complete monster? Just shatter a kneecap or snap their neck and throw them in jail or the morgue already

Sorry for the ranting, but all in all it’s the LONG TERM world building if mha that ends up ruining the picture when the short term puzzle pieces were those nice corner squares you just couldn’t wait to connect together.

…

then the main picture is revealed and it just doesn’t sit right with you.

No worries. I love it when people leave long and well thought out asks 😊.

You pretty much nailed why a lot of people love anti-heroes and heroes that are willing to kill if need be. They exist in a more gray area and as such are less predictable than your ordinary heroes. There’s also the aspect of killing vs not killing. It’s a commonly debated topic amongst comic book fans. On one side, you’ve got your boy-scout heroes like Superman, Spider Man, and Batman, who believe that killing is not an answer, that villains should have a chance to redeem themselves and seek out help if they need it. On the other side, you’ve got anti-heroes like Punisher and Ghost Rider, who won’t hesitate to kill you if you’re a criminal, no matter your crime. Then you got the oddballs, like Deadpool, Hulk, and Moon Knight, who exist in their own circles when it comes to killing. Finally, you got the middle grounds in the whole “to kill or not to kill” debate. The likes of Wonder Woman, Captain America, Thor, and Wolverine will do what they feel must be done. Sometimes they won’t kill someone, believing that they can be stopped without lethal force. Other times they will kill as they see no other option as to how to neutralize the threat. Ultimately, some people agree with the stances taken by anti-heroes and heroes who aren’t afraid to kill (whether they’re like Wonder Woman who only kills when need be or Punisher who will wipe out mobs of criminals with no mercy) and are bored/frustrated by the boy-scout heroes. One of the biggest criticisms of Batman is that he’s “letting more people die by letting Joker live”. At the end of the day, not everything is Black and White, and heroes that are willing to kill to save lives embody this mindset.

[otakween]

0-Sen Hayato - Volume 3

It feels like it took me a whole year to get through this one lol. It's boring, but not the worst thing I've ever read. Sometimes something spicy will happen (like someone dying or the romance side plot inches forward) and that's enough to keep me going.

Ch. 23

-In this chapter the gang tries to blow off some steam by goofing off and dancing (and getting drunk) but then their superior's superior comes in and chews them out. Hayato and Ishikawa get exiled (?) and sent to the jungle where they run into "a ghost." Meanwhile, the Americans plot their attack.

Ch. 24

-Hayato and Ishikawa find Ishiki in the woods wounded and bring him back to camp despite being exiled. Ishiki warns them about the encroaching enemy and then we cut to some sort of D-Day-esque scenario on the beach. The squad isn't allowed to participate in the battle because their territory is the skies, so they just watch on.

Ch. 25

-The boys continue to scramble to kill themselves for their country and for glory...this is seriously the least relatable thing I've ever read lol

-I don't really get how war works. If the air force can just attack the people on the ground, why didn't they just always do that? Lack of resources maybe? It kinda seems like an OP tactic...

Ch. 26

-This chapter was WILD. Hayato convinces the gang to kill a bunch of monitor lizards and dump their blood in the ocean. Then when the bad guys (Americans probably) attempted to storm the beach a bunch of sharks gathered and ate them all. That's wacky enough, but then they said that 10,000 soldiers were eaten!? Wtf...not possible. (I googled this and apparently there was a WWII incident where an American ship sank and 890 people were left in shark infested waters, probably the closest thing irl to this manga's ridiculousness).

-This manga has an anti-kamikaze stance, but it also shows its heroes as constantly ready and eager to die for Japan so...mixed signals.

Ch. 27

-I kinda liked this one, at least we got to meet Ishiki's sister (now a nurse). Of course everyone instantly has a crush on her because they're women-starved

-Wtf was up with the "muu" grass? It was strangely magical, like a tentacle monster? I guess since the last chapter jumped the shark (hehe) they feel like they can get away with this magical realism BS.

-Ishiki is WAY too committed to his rival bit. Someone needs to smack some common sense into him before he gets himself killed for real.

Ch. 28

-Ishiki continues to act recklessly, but I guess he's just getting away with it for now? Not sure if he just figured out how to compensate for his bad eye or if he got lucky and something bad will happen in the future...

-I think Hayato's dad just died? Hard for me to tell cuz all middle aged men look identical to me. Hayato did say "I sense a disturbance in the force" (paraphrasing). So I'm probably right. That seems like a pretty major character death for this series so I was a little taken aback!

Ch. 29

-Okay phew, I got it right. In this chapter Hayato finds out about his father's death and inherits his plane and katana. I thought the emotion of it all was handled pretty well without going into any melodrama. Since soldiers sign up knowing they might die (especially Japanese soldiers in WII) they'll probably react more stoically to that kind of news.

-We find out that it was the King Satan airplane that shot down Hayato's dad, because of course it was. Gotta give more fuel to the silly rivals plot. Ishiki acts like a douchebag again and is like "sorry about your dad, but I'm gonna make this about ME" lol. At least I can laugh at how cartoonishly shitty he is.

Ch. 30

-Hayato tries to figure out how to operate his Dad's plane which is "different from other Zero airplanes" (or whatever you call those in English). I didn't really get what he was saying about it, but I figured I probably wouldn't get it in English either so it's fine lol

-We get to see the nurse girls again which is always nice. The chubby one with braids is adorable. Of course they made each girl have a crush on their male counterpart (chubby girl likes chubby guy, skinny girl with a hooked nose likes the dude with a hooked nose, etc.) Whatever, there's so little body diversity in anime girls nowadays that seeing this lil bit of variety is refreshing.

Ch. 31

-The Bakufuutai's rival squad (the Shiuntai) get 35 new pilots but they are very inexperienced (only 150 hours of flight training). The Bakufuutai tries to be good senpai and stop them from flying recklessly, but the Shiuntai's leader is being a jerk as usual and tells them they can't tell his squad what to do. I should probably learn that guy's name lol.

-The hairy dude with big lips gets his own big lipped girl who's in love with him. Unfortunately they used this as an opportunity to make her "ugliness" a joke. Hey! If dudes are allowed to look funky girls should be allowed too >:/

Ch. 32

-This chapter was far too dialogue heavy and I barely followed what was happening. All I got was that Hayato and Ishiki were begging their leaders to not send the newbies off on a mission and then Hayato and friends end up being sent off to Manila for some reason. The nurse love interest creepily talks about being prepared to die a bunch...

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

As a sworn Cassie lover I must say, Rachel deserved a better friend. Cassie should have been a better friend.

Okay, to clarify: what should Cassie have done differently? Backed Rachel up in battles? Trusted Rachel enough to go on entire missions at her say-so alone? Risked her life and trusted Rachel to catch her? Shown up in the middle of the night because she knew Rachel was worried about her house collapsing? Taken Rachel's side in the debate about whether to leave Earth without knowing all of Rachel's reasons but knowing that Rachel has her reasons? Attacked the French army against her better judgment because some guy stuck a spear in Rachel?

Because [checks notes] yep, yep, she did all that already.

Or is your argument that Cassie should never criticize Rachel? Setting aside for a second that they both have valid points*, I take it as a sign of love and respect when my friends are close enough to tell me when I'm wrong or to suggest I change my behavior. Friendship is important because our friends are the ones who can tell us to our faces "what you did was hurtful" without it ruining the relationship, whereas we'd be tempted to dismiss the same words coming from an acquaintance or rival.

Is the argument that Cassie should subsume her needs to Rachel's? I don't think there are any formulas for a perfect friendship, but I think that they tend to work best when you let your own needs come first, and your own wants come after your friend's needs. For Cassie and Rachel, that's as basic as Cassie letting Rachel drag her on shopping trips and beach excursions in spite of not finding those activities all that fun. It's as complicated as Cassie saying "I love you but I can't be an Animorph anymore" even though she knows Rachel won't understand.

I don't understand the demand for Cassie to "do more" for Rachel any more than I understand the demand for Rachel to "do more" for Tobias or for Jake to "do more" for Toby. This series doesn't have a single hero whose needs outweigh those of the supporting cast. Animorphs is a series filled with humans who aren't perfect at understanding one another. It has six protagonists and twelve narrators and we get to see the private struggles of each of those characters well enough to realize that sometimes Cassie hurts Rachel's feelings without meaning to, just like Rachel sometimes hurts Marco's by accident and sometimes Jake hurts Cassie's. Not because of malice or even complacency, but because they're human beings and inexperienced kids who are struggling under an emotional burden whose weight is slowly killing them, and they're doing their best under the circumstances.

[unrelated rant below the cut]

*There's this whole other discrepancy in the way that we talk about Rachel and Cassie, one that I think reflects the way American media are filled with stories about characters using violence to "solve the plot" and the character with the fastest and most effective plot-solving being portrayed as the coolest and most likeable. An obvious example is Han Solo; fans threw a revolt when George Lucas tried to shift away from the character's first scene involving him shooting an unarmed coworker in cold blood. Han is cool because Han is violent without cause, not despite that.

Rachel solves the plot most efficiently when she's being "badass" and murdering prisoners of war alongside enemy soldiers, and that's when we (myself included) tend to admire her the most. Cassie solves the plot least efficiently when she's asking whether the kids really have the moral high ground anymore if they become as careless with others' lives as the yeerks, as willing to kill inconvenient humans or hork-bajir as the andalites, and that's when she makes us (or at least me) the most uncomfortable.

The shift toward "realism" in superhero media kicked off by Alan Moore and Frank Miller gave us the idea that "realism" in superheros is blood/guts/dirt, not the fact that most humans are basically decent people. Soldiers have to be taught to kill over years' training, because we fundamentally dislike killing people and recognize that the person we're shooting at might not "deserve" death even if it is someone working for a rival army. That's a "realism" angle I rarely see in superhero stories outside of Animorphs, because it's a lot less edgy and aesthetic than the "gritty" realism of Batman breaking his own hand in the act of breaking Joker's face or the Comedian using his superpowers to abuse women. The "people are basically decent and maybe none of them deserve to be murdered" take on realism is a lot more troubling and a lot less power-fantasy, which is part of why it can be easy to dislike Cassie for bringing it up.

[eremiie]

i saw this post here and just wanted to dissect everything lmao

aot 139 spoilers 

“Eren admits that he literally killed 80% of the world’s population, he then says he only did it so it would look like eldians stopped a threat”

eren admit to killing 80% of the population bc he did... he’s admitting to what he did, and he says that he wanted to paint them to be the heroes— but not only did he do that, he ended the curse of ymir and gained freedom for his people. it wasn’t just to paint them as heroes

“He also did it so the rest of the world couldnt murder them”

he didn’t “also” do it for that reason, it was an effect, the rumbling ended up killing so many people that they can’t wage war on the eldians like eren says, it keeps them a little safe which they needed especially since some of humanity knows that paradis is what started the rumbling. it’s a cause and effect type thing. because eren killed 80% of the population that remaining population won’t be able to retaliate and try to kill the eldians since there are so little of them

the tybur family is treated like some of martyr and apparently pulling the strings which led to the deaths of millions of innocent eldians was actually a GOOD thing

this scene was interpreted wrong, armin says “...so you want us to be like the tyburs after the great titan war? we’re supposed to protect paradis from reprisal from humanity outside the walls?” he’s asking eren if that’s what they’re gonna do, he never says it’s a good thing. then that’s when eren explains that either way so much of humanity is destroyed that they wouldn’t be able to retaliate if they wanted to

Armin THANKS him for it

armin thanks eren for doing what he did to free them. not thanking eren for for mass murder period. it’s because of eren that the curse is lifted and that they are free and that’s what armin’s thanking eren for. mass murder is inexcusable, and eren knows that. that’s why after he panics and goes “but i dont want to die!” he comes to a realization that all the people he killed didn’t want to either, that the only way to atone for his sins is by dying himself. even if he didn’t die he would’ve probably been executed, or imprisoned for the rest of the life. just like in mikasa’s ova, “eren’s death is inevitable, no matter what reality you go to eren will always die because he carries death within himself.” 

in another translation of the chapter armin thanks eren for being the bad guy so that they could win. he knows what eren did was bad. he’s not excusing it, he just understands why eren had to do it and that eren had no choice if he wanted them to be free. 

from the get go freedom was one of the themes of eren’s character. if eren lived the whole entire world would be ruins and eren would’ve been even sadder than now, there would be nobody and it would’ve been worse than it is now. eren killing everyone was definitely not the ending to go. the ending we have could’ve been executed differently, sure, but in my eyes since i get the gist i think isa did an amazing job portraying what he had in mind. 

“Armin is more upset with Eren saying he doesnt know how he feels about Mikasa moving on than mass genocide”

once again, armin isn’t all that upset with eren because he understands that eren had a path laid out for him that he had no choice to follow. the point of eren committing mass genocide keeps getting brought up as if it’s not know that mass genocide is a terrible thing. it is and that’s why everyone was so angry about it from the get go, that’s why that one plan of blackmailing humanity with the rumbling and not actually go through with it was brought up once— because they knew how cruel it is. armin knew how cruel it is as i believe it was him who brought that up

he’s upset with eren about mikasa’s feelings in like a banter kind of way. it’s like “this whole entire time this is how you felt but you couldn’t tell her that and let her suffer???? don’t forget what you said to her, she went through hell!” kind of thing. they had already talked about the whole mass genocide thing, mikasa was the next topic of discussion

“Eren then finally shows some fucking emotion and cries abt how he doesn’t want mikasa to be with anyone but him”

in another post i say, "okay so first i think the issue is that a lot of people fail to realize that the way eren acted all throughout season 4 isn’t eren really, that is him putting his emotions at bay so that he can complete something that he laid out for himself for his friends.eren from season 1-3 still exists, and that’s lowkey the eren that was talking the whole time in chapter 139— you can see the how he cares for his friends, you can see the desperation again, the compassion, everything in between.” 

eren is still that s1-3 eren, season 4 eren just had to put his emotions aside so he could walk on the path that ymir put in front of him. 

him crying over mikasa was one of his selfish desires coming to light, and it was realistic. it’s finally dawning on him that he’s gonna die, he’s finally getting to sit down and ponder about mikasa, he’s getting desperate, he’s panicking, and that compassion that he’s always had for his friends is showing through again. this gives realism to his character— it makes his character all the more human. one second he’s complaining about how he doesn’t want to die and wants to be with his friends bc its crashing on him, and the very next second he’s trying to be at peace with himself, realising that the only way to atone for what he caused is by dying. one second he’s complaining about how he wants miksa to be with anyone but him, the next second he’s coming to terms with himself and that mikasa needs to move on, because he loves her and wants her to live a long and happy life even if it means without him. the selfishness that showed for that mere second makes his character realistic. it shows that he’s still whiny, that little whiny angry boy from s1-3. he was never heartless and he was never cold. he was and is still eren jaeger, and you get a glimpse of the eren we know in that scene.

The founder ymir was apparently in love with the king???? another women stupidly devoted to a man, great.

i’m not too in depth with ymirs story so im not gonna speak too much about this because i myself do wish that whole love thingy went more into depth. i get how mikasa and ymir parallel each other, but other than that i’m not too sure myself, and i’ll admit that. it could be a case of stockholm syndrome, it could be that bc ymir was infatuated with living and she was confined to such a familial role she wanted to live in that role again with the king bc he’s the only person who gave her that familial lifestyle. i’m not sure. but if anything mikasa was im pretty sure the only character “devoted” to a man in aot. and it was because of the role eren played in her life, she’s not a bad written character, she has her developement. which i explain here

apparently mikasa’s unhealthy devotion to eren is what took her out of it????? in fact the series overly romanticizes mikasa’s love for eren despite the two having no chemistry and eren being an ass to her

in a sense, but that’s a simple minded way of saying it. ymir’s devotion to king fritz was unhealthy, eren describes it as “agony of love” because it was pretty unhealthy obvi. like i said ymir and mikasa parallel each other, and seeing mikasa be able to let go and kill the one she loves was that realization for ymir that she was able to do the same thing— that’s how i interpret that scene personally.

and in mikasa doing so, killing eren lifts that curse of ymir and frees ymir regardless, so ymir was happy about that as well. thanks to mikasa for cutting eren’s head off. 

the series doesn’t necessarily over romanticize mikasa’s love for eren in my opinion. how i see it is that since eren is a big part of mikasa’s character he was necessary for her development as well, and her development was to let eren go because of how infatuated she was with him. this being said the series points out how unhealthy the way she loved him was especially in s1-3, and her love becomes more healthy when she gets her development in chap 139, finally being able to let eren go and move on. compare that to in the s1 when eren almost dies and she’s ready to die as well. thats development if you ask me. 

one of the themes of the show is sacrifice, and almost every character has made one, mikasa sacrifices eren— she kills him and she chooses to go through with that decision despite how much she loves him. 

eren was definitely mean to mikasa in s1-3 because she was overbearing, and thats one reason why i say the way she loved him was unhealthy at first. eren wasn’t able to reciprocate her love in the way that she loved him because it wasn’t healthy. eren also wasn’t able to reciprocate it because the last thing he was focused on was the concept of love. once again he had a path laid out for him that he had no choice but to follow, and mikasa didn’t have any play in this path until the very end, so the boy who keeps moving forward does just that and doesn’t pay her much mind, doesn’t get to sit down and think about his feelings for her, what she is to him.

(and i dont think i even need to explain the “mikasa i’ve always hated you seen, the chapter covers that enough)

they do have chemistry time to time, the eren v dina fritz scene, the scarf scene, “what am i to you”, little stuff like that goes into play and gives them these little sparks of chemistry. they couldn’t always grasp onto the full scope of the relationship they had and it was only some times they were able to do that with everything going on.

apparently the titans are just gone now….??? i cant even tell if its because Eren died or because Mikasa really made Ymir calm down

... eren controlling rumbling, eren dies rumbling stops, ymir finally lifts curse bc 1) eren died 2) shes able to come to realization that like mikasa lets eren go, she needs to let fritz go and the curse go. ymir lifts curse, eren’s goal is complete, if titan curse is lifted there are no more titans

Characters who murdered thousands and were the cause for AOT’s entire plot in the first place are now treated as heroes to the eldians… despite the shit that they did.

everyone in aot did some “shit” they all are murders, eren commited mass genocide, reiner commited mass murder, annie murdered so many people, reiner, armin destroyed thousands of people in one go, they all have killed somebody. they are seen as “heros” because they stopped the rumbling that was going to kill everyone else...... idk about you but if you just saved me from a horrid death, my racist opinion on you doesn’t really matter because you just saved my fucking life lmao, yes despite the shit that you did— because they have killed people too, and they were ready to kill the eldians still until armin told them that they killed eren, that they saved their lives and eliminated titans for good.... like whew???

the series went from “The military is cool” to “the military did a lot of fucked up shit” to “the military is SUPER cool”, and buffed it up

i’m not really sure where you got that tbh,, like the military wasn’t really a big thing up until the whole marleyan thing??? and they didn’t have much plot in the story besides it existing so like i’m not sure what to say ab this, i can’t really remember many times the military was even mentioned until now, but if anyone wants to elaborate on this for me that’d be nice

oh and they buffed up the military because since paradis had eren jaeger who started the rumbling, just in case, they had to be ready to fight again if the rest of humanity wanted to do something. after marley they updated all their technology, why can’t they update the military as well? it’s realistic, new weapons, new military, and all that

The military was buffed up bc the eldians are scared of the rest of the world retaliating, so Eren didn’t really fix shit except giving the Eldians an upper hand in the war

eren jaeger was the one who always screamed “i will kill all titans, we will get freedom” ya de ya de ya.... didn’t he do both of those things????? i thought those were some of his main goals as a character, he fixed those issues, the issues that have been issues since the start of the show

the rest of humanity don’t know the full scope like the eldians or marleyans, they’re probably just as scared and like in real life not all nations are at peace with one another. this is just another realistic factor— attack on titan is becoming a world closest to the real one we live in, there are militaries, there are still conflicts, there is still all these little aspects that bring the manga even more to life.

in my opinion it’d lowkey be weird if the rest of the world was just like “oh yeah those mfs that started the rumbling we love them haha” no... it killed 80% of the population like eren said... that’s not something to love.

Historia has a really disturbing speech about how the fight isnt going to end until either the Eldians or the rest of the world are exterminated, despite Gabi has an entire arc about her being deradicalized and learning to see the other side of things.

and yes i am not kidding, the heroic conclusion is that there’s still going to be a war, eldians are going to commit mass genocide (which was proposed by eren) and people straight up thank eren for the evil shit he did.

“this fight will not end until either eldia or the world dissapears. this is what eren said and he may be right.” she doesn’t say that it’s for sure gonna be a fight until one or the other is wiped out, she says there’s a possibility of this being the case because of the fact that these nations aren’t at complete peace yet. 

not everyone is gonna be able to see the other side of things, and this applies to the whole word— us as humans will never be able to agree on one thing, and that’s what this shows. no matter what the cycle of hatred will always continue, and this applies to real life and this manga. we are human beings and that’s what makes what historia says even more real. “this is the world we live in, a world without titans.” titans are no longer their conflict. now it’s only like the real word— humans against humans, and as far as humanity existed it’s always been humans against humans. historia’s speech shows that.

the heroic conclusion is that as a human race nothing will always be agreed upon, eldians are going to fight if they need to like our military fights when they need to. people are thanking eren for freeing them and ending the curse of titans that they suffered with for 2000 years. nobody’s thanking him for his actions of mass genocide, they are thanking him for the motive behind his actions, and thats what makes him so heroic.

that he endured and did something so terrible so that anybody who lives after him can be free, and humanity can continue existing as humanity should’ve existed from the beginning.

and that concludes this for me, thanks for reading<3.

[littledevil-jpeg]

Okay, so last post I was giving Lucifer 5B some credit for getting me interested and intrigued about a shitty character, so, as all things should be balanced, here comes the other side of the question. I'll say right off the bat that Lucifer was never a show I took seriously, all at once because of the tone, the way they chose to develop and delve into the themes, the monster-of-the-week format (though also done in spn, there it's redeemed by the darker tone and more subtle theme-development. Obviously, this is S1-S5 I'm talking about) and again the overall way this world works. I've been known to accuse Cobra Kai and even Breaking Bad for coincidence-bending, but they don't even come close to the level of Lucifer here. Then, of course, there's how easy everything is, like a bloody sled on ice: drugs - no problem, kill someone - no problem, infiltrate a mafia group - no fooking problem. How? Well, glaze over that, it's not that important. Except it is. Remember how in that same Breaking Bad Walter's team spent considerable chunks of the show planning, hiding evidence, preparing, measuring little details, diligently covering up their tracks. And they were only involved in a measly drug manufacturing business. Imagine the shit Lucifer runs, with crime bosses, drugs, demons and prostitutes piling out of his front door. Obviously it's a show about angels and demons, and the realism isn't the focus of the program, but still, these things matter. There's always a convenience to it. Like, oh, you need to infiltrate the Russian mafia or some shit? Don't worry, I know a guy - and poof, problem gone. That's not even to mention the universe bending out of shape all around Lucifer, everyone (Chloe especially) putting up with his humiliating bullshit, the fact that he would be kicked out the police in anything even remotely resembling real life, that the mc's get away with almost everything, the unrealistic dialogue that no human irl ever speaks, the second-hand embarrassment, the cheesy "morale" speeches, the dull, predictable cases that are all done by the same formula... and more. So okay, there's a lot, a lot, of problems with this show. Which is why no one really takes it that seriously, we all know it's kind of trashy. But "kind of trashy" is one thing. Now, when season 5 introduces a genuine "evil twin" that we're meant to take with even a bit of seriousness, in the footsteps of such chef d'oeuvres as Dispicable Me 3, when that twin is the most caricature-like villain in recent history, when the allmighty is a buffoon with half a brain, forget omniscient, and isn't even in-line with the stuff he's done before, when one of the main cast is offed as though mid-sentense, with no lead-up, no foreshadowing, no preamble, like a toss of a dice, when the main character is on a race to become God himself, and his love interested Mrs God, and when, oh, Jesus fucking Christ, just stop already! I truly wonder if the writer's room a big dart board with all these drunk-ass ideas stuck onto it, and they blind throw to make the next season. It's finally hitting me now, as I'm writing this, what on god's green earth I watched yesterday.

Why does Lucifer need to become God? Why does a war in Heaven even have to be introduced? Why not focus of the more intricate inter-personal conflicts on Earth, on the characters and their mentalities, on those meaningful arcs that hold actual importance, and emotion, and down-to-earth (lol), well, meaning again. Why do we need a heavenly war? Why does Lucifer need the approval of the angels, when the moral seems to be that he makes himself who he is, not his status, not his people, not his past and not the Silver City (an excellent moral, by the way, so credit where it's due. This self-actualisation business is the second best thing in the whole show)? I get that this is why the majority vote doesn't work, but then what does work? Are they ment to self-actualise into becoming God? Now, I'm aware it's left uncertain whether Luci really is God, so I won't go there for now, but then we have the issue of his resurrection. Was it a reward for self-sacrifice? That wouldn't fit so well, considering all the previous sacrifices that were much more impressive than this one. And what's the philosophy behind that - he's acting out of love? But to what end, if by dying he practically fucked all the other people on Earth, including the very same Chloe he just brough back down? Are these really the qualities for a God to have?

Or did he once again self-actualise, but this time he actualised himself to life? That would truly be a stake-killer. I saw a theory that he finally saw himself as worthy of Heaven, which doesn't quite link to coming back to life. Well, these are perhaps, once again, speculations, and maybe this will be cleared up next season. As for Lucifer's God status, it's a shitty move on the writers' part. Not only was the execution rushed, but thematically, again, Lucifer becoming God to feel worthy of Chloe is nonsense. From a plot and theme standpoint, why does this need to happen? This Godly status holds no meaning, no emotional worth, it's not fullfilling, not symbolic of anything fitting other than that same old "bad to good" and I guess the irony of the Devil becoming God, but the irony is an empty one if it has no real meaning. Which is the case. The whole thing is empty of substance, and I don't know why they went there. You know, it's hollow anyway, not least because Lucifer really doesn't deserve it. Even this season, he is nothing but a child - he acts and thinks like a child, he unchangeably does the same "projecting" bs from season to season to season with no actual sign of emotional maturity other than that in the words of other characters. But you can say he's different all you want, it's not gonna work if the subtle signs of his change aren't there. Say, imagine if Endeavor kept running his mouth about atonement, but kept dutifully abusing his kids - this is that. And yeah, Lucifer loves Chloe in his own way, cares about her, and even comes out of his self-absorbed little world for her, which by the way bugged me about their uneven relationship since season 1 (you know, treating her like shit with a flimsy excuse and then "making up" for it with a grand gesture of sacrifice or a round of angsty suffering. Time after time, every time.)

And finally, of course, there's the issue of how inconsiderate it is to Chloe for him to become God. I mean, it's dead obvious no relationship will be possible there, not without becoming even more unhealthy than it already seems. Themathic significance and meaning aside, even then, even in-universe, it's a shitty thing Lucifer does, again, for himself. So that he feels worthy of Chloe. What she feels, once he's made it his goal to do something, essentially doesn't matter anymore. And the plot fascilitates this splendidly, I mean, she always forgives him without fault like a well-oiled machine. Always, whatever he does, and it's gotten old a long time ago. We know Lucifer can do anything, anything at all, and he will be forgiven - by Chloe, by Maze, by Dan, by Linda, by Amenadiel, by anyone that he needs to forgive him. You'll be lucky if they don't do it the same episode, and extraordinarily lucky if it takes them three or four.

There are many other things to discuss this season, like Dan's ridiculously badly written death, Chloe's whole character stagnation, the, khm, the musical episode, the saturaday morning cartoon villain problem, the fact that Michael manages to descieve an omniscient being, and God himself. I might do those separately, might not, we'll see, as those aren't nearly as interesting to dissect as the above.

Aaaand, anyway, if he is now God, I strongly suspect they'll play the angle of "even though he's God, he stills feels shitty, as true self-love/worth comes from elsewhere" and the usual thing.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really THAT Bad?

How many fucking times must I talk about this movie?

I feel like this movie doesn’t need an introduction. Everyone knows this film. Its reputation precedes it. It didn’t bomb and it’s not generally considered one of the worst films ever made (at least on the level of films like Robot Monster or The Cat in the Hat), but this movie is easily one of the most divisive films ever made. This film has generated enough arguments that, if we harnessed the energy of all the flame wars it has caused, we could probably power the entire world until the heat death of the universe.

With the impending release of Zach Snyder’s bloated redo of Justice League, I’ve decided to go back and ask myself of this film here… is it really that bad?

THE GOOD

Here comes the most uncontroversial opinion: the action scenes in this movie rock (or at least two of them do). The standouts are the titular showdown, which almost makes sitting through the rest of the movie worth it, and the epic warehouse fight Batman gets into, which is like something straight out of the Arkham games. It’s so good. And aside from that, a lot of the cinematography in the film is good. The film knows how to look good, though unfortunately it does end up being a lot of style with little substance.

On the subject of Batman, I think Ben Affleck is a great and inspired choice. I certainly think he’s worthy of standing alongside Batmans like Clooney and Keaton, easily embodying both the Dark Knight and Billionaire Playboy aspects fairly well, though the writing does not always handle him quite as well as it should (we’ll get to that soon enough). Henry Cavill, while still a rather dour Superman, is as good as ever as Superman, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was a great choice here, especially since she didn’t have control so that she could insert anti-Arab racism, like some DCEU movies.

Perhaps one of the movies most impressive feats is how, in an uncharacteristic moment of brevity, it manages to condense the backstory of Batman into the prologue, getting it out of the way and not making us sit through yet another Batman origin film. This is literally the only thing the movie has over the MCU; where that franchise just has the character Spider-Man inexplicably in existence without even a hint of his origins, they just get Batman’s tragic backstory out of the way so we can see him beating the crap out of people. If more superhero movies want to take this route and just condense the backstory into an opening montage like this, I’d be down for it.

THE BAD

I really could just say “most of the movie” but that’s such a cop out. Let’s actually look at the problems. Let’s work our way up through the things from least problematic to most, shall we?

The best place to start is what Zach Snyder did to Jimmy Olsen.

Jimmy Olsen is made into a CIA spook who is brutally killed early on, and yes, that was Jimmy Olsen. Snyder put him in to shock audiences with his senseless murder, and also because he felt the character had no place in his series. Does making Watchmen just turn people into joyless husks who like to horribly bastardize iconic characters? Jimmy Olsen is ultimately a small microcosm of the film, but he is the sum total of everything wring with the early DCEU. He is bleak, soulless, and shows a critical lack of understanding about the comics and why people enjoy them.

Now let’s move on to the more exciting problem to discuss: the villains. I don’t even think it’s worth wasting much time discussing what’s wrong with KGBeast. While it is kind of interesting they’d think to use the guy at all, the fact he never dons the costume and dies by the end of the film is unfathomably lame for a character named KGBeast.

Now, onto the main antagonist, and the most infamous part of the movie: Lex Luthor.

Lex Luthor is horribly, horribly miscast. Jesse Eisenberg is a great actor for sure, and he’s effective in movies like Now You See Me, The Social Network, and the Zombieland films. But here he is being asked to play one of the most diabolical cunning geniuses in comic book history, and rather than play him as such, he plays him like a cartoonish twit. This Lex is utterly unrecognizable as Superman’s greatest foe. Does anyone think Lex Luthor would send a jar of piss to someone as a joke before he blows them up? That’s more something the Joker would do on an off day. Lex is not cunning, not intimidating, and not diabolical in the slightest, and yet there are moments where Eisenberg’s acting chops shine through and Lex, for a moment, is almost engaging. Luthor really suffers the way Doctor Doom tends to in film adaptations: the filmmaker clearly doesn’t get why people like the villain, and decide to do some weird, unique take that will only cause to alienate fans.

But perhaps the worst of them all is Doomsday. Doomsday has exactly one claim to fame, and that’s killing Superman, so as soon as he shows up if you have even a passing awareness of the character you know how the movie is going to end, which robs the film of tension for its last battle. The fact he also appears with little buildup and doesn’t have any characterization doesn’t help; Doomsday is just the Big Gray CGI Blob that superhero movies try and pass off as a final boss for the heroes to fight. This has worked precisely once, in Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk and Venom did not make it work, and this film is nowhere close to being in the same ballpark as Venom.

By and far the biggest problem, though, is the movie’s incredible length and its very existence in the franchise at this point in time. This is an epic superhero crossover in which two of the biggest comic book characters of all time fight and then team up… And it is the second movie in a franchise. While they do a good job of establishing Batman rather quickly, Wonder Woman comes out of nowhere. And then at the end, Superman ‘dies.’ We have had one single movie prior to this to make a connection to the guy, and yet here he is getting a temporary comic book death with no buildup whatsoever that we know is going to be reversed sooner than later because the movie telegraphs this to us.

Imagine if, instead of building up the character over the course of a decade and putting him in all sorts of different stories, the MCU went right from Iron Man to Endgame. You go from a simpler, character-driven piece to a massive crossover where a hero dies right away, and it doesn’t give anyone time to care. Tony Stark had multiple films worth of characterization under his belt before they threw him in a crossover, let alone killed him, but Snyder expects you to give a damn about a Superman who just started his career in the previous movie of a franchise.

And the ass-numbing length of the movie is no justification. Even before the director’s cut came out this film was a slog, and the director’s cut really does nothing to earn its existence. All it does is add more runtime to an already tedious and bloated film, leading to the same exact ending and fixing none of the overarching narrative problems of the thing. The problem with any director’s cut is that ultimately the movie is still going to be Dawn of Justice, it’s still going to lead to extremely rushed character decisions, and it’s still going to be a mess. You’d have to redo half of the film to make this into a worthwhile and coherent narrative that’s actually worthy of being an entry in a superhero franchise.

And to top it all off, the movie spends far too much time foreshadowing for its own good. People criticized The Mummy for shoehorning in way too many shared universe elements right off the bat, and if that movie was bad for it, so is this one. The cameos from all the members of the Justice League, while striking, could be excised from the plot with little to no impact, and the Knightmare sequence is just excessive and weird.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

The answer to this question has never been harder.

On the one hand, this film does have some merit. There is some good casting choices, good cinematography, good action… But then, on the other hand, the film is overly long, pretentious, has poor writing and dialogue, mishandles everyone aside from Superman, and is just incredibly unpleasant.

This film is in many ways the exact problem Christopher Nolan created with his Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan, by grounding the fanciful characters of comic books into a realistic setting, created a climate in which someone could suck any sort of joy or meaning out of comics. The success of his films meant that people would see dark, gritty realism as preferable to joyous, colorful escapism, and the negative effects of his films, however good you find them, are still felt today even as filmmakers are finally shaking off the grit. Dawn of Justice is the zenith of Nolan’s style of superhero film. There is nothing fun, joyful, or engaging to be found here; it is simply the characters you know and love forced into dark, miserable scenarios that ends in death and misery. Where’s the fun? Where’s the color? Where’s the wonder, the excitement, where is any of it? This film paints a bleak and miserable and hopeless picture of a world of superheroes. It really makes me think of this rather famous comic panel:

I absolutely hate this movie, but not because I think it’s bad. I hate it because it has enough good ideas where it should be the best thing ever, but it really isn’t. It’s a miserable slog of a film that does nothing to justify or earn its massive runtime whatsoever. It really does belong somewhere between 5 and 6 on IMDB, because I can almost see why people like it, but it just isn’t even remotely close to being how good its fan say it is. This is not a good superhero movie, and this is not how we should want superhero movies to be. There is a market for serious superhero fare of course, and there’s no reason that these films can’t engage with mature themes or anything, don’t get me wrong. But this is absolutely not the way to do it.

[springfieldblues]

my long ass review for S32E03 Now Museum, Now You Don’t

warning: LONG because i rambled about history more than i thought i would

id been looking forward to this one because i like art history, especially after seeing how they tried their best to stick to historical accuracy in the previous episode I, Carumbus. this time however….they didnt try that hard. i dont know why i thought theyd go through that sort of trouble again LMAO

but its okay, i dont really expect the simpsons to be the paragon of historical accuracy or anything. especially in anthology episodes told through a particular character's lens (in this case, lisa, whos already feverish so whatever)

first i just wanna say that this is, i guess, less of a review and more of an accidental list of history fun facts. so im just gonna get my general thoughts out of the way first.

the episode was fun! to me at least haha. i mean it got me to think and do a lot of research on my own so that must count for something. besides a couple of really weird ones, the jokes were good. anthology episodes tend to be….not that good but i thought this one was one of the better ones so far. idk.

anyway on to lisanardo da vinky its the renaissance! jesus christ the italian accents in the beginning of this segment were annoying as hell but i also feel like that was the joke lmao. ill be real i kind of tuned out for a second there when grampa started rambling so idk what he said.

i told myself i wouldnt get nitpicky with historical accuracy if the jokes were funny (final edit: so that was a lie) but this meh bit with the pizza guys and mascots was really not worth ignoring the fact that its impossible for italy to have any tomato-based food in the 15th century (tomatoes were brought to europe from the americas in the 16th century, and pizza as we know it today—flatbread, cheese, tomato—originated in the late 18th century)

oh this next part was kind of legit tho. lisanardo, like the real leonardo, became andrea del verrochio's apprentice at his workshop. i loved this next bit:

"Whoever paints the sweetest cherub will have the honor of having MY name signed on their work. That's what great artists do!"

SO YEAH as it turns out, lisanardo painted the sweetest cherubs. the painting here is called The Baptism of Christ, and the real leonardo assisted verrochio in finishing it. specifically, he painted the cherubs in the corner.

this causes verrochio to quit and go someplace with less talented people: a music school (yes, verrochio did quit painting after getting owned by young leo and his mad angel painting skills. he never did anything with music tho, he was more of a sculptor)

alongside lisanardo, in mr largo-verrochio's workshop we have barticelli (botticelli bart), dolphatello (donatello dolph), ralphael (raphael...ralph) and mediocrito (no one that i know of. sorry milhouse) (and kearney i guess but they dont refer to him by name). botticelli and donatello are said to have also been apprentices at verrochio's workshop, but raphael came a couple of decades later so he couldnt have been there. and donatello was too old so that claim is a bit questionable. but anyway

it IS true that leonardo's peers envied him, to the point where he was anonymously and purposefully accused of being gay (a major crime punishable by death in 15th century florence) while he was still working at verrochio's workshop

we are then treated by what im pretty sure is the fourth time the show has used 'at seventeen' by janis ian, this time sung by a dejected lisanardo (man they really do keep making yeardley sing these days huh) who only wishes to be appreciated and not envied.

"I'll show them all! I'll show them all in a secret diary that no one will decipher for 400 years!"

some of lisanardo's future inventions. who wouldve known

so after barticelli, for some reason (revenge??? or something?? what was his plan here idgi) steals lisanardo's diaries full of blueprints of her inventions and takes them to mr burns who i have to assume is pope alexander VI here, they decide to use her inventions for war.

"With these, we can kill the most evil people in the world!! ....Slightly different Christians."

leo actually did this of his own accord. im surprised this is what they decided to do with lisanardo instead of talking about leo's love of nature and vegetarianism (not a single mention of that in this episode? come on...) then again, trying to do good only to end up indirectly making things worse is a very standard lisa storyline. i guess they didnt want to miss the chance to have evil pope burns (very fitting, especially for that era since they were all about money and controlling the people)

so lisanardo decides to leave for france, unlike the real leonardo who was more or less persuaded by his ultimate fanboy king francis I to move to france.

"Lisanardo, I have many questions. Why are you hitting yourself? A nerd says 'what'? And how is it possible that I am rubber and you are glue? Et cetera, et cetera."

that line may seem a little random, like hes just nelson saying nelson things (and i mean, obviously he is) but the real francis also "had an unquenchable thirst for learning, and Leonardo was the world’s best source of experimental knowledge. He could teach the king about almost any subject there was to know, from how the eye works to why the moon shines." so yeah, he did have many questions and lisanardo, finally being appreciated for her intellect, was happy to answer them all. its very interesting how lisa assigned this role to nelson in her retelling of da vinci’s life :^)

and so she lived the rest of her days in france, nat king cole's 'mona lisa' plays because duh, and they make a da vinci code reference because duh. and the segment ends. and not a single time did they show the actual mona lisa painting. the fuck?

(ngl i was fully expecting bart to say 'leonardo da vinky' for a second here)

so this next segment is about french impressionist painters, most likely the batignolles group, a name adopted by the early representatives of impressionism. its much more vague than the lisanardo segment since no one here is referred to by name (except moe, more on him in a sec) but i dont feel like it really matters in this case. bart is prrrrooobably claude monet but its hard to say, this segment is kind of a mish-mash of a lot of things. also i gotta say i really liked how lisa introduced the story to bart with an 'if you hate the formal study of art' and not 'if you hate art' because thats exactly my headcanon. i LOVE the concept of artist bart and whenever its referenced it just makes perfect sense to me.

anyway the segment opens in 1863 at the école des beaux-arts (back then it was actually known as the académie des beaux-arts), preserver of traditional french art styles. skinner reviews his students’ paintings one by one. praises the plain, unimaginative paintings depicting your typical european countryside landscapes. very run-of-the-mill (haha get it...cuz theres….a windmill) (although the real académie didnt approve of such basic stuff, they wanted artists to draw epic historical and mythological scenes) then he gets to barts painting and he gives him an F- because the painting made him think.

(the paintings in this scene arent real famous paintings as far as i know but they are inspired by real paintings enough to get the point across)

in comes barney dressed as bacchus as a model for the students to sketch, which i just loved:

barney: “You prefer robe open or robe off?” skinner: “Just cover your privates with this walnut shell.” barney: “Whoa!!! So roomy!”

skinner gasps in horror at bart’s sketch, which “looks nothing like him” and bart explains that “it shouldn’t; we’re making the art that we feel because we can’t compete with a camera.” damn, you go bart. take that, realism. draw what you feel!!

(also no, you didnt need to hold still for 17 hours for a daguerreotype. 30 min tops.)

nelson haw-haw of the week: FOIE-gras!

so here they are at the moulin rouge (“enjoy it before baz luhrmann ruins it” hey shut up. i love that movie), which wouldnt be built for another 26 years, but it is the most widely known gathering place for bohemians in the public consciousness so i can understand why they went with the moulin. nelson delivers this anachronistic line:

“This époque keeps getting beller and beller!”

which alludes to la belle époque, the golden age of france usually dated from 1880 to 1914. made me snort so ill let that slide

and heres moe! as henri de toulouse-lautrec, who was actually born a year after the year this segment is set in. yo moe szyslak he was just 1

toulouse-moetrec introduces himself as the chronicler of the demimonde (not an actual job). an iconic figure associated with the moulin rouge (largely due to his affinity for alcohol and prostitutes), toulouse-lautrec was also a painter, having illustrated a series of posters for the moulin himself. he simply had to be in this segment, anachronisms be damned, just because they decided to include the moulin. cant have one without the other.

and yes he did have a walking cane where he kept his liquor.

i love how everyone drinks absinthe in this place. theyre bohemians what else would they drink

toulouse-moetrec points out that barts paintings are the greatest thing hes ever seen (and hes seen like five things!) and that hes a genius. milhouse realizes that they should stop doing what the teacher says and use their own minds to instead...start doing what bart says lmao. to the easels!

next we have skinner hyping up chalmers about the art his students made for the salon de paris, an art exhibition that the emperor of france will attend. he assures him that none of these paintings will encourage debate, provoke thought or be out of place at a dentist’s office. when they unveil the art, theyre both SHOCKED at how scandalous the paintings actually are.

this reaction was kind of accurate. impressionism was severely rejected at the salon de paris, due to paintings not looking finished enough to them, they thought they were ugly and vulgar for depicting nudity in a contemporary setting (historical and mythological nudity was fine). these impressionist paintings were sent to the salon de refusés, which is. yeah. the place where they sent the rejects. the salon de refusés does not make an appearance but this scene makes a reference to it when the artists get expelled from the royal salon. also:

“What about our student loans?” “Oh they’ll be refunded. We are not barbarians, I mean, come on.”

(god if only)

so the painters are down because they want the emperor to actually see their paintings. toulouse-moetrec pipes in once again with an idea.

“There is one thing the emperor loves more than anything.” “France?” “No, he hates France.”

apparently the emperor really loves cheese, which makes sense since its napoleon III (who loved cheese) and homer (who loves cheese.) so the painters roll into the salon inside a giant wheel of cheese (obviously.) as lenny said, “Eh, you know French cheese. Very runny.” napoleon III chases after the wheel into a room, where the wheel falls apart after getting chomped on by the emperor. now that they got his attention, the painters proudly show the emperor their impressionist art, which he couldnt be more indifferent about because he just wants to eat his cheese dammit, and he awards them with the royal medallion just to kind of get them out of his way. skinner immediately starts kissing ass (as he does) until marge’s like ‘hey wait a minute. you expelled these students from the royal salon’ and an executioner immediately starts ominously measuring skinners neck.

“Uh, sir...is your tongue sticking out because you’re dead or because you’re mad at me?”

and thats the end of that lmao (gore in this episode, gore in the last episode, and next week we’re getting gore too cuz its THOH, what the hell is goin on)

we get a short intermission with maggie, who wants a story for her too! lisa tells her that renaissance artists loved to put babies in their paintings, especially baby angels.

here she is showing her The Triumph Of Galatea by raphael:

King David Playing The Harp by peter paul reubens:

and a very simplified version of pretty much any depiction of hell by hyeronimus bosch lmao:

not much else to say about this one, really. but i really liked that sky!

the last segment is about frida kahlo and diego rivera. or as bart puts it ‘the one about a fat guy whos wife is too good for him.’ i was REALLY looking forward to this one because i love frida and i thought itd be a cool opportunity for animators to go bonkers and do really cool shit with her art as inspiration…..but the segment is not about frida, its about diego and his selling out to capitalism. and its also yet another story with homer and marge drama. no funky cool animation here. sigh i guess i’ll take it

the story begins in 1929 at la casa azul, frida’s home (now museum dedicated to her life and work.) frida and diego are getting married. this courtyard definitely did not look this way yet back in 1929. also theres something very cringy yet funny about lovejoy saying spanish words the way he does, i honestly cant decide how i feel about that one

the writers know theyre being cringy with their gringoness so they go along with it.

moe: “Spanish for ‘best wishes’!” mel: “Spanish for ‘congratulations’!” bumblebee man: “Spanish for ‘muy bueno’!”

OH YEAH BUMBLEBEE MAN this is his new voice actor, eric lopez! hes not mexican but its still great to finally have a latino actor voicing a latino character and hes very excited to be part of the show so i hope to hear more of him!! im rooting for him

el barto/zorro makes an appearance which i am very confused about. he has jack shit to do with frida and diego and mexico in the 20s-30s. el zorro was set in the spanish california of the early 19th century. their use of the original theme song makes me think they just wanted to flex their disney privileges tbh

lets not talk about that that whole scene was bad

anyway diego announces he and frida are going to new york, without even asking her first. frida is obviously pissed.

“Don’t worry, as a woman, you’ll be treated with much more respect in America.”

so in new york, diego is having a bit of a business meeting with mr burns as one of the members of the rockefellers, who is commissioning him to draw a mural for the rockefeller center. its kinda funny how he refers to him and frida as socialists even though they were very much communists lmao its okay you can say it. ok so far, but then frida says ‘yes, we hate the capitalists! right now, a young socialist is being born who will take them down! mr. bernie sanders. i hope hes quick about it’ and that was a simple enough joke and couldve been left at that but then its immediately followed by this weird as fuck family guy-esque cutaway gag to bernie as a baby:

“Getting a cootie shot should not cost your lunch money. And if you don’t listen to me, listen to the Bernie Babies! What? Everybody’s got goons.” *larger babies start beating up this other baby* “I disavow that, and welcome it.”

this confused me so much that i had to ask one of my american friends to help me understand, but even she was like ‘uhhh yeah thats a weird joke,’ especially now that hes been out of the race for months (then again these episodes take almost a year to produce. i guess they couldnt be bothered to replace it with something more relevant.) whatever that was weird and confusing and unfunny moving on

frida is pretty irked that diego is going through with this deal. after all, it goes against everything they believe in. im not sure how the real frida felt about diego doing the mural, but she did feel a bit of rage during her visit to the united states, especially the obvious disparity between rich and poor. she hated having to interact with capitalists and found americans very boring. in this segment, frida seems to be acting more like the american communist party, which diego got kicked out of for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons. in any case, frida is pretty upset about this whole thing.

and finally we get the first and only kind of surreal frida moment. kinda. maybe. its more cartoonish than anything but im desperate ok

interesting how they felt like they had to add a “don’t smoke” in big letters after showing patty and selma flying away on their giant cigarettes. i wonder if this is something theyre making them do now? i remember hearing something about them toning down patty and selma’s smoking

diego comes home to frida, drunk as hell, followed by the marx brothers. i cant believe they didnt make a marxism joke come on it was RIGHT THERE. THE MARX BROTHERS. KARL MARX. COME ON

frida paints her feelings.

this makes diego realize that frida is a genius and he is not half the artist she is. he proclaims he will now show his awe of her by sleeping with other women, starting “an hour ago.” to which frida replies, “and i will start sleeping with other women, starting two hours ago.” yes this was pretty much their relationship. though im just wondering how the hell did diego not know frida was this kind of artist until now? i know homers an idiot but jeez. art was how frida and diego met, diego knew from the get-go that frida was an incredible artist. i guess the fame got to his head or something. again, homer just being stupid.

“well enough already, while the art is still deco, okay?”

its time for the mural diego painted, Man At The Crossroads, to be unveiled:

rockefeller examines it. good and great so far, and then...uh oh

“Who’s that fellow…? With the beard, and the bolshevik smile…” “That’s the founder of Soviet Russia, Lenin!”

“B-b-but he’s a communist!” “Oh he just attended a couple of meetings.”

rockefeller will not have this communist in the temple to capitalism that is the rockefeller center, so he orders diego to paint over it. diego stands his ground and refuses. despite rockefeller’s threats, diego says that theres only one person he wants to be proud of him no matter what and in true homer & marge fashion, frida is touched by this. they happily leave the rockefeller center.

now, the real story of Man At The Crossroads and the rockefeller center was actually not that different. as soon as the rockefellers found out diego had snuck in a portrait of lenin into the mural, they ordered him to paint over it, to which he refused. diego even offered to include abraham lincoln and even american abolitionists in the mural as a compromise, but the rockefellers simply did not want any references to communism whatsoever. they did not complain about the hammer and sickle, though. yes, they did know diego was a communist and hired him anyway. what did they expect? lmao. diego said:

"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."

so they decided to destroy the mural before it was even finished and they never talked to each other again.

diego then repainted the mural at the palacio de bellas artes back in mexico, this time known as Man, Controller of the Universe. this new version included even more communist leaders and a depiction of john d. rockefeller jr. drinking at a nightclub, right underneath a depiction of syphilis bacteria. cue nelson haw-haw:

this was the version they used in the episode also, since the original was, well, never finished and also destroyed. only a black and white photograph of it exists, taken by diego before it was destroyed so he could remake it.

right so, homer!diego then pulls a Barthood and finishes the episode with a large mural summarizing the entire episode. he says some rick and morty thing i didnt get because i dont watch the show idk idc

the end

ALRIGHT NOW ITS TIME FOR THE STORY OF VINCENT VAN MOE

[spectraling]

That Witch King slaying duo and their lack of resolution

Ok, I’m going to preface this with the fact that I am very biased because it’s relating to two of my favorite characters in the entire LOTR trilogy (and also my favorite moment in cinema history), but it bothers me every time I see it so here:

In the LOTR movies, Merry and Éowyn receive the unique opportunity of being able to develop a kickass dynamic because they are both stuck in the same boat, namely wanting to go to war to defend what they love from the clutches of evil, but being considered too insignificant/weak to do so. Having Merry know who Éowyn is is a change from the books, and is by far the best change the movies ever made to the source material (you could’ve had your twist moment Tolkien, just...give us this). This way their arcs collide in a really satisfying way, but since it was now there, and they clearly are concerned about and care for each other, the only thing that was missing was really any sort of...resolution? End? To that arc? Dynamic? After they are separated on the fields of Pelennor they never have an interaction again, even in passing.

I mean, they slay the Witch King together, don’t get me wrong, but the way the movie frames it makes it so weird to just..not have their arc end here? Since Merry never goes to the houses of healing in the movies, and he never receives the horn of Rohan from Éowyn, they just kind of never speak again even though they just went through all of that horrible stuff together (and are basically forever scarred by stabbing the Witch King but nobody wants to talk about that angst) and it was set up as them only having each other during that time.

In the moments after the Witch King is slain they are literally a couple of meters away from each other??

Merry ultimately passes out here to be found by Pippin later on, and Éowyn goes on to find Théoden, but in this moment they are both there and they are looking in the direction of each other and there’s nothing obscuring them and they just did this incredible feat and..

..and the next shot we see Éowyn is somewhere else looking for Merry? He was...right there? In front of her?? This is just straight up a continuity error.

Wouldn’t it have been neat if they had acknowledged each other? Éowyn crawling up to Merry instead and see that he’s alive and she found him (there’s even additional previous shots of her calling out to him, she’s clearly very concerned about finding him)? Not even an exchange of words as much as a look that says “Oh my god you’re alive I’m so relieved what just happened did we just kill that thing?”

We don’t even need her crawling up to him if we want to keep that special for her moment with Théoden in just a second, but like? If you’re going to spend those seconds having Éowyn look for Merry, why not just having her see him, call out to him, him possibly calling back or seeing her, and then the orc captain guy that starts chasing her comes in to interrupt this moment. Éowyn looks for a sword to defend Merry despite her terrible condition, but is saved by the passing Aragorn. Of course I would love if Éowyn successfully somehow gutted this guy and defends Merry, but maybe that is too much wishful thinking. Then again Legolas single-handedly takes down an Oliphaunt only seconds later and surfs off of its trunk like it’s nothing so what is realism really.

This would also serve to acknowledge Merry’s involvement and bravery in slaying the Witch King, doing so out of desperation to defend Éowyn in the books (and simultaneously getting revenge for him stabbing Frodo back at Weathertop where Merry could not defend him). It’s so briefly shown that he’s there at all in the movie that if you blink you’ll miss it completely and then Merry is not seen again until Pippin finds him quite a bit later on. I’m also all for giving Merry a brief moment of seeing Éowyn right before the Witch King starts fighting with her so we know he’s there and his intentions are not so sudden, but that’s outside the scope of this post I guess.

All in all I just wanted to rant about this moment that with such a tiny change could’ve given these characters some sort of acknowledgement of each other’s feats, wrapped up their story at least somewhat and it would’ve made my heart so full.

[fatesdeepdive]

Entry 54: Demigod Shit Magnet

Got a lot of stuff to talk about, no time for intro.

Class Profile - Ninja

The Nohrian thief class and base class of Saizo, Kaze, Kagero, and Asugi. Has good speed and skill and that's about it. Wields shurikens, which make them work best for inflicting debuffs. Also oddly good at mage killing. Oddly enough, the game considers them to be the Hoshido version of a Cavalier. Their first skill, Locktouch, is a utility skill that allows them to open chests and doors without a key. Their second skill, Poison Strike, deals 20% damage to enemies after battle but cannot kill, helping establish their niche of injuring enemies from a distance so stronger units can come in and finish them off. Ninjas can promote to Master Ninjas or Mechanists. I like the Ninja design a lot; the light armor fits well and the scarves, headbands, and arm knife thingies look cool.

Class Profile - Oni Savage

This game’s version of the Barbarian class and Hoshidan rival to the Fighter class. Wields axes, can promote into Oni Chieftain or Blacksmith. Weirdly, Rinkah is the only Oni Savage in the game, making the fact that it has two exclusive promotion classes weird. Oni Savages have great strength, hp, and defense, countered by atrocious luck, skill, and resistance. They can do good damage, assuming they can hit anything, or act as a wall, assuming they don’t die instantly to magic or a crit. Their first skill, Seal Resistance, lowers an enemy’s resistance after combat. I do not know why this was given to this class. Their other skill, Shove, is a utility skill that can be used to move a neighboring unit one space away. I actually like the Oni Savage design, despite it being ripe for fanservice, because the male and female designs are similar. My problem isn’t barbarians being shirtless, it’s when the game does stupid shit like have the female version of a class wear a thong while the male wears pants. The mask and beads worn by generic Oni Savages are also a nice touch.

Class Profile - Monk/Shrine Maiden

This game’s version of the Priest and Cleric classes, Hoshidan versions of the Troubadour class. Sakura and Mitama are Shine Maidens, while Azama is a Monk. Oddly enough, despite this game mostly getting rid of gender-locked classes, these two remain separate. They’re basically the same class, though. Both wield staves, have the same skills, and have good speed, luck and resistance, hampered by awful defense and HP. Oddly, Shrine Maiden has 5% better magic, while Monk instead has 10% better skill. Regardless, the job of these classes is to avoid combat and heal allies using staves. These classes can promote into Onmyojis and either Great Masters or Priestesses. Their first skill, Miracle, gives them a luck-based chance to survive a fatal blow with 1 HP. Their second skill, Rally Luck, boosts the Luck of nearby allies for a few turns. They also secretly have a 10% extra crit evade. I enjoy the simple, modest designs, which fit with the class’s aesthetic. 

Conquest Chapter 8: Cold Reception

As Felicia leads the group to her village, Moron and Silas are separated by a blizzard. Moron faints from the cold and is rescued by Kilma, the Ice Tribe’s leader. Moron begins to introduce himself, but Silas reminds him that they’re here to crush a rebellion. Corrin bemoans the fact that everything is so morally grey. Honestly, I wouldn’t call this route morally grey, so much as it’s the same black and white shit as Birthright with Moron being to stupid to understand he’s on the evil side.

Kilma says he only let Moron into the village because he carries Yato, the sword prophecized to save the world. Kilma introduces Moron to his daughter, Flora. The fact that Flora and Felicia are the daughters of the head of a small country colonized by Nohr is kinda weird. Garon conquered the Ice Tribe, took the daughters captive, and forced them to work as servants for his other kidnapped prince.

Felicia and Elise show up and Elise blurts out that they’re there to suppress Kilma’s rebellion. Elis is an idiot. Flora sounds the alarm and the Ice Tribe rushes in to fight the Nohrians. Flora calls Felicia ignorant and says war is the only language Nohr understands.

This chapter uses the same map as Chapter 17 of Birthright. The gimmick of this chapter is centered on five villages spread around the map. A pair of enemy soldiers will try to go to the villages to summon reinforcements, while the player can visit them to get gold. At the start of turn two, Odin and Niles show up to save us, acting on orders from Leo. Moron has to convince them to not kill everyone brutally, because Odin’s a chunibiyo and Niles is genuinely morally grey.

Odin

Owain from Awakening, now a Dark Mage instead of Myrmidon and pretending to be an evil wizard instead of a legendary hero. He also switches his costume to this tight, garish yellow outfit with a v-neck that stretches to his crotch. I’d complain if it was any character other than Odin; for Odin, it fits. I did like Owain in Awakening, but I will admit his schtick can get old. His personal skill gives him a boosted crit rate when using a named weapon with a name more than 12 letters long, something ridiculous that fits perfectly for a guy obsessed with legendary weapons and powerful spells. Also, he can reclass into a Samurai, a Hoshidan class, which makes sense given his class in Awakening.

Niles

Leo’s other retainer, a sadistic Outlaw. His personal skill, Kidnap, works the same as Orochi���s capture. Conquest is a bit harder than Birthright, though, so I’m afraid I won’t be grabbing another Kenshi. Fun fact, Niles is the only non-promoted bow user in all of Nohr. Niles’s design isn’t half bad; I like the eyepatch, white hair, and hood, although I’d like to note that it’s a bit odd that the sadistic criminal has a noticeably darker skin tone.

Flora apologizes to Moron for standing by her actions, calls Felicia a moron, and tells Jakob she wishes she was meeting him under better circumstances. Felicia’s battle quote with Jakob is especially interesting, confirming she was a hostage and hinting that she has feelings for him. Kilma prays for forgiveness for fighting Felicia and says Moron deceived him.

Moron spares Kilma. In fact, he wins the battle without killing anyone. Somehow. Moron has Elise treat the enemy wounded. Kilma is shocked by Moron’s kindness. Moron negotiates a deal where the Ice Tribe stops rebelling in return for more autonomy, something he has the authority to do that totally won’t be ignored by the child kidnapping mass murderer Garon. Kilma says that Moron might be the legendary hero after all. Flora apologizes for defending her people from an invading army who kidnapped her and her sister as a child and swears fealty to Moron.

So, here’s my problem with Conquest. Nohr is evil. Garon is evil. But Moron is good. So every chapter has him win battles without violence or negotiate people into working with him. Rather than having Moron struggle with his morality, it has him keep his hands clean, even as he conquers neighboring nations for the glory of a brutal dictatorship. It’s idiotic. And it will only get more idiotic as this game goes on. But first, we have some Supports to read.

Support: Corrin/Odin

C: Corrin finds Odin posing. Odin says his stance needs a unique name. Corrin gets annoyed by Odin and walks away.

B: Odin asks Corrin to name his pose. Corrin says they need tome to think of a name.

A: Corrin tries to hide from Odin. Odin tracks them down and annoys Corrin for a while. Eventually, Odin comes up with a dumb name for his pose: Shadow Glitter. Corrin is relieved that they don't have to talk to Odin anymore.

S: Odin asks Corrin to marry him. Corrin gets tired of his long-winded proposal and demands he get to the point. Odin gives a heartfelt proposal and immediately gets back on his bullshit.

Review: Not bad. Odin toes the line between funny and annoying and seeing Corrin get sick of his bullshit is a good dose of realism. This is also one of the only times Corrin isn’t ridiculously friendly. Also, by marrying Odin, Corrin joins yet another royal family.

Support: Elise/Effie

C: Elise asks Effie to go on a walk with her, but Effie is full from eating and asks Elise to roll her like a barrel.

B: Effie uses Elise as a dumbell. The two of them reminisce about how they met: Elise snuck down to the underground and befriended Effie and, when the guards tried to take Elise back, Effie tried to fight em off.

A: Effie talks about how she trained for years to become a castle guard so she could protect Elise.

Review: This is what Corrin and Silas’s relationship should have been. That is, free from dumb bullshit about Corrin having the memory of a goldfish. Lore is always good in Supports and this does a great job establishing Elise and Effie’s friendship, while also having some great comedy bits.

Support: Felicia/Niles

C: Felicia spills some soup on Niles. Niles begins stripping seductively. Felicia offers to take his clothes to the laundry.

B: Felicia offers to give Felicia a special, heavenly dessert. Niles assumes she's coming on to him. Felicia gives Niles a cookie.

A: Niles mocks Felicia for not understanding his double entendres. After finding out about Felicia's childhood as a hostage, he apologizes.

S: Niles proposes.

Review: A fun, kinda dumb comedic Support.

Support: Arthur/Mozu

C: Arthur finds Mozu analyzing the soil around camp. Mozu rambles about how farming is awesome.

B: Arthur helps Mozu plow a field. Mozu corrects his form. A: While Arthur is plowing, a heard of dragons fly over and shit all over him. Mozu is overjoyed because dragon droppings are great fertilizer. Also, I'd like to note a script error in this Support: dragons and wyverns are not the same thing. Wyverns are the mounts with animal-level intelligence, dragons are ancient magic beings that can transform into humans. Unless a flock of demigods flew by to shit on Arthur, the game means wyverns.

S: Arthur proposes by giving Mozu a special flower that is supposed to be planted by a husband and wife. Mozu accepts because Arthur's bad luck is a good source of fertilizer.

Review: The start of this Support is a bit bland, but Arthur getting covered in shit is great.

[nautilusopus]

Why do you hate the remake? The ending?

AMONG MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY OTHER THINGS

AHEM:

the ending

the way everyone’s character is botched

this goes triple for poor cloud and tifa because they literally aren’t allowed to have either meaningful character interactions or character development because they CAN’T because this is the first five hours of the game stretched into 40 hours so we can’t get into nibelheim yet because we have to “save” it

the fact that this is the first five hours stretched into 40 hours and thus is largely padding

the handling of sector 7, where we go from watching actual people we care about die to seeing literally zero people die at all and also we evacuated the slums so it’s cool

especially egregious considering the game made us do so many stupid sidequests in the (way too clean and sunny) slums to get attached to these npcs only to kill literally zero of them

they still kill barret though so they don’t have to have him fight jenova with everyone else because he’s not a REAL character, let’s get him out of the serious moments. except they can’t kill barret so he’s back immediately due to time bullshit, great

on a related note, the complete and utter lack of any real stakes

the way aeris has fucking future knowledge

the way the vii universe, due to the addition of Fate, now has the judas problem. if the planet can literally fucking control fate why didn’t it just keep jenova from landing? why didn’t it keep shinra from becoming a thing? the only answer is that jenova and shinra are intended to do the things they do and thus are actually under the planet’s control and are not accountable for their actions

the fact that this is sephiroth’s motivation now or something, instead of the actual personality he used to have where he acted as a foil to cloud with his inability to accept unpleasant truths about himself and instead creating a grand narrative for himself where he has not been victimised by unfair and unglamorous circumstances and responded to this by making bad choices

the fact that fate is now a concept in this game at all and how completely and utterly fucking insulting that is and how much of a disservice it is to everything the original stood for on a fundamental level. a game that was literally about how there is no inherent meaning in some grand scheme, and that on a cosmic scale we are insignificant and the planet doesn’t give two shits if we live or die, so therefore we must create our own meaning, small and irrelevant to vast forces like the inevitability of pain and death as they are, and that the meaning we create with other small and insignificant human beings is nonetheless something with value, and that in fact it is harmful to try and pretend there is some vast cosmic significance to your actions and that there doesn’t have to be because your life having value to you is enough, especially in the face of something as absurd as the inevitability of death and pain, now has fucking fate in it. actually, cloud DOES matter on a vast cosmic scale! everyone’s deaths do! and in fact those deaths are unnatural and you’re going to prevent them! hooray!

this is yet another narrative, following in the footsteps of harry potter and the new star wars trilogy, that pretends to be about a nobody going on to defy odds anyway only to turn around and say actually lol no they were special the whole time.

cloud’s handling in general even outside of that. aforementioned lack of development aside, he’s simultaneously way too chilly and way too casual with everyone, with the most meaningful interactions he gets to have being shallow fucking flirting with tifa and him walking around making put upon faces with aeris

the fandom thirst over literal sex traffickers

the fact that this was marketed as a remake when it is AT BEST a series reboot that relies on you having played the og to understand what the fuck is going on half the time

* the utter lack of reading comprehension among the fans that still somehow think they’re going to get other “iconic og moments” remade. did you fuckers miss the ending somehow? about how we’re doing none of that actually? about how they’re going to Defy Fate? you aren’t getting those moments. period. the entire fucking game and ending is literally about that. about how we’re going to Prevent All The Bad Things

the fact that the above was done because they clearly started out trying to actually remake the gam, realised they bit off more than they could chew, and then went LOL NO PROMISES at the last minute with some kingdom hearts bullshit that would let them wiggle out of any long term plot commitments at any time (and also shoehorn zack in because of fucking course he’s here too)

pacing pacing pacing. aside from the atrocious padding problems, you’ve also got sephiroth showing up and mugging the camera every three minutes, because he has to, because this is the first five hours of the game so they need to cram him in there anyway regardless of what it does to the story or no one will buy their stupid game. also they drop the “cloud was never in soldier lol” WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too fucking early, jesus christ. good to know any kind of subtlety is just out the fucking window entirely now

what they did to poor sephiroth, easily the worst handled character in this whole mess. sephiroth sweetie i’m so sorry holy shit

whatever the fuck they were doing with cait sith

taking a big old fucking dump on any themes and meaning the original had in general which i won’t get into too much because it would take forever but you can read more about that here

how they handled shinra and avalanche, or rather how they didn’t handle it and made everything as black and white as possible

jessie’s thirst is extremely annoying and i’m over it

the fact that the fanbase keeps trying to simultaneously go “no it’s only the first chapter of course there’s no explanations” in response to pacing criticisms while also trying to go “no no they had to make it feel like a full game” in response to massive fucking story changes that only served to bloat the pacing

because they can’t bring up nibelheim yet, in this forty hour game (but still have time to go Zack Is Alive Now Also There Is Fate) tifa has no motivation or personality or connection to cloud and barret to speak of. also where the fuck is her anger, holy shit. she regrets joining avalanche? she isn’t

the fact that the fanbase is not only fine with all these changes, changes which again are being made directly in the name of profit to the detriment of good storytelling, but also are even pushing this as the “intended, fleshed out” version of the story they always wanted to tell but couldn’t

bad soundtrack, fight me

midgar and especially the slums look boring

the turks are good now uwu

no Trail of Blood sequence. again, pacing issues. this was meant to be your introduction to sephiroth to set the tone and establish how dangerous he was and how he was the REAL bad guy, but because we’ve seen him every three seconds at this point the whole sequence got cut and it was one of the best sequences there was

the fact that the interviews repeatedly indicate to me that they don’t seem to understand that not every goddamn irrelevant detail needs an explanation (a problem they seem to have carried over from crisis core so that’s great) but that they don’t seem to care about things that DO need explanations and that zero genuine thought was put into the worldbuilding

the way barret’s treated as a joke by the narrative when he’s literally fucking correct

the obsession with Realism (TM) to the point where it creates more tone problems than it solves at times (cloud can fucking fly in cutscenes but can’t hop over a two foot fence)

LET CLOUD BE A DOOFUS YOU COWARDS

about the only character that made it out with their personality intact was aeris and even she’s gone and had her motivations scuttled so it doesn’t matter, yaaaaaaaaay

i can’t fucking believe the remake has made me AVOID fics with jessie biggs and wedge in them. before it was a marker of quality. look what you’ve done.

cloud has an apartment now instead of living with avalanche in the basement. this is also done in the name of Realism but also kind of sucks away the charm imo and makes it that much harder to buy any of these assholes as found family

the timeline of all of this no longer taking place over like three weeks is once again a result of pacing issues. i’m sure this won’t bite us in the ass at all.

god remember when we thought roche was gonna be the worst addition? simpler times

also roche

and yeah the whole ass ending, complete with homage to the ending of ffvii period with the weird doctor who brain tunnel that makes no fucking sense to be here and is only gonna confuse people who don’t know this is supposed to be a callback, and even if it was why is it here, you can’t just fucking copy/paste Famous Moments with none of the emotional beats or writing to back them up or lead into them, context MATTERS did you fuckers learn nothing from the travesty of hollow writing that was ffxv and especially prompto?

the fact that people are looking at this fucking travesty and just assuming the og is like this too and not bothering to play it either because they loved the remake (for some reason???) or because they hated it and now wouldn’t play the og if their life depended on it, which breaks my heart most of all. “the original is still there!!!” is a meaningless overture if people refuse to engage critically with it on any level at all, which as we’ve outlined is absolutely what is happening. this is what people meant when we said the remake would erase the og, and on multiple levels, whether it’s people assuming the og was always meant to be like this, or seeing no reason to play it, or once again failing to recognise what the remake very loudly screams in your face it’s doing and assuming that of course we’re getting a vii remake with all those moments we care about, this is what has been happening.

i can’t even fucking imagine what the northern crater scene is gonna look like now, IF we get one at all. and that’s a big fucking if

i know i’ve missed a lot of them but i hope this helps

[aion-rsa]

Salma Hayek in Savages is One of the Most Underrated Movie Gangsters

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“You thought I wouldn’t notice,” cartel boss Elena Sánchez (Salma Hayek) demands of her loyal caporegime Ludo (a physically and emotionally imposing Benicio del Toro). The brutal and effective killer does not defend himself when the head of his family, and boss of bosses, slaps him with the force of a bull whip. He doesn’t even flinch. That would mean death. Oliver Stone’s Savages may not be his most renowned mob movie offering, but Hayek’s drug lord is one of cinema’s most groundbreaking gangsters.

Stone is no stranger to iconic gangsters. He wrote the screenplay for Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which brought Al Pacino’s coke-fueled Cuban political asylum seeker, Tony Montana, into celluloid’s perennial rogue’s gallery. For his 2012 cartel twist of a gangster film, Savages, Stone let Hayek reset the template. Her Elena Sánchez is street smart, tech savvy and a wiz at business. Her venture is so cut-throat, her underlings sever heads in their enthusiasm. Sánchez commands that much loyalty. Her gang decapitates wayward members, rivals and other stray wolves to bring lambs into the fold. They capture the proceedings on video which they send as messages in introductory offers of hostile takeovers.

Our ostensible heroes in this environment are Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), who’ve been friends since high school. Ben went to Berkeley and took botany classes; Chon went into the military and took seeds. The latter’s tour of duty in Iraq left him seething with trauma but well-trained tactically. His tour in Afghanistan left him tactless, but introduced him to the finest marijuana in the known world. The pair now run a multimillion-dollar cani-business in the era when the plant was on the verge of becoming legalized on the West Coast. They, and their mutual live-in girlfriend O (Blake Lively), are idealists, using their new wealth to invest in philanthropy. Sánchez’s cartel wants them to join the “family.” It is a renowned and venerable matriarchy.

Sánchez’s enterprise is larger than Vito Corleone’s in The Godfather, but then she is a wise and tough-nurturing godmother. Nicknamed La Reina, the boss of the Mexican Baja Cartel doesn’t merely conquer her competitors, she destroys idealism. To get the thing she wants, Elena kidnaps the thing Ben and Chon love most, O. This is a talent, discovering the things which people most treasure. When Tom Hagen reported back to his don in The Godfather, the family father discerned the Hollywood bigshot Jack Woltz loved his prized racehorse more than any other thing on earth. He sent a message.

Elena’s most potent message is a niche-meme of sorts. While streaming live footage of O in tortuous circumstances, she cuts to an animation of O’s head popping off, leaving an ever-increasing stain of blood which ultimately covers the screen. That’s her horse’s head. This is a message movie and that’s “the word.”  Hayek is a versatile performer. She brought black comedy subtlety to her roles in The Faculty and Dogma; sensual earth tones to Frida; and romantic fantasy into Once Upon a Time In Mexico. She ratted out her gangster boss in Everly, but made her bones as an assassin in The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Hayek has also proven herself a master thief, stealing From Dusk Till Dawn with one scene which she shared with George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, and a snake. In Savages, Hayek is allowed to be something female characters are routinely denied: ruthless, amoral, and savage.

Hayek presents a straightforward boss with strong family values. Elena Sánchez took over the cartel after the deaths of her husband and twin sons, but there is no room for irony for the Black Widow character. Hayek expertly balances public bravado and private sorrow. Elena is wise, like someone who paid attention to the lessons of different generations. Warnings about getting high on your own supply, and underestimating the other guy’s greed, would sound perfectly natural coming out her mouth. She’s the antithesis of her prisoner, whom she calls Ophelia after sensing the young woman exudes the need for a mother’s accumulated knowledge. Elena’s own actual daughter similarly rejects the past in the movie, but this is a gangster film tradition, sadly. Every mob boss wants their children to move into a thriving legitimate world. Elena says her daughter is “ashamed of me and I’m proud of her for it.”

The gangland dictator’s only vulnerability is her teenage daughter. It is also Elena’s strength. A mob godfather chalks blood up as an expense. Elena, the mother, is not only capable of doing anything for her children, but also justifying any action because it is done for her children. She only took over the cartel because her son was weak and would have been killed. This makes her character fearless.  

Regardless of the hard-bodied eye candy, Taylor-Johnson, Kitsch, and Lively are bland next to Hayek and del Toro, who see entitlement and philanthropy as disgusting conceits of wealth and soft privilege. Lively’s Ophelia is not a deep, William Shakespeare tragic figure. She’s Paris Hilton in a hemp halter top, a seeming trophy for the nouveau stoner rich. O neither shocks nor impresses the crime queen, whose got hideaways and mansions scattered internationally for whim or lam.

“There’s something wrong with your love story, baby,” wise mob boss Elena notes like she’s doling out favors at her daughter’s wedding. “They may love you but they will never love you as much as they love each other. Otherwise they wouldn’t share you, would they?” Their ménage a trois relationship is also seen as absolutely savage to del Toro’s Lado.

The Mexican gang think the gringos lack dignity, tradition, family, and honor. The Californians are appalled by the brutality of the narco-traffickers from south of the border where torture is a routine cost of doing the business. Local D.E.A. agent Dennis (John Travolta) puts his trust in graft. He skims profit from Elena, accepts bribes from her rival El Azul, as well as Lado, and Ben and Chon. Yet he is surprised when he gets bit on the hand at feeding time. “You stabbed a federal agent,” he moans as his faith is shaken in a scene reminiscent of the death of Mel Bernstein in Scarface. Sadly, it only expands Dennis’ jurisdiction.

It is noted in the film that Elena is counting on the reelection of a specific mayor to retain her power base in Mexico. Stone directed the 2009 documentary South of the Border, which presented the untold histories of leftist Latin American presidents. Savages, a commercial film, presents the cultural relationship between Anglo-Americans and Latinos in a way mainstream Hollywood films rarely attempt. Most of this is done through normalizing sequences which act as allegorical bridges, such as when Elena flips back and forth between English and Spanish when chastising Lado and the high-ranking cartel accountant Alex Reyes (Demián Bichir). She is as much a mob representative as when Lado greets Ben with a warm “Welcome to the barrio” as he lets him into his Tijuana hotel suite.

Elena brings an entirely new and unique reworking of the South American narco boss cliché. This is best illustrated with the most subtle of the film’s social commentary, delivered by del Toro, who’d previously won an Oscar for his role in the drug war film Traffic. When Lado drops by Dennis’ house, he’s backed by a landscaping crew packing chainsaws.

Savages is an adaptation of Don Winslow’s pulp fiction novel but only hints at the violence journalist Ioan Grillo wrote about in the book El Narco. The film is set in Southern California’s Laguna Beach, which is close to the province of the Sinaloa Cartel. The film says Elena heads the Baja Cartel, which has operated in the U.S. for years. Sandra Avila Beltran was known as La Reina del Pacifico, but Elena’s circumstances more loosely resemble Veronica Mireya Moreno “La Flaca” Carreon, the first known female leader of the Los Zetas gang of San Nicolas de los Garza near northern Mexico.

The authentic blend of known crime figures brings an immediacy to the character. Hayek’s realism registers subconsciously, adding shades to the gangster persona which blur into a real person. It also instills a real sense of peril. We worry about the antihero.

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But never forget, Elena is a badass. Savages reflects the violence of the then-ongoing drug wars in Mexico. It looks real and feels painful. The first shot the audience gets of the cartel is a blood-slicked concrete floor, headless bodies and decapitated heads, and Lado in a Lucha Libre freestyle wrestler mask. Elena’s crew is one of the most efficiently lethal in the business. Anything less is unacceptable. Lado calls in a debt on lost years from a former attorney by shooting him in both knee caps. He retires Esteban, the henchman who watched over Ophelia while she was in captivity, because he is too soft.

One thing which separates Savages from the many drug war genre films is how Stone mixes media. He artfully moves through visual formats, color schemes, black and white grit, webcam and cell-phone video pixelation, though all of this is restrained when compared with Natural Born Killers. In that film, the villains were strong but powerless, hurled by forces beyond their control. In Savages, Elena exudes authority. “We didn’t make you an offer to hear a counteroffer,” she explains confidently, turning the screw on mere offers you can’t refuse. “We made you a deal to which we expected compliance.”

Stone is as fascinated by power as he is repelled by it. Like many gangster and Stone films, the mobsters at the center of Savages are allegories. Stone took on financial criminals in Wall Street, and here Elena’s cartel is likewise a modern corporation of sorts, putting the squeeze on the little guy. It’s the same thing real-life Bronx bootlegger Dutch Schultz did when he took over the Harlem numbers racket. The Sánchez expansion is the same as when the Corleone family moved in on Las Vegas. Elena muscles in during negotiations, dropping golden parachutes with balloon interests, percentages, sliding scales over three years, and other buzz-killing business school collateral damage. Even as talks deteriorate, Sánchez keeps a cooler head than Tony Montana and is able to strategize in the long term.

Her operations are brazen. When negotiations aren’t being carried out via computer, business is conducted in public, under the protective shield of a small squadron of snipers. Her hackers are as expert as Ben and Chon’s. All of this was within state of the art, real-time operations, which further solidifies Sánchez’s bona fides. Stone spent 15 months of combat duty in Vietnam, and assigned Kitsch to train with a Navy SEAL advisor during filming. Blakely told Collider she “met a little girl who had been kidnapped by the Mexican drug cartel.  We met people in, of all areas, the marijuana field.” Hayek spoke with members of drug gangs.

“I actually talked to some people involved in the cartel that described, on two different occasions, women that have gotten quite high in the cartel,” Hayek told Collider.  “As a matter of fact, they are incredibly efficient, much more so than men… The women are actually colder. The guy gets angry and thinks he has to do something, and the women are not like that. They are all about the business. They’re not about the vendetta, or who is more macho. They’re about getting things done.”

Elena Sánchez gets things done, and she does it with style. This is a real gangster policy which goes all the way back to Arnold Rothstein, who cleaned up street thugs like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, put them in suits, and taught them which forks to use at dinner. Dutch Shultz laid out a small fortune to outfit his outfit in the latest fashion. In Dead End, Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart) shows off his silk suit, tailor-made.  The gangsters in Sergio Leone’s mob masterpiece Once Upon A Time in America wore wingtip collars. In American Gangster, Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas blows his cover to drape himself in a chinchilla coat.

Hayek set Elena’s style in stone, wearing the same diamond necklace and silken black wig in every scene. “These women know they are going to be an icon and they create a character,” she told THR.  “These women design themselves. They don’t want to be versatile. They want you to always remember them.”

Elena Sánchez may only remember Ben and Chon by their nicknames, “Nothing Personal” and “Eat Shit Caviar,” but Salma Hayek presents an unforgettable cinematic crime boss. Savages lives up to its title because Hayek cultivates the untamed natural state with unnatural ease. Sánchez knows enough not to keep too high a profile on “most wanted” lists, but as a gangster, she should never be underestimated.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3rkIW8x

[kingjasnah]

actually. actually let’s talk about diversity in fantasy let’s give that a go. im mad and im gonna be that way for a while

don’t want to read all this? fair. tldr: fantasy writers who rely not only on the medieval europe model but also hide behind historical accuracy in 2020 (fuck it, from ‘95 onwards) are lazy and unimaginative and should be held accountable no matter how many white 20 year old dudes jerk off to whatever power fantasy is embedded in the plot. so lets chat about that lads. (slightly) drunk rant under the cut

now prelim shit: we know fantasy is used both as escapism and as a way to deal with various traumas via magical metaphor. staples of the genre. even if jk rowling busted out the laziest and at times offensive metaphor for ww2 and racism ive ever seen, she still adhered to time and true tropes. whatever.

so why have we, in this post game of thrones era, become insanely obsessed with realism? i can hear sixty 20-something year old men crying at me rn like oh ohh oh its based off the war of roses oh wahh all medieval fantasy fiction is based off england and the crusades anyway so women should get raped and people of color should be demonized its not racism its xenophobia and also gay people dont exist and disabled people are systematically killed off and if we stretch the magic fixes mental illness thing a LITTLE further we have straight up eugenics.

we all know where the england but myth thing came from. now the thing about tolkien is that while i will always absolutely love lotr, looking at the LAZY state of fantasy? damn i kinda wish he hadn’t revolutionized the genre. the bitch was still racist. he still didnt give a shit abt women (eowyn was just a vehicle to show how much he fucking hated macbeth anyone holding jrrt up as a feminist icon for that needs to sit the fuck down and explain to me why i can count the woman speaking roles in lotr, a story with a name and fleshed out backstory for every minor character, on one hand but thats! another post). he had something to say abt class with sam i’ll give him that but he is still 100% NOT what we need to hold our standards to in 2020. 

i dont want to talk about old school fantasy, like 80s early 90s cause theres literally no point. its sexist, racist, ableist for sure, this we know. david eddings (not even that old school tbh) can rise from the grave and explain himself to me personally and i still wont forgive him for ehlana. 

so let’s talk historical accuracy. quick question. who the FUCK gives a shit? WHO is this elusive got fan who’s out here like blehh actually??? this method of iron production is TOTALLY anachronistic of the time. ummm these vegetables in this fictional world were NOT native to english soil so how are they here? cause i know this is the classic argument but ive never actually met someone who cared about the lack of dysentery as much as they care abt the women getting raped on screen/page. 

god forbid you have to worldbuild for a second god forbid you can’t rely on the idea of fantasy readers already have in their head god forbid you have an original idea god forbid you spend more than two seconds thinking about ur setting (oh i should mention i dont....really blame GoT for its setting cause of how long ago it was og written but trust me i sure as hell blame grrm for writing a 13 yr old giving ‘consent’ to sex with a grown man within the first couple of chapters) 

If we accept the basic premise of fantasy as escapism, and i AM drunk so i will NOT be finding fuckin. quotes and shit for this but come on tolkien said it himself and as much as i’ll drag him he crafted the simplest and most powerful fantasy metaphors on the board rn. But if we know its escapism. If we know. then who is it escapism for? certainly not for me, the gay brown woman who busted through all of GoT in 10th grade. 

modern fantasy lit used as an excuse for that white male power fantasy is literally disgusting. calling historical accuracy is so fucking dumb ESPECIALLY cause we, as ppl in the 21st  century, KNOW women have been consistently written out of the story. poc ppl, gay and trans ppl, anyone with a god forbid disability has been WRITTEN out of history as we know it, INCLUDING the fucking war of the roses so HOW can we hold up testimony we know is flawed to support our FICTIONAL. STORY. just to??? support the white power fantasy?? literally noah fence but if you are a white guy who felt really empowered by every time jim butcher described a woman tell me: how do you think that’ll hold up in classic HisToRiCaL fantasy. you think thats a fucking noble pursuit? or are you grima wormtongue out here. 

(side note: jim butcher stop writing challenge i dont need to know abt every woman on page’s nipples. anyone who hides behind subgenre like that? ‘ohhh its a noir story thats why hes sexualizing everyone’ shut the fuck up an author isnt possessed by a fuckin muse and compelled to bust out 500k they have agency and they have choice and they MADE the choice to reserve said will for none of their female characters)

which brings me to point 2: target audience and BOY is the alcohol hitting me rn but WHO is this for? this isnt the fucking 80s we know poc and other marginalized folk read fantasy FOR the escapism. on god ive had a cosmere focused blog for nearly three years and. im just gonna say it im interacted with A LOT of yall and ive managed to talk to VERY few white straight ppl as compared to everyone else. 

like....who deserves to see the metaphor on homophobia or racism. joanne rowling? the bitch who literally tried to sell us happy slaves and the disgusting aids metaphor and the worst case of antisemitic stereotypes i ever saw in an nyt bestseller? yall think that was for US? or was it for the white guilt crowd. 

literally white people can find any book about them that they can relate to. but hmmm maybe theres a reason gay women care so much about stormlight archive’s jasnah kholin, a brown woman who’s heavily coded as wlw. or kaladin, the FIRST fantasy protag ive ever seen with clinical depression. hmm i wonder why a bunch of millennials are vibing all of a sudden. im not saying sanderson is perfect--but its the best ive seen from a white author tbh

maybe theres a reason a lot of poc vibe with a literary way to express trauma, and maybe thats why i specifically get so pissed when its not done well. theres a REASON books about outcasts pushing through and claiming their own lives are popular with people who arent white and straight and able bodied. Junot Diaz had a point. maybe lets STOP catering to those assholes who think theyre joseph campbell’s wet dream personified. ive lost respect SO many authors who are objectively talented. pat rothfuss can write so beautifully that ive cried to bits of name of the wind but literally i will never pick that series up again (not just because of the felurian. women in general tbh. mostly the felurian ngl) cause 1) i personally KNEW men whod jerk off to that shit and 2) there was no need for it there was no plot reason for ANY of that shit 

so like obviously thers an issue with authors of color specifically not getting recognized for fantasy and genre work but on god??????? im still mostly mad at the legions of white authors churning out the same medieval england chosen one books year after fucking year. have an original thought maybe. also im sorry that you as an author lack the basic empathy needed to examine the way that women? or any group of people that youre explicitly writing about see the world and would specifically see YOUR made up world. 

yes your fantasy should be diverse, but more than that it should be kind. if you as a writer cant respect groups of people who deserve it....what the hell are you doing in a genre that traditionally is about finding ways to express injustice through metaphor? tolkien’s hero was sam. fantasy was NEVER about the privileged. yall know who you are so stop acting so fucking entitled. peace out. 

[wingedweasel]

My thoughts on Disney Remakes

Get ready for a loooooooooong post. Sorry. 

So let me start by saying I don’t have Disney+ and haven’t seen Mulan yet, so I’m only going off of what I’ve seen in trailers and the reviews of other people - both who liked it and those who didn’t. Warning, spoilers if you haven’t seen the animated or remakes of Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, or Mulan.

My opinion is that it seems like Disney really doesn't understand what to do with these remakes. 

With Beauty and the Beast, they tried something different and added/changed some things hoping that it would make the story more enjoyable but kept it generally the same, and people didn't react as positively as Disney wanted. In The Lion King, they went the exact opposite and made it a shot for shot remake, and people still didn't react as positively as Disney was hoping. Now with Mulan, it's a completely different story and people are still not happy with the end product. 

I don't think it's an issue with the audience being unsatisfied with everything no matter what. There is a little bit of that, make no mistake. There are people who will be unhappy no matter Disney did. However, I think it's more of an issue of Disney not realizing what people liked about the originals and enhancing that and failing to commit. 

Beauty and the Beast tried to be more ‘real’ in bringing in PTDS and references to war, death, illness, and grief over losing a loved one, ramping up the sexism, and making Gaston more of a douche, but I think it would have been a better story if they made it more real/dark. One of the easiest things would be to make Gaston more of a threat and his followers either more blind in worshiping him - more cult like if you will - or having him have to work harder to get them on his side. The animates version had the almost cult like mentality of how the people of the village treated Gaston. If he said jump, they would have started jumping before asking how high. It was easy for him to get blind followers into charging the castle to kill the beast. 

In the remake, there were times where, while Gaston was able to talk his way out of a problem, his anger or manipulative actions were kind of just waved away or people were only accepting of him and his desires due to peer pressure - which makes a good foil to the Beast before he was cursed. It could have been something the Beast could have recognized and wanted to changed because he sees that acting this way is really bad, wont get the girl, and doesn’t want to be like Gaston (or making it a teaching moment for Gaston if you want to give the villain a possibility of redemption, either works). Another thing would have been to capitalize on the fact Belle is just as much as an inventor as her father and/or she is secretly the one who makes gadgets the village uses and likes or what her father is going to sell. That way it shows she is smart, resourceful, and would be respected if only she just wasn't a gosh darn woman. At the end, when it’s revealed that Gaston is a bad guy and that Belle is the one who created everything, she would be able to get the respect and acceptance of the village she should have had all along. Instead she gets belittled for being able to read and is a senseless romantic because she like Romeo and Juliet? What? Honestly, I don’t think if she ever returned to the village and tried to encourage and teach the little girl to read again, she would have been just as dismissed as she was at the beginning. Her life wouldn’t have changed in any way if she did go back to her ‘provincial life.’ 

People know this story, as I said, so changing it up a bit with the background things but still making it about the message of it's the personality that makes a good person and how you overcome people not believing in you the focus would have made it better than just Gaston having PTSD, Belle wants to teach girls to read, and a potentially hidden gay character. In short, they could have made this a completely different movie and I think people would have been happy with that. Instead, they started to make changes, doubled back, and we got some lackluster kinda pro-feminism...thing. Also, get a singer for musicals. The singing wasn’t terrible, but still actual singers should be used in musicals more often. 

The Lion King suffered for opposite reasons. It seems as if Disney saw that people didn’t like the changes they made to Beauty and the Beast, and went “Okay, not changes at all!” A shot for shot remake should only be done if you can make it interesting. You get bonus points for getting original actors, settings, and crew. Update the technology and it usually becomes better. This should have been an easy A+ since The Lion King did all this. However, it didn’t because it was too real - in a bad way. I haven’t seen the remake of the Jungle Book, but I have heard good things about it because of the way the characters were designed. They were interesting to look at even if they looked more realistic and not as cartoony as they could have done. The Lion King should have gone this root. The characters here were a bit bland looking. They’re just lions, which cool. They hyper realism of the CG was an interesting thing to do - in theory. The hyperrealism in something like Beowolf made it eye catching and was almost a character itself. In The Lion King, there wasn’t a whole lot of variance between everyone. All the animals all looked the same as one another. Sure in nature animals tend to have little variance within their species, but in movies 0 especially a kid’s movie - characters need to stand out from one another to be easily identifiable. Some of the quirks of the animated version could have been used to do this. Make Simba’s mane more reddish-orange, Scar’s mane should have been black. Some of my favorite characters were the lead hyenas. They all had a unique look - it didn’t hurt that Whoppi Goldberg was Shenzi. Now everyone is the same. Also, the mouth and facial emotes didn’t really work with the hyper realism. If they had made the facial features ‘looser’ and a bit more animated, it would have helped convey the expressions so much more and when they started singing, it would have looked more ‘natural’ for them to be doing so. 

Nothing was really changes story-wise; they did add some dialogue and minor things like that, but not a whole lot else. It probably could have gotten away with making more alterations to the story - either by adding scenes or changing backstories or things like that - and people wouldn’t have been as mad as with other movies (as long as the changes made sense and added to the plot and weren’t changes just to be changes).

Now Mulan, on the other hand, seems to be split 50/50 sor far. It’s only been out for a short time, so not a whole bunch of people have seen it - myself included - but looking at reviews, it looks like Disney say the hate The Lion King got for being a shot for shot remake and went, “Fine, we’ll change everything!” And they did. I mean, they kept the general idea of a young woman taking her father’s place in the army to fend off an invading force and she somehow defeats the big bad (I think? I heard something about the Emperor fighting the big bad? I mean, it is Jet Li, so he has to have at least one fight scene, so...). I will say that from the previews that I have seen and all the reviewers agree that the movie is very pretty. It has gorgeous cinematography and the set design looks amazing. There were some other positives that a lot of people toted like even though Mulan has a love interest, it really isn’t that big a thing, and the fight scenes were very well choreographed, and some character interactions that were quite funny - things like that. Important things to be sure, but some of the biggest complaints were that Mulan in the animated version was shown to be resourceful, cunning, and proved that a woman could save the day just a s successfully - if not better - than a man (although why she had a fan when she went back to being a woman, I don’t know, but whatever). In the remake, it seems like strength and fighting prowess is all that is needed to be a hero. 

Apparently, Qi is a thing in the movie and if you have more of it, it allows people - men - to be good fighters and do more athletic things better than those without it (I guess?) Women who have it are apparently shunned, which is part of one of the Witch’s backstory. She has Qi and uses it for dark magic...okay? Do some men not use it for evil? Is every woman who has it eventually turn evil? Speaking of the Witch, she is super more powerful than the main baddie. She is physically more powerful, has Qi, uses magic - some of which she uses to shapeshift? Like, why do we need another baddie? She should be the main villain. One reviewer said it would have been a great twist if she was just pretending to be the main guy using her shapeshifting powers and we only find out right at the end. Now that would have been cool. We get a strong female villain who plays off of the gender restrictions of the society and turns everything on its head by going, “I was a woman the whole time! All those things you said a woman couldn’t do, well, I was doing them and you didn’t have any complaints then!” Instead, we get another movie where the villainous woman is second to the villainous man simply because of gender stereotypes. Hell, even if the man was just pretending to be the main baddie and acting as her puppet would have been better. 

I guess because she really isn’t the main villain, she gets to have a redemption scene and save the hero, but was that really necessary? Couldn’t she be bad and stay bad until the very end? Why not? Anyway, she sacrifices herself to save Mulan, and it’s supposed to be an emotional scene which causes Mulan to find her inner strength and gives her a power boost to defeat the baddie. 

Mulan also doesn’t have a lot of cunning in this remake, apparently. She’s more physical than the animated version, but...wasn’t the point of Mulan to show that you needed more than physicality to save the day? The thing that I’ve seen most people complain about is this. In the animated version, Mulan and the other soldiers are given the task to climb a pole wearing heavy weights (I’ll Make a Man Out of You is one of the best songs ever, fight me). After a montage of her failing physical tasks, she is only able to succeed climbing the pole through her smarts. Not because she suddenly got supper buff and could lift herself up the pole. Yes, she gets physically stronger and becomes the best at everything during the finale of the song, but that just a result of training. You start off really bad and then become good. I believe what made this scene so powerful was that she was held back by the belief that she wasn’t ‘cut out’ for the army. She had to overcome her own mentality before she could start to be a better soldier. She does that by using her brain to find a different way to climb the pole. 

In the remake, the task is to climb steps up a mountain carrying buckets of water. It’s not an easy task, as everyone fails, but apparently, she just keeps at it until she is physically strong enough to do it? No more effective way of carrying the buckets than just T-pose while holding them out to the side. Like I said, training makes you stringer. Practice makes you better. This is obvious. You get stronger the longer you work your muscles. There’s nothing special about that. Yes, the men were probably comparatively physically stronger than her, but they all struggled too. What’s the lesson here? Just keep at it and one day you will be big and strong? Okay, cool I guess. That’s something that is helpful, don’t get me wrong. Dedication and hard work are important. Being physically strong is one aspect of being a soldier - especially during the time period the movie is set in, but it’s not the be all end all. That’s what made Mulan stand out: she was at such a disadvantage she had to find a different way of doing things to succeed. Then the training kicked in and she became physically stronger. 

It’s also good to note that in the animated version, she never relies on her physical strength to do something. Sure she is super awesome at the end of the training montage, but that’s all we see of her being physical. She uses smarts to defeat the army, the previous method of climbing the pole to get inside the palace, and deception to knock out the guards. No epic parkour, no breaking down walls, just her brain. In the remake, it seems as if strength is the be all end all. Mulan is supposed to be a role model for young girls and an example of why you shouldn’t listen to stereotypes. At least, she is supposed to be. And she is - in the animated version. Here, it seems as if the message is forget about being intelligent. All that really matters is that you be physically strong. I mean, even that hot mess of a movie Hercules taught us that this is wrong. You need more than just muscles to be a hero. Being able to fight isn’t what makes you a hero (it’s certainly part of it, obviously). You need a good heart and a good head, not a six pack. 

With all that said, it looks like the Mulan remake suffered from trying to not be Mulan. It went too far in changing things. It added things that it didn’t need to add, and took out things that helped make the animated version well liked. The love story that wasn’t? They took out Shang, but added another love interest? Just keep Shang. Looking back, and even at the time I first saw it, it’s amazing to see the hero is a woman and she doesn’t need to rely on a relationship to reach her goals. The added bonus of having Shang was that he os believed to be the first LGBT Disney character. He respected Ping and thought him a friend before the big reveal and no one can convince me otherwise the looks Shang gave Ping during the training montage and after Ping gives Shang some encouragement right before they march out to the meet the main army are anything other than Shang thinking “Damn, I want some of that.” Add in the fact that he starts to act all flustered when he returned the helmet just shows that he had feelings for Ping, but now that Ping is actually a girl he can act on those feelings (this is both Ancient China we are talking about, not 2020...where being LGBT is still not always accepted...). 

Okay, so what does all that mean for the Mulan remake? Beauty and the Beast wasn’t the best because it didn’t go far enough with its changes, The Lion King didn’t have enough changes, and Mulan had too many changes? Not exactly. Mulan, as a story, can work with being completely different from the original animated version. It probably mostly does. It’s more than like going to be a success on Disney+. But if any movie could have been a shot for shot remake, it should have been Mulan. Hell, making it not be a musical and adapting the story to account for that could work. It was the lessons that made the animated version so well liked. Also the humor, Eddie Murphy makes a great side kick. You have the yearning for ‘more’ and the feeling of not fitting in that Beauty and the Beast has combined with the self-doubt and acceptance despite origins of The Lion King. You have a kickass female hero who breaks all the gender rules of her society and saves the day by using her brain and not a sword. No magic to save the day - the ancestor spirts being the only mystical thing about the movie. Mushu isn’t overtly magical and he doesn’t really help do anything except be a convenient Zippo light two times in the movie - it could be argued that he, and magic in general, is a source of conflict since the other spirits all want to bring Mulan home. Also no stupidly forced romance subplot - or worse a love triangle. The remake just doesn’t have any of that, really. It’s basically just another action movie with the added flavor of a woman pretending to be a man in the army. It’s almost a ‘chosen one’ narrative since the aspect of Qi looks to be a major plot point - and source of conflict. There’s magic - and oh by the way, there’s a phoenix attached to Mulan for some reason...? - and what looks like a romance subplot (one where the guy isn’t Bi boooooooo). Mulan could have been shot for shot and would be successful. It can also be successful by making changes, but not many. We like Mulan the way it was. If you need to make changes or updates to it, fine, but don’t make the story so unrecognizable that it becomes a different movie. Mulan doing a whole bunch of fancy martial arts before literally beating the big bad and an evil Witch who turns into a bird are things we don’t want and the story doesn’t need. 

Disney needs to stop messing with the original stories. We liked the old animated versions for a reason. Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King were two of the biggest box office hits and two of the most popular Disney movies today. The were huge successes and are still talked about 20+ years later. These remakes are just meh. 

If Disney does change the story, change it in a way that emphasizes what was liked about the original. Otherwise, make it into a different movie and - more importantly - call it something else. 

[itsclydebitches]

I would really love to hear your thoughts on Yang's PTSD arc. I hope you don’t think it was handled well. I forgot their account, but someone pointed out about how Tai's joke and calling Yang's suffering moping was toxic as shit. That’s not even getting into her curing her PTSD by killing Adam. Like the racism, it was offensively handled. FNDM loved it, but only because they used PTSD as way to confirm a ship. It’s disgusting for both parties to see/use PTSD like that, this has caused suicides.

First, I think it’s worth acknowledging that such an arc was doomed from the get-go in terms of pleasing anyone. PTSD is an incredibly complex, varied disorder and thus one depiction seen as realistic to some viewers may come across as absurd to others, depending on their experience, knowledge, etc. Like writing a redemption arc, or a dealing with sexism arc, or a breakup arc, whatever, a PTSD arc encompasses too much of the human experience to boil down into one, “right” depiction. Some people will like it whereas others won’t; some people will think it’s realistically done while others won’t; some people will be able to connect with it on an emotional level and - again - others won’t. So when I criticize aspects know that it’s coming primarily from a place of “This didn’t work for me.” Not a claim that it can’t work for anyone. Different people need different types of stories. 

That being said, I’m only really a fan of the beginning of Yang’s arc. I think RT did a good job there: having her unable to get out of bed, rejecting Ruby (which was HUGE for Yang), not seeming to care that her little sister ran off, eventually managing to get herself dressed but not anything past watching TV, emotionally flinching away from the arm as a way to “fix” the situation, her firm acknowledgement that she has lost a piece of herself and things will never be the same... that was all compelling and, dare I say, realistic. Including, in my opinion, the arm comment from Tai. This is a perfect example of how different people need different things. Me? I’m Yang. At a certain point I want people to joke about the bad stuff in my life because 1. It helps normalize it, 2. It helps lighten the mood after nothing but Bad Times, and 3. I’m an emotionally constipated person who more comfortably receives affection via humor than heartfelt sentimentality. The important takeaway is that just because you would have been offended by Tai’s comment doesn’t mean everyone else would have... and the really important thing is that Yang wasn’t offended. She smiled. She laughed. She joked right back and we never saw that comment haunting her later, implying that the previous stuff was all just an act. That moment told us how well Tai knows his daughter and what she needs at this point in her recovery: to be treated like normal, someone who is teased and pushed and challenged, not a delicate victim who needs to be tip-toed around. This is also a great example of how the fandom will often ignore the canon in an effort to “prove” their headcanon/subjective reading. Because they want Tai to be the bad guy here they’re just going to conveniently ignore Yang’s response to his comment - the response that overtly tells us whether we should be offended on her behalf or not.  

So all that was well done. I’d even go so far as to say it was really well done. The problem is RT didn’t maintain it. Not that a character has to be in this depressive state indefinitely, just that things moved far too quickly after that and (as per RWBY’s usual) had no impact down the road. Meaning yeah, Yang’s hand shakes, but that doesn’t actually affect her performance in any way. She’s still able to spar playfully with Tai. Still able to punch out an asshole at the bar (a moment played mostly for comedy). Still takes out Raven’s goons easy-peasey. Is still willing to fight Raven herself - her long-lost mother - with barely a blink. Still participates in the Battle of Haven with, again, absolutely no difficulty. Indeed, as I’ve mentioned before, Yang removes her arm and goes after two maidens and a third, incredibly powerful fighter. Not only is that stupid for anyone on Team RWBYJNOR to do, it makes even less sense to give that moment to the one fighter who should currently be struggling to fight at all. 

The problem comes down to structure. RT front-loaded all of Yang’s difficulties, had her hit a moment where she’s “cured” (putting on the arm), and from then on any “proof” that she wasn’t cured was superficial. It had no impact on her or the plot. Conveniently, Yang’s two flashbacks - in the kitchen and in the Apathy barn - happen when there’s no danger. She’s safe with Tai and safe with Blake, meaning that her PTSD never has a negative impact on the group that Yang has to work through. She never freezes during a battle. She never struggles with whether she can even enter one. Indeed, when she’s faced with the very person who caused this all in the first place, she blasts through Adam with total confidence and control. After Volume Six I received a few anons/responses claiming that this is, in fact, realistic. That anyone with real (“real”) PTSD will struggle when they’re safe but be perfectly capable of pushing through the actual danger if needed. It’s something Steven Universe did much better in my opinion. Steven starts experiencing his most overt symptoms when his galactic war is over - something the show actively has him question and then explains - but the PTSD still has a massive personal impact on his life. I don’t agree that Yang should have been able to confidently blow through every battle like she did. Even if we all unanimously agree that it’s realistic (which, from what I’ve gathered, we don’t), this isn’t a documentary. It’s a crafted story and stories have expectations attached to them, one of which is that we’ll see the impact/outcome/resolution to problems in a way we often don’t in real life. That’s one of the reasons why they’re satisfying via being “unrealistic.” That aside though, even if RT really didn’t want the PTSD informing the plot in that way (what does the group do if Yang can’t fight at Haven?) they could have at least pulled a Steven Universe and had it change the dynamic of the group on a personal level. As it is, no one in the show acknowledges the strong connection between Yang’s PTSD and her current behavior. She’s always been hot-headed, but lately we’ve seen Yang making even more reckless choices (telling Robyn about Amity) and taking her anger out on others inappropriately (the bird conversation, screaming at Oscar, etc.) At no point does the story go, “Hey, you might be doing this because you’re still grappling with PTSD, but that doesn’t make it okay. We need to address this.” Rather, Yang’s PTSD has been forgotten and her behavior continually excused. To the extent that this volume multiple people told me it was absurd to think that Yang should struggle at all with Adam’s death. That’s the legacy her arc has left: such a shallow treatment of the issue that the ongoing nature of PTSD and killing your first person and having that person be the guy who cut off your arm is a combination of things that Yang is expected to just shrug off with a cocky smile. Because that’s mostly what RT has had her do. 

Again, there are expectations for stories. Another of which is that - in rejecting realism - a character need not (necessarily) be burdened by their mental health in the way someone would be in real life. I 100% get that RT wouldn’t want to write Yang out of the group as a fighter just in the name of telling a “realistic” story. I also 100% get that the audience doesn’t (again, necessarily) want to watch a character struggle with the same issue indefinitely, especially when the story’s in-world time doesn’t match up with real life time. If you decide Yang needs two years to start making significant progress with her PTSD, that’s going to take a whole slew of volumes considering we’ve had four covering just one year (at most). People don’t necessarily want eight years of RWBY content where it feels like Yang is static. So yes, there’s a balance to be struck between “This is what PTSD is actually like” and “This is what a fictional story needs.” On the whole though, I don’t think RT did a particularly good job striking that balance. They started strong, but weren’t able to maintain that quality.