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drowning-moonlight · 2 years

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My Thoughts on The Batman

Transcript under the cut.

Hello1 This video will be me talking about my thoughts on the new Batman movie with Robert Pattinson. There will be spoilers.

I’ve seen it three times now and I will probably buy the DVD once it’s out as well. The fact that I’m willing to see a three hour long movie multiple times is a good indication that I really enjoyed it!

I know this movie will be compared to the other Batman movies so I’ll just quickly say that, in my opinion, this is one of the strongest Batman movies out there. I think Ben Affleck was a good actor but I did not like the writing for his Batman. As for Christian Bale, it’s been years since I’ve seen those and I remember that I had some issues with the Dark Knight trilogy. I don’t remember what those issues that I had were but I do remember there were things I just did not like about them. One of my coworker actually asked me if this new Batman movie was anything like Batman Forever with Val Kilmer and I can confidently say that No it is not like that movie.

But for me, the best version of Batman will always be from the animated series voiced my Kevin Conroy. that is THE definitive version of Batman in my opinion. feel free to disagree.

Now back to my thoughts of the new Batman movie: while I did really enjoy it, I still had a few issues with it. I think what bothered me the most was the portrayal of Bruce’s parents and who killed them. I much prefer it when their murder is left a mystery. I really don’t like stories that try to tell us who killed the Wayne's. I like the irony of Bruce being “the world’s greatest detective” but the one case he can’t solve is the case about his own family’s murder. Oh wait! I just remembered that that’s one of the things I didn’t like about the Christopher Nolan Batman movies is that they showed who killed the Wayne’s. I think it was in Batman Begins. There was that scene in court where Bruce was going to kill Joe Chill but some other person shot him first. Yeah I didn’t really like that. I just like it being a mystery! I don’t want the Wayne’s to be killed by Maroni, or by Falcone, or by Jack Napier, or Matches Malone, or the fucking Court of Owls. I want it to be a mystery forever.

Now this movie does have a scene where Alfred says, “Yeah it could have been Maroni, or Falcone, or it could have been some random guy.” I like that they left it open ended as to who killed the Wayne’s.

Also I didn’t like that they sort of painted Thomas and Martha as being not great people. Sure, they don’t have to be perfect, but I like when they’re good, upstanding people. It makes their death all the more tragic. They were good people who got murdered, not because of some mob connection, but because of random, senseless violence. Again, while I don’t like that Thomas had a connection to the mob, I am still glad that the movie made a point to say that it really could have just been some random person who killed them.

That was honestly my only big issue with the film.

A small thing I didn’t like is that I just prefer it when Martha is a Kane instead of an Arkham but I realize that’s a little thing and it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the rest of the film. I know she’s an Arkham in Earth One but I still just prefer it when she’s a Kane.

Another small thing that I didn’t really enjoy was the Riddler’s outfit. Of course the inspiration for him in this movie is the Zodiac Killer, which I kind of get because the Zodiac Killer had codes and stuff but I prefer Riddler being in his green suit with the purple question marks. The creepy mask doesn’t really fit the Riddler’s MO to me. I like him looking kind of campy. He didn’t have to be Jim Carrey levels of campy but a little camp in his outfit would have been nice. Also, I prefer his last name being Nygma as opposed to Nashton but whatever. That’s just a little thing.

But other than those little things, I did thoroughly enjoy this movie.

The music and sound design were top notch. I loved the bell part of the music. I had that stuck in my head for hours after the movie. It was interesting that they made Batman have such loud footsteps because usually he’s so quite and sneaky. The loud boots aren’t great for stealth but they sure did sound cool.

Speaking of being cool, I am glad that they made Bruce be kind of uncool, you know? Like he made mistakes and stuff which I thought was realistic considering he’s only been Batman for two years in this movie. His detective skills aren’t fully polished, as shown with the el ratta/la ratta stuff, though Alfred was the one who cracked that code and he did mention that it was bad Spanish. Anyway, I know a lot of people want to see him be the World’s Greatest Detective right from the start but I really like that it shows he still needs to do some growing.

Oh and that scene when he’s escaping the police with the flying squirrel suit looked so uncool, I loved it. He looked utterly ridiculous and totally wiped out that landing. I liked seeing him be a little uncool and not perfect at everything all the time.

A scene that I did think looked really cool was towards the end where he’s fighting Falcone’s henchmen and he’s beating them up one after another in the dark with only their gunfire as light and it’s one continuous shot for several seconds. I loved the visuals in that scene and it reminded me a little bit of that scene at the very end of Rogue One: a Star Wars Story, where Darth Vader is just cutting down Rebel soldiers in a hallway as they’re passing the Death Star plans off to each other. Such a cool scene! 10/10.

I also liked that part where as they talk about Edward Elliot, the word HUSH is written in big letters across the screen. That was definitely a call back to the Batman: Hush story arc that came out in 2002. In that story, there’s a character named Thomas Elliot who could possibly be related to Edward Elliot in the universe of this movie. I’ve never actually read that story arc but I did watch a YouTube video on it by Smokey’s Vidoes so I’ll leave a link to it in the description below if you’d like to check it out too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U7dWrsc9n4

And as I mentioned before, I didn’t like that Thomas Wayne was involved in the mob and got this reporter killed, even if by accident, I still like that this movie gave a knob to that comic because the main villain in Batman: Hush is actually the Riddler. Sorry if that’s a spoiler for you. But the arc is 20 years old so does that really count as a spoiler?

Another story arc besides Hush that was hinted at was at the very end with it being very similar to the No Man’s Land arc from 1999. Another story I haven’t actually read but I watched a video by History of the Batman, linked below, that describes it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJmw1x1px1s

In this story, there’s an earthquake that destroys Gotham and criminals take over after the government basically abandons the city. I have to wonder if the Penguin series being made for HBO Max will follow the No Man’s Land story? Don’t know when that will be out though.

They could also do more with No Man’s Land if they make a proper sequel to the movie. It did have the Joker in prison with the Riddler at the end and they hinted at a team up, so there’s definitely potential for a sequel there. It’s just. I don’t like the Joker that much. I think he’s been done enough. There’s plenty of other villains, the Joker has been done too much. What about like the Ventriloquist? Or uhhh Condiment King? Give us live action Condiment King.

Oooo do you know who I would LOVE to see in a sequel? Dick Grayson. He is my absolute favorite character in DC Comics and I would love to see Robin done well on the big screen. No, James Gordan-Levitt does not count.

Moving on. As for the end of the movie, I like that it had that hopeful message of rebuilding. I like that we got to see Batman saving a lot of people. I feel like Batman in media is often portrayed as a hero only when he’s fighting bad guys but I like that at the end of this movie he is a beacon of hope who is a hero because he saves people. He wins by helping and not solely by fighting.

I am so glad that he didn’t kill anyone. I know a lot of people find Batman’s no kill rule to be annoying but I like it. Having a line that he refuses to cross causes conflict and I think that’s good. A reason I didn’t like Ben Affleck’s run as Batman was because he did kill. There was that guy with a flame thrower he was holding Martha Kent hostage and Batfleck blew up the flame thrower so I’m pretty sure that guy died. Didn’t like that. I’m glad the Robert Pattinson Batman refused to kill. Though... people had to have died during that chase scene with Penguin. So many cars crashed and there was that huge fiery explosion that Batman drove through. It looked super cool but people definitely died there. But maybe that was mostly Penguin’s fault. Okay, I’m glad this Batman didn’t actively kill anyone.

So all in all, I really liked this movie and this version of Batman. I know I talked a lot of some of the things that I didn’t like but those things didn’t really take away from my overall enjoyment of the film. I’d give it a solid 8 or 8 1/2 out of 10 stars.

What are your thoughts? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Are you indifferent? How does it compare to other Batman movies for you? I’m curious what other people think. And that’s the end. Bye!

#batman #the batman #bruce wayne #the batman 2022 #dc comics

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riverdale-retread · 3 years

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Riverdale S5 E13 (Coyote Ugly)- 5 Things I loved/ 3 Things to consider

I loved a LOT of things about this episode, so I might have to cheat on my loved-it count. Indulge me, please.

Things I loved

1. I loved that Tabitha totally belongs and fits in with these crazy OG Riverdale people. Tabitha asks Betty, the crazy girl, to not “do anything crazy,” while doing crazy things with Betty, herself. Why Tabitha does this, we don’t know yet, but she absolutely belongs with these people. For fancy-school-educated beautiful Tabitha, with her neat puff sleeves and delicate frame, to go all in with Betty Cooper, fake FBI agent, trying to hunt down a serial killer is insanity. To agree to open up her business premises and offer up her own body as bait for this known serial killer is insanity. To be aware that Betty has caught someone who was acting violent, but to go alone, and also unarmed and apparently without having told anyone, is insanity. Tabitha is very, very interesting. Oh and she drives the most amazing car.

2. “Reggie, You’re A Genius!!” and Veronica is not being even a little bit sarcastic. Reggie Mantle’s air punches every time either he or Veronica close a sale really just cheered me up no end. He’s just so exuberant and physical. He’s already stated that he is good with numbers and he has a lot of ideas and he’s finally, at Pearls & Posh, getting a chance to let those parts of himself bloom. I loved the beautiful jewel tones that Reggie and Veronica wear throughout the episode, and the way they become ever more color coordinated. I just love the two of them teaming up and dismantling Hiram’s scam one brick at a time.

3. All the Cheryl things, basically, I loved them.

-“Compulsion Thy Name is Kevin of Finland” is a line that had me hooting. And the fact that Kevin, in the right clothes, totally has the body and jawline to be a Tom of Finland illustration is just icing on the cake. Cheryl has been keeping a very close eye on Kevin his whole life, honestly, like a dangerous sort of fairy godmother. Cheryl in a checked version of her little red riding hood outfit walking out of the misty blue forest! What a beautiful shot.

- I did not love Tabitha having to say, “Hot Ladies, dancing on the bar, fully clothed, of course,” but I *did* love Fang’s groaning in response, just so put upon. I did this simultaneously with the character, so I appreciated that. I did love the glorious amount of cleavage that Cheryl the minister and cheerleading coach insists on putting on display while IN a high school. Her sartorial choices felt like a vengeful commentary on the mores of American television. I would much prefer to see tits on my TV than blood & violence, so the fact that an entire severed leg, a ghost of Christmas past with bullet wounds, and a man getting his face smashed in by a furious fit young man armed with brass knuckles can be shown in full but hot ladies dancing on a bar must be fully clothed irritated me.

So yes - I said a whole bunch of words to fancy up the statement that I loved seeing Cheryl’s cleavage.

Sidebar: Also why does it gotta be only ladies? I think Fangs was fishing for an invitation.

- “I caught them (Moose & Fangs) having wine & cheese” - “Ew that is diabolical.” OK so when you’re in that mindset where you want to ‘win’ the break up but you’ve lost, this sort of hyperbolic reaction is exactly what you want from your female friends, and Cheryl doubles down with, “You did nothing wrong.” Why has Kevin never declared best friendship with Cheryl?

4. I loved that the show gives me permission to do what I’ve been doing already, which is that I absolutely despise Uncle Fucking Frank. That asshole, who claims to understand battle trauma and love dogs, brings home a traumatized dog which deserves to have stable people look after it and be aware of its issues, and doesn’t tell his housemates who aren’t even getting basic mental healthcare, one of which is a nephew he is mooching from for room & board, about the dog’s potential problems. Absolute failure garbage human, and I am elated to have this affirmed. Everything Frank does makes Archie so much worse, and Archie does not trust Frank fully either. Loved this too. Archie lies to Uncle Fucking Frank about ‘Bingo.’ He was a dog, he says, and then says that Eric does not like to talk about the dog so Frank won’t go mentioning him to Eric.

5. I loved the musical numbers, each for a different reason.

- Coyote Ugly Bar Top Dance: These terrifying, formerly terrorized children of Riverdale thrill me and break my heart. Everyone just tosses themselves at danger. Cheryl, Veronica, and Betty are all women who’ve had the experience of being hunted, terrorized, gaslit, stalked, sexually assaulted, having to fight for their lives while under attack from a much bigger assailant, etc - just *all* the bad things, really - but with the promise of a good time (lyrics actually say: How Can I Resist?) they will make themselves live bait for a serial killer.

- Everything Is All Right from Jesus Christ Superstar. I love Kevin’s singing, always. I also adored Penelope Blossom hating the musical interlude, she’s great. This song is also meant to be ironic, in the show, from my memory, because in context things are NOT all right. Mary Magdalene was wrong. They’re showing Kevin and Fangs making up, they’re showing Veronica and Reggie making a sale, Jughead was not in this episode at all, so this was quite arresting from a show perspective. The song is disquieting, with minor key elements, and so it’s a little uneasy, you know? Things are not all right, at all.

3 Things to Consider

a) “This award is a painful reminder of all that I haven’t accomplished.” Kevin breaks my heart but not in a campy tingly way. The feeling that I’m supposed to be somewhere better than this, doing something more than this - it’s so painful and real. I’m you, Kevin. “This can’t be my life, it just can’t be.” This seems to be the theme of the post time-jump Riverdale, but it feels more visceral because of what’s happening in the real world on the date of airing (Fall of 2021).

b) Bingo being a person, not a dog, puts an entirely different and devastating cast over the dream-dialogue between Eric and Archie. According to Archie’s subconscious, Eric is basically saying, “Leave the other man for dead, and save me and only me.” In the football field dream, Eric was transformed into Jughead, who just needed a little help, and had to be fireman-carried to touchdown. Eric insisting that he be prioritized over the unfortunate Bingo goes some ways to explaining the bond between Eric and Archie as well.

c) Archie Andrews is terrifying, and this adult Archie is fascinating and arresting to me. “I don’t want this scumbag arrested! I want him hurt” is the most honest thing Archie has ever said on the show. And when he says, “I’m trying to save this town, but it’s so corrupt, broken, full of awful, despicable people. I think there’s nothing worth saving here,” Archie is very reminiscent of the Dark Hood/ Hal Cooper, actually. Archie scares the worthless Uncle Fucking Frank so much that U.F. Frank can’t even say, “Nobody asked you to save the world, Archie, just save yourself.”

#riverdale s5 opinion #riverdale positivity #It's interesting to experience Riverdale's actual episodes a month later than the states-side viewers #all the stuff that comes up on tumblr is so entertaining but disjointed like reading telegrams sent via bottle all out of order #because I'm in a lighthouse in the middle of the sea #reggie Mantle #cheryl Blossom #Tabitha Tate

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twistedtummies2 · 3 years

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Count-Down: Number 26

Welcome to Count-Down! All throughout the month of October, I’m counting down my Top 31 favorite portrayals and reimaginings of the King of the Vampires, Count Dracula! I have only one thing to say about this Count: “ZOINKS!” Number 26 is…Hamilton Camp.

Scooby-Doo and Dracula have quite a history together. Over the course of the franchise, there have not only been numerous vampires featured, many of them quite obviously inspired by the Count, but Dracula himself has popped up on several occasions throughout the course of many different interpretations of the characters and universe. Out of all the different versions of Dracula featured in Scooby-Doo – none of which seem to have any continuity with each other – my personal favorite is the one from the movie “Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf.” “Reluctant Werewolf” was one of several Halloween TV specials made for Scooby-Doo that eschewed actual mystery-solving in favor of a more direct approach of Scooby, Shaggy, and a few assorted side characters encountering actual monsters and ghouls in comedic situations. Later versions of the Scooby series would mix and match these elements quite well, with the characters both capturing false ghouls and battling actual demons pretty much simultaneously. However you prefer the franchise, the Halloween TV movies have a special place in my heart, because I watched them every year for the better part of two decades. There were three such specials: Reluctant Werewolf, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, and Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers. Of the three, Reluctant Werewolf is the only one I remember a lot about, and it was always my favorite. It's also the only one I've bothered to check out again in my (fledgling and so-called) adult years. I think this is mostly because the movie is basically “Scooby-Doo’s Wacky Races.” I really love Wacky Races, and seeing that kind of format brought to the creepy-goofy tone of Scooby was a lot of fun. The fact it involved so many different classic monsters was also a really nice touch; even at a young age, knowing next to nothing about them, I still had a budding love of the famous monster characters, and over the years that interest would only grow. In Reluctant Werewolf, Hamilton Camp (who some may know as the voice of Professor Moriarty from the English dub of Sherlock Hound, among many other roles) played the Count in, fittingly, a rather “campy” way. This is, as you would expect, another “Funny Dracula,” and one of the first I ever got to encounter. In the movie, Dracula is put in charge of a big racing event that features all the great monsters, but he has a problem: the Wolfman has dropped out of the race, and – apparently – the race can’t go on unless a new werewolf takes his place. So, with help from his Igor-like minions – a couple of cretins collectively called The Hunch Bunch – Dracula transforms Shaggy, of all people, into a werewolf, and forces him to enter the race. The Count’s deal is simple: if Shaggy wins the race, the vampire will give him back his humanity. If Shaggy loses, however, he will become a werewolf forever. Naturally, of course, Dracula has no intention of letting Shaggy turn back to normal – he’s kind of a douchebag, that way – so he basically becomes the Dick Dastardly of the story. He and the Hunch Bunch repeatedly try to sabotage Shaggy and Scooby during the race, and the results frequently involve the Count getting the bad end of a slapstick cliché. I have to admit, as cartoonish and ridiculous as this Dracula is, I’ve always really liked him: while a lot of the humor with him is obviously pretty corny, he actually has a few one-liners that still really work, mostly in regards to his ditzy bride, Vanna Pira, who acts as the host for the race. Vanna Pira’s naïve, flighty, far more human personality is so at odds with Dracula’s…well…EVERYTHING that it’s kind of hard not to enjoy the insanity of the contrast, and his frustration with both her dimwittedness and the Hunch Bunch’s bungling leads to some really great moments. This is by no means a Dracula you can take seriously, but he IS a lot of fun, and I still think he holds up strongest when stacked against the many, MANY other versions Scooby-Doo has churned out. Tomorrow, the countdown continues! Hint: He’s faced two slayers for the price of one.

#count-down #dracula #count dracula #top 31 draculas #halloween advent calendar #october special #scooby-doo and the reluctant werewolf #scooby-doo #hamilton camp #number 26

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themattress · 3 years

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OUAT AND ME: SEASON 6

Story - Season 6 returns to the single-season story arc structure, with its story being the Savior's Fate Saga. The story deals with Emma reaching the point that all Saviors eventually reach: burnout in the lead-up to their Final Battle. And Emma's Final Battle comes courtesy of the Black Fairy, the creator of the Dark Curse who wishes to extinguish all light magic.

And yes, that is the core story of this arc. The problem is that it only constitutes about 25% of it; the rest is dedicated to subplots upon subplots: all the people who were brought in from the Land of Untold Stories, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Evil Queen split from Regina, Regina and Zelena's sibling rivalry reigniting, Belle and Rumple's relationship growing more toxic then ever before, Aladdin the Savior of Agrabah and the Princess Jasmine who is looking for him, a new curse befalling Snow and Charming, the mystery behind how Charming's father died, a new realm being created by a genie's power which brings about the "return" of Robin Hood, a multi-realm quest undertaken by Hook, and flashbacks that have jack shit to do with anything....this season is so packed, it's insane!

If the core story was particularly strong, maybe this wouldn't matter so much. But it's not, since it relies upon yet another bullshit redefining of what it means to be "the Savior"; all of a sudden it's an ancient position that has spanned across all of time and through every realm, like a fairy tale version of the Slayer concept from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And anything empowering about being the Savior is totally gone with this new definition, as now it's a requisite that all Saviors get worn out and die in their Final Battles, doomed to never obtain their happy endings. What a cheap, lazy, miserable way for the writers to raise tension after realizing that all of the epic, mythological stakes raised last season would be hard to top.

Not helping is that in a pretentious way of subverting expectations, they have the majority of the Final Battle...not actually be a battle. Instead, it's a ham-fisted "full-circle to Season 1" situation for Emma and Henry, while everyone else is getting to do more exciting things in the Enchanted Forest. Even the actual battle part of it ends up being underwhelming. Everything does still get wrapped up in a pretty suitable ending, but it's undermined by both the infernal status quo the show's been stuck in since 3B and an intrusive sequel hook into the ill-conceived "reboot" that is Season 7 which never should have been allowed to happen.

Tl;dr: this story arc sucks.

Characters - It's the lowest point for so many of them...

* Emma is a little better in Season 6 than she was in Season 5. She's still generally treated terribly due to the very nature of the arc and has some horrifically shitty things done to her, but she is also able to catch a break every now and then rather than the misery being an uninterrupted stream. She also marries Hook by the end and even plays a decent role in the finale showing how far she's come since Season 1. It was as good a note to go out on as she was going to get, and Jennifer Morrison made the right call to make this the end of her story.

* Snow and Charming...what is there to even say about them at this point? I guess I can say that not only have Goodwin and Dallas' performances largely flatlined and not only are they still written as more parental toward Regina than to their own goddamn daughter who Regina separated them from for 28 years, but they now have retcons applied to them that are ludicrous at best, character assassinating worse than Season 4's eggnapping subplot at worst. No wonder that Goodwin and Dallas were all too glad to call it quits after this trash!

* Henry, despite all odds, is still one of the better characters in this season! Jared Gilmore continues to prove what a better actor he's become and bring a likability to Henry that sometimes is even enough to counteract less-than-ideal written material. Also, getting to see him more invested in Emma again after being hogged by Regina for so long is great.

* The Savior's Fate Saga is a tale of two Reginas. The Regina Mills of Storybrooke is still as insufferably written a Mary Sue as ever, but now we also have the Evil Queen, the dark side of her personality that split from her. With the exception of one episode, the Evil Queen is played excessively campy by Lana Parilla. Adam and Eddy's claims that this "purely evil" Evil Queen would be even worse than the previous one are laughable when we end up seeing what's actually on screen; the Evil Queen from the first two seasons was a legitimately frightening and formidable villain, whereas this Evil Queen is a clown. Sometimes she's an entertaining clown, while other times she's a cringe-inducing clown. But what she most certainly is not is a worthy adversary to the heroes, especially this late into the show.

And then there's the irony in her ultimate fate: rather than destroy her, Regina mixes her heart with hers so that they are both equal and both redeemed. On the one hand, this is a mind-boggling new level of Creator's Pet for Regina to reach, as you would think that the whole point of the Evil Queen is for Regina to suffer the karmic fatal punishment that she deserves for all her years of atrocities without actually having to kill Regina off. And yet in the end Adam and Eddy couldn't bring themselves to kill off any version of Regina, even after they gleefully killed off alternate versions of Snow and Charming a few episodes earlier. But on the other hand, the redeemed Evil Queen is honestly more likable than the redeemed Regina, actually apologizing to Snow for everything, temporarily sacrificing herself for the greater good of everyone in the finale, and getting to have a happily ever after with an alternate version of Robin Hood following a romance closer to what that relationship should have been from the very beginning. In the end, though, I'm just left wishing that the writers had done a far better job redeeming Regina so that this split Evil Queen wasn't necessary. Who knows, we might have had a better season if so many of it wasn't wasted on her.

* Rumple is awful in this season. Just...the absolute worst. After resolving the plotline that the Season 5 finale left him on in the premiere episode, he cuts his hair short and takes his Darkest Dark One shtick to a whole new level of unpleasant and abusive. He stalks and harasses Belle, attempts to take her baby away, makes out with the Evil Queen, and continues to casually threaten Storybrooke without any remorse or any repercussions. And once his new son Gideon and his mother the Black Fairy enter the picture, he dicks around in nonsensically written plotlines in both the past and the present, while Belle essentially takes him back yet again despite the horrific abuse he inflicted upon her. It's painful to watch, especially when Robert Carlyle has completely given up and is phoning it in like mad, with his regular delivery of lines being in a sleepy tone of voice that actually gets grating to listen to.

Much like in Season 5, Rumple improves in the last five episodes of the season, with Robert Carlyle regaining some energy as he declares war on the mother who abandoned him (if you know Carlyle's life story, you can understand exactly why this is) before learning the shocking truth that he was born as a Savior with his mother being his fated enemy, and that she was banished after she cut him off from that fate. Finally exhausted with it all - light, darkness, heroism, villainy, everything - after the emotions of this revelation hits him, Rumple lays his last cards down on the table, joining his mother's side for the Final Battle but with a magical contingency in case she betrays him (which she does). He then kills his mother, chooses to do the right thing for Belle and Gideon's sake even against the temptation of his dark side, and is rewarded for this one good deed by getting a do-over with the two of them as a family and even being accepted at the table with the other heroes. To quote Rumple back when his character was of the exact opposite quality as it is now: "Well, that was a bit of a letdown!"

Now, the "Rumple was born as a Savior" twist is out-of-nowhere nonsense, but it might have worked if Season 6 had been the final season. Not only would it had made him an effective foil for Emma, but it would also add more dramatic weight to his ultimate fate: his death. Yes, Rumple was in fact all set to die if either the show hadn't gotten renewed for another season or if it was and Robert Carlyle turned down returning for it as he actually was very close to doing, sacrificing his own heart in order to break the spell on Gideon's, conquering his dark side once and for all. A very similar scenario ends up being utilized for Season 7's finale, but it lacks the punch it would have had here, where it's the would-be Savior who, after having reached burnout, dies in his Final Battle, rather than the actual Savior who is able to survive thanks in part to his sacrifice. Of course, I still would have preferred Rumple's death after him being the sole Big Bad of a two-part series finale at the end of Season 5, but I digress. Bottom line: Rumple was a complete mess this season and it's sad how far he’s fallen.

* Hook starts off well enough in this season, being Emma's stalwart emotional support who accepts her offer to move in with her (a pay-off that we should have had in the Season 5 finale if it only wasn't so crappy), bonding further with Belle and Henry, resolving the hanging plot thread of his younger half-brother while gaining a new father figure, and eventually making plans to propose to Emma. But then...it happens. It's revealed to both him and us that in the most contrived situation possible, Hook was the one who killed Charming's father. This derails his entire character for most of the remaining season, initially torn between telling Emma about this and covering it up before having a break with her which causes him to go mope and dope for a while before being forcibly sent off on a multi-realm misadventure by Gideon and, once he's finally gotten back to Storybrooke, has his transgression easily forgiven by Charming and his marriage proposal re-accepted by Emma, making this entire stretch of time absolutely pointless! Hook has some good moments in both the musical episode where he and Emma's wedding happen and the finale, but they aren't enough to salvage this from being his weakest showing in any season. Dark Hook was better than this!

* Belle...nope, not even gonna talk about her. Like I said before, she's done as a character.

* Zelena is this season's screwed over regular, and in comparison to Archie, Ruby, Neal, Will Scarlet and Robin Hood, she's got it easy. Her problems have less to do with her character, which is one of the better ones in the core cast at this point, but with her material. First, she and Regina have a sudden falling out because Regina...blames her for Robin's death. OK, all of that talk about how far Regina's come for not going evil over the loss of her romantic partner in the Season 5 finale isn't really worth much anymore when she's still resorting to blaming other people who aren't the actual murderer for that loss! Zelena then goes back to living at her isolated farm house, entering an alliance with the Evil Queen where she'll help her out in small ways but also not commit to fully teaming up with her as a villainess since she has a baby to take care of, plus she rightly doesn't entirely trust her alternate sister.

After the Evil Queen betrays Zelena but Regina still doesn't forgive her for what she blames her for, Zelena is absent or in minor roles for several episodes before she ends up joining the heroes' side out of altruism and the desire to become a good example for her daughter, eventually sacrificing her magic powers to aid the cause, which finally gets Regina to forgive her (probably because it's a sacrifice she's never been able to make). And that's about it.

Oh, but she does get to hit the Black Fairy with a car. That was awesome.

* The Black Fairy / Fiona is the Big Bad of the Savior's Fate Saga. Jamie Murray does a great job portraying her, being whimsically evil like you'd expect a dark fairy to be, and the Black Fairy being the person who created the Dark Curse actually makes a lot of sense when you go back and rewatch Season 3's "Going Home", a Dark Curse-heavy episode that first talks about her, or the Blue Fairy's knowing, worried expression upon Rumple's mention of a curse back in Season 1's "The Return". Unfortunately, that's all the praise I can afford her.

The core problem with Fiona as a character is a simple one: she is too derivative of previous, better Big Bads...especially Regina and Peter Pan. Like Regina, she is a powerful, larger-than-life villainess that Emma has always been destined to face as the Savior, and who ultimately casts the Dark Curse which makes herself mayor of Storybrooke, Henry's adopted mother, and a foe that Emma can only defeat if she believes in magic. And like Peter Pan, she is a parent of Rumple who also chose power over love and abandoned him, becoming the all-powerful ruler of a dark realm who occasionally went out and kidnapped children to bring there, and who is positioned as the story's Ultimate Evil who makes her last stand casting the Dark Curse in Storybrooke and being killed by her own son. This is especially bad when we already have an evil version of Regina to contend with this season and when it's following off of Hades, who was a better successor to Peter Pan's style of villainy (ruler of a dark realm that the heroes venture into to save someone) while still being unique.

She did improve somewhat in the last few episodes, where we see that she at least has sincerely loving Rumple as a differentiator from her ex-husband, has a warped belief that eliminating light magic and wiping out all realms but one is actually the right thing to do, and plays her role in the finale well. But it's too little too late for her to be considered as belonging among the great OUAT villains, let alone the Ultimate Evil that she's billed as. She needed a lot more originality and a lot more truly heinous deeds if that was ever to work.

* There are tons of new side characters in this season, usually either well-handled or not.

Well-handled side characters include the Tremaine family (particularly Lady Tremaine) who make Cinderella's life miserable in both the past and present, Captain Nemo who serves as a father figure for Hook and his half-brother Liam II, Gabriel the Woodcutter who makes an entertaining villain in an otherwise dumb flashback, Robert the father of Charming who is well-depicted in spite of how he dies, and Roderick, Gideon's brave but ill-fated friend.

Poorly-handled side characters include the Oracle who is a plot device character if there ever was one, Edmond Dantes (the Count of Montre Cristo in name only) and his lover Charlotte, Beowulf (another in name only character), Stanum the Tin Man who is pointlessly shoved into Zelena's backstory, Tiger Lily who is an exact carbon copy of Tinker Bell, and almost all of the Wish Realm characters because, as I will discuss later, the Wish Realm episodes are awful.

Then there are the in-between side characters, the ones that are handled...well-ish.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde carry over from the Season 5 finale at the start, then are both taken out of the picture in the 4th episode. Their backstory is well written, they are both well acted, and their death contributes to the ongoing Evil Queen plotline. However, it can't help but feel disappointing - we'd only just gotten a working relationship going between Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Whale in the previous episode, and now that's rendered pointless. And Sam Witwer is such an entertaining presence as Mr. Hyde, so it's sad to see him cut down so soon.

Robin of Locksley, the Wish Realm version of Robin Hood who crosses into Storybrooke, is cool in that we get Sean Maguire back and he is allowed to play something slightly different, since this version of Robin is a selfish, sarcastic asshole instead of a noble, chivalrous hero. However, it also reinforces how badly handled Robin Hood in general has been. Much like with what I said about Regina, I would have rather him and his romance with Regina been written well from the beginning so that this "do-over version' wouldn't be necessary.

After much hyping by the network, Aladdin and Jasmine kind of suck. Aladdin has an inexplicable cockney accent that is really distracting, he's written more selfishly and immaturely than his animated counterpart, and making him a Savior in order to tie him to the main plot is stupid. Jasmine fares better, especially when she receives some development in the 15th episode that largely focuses on her, but before that she was just kind of there and didn't possess the same strength of character she was so known for in the animated film.

Jafar, the Big Bad of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, is featured too. He is now played by Oded Fehr, and while Naveen Andrews is missed, Oded is one of the best replacements possible and does a stellar job. But while he's great whenever he's on screen, that's the problem - he isn't on screen very much at all. He also doesn't accomplish anything relevant to anyone beyond Aladdin and Jasmine in the time he has - even when he is released from his bottle in the present day, all he does is have a confrontation with Jasmine before BOOM! He gets turned into a wooden staff by magic dust thrown into his face and that's it for him. This was yet another sad waste of a great character with a great actor, but then again, Jafar returning in any medium tends to elicit diminishing results compared to his initial outings.

Finally, we have Gideon, Rumple and Belle's son and Emma's direct opponent in the Final Battle. The problem with Gideon is that the writers keep changing his character on a whim. First he's a projection of Rumple and Belle's future son from within Belle's womb, who masquerades as Morpheus in order to put Rumple through a test which he fails miserably. Then, after being kidnapped by the Black Fairy and taken to the Dark Realm, he shows up as angry, Kylo Ren-esque villain who claims that he wants to kill Emma so that he can somehow absorb her power, become the Savior and defeat the Black Fairy. But then it turns out that this was an act he was forced to play - after having been raised to be a villain by Fiona, Gideon rebelled, so she ripped his heart out and has been using it to control his actions so that he could free her from the Dark Realm for good. So he's a pure innocent, then. But then, in the Final Battle, he is rewritten by Fiona's curse into a stingy, spiteful businessman before reverting back to his innocent but controlled self...and then reverting back into a baby. Gideon, you've come full circle....and I still have no idea just who the Hell you are.

Returning characters include Violet, Ashley / Cinderella, Dr. Whale / Victor Frankenstein, the Dragon, August Booth / Pinocchio, King George / Albert Spencer, Baelfire, Tinker Bell, Ariel, Blackbeard, Malcolm, and Isaac Heller. Some of these returns are successful (I always love to see Ariel, and Isaac receiving some closure as a character was fantastic to see), others not so much (Tink's cameo was contradictory and pointless, and there was no excuse bringing back Baelfire in a flashback - for God's sake, Dylan Schmid is as tall as Robert Carlyle now!)

Atmosphere - There really isn't much of one anymore for the majority of the season. There is nothing remotely special about Storybrooke or the Enchanted Forest at this point, new places like the Dark Realm are woefully underexplored, and there aren't any locations like Camelot, the Underworld, or the Land of Untold Stories from last season that make a big impact.

However, there is certainly atmosphere in the two-part season finale, "The Final Battle". Unfortunately, instead of being an epic atmosphere like you would expect, it's dark and miserable and claustrophobic up until the happy ending. Kind of sums up the show now!

Episode Quality - A few episodes in this season are so bad that they're downright unwatchable, and I was able to watch the worst of late Season 2. "Changelings" is all about Rumple taking his abuse of Belle to a new level all while the episode tries to use the Evil Queen and the Black Fairy as scapegoats so that you can feel bad for him. "Ill-Boding Patterns" continues the whitewashing of Rumple at the direct expense of his sons, completely butchering Beowulf in the process. "Page 23" is an exercise with boredom in both the flashback and present day stories and comes to a truly awful conclusion for Regina's character that doesn't even make sense for her. And "Awake" has the ugliest-looking, most ill-conceived flashback story ever: Snow and Charming actually woke up during the Dark Curse and then woke up Rumple so that he could take them to Emma, only to then choose to abandon her so that she can achieve her destiny as the Savior before everyone goes back to sleep (quite literally in Charming's case, how the fuck does that work!?) The only reason this exists is so that Adam and Eddy can say "See? Snow and Charming totally DID abandon their daughter!" whenever anyone says it's Regina's fault Emma grew up without parents.

Perhaps most insidiously, we have the two-part midseason finale, "Wish You Were Here" and "Tougher Than the Rest". Aladdin is turned into a genie and the Evil Queen takes advantage of a passing statement Emma made about sometimes wishing she wasn't the Savior by making a wish that Emma's desire was granted. Thus the Wish Realm, an alternate world where the Dark Curse was never cast, is created. And the insults just keep piling up from there: the depiction of Emma as a wimpy princess if she had been raised by her parents, Regina trying to prove to Emma that "none of this is real" by crushing Wish Snow and Wish Charming's hearts (I can vividly envision Adam and Eddy having an orgasm over this scene), Emma snapping out of it when Wish Henry tries to kill Regina and that's "everything Emma never wanted him to be" (a fucking hero who will bring down the monster who slaughtered his grandparents!?), Charming similarly being considered "dark" for trying to kill the Evil Queen, the explicitly stated notion that Emma owes Regina for ruining her life because that's what made her strong, the appearance of Wish August who is so much more boring than the real August, the appearance of Wish Hook as a fat old drunk, and Rumple and Belle getting back together due to what's going on with Gideon, with Belle asking "What have we done to each other?" (NO. There is ZERO moral equivalence between Belle and Rumple here.)

"The Savior", "A Bitter Draught", "Street Rats", "I'll Be Your Mirror", "Mother's Little Helper", "Where Bluebirds Fly" and "The Black Fairy" are all watchable, if not particularly good.

All the other episodes have their strong points. "The Other Shoe" is a fun breather episode the likes of which this show desperately needed more of. "Strange Case" features a great take on the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "Dark Waters" has Hook and Henry at their best and introduces Captain Nemo played by the great Faran Tahir. "Heartless" is the only episode in the season where Lana Parilla plays the Evil Queen with old-school menace, with the curse she ends up placing on Snow and Charming being legitimately ingenious and diabolical. "Murder Most Foul", until its literal last minute twist, is a highly engaging story and features a (rare at this point and thus even more appreciated) explosively emotional performance from Josh Dallas in its climax. "A Wondrous Place", if you ignore the awful Storybrooke scenes, is a weird and wacky crossover between characters of various stories that reminds you why you liked this show to begin with, and features Oded Fehr's last and best performance as Jafar where he is finally able to match Naveen Andrews in raw intensity.

Then there's the musical episode, "The Song In Your Heart". This is the textbook definition of an episode that is really good and enjoyable in a bubble, but is utter nonsense when applied in context. The flashback is a total filler story about a musical curse being cast by the Blue Fairy so that its result can be used by Emma in the present, and it’s only being used by Emma in the present because the Black Fairy suddenly decides "forget casting the Dark Curse and having the Final Battle, I'll take the Savior out now!", and when she fails it's right back to casting the Dark Curse and having the Final Battle as if nothing ever happened! And Emma and Hook having their rooftop wedding where the whole town starts singing and dancing about "a Happy Beginning" despite knowing damn well that the Dark Curse's arrival is imminent is hysterical- all logic dictates this should have been saved for after the crisis is over, not before it's even begun! It's dumb as Hell, but the songs and dance moves are fun (except for the Snow and Charming vs. Regina one, that was just cringy) so it gets a pass.

Lastly, there's "The Final Battle". For all of its many, many faults, it is better than Season 5's two-part finale (and also better than Season 7's, as we'll get to in the next post), and the areas where there could have been improvement are so blatantly obvious that what could have been is easy to imagine (ex: Rumple dying, a few questionable shots from the final happy ending montage cut, and the entirety of the dumbass Season 7 lead-in framing device removed entirely). It's the closest to a decent series finale we have, even if in terms of satisfaction it pales in comparison to the likes of "A Land Without Magic", "Going Home", "There's No Place Like Home", and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland's "And They Lived..."

Overall - I need to issue a formal retraction about the statement I made in this long-ago post. Not about how Season 5 would have been better with an even stronger connection between its two arcs; I still believe that. But returning to a full-season story arc format was a terrible idea, because with Season 6 we see that Season 1 was lightning in a bottle that's never getting recaptured. Every other time Adam and Eddy are given a full-season story arc, their ADHD style of storytelling won't let them stay focused and they'll end up throwing everything but the kitchen sink into it, resulting in a disjointed, convoluted, borderline incoherent mess. This is especially bad at a point where the vast majority of their most talented scriptwriters have long since departed from the writing team. Season 6 isn't the worst season (that comes up next), but it's probably the most miserable and depressing one, especially considering the fact that it was enough to make several main cast members quit. Back in Season 3, I'd have been ecstatic if you told me that this show would be getting 3 more seasons. Now, when actually at Season 6, I was horrified when I was told that it was getting 1 more season.

#Once Upon a Time #ABC #OUAT and Me #Opinion #Analysis

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mikkock · 4 years

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Hey hi your murder mystery art is super totally cool and amazing and I'd like to Extra! Extra! hear all about it *rattles bells*

haha wow i cant believe ud ask me THIS! unbelievable! now im gonna have to make a long post!

all info under the cut cause im kind like that ♥

For reasons I felt like making a Fancy Ass murder mystery story, with you know, hella complex secret storylines and everyone having drama and shit, and one person died but the more the story goes the less people care about who did the murder and the more they want tHE JUICY DETAILs. X and Y had an afFAIR you say!!! well that’s thousands time more interesting than that murder that happened, who cares about the culprit its not like any of us are going anywhere anyway! tell me more about the marital issues!

The ultimate Vibes are Clue (the game, ya kno, it had a movie too, and that movie was shot with three different endings -fun fact- so that movie theatres could play one alternatively that way people wouldnt get spoiled or even if they did they would not get the ending they were spoiled or even if all three were spoiled you couldnt know which ending you were getting anyway, big dick move, cause its an old movie and film is expensive, also that movie stupid and campy, ALSO I ONLY LEARNED MAKING THIS AU THAT IN ENGLISH THE GAME’S CALLED “CLUE” wE CALL IT CLUEDO therefore my wip playlist is called cluedo. because. fuck it.)(i just have an emotional attachment to that game i even had a cd rom video game version and it was the spookiest shit for a 6 years old, trust me, i played it so much tho i didnt even understand the rULES i was just making scenarios like gathering the characters in rooms n making conversations outloud cause honestly the banter is the best part of a murder mystery) ANYWAY that sure is a whole paragraph of tangent.

BUT YE the inspo from the Clue game. you can tell it from the Colours obviously, everyone’s colour codded.(even everyone’s name is colours as well you’ll see it’s real dang fancy! im just remaking that game but with 2932020 characters and more behind the scenes drama and also for gay people.)

So BASIC PLOT!

Sir Belyy, the dude in white, is The Rich Powerful Respected Fancy Boss, and he throws a Fancy Reception Party with his closest friends and associates to celebrate the opening of a new branch of his business. All the lads gather in his wonderful little very isolated mansion in the middle of nowhere, like ok he got a death wish or something or he’s very trusting of his business partners, but not a good move, cause in the middle of the reception, as A Phat Storm Starts (for plot convenience, we going with a campy vibe if you couldnt tell), his body is found, it’s awful, there’s a killer on the loose! All the guests gather, and attempt to maybe contact the authorities, to not avail, since The Storm ya know, phone lines are Broken my dude. Its clear that the culprit is among them, since no one could have entered the house, or left it (cuz once again, ThE sTORm). And then it’s all about interrogating each other, distrust, alliances and betrayal, revealing one’s deepest secrets when they form an alibi and revealing someone else’s deepest secret for they could be a motive! Meanwhile there’s a dead body in the mansion just chillin there.

So as I mentioned, I changed everyone’s name to be colour related (or ya know, food or flowers of that colour cause sometimes a colour in a language would not work as a name given the way names work in that culture all that jazz) which is the trippiest thing cause tHATS NOT YALLS USUAL NAMES but its fun (also changed so many ages hgfhs it was a trip)(still no one’s really old i guess i got boomerphobia). The “Cast” is clearly the most important part, and if ur a True “My OCs” Connaisseur (hdfghd the most useful skill to have, knowing *MY* Charactersdshgd) you may have recognised some faces and can already read some vibes and predict who will be progressing the plot and who will be yelling at people throwing accusations ghdfgd.

(god i wish i hadnt slacked off making the portraits of everyone in that AU i only have 3 tho that’s so sad so ill just make little sketches just cause <3 only text??? i got too many hoes with no attention span for that)

Sir BELYY (the one who dIEs lmao)

(bust shot missing the fact that this man is the tallest beefiest lad around)

Intimidating, powerful, composed, wealthy, carries the name of a family who has generations of control to it’s reputation, he’s The Man that hoes who believe in the economy wishes they were. As in, the “self made” man who only just happened to benefit from having a wealthy background to uplift his plans. In his youth, he wanted to prove his worth, seperated himself from his father, started a business, that business became big, then got attached to the family’s business, bam back to square one but with Reputation now. There seemed to be VERY big tension between him and The Father, some speculate it had to do with his unknown mother, and some family drama there, and it never got resolved as old man Belyy died quite young (the jUICY speculations are that current sir Belyy mURDEREd old man sir Belyy, fucked up if true!). People love him though in general, as he has that reputation of “Cold Lad With a Gold Heart” aka he takes people under his wings, donates, doesnt treat his employees like the absolute worst garbage etc... you know, he’s rich and a half decent person, so obviously he’s an angel on earth. But does it matter though, he’s dead! that’s the concept of the story!

Mr.GRAY (the grey guest)(who could have guessed from the name)

He’s one of Sir Belyy’s oldest employees, and benefits from a high rank in the company. But, sadly for him, he’s been stagnating lately, as newer, youngest employees seem to have Belyy’s favours, and are his prefered associates for important tasks and positions. Therefore he has Some Bitterness, Some Salt, Some Distaste, some unbriddled but professionally muted hatred for Specific people in the company. He can be an antagonistic figure, but the amount of time he spent in Belyy’s circle grants him an immense quantity of information about the man, but mostly, about his business. Anything about the company’s history, dealings, operations, he’s aware of, either having been told of them, or having snooped around to obtain, immune to being questioned due to his legitimacy in the company.

Mr.LIM (the green guest)

Remember when it was said that Gray had beef with some employees cause they were younger and rose to high ranks faster than him and became Belyy’s favourite over him? Yeah well here comes the one he hates the most for that (ofc he’s belyys fave cuz he’s Mine <3) Our lad caught Belyy’s attention for his Exploits in like, em fancy high school tournaments of smart people, it’s a thing its ridiculous, making kids compete on Smart stuff for the pride of their schools n shit, well homie Lim got clout when doing that, and Belyy was extremely interested cause that kid’s main thing was how “this young lad got mad strategic skills tf are u a war general or smth how fancy”, and that’s a coveted skill for ruthless business. So as soon as the kid is an adult, bam, join the company my dude. And because he’s just that Cool n Sexy ofc he met the expectations Belyy had, and old man Belyy got attached cuz it do be such a young lad, a kid, mentally i am adopting. That’s how you get a youngas employee becoming the right hand man of one the phatest CEO in a few years, and even make your way into being a Good Lad on top of a business partner. And that’s how you get Gray to hate your ass too. Now though, fine lad with mad strategic skills, rising to power that fast, and even infiltrating Belyy’s private life? If I were Gray I’d call suspicion there’s surely some shady stuff going no way we’re just dealing with a nice fella who just happens to work good and be friendly to the boss right?

Herra MUSTA (the black “guest”)

Belyy’s newest butler, assistant, house keeper, he multitasks. His family has been tied to Belyy’s for generations, fullfilling roles of help, but also of confidents. He’s been the head butler since only a short time, after his mother passed, and as such is still “in training” you could say, despite having served the family his whole life. There are rumours going around that the contract tying his family to the Belyys may end on his generation and need to be resigned. He known the manor by heart, and carries all keys to any locked room (and mostly, The Master Key, cause in an old house, some doors may be locked beyond all still existing keys). He also knows secrets of the family that no one else knows, but good luck getting em out of him, he’s under contract not to divulge em bro.

Mr. HASSEL (the brown guest)

Belyy’s childhood friend. They grew up together, pictured their dreams together, sworn to flourish together, worked together when starting the company, and then Hassel felt he should create his own thing instead of depending on his friend’s existing wealth, and while Belyy’s business went wild, his never took off. They still stayed very close, despite the massive difference in wealth. Belyy considers him his closest friend, the one person he can trust (fucked if hassel did the murder lemme tell u). So of course, he’s still always invited to the Prestigious meet ups where’s he’s free to feel uncomfortably out of place amongst all the rich and powerful people that he could have been a part of had he had a tiny bit of luck and a small loan from a wealthy relative...People LOVE saying he’s still hanging out with Belyy so much to leech off his wealth, cause of course they do! His bestie status means he has a whole different brand of information of Belyy than his butler does, the Most Intimate Stuff, the Childhood Stuff. The Juicy stuff ya kno...But Bro Code, its all secrets...

Sir RUZH (the red “guest”)

Deep dive into Belyy’s personnal history, the man has many employees working at his house keeping it working, clean, ya know the vibe. They live on the premice, one has a kid who’s just a Joy to be around, all the employees just vibe with that lad, he’s just a born socialite you know? Belyy gets to meet the kid, and also hella vibes with him. And because human are influenced by their feelings, he gives the kid’s mum a bit of a preferencial treatment, in the tasks she fullfils and all, til he gives her an important-as mission, and then there’s an accident n mama dies, and now Belyy got guilt and there’s this kid who just Vibes. So naturally the move is to take the kid in, and play on how his vibes are just so clean, and raise him to be the Perfect Entertainer for guests, bam, its soft power propaganda, if everyone loves your now son’s vibes, they associate them with you too. And also that’s kind of a clean rep, the selfless man who adopted his employee’s son to not have him fall to the streets, how heartwarming. Not at all traumatising for the kid too I bet! But anyway now the lad is just the most charming young adult, mission accomplished. He’s always present at any reception, ready to work his people-pleasing magic, and then going back to a gigantic empty manor to wait for the next and curate the perfect vibes to meet the expectations of dad. On the plus side, he knows everyone, and those who don’t know him cannot wAIT to, he’s just got that aura ya know. People skills for miles, and the insider knowledge that comes with being the son of the CEO, all this hidden behind the personna of the fresh innocent bashful party lad.

Dr.FEN (the pink guest)

Do not get mistaken by the title, he’s no doc, he will not diagnose you with anything, he just studied long enough to get the sexy title. Study in what? Haha. Nothing shady. Just toxicology. He’s a world reknown poison expert basically, that’s his main thing. Oh but don’t worry, of course studying substances that may kill people is only for finding out how to cure them from it of course. What brings him in this circle? Simple, Belyy may or may not have started to suffer some weird illness that no doctor has been able to find the source, let alone cure, of. Him and Dr.Fen had met previously on some event, cause some rich man also love flexing how smart they are and attending sciencey shit, and he was contacted as sort of a shot in the dark. The lad does know how to treat some things, maybe he can treat The Mysterious Unwellness, since no traditional doctor was able to. He knows science, he’s trustworthy, bam, you’re hired to work on My Case Exclusively. Thanks to this, Dr.Fen has access to the whole health history of Belyy and his family, to many mANY dangerous substances, and also has The Respect of the hoes at the party. He HAS a doctorate after all. Epitome of knowledge. And he’s a kind to people and he wears pink like dang how can you nOT pour your wHOLE trust in him.

Sir MOREVITCH (the blue guest)

Youngest son of an affluent family, who used to be close the the Belyys. The two families fell slightly appart after the death of the previous head of the family on the Belyy side, as they do nOT vibe with the current one (well current, til the first night of the story ig). But, unbeknownst to all, one strong link had been kept, between the youngest of the Morevitch, who dislikes his family and wishes to emancipate himself from them while also assuring his depart will not throw him basically in the streets, and our beloved Sir Belyy, who also dislikes the Morevitches but loves to see the rebellious energy of the young one (and ya know, my enemy’s enemy’s my friend or however you say that). So Belyy’s basically offering tips and helping Morevitch plant himself safely out of his family’s grasp, but it’s all taking quite some time isn’t it, slow and steady is fine until your parents try to arrange a wedding to secure more political power, and suddenly it is all quite urgent that you escape that situation because No Thank You Parents I Do Not Want A Wife I’m Too Young And Also Huh <3 Stuff You Won’t Like Hearing For Sure <3. The people who know they’re working together also know that it’s a big point of argument between them, the difference in vision between “you have to go slow and steady to be safe” and “I have very limited time to get to that safety anyway so I gotta risk it” “hell no you cant i can’t follow through if we’re going that quick that’ll put me at risk and you’re family’s gonna send gunmen to take me down”. A mess, it’d be much quicker to just obtain a few million bucks out of nowhere and bolt for sure...

Mr.GANG (the orange guest)

Morevitch’s trusted assistant. He hears the concerns, he helps the secret businesses, he lies to the parents about the whereabouts, and mostly, he’s basically a budget spy. The lad got that talent where people just don’t notice him popping behind them and catching all their dirty laundry as they confess it to someone they trust, and he always manages to break into places, get the intel he was looking for, and escape, putting everything back into place as if no one was ever there (wonder where he got all those skills from damn!). But what he’s even better at is being sneaky not only to benefit his boss, but himself as well <3. If he can catch all the info in the world, go any places, nothing’s stopping him from playing double agent and also going behind Morevitch’s back. After all the assistant life isn’t the most glamourous and rewarding, who can blame him from going and using his talents to build his own little exit route, right? Everybody sort of knows he cannot be trusted, but also no one managed to really incriminate or stop him, and as much as he has tea on many people, no has it on him, but bet once found that would be heeeella juicy.

M.MOUTARDE (the yellow guest)(this one is straight up the name of the yellow player in the french edition of clue too when i say its my main vibe)

Moutarde was an influential celebrity. He had a big break acting in a movie that the whole country stanned so hard they basically turned the script into their national anthem (they would have if it was a true democracy where the people really decide), he was so handsome and elegant, everyone’s dream husband. And then the fame fiddled out because it’s how fame is, one moment you’re the sexiest dish on the table and the next someone brings in dessert and baam, its all about that fresh cake, and no one pays any mind to your delightful aroma anymore, you’ve gone cold, they had a bite, their interest is somewhere else. Belyy really admires his work though, and mostly finds his image fits with the brand of his company, therefore the two are working on a collaboration to make Moutarde a representative. This WOULD boost Moutarde’s reputation, for his ads would be displayed on every imaginable surface of the country, and it would also benefit the company cause being represented by thAT sexy motherfucker? clearly that’s a deal. The freshness of the partnership means Moutarde is a newcomer in the guests, a fresh face, with no reputation, no relationships, no unfair biases against him. He’s just the new handsome charismatic lad with a squeaky clean image. Emphasis on “image”. After all, no one really knows anything of his background, right?

Kun.LAWENDER (the purple guest)

Private investigator, very useful to be around at a party it’s almost like it was expected there’d be a body to investigate, he’s a very close associate of Belyy, as there’s nothing more important to business than investigating the rivals and finding dirt on them to make them fall through infamy. He’s not exactly the PI who goes look for justice to be served, he’s just here for cash bro. He’s got intel on everyone, and will only let it out if offered the right thing in return (money, or sometimes other pieces of very secret intel, trade is good). Wouldn’t advise letting him and Gang team up tbh but they probably wouldnt, as Lawender is really more of a lone wolf player, going on his own for himself. The one thing that negates his usefulness as a PI on an accidental crime of scene is that even if he knew the whole truth of the event he would not spit it out unless he benefitted from saying it. He sure is a polarising lad, but at the same time, an untouchable one, he’s too knowledgeable to be taken down. Rather than sneaky, he’s extremely observant, noticing the tiniest details and engraving them in his memory, ready to be linked up to other details to deduct the big picture. He’s the upfront tea gathered basically (as opposed to Gang’s shadow tea gathering if you will, they are similar forces but using opposite methods)(also one of em got a licence n the other does not hAH).

~~~~

Now the secrets, all of em have them. One of em at least got the secret of having KILLED Belyy that’s that. But that’s to be kept for later (for if i ever use this story for more than daydream material gfhjgh) bet you can imagine what some of em may be just out of Knowing what i do, from having seen the characters in other contexts, or just because you’re a genius and reading the character profiles immediatly lit up the bulbs in your head forming the perfect theory, props to you, mad genius.

Honestly my thoughts are just how lit of a game that would be, you get to pick one hoe (maybe sum are locked til u find their secrets for juicy purposes) and you do your invetigation using your character’s perks and disadvantages, and maybe there could even be Multiple scenarios and outcomes, to spice it up, give replay value, i just think it’d be a game id spend hours on. tryin to get the spicy details of everyone’s life. walking around n digging through a rich man’s stuff, witnessing the drAMA of people fighting cause they’re locked in with a murderer and that’s stressful ngl. That or a long ass show @ netflix wanna give me a show maybe? give me hella budget we’re making it animated cause im too cultured for live action.

whatever i make of it though, i hope i can make this story Flourish, just so that i can lay down all those secret backstories i’ve written. i want the satisfaction of throwing out the craziest secret drama between character n seeing peeps loose their minds, it just is a tasty experience.

also i gotta say, i plug the hell out of Clue for an inspo but when i was building the basics of the story my mind immediatly went “oH MY GOD THE VIBES,, THE BACKSTABBING AND tEAMING UP and all,,, its The Genius, that one tv show where peeps have to do the wildest games that require strategy n they’re in that fancy set that looks like a rich ppl mansion oh god the vibes” so yeah, i rewatched the whole first two seasons cause they’re my faves and that had an impact if only minimal in the aesthetic.

Anyway hope that quick presentation gave you a lil taste of the story, and maybe,,,, got you curious,,, craving to learn more like you never did before (im exaggerating the only real question we all got is just “so who’s fuckin with whom then how many of yall secretly dating” this the real deal)

#doodlin every lad's face at one rly be like 'welcome to the cheekbone festival'#they got antti AND said at once like the cheekbonage is out of this world!#that's musta n gang btw #also every single time i draw cream (blue lad) im like 'i havent drawn u in ages' n it isnt #that i dont draw him much anymore #but that ive drawn only this bitch for months back in the days #him bein in this without his lover....criminal #cuz his boo wouldnt fit a murder mystery au like #hoes would find the corpse he'd just be like 'welp on that imma go to bed aight bye'#anyway u can tell which of my ocs i simp for v easely #like fr #they the ones i spend the longest drawfigfdj cuz i draw em n then go 'not hot enough do it again'#a struggle!#anyway the secret is that i prepares a motive AND an alibi for all of em #so that i can pick who murdered belyy at the last moment <3 #its all abt the contextual clues on the scene of crime <3 #none of the drama tells u anything its all for the treat of gossip <3 #sad part of this project is how much ive planned n written yet i can barely tell anythin if i want to make it #n ive drawn nothingbhd #i hav a dari n a weiwei in their coloured clothes lookin handsome cuz ofc i do #im predictable i have faves #ask if they're in love in this one too take a fuckin guess #u rly think hoe going to his boss's house so much to see the ceo ???? HAH #the real question isnt if theyre smooshin we all kno that answer the question is if dad white suit knows thATs whats important #are yall secret lovers or is green boy climbing the ladder of the company cuz he's smashing the boss's son #who knows #i do i aint telling pay me

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gross-gal · 4 years

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yo!! i dont know jackshit about Darkstalkers!! What's it about?? What do you like about it?? What do you NOT like about it?? Tell me alll!!!! (@gamer-gremlin-gf-ships)

AAAAAA THANK YOU @gamer-gremlin-gf-ships

SO. I’LL PUT THIS UNDER READ MORE BECAUSE THERE’S A LOT.

Darkstalkers is a fighting game developed by Capcom. The main gimmick is that, most of, the fighters are based off of horror archetypes. So ya got vampires, zombies, frankensteins, fishmen, ghosts, all that shit.

There isn’t really much story wise I can elaborate on since, fighting games don’t usually have that much of a story to begin with. BUT, in Darkstalkers 1 and 2, main story is that this big bad dude named Pyron kinda wants to determine if the Earth is worthy to be ruled under him or if he’ll destroy it. Pyron is a shape shifting alien dude from the planet, Hellstorm and he’s really looking for a good brawl so he goes and fights the most powerful Darkstalker, which is whoever you choose to play as.

Now then, to avoid confusion, Darkstalkers 1 and 2 (or Vampire Hunter/Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge) are basically the same game. 2 is more of an updated version of 1, has two new characters, better gameplay, and it also changes some part of the story because Demitri (the vampire dude) actually was the one who originally started the whole tournment thing in determining who was the most powerful and I think? Pyron kinda ends up in the way. In 2, it basically is changed to Pyron is the one that starts the tournament, and that’s the canonical version.

So 2 isn’t really that much of a sequel, while Darkstalkers 3 (or Vampire Savior) is an actual sequel to the series. This introduces the antagonist, Jedah Dohma, whose plot is that he wants to collect all the powerful darkstalker souls and put them into this big demon baby, which then be used as a vessel for him. Jedah’s whole thing is that he’s basically disappointed in what has become of the demon world (makai world) and decides that he’s going to annihilate both the demons and humans. He sees himself as a savior, and while there really isn’t a protag, Jedah kind of is considered to be one in 3.

NOW. WHAT IS A DARKSTALKER? It’s literally just...fucking monster? I guess? There really isn’t a specific definition but just know, everyone, besides B.B. Hood because she’s the only true human in the series, is a Darkstalker.

Just gonna get my problems out of the way. Obviously, the series has some sexual stuff, which is fine but it can get uncomfortable. Demitri is a pretty big example since he literally has an ability that just involves transforming the opponent into a younger, more desirable person so that he can drain their blood? I won’t go to into it since it’s gross but yeah. Then of course there’s Lilith and yeah...REALLY WISH THEY DIDN’T MAKE HER LOOK LIKE THAT BECAUSE SHE’S A PRETTY COOL CHARACTER.

Darkstalkers also doesn’t offer much as far as a story, this is sort of good because it offers a lot of freedom as far as writing, but to be honest? A lot of stuff which tries to elaborate on the Darkstalkers lore or whatever, KIND OF SUCKS. I myself, am not into the Udon comics or the mangas, the OVA also doesn’t offer much of a great story. Which is a shame because Darkstalkers has a lot of potential but so many attempts, just kinda fail because they miss the point in the series. Udon and the Vampire Savior manga in particular because they take the series way too seriously or just characterize really strangely? The OVA probably offers the best in terms of story but it’s not even much because the only actual good and satisfying one, is Donovan’s story. His is the only one that actually has a conclusion. Otherwise, the OVA suffers from poor pacing, lots of exposition, or just OOC moments. LIKE??? REALLY DOESN’T MAKE SENSE AS TO WHY FELICIA GETS ALONG WITH ZABEL OR MORRIGAN ENDING UP WITH DEMITRI?

And then I guess a more minor complaint. Darkstalkers has a very specific style, I really think the series look best in the first two games and in the OVA. I personally am not a big fan of the character art in 3 jdskal

NOW FOR THE POSITIVES.

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW MUCH I ADORE THE ART AND ANIMATION IN THE SERIES????

The main artists for the series are Bengus (Gouda Cheese) and Daigo Ikeno. Bengus really fucking nailed how the series should look. It’s got that perfect balance of the gothic, sensual aesthetic with exaggeration and fuckin weirdness of the series. Darkstalkers is a series that completely embraces it’s wacky side and just how campy it’s influences are. I mostly love Bengus’ earlier works from 1 and 2. Daigo’s stuff is much more casual and less elaborate compared to Bengus’ works but I kinda love that, he’s really great at showing off the characters in more casual situations and showing off their goofier sides. I’ll share some of my favorite pieces at the end.

OH GOD. AND HOW CAN I NOT BRING UP THE ANIMATION???

While I wouldn’t say it’s as fluent as Street Fighter Alpha 3′s sprites, because Darkstalkers is able to be more creative with it’s moves, the results are some super wacky and fun animation. Darkstalkers animators heavily referenced old Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons when it came to animating. I really don’t know a whole lot of fighting games, especially from Capcom, that look the way Darkstalkers looks. And a lot of that comes from the fact that Darkstalkers isn’t very limited. Characters can launch missles, fireballs, fucking blood?. Characters can extend or manipulate their body. Or just do weird shit like transform characters into basketballs, make characters perform in a rhythm game?, A CHARACTER STRAIGHT UP USES HIS ASS CHEEKS TO GRAB YOU AND SUMMON LIGHTNING?? Everything is super fucking wild and that’s what makes the series.

A lot of people say Darkstalkers needs to be gorey and sexual but that’s really not what the series is about. Yes, Darkstalkers is def sensual but it also really doesn’t take itself seriously. That’s what so many people miss. And honestly? Even though it was terrible, the American cartoon ends up being the most accurate to the source material because it gives no fucks and so much weird shit just happens.

Another thing I love about Darkstalkers is how much it subverts it’s characters and just how creative they got. You have an Australian zombie rockstar, a catlady that’s also an idol and a nun??, a demon possessed samurai ghost armor guy. The character design is genuinely fucking brillant and not at all what you’d expect to get when given the idea for monster characters. I would talk about the characters but you see how long this post is starting to get.

And I haven’t talked that much about gameplay but Darkstalkers feels fucking great. If you’re curious about which game to get into, absolutely go with 3/Vampire Savior. It feels great, combo inputs are relatively simple, you can straight up beat the game just by button mashing, and no character really feels too similar. It’s also a very fast game too, if you ever watch tournaments, they go by so fast and when you play it, you’re very much engaged. It’s a game that requires a lot of attention and I enjoy that. I also have to mention this but, pretty much every character has their own unfair, bullshit tactic that, if you plan on getting good, will require you to figure out how to avoid depending on what character you use. There’s a sorta popular joke with the game that, it’s balanced if all the characters are broken. I’ll admit, probably not the best game for someone like me that sucks as far as remembering stuff and being able to plan ahead, but I still have lots of fun with the game!

I really didn’t expect to become as engaged in the series as I did but there is a lot to appreciate about Darkstalkers. It’s unfortunate to because, sadly, Darkstalkers likely will never get another game.

While the series is technically popular, it’s still way too niche compared to most fighting games. It just never had the same impact as other fighting games, and ultimately, no matter how good those games feel to play, there’s always shit like Marvel vs Capcom that just is more well known and features more stuff that just is what people prefer going to. I think Capcom will pretty much stick with having Darkstalkers characters appear in crossover games vs actually giving the franchise another game

They tries reviving it with Resurrection, which was a re-release of the games on Xbox and Playstation, but it hardly even sold that many copies. Which is where the phrase “Darkstalkers are not Dead” originated from, a phrase that has become a joke now in the fighting game community. Even if they were to revive the series, it’d be difficult recapturing that same vibe since most of the original crew are working on completely separate projects. There’s also a part of me that does fear the idea of another game because of how it’ll be handled. I’ve heard people mention possibly having the Skullgirls team develop or maybe Arc Systems, I just don’t want a lot of the charm to be lost in a sequel.

Since a fighting game isn’t really possible, I do hope for maybe a show or comic series that explores the characters and story more.

My brain is kinda blanking rn but yeah. I just fucking love this series a lot. I hope maybe someday I can contribute something great to this franchise and I hope you listened to me ramble about it.

#i am so fucking sorry #but thank you djsakljdskalda #Anonymous

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spookyceph · 4 years

Text

Comfort Zone Pt. 1

A Shigaraki & Toga fic! Because the League becoming friends is just about my favorite thing ever. Also, it's running long, so I split it into two parts.

Rating: T and up

Relationships: Shigaraki Tomura & Toga Himiko, Dabi/Shigaraki Tomura (hints of)

Warnings: Swearing, anxiety attacks, disturbing thoughts, self-harm (in the form of Shigaraki’s scratching), mentions of blood

Even after shoving the door to the downstairs bathroom shut and locking it behind him, Tomura couldn’t convince his heart to stop slamming against his ribs like a caged animal.

How he’d let this happen—why he’d allowed it to—he couldn’t begin to piece together. He’d been so pissed when Dabi had intruded on his solitude at the bar. But then…then the bastard had started talking. Worse, he’d made sense. As if that hadn’t been enough, Dabi had given him a gift before leaning in close, so close, close enough to touch—touch!—his face, to tangle warm fingers in his hair, and shitshitfuckinghellwhatwashesupposedto—

Gasping for the air that had suddenly abandoned the room, Tomura sagged against the sink. No. The walls were not closing in on him. He wasn’t about to suffocate. His brain was just convinced that was the case because it was busy drowning in swells of adrenaline and anxiety. One hand flew up to his neck. The sting of his nails ripping open new furrows across old scratches caused his flailing thoughts to freeze. Seizing the opportunity, he groped for another lifeline.

“W-white counter. Lavender soap. Blue…fuck.” He gouged his nails deeper, countering anxiety’s own claws in his guts. “Blue. The fucking goddamn towel is blue. Like his—”

The resulting jolt of shock at what had nearly escaped his mouth knocked panic’s grip right off of him.

Tomura turned the sink faucet on and stuck his icy, quaking hands under the warm stream of water. The sensation of it flowing and sliding between all five of his fingers like nothing solid could helped ground him further. Cupping his palms, he caught enough to splash onto his face and scrub away the clammy sheen of stress sweat. Too late, he remembered the fresh coating of salve. Droplets raining down his cheeks and chin, Tomura lifted his head to confront his reflection.

Cracked and crinkled rice paper skin. Beauty mark like a droplet of ink to one side of his mouth. Vertical scar splitting the symmetry of his lips. White wisps of hair that Kurogiri had long since stopped suggesting he comb curling every which way. Eyes as round and rawly red as the healing exit wounds that shitheel Snipe had given him as parting gifts. Or the thin streams of blood trickling from his shredded neck, soaking into his shirt. The same list of features he’d had as long as he could remember—no more than fifteen years back before recollections slid into oblivion, admittedly, but long enough. Tomura squinted, studying each one, struggling to imagine what they might look like through eyes the bright blue of lightning.

Don’t expect me to share my chapstick, though. You’re on your own with that one, creep.

Tomura’s jaw tightened until his temples throbbed. Sensei had once had him take some standardized tests from the most prestigious schools in the country, just to show him how narrow society’s thinking could be. He’d aced every one…yet he’d walked right into Dabi’s little joke. The bastard had probably laughed all the way back to his room at Tomura’s gullibility. Even with half his skin barbequed, face full of staples and stitches like a campy horror movie character, he’d obviously been born a golden child, tall and beautiful and strong. Probably doted on by everyone around him until whatever little accident had tarnished his shine. Driven into the dark of the underworld, he still retained the same entitled attitude. Someone like Tomura—no pedigree, no social standing, and thus no need to kiss anyone’s ass—would be vermin to him.

Think of this another way. As a show of trust.

There. Better?

Here. Keep it. Should last awhile.

The righteous fire in Tomura’s chest dwindled and fizzled. A smaller but much more alarming warmth kindled along his cheekbones. Okay, fine. Dabi’s expression hadn’t belonged to a purebreed staring down his nose at a stray mongrel when he’d said those things, but so damn what? He’d smirked and teased and bulldozed right through every boundary he found.

Why, then, hadn’t Tomura erased his annoying existence from the world? Or at least beat some respect into him? Just because he’d been nice for two seconds? Tomura preferred to think he wasn’t so pathetic that he could be swayed by such an insignificant gesture.

People always show their real selves when they’re pissed.

The tang of copper coated his tongue as he chewed on his nails—his second favorite method to tear himself apart. What if…what if insults and arrogance were tactics? Ways for Dabi to gather intelligence and gain the upper hand? Tomura did much the same on the rare, awful occasions he had to interact in public, just in the opposite direction—he pretended to be a harmless drone of hero society like everyone else. In that light, Dabi’s intentions had been genuine even though his approach relied on deception.

Aloof characters who nevertheless gave their all for the party when it came down to it were always the most useful in games. Not to mention usually Tomura’s favorites.

Right. That concluded his thinking about the subject for the night. Or eternity.

Door opened a crack, Tomura peeked out into the hallway. Not a soul. He cocked his head, listening. Not a whisper or peep. Mindful of every creaky floorboard, he crept out. Slunk upstairs like a thief in his own base of operations. Hardly dared to breathe until he’d shut and locked the door to his room behind him.

Nerves still crawling beneath his skin, Tomura glanced over at the laptop sitting on the small desk against one wall. To the TV mounted on the other, framed by shelves of games to various consoles. He would’ve liked nothing more than to have a glowing screen absorb his attention, but he knew his focus was too scattered to play anything. Scanning the online news feeds would yield nothing but chatter about Stain or All Might—his fingers latched back onto his neck just thinking about it. He couldn’t wear himself out with training since that meant going back downstairs to use the mats and equipment in the basement. No fucking way was he setting foot in the bar for the next few days. Maybe not for years.

He knew he shouldn’t have let anyone stay here. Now he was trapped, a prisoner in his own goddamned room, all because he’d let an overcooked piece of human yakitori put his soft, stapled hands on him, and—

The rising swells of panic dropped and went utterly still as Tomura’s eyes darted to his closet. Of course. Such an obvious answer. He should’ve known what to do from the beginning.

Aah, you poor thing. What are you so afraid of? All you have to do is follow your heart.

As always, Sensei had provided for him.

Sliding one side of the closet open, Tomura picked up a long wooden box from its resting place beneath his neatly hung clothing. He gently set it in the middle of the room before retrieving a cloth from his desk. Sitting on his heels in front of the box, he wiped a few stray specks of dust from its lacquered surface. Though his memory of receiving it (not to mention its contents) remained lost somewhere in the murky haze of his childhood, the familiar action alone reassured him. Sensei had instructed him to care for it and he had, polishing it every week without fail for fifteen years.

Sleeves over the heels of his palms to prevent smudges, Tomura carefully lifted the lid.

The stench of formaldehyde sprang out immediately. It reached straight down his throat and clenched his guts with corrosive fingers. Despite the urge to vomit everything in his body cavity up, a mantle of calm settled over Tomura’s shoulders. As wretched, as vile, as stomach-wringing as they were, the sensations were familiar. They’d woven themselves into his makeup as tightly as his DNA. The same could be said for what lay inside the box.

Paler even than him against their nest of black coffin velvet, fourteen human hands lay in two neat rows. Well, thirteen—one was merely a replica, a replacement. The metal caps on the wrists gleamed sallow gold under the room’s light. Poised on the razor’s edge between sickened and serene, Tomura reached for them in the usual order.

First, the smallest ones, curled around his wrists. A larger pair with aged, wrinkled skin and knobby knuckles clamped to his biceps next. A similar but slimmer version of those followed on his forearms. The hands with the longest, loveliest fingers encircled his neck in fourth place. Two sets of brutish, blocky ones latched onto his shoulders, then his sides just beneath his arms.

Naturally, the best he saved for last.

Tomura fixed the replica to the back of his head almost absently. His attention was reserved for its partner: a left, the largest hand, the father of its macabre little family. He lifted it with the same care a collector would a preserved butterfly. With a fingertip he mapped out the valleys and ridges of bones and strong sinew along the back. Turning it over, he traced the lifeline etched across its palm that had most definitely lied. The way the scar cleaving his lips tingled and burned had nothing to do with the savage grin that split Tomura’s face. He rubbed his chin to be sure the feeling of blood drooling down it was only a phantom from his buried past.

He didn’t need to know its origins to realize how special Father was.

Revulsion and exhilaration surged up from his center as he pressed the precious memento mori over his face like a mask. His roiling emotions alchemized into something he had yet to name, its crystallized shape strange but stable. At last, the feel of cold, waxen flesh molded to his cheeks, of stiff, dead fingers in his hair, chased away the fantasy of hot, living ones. At last, he could think.

With a relieved sigh, Tomura replaced the box’s lid and stood. After feeling trapped, he needed the reassurance of space. He went to his room’s narrow window, pushed aside the curtains, disarmed the little tripwire surprise he’d rigged, and pushed the bottom pane up so he could slither out onto the fire escape.

The night air reeked of the refuse piled in the alley below. This definitely wasn’t high on his list of favored spots, but it was better than nothing. At least the temperature was being kind to his skin, not too warm or humid, not to cool or dry. The rusty skeleton of the fire escape squeaked as he settled himself on the mesh bottom, hugging his knees. Staring up at the void of the sky, a few stars visible through Father’s embalmed fingers, wasn’t so bad either. Everything he could see was warped, discarded, halfway down the path to total ruin. It almost made him feel at home.

A home with dynamics that had changed overnight. But…like it or not he had two new roommates—with more to come, according to Giran. Tomura didn’t have the kind of power to reduce hero society to rubble and ash on his own. Not yet. In the meantime, he had to make do with the next best thing: strength in numbers. It was just…he got so anxious. The concept of living with anyone aside from Kurogiri was bizarre, the thought of having to interact daily with strangers unsettling.

Yet even someone as powerful, as feared and dreaded as Sensei didn’t work alone. If his mentor hadn’t turned his nose up to cooperating with select people, who was Tomura to? He grimaced behind Father, but he could already feel resolve seeping between the seams in his thoughts. One way or another, he’d learn to tolerate his houseguests and how best to use their skills for the greater goal.

Maybe it was his years martial arts training that picked up on some subtle shift in the air. Déjà vu prickled along the back of Tomura’s neck. His head snapped toward the perceived threat on his right.

He caught a flash of a blonde-haired head just before it ducked back inside the next window over.

I’m Toga! Toga Himiko! It’s hard to live!

“Wait,” came from Tomura’s mouth before his conscious mind registered the action. “I’m sorry. About how I acted earlier.” The surprise of those words, in that order, coming from him fell flat compared to the shock of realizing he wasn’t lying.

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demoiselledefortune · 4 years

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You post and reblog a lot of MDZS, Heaven's Official Blessing and Scum Villain and they look interesting but also a little intimidating due to the length and large amounts of side material. Are they related in any way and is there a preferred reading order or does it not matter? If I like things like old-school CLAMP, Basara(manga), Akatsuki no Yona and BL would I like it? How interesting are the female characters or will I mostly just be enjoying it for the BL dynamics and plot?

The three of them, MDZS, Heaven’s Official Blessing and Scum Villain are completely separate work. You don’t need to read one to read the others, they just happen to be by the same author.

None of them actually have a lot of side material, it’s just different adaptations to different media.(some of the adaptations drop the canonical BL stuff because of Chinese censorship, especially the adaptations for TV).

Scum Villain is the shortest work, in novel form, but only accessible in novel format at this time (there’s an animated and a manhua version forthcoming but not out yet). It’s also the one with the worst translation. In tone it was the author’s first work and it shows, it’s got a few tone shift as the story progress and it feels more rough overall. It’s also the more comedy of the three, with a premise that’s a parody of power fantasy harem series (stallion novel) while still having some darker and dramatic aspects, especially as the story progresses. And if you like fanfics, it’s got the best fandom for them.

Mo Dao Zu Shi is the middle work. The novel has a good length but I don’t think it should be too intimidating. You can also get to the fandom via the donghua (two seasons of animated series, unfinished, about 30 episodes of 30 minutes each at this point in term of length), the manhua (i don’t think it’s finished but it’s very very close to the novel), the audio drama (also very close to the novel as adaptation, i think it might be finished? not sure), and of course the TV drama, the Untamed (which I haven’t seen, but is a nice number of episodes so probably would take some time to watch, and is a bit campy in look in the style of Chinese xianxia drama with no real budget). Mo Dao Zu Shi is a great story with good characters and should make a good starting point to see if you like that sort of works I think. It’s probably the darkest of the three, overall, but I wouldn’t call it altogether pessimistic even then. The writer is good at showing the humanity of all her characters which is one of the thing I like about her writing. The fandom is the biggest because all the adaptions have drawn in a lot of people, but it’s also the most wanky.You don’t have to check all the versions, just try the one that seems to appeal the most to your taste.

Heaven’s Official Blessing (or Tian Guan Ci Fu) is the last completed work of the writer and the longest. As a novel, it’s a genuinely long morsel! It’s also the most mature in term of theme and structural craft. I think it’s got a more optimistic tone… it’s still got some very dark and depressing moments; but the overall story is very much about striving to do good in the face of adversity, even in a complicated world where doing so is not easy and can drive you to despair. That’s one of the way in which I like to compare it to Revolutionary Girl Utena (it’s got a few similar motifs).

In term of adaptation, there’s a manhua that has only recently started for it (so is far from being complete) and a donghua forthcoming. They’re both going to be very pretty!! but if you want to check the work in full going with the novel is the best at this point lol

In term of whether you might like them; well, I do and I also love Akatsuki no Yona, CLAMP and Basara lol. I know the AkaYona fandom actually really plunged into MDZS the way fandom migration sometime happen (that’s kind of how I got to it too, even if once removed). I think in term of having a cool fantasy world with depth and breadth and epic drama and intrigue in it, Cnovel Xianxia cater well to that taste and I think it’s one of the reason I’ve been attracted to that genre. (I would say there’s a specific side pairing in MDZS that really reminds me of Seishirou and Subaru, too, since you mention CLAMP.)Unlike Basara and Akayona, they’re BL novels so they don’t have as many female characters and the female characters aren’t center piece, of course.

They *do* have female characters (so unlike most BL manga on that front), especially MDZS and TGCF, who have several meaningful female characters who are genuinely interesting and have depth and their own agency. They don’t necessarily *fare* well. At some point in MDZS you realize that every single female characters in the story except one of the most minor one *dies* at some point in the story. Most of them don’t even get to the present time (MDZS in structure alternates between present time and flashbacks to the past which take as must “screen time” as the present).

TGCF’s female characters aren’t necessarily better (in term of being better written, having more importance in the plot, having more agency) but they don’t end up quite as badly. Of my two favorite characters of TGCF, one is female, the other is genderqueer. That said the first story/part of TGCF is kind of bad on the female front, it takes a little while to get past that and to the cool ones. And I think in term of female characters who are given genuine depth, they’re actually fewer than in MDZS. But holy shit Ling Wen is

So if you want to check those works out mainly for female characters, I wouldn’t recommend them, but if you can get into it for the BL dynamics and plot, then you can also enjoy the female characters on the side. MXTX is really good at investing the full ensemble cast with interesting characterization and their own agency, and that includes female characters, which is one of the thing that makes it pop up as alive and intriguing for fanfic purpose.

I think as someone who enjoys Akayona and Basara, Cnovel xianxia in general could appeal to you, but the breadth of what you can try out is limited by what’s accessible in translation. MXTX has the advantage of being already very translated, something I wish we could say of, say, Priest’s work. If you want to look up some female centered het works, I think there’s also a lot of that on novel updates, including fully translated, which might be another entry point for you to xianxia.

Hope that was useful, anon!

#mo dao zu shi #Anonymous #scum villain's self saving system #heaven's official blessing

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deltaengineering · 5 years

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Fall Anime 2019 Part 4: also, he has a gun for a head

Beastars

So here’s the CG anime that everyone for some reason decided way in advance would be the best show of the season, more or less by default. I was very skeptical of this for a multitude of reasons. First of all, that is a bad name for a show and you can’t convince me otherwise. It’s actually even worse because you’re supposed to write it in all caps, but I refuse. Second, it has a terribly on the nose conceit in which all sorts of animals live together in a high school setting and it’s all metaphorical ‘n shit. The main character is a wolf but get this, he’s actually all sensitive and quiet! Yeah, this is definitely rated D for Deep. And finally it’s by Orange, the CG studio that got an inordinate amount of acclaim for making Houseki no Kuni, the show that everyone thinks looks great and finally made CG anime worthwhile (actual real fact: HnK does not look great most of the time and CG anime was worthwhile well before it).

But enough about my preconceptions since Beastars is... pretty good, actually. If you ignore the setting, which is indeed terribly on the nose. And there’s not much else to say about the story so far besides it. However, it looks significantly better than Houseki no Kuni because it actually has really good character animation throughout instead of a one-minute action scene with flashy spinny camera tricks every other episode. The directing’s strong too, even if the show conspicuously mainly consists of obvious manga panels. I’m still not too hot on the animal stuff but the general writing seems to be sufficiently competent it would work simply on a character level. So I don’t love it, but it seems solid enough to see if it goes somewhere with its “Zootopia but also Beverly Hills 90210 but also they eat each other sometimes″ plot.

Rifle is Beautiful

Remember the whole “anime about some assorted anime girls joining a club doing an oddly specific activity” thing? This is another one of those, and now it’s about air rifle sports shooting. Except it’s not about air rifle sports shooting because that’s apparently way too violent, so they use rifles that look like exactly like air rifles but are actually based on lasers or really bright flashlights (they can’t keep their bullshit straight between scenes, sorry) instead. I just don’t think “girls doing activities” anime should blatantly misrepresent their subject matter like that, you know? With the possible exception of idol anime that is, ain’t nobody who wants to hear about that shit. Apart from that it’s nothing special, so if you are really into air rifles and wish to watch an anime that’s not about those, knock yourself out. It goes through a whole “club needs 5 members” arc in the first half of the first episode, so I really can’t say where it goes next. Nowhere much, I would guess.

Oh right, there’s one more thing: They frequently render the bodies in CG and the heads in traditional drawings, and they do it every time when they’d actually have to draw a rifle otherwise. It’s a weird effect that I think I haven’t seen anywhere else before, and it’s not great but also not terrible. And it’s the most interesting thing about the entire show.

Kabukicho Sherlock

“Let’s take a bunch of public domain characters and put them into a hip modern setting” seems to be its own genre at the moment, and not only because the BBC did that with S. Holmes, Esq. already. Obviously this show is influenced by that (besides other public domain namedroppers like Bungou Stray Dogs), mostly in Watson and his relationship with Sherlock, but Sherlock-san is rather different here; he’s neither the classic Victorian bohemian nor the abrasive sociopath of the BBC version, and tends more towards a bumbling 90s pop culture version of autism and/or general wackiness here. These two are surrounded by a bunch of campy transvestites for some reason, and I’m not quite sure whether I’m supposed to find this particular stereotype offensive or empowering this week, but it sure is annoying. And it has the same character designer as Joker Game, so if you like chiseled, angular anime men, you’re in for a treat here - even if they tend to wear a lot of makeup and dresses sometimes. I don’t know man, it seems sort of okay-ish for the most part but it’s neither as funny as they think, nor as weird as they think, nor is the murder of the week intriguing at all. Oh yeah, he’s hunting noted public domain character Jack the Ripper. Because of course he is.

Shin Chuuka Ichiban!

I am told this is the sequel to episode 19 of a 52-episode anime TV show from 1997. Okay. I am also told to not dare watch this without the important setup therein, which makes me think I should pay less attention to what I’m told because understanding Shin Chuuka Ichiban and its backstory is not hard at all. Kid is superawesome cooking champion in ancient China and goes around clowning on lesser cooks, got it. It’s not a complicated setup and it’s not a complicated genre either: This seems to be mostly about sick shounen cooking duels. Besides the setting, the main difference between this and Shokugeki no Soma seems to be that SnS goes for ridiculous and Chuuka Ichiban goes for epic - which is to say that it fancies itself emotional as well. Apart from that it’s what you’d expect from a cooking shounen, big moves, big reactions, huge twists and so on. One notable thing is that this show looks really, really nice. Production I.G seems to be establishing a sideline in taking stuff from the 90s and updating it with smoother animation and shinier lighting, while keeping the overall look intact; They did it for Mahoujin Guru Guru, and this looks much the same. Still, I’m just fundamentally not really interested in what appears to be a very straightforward cooking shounen from the 90s.

Assassins Pride

Straight from the Department of Chuuni, we have this light novel masterpiece about a cool as fuck teenage assassin who teleports behind u and nothin personells fools all day. He then meets a princess he’s supposed to off but just kinda decides not to, probably because she seems to be smitten by his m’lady act. Now he has to use his sick skillz to keep them both alive. It’s awful and terrible and no good and also kind of adorable. This truly is the most 13 AND A HALF MOM years old anime in a while, and it’s not even isekai! The writing’s just so amateurish and corny you can’t help but smile when princesses exposit their backstory for no reason while being accosted by pumpkin monsters (without knowing that Awessassin McCooldude happens to be listening in, which is certainly convenient). Or when the episode ends with the man just reading the synopsis of the show out again, in case you were too fascinated by this plot to pay attention to what it’s about. Yeah I’m not going to watch this in a thousand years, but it sure made me chuckle. Your mileage may vary.

Mugen no Juunin - Immortal

Speaking of 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔢𝔡𝔤𝔢, another anime adaptation of Blade of the Immortal appeared! You know, the manga for the cultured and historically minded guro fan. The first episode of Blade of the Immortal runs with this and is an arthouse production that someone most definitely directed the shit out of. I don’t think I’ve seen this much directing since, well, Sarazanmai, but “Ikuhara amounts of directing” is pretty much the idea here. And most of the time it even works! The quickly edited, disorienting style gives episode 1 a feeling closer to horror than to a cool swordmen action show, and that really brings out the best in the material, which is grotesque splatter bordering on the comical - It’s somehow a better Junji Ito anime than the actual Junji Ito anime. I think it tries too hard in a few places, but at least it does try.

But then I watched the second episode and that one’s a fairly conventional splatter-comedy swordin’ anime. I am not at all pleased with this development. The third episode was better again and seemed to split the difference between 1 and 2, even if it mostly uses the tricky editing to save on effort in the action – I would much prefer actually readable fights and the wacky mannerisms in the more psychological stuff, thank you very much. Based on episode 1 I thought we might have something special here, but as of episode 3 I’d already merely call it pretty decent. I guess I’ll still stick with it but man, that’s a real bummer.

No Guns Life

No Guns Life is a neo-noir thriller about a guy who has a gun for a head. That’s fuckin rad and exactly the kind of silliness I am totally down for. He also has a gun for a hand, and there’s also some battle nun’s who carry revolvers with two cylinders, so in short I think the title is false advertising. This sounds very wacky (and it is), but it also takes its noir very seriously, down to details more wannabe neo-noirs tend to neglect (like being set right after a big war). The look and feel is pretty excellent, with sharp design and high-contrast artwork, and the music goes all in on the moody saxophone as you’d expect. And there’s some really adorable “look mom, I’m writing” stuff about how Man With Gun For A Head really “needs someone to pull his trigger” and so on (which is, as the astute reader might remember, at the back of his head). It feels like a throwback but then I can’t really think of many 80s/90s shows like this, so it’s actually more like the sort of faux-retro idea Trigger/Imaishi would come up with on a lark. Trigger/Imaishi would, of course, make a far worse anime out of it, so it’s all good. Well, it has some pacing problems and as always it’s a fine line between amusingly camp and not so amusingly camp anymore, but No Guns Life seems to have enough real qualities that it can probably stand on its own even when its conceptual gimmick eventually doesn’t suffice anymore. I give it a two gun’s up.

Hoshiai no Sora / Stars Align

And finally, here’s an anime about middle schooler softboys playing a tennis just as soft as themselves, while being henpecked by the elites on the girl’s team. This is not an “actual” sports anime though: for starters, it’s not based on some shounen manga and is an anime original with quite some staff pedigree instead. It’s also more of a character drama that already goes to some surprisingly real places by the end of episode 1, reminiscent of the recent and quite good Run with the Wind. Furthermore, it looks delicious, with minimalist but distinctive and varied character designs and animation that’s both extremely detailed for a TV anime and also not trying to shove that fact into your face with flashy stunt cuts. In short, this show seems very simple at first glance but every aspect of it just oozes quality. If nothing else, it’s already worth watching just for the excellent ending sequence where the characters show off their “best” dance moves and the chunky student council president dunks on everyone. This one caught me by surprise and it’s an easy pick for most promising show of the season.

#anime #impressions #Beastars #Rifle is Beautiful #Kabukicho Sherlock #Shin Chuuka Ichiban!#Assassins Pride #Mugen no Juunin - Immortal #No Guns Life #Hoshiai no Sora #stars align

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creativity-is-rebellion · 4 years

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Top 10 Favourite TV Shows I Have Seen (So Far)

I’ve done a few of these lists for film and music now, so I thought I would turn my attention to the small screen. The funny thing about these lists is that they may not represent an entirely accurate picture of what they intend to illuminate upon, but rather what comes to one’s mind when they are being compiled. In saying that, all of the below TV series definitely stand somewhere on my lengthy favourites list. So, here we go:

True Detective, Season One (2014)

It’s been said by others before me, but Season One of True Detective is without a doubt a near-perfect blend of narrative, dialogue, and cinematography, arguably the best in the last 20 years or so of crime shows. The Southern Gothic and Cosmic horror elements are present in the decay of the surroundings, the extravagantly decorated victims, and the sinister antagonists. This is juxtaposed with the world-weary detective trope, which switches between present-day interviews with the show’s two protagonists and flashbacks to where the narrative of the season began back in 1995, with the discovery of a body that has been placed in some kind of ritual tableau. Both Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey do a fine job playing the protagonist detectives on the case, but the complexity of McConaughey’s Rustin Cohle definitely steals the show, so much so that his performance re-launched his career (known at the time as the McConaissance). It’s a lot more terrifying than your typical detective series, borrowing a lot of concepts from philosophers, such as Nietzsche, and has an overall depressing and nihilistic vibe. But these elements, in my opinion, just add to its ingenuity and watchability. 10/10.

Dead Like Me (2003-2004)

Ok, so this show is now a cult classic, but at the time it didn’t get enough viewers, so there were only two seasons. I was one of the people who didn’t watch it until many years after its initial run. The renewed interest in the series even spawned a movie version in 2009, six years after the series came out. The premise is simple enough; a young, sardonic girl dies in an accident, and now she, along with a few other wrongfully-dead individuals, need to help a certain amount of people cross-over before being allowed to finally go through the pearly gates themselves. But the series approaches the plot in a unique manner, adding heart to the characters, and being appropriately funny, deep, and interesting when it needs to be. There is a reason it is now a cult classic. 10/10.

Mindhunter (2017-2019)

Ah, the show that tells the story of how profiling at the FBI began, without naming any real-life FBI agents, but portraying hauntingly accurate versions of the serial killers that helped shape the system. I preferred the first season, even if Holden Ford, the main character, at times, appeared just as creepy as the monsters he was interviewing. The freaky-deaky sex scenes in the first season were kinda unnecessary, in my opinion, and took away from the main plot. It was enough to hear about the sexually-deviant acts of the sadistic killers being retold during interviews, and, even though it was meant to show the effects these stories were having on Holden, it still wasn’t needed. I also hated his bitch of a girlfriend. But other than that, the plot moves along at an interesting pace, with an adequate amount of foreboding that should be there when you fill up your days interviewing homicidal psychopaths. The second season took to long to appear in the world of Netflix, where audiences have the attention span of goldfishes, and was over-ambitious in its introduction of more serial killers than its predecessor, and jumping ahead too much in the timeline. I think that, since the first season, it has been interesting the way they start some of their episodes with the exploits of then-uncaught Dennis Rader, or the BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) Killer, but, because there will be no more seasons, we will not see the ending of this plot. Also, in the second season, the plot about Bill Tench’s boy, and Dr. Wendy Carr’s love-life also took away from the plot. It seems that every time they delve into any of the main characters’ personal lives, they veer wildly off-track. They also could have found a more interesting serial killer to track than the Atlanta Child Murderer Wayne Williams, or could have done it differently. The audience agrees with this, obviously, because there will be no third season. Boy, it sounds like I was super-negative in this review, but I swear, I am a fan, if only for the interesting premise, excellent character portrayals, and creepy atmosphere. 8/10.

Dexter (2006-2013)

Fellow Dexter fans, repeat after me: We choose to ignore the ending. We choose to ignore the ending. We choose to ignore the ending. Sigh. Feel better? Good. Moving on. Dexter, the premise of a serial killer who only kills bad guys, as sketched out originally in Jeff Lindsay’s books (the novels for which the TV series was based upon), was, in 2006, a delightfully refreshing addition to Showtime’s prime-time slot set. In spite of what others thought, my favourite character besides Dexter was his sister Deb, played marvellously by Jennifer Carpenter. After Rita’s sadly horrific death at the end of Season 5 at the hands of the Trinity Killer (the best antagonist of the entire series), the quality of the show tumbled steeply downhill, but not enough for me to stop watching. 8/10.

American Horror Story (2011-Current)

I’ve enjoyed all nine seasons of American Horror Story, for its scares, and even for, at times, the sheer ludicrousness and campy acting. The best seasons, of course, include Jessica Lange, and no season to date has eclipsed the first two, but I like how there is a connected universe with each addition to the anthology. I am a person that enjoys a side-helping of Easter eggs and foreshadowing in my TV series, and AHS provides just that. Season 1 will always be the best for being the one that started it all, and Season 2 is a masterpiece. After that, my rankings are 5, 3, 4, 8, 6, 9 and 7. The latter seasons tend to follow a trend of peaking midway through, before skulking toward lukewarm endings. But the sheer existence of this show pleases the horror buff in me, so I will never tire of it. I can’t wait until October to see what they have in store for Season 10. 8/10.

Freaks and Geeks (1999)

Judd Apatow’s foray into the politics of high school in the early-1980s only lasted one season, but what a season it was. Freaks and Geeks introduced 16-year-old Lindsay Weir, who, after her grandmother’s death, is sick of being the brainy kid and wants to hang out with the freaks and finally be cool, sometimes with hilarious or heartwarming results. There is also her geeky freshman brother, Sam, and his equally awkward friends who run along as side-plots and occasionally provide the moral foil to the overarching plot of an episode. With a stellar cast, most of whom went on to even greater things, such as Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogen, and James Franco, Freaks and Geeks is more real than most teen dramas, and has rightfully developed a cult following in the years since the show’s cancellation. 9/10.

Twin Peaks (1990-1991, then again in 2017)

Ahead of its time, a pioneer

American Gothic (1995-1996)

This is a forgotten horror gem of the mid-90s that kick-started Sarah Paulson’s career long before AHS, and Gary Cole was electric as crooked cop Sheriff Buck exerting evil supernatural influence over a small god-fearing town in the South. I first saw this show when I was 10, and it scared the crap out of me. The senseless murder of Merlyn Temple at the hands of Cole’s aforementioned sheriff haunted me years afterward.

Community (2009-2015)

In the first few seasons, Dan Harmon’s hilarious comedy, Community, starts off normally enough, centring around a lawyer (Joel McHale’s Jeff Winger) who is exposed as having a fake degree, and is required to attend community college to obtain the proper credentials to be re-admitted into the bar. When he forms a study group, initially with the goal to convince the girl he has a crush on (Britta Perry, played by Gillian Jacobs), to go out with him, they all become fast friends and partake in many crazy exploits while studying at Greendale, including a dark parallel universe, which has evil versions of each character. With a stellar ensemble cast, including Donald Glover of Childish Gambino fame, and Chevy Chase, who is still hilarious in his seventies, this show is must-see television. Stream it today. 10/10.

The Good Place (2016-2019)

The ending made me sad.

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tanadrin · 4 years

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I've never watched any Star Trek (except for one of the movies a few years ago and a couple scattered halves of TOS episodes) but I've always kind of wanted to get into it and you've been making DS9 sound really good; do you recommend starting with it or some other series? If some further aesthetic preference information is needed, I really like everything I've read of your writing.

DS9 is often considered the Best, for a lot of reasons. I think some of those are that it has long, multi-episode arcs, especially later in the series, and explores some pretty complicated political and moral themes around insurgency/occupation/war--all this for a series that debuted in 1993, no less--and was able to do more with developing a recurring set of characters and locations because the cast wasn’t off to a new planet every week. Also, TNG, especially in its early season, was still a little too constrained by Roddenberry’s creative control, and some of the things the writers were clearly ready to explore already in TNG were shot down by Roddenberry who had a couple of very specific things he didn’t want to make part of his version of Star Trek. Roddenberry wasn’t super interested in war stories or interpersonal conflict for its own sake (and considering some of the shit that gets passed off as Star Trek now, between the Nu-Trek movies and Discovery, that second point looks pretty smart in retrospect), but more in super-high-concept hour-long stories that stood on their own. That was fine as far as it went, and I actually think TNG has some of the best episodes of TV SF of all time: (Inner Light, Darmok, Frame of Mind, and--I realize this is an extremely controversial choice for some--Masks. But if that’s not your bag, TNG is probably not for you. Like, TNG is very much TOS, with a slightly tweaked concept and better effects, but it’s filling the same niche in the genre.

TNG and DS9 are both really good, and I think you’d do well to start with either if you want. Their biggest flaws are things that are common to all 90s TV--they feel a little dated, the sets are small, the shots are framed in specific ways, they don’t have the huge effects budgets of modern TV, and DS9 sometimes struggled to show the big space battles that were important to its plot as a result, and so on. TNG also does the planet-of-the-week premise better than its successor in that regard, Voyager, which had really uneven quality. Plenty of great episodes; Year of Hell is a fantastic two-parter, with a Moby-Dick style alien captain who’s really interesting and, for once, a plot about time travel technology that doesn’t suck ass; Course: Oblivion is a SUPER bleak episode with an ending that is 10000% my jam; but also plenty of stinkers: Threshold, infamously; and the Kazon were super irritating recurring villains that never worked, as was Seska; some characters like Janeway, Kes, and Seven of Nine were played by great actors but the writers didn’t always write them consistently, and in the case of the latter two, sometimes it seemed like they didn’t even know what to do with them at all).

Enterprise struggled to figure out what it wanted to do with the Star Trek format, and at first tried to follow in the vein of TOS/TNG/Voyager, and didn’t really get its footing until season 3, and didn’t get really properly good until Season 4, and then got cancelled, and Discovery... sigh. Discovery can’t stop reminding the viewer at every turn THIS IS STAR TREK! and the dialogue is bad, and the high-concept SF elements are rushed and sloppy, efforts to deal with the encrusted years of continuity are dealt with hamfistedly, and it’s pretty to look at, but other than the cool ships and the way Anson Mount’s ass looks in that TOS uniform, there’s not much to appreciate relative to older Star Trek.

If you actually enjoy retro SF, not merely “can appreciate it on an intellectual level,” I would start with TOS. It’s fun, it’s kinda campy, and the sets are cheap, but it’s clearly lovingly crafted, and genuinely well-acted. I think a lot of people think they know TOS because they’ve osmosed it from the culture generally, but I think the genuine article is always going to be more interesting, Kirk especially [insert your own link to the Kirk Drift essay here]. But if that’s not your cup of tea, or you’re more interested in newer entries, the choice of TNG or DS9 is down to whether you want high-concept planet of the week SF, or less high-concept (though it still has its share of godlike aliens and energy blobs), more character driven (in the original sense of “has really interesting characters,” rather than what it has come to mean now, “an endless churn of juvenile-ass high school-type drama and bad dialogue;” cf. Discovery) stories.

If you’re going to watch Star Trek movies, the general consensus is: avoid Nu-Trek like the plague, and only watch the even-numbered ones. That order holds up once you get into the later movies only if you include Galaxy Quest as a Star Trek movie (which it is, obviously), and I want to particularly recommend Wrath of Khan because I re-watched it recently and there really is no substitute for Ricardo Montalban hamming it up with his waxed pecs lovingly displayed.

#tng is my favorite for childhood nostalgia reasons #but i am contractually obligated by my membership in the International Union of Insufferable Star Trek Nerds to state that DS9 is better

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spaceorphan18 · 4 years

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Marvel Movie Night: Spider-Man

Kicking off Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy! Whoo! It’s interesting - Spider-Man was one of those things that I wasn’t initially into (totally here for the X-Men). Then I really fell in love with this trilogy. And then kind of fell out of love with it. And then Tom Holland came along leaving this in the dust. Coming back to it again I find it… endearing? But like the original X-Men films, despite being thought of as great for the time, I don’t believe it holds up that well now that we’re nearly twenty years later. (My god, am I getting old?)

Let’s back up and talk about this film in context for a second. X-Men was revolutionary in its own way - bringing the comic book genre into a space that could be taken more seriously. Spider-Man, however, was the first glimpse of what films based on Marvel properties would later become. Unlike superhero and action films of the time, it was brightly colored. It was cheesy, but not overly campy. It had humor and emotion. And, not surprisingly, audiences reacted positively!

But now that we’ve had twenty more years of Marvel films, does it hold up? Kind of? Is it a good Spider-Man film, yes if the context you’d like your Spider-Man films to be in is taking directly from the Silver and Bronze age era of comics. Is it a good film overall? Meh.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time in Spider-Man related fandoms, but there is a big chunk of fans that prefer this film and its sequels to the other two Spider-Man franchises. And while I don’t agree (though I support everyone having their own, varied opinion), I can see why this might appeal to those fans who had been reading the comics for years.

The first half of this film is directly lifted out of Amazing Fantasy #15, the comic issue Spider-Man made his debut in. The filmmakers did, really, a fantastic job of bringing it to life -- the origin story, Uncle Ben, the ‘great power’ line, Peter Parker’s guilt, the spider-bite, and so on and so on. It’s there. This film feels like a Silver Age comic book brought to life. On the one hand - that’s pretty remarkable. I don’t think the comics had ever been directly referenced in the same way prior to this. On the other, it brings along with it all the downsides of a Silver Age comic. The dialogue is incredibly stiff. The acting feels forced. And everything has that -- ‘ah, golly shucks’ mentality about it. It felt dated in 2002. It feels even more dated now. But the novelty of it being THE COMIC BOOK was pretty revolutionary for the time.

Peter Parker/Spider-Man

Of course there are hundreds of polls out there, and I’m sure a few dozen YouTube videos about who the best Spider-Man is. Honestly, there’s a lot of subjectivity that goes along with it. I think each of them has their pros and cons, so let’s take a second to talk about Tobey Maguire in this film. One thing I think Tobey Maguire does really well, especially for being nearly thirty by the time he got the part, is play the nerdy and awkward Peter Parker… or at least at least the nerdy and awkward Peter Parker that was written in the 60s by Stan Lee. Maguire does a great job of doing the part he’s supposed to be playing - the problem is, and I feel this way about all the characters, is that he doesn’t feel like he’s playing a real person. He feels like he’s a comic book character thought up during the 60s.

What about the Spider-Man side of things? I’m going to give this a pass more than I probably should. First of all, Spider-Man is supposed to be rather chatting, and this Spider-Man is near silent. But that’s more so due to the lack of ability with the suit. And I don’t blame the filmmakers for keeping Spider-Man off the screen for so much of the film. Not only does it make those times Spider-Man is there feel more special, but it saves them from having to do a lot of things that, maybe, didn’t the technology wasn’t fully ready for yet.

Look - I think while it was definitely moving in the right direction, the action sequences in this film are probably some of its weakest points. Everything is incredibly stiff and/or ridiculous looking. Sure, there are some great moments of Spider-Man swinging around the city. But most of the stuff between he and the Green Goblin have not aged well at all.

One last thing - the organic webshooters? Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Ew.

Aunt May, Uncle Ben, and Great Responsibility

So - Aunt May (and Uncle Ben) in the comics are older. It’s… kinda unrealistic, unless Peter’s parents were much, much older when they had a kid. Uncle Ben says in this film that he’s 68. That’s grandparent age -- and I’d believe this whole thing much more if they were Peter’s great Aunt and Uncle. That said, Cliff Robertson and Rosemary Harris were perfect choices for their roles. Robertson especially plays the closest to an actual person as he grumbles about unemployment and new technology he’s having trouble with. But more so, he does such a great job with his Great Responsibility line, that there’s really no reason for other Spider-Man films to do it. It’s in the culture now. We get it. Meanwhile, Harris’s Aunt May, well, looks exactly like Aunt May. Aunt May, in general, kind of annoys me, so I suppose we’ll leave it that.

The Osborns and the Green Goblin

First, James Franco as Harry Osborn. There really isn’t a whole lot to this character - it feels like he’s talked about more than actually on screen, and I feel like we don’t get to see that much of Peter and Harry’s relationship. That said, Franco does brooding rather well - and is pretty consistent at keeping the brooding up throughout the film. He’s fine, but sometimes feels like he’s there because the movie wants him to be in it.

Willem Dafoe is Norman Osborn, and here’s my thing. Dafoe is a pretty good actor. He does the whole split-personality thing rather well, and makes an incredibly convincing villain, especially when everything about the Green Goblin is, well, incredibly contrived. Really, I think the Oscorp stuff is the dumbest stuff in this film because it strictly adheres to comic book logic. And while I also understand there were obvious limitations and complications making such a ridiculous suit, that Green Goblin costume is terrible. Dafoe was much more menacing without it on.

Mary Jane Watson

**sigh** Okay. Let me start by saying that I like MJ in the comics, even though, yeah, this is a pretty good representation of her (or more so the kind of character she was forty years ago) here. I don’t even mind Kirstin Dunst. This version of MJ bugs me though. Part of it is the story framing. Everything’s from Peter’s POV, and it doesn’t make any sense. What is it about her, besides the fact that she’s pretty, does he even like? They never actually spend time together - and when they do, Peter’s giving her soliloquy about how wonderful she is. The problem is that we’re never really given a reason, other than pretty, to understand why. Do they have anything in common? Not really. Do they make a connection beyond his constant saving her from bad situations - whether it be emotional or physical? Not really.

Everything about their scenes is just over-the-top a majority of the time. Like -- this is a big sweeping romance, hear the music? See the close-ups? Add tears, more tears! But I never buy an actual connection between the two of them.

The one thing that does actual work, and I will give them a ton of credit for, is that upside down kiss in the rain. That’s pretty damn iconic. And kinda hot. It’s the only time that the movie allows the romance to do something other than follow the tired tropes of boy-likes-girl, boy-rescues-girl, boy-gets-girl. Ug.

J Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle

JK Simmons and the Daily Bugle is hands down the best thing about this film. It’s witty and almost satirical with everything looking straight out of the 60s comic book. It gets the humor that the comics often has and runs with it. I have no complaints, it’s really, truly amazing. And I have to wonder if this entire film would work better if it had taken place during the 60s and was a tad more on the satirical side. I feel like the world would have made just a little more sense.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 Spiderwebs. I think this film is a great embodiment for what Spider-Man meant to a whole group of people who grew up with the character. As a film, I think it’s standard issue, and besides letting comic book movies be brightly colored and fun, I don’t think it does anything special with the story it’s telling. And much like the original X-Men film, while I’ll give it credit for being special for the time it came out, I don’t think it holds up now.

Next Up: Oy, I’m gonna have to watch that Ben Affleck Daredevil film now. :P

#marvel movie nights #spider-man

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i-d0nt-even-kn0w · 4 years

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Thoughts on the Little Shop of Horrors Off-Broadway (2019) Cast Album

The Cast Album for the Little Shop of Horrors Off-Broadway 2019 revival recently came out, so I thought I’d throw in my two cents on it.

I’m going to write this while listening to it, but I will put a disclaimer ahead of time that so far from what I’ve heard I overall, quite honestly, don’t love it. I don’t think it’s bad, for sure! But I feel like everyone is fawning over Johnathan Groff and Christian Borle and calling it “the best lsoh yet” which I just... don’t agree with at all.

I thought I’d create this post to gather and explain my thoughts as well as create a discussion. Whether you disagree or agree with me, comment in the post; I’d love to hear what y’all think! I’m interested in hearing others opinions and their explanations as to why.

But for now, here’s a bullet pointed list of my thoughts down below:

Johnathan Groff as Seymour

I’ll be transparent and admit that I didn’t think Johnathan would be a good cast for Seymour before I even heard the album, but listening to it confirmed my suspicions. He obviously can sing the notes fantastically (he’s such a good singer ahh!!!), but he also obviously isn’t the type for Seymour. Furthermore, he doesn’t even try to act into the type that Seymour is or character sing like Seymour would. It consequently sounds like he’s playing the typical handsome male lead in a musical, which Seymour isn’t--he’s more of a loser kid type (to quote my sister) and I just don’t think Johnathan pulls it off.

I hate comparing actors, but I feel it will help to explain what I mean. I think that one of the reasons George Salazar was so good as Seymour in Pasadena Playhouse is because he fits the type and does the character singing, and it feels like how Seymour should feel: a cute, awkward loser. Not a handsome, charismatic guy barely mimicking one.

Tammy Blanchard as Audrey

I cannot say I support Audrey singing in a lower octave the way that this show chose to. Again, they butchered the character voice in the singing, and although some people find it refreshing, I find it out of place.

I usually am awful at noticing autotune, but even I could hear it in Tammy throughout the album. Not necessarily her fault, but strange some people seemed to think she needed it so much.

Her “I’m sorry, Doctor” and everything after in “Feed Me” sounded so weird and not genuine and felt like she wasn’t even trying to act?

The more I listen to her the more I just really don’t like her Audrey... I’m sorry, Tammy. She’s not a bad singer, just... odd choices for Audrey, odd singing and voice acting choices.

Her “oh my gaaawd” in “Suppertime (Reprise)” and literally everything in it wtf I can’t even try to be polite anymore I’m so sorry Tammy but what?

The worst part of this album I am so sorry, Tammy.

I’ve realized while listening to “Somewhere That’s Green (Reprise)” that maybe Audrey sounds so weird because Tammy is trying to jokingly play up “Audrey is stupid haha” with her character voice and I PRAY that isn’t the case but if it is ooooh I’ll be so mad, Tammy/whoever the director is.

Tom Alan Robbins as Mr. Mushnik

His “Mushnik & Son” is fantastic! One of my favorite songs of the album, honestly. They get the creepiness and forcefulness of it well, it’s funny, and he actually leans into the character voice unlike many of the other actors.

He doesn’t sound very old, which is what I prefer in a Mr. Mushnik, but this is just me being nit-picky lol.

Overall he’s one of my favorites from this entire album.

Christian Borle as Orin

I actually liked his “Dentist!” Not my favorite, but well done.

“Now (It’s Just the Gas)” is where it all went wrong... but that’s its own bullet point.

In all, I think Christian has the capability to be a great Orin, but the change in the musical orchestrations and the direction made him one of my least favorite Orins (but hey, at least he didn’t speak-sing every song like many Orins I’ve seen, thank GOD). I think the direction really voided Orin of any depth, and made him an JUST an unlikeable guy as opposed to an unlikeable guy who is also a comedic sadist who also can at times be genuinely friendly before you see him be a total awful person. Basically, they robbed him of complexity (and yes, Orin DOES have complexity).

His “now spit” didn’t sound like he took pleasure in it at all :(

Again, his “stupid woman, Christ what a freaking scatter-brain” and everything after it didn’t sound intimidating or even like he was trying to act at all... the slap didn’t feel intense as a result, and really killed the climax of “Feed Me”.

Kingsley Leggs as Audrey II

I have to be transparent again and say nothing will beat Michael-Leon Wooley as Audrey II in the 2003 Broadway revival, personally. He sang more into the role, which is how I myself prefer Audrey II to be played. That being said, despite Kingsley Leggs speak-singing more than I’d like, he pulls it off better than any of the many other Audrey II’s I’ve seen do it before, balancing speak-singing with his actual singing voice very well. And his actual singing voice is phenomenal! One of the better parts of the album.

His “Suppertime”? Mwah, chef kiss. Fantastic.

The Urchins

They were great, I don’t really have any criticisms for them, probably because they are roles that give the actors a lot more freedom in terms of acting and vocal choices.

Their “The Meek Shall Inherit”? Mwah, chefs kiss, their voices blend so well together. I love...........

The Orchestrations

They make them different from the usual LSOH orchestrations, most noticeably in “Now (It’s Just the Gas)”, which I will get to soon...

In general it’s not terrible, just not as good as the original in my opinion. I can tell they were going for something different, which I can respect, but it just comes out as odd when I’m listening to it. Perhaps it’s better on stage.

“Now (It’s Just the Gas)”

I have particular criticisms on this song because it’s one of my favorite songs in the show for its complexity, horror, and orchestration. This version, in the process of making it campy and different, gutted the song of it’s meaning.

They sped up Orin’s part in the music, which TOTALLY pulls away from the effective contract between his part and Seymours. Orin’s part should be slow to create the horrifying effect that he is dying slowly, begging slowly for Seymour to help him as he laughs himself to death. Seymour’s part is fast to show his frantic anxiety and fear from what will be his first murder. Instead this effect (which quite frankly is a basic part of any good LSOH) is ruined, and it ends up being a fast paced song all the way through that feels like it is just for laughs. One of the best parts of this song is how creepy and horrifying it is with the layer of comedy. This version of “Now (It’s Just the Gas)”... seems to not understand the song at all.

I personally believe Orin’s laughter should sound fearful at least a bit or at least towards the end, but it never does. It just sounds maniacal and leaning in to the comedy, which really takes away from whatever levity this number should have as Seymour’s first murder and the climax of Act I.

Christian’s Orin doesn’t sound angry (or, again, scared) when he dies. It really just feels like he leans into the joke psycho act, and this lack of character complexity or attempt to make us feel bad for a man literally laughing to death is... ugh.

Johnathan’s “Death?” at the end is much too frightened for my taste, and again creates a loss of impact in the song. The quiet fright yet calmness in which Seymour usually says “Death?” creates a sickening effect where you realize that he allowed a man to suffocate to death slowly while laughing. It’s supposed to be disgusting, not funny, not sympathetic towards Seymour (imo).

If you can’t tell, I am very passionate about this number. It’s a make or break song for me when I’m analyzing “is this a good production of Little Shop of Horrors?”

A Very Dumb Preference of Mine

More nit-picky personal preference thing, but I really prefer LSOH’s where Seymour is shorter than Audrey or at least not too tall. Johnathan is 5′11″ while Tammy is 5′6″. Again, super stupid and nit-picky, but just a personal reason this can’t be my favorite LSOH. It’s all about the subversion of stereotypical romance tropes.....

Bigger Than Hula Hoops

They renamed “Bigger Than Hula Hoops” “Da-Doo (Reprise)” in the album............... I’m being petty but that’s illegal.

CONCLUSION:

I’m sorry, but this is overall my least favorite version of LSOH (based off the cast album, of course!). Perhaps I’m biased, and perhaps people who say it’s their favorite version are biased because they are Johnathan Groff and Christian Borle stans (no shade, I am one as well). Either way, this is just my opinion, and I would again love to hear all your guys’s opinions: why you agree, diagree, etc!

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